A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (5 page)

He wanted to sit up and drew a deep breath to prepare himself for the task. He found leverage on the floor with his left hand, his right arm strangely numb. Glancing down, he saw the bandage on his right shoulder, pristine in comparison to the man beside him. Pushing upward, he exhaled hard when a wave of dizziness set the room into a hard spin. He gasped for air and waited for things to settle down. He pushed himself to a sitting position and swiped at the beads of sweat formed by his effort. Guns boomed, shells whined
.

A glance down at his clothes—his pants were a dull gray, fading to dirty beige. The colors yanked a memory. War. Then another. Ben. He held his head in his hands and tried to make sense of where he was and how he’d gotten here, wherever “here” was. Nothing made
sense and his head pounded. He licked his lips. Another scream tore from the man lying on the waist-high table as the saw worked back and forth. Acid rose in his throat. He gulped air and lay down when every fiber of his being screamed at him to run
.

Joe woke at the feel of coolness, tensed. He shivered and tried to focus on what was happening. The dream faded away like fog in the sun and he couldn’t remember what it had been about, only that he had ridden the crest of it, remembering the fear.

He felt hot, hotter than he’d ever been and he tried to lift his hand to push at the thick quilt covering his body. Even the air felt warm. He never knew what drew him to stare into the corner, but a woman sat there, her head bent over a letter, her expression intent.

“What—”

Her head snapped up and the paper glided to the floor as she stood. She knelt next to the cot, her lips curving in a smile that blew wonder into his mind and body. She was beautiful. He wanted to touch her but his body would not release him from the throbbing pain to let him raise his arm.

“Do you remember me?”

Did he? He fought for focus. She seemed familiar. Her voice was soft and gentle, a sound he wished he could carry with him always. Anything to clear his mind of shooting, the constant drone of cannonading and rifle, the awful screams of torment that seemed to surround him, suck him in to a level of pain and torture he didn’t want to experience. His dream. Of course. But if he’d dreamed it, then it wasn’t real. But why was his shoulder hurting just like in the dream? Why was he flat on his back?

“No more.”

Her eyebrows knitted in question and he knew what he said somehow hadn’t made sense to her, but it made sense to him. All of it. The war.

“It would be good if you could drink something.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, her skirts fanning the air as she swept off toward another room. He had not the strength to turn his head and follow her path. He closed his eyes and waited for her to return, hoping she would reappear soon. He didn’t want to go back to sleep or fade into the darkness that held all those memories. Come back. Talk to me. Let me forget. Make me forget . . .

Nothing made sense. In the haze of weariness, Beth understood a little of what was to come. Confederates had stopped throughout the day, appearing with apples in their hands from the Pipers’ orchard they’d tromped through they came scurrying across the hills and valleys of the farms. A skirmish broke out right in their front yard when a Union soldier was found hiding in the barn across the street.

Beth saw everything from her window. She stood, transfixed by the authoritative yelling voices, the snap of fire, the cloud that rose over the three Confederate and the one Union soldier, obliterating the outcome. When the smoke cleared, the men headed toward Gerta’s dooryard and the Union man lay still on the dirt road. A lone man. Dying or dead. And no one cared except her.

Her spine snapped straight, and she flung the package of quilt blocks onto her bed and streaked down the steps just as Gerta turned from the closed door.

“Don’t let them in!”

Gerta’s puzzled gaze skimmed over her.

“They just shot a man . . .” she paused, knuckles white against the railing, choking on a surge of anger.

“It’s too late for that, Bethie. They’ve all shot someone at some point. You should know that.”

She darted forward and yanked open the yard door. The Confederates lounged on the steps, their faces turned toward her. “Get out of here! Get off our porch, you lousy, no good—” She lost her voice. The men rose and parted as she lunged forward, lifting her skirts to clear the steps. She darted across the lawn.

Union blue flashed in the sunlight as she knelt beside the man’s unmoving form. She turned him over, gaped at the blood, uncaring that it soaked into her skirts and stained her fingers. She imagined seeing Jedidiah’s face, dreaded it, was relieved when it wasn’t, then horrified at the hole in the side of his head. Bile surged upward, burning her mouth. She released his head, stuffed a fist to her mouth and bit down hard to squelch the scream.

The Confederates were there beside her, stone-faced. They said nothing. Did nothing. Beth rose to her feet, defeated. Nothing could be done for the man. It all balled together in her stomach—the deed, the senseless death, the gore, the innocence . . . Little Leo . . .

She faced the Rebs armed with a choking rage. They fell back, the one in the center motioning the other two to follow him, and they walked away, toward the Pipers’ farmhouse.

A soft hand on her sleeve made her flinch, and she jerked. “Joe needs tending,” Gerta’s voice was a firm whisper in her ear. “There will be more coming. More death and dying, Beth.”

“I can’t do this.”

“What about them? What toll do you think it takes on them?”

She shot a look at the departing men. “Nothing. They like it.”

“That’s your rage talking.”

Indignation rose. “They shot him. I watched it happen. Like he was a dog—”

Gerta tugged on her arm. “Come on, Beth. I’ll have Jim come and bury him. Joe needs your attention.”

Joe. A Confederate. He was no better than the three men vaulting the Pipers’ fence, disappearing among the apple trees.

Gerta mounted the steps before her, the familiar warmth and the smell of bread and sauerkraut meeting her upon entering the house. She glanced beyond the kitchen into the narrow parlor where Joe lay, restless, whimpers coming from his throat. She didn’t want to go to him. Every ounce of desire to nurse was sapped from her. She collapsed into a chair, and cupped her head in her hands, and pressed her fingers against her temples where a dull ache had begun to form.

“They’re shooting at each other, Beth, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it. One side will win, the other will lose, but thousands upon thousands of women and men and children will forever have their lives changed because, North or South, they lost someone they loved.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t doubt that you do, but I think it’s easy to forget. To take sides because we don’t like what we’re seeing. These men are trained to do what they’re doing. They don’t have to like it—it’s expected of them.” Gerta touched the back of Beth’s hand. Beth lifted her face and accepted the touch, closing her eyes against the burn of tears.

“I don’t know if . . .”

“It’s going to be worse, if I don’t miss my guess. The Confederates hold the town. People are leaving. Things will be destroyed, lives, homes . . .” Gerta’s expression pinched
into the saddest expression Beth had ever witnessed on her face. What she saw there, in the face of the grandmother she so loved, tugged at a level where Beth rarely let her emotions go. It hurt too much to see the agony. Her anger churned into the need to run.

“I can’t bear to watch this . . . carnage.”

“It’s not the watching you’re being asked to do, it’s the helping. The healing. That’s what a nurse is all about.”

Beth stole a glance at Joe. Beyond the gray uniform he wore when he arrived, he was a man. No more and no less. She must not lose sight of that fact.

In her school days, there’d been a boy much like the Confederates. He’d been unconcerned with others, taunting, spending more time hating others than he did learning. Being much older, Beth had kept her distance from him. Jedidiah had fallen prey to the boy’s pranks, until his friend had rescued her brother. Not with his fists, for gentle Leo never fought anyone, but with his words. A boy wise beyond his seven years. Within the week, Leo would be dead in a fire and everyone would forget him. Except her. Her injury was the memory she held of him.

“If you want to leave, you can take the wagon. I fear that if the horse stays the Rebs will come for her.”

“Wouldn’t they have taken her by now?”

Gerta shrugged. “Perhaps not. I have been feeding them, you know.”

“If our boys fight through, we could be in trouble for having helped the Rebs.”

Her grandmother rose from the table. It took a full thirty seconds for her to straighten completely, yet she never once glanced in Beth’s direction. “When did your faith stop and the worry take over, Bethie?”

B
en’s laugh rang deep and loud in the close confines. Joe stared, trying to understand the reason for his brother’s good humor. He scratched his chest, miserable, hungry, and ducked out of the corncrib that provided precarious shelter to stretch his legs. He wandered among the campfires lighting the night like a band of fireflies blazing their color all at once
.

“We’ll be moving soon,” said one of the men, hovering near the fire, hands outstretched to catch the warmth in the cold night
.

Joe couldn’t hear his companions’ reply, but he heard their raucous laughter when a soldier stood up and blazed a trail to the edge of camp. Effects of eating green corn, or bad rations. He’d seen the reaction a million times. His own stomach gurgled with the need for food, but he resisted eating just anything despite his hunger, knowing the ill effects often suffered
.

He wound his way back toward the corncrib at the edge of the meadow, passing the tent of General Daniel Hill, and listened hard for whispers of what might be in store for them. His feet started to burn in the damp coolness of the meadow grass, and he stumbled toward the shelter. Ben was gone, four other soldiers crowding in, drawn by the idea of a roof and some corn left over from a previous
harvest. He unrolled his ragged blanket and folded into it, careful to put his weight on it lest another take it from him in the night
.

Ben came in much later and squatted next to him. In the darkness, he could see his brother’s smile and wondered vaguely what it was that had Ben so amused. Through half-lidded eyes, he watched his brother settle down for the night. Saw him drag Joe’s haversack closer. He fingered something long and slender, smiled, then slipped it into the sack. “Things are gonna get better real soon, Brother. Real soon.”

Above Beth’s head, the floor creaked. Gerta couldn’t sleep either. An eerie quiet stretched over the house and the countryside. Beth stroked the length of the two quilt blocks she held side by side on her lap. She’d dared to light a lantern after putting a blanket over the window that looked onto the porch from the kitchen. She rocked next to where Joe lay, keeping the wick low as she worked the needle.

She wondered if Gerta’s restlessness stemmed from the new wounded man out in the springhouse, fear of what was coming, or a general restlessness. As she pulled the needle through the material, she let her mind wander from the task at hand to the mental image of her mother doing the same thing. Quilt after quilt produced beneath her mother’s steady hand. Beth smiled at her impatience with the task. She’d had no desire to sit and sew, especially when the task was pushed on her because it helped “rest” her leg. None of her mother’s knack for putting together colors and following patterns flowed in her blood. Yet here she sat, doing the despised task, the thread an invisible tie to home.

Beth stabbed the needle into the block and lowered it to her lap. At least Joe slept soundly, despite the faint heat of fever
chapping his lips. She rose to apply more salve to relieve the dryness and wondered if she should check on the other man. He’d been dragged there by Rebs late in the day, his complexion wan, lips a pale slash against even paler skin. A crease running along the side of his cheek and skull had left him addled. His condition appeared worsened by the filth of his uniform, the hollows of his cheeks, and the bites from the bugs that seemed to plague every one of the Rebs she’d seen.