The Valentine's Dance

Author's Note:

This is a period romance taking place during and after the Civil War in the American south. It is a work of fiction and was written for the 2020 Valentine's Day Contest.

This romantic story focuses more on the characters rather than the sex. While there is some sex later in the story, there's not a lot and it isn't all that graphic. If you're looking for long encounters described in great detail, please look elsewhere.

For those who read on, please let me know your thoughts with your votes, favorites, and comments. Thanks!

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Saturday, February 13, 1892

It was a place I didn't want to go on a night I hated.

In truth, I wouldn't have been there at all if it hadn't been for my sister. Of course, most everything about my life had been, from an early age, about my sister.

Or rather, sisters. All six of them.

***

Early October, 1862

The men came at sundown to take my father away. They said he had to go or else. They didn't say what "else" was, but at just days from my 10th birthday, I felt I knew what they meant.

Isaiah Daniels, son of a Methodist circuit preacher and my father, had shared with me repeatedly as we worked about his thoughts on the war.

"Better men on both sides would have found a way to settle the issues peacefully. When stubbornness, hate, and greed are allowed to come into play, Jeremiah, cooperation is the first thing to go. And when politicians are involved, too often they're more interested in personal power and swapping favors than in solving things for the people they're supposed to represent."

Daddy didn't like slavery; we didn't have any and wouldn't have even if we could have afforded them. He didn't like the government in Washington or in Richmond telling us what to do, either. Most of all, he didn't like northern armies or southern armies roving around the countryside taking what they wanted, tearing things up, burning things down, and killing those that opposed them.

"Son, those armies aren't good for anyone except for the politicians and their friends, those selling them food, guns, and equipment," he'd told me. "Those people don't care about the men doing the fighting, those dying, or those enslaved. This war is an evil thing waged by evil men who are only thinking of themselves and their bankrolls."

That night when the men came for Daddy, my mother, Fiona Daniels, a fiery redhead and the granddaughter of Irish immigrants from long before the famines, held little Rachel and clutched my other little sisters, out of the way of the men on horseback who might have trampled them without noticing and probably without caring. Daddy had already told Mama and the girls to stay back.

He probably meant me, too, but I was a bit bigger and wasn't having it.

"You can't take my father away," I declared as I marched up in front of the leader on his big horse. "It isn't right!"

"Right or not, kid, we can and we are. Now get out of the way or we'll run you down."

"Stop!" said my father, forcefully. "I'll go. Just leave them alone and give me a couple minutes to tell them all goodbye."

"One minute," said the leader. "I'm counting."

Daddy kissed each of the five girls on the head. While Deborah and Esther seemed to understand to some extent, the three younger ones didn't know what was happening. Then he kissed Mama.

"I love you, Fiona, and I'll be home soon."

Last, he turned to me.

"Jeremiah, I'll be gone for a while, so you're going to have to be the man of the family. You have to take care of your mama, your sisters, and your new baby brother or sister that's coming soon. They're your—"

"Time's up! Let's go!" demanded the leader.

They started dragging him off as he finished. "—responsibility now! Love them and always take care of them. Promise me!"

With the rope on him and them pulling him along, he barely got the last words out before they disappeared in the darkness. I don't know if he heard me but I called out, "I promise, Daddy!"

After they were gone, Mama calmed the girls, wiped their tears, and put them to bed. Then the two of us went outside to talk.

"Mama, why'd they take him? Daddy said he doesn't like the war." I was fighting off the tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how they could do such a thing to such a good man.

She shook her head. "They need soldiers because they don't have enough, Jeremiah. The government in Richmond passed a new law a few months ago that said he and a lot of other men had to go, even if they didn't want to. They told Daddy to come, but he told them it was a terrible law and he wouldn't do it. That's why the riders came tonight, to tell him he didn't have a choice in the matter. Those men tonight were bad men; they're in charge, forcing others to go so they can stay home. They'd have killed Daddy tonight as an example to others if he hadn't gone with them. He's going to be gone for a while, so you and I are going to have to do our best to take care of the farm and your little sisters."

I nodded, not too happy at the thought. I loved my little sisters, all five of them, but they were a pain most of the time, and we'd only recently found out that Mama was going to be having another baby soon. She would be blessed with yet another girl about four months later, in early February, 1863. I really hoped that the war would be over and Daddy would be home by then.

Unfortunately, the war dragged on and my father never came home. He was wounded and then captured by Union soldiers near Tullahoma, less than 2 days ride from our home, in June, 1863. They sent him to a prison camp up north.

We got two letters from him in the months after he was captured, though the second was sent only a few weeks after the first. He said his wound wasn't healing well and that what food they had was bad. We sent letters to him and told him about how we were doing and how baby Sarah was growing, but we don't know if he ever got them. Word came about him dying in that camp before we received his second (and final) letter.

***

1892

"Jeremiah, thank you for taking me," said Sarah as I popped the reins to get us on our way. She was my youngest sister, having turned 29 years of age only a week earlier. With me being over ten years older and with her having never met our father, I'd always been something more than just a big brother to her.

"You're welcome," I replied, hoping it sounded as if I meant it. I looked at the road ahead of us and could easily think of any number of things I'd rather be doing.

The road was still somewhat muddy from the rains earlier in the week, so we went slowly as we made our way toward town. Both of us were wearing a winter coat as the sun sank toward the western horizon. Her hands were tucked in the furry little hand warmer, but I wore gloves against the cold and the wind. Based on past experience, I suspected that we would have a hard frost in the morning, but the good thing was that these clouds didn't carry snow. At least, not for us.

I looked at the position of the sun once more. I'd have to light the carriage lamp shortly, but I wanted to wait as long as I could to preserve the fuel. We'd need it all the way home later tonight.

Sarah looked nervous on the seat next to me. At five-foot six with blonde hair and green eyes, she was what some would consider the prettiest of the Daniels girls, but she had also once been a little more pampered than the others. She had, after all, been the baby and our last connection to our father, but she had become a hard worker who could do her share as she grew up. She'd also experienced the greatest tragedy, the most heartache, of us all. Now, at her age, she was considered by many to be an old maid.

And that was just another example of the trouble for the women in my family.

***

Late Spring, 1864

Mama and I had some help from a couple of older neighbors with the planting in the Spring of 1863 and we took care of the harvest that fall while Deborah, my Irish twin, and Esther, our next eldest sister, took care of the younger girls and the baby. Things got worse the next spring when planting time approached. Even most of the older men in the community had now been forced to go off to war, so Mama and I were on our own.

I was eleven and a half so I was working on becoming a man but still had a long way to go. I'd done some plowing before, but only after Daddy had pushed the blade into the earth to start the row. Even then, I still had trouble controlling it, and it slipped out of the uncut earth at times, leading to terribly ragged furrows that caused my father to shake his head.

"You're still too small, Jeremiah, but give it four or five more years and your furrows'll be as straight as mine."

Unfortunately, I'd had barely two since he gave that prophecy. As spring came and the clock for planting season starting ticking down, I had to be the man of the family and drive that plow point deep in the hard soil while controlling the ox at the same time. At the end of each row, I drove the ox to the other side of the plowed land, dragging the plow behind, before setting the implement back up and trying to get it to cut into the earth once more. I'd try to jab it in and then step on the back of the blade like I'd seen my father do so many times, but it was often too much for me alone.

"Mama, I can't get it to go in the ground deep enough. If I can't get the ground broken up enough, the seeds won't take, the crops won't grow, and we'll starve." I was worried sick at the thought of that and letting something happen to the girls. Almost as important, I didn't want to let my late father down.

"Don't you worry, Jeremiah," said my mama, giving me a hug.

I could feel her bones as I hugged her back. She'd gotten awfully thin since little Sarah was born and Daddy had died, but she still had hope. "We'll work it out together," she told me.

Therefore, she came out to the field to help. She helped control old Max, our gray ox, and then added her weight to mine when it was time to cut the plow blade into the ground. Between the two of us, sometimes after multiple attempts, we got the plow point down into the earth to start the next furrow. I thanked her every time. When she started thanking me back in the same manner, we had a rare laugh. We became a real team and kept working together to get the job done. We talked as we worked.

"Mama, my plowing isn't nearly as good as Daddy's, and it's a lot slower, too."

"Not as good, Jeremiah, but if we keep working, it will be good enough. Just keep going, Son," she told me. "We'll get by."

I hoped she was right, but our amount of cultivated land was going to be much less than it had been in the past, giving us less food to eat and little if any to sell to allow us to afford necessities we couldn't grow or make for ourselves. Confederate money was starting to have less and less value with each passing month, and Union forces were beginning to control more and more of our area, at least when they stayed around.

To make matters worse, Mama and I were both almost always practically exhausted. While our father had been a big strapping man, I was still growing and Mama was a small woman to start with, even before losing weight. She was sick from time to time, too, and she never felt really good after little Sarah was born. Despite that, she told me, "Jeremiah, you still have to study, too."

I couldn't attend school after Daddy left, but she said schooling was important and she'd continue giving me what education she could, often teaching me as she walked along side me while I struggled to keep the plow in the ground. Sometimes she'd carry a primer or a book in the pocket of her apron. It would come out while we were cutting a furrow, go in her pocket when we got to the end of the row, and come back out after the plow was back in the ground and we were walking back the other way.

There was a written lesson and a Bible reading every night before bed, too. As my reading skills got better, Sunday afternoon became my favorite time of the week because I got to read a few pages of Sir Walter Scott, Alexander Dumas, Charles Dickens, or the like. While I was trapped in the troubles, my mind continued to expand, to want more.

There were just a few weeks left in planting season when a man showed up at suppertime one night in late May. Mama whispered that he was probably a deserter from one army or the other, but he wasn't wearing clothes that looked anything like a uniform. The way they fit, I suspected that they might not have been his own or else he'd lost a lot of weight. With the war going as it was, that could have been a possibility, though I doubted it.

When asked what he wanted, he replied, "Just some food, ma'am, an' a place to stay for the night. I can even do some chores in the morning if you've got somethin' I can take with me on the road."

"Mama, if he could help with the plowing tomorrow," I whispered to her, "we might get the creek field turned so we can run the harrow and get it planted next week."

She nodded. Looking at the man, she said, "Mister, if you'll put in a full day of plowing tomorrow, I'll pack you a sack with two days of food come Thursday morn. You can sleep in the barn loft, and we'll feed you until you leave."

"Three days food in the sack plus the other you said," he countered.

Mama agreed and he replied, "Name's Joe, Ma'am. I appreciate it. I ain't eat in a while, so you're mighty nice to be a'helpin' me." He ate his share of what we were eating that night and then moved out to the barn loft for the night. The rest of us were all just a little hungrier than usual that night.

When he was gone and all the girls but Deborah, just eleven months younger than me, were in bed, she told me, "Jeremiah, make sure that door's locked tonight, and put a full load in your rifle."

"Why, Mama?"

"I think Joe's all right, but I don't want to take any chances with him around your sisters. I've heard terrible, terrible things about some itinerants such as him. If he tries to do anything bad to any of them, you don't hesitate, Son. You aim at him just like he's a deer and you pull that trigger. You understand me?" I'd nodded before she added, "That is, if I don't get there and pull it first."

She turned to Deborah, whose eyes were wide at what she'd just heard. "Deborah, you be on the lookout, too, and if he tries anything with you or your sisters, you scream like there's no tomorrow."

I pulled my rifle down from over the fireplace. It was an old 30 caliber long rifle, so I usually kept a ball with a half-powder load in it for shooting squirrels rather than the full load that I'd used when I'd shot deer to supplement our meager fare. I was trying to harvest the squirrels so we could eat them, not blast them into the next county. I carefully unloaded it, added the full powder load, and then added the patch and the ball before ramming it all home, hoping the whole time that I would never have to use it like Mama had said.

While Joe wasn't as big as Daddy had been, he could plow, and he did a good job the next day while I used the harrow with our mule to start breaking up the plowed ground. By nightfall, he'd finished the creek field and we cleaned off in the creek before making our way to the house for supper.

After eating, Joe said, "I'm really tired, Ma'am. I'm gonna' go on out to sleep. I'd like to leave at first light, so if you can have somethin' for breakfast and have that sack of food packed, I'd be mighty grateful."

I was about as tired as he was so after a quick lesson and a short Bible reading, we said our evening prayers and I went to bed. Mama was pretty excited about having had a day off to catch up on the work around the house and the barn, but she said, "I'm about tuckered out, too, so let's all get to bed." It was hot, so we left some windows open for the air. With the lights out just after sunset, we were all soon sound asleep.

A strange sound and a bump-bump-bump noise woke me sometime later, so I lit my candle, opened the door to my little bedroom, and peeked into the main room. There, I saw Joe on the bed with Mama. The bottom of her nightgown was pushed up and Joe, with his pants down around his ankles, was kneeling between her legs. The bed rocking with his movements was making the noise. Joe was leaning over her, his right hand was holding her left arm down, and his left hand was covering her mouth.

The candlelight surprised both of them, with Joe turning toward me and saying with a low growl, "Back to bed, boy. This ain't none 'uv your concern. Go! Now!" He turned back toward Mama with a sneer on his face.

I'd seen enough of our farm animals copulating to know what was happening and knew that married adults sometimes did it to make babies. Mama and Joe weren't married and I didn't think Mama wanted another child, but it wasn't my place to say anything if that's what she really wanted.

Mama's eyes told me she didn't; she was crying and looked afraid. When she saw me, she moaned and one of her fingers pointed unsteadily toward the fireplace, directing my eyes to my rifle hanging above it.

I ran the few steps for it and pulled it down before Joe realized what was happening. "Get off of her!" I screamed as I pulled back on the hammer and set the firing cap in place.

"Give me another minute and I'll be glad to, boy. Now aim that peashooter in a different—"

I'd moved where I could get a good shot at him without hitting my mother. When I was there, like she'd said, I didn't hesitate despite my fear. I fired.

A wounded and tied-up Joe went to town the next morning in the back of my wagon to be turned over to the authorities. After I told them what I'd seen and gave them the letter Mama had written, they took him away and we never heard of or from him again.

Mama's right arm had been broken and her throat had been badly injured in the attack. While her arm healed, she never again spoke without a rasp. Between that and the word getting out about her being violated, she never drew interest in a suitor after she came out of her widow's weeds some months later, never found someone who might have loved her and helped provide for her and our family.

Forever sad, she died, possibly of a broken heart, six years later in 1870.

***

1892

"Jeremiah! Will you listen to me? Do you think he'll be here?"

Sarah had seen the new man in town at church a couple Sundays earlier. Not one to go up to him to introduce herself directly, she'd reached out to her group of female friends to learn his name, his profession, and the fact that he was, to her great relief, unmarried. They met and spoke a bit the Sunday after that, and Sarah now had hopes that the conversation would continue.

Matthew Kelley was, according to my impression, a handsome gentleman from Nashville. He'd inherited a farm on the east side of town and had come out for a few weeks to put it in order so he could decide what to do with it. No one I'd spoken with knew exactly what he did in the city, but his great uncle's place had been reasonably profitable in recent years, so he was seen as having a number of options.

"He's just got to be there," added Sarah, as if her demand would have some kind of influence over his decision.

It was the third time that day that she'd asked me the question about his presence, so, despite the fact that I tried to make it a practice not to curse or take the Lord's name in vain in front of my sisters, it was all I could do to bite my tongue and keep from quipping, "Good God, I hope so."

Unfortunately, with my experience with the Valentine's dance, I wasn't expecting much.

***

The Inaugural Saint Valentine's Dance,

Saturday, February 11, 1871