The Package

by Brooks Carver

Mail was normally a big event, but not this year. Annie didn’t want any mail at all. She was in the bare dirt yard feeding the hens when the letter arrived. It was delivered by a neighborly farmer on his way home from town. He got down from his wagon, removed his hat, smiled tentatively and handed over the wrinkled and stained envelope.

"I hope things are improving up there along the state line. I hope the news is better for all our sakes." He removed his hat, and looked at the ground. "Should I sit for a bit while you open it up? Maybe just keep you company for a time?"

She shook her head and sat down on the porch steps. "No. Your Abby will be waiting dinner. You go on home now." She paused. "And thank you." The farmer replaced his hat, touched the brim, and rode away into the dust suspended over the land. She stared across the brushy fields, then picked at the wax on the envelope. Finally she opened it. The handwriting was strange.

  *  *  *

April 11th, 1863

In Camp

Corinth, Mississippi

My dear Ma’am,

Us boys in our squad talked of writing to folks when one of our numbers was lost. It falls upon me to tell you a sad truth about your husband Marshall. He and many more men in our squad was wounded or worse on April 7th at the battle of Pittsburg Landing. He was not left on the field. We got him back here safely but sadly he passed on. Our doctor just couldn’t seem to fix him. His wounds were just too severe, you see. We buried him as decently as we could with many of our other valiant boys. I am sending along home to you his personal effects. I hope I got the address right and I pray that you will receive his haversack and all that it contains in good order. I will forward it as soon as circumstances permit with safety.

He was a God fearing man and a fine soldier. He is up yonder now but we will all meet again. I was proud to serve with him. Marshall was my friend and we shared much, both good and bad. His thoughts were of you and your three children, last and always.

In sorrow,

Sgt. Jacob Walker

9th Mississippi Regiment

  *  *  *

The widowed ladies from all around the county met nearly every Tuesday at the Baptist church to pray and commiserate with each other on the loss of their husbands and sons in the merciless, unending war. It seemed to help. The coming together of the wives and mothers of the dead men gave even the poorest farm wife an air of respectability. They all seemed like regular neighbor ladies then, even the merchant’s wives from the big houses in town. Grief was the great equalizer. The ladies just needed to talk and keep company. It didn’t seem to matter much if the minister was in attendance or not, they still packed the church. Annie thought him a dry old gentleman with no possible way to understand a widow’s feelings anyway. She didn’t miss him.

On more than one occasion the elderly preacher said that their menfolk had "passed on to a better place. Let us celebrate for them." The first time he said it, two women walked out. They never came back to the meetings. Most of the widows definitely didn’t feel like celebrating but concentrated with great intensity on finding food and worrying about shortages of every conceivable thing.

"They were our finest and bravest men," the minister had said, "and young. So very young."

You think I don’t know that. Annie also nearly walked out but felt needful of the support of the other women. So she continued, dutifully, to attend.

Annie walked to the post office every day looking for her package. Mail delivery was uncertain. Her oldest child, Mandy, who was in the second grade before school was canceled, stayed home and looked after Little Joe and the baby. It was only a half mile down the muddy lane from their clapboard house into the single street town.

It had been a hot Tuesday in early May when Annie received her package from Mississippi. Bloody Mississippi. She walked into the general store-post office and knew right away Postmaster Griswold had it. He forced a sad smile when she made eye contact. Wordlessly taking her parcel, Annie nodded her thanks. Holding the package pressed in front of her like a schoolgirl holds her books, she retreated out the door and headed for home.

After settling the children down in the yard to play, Annie walked through the dust onto the sagging porch, then into the house. She thought briefly that she needed to clean the fireplace, unlit for three days and full of ashes, but then walked trance-like into the bedroom. After closing the door and leaning heavily against it until it latched, she put her parcel on the bed and spent several minutes looking down at the heavy brown wrapper. With her sewing shears she then cut the twine, peeled back and folded the paper. The heavy hot light of the late spring afternoon fell through the window onto the worn stiff canvas haversack. The gray mound sat there on the bed like some object from a different, alien world, yet still retained somewhat the familiar shape of Marshall’s back and shoulders.

  *  *  *

"Mommy, are them our daddy’s things?" Annie didn’t hear her eldest child enter the room. The bright light shining through the window seemed to search out the shades of yellow in her hair. The little girl’s colorful brightness was out of place in that grim house down a dusty road a half mile from a hopeless town in time of War. She was deeply tanned and wore a too-big dress of faded light blue.

"Yes. Leave me be, Mandy. I just want to be lonesome right now."

"Oh, Mommy, can’t I just stay and see?" She put her fingers carefully on the gray canvas and rubbed it. "What kind of poke is this? Is it a present for us? Open it up. Aren’t you going to open it up?"

"Yes to all them questions." Her mother covered the small hand with her own. She felt the warm sweet exhale of the child’s breath on her upper arm. "This will be daddy’s last gift. It’s for all of us. Let’s just see what’s in here."

She unhooked the straps and found at the very top all of her letters to her husband tied with a cowhide thong. She next found a large kerchief wrapped into a bundle around various objects: a razor, a knife, a rusted pocket watch, a pipe, a pocket Bible, a spoon, some heavy thread, corroded needles and spare metal and wooden buttons. She set these aside. Next was a small woolen blanket in desperate condition, hardly more than loosely held together rags. A battered tin cup rolled out of the blanket. It still contained coffee stains. Annie ran her finger around the inside of the cup, and licked the tannin until the cup was clean. Finally at the very bottom of the pack was his spare uniform jacket. She unrolled it, shook it out, then held it up at arms’ length. Two bullet holes had pierced the forearm of one sleeve. There were powder burns around both holes, but no blood. "Looks like the Yankees missed him that time, girl. I guess he wasn’t wearing this one," Annie paused, then continued, "when they killed him." Only a short time ago he had been standing near a campfire in this same jacket. He probably moved around some to get away from the smoke as he talked to his friends about the coming battle, or perhaps fussed with his ammunition and weapon to make sure all was clean, dry and in readiness for whatever the next morning held in store for them. He was like that.

"Oh my," Mandy said as she wiggled her finger through one of the holes. "Mommy, are we sad now?"

"Yes, girl, we’re sad right this minute."

"That’s not a good way for us to be," Mandy said and skipped out of the room. In a moment she returned with a grimy cigar box under her arm. "See my ballerinas? I’ll make `em dance then you can be happy just like they are." The child took her four empty thread spools, colored vividly with berry juice, and sent them twirling across the bed with her small fingers. Mandy glanced at her mother. She frowned, deep in thought, and then brightened. "All right now. We can have a party right here on the bedclothes." The child hopped up onto the bed and dumped out the contents of her box: small cutouts of pretty ladies from the newspaper, dried flower petals, and colorful pieces of cloth. When all was perfect she said, "I invited the neighbor ladies over. You pour tea, Mommy. Everything’s going to be fine now. We’uns can all visit a little bit. Everything’s ready." The child reached over and shook her mother’s arm. "Come on now, you have to pour because you’re the mommy."

"I don’t care for any tea just now. But thank you just the same. See to your brothers and don’t come back in here no more. I’ll be out by and by to fix us a little supper." The child gathered up her treasures and with the worn box under her arm, left the room without another word.

Annie turned from the bed and looked out the window across the fallow fields--brittle, dusty and full of weeds. Closing the unpainted shutters, Annie put all that was left of her husband except the butternut jacket and the letters back into the haversack, and then into the chest at the foot of the bed. She smoothed his blanket as it came to rest in the dark depth of the chest and she felt at that moment more elderly than even the preacher man back in town.

"Let us rejoice," the reverend had said. "They are in a better place."

It wouldn’t be hard to be in a better place than this. She gathered the letters in her handwriting along with the ones she had received from Marshall. Like a deck of cards, she placed his, then hers, in the proper order according to dates. The latest unmailed one was found in the inside pocket of the jacket.

  *  *  *

Near Pittsburg Landing

April 6, 1863

Dearest darling wife,

We are in battle. We’ve fought it out among these fields and woods around a place called Shiloh Church and it’s not a good sight round about here. The word down from the top says that we are winning but it don’t look like it from my point of view. There’s still an awful passel of Yankees in the woods and down by the river they are throwing shells all over us. Hard to get any sleep. I only got time for a few lines tonight because I’m sorely tired and rain is coming down real steady right now. It looks like its set in for a while. We can’t hardly keep a fire burning. The awful smoke keeps the bugs away though. Another good part is that we don’t fight much in the rain. Tomorrow when the weather clears we’ll probably start up again. I can hear Yankees rattling around over there. They are bringing fresh troops up from the river for us to kill. We’ll try to oblige them. They always have more and more.

Last night before the battle there was a big old moon hanging over the woods directly in front of us. I thought for a long time about how you and me used to enjoy looking at the moon. I would have thought it real pretty if I didn’t know that the timber down there was full of the enemy. That kind of spoilt it for me. We can see their fires twinkling and smoking through the trees. Maybe it’ll keep on raining tonight and into daylight. Then us and them could just forget about killing each other for a little bit. Maybe they would just go away if it got too wet. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing? Probably not though. I’ll write more to you after tomorrow’s deeds are done.

Kisses to Mandy, Little Joe and the baby. Kisses to you too, my dear Annie. Kisses and much, much more.

Love, Marshall

  *  *  *

She removed a ribbon from her hair and tied all the correspondence together. The letters followed the other items into the chest. She slammed the lid and knew that a broken heart wasn’t just a figure of speech. Her heart really did blow apart. She could feel the pieces flying into her throat, her fingertips and stomach. Pieces dropped down her thighs and into her toes and left her with emptiness and the beginnings of a sharp headache. She knew there was not going to be time to mourn. There wasn’t enough time for anything except work. Responsibility stretched to the vanishing point.

A great tiredness overtook her in the dim quiet room. She unfastened the oblong wooden buttons on the bodice of her dress and pulled it over her head, then stood quietly staring at the bed as if she were posing. The dress fell from her hand to the floor. She kicked it into the corner. Putting on Marshall’s jacket, she wiped her eyes with a sleeve which hung slightly below her fingertips, crawled onto the bed and curled up onto her stomach. She buried her face in the arms of his garment. The cloth smelled faintly of wood smoke. Most of all when she breathed in the warp and weft of the worn wool, she smelled a faint trace of Marshall’s own familiar scent captured in the musty cloth. It permeated her senses. It filled her with longing and that special, spectacular kind of hunger. She couldn’t recall his face. She listened in vain for his voice. She searched for his being somewhere in the gray woolen folds that caressed her arms and face and tried to remember the wholeness of him. She felt his beard brush along her neck, then felt his breath in her ear. His presence had no features, yet his spirit occupied her, flooded around her and filled her to overflowing.

"The boys is hungry, Mommy. I fixed up some supper." Small, angry crying came from the other room. "Come on out here now. Wake up. We’uns is waitin on you."

"You go right on without me now, you hear?" The door to the bedroom softly closed. Silence returned.

As darkness began to fall, night sounds echoed from the thick woods just a few feet from the house. Mist rolled out of the timber and covered the pastures. Annie felt the first welling up behind her eyes, a thickness in her throat. She tried with great intensity to remember that war was hard on women and children but harder still on those who were in the common graves hastily dug all around the battlefields of Pittsburg Landing. Finally, as she listened to the riot of sounds from the full obscurity of the darkness outside her window, she began to cry. It would be a night as all nights, however, with a beginning, a midnight and an end. After the mist cleared, the moon would, as usual, cast its glow across the forests of jack and loblolly pine. Daylight would finally come. The night would simply seep away and the days would grow a little hotter, a little dustier, a little longer.

She would muddle through. Tomorrow would be the setting in motion of something different, but not tonight. She wrapped herself tighter in the jacket to try to protect her heart, then tighter still. Tonight she belonged to Marshall.

The End

The Package; 2004 by Brooks Carver

Brooks Carver is a writer and poet of historical fiction. His family comes from the Blue Ridge region of North Carolina. He has a reconstruction era novel set in eastern Tennessee, The Angels' Share now out on speculation. At present he is working on the sequel and another manuscript about Confederate Cavalry General John Hunt Morgan. Brooks has a lifelong love affair with 19th and 20th-century American literature.

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