A Bond So Strong

Chapter I

By Joanna Phillips

A thick smoke clung low to the ground, blocking out an overcast sky. Bullets whined and roared incessantly, and artillery boomed relentlessly from all sides, sending flaming pieces of deathly metal through the air. Man after man screamed in agony, and the wails united into one terrifying pitch.

"God help us," Kid whispered as yet another shell screamed overhead.

"I think God packed up and headed home about the time the Yanks got here," Ben Raymond, Kid's comrade, said softly, turning over on his back to reload his weapon and pulling his neck in close as another bullet whizzed by them.

During a short break in the crossfire, Kid fought to lift his elbows out of the thick, slimy mud, and turned to reload his weapon also. Tears filled his eyes as he let his gaze travel over the day's carnage. Most of his company lay dead or close to it all around him, and the fighting was a long way from over.

It was the worst battle he'd seen yet, and he'd been with the Seventeenth Virginia since that first day at Bull Run, the summer of sixty-one. Had that only been a little over a year ago? Kid wondered. He'd seen and endured a lifetime of grief and suffering since then. His eyes traveled to his own hands, completely covered in mud, as was the rest of his body. He was thin and sickly from the hard winter and the small rations the dwindling resources of the Confederate Army dictated they receive, and homesick beyond belief.

He put his hand over the breast pocket of the warm woolen shirt Lou had given him the last time he saw her, the Christmas of 1861. In that pocket he had every letter she'd written him, including the last one that begged him to try and make it home for this Christmas. He missed her with a pain more acute than anything he'd ever imagined, and his greatest fear was that he would be killed before he could look into her gentle, loving brown eyes again. The last time he saw her he'd been amazed at the change in her. He'd married a girl, and slowly she was coming into her own as a woman, with a grace and beauty he'd only seen glimpses of in the past.

It hadn't been easy on her, Kid knew. Parting from Rachel, Teaspoon, and the boys had nearly broken her heart, especially with the hard feelings left unresolved at the time of their departure. Jimmy had ridden out the night after the fight in the bunkhouse, and they hadn't seen him since. This was the biggest burden on Lou's heart, he knew, because though he'd been jealous of it, he'd always understood that a special bond existed between Lou and his best friend. Lou had admitted to him last Christmas that Jimmy had yet to answer one of her many, many letters to him. The others hadn't been quite as angry as Jimmy, but there had been a feeling of strained politeness that last week, and for the first time Kid had felt unwelcome with the riders, Teaspoon, and Rachel.

He and Lou had purchased a tiny tract of land with an old farmhouse on it when they arrived in Virginia. He'd only lived with her there for a month before he was called to service, and he knew the place still didn't feel like home to her, though she never said so. A kindly older couple were Lou's only company, for when she'd ridden into town with their neighbors, she'd not been received kindly and had been treated as an outsider, even as she labored alongside the ladies in the hospital. Though she'd never admit it to Kid, he knew she was horribly lonely, but no amount of pleading or begging on his part could convince her to wait for him in Rock Creek. If Lou only saw her husband once every year, she wouldn't give up those few precious days for months of comfort with people who loved her.

"Better come back to the battlefield, Kid," Ben said, well aware of his friend's tendency to daydream about his beautiful wife, "The blue bellies are about ready for another go-round!"

Ben was from Georgia, and hadn't been able to make it home during leave for Christmas last year, so Kid had graciously offered him a place to enjoy the holiday. Ben had been smitten by Louise from the moment he saw her charging down the drive to catapult into her husband's ready arms. She'd made him feel completely at home, and had taken the edge off of his homesickness. Ben couldn't blame Kid for thinking about her.

Ben and Kid had grown close, almost a close as he and Jimmy had once been. Ben didn't hold the lofty notion that ten Yankees still didn't match one Southerner as so many of the soldiers in their company did. Ben fought for the same reason Kid did, because he loved his native soil of Georgia. Both men seemed to realize the desperation of the South. They were out numbered, out gunned, and out supplied by the North.

"All right men!" A gruff voice sounded, and Kid and Ben twisted in the mud to find their Captain crawling up towards them on his elbows. Captain Eli Browning was an admirable, respectable leader who had gained his men's confidence long ago.

"Are we going closer, Sir?" Ben asked incredulously, his sandy blonde hair falling over his brown eyes from underneath his hat.

"No, we're falling back!" Browning said.

"All this for nothing!" Kid cried out, and his eyes sought the now sightless ones of the dead boy from Richmond who lay at his side, "Why did we fight in the first place! We can't give up now!"

Eli sighed. Kid was an intelligent man with real possibilities for advancement, especially given the rapid death rate of men in ranking positions. But Kid was stubborn, and could never bring himself to admit when it was time to quit and accept defeat.

"I don't like it any more than you do, but we're beaten! Now fall back! There are reinforcements on the way. Now, fall back! That's an order! The artillery has got the range on us, and any minute they'll fire up the cannons again!"

Kid nodded and reluctantly started to crawl backwards, not able to resist firing a few shots as he went.

He'd stopped wondering what happened when those bullets were brought to a halt, presumably by the body of a blue coated soldier, a long time ago. At first, he'd been tormented by nightmares of women like Lou receiving notices in the mail and sobbing for years because of his hand, of mothers and fathers ruined by the loss of their son, of all the destruction war wrought on everyone. But he'd seen too many of the horrors, seen too many good men in gray killed by bullets to wonder any more. He'd become a true soldier, a machine. After the war, there would be horrors and nightmares. For the time being, it was all he could do to keep going without Lou. He dare not think of the consequences of his actions.

But for all his fear, and all his regret and distaste for the business of war, he believed in his cause as strongly as ever.

The whine of an incoming mortar snapped him back to attention, and he was vaguely aware of the shouts of men around him.

Everything else happened fast, but through Kid's eyes it was all slow motion. He looked up just in time to see the shell crashing down almost directly on top of Ben, who was now several yards away. He saw his friend's face convulse and his fingers dig into the ground in pain. A shower of dirt and metal went up, blinding Kid. Pain ripped through his shoulder as a piece of shell struck him. In a flash, it was all over.

Kid barely dared raise his head when the dust settled. Wiping the mud out of his eyes with bloody fingers, he desperately sought to check on Ben and Captain Browning. A sob escaped his lips as he used his good arm to pull himself toward the scene, every movement sending shattering pain through his left side.

Both men were dead, brutally mutilated by the shell. Kid closed his friend and the Captain's eyes, and was only slightly aware of the dizzying pain in his own arm. He dared not look at the wound.

Sobbing at the senselessness and insanity of it all, he wondered why in God's name these two good men had been killed, when, if the shell had fallen only a foot more to the right it would be he that was dead. He buried his face in the mud and screamed and sobbed with grief that made him nearly mad, clutching at the mud with his good hand until his fingers were raw.

Finally, merciful darkness found him as he passed out with the loss of blood and was carried far away from the hell of the Battle of Fredericksburg.


"Please, tell my wife that I loved her more than anything…that I'm sorry to leave her like this, so soon…tell her to go home…and that I died a whole man…tell her that when our baby is born and she looks into his eyes, it'll be me staring back at her, Tell her…she's the only good thing I ever knew…" The words got fainter and fainter as did the light in the bright blue eyes staring up from the death bed.

Lou's hand trembled as she wrote furiously, trying to keep up with the rapidly slurring words of the young man laying on the cot. Her tears fell onto the paper as he spoke of his unborn child, and Lou clenched her teeth and refused to lose control here, at this poor boy's bedside.

Not five months ago, she'd miscarried her own child. She hadn't seen Kid for over a year, and her unborn child had filled her with such great hope. She would have had something to love in the absence of Kid, and there would have been life in the midst of all the death. But one morning something had gone terribly wrong, and if it hadn't been for the help of Ellen Garner, her elderly next door neighbor, she would have died also. She'd sworn the kind old woman to secrecy. Kid had never received the letter announcing the joyous news in the first place, mail was so scarce and unreliable, so Lou had not burdened his soul with the tragedy. However, it weighed heavily on her heart and spirits, and nothing short of looking into her husband's eyes again could ease her pain.

"Miss, would you hold my hand? I'm scared to die. I believe in Jesus, but I'm still scared…would you pray with me?"

Lou leaned close to the young man's bed, and grasped his cold hand with both of her own. How many blood covered hands had she held, how many eyes near death had she stared into unblinkingly, trying to give assurance that the soul staring out from them was loved and had died a noble death? But God! Lou cried out inwardly, how could it be noble to die writhing underneath a surgical saw with no medicine to ease the pain?

It wasn't long before the boy in front of her ceased to whimper and cry, and his eyes closed forever, the creases of pain in his forehead only lessening slightly in death.

Lou bent her head over the young man and wept for him, as she did for all of them. She was still sitting there with her head bowed when a gentle hand shook her shoulder.

Lou jumped and looked up to find Ellen's gentle brown eyes looking at her sadly.

"So many of them die," Lou whispered, shaking her head.

"I know, Louise, my dear," Ellen sighed and patted a strand of white hair that had escaped her neat white bun before saying uncomfortably, "Louise, I thought you'd like to know, the casualty lists are in from Fredericksburg. I haven't seen them yet…"

Lou bolted from her chair and rapidly wove in an out of the rows of beds in the makeshift hospital, ignoring the cries of the men as she went to make sure Kid's name wasn't on the list.

It was a form of torture scanning those lists for McCloud. Kid had adopted her last name, and she dreaded seeing it with a terror that caused bile to rise in her throat and blood to pound in her temples. The other women were elbowing in to get a copy, but Lou, small though she was, had soon forced her way to the front.

Harriet Williams, one of the society belles who'd looked down on Lou and done everything in her power to make sure Lou stayed the outsider looked down her nose at the shorter woman and held the list high.

"It would be a real shame if your husband's name was on this list, wouldn't it? Then you'd have to leave Virginia and go back to your Yankee heartland."

"Give me the list," Lou said through clenched teeth, her heart fluttering wildly.

"Surely you can't love a husband that fights against your precious north," Harriet continued, her fingers tightening on the paper.

Lou's blood was roaring through her veins, and her cheeks flushed a bright red, "Perhaps if you could find a man who could stand to marry you, you'd understand how I could love him," she snapped.

She'd hit the horrible woman's weak spot in bringing up her spinster-hood. A gasp went up from the crowd of ladies as Miss Williams went about gasping and sputtering.

Lou rolled her eyes and snatched the list from her fingers, casting a fiery eye on any other woman who dared question her love for her husband as she retreated to a corner to read the names in solitude. She was vaguely aware of wailing and moaning as woman after woman found a lover or family member on the list. They all had friends to comfort them, and Lou suddenly felt very alone as she started flipping through page upon page, looking for the M's.

Time seemed to slow as her eyes scanned the list. MacMillian, Mash,…McLead…Lou felt tears spring to her eyes and she buried her face in her hands sobbing with relief. She quickly straitened up, knowing that other women were as anxious to see the list as she. She was about to return it when a name further down the page caught her eye.

Ben Raymond.

New tears filled her eyes as she recalled the gentle young man from Georgia that had become so close to her husband. She could only imagine Kid's grief at losing him. After she relinquished the list to the mob of hoop skirts, Lou wearily sat herself down at a table and put her head in her hands, taking deep breaths to steady herself.

Ellen came up to her and squeezed her shoulder, fearing the worse.

"No, its okay, he's okay," Lou said shakily, "But Ben, do you remember Ben from last Christmas?" Her eyes filled with tears, as Ellen nodded sadly, "He's on the list."

"Poor dear," Ellen said softly, and took Lou by the shoulders, "Come, let's go home. You'll have supper with me and Henry."

"Oh, no, really," Lou began in protest.

"Shh! I'll hear nothing of it. Kid asked me to look after you, and to tell you the truth, Henry and I love having you there. It gives Henry someone else to try his opinions out on," She said with a wink, and Lou smiled through her tears as she thought of the well meaning, but opinionated older man.

Ellen set her arm around the girl's shoulder and steered her out of the old house that served as a military hospital.

That night Lou enjoyed the kinder older couple's company, but her eyes kept drifting out into the cold December night, where a light powdery snow was falling. She longed to have Kid home for Christmas, but the holiday was less than a week away, and with the Battle of Fredricksburg just over, she imagined the infantry would be moving quickly to expound on their victory.

She finally wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and started out into the night, after insisting Henry didn't have to walk her through the small hedge that separated their homes.

"Louise, dear, please promise to go to bed instead of staring out the window like you tend to always do. Watching won't bring him home any faster, you know."

Lou smiled at Ellen and nodded her promise, but silently vowed to leave the candle burning in the window like she had every night since he'd first left.

She was climbing the stairs to the rickety old farmhouse she now called home when something struck her as odd. The door was slightly cracked. Her eyes looked back to the snow, and her heart leapt in her throat to see large footprints next to her fresher, smaller ones.

Someone was in her home!

All the horror stories she'd ever heard about deserters and lone women came rushing to mind, but she remembered that Ellen and Henry were only a shout away. Her fingers dug in her bag for her gun, the same gun which had seen her through the express and that she still carried for late nights coming home from the hospital with Ellen.

Ever so slowly, with her heart beating in her throat, but her jaw clenched with determination, Lou let herself into the house. She avoided the creaking boards on the floor as she stole softly through the pallor and towards the kitchen. She heard slight movement in there, and cocked the hammer of her gun.

Now or never, she thought with a sigh, hesitating only a moment outside the kitchen door. Then she took a deep breath and burst through it, brandishing her gun like a sword, and growling fiercely.

It took Lou's eyes a second to adjust to the dim candlelit kitchen, and even longer for her to believe what she saw there.

Standing there in the middle of the floor, shirtless and barefoot with a chicken wing frozen to his lips was her husband, who now was staring fearfully at her over the food.

"Kid," Lou breathed finally, her eyes misting with tears, and obscuring the view she'd dreamed of for over a year. He was very, very thin, and pale beyond belief. His hair was long and she could tell he'd only recently shaved his face from what she was sure had been weeks worth of a beard. His eyes were bright though, and filled with tears as he gazed at her.

Kid could only stare back at Lou, who had been the one for him since he'd first discovered her secret. He couldn't believe how far they'd both come since then, and it comforted him in the world gone crazy just to look into her knowing brown eyes. She looked more beautiful than she ever had to him, though he could see in her face the year had been a hard one, and she still took his breath away.

They stood and stared at each other for at least a minute, content to let their eyes have their fill, content to know that the other was all right.

Then Lou could stand to be apart from him no longer, and the gun clattered to the floor as she leapt across the room and into his arms. Their tears mingled as they embraced, and Lou turned her face up to Kid's to claim his lips passionately.

They murmured words of love and clung to each other for some time before Kid bent his head against her shoulder and whispered, "Lou, Ben…"

"Shhh, Kid, I know," Lou said soothingly, and her hands caressed the back of his neck as he sobbed into her shoulder. Her breath was hot on his ear a few minutes later when she whispered, "Kid, let's go get you cleaned up."

Kid followed obediently as she led him by the hand up the stairs and he watched as she drew him a hot bath. Then slowly, she unbuttoned his shirt, and cried out with horror at the slowly healing, but still nasty wound on his shoulder.

"Kid, a doctor should see this!" She said, fearfully studying it.

"They'll just take it off!" Kid growled, "They don't have time to see to it! I've had worse, Lou, it will heal. I'm not letting them chop my arm off!"

Lou sighed, Kid was right. And she'd seen many men with less serious wounds suffer amputations. As long as Lou could keep it clean, it would be fine. But when Kid went back to the battlefield, there would be no way to keep it from getting infected.

Lou was silent as she stirred steaming water into the tub and as Kid slowly climbed in. It broke her heart to see him so thin, even more so than when he'd first started riding for the express. Lovingly she kneeled beside the tub and gently sponged off his sore, tight muscles.

"How long can you stay?" Lou finally whispered, avoiding Kid's eyes to hide her tears from him.

"A week. I'm being reassigned. My whole company was killed, besides me."

"Kid, your shoulder needs time to heal!"

"Lou, we've been over this before. You know I have to go back."

"The Confederacy has had you for two years! When do I get a chance?" Lou cried out.

Kid sighed and reached out a wet hand to caress Lou's cheek, "When the war is over, we'll have our whole lives."

Lou sighed wearily, but didn't point out that the odds were against him surviving the war. She didn't want to waste the few precious days they had together fighting.

"Then I guess we'll just have to make this week special enough to last until we meet again," Lou said huskily, and stared fully into Kid's eyes.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stood in the tub, and reached for Lou, sweeping her up into his arms, and not feeling the slightest bit of pain in his shoulder.

Whatever battles raged outside that cold Virginia night, inside the walls of a certain small farmhouse North and South were completely at peace.

However, even as Lou snuggled close to Kid's strong chest and layed awake all night listening to the treasured rhythm of his heart beat, even as Kid slept contentedly, not haunted by nightmares for the first time in months, trouble was approaching.

And this trouble was marching fast, clad in blue.

To be continued… Chapter II

Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author

Way Station
Campfire Tales

Email: gliterin@bellsouth.net