By Accident of Birth

By Accident of Birth

The Quinn Saga

Thomas E. Simmons

To my wife Katherine, the original woman

War is the father of all

—Fragment 53, Hippolytus Ref. IX, 9, 4

Prologue

Mississippi, 1915

The rasping ring was as irritating as it was startling. Bethany Quinn put down the book she was reading, The Ambassadors by Henry James. She walked into the central hall and looked down at the recently installed device. It rang at her like a barking dog. She grasped the unfamiliar receiver from its cradle and pressed it to her ear while eyeing the candlestick mouth piece as if it were the head of a black snake. The questioning voice from the other end sounded weak and tinny.

Bethany picked up the candlestick phone and spoke into the mouth piece. This is she, only it’s Miss Quinn, not Mrs.

Pardon my mistake, Miss Quinn, but are you the owner of the Quinn estates in Cuba? The voice was unmistakably British.

Would you please speak louder and tell me who you are and what this is about?

Yes ma’am. I am Major Mallory Renfroe of his majesty’s special service calling from the British consulate’s office in New Orleans.

What on earth for?

Miss Quinn, it seems you own certain items in storage in Cuba which my government would be most interested in purchasing.

If this is a joke from one of Jonathan’s old friends I wish you would tell me.

I assure you this call is not a joke. I beg your patience, Miss Quinn. It has taken me no small amount of time and effort to find the rumored items of interest, and even longer to locate you. I only today discovered you have a telephone connected through the Vicksburg switchboard. I was prepared to leave New Orleans tomorrow to find you in person.

Major, just what are you talking about?

"I’m speaking of ten thousand such items manufactured by Mauser. They are in a warehouse in Santiago in crates mislabeled, deliberately I assume, machinery parts and consigned to Quinn-Alacon Sugar Mill. According to warehouse records, they have been stored there since 1903. My information is that you are the owner of Quinn-Alacon Sugar Mill."

Bethany’ heart missed a beat. She couldn’t catch her breath and had to sit down on the bench seat built into the new ebony telephone stand.

Miss Quinn, the tinny voice continued. As you know, England is at war. My government would be most interested in taking those items off your hands, all hush hush of course. We wouldn’t want the Germans or Turks to discover them.

Bethany was silent a moment. You must be mistaken, Major. I own the Quinn-Alacon Sugar Mill in Cuba, but I don’t know a thing about any such crates in Santiago.

Perhaps not, Miss Quinn, but the items are there. I’ve confirmed that fact, discretely of course. Do you understand what I mean by items of interest? I hesitate to use a more descriptive term. I will mail a detailed description of the items and how you may contact me. Time is of the essence in this matter, Miss Quinn.

She closed her eyes and whispered to a ghost. My God, Jonathan, will it never end?

Miss Quinn? Are you still there, Miss Quinn?

I’m here, Major. It’s just that you have taken me unawares. You will have to give me a little time to … to see if what you say is true, I mean about me being the owner of the items you mentioned. If I am, I will be more than happy to be rid of them. And Major, don’t you worry about the Germans and Turks. We Quinns never sold to despots. Bethany hung the ear piece back into its cradle.

For Beverly Bethany Quinn the call was a klaxon from hell. It had taken years to subdue the personal demons that had ridden her to the edge of madness. Now one phone call had unlocked their cages, freed them to roil up from the catacombs of her memory. She knew them well, knew they would once more curse her sleep and fill her waking hours with irreconcilable conflict.

She sat on the bench by the phone in the hallway for a long while, a kaleidoscope of images flying across her mind’s eye. The only sound in the house came from a tall, Herschede case clock standing in the shadows. As she listened to the authoritative tick at each swing of its pendulum, Bethany had the peculiar sensation that the great sidereal movement by which time is reckoned had reversed and was inexorably dragging her into the past.

Miss Bethany … Miss Bethany! You alright? You look like you done seen a ghost.

Bethany looked up to see a worried expression on her housekeeper’s face. Maybe I have, Lizzy. Would you get me a tall glass of ice and put a little bourbon in it? Might as well bring the bottle. I’ll be on the veranda.

Miss Bethany! It ain’t even five o’clock yet.

Bethany ignored the remark, stood and walked down the hall, out the screen door and sat in a wicker chair set with cushions covered in flower-patterned chintz. It was a lovely, late-March spring day. Azaleas, camellias, day lilies, peonies, even some Louisiana iris were in bloom. The dogwoods were on the cusp of snowy splendor. Bethany didn’t notice. She was lost in thoughts of Cuba, arms and war.

Directly, Lizzy backed through the screen door holding a silver tray laden with a glass of ice, a bottle of bourbon and a linen napkin. She turned and set the tray on the table beside the wicker chair, rolled her eyes at Bethany, and left without a word.

Ice tinkled as Bethany lifted the glass to her lips and took a taste of chilled bourbon. I knew I should not have had that telephone put in out here at Shamrock. Cost me a fortune.

She took a second sip and lifted her eyes to the panorama of flower beds, lush greenery and great oaks draped in feathery Spanish moss.

Major Renfroe, you just spilled death all over my lovely spring. We Quinns have seen enough violent death haven’t we Jonathan? You know those fools in Europe have started another war? That damn British agent has crossed an ocean to give me a part to play in the killin’. How much death will spit from ten thousand Mauser rifles? Damnit Jonathan, you should have told me about the rifles. That’s how the Cubans paid us the last of their debt isn’t it? Those are rifles the Spaniards surrendered. You mentioned the Cubans had cleared what they owed, but I never saw anything on the books except where you crossed out the debt. When Cuba was freed you said we were through and we were, but you didn’t tell me about the rifles. Were you just sick of it all, just stuck them away and forgot about them? Well damnit, Jonathan, somebody didn’t forget.

Bethany sat in moody silence sipping bourbon. A beauty all her life, she thought herself a freak, an accident of birth, the daughter of war … fortune’s whore. There was a secret part of her that those who loved her were never able to fathom. Jonathan was the only one who knew why and he never told.

Of all things on Earth, war must sadden God the most. He gives us the freedom to think and the will to act, and maybe guardian angels to try to save us from ourselves. When they fail, when Earth rings with the sound of war, the horror of it, do great invisible clouds of His death angels descend over battlefields to collect forgiven souls from the pieces, sometimes less than pieces? Remember Jonathan, remember when I went crazy blaming myself for the death of all those American boys? I asked you how God could find them when there was nothing left. You told me God would gather them from the dust. I do so hope that’s true.

She drained the glass, picked up the bottle and poured another measure over what was left of the ice.

Here it is a beautiful day and I sit brooding over death. Why not? Death was my father wasn’t he? I was not conceived of love, or joy, or passion or even lust … just war, pain, and death.

Carrying the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other, she walked into the house and stood in the long hallway with the ticking clock.

Well, Jonathan, you’ve put me in the arms business again. What price will I pay this time? It won’t be madness or drug-induced lethargy. I’ve been there. So how does one do penance for putting weapons of death in the hands of strangers? Is it time that dulls our memory of the sins, the guilt? I would think one should have to recall all the details of one’s life in order to determine proper penance. God will require that before judgment won’t He?

Bethany walked into the parlor, sat at a mahogany, roll-top desk, set the bottle and glass on the green felt-covered desktop, and unlocked the bottom drawer of the right side pedestal. It contained a nickel-plated, over-under double-barreled derringer with ivory grips, an unusual pendant on a gold chain and a dusty, paper-wrapped parcel. She lifted the parcel, laid it on the desktop and stared at it for a while. Written on the heavy brown wrapping paper were the words, For Ansel Quinn. To be delivered upon my death, and her signature, B. B. Quinn.

After another sip, she untied the string and carefully unfolded the paper exposing two journals. One had her name inked on its cloth cover. She had not touched it in over 17 years. The other was leather bound with the name Annielise embossed in gold on its cover. The leather was cracked with age. Small bits of the embossed gold lettering of her mother’s name had flaked away. Kept from her as a child, it had been given to her at age 17 on the day her uncle Jonathan had taken her from the only home she had ever known. The revelations she found in its pages were so shocking and painful she had never opened it again. Holding it now, she experienced the almost palpable presence of her mother and family whose faces she could not remember.

Mama, I know Nannie helped you with this, and Doctor Ted, bless his heart, had to finish it. He did it knowing it would be all I ever knew of you and Nannie and Great Grandfather and what happened that terrible day up by the old place here at Shamrock. What of your stories and mine have I locked away? The parts too painful to remember? The parts time mercifully shoved into the shadows? The part about me no one would believe? Can I believe it even now?

A phone call from a man I don’t know has dredged up my own shadows, Mama. I have a trip to make, a task to perform, a last salute to a past I doubt you would have approved for your baby girl. I promise you it will be the last of its kind. Perhaps, after almost half a century, it’s time for all of you to tell me again your stories and mine. Maybe that will be penance enough, but I doubt it.

Bethany unlatched the tarnished brass clasp, opened the diary to the first page and began a hard journey.

Book One

The Quinns, 1863

Chapter 1

The harder life got inside the ring of fire, the more tenaciously the besieged attempted to preserve some semblance of civilized society. Although the bombardment proceeded uninterrupted day and night, week after week, the shelling was shifted randomly from one section of the town to another. When the barrage lifted from a neighborhood, its citizens, grown accustomed to hell, defiantly ventured out of their basements, damaged houses or hastily dug caves to socialize as if nothing taking place around them was out of the ordinary. Random shells crossing high overhead occasioned little comment. Women were seen walking down ruined streets holding parasols to protect their skin from the sun, ignoring the odds against a stray shell finding them. Witnessing such activity, a rational observer could argue that the sane had become insane.

Animals, the few that had escaped the cook pot, didn’t adapt as well. Ruled by instinct, they lacked the human ability to pretend, to hope, to trade sanity for insanity when reality became unbearable. Dogs took to whimpering when their tortured ears sensed a shell flying overhead. If one exploded nearby they would commence an awful howling.

As mournful as such sounds were, the most lugubrious of sounds didn’t come from the plaintive cry of an animal. Sporadically, as the sharp crack of an exploding shell died away, there would come the tormented wail of a human witness to the sudden maiming or death of a loved one or neighbor. On one such occasion, a woman and the little boy she was leading from their backyard privy toward the safety of a cellar was engulfed in a deafening flash of fire and smoke. Seconds later, as the smoke thinned, stunned neighbors saw the woman, shocked silent, standing like a blackened, disfigured Greek stature. She was missing the forearm that had held the hand of the little boy, a little boy who had vanished into smoky, pink mist.

Such harrowing sights and sounds were imprinted in the memories and repeated in the nightmares of those citizens of Vicksburg yet untouched, waiting their turn.

The Quinns, caught in the town under siege, were living absent the comforts of Shamrock Plantation. Nor could they enjoy their once lovely Vicksburg townhouse that had so gaily served as the center of society when the planters moved to town between planting and harvesting. That had been a time for parties, courting, marriages, gay excursions up-river to Memphis or down-river to New Orleans … but no more. For the Quinns and their neighbors, life was now a raw, miserable quest for survival.

Sixteen years prior while serving with Lee’s Mississippi Rifles during the Mexican War, Daniel Hillary Quinn had gained a healthy respect for artillery. When the Quinn town house began to suffer damage from shot and shell, Daniel insisted that his daughter-in-law, granddaughter and house servant move to the safety of a cave quickly dug into a wooded hillside some distance behind their home.

It was dark, damp, musty-smelling and tomb-like. There were two sections. The largest was timber braced and crowded with four cots, a table and oil lamp. A small grotto cut into the cave wall served as storage for food and water. The only touch of luxury was an oriental rug brought up from the house to cover the dirt floor. Out front, a canvas tarpaulin supported on posts stayed with ropes served as porch and kitchen complete with wood burning cook stove, chairs and a kitchen table, all carried up from the house. This veranda provided the cave dwellers a shady place to dine and to gather when the daily shelling shifted from their sector to some other. The air outside was rarely untainted with drifting smoke and the acrid odor of spent gunpowder, but it was better than the dank staleness of the cave.

May 27, 1863 began as ordinary a day as could be expected in a town under siege. Shortly after dawn, the Quinns gathered under their awning for breakfast. Nannie Keturah Quinn handed Daniel a fine china plate, linen napkin and sterling silver fork, items as out of place in a cook-tent as she was. Even in a plain cotton dress and soiled apron, Nannie was as beautiful and graceful as always. She had been the center of the Quinn family since the day she married Timothy Ansel Quinn, the only son of the widower Quinn.

Daniel held out his plate to Arabella Dupuis who spooned a ration of salt bacon and a single hoecake onto it muttering the admonition, I ain’t listenin’ to no more complaints about de cookin’. This here town be runnin’ short of near about ever’thing and I does the best I can wit what we got.

At forty, Arabella took no foolishness from anyone including her master. Over the years her official role at Shamrock had progressed from house servant to nanny to chaperon of Daniel Quinn’s granddaughter, Annielise. To hear the senior Quinn tell it, her role had progressed from slave to Tzarina. She had taken care of Massa Quinn’s granddaughter, now sixteen, since the day the child was born, slept in the nursery when Annielise was a baby, and now slept close by her in the cave. It was Arabella’s duty to chaperone Annielise Quinn everywhere she went, especially in a town full of soldiers.

Annielise was a blonde, blue-eyed Southern belle blossoming into womanhood. Although she was raised in a privileged household, she was neither a spoiled nor demanding young lady as were so many daughters of Southern gentry at the time. On the other hand, she was independent, spirited and as stubborn as her grandfather Quinn. She never issued a complaint about the increasing hardships, nor cowered to the danger inherent in a town under siege. That meant aggravation for Arabella who found herself following the determined young woman running errands and visiting friends during lulls in the shelling. Always struggling a step or two behind, Arabella complained continuously.

It ain’t fittin’ for no young lady to run around out here like you doing. Ain’t no need for it neither.

Arabella, I am not gonna let those Yankees make me afraid to leave that hole we live in.

"Well, I is afraid. You goin’ to get us kilt, that’s what. I seen some high foolishness in my time, Arabella stated, but runnin’ round in de middle of dis here war is crazy and you knows it. White folks is crazy. You look round dis here town and tell me dey ain’t." Arabella was very nearly correct. After weeks of living in a city subjected daily to a rain of fury previously unknown by civilians, the population had little choice but to fight stubbornly for survival. Like the Quinns, some moved into dirt caves dug into the yellow clay hillsides of the town and surrounding areas. Some continued to live in their houses, either in foolish defiance of a hated enemy, or because of a terror-driven inability to leave the familiar.

Each day the citizens of Vicksburg had to make do with less. A few undamaged wells and rain water stored in home cisterns provided the only water besides that collected in muddy shell holes and ditches. As pantries and root cellars were emptied and backyard gardens stripped bare, town folks and soldiers alike were forced to eat mules, horses, dogs, cats, cow peas, cane sprouts, songbirds, and sometimes worse. Rats, skinned and dressed, sold in the marketplace at the outrageous price of a dollar apiece.

On that day, 27th of May, while the Quinns were having breakfast, an 18-year-old soldier named Zeke Pittman sat in the dirt in a section of trench line overlooking the wide, muddy Mississippi. Cleaned up, young Zeke was strikingly handsome. He had his father’s strong jaw, his Irish mother’s bright eyes and had inherited high cheek bones and shiny black hair from his grandmother who was full-blooded Choctaw. In his present condition, not even his mother would recognize him, much less a stranger think him handsome. Zeke’s face was streaked with dirt, his cheek blackened by the residue of gunpowder. His coal-black hair was dull, dirty, shaggy-long and uncombed. He was caked in mud, infested with lice, hadn’t washed or changed his threadbare, sun-bleached uniform in weeks. He was thirty pounds underweight, had deep circles under his eyes, and like those around him, his body odor was overwhelming.

The only thing about Zeke that seemed undaunted was his natural good nature. He could kill, had killed, but he would rather joke around than fight. In spite of the pestiferous times, he often brought laughter to his battle-hardened fellow soldiers and they loved him for it. On this morning, Zeke sat lacing his unit’s tattered battle flag to a new staff freshly cut and debarked from a skinny pine sapling. The old staff had been shot in two.

Them damn Yankees burn up a hunnerd dollars worth of lead a day on my flag. They can’t shoot for nothin’.

How come you fixing a new pole then? asked Jeremiah Dunn, 17-year-old, freckled-faced, redheaded kid. He was sitting barefoot in the trench watching Zeke.

Hell, Dunn, that was luck. They couldn’t do it again if the Devil was to fart in their ears.

The two had been on the line together for weeks. Crouching in the open trench they were chilled by rain, burned by the sun and subjected daily to sniper and artillery fire. They spent nights repairing the damage their breastworks suffered by day. They lived in filth, complained, told jokes, talked of girls, thought of home, tried to hide their fear and dreamed of food. Like the men around them, they slept when they could and went hungry on rations reduced by half.

Below them, the bluffs were erratically eroded into craggy fingers that reached down to the river below. The silt that sluiced down them with every rain enriched the accumulated earthen flats and wild vegetation. It was a riverbank adequate to afford concealment for enemy sharpshooters daring enough to cross the river at night and entrench themselves at the foot of Natural Fortress Vicksburg.

Later in the day, Zeke was napping when a soldier down the line named Clem Barfield nudged the man next to him. Would you looky thar. Here come a Yankee Boat! Barfield yelled to the others, Look yonder boys! They gonna try to run the river.

News quickly spread through town of a Yankee ironclad coming down river! Citizens gathered on the lawns, balconies and rooftops of Vicksburg in anticipation of the battle to come. Several young ladies, Annielise Quinn among them, were visiting at the stately, Corinthian-columned Tillman townhouse on Washington Street. From the rear second-floor gallery they had a grand view of the river.

The townspeople watched in silent awe as the dark monster hove into full view. Tongues of flame and smoke billowed from USS Cincinnati’s gun ports as she opened thunderous fire. The solid shot and explosive shells from her huge guns gouged enormous chunks out of Confederate works on the bluff.

The Rebel batteries above answered with devastatingly accurate fire. Great plumes of water like the steps of giants walked across the river to fetch Cincinnati’s range. Her mast, pennant and flag were quickly shot away. While her armored sides repelled Confederate shot, the repeated heavy hammer blows against the iron cladding splintered the thick supporting timbers behind into ragged chunks of wood that tore into her sailors with lethal force. In turn, Cincinnati’s terrible guns took tally tearing apart the flesh and bones of defenders on the bluffs above.

In the midst of the furious exchange, a single Rebel shell fired by the Fort Hill battery found a weakness at Cincinnati’s stern and opened her to the river. Tons of turbid water swirled into her iron-laden hull. Spewing great clouds of smoke and steam, the mortally wounded vessel swung sharply toward the far shore. Laboring vainly for the shallows of the west bank, she settled slowly into the river like a hog into mud. Her surviving crew, those with rapid access to hatches, those who were not scalded to death by steam or maimed by splintered wood, those who could swim, entered the eddying river current and struggled for shore. Some drowned, some died swimming amid the fountains raised from shot fired from the bluffs. The Rebel shelling continued until only Cincinnati’s blue-striped, black funnels remained above water to mark her grave.

Annielise and her friends, watching from the second-floor gallery of the Tillman home, witnessed the spectacle and joined in cheering the victory. The great chorus from Vicksburg rolled off the bluffs and rippled across the water to lap faintly onto the western bank where lay the exhausted Union survivors of another failed attempt to open the river.

For the surrounded, besieged, starving citizens of Vicksburg, the sinking of Cincinnati was a moment for exultation, a singular triumph, a last hurrah.

Look at them Yankee rats swim fer it, shouted Jeremiah Dunn. Zeke Pittman raised the pole from the trench and waved his flag. Soldiers around him whooped and hollered. Wave it, Zeke, boy! Give ’em the flag!

Zeke climbed up out of the trench onto the breastworks. Bracing himself with a wide stance, he waved his flag back and forth for all to see. Rousing cheers came from up and down the Confederate line echoed by the civilian spectators in town.

Sharpshooters hidden below along the flats at river’s near-edge weren’t nearly so amused. Caught in the excitement of the moment, his ears filled with the cheers of the crowd, Zeke didn’t see his sergeant, bent low, running down the trench, didn’t hear him cry out, For God’s sake, Zeke, get down!

Fire! A terrible, clawing fire erupted between Zeke’s widespread legs. The boy let go of the flag and reached to hold his manhood but found only blood and pain. Screaming, Zeke stood staring down at his bloody hands. Before Jeremiah Dunn could scramble up from the trench to pull his friend down, a second ball slammed into Zeke’s pain-twisted face, blowing the back of his head and brains all over Jeremiah. Zeke’s body clumped heavily beside his crumpled flag.

With the town’s one hospital overflowing, several aid stations had been set up in tents. At one of them located two hundred yards behind a section of trench line facing the river, Doctor Theodor Perkins was on duty when casualties from the Cincinnati engagement began to arrive. They were laid out under the hot sun—some on stretchers, some on blankets, many on the bare ground. Some moaned, some screamed, some whimpered, Is it bad? Most were silent, their eyes shut tight, afraid to look at their own wounds or those of their comrades. Body odor competed with that of blood, torn entrails, urine and excrement.

Doctor Perkins stepped carefully among the wounded giving reassuring words to each man while quietly indicating to his orderly which among the more seriously injured he thought had a chance to live. They would be tagged for surgery. All Ted Perkins could do for the others, the ones with gaping abdomen or head wounds, was to try and ease their agony for as long as Death took to call. It was a heavy, almost unbearable burden. Irreplaceable supplies of chloroform, morphine, and laudanum were dwindling. He had to reserve what was left of them for those who stood a chance of recovery. There would soon be little but whiskey available for a patient’s pain, and in too many cases, for the anguish and fatigue of the doctors. The one product the South could manufacture in sufficient quantities was whiskey.

For now, the pitiful sounds of men pleading for him to save their shattered limbs could be stilled by chloroform, the stillness followed by the nicking sound of the bone saw. When the supply of anesthesia was gone, the sound of the bone saw would be lost in the screams of fully conscious men held down while arm, hand, leg or foot was sliced and sawed away—the limb thrown aside, the unwashed, blood-slick table cleared for the next man … and the next.

Unlike so many doctors of the period who had obtained their medical knowledge from the common but vastly inadequate system of a year or two apprenticeship, Doctor Theodore Perkins had graduated from the Nashville School of Medicine where he studied surgery under Doctor Paul F. Eve, and later under Doctor Joseph Newman. Doctor Newman had served in the war with Mexico and made it a point to introduce his students to his firsthand knowledge of the horrific wounds that result from armed conflict. After graduation, Dr. Perkins had set up practice in his hometown of Vicksburg never expecting to treat such wounds.

When the topic of secession first began to dominate conversation in the parlors, poker games and meeting halls of Vicksburg, Perkins had taken a stance against it. After war was declared, he refused to join the Confederate Medical Corps. Instead, war came to him. His civilian practice became second to the terrible demands of treating Confederate wounded.

Ted Perkins was trim and fit at war’s beginning, but the long days and nights now spent attending both Confederate and civilian sick and wounded were taking a toll. The once robust doctor had the haggard look of the overworked, underfed and sleep deprived.

Pausing to take out his handkerchief and wipe away the sweat from his brow, Perkins sensed movement in the periphery of his vision and turned to see Daniel Quinn staggering breathlessly toward him. Ted had always looked up to Daniel almost as a big brother. Without hesitation he told his assistant surgeon to take charge and fetched his medical bag. Perkins saw the worst kind of fear in Daniel’s eyes.

All right, Dan, let’s go. I can only leave for a few minutes.

How did you know?

I know an old bastard like you couldn’t run like that if his own life depended on it. It has to be Nannie or Annielise. Tell me what’s happened, and slow down before you kill us both.

It’s Annielise. Arabella was hysterical by the time she found me. I got her calmed down enough to tell me Annielise has been shot. Don’t know how bad. They were out on the gallery at the Tillman place watching the battle, for God’s sake. Nannie left for the Tillman’s while I came to find you. We got to hurry, Ted.

"I’m trying, damnit. She’s my godchild, remember? Perkins, short of breath, muttered, Damn a town that ate all its horses."

Arabella stood wringing her hands and crying at the front gate of the Tillman house. When she saw the two men puffing up the street, she whispered, Thank you, Jesus!

Neither man had enough wind to speak. Doctor Perkins moved on up the brick walk, urged every step of the way by Arabella. Daniel held to the iron gate and fought to catch his breath.

A crowd of chattering young women fell silent and moved aside as Arabella dragged the doctor past them down the wide central hall and up the graceful, curving stairway toward the second-floor bedroom where Annielise had been carried from the gallery.

Pale and wide-eyed, the child lay on a tester bed, both hands pressing a folded, blood-stained towel to her wound. Nannie held a damp cloth to Annielise’s forehead.

Hello, precious. We’re going to take care of you.

Uncle Ted. I’m scared.

After one look at Annielise’s bleeding wound, he wasted no time bellowing orders.

Arabella, go down to the kitchen and have ’em tear a bed sheet into bandages, boil the strips and dry ’em in the oven quick as they can. Arabella hadn’t made it to the door before she received more orders. Tell Mrs. Tillman I said to send those young ladies home and ask if she has any whiskey. If she does, ask her to wash down the dining room table with it.

Ted Perkins was one of a handful of doctors who had begun to suspect the use of soap or alcohol to clean instruments and wounds before and between surgeries might lessen the prevalent onslaught of infection. Most surgeons didn’t bother to wash their hands, instruments or operating tables between patients. They simply wiped their hands on dirty aprons and used the same blood tainted bowl of water to rinse instrument and sponge in preparation for the next patient. 25 to 50 percent of surgery patients died of infection.

Ted looked back toward the bedroom door to see Daniel laboring for breath.

Dan, you’re gonna have to help me carry her down to the dining table. I can’t operate on this feather bed. Nannie, help me git her clothes off. He turned back to his patient. Annielise darling, moving you is gonna hurt but we have to do it.

The 16-year-old, pale with pain, tried to cover her fear with bravado. Save that Yankee bullet for me, Uncle Ted. I just might wear it around my neck as a souvenir. She screamed as they lifted her off the blood-stained bed.

Annielise was gently placed on the Chippendale table. It smelled strongly of bourbon. Mrs. Tillman and a house servant were on their knees spreading old quilts over the Oriental rug beneath it. She whispered to her servant so that Annielise wouldn’t hear, I don’t want blood on this carpet! Lord knows if we can ever afford another one.

The doctor cleared the room except for Nannie and Daniel.

Arabella, you slide those pocket-doors shut and don’t let anyone disturb the surgery.

Naw sir! Arabella said, Ain’t nobody gittin’ through these doors till you makes that child better. As she pulled closed the ten-foot high, mahogany doors she added, Til’s you do, you ain’t gittin’ out neither.

Ted Perkins took a pint tin from his bag. It held the most precious substance throughout the Confederacy, chloroform. He poured a measure of the volatile liquid over a thickly-folded, flannel cloth. I want you to breathe as deeply as you can, Annielise. This is going to make you feel a little funny, but don’t fight it. He pressed the cloth over her nose and mouth. Annielise fought the sharp fumes like a tiger. It took all three adults to hold her down.

When she was quiet, Ted told Nannie, Don’t take your eyes off her and tell me if she has any trouble breathing. Ted wanted Nannie busy so she wouldn’t watch what he had to do. Dan, you stand on the other side. Don’t look if you can help it, but you’ll have to hold her still if she starts to squirm. I have a little brandy if you need it

Just do what you got to do Ted, Quinn replied.

Ted Perkins set to work with the skill of a surgeon who had treated over a thousand bullet and shrapnel wounds in the last three months. The location of the wound frightened him. Deep abdomen wounds were almost always fatal.

It’s not as deep as I thought, he said as his probe quickly found the bullet. It must have been about spent. I have to open the wound, see how much damage has occurred. We can’t leave any internal bleeding.

Daniel turned away when Ted picked up the scalpel. He was out of practice, but he prayed.

So did Dr. Perkins. He now knew the wound alone wouldn’t kill her, but infection might. Ted spoke as he worked, more out of habit in training apprentice surgeons than in explanation to Daniel and Nannie. The bullet has made a ragged entry wound in the lower left abdominal parietes several inches below and to the left of the umbilicus.

With forceps he carefully lifted the bullet from its resting place, held it up for inspection. It appeared more deformed than he would have imagined from the relatively small amount of damage it had inflicted in the soft tissue of his Godchild. This young lady will have her bullet.

Looking around for a receptacle, he dropped the bloody chunk of lead onto a sterling silver bonbon dish on the Sheraton sideboard and turned back to his surgery.

The bullet has damaged her left ovary and barely penetrated the womb. It’s serious, but she has a good chance of full recovery. He cleaned the wound and began to stitch up the damaged tissue.

Arabella, Ted Perkins called. The door slid open and the short, plump black woman hurried in past the doctor to look at her child. Satisfied, she shifted her attention to Perkins.

Arabella, go ask Mrs. Tillman if she can set up a cot down here in the hall. I think it best if we don’t move Annielise for a few days. I certainly don’t want her carried upstairs. Then he whispered so the others wouldn’t hear, Why in heaven’s name did you let Annielise out on that balcony?

Let her! Arabella bellowed, and then in a loud whisper, How I asposed to stop her? She stubborn as her grandfather. It’s all I can do to keep up wit’ her. Half de town out watchin’ dat battle, Doctor Ted. You knows I rather dat bullet hit me stead a dat child.

It’s alright, Arabella. Go see about that cot, and fetch me those bandage strips. They ought to be ready.

Theodore Perkins left the Tillman house and walked toward the aid station. He ignored the damaged homes, shops and rubble scattered streets, but an agitated mockingbird fussing about in a shell-shattered oak drew his attention. It was the only songbird he had seen in weeks. Songbirds that had not been driven off by the fury of siege had mostly wound up in soup pots.

You better fly out of here fo’ someone knocks you out of that tree with a rock. The mockingbird cocked its head at Perkins, trilled a few notes in answer, then flew off toward the river as if it understood the warning. Ted watched the bird climb over the treetops into the cloud patched sky and disappear in the distance. Wish I could do that. He wearily continued toward the aid station.

As he walked, his thoughts turned to what waited him at the charnel house, for that is what he feared his surgery now resembled. Every day, all day and into the night the wounded, maimed and sick moaned with pain, fever, infection, malnutrition and fear. Worst of all was the unmistakable vacant stare of a patient resigned to death.

It’s hard to save someone who has lost hope, Lord. Ted wasn’t much of a church-goer, but since the war he had fallen into the peculiar habit of talking to God directly. I do the best I know how but it’s never enough is it, Lord? Ted’s thought turned to the army graves detail that arrived at day’s end to collect the dead and the piles of limbs, and how he tried to avoid watching their morbid work. It’s the same for the other side isn’t it Lord? This war visits hell to all in its terrible path. Is this war your doing, Lord? We’re all fools and sinners down here. Have you brought this war down on a nation to cleanse its soul for the sin of slavery?

Ted’s conversation with God was interrupted when Union artillery resumed shelling the town center. Damn ’em Lord! Damn us if you must, but damn them too for the terror they rain down on women and children in this town.

Perkins reached the aid station to join his assistants in attending the day’s wounded. By early evening he was so tired he could hardly lift his arms, his fingers trembled. In the dim light of dusk he addressed the last of the day’s casualties, a sergeant with a dirty, blood-soaked rag wrapped around a nasty flesh wound to his left arm just above the elbow.

What’s your name, Sergeant?

Tunnard, Sir.

Well, Tunnard, whatever it was took a little hide and muscle but missed the bone. This arm probably won’t gain back its full strength, but you’ll likely heal up all right provided you can keep this wound cleaner than the rest of you. Sit down in the chair here. By lamplight Ted used tweezers to pick bits of cloth uniform and unidentifiable detritus from the wound, rubbish that had been carried into the sergeant’s arm when the shard of shrapnel tore through it.

The sergeant said nothing during the procedure—just clenched his jaw. Ted applied a salve of elemental sulfur to the open wound, then picked up a needle. Its tip was a flat, curved, double-edged blade, grown a little dull from use, with a round shank ending in an eye at the top. He held it up to the light and threaded a length of silk suture.

This is gonna smart a bit, he told Tunnard, and began to stitch the ragged wound closed. I’m going to bandage this up to keep the wound clean. You know a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt the rest of you, sergeant.

The sergeant grimaced but didn’t complain as the doctor worked to close the wound. Instead he struggled to continue the conversation. I can hardly stand myself, Doc, but we barely git enough water to drink. Them Yanks don’t exactly invite us down to the river to bathe.

That’s alright, son, Ted replied as he pulled the needle through for another stitch. It’s a wonder any of you fellows up there can move at all without getting your ass shot off. Ted tied the last stitch and began to wrap the arm with a roll of homemade bandage. God knows, I’ve treated enough of you.

Can’t say I’ve showed my ass to the enemy, Doc, but I’d rather get hit there than what happened today. I had a kid git his balls shot off.

His balls shot off! I haven’t treated any such wound as that.

I don’t reckon so on account a second bullet kilt him. Fool kid was standing up on the works waving a flag after we sank that ironclad. I tried my best to git him down. He was a good looking kid. Claimed to be part Choctaw. Died all full of victory and hurt, I reckon.

Well, Sergeant, you’re gonna hurt a while with this arm. Say your name is Tunnard?

Yes sir. My home’s just down river at Warrenton, what’s left of it.

The doctor finished bandaging the arm and fixed it in a sling tied around the sergeant’s neck. Tunnard, I can put you on the wounded list and get you off the line.

That’s tempting, Doc, but I can’t do it. I got to look after my men.

Well, be careful with that arm, son. You don’t want to start it bleeding again. Come back every couple of days to let me look at it and get that bandage changed. Living in a trench is a good way to lose that arm to gangrene.

I’ll do that Doc. Thank you.

The sergeant walked toward the bluffs and disappeared into the darkness.

By the next morning, Annielise was drifting in and out of fever-induced delirium. With the town center under shelling every morning and afternoon, Daniel insisted she be moved to the safety of the cave. Ted sent two stretcher bearers to carry her to the cave and checked on her himself that evening. He didn’t say so, but he feared the worst. I’ve done all I can, he told Daniel. The rest is up to God.

On the forth morning, Annielise’s face no longer glistened with sweat. Nannie gently felt her daughter’s forehead. It was cool, the fever had broken. Nannie bowed her head and said a prayer of thanksgiving.

Near noon, Annielise opened her eyes and announced to the ever present Arabella that she was hungry for some biscuits. As scarce as flour was, she got a biscuit.

A week later, Ted Perkins brought Annielise a present. He had commissioned the sole jeweler in town to make it. The man had been thrilled. The doctor’s strange request was the only commission the jeweler had received since the siege began. He couldn’t eat his merchandise and had begun to barter it for food as the price of a barrel of flour had risen to $500.

With a sly smile, Ted Perkins handed Annielise a blue velvet box. Nannie, Daniel and Arabella looked on as Annielise opened it. Inside was a deformed Minié ball wrapped in a gold teardrop setting threaded onto a delicate chain.

Annielise kissed Ted on the cheek. That’s for saving my life and this Yankee bullet. She fastened the gold chain around her neck.

That’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen, Nannie said. I never wanted to see that awful thing again.

Arabella, hands on hips, mumbled imprecations about trashy folks.

It’s a badge of courage and my granddaughter can wear it if she wants to, Daniel declared.

It’s a badge of foolishness, ‘dat’s what it is, Arabella said. I’m leaving, Ted declared. They’ll be looking for me at the hospital.

That’s right! All the menfolk is leaving so this child and her mama can get some rest. Miss Nannie is done woe’ out. Dere ain’t no shelling going on round dis here part of town so you-uns git. Do yo’ smokin’ and talkin’ out yonder.

Quinn and Perkins emerged from the cave into bright sunlight. First it was my wife, God rest her soul, then my daughter-in-law, and now damn if it’s not a slave ordering me around. Come on to what’s left of my house, Ted. See if we can find an unbroken bottle of bourbon and maybe a cigar or two.

Annielise made the civilian casualty list in the Vicksburg newspaper, The Daily Citizen, J. M. Swords, proprietor. It was printed on the back of wallpaper for lack of newsprint.

Last week the following ladies of our city were wounded: Mrs. Major T. E. Reed, Mrs. C. W. Peters, Mrs. W. S. Hazzard, Mrs. W. H. Clements, Miss Lucy Rawlings, Miss Annielise Quinn, and Miss Eileen Canovan. The wounds were all from fragments of shells except for Miss Rawlings and Miss Quinn who were struck with Minié balls.

A month later, June 27, 1863, the 41st day of siege, Annielise celebrated her seventeenth birthday. Her wound had healed. She fussed about the ugly red scar on my tummy, but had recovered sufficient strength to walk. During an afternoon lull in the shelling, the Quinns held a little party for her in the shade under the canvas tarpaulin. Annielise wore a white linen dress for the occasion. Nannie combed her strawberry blond hair and tied it back with a red ribbon. The sparkle was back in her deep blue eyes.

Grandfather Quinn brought out a bottle of French wine salvaged from his cellar. Nannie produced a small jar of homemade fig preserves, enough for everyone to have a dollop on the half dozen biscuits Arabella had managed to make from flour, one egg, water—milk was unavailable—and a little bacon fat.

Ted gave Annielise a thick, leather bound diary with a brass lock. He had the jeweler emboss her name in gold on its cover. You should record these times. he said. Such an important literary task should keep you out of further mischief.

That’s a wonderful idea, Uncle Ted. I’ll write everything down: the history of the Quinns and Shamrock, the war here in Vicksburg, our brave boys, and the stories I’ve heard about you and Grandfather. Y’all were bad boys.

Your grandfather was years older. He led me astray.

I led you astray?

That’s right, but I’ll forgive you, Daniel, if you show me where you’re hiding that French wine.

A few nights later the most massive bombardment the town had yet suffered was laid down upon Vicksburg. Shells fired from gunboats and mortar barges rained down on the Confederate bluffs facing the river while Rebel trench works forming the landside defenses were pounded by a seven-mile semi-circle of Union artillery. Fired high into the darkness, thousands upon thousands of shells trailing sparks from powder-train fuses and burning wadding arced over the city. Initially mimicking a falling star, the flight of each shell ended in a thunderous flash and concussion thick with the whizzing whine of razor-sharp shards of red-hot iron. It was as near to hell on earth as anyone in Vicksburg that night would ever experience.

At first, the whomp and crack of shell bursts commenced safely distant from the Quinn cave, but slowly the terrifying sounds crept ever closer. Dirt began to dust down from the timber-braced ceiling. The flame of the oil lamp fluttered wildly, casting eerie shadows on the walls. The very ground began to shake. Not a desperate word was spoken. Transfixed by fear, the cave dwellers screamed silently until, like a passing tempest, the barrage rolled over them into the distance. Numb, stunned, ears ringing, hearts pounding, mouths gritty, lungs full of dust, those in the Quinn cave lay awake for hours until fitful sleep granted miserable relief to stressed minds and dirt-sprinkled bodies.

Just after dawn the next day, July fourth, 1863, Nannie awoke inexplicably frightened. There was something eerily unnerving about the morning. Several minutes passed before she realized what made it so. For the first time in 47 days and nights the guns were silent.

Annielise and Arabella were sleeping. Daniel Quinn’s cot was empty. Walking from the cave into sunlight, Nannie found the dead calm uncanny. Spread before her was a landscape of scattered shell holes and splintered trees. All that was left of a great oak nearby was a smoldering trunk shorn of all limbs. Wisps of smoke drifted low to the ground like riptides on an ocean. The sky was hazy, laden with dust, the air heavy with the acrid smell of spent gunpowder. One corner of the tarpaulin at the cave’s entrance hung limply. Sunbeams streamed through the shrapnel-torn canvas patterning the shaded ground beneath with flecks of sunlight. The raucous caw of a crow flying overhead shattered the unfamiliar serenity. Nannie thought, The scavengers are wasting no time arriving.

Nannie!

She looked up to see Daniel hurrying toward her from the direction of town.

Get everyone up! We’re going back to what’s left of the house. Vicksburg is surrendered. Grant will be in town by ten o’clock. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I want you and Annielise off the street. Y’all go on right now! I’ll git some help to bring everything down soon as I can.

While Arabella stayed at the cave to pack, Nannie and Annielise walked a worn path across a weed-choked field to the street that led into town. They were both dressed in the latest fashion … long cotton dresses grown thin and faded from wash-pot boiling and hard scrubbing.

The two women passed small groups of ragged, filthy men with downcast faces. Almost none wore a complete uniform. Many had no shoes. Some had tear streaks down their dirt-caked cheeks.

From one such group, a young soldier stepped into the street in front of the Quinns and took off his cap. Miz Quinn, Miss Annielise, he said, I’m Seth Whitfield. I know your boy, Jonathan, Miz Quinn.

The soldier took a grimy, bullet-holed battle flag from inside his shirt. They say them Yanks most probably gonna search all us when they git here. He held out the flag. My brother, he died carrying this flag. I don’t want no Yankee touching it. I’d be obliged if y’all would take it, Ma’am.

Near tears, Nannie nodded and took the flag without a word, wrapping it in her silk shawl. The two thin, blond women walked on down the littered streets passing damaged homes, some burned out, none untouched. From the verandas of several of the houses, gaunt women and old men silently watched them pass. Some nodded. Along the way, many of the once stately oaks that had provided shady canopies over the street stood splintered, bereft of limbs and leaves, mute testimony to the fury of siege.

Directly, the ladies approached their once beautiful Greek revival townhouse. Many of its windows were shattered, its columns and walls pocked from shrapnel. There were two holes in the roof. To reach their home, mother and daughter had to skirt a long, slow-moving line of troops, each man in turn laying his weapon on a growing pile