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IX The Refugees 1 I WISH my old man was hyar to visit with you. He suffered a great deal in the war, and he'd rather talk about it than eat. Those was powerful troublesome times — scarey times. Me 'n' him was young folks then with a little family of three or four children. We didn’t live in this country hyar. Our home was fifteen mile up the river. He 'd went into the Rebel army, but early in 1862 he come home on a furlough. I s'pose he stayed two months. I ain't certain. You see that's a long time for a person old as I am to ricolect. I'm goin' on eighty now. His captain come and wanted him to go back into the army and would have rushed him right down hyar where they was about to have a fight. My old man said he would go, but he didn’t say when he was a-goin' — he didn’t tell him that at all. "Fanny," he said to me afterward, "I've made up my mind to see my father and mother once more while I'm a-livin'." Their home
was
somewhere near four miles from ourn, I reckon. He started, and he was
ridin'
slowly along when he saw a sight of men down the road on horses — awful
large horses.
The men was all dressed in blue, and the first thing he knew they
charged right
up to him and said, "Throw up your hands, sir." They asked
him
where he was a-goin', and where he lived, and what was his name, and he
told
'em. Then they wanted to know if he was a Rebel soldier. Well, there
was no use
to deny it. "Do you
want
to go back to the Rebel army?" they asked. He said he
didn’t
want to go back if he could help himself. So they asked him to take the
oath of
religion, I believe they called it. He taken that all right, and they
wrote him
a great long paper and turned him loose and told him to go where he
pleased.
They didn’t order him to join the Union army because they had plenty of
good
drilled people, and he wasn’t. He went on
and seen
his father and mother, and then he come back home and bid me good-by.
Hit was
his intention to go right straight hyar to be near the Yankee army and
keep out
of the way of the Rebels gittin' him. He come down the river in a
bateau with some
other men, and when they got nearly hyar they landed on the opposite
bank. The
next day the battle begun. My old man was on yon side of the river
scouting
that morning when he heard some men hollerin' to him from this side.
The Rebels
had housepitals above Pittsburg Landing, and there was a sight of sick
folks in
them housepital camps. Several of the sick men had come out on the
river bank.
They wanted to git out of the way of the fightin', and they hollered,
"Come over hyar and git us with them boats there." My
husband, he
thought so much of the pore sick folks that he went right into a boat
and
started to row across — and them armies a-fightin' there. About middle
ways of
the river was a gunboat throwin' shells over into the woods, and the
men on it hollered
at him, "Halt!" Well, he
just
stopped rowin' and floated down onto the gunboat, and the men reached
their
hands and pulled him in. He wasn’t scared, for he knowed they wouldn’t
jump on
him and beat him to death, but so many were blobbin', blobbin' to him
that he
didn’t have no sense. They were all private men, and they kept
jabbering to him
till an officer came and told 'em to go set down. This officer was the
head
man, and my husband showed him his papers and told him what he was
doin'. "You can
take
that little craft of yours," the officer said, "and go git those men
there. Take 'em over to the other bank and report back." My husband
went,
and tuck the men across to yon side. Then he rowed to the gunboat, and
the
gunboat men helped him on board. "Hyar's that same man," they said to
the commander. "Yes, I
know
he is," the commander said, "I recognize his countenance." Then he
said to my
husband: "Don't git away from the river. These are terrible times right
now." He gave
him a pass
to go on shore, and ordered him to report back there the next morning.
That
night my husband went to his Uncle Tom's about two mile back from the
other
side of the river, and early the next day he returned to the gunboat
and asked
the captain could he come out hyar on the battlefield. The captain said
he
could, and he done so. He knowed he was in danger, but he had a brother
in the
Rebel army, and he wanted to look and see if he'd been killed or hurt. My old man
didn’t
find his brother, though he seen many others that he knowed among the
dead and
crippled. He tried to pick up and tote the wounded, but he couldn’t
stand the
blood and the scent, and the groans, and the hollerin' for water. That
was what
hurt him. Hit made him sick, and for quite a while he wasn’t able to
sleep at
night for imaginin' he heard the cries of those wounded men. He went
back to his
uncle's, and after the battle, when things was sort of settled up, he
brought
me down there. Aunt Mary had butter and milk and eggs and chickens, and
he
peddled 'em to the soldiers. Oh law! the soldiers was great hands for
such
things. He ran a ferryboat, too, and carried across a sight of people
and
wagons and horses. We was used to skiffs and boats, for we was raised
beside
the river just like a duck. My husband had a man to help him run the
boat in
the daytime. One of 'em pulled with the great long paddles, and the
other
steered. I've guided the boat a-many a time on a moonshiny night. I'd
leave the
littlest children with the biggest and go to help. My husband
got some
land and made a fine crop. Hit was bottom land, and he raised mighty
good corn.
Sometimes he'd go off down the river, and he'd bring back sich things
as cloth,
pepper, and especially coffee and salt. You couldn’t hardly git salt at
all
them times. Thar was nothin' hyar, and he was tryin' to help people all
he
could. He bought cheap and sold high, and he was makin' money. We was
prosperin',
but my old man taken a flux hyar because he had to drink the river
water. He
like to have died of fever and chills. So the next season we moved to
Corinth,
and there the old man had yaller jaundice. Hit like to have killed him,
and we
did lose one child. Corinth was full of Northern soldiers, and it was
sich a
nasty place they was a-goin' to vacate. Yes, Corinth was powerful
sickly for
'em. We didn’t
like it
any better than they did, and we moved seventeen mile to Purdy. About a
dozen
families went at the same time. Hit was March, and the coldest kind of
weather,
and there was awful deep mud. We was three days on the road. Often a
wagon
would stick in the mud, and we'd have to pry it out, or double up teams
and
pull it out. At night we'd camp in the woods and make log-heap fires to
cook by
and warm us. We slept in the wagons. Our horses was tied to the wheels
or the
trees. A robber come into our camp and stole a horse one night. We'd
'a' lost a
good deal more, I reckon, if we hadn’t had dogs along to git after
people and
drive 'em off. At Purdy
the only
building we could git to live in was a little old blacksmith's shop. It
was
pretty cold weather to stay in that old shop, but we stuck in there for
three
or four months. The building had only a dirt floor, and you couldn’t
say
anything good about such a floor except that the wind didn’t come up
through.
Yes, the old plank2 While we
was livin'
in that shop my old man was sick of the diptheria. He had it bad, too,
and like
to have died. We moved again and went to Savannah on the Tennessee
River near
where we lived when the war begun. The doctor there waited on the old
man about
two years before he got well. He was sick all that time, but he was
able to
work some, and he tried to make a crop in the fields right around the
house. We had a
sight of
trouble with the guerillas while we was livin' in Savannah. They run in
there
two or three times a week, and they'd whip people and they'd burn up a
heap of
things for spite. Yes, what they couldn’t carry off they'd throw in the
fire
just from meanness. They was powerful folks to drink and was always
wantin'
whiskey, If they couldn’t git whiskey they'd drink vinegar, and vinegar
got so
gone people hardly ever had any. We put ourn in jugs and hid it so
those
fellers wouldn’t git it. They'd come in and take all our food, and at
last we
'lowed to keep only one meal ahead. If there
was a
skirmish with the guerillas anywhere around, all the men in the place,
except
the very old ones, would run and git out of the way and hide hyar and
yonder. Part of
the guerillas
was Rebels and part was Yankees. Sometimes they'd fight each other, and
sometimes they'd git friendly and go together. I suppose we wouldn’t
have had
guerillas if it hadn’t been for the war, hut this war never made all
the
rogues. Some were rogues afore, I guess, though I don't doubt the war
give many
a one a big start in roguery who didn’t work for it. We wasn’t
afraid of
the regular soldiers, for we knew they wasn’t a-goin' to hurt us. But
it was
different with the guerillas. We dare n't open our doors on a dark
night
because maybe a robber or somethin' would be standin' out there, and we
dare
n't talk above a whisper hardly, The whole country was alive with them
guerillas, and they'd be about and hear you when you didn’t see 'em. One day we
looked
out of the window just at nightfall, and there was a party of guerillas
off in
the distance comin' along the road. My
old man had bought him a new pair of shoes a short time before. We was
mighty
pore folks, and he said, "Fanny, I believe I'll put those shoes on or
they'll take 'em." So he sat
down and
put 'em on, and by that time nine of the guerillas was in the house.
Two of the
village men who was settin' in the next house jumped up and run out of
the back
door through the briers and one thing another, and the guerillas shot
at 'em.
Then the guerillas went from our house over to that one, and my old man
said:
"I expect those old mean men will come back hyar. So give me a couple
of
quilts and I'll go lay out for to-night." He took
the quilts,
and I didn’t see him again till the next day. It was a cle'r, pretty
night, and
he slept in a cotton patch under a big persimmon bush. Them
robbers bolted
in soon after he left. They was dressed in black and armed with
pistols.
"We know you've got some money hyar," they said, "and we're
goin' to have it or burn the house." "Well," I
says, "burn the house, if you want to." But I was
scared so
bad I just went and got the bucket of water I'd hid the money in and
handed it
to the head robber. There was ten dollars in silver, and I said, "If
the
money 'II do you any good take it and leave." He put his
hand
down in the bucket and got the money. My old man had a rifle gun
hanging up in
a rack, and he thought a heap of it, Well, one of the robbers took that
gun
down and bent the barrel and broke the stock. Then he
goes off
and the others with him to the next house. The only people there were
old Mr.
Webb and his wife, and they were cripples who couldn’t walk to do no
good. One
of the robbers put his pistol to the old man's My husband
thought
they wouldn't trouble the old man, and he'd given him his pocketbook.
But they
knowed he'd done it, and they made Mr. Webb hand the pocketbook over to
'em. They went
to
another house and took a young feller and hung him to an apple tree
till he was
black in the face. They was pretty near drunk, and that was their way
of makin'
the feller's folks pay 'em money. His mother gave 'em two dollars, and
they
hung him again till she gave 'em five dollars. They
stopped at
every house in the neighborhood, and by and by they went to Mr. Owens'
and
hollered to him to open the door, and he did so. "We want you to give
up
that fifty-dollar bill you've got," they said. "Well, I
won't
do it," he told 'em, and shut the door and wouldn’t let 'em in. It was
gittin'
daylight, and they started off, but before they was out of the yard
they got
into some dispute and began shootin', and one of the robbers was
killed. The
next day it rained one of the hardest rains you ever saw, and that dead
robber
was lyin' there with his brains droppin' out of a bullet hole in his
head. My
old man said, "I'd throw him out of the yard and let the hogs eat him,
only it might poison 'em he was so mean." We
couldn’t leave
him there, and we dug a grave. Hit wasn’t fur away, and it wasn’t very
deep.
Then we tuck him and rolled him into an old box and tied some lines to
the box
and drug it to the grave and buried him. Well,
that's the
way things went in that old war, and we didn’t have any comfort until
it was
over. __________________ 1 She was fleshy and
elderly. Her
home was a primitive, whitewashed log dwelling on the battlefield about
a
quarter of a mile from the river. Now and then, as we sat in the
kitchen
talking of the long-gone war days, she would pause in her reminiscences
to
refresh herself with some snuff from a tin spice box. She swabbed it up
on the
frayed end of a slender stick, put the snuff end of the stick in her
mouth, and
there the stick stayed with the other end protruding. After she had
absorbed a
satisfying amount of the snuff she put the stick back in the box and
spit
tobacco juice into a wooden box of sawdust on the floor with a
persistence and
precision that would have done credit to a masculine expert. 2 The word "plank" as
used
in the South is equivalent to "board" as understood in the North. |