by John Jakes
“I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too.
I hates the glorious Union.
’Tis dripping with our blood.
I hates their striped banner.
I fit it all I could.”
“Christ,” Charles groaned, pulling the thin pillow over his head. It didn’t shut out the rhythmic thumping of tin cups on the bar, the stamp of boots, or the splendid choir baritone of Mordecai Woodvine joining in.
“I can’t take up my musket
And fight ’em now no more,
But I ain’t got to love ’em.
Now that is sarten sure.
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am,
I won’t be reconstructed,
And I don’t care a damn!”
Weeds and wild grasses tossed in the warm wind, high as the hamstrings of his mule. The wind snapped the gypsy cloak as Charles turned into the dooryard, an ominous feeling on him. The fields hadn’t been prepared for planting. On such a pleasant day, when fresh air would have broomed the house, every window was shuttered. Around the rear stoop, wild violets showed where none had grown before. The open door of the barn revealed a rectangle of darkness.
“Washington? Boz?”
The wind blew.
“Anyone here?”
Sunflowers swayed in what had been the garden. Why was he awaiting an answer? Hadn’t he gotten it when he came over the last hump in the scarred road and seen the house so still, the surrounding fields empty in the sunshine?
She had locked the place before going wherever she had gone. Using his elbow, he broke the window of the kitchen door, reached through, and let himself in. The furniture was there, chairs neatly squared up beneath the table. Pots and the iron skillet hung from their pegs in their remembered places. He jerked open cabinets. Dishes there, too.
He ran to her bedroom, his boots thudding the pegged floor. The bed was neatly made and on the table next to it he spied her book of Pope, a place marked with a pale blue ribbon. Surely she wouldn’t leave that if she were planning to be gone for any length of time. She must be away for just a day or two, with the freedmen.
To confirm it, he bore down on the wardrobe, expecting to find most of her clothing. He yanked the doors open.
Empty.
He stood still, frowning, worried. How to explain the contradiction—all the clothes missing and her favorite book left behind?
He had left the porch door open; a strong gust of wind blowing through the hall caught a wardrobe door and hurled it shut with a bang. That roused him and broke the grip of his panic. He carried the book to the kitchen, laid it on the table, then hurried to the barn, where the freedmen stored their tools. All were still in place.
He sawed some boards, nailed them on the inside of the broken window, took the book, and tied the door shut with a length of rope. It would be one of the things for which he would ask her forgiveness the moment he saw her. One of many.
About to mount the mule, he paused and opened the book at the place marked by the ribbon. He discovered a small, unfamiliar flower, its blossom pressed flat, most of the yellow gone. He swallowed.
The poem was “Ode to Solitude.” Gus had bracketed four lines with delicate strokes of an inked pen.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
He cursed and shut the book. A shudder ran down his spine. He booted the mule all the way into Fredericksburg.
Although most of the population had come back, he saw few signs that repair of the destruction had begun. He inquired at two stores, without success. The proprietor of the third, a hefty butcher, gave him some information after he introduced himself.
“She let both her free nigras go. The younger, Boz, passed through town and told me. A few nights later, she disappeared without a word to anybody. That made me recall she had come in the day before and settled her account.”
“How long ago was all this?”
“Several months.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“That’s right.”
“But where the hell did she go?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to, soldier? I’m a Union man.” His hand slid across the moist red block to a boning knife. “I were you, I’d be more polite to the people that whipped you, else they might do it again.”
Reddening, Charles restrained his anger. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I rode a long way to find her.”
The butcher saw his opportunity and smirked. “Maybe she didn’t want you to find her. Ever think of that? Mrs. Barclay left her place without telling a soul in Fredericksburg or the county where she was headed. You don’t believe me, you ask anybody.”
He picked up his cleaver and began chopping a slab of faintly shiny meat with hard, swift strokes. Charles walked out, leaving a trail of boot prints in the sawdust. He leaned on the store front, stricken by the truth in the butcher’s nastiness.
She hadn’t wanted him to come back, else she would have waited. Or at least left word of her destination. Instead, she left a poem about death. The end of everything. He understood the positioning of the ribbon and the inked brackets. They were meant for him.
He walked around the iron hitching post, rested a hand on his worn saddle, and said something broken-sounding under his breath. The mule flicked his ears. Flies landed anyway. The pain, the uncertainty of loss, beat at Charles harder and harder by the second. He didn’t try to quell the feelings. He couldn’t have done it if he had wanted.
141
THE CORPORAL IN CHARGE of the two-man detail hailed from Illinois. He had been educated at Indiana Asbury, a tiny college in the next state, then returned to Danville, the home town of Mr. Lincoln’s great companion Ward Lamon, where he taught in a one-room school for two years before mustering for war. He was twenty-four. The private helping him was four years younger. Their detail was one of many assigned to sift through the rubble of Richmond, with shovels and by hand, to locate and retrieve any unburned government documents.
The corporal and the private worked in the skeletal ruins of what had been a warehouse. Part of the roof remained, and two walls. The soldiers started early each day; this morning there was a slight fog, not yet burned off. The sun shafts around the fragment of roof seemed to hold smoke.
“Here’s a box hardly touched, Sid,” the private said. In this part of the warehouse yesterday they had discovered batches of undelivered letters, most of them at least partly scorched. When they pried open the new box, they found bundles that appeared untouched.
Since their assignment was to recover and mark any mail that could be forwarded, they thought their search, thankless thus far, had finally borne fruit. They were disappointed. The private showed Sid the top letter of a stack he was holding.
“Must’ve had a heavy rain. Guess the box leaked. Spoilt the address.”
The corporal studied the letter. Saw faint handwriting indecipherable because of blots and water streaks.
“The rest like that?”
The private fanned the stack. “Ever’ one.”
Pleased, Sid said, “Then I guess we should open them. The address might be repeated before the salutation.” That was an excuse; he was bored and wanted to sit down awhile. Opening mail beat pawing through wet ashes that stuck to your uniform and made it stink.
Besides, reading the mail of strangers appealed to his sense of drama. He had always loved Othello and Romeo and Juliet and the novels of Dickens. He dreamed of writing a piece of fiction of his own one of these days. Might be some stories worth remembering in these letters.
They sat on fallen beams and opened them one by one. The private did it mechanically, unmoved by anything he read. Sid rapidly grew disgusted. Contrary to his expectations, he found little except bad spelling, worse
grammar, and fragmentary, wholly uninteresting observations about homesickness, mother’s dearly remembered cooking, or the absolute perfection of every girl to whom a letter was addressed. In twenty minutes he was bored again. But orders were orders.
An hour had passed when he sat up suddenly. “Hold on, here’s an interesting one. Signed J. B. Duncan—one of our own officers.”
He showed the private the abbreviations and initials following the name. “Brigadier General, United States Volunteers. But it’s addressed to someone he calls ‘My dear Major Main.’ You suppose that’s a reb, Chauncey?”
“Pretty likely if the letter’s here, don’t you think?”
Sid nodded. “Seems to concern some female named Augusta—Oh, my Lord, listen to this. She became pregnant with your child, and although she knew of her condition at the time of your last visit, she would say nothing, not wishing to exert moral coercion—” With new enthusiasm, Sid said, “This is an educated man. Telling quite a story.”
“Sounds like a hot one,” Chauncey observed.
Sid kept reading. “The pregnancy was fully as difficult, not to say dangerous, as that which occurred while she was married to Mr. Barclay. You know the unfortunate outcome that time, I believe. Fearing for her well-being and also her safety on that isolated farm where she foolishly remained throughout much of the worst fighting, I arranged to smuggle my niece over the Potomac and on to my present home in Washington. Here, on December 23 last, she delivered your son, a fine healthy infant to whom she gave the name Charles. But I regret to say the birth—”
The corporal’s voice had dropped. He shot the private a melancholy look.
“What’s wrong, Sid?”
“… the birth was not without its tragic aspect. One hour after delivering, poor Augusta succumbed. She passed away with your name upon her lips. I know she loved you more than life itself, for she told me so.”
Sid wiped his nose. “My God.” He went on. “I have written twice before and paid to have each missive borne to Richmond by private messenger. I hasten to write yet a third time because I know postal service is disrupted, and I wish to do all that I can to make certain at least one of the letters reaches you. Regrettably, each letter bears the skimpiest of addresses, but I have none better.”
A gulp of breath. “New paragraph. The divisive holocaust, perhaps ordained by God but tragic for His children nonetheless, shows every aspect of an imminent conclusion. When it is over, it is your right to claim your son. I will keep him, providing proper care, until you come for him, or, if you do not, for as long as is practicable for an old bachelor bent upon continuing his military career. I bear you no enmity. I pray this finds you whole and glad of the good portion of my news. Respectfully—”
Sid rested the last sheet on his knee. “That’s all except for the signature.”
“That ought to be delivered for sure,” Chauncey said. He was subdued now, sitting motionless in a smoky shaft of light.
“Yes.” The corporal thrust the envelope into the sun. Tilted and peered at it. “Hello, that’s better. Here’s the name again. Main. And the word Major. The first name’s gone, along with the address. Still, that may be enough.”
He folded the two pages, replaced them in the envelope, and slipped it in his pocket. “I’ll bring this one to the lieutenant’s attention myself.”
“Good,” said Chauncey, staring at Sid. Sid stared back. When the government of that damned Davis had torched so many of its records, how did you find one reb soldier among the hundreds of thousands wandering homeward on the roads of the South—or lying dead in mass graves, thickets, fields, from Virginia and the Pennsylvania mountains to the bluffs of Vicksburg and the hills of Arkansas?
Both knew you didn’t; not easily. Sid would try, but he felt it was hopeless.
142
AFTER LEAVING FREDERICKSBURG, CHARLES wandered aimlessly for three days. Lay rigid each night, unable to sleep. Lost his temper without provocation and almost got knifed for it in another wayside tavern. Wanted to cry and could not.
In the scarred country above the Rapidan, he came to a four-way crossroads and dismounted. While the mule cropped grass, he took off his gypsy robe and lay down at the roadside. He hoped the mule kept eating for hours. He had no destination. No reason to go on.
Out of the bright north, three men approached on foot. All three wore filthy remnants of butternut uniforms. One, a towhead of eighteen or nineteen, hobbled on a handmade crutch. His right leg ended in a stump three inches above the road.
He was the one who greeted Charles with a wave and a smile. “Howdy. You’re one of our boys, aren’t you?”
Charles took the cigar out of his mouth. “I’m not one of anybody’s boys anymore.”
Giving him surly stares, the soldiers muttered among themselves, swung to the other side of the road, and continued on south. To homes that probably don’t exist any longer, Charles thought.
Down the road, he heard noises suggesting a vehicle. He turned on his left elbow, squinted, saw the soldiers pass a group coming the other way. The soldiers went by without speaking. The group consisted of four people: a man, a woman, and two small girls, Black.
When they came closer, he saw their clothes were clean but threadbare. The cart, which carried the girls and some possessions bundled in croker sacks, had solid wheels but otherwise looked flimsy, obviously built by someone not trained as a wheelwright.
Nor did the family own an animal. The father pulled the cart. The mother walked barefoot beside him.
Yet neither parent seemed unhappy. They smiled and sang right along with their children. The mother and two girls clapped the beat. Charles stared at them as they started to go by. The sight of him reclining in the grass made them tense. The singing softened. He could hear no words except one: “Jubilo.”
A grimace twisted his mouth. The father took note of that and of Charles’s gray shirt. He took a firmer grip on the handles of the cart, pulling it as quickly as he could through the crossroads and away down the northern road. The children looked back at Charles, but not the adults.
Too tired and despondent to move, he tethered the mule to a tree branch. He wriggled back against the trunk, intending to doze a few minutes. There was no hurry about anything. She was gone for good.
He woke with a start. The slant of the light told him it was late afternoon. Something hanging above him tickled his face.
Half the tether, still tied to a branch. It had been chewed apart. The mule was gone, saddle gear and all. Luckily he still had his army Colt in the holster.
From the crossroads, he walked about half a mile in each of four directions. The road to the west faded away around a bend; the western landscape blended into the backdrop of the Blue Ridge. He stared at the mountains a moment, recalling his fondness for Texas.
He trudged back to the crossroads. No sign of the mule anywhere. Damn.
The sun slanted lower, casting spears of light between thick trees at the southwest corner of the crossroads. Charles started suddenly. Out toward the Shenandoah, past the woodlands, he heard a wailing rebel yell—
He shook his head. It was only the whistle of a train speeding through the countryside. A Yankee-operated train, more than likely. They had so many of them. And so many guns. And so many men who had come out of mills and stockyards and barns and offices and saloons to make war as nobody had ever made war before.
He walked into the center of the empty crossroads and surveyed it, and then the dead, empty land. For one strange moment, he felt as if all of the might of the Union had been directed against him personally.
It had beaten him, too.
He stood at the crossroads in the lowering dusk, tired desperation in his eyes. He just wanted to lie down. Stop. For good.
But pictures kept intruding. The Bible salesman he had met in Goldsboro who said they wanted cavalrymen on the plains. He had the right experience. It would be a way to survive. Start over. Maybe find a scrap of hope someday.
Hope in a world like this? Stupid idea. He’d do better to lie down in the roadside grass and never get up.
But more pictures came. Men with whom he had served. Ab Woolner. Calbraith Butler. Wade Hampton. Lee—imagine how he must have felt, once the superintendent of West Point and the country’s finest soldier, forced to ask a fellow Academy graduate for terms. They said Old Marse Bob had conducted himself with dignity, rebuffing a few hotheads who wanted to continue guerrilla war from the hills and woodlands.
Although the men Charles remembered had, in his opinion, fought for the wrong reasons, they weren’t quitters. Gus wasn’t a quitter either. He dwelled on her memory awhile. It summoned a detail he had forgotten. A name.
Brigadier Duncan.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Gus had unmistakably signaled that their love affair was over, but he could at least satisfy himself as to her whereabouts and her well-being. Duncan might be able to help, if Charles could locate him.
Only one place to start. Not the safest place, either. But he didn’t worry too much, because suddenly recalling Duncan infused him with the kind of energy he hadn’t felt in a long time. His head started to clear, and his chin came up. Still a lot of daylight left. He had time to walk awhile. He picked up the gypsy robe and left the crossroads, northbound.
In half an hour he caught up with the black family, resting at the roadside. The moment the adults recognized him, they looked alarmed. Stopping in the center of the road, Charles took off his hat and tried to smile. It came hard. It had nothing to do with who or what they were. It just came hard.
“Evening.”
“Evening,” the father said.
Less suspicious than her husband, the woman said, “Are you going north?”
“Washington.”
“That’s where we’re going. Would you like to sit down and rest?”
“Yes, I would, thank you.” He did. One of the girls giggled and smiled at him. “I lost my mule. I’m pretty tired.”
At last the father smiled. “I was born tired, but lately I’ve been feeling better.”
Charles wished he could say the same. “If you’re willing, I’ll be glad to help you pull that cart.”