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Annie, Between the States
By L. Elliott HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2009 L. Elliott
All right reserved. ISBN: 9780060012137
Chapter One July 21, 1861
Manassas, Virginia
Stop being such a pea-wit.
Annie shook her head slightly as she muttered to herself. She hated being so cowardly and sickened by a little blood. She squeezed the ball of lint in her hand to quiet her trembling. It was simple enough to do. The lint would help the wound clot. All she had to do was stuff it in. Taking a deep breath, Annie knelt down and tried again.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said to the soldier lying on the porch floor. "Can you unbutton your jacket for me?" Modesty kept her from touching his clothes.
The Union officer blinked to clear his eyes and focus. "Yes, of course, miss." His voice was hoarse and small. "I'm sorry to be troubling you with this at all."
With a grimace, he undid the long row of brass buttons and tried to ease the blue jacket off his left arm. The motion caused a little gusher of blood to spurt up through his torn shirt.
"Oh, dear." Annie plopped to the floor, her brown muslin skirts popping air out like a blacksmith's bellows as she landed on her bottom. The house whirled. Her stomach lurched. Her ribs heaved against the wall of her corset. She fought to pull in the hot, dusty air. But it only made her feel more nauseous. Annie couldn't believe that not only was she having to tend to a Yankee, shemight retch right there in front of him.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
The windows behind her rattled hard and the floor quaked. Annie forgot her queasy stomach. Lord save us. Those were closer -- she was sure of it. She was no expert; she'd known the sounds of war for only a few hours now. But she was learning fast.
When she'd first heard the cannons at daybreak, she'd thought the noise was way-off thunder, a squall line gathering itself up against the Bull Run Mountains. She'd prayed for rain. The cornfields and hay fields needed it badly. But her naïve thought lasted only a few minutes. There had been skirmishing recently at Blackburn Ford, a mile or so away. Annie had mistaken that artillery fire for distant thunder. This morning, Annie quickly realized that it was guns, and the beginning of something horrible.
It'd have to be, given all the soldiers who had swarmed the area. She'd stood by the gate with Aunt Molly's brood of children, watching Confederate troops pass by. Their cannons were pulled by burly plow horses that strained with the weight. They were thick black barrels, menacing and cold-looking, almost as long as train cars.
"Great God Almighty, Annie, look at them," her little cousin Will had breathed in awe. "They could blow down giants. Do you suppose the Yankees got guns like that?"
"I don't know, honey," she'd said, putting her arm around him. "General Beauregard's waiting for the Federal invaders at Bull Run. And General Johnston's on the way from the Shenandoah Valley. They'll take care of things." BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Cannon answered cannon. Yes, clearly the Union had guns just as big.
Annie thought of her brother, Laurence, good, kind Laurence who'd taken his two best thoroughbreds and joined Jeb Stuart's 1st Virginia Cavalry. Would Laurence be in the fight? What would she and her mother do if Laurence were hurt or . . .or . . . She couldn't allow the idea. Defensively, she replaced fear with anger. South Carolina had gotten Virginia into this mess, South Carolina and six of her Deep South sister states. Ever since they had seceded in the winter, Confederate men had swaggered about, shouting about states' rights and the fact that the Federal government existed only by the consent of the governed. They'd seemed to want the fight, as if it'd be fun, a good frolic.
And the North was no better. Rather than letting states leave the Union as the Constitution guaranteed they could do if they no longer agreed with its policies, President Lincoln declared war and called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to put down the insurrection -- eight thousand recruits were required of Virginia, he said. That was when, in May, Virginia finally, reluctantly, opted to secede from a government that demanded it wage war against its closest friends. Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee did the same, and the Confederacy held eleven states. Everyone started wearing rosettes and singing songs of glory.
Both sides expected quick, easy victory. The nearby village of Centreville was clogged with senators and people from Washington who'd hired carriages, packed picnic lunches, and traveled thirty miles over eight hours to watch the battle as if it were a Fourth of July celebration. Those guns certainly didn't sound like a picnic to her.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Annie covered her ears. She shouldn't be trapped, smack-dab in the middle of a battle. She wasn't supposed to be here. She should be home, safe in Upperville, west toward the Blue Ridge, shielded from the advancing Federals by a long, thick line of Confederate brigades. She'd just been on her way home from school and gotten stuck.
Annie attended Baker's Seminary for Young Ladies in Alexandria. Well, she had until the Union bluecoats crossed the Potomac River and occupied the town in May. Then she and most of the other girls had left. Usually, she would have ridden the train out the Orange & Alexandria Railway to Manassas Junction and spent the night with her aunt, who lived just a few miles away. But the Federals had shut down the rail line. She'd had to beg a carriage ride from a classmate and then walked the remaining distance from Centreville. Her mother, Miriam, had come in their rig to fetch her home. During their visit, Aunt Molly came down with measles, a gift from the Confederate soldiers camping nearby. Several neighbors caught it, too. Miriam insisted they stay to nurse Aunt Molly. And so here they were, sitting on the edge of Hades.
Mother never thought of such things. She was always taking care of everybody else but herself. This time, though, she'd dragged Annie into her dangerous do- gooding. It was selfish, is what it was, Annie fumed.
Continues...
Excerpted from Annie, Between the States by L. Elliott Copyright © 2009 by L. Elliott. Excerpted by permission.
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