Jacob's Ladder

by Donald McCaig

  Major Young didn’t find that theory worthy of comment. “You know, Stump, that we will kill you. But we will not serve you as you have served so many of our men. We will not cut your throats but will give you a chance for your life. Ten rods start, on your own horse, with your spurs on. If you get away, so be it. But my men are dead shots.”

  Stump uncorked his flask, took a long swallow, and offered it to the major, who refused. Stump wiped his lips on his sleeve. “Couldn’t be fairer,” he said. “Fairest thing in the world.”

  One Federal used a dead horse’s reins to tie a stick to Stump’s leg as a splint. Others were gathering wood for cookfires or preparing rations. When a fellow skidded down the bank with an armload of canteens and ended up sitting in the river, his friends thought that it was pretty funny.

  Two men lifted Stump onto his horse. His leg jutted to the side. Stump leaned forward to mutter in his horse’s ear. When he was finished, he patted the beast distractedly, turned to the major to ask, “Say, Major, have I time for a prayer?” and at the same instant spurred his mount. Before the invisible ten-rod boundary Stump slipped over in his saddle, clinging to his horse’s far side like a red Indian. The Federals fired, Stump and horse crumpled, and the horse rolled over on him. All that was visible above the horse’s body was his splinted leg, sticking up like a flag. One of the Federals walked over and fired twice: once for the horse.

  “Sic transit gloria,” Alexander said.

  “Sir?” Major Young turned his head.

  “I believe the dauntless Captain Stump has been daunted.”

  “Are you by chance an educated man?”

  “I attended two years at Yale but was an indifferent student. I knew some Latin, and phrase books easily persuaded others of my learning. I have found the world an inhospitable place and greatly prefer lies and dreams.”

  “I was a professor of rhetoric myself,” the major noted. “In Philadelphia.”

  “I taught at a women’s seminary in Staunton. I can’t recall the name of the place. I ruined a girl and married her. It’s the damnedest thing but I cannot recall her face.”

  “Are you one of Captain Stump’s officers?”

  “Do I hear you aright? Do you imagine that Captain Stump had officers?”

  “Would you make Captain Stump’s wager?”

  “I am no horseman.” Alexander paused. “Tell me, sir. Do you think there are mermaids?”

  “Mermaids? I do not.”

  “The mermaid I saw as a boy was hideous. How is it, sir, that our dreams are so much more beautiful than anything actual?”

  “Do you wish to write a letter? Is there one who would wish to know your fate?”

  A trooper flung a rope over a tree limb. Another was grooming his horse. One went to the roadside to pee.

  “I cannot believe there is a living soul who gives a damn about me,” Alexander said.

  “You are an honest man,” Major Young said. “How did you fall in with these thieves?”

  “I was not an honest man when I fell in with them.”

  CHRISTMAS GIFT

  STRATFORD PLANTATION, VIRGINIA

  DECEMBER 24, 1864

  THE SECOND FLOOR of Stratford House smelled of asafetida and Grandmother Gatewood’s lavender. Duncan’s bed was soft and too short. That lithograph on the wall: the sword Excalibur clutched by an unearthly hand above a foggy lake—what did it mean? When Duncan stretched, his knuckles struck the headboard.

  Thick walls and doors prevented his hearing the prayers offered by Grandmother and her great-granddaughter Pauline in Grandmother’s room. Duncan was incurious about the content of Grandmother’s prayers but suspected that had they been answered, much of the county would have been reduced to ashes.

  Poor dear Leona. Duncan sat bolt upright extracting his mind from the image of his sister buried in the frozen ground.

  A thought hovered at the edge of Duncan’s mind that Catesby had propelled Leona to her fate, but the thought found no purchase. Catesby had been Duncan Gatewood’s friend, and in some respects Duncan was (and was entirely determined to remain) simple-hearted.

  Winter had frozen the armies in place, so Sallie Kirkpatrick could get leave from Camp Winder. They’d taken the canal boat to Lexington, and Duncan’s horse had carried them through the Goshen Pass and over Warm Springs Mountain to Stratford.

  He slipped on his shirt and buttoned it. He prepared each pant leg before he stepped into it. He wriggled socks up his ankles, started his boot, and forced his heel. When he was a boy he had flung his clothes on, buttoning his shirt as he raced down the stairs. Duncan dismissed that thought too.

  Outside Grandmother’s door, Duncan sang out, “Good morning, Grandmother! Pauline!” Pauline returned a muffled greeting.

  His father sat at table, cup between his hands. The room was still elegant. Blue willow plates lined the shelves of the china press, its mahogany veneer doors still shone, the chair rail was recently dusted, the lithograph of Washington at Mount Vernon hung straight. His father’s gray bristles were three days old and his shirt hadn’t been changed recently.

  Old Pompey marched in with a silver coffeepot polished until the eye winced at the glare. “I know Master Duncan be wantin’ his coffee, first thing,” Pompey chuckled. “This parched corn ain’t so good as the old-timey coffee, but it ain’t too bad. No sir! Ain’t too bad.” He paused. “Master Duncan, it sure good have you back home. Yes, sir. We can face all these hard times together!”

  “Thank you, Pompey,” Samuel Gatewood grumbled. “Will you see if you can spur Franky to alacrity?”

  “I don’t know if she got any of that alacrity, but that Franky! Man can never tell.”

  Samuel Gatewood’s look meant: “See what I have to put up with?”

  And old Pompey’s departing chuckle meant: “Oh, these white folks too much for me.”

  The parched coffee wasn’t worth much either.

  Samuel said, “Young Thomas sleeps late. I see the army hasn’t improved him in that respect.”

  “He’s young yet. Bones still growing.”

  “God, how I fear for him!” Startled by his own outburst, Samuel blinked. “You’d think the government could leave us something. They are taking our seed corn.”

  Duncan said, “Our officers try to keep the young boys out of the worst fighting. I’ve spoken to Thomas’s colonel.”

  “Institute cadets died at the fighting at New Market! Boys of fifteen!” Samuel sighed. “I begged him to stay through the spring planting, but he would enlist. He would!” Uncomfortably, Samuel shifted in his chair. “As cold as this winter has been, spring will be slow to arrive.”

  “Won’t the government return your servants it has rented?”

  His father shook his head. “Some have run away, and four fulltask hands died. Richmond’s climate is not salubrious for coloreds. Along with its annual accounting of my confiscated property, our Confederate government appends a promissory note which I faithfully carry to the National Bank of Hot Springs, where it is credited to my account with the ledger notation that my deposit was scrip, not gold, and will be repaid in the same valuable consideration.”

  Franky backed in with a tray. “Here you is, Master Duncan. Your favorite! Probably every man’s favorite! I seen many a man tuck into my ham and cornbread and never a one didn’t come back for more. That Rufus, he always came back for more.”

  Duncan swallowed. He could not tell Franky about Rufus because he could not tell his father he’d set Jesse free.

  After Franky went out, Samuel Gatewood rubbed his eyes. “Amos Hevener’s son is a deserter and lives miserably in that saltpeter cave above Benson’s Run. What will we think about the boy when all this is over?” Samuel eyed the lithograph of Washington as if that patriot were privy to his thoughts and announced: “Honor is neither goodness nor kindness nor Christian charity: it is honor!”

  “Father . . .”

  “When I did not challenge John Dinwiddie for killing my father, I believed
I took the more Christian course. Father’s dishonor was Father’s, not mine, and could not be expunged by anything I might do. I was young, I was wrong.”

  Samuel looked so miserable Duncan longed to say something to help, but only perfect words would not be resented.

  “My son, honor can scrub the stain of dishonor. General Lee’s father was a debtor, his half brother, Harry, a wretch; has not the general’s honor erased the Lee family’s stain?

  “And you . . .” He motioned at Duncan’s arm. “Have not your terrible wounds restored our family’s honor?”

  At Duncan’s protest, Samuel raised a hand. “Had I demanded satisfaction for my father’s shabby death, I do not believe Grandmother Gatewood would have become the creature she has become. And had Grandmother not amplified Leona’s grief, perhaps my dear daughter would still be with us.”

  “Father, fever took Leona.”

  Samuel Gatewood’s eyes were tired and hot. Each word dripped from his tongue. “Had I behaved honorably, you would not have allowed yourself to be seduced by that jezebel Maggie . . .”

  “Midge.”

  Samuel’s headshake was a horse dislodging a fly. “At her wedding to Jesse, I named her Maggie.”

  “She was Midge when I knew her.”

  Samuel drew breath. “Duncan, I have considered these matters! I confess that all our family’s problems were created by my disregard for honor.”

  “Yes, sir,” Duncan said. After a thoughtful moment he picked up his fork, smiled, and said, “We don’t get ham like this in Petersburg.”

  Samuel coughed and murmured, “Aunt Opal is a treasure. Her husbandry keeps all Stratford in meat.”

  A moment later, wan Pauline slipped in to make up Grandmother Gatewood’s tray (gruel, a single weak cup of precious tea) and tiptoe back upstairs.

  When Abigail and Sallie Kirkpatrick joined them, the older woman glowed with pleasure, “Dear Duncan, it is so good to have you here. Stratford has seemed empty without you. My son . . .” She patted his hand. She beamed.

  Sallie collected Pompey’s brilliant coffeepot and more cups. “Sir, may I pour you another?”

  “One cup is all I take. Even when we are furnished with real coffee, I only take a single cup.”

  Sallie said that coffee was one of the few commodities in short supply at Camp Winder. “I believe that if Surgeon Lane could find the beans, he’d swap them for medicines. Men don’t understand how small comforts heal.”

  From her arrival just a week ago, the young woman had made herself indispensable, helping with the household work, invigorating the female side. It had been Sallie who insisted on the German tree that now adorned the parlor, she who claimed that holiday cakes made with maple syrup or honey were every bit as good as those made with sugar. “And,” she’d concluded triumphantly, “we have flour! Why, if a household in Richmond had as much flour as Stratford, its neighbors would gnash their teeth in envy. And there are apples in the cellar and Kieffer pears and, oh my, everything a holiday household could desire.”

  So, Stratford was to celebrate Christmas despite itself. Abigail went to the attic and emerged three hours later bearing mysterious articles and a generous coating of dust. Samuel shot a deer, which hung for a week in the root cellar before he and Jack butchered it. And the day before, accompanied by Pompey, Samuel traveled to SunRise and fetched two small hogsheads of whiskey and a mysterious something which vanished into his spartan office. There were Christmas whisperings and secrecy and anticipations, and Abigail asked Sallie to help her complete the servant’s annual clothing issue, since Grandmother Gatewood would not help clothe those who plotted to run away and (she was certain) had celebrated Lincoln’s reelection. Hadn’t Grandmother heard an uproar in the Quarters the same day the grim news reached Stratford, and hadn’t two laying hens disappeared for the coloreds’ victory celebration? Why should she loom for an ungrateful people?

  “Oh, Grandmother,” Abigail sighed.

  Sallie and Abigail spent hours sewing in Abigail’s bedroom and talked with the frankness of women who have decided to be friends.

  Now, the morning before the celebration, Duncan said, “Sallie, you’ve been wanting to see your homeplace, and I’d enjoy a ride.”

  Samuel Gatewood checked the mantel clock. “Young Thomas would wish to accompany you. I’ll see he rises.”

  Abigail Gatewood said, “Samuel, I’m sure that had Duncan desired Thomas’s company, he would have said so.”

  Samuel Gatewood flushed. Although he had welcomed Sallie Kirkpatrick to his home, he had little to say to her, and in the evening when everyone gathered in the parlor, Samuel retired early. To his wife, Samuel confessed, “I like the girl—even admire her. But she calls forth memories I’d sooner suppress.”

  The road along the river was coated with unblemished snow, and the horse’s breath plumed from his nostrils. Duncan’s horse had filled out on Aunt Opal’s oats and was frisky despite his double load. Signs of Stratford Plantation’s wartime neglect, the flourishing crops of thistles, washouts, and depleted fields, were healed by snow. It was as it had been when Duncan was a boy.

  “Can we stop at the graveyard?” Sallie asked.

  The Stratford graveyard contained Uther Botkin’s remains beside his beloved wife’s. Leona Byrd’s fresh mound was between Catesby Byrd’s slightly sunken one and infant Willie’s tiny grave. Sallie laid her wrap in the snow and knelt upon it to pray while Duncan stood awkwardly, hat in hands.

  Fine scalloped clouds connected horizon to horizon, and Snowy Mountain seemed impossibly high. When Sallie rose to her feet, Duncan said, “Poor Catesby. God, how I miss that man.”

  Sallie asked about Pauline, and Duncan said she was young yet. Pauline would not grieve forever.

  “But Duncan, we do grieve forever.”

  Aunt Opal wanted them to look for a feral sow who had taken her brood to the woods when all the other hogs were driven to Stratford. Duncan angled his horse along the logging road which Aunt Opal had said was the sow’s “stamping grounds,” and though they saw plenty of stamping, big tracks and little ones, they saw no sow until they neared the Botkin outbuildings, when, with two grunts and a squeal, Mama and her small porkers scurried from the empty horse barn to the safety of the woods.

  Sallie laughed. “Aunt Opal will come up here every evening for a week and lay out food until she can close the barn doors on that sow. When it comes to a battle of wits between woman and pig, wager on the woman every time.”

  Uncut dead grass surrounded the porch of the shuttered house. Without its rocking chairs, the porch seemed too empty, naked. Duncan said, “I’ll open the shutters while you start a fire,” and gave Sallie the key for the brass padlock. Duncan could not remember a time when Uther Botkin’s house had been locked.

  He dallied with the shutters outdoors to give Sallie time to reacquaint herself with her childhood home. When she came out, she said, “Oh, it is as cold as the tomb.”

  “Then we’ll sit outside as we did when we were Uther’s prize scholars.”

  “You were no prize!”

  He laughed, and after a time she laughed with him. He tucked Sallie’s wrap around her shoulders. She said, “Leona, Jesse, you, and me: what an odd company we were. Oh, Duncan, poor Leona so hoped her prettiness would bring her happiness and so feared it might not. Thank God Jesse is safe!”

  “First Sergeant Jesse Burns, if you please.”

  Sallie said, “Jesse was like an older brother to me.”

  Duncan stuffed his pipe with tobacco. “When I went with Spaulding, I didn’t know what he intended and certainly didn’t expect to see anyone I knew. It was a small park where they’d had band concerts before the war! The prisoners were just black faces, indistinguishable as peas in a pod. Colored Federal soldiers, that’s all they were, and although I didn’t wish them ill, I cannot say I wished them well. When Jesse called out from that welter of misery my heart jumped. A chill palsied me. Here, in this damnable place, was one I knew. When I rec
ognized Jesse’s face the other faces became men.” Tears welled unheeded from Duncan’s eyes. “My God, Sallie, what have we done?”

  Sallie said, “Yes, Duncan. If you still want me, I will marry you.”

  The pale sun reached its zenith and drove every shadow into hiding. After the fire had warmed the house, Duncan and Sallie pulled Uther Botkin’s bed near to the fire and covered the straw tick with a faded blue-and-red quilt that years ago had made the journey to this place in Sallie’s mother’s hope chest; and for the first time, they made love.

  On Christmas eve, as was their winter custom, the white Stratford family gathered for dinner at six o’clock. Though that custom had originated in happier times when evening chores kept everyone working until dark, they had not changed the hour.

  Though Samuel hadn’t shaved, tonight he wore a clean shirt and a not too rumpled jacket. As another concession, instead of reading in his study, he remained in the front parlor, where Abigail and Sallie talked as they sewed. When the tall clock in the hall boomed the hour of six, Samuel wound his watch and ushered the ladies into the dining room.

  Since lamp oil could not be had at any price, beeswax candles illuminated the room, their sputters magnified in crystal clusters dangling from each candlestand and chandelier. Drafts shivered the crystals and redirected dancing lights around the walls.

  The front quarters of the Christmas deer had become a stew, which steamed pleasantly in its heavy tureen. Spinach, which had stayed green in the garden under a comforter of straw, heaped another bowl. A platter on the sideboard held cornbread, yellow as butter. As a centerpiece, one apple per diner formed a pyramid. Samuel Gatewood’s decanter stood at his place and his glass was already filled.

  Young Thomas Byrd clattered downstairs. “Sorry, sorry. Uncle Duncan, I have been reading Hardee’s Tactics all afternoon and my head is dreadfully sore. How do soldiers understand this thick stuff?” Thomas’s gray uniform was brushed, his boots neatly blacked, and he set his cap precisely on the sideboard. He adjusted his pant legs and perched on the very rim of his seat. Samuel Gatewood permitted himself a smile. He nearly said Thomas needn’t “sit” on formalities here, but swallowed his jest.