Seth a Civil War StoryChapter 2 Momma
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Seth licked his fingers, scooped up the last bits of his second piece of pie and gulped down his third cup of milk. Jefferson sat stiffly at the kitchen table with his frayed hat in his lap. Annie and Caroline watched the boy eat and listened to a disorganized story that seemed like the odd-shaped pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Mrs. Williams busied herself at the stove, but Seth could tell that she was listening, too. Between bites and gulps the boy had told them, in disjointed fragments, where he had been and what had happened since Sunday's dinner. He did not say that he wished he had not called his brother a fool. And he did not say what had happened to Corporal Wainder or where he lay.
"Hardly seems possible that it was only about this time yesterday," said Mrs. Williams as she moved to stand behind Seth. Her hands tightened on the half-moon chair back. "I did get your note, son." She raked his hair with her fingers, picking out weeds and seeds. "I appreciate you sending it, and, of course, I thanked Mr. Bouve. We're real glad you're home, aren't we, Annie?"
"I've got to find some Federal soldiers, Momma, and tell them what I know, what I heard. It might be important." Seth looked up at her, hopeful.
"Aw, Seth," Annie whined, "You're always playing soldier. Can I have some more pie, Momma?"
"I declare, Annie, aren't you happy to have your brother home safe and sound even if he is all scratched up?" Seth's mother asked. "Did you know you'd torn your shirt?"
Annie made a face in reply and tried on Jefferson's broad-brimmed hat. It came down over her eyes and rested on her nose. She leaned her head back and looked around at everyone.
"That reminds me," said Seth, pulling Jefferson's hat down so it covered his sister's chin, "I need a hat. Must'a lost mine somewheres, probably..." He stopped and remembered his frightening flight up that hay-covered hill on horse-sore legs.
"It's much too dangerous for you to go to town, Seth," his mother insisted, turned back to her stove and stirring the jelly she was making. "Look at what happened to your poor uncle."
"It won't be dangerous, Momma. Jefferson's goin' to drive, and nobody knows the back roads better'n he does. Not even Robert."
"Yes'm, Miz Williams, Seth's right," Jefferson said quietly. "I believe him when he says he got som'im important to tell the sojers. That's why that man was chasing him." These were the first words Jefferson had uttered since entering the Williams's kitchen, and they seemed to carry more than ordinary weight. The hall clock ticked in the silence that followed.
"What man?" Seth's mother asked.
"Wainder, mother, you remember." Seth put his finger to his lips hoping Jefferson would not say more about the rebel soldier and how they had left him.
Seth's mother sighed. "I'm certainly glad you got away from him, but you're almost an hour from the nearest fort, and there are Confederate cavalrymen all over the place. Most of our neighbors have fled."
"I'll get us through all right," Jefferson stated. He said it in a way that did not leave room for dispute.
"I've got to try, Momma." Seth played his trump card. "Like Robert did."
After another long period of silence, Mrs. Williams gave a small nod of approval. Annie ran to get Seth a hat.
"Caroline will stay here with you, Momma, if that's all right." The girl glared at Seth. "Her father's not home. He's down in the city."
"Oh, all right, if you don't mind Mrs. Williams," said Caroline, flashing Seth a clenched-tooth smile.
"Of course not," Seth's mother said. "Don't think your daddy'll be coming out the Pike for a while yet. Annie said she heard some shooting from down toward the church."
Seth's mother held him by the arm. "I'm sure your father is safe, Caroline," she said.
"So am I," replied the girl, lifting her chin. "Come on, Annie, let's go out front and see what we can see."
Once the girls had left the kitchen, Seth's mother kissed him on the cheek and then followed him out into the back yard. Jefferson was watering Ben, the French's mule, at the Williams's well. The pump handle's squeak reminded Seth of how all this had started, and once more he fingered the bruise on his forehead.
Jefferson dipped his kerchief into the horse trough and then tied it around his head and replaced his battered hat. He clambered ponderously up to the driver's seat, and Seth and his mother moved to the other side of the wagon.
Mrs. Williams looked up at Jefferson and asked, "Does he know?"
Seth looked from his mother to Jefferson, puzzled.
"No'm, don' think so," Jefferson answered, tightlipped, shaking his head.
"He should," Seth's mother said as she turned toward him and squeezed his shoulder. "Before you go, I think it is important that you know something, son. Jefferson is not a slave. He has not been one for a long time. He is a free man who is going with you because he wants to. He'll explain it to you if he chooses. Now be off. And be careful."
"Don't you worry," said Jefferson, clucking at the mule.
Seth did not know what to say as he settled himself on the plank seat. Soon he and Jefferson were rolling slowly down the Georgetown Pike toward the capital. They followed the same route Seth had traveled with Wainder a little less than twenty-four hours before.
The boy shuddered as they passed the clump of trees where he had made a map in the dirt and the soldier had concealed his carbine. The gold piece gleamed in the boy's memory along with the man's senseless, staring eye. Seth looked carefully along the roadside, but he could not tell if the carbine was still in its hiding place.
In silence, they passed the old, wooden church and the Moores' small plantation, one of the last places to hold on to its slaves. Jefferson stopped at the blacksmith's near Darcy's store and post office, a crossroads many folks called Bethesda for the Presbyterian meeting house. The black man went to talk with his fellow smith, a white man from whom he had often purchased bar iron. He returned to the wagon in a few minutes, frowning. "We can't go much further this way. Too many Rebs. John says there was a fight near here this morning, and the other smith claims he heard shooting from down Fort Reno way."
Jefferson pulled himself back up to his seat and turned the wagon to the right, toward the river. He followed winding back roads, private lanes, and, for a short while, an almost-dry creek bed. Seth kept his silence, wishing Jefferson would hurry and looking at the random damage done by passing Rebels: shattered windows, broken gates, smoldering haystacks. He pondered the news that the man he rode with was not a slave. Finally he had to ask.
"How come I didn't know you were a free man?"
"Wondered how long 'fore you'd ast. We had to keep it a secret 'count'a the law. Weren't but a few white folks, 'cluding your momma, that knew."
Sweating junior officers called squads of soldiers from the walls, trenches and firing pits of Fort Stevens, and at a sergeant's insistence, Seth and Jefferson joined a shuffling chow line. The busy cooks never looked up as they served everyone a piece of gristly meat, a hunk of dark bread, and a cup of thick bean soup. The soldiers stood or squatted in the shadiest areas eating and joking about the probable age and source of their meat. They could not decide whether it was mule or camel,...
Disbelieving, shocked, frightened, Seth watched as his mother faced this angry soldier holding a gun. He felt frozen to his chair as if time had stopped. Unconnected images and sounds flashed in his memory: Mr. Willoughby, his skinny teacher yelling there was no school because a war had started; his Aunt Hope screaming in anguish when he told her that the soldiers had taken Uncle Luke away; the blue-clad men whistling as they smashed down his father's fence; his mother reading and rereading...
Confederate General Jubal Early and most of his staff spent Sunday evening near Gaithersburg, Maryland, a few miles north of Rockville, at the home of a very angry slave owner and Union sympathizer named John DeSellum. Mr. DeSellum was particularly unhappy because passing Rebels had pretty well cleaned him out of food and fodder before someone on the General's staff decided that his home would be a good place to locate the invading army's headquarters for the night. The few dark hours of...
The French's winding farm lane met the long-traveled Pike about a half mile north of Luke Williams' general store. At the open gate Jefferson pulled the faded, gray wagon into the shade of a weeping willow near a dried up brook. The three of them listened. Insects whirred and a faint breeze rustled the dry leaves. Seth walked out into the middle of the worn, hard-surfaced road on stiff legs. He could not see anything out of the ordinary. He had expected cavalry patrols racing back and...
After the first rush of confusion produced by the sound of the big guns to the east, the men of Fort Reno settled back into an afternoon of disciplined routines. Now only the occasional crack of a sharpshooter's rifle reminded General Hardin's men to keep their heads down as they went about their tasks. They fired off a few heavy rounds to harass the people on the old turnpike and then settled back to wait and watch. Jefferson and Seth found a safe place for flop-eared Ben and Mr....
In the French's dark, dry barn that smelled of hay and horses, Corporal Wainder swam back to consciousness after the repeated thud of distant cannon fire. He lay some six miles north of Fort Stevens, but he could clearly hear echoes of the guns' booming reports and even feel the ground beneath him shake. He looked around his horse-stall prison and saw nothing but piles of straw and worn, pine boards. "Water," sounded in his parched throat, but he was not sure whether or not he said the...
Seth woke in a large, open field along the Darnestown Road just west of Rockville's court house. His hands were tied together, and for a moment he wondered where he was. He stretched carefully and felt pain knot his leg muscles and his backside. His knee hurt, too. He bit his lip to keep from crying out and massaged his calves and thighs, but he could not move freely because one of his ankles was tied to the leg of the snoring man lying next to him. The hazy sky grew slightly brighter, and...
The President joined his wife and the other sightseers in a place of relative safety behind the fort's thick wall, and General Wright went back to his troops. Seth left the fort and crossed the crowded turnpike. The eager spectators pressed forward, excited by the increased activity. Seth elbowed his way through the mob, most of whom seemed to be in a holiday mood. He moved into the scrubby woods and past the piles of cleared brush where he had seen the New York soldiers disappear. He wanted...
In a few minutes Seth looked back again. The Confederates were nowhere to be seen in the dappled sunlight. The boy sighed and relaxed, feeling his heart thumping. "What was you so concerned 'bout back yonder?" Jefferson asked in his normal bass rumble. "I knew you could act crazy-like. I warn't worried none." "I think one of those soldiers, that sergeant, he recognized me. I'm pretty sure I ate breakfast with him out in Rockville early this morning." "Aw, come on now, Seth. How...
Seth sat quietly beside Jefferson rubbing his wrists and flexing his cramped fingers. The trooper lay sprawled on his back with his arms extended. He did not seem to be breathing. "Didn' mean to hit him so hard," whispered Jefferson, still holding an ax handle in his huge fist. "We jus' sort'a run together at the corner there. He turned an' I whacked him. I heered you comin' up the hill, Seth." The boy put his ear to the man's chest. "He's not dead, Jefferson. His heart's still...
The wobbly farm wagon and its happy outrider proceeded up the long hill to Tennallytown at Ben's steady pace and then, at what was called Gloria Point, turned a sharp left across the Georgetown-Rockville Pike by the old tavern. The sporadic firing had quieted again, and the only sounds Seth could hear were the familiar creak of the wagon and the clip clop of the mule and horse. Now I'm in the other army, he thought as they arrived at the huge fort's impressive back gate, Robert's army,...
In the barracks behind Fort Reno, a broad bar of golden sunlight slid across Seth's face while the boy dreamed of his mother's sewing circle. His tiny grandmother Axminister, red-faced Aunt Hester who always smelled of camphor, his maiden aunt who was called Miss Vidy, and his mother were knitting at his house. He could hear the needles clicking. Annie sat on a stool playing with her doll. Seth crouched back in a corner, watching and listening. All the women were saying nasty things to his...
They met very few travelers on the highway, passing only two mule-drawn farm wagons headed toward the city, one loaded with a jumble of furniture. That surprised Seth since there had been a lot of traffic heading south the previous couple of days. A half-dozen Union cavalrymen clattered past, Illinois boys, heading toward Rockville with hardly a glance at the two dusty riders going the other way. Seth noticed that many of the farms along the old road seemed abandoned. Some of the houses and...
As Mr. French's buggy topped the hill near the Bethesda Meeting House, Seth looked back, but Jefferson was not in sight. He probably took that shortcut that fords the creek, thought the boy. Mr. French had been full of questions, but Seth had been more interested in looking at the damage done along the Pike by the retreating troops. The fences were gone and so were the flocks of chickens. The blacksmith shop where Jefferson had sought information on the way into town was closed and the...
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At about half past ten that sultry night someone knocked at the seldom-used front door of the Williams' dark farmhouse. The air was still warm, stirred only by the slightest breeze. The night was full of the cicadas' song and the churr of crickets. Lightening bugs flickered in the fruit trees, and heat lightning flared quietly out toward the hills. Seth's mother, still dressed as she had been when her younger son had been taken from her, carried a small lamp to the door. "Who is there?"...
Seth's mother offered him some more cold pork and fresh-made applesauce, but he said he was not hungry. He sat staring into space and ate what he had without tasting it. He rubbed at the small swelling above his right eye, a reminder of Wainder's visit to his house. He could barely feel it now. "Don't you worry," his mother said as she moved about her kitchen doing the familiar things that were somehow comforting in their ordinariness. "Caroline's going to be all right. Her father...
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"Fuck! The Admiral is going to be pissed," Captain Mike Bonnet of the USS Badger said. "I know, and I am going to have to tell him. It's my responsibility. As to your Mechs and Marines, the ship has been cleared of all Crytherians. Anyone left alive is outside and fair game. If you can get your Mechs to create a safe zone for us, I will get all my spiders initiating emergency repairs to get us back into space," turning he looked at Lisa and asked, "Lisa, how long until we get repairs...
“Volunteers for the Defense Forces with CAP scores of certain published levels will be afforded the opportunity to select others to emigrate and maintain their residences on other worlds while they perform their duties in the Defense Forces in accordance with their aptitudes and capabilities; certain high-priority individuals may select up to ten people to emigrate with for this purpose. Obviously, fertility is a criterion -- we will be looking to ensure the continuity of the human race as it...
1760 The Fall of Montreal The heated battles of the French and Indian Wars were primarily fought in the deep forests and isolated outposts of the exposed English settlers. However, the British eventually brought the fight directly into the heart of the French Colonial Homeland in Canada. The initial assaults on Quebec were fought off but it eventually fell to the English forces in 1759 with much loss of life and property. The key to this success was the prior taking of Fort Niagara by the...
Mars Base: Federation Side Thirteen-year-old Mitchell Young sat back from his computer screen, looked at the final design of the APES, and watched the simulation run. Within seconds, they had devastated a unit of T'Lari warriors. Reaching over to the keypad, he typed in a few commands and watched the T'Lari change to battle Mechs and it took a little bit longer but they were able to wipe out the twenty Mechs for the loss of only five of the APES. With a grin, he said, "It's going to...