Beauty From Ashes (55 page)

I will do my best to make all this clear to Pete, but she is already confused in her own life and I am having difficulty following her problems, as seems true with her too. For now, I want you to know that I am at last aware of how doggedly you and Pete have tried, since your father left us, to help me mend my own brokenness. In the main, you have both succeeded and I am forever grateful. I am not writing any gossip or news of Marietta, because this is only a plea for forgiveness and to beg you to be totally honest in your reply. Eve has not mentioned having one of her knowings, but I expect it any day, since my own worry grows by leaps and bounds for the future of our country. Oh, John Couper, I suppose you will see action if anything so insane and terrible as a war comes. I am not even asking you that now. I am just praying that you believe I want to change my selfish ways and become the kind of mother you and Pete deserve me to be.

My love always to you,

Yr Mother,

Anne Couper Fraser

Within days after Anne mailed her son’s letter to Savannah, he had answered it, but not as a son writing to his mother, she thought. More as a careful parent addressing an offspring. With the utmost respect, he literally ordered her never, never to ask forgiveness again from him or from Pete. “Forgiveness cannot be in order,” he had written, “when there is nothing anywhere to forgive. You have always been the world’s best mother to us all, and anything we may have tried to do for you is the very least we could do in view of your worth to us.”

As the news spread with certainty from one part of the nation to another that Abraham Lincoln of Illinois would be the next President, state boundaries in the South became backyard fences over which neighbors talked and buoyed one another with the seemingly unshakable conviction that the North would falter in no time and never, never dare to bully the entire South. John Couper even wrote that “plainly, there is a shortage of courage at the

North, and they would never dare attack more 745 than one Southern state at a time.” This belief was growing so strong in the Southern states, Anne was afraid to broach the subject even to Pete or to Eve. Instead she held it in her own heart, firm in her personal conviction that such an idea was pure bluff and not even worth the irritation she felt each time she heard it mentioned.

The agony in her mind, which far exceeded the irritation, came from another part of her son’s letter, in which he told her gleefully how much he had enjoyed his latest and lengthiest assignment at Fort Pulaski as paymaster for the officers of his regiment. “I’m rather proud of owning my own business but now know that at last I have found my real place in life, Mama, and it is in the military,” he wrote. With a mixture of joy and panic, Anne thought of John, his father, who certainly thrived in the military life above every other.

“Nothing scares me so much,” Anne told Eve morning after morning through the winter and into the early spring of 1861. In fact, she and Eve

spoke of almost nothing else any time they happened to be alone after the arrival of John Couper’s letter in which he’d written so glowingly of his newly realized attachment to his volunteer regiment. It almost angered Anne that Eve usually said nothing in response. “Don’t just stand there staring at me like that, Eve! Nothing could be worse than for my only son to feel as his father felt about—that life! Somehow I’ve made my way through the loss of his father, but if there is a war now and I lose my boy, I’ll—I’ll lose my mind.”

“You ain’t gonna lose God though, Miss Anne, no matter what.”

“That’s a glib thing to say!”

“What glib mean?”

“It means—thoughtless. Something you just blurt out without really thinking first. It’s a word you should know because you can be masterly at it.”

“Mos’ of what I say to you don’t need to be thought about first, Miss Anne. I say zactly what I believes to you an’ ain’t nothing you can do to change Mausa John Couper from what he be. He be his papa’s son jus’ like he yours.”

“And what’s going to happen to me if there is a

war and John Couper gets hurt or 747 killed? What? Have you thought of a good glib answer to that?”

“No’m, not yet. But gimme time. Somepin come to me.”

“I suppose you’ll get one of your knowings.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You know, though, whichever way. An’ ain’t I done tol’ you me an’ you gonna be just fine?”

“I’m sure you have, but there’s nothing in this world I hate so much as I hate war, Eve. Nothing but heartache and sorrow and suffering ever comes from it. No one wins. Everyone loses.”

“That don’ sound much like the Miss Anne I been gettin’ used to lately. Look how you done change with Pete. I ain’t seen one sign that you means to spoil her happiness in lovin’ Doctah Sam. An’ not only Pete, but Fanny too. You even does yo’ bes’ to act polite when dat ole hatchet face, Miz Matthews, she come by to rub your nose in the latest gossip, good or bad, ‘bout the South. I be proud of you the way you been lately. I aim to stay that way an’ pray you keep on growin’ up!”

“Well, all I can say is—good luck!”

At breakfast on the morning of March 6, 1861, Anne’s discomfort at finding herself alone with her daughter Fanny brought sure signs that one of her old sick headaches was returning. For months, because of Fanny’s Southern sympathies, being alone with her beloved daughter had come to be something to avoid when possible, and it shamed Anne as a mother almost unbearably. That shame was more than she could endure today, especially with a throbbing head Fanny was sure to detect. Fanny, the born nurse in the family, was not only the one daughter who knew how to help her mother’s bad headaches, but the one daughter for whom Anne’s heart ached most. Was Fanny’s undeniable plainness enough to cause such pain to a mother’s heart, Anne had asked herself again and again lately, or had Fanny really changed? Gentle, quiet, submissive Fanny had begun to sneer or grin, evidently hoping to hide her pure delight at any shred of bad news about the future of the Union—the glorious Union, as dear Louisa Fletcher called it—which, Fanny vowed, “would never be united again.” Any news that showed a strengthening of the Confederate States of America, as Southern

states that had already seceded along with 749 South Carolina now called themselves, plainly cheered Fanny. She smiled at the mere mention of what to her was good Southern news, and it was a smile her mother did not know, could not recognize as part of her tender, loyal girl.

Fanny’s delight on March 4, the morning Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration was to take place in Washington, had torn especially at Anne’s very soul. It had driven home the ugly truth that she and her family no longer lived in the United States of America. It was still sickening to believe that Georgia, on January 19, had voted overwhelmingly to secede!

“Don’t look so downhearted, Mama,” Fanny said as she stood behind Anne’s chair, rubbing the back of her mother’s neck slowly, soothingly. “You know your headaches only get worse when you’re upset. And mark my words, once old Lincoln is actually the President, things will get better and better for us down here. It doesn’t matter really where your loyalty lies, because you’re a born Southerner and the South is where you live. And don’t forget, the South is already ahead of the North!”

“What on earth are you talking about, child?”

“We had our convention and we already have our President, the Honorable Jefferson Davis. Even Mr. Alexander Stephens, once a Unionist, sees which side his bread is buttered on and is now the Vice President.”

“Fanny, you’re hurting me!”

“You’ve got to let your neck muscles loosen, Mama, or your headache will never get better.”

“Sometimes I don’t think you care a fig about me—whether my head aches or not. How can you hold yourself so stiff and distant and apart from the rest of your own family?”

“Because I believe what I believe and I’m the only true Southerner in this house anymore. What makes you think you and Selina and Pete aren’t the distant ones? You’ve always taught us to stand up for what we really think, and I wonder a lot what John Couper would say if he could hear you and Pete yammering on about the glorious Union.”

“I did not teach you to sass me and I won’t have it. Do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear, and I have to tell you something.

Now seems as good a time as any. I— 751 I miss you, Mama. I miss you and Pete, and although she thinks mostly about whether her intended, George Stubinger, is safe and still planning to marry her, you’ve got Selina believing she’s a Unionist and I miss her, too! Turning against all we’ve ever known or thought in our family, ignoring your heritage, you’ve built a thick, high wall between us, Mama, and I miss you so much, sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night.”

Anne got quickly to her feet, pulling away from Fanny’s skillful hands. “And I suppose you think I don’t know Buster Matthews’s mother tattles to you every time she and I have a conversation! Has Buster asked you to marry him yet? I want an answer, Fanny. Has he?”

“Well, not in so many words. I mean, he hasn’t gotten on his knees yet in that formal way, but—was

“But you just take it for granted that he will. Is that right? Don’t you sense in your deepest woman heart that he’s just stalling? That he’s feeling satisfied with himself for now because he’s found a way to come between you and your family by turning you into one of

those unthinking Southern hotheads? Fanny, you’re thoughtful—at least you’ve always been—and obedient, and you’re anything but stupid. Please, please, dear child, begin to use your good head. I know it makes you furious for me to even to mention his name, but Abraham Lincoln was right when he said `a house divided against itself cannot stand.` Families can’t either, Fanny. Please, please come back to us!”

When, in response to her plea, Fanny simply turned without a word and left the room, Anne sank back into her breakfast chair and began to weep.

On the mild spring morning of April 15, 1861, Anne stood at her bedroom window, looking down across the purple-spattered carpet of spring green grass and deep purple violets spread across her front lawn behind the picket fence June and Big Boy had just whitewashed. In the midst of so much beauty, it simply could not be, she thought, that every snatch of conversation and every letter held the dark threat of what could be a ghastly war

between the North and the South of the once proud 753 Union of the states. She looked out from her corner window on the second floor of her haven, the gracious, dear place she and her girls still called the white-light house, the place in which Anne had finally found the security for which she’d longed since the day they had been forced to leave the dangerously dilapidated little Lawrence cottage on St. Simons Island to move, at the convenience of their host or hostess, from the home of one friend or family member to that of another.

Just remembering St. Simons Island reminded her of the latest letter from Caroline, her brother James Hamilton Couper’s wife, with its disturbing news of the possible fate of so many of Anne’s faithful St. Simons people. “If war does come,” Caroline had written, “James Hamilton said at dinner yesterday that he planned to bring all the remaining Negroes from Lawrence and Cannon’s Point here to Hopeton to work and live, heaven only knows where.”

As the sentence from Caroline’s letter crossed her mind, Anne caught her first glimpse of her own Eve down in the yard with Anne’s best

Marietta friend, Louisa Fletcher. The two were making their way toward the house while stooping here and there to add to the mounting bunch of violets Eve carried in her flat, reed basket.

“Could there possibly be a more peaceful sight?” Anne asked aloud into the empty bedroom. “My two beloved friends—each cherished in her own separate way—Louisa Fletcher and Eve. And my handsome lawn surrounding my own comfortable house. But all of it—my two friends and my house and my violets and my spring grass—seem to be waiting. Waiting, not just for summer when the only enemy will be too much hot sun, but almost surely for the most fearful enemy in the world—war. No, God! Not in the United States, not in Georgia, not in my lifetime. Not war, God, without John to protect me, to tell me what he’s thinking, to listen to my fears and complaints and the panic in my voice when I dare to let myself think that our son, our only son, John Couper, could be one of those young men being shot at! And he will be because he’s a man and because he holds the perplexing belief that simply because he happened to be born in Georgia, he’d somehow be a traitor if he didn’t throw his precious

life into the danger.” 755

Her eyes could see only the silent, peaceful panorama of the world waiting outside her house, but her heart had eyes, too, and there she could picture the ugly, bloody, noisy chaos of battle John had told her about during the years before he realized that she had nothing in her makeup to tolerate the thought of killing even for what could be considered a good cause. No one—no one—could ever convince Anne that either the North or the South had a good cause for war. Trouble could be settled another way between angry factions. As long as sane persons agreed to talk to each other, they could find a peaceful means of settling their dispute, and even her blessed husband, John, had never been able to persuade her otherwise.

Out beyond a big pine tree, Eve and Louisa were moving closer to the house, their basket now piled with violets—for her, she knew, because both women were keenly aware of her torment now that she knew her son seemed to have taken to the military life every bit as strongly as had his father. John Couper was her rock in the troubled land that lay all around her. With each letter she could depend on finding at least twenty dollars “for house purposes,”

as he put it, or word that he was sending her rice or flour or some other necessity that now cost so much in Marietta’s stores.

Most painful of all, John Couper was her only male child, and the gift of a son to John had been her proudest achievement in life. Pete knew how much John Couper meant to her, but Pete had heartache of her own these days trying to make up her mind to marry or not to marry Sam.