North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  “D’ja hear what the soldier said? No niggers from this town wanted in the You-nited States Army. Now you turn around and shuffle back to your shanty, boy, or they’ll be pickin’ pieces of your black balls outa this here dirt for weeks.” A pause. “Boy? You hear me? Don’t just stand there when a white man—”

  “Let him pass.”

  The voice out of blue shadow spun all three of them. Billy stepped to the sunlit walk, halting just short of the recruiting office door. He couldn’t see who was inside, but clearly they had no heart for intervening. Damn fool, Billy called himself, conscious of the absence of a side arm. A crawl of sweat reached his beard from under his left eye.

  Fessenden was the only member of the trio to recognize him. “This is no damn affair of yours, Hazard.”

  “He has a right to present himself for enlistment if he wants.”

  “A right?” The knife carrier guffawed. “Since when’s a coon got any—?”

  Billy overlapped him, louder. “So let him pass.”

  “Tell him to go fuck, Lute,” the third man said.

  Fessenden scratched his stubbly chin, mumbling, “Shit, I dunno, boys. He’s a wounded veteran like me.”

  “I’ve been told you were wounded in the tail,” Billy said “While you were running.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Fessenden yelled, but it was the pimply one with the knife who took action, loping at Billy. Hastily, Billy backed against the building, broke the string on the strop, unrolled the leather, and laid it full force across the attacker’s face

  “Oh, my God.” Shrieking, he dropped the knife. A purpling welt striped him from brow to chin. The leather had drawn blood as well.

  Under the heavy bandages, Billy’s wound throbbed. Dizziness assailed him suddenly. Bending and watching Billy at the same time, the pimply young man groped for his knife. Billy kicked it off the wooden walk into the dust. Fessenden gave him an outraged look, heaved an aggrieved sigh.

  “Shit,” he said again. “Next thing, you’ll be tellin’ us this nigger oughta vote—just like white men.”

  “If he’s allowed to die for the government, I guess he should be allowed to vote for it, wouldn’t you say, Lute?”

  Snickers of disbelief. “Jesus,” Fessenden said, shaking his head. “What’d they do to you in the army? You’ve turned into one of them goddamn radicals.”

  It was nearly as surprising to Billy as to them. He had spoken out of conviction, one that had been growing without full awareness on his part until this contretemps demanded the translation of conviction to deed. He rippled the strop against his leg.

  “Have I? Well—so be it.”

  He looked at the pimply lout and, summoning his best West Point upperclassman’s voice, bellowed, “Get the hell away from me, you garbage.” He raised the strop. “That’s an order.”

  The pimply young man ran like a deer, nearly knocking Pinckney Herbert from his observation place in front of his store.

  Billy glanced at the Negro boy. “You can go on inside.”

  The boy walked toward Lute Fessenden. He didn’t hurry, but neither did he waste time while he was within Fessenden’s reach. But Fessenden just watched him, turning as he passed, repeatedly shaking his head.

  Before the boy entered the office, he gave Billy a smile. He said, “Thank you, sir,” and was gone.

  Billy raised the strop, intending to roll it up again. The sudden motion made Fessenden’s other companion flinch visibly. Though Billy felt a mite guilty about it, he milked the moment, drawing the strop ever so slowly and provocatively across his open left palm. Fessenden’s companion drew back.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” Billy barked. The frightened man jumped, grabbing Fessenden’s arm.

  “Let go of me, for Chrissake.” Fessenden shook him off, and the two shamed whites quickly disappeared around the corner.

  Shameless, Billy said to himself. Absolutely shameless, that last part. It relieved his guilt to recall that the two were deserving.

  Pinckney Herbert ran down the sidewalk to shake his hand. Billy had all but forgotten about the painful wound. He felt fine: wickedly amused, unexpectedly proud, gloriously alive.

  130

  RAIN FELL ON THE low country that same afternoon. Charles sat at the foot of a great water oak, reasonably well protected from the drizzle as he read an old Baltimore paper that had somehow found its way to Summerville, the village where he and Andy had gone in search of food.

  Charles had stayed at Mont Royal much longer than he should have, and much longer than he had planned. But every hand was needed to put up a new house—little more than an oversized cabin—on the site once occupied by the plantation summerhouse, which had been smashed and leveled but not burned. All the lumber in the new place was either broken, scorched, or both. The result was a crazy-quilt structure, but at least it sheltered the survivors, black and white, in separately curtained areas.

  The food situation was desperate. Their neighbor Markham Bull had shared some hoarded flour and yeast. Thus they had bread and their own rice, but little else. Occasional visitors who appeared on the river road said the whole state was starving.

  The visit to Summerville confirmed it. Even if they had been carrying bags of gold, it would have done no good. There was nothing to buy. Just the paper left behind by some refugee in flight.

  Wishing for a cigar—he hadn’t enjoyed one since the day he came home—Charles finished reading the lengthy account of Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural. The war might last a while longer, but Charles assumed Lincoln would soon take charge of a conquered South. Therefore he ought to know what the man was thinking.

  Mr. Lincoln sounded forgiving—on the surface. There was much in his address about malice toward none and charity for all. He wanted to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. He wanted to achieve a just and lasting peace.

  All very fine and humane, Charles thought. But certain other passages suggested that while Mr. Lincoln might forgive Southerners as individuals, he could not forgive the sin of slavery. And so long as the institution survived, he would prosecute the war.

  … if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword … it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

  The judgments of the Lord. Charles kept returning to the phrase, staring at the five words on the yellowing newsprint. They summed up and reinforced what had been with him ever since the fire. A positive, guilt-tainted conviction that the war was ending in the only fitting and proper way.

  Still, resting the back of his head against the tree and closing his eyes—speculation—he did recognize that it might have come out differently had not chance betrayed the South on so many occasions.

  If the copy of Lee’s order had not been found wrapped around the cigars before Sharpsburg.

  If Jackson had not been wounded by a North Carolina rifleman.

  If Stuart hadn’t disappeared off the map, riding to repair his reputation, before Gettysburg.

  If the Commissary Department had been run by a competent man instead of a bungler.

  If Davis had cared more for common folk and the land and less for the preservation of philosophic principles.

  If, if, if—what the hell was the use? They would lose. They had lost.

  Up in Virginia, however, the war went on. And he had a remount. The war had done things to his head. Burned him out, used him up, like a piece of fatwood kindling. But he still had to go back. West Point taught duty above all.

  He crumpled the newspaper and threw it away. He sat staring into the rain where he imagined he saw Gus standing, smiling at him.

  He put his hand over his eyes, held it there half a minute, lowered it.

  She was gone.

  He climbed to his feet
feeling as if he weighed seven hundred pounds. Still limping slightly from the healing leg wound, he went off to search for his mule. He collected his old army Colt, for which he had no ammunition, the cross-shaped sword fragment, which might in an emergency serve as a dagger, and his gypsy cloak of scraps and rags. He said good-bye to everyone and rode away north before dark.

  131

  ON PALM SUNDAY EVENING, Brett and Billy walked up through the laurel above Belvedere. Hazard’s was shut down, customary on the Sabbath, though some of the banked fires still fed smoke traceries out of the chimneys. The air was warm and fragrant with spring. Behind them, the tiered streets of the town, the peaceful river, the sunset over the mountains created a landscape of grays and mauves and small patches of pale, dusty orange.

  That morning they had attended church, then partaken of a huge noonday meal, at which Mr. Wotherspoon had been a welcome guest. Ever since, Brett had silently rehearsed the two things she wanted to say to her husband. One was directly related to the impending end of the war, the other less so.

  She knew the essence of each statement and some of the words, but she wanted a proper setting, too. So she had suggested the stroll. Now she found herself anxious and strangely unable to begin.

  Billy seemed content to walk in silence, relishing the spring dusk and the feel of her hand in his. They came to the meteorite crater they had discovered the night before he returned to duty in the spring of ’61, a night followed by so many changes in Brett herself and in the country that it sometimes resembled a series of tableaux on a stage, viewed from a balcony, rather than events in which she had taken part.

  She noticed that weeds had at last begun to grow in the crater, covering about two-thirds of the surface of the sloping sides. But the poisoned earth at the bottom remained bare.

  They strolled toward the next summit. Should she start with the second subject? No, it was better to dispose of the difficult one first. She forced herself.

  “How soon do you think Madeline will be able to travel to South Carolina?”

  He thought a moment. “They say there’s almost nothing left of Lee’s army. Or Joe Johnston’s. I can’t imagine that either can hold out more than a few weeks longer. I would guess she could start home sometime in May, if not sooner.”

  She took his other hand. Holding both, she faced him in the fading, dusty light.

  “I’d like to go with her.”

  A smile. “I suspected you might.”

  “It isn’t entirely for the reason you think. I do want to see how Mont Royal fared, but I have another motive. One which—” steadily, she looked at him “—which I’m not sure you’ll approve of. I want to go back and stay awhile. The nigras will be free, and they’ll need help adjusting to the change.”

  “You’ll forgive me, but that sounds faintly like the benevolent mistress of the plantation speaking.”

  His wry smile angered her unexpectedly. “It may be, but don’t you dare patronize me for it.”

  Billy put his arm around her. “Here, I didn’t mean to upset you—”

  She sighed. “And I didn’t mean to snap. But I’ve been away so long—I admit I’m homesick. And I’m not patronizing the people at Mont Royal when I say they need help. Protection. They’re in danger of being transferred from one kind of slavery to another. It was your own brother, Stanley, who warned me.”

  “Stanley? What do you mean?”

  As accurately as she could, she repeated Stanley’s remarks of a couple of years ago concerning the Republican scheme to befriend the freed Negroes, the better to manipulate them as voters.

  “Stanley said that?”

  “Indeed he did. He was drunk at the time, else he wouldn’t have spoken so freely. He declared that the party, or one faction anyway, had already agreed on the strategy. I believe him. That’s why I want to go home and stay for a time. The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it’s the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it’s hard to detect an invisible one.”

  She watched for a reaction. He lowered his head slightly, the dark hair, so like his brother George’s, tossing in the strengthening breeze. A few bright stars shone against the mauve now. She could only interpret his silence as disapproval.

  She refused to be so easily defeated. Not after Scipio Brown and his brood of lost children had worked such changes in the way she viewed people. She snapped off a bit of laurel, twirling it in her fingers.

  “Do you remember your last night at home when the war started?” A nod. “We walked up here, and I said I was frightened. You reassured me by talking about this.” She held out the sprig. “You told me what your mother had taught—that the laurel is like a man and woman’s love for each other. It can endure anything. Well, I made a discovery while you were gone. I discovered it in the eyes and faces of those children at Mr. Brown’s school. If the kind of love your mother described doesn’t touch everyone—embrace everyone—if it can’t be given freely and equally to everyone, it’s meaningless. It doesn’t exist.”

  “And going home—helping the nigras in whatever way you have in mind—that’s an expression of love?”

  Very softly: “To me it is.”

  “Brett—” he cleared his throat—“I met hundreds of men in the army who finally accepted emancipation because it was government policy, but they would choke on what you just said. There are a lot of them in that town right down there. They’d reach for a club or a gun to defend their right to be superior to Negroes.”

  “I know. But how can love be the property of a favored few? Or freedom, either? I was raised to believe they could. Then I came here to this state, this town, an utter stranger—and I learned.”

  “Changed, I would say.”

  “Use any term you like. I gather you object to my wish to—?”

  His palm touched her cheek. “I object to nothing. I love you. I’m proud of you. I believe every word of what you just said.”

  “Is that really true?”

  “You’re not the only one this war affected,” he said. He hadn’t described the incident outside the recruiting office and didn’t do so now. It struck him as too much like bragging. But his next statement touched the core of the incident. “I’m not the same soldier boy who stood here four years ago. I didn’t realize what a distance I’ve traveled until—well, lately.”

  His smile warmed. Bending in the starlight, he kissed her mouth.

  “I love you, Brett. What you are and what you believe. You’re right about going home. Your help will probably be needed. I’ll be proud and honored to escort you and Madeline back to Mont Royal. And since I’ll have to return to duty sometime soon, there isn’t any reason you can’t stay as long as you wish.”

  “There’s one.”

  The soft words startled him. Was that scarlet in her cheek? The lowering dark made him unsure.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, “you’ve been so ardent despite the wound—well, I’m not entirely certain yet—I haven’t seen the doctor—but I believe we’re going to have a child.”

  Wonderstruck, he could find no words. New life after so much loss—there was magic in it. Something miraculous. He looked at the laurel sprig in her hand, took it from her gently and studied it while she said, “You see, if I stay at Mont Royal, there’s a possibility our child could be born there.”

  “I don’t care where it happens, just so long as it happens. I don’t care!” Exuberantly, he tossed the laurel in the air and hugged her, exclaiming his joy. The whoop rose up and echoed back from clear across the river.

  That same Sunday evening, April 9, George was in Petersburg, having spent the afternoon assembling and loading construction materials on two flatcars. The Petersburg & Lynchburg line that ran west from town was under repair to supply the army pursuing Lee. George had to be up before daylight and on his way toward Burkeville.

  Tired, he walked in the direction of the tents assigned to visiting officers. Off in the darkness, s
everal horns, two fifes, and a snare drum struck up “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Yells and whistling accompanied the music.

  “Damned strange hour for a concert,” he muttered. He jumped back suddenly as a horseman galloped by, shouting, “Surrender! Surrender!”

  An officer with his galluses down and his chest bare stumbled sleepily from a nearby tent. “Surrender? My God, I didn’t even know we were under attack—”

  Grinning, George said, “I think someone else may have surrendered. Hear the music? Come on, let’s find out.”

  Away he went on his stocky legs. The other officer snapped his suspenders over his naked shoulders and ran after him. They soon came upon a whole mob of men piling out of tents. George could barely make sense of their noise:

  “—sometime today—”

  “—old Gray Fox asked Ulysses for terms—”

  “—out by Appomattox Court House someplace—”

  In an hour, Petersburg was bedlam. It was true, apparently; the Army of Northern Virginia was laying down its arms to stop the shedding of more blood in a war that couldn’t be won. Under the Southern stars, George snatched off his kepi, tossed it in the air, and caught it, then began to take brain-pummeling swallows of busthead from bottles shoved into his hand by officers and enlisted men he had never seen before and never would again, but who were fine friends, closest of comrades, in this delirious moment of lifting burdens and spirits.

  Pistols and rifles volleyed into the dark. Large and small musical groups blared patriotic airs. It occurred to George that, once he got home, he could sleep next to Constance every night for the rest of his life, with no one to tell him otherwise. He jammed his fists on his hips and danced a jig without knowing how.

  Men swirled around him, jumping, dancing, staggering, drinking, cheering. He helped himself to more stiff drinks from the bottles being passed. He threw his cap in the air again, bellowing like a schoolboy.

  “—rally round the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of—”