Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 Read Online Free Page B

allowed passage across the bridge. The route they had taken was punctuated with patches of leaping flames as the Confederates—literally—burned their bridges behind them. While the sailors were waiting for the span to be raised, the sky began to go from black to gray, and finally first light gave them a glimpse of the devastation.
    Whole city blocks were now ablaze, and the Tredegar Iron Works flamed like hell itself, rending the morning air with the shudders of the exploding shells within it. A dense cloud of smoke hung over the city, like a blanket laid over a corpse. There wouldn’t be much left for the Yankees to take now, and the people of Richmond knew it. A great throng of them were gathered on the Manchester side of the river, trying to escape the conflagration.
    The gunboat docked, and the men of the James River fleet tumbled ashore, weighted down with all their belongings, too stunnedfrom the rush of disasters to think what to do next.
    â€œI hope they don’t expect us to march any considerable distance,” said Bridgeford. “Most of us couldn’t do more than a couple of miles at the best of times, not being used to it.”
    â€œI reckon I can walk,” said Gabe Hawks. “I followed Stonewall from one end of Virginia to t’other. But I ain’t no damn pack mule.”
    â€œAh, Hawks, but at the moment you look like one.” Bridgeford laughed and pointed to the jumble of necessities they carried: a mess-kettle, bags of bread, chunks of salted pork, pots and pans, tea, sugar, and tobacco. Which of these precious items could they leave behind in their flight? And what would become of them if they did not?
    â€œHey, you old salts! How do you like navigating on land?” A line of cavalry was passing by on the road—boys scarcely older than Gabe, looking thin and tired in their tattered gray. But when they saw the grounded sailors, staggering about on dry land with pans around their necks, like a gaggle of stranded geese, they cheered up considerably, and drifted out of sight still laughing and making catcalls at their less fortunate comrades in arms.
    Admiral Semmes, without a ship under him, looked just as lost as anyone. He gave orders for the gunboats to be burned and set adrift. Then he called on his captains to muster thetroops. Only now the captains were to be called colonels.
    â€œMy orders are to join General Lee in the field with all my forces!” the admiral called out. “And we shall proceed accordingly.”
    Bridgeford nudged Gabe and said softly, “But where the devil is Lee, and how do we get there?”
    Just then one of the officers shouted, “To the railroad depot! Forward, march!”
    And they lurched off into a cloud of smoke and road dust.
    Gabriel Hawks had just rejoined the army.
    Newtown, Edinburgh
    Dear Bill,
    If I hadn’t received a terse (and utterly incomprehensible) letter from Mother on the same day your note arrived, I would not have dreamed of believing you. In fact, I would have been appalled at your lack of taste and judgment in perpetrating such a prank, and I might have considered giving your name to every insurance salesman in Danville, just to keep you occupied for a bit as unpleasantly as possible. But apparently it is true. Mother and Daddy are getting a divorce. I still haven’t fully grasped it. I suppose it would be useless asking them to stay together for the sake of the children when both of us have postgraduate degrees? But still!
    I feel as if I’d just fallen off a tightrope and there is no longer any safety net beneath me. I suppose that family is one of those things that people simply take for granted. Or maybe I stopped thinking of Mother and Daddy as people with new experiences ahead of them. To me they just
were,
like Mount Rushmore or Old Faithful. They weren’t supposed to change. I was the one who was allowed to go off and have adventures. They were supposed to be the