The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

  “Where’s Sergeant Cashwell?” John asked Carrie.

  “In the house, John. He’ll be fine.”

  Carrie plucked at a few hard clods of cold, crumbling dirt. She didn’t look up, but she didn’t sound frightened, either.

  “What do you mean, ‘fine’?” John said. “Why did he spend the night in that hole, then?”

  “The worst of them passed on by in the night, the men who would have taken things into their own hands, for revenge. They passed right on by, and I assume that this man is someone official. I’m not afraid of the officials.”

  John wasn’t as certain of things, but he looked at Mariah and she seemed equally calm. He watched the man approach on foot, having tied his horse to the porch rail. He got within thirty feet before hailing them.

  “Is this the McGavocks’?”

  “I am John McGavock.”

  The man stopped and scratched his head again.

  “Where are all the rebels?”

  “Dead or gone. Except for the few, the worst off. This was a hospital.”

  The man looked at John with relief, and John knew that here was a man uncomfortable with his role. He looked like he’d spent the war behind a desk, transcribing messages for far more important men, men he feared and despised. He was pale and baggy, slightly gin-blossomed, and he wore his uniform stiffly in the way of men who could not forget what they were wearing. Such men wrote out the orders, saw to their delivery, kept the casualty lists, composed the triumphant white lies telegraphed back to headquarters, and ensured that the men who told those lies were always comfortable and well nourished. John knew men like the one standing in front of him, scratching his head and adjusting his collar. He knew that they were the men who made the war work. Not the ones who waged the war, but the ones who made it easier. There were such men on both sides. He wondered if he would have been such a man had he gone off to battle. He felt some measure of sadness for the man, knowing how he must have spent the war: unappreciated and resentful, perhaps even remorseful. He was not a happy man.

  “So there are only a few prisoners?”

  “We think of them as patients, although the doctors ran off days ago. Not prisoners. Certainly not our prisoners.”

  The man let slip a little smile and a glimpse of unusually small and white teeth. He had very few opportunities to assert himself, John reckoned, and he was happy for this one.

  “They are most certainly prisoners, by order of General John Schofield, U.S. Army. All Confederate soldiers who cannot be moved for health and general brokenness—and I have been appointed the judge of that, sir—shall be prisoners in effect, if not in fact. And at such time that the prisoner regains his health and mobility, he shall be remanded to our custody to be transported to prison.”

  John thought, He must have memorized that, or his English has been corrupted by his work.

  “I am Major Jonathan Van der Broeck, and I will be acting as garrison commander of the wounded, under the direct commission of General Schofield himself. I will need an accounting of each of the men under your care, to include their name, rank, unit, and state of origin. My assistant, Sergeant Allston, will be along to pick up the list and to make a preliminary inspection of the premises. Once a week I will be arriving to inspect the condition of each of your patients and to determine their ability to travel.”

  “That seems like a lot of fuss for so few men, Major Van der Broeck.”

  A pained look broke through the officiousness. Van der Broeck shook his head.

  “There are wounded men all over this town, in every church and parlor big enough to hold them. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Didn’t you notice? I believe I may have the largest command of any major in the army, even if most of them are rebels. Not that I would keep track of such things.”

  He nodded to Carrie, who had come to stand beside John, and turned on his heel. John could sense the burden of things lifting off all of them and dissipating. He imagined them all floating off. Carrie broke his reverie, as she was wont to do. He loved that she wasn’t floating away but standing on the ground behind him.

  “So they’re not taking him anywhere?”

  “Them.”

  “All of them. They’re staying?”

  “It appears so. For the moment.”

  If he looked at it from the right angle, John could imagine that nothing had happened and nothing had changed. The town was back in the control of the Union, and his house was a hospital again. The war had subsided around them, and if he stayed out of town, he wouldn’t have to reckon with the changes it had wrought. Even the piles of men and uniforms and gear that had ringed his house were gone, carted off without John noticing.

  “Nothing will be the same again,” Carrie said. She was reading his mind but drawing the wrong conclusion.

  “It will be better,” he said.

  “For whom?”

  John turned around and faced her, and could see Mariah and Theopolis gathering up their things.

  “You think it will be better for Mariah and Theopolis, John?”

  John looked down at Carrie. She looked at him without sadness or judgment, just curiosity. Sadness and judgment were such familiar expressions it took him a second to register this new one.

  “For those two?”

  “Them. And the rest of them.”

  “I don’t know. It is better that the war has gone away, no matter what else happens.”

  “I’m not as sure of that. I can’t see into the future.”

  “Perhaps you should ask Mariah, then.”

  “What would she know, John? What are you suggesting?”

  “Only that she knows things, you’ve said so yourself. I’m not saying anything more about that.”

  “She knows things? You believe that now? I thought you didn’t believe in such superstitions.”

  Mariah had stopped tidying up the cemetery and stood waiting for them, looking straight at John. Nothing had changed about her except the wrinkles of her brow, which had smoothed out and relaxed, as if she had nothing to fear or worry about. He could see that she would never be his slave again, no matter what he chose to call her. Theopolis, standing behind her but avoiding his eye, still acted like a slave, but John could see that this would change also. He had lost his power, not only over them but over his wife, too. And probably his children? Yes, them, too. It was a relief.

  “Oh, just ask her, Carrie.”

  He drew her close and embraced her briefly and chastely, like a sister. He goosed her side, and she slapped at his hand. That would change, too, he thought. His feelings for her. Passion. It would change. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

  32

  ZACHARIAH CASHWELL

  One morning after my night in the hole I woke up to see Mr. John McGavock sitting in a cane-back chair at the end of my bed, his head hung down between his shoulders like a man carrying a great weight without any hope of letting it go. I had noticed he didn’t often talk to Carrie. He looked like he was in trouble, like he was a boy just been blessed out. I was starting to feel like a prisoner and a geek in a carnival, everyone gawking at me. I wondered what business he had with me, what I could possibly tell him. I spoke up anyway, seemed polite.

  “I’m Zachariah Cashwell.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you. Around the house. I notice things.”

  Then I saw him pull a thin knife from his coat pocket, the kind of thing you might use to bone a chicken. Oh boy, I thought, the man of the house has a knife, and here I am. I didn’t like the way he said “notice,” as if I’d done something with his wife, but I didn’t think it was the right time to square the record. He looked like a rich man who had become tired of owning things.

  “Now that you’re awake, Mr. Cashwell, did you know your head is bleeding?”

  I could feel a drop of blood run down behind my ear.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what, may I ask?”

  “For telling me about my head.”

  “I tho
ught you might have meant something else.”

  “I don’t know what else. Thanks for letting me stay here in this room at knifepoint?”

  “This knife isn’t for you.”

  “You going to fight off the Union boys all by yourself with that knife?”

  “Not Union.”

  “Who? Niggers?”

  “Confederates. Your people. My people.”

  Now, that was something I hadn’t been expecting. It hadn’t crossed my mind that he might be a sympathizer, a Union man. He looked like all of the men who ever came to the train depots to make speeches about our courage and sacrifice and honor and the rest of that mess. He looked like a politician, sideburns and all. He’d allowed his house to be overrun by us, and his wife to tend us. He couldn’t be one of them.

  “Why are you afraid of them?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Suppose it is.”

  I wondered if every member of the McGavock family was going to take their turn sitting across from me and staring. McGavock looked at me not like he hated me, but like he had no use for me, which didn’t make me feel any safer in his care. I figured I’d have to take care of myself if it came to that. But he just kept looking and looking at me. There wasn’t much else to look at, I’ll admit to that, but it didn’t seem very polite.

  “You and my wife get along well.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. McGavock. I think she’d as soon beat me over the head as listen to me, truth be told.”

  “She wants you to stay here. Very much.”

  “She’s a kind lady, Mr. McGavock, and I reckon she don’t think I’m healthy yet.”

  “I don’t think that’s it. I should be jealous, shouldn’t I?”

  “No cause, sir. Please believe me about that.”

  “I don’t know you, and therefore I have no reason to trust you on such a matter. I should throw you out. I should beat you down for trifling with my wife. That’s what most men would do, hmm?”

  “I haven’t trifled with her, sir.”

  “No, I don’t believe you have. Any other woman, I’d think that you had, but not with my wife. Carrie would not let herself be trifled with, I know that much. And so, although I don’t know what kind of person you are, I know that she is fond of you, and I will not come between her and a new friend, even if he is most unsuitable. I’ve learned that I have not the standing to intervene, I have much damage to undo. And she’s had so few friends. This does not mean that you and I are friends, although I will be as charitable and assume you are an honorable man worthy of my respect. I trust my wife in this matter.”

  I didn’t have anything to say about any of that. I had never heard a man talk of his woman that way, but what he said seemed right. I just hadn’t decided what it was that Carrie wanted from me, exactly, and I could see that he didn’t know, either. McGavock turned his head and spit. There was a little blood in it, and I looked at him and realized that his face looked sour because he was chewing on his cheek pretty damned hard. He was nervous. He pulled out a flask and took a long pull, the kind of drink a man takes when he’s getting ready to drink and keep drinking. He offered it to me, and we drank together.

  “You killed men. Correct, Mr. Cashwell?”

  “Yes, sir. I didn’t ever stick around to check to make sure they were dead, but I had a good notion about it.”

  “But you killed men up close?”

  “Sometimes. Most of the time it wasn’t exactly a close thing, with bayonets and knives and all that. Just shooting at lines of men who were shooting at you, mostly.”

  “Have you ever examined your work?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you ever have the opportunity to quietly contemplate the killing of a man and then to see it done just as you imagined?”

  “Never quietly, and it was never like I imagined. It was worse.”

  “I see. Pity.”

  “Reckon I don’t see it that way.”

  “Forgive me. What I mean, Mr. Cashwell, is that what you’re describing sounds so uncivil. Chaotic.”

  “That hasn’t been much of a problem in my life. Being civil or not, I mean. Nobody expected it of me, one way or the other.”

  McGavock spit again. The walls began to fade. I realized I wasn’t blinking. Something had happened to that poor son of a bitch. Or he’d done something I didn’t want to hear about. I distracted myself by stretching out my leg and yawning.

  “You’ve been with whores, though, Mr. Cashwell?”

  “I’ve known some, yes.”

  “Known how?”

  “Some of my aunt’s friends. My aunt and uncle owned a saloon back home. She was a religious lady who thought she was called to take care of the women who worked out of the bedrooms upstairs. She was their friend. My uncle took some of their money, but they were happy to give it because my aunt was so kind. She never let me upstairs.”

  McGavock raised his eyebrows, and then he laughed.

  “You grew up in a whorehouse.”

  “A saloon.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He fell to thinking, and running his hand through his hair. He stopped chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “What is your opinion of the whore?”

  “Which one?”

  “As a group. All of them.”

  “I don’t know all of them.”

  McGavock began to laugh, and then he stopped. He had been all set to laugh at me because I was so goddamned dumb. I knew this, because I was trying to be dumb. I’d found that if they thought you were dumb, they’d quit talking to you after a while. But his laugh stopped before he could get off a good smile, and his face twisted back down until it was serious again. Only his eyes were big as supper plates.

  “You don’t know all of them. That’s right. That’s right. You don’t. No one does. That’s exactly right.”

  Then he did smile, but it was a kind smile. He smiled and he patted his knees. Pat. Pat. Pat. Real slow, like he had just thought of something but he couldn’t remember what it was.

  “You’ll have to stay with us. You’re in no condition to be captured and taken away.”

  “I suppose not, Mr. McGavock. Thank you.”

  He told me his whole story then. It took hours, back to when he was a young man. I listened close. There were sounds come from outside the room every once in a while, and one time I thought I heard soldiers arguing with themselves, but no one ever found us. His story made me very happy, which sounds wrong. But I was looking at a man who was just a man. Not a special man, just a man, and that meant I could be a man like him someday, with a house and a family like his. And a wife like his.

  33

  CARRIE MCGAVOCK

  Becky did not stay away from the house for very long, even after I sent her and her brother away for their own safety. I hadn’t really expected her to stay away after watching her tend the men, always appearing to be looking for someone who never appeared. A day or so later she was back, already changing bandages and water when I awoke and went into the sickrooms. I suppose she thought they might still be bringing wounded to the house and that one of them might be the man she was looking for or someone who had news of him. If she was disappointed to discover that no one had arrived in her absence, she didn’t show it. No one had arrived since the second day, although many had departed this house and this world. She kept working, which I understood to be her way of maintaining her dignity and guarding her heart. I had known women like her but older, poor, sharp-faced women who would not acknowledge having anything to do other than to work until they died, and for whom boundless labor guarded them against the perils of unreasonable hopes and foolish dreams. Dreams of love, for instance. I prayed that she would find this man, that he would help free her, and that they would indeed love each other unreasonably and foolishly. And what do you know of love, Carrie McGavock? I thought. Perhaps not very much, but I was learning.

  I didn’t say anything to her when I saw her aga
in, and she said nothing to me. I just walked over and helped her tie off the bandage on the stump of a man with long, hairy arms and a soft, lively red face. He looked kind. Could you love him instead? I thought, but knew better than to say anything.

  Becky was standing in the house with the others, the ravaged and maimed, when John rode up and told me that Will Baylor had been killed, that he had been to see Mrs. Baylor. My first thought was that he was one of thousands, and so why was that news? But then I remembered that Will Baylor had been my favorite among the Baylors, the most intelligent and witty and thoughtful of the bunch. The prettiest, too. I said a silent prayer and didn’t think much more about it right then.

  When I went back into the house, I found Becky standing stock-still and mute, her arms rigid at her sides and her fingers splayed apart, palms forward. She was not looking at me, she was looking up into the ceiling. I could tell she was trying to see up through it, into the sky, and on to whatever it was that ruled above us, because I had made that very same gesture too often to forget. It was the posture of a woman frozen by her pain and hatred.

  I knew then that Will Baylor had been her beau. Damn him, damn him, I thought. What was he doing toying with a girl like that? That wasn’t fair, that was damned awful of him. I felt shame immediately. I knew nothing about them. I barely understood myself in these matters. I thought of Cashwell off in his room.

  Of course, I went to Becky and took her in my arms, and she sobbed and sobbed, always wiping the tears from her face before they could run onto my dress, but I just hugged her harder. Then I brought her into the parlor to sit down.

  She said nothing for a while and just struggled mightily to take back her tears. Eventually she stood up and said she had work to do, that it was nothing, that it was the strain of the war that had toyed with her head but that she was all right now.

  “Sit,” I said.

  She sat down, and the tension seemed to run out of her. I thought she might faint. She sat on the chair with both feet planted before her and rested her chin on her chest.

  “Will Baylor. That’s the man.”

  The lights were low, and I could barely see her face, but nevertheless, I knew she was shocked to hear me say his name.