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 17 << – Index – >> Chapter 19

Chapter Eighteen

“What happened?” Emily asked Amanda at the barn. “You’re soaked and shivering.”

“Just take care of Molly.”

“Your head’s bleeding.”

“Leave me alone,” Amanda mumbled. She walked toward the house. Emily followed, right on her heels, questioning her all the way.

Amanda just wanted to escape to her old bedroom. She didn’t want to explain her condition or where she had been, but Emily persisted. At the bottom of the stairs, Amanda turned around and glared at Emily, almost knocking her down.

“He’s dead, all right!” Amanda shouted.

“Who’s dead?” Emily asked.

“Judie Baker’s dead! I shot his face right off his head. Does that satisfy your morbid curiosity?”

Emily gasped.

“And it wasn’t just for Silver. It was for Father and David, for Jonathan and Luke, for your sons and husbands, for everyone from these mountains who have suffered and died for this foolish war, and at the hand of such animals as Judas Baker!”

“Yes,” Widow said, coming forward and putting her arm around Amanda’s shoulders.

“The world will be a better place without him.”

“No!” Amanda screeched, trying to escape the hold Widow had on her.

“What is it?” Widow asked calmly. “What’s troubling you?”

“Aren’t you glad to know that Silver Plume’s killer is dead? Emily asked.

“No! Silver is still dead, and I am a murderer. I’m just like Judie Baker!”

“Now listen to me,” Widow said, turning Amanda’s face toward her. “Judas Baker deserved to die. I should have killed him years ago, after he killed my husband.”

Amanda stopped struggling for a moment. “He killed your husband?”

“He came into our home and shot him as he slept beside me.”

Amanda tried to raise her arms to hide her face, but Widow held them down.

“If you have to justify it in your mind, think of the other lives you’ve saved by killing Judas Baker.”

Amanda broke free and ran up the stairs.

For three days, Amanda didn’t leave her bedchamber. She slept fitfully and woke up weeping. She dreamt horrible nightmares, and was awakened by her own screams. Her body temperature rose to dangerous levels, and then suddenly plummeted.

On the fourth morning, Amanda opened her eyes and spoke to Widow, who was sleeping on a pallet beside her.

Too soon, the memories came flooding back, and she began to cry. “What did I do?”

“Hush, now, hush,” Widow said firmly. “You don’t want to go back to that dark place you just came from, do you?”

“No,” Amanda sobbed.

“Try not to think about it for right now,” Widow said. “Are you hungry?”

“Starved,” Amanda said, drying her tears.

“Wonderful,” Widow sighed.

Widow helped Amanda get dressed in the old blue calico, the dress she had worn the day Silver was killed. She wondered how they got out the bloodstain. Upon closer examination, she detected a faint brown splotch on the bodice, just above the gathered skirt. The edges of the stain feathered out, but the center of it was still quite brown, and she knew that it could never be separated from the fabric.

Widow helped her down the steps and into the sitting room, holding onto her all the way. She was very weak.

Widow summoned the other women of the commune.

“Our leader has returned,” Sally said, amid a round of applause.

“Welcome back,” said Becca.

“We’ve been praying for you,” Emily said.

“I’m all right now,” Amanda said.

“What did I do while I was delirious?” she asked Widow, after the others left. “Did I behave badly? There’s so much I don’t remember, but I remember you were always there.”

“Exactly where I wanted to be.”

“I believe there comes a time in almost everybody’s life,” Amanda said, “when you realize you’ve made the wrong choice—a life-changing choice that cannot be undone. You say, ‘Wait. I didn’t mean that. Let me go back.’”

“Please don’t be so hard on yourself,” Widow begged.

“But there is no going back,” Amanda said softly. “Then the weight of that decision settles upon you, and you must learn to live with it.”

For several days, Josie stuck to Amanda like a second skin.

“I’m sorry to keep scaring you, Josie,” Amanda told him.

“You can’t help it,” he said, patting her shoulder.

“I believe some people have special souls, and you’re one of those people.”

“Me?” He bowed his head shyly.

“Yes, you,” she said, touching his nose with her fingertip.

“Where did I get it from?”

“God must have given it to you.”

“When you were sick, I felt like you were leaving me.” His large brown eyes looked very sad. “But I kept telling you everything would be all right—‘til you believed it.”

“See there, that’s how special you are.”

“I made Miss Widow mad at me sometimes for bothering you too much.”

“She’ll get over it.”
***
Later, Widow found Amanda in tears.

“Don’t tell me you’re still torturing yourself about Judas Baker.”

“I don’t want to forget it. I want to remember that sick feeling I had after I killed him—in case I ever get that desperate again. I had no right to kill him. God should be his judge, not me.”

“Why don’t you try to focus on all the good you’ve done here.”

“How so?”

“These women respect you and admire your courage.”

“Why, for heaven’s sakes?”

“You’ve shown them how to take care of themselves, how to live, really. You’ve given them faith in themselves. That’s powerful medicine.”
* * *
One afternoon, Amanda was helping to prepare supper. Her strength was coming back, but not nearly fast enough. She thought she heard someone calling, “Mandy.” There were only two people in the world allowed to call her by that name, and it certainly wasn’t Josie’s voice. Amanda ran through the house, not yet knowing why she was running.

Barbé was just reaching the carriage drive when Amanda ran out the front door. Barbé was running so fast and Amanda grabbed her so strongly, they almost tumbled onto the ground. They cried and clung to each other, too emotional to speak for several minutes.

“Can I come home?” Barbé asked.

“You are home,” Amanda said softly.

Then they stepped back and looked at each other, and wiped the tears off each other’s face.

“My dear girl,” Barbé said, “what’s happened to you? I’ve never seen you so thin and pale.”

“It’s a long story, which I will tell you later. Right now, I want to know what happened to you.”

“Things weren’t what we expected in the North. I guess we expected too much, and I was so homesick. People didn’t understand why we missed the South, but why shouldn’t we miss it? We were born and raised here. Everything is so different up there. It’s like going to another country altogether.”

“Darling,” Amanda said, touching Barbe’s face, “I’m sorry. I know how much Juba wanted it to work out. Where is he anyway?”

“There,” Barbé motioned toward the gatepost. There he sat with his horse and wagon.

“He’s going on to the Crossroads to see what might be left of the blacksmith shop. He said he’d stay the night there. And I can stay here with you,” Barbé shrieked.

For a minute, they danced around like schoolgirls.

“What’s happened to the shop?” Barbé asked.

“Oh, it’s still there, but I can’t say what condition it might be in. What tools you couldn’t take were stolen. Everything of any value that isn’t nailed down soon disappears around here. I’m glad you didn’t have to see it all.”

“The only work I could get up there was cleaning for white women a few hours here and there, and they don’t want to pay you enough to earn a living. I tried to hide from Juba how unhappy I was. Then one day he came home—looked like a total different person. Something in his face had shaded over. The man who owned the blacksmith shop where Juba worked came home from the war and threw Juba out of his job. And then, I told him how much I missed you.”

“Bless your heart,” Amanda cried. “I’ve been sick with worry since you left. Are you well?”

“It was a hard trip. Lots of good people sympathize and help you when you’re leaving the South, but they don’t understand why you would ever want to come back. They wouldn’t give us no papers. We had to hide like runaways. Some days we didn’t eat, and we had to sleep in the wagon in the woods. My poor feet won’t never be the same after this journey,” Barbé said, looking down at her worn-down shoes.

“Go with Widow,” Amanda told her. Widow was standing on the terrace, waving to them. “I want to have a word with Juba.”

“Juba, wait,” Amanda yelled as she ran up the lane. Maybe he couldn’t hear her above the noise of the wagon wheels.

“Wait!” she called again.

He finally pulled on the reins, stopping the wagon.

“Juba,” she gasped, as she caught up to the wagon. “Thank you for bringing her back to me.”

She said his name again, but he didn’t look at her. She moved forward, near the small, jittery horse. She stared at Juba, willing him to look at her. When his gaze finally met hers, she saw the heartbreak in his eyes.

“Just so you know,” he said through hard tight lips. “I don’t like nothing about this. Weren’t my idea to come back here.” The muscles in his jaw twitched.

“I know how hard this must be for you,” she said gently.

“You don’t know nothing of it. A man takes his wife away from a hard life, and she’s still not happy.” He looked off into the distance.

“You’re right. I don’t. But I remember how I felt when you took her away. I’ll do almost anything not to ever feel that again.”

He looked at her inquisitively.

“It hurt me so bad,” she whispered, tears close to the surface, “I swore if I ever got the chance, I’d handle things differently.”

Some of the pain left his face.

“You’re a proud man, Juba, and I respect that. I’m a proud woman. Just don’t be so proud that you shut people out of your life. I’ve learned that I can live without my pride, but it’s hard to live without the people I love. I’ve lost almost everybody.” Her throat choked off those last few words.

“Mr. Armstrong?” Juba asked.

“Yes. He was killed at a cavalry fight down at the Crossroads, and—“

“Not Luke.”

She nodded.

He covered his eyes with one large brown hand and stayed like that for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry. I truly am,” he finally said.

“I know you are,” she said, trying not to cry.

“I hate it I can’t give Barbé a child. That’s the one thing she wants more than anything in this world.”

“Why do you think it’s your fault?”

“I just do, I guess. Always have.”

“Nobody knows why some people can’t have children,” she said. “Maybe it’s God’s will. Sometimes we don’t understand His will, and it’s hard to accept.”

“If I had a child, and it got taken away from me like your Luke, I’d surely lose my mind over it.”

“I did, for a while.”

A long moment of silence passed between them.

“Juba,” she said plaintively, “I’m sorry for all the times I didn’t consider your feelings, when Barbé and I shut you out. I didn’t see it then, but I see it now. I thought I needed her more than you did, and that was wrong of me. But you’re wrong if you think she loves me more than you.”

Juba’s jaw clinched.

“It’s hard to explain the connection Barbé and I have. We were born only a few months apart, and from our earliest remembrance, we’ve been together. What with Barbe’s mother being a house servant—”

“They were slaves,” he said, but not too harshly. “Have the decency to call them what they were.”

“Yes, they were slaves, but I didn’t know what that meant. Barbé and her mother lived on the third floor of my home. She was part of my family. We did a very childish thing—after she came here to live.” Amanda chuckled, remembering it. “We pricked our fingers with thorns and pressed them together so our blood mixed and made a little ritual of it. ‘You are the blood of my blood, the heart of my heart, and we will never be separated.’”

“Why didn’t she ever tell me about things like that?”

“I expect there are many things she didn’t tell us—because we already hated each other so much.”

Juba jerked on the reins and urged the horse to move, but she grabbed his arm and said,
“Don’t leave yet. Please.”

He looked at her face and then at her hand on his arm. She removed it at once.

“There’s more I need to say,” she stammered. “Maybe the best I can do is tell you how I feel, and you can think about it.”

He nodded begrudgingly.

“I’ve been jealous of you since you and Barbé met at church that day—more so after you bought your freedom—then you could take her away from me. I guess that’s why she didn’t tell you when I freed her, for the same reason.”

Juba turned his head completely away from her. She had no idea how he was reacting, and she suddenly became scared—cold fingers ran up her spine. But she continued, trying to talk faster, to get it over with, and let him be on his way.

“Maybe the only good thing this war has given me is time—time to reflect, to see myself as I was back then, which certainly hasn’t always been pleasant. I was selfish, willful, and inconsiderate.”

He turned and looked at her, but she couldn’t look at him while she made her last confession. “And I haven’t always spoken kindly of you. At times—when you upset her—I criticized you terribly. The only reason I spent so much money to get the blacksmith shop for you—well, it wasn’t for you. It was to keep her here.”

She nudged a rock with the toe of her shoe.

“But I’m pleading with you not to take her away from me again. It probably sounds ridiculous for me to say that Barbe’s absence has been more difficult for me than the death of my own son. I saw what happened to Luke with my own eyes, and I put him to rest in the cemetery on the hill.

“It’s the not knowing about Barbé that has troubled me so much, realizing that I might never know what happened to her—it made me quite desperate. Desperate people do foolish things, and I have done my share.”

Two teardrops fell to the ground; two tiny puffs of dust flew up. “Well, enough of this,” she said, trying to sound carefree, wiping her tears away with both hands before looking at Juba.

“If I do something that upsets you, tell me, please,” she said. “And try to remember that I’m trying to do better, and I’m not very good at it yet. We’ve been fools all these years, and we’ve hurt her more than she deserves. Maybe it’s time we tried to get along.”

He finally met her gaze. She thought she saw relief in his eyes, and maybe a glimmer of hope, which was no small thing for a man who had been kept down by white folks all his life.

“Maybe so,” he said. He clucked at the horse, and the wagon slowly pulled away.
***
Amanda found Barbé in her old cabin.

“Oh no, darling, we don’t want to go through this again,” Amanda said.

“What?” Barbé asked, a frown on her face.

“I hope I just patched up things with Juba—or at least I made a start. I won’t be responsible for keeping the two of you apart. You have to live with your husband at the Crossroads—if Bixby agrees to let him run the shop again. We’ll just have to hope that Juba will let you visit often.”

“All right,” Barbé sighed.

“And tonight, you’re sleeping in the house with me. Let’s go. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who?” Barbé asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Amanda said.

They found Josie napping on the old chaise in the sitting room.

“Who’s this?” Barbé said.

“Sshh, he’s my son.”

“What!”

Just then, Josie looked up at them. “Who are you?” he said, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

“Do you remember all the stories I told you about Barbé?” Amanda said.

He nodded.

“Well, this is Barbé.”

“Can I pick you up and give you a great big hug?” Barbé said.

Josie raised his arms. Barbé held him close, his head resting on her shoulder. Amanda had never seen the joy that came over Barbe’s face.

Barbé and Amanda clung to each other and talked late into the night. It was the talking they had missed the most.

“How’s Luke?” Barbé asked. “Does he write to you?”

“Darling, I hoped you would save that question for tomorrow.”

“Why?” Barbé instantly looked worried.

“Well, there’s no easy way, so I’ll just say it straight out. Luke’s buried up on the hill.”

“No,” Barbé screamed. “It can’t be true.” Amanda held her while she grieved for the boy she had loved as if he were her own child.
* * *
Barbé found Amanda crying the next morning. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“They’re threatening to take Bluesmoke away from me,” Amanda said, looking at a letter she had just received.

“Who?” Barbé asked.

“The government.”

“How can they do that?”

“I owe hundreds of dollars in back taxes,” Amanda explained. “Jonathan hadn’t paid them in years—one last slap in the face from him. I shouldn’t say that, Jonathan was wonderful to me the day he died.”

“That doesn’t mean you should forgive him for all he did to you,” Barbé said.

“Yes, it does. I told him I forgave him for all of it,” Amanda said. “Anyway, I have no money to pay the taxes.”

“That’s not fair,” Barbé said.

“Maybe I should leave Jonathan’s bones at the church. When I leave here, I’ll be leaving my son up on that hill,” she said, nodding toward the cemetery.
* * *
When Juba came back that evening, he was in high spirits. Bixby had been overjoyed that Juba wanted to run the blacksmith shop again. Bixby had fared no better than most other folks during the war, and he needed the income.

When it was time for Barbé to go to the Crossroads with Juba, Amanda hugged her for a long time. “I’ll see you soon,” Amanda said.

Barbe’s eyes filled with tears.

“What if I bring you back here tomorrow morning,” Juba said, “before I open the shop, and pick you up tomorrow evening? Then I’ll bring you every other day during the week. And we can have dinner together on Sundays after church.”

“I think that’s a very generous offer, Barbé,” Amanda said.

Barbé hugged Juba and thanked him.

The next morning when they returned, it was obvious that Barbé had told Juba about the taxes.

“I worked hard while I was in the North,” Juba told Amanda, “and put back a good bit of money. I’ll be glad to do what I can to help. Bluesmoke was once my home, too.”

“I won’t let you do that. That money if for your future—yours and Barbe’s. I won’t be able to—” Amanda quickly covered her mouth to hide her trembling lips. “I won’t have a home for her anymore.”

Chapter 17 << – Index – >> Chapter 19