Beauty From Ashes (75 page)

All around Big Boy were soldiers in heavy bandages, some on crutches, and staff doctors, their once white coats stained and bloodsoaked. As usual, Pete pushed her way to the front porch, picking paths between filthy cots and sobbing or groaning or cursing sick men, almost as though she didn’t see them. She gave vent only inwardly to the anger that inevitably rose in her when she thought of those empty buildings around the Square, which could easily have made far better hospitals than did their once quiet, clean, lovely home. It seemed cruel retaliation for displaying their pathetic homemade British flag.

“Big Boy,” she said softly, standing on the step where he sat, head buried in both his hands. “Big Boy, have you heard anything about Mama?

How she’s getting along?” 1021

Big Boy was weeping. “No’m. Ain’ heerd nothin’. Just settin’ here cryin’ for June.”

“June? Why are you crying for June? Where is he?”

“June, he die no more’n a hour ‘fore you come to fetch Evie, Miss Pete. My ole frien’—be daid!”

“What?”

“Evie, she done wash him an’ got him dressed an’ laid out on their bed at the brick cabin.”

“And Eve left his body alone to come to help with Mama?”

“Yes’m. Dat woman she love Miss Anne an’ Miss Anne, she say, be still livin’ an’ breathin’ at least. June be daid. June’s big, old body be empty now.”

Without another word, Pete ran into the house and up the stairs, first to Selina’s room. It wasn’t the time to cry or even to feel sorry for herself because she was so scared. It was the time to do something that would really matter. Selina needed her letter from George, and Pete had loitered long enough because of her own terror that Mama might die.

When Pete hurried into Selina’s room, her sister was holding Johnny’s bare feet up in the air, lifting his bumpy to put on a fresh diaper.

“Selina,” Pete choked out her sister’s name. “Let me do that. Look! I have something for you. A letter from George! And, addressed only to you, one from Fanny too.”

Selina let the baby’s feet drop and grabbed both letters as Pete took her place diapering Johnny. Before she broke the seal on the letter from George, she said, “Tell me about Mama, Pete! Have you seen her? I heard Captain Porter go downstairs a few minutes ago and assumed he had gone back to the operating tables in the yard, so he must be finished with Mama’s operation. Is she all right? I was going to check on her but I was too scared. Who’s taking care of her?”

“Captain Porter would have told you if anything was wrong. Eve’s with her. The captain couldn’t get anyone else to help him. And, Selina, I just found out June—died this morning. Just an hour or so, Big Boy said, before I got to their cabin.”

“Eve must be a wreck! She loved 1023 that old man so much. But how did the surgeon dare leave Mama alone with only Eve? It scares me that George might be—dead or terribly sick, too. Bad news comes in bunches.”

“Don’t be silly. Just read his letter. He can’t be dead or he couldn’t have written to you! Eve would say you’re talking like your bread ain’t done in the middle. Use your head, Selina, and read.”

“I can’t stand it one more minute without knowing how Mama is!” Selina cried. “Go, Pete, please, and find out, then come right back to tell me. We can read Fanny’s letter together later.”

Relieved that Selina was behaving so sensibly, Pete thrust the freshly diapered baby into her sister’s arms and rushed from the room.

From the moment Pete stepped into the upstairs hall, she could hear the guttural, gagging sound of her mother vomiting. No one had told Pete to expect this! Did it mean that Mama was drawing

her final breaths?

Without knocking, she all but ran into Mama’s room to find Eve right with her, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a dishpan. For an instant, Pete felt faint. She suddenly remembered that Eve had left her adored June on their bed in the brick cabin Eve was so proud of. How had Pete dared to desert Eve at a time like this? For all the years of Pete’s life, Eve had been only good and thoughtful and always there when Mama or any of her children—or Papa—needed her.

To steady herself, Pete leaned for a moment against the door, then went toward the big bed—the bed where Pete and all the others had been born, the bed where Papa and Mama had loved them into life because of their deep love for each other, the bed where Papa had died at Hamilton on St. Simons Island.

The hard, labored retching kept up, and Eve spoke without taking her eyes from Mama’s face. “She be s’posed to do this,” Eve said, her voice thick from weeping, but not weeping now. “Dr. David he say the chloroform make her do this.” She was giving Miss Anne her full attention, holding the pan just so, dipping a clean cloth into a

bowl of cool water, then wiping 1025 Mama’s white, drained face over and over with her long, slender fingers, as gentle as a baby’s breath. But firm, Pete knew. Eve did everything in a measured, firm way so that the one receiving her care knew that each gesture was important. “The doctor, he say she be terrible sick when she begin to wake up,” Eve said softly. “It ain’t but to be expected, Petie. Don’ fret. Your mama, she ‘bout to wake up. Then I find a way to get her off them bloody bed clothes an’ get some clean ones under her an’ over her. She been through so much, she might could be chilly later. Ain’t nothin’ you can do now. Come back in a little bit. She be more herself then.”

Pete returned to Selina’s room with the news that their mother had survived the surgery. “Eve told me we can see her soon,” she said.

Selina was composed now. “George is safe,” she said, “not even minding prison life too much.”

“That’s all I need to know. I really do care so much about your heart, little Sister. I know what torment it can be not to know about the one you love. But

could you read just a little of Fanny’s letter to me now?”

More obedient than when she was a child and the spoiled baby of the family, Selina kissed George’s single page, then opened Fanny’s short note and began to read.

“Near Forsyth, Georgia

10 October 1864

My dear sister Selina,

I am writing to you because I know you’ve never seemed as far away from me as Mama or Pete, because your Unionist sympathies are not as strong as theirs. I’m well, but exhausted and think I am having a painful change of heart and mind. Buster is a deserter from the Confederate Army and I haven’t heard from him in weeks, so I know that chapter in my life is at an end. I guess I loved him because he’s the only man who ever wanted me. But I am lonely for my mother and my sisters! I can’t say I have become a Unionist. I’m too tired to know what I am, except that I’m coming home sometime before Christmas if I’m ever told I’m free to go. Mama has been faithful to write. Pete sometimes. But they both hold my politics against me and I have

no spirit left to defend myself. I need 1027 all of you and want you to tell Mama and Pete that I love them, and, of course, I love you and pray your baby is well. I pray every day that you are all well, that you hear often from poor George in prison at the North. As soon as I can, I will let you know when I am coming home. Please do all you can to convince Mama and Pete to be glad to see me.

Your affectionate sister,

Fanny Fraser.”

“I’ve written to Fanny as often as I’ve found the time, with these soldiers crawling and bleeding all over our yard and porch, and I know Mama has written only that we send her much love and concern. Fanny seems so sweet and docile, but she’s really quite prickly, isn’t she? She’s the one who turned against all of us over this dumb war!” Pete had let her words spew out and wished with all her heart that she could take them back. Mama might be dying this minute and it certainly was no time for anyone to spew spiteful things!

“I know you didn’t mean to be unkind about poor Fanny,” Selina said, pushing Pete

toward the door. “Go find out if we can see Mama now.”

When Pete reached the hall, the acrid smell of burning cloth was so strong, she suddenly felt a new sense of panic. They had lived for so long, week after week, with the prickly fear that the Yankees would set fire to their house, would, in a half-drunken state, attack one of them, would try to hurt them. Some of the men were drunk most of the time. It seemed to Pete that all of them except Captain David and the two English privates, who had been kind to Mama, were so foulmouthed that she found it impossible to understand some of the ugly swearing. Somehow the worst among them had the idea that all the Frasers were Rebels. David had made the innocent mistake of telling the men that the Frasers had been born on St. Simons Island in south Georgia, where almost every planter owned slaves. Didn’t the “damned old Rebel,” as they liked to call Mama, own slaves herself? And didn’t that make her their enemy? At this moment, they were Pete’s enemy in a way she hadn’t felt before.

The stench of burning cloth was no longer just a stench! The curtains at the open balcony door

were smoldering. Smoke must surely be 1029 visible down in the yard where Captain David was hard at work, busy with his deft, sickening labor of sawing off a young man’s lower arm with Big Boy’s carpenter’s saw.

Pete went flying into Mama’s room. Mama was still retching horribly as though she knew everything that was happening down in her once lovely, green lawn—as though one more scream from one more boy’s throat rising to her open bedroom window might cause her to die because she was so tired of fighting. …

Then, as she was about to reach for Eve’s bowl of cool water to douse the smoldering curtains, Pete heard heavy boots stomp up the stair and was relieved when Captain David burst into the room and grabbed the bowl of water before rushing back into the hall.

After he had put out the fire and returned to Mama’s room, Captain David motioned Pete away from the bed and said, “I’m more than sorry that someone tried to set fire to the house with your Mama lying so ill on her bed. I’m sick about it. I’ve finished the surgery that took me away from your mother, and I won’t leave her again

now. I promise.”

“Will Mama—live, David?”

“I can’t be sure yet, but I expect her to recover almost entirely with the kind of care I know you and Eve and Selina will give her.”

“My sister Fanny, the nurse for the Rebels, is coming home, too,” Pete said, her heart swelling with relief at the thought of Fanny’s skill and what it might do for Mama.

“As I expected, your mother’s still vomiting, but she should be conscious within another hour,” David said.

“Is she awake enough for me to call for Selina now?” Pete asked. “Shall I call for Selina?”

“Not yet. I imagine she’s in a lot of pain, and that will get worse, but”—he stood looking down at Mama with what could only be called love in his eyes—“she’s a remarkable woman. It’s a miracle that she’s alive after enduring what she endured in the midst of such noise and ugliness. It’s truly a miracle, Pete. I know I performed the surgery, but it was God who gave her back to us. It’s God’s miracle.” For a moment David stood looking down at

Eve, then he laid his hand on her 1031 shoulder. “You’re part of the miracle, Eve,” he said. “Big Boy told me a little while ago— about your husband. You also gave God a hand with His miracle. Big Boy wants you to know, now that I’ve told him Miss Anne should pull through all right, that he’s gone back to your cabin to sit by his friend June. Thank you, Eve, for having the courage to leave your dead husband to help God and me save Miss Anne’s life.”

Eve looked up at David, then at Pete. There were fresh tears flowing down her mellow brown face. “Pete can tell you, Doctor, that I done promise Miss Anne to be right beside her for the rest of her life whenever she need me. My sweet June, he don’ need me no more. God He be takin’ care of June now.”

“And I’m sure June knows that his kind, beautiful wife has been a part of God’s miracle today.”

Suddenly, almost peacefully, Anne’s vomiting stopped, and her heaving chest settled down to a fairly even rise and fall.

Weeping had never been easy for Pete. It

had always made her feel stiff and uncomfortable. The tears now streaming down her face felt calming and good. If only Mama were awake to tell them what this miracle meant to her … Mama would know exactly the right words.

And then, so did Pete. “Eve? Captain David? Mama would agree that we’ve seen God’s miracle, but she’d call it beauty from ashes.”

David’s expressive face turned to look gratefully at the sudden shaft of pure, white light that came pouring through the window of Anne’s room. “Beauty from—ashes?” he repeated, as though he needed Pete to make it plain again.

“Yes, David. Beauty from—ashes.”

For a time the room was quiet, Anne was quiet, as though in deep, healing sleep. Then, Eve said to no one in particular, “… beauty from ashes, and the oil of joy for mournin’.was

Afword

Whether a miracle or a fortuitous twist of fate took place that long-ago day in Anne’s white-light house, she did survive the highly

risky operation performed by a young man who 1033 would have been considered her enemy by other Georgians—showing to me the high-arching scope of God’s love. That she recovered is to most persons unbelievable, considering the primitive medical equipment of the time and the inadequate training of the doctors. In fact, my own doctor, William A. Hitt, who is not only one of my most perceptive and loyal readers but a reliable source of reference for me in research, agreed to my using the procedure as written only when I assured him that I had it all down in black and white directly from a letter written August 10, 1865, by Anne herself. It seemed to illustrate perfectly that God can and does bring beauty from ashes. General Sherman’s men did try to burn down Anne’s house, which punctuates the truth that not all persons and their motives are alike.

Since Anne lived to be sixty-nine and died not from the surgery but after a brief illness while visiting the home of her daughter Selina in Louisiana on May 9, 1866, almost two years later, she is buried in Rosehill Cemetery at New Iberia, Louisiana.

Her grave, because of the shortage of funds almost everywhere in the South following the Civil War, was without a tombstone until recently. George Stubinger is also buried in Rosehill Cemetery; Selina, who died after she and her family moved back to Marietta, has a marked grave in Citizens Cemetery. As far as is known, Pete and Fanny are there also, but without markers.