My Vicksburg Read Online Free

left?"
    "Yes. Part of it. I'm not going to wed a turncoat. And be known all over town as the wife of that Landon Corbet. The one who turned his back on his people. And anyway, I don't want to wait until the war is over to wed. I want to do it now."
    Amy and I looked at each other and burst out in laughter. "You just contradicted yourself," Amy told her. "You won't marry a turncoat, but you wanted to marry him before he left."
    Sarah burst out in tears and flung herself into Amy's arms. Her sister held her and then I joined them, wrapping my arms around them.
    Sarah drew away and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. "Oh, I hate that brother of yours, Claire Louise. And at the same time I love him so much I could die. Do you know what a dream he is?"
    I shook my head, no. "He's just my brother," I told her.
    "You write to him, don't you?"
    I said I did.
    "Then you can do me a favor. Tell him I ran away and joined the
Confederate
army. I want to punish him for thinking he can have everything his way."
    Amy was horrified. "Is
that
why you're going to fight like a man?"
    "Yes," Sarah snapped. "I'm joining Lee in the Cumberland Valley."
    "You have to go all the way out there?" Amy scolded. "Why not right here where we're fighting for our town?"
    "I'd be recognized," Sarah returned.
    In the stunned silence that followed we heard my mother calling up the stairs.
    "Claire Louise? Are you up there?"
    "Yes, Mama."
    "When I said you couldn't come here? You wait until I tell your father about this. He'll give you what for. Now you come down this minute, young lady. We're leaving for the cave. The shelling is about to start. Claire Louise, if you don't come this instant I'll have to come up there and get you. And then you'll be sorry."
    Mama's threats were empty. She never knew what to do to make me sorry.
    Amy kissed me. "Go," she said.
    The enormity of the situation hung over us like a sword.
    We both knew we might never see each other again.
    Both of us loved and wept over English novels.
Especially Jane Austen. But this, now, was worse than anything she could dream up. Or write. And we knew it.
    We just looked at each other. "Be careful," I told her.
    The words were so empty, and I knew it.
    She nodded her promise. We hugged. I went downstairs to my waiting mama.

    As it turned out, Mama knew exactly where our cave was, and so did Chip, Pa's personal man. Chip wasn't his usual happy self. He had wanted, he told Mama, to go with Pa, to "tend to him whilst he was doin' his business of doctorin'" but Pa had said no, he'd rather have Chip home with his family. To take care of them.
    Chip and Easter were to live in the cave with us. Clothilda and Andy were staying in our house, to guard it. And if it got hit, why they'd take refuge with other servants, wherever that might be, but still keep an eye on the house so it wouldn't be ransacked.
    "You can't buy servants like this," Mama whispered to me, forgetting that Pa had, indeed, bought them. Likely down in New Orleans. He never spoke about things like that.
    Our cave, the one Pa had had built for us, was located on a very high hill in the northeastern part of the town. You went in and there were arched hallways leading to rooms. And you could stand up in both the hallways and the rooms. Most people, I later came to understand, couldn't even stand up in their caves.
    Chip brought in the bedding and the other necessities
for living. Pa had had planks laid on the floor so we wouldn't be walking on dirt.
    "Can I bring Sammy in?" James asked.
    "Yes," Mama said. "And keep him in. Or someone might steal him."
    She did not say for what. Neither did I. But we'd heard, already, that there would be a shortage of food soon. And that people should not let their dogs and cats wander loose. Hungry soldiers would eat anything.

Chapter Four
    Our cave was about half a mile from town, and not too far from the Yankees. I heard firing all the way down from where the graveyard was. From Yankee