Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [168]
“Well . . . they selling meat in the market, but I ain’t sure you want me to buy it. I think I can probably cook it up real nice and feed all of us a good meal for once . . . but I ain’t sure if I should tell you what it is first or just serve it up. I decide I better ask you.”
“What is it?” I asked quietly.
“It’s rat meat.” Esther must have seen by my expression that the idea revolted me. “They selling it in the butcher shop,” she quickly added, “all cleaned and dressed like any other kind of meat. I talk to some folks that try it and they say it ain’t no different than squirrel. Said you’d never tell the difference if you didn’t know.”
I looked around the table at the others. “What about all of you?” I asked. “Could the rest of you eat it?” Only Gilbert and Eli were willing to try. “Buy it and cook it for them—and for whoever else is willing,” I told her. “Maybe someday I’ll be hungry enough to eat rat meat, but I’m not that desperate yet.”
In August we celebrated Isaac’s first birthday. I had written the date in the family Bible so we would all remember. “He’s a free man, not a slave,” I told the others, “so it’s important that he always knows when his birthday is and how old he is.”
Esther baked a tiny pancake for him and drizzled it with sorghum. Tessie gave him a tallow candle to blow out, the only kind we had. I wished that I could buy dozens of presents to repay him for the joy he had brought all of us during the past year, but Isaac was content with the tiny wooden animals Gilbert had carved for him.
The city of Atlanta fell to the Yankees’ General Sherman in September. They burned it to the ground. Since everyone in Richmond was already half-starved and worried about our own fate, the news was a severe blow, reminding us of what might soon happen to us. A large part of the South already lay in ruins, and Sherman had vowed to continue to battle across the state of Georgia, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
On the day we learned that Atlanta had fallen, my uncle William and cousin Thomas drove their wagon up to our backyard gate.
“Won’t you both come in?” I invited. “I can find you something to eat and fix you some mint tea.”
“Thank you, but I can’t stay,” Uncle William said. “I’ll let your stable boy water my horses, but then I have to head home. I want to get back before dark.”
“Are you staying, Thomas?” I asked. He had jumped down from the wagon, carrying a small satchel.
“I’m joining the army, Caroline,” he said proudly.
“You can’t be! You’re only . . . how old? Sixteen?” But then I recalled how the Confederate Government, desperate for soldiers, had extended the draft to include boys aged fourteen to eighteen for the junior reserve and men aged forty-five to sixty for the senior reserve. They would be trained and kept in reserve for rearguard duty.
“I’m finally old enough to fight, just like Jonathan,” he said.
I still thought of Thomas as the six-year-old child he’d been the first time I’d visited Hilltop, even though he was several inches taller than me. But at sixteen, he was still a long way from manhood. How could any government ask its children to fight? How could they ask this family, who had already given so much to this war, for yet another one of its sons? It didn’t seem fair.
“Isn’t it true that if a plantation has more than twenty slaves, the owner can get an exemption from the draft?” I asked Uncle William. “Couldn’t you sign over the deed to Thomas so he wouldn’t have to go?”
My uncle slowly shook his head. “Caroline, there aren’t that many slaves left at Hilltop.”
“Besides, I want to fight,” Thomas added.
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “Please, come to the hospital with me and talk to some of the wounded men. Let them tell you what—”
“That’s enough,” my uncle said quietly. “The boy has no choice. If I were one year younger, they would have drafted me, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“May he spend the night with you, Caroline? He has to report to the armory in the morning. If you could have your driver bring him there tomorrow, I’d be obliged.”
Eli had tended