When the Civil War started in 1861 no single geographic point was more important to both sides than Vicksburg, Mississippi. With a population of less than five thousand souls it was nonetheless the hub of traffic moving up and down the Mississippi River and acted also as the heart of rail traffic east and west, tying the Confederacy together. Vicksburg was the commercial center of the South and when the clouds of war rolled over the state in 1861, the citizens of the town voted against secession—apparently horrified at the thought of interrupting their business activities, a large part of which were transacted with northern states far up the River.

But Mississippi did secede, and war came, and the bluffs of Vicksburg that overlooked the River were fortified with batteries of artillery. The Federal Navy and transports supplying the Union Army could not pass by the guns of Vicksburg.

Then in 1863 the Federal Army—77,000 troops under General Grant—completely encircled the city. Across the River and up and down stream from Vicksburg the Union Navy abetted the stranglehold with gunboats, transports, supply organizations and more army troops. The defenders of Vicksburg, under General Pemberton, consisted of 31,000 Confederate troops.

The Siege of Vicksburg lasted forty-seven days.

As the federal noose tightened, only a few citizens left Vicksburg. For most there was no place to go—the entire country was at war. The remaining population, mostly women, children, and the elderly, dug caves into the hillsides and moved underground while the United States military tried to force them into submission.

In 1946, eighty-three years after the Siege, I spent a weekend in Vicksburg. I knew nothing then of the hellishness of the Siege. I was an eighteen year-old Army private and my mind was on other things.

I was stationed at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, where I met “Ed Clay” (all the names are made up), a Mississippian from Clarksdale. We had both been pulled out of processing and assigned to an administrative company because we both could type. We had intended to get a three-day pass to go up to Clarksdale to visit his family but the pass never came so we did the next best thing. Ed’s sister lived in Vicksburg, only half the distance to Clarksdale. Ed’s girlfriend from Ole Miss, Jo Sarah, lived in Vicksburg too, and she would be home for the weekend. His folks agreed to come on down from Clarksdale and meet us there.

 Ed and I hitched rides from Camp Shelby. A family of four took us a few miles, then we a caught ride on a school bus, and then later, with a traveling salesman, and finally with a truck driver. Jackson, Mississippi, the capital city that I had never seen before, came into view as we rolled along. It was an impressive, glistening modern-looking city at that time, rising out of the flatland like a shimmering mirage. Beyond Jackson we crossed a bridge that spanned a stream and from it got a fleeting glance at a gypsy camp: colorfully painted vehicles parked about, people dancing in the light of a campfire. “Can’t catch those guys long enough to draft them in the army,” the truck driver said. “Ought to be in jail, every one of those good-for-nothing draft dodgers. A lot of good they did us during the war, going around selling stuff door-to-door and telling fortunes.”

 

1863. The Commander of the Federal Advanced Naval Division sent a letter ad- dressed to “The Authorities of Vicksburg,” demanding the surrender of the city. The reply stated: “We have erected no defenses and none are within the corporative limits of the city, but, sir, in further reply, I will state that neither the municipal authorities nor the citizens will ever consent to a surrender of this city. [signed] L. Lindsay, Mayor of Vicksburg.”

 

It was late when we got to Vicksburg. Ed’s sister, I learned, was not to be called Mary Anne, after all, but Sugah. And her husband, Ed’s brother-in-law, was not Hiram Bendy Witherspoon, but Boo Boo.

Sugah was nice, a young mother of two who had followed her husband around to military bases until he went overseas. And Boo was a sharp young man of twenty-seven who had been a Marine pilot in the South Pacific. He had been out of the service a couple of months and would be returning to Ole Miss for a law degree the following fall. Just by shaking his hand one knew he was going places.

 

1863. The city was moving underground. Everyone was digging caves and as the bombardment started they moved into them. At first the caves were simple affairs and then gradually became bigger and more elaborate. One diarist wrote that the city was so honeycombed with caves that “the streets looked like avenues in a cemetery.”

 

Ed’s parents, I learned once they arrived, were not known as Mr. and Mrs. Clay, but simply as MaClay (a nice, but rather mousey little lady, a professional mother and housewife of the old school) and PaClay, who was taller than Ed and surprisingly trim for his age.

I first saw PaClay as he got out of his yellow Packard, smoking a cigar. He wore a black and white check sport coat and dark green pants. When he removed his plaid driving cap a mop of thick grey hair was displayed. He pumped my hand as if my vote counted. But I soon learned he wasn’t a politician. He owned a lumber company or a hardware store, or something like that.

I was to meet the neighbors later but now it was late and we, Ed and I, were assigned to the attic, a small extra bedroom with sloped walls facing the street. There were twin beds there, and I quickly got in one. As I faded into sleep I could hear Ed in the hallway downstairs talking on the phone with his girlfriend. He spoke in a whisper, but every word was clear. I wondered if everyone was staying awake to listen. I tried but couldn’t.

Soon after daylight PaClay shook me awake and said, “Get dressed and come downstairs. We’ll go out for breakfast.” As I was dressing I noticed that Ed was not in his bed. Making my way down the narrow stairs I found PaClay in the living room, smoking his cigar and looking out the open door. No one was awake but us, and I didn’t ask about Ed. Driving into town he asked me a few questions about my family and we talked about Ed being a really fine pitcher on the Ole Miss baseball team. “I could have kept him out of the service, but he wouldn’t let me,” PaClay said. “The draft will be stopped soon. It would have been easy to keep him in school.” We finished eating and got back in his car. “Let’s drive out to the Military Park.” That, I realized later, was the purpose of our coming out so early. And some time later I realized that everyone had made this trip with him until he could no longer get anyone to join him. He liked to talk about the Siege of Vicksburg, and he liked to wander around in the park and look at the monuments and the positions of the troops and all that. Although he knew a lot about it, I was not at all interested.

We drove to the Military Cemetery, just a short distance from downtown. He drove along the battle lines and mentioned things like the Louisiana Redan, General Pemberton, and McPherson’s Line. We walked around. He stood looking down toward town, hands on his hips. His cigar smoke floated in the cool morning air. “The Yanks starved our people out, but they never broke our line.” He spoke as if he were talking to himself. As we got in the car he said, “My grandparents were here during the Siege. They dug a cave and lived in it until it was over. They lived through it. Their house was destroyed, but they lived through it. I’ll show you where they lived.”

Ed was at Sugah’s house when we got back, but he didn’t stay long. He said he had to go back to Jo Sarah’s. He said he would like for me to come along, but they were having a lot of trouble and I wouldn’t enjoy all the fussing and everything anyway. In the meantime I should just make myself at home and he would be back shortly. I was making myself at home when Sugah sent me to Phil and BJ’s, two houses up the street. “That’s where all the men are. Boo Boo’s up there, too.” It was not quite ten o’clock in the morning then.

 

During the winter of 1863, brandy had been priced at sixty dollars a gallon.—The Journal of Kate Stone.

 

In the kitchen of Phil and BJ’s house there was a crowd of people, neighbors, and they were doing some very serious drinking. Many of the wives were there too. After a few introductions, I pulled a chair over in one corner of the kitchen and sat down. They forgot I was there.

They were all young couples recovering, I supposed, from the war and celebrating the peace. Phil was not discharged from the army yet, just home on leave. Tom McKinley had been home from Europe only six months, a pilot in the 9th Air Force. Horace, the only one with any obvious sign of a war wound, sat back in a chair with a cast on his leg. But it was not a war wound, it turned out. Actually, he was still in the Navy, stationed in Memphis, and had come home a few weeks before and was to surprise his wife late at night. His own dog bit him. Some of them had not been to war. Herman was 4-F and cross-eyed. He had been a jeweler in town all through the war.

 

1863. Molly Brunch gave a ball at her Bordello. This time they invited the ministers and the most respectable families.

The townspeople got together and took the fire wagons down to the manse and, by turning the hoses on the dancers and the food on the tables, washed them out and then they went to Pat Gorman's Tavern and did the same there too. The mayor said it was, “A quiet but determined way of correcting evil.”

 

As the morning wore on the party moved along the block from one house to another. It was like all the houses were common property. For some reason or another, and with little or no discussion about it, as if by a prearranged signal, they would pick up their bottles and glasses and move along to the next house. The women seemed to drift in and out of the group as did MaClay, who did not drink at all, and PaClay who was considerably more sociable but seemed to disappear after a few minutes each time. I did not know where they went, but assumed they went back to Sugah’s house.

 

1863. “I think all the dogs and cats have been killed. We don’t see them prowling around anymore,” one Vicksburg citizen wrote. “We are lucky to get a quart of milk daily from a family near who have a cow they expect hourly to be killed.”

 

As the party moved up and down the street food would appear and just as suddenly disappear; perhaps they moved off and left it. Later I would realize that not a single time during my entire stay did I see any family or group of people sit down at a table and have a meal together. There was food, to be certain, but never a meal where people gathered around a table. And in some places there seemed to be a shortage of food. At one house I saw Boo Boo put potato chips between two slices of bread and at another PaClay seemed to enjoy his own invention of spreading pimento cheese on chocolate cookies. Horace opened a can of pork and beans and ate them with an improvised utensil, a sort of trough he made by folding up a piece of paper.

But there was never a shortage of whisky. When the supply looked like it was running low, someone darted off to the store.

It was just barely dark and I moved to the front porch, sitting there and wondering why Ed had not come back, when Beth May came running across the front lawn, crying and screaming that Sue Helen was going to kill herself. I froze up and she raced past me into the kitchen and repeated her call for help. The entire brigade in the kitchen jumped up and ran down the street into the Thompson’s house, carrying their glasses with them. I was swept along too. “She’s in the bathroom. She locked herself in. Oh, my God, do something!” They banged frantically on the bathroom door, calling her name, but there was no answer. Boo Boo pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “Stand back, stand back!” He proceeded without discussion to kick the door in. It splintered and began to give in. I was almost afraid to look but I watched anyway. Boo Boo gave the door one final kick and the door fell back off its hinges but the room was empty. “She went out the window!” someone exclaimed. “The screen’s off!” Stumbling and bumping into one another, we raced outside to search for her. Through the neighborhood, in the garages, in the field at the center of the block and the ravine there, and then a look through all the houses. As the search continued, most of the people would stop by a kitchen now and then to refill glasses. Most of the women seemed on the edge of hysteria. Shrieking could be heard occasionally throughout the neighborhood. The search was exhausting. Small groups would stop now and then and continue their party, then jump up and start looking again.

 

1863. Mary Loughborough, a visitor to Vicksburg, wrote, “...the ordinary rules of good breeding are now so entirely ignored.”

 

A long time later they found Sue Helen. She had been in the back seat of one of the cars parked along the street. She was crying when I saw her. They brought her into the Macintosh’s house and were bathing her face in cold water, and then they moved her into one of the bedrooms, but she kept sitting up and periodically letting out a sort of muffled scream, a noise that, whatever it was, I had never heard before.

I was vastly relieved that the suicide had been averted, but the relief was short lived. Within two hours the same thing happened three more times to different people. It was all basically the same. A threat of suicide preceded the routine, then the alarm, the disappearance, the wild frantic search. It was very upsetting.

 

1863. “The flowers are in perfection, the air is heavy with perfume...and the garden bright and gay with all summer flowers... Nature is all fair and lovely—all except the spirit of man seems divine."—The Diary of Emma Balfour.

 

Later, someone discovered that Sugah was missing from the neighborhood, and the same hysteria was generated anew. But the search for her was hardly organized when she drove up in PaClay’s car. She was exasperated with the way everyone was behaving. “What’s the matter with you all? I’ve just been to the store.” I helped her carry the sacks into the house. As we went in she said, “Aren’t we the worst people you ever saw? Carrying on like this....”

That thought had apparently never occurred to any of the others. “Not at all,” I told her. “All this just makes me homesick, these people having such a good time and everything.” The truth was that I had never seen a drop of whisky in my parents’ house.

She smiled sheepishly and put the things in the refrigerator, not dwelling on the thought any more, or perhaps afraid to pursue it.

I started out of the house, got to the living room and walked back to the kitchen. I said, “Sugah, did you know there is a postman’s mail bag in there on the sofa, and it’s full of mail?”

She laughed. “That Palmer Joe. He stops by here on Saturdays on his route and has a drink and then goes off and forgets to take his mail bag. He’ll be back. It may be tomorrow, but he’ll get it.”

 

1863. The Vicksburg Whig reported that an officer went into the hospital and drank the medicinal whisky and reeled out.

 

A little before ten o’clock that night we went out in a few carloads to the Rainbow Club at the edge of town. It was a painted concrete block building with a big neon rainbow sign out front. Inside there were thirty or forty tables around the walls with space to dance in the center. With the juke box blaring, our party ordered drinks and began watching the dancers. I had my eye on a very pretty girl who was dancing with a sailor. “Is she married?” I asked Sugah.

“No,” she said. “That’s Evelyn something, I can’t remember her name. I know her. She works for a cotton broker downtown.”

A few minutes later Sugah saw I was still watching the girl. “Go on and dance with her. Break in.” She sort of pushed me out of my chair.

 

1863. Granville Alspaugh, a soldier in Vicksburg, wrote to his mother of a conscript who “makes out like he is sick and lays up all day and runs around at night with girls. ”

 

I made my way out onto the floor and tapped the sailor on the arm. He stopped dancing and stepped around between me and the girl and said, “What do you want?”

“I’m breaking in. I want to dance with your girlfriend, if she doesn’t mind.” I tried to see her, to judge her reaction, but he kept moving between us. I leaned around. She looked at me with a bewildered expression. The sailor was very annoyed, his face screwed up, puzzled.

“Break in?” he said. “You can’t do that here. We don’t break-in in Vicksburg!”

I had never heard such a reaction.

“Other places, yeah, but not here. We don’t do that here.” He had to shout above the music when he spoke.

The girl leaned around him, looking at me, but she still had no expression. I said, “Well,” and turned and started walking away.

The sailor kept talking, “Sure, a long time ago, but not in years and years. You’ll see, if you stay here for long. We just don’t do that. And it’s really for the best, too....”

He was talking so loud that I thought he was following me and I wheeled around because I had had enough. But he had started dancing again.

I was embarrassed to report back to Sugah. “What?” She sounded like she didn’t believe me but she laughed and turned back to the girl she had been speaking with.

 

1863. The Vicksburg Whig reported that several young ladies received invitations to a moonlight ride with some officers. The young ladies convened at the right place and then waited in vain long past the set hour. They later discovered that “rival belles” had sent the invitations.

 

To my complete surprise, Ed suddenly appeared in the club and walked over to our table. He was grinning as he greeted everyone. Then to me he said, “Come outside with me.” I followed him across the dance floor and out the door. Two girls were standing in front of the parked cars. He walked up to them and said, “Well, here he is.” He touched one of them on the arm and looked at me. “This is Lenta. She’s your date.” Turning to the other girl, he said, “And this is Jo Sarah.”

The girl he introduced as Lenta was much prettier than Jo Sarah. Much prettier. I was speechless. I kept staring at her and back to Ed. I tried to say something flattering or funny to Lenta, but nothing would come out. When I finally spoke she smiled and what a smile. She was terrific.

 

1863. 2nd Lt. James Brotherton of Georgia was stationed in Vicksburg. He wrote a letter home that said, in part, “Tell Mat that I have found me a Mississippi sweetheart. She is very pretty and accom- plished and her name is Maggie.”

 

I decided it was some kind of joke Ed was pulling. Nonetheless, I took a couple of steps and stood beside Lenta. To Ed, I said, “Well, what are we going to do? Where are we going?” I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Ed pulled me aside. “Look, ah...we’re still having a lot of trouble, and arguing and everything. It would be best if you all don’t go with us right now. Why don’t you and your date just go back to the club and hang around with Sugah and them. We’ll be back in a little while and pick you up.”

When I directed Lenta to the door she said, in a whisper, “I thought we were going with them.”

“I thought so, too.”

We turned and watched them drive away. We then went into the Rainbow Club but were quickly evicted. They would not permit a seventeen year-old girl in the club. I could come in because I was in uniform, but not her. So we stood around out front, talking, and then we sat on the fender of a car. She asked me my name and when I told her she frowned, looking skeptical. She did not change her expression so I fished my dog tags out of my collar and stretched the chain her way so she could read them. She studied them carefully and finally said, “You have a funny name, and your initials are G.W., like Gee Whiz.” She addressed me as Gee the rest of the night.

“Or G.W. could stand for George Washington,” I said.

She smiled, “But it doesn’t.”

She laughed. “And your last name looks like a radio station.” Then she repeated my name and dropped the dogtags in my hand, and said in a mocking tone, “Your date tonight is coming to you from station W-A-D-E.”

She told me her family was moving to Tennessee from Oklahoma. Her reason for being in Vicksburg was very complicated. I hardly understood it and really didn’t care. They were staying near Jackson with relatives, an uncle or somebody. She had come to Vicksburg with a cousin who went on to Port Gibson and Lenta was supposed to wait for her and meet another relative who would return to Jackson with her. It would be a couple of hours before the next bus arrived. She was tired of sitting in the bus station with all those servicemen, she said, and Ed and Jo Sarah seemed real nice so she decided to go with them. That’s all there was to it. She seemed a little bit old fashioned, somehow, and that, too, was very appealing. She was beautiful. Her dark auburn hair, maybe black, glistened in the light of the neon sign, sometimes reflecting the light rainbow colors. She was cute, she was a doll. She looked almost too young to be wearing lipstick. Her dark blue eyes sparkled. She possessed a confidence that the giggly girls I had known in high school did not have. I am six feet. She came up to about here...she was maybe five-six, or five-three, or...I don’t know. She was the perfect height.

We could easily hear the juke box from inside, so we started dancing on the sidewalk. When I tried to pull her too close to me she stopped and looked at me hard, hands on hips. She would have none of that. We started dancing again to “Sentimental Journey” and then “Blues in the Night.” I took off my field jacket and put it around her. She was a good dancer, rhythmic and smooth; she floated, and followed me so easily. When they played “Paper Moon” I started trying to lead her into a faster dance, and to my amazement, she had no earthly idea how to jitterbug. I had never met a girl who could not jitterbug. She tried. Her skirt flared out when she whirled around. Very pretty legs. Even the back of her knees were cute. I had never thought that of any girl before.

It was getting cold, and we got in Sugah’s car. I asked her about school and what were her best subjects. She was non- committal. “I don’t know. I had no tru-a-bill with any of them.” I had noticed a slight accent when we first started talking, but this was the first word that was distinctly off track. “Tru-a-bill,” I repeated, while trying to keep from laughing. Then I said, “Well, I did.”

“You did what?” she asked.

“I had tru-a-bill with everything. Just about every course in school was tru-a-bill for me.”

She looked at me scornfully.

I said, “I mean, you have tru-a-bill or you don’t. You didn’t and I did. That’s all there is to it.”

She gave me another stern look. “You’re being a fool,” she concluded. Then she added, “I think you are like that.” And I did not know exactly what she meant.

I snuggled up to her and pulled my jacket around the both of us, but she wouldn’t allow any kissing. A brush of my lips across her cheek as we tried to keep warm but that was all. “I don’t know you good enough,” she explained.

A while later someone knocked on the car window. Two MPs told me to get out of the car. One checked my pass while the other one grinned and stared at Lenta. Then they went inside the Rainbow Club.

We got out of the car to dance again, just to stay warm. “It Had to Be You” played.

A police patrol car drove slowly past, stopped and backed up. The officer got out, leaving his door open, and came over to us. We stopped dancing. He spoke to me but kept his eye on Lenta. “Do you have any identification?” he asked.

I again retrieved my pass from my wallet. He hardly looked at it before handing it back. “And what about you, young lady? Do you have any identification?”

She stepped directly in front of him. “My name is Lenta Byington. My family is moving to Tennessee, and I am only visiting here.” I assumed she didn’t have a driver’s license. He looked at her coldly. He mumbled something and then he felt around in his shirt pocket, and apparently not finding whatever it was he was looking for, he stepped over to his car. I watched him but could see Lenta just out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly, in a single motion, she reached down and removed her shoes. And then in a flash she began sprinting down the street. I watched her disappear into the dark.

A look of amazement came over the cop. He looked over to me and then back up the street. Then back at me again.

I said, “I don’t know why.”

Then I bolted into the dark after her, using all my speed.

I saw her pass under a street light nearly a block away, running like a deer. I had played three years of high school football and considered the obstacle course to be the only fun thing in the Army, so I knew about running. This girl could run. I was barely gaining on her. We raced on. She dropped my field jacket, picked it up and went on. I still could not catch her. She passed under another street light and then turned down an alley. Dogs started barking in our wake and ahead of us. She came to a fence and went over it. Chickens squawked. House lights came on as we ran through hedges and across backyards. Someone fired a shotgun behind us. Birdshot rained through the trees. 

Eventually she came out on a street at the top of a hill and stopped in the shad- ows of some very tall shrubs. I fell to my knees beside her. When I could almost speak I said, “Why...why did...you run...? You’ve almost killed me...trying to keep up...."

“I’m not going to let that policeman put me in jail,” she said.

I was completely puzzled. “Well, he’s sure going to have to catch you first, but he wasn’t going to put us in jail. Why would he? We haven’t done anything.”

We started walking down the street. She said, “You never know what they will do. Or how they feel about people....”

What a strange statement. What a strange girl. She was the cutest girl I had ever met. I wanted to protect her and shield her but I didn’t know how.

 

1863. The Vicksburg Battalion rushed out to Fort Hill and hauled up four artillery pieces to defend the town against the Federal gunboats.

 

All alone in the quiet night now, we stood at a street corner that overlooked the Mississippi River, which I had never seen before, and watched a towboat plying its way downstream. The pilot house was lit and its searchlights raked the banks of the River through the mist that hung over the water.

Lenta thought she saw the policeman’s car turn onto the street. She made a startled squeaking sound and started running down the hill before I could tell her it wasn’t him.

Again, I raced after her along a path at the very edge of the River. She stumbled over a root, partially caught her balance and dropped into the water standing up. The water was shallow, only knee deep. I tripped over the same root but went into the River stretched out in a pancake dive. It was very cold.

 

1863. “More than one Southern Belle saw her dress ruined when she had to dive to the ground for cover as she ran home that night."—The Vicksburg Campaign by David G. Martin.

 

She was only wet from the bottom half of her skirt on down, whereas I was completely drenched, and muddy, to boot. We walked toward the bus station. Her shoes squeaked so she took them off and carried them again. When we got there it was packed with people, mostly soldiers. I imagined we were a strange sight, but no one seemed to notice. Servicemen were asleep on the floor, and we had to step over a few of them just to cross to the waiting room to warm up in front of the heater.

 

1863. “A crushed army slept in the midst of the city. Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped about unarmed...."—The Diary of Emma Balfour.

 

People were already lining up for her bus when she said, “I don’t have any money. I must have lost it.”

“I’ll buy your ticket,” I said. “Look, why don’t I go with you.”

“No,” she replied curtly, “What would my mother think, me bringing a strange soldier home with me? I will come back tomorrow and bring your money to you.”

I had never thought of myself as a strange soldier. In my wet wallet I had two ones and a five. She pulled the five out. “Let me have this. I will be back tomorrow. I will return it to you.” When your monthly income is fifty dollars, five is a lot, but I didn’t care. I would have gladly given her my wallet if she had asked, and would have considered it well spent.

We stood in a long line for her to board the bus. Somehow I knew she liked me. You can tell when a girl likes you. She squeezed my hand and sort of leaned against me now and then. And the way she glanced at me. Girls don’t look at you that way unless they like you, at least a little.

She gave me a hug, but no kiss, not even on the cheek, before getting seated by a window. Suddenly I could not bear to see her leave. I wanted to take her off the bus. I wanted to do something, to say something, or give her something. I was afraid she would not even remember my name.

I took the chain over my head and took one of the dog tags off and handed it to her. She reached out and took it as the bus started rolling. She looked at it, pressed it to her cheek and smiled as the bus turned. As the bus moved away, she waved.

My clothes were still damp as I walked back to Sugah’s. I was thinking about Lenta and hoping that she would return on an early bus. We never checked the schedule.

The policeman came by in his patrol car again, recognized me and pulled over to the curb. I walked around the car and stood at his window. “Soldier boy, you are about to get yourself into some serious trouble.” I was trying to ask him exactly what I had done that bothered him, but he continued talking over me in vague references, and I really didn’t understand what the problem was. He said a few things that made me believe that it was Lenta who had caused some trouble, but he did not give me a chance to inquire about that either. “I know everybody in Vicksburg,” he said, “and I know the wrong kind of people when they show up here. I could take you in now for running off like you did. You better watch your step in this town, son. Where are you stationed, down at Shelby? When you going back?”

“Yes. Tomorrow,” I told him.

 

1863. “As I sat at my window, I saw mortars from the west passing entirely over the house and the parrot shells from the east passing by—crossing each other and this terrible fire raging in the center. One or two persons who had passes to leave the city if they could, returned last night, General Grant saying no one could leave the city until it surrendered. I see that we are to have no rest. All night they fired so that our poor soldiers have no rest and we have few reserves."—The Diary of Emma Balfour.

 

At Sugah’s house the front door was open, and I could see the lights were on in the back of the house. I went in and passed through the kitchen where three of the men were sitting at the kitchen table. They hardly noticed me as I went through the kitchen and upstairs to go to bed. Someone had beat me there but in the dark I was not sure who was in my bed. I walked over to the other bed, and, to my amazement, Ed was in it. I went back downstairs, through the kitchen again, and to the bathroom. When I turned the light on Grade Helen was sitting on the commode, backwards, with her head resting on the tank. She was asleep.

I went out to the dining room—the only room not occupied—cleared off the window seat and lay down in the darkness, or near darkness, for there was a shaft of light coming from the kitchen. I got up and got the table cloth and put it over me for a blanket and stretched out. I placed two books under my head for a pillow. From exhaustion, I immediately started fading away into a deep sleep. As I did I could hear low voices from the kitchen, very tired voices now. Water was running somewhere, and out in the neighborhood a dog barked. Faintly, I could hear a woman crying, perhaps next door. And from down on the Mississippi River the low, agonizing groan of a riverboat’s foghorn sounded into the relative stillness of the night.

 

1863. “There was not much sleep, just constant movement, shuffling, moaning, and crying. Three wounded soldiers lay on the cave floor, a big box lined with blankets held several babies, and a woman writhed on a mattress, her body swollen with labor. Before the night passed William Siege Green had entered the world."—Century Magazine.

 

Sometime Sunday morning MaClay woke me up. She was trying to round up a group to go to church and had worked her way through the neighborhood, extending her invitation. “Come on and go with us. I’ve never seen a bunch that needed to go to church more than the people around here.” In the end, she succeeded in gathering two carloads of children and a couple of the women, to attend the service.

 

“It was comparatively quiet...how like and yet how unlike Sunday. All nature wears a Sabbath calm, but the thunder of artillery reminds us that man knows no Sabbath...Yankee Man at least...Only 30 people at the service. They had to pick their way through brick and rubble and sweep shattered glass from the pews before they sat. At times the responses were obliterated by cannon fire, but they found comfort and were determined to continue the service." —The Diary of Emma Balfour

 

I was planning to go but PaClay interrupted my plans and we ended up in the Military Cemetery again. It was pretty much the same as the day before, which seemed years back now. “The Yankees never broke this line. They starved us out, but they never broke our line.” PaClay talked as if he had been an eyewitness.

Back in town PaClay put me out at the bus station to wait for Lenta. The bus finally arrived from Jackson, but she was not on it. I spent the rest of the day at Sugah’s house, just going down to the bus station to check each arrival from Jackson. I had talked with Ed at Sugah’s house once, and he said he didn’t want to leave until that night, so he could have a little more time with Jo Sarah. I said, “You’re still having a lot of trouble?”

The roving neighborhood party was in full swing by late afternoon minus just a few who had been wiped out by extreme drinking or exhaustion during the previous twenty-four hours.

The men of the neighborhood were working their way along the block, from one house to the other, one kitchen to the other, talking and drinking, and sometimes just sitting there during long silences, simply drinking. By then there was no doubt in my mind. They were all crazy.

 

1863. “You do not know what a blessing it is to live in the Confederacy where you see nothing but grey. I do not think I will ever wear blue again. I hate it."—Letter from Alice Shannon to Emma Crutcher.

 

It was after dark when I made my last walk up to the bus station. I knew that Lenta would not be there. She wasn’t. I knew that I would be able to look her up in Columbia, Tennessee, but I wanted to see her then, to talk with her, and make arrangements to see her, maybe when I got my next leave, maybe even before I shipped out of Camp Shelby.

I was walking along in the dark, about a block from Sugah’s house, thinking about Lenta, when PaClay came loping down the street toward me. When he recognized me he said, “You’ve got to help me!” He was out of breath and very excited and it was the first sign of excitement I had seen in him during the entire visit. “Help me find Boo Boo. He’s the only one in the whole bunch with a grain of sense and now he’s trying to kill himself!”

I had been playing this game for two days, but coming from PaClay and it being Boo Boo made it different. I attempted to find out exactly what was going on, but PaClay just grabbed my arm. “I can’t find the others. I’ll go across the block and down to the pine thicket. You go through the sage field to the ravine and I’ll meet you on the other side of the block.”

A little later I was walking down the sidewalk and could hear PaClay yelling at me from the other end of the block. “Check those garages down at that end!” Across the street an elderly lady stood on her front porch in a bathrobe, arms folded across her chest, just watching. Her porch light was on and I could see that her hair was done up in curlers. I was directly across the street from her. I wanted to say, “Lady, don’t look at me like that. I’m on your side!” But I just waved and kept walking.

By then I knew my way around the neighborhood pretty well. I was very tired of all this, but it was Boo Boo this time, and, well, you can never be entirely sure. I checked the garages and then made my way through the sage field in the dark. I didn’t believe Boo Boo would attempt suicide; he was far too sharp for something like that, but still.... I checked a couple of the garages and started back up to the house to look for a flashlight. As I went up the sidewalk at Sugah’s I could see someone in the living room, and as I stepped inside there was Boo Boo with a room full of small children. A bunch of the kids from the neighborhood were lined up facing the wall.

Most of them were looking back over their shoulders at Boo Boo.

I was speechless. Sugah burst into the room and stopped beside me. “Boo Boo. We’ve been looking everywhere for—what are you doing?”

Boo Boo took a step and staggered. His hair was down in his face. He was very drunk. He squinted one eye to focus in on her. He stepped over to a tiny girl as he said, “I’m going to kiss everybody’s ass and then I’m going to kill myself!”

He spoke clearly, with an intoxicated deliberation. He reached down and flipped the child’s dress up. She had been playing in the dirt. The seat of her panties was completely covered with mud. “Damn,” he said. “Even this is not going to work out.”

I was about to laugh and I thought he would too but instead he looked around and then sank down on the sofa and started crying. Sugah rushed over to him and held him tightly. One of the children giggled.

 

“There is not an unbroken pane of glass in the city... it is the roughest place I ever saw."—Letter from Nathan G. Dye to his parents.

 

A little while later PaClay took us to the bus station and gave Ed and me ten dollars each, a welcome surprise because I only had two dollars for the rest of the month.

 

“At 5 o'clock on the afternoon of July 3, the last shot rang out from the river batteries. In one of the battered houses a man leaned back in his rocking chair and said to his wife—‘It seems to me that I can hear the silence, and feel it too. It wraps me like a soft garment.” —Century Magazine

 

On the bus we didn’t talk much. Ed didn’t say anything about the visit, or ask me what I thought, or apologize, or say he was embarrassed. He acted like it was all routine. I remember wanting to ask him why he had asked me to come on the trip with him. I had hardly even seen him the whole time we were there.

Many years later I would think back and realize that during all the commotion and craziness of that weekend there was not a single threat of a fight, nor was there a single hint of any promiscuity. There were never any serious or heated arguments. There was wholesale drunkenness. But there was no hostility among them. They liked, perhaps loved, one another and clung together like wharf orphans on a cold night. And they seemed to do that best when they were rip-roaring drunk.

As we rode along I finally asked Ed where he had found Lenta, and why he had brought her to me.

“We found her at the bus station, like I told you. I couldn’t take you with me so we thought it was the next best thing. I’m just sorry you started to like her so much.” He turned and looked at me. “We happened to be passing the bus station a couple of times and she seemed to be alone. There were a lot of service people in there, but she was obviously not with any of them. Jo Sarah and I went in and talked with her. She had a few hours to kill, so we brought her out to you. That’s all there is to it.” Then he grinned. “I’m sorry you like her. You do, don’t you? Well, I’m sorry it worked out that way.”

His smile went away, and he became very serious for a moment. “I’m not sure, but I think she’s a gypsy girl. Jo Sarah and I talked with her for a while and we found out practically nothing about her. All that business about her family moving. And the way she was dressed.” He paused, and then said, “And the way she looks. Blue eyes, dark skin....”

I knew very little about gypsies, but I was puzzled and angry at what he was saying about her. “My sister has skin every bit as dark as hers. How can you say that about her without knowing more?”

“Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am.” He slumped down in his seat. A few moments later he looked at me and grinned. “And she got your money, too, didn’t she?”

We rode in silence almost to Jackson, and as we crossed a bridge he sat up and looked out the window. When he leaned back in his seat again he said, “They’re gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

When he spoke this time he did not laugh or look at me. “The gypsy camp that was there when we came up Friday is gone. They’ve moved on to somewhere, like they do. God only knows which direction they went.” He shook his head solemnly. “You’ll never see that girl again.” He slid down in his seat as if he would like to go to sleep.

I was still not convinced that I would never see her, and I fully intended to find her up in Tennessee or somewhere.

Three or four weeks later Ed and I both got orders to transfer to different bases. He was going to a camp in Texas, and I would be shipping out to one in Florida.

On the morning we were to leave we were down at the staging area, sitting on our barracks bags, waiting for our transportation. I was headed for the train station in Hattiesburg in an army truck. Ed would be going by military bus up to Jackson, where he would catch the train for Texas.

We left our barracks bags by the road and walked over to the base post office to see if any mail had arrived for us since the last mail call. Ed had four letters—three of them pink, from Jo Sarah, and one white one which I assumed was from his folks in Clarksdale. I had one letter.

When the clerk handed it to me I supposed it was from my mother who was always a faithful correspondent, but it wasn’t. It was addressed to me in a flowing, artistic, feminine handwriting and the envelope held a faint scent of perfume. Definitely not from Mom.

As we ambled back to the staging area Ed started reading his letters, and when we sat down on our bags I opened mine.

Inside was a matching piece of stationery with only a few words written on it. Two one-dollar bills were clipped to it. The letter said:

Dear Gee,

I still owe you $3.

Love & kisses,

Lenta

There was no address or anything. Just that. The envelope was postmarked Elmira, N.Y.

I looked over at Ed. He was smiling as he read his second letter.

He looked at me. “News from home?”

“Ah, yeah.” The truck for my group was pulling up. I shoved the letter in my pocket as I stood up. I stuck out my hand. “Good luck, Ed.”

He stood up and shook hands. “Maybe we'll be stationed together again. I hope so. Good luck to you, too.”

I had decided to show him the letter, but when I turned around he was sitting down again, reading. Other soldiers were scrambling into the truck.

I picked up my bag, threw it into the truck, and climbed in.

After the Civil War, an Indiana volunteer named William Duffner presented a handcrafted rocking chair to A.K. Shaifer in whose yard a battle had begun just south of Vicksburg. The inscription on it read in part: “May God Forgive, Unite and Bless Us All.”