She lay back against a tree in a small family cemetery surrounded by homemade markers. She’d had little to eat for several days. She’d undone the top two buttons of her sweat-soaked dress and pushed the sleeves up. No breeze, but the shade helped a little. She’d been resting there since some time in the night when she’d turned swimmy-headed, and her feet had quit listening to her.

Sally Bolton, 1845-1859, one of the other headstones said. Sally had missed all the fighting of the past few years. Lucky Sally. Was she Secesh or Lincolnite?

When Bobbin lay down there the night before, she didn’t know but what she’d be joining Sally and Dear Baby by the next morning. She gave herself a mental shake to break the fuzzy weavings of her thoughts. By Pharaoh’s daughter, she hadn’t come this far to give up, but her strength was harder and harder to summon.

She wasn’t sure where she was, somewhere north of Chattanooga maybe. She’d fled from the rail car that was taking her and other mill girls to Lincoln land when the train stopped at a siding in the middle of the night four or five days ago. Then she’d skulked through some fields, and followed a creek. When she came to a road, she cautiously trailed it, keeping to the brush at the side. She’d escaped the Yanks, but she didn’t know where to go now.

When the bluecoats came to burn the mill and take all the mill girls away, she hadn’t liked the way the Yankee man hefted her into the wagon that was hauling them to the railroad cars. When he squeezed her leg like he would like to squeeze more of her, she smacked his hand away, but he just laughed.

It reminded her of the time, before she’d begun millwork herself, that she’d taken lunch to her Ma at the other mill. One of the mechanics there showed her the little closet where the women left their lunch pails and gave her a piece of chalk to mark Ma’s. Then he started to wheedle for a kiss. Big and smelling of machine oil and sweat, he was wiping his greasy hands on a dirty rag and grinning at her like he knew he had her trapped. The thrashing of the mechanical looms thundered in the little closet; nobody would hear her if she called. The vibration of the floor traveled straight up her backbone and buzzed a warning in her head. The man loomed in the door.

“All right,” she’d said, bold as Jezebel. She surprised even herself. “But you’re too tall. I want to get a good hold of you. Have you got a box or a bucket for me to stand on?”

He grinned even bigger. “Why, I believe you been doing some kissing.”

“Bring me that box, and you’ll find out.”

Rather than moving away, he reached down outside the door and picked up a small wooden box. When he bent over to set it down, Bobbin gave him a shove with all her weight behind it. He fell against the door jamb and slid to the floor. She stepped on his back and cleared the doorway but stumbled outside. He was yelling and cussing as he tried to stand. She hied away as fast as she could and did not slow down until she had to gasp in great gulps of air and give her shaky legs some rest.

That episode taught her something useful: if a man thought he was going to get what he wanted, he could be distracted. She knew the oily man probably would not have stopped at a kiss, and whatever else might have transpired, she knew it would only be trouble. Ma had warned her about such devilment.

She tried to sit up again. Her head seemed to float above her. But her body was hollering. Water. Food.

Since she was in a family cemetery, there must be a house nearby. It had to be investigated. She took off her worn shoes and draped them around her neck by the laces. Better to save the shoes for the night when she couldn’t see where she was stepping.

She rolled herself up to all fours and rested there a minute. Bracing against the tree, she carefully stood, then tottered through a pasture empty of cows or horses. Both armies had scavenged through here, and her stomach moaned at the thought that nothing was left. But water would help. She could fill up on that.

Spotting a house, she crouched behind some poke weed that had flourished into bushes of purple stalks, bright green leaves, and drippings of white flowers growing along what had probably been a fence row before the soldiers had taken up the rails.

Bobbin studied the house. The windows were propped open, the door ajar. No dogs or animals in sight. Yard grown up. Garden gone to weed. No human sounds. The poke stalks rustled. A bold wren chortled in a bush as though it had found a treasure. She spied a spring house, and the desire for cool water nearly stopped her heart. But she waited and watched.

She examined her hands. They were dirty, scratched, and pocked with mosquito bites. Darker, too, from walking so long under the sun. Even working in the mill all day, her skin was never as fair as Ma’s. Mill girls had the pale skin of a lady, except for her. Some called her a gypsy. Bobbin had sassed right back at them. Not gypsy, she had said. Egyptian. Pharaoh’s daughter. My great-grandmother was an Egyptian princess from the Nile, and she was friends with the Queen of Sheba. They laughed at her, but they liked to hear her tales. That was how it was in the mill. A girl had to stand up for herself, or she could be the chicken they all pecked on until they ran her away. Ma did not like her telling stories like that, but Ma was gone now, dead from the fever that had come through last winter.

Bobbin decided that no one was about. She staggered to the spring house in the side yard near the road. The door was off its hinges, and the little house was surrounded by old bootprints, but, praise be, the spring bubbled fresh. She gulped several handfuls of water, even before rinsing her dirty hands and wiping her face. The water cleared some of the dust from her thoughts also.

After drinking more and pouring some water down the back and front of her dress, she eased up to the main house and went in to explore. Many someones had been there before her. Things were slung about, the meal chest was open with only a dusting of grains inside, and a shelf hung askew. Two poles which looked to have had strings of some herbs or maybe leather britches beans were empty. Dust motes swam in the sunlight pushing through the windows.

Stepping out to the back porch, she felt faint again and sank down on the big flat rock that did duty as the step. When her head anchored itself again, she trolled through the garden, in which dandelions were about the only plants that flourished. She picked several dandelion leaves and ate them, the green bitter taste strong in her mouth.

Still shaky, she picked up a tomato stick to lean on and aimed for the barn. Maybe she’d at least find some corn kernels there.

The barn door was as neatly closed as though a cow were penned inside. As she pushed the door open to the dim interior, there was a faint smell of manure, but it was clear that no cow had been milked here for a while.

But—something.

There was a sound—a little creak like a weight shifting in the loft. She did not look up but took another few steps forward and then felt, rather than saw, something coming at her. She ducked and fell, dropping the stick. Her right hand landed on a dried cow patty, and without thinking she picked it up and hurled it at someone coming at her.

“Sweet Jesus!” said a woman, spitting and huffing to clear the dusty dung from her face.

“Teefa, it’s a woman!” another woman’s voice said from the loft.

Bobbin scooted backwards, losing her shoes, and ran into a grindstone on a stand that tipped over with a thunk, pinning her skirt. “Hold on! I ain’t looking for trouble!” she yelled.

Two women studied Bobbin as though she were a copperhead.

“Who you be?” demanded the woman who had been smacked by the cow patty. Her hair poofed out like black cotton fresh picked from the boll, and her skin was the color of strong coffee. She scrubbed at her face with her skirt. She was not much older than Bobbin. 

“I be Bobbin,” she said, yanking her dress free of the grindstone and putting her shoes back around her neck. “Pleased to meet you, Teefa. How are you faring?”

After a pause, the woman in the loft giggled. “About as well as you, you sorry-looking thing.”

Bobbin started to giggle. She and the loft woman were soon laughing—and then Bobbin found herself crying and gasping for breath. The other woman, too, wiped tears from her eyes.

Teefa watched them both in puzzlement. “What’s so funny? Lissa, somebody might hear! All kinds of devilsome folks are slinking around here.”

Lissa laughed harder. “Yes, and we’re some of them!” Lissa’s skin was barely lighter than Bobbin’s. Her brown hair was twisted into a bun from which curly wisps escaped to surround her  dirt-smeared face.  Her green eyes pierced right into Bobbin.

Teefa had been a slave, Bobbin thought. But who was Lissa? Why were they traveling together?

Bobbin started to stand and realized her knees would not support her. She slid back down the wall, and a splinter jammed in her shoulder.

“Foraging for food, was you?” Teefa asked. Her eyes were green too. “We done looked all over the place. Nothing here.” She glanced at Lissa.

That look said food to Bobbin, and she ached to get some of it. “You’re running, ain’t you?” she said. “Me too. I don’t aim to hold you back or nothing. But I ain’t eat so much as a smidgen of cornmeal for days. If you had something to spare, I’d be much obliged.”

Lissa climbed down from the loft and plucked pieces of straw off her homespun dress made of faded patches of blue and brown. Teefa wore a nicer printed cotton dress, much mended around the hem and elbows. Bobbin thought that they might have switched dresses. And there was a likeness between the two of them, as though Teefa were a shadow version of Lissa, who seemed a year or two older.

“We’re not running from anything,” Lissa said. “We’re running to the contraband camp.”

“If you get there,” Teefa added, “the army’s bound to take care of you.”

“But it sounds like you’re running from something or somebody,” Lissa said.

“When fire scours the field, it’s smart for the rabbit to run,” Bobbin said, trying to think what story to tell. She picked at the splinter in her shoulder. Despite the different way the two girls talked, their voices had a similar lilt. “Which army? What’s contraband?”

Teefa’s laugh was a snort. “Oh, yassum, we been looking for old Jeff Davis, but we’ll settle for any General Reb.” She shook her head. “Which army. My oh my, girl, have you been sleeping under the stupid quilt?”

“Haven’t you heard about the contraband camps?” Lissa asked suspiciously. “If you leave the massa, you can go to the Billy Yanks, and they’ll give you a place to stay and some food and not let the Johnny Rebs take you back. You’re safe, Mr. Lincoln says. So if you—”

They all three heard it. A faint jingle that grew louder. A rider on a horse. No, many riders. Horses’ hooves thumped on the dirt road. Voices threaded around the other sounds.

Lissa scrambled up the loft ladder to peer out a crack between the boards in the barn wall. Bobbin and Teefa did not move. Lissa came back to the edge of the loft and whispered, “Mr. Lincoln’s boys!”

Teefa looked at her. “What’ll we do?”

“Let’s chance it,” Lissa said. She scrambled down the ladder with two small bundles. At the barn door, Lissa looked back at Bobbin. “Staying or coming?” she asked.

Bobbin hesitated. Lissa shrugged, and the two women walked down to the soldiers.

From the shadow of the barn, Bobbin watched them. Some soldiers had dismounted and were watering their horses at the rivulet that ran from the spring house. Others were wetting their bandannas and wiping their faces.

Lissa and Teefa talked with the one in charge. He did not seem to be surprised to see them and gestured up and down the road giving directions.

Bobbin’s stomach lurched, and she threw up the dandelion leaves. By Jezebel, she hadn’t come this far to starve. She’d have to ask for help even if it was Yank soldiers. She pulled on her shoes and, leaning on the stick, cautiously picked her way down to the road.

“Here’s another one!” One of the soldiers pointed.

“Who else is in that barn? Sergeant, take some men up there and look.”

Lissa and Teefa were eating something. Lissa had pulled her sunbonnet forward and kept her face down in its shadow.

“Hungry?” the leader asked Bobbin.

“Yessir,” Bobbin said.

The soldier who’d called out about her, a pale-haired boy with a sunburned nose, handed her a piece of hoecake and peered curiously at her. “That’s the Johnny Reb recipe,” he said. “Just like your mam used to make.”

Bobbin sank down on the grass and cautiously bit into the bread. Little flavor, no salt. Yet to her it tasted as good as scripture cake her mama had made. Her stomach still felt rumpled up, so she ate slowly.

Two riders came from the south and gave a scouting report to the leader. There were signs of a group of men up ahead, maybe secesh home guards, maybe outliers, maybe thieves. Advance with caution.

They noticed the women. “More contraband, huh?” one said to the other.

My Queen of Egypt looks, Bobbin thought. She laughed inside at the notion that she was a runaway slave headed to the Union army for help. Ma wouldn’t have laughed at it. But then, Bobbin was a runaway—from another bunch of Yanks. And true for sure, she had more color to her than Lissa did.

She glanced up and caught the eye of the soldier with the sunburned nose. He smiled and winked. She lowered her eyes. An uneasy flutter ran down her spine. After the soldiers left, she’d go her own way. Somewhere. Maybe she still had some people up in East Tennessee. Ma had a sister up near Greeneville, or was it Bristol?

But maybe Aunt Belle’s house, if she could find it, would turn out to be just like this one here, empty and growing only a crop of dandelions. More running and hiding then. She chewed the last bits of the hoecake and licked the crumbs from her hand.

After several more minutes, the men began to ready the horses to leave.

The sunburned soldier spoke to Bobbin again. “Like that hoecake? We liberated it from a she-rebel up the way.”

“Liberated? Fancy word for ‘stolen’ I guess,” Bobbin said before she could stop herself.

“An official ‘requisition,’” he pronounced carefully. “But it was a fierce skirmish.” He laughed, stepped up into the saddle, and headed the horse to his position in the line.

The leader came over to the three of them. Pulling on his gloves, he told them that the road was mostly safe to the north and that once they got to the army camp, they’d be taken care of and sent on to Knoxville. Plenty of food, he said.

That’s as may be, thought Bobbin, but she wasn’t following the soldiers.

The leader sighed. “Poor things,” he said, “you’ve all got tales to tell, I’ll venture. I’ve heard some hard things. What’s your story?”

Teefa wove an admirable tale of woe—massa, mistress, hard work, little food, no sleep, overseer with a cowhide. Lissa sobbed to punctuate the low points. Bobbin wondered how much of it was gospel true.

“You with them?” the leader then asked her.

“No, sir, I ” Bobbin stopped.

The hoecake had tasted so good. Food. Water. Shelter.

“But” —by Jezebel, she could spin a yarn too—“it’s many desperate twists and turns that have flung me here.” It was easy to summon tears. “My master—massa—”

Teefa rolled her eyes but said nothing.

The leader held up his hand after several sentences. “All right, all right, enough. Head on up that way.” He gestured. The troop started down the road the opposite way.

The three women trudged up the road.

“Huh,” Teefa said. “Big story.”

Lissa grinned at Bobbin.

Bobbin felt better after the hoecake. She grinned back. “I got plenty of stories.”

Carroll Gardens Story

by Sally Frances

  “An emotionally affecting story with excellent prose.” — Kirkus Reviews     It’s 1998 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where the close-knit Italian-American community clings to its traditions. The week of Halloween a shocking discovery shatters the festivities, when the body of an unpopular neighbor is found on her balcony, disguised as a holiday witch. Helper, a beloved local handyman, becomes a suspect in the ensuing investigation. When his own nephew becomes one of the detectives on the case, long-held secrets and buried traumas are revealed. The complexities of justice and family loyalty are explored from three perspectives in this captivating story, while this special neighborhood is depicted with warmth and wit. “The beating heart of Carroll Gardens Story is its wonderful depiction of the Brooklyn neighbourhood, which Frances brings to vivid life through her authentic, quirky and complex characters… a powerful journey about the importance of acknowledging and speaking the truth before real healing can begin. May this be only the first of many more Sally Frances books to come!” — Ann Lambert, author of the Russell and Leduc Murder Mystery Series “Sally Frances writes with clarity and emotion, and each character has a distinctive voice. Readers who enjoy The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold will find Carroll Gardens Story similar in its exploration of trauma, healing, and the ripple effects of a mysterious death on a community, told through deeply personal perspectives.” — Carol Thompson for Readers’ Favorite Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore.

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