“Mopping up” is what they called the minor skirmishes we dealt with over the winter as the starved-out Rebels made their last, futile stands. It was one of the coldest winters in memory, and we stripped timber off every house and barn and chicken coop in five counties to build shacks with wood floors to keep us from freezing. We even put up tall windbreaks for the horses and mules to shelter behind when the wicked winds came screaming down off the Allegheny Mountains.
Near the end of winter, we rolled out again, following Sheridan’s advance deeper and deeper into the burned-out heart of Dixie. By early April, we were headed to a place Solomon said was called Apoplexy. It wasn’t the strangest town name I’d heard by a long shot, but it certainly held its place among the oddest.
The morning when we set out was chilly and damp. Solomon and I had a system where one drove and one slept. It was late in the day when Matildy and me snuggled up amongst the sacks of feed we toted for the mules. I never once rested on those sacks without recalling Wager Swayne laid out the same way. As usual, I dropped off to sleep with every word that had passed between me and my soldier singing in my head, a lullaby to replace Mama’s.
I was dead asleep when the bomb exploded. My eyes flew open and I beheld a night sky bursting with flames. Matildy dug her claws into me tight enough to hang on but not to really hurt. She cuddled up and made her whimpering noise that, over the past seven months, I’d come to know meant she was scared. I stroked her sleek little head and the whimpers turned to a low chittering. All up and down the line horses whinnied, mules brayed, and wagons clattered from being jostled by spooked animals.
“Lord, save us,” I said aloud, terrified of the Rebs’ mighty new weapon.
Solomon cackled and asked, “Don’t tell me you so country you never seen fireworks before?”
For the first time since I’d known him, the face that Solomon tipped up to a sky exploding with colors and light was filled with happiness.
“Somebody celebrating good news,” he announced. “My guess is word come down that ole Bobby E. Lee’s finally gonna roll over and play dead.”
He snapped the reins and we drove on to our destination, which I came to know was called “Appomattox.”