FEBRUARY 26, 1863
You gotta get through this conflict to be ready for the next one.
There’s always a next one.
THE LETTER ABOUT Susannah’s death sends me into a sorrow I’m not sure I can climb out of. Though I haven’t told them yet, J.A. and the boys try to cheer me up. I spend most of my free time in St. Paul’s Catholic Church just up Crawford Street from the Prentiss House. It may be the only place I can find my soul again with such misery and heartache as I’m bogged down in now.
I like the paintings, stained glass, and statues of the saints. Granny used to say, “Folks gone to be with the Lord are just on the other side of a sheer curtain. If you get real still, you ju-u-u-st might see them through the thin veil. So why not talk with them from time to time?” Honoring and treating the departed like family and calling on them for help? Why wouldn’t those once alive, who loved and cared for us for so long, not love and care for us now just because they’re dead? Yep, I’m sure of it. I got a little Catholic in me.
As I sit with the saints in this beautiful place, I think about Susannah. If there ever was a saint, it’d be her. I remember when I first heard that President Lincoln planned to free the slaves, North and South. Some in Winn Parish freed their slaves before war broke out. Mr. Gilmore’s slaves were already free. Susannah was free, but she couldn’t leave the safety of his farm.
I clinch my fists. “Lincoln, you’re just too damn late. My wife is dead because of your war.”
The priest pokes his head out of his confession box. “You all right, my son?” I nod. “If you’d like to talk, I’m here.” I shake my head. He makes the sign of the cross. “Bless you, my son.”
Mr. Gilmore does the best and right thing keeping his slaves. If he frees them, they’d probably get caught, killed, or wind up who knows where. He set people free long before Lincoln’s proclamation. The man is a visionary. He saw Susannah and me getting married long before it happened.
But why couldn’t she have been free from birth? Why did it take a good man like Mr. Gilmore to steal her away to free her? Why did it take this damn war to force white people to realize they never owned another human being in the first place? Why did that soldier, doing what he thought was right, go off to fight for his country and then bring home the measles that killed my Susannah?
I rub my eyes. “If there was no war, Susannah would be alive. And I’d be home with her.”
Don’t slave owners know they could’ve just as easily been born black as white, slave as free? No one gets to choose where or what color they are when they come into this world. Too many whys and not enough becauses.
“God, is it okay to scream in your church house, in front of all your saints and the priest?” I don’t have the strength to yell. I sit still. I empty my nearly wasted soul. I need something, but I don’t know what. “Lord?”
My surroundings grow dark. The stained glass windows no longer allow in sunlight that make the multi-colored Bible scenes come alive. I sink into the depths of my soul, and a tiny light in the far off distance wanders my way. Someone walks with a very small candle. She has fiery red hair and wears a flowing white dress covered with pink and purple flowers, though not flowers. They’re lights glowing like springtime azaleas in full bloom. This lady is young, and though I don’t recognize her, she is very familiar.
She places a stone in my hand.
“Who are you?” The red-haired lady points at the sparkling gem that changes color as I turn it over and over in my hand.
“I bring light to your dark soul, my son. You must trust the river for it flows without end, and we all are blessed to rest in its current. You must join us in the stream of life, Columbus Nathan Tullos, for you cannot stay in the place you have assigned yourself. You will not live. Go to the river. You will find the reminder of what you now hold in your hand. It will teach you that we are never apart from those whom we love so dearly. We all flow together in this river of time.” The red haired lady turns to walk back the way she came.
“Wait, I want to know about my Susannah.”
The red-haired lady turns and grins. “She waits for you.”
“But who are you?”
“One who has known you since you were born and walked this earth for a time. You know me, Grandson. I live just across the thin line between this life and new life.”
“Granny Thankful.” She melts into the darkness from which she came. I watch until someone speaks, shaking my arm.
“Son, are you all right?” It’s the priest.
Two words pop out of my mouth. “I’m thankful.” I go to the prayer garden with the priest, and we talk for hours. I tell of my experiences with God, my struggle with anger, my love for Susannah, talking with Granny Thankful, and my change of heart about this war. He listens patiently. He finally speaks when I finish.
“Son, your Susannah is not gone forever. She is not far away somewhere in the stars. No, she’s right here, right now, with you still. Those of us still alive are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the Bible says. Susannah now lives in that crowd. This great crowd is not present to witness to our every mistake. No, that sort of belief only strikes fear to keep us children when the Lord wants us to mature as healthy spiritual adults. The cloud cheers us on our way and helps pick us up when we fall in this life.” The priest leads me back into the sanctuary.
“Remember this, my son. A piety towards God fostered in leisure rarely proves true in the trials of life. Let the Lord flood into your soul and be mindful of what he gives you.”
I study the statues of the apostles and paintings of Bible story scenes, thinking of my friends and loved ones gone on—Grandpa Temple, Granny Thankful, Saleta, Pa, Amariah, Amanda, Susannah. Annie Fanny could be painted on these holy walls as easily as Mary Magdalene. Kindness comes in all shapes and sizes and just maybe with a snuff juice stain on a chin. Peace covers me beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.
A door slams. Mrs. O’Neil walks in the back. She smiles as she makes the sign of the cross and then kisses me on the cheek as she passes on her way to the confession booth—another saintly woman whose picture should be painted on these walls.
I close my eyes for just one moment more in the silence, stillness, and solitude in this place, emptying my soul of all distractions. I am not alone. And I have no fear.
I trot down to the river and walk along the bank until I find a rock bed. The first stone I spot is a beautiful agate like I’ve never seen—blue, green, and red wavy lines in a swirl of designs. This is the reminder Granny Thankful sent me to find. What I find is peace.
I walk along the sandy bank watching the water roll by. There are so many things I don’t understand, so many things I can’t get my soul around, things that probably won’t become clear for years or until I reach the other side. I let the sun shine on my face.
I clear all thoughts. A faint voice like Granny Thankful’s speaks. Faith is standing firm where there’s little to no understanding.
I walk back up the hill and thank God I don’t have to figure it all out. He holds me in the palm of his mighty hand.
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SHERMAN STAYS UPRIVER waiting on Grant. The constant rain and cold make us miserable, but they keep the Yankee troops and gunboats away. We need the peace, and it offers opportunity for me and my brothers to have a few good times together. They come into town, and I get them a place in the Prentiss House for the night. We drink a little, as weary soldiers will, talk of home and joke a lot, and eat everything we can get our hands on.
I take Jasper and James to Mrs. O’Neil’s for more of those rooster dumplings. She’s happy to meet my brothers. We know our time together is short with the Yanks creeping up closer every day. We make the most of it.
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JANUARY PASSES BY relatively quiet, except for shelling and the noise of steam-powered digging machines working on Grant’s canal behind DeSoto.
I grin. “Pretty high minded to think he can change the course of the Missip.”
“Must think he’s God Almighty himself,” J.A. crows. “Still, I’d like to see those machines.”
“Look at all those Yankee tents across the river.”
“Yeah, they’re dug in like ticks on a dawg.”
“They got us hemmed in pretty good now.”
“I wonder if they know over a hundred of their troops in the Warren County Jail want to take the oath to fight for the Confederacy. Yank deserters come in nearly every day now.”
Some of the officers speculate the war will be over by March. That talk usually has little to back it up. I’m content with whatever the Lord brings or allows. What choice do I have anyway?
The townspeople are in good spirits, watching the Yanks work hard and getting nowhere for their labor. Regiments from Tennessee and Georgia pour into our defenses, raising morale, until the smallpox plaguing the Yanks crosses the river into our ranks. Talk about wasteful death. Good boys leave their homes, wives, and sweethearts to fight for the Cause only to be struck down by an enemy they can’t shake a stick at. It’s like one of the ten plagues. Several men of the 27th Louisiana die from the dreaded disease. I want to blame God, but I know the pox spares neither Reb nor Yank. Truth is, ain’t none of us right in this war.
The worst is the screamers. Men dwindle down to nothing, trying to eat, staying away from water like the doctors order. Screamers, dysentery, the flux, whatever you call it, is when a man runs to the ditch as the watery, sometimes bloody mess screams right out of his backside. It’s hard to watch men die.
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SHELLING IS SLOW but steady now. The Yanks remind us they aren’t going away.
I huddle up with Sarge while getting ready for picket duty. “Where you want me tonight?”
“Go stand guard up at the city hospital. Check on our boys while you’re there. They should be upstairs.”
It’s a peaceful walk with a light snow falling. I enjoy the quiet, alone with my thoughts.
About halfway through the night, a shell screams our way. I duck behind a big tree. The house next to the hospital catches the exploding shell and burns like they poured coal oil on it.
I rush inside the hospital. “Get them boys out of here. A fire’s blazin’ next door.”
We work like bees in the hive getting the sick and wounded out. Some boys who are so weak they can’t walk. Those who can help those who can’t. All we can do is lay them in the snow, a recipe for pneumonia. Better than being burned alive. Thankfully, the blaze settles down when the house collapses in on itself away from the hospital. I sit after we get everyone back inside, smelling of smoke, but thankful my friends are unharmed.
A doctor pats me on the shoulder. “Just another tale to be told about the brave 27th Louisiana Volunteers. Thanks, son, you did your duty well tonight.”
I look into the clearing sky. “Thank you, Lord. It’s by Your hand these men were saved from the flames and me from measles, mumps, pox, and the screamers.” I want to say it’s because Tullos men are tough, but I know better. I’ve watched stronger men than me waste away from disease that eats their bodies down to nothing. And not a damn thing can be done about it. Disease respects no one. It’s killed more men than bullets ever will. It killed Amariah.
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TOWN FOLK AND troops cheer Grant’s failures. He gives up on one project to start another one. It’s all too comical until the Yanks target the hospital with their shelling. Pretty low down, even for a Yankee. Grant tries to cut the levee at Lake Providence to make the Mississippi bypass the batteries at Vicksburg, Warrenton, and Grand Gulf. Doesn‘t work.
Grant’s newest plan is to cut the levee at Yazoo Pass and let the Mississippi run into the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers, then into the Yazoo. That’d flood the whole Delta and allow the Yanks to get behind our defenses without having to run the gauntlet of batteries at Snyder’s Bluffs. But the Yanks forget about Mississippian ingenuity. Pemberton sends soldiers and slaves to fell trees blocking the narrow river channels upstream that flow into the Yazoo.
A man with an axe wound comes in on a wagon. “Grant’s gunboats ain’t gettin’ nowhere. We felled eighty trees a mile if one!” Good men with sharp axes can do it. “Them sharpshooters are wearin’ ’em out, too. But the best part is hearin’ them Yanks scream like schoolgirls fightin’ off snakes fallin’ out of trees.” They give up on that big plan, too.
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BY MID-FEBRUARY, the weather feels like spring. Train cars arrive daily full of guns and ammunition. Wagons bring corn and provisions from the depot as drays haul barrels of sugar and molasses and all sorts of government stores.
The Yanks hurl mortar shells in the city up into the evening. Town people scatter like chickens hearing a red-tailed hawk whistle when a bombardment starts. Little damage is done, except a cow is killed. One man had his arm torn off by shrapnel late this evening. Most soldiers pay little attention to the constant barrage. I think the Yanks are simply amusing themselves or are mad as hell that none of Grant’s plans have worked. Damned devils, anyway.
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IT’S THE END of February, and I stand picket by the river. My brothers race down the street. James falls and slides on the wet cobblestones right up to my feet but springs up like a cat.
“We’re headin’ out tonight to Grenada. Grant’s found a way through to Greenwood. We’re goin’ to Fort Pemberton, big brother!”
I place my hands on their shoulders and pray. “Lord, watch over my brothers, Jasper and James. Keep the train on the tracks, the fort secure, and their aim straight and true when they face the blue invader. Amen.”
Jasper and James whisper, “Amen.”
I shake them. “Look at me. This battle’s comin’ for you, but don’t fear it. Listen. You gotta get through this conflict to be ready for the next one, ’cause there’s always a next one.”
James lays his head on my shoulder. “Thanks, big brother.”
Jasper grins. “See you soon, Lummy dummy.”
I sling a rock at him. “Go on now. I’ll be right here waitin’. Keep them blue-bellies off of us.”
Jasper yells, “We’ll blow ’em all to hell and back, big brother.”
Young men boast, and so many die before their time. I look out over the river at the Yankee fleet—death waiting to pounce like an owl on a cotton mouse. I don’t care if Jasper and James fight Yanks. I just want them back here, close, alive, where I can watch over them. I know that’s the Lord’s job, not mine. Truth be told, I’m the one needing him to watch over me.
Prentiss House, Vicksburg,
March 1, 1863
Dearest Ma, it’s been a while since I wrote. We’ve been busy with the Yanks comin back. Good news is I have escaped the pox and other diseases. Pray we escape the shells and bullets. Jasper and James left for Grenada to meet the Yankee foe. I sent them off with a prayer. There’ll be some heavy fightin soon, but worry not for sons who love the Lord. The Yanks send shells into the city all day. We don’t sleep well. I’m still in the hotel by the river. We’re ready if the Yanks try us here and will pay dearly if they do. I have bad news. My wife of just a few short months died. Measles took her life. I’m heart broke. That’s all I can say right now. Pray for me about that. Tell Elihu, Mary, and Emaline hello. Here’s half my pay to help out on the farm. I miss you Ma and hope to be restored to you one day.
Your affectionate son,
Lummy