Homeland by Barbara Hambly Page A

Vicksburg is all hills, worse than Greeneville. From the one called Sky Parlor—if you climb it up either a switchbacked zig-zag path, or a long flight of wooden steps—or from the cupola of the Court-House, you can see miles up and down the Mississippi. It’s a breathtaking sight, Cora. Vicksburg lies just south of a sharp hook in the river around DeSoto Point. North of town the land flattens into a swampland of bayous around the Yazoo River, and across the Mississippi from us the land is flat, too: the best cotton land in the world, Aunt Sally says, though it floods in winter. You can see all the little houses of DeSoto, where the railroad comes in from the west, and where the ferry crosses to town. The house is large and luxurious, since Aunt Sally’s most recent husband was a wealthy merchant here, and has a garden where I draw most afternoons. Her second husband made the Grand Tour and she has three Italian and two French paintings here in the house for me to copy, in oil, if I can get any. Mr. Cameron set out a program of drawing-practice for me, to follow if I cannot get regular lessons. One thing that reconciles me to Sunday calls with Aunt Sally is, to see who has decent paintings in their houses. I am currently making plans to ingratiate myself with them all!
    She also has her third husband’s whole library! Including
all
Jane Austen’s novels (including
Northanger Abbey
, which I’ve never read!), and Sir Walter Scott’s
Paradise!
    The paintings are:
Bacchus Comforting Ariadne
(by Vernet); a
Portrait of the Artist’s Sweetheart in Gypsy Costume with a Suit of Armor
(it isn’t called that, but that’s what it is); a
splendid Rape of Lucrece
(which I think she purchased because she likes to gaze upon the semi-draped Adonis the artist got to model Tarquin); Samson grinding grain (ditto ditto the model for Samson); and
A Mother Displays Her Daughter to a Wealthy Suitor
. The Wealthy Suitor has a scrawny neck and squinty pale eyes, exactly like Captain McCorkle, only without the spectacles.
M ONDAY , A PRIL 7
    Unspeakable fighting at Shiloh. I remember the wounded being carried ashore at Nashville back in February, after the fighting at Fort Donelson—when I got Mr. Cameron to take me down to the landing—and I am filled with rage, at the lives so casually blotted out.
T UESDAY , A PRIL 8
L ATE NIGHT
    [ I dreamed about Payne, and Gaius: an awful dream in which they came back to Bayberry, Payne carrying his right arm in his left hand like a stick, Gaius with his lungs in a basket and a hole through his chest you could see daylight through. Bayberry was the way it is now, trees cut down, rugs torn up by the militiamen. When the boys smiled at me, their mouths were full of flies —entire paragraph heavily crossed out]
    Please be there to get this letter, Cora.
    Love,
Susanna
    Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi
To
Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine
c/o Eliza Johnson, Elizabethton, Tennessee
F RIDAY , M AY 30, 1862
    Dearest Cora,
    Two
letters!!! How strange to read of icicles and snow still on the ground in April!, then go down to the river landing, where the air is hot and close as steamed towels. Reading your letter made me wish again that I could go there and pull Elinor’s hair for her. When Payne was killed, I know Regal and Julia both felt angry at President Lincoln,
personally;
at Senator Johnson,
personally;
at Justin,
personally
, as if everyone who favored the Union had conspired to murder our brother. Sometimes I find myself wanting to blame someone, for the fact that I’ll never see Payne again, and I’ll never see Gaius again, but there’s never anybody really to blame. I go calling with Aunt Sally, and everyone sounds the same. Hating the Yankees. Wishing every one of them would die, and that they could watch it happen.
    Your other precious letter was the one you wrote back in February, about Justin Poole. Thank you for not being horrified. Or for not saying so, if you were. When Justin took me