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or if he slept. He brought in extra straw from the barn to put beneath the mattresses, careful to keep it away from the hearth, warning us sternly not to put lanterns near the straw and supervising all around. Josie brought down a fresh pot of coffee and all that went with it. And soon we were comfortably ensconced in the cellar, if that word could be correctly applied to our situation, what with the constant explosion of shells going on outside.
    I don't know if the correct word to describe the sound of the shells is
screaming
or
piercing
or
screeching
or
shrilling
, because just as they got done doing all that, they
exploded
and
burst
and
violated the night
and
tore
and
ripped
and
destroyed
and
ruined
everything I felt was
secure
and
safe
and
holy
and
sacred
inside me.
    I lay there under my blanket, away from everyone else, trembling. The whole world was surely breaking in two, and it would never be whole again after this night. I felt the house shaking. I pulled my blanket over my head. Everybody in the room was quiet. All that could be heard was the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the occasional footsteps of David upstairs.
    Then some time went by. I don't know how much, because the way things were, time could no longer be measured in the same manner. The dimensions of its value now must be the number of lives lost with each shell.
    I heard David's footsteps coming down the stairs. I tried not to whimper. I did not want him to think I was a sissy-boots now, along with completely having no sense.
    He was walking around, likely inspecting everything. I heard him pause, checking things. Oh, I wished he'd go away. I managed not to whimper, but I knew I was still trembling. Then I was mindful that he had stopped and was standing over me.
    I pretended to be sleeping.
    "Tacy?" his whisper came.
    I tried to breathe easily.
    I felt his hand at the edge of my blanket, cautiously pulling it down from my face. I did not open my eyes. Next I felt a kiss on the side of my face, so gentle it was like a butterfly had decided to land there for just a minute, then flew away.
    My heart stopped. Hearts do that sometimes. Then he adjusted the blanket so it came to just below my chin and walked away, going back up the stairs.
    I stopped trembling and fell asleep.
    ***
    S OMETIME DURING the night, Marvelous came. She was there in the morning in a corner of the cellar, wrapped in a quilt, sitting up and grinning at me.
    I had slept late in spite of everything, all the shelling, the noise, the crowds of Rebs in the street outside. Everybody else except Mr. Cameron was upstairs having breakfast. He was outside, having gone to the outhouse, accompanied there by David, Marvelous told me.
    "Where did you come from?" I almost screamed it at her.
    She came to kneel down beside me. "'Bout time you got up. I wanted to wake you, but that brother of yours said no, let her sleep. I came in the middle of the night. My daddy, he brought me. And David said yes, he'd keep me, and he brought me right down here. My mama, she wanted me to come. There be so many wounded in that church now, there be no place for me to sleep. And the Rebs, they're taking over the town."
    "They are?"
    "Yes, and my mama said, if they come into the church she'll fight them to the death, and so will the other women, before she'll go with them, but she doesn't want me in the middle of it. So she sent me here."
    I hugged her. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. Let's go upstairs for breakfast."
    ***
    I T WAS THE second of July, and we did not know what to expect next. The terrible shelling had stopped, yes, but only because the Confederates did seem to have taken over the town.
    We were prisoners in our own village, if you wanted to think of it that way.
    Outside the sky was a clear blue and the sun was bright, and I thought, eating my eggs and bacon, how any other year this time we'd be making food for a Fourth of July picnic. But I said nothing. Maybe I was finally acquiring some of