My Vicksburg Read Free

I think it's more than just romancing Landon."
    I looked at him quickly. "What?"
    "I'm not talking out of school if I tell you that she came to my surgery to have a mole removed from her face. Said she didn't want to be recognized by it. I laughingly asked her if she was going to be a spy for the Confederacy, and she didn't answer. Just be careful and don't be influenced by anything she says. All right?"
    "Yessir," I said again.
    And there it was in a nutshell, why Amy needed me. Her older sister, Sarah, who was seventeen, was going to give her family trouble.
    Sarah was joining the Southern army. As a man. She was going for a soldier. And only Amy and I knew it. Lan-don didn't know it before he left. Oh no, Landon could not be told, or he'd never have gone. Sarah had decided that.
    Riding in the surrey with Mama and James on the way back to Vicksburg, with Pa alongside us on his black stallion, Mercer, I worried. Had Sarah Clarke left yet as a soldier? If so, what did she tell her family? Did they know? Or did only Amy know? Oh, I must be allowed to be excused as soon as we got home to go next door and see her.
    I was still thinking of home as it was when we left it, with its pristine houses and church spires and view of the river in the distance. When we got close to the Joe Davis plantation (he is the brother of President Jefferson Davis), we first heard the firing of the cannon, which we soon learned was the battle of Champion Hill.
    Cannon fire soon filled the air, and James began to
cry. Pa reached over from Mercer's back and took James onto the saddle with him. Pa had a special place in his heart for James.
    My one wish in life was to find my special place in Pa's heart. Times I saw him eyeing me with a fondness when he didn't think I saw. But then Pa would say something jagged, covered by humor, that cut like a scalpel.
    Mama said he did not know how to act with me at my sensitive age. "When was the last time he took you on his lap?" she asked.
    Tears came to my eyes. I could not remember.
    "He doesn't want you to grow up," she told me. "He doesn't know what to do with you now that you are growing up. So he teases you."
    "He's always telling me to grow up."
    "He means behave. He is more comfortable," she said, "with his sons. So he gets brusque and stern. He dies a little inside, thinking of the boys he someday may have to share you with."
    "Mama, I'm only thirteen. Why punish me for it now?"
    "He knows what's coming."
    It sounded right, but it was not right. Not by my calculations. Pa was a doctor. He should know, more than anybody, what a girl went through when she was growing up, and what love she needed from her own father. And he was not giving it. And now he was leaving.
    As we got closer to Vicksburg, the road before us
became crowded with soldiers—Confederate soldiers, ragged and some barefoot, with dirty faces and hollow eyes and shamefaced looks. They stopped and saluted when they saw Pa.
    "We been beat, sir. The enemy is pursuing us from Big Black and Bridgeport Ferry."
    "Never mind that," Pa said. "I understand there are Louisiana and Tennessee troops commanding the riverfront. So we're still strong. Vicksburg won't fall. Now, is anybody here hurt?
    One man had a slash on his head and Pa stopped, took his doctor's bag right out of the surrey, and fixed the head right there. Then we went on.
    It was night by the time we got to Vicksburg. Fierce shelling was going on from Porter's ironclad boats on the river. It was like fireworks on the Fourth of July. We didn't go home. Home was across town, Pa said, and he wouldn't let us go there. We went, instead, inside a church. The street outside was crowded with wagons, caissons, artillery, surreys, and waiting horses. I think it was the Catholic Church, St. Paul's, on the corner of Crawford and Walnut streets. We weren't Catholic, but Pa knew we would be welcome. He took us to the basement, where it was lighted with tall candles and people were sleeping in pews