Rebel prisoners say that conscripts does them more harm than good. They cannot trust them to anything. We are getting a considerable force here and troops coming in all the while and that is what makes me think they will be gobbled but I may be mistaken, but I hope not. I cannot see how Rebel troops can last much longer. My opinion is that South Carolina will be the first state back in the Union. My reason is this-Charleston is the only place in the state to amount to anything and when that falls it will be very nigh rid of Rebs and so there will be nothing to keep it out of the Union. It being the first state out will be the first in, and then the balance of the states will follow. You may think I am foolish in thinking so but I have a right to my ideas as have all the balance of the people. I have written enough about this.

I have received two letters from you and this is the answer to them. I was glad to hear from you and to hear you were all well. The reason I have not written to you before was this. We were ordered to leave our Knapsacks and I left my paper in it. So I had nothing to write a letter on and I fear we will never see them again. I have an idea that my letters will be few and scattering for a while but you must not be uneasy if you do not get a letter for a month or two. I will write whenever I can. I do not want you to stop writing because I have to. It is not my wish to stop writing. I would like to be at home so I could help tend the farm next year and I hope I will be right. Give me all the particulars of the day and how the people are getting along and where Joe Williams is and how he is getting along. I would like to hear from all the neighbors.

I must close so no more at present from your loving husband, Silas I. Storm to E. J. Storm.

Chapter Twenty-five: Mississippi Woman.

Rebecca Edminton placed the blackened skillet of cornbread onto the fire and stepped back and leaned against the large trunk of a White Oak tree. As she tended her cooking, her gaze went from the fire to a soldier who was walking the perimeter of camp on picket time.

She lost count of the number of times she had seen him since his company took up camp here. All she knew was she wanted to know him better. Much better. She had been dreaming about him in her night dreams and her day dreams. Some of her dreams of him were sensual in nature, and she'd wake up wanting to feel his warm skin against her naked body. She wanted his arms holding her close. She now wondered what that would feel like and a warm quiver ran through her lower abdomen.

It had been awhile since any man had held her. There had been plenty of them who wanted to hold her and more than one man had begged in a drunken stupor to have her but she had refused. She had grown tired of giving her body away to any man who came along with a few bucks in his hand and wanted a fast get off and nothing more for her or from her until the next time he had some extra bucks and an animalistic desire to have a little more than he could give to himself.

The soldier was coming her way again. She straightened her blouse, undid the top b.u.t.ton and made sure it was tucked into her skirt and pulled tight across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. This time she would get his attention. Somehow she would.

James Garrison glanced the way of the young woman under the tree. He could smell cornbread cooking. He had seen her before, a pretty girl who looked like she belonged on a stage, not a dance hall floozy but a woman of substance. She looked so out of place here cooking and doing daily ch.o.r.es of the camp.

James stopped his forward gait and stood watching her a moment. He noticed she did not turn from his gaze. As he moved toward her he saw she had lifted her skirt up a little, revealing petty-coats underneath.

His heartbeat speeded up at the thought of what more might be revealed under her clothing. He hoped she might pull it up further. If her exposed leg was any example he'd love to see more. Lots more. He chuckled.

Actually he'd love to see all. A naked impression of this beautiful girl flanked his mind and his body reacted.

d.a.m.n, he thought. It had been so long since he had his wife. Made love to her. Too many months to count. He quickly replaced the vision of Lucinda with this beautiful auburn haired beauty standing under the tree with a tempting and inviting look about her.

He wondered what her name was. He decided it might feel so good to hear the voice of a woman, and a beautiful woman at that. He watched her as he continued his picket walk, making his round away shorter and returning to the sight of her.

When he returned, she was tending her food on the fire. He watched as she bent over to lift the fry pan from the fire and he wanted to be there with her, holding those shapely hips against his thighs.

And that was not a dream. He would get to know her. Just a few minutes of picket time left and he'd find out who this attractive woman was.

"Rebecca, hmm, that's a pretty name for a pretty girl," he told her.

"Thank you, sir. And what is your name?"

"James."

"Well, James, can I get you some corn bread and honey."

"Yes, I'd like that."

"Coffee, too?"

"Uh, I don't have my tin with me."

"That's alright. I have one here." She poured them each a cup of hot coffee, and they moved into the shade of the oak and sat on the ground.

James loved the sound of her voice, soft and yet husky and her words came fast, fast enough that he had to keep attentive or he might miss something, something that might be important. And he didn't want to miss a word she had to say. There was a little mystery about her, not that she wasn't open and revealing in her conversation, but a feeling there was a bit of her hidden away, waiting to be found in a game of hide and seek.

And James was willing to play the game.

That had been their first meeting and conversation. Several more followed over the next few days.

It was late on a moonlit night while sitting in her tent that James said to her, "Rebecca, I can't just be friends with you. Do you know that?"

She responded quickly and softly, "I know, James."

They sat silent for several minutes, and then she asked, "What are we going to do about it?"

"Well, I have to tell you I am a married man, as you know."

She nodded. "Yes."

He continued, a serious and sober look in his eyes, "but the way it looks with this war and the bodies that keep piling up at my feet, I may never get back to Iowa and see her again. And if I might die tomorrow from some Reb bullet hitting me in the chest, I think I'd like to spend my last night on earth loving you."

She smiled. "Don't be silly, James. No bullet is gonna get you tomorrow."

He returned her smile with a look of tease in his eyes and said, "Oh, darn. You mean tonight won't be my last night before the good Lord hauls me away."

"I don't think so, but ...."

He gave her an inquisitive look, "But what?"

"I want you, too. So then let's pretend it is your last night because I can't just be friends anymore either." She reached for a b.u.t.ton on her blouse and slowly undid it. "James, you need to know I've been with a lot of men before, you know, whoring."

"It doesn't matter, Rebecca," he said as he pulled her close and his fingers moved to the next b.u.t.tons on her blouse. He gently pulled it off her shoulders and away from her back and at the same time his wet lips came down onto her bare skin. And in that moment, it took his breath away as it did hers.

Their first love making was intense and fast but after a little time for recovery they made love again, with pa.s.sion and abandonment, releasing all inhibitions and any recognition of time pa.s.sage.

When the dawn broke and the bugle sounded, James knew he had a dilemma. He was falling in love with Rebecca and that acknowledgment was confusing, and would be painful when he would have to leave her to go to a Confederate confrontation miles away-a lifetime away.

As he dressed, he looked at her reclining, half asleep, and he made a decision.

He would take her with him from camp to camp, battle to battle.

He had to.

He had to protect her from harm and keep her safe. And he had to protect her from other men. Rebecca was now his woman, and his alone.

All thoughts of Iowa and a woman with golden silky hair was now replaced by Mississippi and a woman with deep auburn hair. And the thought of a disease that may be carried by this former prost.i.tute he now loved seemed unimportant and nonexistent when the sky was colored gray with artillery smoke and the sound of distant cannons plugged the ears and fuzzed the mind.

James Garrison was a happy man for the first time in many months. And when he told Rebecca Edminton she was staying with him, she was happy for the first time in her twenty-six-years of living a life of desperation and selling her body to buy food for her table. As horrific as this war had been, Rebecca was so thankful for it. It was giving her a life she had always dreamed of, a life with a man she loved.

And for James, this woman gave him a reason to fight the Rebels at every turn, to do his job quickly so he could hold in his arms this woman who made every night of war bearable. The smell of her body close to his shut out the smell of gun powder, and the music of love playing in his ears took away the sounds of cannon fire and screaming bodies being ripped apart by weapons of war.

James Garrison had found the peace he needed. And right now she was in his arms, and he prayed his arms would be there to keep her safe from harm in these b.l.o.o.d.y fields of war.

Chapter Twenty-six: Tuesday, the 22nd Day of September 1863.

Brashear City, Louisiana Dear Companion, It is with pleasure that I embrace the present opportunity of addressing you a few lines and I am happy to say that I am well at present and hope I will remain so. I sincerely hope these lines will find you all enjoying good health and pleasure. I received a letter from you from the second of the month and it gave a great satisfaction to my heart that you were all well. That is the first thing that attracts my attention, and then I am satisfied. The weather is fine with the exception of the night which is cold. The way we are prepared to sleep we have no woolen blankets with us. A gum blanket is all we have to keep warm and they are like ice of a cold night and the fire of a hot day. Our shelter from the storms is what we call Dog Tents, shelter tents. I will describe them as I can. It is a piece of twilling about six feet square and them who want one of those tents has to lug it on his back or any other way he can get along with it. So he totes it (as the Negro says). It is intended for two soldiers to bunk together and when night comes they will fasten their tents together and stretch it across a pole and fasten the four corners to the earth. Both ends of the tent are left open so as the wind and storm can blow through them without any difficulty whatever. Myself and Hank Perin are two dogs that occupy one of those kennels. Our brigade occupies those kinds of tents and they make a very nice dog town.

I am glad you are still talking of your time with the speeches at Peoria. It is good you learned more about the Union. As I wrote you, all men that is not for the Union is against it. What is worse is Rebels in arms against us. We are into it now and we can fight them in the North as well as in the South, but I am in hopes we will have no such things as that to do.

You ask about the Negroes. As far as that is concerned I have nothing much to say for my eyes don't see as they did when I left home. Since I have got down here and seen what slavery was and where it had run to, it changed me in a political sense of view. Slavery is what caused this war and the principle of it has changed me considerable. I have had prisoners tell me that it made no difference how much a man was worth. He was nothing thought of unless he owned a Negro or two and a poor man was not as much thought of as a Negro. I think the best thing we can do is to wipe slavery out but I do not think it will be done at present, and I do not think we will have slavery directly, but indirectly. I think it will be gradual emanc.i.p.ation and those Negroes that will be good for the Union army will be put in it. They are just as good soldiers as are the White soldiers. They look like men when uniformed. I have seen regiments with commissioned officers of their own color and they look sniptious. If those men North who are so bitterly opposed to the emanc.i.p.ation of slavery had served as long a time in the South as I have, their ideas would change, too. You people North know nothing about such things without having experience. Experience teaches a dear school but fools will learn in no other and the South is beginning to find it out. Taking the Negroes from the South and arming them is one of the greatest blows that was struck. To put this rebellion down you people North may not see it but I see it here very plain. Now you may take me to be an abolitionist but that matters for nothing. I am a War Democrat and you may call them what you please.

So no more at present.

Your loving husband Silas I. Storm to Elizabeth J. Storm

Chapter Twenty-seven: Peoria.

On this Sunday afternoon Elizabeth Jane was delighted to have a table full of guests for Sunday supper. She had always been one to avoid conversations about politics but after attending the political rally in Peoria earlier in the month with Alexander, and her parents, Catherine and Daniel, she was enthusiastic and energized that she now had the opportunity to discuss with others the ideas she heard that day.

"I now realize why Silas was always so interested in politics in our community, and even the country," she said. "I used to be irritated when he seemed to put those things before family."

Michael Storm offered, "He's always had that interest, even at times when he had other things he should be doing. Isn't that right, Rachel?"

Rachel, Silas's mother, seated alongside her husband, nodded. Although she had never had any interest in politics she was very active in the temperance movement and she put that into a religious category not a political one. She was pa.s.sionate about banning alcohol and her pa.s.sion may have been intensified by having a son who was attached to the bottle. Benjamin at times had given her a broken heart. She never let Michael see her at her worst, choosing the easy way out-dismissing her angry thoughts. She replied, "Yes, I remember Silas should have been paying more attention to his school work but he was always reading about politics. Said he wanted to be a United States Senator some day. He could be quite the orator, just like the Biblical Silas, and I often wished his words were all about religion rather than politics."

"My wife wanted him to be a preacher," Michael said.

Elizabeth Jane stood at the head of the table with a big pot of stew in front of her. She ignored the comment about Rachel wanting a preacher son. "I didn't know he wanted to be in government. He never told me that," she said as she filled each bowl and pa.s.sed it around the table.

Michael laughed. "He was only ten, what did he know?"

Alexander chuckled. "He may have been ten-years-old but that kid knew plenty. He was always reading my newspapers. He'd set aside his school book and pick up the newspaper the moment I put it down."

Elizabeth Jane sat down. As her stew cooled she said, "Silas wrote me he was glad I went to the big speeches at Peoria. He said he wished he had been there and maybe he would have liked the speeches. That is, he said, if they were Union speeches."

Alexander nodded his head. "Yes, Silas would have been jumping for joy hearing them speeches. They were Union alright, except for those couple of dough-faces. You can't talk sense into the heads of stupid persons."

"Those men were mean and hateful against the Negroes," Elizabeth Jane said. She glanced at her mother, remembering their conversation not too long ago about Negroes and how biased she had been, that was until her mother told her about Negro blood in their family. And now after hearing the speeches at Peoria, she came to new understandings about slavery and was embarra.s.sed about how she had previously believed.

Alexander tapped his long fingers on the table beside his bowl of stew. "We have too many dough-faces among the Northern Democrats. Those dunderheads need to go live in the South and quit their complain'in."

"You're right about that, Pap," Michael agreed.

Elizabeth said, "Silas said if they were not Union men at Peoria he could not swallow their doctrine for he's a Union man and would not support anyone who is not for the Union."

Michael said, "That is what he feels he is fighting for. The Union, and keeping our country whole, making it whole again."

Daniel said, "President Lincoln has a lot of work getting our country together again."

"Sometimes this war sounds hopeless," Catherine commented.

Elizabeth Jane agreed. "I wonder if it will ever be over. Silas's ideas have really changed," she said. "I wonder how he will be when he comes home."

Alexander spoke up. "He'll be different, hon. He has seen a lot of happenings that he would have never seen here at home. Some good, most bad. That's what war does to you."

Catherine sighed. "It will be that way for my son, James, too."

"Yes, it will, Mama." Elizabeth Jane said and then quietly added, "We've all changed. We are all different than we were when this war started."

All at the table were silent as they nodded in agreement. The good-okay, but the bad was not easily spoken of. For all of them sitting at the supper table were aware of changes in their lives, like it or not.

And for Elizabeth Jane some changes began for her at Peoria. And at the moment she liked those changes. She felt she was able to think for herself now. Maybe for the first time in her life. She did not have a parent or a husband making decisions for her. She was making her own way in the world, and even though she was very lonely at times and missed Silas, she also found she enjoyed the sense of freedom and independence she now had.

As much as she did enjoy it, though, she did not want it to last forever because that would mean Silas was not with her. She wanted her husband by her side. And she prayed it would be soon.

ChapterTwenty-eight: Benjamin and Lucinda.

It had been days since the trial and he couldn't stand it any longer. He had to see her. He felt fear in the pit of his stomach just thinking about it. What if she refused to see him? What if she would not open the door? What if she refused to even speak with him? What if she sent him away? All of those thoughts were flashing through his head and his stomach was doing rollovers. He took a deep breath to take away his anxiety and his urge to vomit. d.a.m.n! He wanted a drink, a straight shot of whiskey to take away this fear. What if she became angry with him for intruding, forcing his way into her life when he did not belong.

Oh, G.o.d, he thought. Force. He despised that word. Really despised it when it came to Lucinda. He had let her go years ago, let her go from him into the arms of a man who treated her badly with force, a man who had no respect for his beautiful Lucinda. And then now these years later, a young angry boy forces himself onto and into her. He took a deep breath again, and slowly let it out. Karns will never do that again, ever. He glanced down at his hands, and then carefully examined the hands that had killed Thomas Karns. He rolled his fingers into fists and held them tight for a moment. Guilt? Okay, Benjamin Storm, you don't have guilt anymore. You did right. Guilt does not belong to you. He opened his hands and rubbed them together. Regrets? No, no regrets about Karns. But regrets? Yes. He never should have put Lucinda on the train that rainy day. He never should have turned and walked away.

Was it too late, he wondered.

As he neared Lucinda's home he had to face his fears, and he had to find out, was it too late?-or was there even a hint of getting her back? If there was, yes, even a hint, he would be there, he would not walk the other way. No, not this time.

Lucinda opened her door on Benjamin's second knock. Her eyes widened when she saw him standing on her porch.

"May I come in?" Benjamin asked.

After an awkward moment Lucinda opened the door wide. "Yes, of course, Benjamin. Come in."