CHAPTER 14

INVADER IN THE THICKET

Cassie’s heart pounded. The deserter had returned, and now that low-down scoundrel was headed inside the thicket. Cassie’s mind flooded with all the wrongs the deserter had done to her and her family—the way he had threatened her that day in the swamp and the way he had toyed with her ever since: following her through the woods, sneaking around the farm, pilfering things, coming inside her house.

Cassie’s muscles tightened in anger. How could she just sit here and wait, meek as a dove? She had to go after him, now, while she had him cornered. She could sneak in through the back passageway and surprise him. “If he tries anything funny,” she whispered to herself, “I’ll up and shoot him.”

Cassie crawled out of the hollow and stood. The pain in her ankle made her dizzy, but, she determined, she would get to the thicket, even if she had to do it on all fours. She waited a moment for her head to clear, then took a few hesitant steps. She could walk, though just barely. She crept around to the back of the hill before she approached the thicket, soundlessly, ever so soundlessly. At just the right place, she dropped to her belly and slunk forward, into the back passageway. It was overgrown with woody vines, and she could barely squeeze through. She inched along, musket in front of her, holding her breath, every one of her senses honed. She had to be silent, absolutely silent.

But suddenly—crunch! A twig she hadn’t seen snapped under her weight. Cassie froze, terrified.

“Who’s there?” said a voice from inside the thicket. But it wasn’t the voice of the deserter. This voice was rich and smooth, like honey, like, like … A wild thought leaped into Cassie’s mind. No, it can’t be, she told herself. I’m hearing what I want to hear, and it can’t be.

“Who’s outside there?” said the voice again.

Cassie’s throat constricted; her heart twisted. It can’t be … It can’t be …

There was movement inside the thicket. Footsteps. Cassie was shaking. Tears were coming. Hands yanked back the branches in front of her.

No one else could have known right where that opening was. No one else.

Jacob! Cassie looked up into her oldest brother’s face.

Cassie was seated with her back against a pine tree and her gaze fixed on the brother she’d thought she would never see again. Jacob was much changed from the way Cassie remembered him. Three years ago, when he left for the war, Jacob was a boy of fourteen. Now he was a grown man, with a beard, an ugly scar across his forehead, and weary eyes that belonged in the face of someone much older.

Jacob had settled Cassie on a bed of leaves, with her foot propped up on a stone. He tore off the sleeves of his shirt to make a bandage to support her ankle. Cassie watched as he twisted the cloth into a rectangle and placed it under her heel. He carried the ends up and back, crossed them around her ankle, then went down and around again.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” she asked. She was staring at Jacob, still trying to convince herself that he wasn’t a ghost.

“Three years of soldiering learned me a few things,” he said. Then he added gravely, “Past killing people.”

“We thought you was killed,” said Cassie. “We got a letter from some major saying you was.”

“Y’all thought I was dead?” Jacob’s eyes filled with anguish. “Mama must be tore all to pieces.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said. The lump in her throat wouldn’t let her say more.

Jacob shook his head. “I hate you had to go through that. Though I was close to dead, I’ll allow.” He made a hitch under the cloth on each side of Cassie’s foot in front of the heel. Then he pulled the ends in opposite directions, crossed them, and tied them. “That oughta do you. You could walk from here to Texas on that.” He sat down beside Cassie. “How’d you manage such a savage sprain?”

“Never mind that. How’d you manage to come back from the dead?”

Jacob’s face looked tormented. “It’s a long story, Cass. And you’re liable not to think too much of me when you hear it.”

“That ain’t likely. Couldn’t be nothing but proud of you,” Cassie said, but a mixture of alarm and uneasiness was creeping through her. What could Jacob possibly tell her that would change the way she thought about him?

“Huh,” he said in a bitter tone. “Better hold off that judgment till I’m through.”

Then Jacob told Cassie his story. His regiment had been with General Johnston, retreating from Sherman’s army across North Carolina. The condition of the Confederate troops was miserable—thousands sick and starving, with no proper clothing or supplies. Many soldiers were barefoot, their clothing little more than rags.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” Jacob said. “I still had that big ol’ gray coat Mama sent me last fall. But this friend of mine—Lonnie Reid—he was bad off sick, coughing something awful, and it was raining like all wrath, and cold, and we was out there right in the midst of it. I was scared he was going to die for sure if he didn’t have something to cover him, so I give him my coat.

“Well, next thing you know, we was locked in a skirmish with the Yankees—three of Cox’s divisions under General Sherman. They was pounding us with artillery—grape and canister coming at us hard. I got hit, then everything went black.”

“But you got your coat back,” Cassie said, “before you got hit. You’d have had to, for you to give it to your major when he got wounded.”

Jacob looked at her like she was crazy. “What you talking about?”

“That’s what the letter said—that you was a hero, pulled that major feller out of danger. Saved his life and then give him your coat. That’s what he said you did. Only he was wrong about you being killed. You was just wounded—”

“That wasn’t me, Cassie. Must’ve been Lonnie.” Jacob sounded distressed. “Reckon that means Lonnie’s dead.”

“Then what happened to you?”

“I’m getting to that.” Jacob heaved a deep sigh. “Reckon you got to know.”

Cassie was starting to be frightened. What had Jacob done?

“When I come to,” Jacob continued, “I was laying in a sort of ditch back in a skirt of trees. Weren’t no sounds of battle, nothing but birds singing. My head felt like it was near blown clean off, but it couldn’t have been, ’cause I was alive and breathing. I crawled out of the ditch, to the edge of the trees, and looked around. The field where we’d been fighting, why, it was swarming with Yankees.

“All I could think about, then, was getting clear of them Yanks. I wasn’t about to be taken prisoner. I high-tailed it off into the woods, but I must have passed out again. Next thing I knowed, I was waking up in a strange bed inside somebody’s farmhouse.”

Jacob was burning with fever, he told Cassie, and he drifted in and out of consciousness for days. Finally, the mother of the family nursed him back to health. “She put me in mind so much of Mama,” he said, “it made me pine for home something fierce.”

When he finally left, Jacob went on, he had every intention of heading back to rejoin his unit. “But I was sick to heaven of fighting. Of slaughtering men like hogs.” Jacob closed his eyes, and Cassie wondered what horrors he was seeing behind his lids.

“Oh, Cass,” Jacob said when he opened his eyes. The scar on his forehead stood out, red and angry. “How I ached to see you … Mama … Pa … everybody. I could scarcely remember your faces.” At that his voice broke.

Cassie’s throat was aching.

Then, his face and voice expressionless, Jacob said, “So I changed my mind and headed home instead.”

“You deserted?” Cassie couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

Jacob dropped his head. “It’s shameful, I know, but I wanted to see y’all so bad …” His voice trailed off.

Cassie didn’t know what to say. Her own brother, a deserter.

Jacob must have sensed what Cassie was thinking. He wouldn’t look at her. “By the time I got to these woods,” he said, “it hit me, the shame of what I done. And the shame it would bring to Mama.” Although he was so near to home, he couldn’t bear to present himself to the family. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

“So I been hiding in the woods ever since, sometimes sleeping here in the thicket, sometimes in one o’ the old Quaker caves down by the creek. You recollect them caves, don’t you, Cass? Myron showed ’em to us.”

“I recollect.” Cassie felt a weight inside her like a stone.

For a moment Jacob was silent. Then he said, “Y’know, I seen you a couple o’ times. The first time was when I come and got these britches off the line. You took me by surprise coming out—I had to hide behind the hedge—and, well, I couldn’t get up the nerve to show myself.”

“That was you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“You saw me?”

“No, I felt you. Only I didn’t know it was you. And I was too scared to go look.”

“Sorry I scared you, Cass.”

All Cassie could do was nod. She was overwhelmed by what Jacob was telling her.

There was another long pause. Then Jacob went on. “I swore I’d show myself the next time I seen you. But after that you was always with Emma or Philip, and I figured they wouldn’t understand, though I hoped you might.”

Guilt shot through Cassie. She didn’t think she did understand. Avoiding Jacob’s searching eyes, she asked him about Maybelle. “It was you that took her, wasn’t it?”

Jacob nodded. “I’d been living off roots and nuts for I don’t know how long, and what fish I could catch without a line. It was Providence, I thought, when I found Maybelle. Figured I could have me some eggs right steady. But I was so hungry, I ended up eating her.” He stopped. Cassie figured he was waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t, he went on.

“More’n once,” he said, “I wandered to the house all set to show myself, but I couldn’t go through with it.” Jacob had picked up a pebble and was rolling it around in his hand. “One time I took one of Mama’s ash cakes from the windowsill where she’d set ’em out to cool. I couldn’t help it—I remembered how good they was, and I was just so hungry, Cass.”

Though he was staring at the pebble and not looking at Cassie, she heard the pleading in his voice. She knew he was desperate for her to understand.

“Mama give Ben a whipping for taking that ash cake,” Cassie heard herself say. It came out sounding hard and harsh, not at all like Cassie had meant it. Jacob’s face fell.

“Little ol’ Ben got a whipping on my account.” He shook his head. “I should have gone on and left—gone off to start a new life somewhere. I seen that, finally, since it was clear I wasn’t never going to get up the courage to show myself to Mama, and I wasn’t about to go back to the army and risk being shot for deserting.”

Cassie shuddered. It wasn’t so long ago that she had declared a bullet was what a deserter deserved.

“Yesterday,” Jacob said, “when I seen y’all out in the cornfield, I snuck in the house and took my silver mug from the mantel.” He lifted his head, and his tone turned defiant, more like the Jacob Cassie remembered. “I figured it was mine anyway, and it’d bring a heap o’ money in Danville or Greensboro. Enough so I could head out west—Texas, maybe even California.

“Even so, it was almighty hard to make myself leave, without saying good-bye, knowing I couldn’t never come back. I told myself I’d spend one last night in the thicket and then I had to be off—for good. Only I didn’t expect to run smack into you.”

Cassie was in turmoil. There were so many feelings tumbling around inside her, and she couldn’t put a name on any of them. She had never felt so confused in her whole life.

But Jacob was looking right at her, with those clear blue eyes of his. She had to say something. “Ain’t no need to go away if you don’t want to. General Lee done surrendered. War’s all but over.”

A brief spark came to Jacob’s eyes. “OI’ Marse Robert surrendered, huh? Then Johnston can’t last much longer.”

“Folks won’t know you deserted,” Cassie went on. “They’ll just think you been paroled and made it home quicker’n everybody else.”

Jacob’s face clouded. “What? And have to lie about what I done for the rest of my life? I’d rather leave, I think.” He paused. “Cass? You think Mama would be ashamed of me if I did go home? And Pa?”

Cassie didn’t answer. What would it be like, she thought, if everyone knew her brother was a deserter? She dropped her eyes.

Pain filled Jacob’s face. “You’re ashamed of me, ain’t you, Cassie?”

Suddenly Cassie’s breathing came hard. Was she ashamed of Jacob? She had worshiped him ever since she could remember … Her chest ached at the thought.

Then she remembered the buzzards. And Gus.

Names attached to things—or people—didn’t change what they were deep down. Yankee. Deserter. They were only names. Names that didn’t really tell you much of anything, when you got right down to it.

Maybe Philip was right. Maybe it was Cassie who had never been able to see Jacob clearly. So Jacob wasn’t perfect, like she had thought. So he had faults. That made him like everybody else, didn’t it?

Deserter or not, Jacob was still the same person he had always been. Her brother.

“No,” Cassie said. She was looking straight at Jacob now. “I ain’t ashamed of you.”