Homeland by Barbara Hambly

there when Julia’s baby is born? Will Emory go back to Boston with you? Or will he be prosecuted as a traitor? Will Justin be able to come back, after all? And if so, what then? I thought I’d be glad when one side or the other won, but I just feel hollow, Cora, as if there’s a hole blown in me and the wind’s coming through.
T UESDAY , F EB . 18
B AYBERRY R UN
    I just re-read what I wrote to you last week. It’s as if it were somebody else writing about another world!
    Late Saturday night, just hours after we got back from listening to the speeches of victory, word came that the Confederate Army was pulling out of Nashville and retreating south.
    As soon as it was light I ran to the Russells’ house. I found Henriette’s mother and sisters packing to leave. They practically shoved Julia into my arms, to get rid of her. All Mr. Russell’s money was invested in cotton and tobacco, and they’ve been living onalmost nothing for months, so I can’t really blame them for not wanting another mouth to feed. Julia just about swooned at the thought of setting foot outside the house, much less taking a train, in her “delicate” condition. But I asked her, who did she want to be seen by? Strangers in the depot when she’s completely covered with a cloak? Or whoever was going to pull us out of the smoking rubble of the house if the Yankees
did
shell the town? There were mobs in the street, either trying to get to the depot and on a train, or taking carriages to loot the Army warehouses. Men and women—white and black—in rough, dirty clothes, were just walking around the streets watching to see who was loading up to abandon their houses: looters, waiting for people to flee. Of course the entire city police force joined the Army as it was pulling out. What a horrible feeling, knowing that if someone were to decide to kill Julia and me for our earbobs, nobody would stop running long enough to do anything about it!
    Dr. Elliott somehow got the whole Academy down to the depot together. Half the girls were in hysterics the whole way. People were fighting to get tickets and cramming onto anything that moved. We got onto a train at about sunset, and reached Chattanooga just before nine. The self-respecting heroine of any novel would have gone into labor on the train, but for a wonder Julia didn’t. In Chattanooga Mr. Cameron took us all to a hotel (one room, and glad to get
that)
, where he’ll stay with the girls and Mrs. Elliott until Dr. Elliott gets word to everybody’s parents. But Julia and I went back to the depot first thing in the morning. After a lot of waiting, we got a train to Greeneville around noon.
    That was yesterday. Julia and I didn’t have a nickel between us when we arrived, but Charley Johnson was kind enough to drive us out to Bayberry Run.
    Pa still isn’t back from Richmond (not that he’s written us, or anything like that) and most of the darkies have run off, and I can’t blame them. The militia is still camped around the barn, but about thirty of them have now moved into our house. Regal wasn’t here to order out the ones camped in our bedroom. Captain McCorkle(he wears spectacles and has an Adam’s apple the size of a lime) got them to move finally, but the whole bedroom stinks—tobacco-spit, cigars, and plain dirtiness, a smell worse than any animal—and the bed and blankets are crawling with bedbugs and lice. So is the chair—I tried sleeping in that. The window is broken, so we needed to wrap up in the one remaining blanket, and we wouldn’t have had
that
if Captain McCorkle hadn’t been standing right there when the men got out of the room. We hugged each other to keep warm, and Julia wept all night (in between both of us scratching). She has been begging me for the last half-hour while I’m writing this to go downstairs and get Mammy Iris to come up with hot water to wash, and milk for her, and to have Cook boil up water to wash all the bedding.
    Does she really think any of