Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  Against The Odds Gwyneth Atlee

  AN [ e reads ]BOOK

  New York, NY

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Colleen Thompson First e-reads publication 2004 www.e-reads.com www.e-reads.com 5902-X

  To my parents, William and Lois Swartz, and to the memory of those who never made it home that April

  Table of Contents

  Prologue 1 Chapter One 3 Chapter Two 18 Chapter Three 28 Chapter Four 38 Chapter Five 55 Chapter Six 78 Chapter Seven 90 Chapter Eight 108 Chapter Nine 119 Chapter Ten 130 Chapter Eleven 143 Chapter Twelve 151 Chapter Thirteen 160 Chapter Fourteen 175 Chapter Fifteen 195 Chapter Sixteen 212 Chapter Seventeen 219 Author’s Note 225

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a historical novel based on an actual event requires a great deal of assistance from experts in the area. I would like to thank the many members of the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends who shared their knowledge and the stories of their ancestors. Specifically, I’d like to thank Jerry O. Potter, author of the excellent history The Sultana Tragedy for his enthusiastic support and assistance; Gene Salecker, author of Disaster on the Mississippi, another outstanding volume; and Michael Johnson, Pam Newhouse, Ken Riggins, Joe W. Smith, and Helen Chandler.

  Thanks also to John Dougan of the Memphis and Shelby County Library for his help in gathering research materials and to John and Kathy Haase for the Memphis hospitality. Kathleen Y’Barbo was also very helpful in researching the Creole culture of New Orleans and by faithfully reading the manuscript. Jack E. Custer of the Egregious Steamboat Journal was also of assistance.

  I’d like to acknowledge my editor, Tomasita Ortiz, and my agent, Meredith Bernstein, for their encouragement and support of this project.

  Thanks also, as always, to my husband, Mike, and son, Andrew, for offering their enthusiasm as well as a lot of quiet time in which to write.

  Finally, I’d like to say thanks to the members of the Northwest Houston Chapter of RWA, Guida Jackson, Bill Laufer, and the Friday Nighters. But most especially, I could never do without my fabulous critique partners, the Midwives: Bobbi Sissel, Wanda Dionne, Betty Joffrion, and Linda Helman.

  Prologue

  April 28, 1865 Memphis, Tennessee

  As he rested on the narrow hospital cot, Gabe could hear the whispered speculation about the impending investigation into who was to blame. But he barely listened, for he had little interest in the rumors of a Confederate bomb planted near the boilers or in the whispers about bribes passed between Union army officials and the Sultana’s captain.

  Some part of him realized that perhaps he ought to care whether the steamboat had carried too much weight or had been pushed to an excessive speed, whether the destruction was intentional or the result of gross stupidity. But that part of his mind felt separated, as if it had been walled off behind something lead-gray and impenetrable. None of it really mattered now.

  Only the people mattered: the soldiers catapulted from their sleep into the flooded Mississippi, the panicked passengers clutching and then overwhelming the same sinking wooden plank, a woman shrieking frantically as five crewmen—her own husband among them—abandoned her in a small boat used to sound the channels.

  Yes, the people mattered, and certain people mattered to him even more. One woman and three men. A tiny fraction of the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, aboard the overcrowded vessel. But so was a heartbeat a tiny portion of what made up a man. Tiny but so crucial, something that he couldn’t live without.

  He covered his eyes with bandaged hands, as if that action might blot out the pain of all that he had seen. But darkness afforded him no mercy, for memory is made up of far more than a man sees. As he lay beneath a crisp white hospital sheet, his body trembled with the smells of what had happened, the acrid odors of burning wood and coal, the sickly, meatlike stench of roasting flesh. And even more insufferable were the sounds that rose up like specters from a thousand moonlit graves: the muttered prayers and curses, the wrenching pleas and screams—all nearly drowned out by the almost deafening explosion, by the thunder on the river, in the waning days of war.

  One

  Four days earlier Monday, April 24, 1865 Vicksburg, Mississippi

  America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided.

  —Sam Watkins,

  First Tennessee Infantry, CSA

  Yvette hurried through the streets of Vicksburg. Nothing about the wounded town encouraged one to linger, from the buildings scarred by Union shells to the faces that remembered the pride of holding out against the long siege and the shame of their ultimate surrender. Unlike her New Orleans, which painted on its bravest face, the citizens of Vicksburg wore their pain for all to see. She saw in it the defiant stiffness of the backs of women as they shopped and in the sullen expressions of men as they paused to mutter among themselves.

  Had her errand not been so urgent, she would have remained hidden aboard her stateroom on the steamboat, as she had the past two days. She wasn’t at all certain she had not been followed, and if that devil Captain Russell approached her here, she would not know where to run. Her discomfort turned to distaste as a horde of shabby-looking men shuffled past the sidewalk toward the wharf. Bedraggled men and boys who wore the cursed Union blue.

  Her distaste became horror when she heard the sergeant’s order.

  “Make for the Sultana, boys. She’s the one to take you home!”

  The Sultana! The same steamboat she had used to flee her New Orleans home. And though she’d left it long enough to risk a quick trip to the telegraph office, it was the very steamer she had no choice but to reboard.

  Two old men not far from her stood talking, and she couldn’t help but overhear their words. “Them’s those pris’ners goin’ back North. Pris’ners of war, sent here from Andersonville, Cahaba, and the like. And good riddance to ’em, I say.” The man jabbed the air with a walking stick as if it were a saber. Beneath his thick white brows, his eyes glittered with hate. “If we’d shot every Yank we’d caught, we woulda won this war.”

  “Looks to me like we was killin’ these—the slow way. You ever seen the likes of that?” The second man’s white beard stopped wagging as he gestured toward the soldiers.

  This time, Yvette saw beyond the hateful uniforms, noted the shockingly thin limbs and sunken cheeks. Slow horror rose like gorge as she realized that the South—her own people—had starved them. She’d been so righteous in her fury over the North’s invasion of her homeland, its occupation of her city, that she’d never given credence to the reports of Confederate sins.

  And surely, this was sinful. . . . She turned her gaze from the pathetic wretches, but not before she felt the waves of hatred and suspicion emanating from those men, which was shared by the people around her on the street and threatened to erupt at any moment into jeers or even violence.

  She wished in vain she might forget the ticket she held for the Sultana and that these last two weeks had ever happened. She ached to flee this tense scene and take the first steamboat heading southward— and home. New Orleans thrashed restlessly in her memory with the voices of her noisy family,
the dancing of her fingers on her piano’s keyboard to accompany defiant lyrics, the delicious scents of jasmine blooming in the courtyard, of café au lait and bread pudding. All of them together formed a mélange so sweetly painful she could cry. But New Orleans was as lost to her as poor Marie—and her own good name.

  Turning her thoughts from home, Yvette once more focused on the hostile glares of the Union soldiers, and the idea occurred to her that these men blamed her—and all Southerners—not only for their hardships but for the murder of their president as well.

  Our president, she reminded herself. Lee had weeks ago surrendered, and the last few bands of Confederate stragglers were stacking up their weapons. Lincoln had been their president as well.

  But now he presided over no one but the dead.

  Of course, Yvette realized that the mob of Yankee soldiers wouldn’t see her as the actual assassin, but in the wake of Lincoln’s murder, all Southerners were suspect. And if they ever learned of the charges against her—especially if they learned it involved the death of one of their own officers—it would be all too easy to imagine their summoning the strength of outrage to string her up—even in the shadow of the steamboat meant to take them home.

  “Remember Old Abe! The damned Rebs killed him, too!” they would cry. “Hang every murderer among ’em!”

  Yvette shuddered, and her knees grew weak as she pictured the noose, the very same one she had fled shortly after her arrest.

  She crossed herself in an attempt to banish the horrifying image. But the gesture did nothing to ease her foreboding until the prisoners’ footsteps faded as they passed.

  She wished she did not have to follow, that instead her steps could take her somewhere other than downhill, in the direction of the broad brown Mississippi. Before Marie, she would have felt relief at the sight of the familiar river. But today it seemed swollen with menace even more than spring floodwaters. It pressed impatiently against the levee, as if in eagerness to wash away the taint of war.

  Still carrying the delicate burden of her handbasket, Yvette crossed a gangway that led onto the wharf boat, a floating platform used to load passengers onto waiting steamboats. As she glimpsed the muddy water beneath the wooden span, she reminded herself that it would also flow past home.

  I’d jump in and swim there for a Hard Times token and a cup of good New Orleans brew. But no one offered either. Instead, she approached the mass of waiting Yankee soldiers, wishing she could become invisible for long enough to blend with the few female passengers aboard, then disappear into her stateroom.

  If she had more money, she’d demand a change of boats. However, for the first time in her life, she was forced to endure the shameful necessity of counting every penny. She’d have to make the best of it. There simply was no other choice.

  Steeling herself, she drew closer to a knot of soldiers near the line’s end. She needed information, and there was no one else to ask.

  “Excuse me.” Her heart pounded as she spoke. Surely these men had been captured all over the South months before. Surely none would recognize her from New Orleans. Even so, she fought to control the quaver in her voice. “Would you know where the ticketed passengers are boarding?”

  She wondered if they recognized New Orleans in her speech, if they would pelt her with crude remarks—or worse. But she needn’t have worried. The moment the ragged men noticed her, those who wore caps snatched them from their heads. Those who didn’t made little bows, though some of the thinner ones moved stiffly, like skeleton men whose bones might tumble into pieces with the effort.

  “Pretty gal like you can have my spot in line anytime,” one offered with a grin. His eyes glittered brightly, but several missing teeth spoiled the effect.

  “Mine—or no man’s!” challenged a man whose neck jutted from the collar of a dark blue shirt many sizes too large for his starved body.

  Several others hooted laughter or their own claims at his boast. From somewhere nearby a coarse whistle heated Yvette’s face with embarrassment. She was dreadfully sure that rosy patches now splotched both cheeks and the pale flesh exposed at her neckline. Pulling her ivory shawl higher, she tried to screen at least some of her thrice-accursed blush from view.

  Abroad-shouldered young sergeant she’d seen earlier strode forward. Healthy and well muscled, he looked immense compared to the former prisoners.

  “Paying passengers to the front of the line.”

  His voice sounded crisp and officious, reminding Yvette of the hated Union soldiers who had so long occupied New Orleans, especially the one who had destroyed her life.

  When she stepped away from the line, he grasped her arm and dropped his voice. “You’ll need to find another boat, miss. These boys have been locked up a long time. I’m afraid they may prove too rowdy for your taste.”

  She jerked her arm away from his too-familiar touch and glared into his flat brown eyes. Ignoring the mewing that came from her handbasket, she pulled a slip of paper from her reticule. “This ticket says Sultana, and I mean to reboard her.”

  * * *

  Gabe couldn’t shake the feeling that something meant to keep him in the South. Maybe since Lincoln had been murdered, the Confederates would take heart and try to drag them all back to their hellish prisons. In that case, they could leave his body here, because now that he’d tasted freedom, he’d make them shoot him before he returned to that stinking cesspit in Andersonville.

  Or maybe it would be a sniper’s bullet that kept him from Ohio. Probably it was too late for the Confederacy to resurrect an army, but still there were scattered soldiers who refused to admit defeat. The Union guards escorting the prisoners home had been posted not only to keep order but to watch the wooded shorelines for telltale rifle barrels, maybe even cannon.

  More than likely, though, it wouldn’t be the Rebels who left him dead here in the South. It would be the men of his own company, once they realized their last attempt to kill him had somehow fallen short. Just barely, anyway, Gabe remembered, thinking of the ambush his former comrades had sent him into.

  “Got no use for a goddamn coward.” Their judgment was a heavy stone cast into a pool of darkness, the ringlike ripples of it spreading ever outward, still troubling Gabe’s waters despite the passing months.

  He’d never imagined that some from his old unit had been captured, never dreamed that while he’d languished in Georgia, they’d been imprisoned in Cahaba in Alabama. When he’d spotted them in the release camp at Vicksburg, his heart had nearly thumped its way clear of his chest. He’d managed to avoid them, but here, aboard the steamboat, it would be much harder.

  So hard to silence his protest. Hard but necessary. They’d no more listen now than ever.

  In line on the wharf boat, he tried to keep his back to everyone at once. To distract himself from the threat at hand, he started Food Talk with his Andersonville friends.

  “My first meal home’s gonna be sweet peas with new potatoes and a beefsteak thicker than your hand. With onions piled on top. So many onions, you can barely see the plate.”

  He felt the ritual begin to work its familiar magic and the tension start to ebb out of his body. Left over from the darkest days of their starvation, the Food Talk fed their spirits, though it could do nothing to ease their bodies’ ever-present hunger.

  Gabe wondered if years after Appomattox, Food Talk’s power would stay with them, faint compensation for the memories of Andersonville. When he looked at his three friends, he saw those bitter months in their gauntness and fatigue, in the oozing sores that had scabbed over and promised lasting scars. And then there were the deeper scars, the ones that did not show.

  “Too early yet for sweet peas,” Jacob Fuller told him, already reverting to thinking like a farmer, though he’d spent recent years shoeing horses for the cavalry. “And I’m more partial to chicken. Mama’ll fix two fat hens, and I aim to eat them both.”

  “Not if I don’t beat you to ’em,” Zeke swore. Though he had to lean against his bro
ther for support, some of the pain in his eyes dimmed with the familiar game. “And I mean to wash them down with a whole day’s milking.”

  “Bacon.” Captain Seth adjusted the cracked spectacles he always wore. Behind them, his gaze turned toward the line to board the steamer. Several men ahead of them were pushing for a spot. Some of them had looked half-dead a few days earlier, but the orders to board the boat home had revived their fighting spirit. Though none of them were Seth’s responsibility, he’d take charge if the need arose.

  Captain Seth, though only thirty, had been a professor before the war. Mathematics and logic at some little private college that Gabe had never heard of. But Seth’s education had stuck with him in the calm way he invoked order out of chaos, in how he appealed to a man’s sense.

  “Bacon for my breakfast,” Seth continued, watching as guards restored the peace, “with some thick chops for a snack, more eggs than a frog spawns, and biscuits—”

  “Without your day’s meat ration squirmin’ in them. No more worm castles for us!” Gabriel interrupted, and every man within earshot cheered the end of infested, teeth-dulling army hardtack, though a month ago, all of them would have fought for the chance to eat it. Some who hadn’t heard Gabe still joined in the cheering out of high spirits at the thought of going home.

  Before Andersonville, Gabriel would never have considered interrupting an officer, even for a jest. But in the past six months, he had learned that to Capt. Seth Harris, rank meant less than the brotherhood that the four men formed to survive.

  In spite of his friend’s rank, Gabe had admitted what he’d done to Seth and Seth alone. Gabe frowned, remembering how hard it had been to relate the events of six months earlier, even after all the men had shared. Deliberately, he withheld the details out of fear that Seth would think he was attempting to excuse his cowardice.

  But as always, his trust in Seth had been well placed. Without a word of reproach, the captain had told Gabe, “Better stay with us, then. There’s no sense in making it this far, only to get killed by a bunch of Ohio hotheads. You can use Hale’s name for the roles so you can sit with us. God knows, the poor devil won’t be needing it again.”