I Have Seen Him in the Watchfires

  I Have Seen Him

  IN THE WATCHFIRES

  Cathy Gohlke

  MOODY PUBLISHERS

  CHICAGO

  © 2008 by

  CATHY GOHLKE

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Editor: Cheryl Dunlop

  Interior Design: Ragont Design

  Cover Design: Chris Gilbert, Studio Gearbox

  Cover Images: Image of two boys, Phillip Behr, i-stock;

  Image of horse, Jupiter Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gohlke, Cathy.

  I have seen him in the watchfires / Cathy Gohlke.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-8024-8774-2

  1. Teenage boys—Fiction 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.O3448I15 2008

  813’.6—dc22

  2008013224

  We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

  Moody Publishers

  820 N. LaSalle Boulevard

  Chicago, IL 60610

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America

  ~ In loving memory of my grandparents,

  Who prayerfully sowed seeds of faith within their families,

  Then tended our gardens in hope˜

  Bertie Dunnagan and Mack McKinley Goforth Sr.

  and

  Olive Florence Dubock and Homer Milton Lounsbury

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the readers of William Henry Is a Fine Name who asked that Robert’s story continue. Your enthusiasm inspired me.

  Warmest thanks to my mother, Gloria Bernice Goforth Lemons, my families of origin and marriage, friends, church family of Elkton United Methodist Church, and colleagues, who daily encourage, share, and pray for this writing journey. You mean the world to me.

  Thank you to Andrew McGuire, my editor at Moody Publishers, for believing in this new author, and for working with me to make this book the best it can be.

  Thank you to Cheryl Dunlop, my copy editor, who challenges my every wayward literary turn, and is severe in all the ways I love.

  Many thanks to Lori Wenzinger and Randall Payleitner, and all at Moody Publishers who work so diligently to place my stories in the hands of many.

  Special thanks to the wonderful team who carefully critiqued this manuscript, helped me laugh when things got too serious, and kept me on the straight and narrow: My sister, Gloria Delk; my brother, Dan Lounsbury; my pastor, Rev. Karen Bunnell; my friends and colleagues: Tracy Leinberger-Leonardi, Carrie Turansky, and Ivan P. Mehosky, who guided me in all things military.

  For rousing discussions and historical enthusiasm that knows no bounds I thank my brother-in-law, Ron Delk, Jake Jacobs, and all those who have shared family and regional stories, historical details, old books, diaries, heirlooms, and photographs. I gleaned a sense of time and place that I could not have found alone.

  For help in researching historical details that brought this book to life I thank historians Milt Diggins, Mike Dixon, and the staff and volunteers of the Cecil County Historical Society; David Healy, for his class on The Civil War in Cecil County; Fort Delaware historians George Contant, Martha Bennett, and Daniel Citron, Historic Site Manager; the librarians of the Cecil County Public Library in Elkton, Maryland, and of the North Carolina Room of the Forsyth County Public Library in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the volunteer tour guides at Mendenhall Plantation, Jamestown, North Carolina; historians and staff of Old Salem Museums and Gardens, MESDA, the living history staff in Old Salem, North Carolina, and the men and women who serve each year at Old Salem’s Moravian Candle Tea—a treasured memory of my childhood and a pilgrimage I make each year.

  Thank you, again, Uncle Wilbur, for reminding me that a sure way to know if I’m working in the will of God is to ask, “Do I have joy? Is this yoke easy? Is this burden light?”

  Last but never least, I thank Dan, Elisabeth, and Daniel, my beloved family, for your love, encouragement, and patience with my passion.

  Prologue

  Ma left us to go south and live with Grandfather Ashton a full year before the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. When President Lincoln called for 75,000 Union troops to squelch the rebellion, Pa telegraphed Ma that North Carolina wasn’t safe, that he was coming to get her to bring her home to Maryland, to Laurelea. Ma shot back, “Ashland is my home. I’ll defend it with my last breath. I am proud of our men who will do the same on the battlefield. Do not come unless you come to enlist with them. I will not go with you.”

  I wanted Ma to be proud of me too—more than anything. And I was itching to fight, like every boy I knew, but not for the Confederacy.

  I’d cast my lot with Pa and the Henrys, and with Mr. Heath, their employer, in running Laurelea as a station—a safe house, part of the Underground Railroad. I’d run escaped slaves north on the freedom train, beginning with Grandfather Ashton’s son, born of a slave woman—the boy he’d planned to sell. I’d buried my best friend, William Henry, who’d died protecting us all for the same cause.

  I could not fight for states that bought and sold human beings. But with Ma and all her kin in the South, how could I carry a gun to her door?

  Pa made me promise that whatever I decided, I’d stay at Lau-relea to help Mr. Heath and the Henrys with the farm and the Underground Railroad, that I’d wait to enlist until I turned eighteen. “Then think long and hard,” he said, “before you agree to shoot one of your countrymen—or kin—between the eyes.”

  It was a promise I sometimes regretted, but kept true, until the spring of 1864, until the day Emily’s letter came.

  One

  Late May, 1864

  Our worst spring storm broke on the edge of midnight, a river thrown from the sky. By dawn the Laurel Run had overflowed its banks and was busy stripping the lower fields clean. I knew it even as I lay in my bed, listening to the downpour.

  Maybe it was the wind and thunder, or maybe my mind so bent on worry for our new crop, but I never heard the parcel thrust inside the parlor door, never heard so much as a knock or footfall. When at first light I found it, battered and beaten, bound by twine, I knew that the messenger had taken care to keep it dry. But the seal on Emily’s letter was broken, proof that somebody knew our business.

  It wasn’t that violation that made the heat creep up my neck as I tore open the letter. It was the first words Emily’d ever penned me: “Dearest Cousin Robert.” She’d written on Christmas Day—five long months before. Still, it was a miracle that it had come at all, the mail from the South being what it was.

  “Yesterday,” she wrote, “I was visited by Lt. Col. Stuart Copeland, of the 11th North Carolina, lately a prisoner, exchanged from Fort Delaware, Pea Patch Island. Lt. Col. Copeland informed me that Papa—Col. Albert Mitchell—there, I’ve written his precious name—was chest wounded, and captured at the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 3rd July, along with his remaining men from the 26th North Carolina. He said that Papa, like so many prisoners at Fort Delaware, suffers gravely from smallpox.”

  It was the first news shed had of him in more than a year, and she was desperate to know if he lived … “I beg you, by all the love of family we have ever known, to forget the estrangement of this maddening wa
r and do all you can for Papa.”

  I raked my fingers through my hair. It was a hard request. I’d turn the world over for Emily, if given the chance, but Cousin Albert was another matter. I figured him to be the reason, or a good part of the reason, Ma never came home.

  “Gladly would I go myself,” she wrote, “but the railroads are a shambles, and Uncle Marcus is not well. I do not know if he will see the spring.” I couldn’t imagine Ashland without Grandfather, or Ma without him—and why was all this left to Emily’s care? She was no older than me. I took up the letter again.

  “I would send Alex, but Papa sent him to school in England for the duration of the war, and we have heard nothing from him in two years. The blockades prevent all such communication.”

  I felt my jaw tighten, remembering Emily’s younger brother. Alex’s first priority was always Alex. I couldn’t imagine him risking life and limb to help anyone, his father included, if it meant he’d inherit Mitchell House, and possibly Ashland, sooner. That was his life’s goal, even before his voice began to squeak.

  “As you can imagine, this horrible war has taken its toll on us all, especially your dear mother. I promise that Cousin Caroline will want for nothing that I can provide in this life as long as I live and am able to care for her. If there is any way you or Cousin Charles can come to her aid, I urge you to do so. But I beg you to see about Papa first.”

  My heart raced to think of going to Emily, and to Ma, that they might need me, might want me. It was the first news I’d heard of Ma in months. I tried to conjure their faces, but they wouldn’t come. I remembered that Emily was a younger, darker version of Ma, that Ma’s eyes were blue and Emily’s brown. But four long years had passed since Ma’d left, it had been longer still since I’d seen Emily, and there was not so much as a tintype to remind me. I forced myself back to the letter.

  “With this letter I enclose a parcel of comforts for Papa. I have no hope that they would reach him if I sent them directly to the prison. We have heard such stories of the prison guards….”

  I set the letter on the parlor table and counted the days since the battle of Gettysburg. After ten months, stuck in a Union prison—chest wounded, and with smallpox—I couldn’t hope that Cousin Albert lived. But for Emily’s sake, and for all she’d done and bound herself to do for Ma, I vowed to heed her plea, to go and see and do my best by him.

  As soon as I’d seen to Cousin Albert I’d head for North Carolina, no matter that Grandfather had disowned me and forbidden Pa or me to set foot on Ashland. Grandfather couldn’t keep me from Ma if she needed Pa or me. And Pa was gone south more than a year now, drawing maps of back roads and terrain for the Union, though no one was to know.

  Pa’d gone as a civilian, not willing to carry a gun. He said he wanted to help secure the Union’s power to settle the slavery issue, but he wouldn’t fire on his countrymen. It didn’t seem to me that the secessionists, the secesh, were our countrymen anymore. But Pa figured it was the politicians that seceded from the Union, that the Southern people weren’t our enemy. He’d long ago decided he’d not take the life of another man. It angered me that Pa would not protect himself, that he’d march into enemy territory without a gun. It was the only thing in life that stood between us. I didn’t know if he was still alive.

  So it was up to me. I’d bring Ma home—Emily and Grandfather too, if they’d come. But it must be done quickly. My eighteenth birthday was in two months, and I wouldn’t wait one more day to enlist. I wanted Ma and Emily out of the South before then. It would put to rest every worry I carried over fighting the Confederacy.

  I packed my bag before walking up to Mr. Heath’s to tell him and the Henrys I’d be going. I almost packed Pa’s heavy black Bible, the one from the mantle that we’d always used for the evening read, then set it back. I wanted it to be here, to be waiting when Pa and I returned. I’d kept that read all the months Pa’d been gone, every night. I could never make the words stand up and sing like he did. I didn’t know whether I’d ever draw the faith or strength from the Word, same as him. But I knew that reading it was a path to life, and that you never reach a thing without setting your feet straight and walking toward it. Leaving it seemed a pledge that I’d make it home, that we’d all be together again.

  I set my bag in the parlor, by the front door, and picked up Emily’s letter. I stopped the pendulum of the mantle clock. Already the house felt empty. But it wouldn’t be empty long.

  When the rain had stopped, and the wind died to a stiff breeze, I walked the lane to Laurelea’s Big House, straddling the puddles. I pulled my collar high, tight around my neck, and bent my head to my thinking.

  I knocked on Mr. Heath’s open study door. He’d been snoring in his chair by the fire, though I don’t think he wanted me to know. When I gave him Emily’s letter he pushed his lap rug aside, pulled his spectacles over his ears, and carried the letter to the window, catching the late afternoon light to read.

  Aunt Sassy walked in, balancing a tray of steaming sassafras tea and fresh molasses cookies. My mouth watered at the sight, the smell.

  “You’ll leave soon?” Mr. Heath asked.

  “First light. I’ll do all I can for Cousin Albert—if he’s still at the fort—still alive. Then I’ll leave straight for Ashland, and Ma.” I didn’t say, “and Emily.”

  “Ashland?” Aunt Sassy’s bronzed face jerked toward mine. She sloshed tea across the tray.

  Mr. Heath didn’t answer, but nodded, handing the letter back to me. “That he’s a colonel should help him. They generally treat officers better than enlisted men.” His brow furrowed. “I only wish Charles were here.”

  “But he’s not, and Emily said Ma needs me.” I wouldn’t back down. “I know I promised to stay till I was eighteen, but it’s only two months, and I—”

  Mr. Heath waved his hand. “I understand that. I know you must go, but you’re nearly of age now. It won’t be so simple to pass through the South out of uniform.”

  Aunt Sassy teetered. “What about our crop? You can’t leave Mr. Heath with no crop!”

  “The crop doesn’t matter, Sassy,” Mr. Heath interrupted. We’ll replant what we can when we can. We have enough workers. Robert has to go.”

  “They shoot you for a spy.” She trembled, and the pot of tea slipped, crashing to the floor. “They shoot you and not know who you are or where to send your dead body.”

  “Sassy, that’s enough,” Mr. Heath warned her gently. “Robert has no choice if Caroline needs him.”

  “Miz Caroline got along fine without you these past four years.” Aunt Sassy’d never spoken against Ma. “Don’t be taking off. Don’t leave us, Robert.”

  I bent to pick up the broken pot, to mop the floor with her tea towel. I wouldn’t look in her eyes.

  Aunt Sassy and her husband, Joseph Henry, were slaves when Mr. Isaac and Miz Laura Heath freed them the year before I was born. Aunt Sassy had cooked for the Heaths for as long as I could remember, and Aunt Sassy’d nursed Miz Heath—Miz Laura—through her long illness, till the day she died. Two days later the Henrys’ only son—my best friend, William Henry-was killed, hit by a train. Those losses shadowed her every day.

  “I’ll be back with Ma, and maybe Emily and Grandfather if they’ll come, before my birthday, Aunt Sassy. I promise.” I didn’t look at her, didn’t say I’d be going off again, enlisting for the Union right away. But they knew my plans, had known them all along.

  Her mouth set, grim. She swayed, taking that in, rocking back and forth softly.

  I finished mopping the tea and set the broken pot pieces on the tray

  “You be needing this, then.” She pulled a small, round tin from her pinner pocket. “Mama brought it up here this morning, said to give it to you, make sure you take it along.”

  I reached for the tin. “What is it?”

  “Salve. Some kind of salve she concocted. Said it’s for rope burns, that you be needing it.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to ask how Granny Str
uthers, Aunt Sassy’s ma, knew I’d be needing a salve for rope burns, what that meant, or how she knew I’d be going off. Granny Struthers was an old midwife and herb doctor, black as the crow that flies, small and ancient, bent and gnarled like an old apple tree. She knew things before they were spoken and understood what went on inside people’s four walls—even in their heads-long before they did. The salve wasn’t a good sign.

  Mr. Heath squeezed my shoulder. “Robert, your times, like every one of ours, are in God’s hands.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, knowing Pa would’ve said the same. But Granny Struthers’ salve made it hard not to wonder.

  Aunt Sassy cooked my favorite meal that night, a feast of roast chicken and hot dandelion greens poured over potatoes. She baked apple dumplings, cinnamon and molasses oozing out the tops, and brought out the last of the coffee. “You be thinking on this cooking when you’re off half-starved, and come on home.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I grinned. “Fast as I can.” Since Miz Laura and William Henry had died, since Ma and then Pa left, the four of us—Mr. Heath, Aunt Sassy, Joseph Henry, and me—took our meals together at Mr. Heath’s table. We made a family, two black, two white, bound by missing those we loved most.

  “Be careful visiting that prison. They’s sickness of every kind there, and no secesh, kin or no, is worth you dying for,” Aunt Sassy fussed as she heaped another ladle of sweet cream over my dumpling.

  “Sassy, don’t be filling this boy’s head with your bitterness.” Joseph Henry shook his head at his wife.

  “I want this boy back to this table, safe and sound!” Aunt Sassy shook her dripping spoon. “I won’t lose him too!” And then the brewing storm broke. Joseph Henry looked away. I stood and cradled her in my arms. The Henrys should’ve had a whole passel of kids to spread their love and worry over.

  “You’ll write as soon as you know anything about Albert, before you leave for Ashland?” Mr. Heath tried to steer the talk away