by John Jakes
And that’s why no man should let himself fall in love in wartime. The conviction lay like a rock inside him, unwanted, upsetting—and undeniable.
“That’s foolish, Charles.”
“Hell it is. Hooker’s sure to attack Fredericksburg—maybe within a few days. The Army of the Potomac could overrun the whole county.”
“Boz and Washington and I can—”
“Hold out against bluebellies who haven’t seen a pretty woman for months? Come on.”
“You’re being quarrelsome.”
“So are you. I have good reason. I can’t stop worrying.”
“You could stop coming here, then you wouldn’t have to worry at all.”
Cold and flat, the words fell between them. He flung himself out of bed, crossed his arms, furiously scratched his beard in vexation. She rose to her knees on the bed, touched his shoulder.
“Do you think I don’t worry about you? Constantly? Sometimes I think I fell in love just when I shouldn’t have—with a man I shouldn’t have—”
“Then maybe I should stop coming here.”
“Is that what you want?”
A silence. Then he broke, spun, pulled her naked body up in his arms, hugging her and stroking her hair. “God, no, Gus. I love you so much, sometimes it makes me want to cry for mercy.”
Trembling, they held each other, he standing beside the bed, she kneeling. Finally, the searing problem had been exposed. Sometimes I think I fell in love just when I shouldn’t have—with a man I shouldn’t have. She faced the constant threat of loss. He bore a constant concern, one that weighed him down like all the gear carried by the Yankee cavalry. Lord God, Charlie—Ab’s voice—you forgotten why we’re all here?
Sometimes he almost did. A lot of men did. For some the burden became too heavy; they put distant wives and sweethearts ahead of duty and deserted. He would never join that company, yet he did recognize that the cancer of worry was in him, too. He knew it while he clasped her body and kissed her clean, soft hair. “Go to Richmond,” he pleaded.
She broke the embrace. “Charles, this is my home. I’ll not run away.”
“It’s no admission of cowardice to go for a week or two. Until Hooker moves, and something’s decided.”
“What if the Yankees came when I wasn’t here? What if they looted this place or burned it? It’s all I have.”
“They can loot it and burn it with you standing in the kitchen.”
“Richmond’s too crowded. There is no place—”
“My cousin and his wife will take you in. Boz and Washington, too. I stopped to see Orry and Madeline on the way up from Sussex County. They don’t have much room, but they’ll share what they have.”
She sank back on her haunches, bringing her forearms across her breasts as if she were cold. “It would be a great deal of trouble to pack and—”
“Gus, stop. You’re a proud woman. Strong. I love that about you. But goddamn it—”
“I wish you wouldn’t curse all the time.”
The soft words conveyed her anger as nothing had before. He took a breath and grasped the post at the foot of the bed to steady himself.
“I’m sorry. But the point stands. Pride and strength and two nigras aren’t enough to protect you against Joe Hooker’s army. You need to go to Richmond, if not for your own sake, then for mine.”
“For your sake—?”
“That’s right.”
“I see.”
“You take that tone, I’ll sleep in the other room.”
“I think you’d better.”
Out he went, wrapped in a blanket, slamming the door.
Just at daylight, he stole back in, whispered her name, started when she sat up, wide awake. From the raw look of her cheeks, he knew she had gotten little sleep.
He held out his hand. “I’m sorry.”
They embraced, dismissed the quarrel, and over breakfast she said yes, all right, she’d close up the place and travel to Richmond before the week was out if he could get her a pass. He promised he would. He wrote directions to Orry and Madeline’s and went over them with her. Things were all right again. Superficially. For a man and woman to fall in love in times like these was folly, and each had acknowledged it.
Later that morning, he prepared to leave. “I’ll stop in Richmond and tell them you’ll be coming.”
They were standing in the dooryard. She put her arms around him, kissed him, and said, “I love you, Charles Main. You must not worry about me.”
“Oh, no, never. And Old Abe will raise the Stars and Bars in Atlanta tomorrow.”
He mounted, waved, and cantered to the road. After he had gone a half mile he reined in to look back, but a rattling column of caissons raised dust and forced him to the shoulder. He could see only sweating horses and grinding wheels. At last the column passed. The dooryard was empty.
When he returned to the brigade in Sussex County, he lied to Ab, saying the visit had been a fine one.
75
“MISS JANE, I HAVE got to confess—”
He had walked her to the stoop of her cabin in the dusk, tightening up his nerve along the way. She smiled to encourage him.
“I love you. I pray for the day I’m a free man and can ask for your hand.”
He had flirted with the declaration before but never said it outright. The words made her warm and happy. She looked at Andy against a background of cabins and overhanging trees and mist rolling in from the river to fill the spaces between. The hidden sun lit the mist to a dusty rose color. Softly, she said, “The day will come. When it does, I’ll be proud to say yes.”
He clapped his hands. “Great God! I’d kiss you if there weren’t so many people watching.”
Laughing, too, she said, “I don’t see anyone.” She pecked his cheek and ran inside. She leaned against the door, clasping her hands against the cleft of her breast. “Oh, my. Oh, my.”
Then the smell assaulted her. The smell of a dirty body and spirits. It wrenched her mind, gripped her attention. He was lounging against the whitewashed wall, his eyes bleary. Where had he gotten whiskey? Stolen it from the house?
“How dare you sneak in here, Cuffey. Get out.”
He didn’t move. Giving her a sly smile, he reached down and fingered himself. “I heard what that nigger said. He loves you.” The dark brown hand loosened one button after another until he could show her what was underneath. “He can’t do it near as good as me.”
“You drunken, foul-minded—”
Cuffey let go of himself and ran at her. Jane cried out and groped for the door latch. He caught her shoulder, yanking her so hard she stumbled. Then someone struck the other side of the door, driving her over to the other wall. She hit with a jolt, dazed, not seeing the door crash back or Andy peering in. Anxious blacks crowded the little porch.
Cuffey said, “Shut that door, nigger. Go do what you do bes’—kiss ol’ Meek’s backside.”
Andy quickly took it in: Jane slumped by the wall, bracing herself with her hands, Cuffey stuffing his dangling organ back into his pants. Andy tilted his head downward slightly and walked into the cabin.
Cuffey picked up an old stool and swept it in an arc, striking Andy’s head. One leg of the stool broke; somehow the splintered end drew blood from Andy’s temple. The blood streamed into his eye as he jumped at Cuffey and aimed a powerful but mistimed punch. Cuffey easily avoided it, then jabbed at Andy’s eye with the splintered leg.
“Let him be. Wait for help,” Jane pleaded. If Andy heard, he paid no attention. He walked forward like a soldier in a skirmish line, upright, scared, but never wavering. He laced his hands together to create a double fist. Cuffey kicked him between the legs. Andy doubled over, letting out a clenched, hurt sound. But he stayed on his feet. He lifted his joined hands and struck Cuffey where his neck met his left shoulder, a sideways blow that shot Cuffey against the wall and made him grunt explosively.
“You been begging somebody to do this,” Andy said, looming over the other man, pounding down
ward with his joined hands. He slammed the top of Cuffey’s head. This time Cuffey yelled. Andy began to hammer him like a nail, pushing him down to a crouch, then to his knees, working in sideways blows to the face for good measure. Cuffey’s ear bled.
“Watch out, Andy, Mist’ Meek comin’,” someone called from the street. Jane stood, saw the blacks on the porch disappear and the overseer stride into view, pulling a pistol from his wide belt.
“Who’s fighting in here?”
“Cuffey and Andy,” a woman answered, just as Andy raised Cuffey by the front of his soiled shirt. Blood leaked from Cuffey’s nose as well as his ear. He blew the blood and mucus into Andy’s face.
“I kill you, nigger. You an’ everybody on this place.”
“Let him go, Andy,” Meek ordered from the doorway. Andy turned toward the overseer. The blood from his temple blurred his vision a little. Cuffey saw his chance and gave his adversary a shove.
Andy staggered, thrown back against the overseer. Cuffey tore down the flour-sack curtains Jane had tacked over the back window. He flipped one leg over the sill. “Give me room to shoot,” Meek shouted, pushing Andy.
Cuffey grabbed Jane and swung her into the line of fire. Meek jerked the pistol upward, and Cuffey dropped down outside the window. He bolted away into rose mist that was deepening to gray.
“Stop, nigger,” Meek commanded, discharging one round. Cuffey disappeared behind a live oak. The mist stirred and settled.
Meek swore an uncharacteristic oath. “Andy, what happened?”
“I was outside and—I heard Jane cry out.” The words were labored; he was still breathing hard.
“I came inside and found him hiding here,” Jane said. “He said dirty things to me, then unbuttoned his trousers.”
The listeners outside, especially the women, expostulated and groaned. Still angry at losing the culprit, Meek snorted, “If we gelded all you bucks, things’d be a sight more peaceful.”
Andy glared. “Listen here—”
The overseer was too mad to pay much attention. And just then a voice rolled out of the deep rose mist behind the cabin.
“I’ll kill ever one of you on this place, you hear me?”
“Get some men,” Meek said to Andy. “Eight or ten at least. It’s a bad night to chase runaways, but we’re going to catch that one. Then I’m going to sell him off.”
The pursuit ended three hours later, when the mist had become fog. By the light of a fatwood torch he was carrying, Andy reported the failure to Jane. “I ’spect he’s gone for good. Toward Beaufort, most likely.”
“Good riddance,” she said. The dank night and the memory of Cuffey’s wild face made her uneasy. She knew what kind of life Cuffey had led. His hatreds—Mont Royal, its owners, the more docile slaves—were understandable. Yet she nurtured the same hostilities and so did Andy, and neither had been ruined by them.
“Maybe I ought to keep watch here on the porch till morning,” he suggested.
“He won’t come back.”
“You heard what he yelled after he jumped out the window.”
“Cuffey’s been a braggart ever since I’ve known him. We’ll never see him again.”
“Surely hope you’re right. Well—good night, then.”
“Good night, Andy.” She touched his face below the strip of linen tied around his head to protect the clotted cut. “You’re a brave man. I meant what I said about being proud to marry you.”
His eyes shone in the flaring light. “Thank you.”
He walked down the creaking steps into the fog. As soon as her door closed he extinguished his torch, faced about, and quietly lowered himself to the edge of the porch, where he intended to stay until daylight.
Although Jane was awake for some time, she didn’t know he was out there. She heard instead the noises of the spring night beyond the window from which Cuffey had torn the curtain. She heard the doglike barks of the frogs, the three-note chant of the chuck-will’s-widow, the drone of insects. And, in imagination, she heard a voice promising vengeance. She lay with her hand clenched against her cheek, wishing she didn’t hear the voice but unable to silence it.
76
IN THE EARLY MORNING of April 28, Billy wrote by the light of a candle pushed into the mounting ring of a borrowed bayonet.
Lije F. and yr. obdt. are detached with a volunteer co. for duty with Gen. Slocum’s three corps. We march upstream tomorrow. Some suspect a great sweep around Lee and a strike at his rear. The regulars and vols are cooking rations for 8 days. Pack mules numbering 2,000 will replace most of the supply wagons, further evidence of a desire for speed and surprise.
Weather is better—rains over, though roads & stream banks remain very muddy in some places; we will earn our pay planking the worst spots.
Among the army’s current complement of vols, about half are replacements for deserters or the dead, wounded & sick; most of the greenhorns are foolishly excited at the prospect of battle—much happier to march forward than stay behind with those corps which will apparently demonstrate against Lee’s works in Fredericksburg, or below the town. One such corps is Howard’s XI, the Germans, almost universally detested as radicals, revolutionaries—fugitives from the trouble of 1848 whether they be so or not. Almost without exception, the Dutchmen swear by Old Abe and his proclamation, while the rest of the army swears at them. We have not much tolerance—and I point the finger of conscience first at myself. Yesterday I saw two Negro teamsters in army blue and confess to being unsettled by the sight. Lije prayed twenty mins. longer than usual tonight. At supper, while a band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” I asked why. He replied, Do not forget who is over in Fredericksburg. Two of the best—Bob Lee & Old Jack. Lije said he had implored the Almighty to confuse their minds and impair their judgment, though he stated this was done with regret, as both generals are staunch Christians. Wish I were, Brett. It might ease my soul. I am sick of the dirt and killing, and cannot take any joy in what’s to come, as the vols do. But they are boys yet. They will be something else before this spring’s over.
Late the next day, Billy and a detachment of twelve volunteer engineers found a farmhouse with a sturdy barn and a smaller outbuilding from which the breeze brought the powerful odor of chicken droppings.
“What d’you think, sir?” asked the senior noncom with the group, a youth from Syracuse named Spinnington. He had been appointed corporal because he seemed less lazy and stupid than the other replacements; no positive traits recommended him.
From the roadside Billy studied the neatly kept buildings surrounded by a small orchard of peach trees. The detachment had fallen out around a wagon commandeered from another farm. Other detachments, with wagons similarly obtained, were roaming the countryside just above the Rapidan. Screened by Stoneman’s horse, the army had marched with great secrecy and encountered no difficulties until reaching the chosen ford. The rain-swollen river could still be crossed, but its near bank was a bog where it should be solid.
“Sir?” Spinnington prodded. Billy continued to stare at the farmhouse, wishing he could give the order to move on. He felt tired enough to drop. He knew that had little to do with the forced march from Fredericksburg and everything to do with the task at hand.
Billy’s beard had grown out during the winter; it was carelessly trimmed, and matted in places. Despite a natural stockiness, he had a curiously shrunken appearance. Seen with his brother George, he might have been picked as the older—or so he thought on those increasingly rare occasions when he saw himself in the scrap of polished tin he used as a mirror. The reflected face had a saggy look, as if it were made of melting candle tallow.
Spinnington fidgeted. Billy said, “All right.”
There were whoops as the new replacements charged the house, the low-lying sun gilding an ax blade, the face of a boy with a crowbar. Their elongated shadows climbed up the side of the house.
The front door opened; a man came out. A tiny man with a white tuft of beard but huge strong han
ds.
Billy approached the porch. Before he could speak, a woman appeared behind the man. She weighed three times what he did and stood a head taller.
“Mr. Tate,” she said, “get back inside. General Hooker’s men who came by said we’d be shot if we stepped one foot in the open.”
“It’s a bluff,” the old farmer said. “They’re afraid we’ll slip over the Rapidan and warn Bob Lee. I wouldn’t do that. I have to protect this place. That’s why I must talk to these boys.”
“Mr. Tate—”
“What do you boys want?” the old farmer called over his wife’s continuing objection.
Billy pulled off his kepi. “Sir, I regret to inform you that we’ve been sent to forage for lumber and siding. We need them because the Germanna ford is a mire and must be planked so General Hooker’s forces can cross the river. I’ll be obliged if you and your wife will go back inside and permit us to do our work.”
“What work?” the old man cried, his white tuft twitching in the twilight breeze. “What work?”
He knew. Ashamed to look him in the eye, Billy bobbed his head at Spinnington. “Get them to work, Corporal. Take the barn first, and maybe we’ll get enough to fill the wagon. Maybe we can leave the chicken house alone.”
“It’s taken me all my life to build this place,” the old man said, clutching the porch post, angry tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Truly sorry.”
A nail squealed, a raw, screaming sound. Two volunteers pried off the first piece of siding. Another ran it to the wagon.
The old farmer lurched off the porch. Billy drew his side arm. The farmer hesitated, sat down on the steps, and gave Billy a look he would never forget. Then the farmer stared at his shoes as the engineer volunteers tore the barn apart. They brought out crosscut saws for the pillars and beams. They had it all down by dark, leaving the unpenned milk cows and plow horses wandering around the chicken house. Billy sat on the seat of the wagon as it rolled away and didn’t permit himself to look back.