by John Jakes
Grant shook his head. “You’ll make a fine soldier, Mr. Main. If you don’t die of mulishness first.”
“You know who I am?”
“Every man in the corps knows about you, and your friend, and that scum from Ohio. It’s a pity Corporal Bent’s standings are so high. Some of us are trying to remedy that. He’s being deviled as furiously as he devils others. I sincerely hope you survive to enjoy that, sir.”
With a little smile, Grant tramped off into the storm.
It was about four o’clock, Orry guessed. Dark as midnight. He forced himself to move. He thought he was marching, but actually he was reeling from point to point. Fortunately, most of the officers were indoors, hence didn’t witness his awkward performance.
Another half hour passed. He began to fear he was desperately ill—mortally ill, maybe—and that his foolish wish to avoid a display of weakness would finish him.
“You’re not stepping smartly, sir. Not smartly at all.”
Stunned by the voice, Orry turned. He saw Bent’s tentlike overcoat looming just this side of the sally port. Bent seemed to float forward, a huge shape in the murk. His eyes shone with glee.
“I heard you were out here, sir. I came to inspect—”
The Ohioan’s voice faltered as Orry wrenched the old smoothbore flintlock off his shoulder. Orry was out of his head, beyond fear.
“Why are you pointing that piece at me, sir?”
“Because I’m going to shoot you, Bent. If you don’t leave me alone, and my friend too, I’m going to shoot you.”
Bent tried to sneer. “That musket is unloaded, sir.”
“Is it?” Orry blinked and weaved on his feet. “Then I’ll beat you to death with it. They can court-martial me, or even shove me in front of a firing squad, but if you’re still here at the end of the next five seconds, you ungrateful bastard, I’m going to kill you.”
“By God, we’ve a madman at West Point.”
“Yes, sir. An Ohio madman, who treats plebes like animals. Well, Mr. Bent, sir, this is one plebe who won’t be treated that way any longer. Five seconds. One, sir, two, sir …”
Bent huffed, but said nothing. He was intimidated by the wild white specter in front of him. Sleet clung to Orry’s cap and eyebrows. His expression almost maniacal, he turned the musket so that he gripped it by the barrel, like a club.
Humiliation and hate flickered on Bent’s face. Suddenly, he spun on one heel. He seemed to melt into the storm.
Orry swallowed and shouted, “And you’d better leave us alone from now on.”
“What did you say, sir?”
The sharp voice turned him the other way. Bundled to the ears, one of the tactical officers came striding toward him. The howl of the wind forced the officer to yell. “Cadet Grant requested that I come out here, sir. He said you were too ill for this duty. Is that true?”
By now Orry had practiced the position of a soldier a thousand times or more. He tried to assume it, not even realizing he had just committed the one unforgivable sin. He had dropped his musket in the snow.
The tactical officer seemed to be tilting back and forth. Orry attempted to stop the motion by blinking his eyes.
“Is that true, sir?”
“No, sir!” Orry cried, and fell forward against the officer, unconscious.
George came running to the hospital an hour later. Surgeon Wheaton met him in the waiting room.
“Your friend is in extremely serious condition. His fever is dangerously high. We are trying to reduce it, but if it doesn’t break within twenty-four hours, his life could be in jeopardy.”
George thought of Bent, and the storm outside, and of Orry. “The poor damn fool wants to be a soldier too badly,” he said in a bitter voice.
“This place has a way of inspiring that ambition.” Wheaton’s tone mingled regret and pride. “You look none too well yourself, young man. I prescribe a tot of rum. Come into my office and”—he smiled—“Wheaton it for a few minutes, as the saying goes.”
With the surgeon’s permission, George kept a vigil at Orry’s bedside all night. Pickett joined him for a while. So did Jackson. A first classman named Grant looked in briefly. How Orry knew him, George couldn’t imagine.
By morning the hospital was cold and silent. George wriggled on his chair. The others were gone. Orry’s face was still as pale as the undyed wool coverlet drawn up beneath his chin. He looked fragile in the flickering glow of the fish-oil lamps. Fragile and very sick.
George gazed at his friend and, to his astonishment, found tears welling in his own eyes. The last time he had cried he was five years old. He had been thrashed by this older brother for daring to play with Stanley’s pet frog.
George wasn’t surprised that Orry Main’s fate could mean so much to him. The two of them had gone through a lot together, in a very short period. Common hopes and hardships had forged a strong bond of affection. West Point apparently had a way of doing that, too.
He stayed in the chair, neither sleeping nor eating, until noon, when Orry’s fever broke.
The next afternoon, with February sunshine pouring through the window, Orry looked much better. George visited him before supper call with some good news.
“Bent seems to have gotten tired of deviling us. I passed him when I was coming over here. He looked the other way.”
“I’d still like to kill him. God forgive me for saying such a thing, but it’s the way I feel.”
Orry’s quiet savagery disturbed George, but he smiled and tried not to show it. “See here, my friend. You were the one counseling meekness and mercy when he was going down ’neath the icy waves. And I listened to you.”
Orry folded his arms. “Almost wish you hadn’t.”
“It’s better to leave him alive and squirming. The upperclassmen are skinning him right and left. That’s sweet revenge.”
“But he’ll blame us. Even if he lets up on us for a while, he won’t forget. There’s something twisted about him.”
“Well, don’t fret over it,” George said with a shrug. “We have enough to do keeping our demerit total under two hundred. It’s a long way until June.”
Orry sighed. “I reckon you’re right.”
But neither believed that merely forgetting about Bent would do away with the threat he posed.
Late in the spring, all the Hazards except Virgilia paid a visit to West Point. George wheedled the necessary permission to join them for Saturday dinner at the hotel. He took his friend along.
William Hazard invited Orry to visit them in Lehigh Station at some time in the future. Orry said he’d enjoy that. He found the family as likable as he remembered—save for Stanley, who talked, or rather bragged, incessantly. Stanley was preening over the fact that he and his father were to dine that night with a family named Kemble, who lived across the river in Cold Spring.
Between bites of a delicious lamb chop, Orry asked, “Are the Kembles relatives of yours?”
Stanley snickered. “No, my boy. They are the proprietors of the West Point Foundry. Who do you think casts most of the ordnance purchased by the Army?”
Stanley’s pompous manner made his little brother Billy grimace and silently imitate him. Billy was seated next to Stanley, who didn’t see the imitation and thus didn’t understand why George guffawed. Billy’s antics earned him a thwack on the ear from his father. Mrs. Hazard looked chagrined.
Stiffly, Orry said, “I’m sorry, I never heard of the Kembles.”
“Their Saturday-night fetes are famous.” Stanley’s tone suggested that Orry and his home state somehow existed outside the mainstream of national life.
To Mr. Hazard, Orry said, “They’re ironmakers, are they?”
The older man nodded. “With candor and envy, I must admit there are none better in the nation.”
“Maybe they could help my brother.”
Bored, Stanley forked up a potato. But William Hazard listened politely as Orry explained that in recent letters Cooper had complained about exces
sive breakage of wrought-iron walking beams and flywheels in the rice mill at Mont Royal.
“That’s the name of our plantation. The mill used to be powered by the river tides, but my brother talked my father into trying a steam engine. Father was against the idea. Now he thinks he was right.”
“Casting iron is a tricky business,” Mr. Hazard said. “Perhaps the Kembles could help your brother. Better still, why not let us try? Have him write me.”
“I’ll do that, sir. Thank you!”
Orry was always eager to make his older brother think well of him. He wrote Cooper the next day. Cooper’s reply began with words of appreciation to Orry. He then said he suspected that the man in Columbia who made the mill parts understood the process even less than he did. Hence he would be grateful for advice and assistance from experts. He was dispatching a letter to Hazard Iron immediately.
June approached. To Orry’s surprise, he realized he stood a good chance of surviving his plebe year, although he seemed destined to remain an immortal forever. George continued to stand high in the academic ranking, and without visible effort. Orry envied his friend, but never to the point that jealousy impaired their relationship.
Both friends had managed to keep their demerit total just under two hundred, and when the new group of prospective cadets began to arrive, pressure on the plebes lessened. Orry and George did their share of deviling the newcomers, but there was little meanness in it. Bent had provided too good an object lesson.
It was impossible to avoid the Ohioan completely, of course. But whenever they encountered him, he affected an opaque stare, as if they didn’t exist. The friends continued to feel that although Bent had left them alone during their final months as plebes, he certainly hadn’t forgotten about them. Nor was it likely that he had forgiven them, either.
About ten days before the start of the summer encampment, Cooper arrived unexpectedly. He had just come from Pennsylvania, where William and Stanley Hazard had examined some of the shattered parts from the Mont Royal mill.
“Your father and brother solved the problem in short order,” Cooper reported to George. “As I suspected, that clod in Columbia doesn’t know what he’s doing. Apparently he doesn’t remelt his pig iron at the right temperature. If I can convince him of that, we may have fewer breakdowns. Of course convincing him won’t be easy. As far as he’s concerned, admitting you can learn something from a Yankee is almost as bad as saying Johnny Calhoun was wrong on nullification.”
George was fascinated by Cooper Main, who was twenty-three and taller than his younger brother. He wore fine clothes, which managed to look terribly untidy. He had sunken cheeks and darting dark eyes and was not without a sense of humor, although George found him more inclined to sarcastic smiles than to laughter. Cooper and Orry shared certain obvious family traits, including a slender frame, the brown wavy hair, and the narrow, almost haughty nose. But the older brother lacked the robust color Orry developed whenever he spent even one day in the sunshine; Cooper’s thin face and body seemed to have an unhealthy aura, as if he had been born pale, tired, and driven to think too much.
Cooper had decided to make the whirlwind overnight visit not only for the purpose of seeing Orry but to inspect the school that was turning out the nation’s smartest soldiers. He remarked that there was nothing in creation unworthy of study, unless perhaps it was family trees in his native state.
During Cooper’s short stay at Roe’s Hotel, however, his attention seemed to wander repeatedly from the sights he had come to see. Once Orry caught him gazing at the big stone barracks—or perhaps something beyond them—with an almost melancholy look in his eyes.
But just before Cooper left, he put aside his preoccupations and his air of mockery and flashed a big grin at George, saying: “You must pay us a visit, sir. Lots of mighty pretty girls down on the Ashley. Got a couple in our own family. They’ll be beauties when they grow up. Didn’t see many pretty girls in the Lehigh Valley. ’Course; I spent most of my time staring into fiery furnaces. Your family operates a mighty impressive factory, Mr. Hazard.”
“I wish you’d call me George.”
“No, call him Stump,” Orry put in. “All the cadets get nicknames eventually. We were christened last week.”
“Stump, eh?” Cooper shot a glance at his brother. “What’s yours?”
“Stick.”
That made Cooper laugh. “Parts of the same tree, is that it? Well, Mr. Stump, I want to say I admire the size and scope of your family’s enterprise.” Again his eyes took on that distant, melancholy look. “I surely do.”
Over the bellowings from a calf boat moving down the Hudson, they heard the whistle of the steamer at the North Dock. Cooper grabbed his valise and rushed down the steps of the hotel veranda.
“Come see us, Mr. Stump. Mind that you eat right, Orry. We’ll expect you home next summer.”
After the visitor hurried out of sight, George said, “Your brother seems like a fine fellow.”
Orry frowned. “He is. But there was something wrong. He was making a valiant effort to joke and smile—neither is very easy for him anytime—but he was upset.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew.”
4
THE RIVER SLOOP EUTAW carried Cooper home from the seacoast. Aboard the sloop were packets of mail and shipments of staples sent upriver to the various plantations by the Charleston factor who served them.
It was a still, sunny morning. The Ashley was placid, glassy. Of all the rice rivers, it was one of the least valuable because the ocean could affect it so drastically. Although the river was fresh here, freak tides or hurricanes sometimes brought the salt of the Atlantic, which killed the rice. But in the opinion of Cooper’s father and the other local planters, that risk was offset by the ease of shipping the crop down to Charleston.
The heat of late June baked Cooper’s neck and hands as he stood at the rail awaiting his first glimpse of the Main dock. He was often bitterly critical of his state, and of this region in particular. But love of both dwelled deep in his bones. He especially loved the familiar sights of the river, the panorama of pines, live oaks, and occasional palmettos rising on those stretches of shore that remained unclaimed. In the trees, jays and redbirds flashed their colors. At one place a river road skirted the bank. Cooper watched three young blades on fine horses thunder by; racing was a favorite sport in the low country.
Insects nibbled and nagged at his skin. He could almost smell the sickly season coming. At the great house, preparations would be under way for the family’s removal to their place at Summerville. From there Cooper’s father would ride down to the plantation to inspect on a regular basis, but he would not stay at Mont Royal until the weather cooled again. They had a saying about South Carolina’s coastal region, where miasmic fevers killed scores of whites every year: “In the spring a heaven. In the summer a hell. In the fall a hospital.”
On the port side the foliage gave way to man-made ramparts—the high main banks. Beyond them lay fields long ago reclaimed from the marshlands by the hard work of Cooper’s forebears. The banks themselves were a key part of the operation of the complex agricultural machine that was a rice plantation.
At regular intervals the banks were pierced by rectangular wood culverts called trunks. The trunks had gates at both ends. By means of these gates the water of the river was carefully admitted to, or drained from, the fields where the rice grew. That is, the rice grew if Tillet Main’s people did their work properly and on time. It grew if the May birds and the rice birds weren’t too numerous. It grew if autumn storms didn’t poison the river with salt.
There were all sorts of variables, and endless risks. Many disappointments and few absolute triumphs. The life of a rice planter taught a healthy respect for the elements, and it frequently gave Cooper the feeling that the Mains should be in some less capricious, more modern business.
A hail from the wheel lifted him from his reverie. They had come in sight of the landing, and he h
adn’t even realized it. All at once he felt strangely sad. Better keep your mouth shut about the things you saw up North.
He doubted he could, though.
Soon he was striding up the path through the formal garden that overlooked the river. The air smelled of violets and jasmine, of crab apple and roses. On the second-floor piazza of the great house, his mother, Clarissa Gault Main, was supervising some of the house slaves in the work of closing off the upper rooms. She spied him, ran to the railing, called down with a greeting. Cooper waved and blew her kisses. He loved her very much.
He didn’t enter the house but instead circled one end, saying hello to each of the Negroes coming and going around the separate kitchen building. From this spot he could enjoy the pleasing view down the half-mile lane that ran between giant live oaks to the little-used river road. A sultry breeze had sprung up; gray beards of Spanish moss stirred on the trees.
At the head of the lane he saw two little girls. His younger sisters, scrapping as usual; one was chasing the other. Of that rascally Cousin Charles there was no sign.
Mont Royal’s business headquarters was another small building beyond the kitchen. Cooper mounted the steps and heard the voice of Rambo, one of the plantation’s most experienced drivers.
“They’s pipped in South Square, Mr. Main. Landing Square, too.” He was referring to fields, each of which had a name.
Tillet Main hedged his bets every year by planting a third of his land during the late season in early June, when the resulting crop would be less likely to be damaged. The driver was telling Cooper’s father that the seed in those late-planted areas had put out shoots from beneath the water of the sprout flow. Soon those fields would be drained by means of their trunks, and the long period of dry growth would begin.
“Good news, Rambo. Does Mr. Jones know?”
“He there with me to see it, sir.”
“I want you and Mr. Jones to inform all the people who need to be told.”
“Yes, sir. Surely will.”
Cooper opened the door and said hello to the big gray-haired black man just leaving. Everyone else in the family called the Negroes Tillet’s people, people being a traditional term that was somehow supposed to soften or obscure the truth. To Cooper it seemed less onerous—though not much—to be honest in one’s thinking. He mentally referred to the Negroes by one word only: slaves.