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show,” Justin said. I promised him that I’d come to check on them, every time I was back in Greene County. “You did ask Pa for myhand,” I said, to make him smile. “Keeping these safe is the least I can do for you. Will you join the Army, when you get to Kentucky?”
    “Not Kentucky,” he said. “If I join there, Emory and I would meet, sure as death. I can’t shed my son’s blood.” He said he’d go to his sister in Illinois, and join there. “And when the War is done,” I asked, “will you be back?” He said, “I see it bringin’ me nuthin’ but pain,” which made me feel strange, because everyone in the mountains swears Justin Poole has Second Sight. “When the War is done, you’ll be gone,” he went on, and put his hand to my cheek, the way he did in the depot, the day he went to watch his son get on the train with you as his new bride last April. “To Philadelphia, and Paris, and wherever artists must go.” And just the way we did in the depot that day, I put my arms around him and we kissed, and if he’d asked me to go with him then, to Illinois or the Moon or back to the Holler to live the rest of our lives, I would have gone.
    I thought that Art was the only thing I cared about, Cora, the only thing in the world for me: the road out of being the housekeeper at Bayberry all my life, the road out of the South, out of a world where everybody expects girls to marry and have babies when the only thing that makes me happy is drawing and painting. But with everything in me I also want to be with Justin. And I know I can’t have both things. If I’m an artist, I would be a
terrible
wife, and a mother worse to my babies than Pa is to me. And I would hate them, and Justin, too. I can’t be what
I
need, and what everybody else needs.
    And I can’t imagine living without either one.
    I don’t know whether to tear this letter up and throw it in the fire, or put it in an envelope and send it.
    Susanna Ashford, Nashville Female Academy
Nashville, Tennessee
To
Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
T UESDAY , D ECEMBER 24, 1861
    Dear Cora,
    The Christmas present I most wanted (since it isn’t likely anyone’s going to give me a painting by Caravaggio); your letter from Deer Isle, about those awful ladies of the Southeast Harbor Reading Circle telling you that you must divorce your Emory. Being buried in snow like that with everything smelling like smoke sounds horrible, and it’s hard to imagine how trapping
more
snow around the house is going to keep you any warmer. I love cheese-making but I’m afraid the only time I’m glad Pa is a slave-owner, is when it’s time to make soap. But there’s no cheese this fall because the militia has eaten most of the cows.
    I’ve enclosed some of the drawings I made of one of the taverns on Spring Street. Use your best judgement about showing them to anyone. Nora and the other girls here all squeal when I paint things like old shoes and broken glass and ask, “Why do you always paint such ugly pictures?”
She
should talk! Her flowers all look like cauliflowers and her butterflies look like ducks.
Dead
ducks. I replied, “I don’t know, Nora—why do
you
paint such ugly pictures?”
    Most of the girls have gone home to their families, and the school halls echo strangely tonight. Mr. and Mrs. Elliot gave those few who are left here presents at supper. (New pen nibs! Heaven only knows how Mrs. E got them!) I will go to the Russells’ tomorrow for dinner.
W EDNESDAY , D ECEMBER 25
    Well, everybody who said last spring, “The War will be over by Christmas” is wrong. Last Christmas was the last time I saw Payne. Now my dearest brother is gone, and Bayberry … isn’t really Bayberry anymore. I hope and pray your brother Brock is well, and having a happy Christmas, wherever he is. I pray for Emory, and for you, buried under a hill of snow on Deer Isle.
    Last night I pretended I was there with you in your snug bedroom behind the stairs; that we