Page 64 of Under the Tulip Tree
“I wanted to stand up and say something in that woman’s defense,” Jael said, her eyes welling with tears, “but I was scared.”
Frankie tugged Jael down into an embrace. “You done the right thing, baby girl. It wasn’t your fight. There may come a day when you gotta stand up for yo’self, but today wasn’tit.”
They stayed in one another’s arms for a long moment, with Frankie whispering words I couldn’t make out. I glanced at Alden, wondering if we should leave, but he was looking at the floor, hands clenched. In the short time I’d known him, I’d learned the inequality of the races didn’t sit well with him. No doubt he wished he could locate that streetcar conductor and share a choice word or two.
Jael sniffled again before rising to her feet. “What are you all talking about?”
“I was just telling Rena and Alden ’bout the time after the fighting stopped here in Nashville. Sam was still in the hospital, but it looked like he might recover.” A deep frown filled Frankie’s face. “But the better he felt, the more that man kept on me about going to work in the prison hospital and caring for the men there.”
“You mean the Confederates?” Jael’s mouth hung open. “They didn’t deserve any kindness.”
After what she’d witnessed on the streetcar, I couldn’t blame her for her strong opinion. The thought of a black person coming to the aid of the very people who’d kept them enslaved surely seemed offensive.
Frankie sighed. “There were so many prisoners, the folks tending them couldn’t keep up. I thought poorly of anyone who went to help, but Sam wouldn’t let up. ‘You gotta go to them, Frankie,’ he’d say every day. ‘One of them prisoners needs you.’” She shook her head, her face pinched with aggravation as though Sam had just spoken the words.
“Why did Sam think a Confederate needed you? You didn’t know any, did you?”
“None that I could recall. Mr. Waters’s son was too young to join the army when they left the city in 1862. I heard later the South was taking boys as young as fourteen by the end of the war, so I don’t know if Grant Waters joined up or not.”
“Then who needed you?” Jael’s question echoed my own.
Frankie settled back in her chair, rubbing her gnarled fingers as she often did when deep in memories. The clock on the wall ticked several minutes away before she finally answered.
“Someone I never expected to see again.”
Sam improved a little each day. He had a long way to go to be fully recovered, but every morning brought new victories, like sitting up, feeding himself, and reading from his Bible.
The matron of the hospital, a disagreeable woman with the fitting name of Miz Stoney, never had a kind word to say when I passed her in the hallway. She seemed put out that the men in the beds refused to mend as fast as she desired, and nothing I or any of the volunteers did ever met with her approval.
“That woman shouldn’t be working in a hospital,” I said to Sam one day after hearing Miz Stoney rail at the young woman I’d seen stargazing. I didn’t know what infraction the young volunteer had committed, but she was in tears afterMiz Stoney was finished. “She’s too mean. Miz Illa should be the matron.”
“Miz Illa doesn’t want to be a matron. She’s free to go between hospitals and the camps, tending to the needy in ways she couldn’t if she was kept at one hospital.”
I saw the wisdom in his observations. “Well, if not Illa, then someone else who has a heart that isn’t made of stone.”
Sam smiled. “You’d make a good matron.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward. “As though they’d allow the likes of me to be matron.” My gaze swept the room. More beds had been added to accommodate more wounded, and the room now had thirty patients crowded into it. I helped the volunteers tend some of the men, but Sam was my main concern.
“Listen, Frankie,” Sam began, but I held up my hand to cut off his words. I knew what he intended to say. He’d already said it a dozen times.
“I told you. I won’t go nurse the prisoners, so stop asking.”
Hurt filled his eyes, and I regretted the harshness in my voice. My tense shoulders eased. I didn’t want to argue with Sam. “Do you want me to read to you?”
He nodded.
I took up the Bible, turning to the book of Psalms, when Sam said, “I’d like to hear Luke, chapter6.”
I eyed him. He’d never asked for a text so specifically before. I flipped pages until I found the passage and began reading. I smirked when I came to verse24. “‘But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.’”
I looked up. “That sounds like he’s talking about the Confederates.”
“All Confederates aren’t rich,” Sam said softly, his eyes remaining closed as he listened.
I scowled. He was right, although I didn’t like to admit it. I kept reading. “‘Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.’”
I didn’t say it aloud, but I thought for sure Jesus must have had the Confederates in mind when he spoke those words. They were sure mourning now that the Yanks had whipped them and sent them on the run with their tails between their legs.
