Hixson all in one piece was a gift from God.
Eliza hugged Hixson, and skipped around him like a little girl. Charlton shook his hand, then gripped him in a bear hug and swung him around in a circle. It was a hysterically happy scene being played out across the nation, in those lucky homes with returning soldiers.
Hixson had arrived after supper; everyone was finishing the last of the day’s chores when he got home. Momma apologized for not having a real supper for him. “This isn’t hardly fit to feed you, but it’s what we have right now. Tomorrow I’ll fix up all your favorites.”
Then she proceeded to stuff him with chicken and dumplings, maple carrots, pickled pears, stewed fruit, butterbeans, two kinds of pickles, warm apple crisp, corn bread, fresh greens with hot bacon dressing and real coffee with real cream.
Hixson had forgotten how the Northern farm families ate. Not a bit of salt horse around, no weevils in anything. And real cream in the coffee. It was heaven.
When everyone had settled down enough to have a sensible conversation, Hixson was peppered with questions. They wanted to know every detail of how he was, where he’d been and what he’d been doing. As Hixson recounted his tales of glory and triumph, defeat and sorrow, he didn’t tell the story that was most on his mind. He didn’t tell them about Sarah.
For one thing, he wouldn’t be able to explain her. A healer with magical powers? It passed belief anyway. Neither could he discuss his feelings. The way he felt about her was a delicate thing, a very private thing to be held protectively guarded. Hixson dreamt of her almost every night. He would barely close his eyes and he would see her, standing with her arms outstretched. But instead of stretching out to gather the light, in his dreams, she was reaching out to him. He would wake from the recurring dream with a pounding heart and an aching fullness in his groin every time.
July 2nd, 1865--Dover, Pennsylvania
Hixson gathered up his gumption and went to call on Patterson Hilyard’s parents. He brought the sentimental harmonica and a photograph of the two of them, taken on the day they got their uniforms.
It went better than he expected, for the Hilyard’s had come to uneasy terms with the loss of their son. The Hilyards felt that Patterson would not have liked to come home with missing limbs, as so many had. He had been a proud boy. Other men had learned to live with their war wounds. Maybe Patterson would have learned, too. But then, maybe he would have preferred to just go on and leave this world.
They would have wanted him home, however many bits were missing, but told themselves he wouldn’t have wanted it that way. In the end, it was out of their hands anyway. It was small comfort, to think in such terms, but it was all they had. Their son was lost to them, before he had the chance to grow up all the way. He left no child to carry on for him. All they could do was take whatever consolation they could think of.
When Hixson presented the harmonica and the picture, he felt ashamed. It was a poor trade, to be sure. They had parted from a vibrant, vigorous young man. Hixson had returned with only a bit of metal and a scrap of paper. He was a thief.
Like a jackdaw, who steals something good and leaves some shiny worthless thing it its place, Hixson felt like a criminal. He had stolen away their son and brought back only a paper ghost of him.
In truth, Mrs. Hilyard was happy to have a reminder of her son’s music. Other mothers had only the bullet that had killed their sons. A harmonica was much better. At least she could look at it and touch it, something she could not have done with the mini-ball that had taken his life.
Hixson returned to a noonday meal that bowed the table legs. Poppa’s family were Scots, but Momma’s people were German. In true Pennsylvania Dutch style, she had seven sweets and seven sours, greens and yellows, cakes and pies, meat, fish and fowl.
When Hixson thought about the lean days in camp, the men suffering from scurvy and living on hard tack and salt horse, he felt like a glutton.
Salt horse was a kind of salted beef. Most of the men got gripping cramps from eating it, until they became accustomed to it. Many of the men were farm boys, like Hixson. They had grown up on fresh wholesome foods. Army fare was canned, dried, salted and pickled. It wreaked havoc with their digestion.
Then he considered what the Southern families faced, and his appetite vanished. Northern farm families like his had not faced the same hardships as the Southerners. War was still hell for them, and most families had lost loved ones. One lady nearby had lost all five of her sons. That was true hardship.
But life on the farm meant hard work–and food. Confederate soldiers came through the area; they were not that far from Gettysburg. Even when invading forces foraged through the countryside, there was enough for the Morris family to eat.
There were plenty of farms around and the soldiers didn’t take all their provender from any one home. They waged as harsh a war as the Union soldiers did, but with fewer men and more important missions, they paid little attention to the farms of Pennsylvania.
It was a different story on the southern farms. Union soldiers were ordered to destroy anything that might be of use to enemy forces. That included food. Wells were collapsed, livestock was either taken or killed. Smokehouses were a particular favorite: Union soldiers prized a good ham or bacon.
Hixson’s company had been sitting around a bivouac fire one night in Georgia when they heard a strange small voice calling softly. Going to investigate they found a whisper of a man, little more than a mobile skeleton, struggling to cross a fallen log. He had escaped from Andersonville Prison.
The emaciation of the man infuriated the soldiers and shook them deeply. Hixson never lost the picture, and expected he never would. Suffering in war was no academic notion for Hixson. He had seen it. Hixson had helped to carry the starved man to the surgeon’s tent. He had buried many comrades, and held the hand of his best friend’s corpse. Hixson had spent many nights within earshot of the medical tents, and he had lain awake listening to screams.
He had seen grand generals and the President with his own eyes, and had outlived some of those. Hixson had seen more dead horses in the war than he had live ones before. He had lost count of how many homes he had seen destroyed.
Hixson had to find a way to put all that he had lived through and all that he learned into a workable present. He had to find compartments to hold everything, or the tangle of it all would choke him. Finding a way to accept the disparities of war would be a fine first step.
After another gargantuan meal for supper, Hixson sat on the front porch with his father. Charlton had gone to call on a young lady down the road and Eliza and Momma were cleaning up the supper dishes.
“Poppa, how did you know that Momma was the one for you?” Hixson decided he might as well jump into the deep part of the creek, right off.
Poppa laughed deeply. “I didn’t know no such of a thing! Momma knew and told me how it was gonna be. “Oh, you shoulda seen her, boy. I reckon you’re old enough now in years and in experience.
“Your Momma was pretty as a speckled pup. She had that curly hair and a pouty mouth that looked like it was begging for a kiss. She was mighty ample in the bosom, too, more than any of the other girls.
“In my day, the girls all wore dresses that pushed their bosoms up high and round. Your Momma was really something in a dress like that. Looked like she was about to come outta the dress. I couldn’t take my eyes off her!
“If I wanted to get my hands on her, and good gracious did I want to get my hands on her, I was gonna have to marry her proper. She put that German foot of hers right down, so I married her. Glad I am, too. She turned out to be a prize. You got your eyes on a prize somewhere, son?”
Hixson was still laughing at his father’s candor when he answered. “Yeah, I met a prize when I was wounded. I can’t hardly force my mind onto any other subject. She’s... remarkable.”
“Remarkable? Is that another word for pretty as a speckled pup?” Poppa was laughing, too. “If she’s so remarkable, why don’t you go fetch her?
What does she look like?”
“Well, she’s pretty. No, beautiful. Yeah, I’d say she’s beautiful. She’s a little bird of a thing, but all grown up, if you get my meaning. She’s got the greenest eyes ever, and hair the color of that hard winter wheat when it’s ripe. I’d sure like to see her again, see if she’s been thinking of me at all.” Hixson said.
“You have some reason to think that she’s been thinking of you? Did you get to know her real well?” Poppa wasn’t concealing his true question very well.
“No, nothing like that. But there did seem to be a connection between us. I’m pretty sure no one around there holds her interest. But I think she liked me alright.” Hixson did not feel ready to explain the whole situation just yet.
“What about her folks? Did they like you?” Poppa was ever practical.
“She’s all alone, Pop. Her Ma died when she was born and her Grandma brought her up. Grandma died some five years ago, so she’s all alone. I don’t know what happened to her father.” It was the truth, just not all of it.
“Then I guess I’m confused, boy. You got you a beautiful woman, all alone, interested in you...and you’re sitting on the porch with an old farmer? Virginia ain’t so far away you can’t go, you know.” Poppa said.
He well knew that Hixson was not the sort to even mention her, if he