And Forever Be Free – Chapter One

Major General Winfield Scott Hancock USA

“There are times when a corps commander’s life doesn’t matter.”

This will be something of an experiment, one that will not be everyone’s cup-o-tea – for it’s more than the usual amount of words – but it may prove to be an Earl Grey for some of you.

The back story: I’ve written a lot of stories in my time, some short, some longer. When my daughter was younger, I would also write her a story each birthday, one in which a thinly-disguised version of her was the heroine. What follows is one of my favorites from that era, a children’s novel that I called “And Forever Be Free”. The intent was to put together historical fiction,  vaguely Johnny Tremain-like, except that it’s based in the Civil War, the hero is a girl and nobody gets their hand maimed by molten silver.

I’ll publish it here in serial format. Chapter 1 today, Chapter 2 tomorrow, etc. until we’re done.  To answer your question: no, I never tried to have it published. That would require dealing with publishers, which is depressing, or agents, which is worse. However, if someone wants to apply to be my literary agent, the position is always open.

Here we go…

AND FOREVER BE FREE

By Rich Trzupek

Copyright 2009 Richard J. Trzupek

Chapter One

Sara loved the hills.  These hills were not as pretty as her hills – the hills back home – but they were pretty enough.  They reminded her of home.  The leaves were just beginning to change color and the air was crisp and cool with the first gentle breaths of autumn.  She found a comfortable spot where the hills and the trees surrounded her, like a little house that God had built just for her.  She sat down on the grass, pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and remembered.  Remembering was one of her favorite things…

The time she remembered was not so long ago, but sometime it seemed like forever.  It was only three years ago, 1859, when her life seemed all so normal – all so wonderful.  She remembered her father’s laughter, her mother’s gentle lullabies and all of her friends in Harpers Ferry.

Harpers Ferry.

Home.

How she longed to be home again.  How she longed for the big, quiet river to splash in and the big, woody hills to climb with her friends.  It was, Sara had decided, the most beautiful place in the world.  Nowhere else on earth could ever be as beautiful.

It was home.

Back then, when she was seven years old, her mother and her father had still been there and life still seemed like an adventure.  That all changed, that awful night in October in 1859.  She and her father and mother were gathered about the fire.  Father read a Bible story aloud.  As usual, father and mother disagreed about the meaning of the story father had read.  For father, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was just that – a story that was merely part of a larger story of the  eternal perfecting of the world.  For mother, the story was divine vengeance – God punishing the wicked and rewarding the good.  Sara did not quite see the difference, but she saw that her parents believed there was an important difference.  They might not believe that she would notice the subtle argument, but she did.  There was little that escaped her attention.

The evening’s debate was ended by news of the most frightening variety.  A neighbor burst in, breathless with news that the armory was under attack.  “The armory” was the complex of great brick buildings in which the army built guns and cannon.  It was the pride of the city.  It was also one of the most dangerous locations in the entire United States.  There were thousands of weapons in Harpers Ferry armory.  If someone were to capture it with a strong body of men, it was easy to see that they could equip an army in no time – an army big and strong enough to challenge the entire country.

The value of the armory had not gone unnoticed to “Old Osawatomie Brown” – otherwise known as John Brown.  John Brown was an old man who wore a great white beard and had fiery eyes that burned whenever he spoke.  What he mostly spoke about slavery.  He hated slavery.  He believed that slavery was the greatest evil on earth.  He believed that God hated slavery more than He hated anything else.  Eventually, John Brown believed that God picked him to bring an end to slavery.  And so, on the night of October 16^th, 1859, John Brown led a small band of slaves and attacked the armory at Harpers Ferry.  He hoped that more slaves, and like-minded white citizens, would join him.  Together, they would use the weapons of Harpers Ferry to take over the country and rid the nation of the evil God had sent him to battle.

Sara’s father did not react in the way John Brown had hoped – few people in Harpers Ferry did.  For Sara’s father, someone was trying to take over the armory and, no matter how good the cause, that was a fearful thing.  It would mean that the government was no longer in control.  For Sara’s father – and Sara’s mother too – there were few things that could be as frightening.  No matter how they felt about slavery, the question could not be decided by wild men who seized guns and cannons to force other people to listen to them.

Sara’s father took an old flintlock musket off of the wall – the musket he had inherited from his father – and rushed out of the door. Sara was terribly frightened.  She was sure that father would be killed.  She begged him not to leave, tugging at his coat in a desperate effort to make him stay.  To her surprise, mother did not aid her.  Gently, mother removed Sara’s hands from father’s coat and bade her husband farewell.  Sara couldn’t understand it.  Didn’t she know that father could be killed?  It frightened her beyond knowing and the fear grew into anger.  This was John Brown’s fault, she decided, and her rage was directed at the old man.  She hated John Brown more than she ever thought it possible to hate anyone.

Brown and his men were captured.  Their raid had been a failure.  Captain Lee and his soldiers had marched into the city, brass buttons gleaming on their blue uniforms, and restored order.  It was Captain Lee himself whom captured the old man.  Sara would always remember the sight.  Captain Lee marched through the streets of Harpers Ferry, tall and proud and terrible as the citizens of the city silently looked on. He looked like the tallest man alive, with a thick neck and beautiful black beard.  He was terribly dignified but his eyes – to Sara – also showed a sadness almost as great as the anger she felt.  Almost.

When Brown hung, later that year, Sara felt nothing but relief.  The nightmare came to an end with that act.  Never again would father be rushing out the door, musket in hand in order to face some madman who was trying to take over the country.

So she thought, but Sara’s relief was short lived.  A little more than two years later, father left once more – musket once again in hand – in response to President Lincoln’s plea for troops to put down the rebellion in the southern states.  Mother left only a little while later. Her mother – Sara’s grandmother – lived in Manassas Junction.  Aged and nearly an invalid, grandma had never-the- less refused to leave her home even when the war raged around her.  Sara’s mother was torn by her duty as a daughter and her duty as a mother.  Ultimately she decided that she had to look after her mother. There we no one else. Sara would be safe in the quiet hills of western Virginia in the meantime.  Someday Sara would understand, she said.  Sara didn’t believe it.  In a little more than two months both of her parents were gone and Sara was left with her Aunt Jean.

She hadn’t seen her parents for over a year.

Aunt Jean tried to be a comfort to Sara, but her efforts were mostly futile.  Jean Ercinek – mother’s elder sister – was a woman with an instinctual understanding of children.  She was a widower and she had never been a mother herself, but unlike many adults she had never lost the best part of her own childhood.  There was a sense of quiet understanding about her.  There was a also an ever-present sadness about her.  If the disappointments and pain she had suffered in her life had not hardened her, they had made her more quiet – more withdrawn somehow.  She watched the world more than she was of it now and the peals of laughter that had been so much a part of Jean as a child had been replaced by a quiet laughter – laughter that could be usually be only be heard in her heart.

Jean understood Sara.  She treated – and spoke to Sara – as a thoughtful ten year old girl forced headlong toward adolescence should be treated: gently.  She respected her niece’s moods, knowing it was all part of “figuring it out” in a painful time.  More than anything, Jean was one of the few who could understand Sara’s constant playacting.  It was a trait that became more and more pronounced after her parents had left.  If scolded, Sara might suddenly shed half of her years, weeping effortlessly as a toddler might and lapsing into a lispy stutter that was half babytalk.  If covering for some prank, Sara might invent some phantom noise or threat so convincingly that the average adult would find themself fearfully searching through the windows for an imagined intruder.

As much as Sara wanted to have the protection and attention of an adult, she directed all of her bitterness toward her Aunt.  “I don’t love you” Sara would tell her.  Jean would nod – never rising to the bait – and tell Sara that she too hoped that Sara’s parents would be home soon.

Sara and Aunt Jean lived in a sprawling farmhouse just north of Martinsburg, Virginia.  It was owned by Jean’s cousin, a rather wealthy merchant named William Danhurst.  “Uncle William” (as Sara was made to call him) was a short, rather portly, man with a bald head and face that was constantly red and sweating – as if he had just run for a great distance.  In fact, William Danhurst did little running.  He was one of the few slave owners in the western part of Virginia and he had plenty of slaves to run for him.

Danhurst, his wife, Aunt Winifred, and their children – 9 year old Claire and 12 year old Catherine – were doing very well from the war.  Selling shoes and uniforms to the North, through official channels, was profitable enough.  Selling the same goods to the South, through highly unofficial (and illegal) channels, was more profitable than he could have imagined.  The money was all the better for the poor quality and workmanship of the items.  “Shoddy” was a word that would be added to the dictionary about this time.  It was a word that described the goods sold by the William Danhurst Dry Goods Trading Company quite well.

Though he was getting rich from the war and though he was a northern born man living in a city occupied by Federal troops (although the South claimed Martinsburg – and all of Virginia – for the Confederacy), William Danhurst had nothing but contempt for the leader of the United States. Sara never heard him refer to President Lincoln by his title, but rather as that “fool from Illinois”, or “that nigger-lover in the White House” or, most often, “the ape”.  He praised the virtues of the Confederate armies and took glee in every victory.  “You’ll see Sara,” he had said one summer’s evening after the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had whipped the Union Army of the Potomac at the Second Battle of Bull Run.  “Nobody can beat old Bobby Lee.”  He waved his cigar to make the point.  “One day soon, he’ll march into Washington run the ape out of town.”  Uncle William looked forward to the prospect gleefully.

“Bobby Lee”, Sara had come to understand, was the same Captain Lee that she had seen marching through the streets of Harpers Ferry three years before.  He was the same tall, terrible, giant that had been her savior not so long ago – except he was a general now.  The general, or at least so they said.  She did not doubt that such a man could “march into Washington” whenever he might choose to do so.  How could a man like that fight for the South?  How could a man like that fight her father and mother?

It was hard for Sara to think about.  The vision of General Lee stuck in her head along with the voice of Uncle William assuring her that the North was going to lose.  Aunt Winifred and her children parroted everything Uncle William said – the children especially.  Claire and Catherine took special delight in teasing Sara about it, dancing about after every Southern victory.  Aunt Jean, on the other hand, would never offer an opinion.  “War is a terrible thing Sara,” was the only thing she would say “and we can only pray that it will end soon.”

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