Warren sent a carriage for me early in the month of July and I was happy to leave Marsh Station.
“Telegram for you, Miss Cunningham,” Mr. Quimby said in the spirited manner with which I had become so familiar. Whenever I was in town I stopped in to see if there had been any word from Warren. “Guess this is what you’ve been waiting for.”
“Thank you, I’m grateful, Mr. Quimby,” I replied.
“If you hadn’t stopped by, I’d of rounded up the newsboys to get it to you, seeing it’s important.”
The telegram read: ‘Carriage will be arriving soon. You are needed here. Four days.’ The time and place of departure was listed at the bottom of the note.
Two days later, having told the hospital and Lucy that I was off to check on an old aunt, a carriage arrived to take me to the outskirts of Fredericksburg in July’s withering heat. I was certain that by the time I reached Warren, I would be nothing more than a dust-covered mass of sweat and fabric, but a welcome change from the hospital ward.
To keep myself from crawling out the window to find the nearest stream, I thought about the weeks that had passed since Warren left and I recounted how I’d spent my time. I’d been very busy the past few weeks taking over more of the nursing duties within the hospital and as I had hoped, soon its adjoining prison. I had been picking berries and making jams and pies to sell at Beard’s Mercantile, gardening, mostly weeding actually, and each afternoon on the way back from the hospital, visiting Mr. Quimby to see if any messages had arrived from Warren.
“Haven’t heard from Captain Dodd,” Quimby would say in his predictable manner each day. “‘Spect to hear from him soon though.”
I’d thank him as always and turn to leave. Quimby was a kind gentleman, with a clean shaven face that seemed to reflect light, his hair was always combed and he wore a starched white shirt with black ribbon bow at the collar.
I thought back to one evening, a warm summer night, when I decided to stop into The Three Lanterns to see what revues were playing there or were soon due in town. Posters announcing all the local the entertainment —singers, banjo players, actors and jugglers—fluttered by the doorway whenever a sudden gust of wind came up. Katherine, at the bar chatting with a prospective client, let out a squeal when she saw me. Holding me at the elbow, she escorted me back to the high stools around the bar. Ordering the bartender to get me a drink, Katherine brushed aside my hair and talked to me as if I was a child or at least one of her “girls.” Ian, the bartender, an Irishman with whom I had briefly become acquainted during my short tenure as an actress and performer at the Lanterns, welcomed me in his jolly way and set a tall beer before me.
“Well stranger, where’ve you been?” he asked.
“Ian, my dear, I’ve been right under your nose, just busy trying to make my living and pay the rent. Sorry, I haven’t come by to visit, but this place is usually crawling with those buck privates who have the competence of the fleas in their seams,” I retorted.
By then, Katherine’s new acquaintance had given up waiting for her to return and had taken a table closer to the stage. Kate was purposely trying to impress me with her attentiveness.
Patting my back, she looked at me closely and said, “You know dear if you need any help, you can depend on me.”
I saw the half smile of hers and knew what she was insinuating. “Katherine, you know I’m opposed to taking the kind of work that you have suggested in the past. I could no more work here than be a miner in the gold rush, risking all I have in unfamiliar surroundings to find gold, or in this case, quicksilver. No offense, Katherine, but I’d rather be your friend, ah cousin rather, than your employee.”
“Annie, all I’ve suggested is that with your good looks and fine features, you could make quite a bit of money in a short time and live a comfortable life for several years. I know your feelings on this, but I hate to see you struggle so hard. Isn’t your Captain going to take good care of you? I don’t see him around here anymore and for a while I thought that the two of you may want to carve out a comfy home together far away from here.”
“Captain Dodd is out of town, and Katherine, he hasn’t been taking care of me, nor would I want him to”, I paused, “Though I admit, I am quite fond of him. Anyway, he respects my independence and he has his own work to do. There is a war on, you know,” I said with a laugh.
“Lest I forget,” Katherine replied. “And business is good. Just tell that handsome Captain of yours that I send my best regards for your futures…together. If there is anything I can do for you, please dear, let me know. Now I must check on things if you will excuse me.”
After Katherine left, I sat for a few moments, sipping my drink and chatting with Ian while a tinny piano accompanied a political skit on stage. The dash in his eyes made me aware that Ian would be happy for a signal from me. A signal telling him that I was interested in spending an evening with him. Or more. But no signal was ever exchanged and we passed the time with small talk.
The carriage was shifting now, bringing me back to the steamy reality of the ride. I had to hold onto the sides, bracing myself. Going over a deeply rutted road, the dust kicked up, sticking to my face and neck. It was all I could do to close my eyes and gather myself, thinking about the busy month that I had had since Warren left.
After leaving Katherine’s tavern, I walked home in the waning light, a bit melancholic after my chat with her. I welcomed the softness in the evening breeze, gathering around me like a velvet shawl. Crickets chirped and birds sang softly to one another in the trees sharing their secrets about the invisible worlds. Breathing it in, I would store the evening deep in my memory and keep it handy for the sunless, dank days that would find me on the on the other side of the year.
Passing the worklot adjacent to the house, I looked over the fence where berry bushes grew and I’d noticed just that morning, were ripe for the picking. Checking the sky for remaining light, I patted the basket that I had been carrying imagining it full of berries and I walked back among the scratchy bushes. Back behind a thicket I heard a soft humming, a sweet song, and braved the thick wall of prickly bushes to find the same slave laundress I’d met earlier in the spring. Without expecting each other to be there, we both leaped as we saw one another. Her berries flying from her apron skirt, the slave woman fell back on her rear end, having been crouched to reach the bottoms of the bushes where the berries grew thickly. I couldn’t help myself. Reacting to my own start and the collapse of the woman beside me, I doubled over and laughed out loud. Then the Negro woman laughed at herself as well and our giggles rose in pitch until I was laughing so hard that I was completely silent, but scarlet, I’m sure. Looking at me in that state only made the woman point and laugh harder, throwing her head back with two slits for eyes and white teeth and tongue forming the bulk of her features. We made an effort to pick up the berries that had flown from her lap, but it was no use, we’d just look at one another and double over again. I hadn’t laughed that hard for years and I wondered if she had ever had a reason to find that much joy or humor in her miserable life.
Returning to our calmer selves, I reached out to the woman on the ground beside me expecting to help her up but instead, she responded by looking down and folding her arms around her knees. I looked around, reached out my hand once again to help her up.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Really, it’s all right, come on.”
Finally, the woman held out her hand to be assisted and with a deep breath, I pulled harder than I needed to; so light in weight and tiny in stature. Teetering back on my heels she gave my arm a lurch to correct my balance, but it was too late. I fell squarely on my backside. This only brought on another round of laughter as I was jolted forward to standing. Catching our breaths, I focused on the full bushes and the diminished light.
“We’d better get these before the raccoons do,” I said. Turning to my companion, “What do you use these for, May I ask?”
Reaching for the berries on a full bush, she spoke softly “Why ma’m, I fe
ed them to my little ‘uns as a treat. They so rarely gets any fresh food. Despite my hollering about their tummies getting upset, you knows, they eat them ‘til their teeth are purple, if they have half a chance. Then, I make syrup when I can gets some sugar cane. It’ll make some of the best syrup for chest aches, the coughs and for throat pain.”
“Really? I’ll have to try that. I was just going to make a pie. That and a bit of blackberry jam or maybe a few crocks of wine to have for special occasions,” I said dropping my voice, realizing there would be little room for special occasions in the life of a slave. We moved away from one another as a common courtesy so as not to compete for berries on the same bush. We picked through the gloaming.
The sun had dropped down, dissolving into the horizon like a dollop of honey. I knew I’d better be getting back and I gathered my skirts, sweeping away dried leaves and thorns as I did so.
Turning to the woman who in my mind I had already adopted as a friend, and in other places I could call one.
“Goodbye, I must go now,” and walked back a few steps closer to the path. In the darkness I nearly whispered, “By the way, I’m Annie. Annie Cunningham.”
The woman didn’t respond, but I could see her silhouetted against the sky, her head cocked slightly as if she was pondering what to do. I wondered if she didn’t understand my casual ways, or my treatment of her as if she was just another woman friend, not chattel or a piece of property.
Looking down she said in a barely audible voice “Uh, Lacey is who I is. Just Lacey.”
“Good night Lacey, it’s been a pleasure to meet you,” I whispered, and poured half of the berries from my basket into her bulging skirt.
Walking away towards the house I tried for a moment to imagine what it would be like to be Lacey. The institution of slavery represented a culture born blind in both eyes to the cruelty that slaves faced from birth on. Cruelty beyond what I could imagine: periods of forced separation, of forced abuse, of forced sex, of relentless authority from slave masters. I couldn’t pretend to know, even for a second, a slave’s degree of despair and anger. What I did know was that freedom and its opportunities are inherently intertwined with self-worth, and both need to be protected. As well as the dignity and self-worth of an entire nation.
If we were ever to stand up and be counted as a nation with the power of reason and the status of economic markets to move us forward, the institution of slavery had to die. Our European allies were pressuring both personalities of the nation, the Federal government and the Confederate government, to heal the split and in so doing, rid ourselves of the institution of slavery that had been rationalized for centuries, like a disfiguring disease.
That was the reason so many families were willing to send their sons to war. Whole families were wiped out with the loss of their men, young and old. Their names would be engraved on plaques in town squares throughout the North in honor of their duty. Five and six sons and a father. Lost. Following their convictions, they must have felt strongly about preserving the Union, reversing the disunity created by slavery. These were the town squares that erected monuments to recognize all those lost in the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and now this unruly monster called the Civil War, that unless the North managed to win, would forever cast aside the hope of unity and freedom fought for by so many. So many with so little to support them or pull them forward, except their own convictions, their morals, and at times, their blind courage.
With the road having smoothed out a bit, I pulled a book from my bag. The ride gave me a glimpse of events since I’d been situated in Marsh Station. Fields that should have been tall with crops were fallow, rutted, and some cratered by cannon ball and battle. Houses, or shells of houses, gouged and cavernous, missing walls and roofs, peppered the countryside. One house after the other stood abandoned and collapsing in upon themselves like wooden cadavers. A bed on the top floor, still covered by a quilt, a chair next to a chimney, like toy models of lives once lived, then torn to shreds. Traveling unaccompanied gave me a degree of freedom: I didn’t have to chatter with curious passengers who might want to talk and delve into my personal affairs. Without a companion, I had no reason to formulate a false past, lest I slip up and risk inconsistency. Though tired, I couldn’t read; there were too many unanswered questions on my mind. I had to figure out how to respond to Warren. Could I temper my feelings towards him? Must I? Was I using him or he using me? For some reason I couldn’t figure out, I felt deeply connected to the man. How much could I risk sharing with him? Was my own instinct deluding me? Staring at the green fields and wildflowers outside the carriage window, all I knew was that I missed him, I wanted desperately to see him and hold him and hear his voice.
I realized then the nature of my problem: my attraction to Warren was not just physical. A bond of sorts on a level I couldn’t even explain had formed between us. At what point, I couldn’t be sure, but I felt it in our playfulness, our discussions, and in all of our times together. He was the first man I could see spending years with, years that stretched into a lifetime, and that stretched into creating a family; a web of years, of shared joys and sorrows. And indeed, that was a problem. I wouldn’t be able to dismiss Warren and our relationship because we were on opposite sides – because he was an officer of the Confederacy and I was a spy. I wanted our relationship to grow despite the differences we’d have to overcome, differences that I couldn’t possibly begin to reveal to him.
The driver guided his carriage down an embankment where down near the bottom of a hill I heard a stream and voices, a man shouting. We came to an abrupt halt, and when I was certain that we weren’t about to move, I opened the door to the thick noon air and jumped out, calling up to the driver.
“Driver, is there a problem?”
“I ‘spect it’ll be a few minutes Ma’am,” he replied holding tight to the reins. Walking around the front of the horses, pausing in the shade, I reached up to one, but realized that the horse was thick with sweat and drew back. Now I could see what had caused us to stop. My stomach wrenched to see the sight before me. A man, a Negro man stood nearly naked in the middle of the stream up to his hips, harnessed like a steed himself, being forced to pull a man and cart like a pack animal through the mud and water. Beads of sweat drenched his brow and his ribs stood out with each determined tug and pull of the cart. However, this effort was clearly not enough for his cruel master. At one point when the cart wouldn’t budge behind him despite the man’s body bent at a severe angle, the master yelled from his perch atop the cart.
“You good for nothin’ son-of-a-bitch, move I say, move.” With the sharp tongue of the whip, the young man’s back bled, reopening unhealed wounds and thick scars from past lashings. He went down, nearly to his knees, but the tack that hooked him caught him, nearly strangling the poor man.
Standing up, he shook as the whip and his own salt struck him again.
I couldn’t bear what I saw. Without planning or plotting a strategy, I reacted in urgency.
“Can’t you stop him, can you not do something for the man?” I called to the driver.
“Do somethin’, Ma’am? Ah, well it wouldn’t be in my place to do somethin’. He’s not my property. He’s obviously the property of the cart driver. We’ll just have to wait it out.”
“I won’t wait,” I said to myself, seeing now that there would be no effort to help the young slave. I had to think fast. My first inclination was to scream and yell at the blatant cruelty of the owner but I knew he would only take out his wrath towards a challenging woman on the slave who had already suffered so greatly.
I clapped my hands to get the attention of the cruel master.
“Is that you Mister Johnston?” I asked. “Oh no, I must be mistaken. I thought that you were someone else.”
The beast of a man, paused, looked up from the back of his slave and down at me standing near the cart. His dark hair was matted with sweat and his mouth pulled down tightly in disgu
st at the interruption. He put down his whip and touched the brim of his hat towards me in a gesture of greeting. I had gotten his attention and hopefully broken his spell of brutality, at least for a moment. Personally, I wanted to pull him from the cart myself and bury him in the wet sand for the ants to find, but I held to my act.
“Sir, I’m trying to reach my mother’s house now that I have word she’s ill, and you see, I just don’t have a lot of time to spare, waiting in line to cross this creek. You don’t suppose that we could hitch one of our horses to your cart to cross now do you, at least enough to get across and pass you?” I smiled at him.
“Well, I s’pose that would be all right, Miss. After all, if your Mama’s ill.”
“Thank you. My driver would be happy to help I’m sure.”
The driver descended to unhitch ‘his’ slave. Then, the driver of my carriage followed.
I returned to the carriage and pulled out part of a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth. While the two white men were busied with the horses, I nodded to the black man to move out of sight temporarily behind a tree and handed him the bread and the cloth that I had dipped in the stream. Applying it to his back, he winced and jumped, but ate the bread heartily and in no time.
“Why was he treating you like that? What had you done?” I whispered.
“He caught me writin’ in the dirt, writin’ letters from the alphabet and short words too. I am learning to read and write. Slaves usually get turned over to dogs for that, Miss. He has me pullin’ the cart this time. Next time he’ll probably let them rip me apart if he don’t do that first. Thanks, Ma’am.”
He nodded slightly and walked away.
I bent down at the side of the stream and dabbed water on my temples then walked slowly to the carriage so as not to attract attention. From the carriage window I could see the slave’s back, bloody and torn; so open that I winced just thinking about what I saw when I applied the wet towel just moments before. I stared ahead thinking about his suffering, straining under the weight of the cart, reined in like an ox. He was just one of millions who had been forced into slavery since the earliest days of colonial America. Forced from their homes by slavers in Africa, or born into slavery here. Men, women and children who were part of the triangle of the rum trade sold to sugar plantations in the West Indies or sold to cotton plantation owners in the South; sold and enslaved over the centuries. With these thoughts I felt my anger rising inside me. With that and the dense, hot air it felt like I was suffocating.
‘We had to win that bloody war. We just had to. Anyone who said that it was just about states’ rights just wasn’t looking at it with both eyes open. It was about human dignity,’ I thought to myself.
Between June 25 and July 1, 1862 a series of engagements, known as the Seven Days’ Battle occurred near Richmond, Virginia. In these skirmishes General Lee prevented Union troops from capturing the Confederate capital.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN