I GAVE the drum to James so he, too, could have a remembrance from the war, which went on for two more years. James was seven when General Lee finally surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, and already talking about becoming a drummer boy himself.
I think if the war hadn’t ended when it did, he would have run away and done it. He certainly knew how to play that drum. He took lessons from Johnny Wilcox, who’d been a drummer boy in the 2nd Mississippi, the unit Pa was in. Johnny came home with a minie ball in his shoulder, the shoulder he used to support the cord of the drum.
Pa recovered from his camp fever, or whatever it was, and came home from Milliken’s Bend after the surrender of Vicksburg to spend some time with us, then went back to serve with the 2nd Mississippi as a doctor again. Landon came home the morning of the surrender of the town to tell us that he and Sarah were to wed in two weeks, and Mama near had kittens.
“How do you make a wedding in the middle of a war?” she said.
“Others are doing it,” Landon told her. “Anyway, it’s Mrs. Clarke’s job, not yours.”
Once told that, you’d think that Mama was impeached from the presidency of the United States. The Clarkes came back from Jackson. Mama set to “helping” Mrs. Clarke, and those two women put their heads and hearts together so that the wedding two weeks later lacked nothing.
Of course there was no satin and lace for a wedding dress. But there was the dress Sarah’s mother had worn. There was precious little time for a trousseau to be made, but in those two weeks we all pitched in and sewed our eyes out.
There was no Pa to escort Mama, for he was in the Shenandoah Valley with Lee and could not get home. But it seemed like everybody in town came to the church to see the “Yankee doctor” wed. The town was now occupied by Yankee troops. They swarmed around the church outside, and Mama and I both prayed there would be no trouble between them and our own Confederate neighbors.
But there wasn’t any. The occasion was too joyous. And when Landon and Sarah came out of church, the Yankee troops formed an arch with their swords for the bride and groom to walk under. My brother looked so handsome, and I was so proud.
I was maid of honor and Amy was bridesmaid. But here is the icing on the cake. Because he couldn’t get any of his doctor friends at the hospital off duty that day, Landon made James his best man.
Mama dressed him in his best and he was schooled in what he must do. And so our “little man” stood waiting at the altar with Landon and, when the time came, handed Landon the ring. My heart near burst at the sight of him.
As for the reception afterward, the food was plentiful. There were tureens of terrapin stew, turkeys, deer meat, mounds of mashed potatoes and green vegetables. There was a sculpture made of butter of the bride and groom, which Sarah had made with one hand.
The wedding cake was made by Dr. Balfour’s wife.
Landon and Sarah took the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad to Jackson, then a stage to Raymond. They had only two days. Sarah’s aunt, the lady she was supposed to run away to, had her home there. She lived alone and she was going to vacate it so they could have the place to themselves.
Landon had to be back at Milliken’s Bend to his post Tuesday morning.