Widow of Gettysburg (39 page)

His words hung in the stifling air, more putrid than the rot that had blown in with him.

“The rest of the story gets a little fuzzy. Gideon died and left Liberty to his sister. Why?”

She glared at him, muscles in her jaw bunching. Gideon loved that girl, wanted her to be raised white for her own sake, even though she was not his daughter. He said he loved Bella too, but she never trusted that. Bella would share none of this with a reporter.

Fear churned and solidified into anger. Bella gritted her teeth. “Don’t you have a battle somewhere to cover?”

“We’ll get to that. But this is the story I want, Bella. Do you realize what a fantastic tale this is? It could be even better. Why don’t you tell Liberty who you are? Don’t you think she’d be overjoyed to discover she isn’t an orphan after all? Come now, write your own happy ending.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you how this ends. It ends here. It ends now.”

“Surely not yet!”

Bella walked over to him. “Surely I have some say on this. Surely you don’t get to tell me what to do just for the sake of a story.” Her voice grew quiet. “I sure would like to be you, Mr. Caldwell, running around all over the map to write stories about the bad things that happen to other people.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised a hand to stop him. “This is my turn now. I will have my say.”

Bella was nearly suffocating. With the windows shut against the toxic fumes in the street, the heat of summer baked the inside of Bella’s house, even with the shutters closed. She unfastened the top two buttons of her collar and paced slowly, to create her own breeze in the dark, steamy room.

“All my life I been bowing to white folks, from yes massa to yes ma’am. Not this time. Now hear me. You covered the battle of Gettysburg, and then you left. The armies left. The surgeons left. And the rest of us stayed, to put life back together again while you’re off watching some other big drama unfold. Just don’t forget, Mr. Caldwell, that just because you turn in your article doesn’t mean the story ends there. See what I mean?”

His flushed face glowed with sweat as he listened. Good.

“Every battle has its aftermath that goes largely unnoticed except by the folks living in it. Right? Well, now you come here saying you know my story, and that gives you the right to share it for me. It’s not your story to share. It’s not even just mine. It’s Liberty’s story, too, and you’ve got no business waltzing in, stirring things up to make a buck for yourself, and then waltzing out again. You want to put a period at the end of our story and move on. It doesn’t work that way. Yesterday’s news is always somebody’s life today. Does it matter to you at all that I don’t want her to know where she came from? Did it ever occur to you she might rather believe a lie than the truth? Just leave it a question mark and move on.”

“But—”

In two long strides, Bella stood in front of the man and silenced him with a tug down on her collar. Mr. Caldwell’s eyes widened at the sight of the scar at the base of her neck.

“You should see the scar I gave the man who gave this to me.”

His eyes darted back up to hers.

“I fought to protect my mother. Don’t you think I wouldn’t fight
for my daughter’s safety, too. There is no story here, Mr. Caldwell. Just a question mark. Now. Move along.”

She released her collar and stood tall.

Harrison rolled the brim of his hat in his hands. “I will. But first, there’s something else. About your husband. There’s been a battle.”

“You’re lying. The 54th doesn’t fight. They dig ditches. Build breastworks. They don’t fight.”

“I assure you, they did. They led the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 19. It was, however … unsuccessful.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this.”

“News travels slow from South Carolina. Surrounded by Confederate lines, you know, so it had to travel by ship, not telegraph. We only just learned of it at the
Inquirer’s
office ourselves. It will be all over tomorrow’s papers. Of the six hundred men, nearly three hundred were killed, missing, or wounded. They fought most nobly, according to witnesses.” He retrieved a paper from his knapsack. “Abraham Jamison is on the casualty list. I’m sorry.”

Bella eyed the paper as if it were a rattlesnake, ready to strike. She backed away. “You could have typed that page up yourself. If this is some game to get me away from here …”

“No game. Your husband has been injured. But it may only be slight. The list doesn’t specify. If you want to go to him, I can arrange the passage. I would be willing to accompany you myself.”

“If I let you print your story, you mean?”

He shook his head. “I’m not that low, ma’am. No strings attached.”

The broken bodies of Gettysburg rolled through her mind, but with Abraham’s face on every one of them.

“South Carolina?” The birthplace of the Confederacy, and major port for the slave trade. Just north of Georgia.

“Beaufort, yes. You need not fear, Mrs. Jamison. The area has been controlled by Union troops for more than a year now. You need not fear.”

The anger that had fueled her a moment ago fled, taking her
strength with it. Her eyes focused on the curtains hanging limply in front of windows shuttered against battle’s stench. She had not been able to keep war from her home after all.

Tasting her heartbeat, she turned back to Mr. Caldwell. “When do we go?”

“We can leave Gettysburg tomorrow.”

It did not feel soon enough.

H
arrison Caldwell stepped around a pile of old muskets blocking the sidewalk and almost tripped on a four-year-old boy sitting on the other side, pounding with a toy hammer at some percussion caps on the ground. Down the street, another boy launched a used-up shell and called out to his friend, “Hey, you Reb! Don’t you hear that grapeshot scream?”

In his mind’s eye, Harrison saw all three boys in uniform, perfectly whole until they were ripped apart on the altar of war, the blue-grey smoke of gunpowder consuming their ravaged bodies. He shuddered. The nightmares were bad enough, but these vivid daydreams rattled him to his core.

Loud voices and laughter splashed the night air as it spilled out of the Confectionary and Eating Saloon on West York Street. Though he had not eaten all day, Harrison did not go in. He was in no mood for a crowd.

Instead, he crossed the street and made a beeline for the Grocery and Provision Store. The wooden sign that swayed, squeaking on its iron rod, was no larger than a foolscap page, yet riddled with six bullet holes. Harrison purchased two boxes of Necco wafers—licorice, of course, and chocolate, which he hoped Bella would enjoy on tomorrow’s train ride.

But when he stepped back into the night, and before he could open his package, his nose pinched and his mouth clamped shut against the smell of decay and chloride of lime.

Harrison wasn’t all that hungry anyway. But he sure was thirsty.

He checked his pocket watch. Eight o’clock. Still an hour before the sale of beer and liquor would be stopped for the night, thanks to the Union Provost Marshall. With swollen feet and a heavy heart, Harrison Caldwell followed a stream of men into the Eagle Hotel and claimed a stool at the polished cherrywood bar. Oil lamp sconces with soot-rimmed chimneys belied a staff too busy pouring to bother cleaning. Bottles of liquor lined the wall behind the bar in a sparkling glass rainbow of clear, brown, and green.

“Whiskey?” the bartender asked as he wiped down the bar with a terry cloth towel. Cigar smoke clouded above his head. A drunk man at the end wept into his cup, while raucous laughter penetrated the walls from the town square, one block away.

“How’d you guess?”

“Whiskey sales have shot up since you embalmers came to town, threefold. Not that I’m complaining. My business picks up every time yours does.” He threw the towel over his shoulder and grinned.

“Oh, I’m not an embalmer.” Harrison tugged at the cravat around his neck and scanned the row of pale faces and droopy mustaches lined up at the bar. “I’m a reporter.”
A reporter who has just given up one of the best stories I’ve ever dug up.
He still couldn’t believe it.

The man next to him swiveled on his stool to face him. “You don’t say. I hate to tell you this, but the battle’s over, fella. You missed it. No wonder you need a drink.”

The bartender filled Harrison’s shot glass, and he threw back the drink. He shivered as the liquid burned all the way down to his stomach. “Yes, well, not all stories ended when the armies left town.” Bella’s words echoed in his mind.
Just because you turn in your article doesn’t mean the story ends there.
He slammed down the glass and asked for another.

“Oh? Go on.” The stranger leaned on his elbow, propped up on the sweaty bar, eyes glazed as if he already had a few drinks in his belly.

Harrison tossed down another shot. “I had a great story all lined up, and every bit of it true. Loads of evidence, eyewitness testimonies, the works.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Can’t print it. Source doesn’t want me to.” He took a deep breath, tasting the tobacco-fogged air.
Source doesn’t want me to?
Since when had that stopped him before?

“Was it really that good of a story?”

Alcohol coursed hotly through his veins. “It was really that good.” A shrill, staccato burst of laughter from a corner booth jolted him.

“And it’s factual? It all checks out?”

“Most definitely.” Harrison wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He had forgotten how good it felt to get drunk.

“Then just run it.”

“Oh, no.” He wagged his head. “That’s not how I work. Wouldn’t be right.”
At least not in this case.
He could barely hear his own voice—or his conscience—over the buzz of the other patrons.

“Bartender—another drink.” The stranger slid the glass, and his stool, closer to Harrison. “This one’s on me. Now, don’t you hate to let a story like that go to waste? Why don’t you just tell me, and I’ll let you know what I think of it. Just between us, two bums at the bar. It’ll go no further.”

Harrison cocked his head at his new friend and clapped him on the shoulder. “I think I will. I think … I will. There is a woman in Gettysburg—no two. And they’re related. But only one of ’em knowzit, see?”

Whiskey loosened his tongue and untethered him from suspicion. Somehow, between waves of nausea from too much drink, Harrison spilled the story until every last detail had sloshed out.

“Whaddya think?” he asked at the end, now drowsy from the heat and alcohol. “Good story?”

“Very.” Smiling, the stranger stood and tugged his bowler hat down on his head.

Harrison fumbled in his pocket for a moment. “Thanks for the drinks, old chap. Here’s my card.”

The stranger looked at it and smiled broadly. “
Philadelphia Inquirer!
Excellent. And here, good fellow, is mine.” Winking, he dropped his card into Harrison’s empty glass and disappeared into the crowd.

Harrison leaned over to fish it out, and blinked at his puffy-eyed reflection in the polished cherry wood bar. He should have stopped drinking after the first shot.
Or before it.
Shaking his head, he plucked up the card and squinted at the tiny print swimming before him.
Lorenzo J. Ellis. Reporter, New York Times.

Suddenly, he was wide awake. Still rubbery with drink, he slammed his cash down on the bar and stumbled toward the door. Harrison was about to be sick.

Pearl-grey mist draped Holloway Farm in muffled quiet as Silas Ford hopped with his crutch to the porch. His mind was just as clouded, but he hoped working with his hands would clear away the haze.

Easing himself into the velvet armchair, he picked up the crutch he had been working on yesterday for another amputee and began sanding the edges. He had barely seen Liberty in the last three days, but that didn’t keep her from his mind. Guilt cinched his gut every time he remembered kissing her.