"I'm gonna have you hanged!" The Major’s threat was hardly an idle one in a case of espionage. The fearsome and bloody War Between the States was raging into its second year. Union forces had occupied northern Alabama and had stalemated the Confederate onslaught at Shiloh, thousands upon thousands of sons and many daughters would never see their families again. Even blood brothers wore uniforms of different colors and fought under different flags. Raw and bloodied emotions were encrusted on mourning suits. ”You’re a connivin’ wench!” A strange and surprising calm came over Mariah despite being caught red-handed OR dead to rights in Montgomery's Confederate hospital. Her breathing was even. Mariah wondered if her reputation as a trusted slave …show more content…
That'll come 'bout only if I tell the truth. I'm learning The Word from Mrs. VanDeveer, here. That's the fact, sir. You can ask Colonel McGavock of Franklin, Tennessee, hisself if he trusts me." She knew from experience that religion was a useful deflection and she made sure to emphasize John McGavock's honorary title in the Confederate Army since he outranked her inquisitor. Now in her XXth year, Mariah had been tricking white folks a long time. "You take me for a fool?" the Major demanded. His awful stale tobacco breath was in her face. The odors of his body and the antiseptic were stinking through the bandages. The mixture made for an oppressive brew. "I know what I saw, nigga." Then came the terror for Maria, "I've been watching you for two …show more content…
During that time, she had talked with these Unionists at least four times. As a patient, she wondered, could the wounded Major possibly have seen them together in the laundry on one or both occasions or in the upstairs supply closet near the isolation ward? Mariah maintained her composure, but was thinking frantically about how she might explain each of those suspicious situations. If the Major had accosted her during one of those surreptitious meetings, he might have found one of the documents she had lifted from a doctor's bag. That unlikely hiding place somehow became a favorite for potentially important documents. She couldn't be sure if this man had even been at the hospital for two weeks because, while she noted their pain, their faces and their sometimes mutilated bodies, she did not and could not keep track of when the men in the gray came and went – alive down the steps at the front door or dead out the back under a sheet and bound for the bone yard. But while the Major, unbeknownst to Mariah, had undeniably been watching her, it was lust and not suspicion that had him admiring her striking face and pleasing figure. Memories of his past 'adventures' with women of the African race, even though they resisted or because they did, had inflamed his lust when he first saw Mariah. Thus, he had gone out of his way to see her come and go in the dingy halls and overcrowded wards of the hospital. He thought she was a comely and tempting Negress and had intended to try