Austin turned to wave. They were all watching. His father stood outlined in the dark doorway; his mother and Tessie were bold against the pale stone, both wrapped in the same shawl. Joey stood in the street, his hand lifted.
Tessie shouted, “Goodbye, Francis!”
It was the first time. He felt a leap inside his chest: it was real.
“Goodbye, Tessie,” he called. “Goodbye, everyone.”
He raised his hand in a showy salute, snapping his hand to his forehead. He had no idea how to do it. They all waved and called, and Joey saluted back.
The carter flicked the whip on the horse’s wet-streaked haunches. The horse flattened his ears, jerked his head, then moved into a ponderous jog.
6.
January 1, 1862. Southampton
ON THE DECK of the Nashville the same young officer was on duty. Gary or Cary? When Dawson asked permission to board, he called down that Captain Pegram was in London.
“I’m expected,” Dawson called up. “I’m a member of the crew. Frank Dawson. Captain Pegram told me to come.”
The dinghy knocked against the wooden side. The officer vanished, then returned. “Permission granted.”
The bosun took Dawson down to the fo’c’sle, which was dim and low-ceilinged and stinking. In the center was a table, run through by the foot of the mast. Around the walls hung filthy gray hammocks. Two men sat on a bench, splicing rope. They were much older than Dawson. One man was missing his front teeth; the other had a gold ring in one ear. They both wore jerseys and ragged pants.
“Frank Dawson.” Dawson held out his hand. They stared at him without moving. The earring man moved his tongue slowly along his open lips.
The Nashville—a two-masted, brig-rigged, side-paddle-wheel steamer—had been a mail ship, and was being fitted here for war. During the fitting there was little work for the men, who were given shore leave. Dawson went off with the midshipmen. They were his age, and from similar backgrounds. They were pleasant and courteous, and when Dawson introduced himself they gave their own names and shook hands. One of them learned that Dawson was fluent in French, and asked for tutoring. Later another learned that Dawson could read music, and asked for lessons in harmony.
But though Dawson spent time ashore with the midshipmen, on board he ate and slept and worked with the crew. There was one other educated man below with him, a midshipman called Lusson. They behaved as they had been brought up to do, which set them apart. They used knives and forks, napkins. Courtesy. They washed themselves. The crew hacked pieces from the communal meat, stuffing huge gouts into their mouths. They licked grease from their knives, staring at Dawson. They didn’t wash. They fought and swore, gossiped and lied.
The crew hated Dawson for everything he did: for speaking four languages and reading music, and for eating so carefully with his fork and knife, for wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. They hated him for becoming friends with the officers: he had got above himself. One afternoon when he came back from standing watch he found his sea chest had been broken open. They had stolen some of his things. A small pocketknife from his father. A prayer card Tess had given him, in an ivory case. When he reported the theft the bosun told him he should have had a better lock. Or brought less valuable things.
In early February the ship was ready, and one cold gray morning they hoisted anchor and set off, floating into the Atlantic on a rising tide. For the first time Dawson was ordered into the rigging. He clambered up the mast, the wind buffeting at his body, the ship surging beneath him. When he reached the spar, the mast slowly tilted away from him. Beneath his feet was the shifting rope, below was the glittering water. He held the mast with one hand, trying to furl the sail with the other. He was in a new element, the tingling emptiness of the ether. It was exhilarating. Later he learned to shuffle easily along the line, working the heavy canvas with both hands, leaning against the spar for balance. He liked working aloft in the spinning air, but he liked best the night watch, standing alone at the bowsprit as the moon spilled herself across the water. Listening to the intimate creakings of the ship, the soft rush of the waves beneath her. It seemed like another language, one he could almost speak.
One morning Captain Pegram came out on deck and saw Dawson kneeling on it with a scrub brush. Pegram frowned: he’d forgotten about the English boy. Later he asked for a report on him. It was a good one: Dawson was a hard worker. He was told that the crew had broken into Dawson’s trunk. Pegram didn’t want a gentleman below with the crew, it was bad for morale. The next morning the master-at-arms appeared in the fo’c’sle and ordered Dawson and Lusson to move to a small cabin on an upper deck. Paradise, Dawson wrote to his mother: bunks instead of hammocks, and a safe place for their trunks. But the greatest luxury was privacy. Now they could talk.
H. W. Lusson was twenty-one years old and from Richmond, Virginia. He had a high bulbous forehead and an enviably thick mustache. Dawson asked him questions constantly; he wanted to know everything about his destination.
“Tell me about where you live,” Dawson said. “City or country?”
Lusson was sitting on his bunk, struggling with both hands to take off his boot. “Country,” he said. “On a cotton plantation.”
Dawson had gone to school in Berkshire, among smooth furrowed hillsides and thick hedgerows. Isleworth was full of walled orchards, rows of fruit trees. He couldn’t imagine cotton fields. “How do you grow cotton? Is it a plant or a tree?”
“A plant. We plant in the spring, pick in the fall.” Lusson got one boot off, and took hold of the other. Dawson could smell the rich blossoming scent of wet feet. The leather shrank in wet weather, and stuck to the skin. “We don’t do it ourselves. We have field hands.”
“Negroes,” Dawson said. The word was strange, charged. He’d rarely seen black people in England, and had never spoken to one. Though in Paris, among the flood of students at the Sorbonne, he’d seen a young man the color of polished ebony, dressed like the others, and speaking rapid French. They were all laughing together, like friends.
“We call them servants,” Lusson said, tugging.
Dawson didn’t want to say the other word. England had banned it. It was barbaric. “Where do they live?”
“On the plantation. There are rows of cabins.”
In England the farm workers had their own cottages in the countryside. Dawson pulled off his second boot and flexed his white toes.
“And what are they like?” he asked. “Negroes.”
“Different,” said Lusson. His foot came free, pale and damp. “Not like us.”
“But how?” Dawson persisted, uncomfortable.
“Like another species,” he said. “God made them inferior to us.”
Dawson thought of the student at the Sorbonne. But that was France, maybe the Negroes there were different.
“How do you mean?” he asked.
“They aren’t intelligent. They can’t take care of themselves,” Lusson said. “We have to give them everything. Clothes, food, houses. If the Yankees won and set the Negroes free they’d all die. It would be cruel.”
“But the Yankees won’t win.” Dawson rolled onto his bunk.
Lusson set his boots side by side. “What people don’t know is that we take care of them. We always have.” He looked at Dawson. “People don’t understand that. It’s our duty as Christians.”
Dawson nodded, confused.
The ship was beginning to heel, tilting ponderously against the wind. The bunks began to slant, and Dawson braced his back against the rail. The ship creaked loudly, making deep intimate sounds, as wood strained against wood.
A week before landing, Captain Pegram made Dawson a midshipman’s mate: he was now a junior officer in the Confederate navy. When they landed in Beaufort everyone was given home leave; Pegram took Dawson to stay with his family in Sussex County, Virginia. There he met Nathaniel Raines, of Oakland Plantation, Stoney Creek. Raines took an immediate liking to the young Englishman, who’d come to fight for the
South. They became fast friends, and Raines wrote, “My dollars and cents I will divide with you; half my bread and meat is yours.” Thereafter Dawson treated Oakland as his American home, and there he was treated as a son.
* * *
THE NETWORK OF friendship and kinship was spread across the South like a great shawl, patterned by education and upbringing, stamped by manners, fringed with wealth. It was loosely woven but extensive, covering the entire region—from Virginia and Georgia to Texas and Kentucky—from a certain class, a certain tribe. Membership depended on family, background, education, values—those imprecise definers of the American class system. Money was not essential: you could be a member without money, and money alone was not enough, but most members had some money, or they had had some at some time. Most members were born into the tribe, but you could join through marriage or education or circumstance. You could not force your way in. You needed an introduction. It was a powerful system that conferred on its members trust, respect, and preferential consideration.
By the time Dawson arrived in America he had joined this tribe. The Confederate officers would become his brothers in combat and his friends for life. Their mothers and sisters would welcome him into their houses and families. It was these men who taught him the South.
* * *
THE CONFEDERATE NAVY was disintegrating. The Nashville was decommissioned. Captain Pegram took Dawson and some other junior officers down to New Orleans, but before they arrived their ship was sunk. Dawson’s next ship, near Richmond, was a lighter, without sails or engine. All the action was now on land, and Dawson resigned from the navy to join the army. Captain Pegram’s nephew Willie was a friend, and Dawson offered himself to his artillery unit, Purcell’s Battery, as a volunteer. Willie told him to wait for a unit he could join as an officer, but Dawson refused to wait. In early June he became a private in Purcell’s Battery. Mr. Raines gave him a horse and he taught himself to ride.
His first battle was at Mechanicsville.
June 26, 1862. Outside Mechanicsville, Hanover County, Virginia
IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON they received orders to move out. They’d been waiting since daylight, horses saddled, gear packed. When the order came they swung up into their saddles. They were heading to Mechanicsville, across the Chickahominy. It had been raining hard, and the river was swollen. Below the bridge the water was wide and green, swirling, moving fast.
Dawson’s horse was a slab-sided brown gelding who didn’t like the look of the water. When he stepped onto the bridge it sounded hollow, and he didn’t like that, either. He stopped dead, but Dawson clapped his legs hard against the horse. He had never made a horse walk over a bridge. He urged the horse out onto the echoing planks.
They’d been camping outside Richmond, along the Mechanicsville Turnpike. The Battery was part of General Hill’s Division. As they moved out, Willie rode in front, with Dawson and the other officers just behind him. Behind them marched enlisted men, carrying bayonets and battle flags. In the rear were the cannons and caissons, pulled by big teams of horses. The marching footsteps, the metal grinding of the artillery wheels, and the hoofbeats made a sound like rolling thunder. Dawson was in the thick of things.
In Mechanicsville an overturned farm cart lay on its side. There were bags of grain still in the back, but the horses were gone. The traces lay in a tangle on the street. The town was silent. At the corner was a picket fence covered with climbing roses. Beneath the roses lay a dog, a black-and-white collie, nose covered with flies.
At the crossroads they headed east. The road led toward a cut between two high banks. The trees crowded along the road, the summer foliage lush. Nothing moved, but everyone knew the woods held snipers. Everyone went silent as they approached, and the horses danced. Ahead of the column walked the skirmishers, muskets ready.
The crack of the rifle was what Dawson was expecting, but it entered him like a shock. His horse flinched, and a puff of smoke drifted among the trees. Answering shots came from the skirmishers: sharp cracks, then puffs of smoke. The skirmishers jogged toward the woods and vanished into the trees.
The rest kept on. They rode through the cut, expecting more shots, but no one was hit. Beyond the trees the landscape opened up again. They were heading toward the sound of artillery, though they couldn’t yet see it. Shots began to crash onto the road ahead and the fields alongside. The Yankees were firing blind.
They came up over a low rise; beyond it, broad hayfields ran down to a marshland tall with cattails and a wide creek. Across it were high banks and rising ground. A wooden mill stood on the far edge, its wheel still. On the high ground was the Yankee battery, a long semicircle of cannons aimed at them. As soon as they appeared a shell whistled among them and crashed onto the ground. A horse reared, panicky; another gave a high frightened whinny.
They set up the cannons facing the creek. The horses pulled them through the tall grass. Mules were better at pulling but useless in battle: under fire they went mad, kicking and plunging until they could get away. Horses were more trusting. There were four battery guns, twelve-pound Napoleon cannons, each between two spoked wheels. Each gun had a two-wheeled limber, a carrying caisson, and ammunition.
The horses were unhitched and led away. The guns made a deep crushing noise, and blue smoke rose from each shot. Dawson rode across the road to an empty corncrib. He tied the gelding to it and went back to the cannons on foot. What he wanted was a task, a way into this world of thunder and lightning.
Each gun had a team of ten numbered men, one for each task: cleaning, loading, aiming, ordering, igniting, everything. The numbers began setting up. Across the creek the tiny Yankees moved back and forth. The sound of artillery was steady and infernal. The shots were now hitting their marks. Dawson stood behind the row of cannons: he knew the drill; while they’d camped out, waiting, he’d watched them training. The cannons gave off flashes, and the shocking brightness of the flames, the roiling, weltering smoke, and the thunderous sounds made the scene like hell. A solid shot whined toward them, and two men by the cannon jerked wildly, limbs flailing. There were cries everywhere and screams from the horses. The two men were on the ground; one swept his leg wildly back and forth. Dawson ran forward to the twitching man but someone dragged him off. The other man was inert. Dawson crouched beside him and someone else ran up.
“I’ll take him.” The soldier grabbed his shoulders. Dark blood came from the corner of the man’s mouth. The soldier started to drag him away, but Dawson shouted to give him the bag. The soldier pulled the ammunition bag off the wounded man’s shoulder. He was the number five man, who ran to the limber to get ammunition from the caisson, then delivered it to the number two, who stood at the piece.
Dawson put the strap over his shoulder and ran for the limber. Around him the shots kept coming, the smoke and the monstrous noise. Dawson ran, not because they could load any faster, but because urgency was all around him.
Time didn’t seem to pass. It was always only this minute, smoke drifting, explosions, the whistling shells, the screams of horses and men. Cheers, when someone scored a hit. The Yanks kept firing. Dawson ran back and forth. The number four man was hit, then the number one. They shared the tasks. The number three cleaned and sponged, dipping the long pole with the sponge into the bucket. He was sobbing silently, tears flooding down his face. Willie Pegram appeared, his gold-rimmed glasses glinting in the smoke, and took over the number one. At the end of the afternoon they were down to three. The billowing acrid smoke, the sounds of the guns. Men kept falling down. Sometimes they screamed, sometimes they were silent. It was always this minute.
Toward evening Dawson found himself on the ground. He lay on his back, looking up at the sky, confused.
Someone said, “There’s that Britisher gone down.”
He’d been hit, then. He couldn’t move, though he could see and hear. When the feeling came back he stood up; he didn’t think he was hurt. His leg felt cold, and he looked down: below the knee it was black and glis
tening. Blood ran thickly down his calf. He took out his handkerchief, his hands slow. He bound the handkerchief tightly just below the knee. His fingers were slippery with blood, and he had trouble making a knot. Beside him the cannon discharged with a roar, rolling violently backward. The wheel just missed his foot.
Dawson couldn’t run but he could stand. He took over the number four. The battle went on like an infernal dream.
It was nine o’clock, fully dark, when the cannon fire ended and they left the field. The cart horses were hooked up again and pulled the cannons back through the tall grass. Dawson limped to the corncrib; his horse was gone. He joined a slow column of tramping soldiers, but his leg was stiffer and stiffer, and he couldn’t keep up.
An ambulance wagon came through, and someone pushed him forward. He climbed into the back and lay down beside two other men. Neither spoke, though he could hear one breathing loudly. They lay in the jolting wagon. Dawson watched the stars in the darkening sky. He thought of his family at Isleworth, his father’s boots. He drifted; the sky seemed to envelop him. Once he heard Tessie speak, very distinctly. Austin, she whispered. I can’t hear the bells. He felt the air chilling around him.
The driver turned and asked if they were all right. Dawson said that he was. The breathing man did not answer, the other man gave a groan. Dawson could feel the man’s distress coming off him like a wave of heat. The driver said they’d stop for some morphine.
When the wagon stopped, Dawson sat up, his leg throbbing. They were at a tent, open on all sides to the night. It was a field hospital. A lantern hung from the ceiling and a surgeon stood over a man stretched out on a rough table. The surgeon’s sleeves were rolled up, and his arms were covered with blood; blood was everywhere, sumptuous, reeking, the smell filling the air. Under the table was a pile of something. It took a moment for Dawson to understand what it was: arms and legs, hands. A perfect foot, severed just above the ankle, pale against the darkness.
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