Shadow of Dawn (37 page)

“Probably burning official papers so the
Yankees won’t get them,” Ephraim said.

“Shouldn’t we tell people?” Catherine asked.
She would have wept had she not shed every tear her body would
produce the night before.

“They wouldn’t believe us, Miss Catherine.
The army will let them know when the time is right. Folks should be
able to figure it out by now…if they had good sense. Looks like
General Grant can hold out forever, and General Lee can’t. Not many
men left, and even less food. Looks like this is the only thing
General Lee can do.”

“Why don’t we just go ahead and surrender? We
fought a good fight, but they beat us.”

“Well, I reckon that’s a hard thing to do,
Miss Catherine. Thousands and thousands of men have died for the
southern cause.”

“And more will die…and all for nothing.”

“No, ma’am,” Ephraim said thoughtfully. “They
died for something they believed in. I’m not saying it’s slavery,
but their land, or what they thought of as independence. Whether it
was right or wrong I don’t pretend to know, but it takes courage to
lay down your life for a cause. And they were good and smart
fighters. You can be proud, Miss Catherine, of the army of the
South.”

“Oh, Ephraim, why did God let this happen?
Why did he let it go on so long if he meant the North to win?”

Ephraim sighed and looked up at the cloudless
sky. “It’s been a hard lesson to learn, sure enough. I reckon God
don’t like slavery, Miss Catherine. And the North has got their
faults, too. There was good men on both sides, and both sides had
right and wrong reasons for fighting. Somehow or other, it’s all
going to fit in with a plan. God’s plan. But I think it was such a
terrible war so folks would never forget it.”

They boarded the only train not reserved for
government officials and with an ear-splitting whistle crossed the
bridge over the James River. Ominous groans and a constant rattling
sound signified mechanical problems, unnerving the passengers and
leading to long delays—stop and start, refuel, discharge
passengers, take on new ones,

many of them refugees from the Petersburg
area.

That’s what I am, Catherine thought, a
refugee, fleeing the enemy.

Finally they entered north Georgia. The
grueling journey had taken more than twice as long as it should
have. Catherine looked out the window at the total devastation—the
fields and roads rutted and strewn with debris, houses burned with
only the chimneys left standing. Sherman’s Sentinels, they were
called. Torn-up railroads had only recently been repaired; the iron
ties could still be seen wound around telegraph poles. The Yankees
had heated and wrapped them in such a way that they could never be
used again.

It would be easy to hate them, she thought
bitterly.

The train finally chugged into the Atlanta
depot, such as it was, for the station house had been destroyed. As
she and Ephraim walked into the street, Catherine caught her breath
at the sight of all the blue-coated figures. She had never seen
Yankee soldiers before, except as prisoners of war.

She suppressed another gasp when she saw the
ruined city. Everywhere she looked, buildings had been burned or
half demolished by shells. Even the trees stood blackened and dead.
People, as many women as men, scurried around with wheelbarrows,
picking up bricks and wood and any useful object.

For all she knew, Richmond now looked as
desolate.

Ephraim obtained directions to the address
Clayton had given them from one of the Yankee soldiers, and they
set out wearily. Catherine had a hole in her shoe but refrained
from saying so. Ephraim’s shoes were probably full of holes. She
set her teeth and resigned herself to the last leg of the journey—a
journey that had really begun four years ago.

At last, footsore, dirty and exhausted, they
reached the street on which Clayton lived. A shallow but wide creek
had stopped the flames that had destroyed much of Atlanta, and the
stone bridge over it was still standing. The road wound in
graduating degrees up a steep hill. The fine houses, all similar in
appearance, sat back a short distance from the street. Elms and
poplars interspersed the green lawns.

“There it is,” Ephraim said.

C
atherine lifted her
head to look. The house stood three stories high, painted ivory
with dark green trim. A small barn painted to match the house stood
to the side and slightly behind. Both were in need of repair,
though nothing could diminish the elegant, tasteful lines of the
house.

A short flight of steps led to the front
porch, on which an elderly woman sat in a rocking chair. Her
attention remained on something she held in her hands, possibly
sewing or crocheting.

“Oh, my,” Catherine said, stopping abruptly.
“Oh, Ephraim, I can’t meet her looking like this! Clayton’s
grandmother! What will she think of me?”

Ephraim sighed, looking with mild reproach at
the sharp incline they had yet to climb. “I’ll go and speak to her
first, Miss Catherine, if you like.”

“Oh, please do. Just leave your bag
here.”

Catherine watched as he walked forward,
limping slightly. The woman on the porch glanced at him, saw that
he was approaching her house, and put down whatever was in her
lap.

I hope she doesn’t shoot him, Catherine
thought, with a fleeting pang of apprehension; but apparently, the
woman did not consider him a threat. She continued to watch as he
came up the steps and stopped before ascending to the front porch.
They talked, then the woman stood up, shaded her eyes, and peered
down the street at Catherine.

Ephraim started back toward her. Catherine
waved him back, picked up both bags and trudged forward, gritting
her teeth at the pain in her feet and lower back. She knew she was
a mess. Her hair had come unpinned and straggled down her back; her
one good dress was dirty and stained from days of travel.

Meeting her halfway, Ephraim relieved her of
the bags and Catherine somehow managed to climb to the porch. She
stood uncertainly, her hands clasped before her.

“Mrs. Pierce, I do apologize for appearing so
unexpectedly and in such a state of—”

The woman embraced her before she could
finish, her glowing eyes dark against a frame of rosy cheeks and
silver hair tucked neatly into a braid pinned on top of her head.
“Clayton is alive!” she exclaimed. “Child, you don’t know how happy
you’ve made me. And you’re his wife! My dear, you mustn’t apologize
for looking as though there’s been a war going on. Come inside,
both of you.”

She took them at once into the kitchen.
Catherine couldn’t help but notice that the house had been looted,
for several windows had makeshift curtains, there was no
bric-a-brac to be seen, and blank spaces on the upper and lower
walls gave silent testimony to the disappearance of pictures and
large pieces of furniture.

Only two chairs stood at the plain wooden
table in the kitchen. Ephraim, however, refused to sit in one of
them until Mrs. Pierce ordered him to do so with the magisterial
air of a general commanding his troops. It said much for her powers
of persuasion when the old man complied, or possibly he was just
too tired to resist. Mrs. Pierce began

to remove things from the pantry…a crust of
bread, a jar of preserves, a block of cheese.

“Clayton gave me some money,” Catherine said
uncomfortably. “I hope we won’t be too much of a burden to
you.”

“Piffadiddle,” said Mrs. Pierce. “You’re my
family now. I’ve been here alone for months. I’m happy you’ve come,
both of you, very happy indeed. After all, this is your house! Tell
me, my dear, do you sew?”

“Why, yes, a little.”

“Then you’ll be a great help to me. You see,
I take in sewing for the Yankees. It’s been almost more than I can
handle.”

Too tired to reply, Catherine simply smiled
at the older woman.

“Oh, what was I thinking? Of course you need
something to drink.” Mrs. Pierce poured tall glasses of cool water.
“Forgive me. My mind’s been in a dreadful state since I heard the
news.”

“News?” Catherine said, her attention
sharpening.

Mrs. Pierce stared at her. “You haven’t
heard? Oh, my dear child. One of the soldiers I work for told me
this morning…they had it by telegraph. General Lee surrendered
yesterday. The war is over.”

***

Less than a week later an obsessed Southerner
with the misguided notion of avenging his homeland assassinated
President Lincoln. The beleaguered South lost whatever hopes it had
for a sensible guiding hand, as the broken nation began to piece
itself together again.

The days passed; April turned to May and May
into June. There was no word from Clayton. Catherine told herself
that was because the mail service had been interrupted, the only
couriers were with the Yankee army, everything was topsy-turvy, and
nothing would ever be the same again. The officers, she thought,
would be the last ones to go home, for surely they had duties,
final responsibilities.

She spent hours on the front porch, straining
her eyes, praying, listening for the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves.
Mrs. Pierce often joined her, and they did their sewing there,
mending Yankee uniforms, darning Yankee socks.

Catherine had never enjoyed that particular
womanly art, but she didn’t complain; it did put food on the table.
Privately she decided that in the fall she would look into the
possibility of teaching school, since most of the schoolmasters had
gone to war and many would never come back.

Ephraim did his share of the cleaning and
cooking, maintained the yard, planted a garden and took care of
whatever business needed to be done in town. He lived on the third
floor where the servants’ rooms had been located. The Pierces had
not owned slaves but had employed a number of servants, all of whom
had gone elsewhere shortly after Clayton left Atlanta.

Catherine found the old butler in the barn
one day, putting it in order, for it too had been ransacked; along
with the horses, the saddles and bridles and all the accoutrements
had disappeared.

“Ephraim, I’m more afraid now than I was when
the war was going on. He should be here by now.”

“Maybe. Or…maybe he’s sick, Miss Catherine,
and can’t travel right now.”

“He should have written me.”

“No way to get a letter to you these days. Do
you want me to go look for him, Miss Catherine?”

“Well, not just yet. But if he’s not here by
the end of June, I’ll go looking for him myself.”

“I can’t let you do that, ma’am. I promised
Mr. Clayton I’d look after you, and I’m not going to let you go
traipsing around the country when it’s full of…well, there’s things
you don’t know about, Miss Catherine. Things are bad.”

Catherine wrapped her hands around a post,
sighed, and leaned her head against it. “Ephraim, what does that
verse mean in the Bible, where it says that perfect love casts out
fear?”

“Well, now,” he said, looking out the door
and over the quiet street, “I don’t think it means that if you love
God enough you won’t be afraid…if that’s what you’re asking, Miss
Catherine.”

“But that’s what it says.”

“You read the whole chapter next time. It’s
about loving our brothers, like Christ loved us. If we’d done that
in the first place, this war wouldn’t ever have got started. And
then there wouldn’t be any cause to be afraid, would there?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you miss
your church, Ephraim? I…I don’t know what I’d do without you,
but…you know you’re a free man now.”

He smiled. “Why, I’ve always been free, Miss
Catherine. Free to choose how I was going to feel about things, to
make the best of things or just whine and complain about them. Why,
that church might not even exist anymore. I think this is where I
belong. They might say I’m free, but nothing’s really changed,
ma’am. Things aren’t going to change for a long time to come.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Ephraim. But I
can’t worry about that now. All I can think about is Clayton.”

Ephraim’s perceptive gaze lingered on her for
a moment, but he said nothing.

“What if Mrs. Shirley died for nothing?”
Catherine’s hard-won struggle for self-control began to slip. “What
if Clayton’s been dead since the night we saw him? Or what if he’s
wounded and suffering? Oh, it would have been better for him to die
from that bullet John Kelly meant for him than to have to endure
some of the things I’ve seen!”

Ephraim shook his head. “I haven’t got a word
of comfort for you this time, Miss Catherine, ’cause I just don’t
know. I don’t know what could have happened to him. But I do know
that, if he’s not with God, then God is with him.”

***

As word of Catherine’s arrival spread
throughout the neighborhood, people began coming to call, welcoming
her to Atlanta. They spoke so kindly in such quiet voices that
Catherine felt worse than ever; they treated her as though she were
a widow. At her request Ephraim walked to town every few days to
inquire at Yankee headquarters about Clayton, but though they were
polite, they never went out of their way to obtain any news.