CHAPTER 5

SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS

As it was, the next day no one in the family had much time for “traipsing off.” With April nearly half gone, Mama said, they’d best make haste on getting the garden started. Philip was powerful vexed, too, about not having gotten his corn crop in, so he plowed and planted out in the cornfield from dawn until dusk. Mama didn’t like the idea, she said, of him being out there alone, and even though Philip put up a fuss, she made him take the musket and promise to keep it nearby.

Mama wouldn’t let Ben out of eyesight, either, while they planted the garden. She put him to work helping Cassie plant onion slips and scallions, which made the whole job take twice as long. The weather had turned even hotter, and the sun pummeled them without mercy. Cassie bent and stooped and hoed until her shoulders felt like fire and every muscle in her body ached.

In truth, though, Cassie was glad to be so busy. It kept her mind off things that were painful and unpleasant—like Jacob being dead and gone, and the chance that the deserter would somehow find their farm. Despite being worn out that night, Cassie didn’t sleep well. She woke at every little noise in the loft—the mattress shucks rustling as Emma turned in the bed, and Ben snoring in the bed he shared with Philip on the other side of the curtain. She had nightmares, too, and in the morning she felt as if she hadn’t slept at all.

The next evening they finished the garden, and Myron showed up unexpectedly for supper. He brought news, he said—some good, and some that could be either good or bad, depending on how you looked at it. The good news was that his search party had not turned up a single sign of the deserter, though they had combed the swamp and the piney woods for miles around. “Appears the feller got scared when he met up with Cassie, and hightailed it out of the county,” Myron said.

The other news was about the war. It was over—or nearly over—due to what had happened April ninth, day before yesterday. General Lee had surrendered to the Yankee general Grant in a little town down east that Cassie had never heard of—a place called Appomattox. Which meant the South had pretty much lost the war. Lee’s men, including Pa, would be released on parole to come home.

Myron didn’t hold out much hope that General Johnston down in North Carolina could carry on alone for long. Mama and Myron looked serious and talked about the hard times that were likely ahead for the South.

Cassie, though, didn’t think times could be much harder than they already were, and at least Pa would be coming home.

Then Myron said he had one more piece of news, special news just for Cassie. He went outside to his wagon, and when he came back in, Cassie’s heart leaped. He was carrying Hector—all bandaged up and skinny as a beanpole, but alive! One of the men in the search party had found Hector lying under hydrangea shrubs in the swamp. Cassie ran to Hector and stroked his head while Myron laid him gently on the rug by the hearth. Hector thumped his tail weakly.

Emma was gushing about the war being over and the blockade being lifted. “There’ll be real white sugar again—won’t there, Mama?—maybe even cloth for new clothes.”

“Don’t mean there’ll be money to pay for ’em,” Mama said.

But Emma didn’t seem to hear. “The boys’ll be coming home,” she was saying. Emma had fretted forever that there would be no men left for her to marry by the time the war was over.

Myron held up his hand. “Hold on, girl. It’ll take a while for Lee’s men to get their parole papers. And won’t be no soldiers in this vicinity going home anyhow. General Johnston’s got to battle it out with Sherman yet.” Both Johnston’s Confederate troops and Sherman’s Federals were camped a few miles south of Danville, across the Virginia-North Carolina line.

“So,” Mama said in her sternest voice, “there’ll still be soldiers, Yankee and Confederate, camped all around here. Tempers going to be flaring ’cause of the surrender. And we still got the prisoner-of-war camp right up the road in Danville. There could be more deserters like the one Cassie met up with once the word gets out about Lee’s surrender.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Myron. “Johnston’s men’ll be dropping their guns in droves and hightailing it home, unofficial-like. Be a heap o’ no-gooders looking for trouble.”

Myron made them all promise to let him know if they saw any strangers in the woods or suspicious characters about. “Especially soldiers,” he said. “Solitary soldiers. Such as them is usually up to mischief.”

Cassie shuddered. She knew all too well how right Myron was.

First thing the next morning, Mama set Cassie and Emma to spring-cleaning. Mama wanted everything spotless, she said, to welcome Pa home. All the furniture and mattresses had to be carried out to the yard to air, the shucks in the mattresses fluffed up, the rugs beat out. All the bedding had to be washed, along with every stitch of clothing in the house. There was endless toting and heating up of water, washing and scouring, hanging up of linens and clothes on the line, taking them down and ironing them. At the end of the day, Cassie was bleary-eyed and exhausted.

It was after dark when Mama sent Cassie out to the yard with her big willow basket to gather up the last load of clothes. It was a dark night; a spray of clouds covered the moon and stars. Cassie moved along the garden fence, collecting the britches and dresses and drawers from the line and from the bushes where she had put them when she ran out of room on the line. Her brain was numb with weariness.

Suddenly she stopped, struck by the distinct impression she was being watched. She could almost feel the weight of eyes upon her.

Cassie went rigid. Was there someone hiding behind the currant hedge back of the garden? Or maybe in the toolshed? She stood as still as death, listening. All she heard was a stir of leaves as a breeze rippled through the bushes at the garden’s edge.

That’s what it was, she decided. Just the wind, and nerves worn to a frazzle by exhaustion.

Cassie realized her arms were aching from holding the heavy basket of clothes. She set the basket down and shook out her arms, still watching the hedge, the quiet, dark hedge. “There’s nothing there,” she whispered, but her stomach still felt fluttery. Then a whippoorwill called out from the old quince tree beside the well.

“Just a whippoorwill,” Cassie said aloud. She picked up the basket and started for the house.

She tried to ignore the feeling of two eyes boring into her back.