“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir, what? You know or you don’t know.”
Ezra looked at the ground.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“I can likely guess some places,” Allen said to his sergeant. “Can’t you?”
“Antietam or Gettysburg maybe.”
“I’d say more likely Tennessee, since they head west to join. Shiloh or Stones River, there or maybe Donaldson.”
At the last word Rebecca’s right hand clutched Hannah’s shoulder so hard the child gave a sharp cry.
“So it was Donaldson,” the sergeant said.
Rebecca didn’t respond.
“My first cousin was killed at Donaldson,” Allen said. “A good man with children no older than those you got your hands on.”
“I had a friend killed there,” the sergeant added. “Grapeshot ripped his legs off.”
The two men said nothing more, appearing to expect some response. The corporal and the two men came out of the barn.
“Ain’t no one hiding in there,” the corporal said, “but there’s a ham curing and it’s enough to give some bully soldiers a full feeding.”
One of the men whooped and slapped a palm twice against his belly.
“What else is in the barn?” Allen asked.
“No livestock,” the corporal said, “but enough hay to make a pretty fire.”
For a few moments the only sound was the snort of a horse as Rebecca and the men waited for Colonel Allen to give his orders. Soldiers. That was what the corporal claimed them to be, but they looked nothing like the soldiers sketched in the newspapers her father-in-law had brought with Aaron’s letters in the war’s first months. Those soldiers wore plumed hats and buttoned jackets, sabers and sashes strapped on their waists. They looked heroic and Rebecca knew that many, like Aaron, had been. Some of these men before her were surely heroic at one time too, but now their ill-matched clothing offered no sign of allegiance except to their own thievery.
“Bost,” Allen said to a man who wore a frock coat Rebecca recognized, “you and Murdock and Etheridge gather what chickens you can.”
Several men shouted encouragement as Bost dove for the closest chicken. White feathers slapped his face until he pinned the bird firmly to the ground.
“Kill it now?” Bost panted, his scratched face looking up at the colonel.
“No, we’ll take them with us.”
A second man retrieved a burlap tote sack and the squawking chicken was shoved inside. The second soldier knotted the sack and tied it to a saddle as the other two men began their own chases.
“Take a man and get that ham, Corporal,” Allen said. “Sergeant, take two men and go inside. Look around good. You know how they hide things.”
“Nothing inside is worth your while,” Rebecca said. “There’s a root cellar behind the barn. It’s partial hid by old board planks. Near all what food we have is there.” She met Allen’s eyes, saw that, like Aaron’s had been, there were gold flecks within the brown. “These chaps are cold. Just let me and them go inside, and you take everything else.”
“She must be hiding something real good,” the sergeant said. “It’s yankee money or clothes that boy there can’t fill. Maybe the son-of-a-bitch himself is hiding under the bed.”
“Take a man and see, Sergeant,” Allen said, and turned to Rebecca. “You and your children come on out here.”
“Let me get their shoes first,” Rebecca said, but Allen shook his head.
Rebecca helped the children down the porch’s one step and into the yard. Frost crunched beneath their feet. As Allen gave more orders, Rebecca glanced furtively toward the ridge, looking for a bright wink of sun on metal, then farther down the valley. Smoke yet rose from Ike Wilkey’s farm and, beyond it, Brice and Anna Feathergill’s home, which meant the Confederates had come in the night unseen. Hannah began whimpering again but Ezra stood silent, his hands balled into fists. Don’t, she whispered, and used her hand to open his.
She should have burned the letters, as she had done with the newspapers her father-in-law had brought. But there were only five because Aaron died early in the war, so early her father-in-law had been able to travel the eighteen miles from Asheville in broad daylight, this before bushwackers as well as Colonel Allen and his men made any stranger in Shelton Laurel a suspected spy or thief, thus shot on sight. I will return with a wagon to take you and the chaps back to live with me. That was her father-in-law’s promise when he’d brought the last letter, which contained a brass button taken from Aaron’s field jacket. My hope is that this button might offer some remembrance, the commander had written.
But her father-in-law had not come again, with or without a wagon, and Rebecca had wondered if it was suspicion of her allegiance, not fear, that had kept him away.
“Put a match to the barn?” the corporal asked when he’d returned with the ham.
“We’ll feed the horses first,” Allen said as men returned with potatoes and apples from the root cellar, what chickens had been caught.
The two privates came out of the cabin, one holding the salt tin and matches. The sergeant followed, in his hands the firkin.
“It’s near all letters, except for this,” the sergeant said. He cradled the container with his elbow as he reached inside and removed a button with CSA stamped into the brass.
He handed it to Allen, who examined it a moment before putting it in his jacket pocket.
“You know it was took off one of our own, probably killed up here by some coward sniping from behind a tree.”
“What do the letters say?” Allen asked.
“You know I never had any school learning, Colonel.”
Rebecca glanced toward the ridge, then the closer woods before she spoke.
“They’re just personal letters,” she said softly.
Colonel Allen took the firkin and sat on the porch step. He lifted the lid, took out a letter, and began to read. As he did so, Rebecca remembered the night Aaron had filled the travel trunk with not just clothing but his briar pipe, pocket watch, and pen knife, the tintype taken on their wedding day. She thought of the two shirts and pair of breeches she’d cut up for Ira’s quilt, and how her fingers lingered on those cloth squares, sometimes pressing one against her cheek.
After he’d read the first letter, Allen read quicker, then merely scanned. Coming to the last, which, unlike the others, had been written on rag paper, he read slowly again, then raised his eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked, his voice as perplexed as his eyes.
When Rebecca didn’t respond, he refolded the letter carefully and set it back in the container. Colonel Allen placed the lid back on and stood.
“Tell the men to put everything back, Sergeant Reeves.”
“Sir?” the sergeant said.
“Free those chickens, and put that ham back too,” he said, addressing the corporal as well. When the sergeant didn’t respond, he added, “That’s a direct order.”
“Yes sir,” the sergeant said, not alone in watching hungrily as the ham was returned to the barn.
“Mrs. Penland, it is too cold for you and your children to be out here,” Allen said. “You must go inside.”
He took off his hat and followed them. Colonel Allen set the firkin on the fireboard and went out to the porch, first for kindling, then one of the hearth logs Brice Fothergill had cut. Allen took a tin of matches from his pocket and lit the kindling, waved his hat to coax the fire into being.
“You children,” he said as he stood. “Come closer and get warm. You too, ma’am.”
Rebecca did as he said, placing the children before her. The flames thickened and Hannah and Ezra ceased to shiver. Rebecca took a quilt from the bed and laid it before the fire.