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A year after the Civil War’s end, battle-scarred surgeon Dru Talbot—presumed long dead by all who loved him—returns home. Through everything he’d clung to the dream of starting life over with the bride he’d married on the very eve he left for war. Yet the truth that awaits him in Magnolia Creek is nothing like his fairy tale.
Young widow Sara Collier had risen above her grief for Dru, refusing to mourn her life away. But she’d put her faith and trust in the wrong man and made one wrong choice that changed her future forever. Sara returns to Magnolia Creek an outcast, a fallen woman, the mother of a child born out of wedlock. Soon she must face the man she’d loved so desperately when she was young, innocent, and the world was hers.
Can he forgive her? Can he truly still love her? Or her child?
A seven-time Romance Writers of America finalist for the RITA Award, Jill Marie Landis now also writes The Tiki Goddess Mysteries (set on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, where she lives with her husband, actor Steve Landis).
Coming Soon!
1
When lovely woman stoops to folly
And finds too late that men
betray,
What charm can soothe her
melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt
away?
—Oliver Goldsmith
The Vicar of Wakefield
Southern
Kentucky
May 1866
A YOUNG WOMAN clothed
in widow’s weeds rode in the back of a crude farm wagon and watched the
landscape roll by through a cascading ebony veil draped over the wide brim of
her black hat. The misty veil not only cast the world in an ominous dark pall,
but hid her auburn hair, finely drawn features, clear blue eyes, and the
swelling bruise that marred her left cheek.
Her arms were
wrapped around her daughter, a toddler with golden cherub curls who was bundled
in a thick, black shawl to protect her from a brisk afternoon breeze. Sound
asleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder, the little girl was as oblivious
to the chill in the late spring air as she was to the utter desperation in her
mother’s heart.
Sara Collier
Talbot had traveled for days. She had walked south from Ohio along roads
shredded by war, circumvented byways stalled by downed bridges, and trails
clogged with foot traffic, carts full of soldiers going home, and liberated
Negroes heading north. Carrying her child, Sara had begged rides in carts, on
the backs of crowded wagons, atop piles of straw, wedged herself between
barrels of dry goods. She had sold her other clothing to help pay for the
mourning ensemble.
She
had no place to call home, no money, no pride, nothing but an old, weathered
satchel that held a fresh petticoat, two gowns for the child, a dozen saltine
crackers, and the heel end of a stale loaf of bread. Her love child, Elizabeth,
a child born of shame, was the only treasure she could claim.
She
shifted her precious daughter higher on her shoulder, stunned that fate had
brought her home to Magnolia Creek.
An
unexpected breeze skimmed across the open farmland, teasing the edge of her
veil as the sun raked the tops of the trees bordering the road. Behind the
protective anonymity of the black veil, Sara contemplated the only other
passenger besides herself and Lissybeth riding in the farmer’s wagon.
An
ex-soldier still dressed in tattered, gray wool, the remnants of a uniform of
the once proud Confederate States of America, lay curled up in the far corner
of the wagon bed. Sad eyed, defeated, he was so thin that he resembled a
skeleton far more than a man. With no more than a nod to Sara when she first
climbed aboard, he had promptly fallen asleep. Thankfully there would be no
small talk to suffer.
A
pair of scarred crutches padded with rags lay on the wagon bed beside him. He
was missing his right foot. His cheeks were covered with sparse salt-and-pepper
stubble, his sunken eyes surrounded by violet smudges.
Sara
sighed. In one way or another, the war had made invalids of them all.
Looking away from the soldier, she stared out across the
surroundinglandscape: gentle rolling hills, yellow poplar, sycamore, oak, chestnut, walnut
trees all gathered into woods between open fields now lying fallow. Here and
there, trails of chimney smoke snaked up from the treetops, signs of cabins
hidden in the wood.
The
Kentucky countryside had changed very little since she saw it last, but not so
the look of the travelers along its byways.
Before
the war, back roads pilgrims were mostly farmers, a few tinkers and merchants,
or families on their way across the state. The majority were war refugees—many
of them Confederate soldiers hailing from Kentucky, men banished and marked as
traitors after the state legislature voted to side with the Union. Now, a long
year after surrender, those men were still making their way back home.
There
were far more Negroes on the roads now. Former slaves who had feasted on the
first heady rush of freedom, but now wearing the same disoriented look as the
white casualties of war. They wandered the rural countryside searching for a
way to survive the unaccustomed liberty that had left so many displaced and
starving in a world turned upside down.
Sara
had spent nearly all she had to buy the black ensemble to wear while she was on
the road. The South was full of widows; the North, too, if the papers were to
be believed. The sight of a woman alone in drab black garb was not all that
unusual, and she blended in, one more casualty of the war between the states.
On
the outskirts of town, the wagon rattled past the old painted sign that read, Welcome
to Magnolia Creek, Home of Talbot Mills, Population three hundred and
eighty-one. Obviously no one had bothered to change the sign. Sara knew,
painfully well, that there was at least one who would not be coming home.
For
the most part, the town of Magnolia Creek looked the same, the streets evenly
crisscrossed like a fancy piece of plaid that was a bit worn and frayed around
the edges. The brick buildings along Main Street showed signs of weather and
shelling, as battered as their occupants must surely feel.
Melancholy rode the air. She could feel it as she viewed
wood-framedhomes with peeling, whitewashed siding that lined every even street.
A
few of the shops and stores around Courthouse Square were still boarded up,
their broken windows evidence not only of Yankee cannon fire, but the shortage
of replacement glass. The courthouse still remained proud and unbattered. The
Union stars and stripes flew triumphantly over the grassy park surrounding the
impressive two-story building.
She
remembered walking Main Street for hours the day she had first moved into town,
recalled staring into storefront windows at all the bright new things. Now she
barely gave those same windows a second glance as the wagon rumbled by.
The
farmer finally reached his destination, pulled the team up before the dry
goods store, and set the brake. Sara gingerly lifted Lissybeth off the floor
beside her. The exhausted soldier didn’t even stir as she stepped from the back
of the wagon onto the wooden porch that ran the length of the storefront. She
thanked the man for the ride and when her stomach rumbled, Sara stared
longingly into the store’s dim interior before she turned away and started
walking toward Ash Street two blocks away.
"Not
far now, baby,” she whispered to Lissybeth. "Not far.” She prayed that she was
doing the right thing, that once she reached the Talbots’ fine, familiar house,
a hot meal and safe haven would be waiting, even if only for a night.
Number
47 Ash Street came into view the moment she turned the corner. Set off behind a
white picket fence with a wide lawn, it was still the grandest house in town.
Sometimes
late at night she would lie awake and wonder if the magical time she had spent
living in the Talbots’ home had been real or merely a figment of her imagination.
Her life before the war seemed like a dream; at fifteen, she had moved in to
care for Louzanna Talbot; at seventeen, after two glorious, golden weeks of a
whirlwind courtship, she had married Dr. Dru Talbot and thought to live happily
ever after.
Five
years later, it was hard to believe she had ever truly been the innocent,
starry-eyed girl that he had taken for his bride.
Now
she was not only Dru Talbot’s widow, but a fallen woman in the eyes of the
world. She was no better than a camp follower. She was a woman who had lost the
man she so dearly loved to war, a woman who then put her faith and trust in the
wrong man and now had nothing save the child of that union.
Sara
lingered across the street from the Talbots’ staring at the wide, columned porch
that ran across the entire front and side of the house; she tried to make out
some sign of movement behind the lace curtains at the drawing room windows.
Then, mustering all the confidence she could,
she shifted Lissybeth to the opposite shoulder and quickly crossed the
street.
The
gate in the picket fence hung lopsided on its hinges. The flower beds bordering
the front of the house overflowed with tangled weeds. The same, deep abiding
sadness she had felt earlier lingered around the place, one that thrived
beneath the eaves and lurked in the shadowed corners of the porch behind the
old rockers lined up to face the street. The lace draperies at the windows,
once so frothy white, hung limp and yellowed behind weather-smeared, spotted
panes of glass.
A
sigh of relief escaped her when she spotted a familiar quilting frame standing
inside the long parlor window. An intricate bow-tie pattern made up of
hundreds of small, evenly cut squares of print and checkered pieces was framed
and ready to finish quilting. Louzanna Talbot’s world had been reduced to
fabric patches and thread that bound cotton batting between patchwork tops and
backing.
Sara
stared at the front door while trying to shush Lissybeth’s whining. She lifted
the brass knocker and stared at the black, fingerless gloves that hid the fact
that she wore no wedding ring. She pounded three times, then tightened her arms
beneath her little girl’s bottom and waited patiently. When there was no
answer, she lifted the knocker again and let it fall, wondered why Louzanna
Talbot’s Negro manservant, Jamie, was taking so long to answer.
A
flicker of movement caught her eye. Someone was inside the house, standing near
enough to brush the edges of the curtain against the window in the center of
the door. Sara pressed her nose to the pane but could not make out a shape
through the layers of her veil and the sheer curtain panel at the oval window.
"Hello?
Is anyone home? Jamie, are you there?” She pounded on the doorframe. "Louzanna?
Can you hear me?”
A
recluse afraid of her own shadow, Louzanna suffered from severe bouts of
hysteria. Sara resolved to stand there all evening if she had to as she pressed
her forehead against the windowpane and tried to see through the curtain.
"Louzanna?
Lou, open the door, please.” She lowered her voice. "It’s Sara.”
Finally,
a latch clicked, then another. The door creaked and slowly swung inward no more
than six inches. All Sara saw of Louzanna was a set of pale, slender fingers
grasping the edge of the door and thick braids of wren-brown hair pinned atop
her crown.
"Louzanna, it’s me. It’s Sara. May I come
in?” Sara knew what it cost her former sister-in-law to open the front door at
all.
Dru’s
older sister was thirty-eight now, but her translucent skin, hardly ever
touched by sunlight, was barely creased at all. Her hair was streaked with a
few wisps of gray, but for the most part, it retained its fullness and soft
brown hue.
Silence
lengthened. The knuckles on Lou’s hand whitened. Finally, in a weak, low voice,
the woman on the other side whispered, "Is it really you, Sara? Is it
really, truly you?”
Tears
stung Sara’s eyes. She frantically tried to blink them away. "It’s really me,
Louzanna. Please, let me come in.”
Another
pause, another dozen heartbeats of despair.
Louzanna’s
voice wavered. More of her braids showed, then her forehead, then pale, hazel
eyes peered around the edge of the door. Those eyes went wide when they lit on
the child in Sara’s arms.
"Oh,
Sara.” Louzanna’s voice was thready.
"Please,
Lou.”
Louzanna
clung to the edge of the door, wielding it like a shield, a barrier between
herself and a world she had shut herself off from long before the war ever
started.
Sara
couldn’t imagine Louzanna coping all alone for very long. One of the reasons
she had felt she could leave Lou at all was because she knew Jamie would be
there to care for her.
"Where’s
Jamie?” she asked.
"He’s
gone. Gone with the Union soldiers. They took him right after you left.”
The
sun was dipping low on the edge of the sky. Dusk was gathered in the thick,
overgrown hedges and dense woods that ran behind the homes on Ash Street. Her
desperation no longer tempered by daylight, Sara planted her thigh against the
door, afraid Lou might suddenly become fretful and edge it shut.
Dear
Lord, give her the courage to let me in.
Frantic,
Sara spoke quickly, glancing over her shoulder toward the deserted street.
"I’ve
come all the way from Ohio. I stopped by Collier’s Ferry first, but my daddy
turned me away. I’ve no place else to go. I’m begging you, please let me
in. If not for me, for my child. She’s innocent of everything I’ve done. Take
pity on her and let us in, just for tonight. All I’m asking for is a meal and a
place to sleep.”
She
remembered there was an old cabin behind the house where Jamie had lived. "We
can sleep out in Jamie’s old place. You won’t even know we’re here.”
What
did it matter where she slept, as long as there was a roof over her child’s
head?
"Lift
your veil, Sara.” Lou sounded edgy and fearful, her voice weak, as if
unfamiliar with sound.
Slowly
Sara shifted Lissybeth, grasped the edge of her veil, and lifted it over the
wide hat brim to reveal her face. She smiled, but the result was weak and
wobbly at best and a painful reminder of the swelling on her cheek. The image
of the door wavered as it floated on her tears.
"Oh,
my, Sara!” Lou gasped, shaking her head, her eyes gone wide. "What happened to
your face?”
"I . . .
tripped and fell.” Sara avoided Lou’s gaze as she mumbled around the lie. Daddy
had always hit first and asked questions later. Today he had given her
something to remember him by before he had turned her away from the family
cabin at Collier’s Ferry.
Lou
backed up and disappeared momentarily. When the door swung wide enough for Sara
to slip in, she moved quickly, knowing Lou’s deep abiding terror of the front
yard and the street beyond. Once inside, she turned to her former sister-in-law
with a rush of relief that comes after finding something long sought and
familiar.
Lou was dressed the way she
had always dressed, much like Sara was now, in a black silk gown with black
lace trim and jet buttons. A gold wedding band with an opal stone dangled from
a long, gold chain around Louzanna’s neck. Her faded brown hair and evenly
drawn features were the same as Sara remembered, save for added etching at the
corners of her eyes.
Louzanna had kept her figure,
her slender waist, and dignified stance despite bouts of fear and hysteria that
bordered on madness. Though the cuffs and hem of her dress were worn and turned
inside out and her gown was wrinkled, she didn’t have a single curl out of
place.
Quieted by new sights and
sounds, Lissybeth lay her head in the crook of Sara’s neck and sucked her
fingers as she stared at Louzanna.
"I’m sorry to show up like
this without word, but I truly have no place else to go,” Sara apologized.
Lou was watching her closely,
her gaze darting to the door and back again as if she suspected some horror had
followed Sara inside.
"What are you doing all alone?
What happened to the man you ran off with, Sara?”
Humiliation pierced Sara’s
heart. She had been such an utter, witless fool the day she had run off and
left the wedding ring Dru had given her atop a note for Lou on the upstairs
hall table.
Sara licked her lips,
swallowed. She could lie, but she and Louzanna Talbot had lived together for
nearly two years, shared Dru’s letters, shared their joys and heartaches.
Louzanna deserved more than lies, but Sara couldn’t bear to tell the whole
sordid story.
"He is out of my life for
good.”
Lou stared at Elizabeth,
unable to take her eyes off the child. "And so you’ve finally come home,” Lou
said softly.
"Yes.”
"I knew you would, eventually.
I never lost hope.” The edges of Lou’s lips curled up into what might have been
an attempt to smile. She concentrated on the little girl in Sara’s arms.
"What is her name?” Lou and
Lissybeth exchanged curious stares.
"Elizabeth. I call her
Lissybeth,” Sara said.
One of Lissybeth’s little
hands, fingers splayed and extended, stretched toward the lonely recluse.
Timidly, Louzanna slowly
raised her hand and offered her index finger
to the child. When Lissybeth’s little hand closed around Louzanna’s fingers,
Lou closed her eyes and let out a sigh.
"Lou?” Sara was used to Louzanna’s
mind drifting and having to coax her around.
Startled,
Louzanna looked up, met Sara’s eyes, and suddenly threw her arms around Sara’s
neck. She held on for dear life, encompassing both Sara and Lissybeth in her
embrace. When she finally drew back, her hazel eyes were shimmering with tears.
"I
haven’t much,” Louzanna admitted softly, "but you’re welcome to share it. This
is still your home, Sara, if you want it. I’m so glad you’ve finally come
back.”
2
DR. DRU TALBOT stumbled on a rock in the middle of a bone-dry road and hit the
ground. He tasted dust and stifled a groan. As the woods along both sides of
the road came back into focus, he straightened to a sitting position and tried
to shake the stars out of his head. Used up by the war, he felt as old as the
dirt he was sitting in.
An
old swayback mule he’d found wandering a back road blinked down at him without
a lick of comprehension.
"I
must be a damned terrible sight,” he told the mule. "But at least we’re a
matched pair.”
He
had traveled with an odd mix of companions on the road between southern
Georgia and home, but the mule was the most amiable and the easiest to suffer,
by far.
After
months of crossing the South on foot, searching for any rail line still running
and finding none, meeting dead ends at every turn, he had finally walked across
the Tennessee border and was so close to home that he could almost taste it.
His
hand shook when he reached out to push himself up off the ground and a groan
escaped him. There was a chill in the evening air and he found himself wishing
that he hadn’t lost the Irish chain quilt his sister had given him on the night
he declared he was going to Tennessee to enlist in the Confederate army. Back
in the early days of the war he had carried the tattered keepsake for so long
it had almost become part of him, as much as an old ache in his shoulder
and the long scar above his right ear. As much as his memories of home, of his
sister, and most of all, of Sara, his wife.
His
legs were heavy as lead but he pushed on, determined to keep moving until there
was just enough light left for him to see by to make a fire. Every step he took
put him another minute closer to home.
He
hadn’t laid eyes on Sara since the dawn after their wedding. He’d done as she
had asked, left the way she had wanted him to, slipping away with no goodbye,
the way he had promised her that he would go. Now he wondered if he was fooling
himself thinking that after all he had been through he could slip back into his
old life just as easily as he had walked out of it.
He
remembered every moment of their brief but passionate love affair as if it had
happened yesterday. He had met Sara two years before they married on a warm
spring day, the day he had been leaving for South Carolina Medical College.
He’d
first laid eyes on her aboard the ferry raft that her father and brothers ran
across Magnolia Creek.
He
boarded the ferry deeply lost in thought when suddenly there came a tug on his
sleeve accompanied by a low, seductive female voice.
"Nickel fare,
Mister. You paid yet?”
Reaching into his
vest pocket for change, Dru palmed a nickel, turned around, and suddenly found
himself staring into the bluest, most enchanting eyes he had ever seen. The
sound of the creek lapping against the side of the huge raft, the low cough of
a rheumatic old man, the babble of children crowded along the rail, everything
but the girl faded from his conscience. His tongue had stuck to the roof of his
mouth, and his lips, of their own volition, had curled into a smile.
Immobile, he had
stood there with one hand half out of his pocket and his heart beating in his
ears, unable to do anything more than gaze into eyes so captivating that he
didn’t even mind that they had paralyzed him.
A lovely smile
broke across her features and although dirt smudges marred her cheeks, the
complexion beneath them was flawless and radiantly aglow. She was tall for a
woman, though not tall enough to look him in the eye; whip thin; with
well-rounded breasts beneath the rough homespun fabric of a faded gray gown;
and barefoot.
She blinked at him
and the spell was momentarily broken, at least long enough so that his hand
had come out of his pocket, almost as if it had never stopped moving at all.
Once again he had become aware of the sights and sounds around them, but all he
could do was stare at the bewitching girl standing before him.
"Thank you kindly,
Mister . . .”
He could tell she
was waiting for him to tell her his name, but he could only concentrate on her
fingers as they closed around the nickel and thought, lucky, lucky coin.
He had to stall
and clear his throat before he could finally remember his own name. "Talbot.
Dru Talbot.”
Her lashes lazed over her eyes, forcing her to peer through them. She took a step that brought her up
heart-stoppingly close.
"Of the Talbot
Mills Talbots?” she asked.
His grandfather
had founded a sorghum mill at the old family farm, which had eventually led to
the settlement of the nearby town. Farmers from all around the county brought
their sorghum cane into the mill to have it processed. Dru’s father, Gerald,
took over running the mill when the time came and had kept the family one of
the most successful and prominent in the county.
He nodded in
acknowledgment. "My family used to own the mill.”
She stood there squeezing
the life out of the nickel and Dru found himself thrilled to have her tarry
rather than move on to another passenger. Suddenly he didn’t care if the ferry
ever reached the opposite shore. He was content to stare into her gorgeous eyes
and bask in her warm smile.
"Are you married,
Dru Talbot?”
He laughed at her
boldness which somehow, coming from such innocent, pouting lips, seemed
perfectly natural.
"No. I’m just off
to medical college.”
"College? You’re
goin’ off to college? Where?”
"South Carolina.”
"So far away.” She
shook her head in awe. "I don’t know a lick about either one. I’ve never been
past this damn creek.”
When she looked as
if she was about to move on he knew a moment of unforeseen panic and before he
knew it he had asked, "What’s your name?”
"Sara. Sara
Collier.”
She said the name
proudly, as if daring him to speak against it. He’d heard the name but only
knew that there were lots of Colliers who lived somewhere in the bottomland
along the creek. They ran the ferry, surviving off nickel fares, hunting and
selling moonshine liquor.
"How old are you,
Sara?” A burning need to know and a mounting desire made him ask. She looked
very young, but in many ways seemed much older than he. He found himself
wondering what her lips would taste like.
"Old enough, I
reckon.”
"And how old would
that be?”
"Just turned
fifteen.”
He had been almost
disappointed to think that the last thing he needed was an entanglement with an
uneducated, barefoot—though very tempting—backwoods girl.
"What will you study
in college, Dru Talbot, that you couldn’t learn right here in Kentucky?” She
arched her back, accentuating her breasts, and smiled up at him so flirtatiously that he found himself captivated by
her impetuosity.
"Medicine.”
"My granddaddy’s a
healer. He taught me to be one, too. I know all about healing herbs. I know
lots of charms, too.”
She was charming,
he’d give her that, but he doubted any girl that young knew much about healing.
A burly, slovenly
dressed young man with a few days’ growth of stubble over the lower half of his
face was watching Sara from across the ferry. Dru had seen him loading the
passengers at the landing and figured the man for a Collier, too.
He tried to look
serious, as if he and Sara might be engaged in worthy discussion. "What do you
mean by charms? Is he a faith healer?”
If she was worried
about taking the fares back to her sibling, she didn’t appear to be. "He
relies on the Bible, that’s for certain, but to my mind there’s always a bit of
magic in it. That and what Granddaddy calls the power of belief. Folks have to
believe that the healing is going to take or that a charm will work. Some folks
think a charm is something like a spell, but Granddaddy would never do the
devil’s work.”
Dru shifted,
steadied himself against the sway of the raft fighting the current, and watched
the breeze toy with a lock of her hair. "Give me an example,” he urged.
"Well, for
instance, if a body has the shingles, the cure is to rub the blood of a black
cat or a black hen over the troubled parts. Or . . .” She
glanced up to make certain he was listening. "Shingles can be cured by thinking
of the person you like best.”
He bit the inside
of his cheek to keep from laughing outright and risk offending her, and
focused on the far side of the creek as she went on.
"Granddaddy puts polecat grease on folks with rheumatism and cures the typhoid by binding onion and
fish on the soles of his feet.”
"His feet or the
patient’s?” Dru might have dared to laugh at his joke had he not almost choked
on his own breath when his gaze slammed into the near iridescence of her huge
blue eyes.
"Are you teasing
at me, Dru Talbot?” She reared back, acting affronted, but her warm smile and
the twinkle in her eye gave her away.
"I’m starting to
fear it’s the other way around, Miss Collier.”
"Granddaddy takes
his healing serious. He’s passed on a lot to me. Some of it superstition, to be
sure, but I’d be willing to bet many of his herbal remedies are the same as
what you’ll learn at that fancy college of yours.” She tipped her head and eyed
him from beneath thick sable lashes. "I’d be more than willing to help you when
you start your doctorin’.”
"I won’t be home
for two years.” The notion made him suddenly sober. Two years was a long time
to be gone. He wondered where Miss Sara Collier would find herself in two
years’ time.
"Dru Talbot?”
Sara’s voice slipped over him like warm, fresh cream when she tugged on his
sleeve again. "I’m giving you fair warning so you won’t be shocked when it
finally happens.”
"When what happens?”
"When we get
married.”
THE
PRESENT ENFOLDED him again as night crept through the wood, deepening shadows,
tempting cicadas to sing. An owl hooted somewhere to the east. He had grown
accustomed to the comforting night sounds of the woods and so shut them out as
his mind lingered, as it always wanted to, on Sara.
He
had returned home from medical college two years after they met to discover
Sara Collier was living in his home. Dr. Maximus Porter, Magnolia Creek’s only
physician, a man he greatly admired, had introduced Sara to Louzanna and
strongly urged Lou to hire the girl as a companion, hoping Sara could help
Louzanna combat her bouts of hysteria while Dru was away.
Fate,
it seemed, had wanted them together.
Now,
after rounding one more bend in the road, he noticed the flickering
yellow-orange glow of a low campfire and cautiously slowed his steps.
Irregulars roamed the woods, men who weren’t about to let the war die even
though surrender was a year old. Spawned by war, there remained a deep abiding
bitterness throughout the South, but he wore the right colors in this state to
be insured a modicum of safety.
His
uniform trousers had been reduced to rags and exchanged for inexpensive brown
homespun long ago. His ragged officer’s tunic of cadet gray was nothing but a
sad remnant of the surgeon’s coat he had once worn so proudly. The sash of
green silk net that labeled him a medical officer now lashed his sword and
scarred leather instrument bag to the trappings on the mule.
"Talbot,
Fifth Kentucky!” he called out to identify himself to the two men seated by the
fire. It wouldn’t do to get himself killed this close to home.
Both
men turned in his direction, looking enough alike to be brothers with their
strawberry hair and wide gaps between their teeth. One called out an
invitation.
"Come
on up close and sit a spell, then. We’re here for the night. Got a bit of
roasted squirrel to offer ya.”
He
led the mule into the welcoming circle of firelight, nodded to each man in
turn, and began to untie a bag that held a can of beans and rummaged through
his things for a tin of sardines that he’d been hoarding.
"I
see by that coat you’re a doctor.” The thinner of the two bearded men in
Confederate States of America gray was in the process of chewing a mouthful of
roasted squirrel, but that didn’t keep him from talking.
"That
I am,” Dru admitted. Once, a raw recruit and fledgling doctor at the same time,
he had been proud of his new profession. But pride does come before a fall, and
as soon as the war had turned fierce, he had found himself feeling more
helpless and overwhelmed than anything else.
He
had learned to work under the most foul of conditions, no matter how spent or
mentally exhausted he was feeling. Sometimes he wondered just how many lives he
had really saved when he had permanently altered a man’s future by removing a
hand, a foot, a limb, or sometimes even two, from the same man?
In
the heat of his first battle, as cannon fire sounded in the distance and the
injured awaiting surgery were backed up ten deep, he was just thankful that he
had been given a chance to assist a country doctor for a few weeks before he
returned from school in South Carolina.
There
were plenty of so-called surgeons active during the first years of the war who
had never even witnessed an operation, let alone performed one.
Often
he found himself with no time to think, acting on sheer instinct and brash
bravado. There were days he would have done anything to escape the bloody
theater of war and, ashamed to admit it even to himself, he had even lived a
lie to keep himself away from the conflict for a few blessed months.
Settling
into a quiet practice in Magnolia Creek after all he’d been through would seem
to be as easy as walking through a flower garden on a warm summer day.
He
offered up the sardines, and the scant dinner was accompanied by sparse bursts
of conversation. The young men turned out to be brothers, farm boys from the
Ninth Kentucky Regiment, headed home to Daviess County.
After
dinner, cups of acorn coffee sufficed. Few in the South had tasted the real
thing in years. Southerners had learned to make substitutes out of just about
anything they could boil.
The
older brother from Daviess County bragged that he hadn’t suffered a single
gunshot wound and was certain that he had nine lives and he had only used a
couple of them. But Dru suspected, from the look of the dense rash on the man’s
neck and arms, that the farm boy was suffering the second stage of gonorrhea.
Out
of silkweed root, resin, and blue vitriol—all common treatments for the
ailment—Dru couldn’t even offer to do anything for the young man. He had
treated more cases of the disease than he had war wounds. So many young boys,
newly off the farm, spent as much time with whores as they did fighting,
especially if they were stationed in cities where whores were plentiful. If
venereal disease didn’t kill them, then typhoid, or even the measles, often
took their toll.
At
least he would be going home to Sara clean. He hadn’t touched another woman in
six years. He had lived through Shiloh and Vicksburg, fought for his life when
a minié ball slammed along the side of his head above his right ear, and spent
hellish months on the other side of the country in Point Lookout Prisoner of
War Camp in Maryland. He considered himself lucky.
The
memory of the night he had spent in Sara’s arms and the dream of all the nights
they would one day share had kept him alive.
Later
that evening, as he hunkered down in his bedroll oblivious to the hard ground
and the chilly air, Dru Talbot fell asleep with the hint of a smile on his
face.
After
six long years, he was almost home.
