Here's Chapter Two of the historical series that correlates with the ghosts in my Book B!tches series. They are unedited, although their draft form is pretty complete. Please leave a comment or contact me at anneconleyauthor@gmail.com with thoughts. I will post one chapter a week moving forward. I hope you enjoy!
Catch up on Chapter One: HERE
Emily was half-way through the hen house on her way to milk
the cow, lost in the waking wildlife of her surroundings. She had risen and dressed for chores, still
in a daze of sleep. When she heard a rustling and a grunt coming from the barn,
Emily froze, then remembered that she wouldn’t be alone in there this morning.
Union soldiers were camping out. Stiffening her shoulders, Emily resolutely
marched forward, determined to complete her morning chores.
While most of the men were too sick or exhausted to try
anything funny, she still worried.
Everyone in Texas had heard of the atrocities committed by Yanks. They plundered fields, raided farms, raped
women. And Mama had practically invited
them in and told them to make themselves at home.
Emily ignored the snores and occasional flatulence as she
milked the cow as quietly she could and left.
It wasn’t from some sense of curtsy that she didn’t want to wake
them. She didn’t know how to act around
them. Would they be rude, making lewd
comments? Or would they be
demanding? Would they just kill her on
the spot, now that they’d rested up from their journey? She had no idea, but she wasn’t in the mood
to find out.
Carrying the bucket to the kitchen, she found Rachel making
several loaves of the dense bread from the yeast bowl she kept on the counter,
her face a mask of determination.
“Go kill three of those old roosters, Emily. I’ll make some broth for the sick ones. Get Jamie and Irene to work on your
chores. And tell them to put the steer
in the back pasture. We need to get it
fattened up fast now. I was planning on
butchering the pig in a few weeks, but we can go ahead and do it tomorrow, and
the steer in a few weeks.”
Never mind that those old roosters were supposed to feed
their family. They could eat off one for two days. Three roosters at once? For a bunch of Yankees?
“Alright, Mama.”
Emily knew better than to argue.
Her mama had a plan, and wouldn’t be deterred. She was feeding these men all their
food. Emily wouldn’t think about that
too hard. If she fed them all their
chickens, the steer, and the pig, what would the family eat after they left? Mama was taking a gamble, and Emily didn’t
like it. But who was she to say? Their summer months were supposed to be
filled with canning meats and vegetables, smoking meat for the winter, and
harvesting the corn to sell for winter supplies. And the bank payment. She couldn’t forget that. They’d mortgaged the farm to buy corn seed
and equipment when the cotton embargo had happened.
After wringing the necks of the roosters, and plucking the
feathers off, Emily brought them inside the kitchen so Mama could boil them
into broth. Normally, she’d make a gravy for the chicken meat and serve it over
the bread or make a rich soup and they’d eat off that for a long time. By the time she was sick of chicken, Mama
would declare it butcher day, and then Emily could get sick of pig instead. At least, that’s how long it would take
without all the extra mouths.
A couple of hours later, Emily found herself in the barn
with Louise, ladling broth into sick men’s mouths, and wiping their brows with
cool water. They looked better today,
certainly cleaner. They were—every last
one of them—thin as rails, and Emily had a difficult time imagining them as
fierce warriors, fighting against her father and brother. Most of
them looked a little less gray after their rest, and now she endeavored
to get something inside them. The ones
that could handle it, she gave some bread soaked in broth, but most of them
just drank broth. She put the ones well
enough to work, churning butter, cleaning stalls, and shucking corn. Trying to look on the bright side, she
decided having the extra hands at the farm might not be all bad.
Most of the men she fed were responsive enough to thank her,
yet others seemed to be hallucinating she was an angel of mercy, coming to
escort them home. She wondered at how
far yet they had to go, how long it would take, and whether or not they could
make such a trek. It was daunting for
her to imagine, even healthy. But they wouldn’t
be able to make it in the state they were in, she mused, so she would do her
part to make them healthy enough to journey home.
At the end of the row, she held the ladle up to a man’s
mouth, watching it closely so as not to spill any broth, when his eyes opened
to watch her. Something fluttered to life
inside Emily as his blurry gaze focused on her features. Her breath caught, and a little broth sloshed
out of the suddenly shaky ladle. Gunmetal
guarded gray eyes focused on her, as his cracked lips wrapped around the edge
of the ladle. Emily could see his throat
working as he swallowed until the ladle was empty.
She was transfixed.
This man seemed different. Even
in his weakened and sick state, he exuded an aura of danger. Not necessary menace toward her, just a
dangerous air, as if he were under the bead of a gun at all times. It was different from the other soldiers, who
just seemed defeated. This man was
sicker than some of the others, but still held a fierce wariness.
When she dipped in for more, he eyes searched her face as he
leaned back on his straw bed. The man
seemed to be trying to determine her worth with his gaze. Emily felt a strange reaction to his piercing
gray eyes. Even though she was scared of
these men, and didn’t want them blundering into her life, for some reason, she
wanted this one man to find her
worthy. She shook that thought out of
her head. That was a stupid, fleeting
thought. She didn’t want any of them to
find her worthy of anything. She wanted
them gone.
Repeating the process, Emily continued her examination, wondering
why this man was different. She was
struck by his features—long dark hair and beard that took up most of his face,
swarthy complexion, and piercing eyes. His
features would probably be attractive, if he wasn’t so ill, and dirty. She and Mama had bathed them the best they
could, but this man sure could use a dip in the creek.
Emily didn’t know what was happening to her, but her heart
pounded, she tryied desperately to catch her breath, and she was suddenly
burning from the inside out in the heated shade of the barn.
When he’d drunk his second ladle full, the man spoke, a deep
rich voice husky with disuse. “You’re
like sunshine. Used to call my daughter
Sunshine, because she was blonde, like you.”
His eyes closed with a small smile on his face, and Emily thought about
his words. Pleasure he’d spoken those
words with a smile to her swirled around with sadness he had a daughter
somewhere who most likely missed him as much as she missed her papa.
Then it hit her.
These men had families at home.
They were just people. People
like her Papa and her brother, and Jakob, who had places to get home to, people
who missed them. That one man with the
gray eyes and the small smile brought that home to her. As well as a tumbling in her tummy she didn’t
know how to deal with. And guilt. She’d been thinking all these awful thoughts
about them, coveting her family’s food, when these men knew hunger she couldn’t
fathom. She’d been looking at this man
in a way that certainly wasn’t appropriate for a woman who was spoken for.
She sat back on her heels and examined him, telling herself
she wasn’t being inappropriate, she was trying to understand. He looked like he used to be a strong man,
but his muscles had wasted away with starvation and sickness. He was boney—gaunt, and looked fragile. His skin had a yellowish gray hue to it, a
frightening color, and Emily vowed to work harder to make these soldiers better
so they could get home to their families.
She tucked the sheet around him and let him rest. As Emily walked away, carrying the empty
broth pail, she was stopped by a man.
“That’s Isaack. I
wouldn’t bother with him.” His voice
wasn’t unkind, just matter-of-fact. “He
doesn’t want to live,” he finished off with a shrug. “You should focus your attentions
elsewhere.” Pointing to his puckered
lips, he said, “Like here.”
Emily looked at the man, repulsed. This Yankee was living up to her
expectations. But, as she thought about
it, he wasn’t being cruel or ugly. He
seemed to be laughing with her, at some joke she just didn’t find funny.
Her perceptions of the Yankees were shifting. If the way she thought about the enemy was
changing, what would that do with how she thought about the rest of her
life? Emily wasn’t comfortable with her
train of thought, but decided to explore it anyway. She would write about it in her journal
later, when she had some time, and maybe things would make sense to her then.
As she ignored the man and walked away from his chuckles,
she couldn’t help but wonder why Isaack didn’t want to live. He was bad off, but not as ill as a few of
the others. She could make Isaack
better, and with her mama’s words finally making sense, Emily vowed to do her
best to help these men get well.
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