And so it was he saw her in church, which was to say the Estill Fork Methodist Church. It was deep up the valley, whose ponderous shoulders embrace the Paint Rock River in their cusps. The chapel itself was a single room clapboard structure. It was coddled on the sandstone ledges above the rustling waters of the fork. The gothic windows were shaded first by the woods, then by the mountain's draw towards sunset. And down the valley would echo the Sacred Harp these Holy people chorused from the mountains, for their Reverend was of the Holiness movement.
Her hair was brown, her eyes almond. Before church she passed mountain flowers to the elderly from a wicker basket. They baptized in the pools they call Jericho where they wore linen robes and sang Idumea. These praises were pleasing to the Lord like the aroma of burnt offerings, and thus the war had not yet reached these people of the mountains, who owned no slaves, and worked communally in the scratch of the sandy soils to raise lamb and cattle and grow patches of corn. Not one of this congregation had sent a son to the war.
This Bill Marmaduke respected, and honored the Reverend's wishes to attend service unarmed. It was up the Paint Rock River that Frank Gurley had pitched camp for his guerilla band for a time, striking south out of the valley to raid the Yankee outposts at Woodville and Gurley's Tank along the Memphis & Charleston. It turned ugly. Farms were burnt out, livestock shot up. They'd stick up the railroad to Bridgeport then burn the train carriages down to cinders. The Yankees rarely ventured away from the railroad and chose to keep most of their garrison close to the Huntsville Depot. The mountains belonged to the rebels.
They also belonged to her.
Her name was Amanda, and she did not understand the war. None of them did. They were pacifists all. And he'd try to explain the Cause, but he felt he wasn't making any sense. She laughed at him. She was charmed by him. She was afraid of him. He carried firearms. He's killed men. He was Episcopalian. He had fallen madly in love with her. He brought her flowers. He asked to write to her. She was receptive, but cautious. There were the admonitions of her counsel. Nothing sinister, but disapproving. The Godly do not consort with killers. And she did as she was bade. It was love irreconcilable to God.
But the time grew to pass anxiously for her during which they were parted from each other's sight. During one raid, Bill Marmaduke took a ball in the gut and he was brought in to Mr. Somerfield's farm where the doctor shook his head and removed his spectacles and place his arm on her shoulder. He wasn't expected to make it. The fever set in. She spent interminable hours at his side in prayer. He spent a fortnight in the fitful brink before his fever broke and he came to. Prayers were answered. A promise was struck. She took hold of his hand and walked with him as he convalesced beside the gliding mountain meadows. She read the Bible to him beside cool waters. She picked him bouquets and sang to him Lochaber No More beside the pools of Jericho. It was time standing still. But she could not marry him. He pleaded, she demurred. He swore he would love her the rest of his days. He knelt before her as he parted, and she kissed his forehead, like Guinevere and Lancelot of the Lake.
He did not return for two seasons. He was swept up by the Wizard of the Saddle and rode with him burning across West Tennessee. General Bragg and the Army of the Tennessee had turned out the Yankee occupation of the Nickajack and was now facing the mighty Union army of General Rosencrans's Army of the Cumberland near the Shelbyville, Tennessee. General Bragg's agents swept into the Nickajack and confiscated everything that could be eaten, exchanging them for scrips in Confederate dollars. Then they enforced conscription. It was the unassailable force of incontestable authority. When most of the yeomen of the mountain country sequestered their stocks and evaded the draft deep in the mountains, the congregants of Estill Fork prayed for deliverance instead. Nothing came but the sutler's wagons and men with guns who passed them a scrip note and saluted them as they loaded away barrels of cereal. Then they drove off the cattle with them. They were gone within the week and left scarcely anything behind but the mules to tend the next harvest. Malnutrition set in.
Amanda was carried away by the diphtheria later that mournful July. When Bill returned to Estill Fork, he felt as though his heart had suddenly swollen, then suddenly emptied onto the Earth. He never knew when was the last time he would see her each time he had ridden off to war. He could have accepted that, but he never imagined it would be her the one to go. They had never even kissed. They had never even made love. All the time that had stood still but a memory. In time, the memories would fade too. Then there were just ghosts in his dream, where they'd never say a word to one another. He never repeated her name again.
Boo hags.
He began to blot this one with sins. It took years, even into the after-war. There was the soldiering, which she had called killing. Then the gambling. Then, many say, his ambitions and pride. He never cared much for Jesus, he concluded. Never met him. If she meant nothing, then all that meant nothing. You could make room for Jesus, or you could make room for her. Not both. So he'd chose neither. Here is where they said Bill Marmaduke grew selfish and peevish, shrewd and cold. Say what they will, he thought, I run ahead of my demons.
But he never forgot the impression of charity in Amanda's heart. There were Bible verses she read he couldn't get out of his head, like from Malachi and Ephesians. What is this Cause you were willing to kill for, Bill? Who shall enslave his brother and sister in Christ but he who is a slave to the enemy's power?
If Amanda was beyond a memory, and beyond a ghost, then maybe she could have been an angel.
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