by Daren Wang
His tone was that of a grocer trying to sell rotten fruit.
“I have an agent on board who will incapacitate the officers. You and a team of raiders will seize the ship, free our soldiers, and transport them to the Buffalo waterfront. Once there, you’ll arm them with the weapons on board and you will turn the Michigan’s cannons on the city. The copperheads of Buffalo will rise up and join you, and you will lead the accumulated force, cutting a swath through New York toward Manhattan. Reinforcements will come up through Pennsylvania. On the way, you can stop at a certain little farm outside Buffalo where you will find your slave.”
It was so implausible that Yates laughed in Compson’s sad face.
“You want me to be the South’s John Brown?” he asked. “You know I was at his hanging, right?”
Compson pushed a roll of Union greenbacks across the table.
“Atlanta has fallen,” Compson said. “Savannah will be gone soon. You think you can live a life worth anything up here on this lake? You’re not a soldier, you’ve got no status. The Yankees will hang you as a spy when they finally track you down. And they will. You killed a U.S. marshal. That will not be forgotten. There are several other misdeeds around the border that I’m sure you have no alibi for. But do this, and everything you’ve done will be sanctioned under the cover of war. You’ll be a hero.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Or I’ll be hanged,” Yates said.
“The election is just weeks away. Open another front on the war, and the press and I will handle the rest. Lincoln will be out and McClellan will negotiate.”
Yates picked up the roll of money and counted it. Down South, they were using the Confederate bills as tinder. This much Union script could buy half of Alabama.
“Erastus Dratch is your second,” Compson said.
“Dratch?” Yates asked. “This really is suicide.”
“He’s the best we have. He’s done more to the Yankees than the Louisiana army, but he’s northern born. Richmond wanted your name on these orders. Your men will break into different teams, boarding at separate docks to keep down any suspicion.”
“I guess you knew how this would work even before you came here,” Yates said. “I wish you could move the Yankees around on the board like you do me.”
* * *
When the Philo Parsons docked, Yates disembarked to meet Dratch on the dock and to help load a crate of weapons, but Dratch lifted it on his own and pushed past him and up the gangplank.
“Out of my way, Your Highness,” he sneered.
Others came aboard at Sandwich, then at Malden, and finally at Kelly’s Island. At each stop, there were less than Yates had been told to expect and once they were all on board, he came up half a dozen short.
“Where are the others?” he asked after finding Dratch sitting on the crate on the aft deck.
“My lot got themselves some rum and ladies in the tavern last night,” Dratch said. “I couldn’t speak for the others.”
“Sir,” Dratch added, fitting as much scorn as possible into one syllable.
“We’ll make due with those we have,” Yates said. “We’ll take the pilothouse once we’re on the open water.”
Yates pulled his notes out, trying to sort through the substitution of duties as he walked away.
It was a half hour later when he and Dratch pushed into the tiny pilothouse.
“What are you doing?” the captain asked. “You can’t be in here.”
“We’re taking your boat,” Yates said. “Just do what I tell you and the Parsons will be fine.”
Dratch pulled the steam whistle, signaling the raiders to assemble on the aft deck.
Yates went astern to where the crated weapons had been piled, leaving Dratch in charge of the pilothouse. The guns were already being passed around. Yates scrambled to find a pistol, and was strapping on the holster when he heard the gunshot at the pilothouse. He rushed forward again.
The captain lay faceup at the threshold of the pilothouse.
Yates dropped to his knees. The man’s blood pooled on the deck, rippling in rhythm to the boat’s engine. The green aurora borealis reflected on his spectacles.
“What have you done?” Yates asked. “He’s a Canadian civilian. They’ll hang us.”
“He resisted.” Dratch cackled.
Yates put his hand on his holster, but Dratch just smiled and cocked his still-smoking pistol as he walked aft to where the other raiders had assembled the passengers and crew.
Yates climbed to his feet and grasped the wheel of the unpiloted boat in his bloody hands.
“Mr. Bell there just killed the captain,” he heard Dratch announce. “The one of you boys that knows how to steer this wreck is the one he is least likely to shoot next. Any takers?”
The brass levers and dials on the helm meant nothing to him. Yates scanned the horizon, looking into the night for any landmarks he recognized. He turned the Philo and aimed it west.
Dratch returned, his pistol leveled at a skinny mate in a worn peacoat with his hands in the air.
“Here’s your crew,” he said. “Issue your orders.”
“Oui?” the man asked.
Yates looked at him, baffled.
“Quel est le cours?”
“Parlez-vous Anglais?” Dratch asked.
“Non.”
“He doesn’t even speak English,” Yates said.
“He’s the pilot, the only one who can steer.” Dratch smiled with bemusement, then added, “Captain.”
“Sandusky?” Yates asked, but the sailor shrugged.
“L’Islande de Johnson près de Sandusky,” Dratch said, and pointed him toward the chart table.
The mate stepped over the pool of blood and riffled through cluttered drawers until he found a map to spread on the table.
“They speak that way up here,” Dratch said with derision. “How long have you been in this country?”
“Nous aurons besoin de plus de carburant,” the mate said. “Nous ne pouvons arrêter Middle Bass Islande.”
“Oui,” Dratch said, nodding.
“What did he say?” Yates asked.
Dratch continued his death’s head grin, but said nothing.
Yates pushed past him and out onto the deck.
One of the raiders went from passenger to passenger and had them empty their pockets into a canvas satchel.
“Stop that,” Yates ordered, but the thief paid him no mind.
Yates motioned for the raiders to gather, and after Dratch nodded, they formed a circle around him.
Yates looked at his notes and assigned each man’s task, explaining the mission to the men.
“Crikes,” one of the raiders blurted. “There’s fourteen guns on the Michigan. You won’t get to within a league of that thing before they sink this tub.”
“We have an operative on board,” Yates said. “He will poison the crew, and signal us with a flare when they are incapacitated.”
“Of all the harebrained, idiotic plots,” another raider said.
“This can save the Confederacy,” Yates said, not believing it as he said it.
“There ain’t going to be no Confederacy,” another said. “I’m through. I ain’t signing on for any more of this.”
Yates wasn’t sure how he’d found himself on this boat with these men. Not for the first time since he’d boarded he wished he’d strangled Compson that day and sailed away. But with the captain lying dead on the deck, there was no way but forward for him.
The pack of raiders started to break up, each man grumbling and heading in different directions.
“I’ll double your wages,” Yates said, pulling the roll of bills from his pocket. “That, and the loot of Buffalo will make you all rich men.”
The men did not turn back to him as he’d hoped.
“A flare, huh?” Dratch asked, coming up behind him. “It’ll never happen.”
“Make certain none of the passengers or crew have weapons,” Yates said to him
.
“The least of your worries,” Dratch said. “You should just kill them now.”
“Kill them?” Yates said. “We’ll release them at the fort.”
“They just witnessed you kill the captain on an international border,” Dratch said. “You really want to set them free?”
“You killed him, not me,” Yates said.
“That’s not what they think,” Dratch said.
The Philo Parsons plodded west and south through the day and the raiders found the hawker’s whiskey in the cargo hold. Yates ordered them to dump it overboard, but they brought the cask onto the aft deck and drank the afternoon away.
The passengers were crowded on the foredeck, and after seeing Dratch eyeing a pretty young lady, Yates took to standing watch over them himself.
When the Philo Parson’s engine idled down and the boat glided toward a small island’s dock, Yates scrambled to the pilothouse only to argue fruitlessly with the pilot.
He found Dratch throwing dice with the drunk raiders on the aft deck.
“Why are we stopping?” he demanded. “Order the pilot back underway.”
“We need to stop for fuel,” Dratch said.
“Fuel? You must be joking,” Yates shouted. “Every one of these men will jump ship if we land.”
“You don’t engender much loyalty, do you, Captain?” Dratch chuckled, then turned and went below. One of the men offered him the dice, and cackled at his back when he walked away.
When the boat reached the dock, Yates put the plank down and ushered the passengers off, followed by Dratch and his pistol.
“Load up on firewood,” Dratch shouted at them, motioning at the neatly stacked cords near the dock. “Get it done quick, and I’ll leave you here.”
Yates stood by the gangplank and watched.
Two raiders approached, perfumed in whiskey.
“Get back stern,” Yates said, hand on his pistol.
“We’re just going to help load,” one of them said.
“It’s handled,” Yates said.
The men disappeared around the cabin and Yates immediately heard splashing in the water on the far side of the boat. He rushed across the boat to see the same two swimming toward shore.
“Son of a bitch,” he shouted. He drew his pistol and fired at them, but they turned and waved, laughing as they climbed onto the rocky shore.
He rushed back over to the dock to see another man strolling down the gangway.
“Goddammit,” Yates screamed. “Get this thing under way.”
He pulled the plank back up himself and rushed to the pilothouse, shouting, “Go! Go!” at the Frenchman, hoping he at least knew that word.
He heard another raider jump over the rail and into the lake as the steamer lurched into motion. Once the boat was back on the open water, he circled the deck and counted six men, two of them sleeping off the day’s whiskey in the fall’s fading sun.
They still had not risen by the time the Michigan came into view under the harvest moon.
Yates ordered the boat idled, and stood at the prow, spyglass in hand, watching the gunship. He heard the pilot go overboard soon after sunset.
By midnight, the flare still had not come and the Philo Parsons rocked adrift and anchorless.
Yates stomped into the midst of his drunken team.
“Goddammit, we’re taking it anyway, full steam ahead,” he shouted, and fired his pistol into the air.
“Was there supposed to be an element of surprise in all this?” Dratch asked.
“Put that whiskey overboard,” Yates yelled. “Take up your rifles.”
One of the drunks laughed, and Yates fired in his direction.
“We can shoot this out if you want,” Dratch said, leveling his own pistol. “We all pretty much know how that’ll end. But Compson told me you had a mind to kill some nigger back Buffalo way, and far be it from me to interfere with that kind of work. Why don’t you hand me that bundle of notes you’ve been flashing, take the lifeboat, and paddle your way east?”
USCT
The recruiter looked at the pallid man leaning on his desk for support, and he looked down at the records on his desk.
“There’s not a unit that’ll take you,” he said. “Even your old tent mate wrote a report that called you unfit for duty.”
“Maybe the USCT?” Leander asked. “I’ve got a friend in the 78th.”
The recruiter looked over his glasses.
“Why didn’t you say so? Sure as shit you can join the colored troops. Damn, they’ll give you a commission if you want to mess around with the darkies.”
After the muster, the company took the train down to the new state of West Virginia.
The woods felt a lot like Town Line, but there were mountains overlooking the river that made him want to climb to the top every day.
The locals called them hills, but they seemed like mountains to him. When he had a free day, he’d climb as high as he could go and watch the earth below him.
At first they dug latrines, then they hauled provisions, then they filled in the latrines they had dug and dug new ones.
The work helped him feel strong again.
His CO told him that he might be reassigned to a white unit if he did well, but he squandered that opportunity after being spotted repeatedly in the latrine holes with the colored troops, pick in hand.
He slept well after each day’s work, and he woke each morning grateful for the long hours of peace. He had not seen Hans since the opium sweats had ended.
There wasn’t a day he didn’t want to find a den and feel that bliss again, and he was grateful to spend his days out in a field away from the town. Even in the camp, he could see others in the thrall. He knew he could find some with just a few questions.
He missed his friends, hoping there would come a day when he could think of them without shame.
He understood that the farm belonged to Mary now, but he hoped she might let him have a corner for himself someday. He wanted to make things grow again, to start fresh.
He’d been saving his money as a down payment.
Eventually his unit was moved on to more permanent construction. There was a redoubt on Loudoun Heights and a stone blockhouse at the crest of Maryland Heights. It was not a coincidence that the black troops did the work on everything with the word “heights” in it. The white troops laid the stone, but it was the 78th that hauled it the long miles up from barges on the Shenandoah.
Leander had hoped to lead the unit into combat, but his requisition for rifles was refused. Two of the men deserted the day he announced they would not get weapons, and those that stayed were often AWOL. Still, he kept more than most of the other USCT units.
Lately, even Malcolm had taken to slipping out at night, but unlike the others, he showed no sign of hangovers in the morning, and worked himself to exhaustion each day. Leander did what he could to cover for him. He’d never been worse off than the night Malcolm and the others on the farm had taken him in. When he looked back at it, he still couldn’t understand why they had.
He tried not to think of the debts he owed. There weren’t enough latrine holes in the Union Army for him to dig.
More than anything, it was those regrets that kept him from the smoke. He couldn’t bear the idea of being that man again.
The summer heat had faded and the leaves had taken a turn from green to red when Malcolm came to him before mess one morning and handed him a calling card with the words MADAME LEVANT, CHARLES TOWN printed on creamy, linen paper.
“Alaura,” he said. “I found Alaura.”
“What?” Leander asked.
“Joe’s sister,” Malcolm said. “He’s from around here, and I’ve been out each night looking for her. It’s the only thing he ever asked anyone for, help finding his sister.”
“You sure it’s her?” Leander asked.
“How many black girls you know with one eye green and one eye brown?” Malcolm asked. “I can’t break her out myself. I need your
help. I see you, I know you’ve been trying to make things right again. This is your chance. This is how you make it up to Joe.”
* * *
Nearby Harpers Ferry was occupied by the Union, and its streets were quiet and orderly. But twenty miles to the east, Charles Town had been occupied and abandoned so many times that it had slipped into its own private limbo.
The plantations had been laid to waste and the feed lots and cotton market had closed, and commerce more suited to armies of men had risen in their place.
A women in an alley could be engaged for the price of a newspaper, while the ones that strutted in the satin dresses on the balconies overhead required negotiations with a man stationed on the sidewalk below.
Leander followed Malcolm through the rain-slicked streets and saw the shadowed, below-street entrances where he was sure he could find a bed of filthy satin pillows to lie upon. He saw the glassy-eyed boys, stumbling and falling in the gutters and wished he could pick up each of them, shake them to their senses. As much as the offerings tempted him, they disgusted him more.
Uniformed soldiers stood on corners under gaslights, skirted by the negotiators and their customers. With neither the will nor the means to impede the trade, the Union Army sent them out to ensure that the commerce remained civil and the armed men resolved their conflicts with nothing more than fists.
Leander looked at the calling card again. Malcolm’s face had glowed with pride when he showed it to Leander, but each time Leander asked how he had gotten it, the story had gotten more convoluted, and eventually he gave up on trying to get the real story.
“Are you sure you know where you are going?” he asked.
“It’s up here,” Malcolm said, leading him through the crowds.
Turning the corner onto Congress Street was like entering another world. The houses were set back from the street, and the lawns were perfect squares of vibrant green under gaslight. The paint was all fresh, and the streets clean.
The single-shot pistol strapped to his calf shifted as he walked. He bent down to tie his shoes, adjusting it when he was sure no one was watching.
The Levant house would not serve the drunkards of Mildred Street, nor would it serve a lowly lieutenant with USCT pinned to his collar. Malcolm’s plan required something different, and Leander spent much of his savings on an outfit that would get him into the upscale whorehouse. He could not deny that the tailored clothes brought him a bittersweet pleasure.