Tennessee Twilight: A Civil War Novel – Free Online Novel – Webnovel

This is a work of fiction. The main characters and the incidents in their lives are fictional. The setting, historical personages, and events in the Civil War are real.

Chapter 11 << – Index – >> Chapter 13

Chapter Twelve

Amanda was awakened by a strange sensation. She had been sleeping on top of the oilcloth—the wet ground was unbearably cold. She opened her eyes just enough to see a disheveled man pulling on Molly’s reins. Little did he know that she had tucked the lead rope underneath her body before she went to sleep. In one swift motion, she sat up and leveled the revolver at his head.

“If you’re intent upon stealing my horse, one of us is going to die this morning,” she said coldly.

He grinned at her, and bent over, reaching for the handle of a large knife that protruded from his boot top. She knew he meant to cut the lead rope and jump onto Molly before she could get a round off.

“I’m dead serious,” she said, raising her other hand to steady the gun. She wanted to stand up, but didn’t want to expose Josiah, who was still asleep behind her.

“Now just hold on,” the man said, holding up a hand in the direction of the gun.

“You think I won’t shoot you?” she asked pointedly, stretching her arms as far toward him as possible. She was aiming for his leg, hoping to disable him, but she didn’t know if she could pull the trigger.

She felt Josiah move. “Be still,” she whispered, pushing him back down, her eyes never leaving the man’s face.

The man tried to peer over her shoulder. “Who’s back there?” he asked.

“Never you mind,” she said. “I’m feeling a little generous this morning, so if you can make it to the edge of that clearing in three seconds, I might not kill your sorry ass.”

The man straightened up and disappeared quickly into the brush.

“What did you say?” Josiah asked.

“Let’s get ready to travel.”

“I’m hungry,” he whined.

“Eat a few of the nuts Ben gave us—but only a few.”
* * *
Amanda had no idea how many miles she had walked that afternoon, but it was more than a few. Josiah was suffering from a cold, and probably a low-grade fever. He had complained, “When Molly gallops, it makes my head hurt.”

She placed him on the rear of the saddle, laid him forward onto the seat, and covered him with the oilcloth. Since then, she had been leading Molly along deserted mountain trails through very heavy fog. Rain drizzled down all day. She was drenched head to toe. The temperature felt almost cold enough to turn the rain to snow, but she moved on, determined to reach home.

While she walked, she considered the possibilities of all the destruction that might have occurred to her home. She knew it was unlikely that it would be in the same condition as the day she left it. It might be burned to the ground, which was the fate of some civilian residences she had seen. If the structure was still sound, she would rebuild it—if it took the rest of her life. If it were destroyed, she would never forgive herself for leaving it.
But when she finally arrived, she abruptly stopped Molly in the lane, just before the house came into view. She was relieved to finally be there, yet dreaded what she might see.

She tugged at Molly’s reins and inched a little farther down the lane. Since the foliage had fallen, she could see the shape of the house through the trees. As she rounded the bend in the lane, the house came into full view. She let out a deep breath—yes! The house was still standing.

“It doesn’t look so bad from here,” she said out loud.

The exterior of the house looked pretty much the same, but every tree in the yard was now a stump.

Josiah sat up and tugged at her shoulder. She helped him down from the horse.

“Is this your house?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Well, it was,” she sighed.

“All this for one person?”

“I wasn’t ‘one person’ until this past summer.”

As she got closer, she could see that the front doors were missing altogether. She thought the windows were open, but soon saw that the glass was broken out. The closer she got the worse it looked. She suddenly felt like someone had sucked all the air from her lungs. She stood in the yard for a long time.

When she finally entered the house, she found it incredibly filthy. Not a stick of furniture was left in the rooms on the first floor.

She put Josiah in the small bed in Barbe’s cabin, and covered him with all the blankets she had left. While he slept, she would try to make a livable space in the house.

She discovered that the front doors were still there—just off their hinges. She leaned them against the opening, as close together as possible. The door to the sitting room was still attached and the windows intact, so she shut it off from the rest of the house. The heat from a small fire would make the room somewhat comfortable.

She ran upstairs, looking for some furniture. Every room was bare. Nothing was left. She had hoped to find some dresses in her armoire, but the armoire itself was gone. She began to get angry.

She cleaned the sitting room and built a fire with wood she found in the side yard. In the parlor, she found one of the legs to her favorite marble-topped table, half-burned. She threw it on the fire as well.

She should have gone right then to see if she could pull off some of the boards in the barn stalls to add to the fire, but fatigue consumed her. She could do no more. She curled up on the cold wood floor in front of the fireplace and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

When she awoke, it was dark. Her body was so sore she could hardly move. She was cold to the bone. Her little fire had almost sputtered out completely. On the raggedy edge of sleep, she thought, Josiah!

She grabbed a bit of candle from the mantle, and tried to light it with the coals from the fire.

“Come on,” she begged, holding the candlewick in the hot coals, burning her fingers in the process. Finally, it sputtered to life.

She ran to Barbe’s cabin and found Josiah still completely covered by the blankets and the oilcloth. She touched his face, which didn’t feel as cold as she expected, but his nose was freezing. As she touched him, he began to stir. She reached down to touch his body inside the blankets, and he was warm as could be.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, stretching his arms.

“I was scared you’d be frozen,” she said impatiently.

“No, I’m warm,” he said, pulling the covers up over his head again.

“So I see,” she said, smacking him on the behind, through the padding of all the blankets.

“Get up,” she shouted. “I’m starving.”

He laughed out loud. He was like a cocoon wrapped in the blankets. He couldn’t move.
Amanda had found a small mound of cornmeal in the side yard earlier, where soldiers had been camping. She sifted out as much dirt as possible—the cornmeal being coarser than the sand. She found a small pouch of salt on the kitchen table as if someone had forgotten it.

The food preparation table was about the only thing left in the kitchen. Her pots and utensils were all gone. The cook stove was in shambles. The burner tops were missing, even the door to the wood box was broken off and nowhere in sight. Why would anyone do such a thing?

With water from the well, she made a very small “johnnycake” from cornmeal, water, and salt. She baked it the old-fashioned way: on a stone in the sitting room fireplace.

“I sure wish we had some furniture,” Amanda said as they ate the johnnycake. “A chair—anything would be nice.”

“There’s nothing nowhere?” Josiah asked.

“The attic!” she said.

Chewing on their last bite of cornbread, they raced upstairs. The small door that led to the attic was stuck. After several minutes of pushing and pulling, Amanda put her shoulder into the door and it opened suddenly, sending her flying into the attic stairs. She groaned in pain.

“What is it?” Josiah said, in a panic.

“My elbow,” she said, grabbing her right arm. “I hit my funny bone.” She flung her arm from side to side, but that only increased her discomfort.

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

Even the attic had been ransacked. She found an old upholstered chair. The seat was hard as stone, but it would be better than sitting on the floor. There was an old chaise longue in the corner, under lots of debris. Its brocade cover was stained and worn, but it was comfortable to sit on. Several old rugs were stacked in the corner. They dragged their findings downstairs.

In the sitting room, she made a bed on the chaise and a pallet in front of the fireplace for Josiah. At last, she laid her weary body down. Her last thought was how good it was to be home.

She was awakened pre-dawn by heavy footsteps in the center hall. Josiah sat straight up and gasped. She grabbed him and placed her hand over his mouth before he could make a sound. Together they huddled in the corner near the back door. Someone was jiggling the locked doorknob.

“Who’s in there?” a loud voice asked.

Josiah whimpered.

“You mustn’t cry out,” Amanda whispered.

“I’m Lieutenant Quinn from the Union garrison in Greeneville,” a male voice said. “We stay here when we come scouting over this way, and I don’t plan to be run off.”

If his voice was any indication of his size, she and Josiah were in deep trouble.

“You’d best show yourself,” the lieutenant yelled. “I’m not going to be very happy if I have to find you myself.”

Amanda grabbed the ratty blankets and a smelly quilt she had found in the attic. “We’re going to sneak out the back door,” she whispered to Josiah.

She almost got lost twice, trying to find Silver’s hut. She fumbled her way through the hills and forest. Molly, still hidden in the stables, would be of no help in this dark sky. The air was bitterly cold. Finally, she arrived, and tapped at Silver’s door.

“Who’s there?” Silver asked in her gruff voice.

“It’s Amanda.”

Silver opened the door. She was smiling. “Many nights I worried for you,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Amanda said, gravitating to the roaring fire inside the hut. “You were right. It was a mistake to leave home. Josiah!” she said, running back to the door.

“Who?” Silver asked.

He entered slowly, his little head to one side. He walked quickly to Amanda’s side and hid behind her skirts.

“Where did you get a Negro child?”

It took a while to explain all the crooks and turns she and Josiah had made to end up in Silver’s home. Silver offered them some bread, nuts, and berries to quiet their rumbling stomachs, and then brought a large stack of quilts and wool blankets to make a pallet for them in front of the fire. Amanda felt safe for the first time in months.

“Stay here with me.” Silver begged, after they had eaten breakfast the following morning.
I can’t,” said Amanda. “I have to get those soldiers out of my house before they do any more damage. It rankles me that they seize property that doesn’t belong to them. They think they can take whatever they want. It’s not right, and I intend to protect what is mine.”

“Now you know how I feel when Judie Baker tries to take my home,” Silver said.

“Yes,” Amanda sighed, “I do.”
***
Amanda and Josiah crept back into the house at Bluesmoke. Silver sent what food she could spare—enough to feed them for a few days if they rationed it.

Amanda spent the entire day cleaning. The floors in the center hall were covered with inches of mud and animal feces. She attempted to push the slimy dirt out the front door with an old weeding hoe.

At day’s end, she and Josiah ate a few bites of bread and beans before they lay down in the sitting room to rest.

Again, the soldiers came and rousted them from their sleep.

This time Amanda marched straight into the center hall and confronted Lieutenant Quinn. She was too tired for another nocturnal journey to Silver’s hut.

She couldn’t see the lieutenant’s face, just his outline in the little light that filtered through the open doorway behind him. He was tall and broad-shouldered.

“My name is Amanda Armstrong,” she said with all the calmness she could muster, “and this is my home.” Her legs began to tremble. She hadn’t been fully awake, or she wouldn’t have confronted these soldiers in this manner.

“I have impressed this house for use by the Union army,” Lieutenant Quinn shouted.

“I intend to stay here, sir,” she said firmly.

“Then, we have us a little problem,” he said smartly, “but we won’t have it for long. Take this woman and put her in the Greeneville jail,” he said to one of his aides.

The soldier grabbed one of Amanda’s arms. She wrenched it from his grasp, ran back into the sitting room, grabbed Josiah, and fled out the back door again. When the cold air hit her, she fully realized how reckless her behavior had been.

She and Josiah slept in the hayloft, but it was a miserable night. A nasty winter wind kicked up and penetrated every crack in the walls of the barn. The rain hadn’t stopped for days. It appeared that winter weather had set in for good.

The following morning, it appeared that the soldiers had vacated the property. There were no tents on the lawn, and no sign of a fire. Maybe they had gone back to their post in Greeneville. Amanda could only hope.

She was ready to fight for her home, but she couldn’t take on a whole cavalry detachment. She closed the exterior and interior shutters on the windows, the ones that were left, and put Josiah to bed on a pallet in a small bedroom at the rear of the second floor. It was the smallest room in the house, and it didn’t take much wood to heat it.

She went out onto the second-floor balcony, wrapped in quilts and blankets, and waited in the darkness. She laid the revolver Ben had given her in her lap. She would tell Lieutenant Quinn that she was holding a gun on them, and that they would have to find another house to use for their headquarters. Just the thought of it made her tremble.

The pounding of horses’ hooves didn’t wake Amanda until they were almost at the gatepost. Startled and half-asleep, she fumbled for her revolver. It fell from her lap, clattered noisily onto the floor of the balcony, and slid over the edge. She heard it fall into the rosebushes below.

“Mrs. Armstrong,” Lieutenant Quinn called from the front terrace. “I don’t intend to have any problems with you tonight. If I find you here, I’ll send you to jail.”

When she heard the soldiers running in the hall downstairs, she panicked. She ran to the bedroom and grabbed Josiah. She threw open the door and climbed the stairway into the attic, Josiah behind her. They huddled together in the corner as they listened to the soldiers enter every room on the ground floor, then the second floor.

The darkness was pervasive. She told Josiah to get down on his hands and knees, and they crawled slowly up a narrow flight of stairs. When they reached the top of the steps, she pushed on the hatch door that led to the widow’s walk on the roof, but it wouldn’t budge. The rain had caused the door to swell, and it was stuck tightly in its opening. She sat on the top step and pushed her back against it as hard as she could. It finally opened, and slammed against the floor of the observation deck.

She stopped, and waited breathlessly to see if she had alerted their visitors.

“Mrs. Armstrong, are you up there?” she heard Lt. Quinn say, as he mounted the stairs to the second floor.

She climbed onto the roof, pulled Josiah through the hatch door, and closed it. Her heart was beating double-time.

“Look here, Lieutenant” a voice said from below. “There’s a fire in here.”

“She must have took off running when she heard us coming,” the lieutenant said.

Josiah’s eyes opened wider as he mouthed the words: “Someone’s on the stairs.”

“Sit down,” she whispered, trying to hide her trembling hands.

“What did you say?”

“Sit down on the door,” she said, sitting down on it herself. Josiah sat down beside her.

“I can’t get up to the roof, Lieutenant,” said a husky voice directly below them. They could feel him pressing on the door they sat on. “The hatch door is stuck.”

“You sleep up here,” Lieutenant Quinn ordered, “just in case. If she’s up there and tries to come back down, arrest her. I’m going to bed.”

She listened while the lieutenant left the house and entered Barbe’s cabin.

Amanda and Josiah were trapped on the roof.
***
Amanda waited through the night without trying to escape, afraid to re-enter the trap door for fear the guard would find them. If they could survive the night, the soldiers would leave again in the morning.

She and Josiah huddled together against the chimney. They tried to pass the time by sleeping.

When Lieutenant Quinn was ready to leave for a reconnaissance the next morning, Amanda heard him posting a guard. “Hodges, you’re it,” he bellowed.

“What?” a voice asked.

“You’re officially on guard duty at these quarters. Better stake out in the hall, so you can watch the front and the back. And you’d better not fall asleep.”

“We’ve got to go down,” Josiah said, when she told him they couldn’t go back inside. “I don’t like it up here.” He began to cry.

“Do you want me to go to jail?”

“No,” he whined.

She didn’t want to frighten him by expressing her other anxieties. What would the soldiers in Greeneville do with Josiah? Would they take him away from her? What right did she have to keep him? Dozens of thoughts raced through her mind as she tried to decide what to do.

She had to get to her gun in the rosebushes if she had any hope of getting rid of the soldiers. Already, the murky dawn made enough light to give them away if they tried to climb down. But, with only one guard on the ground floor, she felt safe enough to go into the attic, where they could at least get warm and sleep.

Lieutenant Quinn and his detachment of cavalry returned late that afternoon. Amanda and Josiah were startled, and they climbed back onto the roof. She listened to the activities below for hours, thinking they would never go to sleep. He posted a guard on the second floor, and another to walk the perimeter of the house all night.

Her hopes were dashed once again. The guard on the second floor would surely discover them if they reentered the house by the hatch door. If they timed it right, climbing down the trellis might be their best chance.

“Josiah, can you follow me?” she asked patiently.

“No, Misty, I’m not good with high places,” he stuttered, covering his eyes.” He still reverted to calling her “Misty” when he was frightened.

She sat down, pulled his tiny body close to her, and spoke calmly. “If we don’t get down, we’ll get too hungry and thirsty up here.”

“I’m already too thirsty,” he said, trembling with fear.

“The trellis at the side of the porch is like a ladder,” she explained. “I know your legs are short, but I’ll be right below you, and I promise I won’t let you fall. But you must be very quiet.”

She could see the whites of his large eyes even in the darkness. For the first time, she thought about how frightened he must be.

“I wouldn’t ask such a thing of you if I had any other choice. Please try,” she begged.

At last, he nodded reluctantly.

She climbed over the railing that encircled the deck and lifted Josiah over. The rain had stopped, but the roof was still slippery. She showed him how to sit on his backside and move slowly down the roof, inch by inch, but he whimpered all the way. She shushed him repeatedly, fearing that they would be discovered at any moment.

The porch roof had only a slight pitch, so they were able to move much quicker there. She started down the trellis, coaxing Josiah to follow. She let go of his arm for just a second to get a better hold, and he almost fell. He squealed. She waited, breathlessly.

The guard on the ground came running around the corner of the house. “Who’s there?” he shouted. Fortunately, he didn’t look up.

Amanda’s arm was breaking. Josiah was so frightened that he let go of the trellis completely, and sat down on her shoulder. Then he peed his pants, wetting his trousers and the front of her dress. “Sorry, Misty,” he whispered.

“Sshh,” she said.

The guard continued around the corner of the house. Thank God for a dark night.

Amanda let out a full breath. She told Josiah to grab onto the trellis again. She quickly climbed down to the ground and instructed Josiah to jump into her arms.

“I’m scared,” he whimpered.

“Jump,” she whispered, “or I’ll leave you here.”

When he finally let go, she couldn’t hold his full weight. They fell into the rosebushes with a resounding thud, prompting another alert by the guard.

After the guard passed again, she began to look for her revolver. The thorny bushes scratched her arms and hands, but she finally recovered it. They waited until the guard passed again, and then ran as fast as they could around the house. She opened the door to the summer kitchen and pushed Josiah inside, telling him to stay there no matter what happened. She exited the building as soon as she heard the guard pass by.

Since Lieutenant Quinn slept alone in Barbe’s cabin, she could get to him without alerting his men. He was still sleeping when she pushed the revolver under his nose. He woke up with a start.

“Lieutenant Quinn,” she whispered, “I am a desperate woman, who will do almost anything to save what is left of my home. So maybe you’d better find another place to house you and your staff. I’ve done my part for this war.”

He sat up and pulled on his boots without a word.

She held the gun to his back as they walked outside.

“Why, you’re a fine-looking woman,” he said, peering at her in the moonlight.

“What did you expect?” she asked him. “An old hag?”

“I-I don’t know,” he stammered.

“Why do you hate me so much, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“I don’t hate you specifically,” he said. “I just hate your kind.”

“What kind?” she asked. “I just want to be left alone.”

“You might be sorry for saying that,” he said viciously. “You’re pretty far from the road down here. It’d be easy for someone to come in here and burn your place down.”

“Should I take that as a threat?”

“Take it however you want,” he said.

Once they were on the back porch, she opened the back door, and ordered him to call out to his men.

“Come on, boys,” he shouted. “We’re leaving.”

She heard their footsteps as they scrambled for their trousers and boots.

She waited breathlessly until they rode away.

“You showed them, Misty,” Josiah said, when she opened the door to the summer kitchen. He laughed and hugged her legs.

“I told you not to call me ‘Misty,’” she said irritably.

“What can I call you?”

“I told you to call me Amanda, but your tongue gets tangled up when you say it. What would you like to call me?”

“Mama,” he said shyly. “You’re my Mama now, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

His chin dropped to his chest.

“My dearest friend in all the world used to call me ‘Mandy.’ Can you say that?”

He recited it repeatedly.

“Let’s see,” she said, taking his hand as they walked into the house, “what can I call you? Josiah sounds like an old man’s name. I’ll call you Josie. Is that all right?”

He nodded his approval.

A few days later, the Widow Wilkes came to Bluesmoke.

“The Union army is taking the church,” she said, almost in tears.

“What do you mean they’re taking it?” Amanda asked.

“Something about the War Department ordering them to seize abandoned churches within areas controlled by the Union army.”

“What?” Amanda said.

“Since you’ve been gone,” Widow said, “the circuit riding preacher stopped coming. We haven’t had any services for a couple of months now.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s been abandoned,” Amanda said angrily.

“They won’t listen to me,” Widow said. “You can tell them your husband’s in the Union army. Maybe that will help.”

Amanda rode to the Crossroads and found a captain and a small detachment of soldiers putting a padlock on the church door.

“You can’t take this church. It’s mine—ours. There aren’t many of us left, but it’s still our church,” she insisted.

“I have the authority to take this church per the order of Lieutenant Quinn in Greeneville,” the captain said.

“I might have known,” she whispered.

“They say it’s Baptist property.”

“My husband’s grandfather built this church. It belongs to the people of this community.
How can they claim it?”

“All I know is that the order came directly from the Union War Department. Here it is.”

“It says here that we have no loyal minister. I’ll be the minister.”

“Really?” the soldier asked. “Are you ordained? When did you last hold services here?”

“Well—uh—I’ve been gone, but I plan to have services this coming Sunday.”

“Get out of here,” he said angrily.

“I’ll break that lock.”

“And I’ll throw you in jail.”

“Don’t you men ever get tired of threatening women?”

Chapter 11 << – Index – >> Chapter 13