Chapter Thirty-Seven
We didn’t need a map to trace the war’s approach. We didn’t need to read the headlines. News moved faster than ink, slipping
through neighbors at the dry goods store, whispered from pew to pew at Sunday service. Every week brought news of death and
more death—sons, brothers, husbands. Some young men, coming of age, slipped away into the hills before the war could claim
them.
The shortages deepened. Every stitch of fabric was repurposed, every scrap of food stretched.
By early 1865, refugees began appearing on the road, whole families packed onto wagons piled high with quilts and kettles,
fleeing places where the fighting had turned lawless. They spoke of farms burned, barns stripped bare, slaves escaping in
the night to join the Union Army. Confederate money was as good as worthless. A pair of shoes cost $600 in paper currency.
At the store one afternoon, Flora Wadkins pulled me aside. “They say there’s another raid coming down from Virginia, and the
men they sent from Raleigh won’t be enough to hold them off.”
The roads were no longer safe. Bands of deserters raided farms for food, stealing from their own neighbors.
Addie and I had to speak around our differences—there was no room for them now; whatever lay between us, we could not afford to be estranged.
The danger was too real. So we held our tongues and carried on as best we could.
Sometimes she came to me; sometimes I walked through the fields to her farm, avoiding the road.
We threw ourselves into the day’s demands: stretching what little flour and salt we had left, dyeing old dresses into mourning black, managing our farms, trying—failing—to preserve some illusion of normalcy for the children.
The mood shifted from weary to desperate.
In the evenings, Eng and Chang paced the parlor, listening to the wind move through the trees, the hoofbeats of passing patrols.
I saw the way their shoulders stiffened when a rider passed by too slowly. How they lingered over the newspapers, rubbing
their temples, pulling on their pipes. Whatever protection their wealth had once offered felt fragile. What would happen to
them—to all of us—if the war came closer? If raiders swept through? If the wrong man decided they didn’t belong?
How naive we’d all been. How willfully blind. Nothing was certain now. Pretending otherwise only prolonged the inevitable.
In the spring of 1865, General George Stoneman marched four thousand Union cavalrymen from Tennessee into North Carolina.
They moved swiftly through the Blue Ridge Mountains, sweeping through towns like Boone and Wilkesboro, pressing north toward
Mount Airy. By the time they reached us in early April, the war seemed to be in its final gasps, though no one yet knew how,
or when, it would end.
Stoneman’s raiders were infamous for their brutal scorched-earth tactics. News of their impending arrival traveled quickly,
passed in urgent knocks at back doors, in frantic letters smudged with shaking hands. They burned a courthouse in Wilkesboro. Shot a man in his own parlor. Stripped the store bare, every last bag of potatoes, every pound of salt.
By then, we’d already hidden what little we had left.
Eng and Chang buried the silverware beneath the floorboards of the barn.
Addie and I packed our jewelry and other valuables into sacks and lowered them into the well.
The few provisions we still had—some bacon wrapped in cloth, a handful of dried apples, a half barrel of cornmeal—we concealed in hollow tree trunks and buried deep inside barrels of feed.
Then we waited.
It was late morning when Stoneman’s men reached Mount Airy. The sky was mottled with storm clouds, the air smelling of wet
earth. The first wave of soldiers clattered into town on horseback—blue coats flashing between the trees, swords rattling
in their scabbards, muskets slung across their backs. They moved fast, fanning out along the main road, some galloping ahead
while others dismounted and marched toward the depots and shops. At the post office, they smashed through doors and overturned
desks, scattering letters across the floor as they broke open drawers searching for cash. At the railway depot, they pried
up tracks, tore down telegraph wires, and set fire to the storehouses, leaving the North Carolina and Piedmont railroads,
lifelines of the Confederacy, in ruins.
Inside the general store, a group of soldiers, half drunk and laughing, kicked over barrels of flour and slashed sacks of
grain with bayonets, sending white dust billowing into the air. The grocer was forced to his knees, a rifle pressed to his
chest.
We didn’t see this ourselves. We heard it from a stranger passing by in a rush. When we took the buggy into town later that
day, we saw what remained—scorched wood, shattered windows, the smell of ash in the air. Boot prints ground deep into the
mud. The haunted faces of the people who’d witnessed it.
Late that afternoon, word spread that General Stoneman was preparing to conscript local men into his ranks. Every able-bodied
man in Surry County, regardless of allegiance, would have his name entered into a lottery, with names drawn at random to fill
out Stoneman’s division.
Eng and Chang tied up the horse, and the four of us hurried to the square. Stoneman stood on the courthouse steps in front of a crowd, tall and commanding in a dark blue frock coat with a black velvet collar and cuffs. His voice carried easily across the square.
“This is not a negotiation,” he said, silencing a ripple of protest with a look. “This is conscription.”
I slipped my hand into Eng’s.
An officer placed a wooden drum on a table. One man read names from a ledger; another copied them onto scraps of paper and
dropped them in the drum.
I held my breath as neighbor after neighbor was called, each name written down and spun into the mix.
“Eng Bunker,” the officer called. I felt Eng stiffen beside me.
When the last name had been added, Stoneman stepped forward. He made a show of turning the drum, the paper inside rustling
like dry leaves. Then, with a practiced flick of the wrist, he reached in and pulled a single slip.
He handed it to his lieutenant.
“Eng Bunker,” the man read.
The air went still.
Recognition crossed Stoneman’s face. Of course he knew who Eng and Chang were—everyone did. I watched as annoyance gave way
to a kind of reluctant amusement.
For a moment, he said nothing. His gaze shifted between the twins and the waiting crowd.
Then he exhaled. With a tight shake of his head, he dismissed the matter. “Let him go,” he said. “Both of them.”
Just like that, it was over. The next name was called.
Despite the destruction all around us, the brothers’ farms escaped unscathed.
Later, we learned that Union soldiers had issued orders: the property of the famous Siamese Twins was not to be harmed.
News of a raid on their land would have made for sensational headlines, bad publicity for the Union cause.
But that didn’t mean we were entirely spared.
Eng and Chang had gone down to the lower field to shore up a collapsed fence after the storm two nights earlier. They’d been
away for hours—long enough, I remember thinking, that they might not return until dark.
I was helping Addie preserve the last of her strawberries. Her kitchen house was warm and fragrant, the countertops sticky
with juice, our aprons stained red.
Then we heard it—the sound of boots in the yard, heavy and unfamiliar.
Through the kitchen window, I saw them before she did: five Union soldiers were crossing the grass toward the back porch,
where her sixteen-year-old daughter, Susan, sat with some of the younger children playing cards.
“Addie,” I said, nodding toward the window.
She followed my gaze and went still, the wooden spoon dripping red onto the floor.
We watched as one of the soldiers, broad-shouldered and unsteady on his feet, mounted the steps. Addie dropped her spoon and
rushed from the kitchen. I was close behind her.
Before we reached the porch, another soldier stepped in our path, one arm extended like a gate. “Stay back, ladies,” he said,
his voice unnervingly mild.
“These are my children,” Addie said, trying to push past him.
He didn’t budge. “Frank’s just having a little chat.”
Beyond him, on the porch, Frank swayed a little as he stared at Susan. The sour smell of spirits reached us even from yards
away. “Pretty girl,” he slurred, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. “Why don’t you come for a walk with me?”
Her eyes widened. Then she did something I never would’ve expected of my shy niece: she swung her free hand in an arc and struck him, hard, across the face.
He staggered back, releasing her wrist. Color surged in his cheeks. “Bitch!”
The younger children scrambled backward, behind the rocking chairs and card table. Frank reached for his holster.
Then one of his companions laughed. “You picked a feisty one, Frank.” He climbed up and threw an arm around him. “Girl’s got
more fire than you can handle.”
Frank rubbed his jaw, fixing his eyes on Susan’s face. For a long moment, he held her gaze. Then he spat on the porch boards
in front of her feet and turned away. “Come on, boys,” he said. “Nothing worth our time here.”
The soldier blocking Addie and me stepped aside with a mocking tip of his hat. “Evening, ladies.”
As they moved off into the dusk, their shadows stretching across the yard, I had a chilling thought: they must have waited
to approach until they knew our husbands were gone.
Only when they disappeared beyond the tree line did I realize I’d been holding my breath.
Susan stood rigid on the porch, her chest rising and falling. A thin line of blood trickled from her wrist where his fingernail
had broken the skin.
Addie rushed forward and wrapped her daughter in her arms. Over Susan’s shoulder, her eyes met mine.