13
july 1862. from mary.
i feel quite pert after the cool rain we had yesterday. i hope it isn’t as cold at night
up the valley. tell beards he didn’t take all the rain away from here this time when he
headed back to camp, and he also left the cold air behind. i suppose i shouldn’t
complain about the rain, it was welcome after such a dry may and june. beards also
left behind a bit of sadness, i confess. he came by to call, and because i told ma about
our vow to be sweethearts, she left us alone in the parlor for an afternoon. i believe i
love him more with each passing week. you can tell him that he is sorely missed
around here.
law, tom, your jaw would drop if you could see the poverty of the merchants in
staunton these days. pa set off last week to get provisions, but there were none to be
had. mr. sampson’s market was shut tight, as were mr. wilson’s bakery, the shoe
stores, hardware and seed merchants, the american hotel, and even all the taverns.
nary a crumb of sugar or coffee could be bought for all the gold in china! prices for
flour have risen from six dollars a barrel last year up to as much as forty dollars, and
butter has risen from twenty cents a pound to as much as two dollars a pound. there
simply is no salt, not even for rich people.
pa finished his first harvest last monday. he had no help, but for young jackie
beard one day and old mr. york, who must be in his seventies, the next two. he could
scarcely find time to be in the field because folks dragged one sack after another to the
mill. farmers around here are not storing their grains but are having them ground
immediately after harvest. pa says it’s because they want to take advantage of current
government prices.
but i believe they are convinced that if their grain is in sacks rather than a silo, it
can be better hid under floorboards and in attics, safe from both armies’ soldiers. i
tell you, tom, folks this year don’t want to give up their all for the confederacy. the
summer’s terrible drought and relentless army requisitioning is causing men around
here to predict a sure famine. they say an agricultural catastrophe plagues the entire
valley.
in the flatlands around richmond, i’d marched alongside dry fields filled with stunted brown
corn stalks and topsoil spiraling upward in the slightest breeze. that’s where we camped and
fought that june and july. i’d witnessed the townspeople’s faces marked with fear that they’d
lose what was left of their crops when we marched through. but i had prayed that the valley had
been spared. this letter proved my worst fears were true.
in her next letter, mary told me that cannon reports were heard every day, that they came
more rapidly than she could write each word of her letter. that the booming kept rhythm with
every beat of her heart. she wrote:
it seems powerfully strange for violent noises to fill the house, while i sit as usual on
the library sofa, surrounded by familiar things like our childhood books and ma’s
framed currier and ives prints. the morning sun shines just the same on the blue
chinese carpet. outdoors, it looks like any summer day. ma’s fluffy pink and red roses
are in full bloom, and clusters of snow-white daisies and fever-few are near the end of
their season. do you remember that the only machine sounds we used to hear were
those of the horse-drawn thresher with the swish, swish of the blades in the fields,
wagon wheels rumbling on the dirt road, and the hall clock ticking? now, close by,
there is the unrelenting noise of cannons and artillery.
at first, with no newspapers and only rumors to inform us, we had no idea how
close those weapons were. we worried sick we’d be overrun by yankees or be struck
down by stray bullets whenever we went into the garden to fetch a potato. it’s taken us
a while to figure distance and to understand that cannon fire can be heard from battles
as far away as sixty miles because the mountains pass along the sound. when we can
bear it no longer, we lower the window sashes and swelter inside during the heat. to
preserve sanity, the booming must be ignored, or we’ll all join poor mrs. calliston in
the lunatic asylum.
i’d worried for days over mary’s letters about the drought and hardships at home. now, not
far from manassas again, the boys in my company and i were also suffering from heat,
surrounded by tens of thousands of soldiers tramping ahead and behind us.
grunting with effort behind a briar rosebush by the roadside, sam tugged at his filthy canvas
pants. then off came the one-piece cotton drawers that covered him from shoulder to mid-thigh,
and which were slung disdainfully aside. he quickly yanked the pants back on, but at least had
shed the extra layer underneath. his shirt had been peeled off several miles back.
the august sun sizzled hot enough to boil a cup of confederate rye coffee and pretty soon
gave rise to blisters across sam’s muscular shoulders. his clothing blended into the other
drawers, shirts, handkerchiefs, and vests that littered the road and blanketed ditches with a
continuous strip of white. jim blue walked next to me bare-chested, but his shirt draped his head
like a biblical sheik of arabia and partially shaded his back. a chorus of coughs and sneezes
peppered the air, caused by grit stirred up by boots on the road. our meager water was hoarded
in tin canteens drawn from a nearby caramel-colored creek. sweat blinded anyone without a
bandana or torn strip of shirting knotted across his forehead.
“when i took these things off a second ago, it felt good enough to do it again and tramp
naked down the road.” sam grinned mischievously and fiddled with his top pants button again.
“these canvas pants are danged hot.”
“you do that, and winchester women will faint at your feet. i hope you’ll spare a few for
your old comrades.” tayloe wiggled shirtsleeves from his bare shoulders as he spoke. along the
route, women and children had come into their yards to cheer us on.
“not a chance,” sam said.
beards’s complaints had grown fewer and weaker as the sun soared higher. “tom, i cannot . .
. do you,” he mumbled. for several minutes he had rambled in his talk, but a headache pounded
between my ears, and my vision swam. in my haze, i couldn’t pay attention to anyone else.
“if you’re going to say something, for tarnation’s sake, make some sense,” i grumbled.
suddenly, he bent over double and spewed out the messy contents of his gut. this seemed
different from beards’s vomiting habit whenever battle was nigh. he stumbled and grabbed my
arm, panting. then he crumpled at my feet. he lay there unmoving, his legs tucked under like
useless wings.
“water! does anyone have water to spare? a man is down with sunstroke here,” i hollered as
i stooped to raise his head above the parched road. the flesh on the back of his neck felt on fire,
and he was still as a corpse. beards had been in my life as long as i could remember, right up
through these worst of days. he couldn’t abandon me now. and i wasn’t the only one who
would mourn his passing. what would i tell mary? my breath caught in my throat. with the last
of my canteen, i frantically sprinkled his head and slapped his reddened cheeks. his eyes
fluttered, and he shoved my hand away. pushing himself up with his elbows, he sat without
support in the dust. now that he was roused, sam and i helped him stagger to a hospital wagon,
where he could travel sheltered by its tarp. we settled him on the boards with his back propped
against the side. wiping his forehead with his hand, in a weak voice he said, “i owe you, my
friend. i’ll not forget.” my heart near to burst with relief. some boys had fallen, never to rise
again. thank god, beards wasn’t one of them. the wagon train gathered their prostrate bodies
and hauled them to the next campground where their gaseous remains would be buried before
they burst. mary couldn’t have lost beards like that, nor could i.
for two weeks, we had marched twenty-five miles a day as blood pounded unceasingly
through my ears. we marched even when the temperature must have soared above 100 degrees.
a rifle, ammunition, a water canteen, and rations were all that was worth carrying. by the sides
of the road, foam-speckled horses sprawled, done in by the sun. we hadn’t passed a creek or
pond for far too many hours. by nightfall, the army came upon a few houses with wells in their
yards, but with thousands of men jostling for a position to get water, there was little hope of
quenching one’s thirst. now we were a day from the brutal battle of second manassas where
we’d find relief from the marching but not the infernal temperature. those of us who survived
nature, through dumb luck or precaution, eventually became hardened like a gallstone to such
discomfort.
