The Wren

ONE

South Carolina

Death was so permanent, wasn’t it?

The screech of cicadas filled the stagnant air as Maggie dropped her shovel. She weakly lifted her head, straining to sense the slightest breeze.

Nothing.

With dirt-stained hands, she swept her hair out of her eyes.

Rivets of sweat ran down her body, making her bodice cling to her like a second skin.

Through a haze, she stared down at the freshly covered dirt mound.

No flowers adorned it—only the two pitiful sticks she had tied together to form a cross.

Quite an insufficient marker for her mother’s grave, but it was the best she could manage.

She staggered away, weak from the effort of the burial.

Not one person left but me. The starving sparrow, she thought.

Parables found in the book of Matthew had been a favorite of her mother’s. More specifically, during times that Maggie came to her troubled.

“Margaret Anne Ackerman,” her mother would say. “‘What does the Lord tell us? ‘Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your Heavenly Father’…?” Raising one eyebrow, she waited for Maggie to finish the verse.

Sighing, Maggie concluded, “‘Yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?’”

It was a verse she was forced to recite often, as Maggie was somewhat of a worrywart. Later, as she grew, her brown hair and plain features earned her the nickname Sparrow. She supposed if she had been pretty, it might’ve been Lily instead.

The two smaller mounds caught her eye as she turned away. Her infant siblings. They hadn’t lived long enough to even name, one born still. “Baby Ackerman” carved onto each headstone. At least they had headstones. Her mother wouldn’t as there was no one to make it.

“This bloody, bloody war.” Maggie sank to her knees. A few more days and she wouldn’t have the strength to move. She barely had enough to push dirt and rocks over her mother’s quilt-wrapped body. The crops were wilted and the well had long run dry.

“I’ll never forgive you, Papa,” Maggie vowed.

When South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, her father was among the first to enlist. Although he loved his family, his stubborn pride was his downfall.

He didn’t even make it through the first battle, falling at Fort Sumter in April 1861.

“What were you thinking? You were just an old farmer. You left us here defenseless to pursue a hopeless endeavor. Look at your beloved farm now, falling to pieces.” Maggie pounded the earth with her fist as she let loose her pent-up anger.

Not long behind her father, Maggie’s two brothers followed suit and enlisted. They’d been the ones who wrote saying Papa had been killed.

“And all that praying you did, Mama. Begging God to send the boys home safely. What good did that do?” Maggie shook her head in defeat.

Despite her mother’s pleas, the two brothers continued to fight for their ‘beloved cause’.

Word first reached them of Hugh. He’d fallen at Gettysburg.

By the time the letter written by a military acquaintance reached them, it was barely legible.

Of the two brothers, Hugh was the oldest and left behind a betrothed.

She was a kind girl from the next county.

They hadn’t heard what had happened to her after news of Hugh’s death.

After Hugh, their mother spent more and more time on her knees in prayer, begging for news of Joel. In her heart, Maggie already knew he was gone. She knew the moment the letter about Hugh arrived. Joel and Hugh were inseparable. Joel would’ve written himself that Hugh was gone.

Months and months later, word finally came.

Just not the kind her mother had been praying so hard for.

As the baby of the family, Joel had always been their mother’s favorite.

His death sent their mother to her grave.

She survived the news of her husband and eldest son’s death, but she couldn’t withstand the heartache that Joel was gone. He was barely seventeen when he left.

Maggie can still see her mother crumple to the ground, letter balled in her hand. “Mama!” Maggie cried. She ran to her and pulled her head onto her lap. Her mother moaned but wasn’t speaking. Her body and face contorted in pain.

“Mama, talk to me. Tell me what to do! What can I do?” Maggie pleaded with her.

Her mother attempted to respond, but the words came out in a jumbled, slurred mess.

Her face drooped on one side, saliva spilling from the side of her mouth.

Tears streamed down from the one eye that was open.

Maggie’s eyes widen in fear. There wasn’t a doctor nor neighbor for miles.

She alone would have to help her mother.

Maggie clung to her mother, repeating, “It’s fine. I’ll make it okay. Let’s get you to the bed and have a rest.”

Over the weeks that followed, her mother’s once shiny black hair turned a dull white. Her face still drooped on one side, and it was impossible to get much, if any, food into her mouth. Maggie was able to spoon some water into her mother’s mouth and damp her lips with a wet cloth.

She’s wasting away already. She would hate herself if she saw what she looked like.

Her mother had always been a tiny woman, but now her ribs showed through her paper-thin nightgown. Any trace of beauty had vanished, leaving only a skeletal, old woman.

Her mother must have been aware of her surroundings and circumstances because in the final week, she refused any water. Maggie’s pleas fell on deaf ears. All she could do was watch her mother die.

On the last day, her mother attempted to communicate for the first time since she’d fallen. “Mahggg,” cracked lips bleeding. One hand clawed at the neckline of her nightie.

“What, mama? What is wrong?”

“Mahgggneklzzz,” Her mother grew frustrated at her failure, her hand scratching at her neck.

Maggie untied the top of the nightie and saw what her mother had been trying to grasp.

Her golden cross necklace. A gift once bestowed by her own mother.

It had been secretly stored in a case that she pressed into her daughter’s hands as she left the family home to marry Maggie’s father.

It was undeniably valuable, especially during the war.

Mama pulled on the necklace once Maggie placed it in her hand. She turned her head to the side, and Maggie undid the clasp. Necklace now removed, Mama placed it in her own daughter’s hand and pressed her fingers over it. Her eyes pleaded with Maggie, and in them, Maggie saw her final wish.

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to answer the question that lay in them.

Lying her head on her mother’s chest, she began to cry.

Silent tears at first and then chest-racking sobs.

She sobbed until her tears ebbed away. Maggie felt her mother’s hand on her head and brought her head up.

Gone was the beseeching look, and now acceptance lay in her mother’s eyes. Tears streaked down her mother’s good eye, and she slowly closed them and breathed deeply.

That was the last time she would look upon her daughter. Maggie awoke later that night, necklace still clutched in her hand, and knew her mother was gone forever.

She slowly rose and clasped the necklace around her neck. Maggie bent down and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Goodbye, mama.”

The vigil she’d kept by her mother’s side had left her without means to survive. In her absence, the garden had succumbed to the drought. The crops had shriveled into dead heaps. Even the last remaining chicken was gone, the coop unattended.

At least the fox had a good last meal, Maggie deliriously thought.

Her strength was rapidly fading from the exertion of the burial. Crawling on her hands and knees, she made it to the water shed, desperately hoping one of the barrels contained any water.

She found a small puddle at the bottom of the third barrel. The sulfurous water did little to quench her thirst. Maggie uttered a foul word.

I’ve got to get to the creek, or I’ll be dead.

The creek was a good distance, and in her weakened state, it was going to take every ounce of strength she had left. Steeling herself, Maggie grabbed the water bucket and staggered in that direction.

The sun bore down on her bare head. A walk that would’ve taken fifteen minutes in good health took Maggie close to an hour.

When mosquitoes swarmed her face and exposed arms, she knew she was close to the creek. Finally, she heard the slow trickle of water. Maggie lunged forward and plunged her hands into the small stream and slurped handful after handful.

Only when the cool water filled her belly did she feel temporarily replenished. She lay down amongst the wild dwarf palmettos to gather her strength to return.

Overcome, she closed her eyes, too tired to cry. Beneath the shelter of the trees, she drifted to sleep where grief faded into a dull ache and time held no measure.

Something brought her out of her unconscious state.

She didn’t know how long she’d been there.

When she opened her eyes, a dusky orange colored the sky, and cloth loomed over her.

Groggily, she did not comprehend what she was seeing until she blinked, and the cloth came into focus.

Blue wool. Maggie’s eyes traveled up its brass buttons and into the acne-scarred face of the young man wearing it, a telltale cap atop his head.

Maggie gasped, A Union soldier!

“They all said women here slept in the dirt. Never believed it until I saw it.” He smiled a wicked grin at her, revealing yellowed teeth.

Feeling the dirt beneath her palms, Maggie suddenly remembered the bucket beside her. Her right hand shot out and grasped the handle and swung it up at the soldier, hitting him in the face. Shocked by her sudden movement, he fell backwards, his cap tumbling off.

He wasn’t on the ground yet when Maggie shot up and jolted into a run, dropping the bucket. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She hadn’t made it three hundred feet before she was jerked backwards by her arm.