Finding Jamie

Words by Ken Branson

Art by Sandra Eckert

“I’m going to this Wilderness place in Virginia,” Alice Craig told her husband when he came home to find her packing. “I’m going to find Jamie and bring him home. You can come with me, Rob, if you like. I hope you do. But whether you do or not, I’m going.”

“Alice, dearest, you know I can’t just drop everything and go to Virginia,” Rob said. “I have a paper to get out.”

Alice stopped packing and faced her husband. He was the editor of the Rockville Gazette and devoted to his work. She used to admire his dedication, but now she came close to loathing him for it. She hated the Gazette. Since the beginning of the war, she hated all newspapers.

“Suit yourself, Rob,” Alice said. “Will you at least drive me to Terre Haute so I can catch a train to Washington? There’s a train at eleven this evening.”

They were standing in the bedroom of their home in Rockville, Indiana, where they had raised James Craig and seen him off to war in 1861; where they had received a letter from his colonel in June of 1864 telling them that Jamie had been killed in the Battle of the Wilderness, and that his body was unrecovered. In the year and a half since, grief had disabled Alice. She often had trouble getting out of bed. When she did get out of bed, she dressed in mourning and often spent the day re-reading Jamie’s letters. She rarely left the house, even to go to church.

“Mr. Craig, can I talk to you for a minute?” It was Janet Morgan, the old country woman Rob had hired to watch over Alice a few days each week. Reluctantly, he allowed Janet to drag him into the hallway.

“You got to let her go, Mr. Craig,” Janet said. “She’s fixin’ to die otherwise.”

“Is she ill?” Craig asked, alarmed. “She seems fine—better, in fact, than she’s been in months. I can’t remember when I’ve seen her this vigorous.”

“She ain’t found a sickness to die from, Mr. Craig, but she’s lookin’ for one. She’s up and movin’ ‘cause she’s got somethin’ she’s got to do. Let her do it. If she finds your son, or somethin’ she can call his remainders, she can bury him next to his brother and sister and be at peace. If she don’t find nothin’, you won’t be any the worse off.”

“But a woman alone, traveling all that way …”

“She’s wearin’ mournin’ clothes, Mr. Craig. You’ll give her enough money for the trip. She’ll be fine.”

Returning to their bedroom, Rob asked his wife, “Are you sure about this, dear?”

“Of course I’m sure. We’ve tried everything. We’ve written to the War Department. We’ve written to boys in Jamie’s regiment. I’ve even been to see Mrs. Stack, the medium, to find out how Jamie died and where his body is, but she couldn’t help me. She’s a fraud, I think.”

“Of course she’s a fraud,” Rob said. “My dear, you must accept that Jamie is dead. You have to let him go.”

Alice closed her valise and walked over to her husband, standing a foot from him. “No, I don’t. I can’t. You can. You let him go when he told you that you were wrong about slavery and secession; you pushed him away until he joined the army; you were cold to him when he came home for his last Christmas. You don’t want me to bring him back because you don’t want him lying in our churchyard, where you have to see his gravestone every Sunday.”

Rob knew he was defeated. “Oh, very well, dear. I’ll drive you to the station in Terre Haute.”

They got to Terre Haute with about thirty minutes to spare, and Rob waited with Alice on the platform. He asked her to send a telegram when she reached Washington, and another one when she reached Fredericksburg, the nearest station to the Wilderness. She nodded. He asked if she thought he’d given her enough money for the journey, and she said he had. She was already somewhere else, Rob knew. When the train came, Alice stood up, lifted her veil, gave Rob a quick, chaste peck on the cheek and boarded the train. She didn’t look back as the train pulled away.

Alice didn’t sleep as the train rolled across Indiana, Ohio, and into Pennsylvania. She had no idea how she would even reach the Wilderness battlefield, let alone how she would go about finding whatever was left of her son. But in Pittsburgh, just before dawn, Alice saw a headline in a newspaper a passenger brought aboard: MISS BARTON CONTINUES SEARCH FOR MISSING SOLDIERS. She asked the man if she might borrow his paper, just for a few minutes, and he obliged.

The story reported that Clara Barton had established an office in Washington called the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, at Seventh and E streets, N.W. Anyone with information about a missing soldier, or searching for information about a missing soldier, was invited to contact her. The story said that Miss Barton and a small staff helped locate the remains of the dead. She determined to pay a call on Miss Barton later that day, when her train reached the capital.

At Washington’s Union Station, Alice fought her way through a crowd of arriving and departing passengers, vendors, and cabmen to find herself on E Street. It was New Year’s Eve, and she could tell from the behavior of some people in the street that the annual bacchanal had already begun, even though it wasn’t quite four o’clock. Alice thought about hailing a cab, but a traveling salesman on the train had warned her that Washington cabbies were crooked, crazy, or both. Alice decided to walk.

Alice was a country woman and hadn’t been in a city since Rob took her on a trip to Chicago before the war. Now, she felt as though she had landed in the middle of one of those medieval paintings depicting hell and purgatory.

It took her about twenty minutes to get to Clara Barton’s office, and she nearly walked right past it, so intent was she on avoiding drunks and cutpurses on the street. Once inside, she was struck by the aura of peace in the place.

Barton was tiny, no more than five feet tall, with a bird-like build. She was in her early forties, Alice surmised, and her expression seemed to invite confidences. Her voice was even and firm, but very gentle. “Now, Mrs. Craig,” Barton said. “Please tell me what I can do for you.”

“I’m looking for my son’s remains, Miss Barton,” Alice said. “He was killed at the battle of the Wilderness in May of ’64.”

Barton opened a drawer on the desk and produced a sharp pencil and a pad of foolscap paper. “Please tell me your son’s name, rank and regiment,” she said.

“Captain James Craig, 21^st Indiana Infantry,” Alice said, and Barton wrote the information down.

“Did the colonel tell you anything about the specific circumstances of your son’s death?” she asked.

“No,” Alice said. “That’s why I’m here, Miss Barton. I know he’s dead … his colonel said so. He said they couldn’t recover Jamie’s body. Why would he say Jamie was dead if he weren’t dead? But in my heart, I can’t really believe he’s dead until I have his body, or what’s left of it, to take home and bury next to his little brother and sister, who died before the war. Because I can’t really think of him as dead, I can’t really think of anything for very long. I know it sounds crazy, but there it is.”

“Mrs. Craig, it’s not crazy. Many people, many women especially, and mothers most especially, feel the same way.”

“If I could have any part of him at all, I could lay that part of him in the ground in our churchyard and say to myself, ‘Well, now, he’s home.’”

Barton uttered a sigh and set her pencil down. “I must be completely honest with you, Mrs. Craig, and what I have to say may be difficult to hear.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Miss Barton. My husband, the colonel, all the men in my life, try so hard to coddle my feelings, but they are my feelings, and I have to feel them.”

“Indeed. Well, first, the chances of your finding your son’s remains are slim, I’m sorry to say. The armies fired so much ordnance at each other that the woods caught fire. Many soldiers on both sides were burned to death, along with everything they had that might identify them by name, or even by which army they were in. That’s probably why your son’s colonel couldn’t recover his body—that, and the fact that commanders on both sides were more concerned with killing the enemy than recovering their own dead. So, while I understand and sympathize with your quest, I must advise you that the best thing for you to do would be to go home.”

Alice shook her head and said emphatically, “I must have part of my son to take home with me, Miss Barton.”

“I see. Well, the first thing to do, then, is to find out where the 21^st Indiana Infantry was during the battle.”

And Barton rose, walked to a cabinet across from her desk, and withdrew from it a large, rolled map. Clearing her desk of papers and brick-a-brack, she unrolled the map, put inkwells and pencil boxes on the corners, and called Alice to stand with her. She explained that the War Department, whose map this was, had gotten tired of people pestering them with questions about men missing in the Wilderness and sent the map to her. Barton started to explain the military situation to Alice. She had been with the army so long that she was steeped in tactical detail, but Alice had no patience for it.

“Miss Barton, please,” she said. “I’m not interested in a recitation of the battle. I just want to know where to look for my son.”

“I understand that, Mrs. Craig,” Barton said. “But you’ll have to know a little bit of the tactical situation, so you’ll know where to look.”

Alice sighed. She was suddenly aware of how tired she was—the train trip to Washington, the decision en route to visit Clara Barton, and the unsettling walk from Union Station now began to weigh on her. But she recognized that Barton was trying to help. “Very well, Miss Barton,” she said with a sigh.

“‘The Wilderness’ is actually a bit of a misnomer,” Barton said. “The original forest was cut down almost entirely before the Revolution to provide fuel for the iron forges in the area. What’s there now is a sort of low tangle of shrubs and some trees that have grown up over the last hundred years. The armies could hardly see each other until they were only a few yards apart.”

Alice imagined Jamie leading his company into those woods, into that second-growth tangle. Was he mounted, or on foot? she asked herself. What was he thinking?

“The 21^st Indiana was with Ward’s brigade in Birney’s division, right … here,” Barton said, pointing to a spot on the map. “On May 5, the rebels ambushed the regiments in front of the 21st, and they ran into the fight, I’ve been told, like people bumping into each other in the dark.”

“My son commanded Company B,” Alice said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about individual companies, Mrs. Craig. But your son probably was killed somewhere around here.” And Barton made a vague, circular movement with her hand above the place on the map where Ward’s brigade had been surprised. “There was lots of fire, I’m told,” Barton added quietly. She took a piece of foolscap and, sharpening her pencil, drew a rough sketch of the part of the battlefield where the 21^st had been and handed it to Alice.

The two women were quiet for a moment. Then Alice said, “I’m very tired, Miss Barton. Is there some sort of respectable boarding house or hotel where I can find a bed for the night?”

“Why, yes, I know of such a place,” Barton said, and, ripping off another piece of foolscap, wrote down an address. “It’s only three blocks away, just off Tenth Street.”

“I’m very grateful for your time and attention, Miss Barton,” Alice said. “I have one more question. How can I get to this … this spot in the Wilderness?”

“You take a train from Union Station to Fredericksburg; it takes about two-and-half hours,” Barton said. “There are train tracks to Spotsylvania Court House, but there’s no passenger service on that line, just freight. Once you get to Spotsylvania, however you get there, you’ll have to find your way to the battlefield somehow. It’s about five more miles, I think.”

* * *

The next morning, New Year’s Day, 1866, Alice Craig ate a modest breakfast in the boarding house dining room, and headed back to Union Station. This time, she took a cab and was pleasantly surprised to be driven to the station in comfort and be charged only the posted fair, to which she added a small gratuity. In the station, she bought a round-trip ticket to Fredericksburg.

The weather had been cold and raw, always on the edge of snow or sleet, since at least Pittsburgh, but 1866 began in the nation’s capital with sunny skies and a temperature in the high forties. There was a hint, a mere suggestion, really, that winter might not be permanent. Alice felt an odd sense of … what? Not happiness, exactly. Maybe anticipation at the thought of encountering, touching and taking home some fragment of her son, if a fragment were all there was to take. Jamie rode down this line on his way to fight, probably many times, she thought. Maybe he was in this very car, pulled by this very locomotive. She quickly erased that thought. This train was comfortable. Nothing in Jamie’s letters home or anything he said while on leave suggested that he or the men he served with were ever comfortable.

At about 1:45 that afternoon, her train pulled into Fredericksburg. The railroad station was more or less intact, though the roof above the platform still had jagged holes left over from the siege. In the town itself, several buildings were missing their roofs or walls or some of both. The streets were overgrown with weeds and the people, black and white, stumbled around as if dazed. Where do I go from here? she wondered.

A station clerk confirmed that only freights ran to Spotsylvania Court House from Fredericksburg. She carefully negotiated the damaged stone steps leading to the street from the platform and then just stood there on Lafayette Boulevard, looking up Princess Anne Street, unsure about what to do next.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” a deep male voice said from just behind her. Alice turned to see a black man of indeterminate age—he might have been anything from 30 to 50—standing with a derby hat in his hands. He was the blackest man Alice had ever seen, dressed in a clean but ragged white shirt, black vest and ragged corduroy coat, gray pants too large for him and mismatched shoes, his big toe visible through a hole in the left shoe. “Y’all goin’ to the battlefield?” He gestured up the street about 10 yards to a horse and trap. “I’ll take you, ma’am, fo’ a fair price.”

There didn’t seem to be an alternative. “How much?” she asked.

“’Pend on whar y’all goin’, ma’am.”

“The Wilderness. I’m going to the Wilderness.”

The man closed his eyes for a moment while he calculated the price. “Well,” he said, “that’s ‘bout two hours out an’ two mo’ back. ‘Course, the road’s a-meltin’ now in the thaw, so it might take longer. You kin have me, the buggy and the nag fo’, the afternoon fo’, let’s say, one dollar.”

Alice looked around for other cabs. There were none. “That won’t leave me much time at the battlefield,” she said. “How much to hire you and your rig for the day tomorrow?”

“Three dollars,” the man said.

“Make it a dollar-and-a-half.”

“No’m, make it two, an’ we got a deal.”

Alice looked up and down the street. It seemed that the black man, the station clerk, and she were the only people in town. “All right, two it is. Can you suggest someplace respectable where I could stay tonight?”

The cabbie flashed a mouthful of white teeth at her and said with a chuckle, “Well, ma’am, they’s the Rapahannock House. It’s got fo’ walls and mos’ all of its roof, so I guess you kin call it respectable.”

“Take me there then.”

It was a short ride. The man refused to take a fare for it. “On the house, ma’am,” the cabbie said. “Y’all’ll make my day tomorrah.”

“What is your name?”

“Obadiah, ma’am. Eight o’clock tomorrow mornin’, ma’am?”

“Eight o’clock it is, Obadiah. I’m Alice Craig, by the way.”

* * *

At seven o’clock the next morning, Alice joined two other guests of the Rapahannock House at breakfast, served with a surly lack of enthusiasm by the landlady, Mrs. Spears. The other guests were Jared Garner, who said he had come to Fredericksburg to work for the local Freedmen’s Bureau, and Garrett Tick, a railroad engineer in town to oversee repairs to the train station.

Garner was enthusiastically talkative about the task ahead of him. Tick was courteous, but reticent. After greeting Alice, the two men began to talk about the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and then, inevitably, about the war. Garner said he had commanded a company of U.S. Colored Troops; Tick said he had served in the 14^th North Carolina Infantry.

“Ah. Well, you probably think Negroes should be returned to slavery,” Garner said.

“Oh, you mistake me, sir. The war has decided that matter. I am content to let it rest. However, some way must be found to maintain the natural relations between whites and Negroes, and the war has given many of our local darkies the impression that they are our equals, simply because we were overcome by superior money and resources. That is not so; nothing you do down here can make it so, any more than anything you do can turn a crow into an eagle.”

Alice cleared her throat. She didn’t really mind being ignored by two men; she was used to that. She minded talking about the war.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Tick said. “Mr. Garner and I appear ready to re-fight the late unpleasantness between the states. I perceive from your dress that you are in mourning, and from what little speech you’ve uttered that you are a northerner.”

“I am in mourning, Mr. Tick. And, yes, I’m a northerner.”

“Who are you mourning, Mrs. Craig?” Garner asked. Tick and Mrs. Spears locked eyes and traded expressions of shock at his indelicacy.

“I am here to retrieve my son’s remains from the Wilderness battlefield, if I can, Mr. Garner,” Alice said.

“The Wilderness, Mrs. Craig?” Tick asked.

“Yes. Do you know it, Mr. Tick?”

Tick lowered his eyes. “I do, ma’am. All too well, I’m afraid.”

The mention of the battle that took her son’s life had evidently pierced Tick’s armor of genteel chivalry and struck something deeply personal. He stopped talking and focused on his breakfast.

“Well, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to,” Alice said, and rose from the table. Garner and Tick rose and bowed slightly. She nodded back, turned and walked briskly out of the hotel.

Outside, Alice glanced at her watch and was dismayed to see that it was only 7:45. She believed that Negroes had no sense of time and that Obadiah might not arrive for a long time. It was chilly, and while she was dressed for the weather, she still felt cold. The streets, as had been the case yesterday, were deserted. She began to think about why she had come and whether it was worth the effort.

What am I doing here? she wondered. What do I expect to find? Was Rob right? Should I just let it all go?

She was nearly ready to give up the project, to return to her room and pack, then tell Obadiah to take her to the train station, when she heard a horse approaching and looked up to see Obadiah driving his buggy down Lafayette. He pulled up in front of the hotel, jumped down from the driver’s box, opened the buggy’s door for her, swept his derby off and said, “Mo’nin’, ma’am. Hope y’all slept well.”

“Not especially, Obadiah,” Alice said. “I haven’t slept well in years.”

To Alice’s relief, Obadiah was not chatty, but all business, as he drove. His gray horse, who looked somewhat the worse for wear when Alice had seen him the day before, seemed now to be full of energy, and he pulled the buggy at a spirited trot. Obadiah didn’t even slow down when they passed through Spotsylvania Court House, which looked, if anything, more completely flattened than Fredericksburg, its streets equally deserted.

The country through which they passed was a dull brown—brown mud, newly frozen overnight, brown trees and bushes. There was nothing to attract Alice’s eye, and she wasn’t interested in the scenery anyway. It was springtime when Jamie passed through here, she thought. It would have been very green. What was he thinking about?

Rather abruptly, Obadiah brought the buggy to a stop. “This is it, ma’am,” he said.

On both sides of the road there were naked trees and thick, thorny, equally naked bushes. Looking closer, Alice could see blackened tree stumps. “This is what?” she asked.

“This is the Wilderness. The beginnin’ of it, leastways. It goes on like this for, oh, a good twelve mile, at least.”

Alice reached into her purse and removed the rough sketch Clara Barton had given her. “Obadiah,” she said, “a little farther on, please. Go slow.”

Obadiah tapped the horse’s rump with the reins and clicked his tongue. The animal pulled obediently, at a slow walk. After about 15 minutes, Alice said, “Stop!” Obadiah reined the horse to a halt, and jumped down to help Alice alight.

Alice ignored him and began walking into the woods on her right. The ground was uneven and partially frozen. Obadiah slipped the reins of his horse around a branch protruding from a fallen tree near the road and followed.

Thorns tore at Alice’s mourning dress and mud covered her shoes when she plunged through the thin ice, but she walked on steadily, as straight as she could over the tangled ground. Several of the taller trees had been snapped in half, and the standing trunks had great chunks of bark torn off and bullet holes in their charred surfaces. About thirty yards in, Alice stopped.

“Ma’am, I think—”

“Hush!” Alice said. “Please.”

It was a still day. Nothing moved in the woods. Alice and Obadiah could hear each other breathe.

“It was here, or very near here,” Alice said. “I know it.”

Obadiah said nothing. Alice swept the ground nearby with the most penetrating glance she could manage. Ahead, perhaps ten yards away, she caught sight of something that was neither wood nor mud, a dull, beige sort of color, and started walking toward it. Obadiah followed.

What she had seen was a skull. It rested on the lower branch of a forked, fallen tree. There was a jagged hole in the top. Stepping over the log with care—no easy job in a mourning dress, resulting in more rips and tears in the garment—Alice saw the rest of the skeleton. It lay on its back. The skeleton was intact, but parts of it were blackened. Looking around, Alice saw more skeletons and pieces of skeletons. Several of them had the same sort of hole in the crown of the skull; a couple had neat holes in one side of the skull and a large, jagged hole on the other side.

“My God,” Alice said. “Dear Jesus.”

“Ma’am, maybe we should—”

“No, I’m all right, Obadiah. He’s near. Jamie’s near, I know it. I must find him. Or, at least, something of him.”

She continued to walk, stepping over and around skeletons and pieces of skeleton until she found a little clutch of them, huddled together. They were entangled with each other and with the branches of a tree and several bushes in such a way that Alice couldn’t really tell where one left off and another began. At the center of the tangle was a tall skeleton gripping a sword hilt in its right hand. The blade was missing.

“This man was an officer,” she said, more to herself than to Obadiah. “He died with his sword in his hand. This is Jamie. Please Obadiah, help me get him out from under these others.” And she began to pull on the topmost skeleton, breaking off its arm.

“Ma’am, this ain’t yo’ son,” Obadiah said gently.

“Yes, he is. Now please help me.”

Obadiah knelt next to her but made no move to untangle the skeletons.

“No, ma’am, he sho’ ain’t,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

“If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself,” Alice said. And she began to pull on the skeletons, but they were stuck together in so many places that she couldn’t get to the one at the bottom. She stood up, grasping one skeleton by an exposed leg and shaking the pile, then swinging the pile back and forth violently. “Jamie! Jamie! Come back with me!” she wailed, swinging the pile some more, with more force, until individual bones began to detach and fly into the bushes.

Obadiah watched all this until he could stand it no more. He advanced on Alice from behind, wrapped his arms around her, and held her steady.

“Now, ma’am, that’s enough!” he shouted.

She fought him at first, but finally, he could feel her collapse in his arms. Her legs gave way, and he lowered her gently to her knees in the mud. She was holding one leg bone. It was partially charred, and had a nick toward the top, where it would have connected to the knee. The rest of the skeletal pile had been dispersed around them, including the skeleton with the sword hilt.

“Oh, God!” Alice wailed. “Oh, God, it’s too much to bear!”

“I know,” Obadiah said. He had separated himself from her and stood nearby. He had never laid hands on a white woman before, and looked around quickly to make sure no one had seen them.

“You can’t know!” Alice said. “You can’t possibly know what it’s like to have two babies die, raise one to be a fine young man and then have him snatched away.”

“Yes, ma’am, I sho’ can,” Obadiah said, and something in the way he said it caused Alice to stop her wailing and look at him. He was looking steadily back at her.

“You ain’t the first person I drove out here, ma’am,” he said. “You ain’t the tenth person, not even the fiftieth person.”

It occurred to her that he was probably right. There were thousands of bodies in these woods.

“None o’ these here can be yo’ son,” Obadiah said. “That’s ’cause all these boys here is No’th Carolinians. The Yankees come through here last summer, after the surrender, an’ they gathered up ev’ry body they could find that had anythin’ blue about it. Ever’ one. They figured out who some o’ those boys was, but mostly, they couldn’t tell. So they buried ‘em in a big hole no’th o’ here. I know. I helped dig it. They didn’t care nothin’ ‘bout these southern boys, just left ‘em to rot. So, least once a week since the end o’ the war, some white folks whose boys’ bones y’all been tossin’ aroun’ come lookin’ fo’ sons, brothers, husbands, fathers.”

He walked a few yards away and sat on a log. “An’ when it comes to losin’ babies, ma’am, I know all I want to know. My Ella an’ me, we had fo’ little’uns. Two died befo’ they was two. Third one, our little girl Kessie, she got sold off down to Georgia. Leastways, I think it was Georgia. That was in ’57, and we don’ know what become o’ her. Our son, Jeremiah, he run off the year befo’ the war. Then, one day, these colored soldiers come marchin’ through Fredericksburg, and one of ‘em is Jeremiah.”

Obadiah smiled at the memory. “We had a high ol’ time fo’ a coupla days, let me tell you,” he said. “Then he left with his reg’ment, the 43^rd U.S. Colored Infantry. They was guardin’ Gen’l Meade’s supply train when the rebs jumped ‘em. One of his friends tol’ us later that Jeremiah was shot through the head right away, didn’t suffer none. We never had no body to bury, neither, just like you.”

Alice considered herself enlightened on matters of color. She didn’t hold with slavery and thought Jamie, rather than Rob, was on the right side of that issue. She was always kind to colored people. But she never thought of them as having husbands and wives and children in quite the same way as white people did. She realized now, looking at Obadiah, that he and she were members of the same awful, hellish club. And Obadiah, unlike her, had to come out to this hellscape all the time in order to make a living.

“I’m so sorry, Obadiah,” she said quietly. “I had no idea.”

“No, ma’am. You sho’ didn’t.”

“What was your son’s name again?”

“Jeremiah. Sergeant Jeremiah Jones, Company B, 43^rd U.S. Colored Infantry,” Obadiah said, slowly and distinctly. He wanted Alice to remember every syllable.

“I’ll pray for him. And for you and your wife.”

Obadiah nodded. “I’m obliged, ma’am. An’ I’ll do the same for you an’ yo’ husband an’ boy.”

“Capt. James—”

“I know, ma’am. Capt. James Craig, Company B, 21^st Indiana Infantry.”

Alice got slowly to her feet. Her torn dress was full of mud; there were rips in her veil. She was still holding the leg bone. “I think I’d like to go back to the hotel now, Obadiah,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. Y’all gonna take that ol’ bone with you?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “This is as close to Jamie as I’m ever going to get. As far as I’m concerned, this is Jamie. I’m taking him home.”

* * *

Alice returned to Fredericksburg in time to catch a train back to Washington. There, in a funeral parlor, she purchased a child’s coffin, about two feet long by a foot wide, and a foot deep. It was made of dark oak and sported a tasteful brass cross on the lid. When the proprietor opened it for her to show her the padded, satin bed with a tiny pillow, Alice nodded and said that would do. Then, to the proprietor’s shock, she retrieved the leg bone from her valise, removed the newspaper in which she’d wrapped it, placed it in the coffin, closed the lid and paid the bill.

* * *

Alice spent the night in the same rooming house she’d stayed in after arriving. In the morning, she took a cab to the train station and sent Rob a telegram:

“Found Jamie STOP Am bringing him home STOP Arrive Terre Haute tomorrow 4:30 train STOP”

As the train left Washington, snow began to fall, covering everything but not really slowing the train down. It had been night for much of her outbound trip, but Alice had been unable to sleep. Now, with daylight all the way, she found herself so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open and, at length, stopped trying. She propped Jamie’s coffin against the window, leaned against it, and fell asleep. The conductor and passengers stared at her and speculated among themselves about what events transpired to bring this woman in the tattered widow’s weeds to Washington and why she was taking her dead baby home with her as if he were a passenger and not a corpse.

At 4:30 that afternoon, the train slowed down to enter the station at Terre Haute and the conductor, a little hesitant to disturb this strange woman with the dead baby, tapped Alice on the shoulder. “Terre Haute, ma’am,” he said. “Your stop.”

With the other passengers, Alice, carrying her valise and Jamie in his box, carefully descended the stairs to the platform. The air was very cold and the train was belching steam and smoke; she couldn’t see to the end of the platform. Like a small tender in the wake of a great ship, Alice followed a fat man in a top hat and, as the man peeled off to hail a cab, she saw the tall, spare silhouette of her husband. He seemed not to recognize her at first, then came rapidly forward to take her valise and embrace her. Their embrace was awkward, encumbered as it was by the coffin, which Alice held under her left arm as she held Rob with her right.

“My God, Alice, what’s happened to you?” Rob said, looking at her tattered and ripped mourning clothes. “Are you all right, dearest?” Craig asked.

“I’m all right, Rob,” she said. “I’ve brought our son home.”

And Alice held the box out to her husband. Craig took it in his arms uncertainly—exactly, Alice remembered, the way her husband had taken Jamie in his arms less than an hour after he was born. His bearing and expression, then and now, seemed to ask, Am I doing this right? Is this how you hold him?

Now, just as she had then, Alice reassured Rob. “It’s all right, Rob. You’re doing fine. He won’t break.”

About the author

Ken Branson spent forty years in journalism and public relations before retiring four years ago, and now writes historical fiction. His interest in the American Civil War and its aftermath is personal: he is descended from a soldier who was drafted into the United States Army in 1864, captured at the Battle of Franklin, imprisoned in the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, and died there. "Finding Jamie" is his first published fiction.

About the artist

Sandra Eckert is a doodler, a dabbler, and a messy and restless individual. An avid naturopath and off-the-road walker, she finds inspiration in the unscenic vistas and hidden places. While her interests currently lie in the world of art, she has been known to tend goats, whitewater kayak, fish for piranha, and teach teenaged humans. She is fascinated by the lessons of the natural world, both seen and unseen. Sandra holds a BFA with certification, and has continued her education both formally and informally, though she is too distracted to gather up her credits. She lives in Allentown with her husband, Peter, and her dogs, Jack and Tobi. Additional works are available here.