Wild Rose

"I want to take Jamie to Virginia, Lou. I want him to know where he came from. Where I came from."

The words had come in the dark of a winter's night, and to Lou the bed suddenly seemed as cold as the howling wind outside. Virginia. It was the love of his homeland that had stolen him from her for years, and nearly forever. Virginia was the only thing she felt he'd ever come close to loving more than his family-than her.

Her thundering heart proved her suspicions. She was jealous. Jealous of Virginia as if she'd been an old lover of Kid's. In fact, she halfway wished it was that simple. Kid's love for Virginia was stronger and more inextricably embedded in his heart and manhood than any woman could ever have been. And though when forced to choose between Virginia and Lou herself, he'd come back to her, she'd never been entirely secure where his home was involved. The memory of how close Kid had come to choosing Virginia was too easily recalled, too fresh even after twenty years of him by her side.

"You want to go back there?"

Kid heard the catch in Lou's voice, felt the space between them on the bed grow by miles. He reached across the chasm and found her hand, icy in the dark, bridging the gap between them. Her fingers curled around his reflexively, and she clung tightly to them, an anchor in the sea of emotion washing over her.

"Come here, you," Kid whispered huskily, and drug her across the space, fitting her against his side, "What is it Lou?"

"Nothing."

Kid chuckled slightly at this and pointed out, "Honey, if after all these years I didn't know that particular nothing meant something I'd have been out on my own long ago."

Lou sighed and repeated her earlier question, "You really want to go back there?"

Kid sighed too. Of course she didn't understand his love for the land he was born on. She hadn't had the fortune to know the glory of Virginia before war had ravaged it. She'd never spent a lazy summer twilight watching a heavy silver mist roll in from the James River. She never walked under trees blazing with a kaleidoscope of colors in the autumn chill that was so welcome after the sweltering days of summer. She never watched the snow blanket the ground in white satin on a Christmas morning, nor the hills become a tapestry of wildflowers in the spring.

No, Kid realized, her memories of Virginia were quite different. Ripped from the only real home and family she'd ever had, she'd been left alone in the strange land to wait and worry for his life. The women had treated her as an outsider, and her only comfort had been from elderly next door neighbors. She'd lost her first child there in a miscarriage, and borne the heartache alone for over a year, unable to bring herself to burden him with the news. And all the while she'd been there, she'd never believed in his cause.

Kid sighed. "Oh Lou, I know you hated Virginia. I don't blame you. And it's different for me now too, you know. It isn't my home any longer. But it is my heritage Lou, and Jamie's too. I want him to see it, and I want to go back there too, for me."

"Why Kid? What's in Virginia now?"

Kid's voice was quiet, but quivered with passion, "Me. Part of me is still there Lou. The part that wakes you up screaming at night sometimes. Ghosts. That's what's there. I need to do this. To try and put it to rest once and for all. It's been twenty years since I joined up Lou. I think I can finally face it."

Lou reached up to kiss his cheek. "Okay Kid, we'll go."

Kid nodded, "It might be good for you. You left part of yourself in Virginia too, you know, sweetheart."

Lou's throat got tight. Indeed a very real part of her was still in Virginia. Not a day passed when she didn't think of the child she'd lost, who would have been two years Jamie's senior. Ellen, the elderly neighbor who'd befriended her, had found her lying in the snow in a pool of blood and had seen her through the miscarriage and the raging fever that followed. Ellen made her look at the stillborn; not wishing her to suffer the mental pangs of mothers who never have the misfortune to look on a child that didn't survive birth, and therefore never could accept its death. She'd been too weak to attend the burial, but had baptized him during a particularly lucid period of her fever Jed McCloud. She knew Kid would have wanted to name his son for his dead brother. Jed McCloud, the grave marker read, matching the cross on the hill of their land.

"I need to go back, Lou," Kid's voice broke into her thoughts, and it was as if he'd been reading them, "I've never even seen my son's grave."

Lou nodded, finding strength and reassurance from the hand that surrounded her and pressed securely into the small of her back. "I know you have to go back. I think I always knew someday you would. I wish you didn't have to, but I knew I was marrying Virginia long ago."

Kid nodded, feeling nervousness work into his gut. Twenty years was a long time, but the visions that still played in his nightmares seemed as if they'd occurred yesterday. Going back terrified him, but he knew it was the only way to put the war behind him once and for all. It had taken all the years of trying to move on, surrounded by the love of his family to give him the courage to face his demons. His son was a man, a man who would understand his roots and do with them what he felt he must.

Jamie glanced out the window of the train, feeling nervous. The hills were a beautiful fresh green, so different than the golden plains he was used to, and yet, it all seemed strangely familiar.

I was born here.

Rose watched Jamie rather than the land rolling by and tried to read his face. Usually he was poor at concealing his thoughts, especially from her, but today his expression was one she didn't recognize. She reached a foot out to nudge his, hoping to break the train of deep thought.

Ho looked at her, distracted, then smiled lightly and pressed her foot with his in return.

Rose smiled back, "You alright?" she wondered softly. Kid and Lou were in the dining car, and it was the first time she'd been alone with Jamie in many days of travel.

"Yeah," Jamie nodded then shrugged, "It's just strange-Virginia I mean. I feel…" he held out his hands in a gesture of incompetence at expressing his thoughts to her, "I feel like I've been here before, it's like I know this place."

"You have been here before. You were born here," Rose reminded him.

He shook his head, "No, not that I remember. I was too young then. I can't explain it exactly, but it feels like I'm coming home in a way."

Rose suddenly smiled, "I don't think you have to explain it. I felt the same way when I first came to the Bar M. I'd never known a home in my life, but I knew home the minute we rode through the gates."

Jamie grinned at her fondly, and reached to press her hand with his before turning back to the countryside.

"Jonathan! Catherine!" was all Jamie heard before he saw the streak he thought was his mother fly by him and hurry down the platform.

He and Rose stood back as Kid and Lou embraced a man and a woman several yards away. Jamie knew who they were, in fact he had a vague recollection of meeting Jonathan Monroe when he'd visited the ranch twelve years before, and he knew their stories quite well.

"That's Jonathan Monroe," Jamie told Rose as the four further down the platform began catching up. "He marched with the company that burned Mama and Daddy's house and took Daddy prisoner in 1863."

"And they are friends?" Rose asked, her eyebrows arching skeptically.

"Well, there's more to it than that. Jonathan was stationed at Point Lookout after he was injured in battle, and saved Daddy's life when he was hurt in a riot. They would have amputated his arm, but Jonathan remembered him and told the surgeons to care for it. Then he helped Mama get Uncle Jimmy out of the prison after he took Kid's place."

Rose looked with new interest at the tall man with the silver hair. She was well versed in the story of how her father had knocked Kid out and took his place in the hellish prison so Kid could go home to a pregnant Lou, however unwillingly.

"They all took refuge at Monroe Hall, where we're headed to next. Your father and Catherine Monroe," he gestured toward the beautiful blonde woman, "had a fling, but he left to fight for the Union without saying goodbye. She was a staunch southerner, and Uncle Jimmy knew she'd never forgive him for his decision. Jonathan saved Mama's life. She almost died when I was born."

Rose felt a bit daunted by the complex history and its relations to her family, both blood and adopted, as the party made its way to them. Jonathan seemed imposing, tall and slim with silver hair and dark green eyes. The woman with golden hair at his side had the same sharp green eyes. She was much less intimidating.

There was a lot of staring going on; Jonathan studied Jamie and Catherine watched Rose, and vice versa.

Catherine spoke first, tears bright in her eyes, "Dear God! I never thought I'd see him again, but I swear he's right there in your eyes plain as day!"

Rose was a bit surprised when Catherine stepped forward and embraced her, whispering words of welcome, making her feel as if she too had come home.

Maybe they were both coming home, Rose thought, her and Jamie. It was a journey started long before they existed, but she began to wonder if they'd been a part of it back then, looking out through their parents' eyes, the same way their parents looked from theirs, and would long after they were gone.

"Oh, how beautiful," Rose sighed in appreciation as she leaned out of the carriage that rumbled over a cobblestone path.

Jamie looked out and raised his eyebrows in surprise too. He knew Monroe Hall was a plantation, but he'd never pictured anything quite so grand. The house was massive and sat on a rise, watching over the manicured grounds with dignity. Huge white marble pillars lined the front of the white house. Gardens sported the colorful flowers of a warm spring, and white-washed fences encased many beautiful horses that Jamie appraised with a professional's eye.

Lou had the oddest sense of moving backwards in time, of seeing the plantation as she had for the first time. They'd been refugees then, with members loyal to both the North and the South, which made them traitors to both as well. They'd arrived at dawn, under the protection of the darkness, ragged and desperate. The rising sun had bathed the house in soft pink. Catherine Monroe greeted them with a shotgun, but thankfully had loved and trusted her Yankee brother enough to throw her lot with them and offer them shelter at the risk of her home and her neck. The house was better kept now, but still amazingly similar to the Monroe Hall in her memory.

In the parlor of the huge mansion, they were greeted by a rush of people. Catherine had married years ago to a childhood sweetheart. His name was Marcus Rutherford and he'd lost his arm at Gettysburg, but there was no doubt in Lou's mind that they were very much in love. They had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, who both had golden brown hair and blue-gray eyes. Jonathan never remarried, but continued as the master of Monroe Hall, with the Rutherfords as his partners. Lou's eyes sought the portrait of Grace Monroe, Jonathan's young wife, who died in childbirth before the war. A beautiful woman with chestnut hair and blue eyes, her death had stolen Jonathan's confidence as a doctor. Only when Catherine had forced him to save Lou and Jamie during her dangerous delivery had he found his calling again. He still practiced medicine in the area. Bram, who'd been with the Monroes as a slave until Jonathan took over as master and freed them was still there, his hair gone snowy white and a great contrast to his dark skin. Quinn, another ex-slave, greeted them warmly too.

Kid and Lou only lived at Monroe Hall for a few years, but there was little doubt in Jamie's mind as he had his cheeks pinched by the female house staff who had last seem him when he was two years old, that this was certainly a homecoming.

"You alright Kid?" Lou asked softly, urging her spirited Arabian mare to his side.

His face looked drawn, but he attempted a weak smile that fell far short of his eyes, "I don't know."

Jamie and Rose glanced at each other from their borrowed Monroe horses. As the days went by, their destinations grew increasingly harder on Kid. First had been the field at Fredericksburg, where he'd lost a close friend in battle and been wounded himself. Next they'd seen Richmond, which had only recently been freed from martial law. Kid had shaken his head in amazement at the difference in what was now a somber city as compared to the gay, parade atmosphere he'd marched into before and after Manassas.

Manassas was on the trail too, his first taste of war. He'd grown up in Manassas, and they'd visited the tiny shack where he was born, the marker where his mother lay. Lou had sighed hopelessly when she saw the last name had worn from the stone. She was never to know Kid's real name then, but after all their years together, she realized it was better that way.

Then, a few days ago, he and Lou had traveled back to the land they bought in Virginia. The charred remains of the farmhouse Jamie had been conceived in days before it burned still littered the land, as well as the ruins of their now deceased next door neighbors. Jamie and Rose hung back and watched as Lou took Kid's hand and led him to the tiny marker. They turned away as Kid went down on his knees beside it and Lou with him, holding one another, both dealing with twenty years worth of grief and guilt.

Later, Jamie had walked to the marker himself, studying it intently and feeling a million foreign emotions. This was his brother. He'd seen the cross with his name all his life at the Bar M, but standing at this spot, the spot where the tiny bones had long turned to dust struck him hard, and he didn't know how to react. There was guilt on his part too. Guilt because he'd survived while his brother had not, guilt because he was glad that if one of them couldn't have been it was the other. But there was also a sense of loss he'd never known before for not having known the brother that should have spent lazy days teaching him to fish, and womanize, and fight. In the end, he laid a wildflower across the grave, and walked away quietly, without ever saying a word.

The last stop on their journey was also the most difficult, Jamie realized. Lou and Kid had fought adamantly about his decision to return to Point Lookout. Kid had proved more stubborn this time, and so they'd been riding north for two days, toward Maryland. The sun had been behind the clouds for those two days, and the air had a slight chill in it compared to the warmer weather of the past week. It wasn't entirely different from the day Kid had been marched into the camp.

Kid's face showed many emotions, apprehension and sorrow being at the forefront. Lou too, looked as if she was taking Kid to leave him in the prison again. In fact, part of her was afraid she would. She had only a slight glimpse of what all Kid had suffered in the prison. He'd never told her the worst of it, she knew. She had no idea how he would react to going back, but she knew it wouldn't be pleasant for any of them.

There was a rise of the trail that Lou remembered from the first journey to Point Lookout, and she knew at the top of it the Chesapeake Bay and the prison would stretch before them. She shivered as she breathed in, imagining the stench of thousands of unwashed bodies that had sickened her the first time she pulled up the rise with Jimmy and Cody.

Suddenly, Kid's horse was no longer beside hers, and Lou quickly turned around in the saddle. Kid was climbing unsteadily off his bay and had his hands on his hips, pacing back and forth. He breathed heavily and sweat beaded on his face despite the cool day.

Jamie and Rose stayed atop their animals as Lou dismounted and went to him, placing a cool hand on his flushed cheek.

"What is it? Do you want to turn back?"

"Yes, I want to go back! I don't think I can do it Lou…I'm such a coward, but damn my soul, I don't think I can go up that hill."

Rose glanced at Jamie and saw Kid's pain reflected in his youthful face. She felt slightly out of place, although the McClouds had treated her as family from day one. This was such a personal part of their history that she'd been asked to share in. When Rose had suggested she stay behind, Kid, Lou, and Jamie had refused, insisting Point Lookout was as much her history as theirs. Still, she felt none of the horror pulling at her soul that dimmed Jamie's usually bright eyes and set Kid and Lou to trembling.

"Damn me, I can't believe this," Kid cursed softly and pulled away when Lou tried to take him into her arms. Instead he walked to a tree and laid his forehead against the trunk, his fingers curling into the bark.

"Kid, you don't have to do this. No one would fault you for it, we all know what you went through there," Lou murmured, "You don't have anything to prove, you know."

"You don't know what I went through in there Lou! You don't know what I became!" His voice was hard, as were his eyes, and Lou knew anger was his only way to hold the agony that ripped him apart at bay. How could he explain the animal he'd become to survive within those stockyards, to remain one of the strong instead of the weak?

Lou sighed, her heart aching for him, knowing the misery he felt, although he tried not to let her see it. She turned to Jamie and Rose, "Go ahead. We'll catch up, or wait for you here."

Jamie looked doubtfully at Kid, who met his eyes and nodded for him to go on. Rose caught her lower lip between her teeth, a gesture that indicated her nervousness, and reined her horse after Jamie's.

They both watched wordlessly as the pair moved away, then Lou looked back at Kid, "Do you want me to leave you alone?"

Kid put his head back against the tree, and squeezed his eyes tightly closed, all the while knowing the images he tried to escape played behind the lids. He couldn't explain the fear that clutched him, nor the fury. He couldn't explain why he felt angry at Lou for being so understanding, for not condemning his cowardice. He halfway wished she would berate him, and fire up his pride so that he'd march up that hill with defiance, and to Hell with the consequences.

But she didn't, and she wouldn't, force him to finish this last leg of his journey. She knew him too well, recognized it was an inner battle he'd fought since the day Cody had carried him away from the prison, unwilling to leave his comrades even to return to her side.

"I have to go up that hill, Lou. I know I do."

"I know you do too," she responded.

"So many men died there Lou. Men that were the same as me. Men who had no less right to live. Maybe I should have died there too."

"Is that what you really think? You think you were meant to die before you ever saw your son? Before you fulfilled your dream of raising horses? Before all the years we've had? Don't you see how blessed you've been, you fool? Do you think you would have known such happiness had you stolen those years? You were meant to return to me, Kid."

Kid shook his head, "But why? That's what I've never understood. Why did I live…and not just at the prison. Why did a bullet never find me in battle, or why didn't I die of sickness in the dead of winter?"

Lou sighed. It was the curse and consequence of every veteran of every war, she supposed, to never feel worthy of the gift of their lives when they'd watched so many men cut down.

"You've led a good life, Kid. You've raised a family, built a town, built a life. You've earned your life, you know that don't you?"

The tears that he'd been holding back stung his eyes, but again he squeezed them shut, refusing to shed them here.

"Do you want me to leave you now?" Lou wondered.

Kid couldn't speak, he only nodded.

Slowly, Lou turned and began walking her horse up the rise, knowing he would follow when he could.

Rose and Jamie were both silent when their horses topped the hill, as if caught in the solemn atmosphere of the scene below. Rose glanced over and noticed the hairs on Jamie's arms stood on end. She shuddered suddenly also. At one time fifty thousand men had been kept here, and in two short years three thousand had died.

It was eerie to look at the relative calmness of the abandoned prison now. The fences rotted in the constant standing water, and swayed and fell along the parameters of the yard where prisoners once milled restlessly. Parapets that served as guard towers stood throughout the yards. Jamie remembered overhearing Kid tell Patrick once that the guards opened fire into the crowds randomly, for sport.

In the dead of winter the only shelter offered to the poorly clothed prisoners had been a few tents and shacks built with precious scraps of wood that were often later ripped from a roof and used as fuel for burning.

"Can you imagine what it was like for them?" Rose finally said softly. She knew her father had loved Kid and Lou, but for him to willingly step into the confines of the hellish prison that she now gazed upon gave her a whole new appreciation for the depth of his love.

Similarly, Jamie was given new respect for Kid. His father had survived within these yards, and when given the choice of leaving his comrades to go to his mother, he'd felt the call of duty so strongly he'd chosen to stay. And although, once out of the prison, looking into Lou's eyes had changed his mind, it took a hell of a man to have that kind of will.

"They did it for us," Rose murmured softly, "All of the men who fought, on both sides. They did it so we might know a better life."

It was Jamie's turn to look at her. Her eyes were peaceful, but sorrowful as she stared over the prison. "Was it worth it, you think?"

Rose looked at him in surprise, not really expecting he was listening to her. A good question. Had all the suffering been worth the peace? All the death worth their lives? She sighed, "I hope so."

Jamie nodded quietly, and they resumed silent observation and turned inward on their own thoughts.

In a moment, Lou topped the rise alone. She didn't look at or speak to Jamie and Rose, but pulled her horse to a stop a distance from them and raised her chin, staring out over the prison.

Jamie would have expected tears to course down her cheeks, but her eyes remained dry. He couldn't imagine the emotion churning in her, but she wasn't willing to share it. Then an expression crossed her face, one that Jamie recognized.

Triumph. The war and the prison that had existed below tried to steal the men she loved from her, but in the end, she won.

Not long after she appeared, Jamie turned his head at a sound and saw Kid coming slowly up the hill on foot, much as he'd come into the prison the first time. His father marched slowly, his back straight and head high. Jamie could see his jaw muscles clenched against the tide of sorrow pulling on him. He knew Kid was marching with his comrades again, one last time.

Jamie blinked down tears as he almost saw what it must have been like that day, hundreds of weary soldiers finally at the end of their long march. Jamie could imagine the first time they laid eyes on the prison from this hill. Surely they thought they'd been marched straight to Hell.

Kid met Jamie's eyes briefly, saw his own pain mirrored in them, and he knew his son understood, not only his misery, but the reason he'd done it all. The reason he'd fought, the reason he wanted to stay, the reason he had to come back.

He turned away from his son and looked at Lou, who was watching him with a guarded face. Her eyes also reflected his pain, they always had. But today was the first time he'd ever seen the gleam of acknowledgement, she finally understood his choices as well.

He looked at Rose. Was it really her eyes that bore into his own now, or were they Jimmy's? Jimmy, who once swore them enemies if he carried arms against the Union, but later betrayed that Union for him. Was the love that burned in those silver eyes completely Rose's adoration of the man who'd been a father to her for years, or was there also a hint of the undying devotion and loyalty of a man who'd taken his place in Hell, despite the hatred he harbored for Kid's cause? He felt as if Jimmy stood before him and offered him forgiveness.

Finally he turned his eyes to the scene below them, feeling the ghosts of thousands of men. These were the real souls he answered to in his nightmares, his prayers, his heart. Could they have ever forgiven him, he wondered as he found the remains of the old tent he'd spent many cold nights in trading war stories? Would they begrudge him the years of comfort, love, and laughter he'd known? He stood and let his eyes drift over the camp, waiting for some sort of absolution, some sort of indication that it was alright, that he was forgiven.

However, the prison was quiet, and nothing stirred within it or within him. The hollow area of Kid's heart that filled slightly with the forgiveness of Lou, his son, and Jimmy, never would know complete vindication from the men who died while he lived. He'd never have the assurance that he was dismissed of all charges until he stood before his maker on Judgement Day. He prayed fervently that on that Day all his questions would be answered.

Jamie watched his father's desperate face look over the prison, and knew he longed for the sight of the faces of men who'd never walked out of there. He felt tears run down his own face. Rose gently took his hand and held it. At the same time, Lou approached Kid, and he let her take his hand too.

Was it Worth it? Jamie had asked Rose. Tears fell down his cheeks as he watched his father's tortured eyes living in the memory of those who'd fallen, those who had given their life because they believed in something greater and more worthwhile than themselves. For the pain that still lived in his father, for the souls of those he remembered, maybe it wasn't worth it. Jamie knew he could never be the judge of that. He longed to ask Kid the question, but knew he never would.

He only hoped to God Kid thought it was.

To be continued...Chapter XIV

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

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Campfire Tales

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