Ghost Lips from the Trickster: A Civil War Story

By Dennis Boisvert

Sergeant Victor Peters breaks away from a Rebel prison train running hard from Soldiers with dogs closing fast on his heels. Hopelessly lost in deep woods about to be caught when suddenly a ghost vision of a drummer boy who was shot that morning ashes before him pointing a way to a steep hill. Climbing up that hill he shakes o the dogs and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennies Boisvert Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958066034

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Ghost Lips from the Trickster: A Civil War Story

Copyright © 2020, 2022 by Dennis Boisvert.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher and author, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

ISBN-13:

978-1-958066-02-7 [Paperback Edition]

978-1-958066-03-4 [eBook Edition]

Printed and bound in The United States of America.

First originally published by Page Publishing, 2020.

Table of Contents

Chapter One 1

Chapter Two 9

Chapter Three 15

Chapter Four 24

Chapter Five 34

Chapter Six 45

Chapter Seven 55

Chapter Eight 70

Chapter Nine 78

Chapter Ten 90

Chapter Eleven 105

Chapter Twelve 114

Chapter Thirteen 134

Chapter Fourteen 142

Chapter Fifteen 147

About The Author 160

I like to dedicate this book to my family for their support.

Sheila, Nicholas, Colleen and Kaitlyn all Boisvert.

I thank you very much for it means a lot.

PROLOGUE

July 22, 1864

Dear Victor,

My dear husband! With agony and remorse, I must tell you our Bessie is not getting better. Her cough now sounds like a whoop coming from her lungs, and at times, she coughs all night. I took her to Quincy to see a doctor before he left for the fount, and he did all he could to keep the cough from going deep. The doctor said that once she spits up blood, we will lose our only child in a month’s time. What is making things worse are the bad dreams she suffers from. They cause her to awaken in the middle of the night, and she cries for you, sits up, and coughs. She misses you dearly and the stories you tell her.

Your mother and I have done all we can for her. We have given her cinnamon juice with lemon, but each time, she seems to get better, The dark dreams wake her, and the hacking cough starts again. Oh, Victor, can you please come home and find a way to get here? It tears me and your mother apart to see her so. I know you can help her end the hell in her ugly dreams. Your mother tells me you had bad dreams when you were a boy, and you had sleepwalked the house talking to yourself. Your mother said you overcame your dark dreams on the day you and your father along with six other men rowed out to save the brig Sally-May from sinking.

Victor, I know you told Bessie you have a special story to tell her when you return home from the Army, for I do remember seeing you talk to her by the fireplace. You told her not to worry about you as you had your father’s Saint James locket and you opened it. You told her it had performed a miracle on the day you saved the Sally-May from tipping over and sinking. You also saved eight people in the jolly boat that were trapped by a falling mask. You held up the locket and told her it holds a secret in how you saved the Sally-May, and I saw a wonderful smile and dreamy eyes on our little girl, who couldn’t wait for you to return home so you could tell her that secret.

Victor, I beg you to find a way to get home. If we lose Bessie, at least you will be at her side to end her nightmares, so she can go in peace to God’s heaven. If you can’t get here, can you write to me and tell me how to rid her sad dreams as you had done when you were a boy? Now she needs a miracle, and she needs to hear it from you. I am at wits’ end sitting up late at night hugging her, and our tears match as we weep. I have to check each morning the handkerchief she holds to her mouth when she coughs to look for blood; so far, I saw none. My heart cries as I have to see the frightened look in her wet eyes. Victor, I need your help. I cannot stop her nightmares, of her seeing herself buried alive, alone in a dark tomb.

As I told you in my last letter, we walked by cemetery on our way to evening mass when she saw the awful deeds—how grave robbers had dug up the dead, leaving their evil crime for all to witness parts of wooden caskets and bones scattered about. What kind of person could do such a thing with our country at war! Victor, she saw the inside lid of a casket that had scratch marks on it. Whoever was buried in that wooden coffin had been buried alive. That brought on her bad dreams! She needs to know the magic of the locket, and only you can tell her. She needs to hear your voice, feel your love as you tell her the story that happened that day in July 16, 1858.

I do not question your reason why you locked up that hidden secret for so long, but she needs to hear your voice telling her that secret of the locket. Victor, if you cannot get a pass to get home, I will bring Bessie down to you. Some wives have traveled to the Army to visit their husbands, and a few have stayed to help out at the army hospitals. Your uncle Gillis can get us passage on a ship to City Point, Virginia. We will be able to make passage to the hospital camps. Please, please, please, send a telegram to me if you cannot get a pass to come home.

My darling husband, if I do not get a telegram from you by August 20, we will be sailing out of Boston on the steamship Elmer Mead along with twenty other women as part of the US Sanitary Commission to help in army camp kitchens. We will be coming to you, and if need be, we will steal our way to the battle fount trenches. I am to do everything I can to save our daughter. I need you to tell her the secret of the locket so I can end her awful dreams. She sees herself alone in a dark, dark world full of demons that are coming to take her. Help me, Victor, to chase the devils from her soul, and that will end my suffering and your mother’s. Please hear my plea, send a telegram right away. You can put the promise secret in a telegram. I need that promise secret.

Please understand my will to save our Bessie is unbending, and I will do the utmost to do what I can to save her. Your voice and that special secret you promise to tell her will help her greatly. We will be coming to you, and all you need is a day pass to visit us. I don’t care if I must take her to the fount lines, I will get her to you. Do what you can to come home but come home. If you can’t, we will be on the steamer in August to City Point. This is a letter of hope to you. Please respond soon.

Your loving wife,

CHAPTER ONE

In a dark cattle car, Victor Peters pressed his face against the side wall struggling to breathe through a bottom slab opening. The heat was unbearable inside the packed car crammed with twenty-five Union prisoners all trying their best to sleep or breathe. None of the prisoners noticed the slow-moving train had stopped late in the night until the sound of muskets rattled off outside. No one said a word until someone said it’s a Union Cavalry raid to capture the train. Victor popped up with a bounce in his heart, full of hope. Then the shooting suddenly died away, and soft whispers floated in the darkness as Victor listened, but the doors did not open. Victor sat down, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes.

When dawn came, the doors opened; the Confederate guards ordered the prisoners out to lay flat on the ground. As the sun rose, Victor’s face was in the dirt. No one moved or talked, but in Victor’s hand, he reread Ann’s letter without any rebel guards seeing him.

After looking over Ann’s letter, he told himself he must escape and get home to tell Bessie his secret. Off to his right, he spotted a group of trees not more than twenty-five feet away. He believed that a quick dash toward the dark trees he could reach it in seconds to freedom. He kept telling himself that his Bessie needed him home. He pulled his arms under his body and waited for the right moment. He turned his head in the dirt to look for rebel guards.

He saw two Confederate soldiers standing boldly on top of a boxcar constantly pointing their muskets down on the group of over a hundred prisoners from the other boxcars. Victor then spotted six more rebels behind him in a line on the tracks, and four other soldiers moved about threatening prisoners with the bayonet, yelling Stay low and don’t move! All he could think of was if one prisoner jumped up to take down one Confederate soldier, the rest would spring up to break and run. But who would be first?

Nearby, rebel guards said, Union Cavalry derailed the train, and when Victor heard tracks needed repair, he knew time was with him, and for the first time in two months, he had a chance to escape. And that chance came as a rebel soldier had his back to him. Victor felt a strong urge to jump up, pop the rebel in the face, grab his musket, shoot down the closest rebel and run off. The chance was near as his heart ran fast, ready to jump up when he heard the sound of horses riding in fast.

Victor put his face back into the dirt, closed his eyes and prayed it was Union Cavalry. But the men on horseback riding by were Confederates, and his heart sank fast. Still the horsemen kept riding on. They were after Union troops, and the opportunity was still there. He turned his head to one side to jump the rebel soldier who was not looking, waving his cap at the horsemen riding by. Victor waited for the horses to move off, and his body was ready. The rebel was taken off guard, chewing tobacco, but he lost his nerve.

Over and over, he told himself to push up and run for the trees. He was so close. He was sure he could make it. He told himself not to fear the rebel’s muskets. Go for it. Then he heard a strange, squeaky pitch of a crow high in the tree as if it had said, Don’t move. It squeaked again.

Not far from him, a fellow prisoner, yelled, Bobby, me boy, get down!

The drummer boy next to Victor started to stand up, and Victor cried, Get down, but the boy stood up as a shot rang out, and the boy dropped into Victor’s arms, and he saw the boy’s eyes turn cold. That boy stood up to look at the crows high in the trees, but why? Victor mused.

Some prisoners started yelling at the Confederates for shooting the drummer boy. The rebel guards yelled back for all prisoners to remain quiet. Then one Confederate soldier kicked Victor and ordered him to pick the boy up and follow him. Victor lifted the boy and followed the rebel who ordered him to put the boy down behind the trees and take a flat rock to start digging a hole.

Victor grabbed a flat rock as the bird let out another large squeak; the guard looked up at the big black crow as Victor saw his chance; he took the rock, smashed the rebel in the face, pulled the rebel’s Navy Colt pistol from the belt and took off. Soon, all hell broke loose.

A rebel yelled, firing a shot and sending a spinning Minié ball past Victor’s ear with a whirrrrrrrr sound. The sound of death missed. Another shot from a rebel on the boxcar sent another death bullet at Victor; this one whistled like a bumblebee passing his ear, and it smacked against a tree, inches from his head. Victor kept on running.

More yelling, more shots, and more trailing curses could be heard; Victor ran like a deer smashing branches tripping, catching himself. There were more shots. Don’t look back, stay running—running. Victor kept moving, racing between trees, leaping over logs as a few Confederate horsemen, who had stayed behind, circled about, shooting wildly at anything that moved.

Always on alert, Victor looked for the darkness of ravines, dales, and tricky small hills, full of brush, and he kept running to escape. Nothing was to stop him as he ran for some thick underbrush with his mind made up; he was heading home to his family. Nothing but a death bullet would stop him. This was his day to escape.

One horseman came dangerously close as his uniform became stuck on thorns. Victor shook this trivial threat with a toss of a huge stone down a difficult grade. The horseman kicked the spurs, bolted too fast, and rode into a terrain of loose rocks and thick with small dense trees. The rider became entangled, trapped, and full of anger, he cursed an oath he was to kill a Yank as he dismounted, shooting at shadows.

Victor kept moving, dodging behind trees, sprinting—running away from harm. He saw an old log road, used it for a short distance and turned to dash up a hill and away into the woodland while hearing the guard yell, I’ll get ya, Yank…Am gonna get ya, Yank! But he was far behind as Victor picked up his stride, and soon, the voices and the shooting died away.

After a long desperate run, he was out of danger. Victor ran with swift strides, always sticking to the darkness of the trees—then hours later, he heard sounds behind him—the snapping of dry branches and sticks; someone was following him in the vastness of the woods. He hid in the thick underbrush. Who was following him? Perhaps that fanatic, dismounted Confederate in pursuit as an avenging angel. Victor took the Colt from his belt, cocked it, and waited. He was not going back.

Cautiously without sound, Victor inched his head above the scrub leaves to see a hometown friend, Corporal John Hardy, running toward him. He laughed a little buoyantly and stood up yelling, Over here!

The two looked at each other over in disbelief, then laughed, and hugged. Both had escaped and pushed on running in the darkness of the forest. Then they came to a clearing, moving swiftly on bended knees through thick grass passing by a small settlement far off to the left. And quickly back into the safety of deep forest filled with broken hills.

Around noon, they found a stream, stopped, and dropped down to drink and drink and soaked their heads. Soon, three Union men who they didn’t know dropped down and drank. Without words, Victor tapped the corporal’s arm, and they took off with no idea where they were or how far they had to go. For Victor, it was a must to reach Union lines, get