Yankee in Atlanta Page 5

  “With your father.” Ruby squeezed her hands together in her lap. “How is he?”

  “Fine, thank you.” He paused, spinning the saltshaker around on the table. “Some mansions on Fifth Avenue have been looted and burned, and some homes just a few blocks from here were destroyed, too. They cut the telegraph lines. Sacked Brooks Brothers for its profiteering with uniforms made from shoddy. Thousands of rioters broke into the armory, took carbines—rifles—and then burned the building down even though ten rioters were still inside.”

  “Did they escape?”

  “No.” Folding his hands in his lap, Edward pressed his lips together for a long moment before continuing. “They have made barricades in the streets. I believe they are truly at war. With New York. Including its children.” He shook his head. “They burned down the Colored Orphans Asylum, Ruby.” His voice wavered.

  Nausea rolled Ruby’s stomach as she cast a blurry glance at Aiden. Were her countrymen really so vile? “What happened?” she whispered.

  “Thank God they all escaped alive and by the guidance of an Irishman, word has it. Paddy McCafferty? Do you know him?”

  Ruby shook her head, although she wished she knew this heroic Paddy rather than the rioters she had called by name on Monday.

  “Well, the boys and girls are safe, but they’ll need a different home. Actually, I fear most of the city’s black residents will be looking for another home if they aren’t safe in the arms of Jesus by now.”

  Ruby sucked in a breath. “What?”

  “Have you not read the newspaper?”

  “Only the headlines. I’d rather hear it from you.” She pinned him with her gaze and watched the struggle behind his eyes. Was she selfish for asking him to repeat what he had seen?

  “Whatever violence you can imagine an Irishman doing to a freeman, it has been done.”

  She blinked. “I can imagine quite a lot.” Destroying their property. Beating them. Mutilating them. Drowning them. Shooting. Lynching.

  “It has been done.” He spun the saltshaker still, with trembling hand. “Many times over.”

  The words cost him, she could tell. Edward fell into silence then, and Ruby did not pull him out. She only sat at his elbow, watching Aiden roll around on the rug, his bottom wedged in the colander, and wondered how long her son would believe the world was a beautiful place that existed to make him happy. She wondered what he would do when he discovered it did not. Would he reach for the bottle? Or a gun? Or a noose? Did his Irish blood condemn him to a life of violence? No, please, God. She would raise him different than that. Besides, he was only half-Irish. At least, as far as she knew.

  Edward leaned back in his chair and winced, snapping Ruby from her reverie.

  “Has anyone treated your wounds yet?”

  He grimaced as he leaned away from the rungs of the chair. “You mean there is something that can help these stripes feel better?”

  “Aye,” she said. “Comfrey leaves boiled into a tea should help.” She had used them countless times to soothe Aiden’s cuts and scratches. “You just soak linen strips or towels in the tea and place them on the wounds.”

  “Can you help me?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. What had she done? She couldn’t help him, she couldn’t touch a man, not even this man, not any man, not after—her eyes squeezed shut against the sneering face that surged before her. She could almost smell his pomade and whiskey. Ruby shook her head, trying to loosen memory’s tentacles from her spirit.

  “It’s just that—I don’t have any comfy tea. Can you make it for me?”

  “Comfrey.”

  “Comfrey sounds comfy to me.” The corner of his mouth tipped up.

  “All right. I’ll go make it. It will take a few minutes.”

  By the time Ruby returned carrying a tray of tea-soaked linens, Edward had fallen asleep lying on his stomach on the rug in the rear parlor, Dickens curled next to him. Kneeling down beside him, she could not bring herself to rouse him from his slumber. It was what he needed most of all.

  She looked at the towels, already cooling. They really should be applied when quite warm to do the most good. Come now lassie, you can do better than this. It is only Edward. You are a widow, not a maiden.

  Gingerly, Ruby tugged up his shirttail to expose the tracks the belt had left on his back. The damage may not have been so great save for the brass buckle digging its tooth into his skin before tearing through it. She cringed at the sight. No, she was not cut out to be a nurse like Charlotte, or to visit the wounded in hospitals nearly every day like Edward did. But God help her, she should be able to lay comfrey-soaked strips on top of these scabbed-over gulleys through his flesh. Really, she didn’t even have to touch him.

  Ruby spread the cloths over the inflamed stripes and sat back on her heels. It was a victory, and she thanked God for it.

  Aiden toddled over, tin colander in his chubby hand, and Ruby scooped him up before he could climb on Edward or pull the cat’s tail. “Come, darlin’.” She kissed Aiden’s temple as she peeled his little fingers off the handle. “It’s time we get you to bed.”

  Ka-boom! Ka-boom! Ka-boom!

  Edward jerked awake and stumbled to his feet, wet towels peeling from his back as he did so. His heart hammered against his ribs as comprehension knifed through his drowsiness. New York’s troops had come back from Gettysburg.

  Ka-boom!

  And were firing cannons at the rioters.

  Quickly, he swiped up the towels that had fallen to the carpet and dropped them on the tray at his feet, then rushed to the bottom of the stairway.

  “Ruby!” he called up. “I’ve got to go now. Lock the door behind me!”

  Edward slammed the door shut after himself and bounded down the steps. The twilight sky was stained a dirty orange, and thick with the smell of turpentine, a choking reminder of the buildings the rioters had torched. The black community downtown had fared the worst, by far, as had the restaurants, saloons, and brothels that had served them. Sidewalk bonfires consumed furniture in these neighborhoods, and kept the skies glowing even after the sun had set. The waterfront had all but emptied of dark-skinned New Yorkers.

  But it was the cannons that concerned Edward now. They seemed close, only blocks away. He jogged on Sixteenth Street east toward the sound, through Union Square Park, past Lexington Avenue, and Third Avenue—and stopped.

  Bronze, short-barreled howitzer cannons gleamed as they spewed grapeshot into the barricades erected at First Avenue. Clouds of gun smoke belched from their mouths, and the taste of saltpeter bit on Edward’s tongue. The earth shuddered, reverberating in his chest.

  The rioters engaged desperately. When a chink was punched through the barricade, bricks came hurling out of the open windows of the tenement behind it. Then came the sniper fire. Soldiers who had survived the battle of Gettysburg and then a hard march back up north were being felled by their own neighbors.

  “Fix bayonets!” The order jolted through Edward like lightning. Bayonets? “Charge!”

  “No wait!” But Edward’s voice was lost in the cacophony of the charge. Did they understand that the building surely held more than just the snipers and stone throwers? That women and children could be huddled in the corners? Visions of the Irishwomen he’d seen on the streets since Monday flitted through his mind then. Women, in fact, had been the ones who crowbarred up the tracks of the Fourth Avenue commuter rail line above Forty-Second Street. They had beaten policemen until they were unrecognizable.

  But of course, those women did not represent the whole. There had to be more like Ruby O’Flannery among the Irishwomen. They just weren’t the type to be seen. They were the type to hide and pray for it all to pass on by.

  “Wait!” Edward cried out again, and pushed through the gap in the barricade and into the bowels of the tenement building. He ran into room after room, calling, listening, looking. Until finally, he heard it.

  “I mean you no harm!” It was not an Irish accent. Perhaps the rea
son she had been spared the soldiers’ steel blade.

  “I am coming, just a moment!”

  Edward found her then, exactly as he had imagined her. Small, unthreatening, yet threatened. “Can you walk?” Edward helped her to her feet.

  “I believe I twisted my ankle.”

  “Here, let me help you.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and ushered her outside. She was so very thin, her weight was nothing for him to support. She was draped in rags, but her hair was pulled neatly into a bun.

  “Are you hurt elsewhere? Other than your ankle?” He eased her down onto a barrel while the firefight continued inside the building.

  She stared at his face, eyes growing wide. Her bony hand fluttered to her heart. “George?” she whispered. “It’s me, Vivian! You have found me!”

  “No, I’m sorry, dear woman, you must be mistaken. My name is—”

  “Of course, of course! It has been so long you see, and you look so much like your father. You are Edward.” Tears glossed her eyes. “My, how you’ve grown!”

  Edward cocked his head and studied her.

  “Edward Goodrich. My nephew.” She clasped his hand in both of hers. “I never thought I’d see you again. You look just like your father did at your age. Oh! I can scarcely believe he sent you for me, after all this time!”

  But Edward had not seen this woman, ever. His father was an only child, like Edward. At least, that’s what he’d always said.

  A few more soldiers jogged up to the tenement, one of them shouting above the rest. As they drew closer, the shouting became louder, more frantic.

  “That’s my building! That’s my home! Hey! My mother’s in there!”

  Vivian whipped her head toward the shouting, eyes blazing. She stood on her good foot.

  “Jack?”

  The soldier froze.

  Vivian shouted again, waving her arms. “Jack! Jack! Over here!”

  Edward stepped back and Jack ran to her, engulfing her thin frame in his arms, and she wept onto his dusty blue frock coat. “I can’t believe you’re here! My son, my son, oh thank You, God, my son is home!”

  She pulled back and removed his kepi, brushed his saddle-brown hair to the side. “It’s you,” she whispered. “Look at you. Nineteen years old now, and taller, too.”

  “And Caitlin? Is she here?” Jack looked over his mother’s head, scanning the faces around them.

  Her smile wilting, two lines appeared between her eyes as she shook her head. “She’d been sending me money for months—never put a note with it, and never a return address, but I recognize her handwriting on the envelope. It’s just the sort of thing she would do, too. Then all of a sudden, the money stopped coming. That was more than a year ago.”

  Jack dropped his chin to his chest and scuffed the dirt with his brogans. “I thought she’d made it home before me.”

  “From where?” The words leapt from Vivian’s throat as her bony fingers clutched his biceps. “Jack, do you know where your sister has been?”

  “She was with me.” The boy’s voice quivered. “But I—I lost her. She’s missing in action.” He winced at his mother’s strangled gasp. “But she might be all right. If Caitlin is alive somewhere—anywhere at all—she will survive.”

  Eyes squeezed shut for a moment, Vivian’s lips trembled even as she nodded. Whatever she whispered in her son’s ear as she embraced him once more, Edward could not hear.

  “Come,” Edward said as soon as Vivian released Jack’s neck. “You need food and rest.” Clearly, she needed more than that. But at least, it was a start.

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Thursday, July 16, 1863

  Many years ago there was an emperor who was so excessively fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on them.’”

  The low rumble of Noah Becker’s voice drew Caitlin in from the porch and to the doorway between the main hall and the parlor. Slowly, she sipped her cup of raspberry tea and drank in the scene. The room was dressed for summer, with reed mats on the pine floor, and bleached linen slipcovers protecting the sofa and upholstered chairs from the dirt and dust that clung to summer’s breeze. Ruffle-edged white sheers sashayed in front of open floor-to-ceiling windows. A gilt-framed mirror hung on picture molding over the fireplace between gold leaf candle stands with crystal accents. In the middle of the room, flanked by two slipcovered chairs, a tea table proudly displayed a decorative oil lamp.

  But the real centerpiece of the room, Caitlin thought, was Ana nestled in her papa’s lap on the sofa, her head resting on his shoulder, her gaze fixed on the pages from which he read. Evening’s rosy glow filled the room as pink champagne would fill a goblet, but the warmth radiated from father and daughter, alone.

  “Life was very gay in the great town where he lived; hosts of strangers came to visit it every day, and among them one day, two swindlers.” The rich, melodic timbre of Noah’s voice proved that reading to Ana was not a chore, but a cherished ritual, much like teatime had been with Caitlin’s mother.

  Unobserved, she knelt on the reed mat for the rest of the story, and her eyelids slid closed. Her own father held her tenderly on his lap and read to her, once upon a time, as well. Of course, Da’s accent was Irish, and Noah’s was German—but the two men held two important things in common. They had chosen to leave the lands of their births to adopt America as their home, and they loved their daughters.

  Yes, Caitlin had been known once, and treasured. Tears pricked her eyes. For more than two years now, she had sheathed her true identity. She was beginning to forget what it felt like to be loved for who she really was. Unbidden, her mother’s face now surged before her. Poor Mama. She, too, had been truly loved once, and maybe that was the curse of it. Da had loved Mama with every thread of his being, and though she gave up her privileged standing to be with him, she thrived as his wife. They had been so happy together in Seneca Village—Da, Mama, Caitlin, and her brother, Jack, four years her junior. Life overflowed with simple pleasures.

  When Da died, he took the light of day right with him. At the ages of seventeen and thirteen, Caitlin and Jack were stunned by grief. But Mama had been crippled by it. If Da could see what became of her then …

  Caitlin opened her eyes again to wiggle free of memory’s grasp, and focused on the fairy tale instead.

  “‘But he has nothing on!’ at last cried all the people. The Emperor writhed, for he knew it was true but he thought ‘the procession must go on now,’ so he held himself stiffer than ever, and the chamberlains held up the invisible train.”

  Ana sucked in a breath before releasing it in a belly laugh.

  “Ja, der Kaiser ist sehr absurd, nicht wahr? All right, to bed with you.”

  Noah stood and reached his open hands back behind his shoulders. Ana clasped them and scrambled onto his back. With her legs squeezed around his waist, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  “How many more sleeps until you go, Papa?”

  Caitlin’s heart seized in the silence that followed, and she retreated to the porch to respect the privacy their moment required.

  “Take your cup, Miss Caitlin?” Bess smoothed her yellow kerchief over her hair before offering calloused hands.

  “Oh, I can take it to the kitchen myself, thank you.” Caitlin would never feel comfortable accepting slave labor.

  A smile brightened Bess’s shining brown face, and faint wrinkles fanned from her eyes. "No need for that, now. Mr. Becker pays me to clean. And I’m headed to my quarters for the night, which just so happens to be above the kitchen. Land sakes, you’re holding on to that dish tighter than a noon squint!” Her rich voice bubbled with laughter. “Come on, now.”

  Reluctantly, Caitlin relinquished her teacup and watched Bess shake her head all the way to the kitchen, muttering something about “that strange white lady” as she went.

  A sigh escaped Caitlin as she eased into a rocking chair and gently swayed to her own lazy rhythm. Soon, the muffled voices of Bess and Saul talkin
g in their quarters floated to her on the breeze, punctuated by a rare burst of masculine laughter echoing in the house behind her. Somehow, it only made Caitlin’s heart heavier for Noah and Ana. With their hearts knit so tightly together, the unraveling from each other would prove that much more painful when the time came for him to leave. It would be easier, far easier, if Noah and Ana didn’t get along so well.

  Get out! I don’t want to see you here again! You’ve done enough! The last words her mother had spoken to her slammed against her memory, bruising her just as much as they had the fateful night they had been hurled. Rippling bitterness gave way to a wave of regret for what had happened next.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” Noah stood over her, framed by a sky flaming with broad strokes of marigold and magenta.

  Liberated from her grim recollections, she smiled into Noah’s red-rimmed eyes. “Please do.”

  He dropped into his rocker as if his energy had gone to bed without him, and stared out over the gardens. A chorus of tree frogs and crickets mingled with the creaking of their wooden rockers.

  “You are the center of her world, aren’t you?”

  “She is the center of mine.” He kneaded the back of his neck. “It is almost frightening. Can you understand?”

  “Love is risky.” She paused. “You have something to lose.”

  He nodded, slowly. “I also have something to fight for. Die for, if necessary.”

  “Mr. Becker—” She sought his eyes. “You have someone to live for. You are no use to her in the grave, you know.”

  Shadows sagged on his face. She should tread lightly. And yet—“What would she do if something happened to you? Where is the girl’s mother?”

  Noah leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the whitewashed floorboards between his feet. “She is—gone.” His voice was rough.

  Caitlin scolded herself for bringing it up. “I’m sorry. Has it been long?”

  “Ana never knew her mother. We do not speak of her,” Noah added, his tone leaving no room for debate.