by John Jakes
“Not necessary.”
“Anything you want me to do, then?”
“How about joining the pioneers? How about getting out of my sight?”
“Oh, no, sir. I got to pay my debt first. It’s a big debt. The biggest.”
“Well, I hereby declare it canceled.”
“No, sir, sorry. I’m the one’s got to decide when, as, and if it’s canceled. Meaning no disrespeck.”
Winks’s bad mood cracked and crumbled under an onslaught of weariness. How could you hate such a willing, cheerful darkie, particularly this time of year? Once, several days back, Zip had boldly asked him the reason for his all-too-evident dislike of the colored race.
It was the closest Winks came to snarling out the truth: “White men are dying by the thousands for you and your people. Wouldn’t be any war, any vacant chairs, wasn’t for slavery.” The reference to a popular song eluded Zip, so the conversation lapsed.
“How about a hot tater?” Zip pulled one from the embers, held it out on the point of his stick.
Winks gave in: “Don’t mind if I do.” He grasped the stick, took a nip of the potato. A few more snowflakes settled among the flowers on the crown of his tall hat. His carpet cape wasn’t much protection in this weather, but the warm potato was delicious.
Chief Jim appeared and squatted by the fire. Winks asked, “Where’s the rest of the boys?”
The big Indian with the shiny black hair hiding his collar seemed reluctant to answer, but he did. “Moseyed into town—Pence and Spiker and the professor. Professor said they wanted to get acquainted with the locals. Gauge their mood, now they’re whipped. Said they might call on one or two.”
“Blast. I know how the professor calls on people. He didn’t have permission to leave camp. None of them’s got permission.”
“Yes, sir,” Chief Jim muttered, acknowledging the truth of it.
Winks briefly considered mounting up and riding after Marcus and his confederates. He decided against it; probably couldn’t find them and if he could, the way things were going lately, Marcus would likely thumb his nose. He’d hear about their antics tomorrow. It meant a night of worry.
Zip began a series of two-note whistles that sounded like tee-you, tee-you. Winks glanced across the fire. Zip interpreted it as sincere curiosity.
“Tufted titmouse.”
“Aw sure, I should’ve known. You can do something for me now.”
“Yessir?”
“Go practice somewheres else.”
Downcast, Zip tossed his stick in the fire and shuffled away. More snowflakes drifted into the light and melted. Winks suddenly felt lower than a snake. Even Chief Jim had developed a sudden interest in the starless sky, embarrassed.
The bummers were drawn to the house by golden windows, soft piano music—“Silent Night,” slow and sweet—even by the painted siding. “Shows care for the property,” Professor Marcus remarked. “Fence isn’t falling down neither.” Many Savannah fences were; for all the town’s mossy charm, there was wartime blight and rot if you looked closely.
Marcus gigged Peter Pence. “Scout the place, Private.”
Pence disappeared down York Street. Marcus and Spiker kept to the shadows; behind them, Wright Square was strewn with the detritus of Hardee’s men; no doubt the space would be used for a campground again, by a different army. Despite the hour, Union troops, ambulances, wagons, artillery limbers were everywhere, marching or galloping, with many an officer visible. Not one had challenged Marcus and his men. He’d instructed them to stride at a fast pace, as though under orders. In this way they’d arrived in Wright Square after scouting and bypassing five other houses.
Each of Marcus’s bummers had a virtue, and a use. Private Spiker’s round choirboy face enabled him to worm into places without arousing suspicion. Private Peter Pence’s bulk and overhanging brow hinted at a pea-size brain, but he never hesitated to shoot first and think about it later. The professor had played to their avarice, emphasizing the wickedness of secession, the maniacal militarism of Jefferson Davis, and the treachery of Southrons generally. This justified robbing any household. Marcus had done his work successfully, behind Winks’s back, once the sergeant had gone soft by banning liberal foraging and tolerating a nigger’s presence. Marcus’s propaganda worked on all but the Wisconsin Indian, whom Marcus considered a fool.
Marcus and Spiker stamped and slapped their arms in the bitter dark. Wind blew occasional snowflakes in their eyes. Peter Pence returned in ten minutes. “Had to sneak up the kitchen stairs. I spied ladies and a little girl, but nary a man. They’s a pig, though. I had to make friends to keep it quiet.”
Marcus stroked his chin. “Excellent. I’ll bet those females have Christmas presents aplenty for needy fellows like ourselves. Let’s not hesitate. ‘Glue your courage with the sticking plaster,’ as the immortal bard wrote.”
Peter Pence said, “How do we go in, bust down the door?”
“Nothing so crude. We combine encirclement and an attack from the rear with a strong frontal assault.” The professor laid a comradely hand on Spiker’s shoulder. “Frontal assault. That’s you. We’ll back you up. Forward, march.”
Miss Vee continued to play. In the kitchen, where a few sticks of fatwood in the hearth provided a feeble light and a meager heat, Sara sat on a stool in the midst of old newspapers, shredded rags, and a bowl of thin paste made of water and precious flour. She was layering the paper and rags together. When it dried into pasteboard, she would shape it into some sort of crude toy.
Hattie sat across from her at the kitchen table, carefully using the home-brewed ink to create eyebrows on a doll’s head made of walnut shell. A clownlike ink smear tipped Hattie’s nose. All of them were roused, with varying degrees of alarm, by rapping at the front door.
“It’s so late. I wonder who—” Sara began.
“We don’t want to know,” Vee cried, hurtling away from the piano to be sure the bolt was secured. Hattie and Sara dashed into the parlor as Vee peered through the opalescent glass. “Oh, heaven. It’s one of those Yankees. You know what he wants.”
“We have no idea what he wants, Vee. May I look?”
Vee stepped aside; Sara peered into the winter night. “Why, he’s just a boy. Harmless-looking. We should see why he’s come.”
Vee clucked dubiously but drew back the bolt and opened the door six inches, admitting a rush of cold air that set the lamp flames dancing in their chimneys. The soldier in the soiled blue talma looked only slightly older than Legrand. He touched his cap with his knuckles.
“Howdy, ma’am, sorry to disturb you. My canteen’s empty—could you spare some water for a thirsty soul?”
Vee pondered briefly. “Go around to the backyard—there’s a pump if it isn’t frozen.” She started to shut the door. The boy lunged and rammed the door open with his shoulder. Vee staggered back, falling against Sara while Hattie scrambled to stay away from the tangle.
The young soldier sprang into the room, baring his teeth and whipping an Army Colt from under his cape. “You ladies just stand still, don’t cause no trouble, and everything’ll be hunky dory.”
The back door burst open; two more men ran down the hall and leaped into the parlor. They, too, had sidearms drawn. Vee’s sizable legs started to wobble.
Sara jumped to her aid, managed to guide her to the piano bench. Hattie was mesmerized by the mole-spotted face of the corporal to whom the other two deferred. He was stoop-shouldered, homely; she caught a whiff of him and pinched her nose. “Whew.”
The corporal seized Hattie’s curls and yanked. “What do you mean, ‘whew’?”
“I mean you ought to bathe once in a while, you smell worse than—ow, ow!”
The corporal flung Hattie aside. “Boys, I do believe we stepped right into a nest of rebs who need a comeuppance. Search the place. See what they’re hiding.” He wigwagged his revolver, and the other two, a burly one and the choirboy, ran into the back hall. “You three, sit down.”
&n
bsp; “Do as he says, dear,” Sara whispered. She pulled Hattie to her side on a love seat. “Vee, compose yourself. Possessions aren’t worth your life.”
“If—if—if possessions are all they want,” Vee sobbed, just as a terrific crashing and smashing from the kitchen set Hattie’s heart pounding. The burly soldier ran into the parlor with Hattie’s box of handmade toys.
“Professor, looky here. These dirty rebs are tryin’ to have Christmas.”
Marcus peered into the overflowing box, pulled the string of a crude jumping-jack Legrand had helped Hattie whittle and assemble. “We’ll put a stop to that.”
He gestured three times before the slow-witted soldier caught his meaning and set the box on the floor. Professor Marcus lifted his boot. Crunch, crack—“No presents for little traitors, no sir.”
One of Hattie’s carefully inked walnut heads popped off and rolled. All of her handiwork was rapidly stomped to bits. Hattie would have punched the awful corporal if Sara hadn’t restrained her with strong hands and warning looks.
Professor Marcus dusted his hands, surveyed the room. He snatched Bob Lee’s engraved portrait from the top of the little Christmas tree. Several quick rips reduced Lee to confetti. Hattie cried, “How dare you insult a fine soldier that way?”
“We’d do worse than that if we had Old Marse Bob here in person. Boys, where’s that porker?”
“Tied outside,” said the burly soldier.
“Bring her on in.”
“I—uh—turned over an ink bottle back there in the kitchen—”
“Doesn’t matter. Get the pig.”
Hattie heard Amelia squealing before she saw her. The soldier pulled the pig into the parlor by her tether. “Don’t you dare hurt her,” Hattie said, this time successfully escaping her mother. She kicked the burly soldier’s shin. He shouted for help, and Professor Marcus pointed his revolver at Hattie.
“I never plugged a child before, but you’re tempting me. Shut your clapper and quit abusing my men.”
Sara caught Hattie’s skirt from behind, drew her off. The burly soldier tied Amelia’s rope to the leg of a chair. The pig had managed to trample in the spilled ink, thus tracking and staining the carpet. Marcus stroked his chin. “That’s a mighty nice pork roast on the hoof. Or pork chops. Or barbecue.”
“Say, we’ll have a party,” the choirboy said. He laid his revolver atop the Chickering, sat down on the bench and began to play clangorous chords, clearly demonstrating he’d never had so much as five minutes of musical education. Marcus pulled out the hem of his uniform blouse like a lady’s skirt and performed a series of shuffling dance steps timed to the music.
Egged on by Marcus, the choirboy stepped up on the bench, then the keyboard, then the top of the piano cabinet. At this point Miss Vee collapsed sideways and fainted dead in the middle of the inked carpet. On top of the piano, head bent to clear the pressed-tin ceiling, the choirboy danced a step or two, then peered down at his leader.
“Chop this up for kindling?”
“Make a mighty swell bonfire,” the burly soldier said. Hattie felt dizzy in the confining crook of Sara’s arm. She’d never imagined anything so horrible as this invasion, this desecration—
The choirboy jumped all the way from the piano top to the carpet, rattling the lamps and window lights. “Leave me look around for a hand ax, Professor.”
Professor Marcus raised his hand. “Wait. I got a better idea.”
They all held still.
“Sometime back, second day out of Atlanta I think it was, there was a piano in the house of some traitors we visited. Winks wouldn’t let us take it. Later a lieutenant told me we could’ve sold it for plenty if we could’ve moved it. We’re going to find a way to haul this instrument out of here, boys.”
The end of his speech brought an interruption to swivel every head and fasten every eye on a new arrival stepping in the front door.
“Well, now,” said Capt. Stephen Hopewell, not cordially.
A bit earlier, Stephen enjoyed an unexpected reunion when he walked into the saloon bar of the four-story hotel on Johnson Square. “Hallo, Davis,” he said to the man from Harper’s Weekly.
“Hopewell. Greetings. What are you doing?” Davis’s blank sketch pad lay on the table beside an empty stein.
“Waiting for the first mail boat to arrive.”
“So’s the whole army. The men are dying to know whether Aunt Maud had to sell the farm or beautiful Nell said ta-ta to her soldier fiancé and found another.”
“I haven’t heard from my editor in weeks.” Not that he was particularly eager to receive more of Plumb’s acerbic messages, but he had to earn his wage. “I have dispatches to send.”
The room was noisy, smoke-laden, the bar lined with officers congratulating one another on the splendid news of Gen. George Thomas’s victory over Hood at Nashville five days earlier. Beyond the dining room archway, an assortment of civilians were swilling at the hotel’s public table. Cotton speculators and others eager to take advantage of the misfortunes of war, Stephen suspected.
“Cold night. Mind if I sit?” After a welcoming gesture from Davis, Stephen unfastened the black silk frogs on the front of his cloak coat, doffed it, and took a chair. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for Sherman. They say he won’t arrive until tomorrow.” He noticed Stephen’s eye on the scarred upright piano in a corner of the room. “Do you play?”
“Some.” He didn’t know the Harper’s man well enough to reveal that his last engagement in New York, three nights, 9 p.m. until dawn, was filling in for the ailing colored professor at Madame Celia’s Bower of Bliss, a notorious establishment in the Five Points. The waiter approached. “Order, sir?”
“Do you have real coffee?”
“Indeed we do, sir, genuine Brazilian, though I’m not at liberty to say how or where we got it.”
“Fine.” The waiter left. “Uncle Billy planning to make the hotel his headquarters, I understand?”
“I was told so. He’ll change his mind when someone on his staff checks the tariff. The owner hails from Vermont—a first-rank Yankee penny pincher. I don’t expect the hero of the hour to fork up government money for room and board. He’ll expect it gratis.”
So he wouldn’t be able to witness the arrival of General Sherman tonight. Lingering at the Pulaski House, while pleasant, wouldn’t be particularly productive. When he’d drunk his coffee—dark, fragrant, the real article—he thanked Davis for his hospitality, threw on his cloak coat, and set off.
Riding his mule down Bull Street on his way to his temporary bivouac in Forsyth Park, Stephen was on Wright Square’s east side when noise and commotion on darkened York Street drew his attention. He turned Ambrose that way and moments later gazed with astonishment through a first-floor window. A soldier appeared to be dancing atop the polished case of an upright piano. There were male voices raised in coarse merriment, and the oinking of a pig.
The man leaped off the piano. Stephen dismounted, certain he’d seen the cavorting soldier before. Soldiers had no business in a civilian house. He tied Ambrose to a picket and slipped through the gate.
He eased his Belgian revolver from under his cloak coat and stole up the stairs. He interrupted the party by bolting through the door suddenly and saying, “Well, now.” It wasn’t original, but it was spontaneous, expressing his surprise and dismay at the disorderly scene before him.
A pig squealed and yanked on its rope knotted to the leg of a chair. An unlovely little tree, presumably for Christmas, lay overturned. A large, very large, woman reclined on her side, unconscious but breathing like a factory bellows. A pretty but distraught young woman with straw-colored hair hovered near a child with snapping blue eyes and long curls. Ink blotched portions of the carpet, which was further disfigured by a litter of rags, broken sticks, crushed walnut shells and scraps of paper; on one scrap Stephen recognized a mournful eye that might have belonged to R. E. Lee.
Three Union soldiers were ranged abo
ut the room in attitudes of confusion (the hulking and angelic ones) or hostility (the homely one). Although the men carried sidearms, they were disinclined to challenge an officer.
“I’ve met you boys before. Quite a few miles back, wasn’t it?” Stephen addressed Marcus. “As I recall, you were wearing earrings. Do you fellows make a habit of abusing those weaker than you?”
It was the choirboy who protested. “Sir, they’re nothing but rebel trash.”
“They don’t look like trash to me. They look like respectable Georgia citizens—harmless members of the fair sex.” All but that moppet, Stephen thought; she was gritting her teeth and glaring like a regular little harridan.
The stout woman on the floor was gradually waking with a series of moans and eye-flutters. The pretty woman hurried to her side, helped her sit up as Stephen continued, “We’ll find a broom and a bucket of water so you boys can clean up this mess.”
“No, no,” cried the stout lady, fully awake. “Don’t let them touch a thing with their unclean hands. Make them leave. I was certain they were going to outrage us.” The homely corporal snickered.
The pig bolted one way, then another, displacing the chair each time. Stephen said, “Little girl, can you quiet that animal?”
The moppet stuck out her chin. “These men scared her half to death. They threatened to cook her for barbecue.”
The pretty woman soothed the child, patting her, speaking gently. “Please try, Hattie. Take Amelia outside. Feed her.”
Hattie slitted her eyes at Stephen in an unfriendly way, but she obeyed the older woman whom he guessed to be her mother. Quite a handsome creature, excepting her wartime pallor and general state of disarray. Stephen liked most of the Southern women he’d met—charmingly soft-spoken, with a faintly exhausted air, as though perpetually suffering from the heat. He had no illusions about what lay beneath the facade: iron. Southern women managed to conceal it graciously, in contrast to many New York females who aggressively bashed you over the head with their wants, whims, and opinions.