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.
NOVEL SUMMARY
Amanda Armstrong is trying to survive the Civil War in the East Tennessee mountains. Her husband is a Yankee, her son, a Rebel. Her fear of being alone leads her to undertake a perilous journey, looking for a safe haven. Along the way, she is aided by her Cherokee friend, a little black boy, and a crippled Confederate soldier.
About the Author
A young grandmother, Marge lives in beautiful southwest Florida. She has been a Civil War buff since childhood. Her professional life has been spent in business management. She is an avid reader of fiction and nonfiction, but the Civil War is her passion. In addition to writing, she enjoys taking her grandchildren to the park, cross-stitching, sewing, and quilting.
Chapter 1 (Read Below)
Chapter One
Northeastern Tennessee
Sunday evening, April 26, 1863
“Luke’s late again,” Amanda Armstrong said. “Where could he be?”
“I don’t know,” her husband, Jonathan replied.
She stared out into the moonless night. The darkness didn’t frighten her. There was no darker dark than that left behind when the sun settled behind the huge spurs of the Great Smoky Mountains. The thought of what might be out there caused a ripple of goose bumps to run up her arms. The war had brought more dangers to the mountains.
She could barely see the shapes of the white frame buildings that surrounded the rear terrace. They glowed in the last light of day, like large boxy ghosts. The approaching darkness was at that moment when the twilight lowers its shade and turns the evening over to the night.
She stood there for several minutes, trying to see beyond her own reflection in the glass. She didn’t recognize the woman looking back at her—the pinched face and furrowed brow. What happened to the girl with creamy skin and shiny hair? Her new hairstyle—parted in the middle, pulled back, and rolled into a bun—probably made her look matronly, but it was convenient. She didn’t think it was a good sign that convenience was suddenly more important than appearance. She still had a good figure, but she could almost feel her hips spreading into the shape of the middle-aged.
Her eyes met Jonathan’s for a flash when she sat back down in her rocking chair at the edge of the fireplace. It occurred to her how rarely they actually looked at each other these days. Why was that?
His behavior on Sunday was unpredictable at best. He consumed no whiskey on the Sabbath, no doubt hoping to atone for his daily drunkenness during the previous week. He fumbled for his pipe. She pretended to concentrate on the novel she was reading.
She could see most of his face above the newspaper he was reading. She hadn’t noticed how deep the creases in his forehead had become—was her face that wrinkled? His hair was thinning in the front. He plastered it to his head with some sort of fixative, which created a harsh line across the top of his forehead.
“Could Luke be at the Crossroads?” she asked. Two miles away from their home, Bluesmoke Farm, was Armstrong Crossroads, named for Jonathan’s grandfather, who had established their small community.
“What would he be doing at the Crossroads?” Jonathan asked. “It’s a bit far to walk, and there’s nothing to do there since Bixby closed his store.”
“Didn’t he ride Lady?”
“When I went out to feed, Lady was in her stall.”
“I don’t know anything about my son anymore,” she said. “‘A boy has to turn away from his mother to become a man,’ isn’t that what you tell him? I think you should saddle Bean and go looking for him.”
“And where would you have me look?”
“What if the conscription agents got him?”
“He’s just a boy,” he said.
“Well, I’ve heard the Confederates are so desperate for soldiers they’re taking anybody who can lift a gun.”
“That’s just rumor, Amanda,” he said, shaking his head.
“Didn’t you hear what Tom Bennett said today?” she asked. Their friends, Tom and Alice Bennett, had come for Sunday dinner with them after church that afternoon. As usual, the war soon became the topic of conversation.
“I hate the draft,” Jonathan had said at the dinner table.
Jonathan and Tom had been eligible for the Confederate draft since the previous September. Union conscription laws had no authority over men who lived in the seceded states, even those men who were still loyal to the Union.
“I would have fought to keep Tennessee out of the Confederacy, but the thought of being forced to fight for the Rebels, whom I abhor, is beyond words!”
“I thought you might be ready to join the Union army,” Tom said. “I thought you were a Unionist.”
“You know I am,” Jonathan said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to rush off and get myself killed. What’s the Union army ever done for me? They’ve been promising for two years now to run off all these Rebels in our midst, and I haven’t seen them yet. And those poor fellows who burned the railroad bridges, hoping to make it difficult for the Confederates to move more troops in here—the Union army promised to help them, but they never came. Those poor men were hanged! Where was your precious Union army then?”
No one made a sound.
“There are still people around here who need my legal advice, you know,” Jonathan said in a calmer voice. “Where are they to go if I leave? To Greeneville and pay a fortune?”
“Could we please postpone this talk of war until after we eat?” Amanda asked.
“If you enlist now,” Tom said, chuckling nervously, “you won’t have to worry about the Rebels getting you.”
“Or I could get a phony medical exemption like you did,” Jonathan said, his voice cold, his eyes glaring.
“You know I’m disabled,” Tom stammered sheepishly. The previous autumn, Tom had been suddenly afflicted with some sort of curvature of the spine.
“You’re about as disabled as I am!” Jonathan shouted.
“The way I hear it,” Tom said, “since your Daddy died, Amanda takes care of everything around here. Maybe you should stay at home, and send her to the army.”
Jonathan’s lips began to form a word, but froze in a half-pucker. His face glowed red.
All color had drained from Tom’s face. He grabbed Alice’s hand, and they made a quick exit.
The only friends they had in all of Armstrong Crossroads were the Bennetts and the Cuthbertsons. Would they now have only the Cuthbertsons to socialize with? Franklin Cuthbertson was a brute. His wife, Emily, was quiet and withdrawn in his presence, but when she and Amanda took tea together on Saturday afternoon, she was altogether a different person.
* * *
“All this talk of conscription today frightens me,” Amanda said, “especially when Luke’s out there after dark. Knowing he’s on foot worries me even more. I think you sometimes forget he’s only fifteen. You have no idea where he might be?”
“For the last time, no!” Jonathan shouted. He rose abruptly, shuffled off to his study, and slammed the door.
We’ll see how he likes being snubbed, she thought. But she was always too impatient to hold her silence, and she got no satisfaction after she expressed her feelings. He gave her nothing—not one “I’m sorry,” nor a single “I didn’t mean it.”
Her legs began twitching, itching to move. Pacing was her worst nervous habit. She began to move slowly around the perimeter of the room, stepping as softly as possible. She remembered there was a board near the study door that creaked, but it was too late. The board screeched like a fingernail on a chalkboard. She held her breath. Jonathan cleared his throat with a loud and irritated “Umm-Umm.”
Well, if he knew she was up, why try to hide it? She knocked softly on the study door.
“What!”
She opened the door just enough to see him laid back in his chair, his feet on the desk, his back to her. Smoke from his pipe curled around his head.
The study was a small room. It contained some of Jonathan’s personal possessions and a beautiful mahogany desk that once belonged to his father, Charles.
“It’s getting late,” she said, looking through the window beyond the desk. She used a conciliatory tone with him, all the while chewing the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, attempting to keep the bitterness she felt from spewing out all over him. Only when he was drunk could she rail at him, but she got no consolation. He laughed at her. The angrier she got, the more he giggled. And the next day he remembered none of it.
“Please check the barn again,” she finally said. “Maybe he went to do his chores before coming to the house.”
“I did his chores.”
“He doesn’t know that, does he?”
He looked at his pocket watch. Had he and Luke made some previous arrangement? Had he known where Luke was all along?
“Please,” she said.
“By the time I go to the barn again, he’ll be here,” he said wearily, but he stiffened his arms and forced his body erect. He carefully folded his newspaper and slapped her quite roughly across the face with it. If she hadn’t been leaning against the doorjamb, he would have knocked her down. The door to the porch closed with a resounding thud.
It occurred to her that only at church did they talk and laugh as if everything was fine in their family. How had this escaped her attention until now? The answer to that question came quickly to mind: It hadn’t. She had avoided looking at it for as long as possible.
She heard footsteps on the front terrace. Luke was halfway down the long center hall by the time she reached the sitting room doorway. His straight brown hair was in disarray, his cheeks pink from the night air, a cunning little half-smile on his lips. His jacket hung off his shoulders.
He stood almost a head taller than his father, and he probably hadn’t reached his full growth yet. Where Jonathan was stocky, Luke was lanky, built like her father.
When she looked directly into her son’s eyes, he assumed his guilty-but-will-never-admit-it face. He threw his jacket on the table. When she hung it on a hook, several slips of paper floated to the floor. She picked them up, and saw that they were newspaper clippings about the Confederate General, John Hunt Morgan.
“Where did you get these?” she asked secretively.
“Mr. Crocker saves them for me.” Crocker was their farmhand, a crude backwoodsman with a large and growing family.
“You’d better not let your father see these. You know how much he hates Morgan and his raids into Union territory.”
Luke stuffed the clippings into his pants pocket.
Amanda entered the sitting room just as Jonathan opened the door from the back porch.
“I’m not going out there—there you are,” Jonathan said when he saw Luke standing behind her. “Safe and sound as I predicted,” he said, a smug look on his face.
“Lucas Cambridge Armstrong, sit down,” Amanda said, motioning toward a chair at the walnut table in the center of the room. “This sudden habit of running off after supper is not acceptable.”
“You go on up to your room, boy,” Jonathan said. “I know you have reading to do.” Luke, who was studying the law under his father’s tutelage, escaped with a grateful look.
“We have to discuss this,” Amanda said. “I’m afraid it’s Crocker’s little gap-toothed girl—Lydia, I think her name is—that’s keeping Luke away from home so much. She’s only twelve or thirteen, but poor mountain girls marry young—as soon as they can find some fellow to provide an escape from the poverty and difficulties at home.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Jonathan said nonchalantly. “None of Crocker’s children ever leave home. They just move their spouses in and start reproducing, and he adds another room onto the house.”
“Luke would be a prize catch for a girl like her,” Amanda continued. “You know as well as I do that she wouldn’t be suitable for him. A boy his age doesn’t realize that one moment of pleasure can ruin his entire future.”
“There you go again,” he said, “off on some wild scenario that exists only in your head. If you don’t have anything to worry about, you create something. The Crockers might not be ideal companions for Luke, but he’ll figure it out in time.”
“We are his parents,” she insisted. “If we don’t say anything, he might think we approve. We also have to make him understand that there are dangers out there on the road at night.”
“He knows that.”
“Well, he doesn’t act like he knows it.”
“Do you want him to shut himself up in this house and live in fear like you do? I promise you there’ll be no more coming home late,” he said. His stern stare kept her from saying more.
* * *
Amanda excused herself and went upstairs. The day had exhausted her. She crossed the bedroom to her dressing table. She sat down, took the pins from her hair, and allowed it fall down her back. She washed her face at the marble-topped washstand in the corner, and changed into a nightgown.
Jonathan soon came to bed. He leaned against the bolster pillows at the head of the bed and took her hand in his. She wasn’t feeling particularly “cuddly,” but she went along with it. She still wanted to talk about Luke, but Jonathan quickly turned cold when she broached that subject.
“How dare you continue to question my ability to rear my son!”
“I raised him by myself from the day he was born,” she said, “until you decided I was to be completely shut out of his life. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I don’t care!” He stretched roughly across her body and doused the light. The candlewick sizzled when he touched it with his wet fingertips.
“You’d better let this go, Amanda.”
