You will likely not be able to read between the lines here.
Rachel had spent a thousand dark and dismal days thinking about those poor people over in Georgia who had taken the hardest blow from the burning, although no one knew better than Joab that Oxford, too, had been trampled and leveled—burned to the ground. And it was not until sometime later that Rachel learned about the New Albany burning. Just two counties north of Calhoun. Sherman was getting his courage from those men who randomly, or maybe methodically, burned towns and villages across the South. At any rate, the newspapers had called his behavior insane. And more letters to his wife, Ellen, confirmed what journalists were seeing and saying about him. About his incessant talking, pacing, smoking one cigar off the other. At night, he was too nervous to sleep. He brooded but at the same time, he was highly energized, leading the writers to depict him as suffering from a combination of depression and the actions of a lunatic.
Rachel
closed the box of time-wrinkled papers, pushed them into the window seat, and
stepped to the back door.
“Samuel!
Samuel!” she called.
Rachel
heard the front door slam and Samuel, out of breath, yelling, “Yes ma’am, Mama.
What is it?”
“I
didn’t mean to startle you, son, but I need you to harness the mules and hitch
them to the buckboard. I’ve just decided we’re going to take a ride to Sarepta.
Are you hungry, or can you wait until we get back to eat?”
“I’m
fine,” he said, bolting out the back door, excited to be going somewhere.
Anywhere.
“Wait,
son!”
“Yes
ma’am?”
“When
you get that done, pull the buckboard up to the front and you come back in and
wash up and change your clothes. Wear the trousers and shirt Joab brought you
from Oxford. They’re freshly washed, starched and ironed. We’re going to call
on the Jamisons. Oh, and Samuel, did I tell you—you’re going to Sarepta School
after New Year’s?”
“Oh,
Mama! I knew it! I just knew it!”
“Well,
why didn’t you say so?”
“I was
waiting for you to say so.”
“Your
patience is becoming, son. I’m not sure I could have waited. What do you say to
that?”
“Mama,
I could yell so loud, but I will refrain.” He threw his head back and laughed
instead.
They
climbed onto the buckboard seat, Rachel clutching her old worn handbag with the
letter to her mother. She would post it in town. Samuel took the reins and
drove the old mules toward the main road and yelled, “He ah!” Partly to urge
the old mules. Mainly, because he was overjoyed.
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