the time, he gave her a couple of drops of laudanum and talked her in to letting him blindfold her, all laid out on her back. He then washed his hands and scissors. Putting Ella Mae and Coon by Mary’s sides to hold her hands and comfort her and me at her head to keep it steady, Henry gave her a whiff of chloroform. He then put a roll of leather in one side of her mouth to keep it open. While holding her tongue out, he started fishing down her throat with a loop on the end of some thread. When he had her tonsils snared, he reached down her throat with his scissors, whacked them off and pulled them out with the thread. Of course there was some blood until he cauterized the wound.
“She can’t drink anything hot for three days. Not even soup. Milk, strained fruit juice, cold sugar water, or honey dissolved in cold water will be okay,” Henry said.
“We don’t have any of that,” Ella Mae said. “We only have some bullas jelly and some cane syrup.”
“That’ll be fine dissolved in water,” he said. “Do you have a neighbor with a cow?”
“Yes,” she said. “Bout three miles from here.”
Turning to Coon, Henry said, “Here’s five cents. Take my mare and get some fresh milk. Don’t run the horse.”
“I’ll go with him,” I said, thinking to keep him from running the horse.
Handing me a dollar, Henry said, “If there’s a place to get them, bring some supplies. I don’t think there’s much to eat here.”
While we were gone I found out their ages. Though he looked to be ten, Coon was fourteen. Mary, who looked older than Coon, wouldn’t be twelve until late December. Their mother was barely twenty-eight.
Arriving back at the house we found Mary asleep. She had been sleeping off and on for the whole time the two of us were gone.
Henry said, “Ben, I think we should stay here for a few days to make sure that Mary gets along okay.”
Smitten by Mary and her mother, I replied, “That’s fine with me.”
Henry and I stayed five days and nights. Mary was up and around and eating scrambled eggs, grits, and chicken soup before we left. The rest of us were eating a lot of stuffed raccoon and fall greens. Coon got his name from his constant coon hunting. Fortunately, I had bought some beans, rice, flour, grits, and salt pork with the dollar. It was a pleasurable and restful five days.
Our luck remained strong. Ella Mae and her husband, who was off at the war, were from a little settlement north of Pensacola. As a result of having lived there, she knew the lay of the land and drew it out for us. Things couldn’t have happened better.
November 15, 1861
Leaving some of our things at Ella Mae’s lightened Smokey’s load enough that Coon, who left with us, could ride him. After we told Coon the entire story about what happened to Henry and what we were going to do, Coon had announced that he was going. He thought it would be a great adventure. I was surprised when his ma said he could go. After giving it some thought, I decided that Coon was allowed to go for the same reason that I was allowed to go. He was the reason for us to go back by his house.
As we rode, I spent lots of time thinking about Ella Mae and Mary. I didn’t say anything about my thoughts to Coon or Henry. It was real easy not saying anything to Coon. He never did talk very much.
Henry and I continued reading the medical book and discussed it daily. Those discussions kept me reminded of Mary’s tonsils. Having read about taking tonsils out, and having seen Henry take out a set, I figured I could do the same if the situation required it. Occasionally, I daydreamed about removing my first set of tonsils from a child of a young woman with the same qualities as Ella Mae. I was to find the medical profession is usually not so glamorous.
We hadn’t been riding long when Coon said, “My pa’s fighting for the Yankees. We got a letter from him that says there’s lots of Southern men doing the same.”
This startling piece of information left Henry and me silent until Henry said, “We’re going to kill some Yankees. How do you feel about that?”
“Pa’s way up north and I don’t know any Yankees down here. I don’t care,” Coon said.
After reflecting on that, Henry said, “I’m going to get revenge for Pa. I don’t care either. I’d take revenge on the Confederates if they were the ones.”
Coon said, “Me too.”
I didn’t say anything, but Coon’s pa being in the Federal army sure jolted me. It started me to thinking about Ella Mae and how I felt about her husband fighting for the North. I also asked myself if her husband being in the Yankee army made me feel any different about her. I immediately said no. Even then, the question kept coming back to haunt me as we rode.
When asked if he had a plan for getting revenge, Henry said he had a few, but would first have to get the lay of the land before finalizing one. He was concerned because we didn’t know who actually had killed his pa and he wasn’t sure if Ella Mae’s map was accurate. Ella Mae had last been in the Pensacola area a couple of years before the war began and her information might not still be good. Also, Coon was eleven years old when he last saw Pensacola and his memory might not be exact. Henry also said that he didn’t know which men had killed his pa but that we would get revenge on someone wearing Yankee uniforms.
The area we passed through from Blountstown to Milton was the most desolate any of us had ever seen. Though we’d seen no one for days, we still avoided Milton and Pensacola by riding north of those towns before turning south toward the coast. It was a big detour. Pensacola, then the largest city in Florida and the largest we had ever seen, had a population of 2,886 people, even without the Confederate States of America forces there.
Henry bought a bushel of dried in the hull peanuts at a farm near Pensacola but wouldn’t let us eat any. Though I kept thinking those peanuts had something to do with his plan, for the life of me I couldn’t think of what.
Upon our arrival, we began to familiarize ourselves with the area. As we were observing the coast road and Fort Pickens late on the morning of November 22, a terrible artillery battle started. Fort Pickens, then held by Union forces, is on the west end of Santa Rosa Island. The batteries in Fort Pickens, two gunboats, and several other batteries on the island were firing on CSA positions in Fort McRee, which is on the mainland. The Federal guns couldn’t reach Pensacola, ten miles away, but could hit Fort McRee and other CSA positions. Fort McRee was taking a beating and by nightfall its guns became silent. We learned a few days later that, for all that shooting, there were only two killed and six wounded on the Confederate side.
A barrier island, Santa Rosa Island is near sixty miles long but only a couple of miles wide. Skirting the Florida coast from Shalimar, Florida, almost to Alabama, it partially blocks off Pensacola Bay. The CSA sank some old ships and barges in the channels so the Union couldn’t get their gunboats into Pensacola Bay or into the channel between the mainland and Santa Rosa Island. The two sides just sat there shooting cannons back and forth at each other, and raided a little.
Along with a couple of gunboats, the Federal position on the west end of the island allowed their forces to blockade Pensacola Bay and prevented the CSA from importing arms and supplies through that port. The Union did the same thing at Cedar Key, Tampa, and all the rest of the ports along the east and west coasts of Florida and the coasts
