Into Enemy Arms by Rex Burns

Author:Rex Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: second chances and starting over, confederate woman falling in love with yankee man, having yankee sympathies in confederate virginia in civil war, life in civil war american, life in virginia during civil war, struggling to survive during the civil war, widows struggling to run farm in civil war time
Publisher: Black Opal Books

Chapter 18

Life at Marshfield flowed into the lengthy days of another summer. Willy took over the fieldwork, and Gretchen and Lydia sighed with relief from that burden. Perhaps Dan as well felt relief to work with an expert plowman because he pulled much faster. Or, as Gretchen opined, he wanted to escape “The Lord watches always and ever” sung behind him in wailing monotony. It was strange to once again share only the work around house and barn; it was an almost forgotten luxury to sit for a cup of precious coffee after the noon meal, or to have the time and strength to read in the evenings, or to take a long twilight sail in the Lydia.

Union patrols visited almost weekly. Sergeant Durgin, with a sly smile but without dismounting, would touch his finger to his hat brim and then water the soldiers’ horses with never, as Gretchen said, a “by-your-leave or a thankee.”

For weeks, no goods were hidden in the barn, and as July and August passed--busy with picking the corn as it ripened and carting it to Mr. Henderson for sale--Lydia felt a growing hope that Mr. Carswell’s smuggling had been halted by the patrols and the picket ships on station in the Atlantic off Chincoteague and out in the Chesapeake.

On a late August afternoon, when storm clouds piled so high their tops were painted red by the setting sun and thunder muttered and growled in the dark over the bay, Gretchen rode the wagon back from delivering the last of the corn and visiting her home. From the kitchen, Lydia saw Willy shuffle barefoot from the barn to unhitch Dan. Gretchen sat while Willy talked, but she made no gesture in reply. Then, bending from the waist as if her stomach pained, she slowly stepped down as Willy gaped at her.

“Gretchen? Are you all right?” Lydia came down the back steps, wiping flour from her hands. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, ma’am--” The girl’s red eyes welled tears. Behind her, Willy mumbled into Dan’s flicking ear and led him into the barn. “Allen Rafer’s dead. Killed in a battle. Over near Richmond.”

“Oh, Gretchen!”

The girl stumbled into Lydia’s arms. “Humphrey wrote and said they fought the Yankees over on the Jamestown Peninsula last month.” Her body wrenched with a silent sob. “He said it was awful--Allen Rafer--He said--” Her voice broke into gasps.

“Gretchen--shh, now. There, now.” Lydia did not know what words she spoke or for how long. She let the low sound of her voice reach for the girl lost in her pain and rocked her gently to bring a semblance of comfort until the girl could be led into the house.

Gretchen finally fell asleep on the sofa, her teacup with its drops of laudanum half-empty. While she slept in the parlor, Lydia quietly finished making supper and then served Willie on the back porch.

“They’re closing in, ma’am.” The cropped beard on the man’s lean jaw wagged with his chewing. “They be closer and closer.”

“Who, Willy?”

“All them--in the woods.

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