Lincolnites

Lily sat on the porch, the day’s plowing done and her year-old child asleep in his crib. In her hands, the long steel needles clicked together and spread apart in a rhythmic sparring as the yarn slowly unspooled from the long pocket of her gingham dress, became part of the coverlet draped over her knees.  Except for the occasional glance down the valley, Lily kept her eyes closed. She inhaled the aroma of the fresh-turned earth and the dogwood blossoms. She listened to the bees humming around the bee box. Like the fluttering she’d begun to feel in her belly, all bespoke the return of life after a hard winter. Lily thought again of the New York newspaper Ethan brought with him when he’d come back from Tennessee on his Christmas furlough, how it had claimed the war would be over by summer. Ethan had thought even sooner, claiming soon as the roads were passable Grant would take Richmond and it would be done. “Good as over now,” he’d told her, but Ethan had still slept in the root cellar every night of the furlough and stayed inside during the day, his haversack and rifle by the back door, because Confederates came up the valley from Boone looking for Lincolnites like Ethan.  

She felt the afternoon light on her face, soothing as the hum of the bees. It was good to be sitting finally, only her hands working now, the child she’d set in the shade as she plowed, suckled and asleep. After a few more minutes, Lily allowed her hands to rest as well, laying the foot-long needles lengthways on her lap. Reason enough to be tired, she figured, a day breaking ground with a bull-tongue plow and draft horse. Soon enough the young one would wake and she’d have to suckle him again, then fix herself something to eat as well. After that she’d have to feed the chickens and hide the horse in the woods above the spring. Lily felt the flutter again deep in her belly, and knew it was another reason for her tiredness. Hand on her stomach, she counted the months since Ethan’s furlough and figured she’d be rounding the homespun of her dress in another month.  

Lily looked down the valley a half mile to where the old Boone toll road followed  Middlefork Creek, then closed her eyes again, mulling over names for the child, thinking about how her own birthday was also in late September and that by then Ethan would be home for good and they’d be a family again, the both of them young enough not to be broken by the hard times of the last two years. She made a picture in her mind of her and Ethan and the young ones all together, the crops she’d planted ripe and proud in the field, the apple tree’s branches sagging with fruit.  

When she opened her eyes, the Confederate was almost in the yard. He must have figured she’d be watching the road because he’d come down the valley instead of up, emerging from a thick stand of birch trees he’d followed down the creek. It was too late to hide the horse or gather the chickens into the root cellar, so Lily didn’t get up from the chair but just watched him approach, a musket in his right hand and a tote sack in the left. He wore a threadbare butternut jacket and a cap and a pair of ragged gray wool trousers, the boots alone looking new. Lily knew the man those boots had belonged to, and she knew the hickory tree where they’d left the rest of him dangling, not only a rope around his neck but also a cedar shingle with the word Lincolnite burned into the wood.  

The Confederate grinned as he stepped into the yard.  He raised his finger and thumb to the cap, but his eyes were on the draft horse in the pasture. He looked to be about forty, though in these times people often looked older than they were, even children. Early in the year as it was, the man’s face was tanned. Because of the way he wore the cap with its brim tilted high, Lily knew, not the way a farmer would wear a hat or cap. She saw how he’d cinched a strip of cow leather around his waist to keep his pants up and the hollowness under the cheekbones, as if she didn’t already know what the tote sack was for. Lily knew she’d be lucky if a couple of chickens were enough for him, but the boots didn’t reassure her of that. 

“Afternoon,” he said, finally letting his gaze settle on Lily briefly before looking westward toward Grandfather Mountain. “Looks to be some rain coming, maybe by full dark.” 

“Take what chickens you want,” Lily said.  “I’ll help you catch them.”

The man took his left forearm and wiped sweat off his brow, the tote sack covering his face a moment as he did so. As he lowered his arm, his grin had been replaced with a seeming sobriety. 

“Wish I could, but it’s my sworn duty to requisition that draft horse for the cause.”

“For the cause,” Lily said, meeting her eyes, “like them boots you’re wearing.”

The Confederate stared at his boots, lifted one onto the porch step as though to better examine it.

“These boots wasn’t requisitioned. Traded my best piece of rope for them, but I’m of a mind you already know that.” He raised his eyes and looked at Lily. “That neighbor of yours wasn’t careful on his furlough as your husband.”

Lily studied the man’s face, a familiarity behind the scraggly beard and the hard, unflinching eyes worn by all who traversed this land now. She thought back to the time a man or woman from up here could go into Boone. 

“You used to work at Old Man Mast’s store, didn’t you?” Lily said.

“I did,” he said.

“My daddy used to trade with you. One time when I was with him you give me and my sister a peppermint.”

The man’s eyes didn’t soften, but something in his face seemed to let go a little, just for a moment. 

“Old Mast didn’t like me doing that, but it was a small enough thing to do for the chaps.” 

For a few moments he didn’t say anything else, maybe thinking back to that time, maybe not. 

“Your name was Mr. Hartley,” Lily said. “I remember that now.”

The Confederate nodded.

“It still is,” he said, “my name being Hartley, I mean.” He paused. “But that don’t change nothing in the here and now, though, does it?”

“No,” Lily replied. “I guess it don’t.”

“So I’ll be taking the horse,” Hartley said, “lest you got something to barter for it, maybe some of that yankee money they pay your man with? We might could make us a trade for some of that.” 

“There ain’t no money here,” Lily said, telling the truth because what money they had she’d sown in Ethan’s coat lining. Safer there than anywhere on the farm, she’d told Ethan before he left, but he’d agreed only after she’d also sown his name and where to send his body on the coat’s side  pocket. Ethan’s older brother had done the same, the two of them vowing to get the other’s coat home if not the body. 

“I guess I better get to it then,” Hartley said, “try to beat this rain back to Boone.”

He turned from her, whistling “Dixie” as he walked toward the pasture, almost to the split-rail fence when Lily told him she had something to trade for the horse.  

“What would that be?” Hartley asked.

Lily lifted the ball of thread off her lap and placed it on the porch’s puncheon floor, then set the half-finished coverlet on the floor as well. As she got up from the chair, her hands smoothed the gingham around her hips. Lily stepped to the porch edge and freed the braid so her blonde hair fell loose on her neck and shoulders.

“You know my meaning,” she said.

Hartley stepped closer to the porch, not speaking as he did so. To look her over, Lily knew. She sucked in her stomach slightly to conceal her condition, though his knowing she was with child might make it better for him. A man could think that way in these times, she thought. Lily watched as Hartley silently mulled over his choices, including the choice he’d surely come to by now that he could just as easy have her and the horse  both.

“How old are you?” he asked. 

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen,” Hartley said, though whether this was or wasn’t in her favor she did not know.  He looked west again toward Grandfather Mountain and studied the sky before glancing down the valley at the toll road. 

Okay,” he finally said, and nodded toward the cabin door. “Let’s you and me go inside.”

“Not in the cabin,” Lily answered.  “My young one’s in there.”

For a moment she thought Hartley would insist, but he didn’t.

“Where then?” he said.

“The root cellar. It’s got a pallet we can lay on.”

Hartley’s chin lifted, his eyes seeming to focus on something behind Lily and the chair.

“I reckon we’ll know where to look for your man next time, won’t we?” When Lily didn’t respond, Hartley offered a smile that looked almost friendly. “Lead on,” he said.

Lily came down the steps and Hartley followed her around the cabin, past the bee box and chopping block and the old root cellar, the one they’d used before the war. They followed the faintest path through a thicket of rhododendron to where the path ended abruptly on a hillside. Lily cleared away the green-leaved rhododendron branches she replaced each week and unlatched a square wooden door. The rusty hinges creaked as it yawned open, the cellar’s damp earthy odor rising as well. Lily didn’t let go until the door rested against the slanting land. The afternoon sun angled in and pushed back enough dark to see planked flooring lined with jars of vegetables and honey, at the center a pallet and quilt. There were no steps, just a three-foot drop. 

“And you think me stupid enough to go in their first?” Hartley said to her. 

“I’ll go in first,” Lily answered, and sat down in the entrance, dangling one foot until it touched the packed earth. She held to the door frame and eased herself inside, crouching low, trying not to think how she might be stepping into her own grave. The corn shucks made a rasping sound as she settled herself on the pallet.  

“We could do it as easy up here,” Hartley said, peering at her from the entrance. “It’s good as some old spider hole.”

“I ain’t going to dirty myself rooting around on the ground,” Lily said. 

She thought he’d leave the musket outside, but instead Hartley buckled his knees and leaned, set his left hand on a beam. As he shifted his body to enter, Lily took one of the metal needles from her dress pocket and laid it behind her. She prodded her upper stomach with her fingers, not the midsection but around the edges—finding where the ribs were and where they weren’t. 

Hartley leaned his rifle against the earthen wall and hunched to take off his coat and free the cowhide from around his pants. The sunlight made his face appear dark and featureless as if in silhouette. As he moved closer, Lily shifted to the left side of the mattress to make room for him. Lily smelled the tobacco on his breath as he pulled his shirt up to his chest and lay down on his back, fingers already fumbling to free his pants buttons. His sunken belly was so white compared to his face and drab clothing it seemed almost to glow in the strained light. Lily took the needle into her hand. She thought of the hog she’d killed and slaughtered last January, remembering how the liver wrapped itself around the stomach, like a saddle. Not so much difference in a hog’s guts and a man’s, she’d heard one time.

“Shuck off that dress or raise it,” Hartley said, his fingers on the last button. “I ain’t got time to dawdle.”

“Alright,” Lily said, and hiked the hem over her knees, kneeling beside him as if to pull the dress off. She reached behind her and grasped the needle. When Hartley placed his thumbs between cloth and hips to pull down his pants, Lily raised her right arm and fell forward, her left palm pressed against the needle’s round stem so the steel wouldn’t slip through her fingers. She shoved the steel deep as she could, the needle stalling a moment on the backbone, then scraping past as she flattened her right hand, both palms pressed against his stomach when the needle point went all the way through. 

 Hartley’s hands stayed on his trousers a moment longer, as though not yet registering what had happened. Lily sprang away and scrambled to the entrance before pausing.  Hartley shifted his forearms and slowly raised his head and stared at what little of the needle was not in him.  His legs pulled inward but he seemed unable to move his midsection, as if the needle had pinned him to the cellar floor. Lily took the rifle and set it outside, then pulled herself out of the hole as Hartley loosed a long lowing moan.

 She watched from above, waiting see if she’d need to figure out how to use the musket. After almost a minute, Hartley’s mouth grimaced, the teeth locked together like a dog tearing meat. He pushed himself backward with his forearms until he was able to slump his head and shoulders against the dirt wall. Lily could hear his breaths and see the rise of his chest. His eyes moved, looking her way now. Lily did not know if Hartley could actually see her. He raised his right hand a few inches off the cellar floor, palm upward as he stretched his arm toward the entrance, as if to catch what little light leaked in from the world. Lily closed and latched the cellar door, covered the entrance with the rhododendron branches, and walked back to the cabin.  

The child was awake and fretting in the crib. She nursed him and then fixed herself a supper of cornbread and beans. As Lily ate, she wondered if the Confederate had told anyone in Boone where he was headed. Maybe, but probably he wouldn’t have said which farm in particular, wouldn’t have even known which one until he found something to take. Ponder something else, she told herself, and thought again of names for the coming child. Girl names, because Granny Triplett had already rubbed Lily’s belly and told her this one would be a girl. Lily said aloud all the names she’d of thought of and again settled on Mary, because it would match her boy child’s name. 

After she’d cleared the table and changed the boy’s swaddlings, she went outside with the child in her arms, scattering some shell corn for the chickens before walking back through the rhododendron to the root cellar. There was less light now, but through the slats in the wood door she could see that he still slumped against the earthen wall, though now Hartley’s head rested on his chest. Lily watched several minutes, listening for a moan, a breath or sigh, then set the child behind her and quietly unlatched the door, opened it a few inches at a time until she could see clearly.  The needle was still inside him, every bit as deep as before. His face was white now as his belly, bleached looking. She quietly closed the door and latched it softly, as if a noise might startle him back to life. Lily gathered the rhododendron branches and concealed the entrance. 

She sat on the porch with the child and watched the dark gathered on the ridges slowly slide into the valley. A last barn swallow swept low across the pasture and into the barn as the first drops of rain began to fall, soft and hesitant at first, then steady. Lily went inside, taking the coverlet and yarn with her.  She lit the lamp and suckled the child a last time and put him in the crib. The supper fire still smoldered in the hearth, giving some warmth against the evening’s chill. It was the time of evening when she’d usually knit some more, but since she couldn’t do that tonight Lily took the newspaper from under the mattress and sat down at the table. She read the article again about the war being over by summer, stumbling over a few words that she didn’t know. When she came to the word Abraham, she glanced over at the crib. Not too long before I can call him by his name, Lily told herself.    

After a while longer, she hid the newspaper again and lay down in the bed. The rain was steady now on the cabin’s cedar shingles. The young one breathed steadily in the crib beside the bed.  Rain hard, she thought, thinking of what she’d be planting first when daylight came. Bad as it was that it had happened in the first place, there had been some luck in it too, Lily reckoned. At least it wasn’t winter when the ground was hard as granite. She could get it done in an hour, especially after a soaking rain, then rest a while before scattering the potato seeds, maybe even have time to plant some tomato and squash seeds before supper.

Note from Ron Rash — “Lincolnites” was inspired by an event that occurred to one of my ancestors in Watauga County, North Carolina. During the Civil War, my family and their neighbors were known as Union supporters. One afternoon a Confederate came and “confiscated” a horse, whistling Dixie all the while. My ancestor, a young farm wife, told the soldier he’d be whistling Dixie in hell by nightfall. The Confederate was found facedown in a creek the next morning, and the horse was back in its stable.

About the author:

Ron Rash is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University. He has published three collections of poetry, three short story collections, a children’s book, and three novels. His first novel, One Foot in Eden, won the Novello Literary Award and 

Appalachian Book of the Year in 2002. His second novel, Saints at the River, won Fiction Book of the Year from the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association in 2004. “Speckled Trout,” a short story that formed the basis of the first chapter in his third novel, The World Made Straight, won an O. Henry Prize. Chemistry and Other Stories, his most recent collection of short stories, was a finalist this year for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His forthcoming novel, Serena, will be released in October 2008.