The Hope Chest, Chapter 1: A Peak at my second novel (a prequel to the Tin Box)

The Hope Chest                               1865                                       Chapter 1

The incessant rain seeped into the ground in an attempt to wash away the blood that had caked up on the well-trodden square.   Once tidy homes had lined the narrow streets and dusty roads had led to plantations just beyond the town.  She looked toward her own home, just a few blocks from where she now stood.  Her family had moved as much as they could before the cannons had blasted holes through the walls.  She wondered if the rest of her possessions were still safe or if her home had been looted like so many others.  She prayed silently that her hope chest was safe, still there, but hidden in a space between the walls.  It had been filled, over the years, with treasures meant to carry her into her married life.  But it had been too heavy to move quickly, so it had to be left behind.  Of course, the chest was filled with material things and they couldn’t compare with the treasure that was now housed in their cave.  After all, her father, mother, brothers and sister were all still alive.  Not all families had been so lucky. 

As a child, she had often played along the river, while her mother shopped in the town.  She reminisced, now, about the time Jeremy’s hoop would surely have been lost to the river, had it not been for Wesley’s quick response.  His young agile frame, quick and lean, scooped up the hoop just before it touched the muddy water’s surface.  She had held her breath for a moment as she wondered if he would tumble into the swollen river after the toy.  But with great balance, he had righted himself and flashed his disarming smile in response to her gasp.   He tossed the hoop back at her little brother and sauntered away with his cousin, Charles.  Taking Jeremy by the hand, she had looked toward the cousins with some consternation. 

While she should have been grateful simply to have had Jeremy’s hoop returned to him without damage, in truth, she had felt annoyance at the boy who had retrieved it from certain destruction.  While they had once shared every thought and dream with each other, he barely looked at her anymore.  She had led Jeremy toward the shop where their mother was purchasing some cloth and thread, but couldn’t help looking back toward Wesley and feeling immensely disappointed that he hadn’t felt the need to, likewise, follow her with his own eyes.  She had walked carefully with a newly perfected sway to her hips; hoping that his head might turn, just once, to glance back in her direction. 

The scene from her childhood faded away as she took in the view from the cave’s entrance.  The summer of 1858 had been a time of innocence that would surely never return to this place.  She bent low to enter the cave and wet her fingertips to smother the wick at the entrance.  In the course of these past five years the country had been ripped in two.  Charles and Wesley now stood, far from home, on opposite sides of a war.  And now that war had even found its way to Vicksburg.