A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (20 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was a lilt to Pearl’s voice that identified her as Southern. She recalled that voice now. The same accent she heard from Joe. A deeper connection was made. “You’re the ones who brought Joe to us.”

Pearl glanced at Roy. The man nodded. “Jim told us to come here.”

Roy’s accent was the same as Joe’s, soft, Southern. “You risked your lives for us last night.”

Pearl and Roy shared a look, the woman continuing to help relieve the man of the produce. Anya stepped closer, a joyous smile lit her features. “They wanted to help. We were worried when the battle was raging so close.” Her smile wilted into sadness. “Gerta has not been well for many years. Her heart.”

“You should have seen her, Mama.”

“I have seen her at work. She loves—loved—what she did.” Anya turned and plucked down an apron for Beth. “We will work as we talk. We have much to do before the wagons arrive.”

All along, during the long days and nights, her mother and father had been helping the very slaves who had brought Joe to Gerta. “I worked on the quilt blocks.”

Anya raised a long knife and sliced a sweet potato in half, then quarters, as if she hadn’t heard. Beth took the pieces and cut them even smaller as Pearl kneaded a trough of dough, sprinkling flour as she worked.

“You put several together,” Anya wiped at a strand of hair with the back of her hand, moving back in time for Roy to place more washed sweet potatoes in front of her.

Despite being in the comfort of her childhood home, close to her mother and father and out of the way of danger, Beth could still taste the terror. “It was a welcome respite from . . .” She wondered if she would ever be able to shake the horror.

Her mother laid her knife aside, put her hand beneath Beth’s arm, and directed them outside into the warm air. Her mother let go and pushed Beth gently onto a chair, then sat beside her.

“You have experienced much more than most.”

She lifted her face to the beams of light. “You didn’t want me to be a nurse.”

“No,” Anya’s voice was firm. “No, Bethie, it wasn’t that at all.”

For the first time, she thought she understood. “It was spiritual.”

Relief smoothed the wrinkles of her mother’s expression. “Now you see.”

“I knew the quilt was your way of showing me something.”

“I had hoped you would seek comfort in it. I chose the colors to show you that your limp and Leo’s death did not have to be a darkness that forever shaped your soul.”

Beth sank to her knees and laid her head in her mother’s lap. “It was what I saw when I looked at it. Joe, too. The colors, the message . . .”

“It is an old pattern. Goose Chase. It reminded me of you. Your father and I saw the darkness that was trying to consume you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as Anya’s fingers smoothed the hair above Beth’s ear. “It brought me home again.” She wondered if her mother would understand what she meant. Not the physical home, but the spiritual. When she lifted her head, Anya’s eyes were full. She leaned into her mother’s arms.

“I am so happy.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

They worked elbow-to-elbow shaping bread, making pies, packing jars of pickled pig’s feet, preserves, boiled eggs, and potatoes already baked and left to cool. Women from around town gathered at the church down the road to rip linens into bandages and donate blankets, clothes, shoes, whatever could be spared. Hogs were slaughtered and sausage making begun in earnest, not for their private stores, but to help support
the thousands of wounded flooding Sharpsburg, Boonsboro, Reisterstown, and others overwhelmed with the sick and dying.

Beth escaped to check on Joe who slept through most of the excitement. She let him sleep, contenting herself with watching the quiet rise and fall of his chest. Gratified to know that answers might await him in the form of Pearl and Roy. It would be Joe’s chance to learn the truth of what happened that night, instead of living with the fragments his traumatized mind served up in splinters.

Beneath the window she watched the new wave of women arrive, their sons or daughters doing the driving as the women tried to keep their youngsters in check. Beth drank in the willingness of the townsfolk to help. They asked her about the battle, slack-jawed at the stories she told of the dead and wounded in the fields surrounding Sharpsburg. Smells of death. Of Teresa Kretzer’s flag and the noise of the Confederate retreat. She knew nothing more firsthand, but was gratified to see the way her stories sparked a caring and renewed dedication in the women toward helping those South of them.

She noted that Pearl said little, that Roy never said anything, and that he stayed close to her father in the buildings surrounding the farmhouse, always busy loading something more into the bed of an already full wagon. She knew that the reason for the man’s silence extended beyond working hard. She wondered if the very women who flocked to hear the stories of the battle would gasp in horror and brand the Bumgartners as traitors if they knew a Rebel soldier lingered in a spare bedroom upstairs, or that Pearl and Roy, and Roy’s father Jonah, were all from the Deep South, escaped slaves that had found a home with her mother and father.

With every wave of women, her stories had to be retold. Until, finally, the telling had chipped at her and she sought out
Joe as she had sought him out during the dark days. He slept, and as he did she nestled her hand beneath his and lowered her head to her arms.

Joe blinked awake feeling like a great bear waking after a long winter. The thought brought a smile. The pain in his shoulder wrestled him back to reality and twisted his lips into a grimace. There was something else, too. A subtle vibration that had woken him.

He cracked open an eye and saw a black woman at his side. She was smoothing a cool cloth over his warm skin. Every time she leaned forward, the bed wiggled.

When she saw him watching her, she lowered her eyes and let the rag she’d been using fall back into the basin of water. “I am Pearl.”

She did not turn and scurry away as so many blacks did in the South in the presence of a white man. Except Lela. The housemaid who had cared for him, Ben, and Sue in their youth, seldom backed down to any man or woman, white, black or otherwise. He’d loved Lela.

He licked his lips. “Could I have a drink?”

She raised her gaze to his. “I’ll get you one.”

“And Beth—I mean M—”

“I’ll fetch her for you.”

Her voice nudged him. It was more than the obvious southern drawl. It was familiar. When Pearl returned with water, he drank long and deep. Muscles bunched from disuse. A soreness that registered through his back and sides. Stretching upward, he wiggled himself to a sitting position needing to work the stiffness from his muscles. Pearl took a step back,
grabbed up a shirt, and handed it to him without saying a word. He squinted at her. “I know you.”

She returned his stare, saying nothing.

Her smooth skin glowed. Her head, wrapped in a kerchief, barred him from seeing her hair to determine her age. Thirties would be his best guess. Southern . . . a
V
appeared between his eyes as he tried to combine the voice with the face. And then it came to him. He used the footboard to get to his feet, the surprise coursing through him.

“Ben. You were the ones we rescued.” His world tilted. Spun. He hung on.

“We’re forever thankful for your sacrifice.” Her gaze went to her feet. “For your brother’s kindness to us.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She passed him the tin of water.

He ignored it.

“You found us in that rundown—”

He waved his hand impatiently. “No. Ben. My brother was shot. What do you remember?”

Pearl shrank back, sensitive to the forcefulness in his voice.

He stuffed back his anxiousness. He reached for the tin of water and gulped it down, passing it back to her with a smile he did not feel. “Please.”

She stared at her feet. “He rose up out of nowhere. Your brother was helping you along the way as fast as he dared to go, aiming us toward Maryland. We was almost there when that man rose up in front of us. He had no eyes for us, just your brother.”

Her words stirred the memories. He remembered falling. A sudden thrust away from Ben’s side.

“Shoved you away from him and went to swing his rifle around, but the man raised his and fired before your brother had a chance. He crumpled to the ground. Ray tried to carry
him, but your brother was bleeding too much . . . he was dead. You were all we had left and you’d already told us the direction we needed to take. We vowed we’d get ourselves North, then find you some help. Roy asked around for a woman who might be kind to a Rebel and we waited ’til midnight to go to the woman’s house. She fed us. Told us to go to Jim.”

His anger rose hot, hotter than the fever that raged off and on. He didn’t want the general story, he wanted specifics. His rage gave him strength and he took a step closer to her. “You must know who shot him.”

She shrank away from him, her eyes wide.

He stilled and tried to rein in his emotion. “A description.” But it had been dark. Even his image was vague, the mismatched uniform his only clear clue and he often wondered if that had been a product of his dreams. “Sounds. The time or place. Did Ben say anything?” Hadn’t he heard Ben’s voice utter something in his dreams?

“Please, sir!”

Her shriek pulled him back to what he was doing. His hand on her wrist. His grip tight. He released her immediately and retreated.

She burst into tears and his anger blew away like chaff on the wind. He stared at his left hand as if its grip had betrayed him. Pearl slid away from him and bolted out the door just as Beth entered the room, confusion knitting her brows.

“Joe?”

He half-turned. “I scared her.” Truth be told, he’d scared himself.

“They’re the ones who brought you to us that night. Her and—”

“I know,” he turned his back to her, gaze landing on the overflowing wagon and the women and men working hard to fill another wagon. More people arrived by the minute. The
temptation to go down there and reveal his identity rubbed at him.

He heard her take a step closer, her skirts swishing as she moved. Her hand on his arm. “Perhaps you should lie down again. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

He faced her. Her expression glowed. She was home. Happy and whole. And he was miles away.

Her expression softened and a smile lit her face and set her eyes to dancing. “I think my mother has a pie for you.”

He drank in the high color of her cheeks, the smooth gloss of her hair, the strand that fluttered around the corner of her left eye. Her smile faded and he wondered if her heart beat as hard as his, or if she understood that she was all he had that was comfortable and familiar.

His left hand gripped the post, then slipped out to rest at her waist. When he leaned forward, she didn’t gasp in horror or step away, which he took as a good sign. She met his kiss with a gasp that melted to surprise. She allowed her lips to linger on his, took a tiny step closer. She broke the kiss as she stepped back, her expression both amazed and horrified. Her fingers stroked the place where his lips had just lingered. His heart beat like the drone of men marching hard toward the next battle.

“Beth . . .” her name slipped from his lips and he knew not what he was asking or why he had kissed her. It meant something, a kiss, but he only knew she had been there and he had needed comfort. A sign. Affirmation. But he would not apologize.