Jacob's Ladder

by Donald McCaig

  Catesby’s king in the hole had a twin showing and he bet ten of his dollars and ten of the regiment’s dollars, and everyone folded except Mr. Benjamin with a queen.

  “You are a cautious adversary, Lieutenant,” Benjamin said, “but I will see another card.” He paired his queen and raised Catesby’s bet twenty dollars. When Catesby folded and Benjamin flicked his cards faceup to the dealer, his hole card, which Catesby had thought a queen, was a lowly seven.

  Benjamin signaled the waiter. “Gentlemen, at midnight I usually eat something. If you would append your requests to mine, I’m sure this gentleman would be pleased to serve us.”

  The colonel said no, he didn’t want food. He was going to Joe Johnston’s sorry goddamned army in the morning and he’d as soon play until then. Like Benjamin, the naval officer asked for a sandwich. Catesby, who had been hungry, had no appetite now and asked for another bottle of champagne.

  Benjamin specified, “Just a dash of horseradish. And the mustard with the tiny seeds Johnny has from Georgia. Did you know Georgia is Johnny’s home? He came up to Richmond hoping to do something in the way of the tobacco trade but found that too much of a gamble.” Benjamin’s smile invited the world to join him, but Catesby didn’t feel convivial. “And where, sir, did you practice law?”

  “Warm Springs—in our western mountains.”

  Benjamin’s bland smile was infuriating. “I have often dreamed that one day I would take up a less demanding practice, find some pleasant county seat, and enjoy life. I envy you, sir.”

  “Yes,” Catesby said. He drank more champagne.

  The colonel had about the same money he’d had. Benjamin and the naval officer had won the cavalry lieutenant’s stake as well as Catesby’s two hundred dollars.

  “May I take a seat, Judah?”

  “I’m sure these gentlemen won’t mind. Certainly, Silas.”

  The man was tall, of a saturnine cast. He had long dark eyelashes and a receding hairline. “And what news of the blockade?” Benjamin inquired of him.

  “The Whippet cleared Wilmington yesterday. The Jane Porter tied up at midnight with a cargo of luxury items—wines, steel needles, silk. I believe they also carried a few cases of Austrian muskets.” Omohundru inspected his hole card and promptly folded. “If the government would insist on military provisions in place of civilian fripperies, our ships would carry them.”

  Benjamin smiled. “But to get our states to agree to regulate their maritime commerce . . .”

  The colonel bet twenty dollars. “The Confederacy’s peculiar obstinacies are too well known. I wish to know the identity of my next card and intend to charge you for the privilege of seeing it.”

  Despite his new concentration—or perhaps because of it—the colonel’s luck took a turn for the worse and his stake shrank. In one hand, he lost five hundred dollars to Omohundru. By dint of cautious play, Catesby lost only two hundred in the same period.

  Half an hour later, the colonel’s eights lost to Benjamin’s three fours. Catesby had staked nearly a thousand dollars on two aces. He had lost half the money his regiment had entrusted him with.

  Benjamin inspected his watch and tsked. “Oh dear, such revelries at my age.” He ordered a bottle of the best champagne for the other players, and without counting folded his money into his pocket.

  “Surely you’re not leaving, sir,” Catesby said tensely.

  “President Davis requires me first thing in the morning. My presence is not always helpful, but I do my humble best.” Benjamin rose to his feet. “I thank you for a most enjoyable evening.”

  All the other tables were empty, and waiters were stacking chairs. A bouncer was sweeping the floor.

  “What time is it?” Catesby whispered.

  Laboriously, the colonel consulted his watch. “Four,” he announced. “My train departs in an hour.” He seemed indifferent to his losses.

  The houseman flicked out three cards, facedown. Another three faceup. “Antes, gentlemen?”

  The colonel stretched. “Might as well.” He looked at Catesby. “Have you ever gone into a fight with the certainty you weren’t coming out of it?”

  Catesby’s cards were a deuce and an ace.

  The colonel continued, “That damned Joe Johnston tried to get me killed at Seven Pines, and he’ll succeed in Tennessee. I’ve made my will and written a letter to my wife and young ones. Now I’ve naught to do but catch a train.”

  “Prayer?” Catesby murmured.

  The colonel bet ten dollars. “There are too many damn prayers. How does God decide which get answered? When Jackson was praying for success at Chancellorsville, wasn’t Hooker praying too?”

  Omohundru raised fifty dollars. “I do not know that General Hooker is a Christian man.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t praying.” The colonel raised back. “Imagine this big telegraph office—an office as big as Richmond. Countless instruments clattering at once, in all languages—French, Italian, Hindoo . . .”

  Catesby paired his deuce in the hole. “God moves in mysterious ways,” he said.

  “Yes,” the colonel said. He had jacks showing and an eight. “Very mysteriously. Whenever we win a victory our leaders say it is God’s will. When Lee pushed McClellan away from Richmond, that was God’s will. When I’m killed in Tennessee, will that be God’s will?”

  Omohundru had nothing showing. He doubled the pot.

  The next cards helped no one.

  Catesby’s final card was a deuce. It was a five-hundred-dollar pot. He raised the colonel a hundred more.

  “You see,” the colonel said, “I have to guess whether the lieutenant has the third deuce. He must guess if I have the third jack. All mysterious. But God is standing behind the table, able to see every hand. I call.”

  Omohundru raised.

  “You, sir,” the colonel noted, “evidently believe in miracles.”

  Omohundru said, “Our new nation is a miracle. That we can sit here, in the capital of the Confederate States of America, is a miracle.”

  “So. The lieutenant has his third deuce and Mr. Omohundru might win if God decides to punish me for blasphemy and collapses the ceiling on our heads.” He summoned a waiter. When told there was beef left but no bread, he said beef would be satisfactory. “It’ll be salt pork in Tennessee,” he added sadly.

  Catesby showed his third deuce and raked in the pot. “Why do you play?”

  Omohundru said, “I cannot sleep. Each time the Wild Darrell makes a successful passage, I am amply rewarded.”

  “Silks and wines?”

  “No, sir. Military supplies. I carry only a few luxuries to buy swift unloading and transshipment to our armies.”

  “You are a patriot. Are you kin to the Omohundru who was a slave speculator in the western mountains?”

  “I am he.” Omohundru looked up, alert for overtones at which he might take offense.

  “My home is in those mountains,” Catesby said.

  “Yes,” Omohundru said. “A country of sublime vistas.”

  Catesby had another mediocre hand but won when neither player cared to contest it.

  The colonel threw the last of his stake into the next pot, which again Catesby won.

  A yawning waiter opened the drapes. Too-bright sunlight streamed through the windows. The houseman stretched and stood up, saying he could do with some coffee.

  The colonel thanked his companions elaborately for the evening’s sport.

  “Good luck to you, sir,” Catesby said.

  “All those damn telegraphs chattering at once.” The colonel marched into the new morning air.

  The houseman carried his coffee to a vacant table, where he put his feet up on an empty chair.

  When Catesby counted his money he had ten dollars more than the regiment had entrusted him with.

  “You’ll pardon me, sir, if I remark that it is unusual for a junior officer to have so much to wager. You are successful at cards?”

  “It is not my money,�
� Catesby said shortly.

  Omohundru lifted an eyebrow. “Your friends place great confidence in you.”

  Catesby sipped at his coffee. “It was to buy underclothing. Do you know a Richmond purveyor?”

  “You take me for a merchant?”

  “I take you for a gentleman I have met for the first time this evening.”

  “Some take me to be a merchant. I am engaged in trade.”

  “This is real coffee. We do not often see its like in the army.”

  “Do you think I should be serving with the army?”

  Catesby had had enough. “Sir, you are a perfect stranger. I do not presume to judge what you should or should not do. It has been a long and peculiar night—one I shall not soon forget. I am possessed of what I brought into this hell and count myself fortunate.”

  For the first time Omohundru smiled. “And had you lost?”

  Catesby was bone-weary. “I trust I would have done the honorable thing.”

  “And what would that be? After all, forgiveness”—Omohundru gestured around the cavernous room, the light blazing through the window glass—“is omnipresent. As a youth Mr. Benjamin was expelled from college for cheating at cards. Yet today he occupies a position of greatest trust. I was a speculator in slaves, but I am admitted to high councils.”

  “If I had lost . . .” Catesby began again.

  “Do I press you, sir? I have always thought money is like love. It has only the meanings we give to it. Money is like the morning light, it evanesces. A man takes a deep breath and it is gone.”

  “If I provide a competence for my family, I crave no more.”

  “And the satisfactions of your legal vocation?”

  “War is wonderfully inclusive. It satisfies all vocations.”

  Omohundru slid back his chair. “May I fetch you another cup of Mr. Worsham’s excellent coffee? It seems a waste to let it go cold.”

  When he set the two cups on the table, he asked, “When do you return to your regiment?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day. When I have sufficient undergarments, socks, and sixteen slouch hats in various sizes, my work in Richmond is complete.”

  “And you did take sugar in your coffee, I recall.” Omohundru paused. “You are a man of uncommon sensitivity and we will probably never meet again. Forgive me if I take liberties I might not attempt with nearer acquaintances: do you love this war?”

  Catesby spoke his mind. “War is transporting but dreadful beyond imagining—and we are its willing pawns. Our lives will be used up for purposes we do not fathom by a God we imagine only at the peril of sanity. How God is served by a boy burned to death in the Wilderness I cannot imagine, but that He is served I cannot doubt. Are we tools for some grander purpose? There are those who believe so. But Mr. Darwin claims this world is more ancient than previously thought, that creatures once flourished upon our planet that no longer exist. When those creatures lost their lives in some terrible struggle, did their deaths serve some greater, nobler purpose?”

  Omohundru’s face bore none of that challenge which had previously characterized it. “And so you wager with money which is not yours to wager? You tempt a Providence you neither trust nor understand?”

  “And sir,” Catesby said softly, “what is your motive?”

  Omohundru said, “I hope to see miracles.”

  WASHING THE CORPSE

  NEAR SUNRISE, VIRGINIA

  JULY 2, 1863

  “HE SO PUNY,” Aunt Opal said.

  Franky Williams dipped her rag in the vinegar bowl. “There never was much to him.”

  “He ain’t half what he was, poor baby.” Opal dabbed between Uther’s fingers. “He wasn’t able to write nothin’, not after his shakin’ got so bad, but see: he still has the bump where he held that pen. His whole life he spends readin’ and writin’, and ever since Miss Sallie got took away, he can’t read or write a solitary thing.”

  Uther’s naked corpse was bruised. In his final months Uther often fell.

  “It’s a mercy,” Franky said.

  “Uncle Agamemnon, he older than Uncle Uther.”

  “He ain’t got no more wits. Mumblin’ about that African country he come from, that old conjurin’ foolishness. If me and Sister didn’t feed him, why I reckon he’d starve to death.”

  “Uther kept his wits to the end,” Opal said. “Maybe he couldn’t read no more, but that didn’t keep him from talkin’ about fellows he used to read, Mr. Paine, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson, and them. But it was pitiful how he shook. I believe that’s why Miss Abigail never come to call. She couldn’t bear to see him so poorly.”

  “Miss Abigail ‘delicate.’ Master Samuel begged her go to Richmond with him, but she wouldn’t. Said, ‘My son Duncan he has two arms!’ Between Grandmother Gatewood’s prayin’ and Miss Abigail bein’ poorly ain’t much gettin’ done. Wasn’t for me and Sister and Pompey, Stratford House’d fall into disgrace.”

  The two women rolled Uther’s corpse onto his stomach, Aunt Opal gently guiding the head.

  “They say the war be over soon,” Franky said. “Master Samuel say that after General Lee whips the Federals again they’ll leave us be.”

  “You think Master Abraham quit?” Opal snorted. “You think he put back into bondage all them he freed?”

  “You think the Federals gonna win?”

  “ ’Course they is. ’Course they is.”

  Franky asked, “And they kill all the masters? Master Duncan, Master Catesby, Master Samuel?”

  “Prolly. Master Duncan and Master Catesby been whippin’ them regular. You think them Federals show ’em any mercy?”

  “Master Samuel say General Lee gonna win,” Franky repeated stubbornly. “He say General Lee whip the Federal army and then they gonna march on Washington, take Master Abraham prisoner, and that be the end of it.”

  Opal scrubbed. “His neck dirty. Just like a little boy, he never washed his neck too good.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “This vinegar . . .” she said. “Powerful strong vinegar. . . .”

  “Miss Leona worried to death about Master Catesby.” Franky’s cloth patted the old man’s prominent rib cage. “He gone off to Richmond with poor Master Duncan and ain’t writ Miss Leona since. Master Samuel say Master Catesby took up cardplaying again. Why that man want to do that?”

  Opal snorted. “He with the army now. He have more to worry about than cardplaying.” Although she’d been born Baptist, Opal’s long association with Uther had softened her Baptist beliefs.

  “His ankles filthy.”

  “He couldn’t bend over so good as he did. He climb in the washtub Saturday night same as always and I’d wait outdoors, same as always. I’d have washed his ankles for him but silly old fool never wanted me to see him unless he proper.”

  Franky adopted an expression the primmest schoolmarm might have envied. “I always thought . . .”

  Opal snapped, “Too much thinkin’ sometimes. Some people see two people livin’ in the same house and they think those two people might start to care for each other.” Her tears started again. “It wouldn’t have been proper, that’s all! Drat this vinegar!”

  “Can’t tell about these white men. They need it worse than colored men do.”

  “I believe you got more knowledge of such things than I do.”

  “They got more too,” Franky said, lifting her chin.

  “How many men you washed for buryin’?”

  “Right smart of them.”

  “Why you think you and me asked to do this job? Because we don’t say what we seen. You can say what you want but whites I washed ain’t no different than men of color.”

  They worked silently for a time, washing with vinegar, rinsing with water. When the rinse water turned gray, Franky poured it out the window and replaced it from the ewer. “What’d he do to get so dirty?”

  “He just live, that’s all. Old man ain’t been outdoors since summer except to the necessary. All he was livin’ for was Miss Sallie’s letters. That R
ichmond must be some place to see!”

  “I was in Richmond once. Filthiest slave pen you ever saw in your life. I was glad to come to Staunton to be sold. ’Course I was just a child. I was too young for the fancy trade.”

  Opal eyed her companion skeptically. “Maybe you got the disposition, but you ain’t got the looks. When that Maggie got sold away from here I say to myself: that woman ain’t gonna get her hands calloused hoeing. No, it’s her backside gonna get calloused. That gal too good-lookin’!”

  Franky said, “What you do next?”

  “I got to clean up the house. Everybody come here this evening, and in the morning we go to the church and have the funeral and then they put . . . him . . . in his ground.”

  Franky said, “I meant you. What’s gonna happen to you?”

  Opal wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Miss Sallie telegraphed. She can’t come home for her daddy’s buryin’, can’t leave the hospital on account of they waiting on a big fight. But she ain’t been home one time since she was sent away. You ask me, she’s ashamed.”

  “On account of Jesse?”

  “That child never did have good sense. When Jesse run away and came knockin’ at her door she should’ve told him come to us. We could’ve cared for him.”

  “Jesse—you think he livin’?”

  “Nary a word. Rufus and him, they dead and buried for all we know. You gonna work on that foot? Old Uther vain about his feet. He didn’t care about what shirt he wore or whether it was fresh but his shoes always brushed and good-looking. He liked to dance some in olden times.”

  “They have dances in them days?”

  “Long as there been people they been dancin!”

  “Maybe Miss Sallie buy you and set you free.”

  “Don’t want no more’n I got. Master Uther never once made me do what I didn’t want. When I say sell a calf, we sell it. When I say keep the calf, we keep it. When I say that horse don’t look too good, he needs some turpentine, he holds the horse’s head while I pour the turpentine.”

  “You gonna shave him?”