The Raging Hearts: The Coltrane Saga, Book 2 Page 6

  “Must I lose the only man I can ever truly love merely because I want to keep a promise to the father I adored?”

  He sighed. “Kitty, I will admit that you have a point. And I will give serious thought to what you ask of me. I do love you. More than that I cannot give you at this time. If you will leave here with me tomorrow, we will be married right away—”

  “I can’t go with you.” She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to close out the picture of his departure. “I love you, my darling, but I cannot leave my homeland.”

  “Then so be it,” he said tightly, mounting his horse and drawing her up to sit behind him. She wrapped her arms about his waist and pressed her cheek against his back. He could feel the moisture of her tears through his clothes.

  And so, they moved up to the road for what might be their last ride together. The night enshrouded them in a cloak of black velvet.

  Chapter Six

  “I don’t believe it!”

  Kitty had been spooning water through the parched lips of a wounded soldier. Straightening quickly, she looked up into the anguished eyes of Dr. Holt. “Tell me it isn’t so. General Lee didn’t really surrender.”

  But the graying medical officer could only nod, his face lined with the anguish of defeat. “He surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox. The word just came.”

  With trembling hands, she set down the water bucket, stumbled over the bodies in the corridor, and ran to the front porch of the hospital. For four long years Lee’s army had been unconquerable. Twice his army had moved the war north of the Potomac. Time and again it was able to beat back the strongest forces that the North could send against it. Now it had come to the end of the road.

  So it was time to quit, she thought. The war was over. It was time to think about the future and rebuilding. Travis might be coming back soon. They would be married and start a new life. It was only two weeks since he last held her, and already she missed him so much that tears sprang to her eyes thinking of him.

  “Miss Kitty? Miss Kitty? Is that really you? Lordy, I don’t believe my eyes!”

  She whipped her head around and, for a moment, could only blink in surprise as she recognized old Jacob, who had been her father’s faithful servant for so many years. “Jacob, Jacob!” She ran down the steps with arms outstretched. “Oh, I was afraid you were long dead. Dear, dear Jacob.”

  They embraced, and then the dark-skinned man stood back, twisting his worn straw hat in his gnarled old hands. “Not me, Miss Kitty. Can’t kill an old coot like me. Come close to it, though, with one thing and another. But I been doing fine. You know my Fanny, she took sick with the fever and died. But I got my young’uns, and we’ve made out.”

  Her hands pressed down on his shoulders, and she whispered, “I’m sorry about Fanny. I’d heard of her passing. But I am glad you survived, Jacob. You heard about Poppa?”

  Tears sprang to his eyes at the mention of the man he had loved so dearly. “Yes’m, I heard,” his voice broke. “I heard all the stories, but I didn’t believe nothing ’cept that John Wright died in glory—just like he lived.”

  Kitty blinked back her own tears as she told him exactly how it happened and then she told him of her father’s admission that Nathan had been among the vigilantes the night he was beaten. The old Negro’s milky, veined eyes bulged in anger. “If I’d a’knowed that, I’d have kilt Nathan myself.” Then he stopped to stare at her in wonder. “But how come he never told you, Miss Kitty? How come he kept silent, knowing you planned to marry Mr. Collins?”

  She bit her lip in painful remembrance of those final moments as she held her dying father in her arms. “He wanted me to find out for myself what a scoundrel Nathan was. But it took a tragedy for me to really see it.”

  “Don’t blame yo’self,” Jacob said gruffly, wiping at his eyes with the back of his bony hand. “You’ll find happiness again someday, Miss Kitty. I knows you will. General Lee, he done surrendered, and now we’ll have peace. You know what I heard? Every black man is gonna have a mule and some land, give to him by the government. I’ll have my own farm, me and my boys!”

  “I’m happy for you, Jacob. I only wish Fanny were alive to share your new life. We were always so poor that we couldn’t give you much, just a roof over your heads. My mother didn’t make life any easier for you, either.”

  He bowed his head respectfully. “I heard she’s passed on, too, Miss Kitty. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you heard how my mother died. A drunk. A prostitute. The talk of the town. Maybe I could have saved her if Luke Tate hadn’t kidnapped me again when I was going after medicine for her, but I doubt it. She destroyed herself. She was never happy. I hope she’s found peace now.”

  “I hope you find peace, Miss Kitty,” the old Negro said in a reverent whisper. “You’s a fine woman. You deserves fine things. If you ever need me, I’ll be around. Just spread the word among my people that you need old Jacob, and there I’ll be, long as there’s a breath left in my body. You believe in that.

  “Maybe it’s a lie, that talk about a mule and some land. Maybe I won’t have nothing. You think you could use me and my boys on your poppa’s farm? ’Course, it’s your farm now, ain’t it? You going to keep it? Make it be what he wanted it to be? If anybody can, you can, Miss Kitty. I knows that with all my heart.”

  She forced a smile. “I’m going to try to do what Poppa wanted me to do, Jacob. And if your own dream doesn’t come true, then come to me. You’ll always have a home.”

  Just then Dr. Holt walked out on the front porch.

  “Miss Kitty, we need you. An amputation. Will you come with me, please?”

  “Sometimes I think the suffering will never end,” she said to Jacob in parting. “We’ll meet again. You take care, and I .pray both our dreams come true. I want to tell you about my cavalryman, Jacob, the man I’m going to marry. He’s wonderful, and he’s going to help me make the farm prosperous, the way Poppa always said it would be.”

  Jacob stared after her, his heart warmed by her smile, by her nearness. She probably never left the hospital, he thought sadly, a place where screams could be heard at all hours of the day or night. So she probably hadn’t heard the rumors yet, either, about how if the Yankees won the war, they were going to take the land away from the Rebels and give it to the slaves. He prayed they didn’t take her land. Lord, her daddy had loved that land almost as much as he loved that girl. Miss Kitty would die if she lost that land, he mused, walking on down the street shaking his white head. Yes, Lord, she would lay down and die.

  The soldier facing the amputation of his right leg was young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. He screamed as soldiers tied him to the blood-soaked table. Kitty stepped forward and placed her hand on his brow. “God, don’t let them do this to me, lady,” he shrieked, seeing her through fevered eyes. “I’ve got to have my leg. God almighty, what good is a man with just one leg?”

  She had heard the same plea so many times in the past four years that she knew by heart every word that would come from his trembling lips. Her eyes went to the exposed flesh of his gangrene-infested leg. It was amputate or die. There was no other way. “We want to save your life, soldier,” she said, and pushed his damp hair back from his forehead. “Why, they make wooden legs nowadays that are just as good as real legs. You’ll be dancing to a banjo in no time at all. God wants you to live, or He would have let you be blown to heaven, instead of just wounding your leg.”

  “I’d rather die than lose my leg.” He arched his back, the veins in his neck nearly bursting as he screamed, “Don’t…don’t let them do it…”

  Someone handed her the chloroform. At least the Yankees still had some of the precious drug. So many times she had been forced to amputate with no anesthesia at all, just other soldiers to hold a man down until he mercifully passed out from the excruciating pain.

  She administered the drug, placing a folded cloth over his screaming lips, letting it drip down, a bit at a time. It didn’t take long. Soon he was
out of his misery. She turned her head away as the sound began, steel cutting into flesh, blood dripping to the floor, the whining of bone being severed. “We’ll leave him a good stump,” Dr. Holt was saying. “He’ll have enough for a nice wooden leg. So many times, there’s just not enough left.”

  The smell of hot tar being slapped against the wound to close it. Then he was lifted from the table and carried to lie on the floor with the others. Soon, he would awaken to scream in agony throughout the long night, the sound echoing with hundreds of others who had been through hell along with him.

  Dr. Holt wiped his bloodied hands on his apron and reached for the cup of water someone handed him. “I heard that General Grant was as anxious to end this damned war as Lee,” he said to Kitty, who was trying to rinse the blood from the table in anticipation of the next poor soul. “I heard it said once that Grant believed the whole point of the blasted war had been an effort to try and prove that the North and South were, and always would be, neighbors. And he thinks as soon as the fighting is officially over, they should start acting that way—like neighbors. God knows, that’s not going to happen. Not in my lifetime, anyway. I’ll never live to see the day that Yankees and Rebs don’t hate each other. And as for acting like neighbors, what meaning does that have? Look at the way your neighbors treat you!”

  Dr. Holt sighed. “The story I get is that Grant told Lee to just have his men lay down their arms and go on home, and it’s even in the terms of surrender that if they’ll do just that, they won’t be bothered by the Federal authorities. Thank God, the man did that. Think of the Northerners who want to see General Lee hanged. Now they can’t do it, not by the terms of the surrender. And if they can’t hang General Lee, by God, they damn well can’t hang a lesser Confederate. That’s some comfort.”

  “Then, if they don’t intend to force their authority upon us, how do they plan to give the freed slaves mules and land?”

  “That’s just talk, girl. But let’s face it. We can’t be sure of just what is going to happen. Look around you. Right here in Goldsboro, people are starving. Have you seen the horses that wander around and die and rot in the streets from starvation? What’s going to happen to all of us? The Confederate dollar isn’t worth the blood that drips off my operating table. Time will tell what God and the Yankees have in store for us.”

  But not a great deal of time passed before the whole nation learned what was in store. Just six days later, Kitty was making her morning rounds when she heard the screaming. Louder and louder the sound came—some shouts of joy, others of anguish. Guns fired. Kitty ran to the window and looked out to see people running around in hysterical panic. Then a man ran up the steps yelling, “President Lincoln is dead! President Lincoln is dead!”

  Kitty’s hand flew to her throat as she stood watching the man talk with the officer. Then the officer turned and made his announcement to the deathly quiet room. “President Lincoln died this morning,” he said, voice cracking. “He was shot last night. Assassinated.”

  He turned away, overcome. A few of the bolder Confederate soldiers lying about began to cheer. The Yankees who were strong enough cursed back at them. Soldiers restored order, but for a few moments there was almost as much pandemonium in the hospital as there was in the streets.

  A gentle hand fell on Kitty’s shoulder as she stood watching the jubilation. “They don’t know what they are doing, the fools,” Dr. Holt said harshly. “President Lincoln was their only hope…our only hope.”

  Kitty turned her head, surprised when she saw tears streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t understand.”

  “President Lincoln wanted peace. He did not want to see the South punished. Vice-President Andrew Johnson feels just the opposite. And now he is our President, Kitty. God save the South. The government is in the control of radicals now.”

  A few days later word came that General Johnston had met with Sherman at Durham’s Station, near Raleigh. Kitty’s heart leaped. Sherman was in Raleigh! Was Travis there, too? If so, he would be back soon. He had to be. Her lips ached for his, and her body trembled each time she thought of his warm strength. He had to return.

  “Kitty?” She jumped as Dr. Holt shoved a plate of beans across the table. “This isn’t much, but you haven’t eaten all day. Neither have I. Maybe they’ll keep us from dying of starvation before morning. It’s all I could salvage from the kitchen.”

  “I can’t,” she said, pushing her fist against her lips. “Thank you, but I can’t. Those worms…”

  “Worms?” he guffawed. “Kitty, girl, you’ve been through the war, and I imagine you’ve seen your share of worms and maggots in your food and learned to pick them out. What’s wrong now?”

  Shaking her head miserably, she whispered, “I don’t know. I just haven’t been feeling well at all lately. I’m tired. Tired of the war. Tired of the rumors. Most of all, I’m tired of missing Travis, wondering if he’ll come back. If Sherman is in Raleigh, though, maybe Travis is, too.”

  “There’s no telling where he is, girl. Haven’t you heard there’s a massive Federal cavalry force sweeping through Alabama and taking over the last war-production center in Selma? They’re moving toward Montgomery, too, where the Confederate capital was once located. Mobile has surrendered, down on the Gulf Coast. And even though there’s an army west of the Mississippi, it’s rumored it will lay down arms any day now. No, honey, there’s no telling where your cavalryman is. And, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s been a few skirmishes. He may not make it back to you.”

  Kitty stared in horror. She wouldn’t let herself think of that. Travis couldn’t be dead. He was too cunning, too strong. Shaking her head, she blinked back tears. “He’ll be back. I know he will.”

  “Mind if I eat your beans?” he asked casually.

  “No, no, go ahead.” Her stomach was heaving again.

  “I hear the paper Johnston signed covers not only his army but the rest of the Confederacy,” the doctor said between mouthfuls. “He didn’t have that authority, but General Breckinridge did, and he is…was…the Secretary of War for the Confederacy.”

  “Does that mean it’s over? All of it?”

  “Kitty, girl, there’s so much turmoil going on that I can’t tell what’s going on. Every soldier that’s brought in here has a new tale, a new rumor. But I do have it on good authority that the agreement Johnston signed went far beyond the terms Grant gave to Lee. Our boys are to march to the capital in the state they came from and deposit their weapons there, sign a paper saying they’ll never take up arms again, and then disband. And each state government will be recognized as lawful once its officers take oath to support the Constitution of the United States. No one is to be punished for his part in the war. Political rights are supposed to be guaranteed. Everything is supposed to settle down and be peaceful.” He snorted.

  “You don’t believe the Yankees will keep their word?” Kitty’s eyes widened. She wanted peace as much as anyone. If the South had lost, then so be it. Rebuild. Think of the future. That was the only answer now.

  Dr. Holt lay down his spoon and looked her straight in the eye. “You want to know the truth, harsh as it may sound?”

  She nodded, a chill moving through her.

  “That was not just a simple surrender document Johnston signed,” he bit out. “It was a treaty of peace, all that any Southerner could hope to ask for. But there’s not a chance that the government in Washington is going to ratify it. Lincoln would’ve. From the moment it became apparent that we were going to surrender, Lincoln insisted that the field generals were not to concern themselves with political questions. They were to give liberal terms to the surrendering armies. They were to leave all the details—about readmission to the Union, and the restoration of civil and political rights, abolition of slavery—all of that, in his hands. But now Johnston is President, and you can bet Lincoln’s dreams for peace and all his plans will go right in the ground with his coffin.”

  Kitty got up and left the room, walk
ing down the corridor and out onto the front porch. There was a full moon. The dogwood petals were starting to drop from the tree branches, and the ground looked as though giant snowflakes had begun to cover its surface. A gentle breeze sent the white flowers swirling and dancing about in the street.

  Lifting her face to the blue-black sky, Kitty gazed up at the moon, thinking that the same glow was shining down on Travis, somewhere.

  A cloud drifted across the night sky, obliterating the moon. Life is like that now, Kitty thought. For all of us. A cloud covers us all.

  She whispered out loud, tears streaming down her cheeks, her whole body quaking, “Travis, I need you. I need you now more than I’ve ever needed you before!”

  The worry that had been locked inside now flowed from her. She whispered into the night, “Travis, I need you…and so does our baby!”

  Chapter Seven

  Spring turned to summer, and heat made the hospital intolerable. Gradually the number of patients began to thin. The Federal medical officers were discharging the Confederate soldiers as quickly as possible. Kitty overheard Dr. Holt arguing fiercely over several patients, saying they were not well enough, nor strong enough, to be sent out into the streets. The Federals argued back that they were not coddling any man, least of all a “damned Reb”.

  Kitty knew that soon she, too, would be discharged from services. There had not been any pay, ever, but at least there was a roof over her head. Food was becoming more plentiful. Where would she go? Who, in all of Wayne County, would befriend her? She knew she had to keep her pregnancy a secret as long as possible. Travis would return soon, and they would be married. He had to come back. It was the only hope she had.

  But where was he? The only news was from a wounded Yankee cavalryman. Kitty questioned him anxiously.

  “I was a cavalryman, all right, lady,” he grinned, enjoying the attention. “I rode with the best of ’em. I was hot on the tail of old Jeff Davis himself when a Johnny Reb that wouldn’t believe the war was over took a pot shot at me.”