Snowfall

chapter three

The Army of Northern Virginia huddled in winter quarters along the Rapidan River, waiting for the spring campaigns everyone knew were coming. Tents dotted the muddy hills like gray mushrooms, smoke from countless small fires rising into the cold sky. Men chopped wood, played cards with worn decks, wrote letters home they might never send.

Elijah Harper’s company had dug in near Orange Court House. Their earthworks were crude but solid—logs and dirt piled chest-high, with sharpened stakes pointing toward the Yankee lines across the river. Rations were short: hardtack crawling with weevils, occasional salt pork gone rancid, coffee made from acorns or burnt corn when real beans ran out.

Elijah kept to himself more than most. He had grown quieter since Gettysburg, where he had seen friends cut down in the wheat field and the stone wall. The boy who once joked easily now spent evenings carving small wooden figures with his pocket knife—a horse, a bird, a tiny house with a porch swing. He sent them to Amelia when he could, wrapped in scraps of paper with short notes.

November brought freezing rain that turned the roads to mire. Sickness swept the camp: pneumonia, dysentery, typhus. Elijah escaped the worst of it, though a persistent cough rattled his chest at night.

On the rare days when mail caught up with the army, he lived for Amelia’s letters. She wrote of small things—the first frost, baking cornbread with chestnut flour, mending his old shirt to sleep in because it still carried his scent. She never complained, though he read between the lines: her father drinking more, neighbors fleeing north or south, Union patrols taking what little remained.

One letter, dated November 12, arrived folded around a pressed violet.

I wear your locket every day, she wrote. When the nights are long, I hold it and feel you near. The river is low now, almost silent. I go there sometimes and talk to the water, telling it to carry my voice to you. Come spring, the willows will leaf again. Come back before then, Elijah. I miss your laugh most of all.

He read it by firelight until he knew every word. Then he wrote back, filling four precious pages with careful script.

I think of you constant, he began. The men tease me for smiling at nothing, but it’s you I see. I dream we’re married already—living in that ridge cabin, waking to birds instead of bugles. I’ll make you that porch swing first thing. We’ll sit in it every evening, watching our children chase fireflies.

He did not write about the rumors: Grant taking command of all Union armies, plans for a massive spring offensive that would aim straight for Richmond. He did not mention the deserters shot at dawn, or the way some men stared too long at their rifles.

December came harsh and early. Snow dusted the ground, then melted into mud. Christmas approached with no cheer—only double picket duty and rumors of Yankee movements.

On December 23, Elijah received an unexpected pass for two days. A distant cousin in Richmond had died, leaving him a small inheritance of Confederate currency—enough, perhaps, for train fare home if he stretched it. The captain grumbled but signed the paper.

Elijah caught the train south on Christmas Eve, crammed into a boxcar with other soldiers heading home on leave. The journey took all day and into the night—slow, cold, the engine coughing black smoke. He clutched his knapsack, inside it a gift for Amelia: a simple gold band bought from a sutler with months of saved pay.

He planned to ask her to marry him. Properly. Even if the world was ending, he wanted her bound to him by vow and ring.

The train reached the little depot near their town just after midnight on Christmas morning, 1863. Snow had begun to fall—light at first, then thicker. Elijah stepped onto the platform alone; most passengers had disembarked farther north.

The road home was five miles. He started walking, boots crunching frozen mud, breath fogging the air. Snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. He smiled despite the cold—imagining Amelia’s face when he appeared at her door on Christmas morning like a miracle.

He never made it.

Halfway there, near Morton’s Ford where a skirmish line had been drawn weeks earlier, shots cracked the silence. Confederate pickets, nervous in the dark, mistook the lone figure on the road for a Yankee scout. They fired twice.

Elijah fell in the snow, surprise more than pain at first. Warm blood soaked his coat. He tried to call out—friendly, it’s Harper—but his voice came weak.

By the time the pickets reached him, he was gone.

They found the pass in his pocket, the letters addressed to Miss Amelia Rose Whitaker, the small gold ring wrapped in cloth. One soldier—a boy from the next county over—recognized the name. He volunteered to carry the news.

Christmas Dawn, 1863. Amelia woke to pounding on the door. Her father was still asleep, drunk from the night before. She opened it herself, shawl over her nightgown, hair loose down her back.

The young soldier stood on the porch, hat in hand, snow melting on his shoulders. Behind him, the world lay white and silent.

“Ma’am,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m sorry. Elijah Harper… he didn’t make it home.”

He handed her the knapsack. Inside were the journal, the wooden carvings, the ring.

Amelia sank to her knees in the doorway, snowflakes settling on her hair like misplaced stars. She did not scream or weep—not yet. She simply held the ring, turning it in numb fingers, reading the inscription Elijah had secretly added inside the band:

Forever, A.R. & E.H.

Later, when the soldier had gone, she walked to the river alone. Snow covered the banks, hushed everything. She opened the locket, pressed the ring inside beside her photograph and curl of hair.

“You promised,” she whispered to the frozen water. “You find me, Elijah. Next time. I’ll wait through a hundred lifetimes if I must.”

The snow kept falling, gentle and relentless, covering his footprints on the road forever.