A Place of Peace by Iris Penn Page B

held it poised above the page.
    She had eaten some tomatoes out of a jar retrieved from the cellar, but she was still hungry.  Melinda wanted to save the meat for later in the season, but Joan was right: she hadn’t been eating much, instead, she tried to conserve food whenever she could.  She had always been thin, but now she could tell she had lost more weight.  The combination of working out in the gardens every day and eating as little as she could get away with was taking its toil.    Now, what fat she had was being dissolved, and bones she hadn’t realized she had made their presence known as they began to protrude in sharp lumps beneath her skin.
    It was crazy.  She decided she was not going to live like that.  There had never been any reason to conserve food when her father was there, and now should not be any different.
    That decided, she went back to the cellar and hacked off a large piece of salted pork and selected some onions and potatoes from the boxes holding them.  She realized that it was the last potato, and she hadn’t planted any more that year.  For a long time she stood there holding it in her hand and debating whether to eat it.
    Her stomach answered for her, and soon she was enjoying grilled ham fried in the large iron skillet with cooked potatoes and onions.  As she ate, she looked again at the blank paper that refused to let any words be written on it. 
    Okay, she told herself.  This is your father you are writing to, not some boy you have a crush on.  It should be very easy. 
    In the end, she began writing, and the words suddenly sprang forth in a rush, and she was very sad when she reached the end of her pages and found she still had more to say. 
    The next letter will have the rest of it , she wrote at the bottom of the last page, just before she signed her name.
    Now, she had to take it to Gallatin to send it off.  Hopefully, Mr. Johnson could take her tomorrow.  As she washed her plate from her dinner, her full stomach made her feel better she had in quite some time.  She decided not to deprive herself anymore.
    She didn’t have to.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    chapter seven
     
     
    “ Son,” Colonel Wilder of the 5 th Tennessee Cavalry Company said.  “We’re going to have to do something about that leg of yours.”  Rain streamed off the brim of his hat.  He had the stern look of a brimstone preacher as he sat on his horse with his saber drawn.
    Colby clutched a double handful of his horse’s mane and tried not to double over in pain.  If he let go, he would fall, and if he fell, it was unlikely he would be getting up anytime soon.  His leg was inflamed, streaking red in sharp bursts up throughout his entire body.  Colonel Wilder had halted the entire company just north of the Hardin County line as the rains began to pelt them.
    The company consisted of ninety men: sixty regulars and thirty more pulled from the train wreck near Savannah.  Colby and his fellow former prisoners had stepped up when Wilder called for volunteers.  They had been armed with the rifles from the dead Union soldiers and mounted on the horses roaming near the tracks.
    John Holcomb watched with concern as Colby tried to mount a horse.  It was apparent that Colby was desperately trying to hide how much pain he was in.  He had his leg sticking out stiff, away from the horse’s body as it moved, trying not to knock against the horse’s flank.
    They pushed north with surprising speed considering most of the soldiers from the train were not trained as mounted cavalry, but the majority of them had grown up in Tennessee, and they had  practically been raised on horseback.
    The troops made their way through a backwoods network of logging roads and foot paths, plunging through thick groves of trees at an almost full gallop.  The company’s banner flapped in front: crossed golden swords against a stark white field.
    They continued moving with speed, and with each step his horse took, Colby