Hannah choked out the words as if wringing them from her heart. “Your brother Joseph has been killed in battle.”
Grief settled over Bebe’s household like deep snow, bringing life on the farm to a suffocating standstill and chilling everyone’s soul. The neighbors brought food but no one felt like eating it. As Bebe lay awake in her bedroom at night, she heard the floors creaking downstairs as her father paced sleeplessly. She remembered Joseph’s wide grin and joyous laughter and wanted to kill a hundred Rebels in retaliation.
“How could God let this happen?” she asked her mother.
“We’ve been praying and asking Him to protect the boys.”
“God isn’t causing this war, Beatrice, people are.”
“Well, why doesn’t He stop us?” For once, her mother had no answer.
Bebe never did see her father weep, but he attacked his chores with a ferocity that frightened her. Hannah grieved quietly for her son, allowing her tears to fall silently as she went about her work.
But Bebe railed at God, alternating between fits of anger and fits of tears until a day came when she was so hot and weary from the unending work, so feverish with rage, that she dropped her father’s hoe in the middle of the vegetable patch and sprinted across the pasture toward the river. When she reached the swing she climbed onto it, remembering the day that Franklin had taught her to pump; remembering Joseph whooping for joy as he’d leaped from the swing into the river.
Bebe started swinging parallel to the river as she always had, then changed her mind. She twisted around on the wooden plank and backed up, preparing to swing out over the river for the first time. The rope creaked against the tree branch as she pumped higher and higher, and she wondered if it might be so rotten after all these years that it would break from the strain. She decided that she didn’t care. Even if it snapped off while she was in midair and she tumbled to the ground and broke every bone in her body, she couldn’t possibly feel any more pain than she already did.
At first Bebe clenched her eyes tightly shut, afraid to look down at the river as the swing carried her out over it. But the July day was so hot, her smoldering anger so intense, that without thinking she abruptly released the rope and dropped through the air into the river.
Bebe realized her mistake the moment her body plunged beneath the surface. She couldn’t swim! Her skin tingled all over from the water’s cruel slap, and she felt as if she had awakened for the first time in her life. She opened her eyes beneath the murky river and feared she was about to die—and she didn’t want to die.
Somehow, she rose to the surface, coughing and sputtering for air. The shore looked a long way off. Bebe had just enough time to draw a quick breath before the water washed over her head and pulled her under again. The current gripped her as if it were a living thing, and she struggled against it with all her might, flailing and kicking as she tried to fight her way to the top for another gulp of air. Each time her head emerged, she heard birds singing and cattle lowing in the distance. Each time she went under, the growling river muffled the sounds as it tried to hold her down and pin her beneath the surface.
Bebe knew there was no one to save her. If she yielded to the current and allowed it to carry her downstream, she would die. If she wanted to survive, she would have to fight to stay afloat, then fight her way to the riverbank. Bebe made up her mind to fight.
Franklin’s heavy work boots felt like rocks tied to her ankles, so she kicked them off, then slipped the straps of his overalls from her shoulders and wiggled out of them. Freed from her cumbersome clothing, she bobbed above the surface again, long enough to drag more air into her lungs, long enough to catch a glimpse of the distant shore. Then she went under.
Bebe fought with all her might until her limbs felt leaden with fatigue. Her stomach ached from swallowing gallons of water. She could feel the current carrying her downstream, but at the same time her efforts were gradually moving her closer to shore. After what seemed like hours, Bebe’s feet touched the rocky bottom. She could stand. She struggled upright, sharp stones jabbing her feet, and walked toward the shore as the river tried to drag her under one last time. At last she flopped down on dry land, collapsing with relief. She gazed up at the blue sky and white clouds and realized that in all of her struggles, it had never occurred to her to pray.
Bebe walked through the kitchen door a while later, still dripping wet, wearing only her socks, pantaloons and calico blouse.
“Beatrice, what happened to you?” Hannah said when she saw her. “Where are your clothes?”
“I jumped off the boys’ swing into the river.”
Hannah stared at her.
“I can’t go on much longer, Mama. I hate this ugly war. Why can’t things be the way they were three years ago?”
Hannah sighed and drew Bebe into her arms, even though the water from Bebe’s clothing soaked through to hers. “Never forget, Beatrice, that the greater goal is to win freedom for the slaves. That’s what we’ve been praying for and working for all this time. That’s what Joseph gave his life for. If we ask the Lord to give us love and compassion for those poor souls, then we’ll be willing to make any sacrifice.”
“But Joseph is gone and . . . and I don’t want to lose the other boys, too. When is this war going to end?”
“Do you want to know the secret of contentment, Beatrice?” Hannah released her and stepped back to hold Bebe’s water-shriveled hands in her own. A damp spot now darkened the front of Hannah’s apron. “We need to live each day as if it was a gift. God gives us that gift every morning when the sun rises, like the tickets they give out when you ride on the train.”
“I’ve never been on a train,” Bebe said, sulking.
“That ticket is only good for today. Yesterday is gone and that ticket is used up. We don’t have a ticket for tomorrow because life has no guarantees. Each day is a gift. When the sun comes up, we need to ask the Lord, ‘What would you like me to do for you today?’ That’s how you’ll find contentment.”
“But . . . didn’t you always say that we should have a plan so we’d know exactly where we’re headed? You said we wouldn’t get anywhere in life without a map.”
“That’s true. But we need to let God draw the map for us, then follow it in faith.”
Bebe stared at the floor. She knew that her feeble faith fell far short of her mother’s. “I can’t do that,” she mumbled.
“You’re not willing to give your life to Him each day?”
Bebe thought of how she had nearly drowned and how she had saved herself. She shook her head. “If this is what He’s going to do with my life . . . then I guess not.”
She endured another summer, another harvest—this time without Franklin’s help. Another winter arrived, and she learned to split wood and shovel snow. In the spring she watched four new baby calves come into the world and helped her father plant corn and cut hay. And just when it seemed as though the war would never end, it did.
“I wish I could dress up in boys’ clothes like you did,” I said when Grandma Bebe finished her story. The envelopes were all licked, my water glass was empty, and my tongue felt as raspy as a cat’s.
Grandma shook her head. “No, don’t wish for that. Those heavy old boots and baggy overalls were nearly the death of me.” She tilted her head to one side as she studied me. I loved the way my grandmother looked at me, as if I were a treasure chest filled with glittering gold and precious jewels.
“Harriet, don’t give your mother a hard time about the party dress. Let her go ahead and decorate the outside of you. She can’t change what’s on the inside, you know—and that’s the most important part of you. Only God can change you on the inside.”
“How does He do that?”
“Sometimes through suffering,” she said quietly. Her gaze got all soft and blurry-eyed as she continued to look at me. “I didn’t know during those war years that God was preparing me for the future, but He was. He knew that I would need to be strong in order to get through what lay ahead.”
“Why, Grandma? What happened?”
I wanted to hear the rest of the story, but Grandma shook her head. “That’s a tale for another day.” She stood and smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. “Thanks for your help, dear, but you’d better run along home. And make sure you enjoy that tea party, you hear?”
I made a face. “You can lead a horse to water,” I grumbled, “but you can’t make him drink.”
Grandma’s laughter followed me out the door.
My jailhouse breakfast, when it finally arrived, was a terrible disappointment. It consisted of lumpy oatmeal and dry toast. The coffee tasted as though it had been sitting on the back of the stove for the past month, boiling continuously. None of the meal was palatable, so I set the tray on the floor and leaned against the brick wall again to do some more thinking. When you have nothing else to do except think, a lot of strange memories come to mind. One of them featured Grandma Bebe’s brother, Franklin.
I had heard stories about him over the years, but I finally met him in person on Decoration Day in 1911, when I was eleven years old. Grandma had purchased her own car by then, much to my mother’s dismay. “There’s no telling how much trouble she’ll get into now that she can drive her own car,” my mother said, so she asked me to tag along and keep Grandma out of mischief. Little did Mother know that I was an eager partner in Grandma’s mischief, and that I had no intention of keeping her out of it. In fact, Grandma was secretly teaching me how to drive on the dirt roads outside of town now that my legs were long enough to reach the pedals. I couldn’t wait for another driving lesson that day.
We left early in the morning and traveled out of town, enjoying the drive through the rolling farmland, admiring the misty forests of the Appalachian Mountains in the distance. Grandma let me slide behind the wheel and practice driving for a few miles as soon as we reached the countryside. She didn’t say where we were going, but I hoped she was taking me to one of her temperance rallies and that we’d be pelted with eggs and spoiled tomatoes. Grandma had shown me a story in the newspaper about a saloon owner who had captured several skunks and set them loose on a group of temperance women who were protesting outside his saloon. Since I was all prepared for some excitement, I was a little disappointed when Grandma motored into a village I’d never visited before and parked her car in a cemetery, of all places.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as we removed our driving gloves and dusters and tossed them onto the seat. “Did someone die?”
“Of course, Harriet—
thousands
of people died!” She spread her hands and stared at me in exasperation as if her reply should make perfect sense. “It’s Decoration Day!”
“Oh . . .” I still didn’t understand, but she linked arms with me and towed me over to a raggedy group of ancient soldiers who were milling around a Civil War monument. They were all holding miniature American flags and waiting for the ceremony to begin. I had seen Grand Army of the Republic veterans before, marching in Fourth of July parades in our hometown, but I had never gotten close enough to see how tattered and moth-eaten their uniforms were after forty-six years. Or how ill-fitting. The passing years were unkind to people’s bodies, expanding them in some places, contracting them in others. I gazed around at these somber men, with their aged faces and gray hair, and I tried to imagine them as young men, their uniforms new, their bodies fit and hearty as they bravely marched off to fight a war that would change them forever. I saw a well-deserved pride in their tired expressions, an awareness that they had courageously stepped forward when their country needed them. They had a right to be proud of their accomplishments.
Grandma halted beside a tall, gaunt soldier who looked like the grim reaper in an army uniform. “Harriet, I’d like you to meet my brother, Franklin.”
I thought she was joking. The tops of our heads barely reached to his armpits. He didn’t resemble Grandma Bebe in the least, and his startling white hair made him look old enough to be her father. But Franklin turned to her with a wide, warm smile that took twenty years off his age.
“Hey, good to see you, Bebe.” He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.
“Franklin, this is Harriet—the granddaughter I’ve told you so much about.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said as we appraised each other. I wondered what she had been saying about me.
“She looks just like you, Bebe, when you were her age.”
“Stop it, Franklin. You’ll give the girl nightmares.” He laughed, and the sound reminded me of a car engine trying to turn over and start.
The ceremony, once it finally began, would have been humorous if it hadn’t been so poignant. The pompous officials took turns posing for the news photographer, sucking in their paunches and gripping their lapels, their chins and jowls thrust forward. The mayor sputtered and flapped and tried not to curse after stepping backward into a mud puddle. He stammered his way through a flowery, incomprehensible speech. The next official accidentally dropped the memorial wreath facedown in the same mud puddle that the mayor had stepped in, and half of the flowers fell out of it. When he finally propped up the wreath on the metal stand, it looked as bedraggled and woebegone as the veterans.
The bugler, who looked old enough to have fought in the Revolution, played a barely recognizable rendition of taps. Uncle Franklin closed his eyes while the commander of the local GAR post spoke about sacrifice and duty and freedom, and I wondered if he was dozing or reminiscing. I saw several old veterans wipe their eyes.
After the minister pronounced the benediction, my uncle limped around the cemetery with the other old men, placing flags and GAR stars on various graves. He used an ebony cane with a silver handle, and moved very stiffly, lurching across the lumpy ground as if it pained him to move. The final grave, where he and Grandma lingered the longest, belonged to their brother Joseph.
“What a pity,” Grandma murmured.
“Joe deserved better,” Franklin sighed. I subtracted the dates on the grave marker while I waited. My great-uncle Joseph had died at the age of twenty—only two years older than my sister Alice was at that time.