Chapter 11: Burned Out

The French's winding farm lane met the long-traveled Pike about a half mile north of Luke Williams' general store. At the open gate Jefferson pulled the faded, gray wagon into the shade of a weeping willow near a dried up brook. The three of them listened. Insects whirred and a faint breeze rustled the dry leaves. Seth walked out into the middle of the worn, hard-surfaced road on stiff legs. He could not see anything out of the ordinary.

He had expected cavalry patrols racing back and forth or Imboden's scouts trotting by or somebody looking excited. Maybe they are already attacking the city, he thought, and I am too late. The sky was cloudless as it had been for most of the summer, and the birds were quiet, resting in the midday heat. Seth felt an urge to run and to tell somebody, anybody, tell what he knew, what was going to happen.

The boy returned quickly to the wagon, and Jefferson drove out onto the turnpike and turned south toward the city, talking to the big mule. Seth stood with his hands on the back of the seat and searched the sides of the road as well as the way ahead for any sign of the Rebels, but he saw nothing. Was it all a dream? The dust cloud behind him was surely real and so was that man they had left in the barn.

"Where are all these terrible Rebs you saw, Seth Williams?" Caroline asked in her I-told-you-so voice. Seth did not respond.

The wagon rounded a gentle curve where the trees blocked the view ahead. Caroline saw the ruins first and cried out, "Look! Seth, look, look at your uncle's store. Goodness!"

Seth stared where the girl pointed. The front and side walls of the store stood, but the porch and shingled roof had collapsed, and the storeroom and rear wall were gone. Above the broken windows the stucco was blackened. When the breeze shifted, the stench of charred timbers made those in the wagon cough and turn away. Luke Williams and his sons were throwing buckets of water on the smoldering ruins of the storeroom. As Jefferson pulled the wagon into the stony drive, Seth could see his Aunt Hope standing beside the thick hedge, crying into her ever-present apron, her broad back heaving.

Seth jumped down and walked slowly toward his uncle. He glanced up the hill across the pasture and was happy to see that his home and its outbuildings still stood and seemed to have been untouched by whatever had destroyed the store. Luke Williams and his full-grown sons stopped their bucket brigade as Seth approached.

"That's enough, boys; she's soaked down pretty good," Seth's uncle said as he stared at what was left of his store. Seth looked, too. A part of both their lives was gone. Much of what Seth had learned about politics, the war, and the world had come from conversations and arguments he had listened to from hiding places in the store's darker corners.

He guessed that most of his fight with Robert about which side was right and which army to join was because Mr. Bouve had been such a fine, logical, reasonable spokesman for the South, and very few had spoken up for Lincoln and the Union. Now the store was almost gone and so too was most of the boy's belief in the "Cause."

Seth turned and looked at his uncle who seemed to shrink as he stared into the smoking ruins. His face and arms were blackened, and a deep cut and ugly bruise had closed his left eye. His shirt was in tatters. A huge blister covered most of his right wrist.

"What happened, Uncle Luke?" the boy asked quietly.

"What, oh, yeah, well soldiers burnt us out, Seth. That's what happened. They jus' went and burned us out." He shook his head and spat.

"Was it Federal cavalry, Uncle Luke? I heard there were some Massachusetts troopers that got beat just north of here, up near Rockville, and thought..."

"No, hell no, boy, it warn't no bluejackets! I might'a understood that. It was Confederate cavalry that done it! McCausland's troop, I think they said, but they sounded more like Georgians than Virginny. Yessir. G'damn Rebels." Seth's uncle stomped around in a small circle. "They rode right in like they owned the place. I tole them they was welcome and said my boys sometimes rode with Moseby and Lije White on both sides of the river. Right after we opened this morning, warn't it, Hope?"