Savannah, or a Gift for Mr. Lincoln

by John Jakes

  The corporal, eighteen if that, snapped back at her. “Ma’am, we’re following General Hardee’s orders. Flood all the rice plantations so the only routes into town are the railroad causeways. Less to defend.”

  “I don’t care who ordered it. I demand that you leave.”

  “Ma’am, I was taught never to lay hands on a lady, but you’ll force me if you don’t stand aside.”

  Sara remained where she was. Fatigue and desperation grated in the corporal’s voice. “Ma’am, you’d better listen. The Yanks are only five, six miles from the city. We got no time to argue.” He pivoted to yell at two soldiers struggling to raise a sluice gate Ladson had built. “If she’s jammed shut, smash her.”

  Near to tears, Sara retreated to the back piazza. From there she and Hattie watched the systematic destruction of Silverglass. Muddy water gushed through cypress trunks and new ditches in the dikes. The corporal and his crew took less than two hours to submerge all but two acres surrounding the house. The familiar regularity of the square fields disappeared, replaced by shimmering upside-down images of the pine and cabbage palmetto forest. Sara’s garden was spared, and the barn, and Amelia’s pen, although Hattie had to run out and soothe her terrified pig.

  Next morning Hattie woke at dawn to hear a rumble of cannon in the west. Oh, Legrand, she thought, clutching the coverlet to her chin.

  She had no appetite for the small portion of boiled rice and the half cup of ersatz coffee Sara served for breakfast. The day was gloomy and growing cold. Without preamble, her mother said, “It’s time we moved into town.”

  “The Parmenters are already there.”

  “I know. We must get ready.”

  Cannon reverberated in the sky. The windows whined.

  Hattie saw no point in making her bed as she did every other morning. Instead, she walked around her room for a last look at her few possessions, each a storehouse of memories. Some lay in a red-and-white-striped toy chest her father had hammered together and painted: a cloth book on creating shadow puppets with your hands; a rusting tin steamboat that could be floated or pulled; three rag dolls of assorted sizes; a lumpy stuffed pig, cotton flannel dyed red, that Hattie had sewn as one of her first attempts to master the skills required of a young woman; a Japanese lady ten inches high, made of bisque, which Saint Nicholas brought one Christmas before the war. It cost an exorbitant eighty-five cents, Hattie later learned.

  There were other mementos scattered around: a wagon for the dolls—Ladson had built that too—a homemade slingshot for scaring off rice birds, a hobby horse. One of her favorites was an iron Uncle Tom bank. When you pressed the back of his neck, his eyes rolled in his black face and his tongue shot out to receive a coin. The toys seemed to belong to another person, another time.

  Not everyone in Chatham County celebrated Christmas as Hattie’s family did. The most conservative still thought it a slave holiday, as the judge had indicated on his visit after Thanksgiving. The Drewgoods clung to the old ways—family gifts exchanged at New Year’s, token gifts, if any, given to Negroes a week earlier. Miss Vee had resisted Christmas until Sara convinced her to abandon what Sara called a narrow and old-fashioned attitude.

  A passion for celebrating on December 25 had grown rapidly in the 1850s. Fast trains and improved printing presses steadily shrank the nation and enlarged many a provincial mind. Periodicals born in New York editorial rooms found their way by subscription into the more liberal Southern parlors. The magazines depicted Saint Nicholas in his chimney-climbing finery and reprinted Clement Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Even children in remote parts of the cotton South could quote stanzas from memory.

  The Christmas tree had become an accepted home decoration for all but the most recalcitrant. Magazines such as Godey’s suggested thrifty ways to ornament a tree: colorful ribbons, strings of beads, angels cut from paper (“easy-to-follow directions illustrated below”). Local merchants took no sides in the Christmas-versus-New Year’s dispute, briskly advertising and selling “holiday gifts” throughout December. That is, they had until the war emptied their shelves and the new Attila lowered a pall of fear over Christmas 1864.

  Hattie packed a few items of clothing in the small trunk Sara brought from the attic. Sara filled a flour sack with some dried root vegetables from her garden, then said to Hattie, “Put two of the small casks of hulled rice into the wagon—can you do that?”

  Hattie said yes and dutifully trotted off. The thought of leaving Silverglass, even with so much of it under water, deepened her sadness. She didn’t like people who were perpetually in a funk—even at her young age she’d met some—so she chided herself out of it as she struggled to hoist the casks into the wagon bed. What helped most in banishing the cloud of despond was thinking of her pig.

  Outside, Hattie leaned on the rail of the pen and observed Amelia, who didn’t stir. No doubt about it, of late Amelia had been morose, lying as she was now, adoze with her snout in the sand. Removing her to a new place might improve her spirits. Amelia wouldn’t know the flight was caused by the approach of a ruthless enemy.

  She hurried back to the house, only to pull up short at the sight of a smoke plume on the far shore of the Ogeechee. The shore itself was hidden by the tall spartina and stunted trees on the intervening islands. A crackle of small-arms fire drifted on the chill air. Hattie ran inside.

  “I think they’re firing at Fort McAllister again.”

  “More gunboats?” The earthen fort had already repelled two attacks launched from the Ogeechee.

  “Can’t tell. Might be coming from shore.”

  “Either way, Sherman can’t open the river as long as the fort holds out. We must go. Are you packed?”

  Hattie said she was. Sara slipped a book into an already stuffed carpetbag: a cherished volume of Mr. Wordsworth’s poems. Almost apologetically, she said, “It’s a small book.”

  “If you’re taking that, I want to take Amelia.”

  “Young lady, that’s very pert. We don’t have room for—”

  Hattie’s curls bobbed vigorously as she broke in: “Yes, we do—the wagon’s mostly empty. I’ll find a place for Amelia at Miss Vee’s. I’ll keep her outside and take care of her, don’t you worry.”

  “How will you feed her?”

  “I’ll give her my rice or anything else I have. I’d starve before I’d leave her for those wicked Yankees to—to—” Words such as butcher and barbecue refused to form on her tongue.

  “All right, bring her. I don’t know whether Vee will really approve, but we’ll cross that bridge later. Do you think Amelia will consent to the trip?”

  “She will if I say so.”

  Sara laughed and shooed Hattie out the door.

  Hattie coaxed and cooed and eventually managed to raise Amelia to all fours. She encircled Amelia’s bristly neck with a collar cut from her father’s best belt. To this she tied a rope to lead the pig. Amelia backed off, snorting. Hattie waved a scolding finger. “You stop that—it’s for your own good. You’ll have a grand time in Savannah.” Which was a statement she didn’t half believe.

  She led the reluctant pet into the barn and, with her mother’s help, lifted her into the dilapidated wagon. They hitched up their mule, and Sara drove out of the barn. She sent Hattie to the plantation house to lock front and back doors with a large brass key. It struck Hattie as a useless endeavor, but she didn’t argue. The pain of leaving was evident on Sara’s face.

  Amelia squealed forcefully as the wagon lurched away from familiar surroundings. The track leading to the Grove Road had narrowed, lapped at the edges by the flooding. In the water Hattie saw reflections of the smoke rising over the Ogeechee. Cannon crumped with alarming regularity.

  The empty slave cabins were flooded, and the mule almost foundered before they emerged onto the Grove Road, which had been churned up and rutted by the passage of many wagons and mounted men. The morning was dark, acrid with blowing smoke; the cries of the marsh wrens and rice birds were s
tilled. Amelia hid her snout in some straw in the wagon bed.

  A half mile down the road they encountered felled pine trees piled up as a barricade; another defense measure, Hattie supposed. It required a detour through soggy bottomland. Several times the wagon was in danger of tipping over. Finally they regained the road, and Sara’s color returned.

  Hattie pictured all the toys left behind, but she didn’t retain the picture for long. In a wordless but nevertheless real way, she understood that childhood was over. In Savannah she must grow up. She would.

  Monday night, Alpheus Winks and his bummers camped in town, within sight of the ashes of the Bulloch County courthouse Uncle Billy had burned. Winks distributed hardtack, now in short supply and selling for a dollar a hunk; he’d obtained his by barter, coercion, and other means.

  Winks’s scowl discouraged idle conversation. He was riled on several counts. Firstly, he’d been sent to the rear, to comb the countryside for undiscovered stores of fodder for hungry cattle and horses. Food for men and animals would remain scarce until Uncle Billy’s troops overcame Fort McAllister and linked up with provision ships anchored offshore. The rebs had thrown defense lines around Savannah, which Uncle Billy was for the moment content to invest and besiege. The city’s defenders, alleged to be mostly cradle-and-grave units, still represented a challenge, but Winks had no chance to assess or address that challenge, being, this cold misty night, some fifty miles from the front.

  Another reason for Winks’s ire was the presence of the colored boy pulled from Ebenezer Creek in a rash moment. The boy, a handsome, bright-eyed sort, had offered his name once, but Winks refused to remember it, nor would he ask. The colored boy had attached himself to Winks’s detail and volunteered to drive the forage wagon, as well as perform other tasks. “I cook your food, Captain. I be your servant,” the boy said even before he dried out.

  “I ain’t a captain. I’m a sergeant,” Winks informed him. “Go away. Look out for yourself.”

  “Can’t do that. I owe you my life. You’re a mighty good man.”

  No one except Winks’s mother had ever called him a good man. “Let me make this real clear to you,” he said. “I don’t like you or any of your dusky race.”

  “Then why’d you pull me outa the water?”

  “I wonder myself,” Winks said. Truth was, he’d been raised to take pity on any endangered human being, of any color, but at that point his humanity stopped.

  A certain part of him liked the views of the controversial Gen. Jef C. Davis, especially the general’s popular remark that “I didn’t come down here to free the slaves.” But they had, hadn’t they? They were fighting the war to liberate enslaved colored folk, and that rankled especially when Winks thought of Abner and Ansel, his beloved brothers. He didn’t see any need to explain to the colored boy, however.

  After Ebenezer Creek, Davis’s XIV Corps had marched on down the Augusta-Savannah road to join the XX Corps of General Williams. Ebenezer Creek had split the army along political lines. The broad-shouldered, usually taciturn Winnebago soldier who wanted to be called Chief Jim revealed Republican leanings by saying loudly and often, “Ought to hang Davis high as Haman.” A pie-faced private named Spiker agreed: “He’s a tyrant and a fiend.” Those on the opposite side, including, it was said, Uncle Billy, scoffed at charges of inhumanity, and rumors that some runaways left behind at the creek had been captured by Wheeler’s cavalry, whipped, and sent back to slavery. Uncle Billy dismissed the whole to-do with one word, “Humbug,” and announced his intent to ask Grant to promote Davis from brevet major general to full rank.

  That night, in Statesboro, Winks sat off by himself, spine against the wagon wheel, gnawing petrified hardtack and brooding. He felt the burden of leadership every waking moment, in nightmares too. A lieutenant usually commanded a forage detail, but Winks’s lieutenant had been bushwhacked by a skulking reb not two days out of Atlanta. The reb’s ball shattered the lieutenant’s knee. He was dumped into a two-wheel ambulance, a regular torture machine. If he survived that, presumably he would be invalided home to Plainfield. The reb vanished in deep pine woods, never caught or identified.

  The adjutant of the 81st Indiana, one Captain Gleeson, was an overeducated law clerk from Indianapolis. He’d handed the forage detail to Winks: “We haven’t a single officer to spare. Nor any as creatively avaricious as you, frankly.”

  Winks supposed that was a compliment although he couldn’t be sure; his limited schooling in Putnam County hadn’t acquainted him with many big words.

  Gleeson continued. “Some of those lowlifes in your detail are outright bandits. That’s desirable up to a point, but I expect you to keep them from stepping over the line of decency and fairness whilst foraging liberally, as our orders dictate.”

  Whilst? What was that?

  “Any questions, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good hunting. Dismissed.”

  Winks left the tent feeling he’d been given a hundred-pound sack of rocks to carry, without permission to lay it down even for five minutes. He was not wrong. Zip’s presence added another twenty-five pounds at least. Make that fifty.

  By the fire, a night bird’s sudden cry roused him; his Deane & Adams .44 was half out of his holster before he knew it. “What the devil’s that?”

  Strolling in from the dark, the colored boy grinned. “Chuck-will’s-widow.”

  “Didn’t see any birds hanging around this town, except turkey buzzards,” Professor Marcus said grumpily.

  “I know,” said the boy. “I done it.”

  Winks blinked. “What’s that? You imitate birds?”

  “Yes, sir, all kinds. Care to hear a screech owl? A mourning dove?”

  “Definitely not,” said one of the enlisted men. “Blasted chuck-will’s-widow keeps you awake half the night.”

  Winks shoved an unlit cigar in his mouth. He circled the fire to confront the boy. “Where’d you learn to do such a thing?”

  “Old Cherokee half-breed trader man taught me. Used to pass through Augusta four times a year. It’s something I didn’t have to pay for, and something I wouldn’t get whipped for, so it seemed to me there wasn’t no harm in learning.”

  “Well, I heard a lot of birds back in Indiana, but I never sorted one from another, and I don’t propose to start. Why don’t you ride shank’s mare back to Augusta?”

  “Liable to get chained up again if I do that, sir. I go with you, sir—you saved my life.”

  “Biggest mistake I ever made,” Winks said as he stretched out beneath his blanket with his top hat tilted over his eyes. He suspected he couldn’t get rid of the colored boy short of shooting him, and he wasn’t quite ready to go that far. Yet.

  Soon after dawn they waved good-bye to a few bored Union pickets and jeered at some unreconstructed rebels glowering from their houses. The morning remained as dismal as the night before: blowing clouds, chilly temperatures, occasional gusts of rain. Winks thanked his stars for his carpet cape, but foraging had lost its appeal. It bored him, and shortened his temper noticeably.

  The land they rode through was alien, not at all like the green hills of central Indiana. It was low lying, flat, cut by creeks and reedy marshes, and it bore the look of wartime: houses dilapidated, barns in ruins, cattle pens empty. Meanwhile, fifty miles away, mighty maneuvers were taking place, Uncle Billy was engulfing Savannah, and Winks wasn’t participating. His bummers shared his unease, except for Professor Marcus. In between frequent complaints, the corporal swept his greedy gaze over the landscape with such vigor and concentration that Winks was constantly alert and suspicious.

  As they rode along next to a fallow cotton field, a shot surprised and scattered them. The wagon horse reared, but the colored boy kept strong hands on the reins and prevented a runaway. Winks galloped forward, revolver drawn, searching for the marksman at the gray cypress farmhouse with half its roof shingles knocked in. He waved his men back while turning his horse into the short access road. Someone f
lew between the back of the house and the barn. Winks raised his revolver and fired at the sky.

  “Woman, you better put down that shotgun and come out of there.”

  She’d taken refuge in the barn. Momentarily, another round from the hayloft hummed by his ear. He spurred into cover behind the house, raising his voice. “If you don’t come out, we’ll torch that barn.” He had no intention of cooking some poor female, but she didn’t know that.

  A minute passed. Out on the road, Chief Jim let out a victory whoop; he could see the thin white-haired woman emerging from the barn, raising an over-and-under in a position of surrender. Winks rode into the open and saw for himself.

  “Lay it down, ma’am.” She did. “Step away from it.” She did. She was seventy at least—toothless too. He waved his men forward. “Corn, oats, rice—take anything you can find.”

  The woman crossed her arms on her scrawny bosom. “I hope you all choke on it.”

  The colored boy reined the wagon in front of the barn while Chief Jim and another soldier hurried inside. Marcus and Spiker invaded the house. Wasn’t long before Chief Jim popped back out of the barn.

  “Corncrib’s a third full.”

  “Load her up,” Winks said, hearing crockery smash and furniture break in the house. He dismounted and walked around the barn to survey their find. The ears of corn looked poor and brown, but the undernourished beeves in the army’s herd weren’t choosy.

  Chief Jim found a shovel and began to shovel corn from the crib to the wagon. The colored boy jumped down from the wagon and volunteered to take over; the Indian gladly let him. The boy wielded the shovel like a demon. Winks shook his head. Why had God given him this burden?

  Noise in the dooryard brought Winks around the barn to confront Professor Marcus with a pile of dresses in his arms. Winks cried, “Put those back. I told you before, we don’t make war on ladies. I’m all wore out with your thieving ways.”

  Marcus was oblivious. “‘Who steals my purse steals trash.’ That there is Mr. Shakespeare.”