The Sentinels of Andersonville by Tracy Groot Read Free Book Online Page A

believe my thinking of Yankees may stand to be adjusted somewhat. Once I have time to consider it. It is a very new idea. You have startled me, right in the middle of this consideration, and I have not come to any conclusion.”
    She lowered her eyes, and a blush pinkened her cheeks. Emery smiled.
    “Attention!” called a man who came around the corner. “You boysgather up your charges and meet Captain Wirz on the east side of the depot. He’ll count ’em off into nineties, and we’ll walk ’em to the pen. Any of you headin’ back to Macon, check in with the provost marshal and get your passes. The rest, report to Sergeant Keppel at the stockade for reassignment to the garrison. Get going, now. Wirz don’t like dalliers.”
      —
    It was an ever-widening world for Violet Wrassey Stiles.
    She sat very still at the woodpile, sorting through many heady impressions, two foremost in her mind.
    First, the Rebel talked to the Yankee wholeheartedly , as if he were not a pillager, murderer, and defiler of Southern women, while the Yankee himself talked as if he were not. To consider a Yankee as something other than a hateful aggressor bound to brutally dominate the South was a terribly new and difficult thought. While it was perfectly acceptable to say out loud that at this point, the outcome of the war did not look good, and that General Cobb or Governor Brown might’ve done better than Jefferson Davis, it was another thing altogether to even think that the Yankees may have been a tiny bit (and the words tiny bit could not be more severe) misjudged, that the South had been perhaps misinformed as to the character of them all .
    She could not bring these dizzying ideas to any sort of conclusion, so discomfortingly did they feel of treason. Yankees had done murder, and this was an indisputable truth. Many boys from Americus lay in far-off graves, and to think well of a Yankee was like killing them all over again.
    The second impression was that the Confederate soldier was handsome. He’d certainly had an effect on her. Or was it a ffect . . . ?
    Oddly, Dance Pickett came to mind.
    And then came a different thought altogether, ousting both boys, and she looked to where the Federal men had filed away.
    Papa worked at the Federal hospital at the prison. He’d forbidden her and the entire household from going near the prison, which was an easy thing to do since it was ten miles from Americus. He said it was not fitting for women to be around so many men. He said there were camp diseases.
    She held very still, as if listening for something distant. Things about Papa and his volunteerism tried hard to make sense right now.
    Tell your father he needs to be more careful.
    The glorious Cause, which some hateful newspapers were now calling “lost,” had always seemed a little independent of Papa, which had bothered Violet   —he was not as patriotic as she wished him to be, content to remain in a vexing state of even-keeled benignity. But Papa had changed in the last few months. He was quieter. His smile was quick and gone. He’d even cut off his beautiful beard, and the family had never known him without it. Lily had cried for two days.
    Just before he cut it, Violet and Papa sat on the porch on a Thursday evening after he came home from the hospital. He was very tired and had closed his eyes, resting a spell before Ellen called them to supper. Violet took the chance to study him when he couldn’t see her concern. How pale he was. How puffy his eyes. How   —and something moved on his beard.
    It was a single, creeping, gray-colored vermin . She saw another.
    Horrified, she tried to flick them away without disturbing Papa, but the hideous little things stuck fast. She looked about, then went to the magnolia tree and pulled off a leaf. She crept back up the stairs, and tried to scrape one off with the leaf without rousing Papa. He did rouse, saw Violet, and followed her eyes to the vermin. He calmly pinched it from his