Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “I cannot help,” I said, “feeling sorry for the boy’s mother. An affair of nations it well may be, sir, but it will break Mrs. Fowler’s heart a second time when she learns the stuff of it.” My mouth screwed into my cheek. “She’s old, and sick. And she believes her boy died for a great cause, murder or not. It is a black matter that he died for a man’s greed.”

  McClellan stood up. Twas the signal that I should go.

  At the door, he took my hand.

  “Justice must be done,” he said.

  The Cawber Iron works were black. Their waste blackened the river till the moon found no reflection, and the smoke from their chimneys blackened the stars. Within the walls the ovens glowed with hellfire. The war was good to the works. Even on Friday evening, the melting and pouring and pounding of steel hinted at Armageddon. Furnaces gaped, and sparks thrilled up. The laboring men appeared tiny and fragile beside the machinery, and their rags were black with the coke, their backs bent. They hurried about in the sudden, frantic gestures of those afraid. Their skin was gray as beef forgotten in the pot and their faces were but dungeons for their eyes. As they tugged at the chains of the great kettles, they looked as though they had already been judged and cast down into the pit. What man could live so?

  The works were a chilling sight to me, for they echoed Merthyr and sorrow. It seemed my fate to live in an age when the whole world would be ground up by industry, and covered with soot and ashes.

  Mr. Matthew Cawber was blacker than his works. Hair black as spent powder, and plenty of it he had. Whiskers wrapped his face, and rogue hair crowded out from his cuffs and down the back of his big hands. Tufts grew between the joints of his fingers. One cheek bore a scar of the sort a miner takes from a coal-face slash. It started from the corner of his eye, and all the whiskers in the world could not hide the depth nor the startling blue color of it. His eyes themselves were savage things, and dark. If not for his fine tweeds and the clean fingernails, you would have taken him for the shift bully down by the ovens. He put me in mind of a wild Pushtoon. I would not have chosen him for my enemy.

  “Go to hell,” he told me, lighting up a cigar. He had waited me out, burning, as I spread my facts and conclusions before him. Not a word was to be had from him before I was done, not a sound— unless there is a sound to inner fury. There seemed to be no fear in the man. Only rage, and plenty of that. He reminded me of those soldiers who are louts in garrison and lions on the battlefield, men who despise all authority but their own, and who slaughter the enemy when they really want to kill their own colonel. His face had gone scarlet, but for the lifelessness around that slash.

  He stood up from behind his desk. If he didn’t look like the devil himself, with his hellfire works and the black night beyond the window at his back.

  The devil with a blacksmith’s shoulders, he was. Or Vulcan, the Greek fellow, all muscle, lust, and bile, “Now,” he said, “it’s your turn to listen to me, you pompous little fool. Just like that damned snot McClellan sending up a cripple to do his dirty work for him. Knowing a gent can’t knock his teeth out his back end.” I tensed and nearly rose. But the force of the man fell on me like a Madras monsoon.

  “You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to?” he said. “You think Matt Cawber can’t buy all the eyes and ears he wants in Washington? Whole worthless city’s for sale.” He drained the smoke from his cigar then fair spit it back out. “Oh, I know you, Jones. Known you since you made that damn-fool scene over at the arsenal.” He picked up a portfolio from his desk and threw it into my lap. “Open it. Read it, if you’re capable. Those are legal government contracts. For Cawber wagons to haul goods to and from your damned arsenal. You think the government has wagons enough for the work at hand? Hell, man, they don’t even have harnesses for their nags. They came to me, to Matthew Cawber, hats in hand. Because Cawber Steel and Iron owns more wagons than the U.S. government. And if they were fool enough to pay me too much for the cartage, shame on them. That’s just business.” He smiled like Satan in a bad mood. “That wagonload of uniforms you turned back? They were on their way to the railyard. Ready to go to Washington. To fill your own requisition. But would you listen to anybody? With all your damned self-righteousness? All you did, man, was to slow your own work down.”

  I looked at the papers. And felt the sort of rottenness in my stomach you get from drinking bad water. “Now, Captain Jones. As for your famous exploding cannon.” He tossed me another file of papers. “Every one of those guns was cast according to the specifications set down by the Ordnance Department. Hell if I know how you got it wrong. I never did run a cannon factory until now. But I’m learning.” He pointed his cigar down at his works. “You just go down there. Go down where we’re casting the guns. Ask for Schminke. Or for Dassenbrock. Or LaFonte. I’ve brought in the best cannon experts from Europe—at my own expense, mind you. Sent my agents out to find them and hire them on. I’m doing the work you people should have done for yourselves. There won’t be any more exploding guns from the Cawber works. No thanks to the War Department.”

  He tossed the cigar, unfinished, into a marble dish.

  “Are you mad, Jones? Do you think I want us to lose this war? And lose half our national market? Just to see those British bastards move in? When the shooting and shouting’s over, I want those damned fools down in Georgia or Louisiana to buy their steel from Cawber, not Sheffield. If secession came off and this country split forever, it would be one damned disaster for business. Hell, you won’t find a stronger backer of Honest Abe and Union blue anywhere in this country.”

  The second set of papers contained diagrams and formulae which I could not fully decipher. But they were to do with cannon, certainly. And they carried the official seals of the Ordnance Department and the War Department both, and proper signatures.

  With a roar, Cawber kicked over a table loaded with papers and account books. A white storm filled the air. The man had the kick of an army mule.

  “Damn them,” he said. “Damn every one of their black Philadelphia hearts.” He wheeled around to face me again, eyes hot enough to burn the air. “Let’s get down to the real business, Jones. This turd you just laid about me killing the Fowler brat.” He made a noise between a choke and a growl. “First of all, what makes you think a snot like that’s important enough to kill? Why would it even be worth my while? You can see for yourself there’s no legal case against me. A judge would laugh to beat the band if you waved this in front of his bench. And Anthony Fowler knew it. Not more than a month ago, he sat right in that chair you’re sitting in and tried to pull this corruption nonsense on me himself. And I gave him both barrels. Boy was like a damned sheep after I laid it all out for him. Him and his Philadelphia crowd. Oh, high and mighty they are. High and mighty and righteous as the angels. But didn’t the little puke end up asking me to contribute to his war chest for the free Negro before he slunk out of here. And damn me if I wasn’t fool enough to give him something, after all he said against me. For slavery’s a bad business, and bad for business, and we’ve got to bring it down. Can’t ask an honest workman to compete with slave labor. But that little snot Fowler was nothing but a confidence man. He should’ve been off selling cure-alls in a medicine show.”

  “Anthony Fowler was a hero,” I said. “He was incorruptible.”

  Cawber laughed. He really laughed. “Oh, was he now? Like his father, I suppose?” He shook his head, smirking down at the wreckage his tantrum had left on the floor. “Jones… you’re like me in one thing, at least. You weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Suckers like us, we tend to think folks like the Fowlers or the Trenchards are our betters. We let them slip the con over us. We don’t like it, but it works on us anyway. Me, I was fool enough to believe a fortune honestly got and a good marriage would be enough to open their doors to my little son and daughter. Didn’t I give to all their charities when they came creeping around? Cave to their academies and schools and orphanages. Hell, I’ve funded the abolition
ist movement damned near single-handedly. And still they won’t shake my hand in public. Because my old man worked his life out on the docks. Broke his back unloading old Bates’s boats. That makes me not quite human to the inheritance crowd. And my children are the same way to ‘em. Tainted. Just because the Cawbers weren’t here in time to steal land from the Indians and kiss the British on their backsides.”

  He smiled and his whiskers spread like wings. “I hear you’ve been to visit Mrs. Fowler?”

  “A grand lady,” I said, “and I will hear nothing spoken against her.”

  “You’ll hear what I decide to tell you. You know why she keeps that carriage you rode around in, Jones?”

  “There is social position to be answered. A lady must have her carriage, though she cannot use it herself.”

  “Oh, use it she does, man. Once a month. In the black of the night. When she thinks nobody sees. The whole city knows—though you won’t get a one of them to say it. They stick together, I’ll say that for them, your Philadelphia society folk. They know if one of ‘em goes, they all go. So they just pull down the shades and slobber over their family trees while Lettie Fowler rides off through the dark like the witch that she is.” His eyes set on me as if he were aiming a gun. “Know where she goes, Jones? In all her fine Philadelphia dignity?”

  This time I had nothing to say. I looked at the cigar gone black-nosed, forgotten in its dish.

  “She goes to a beautiful little country estate near Bryn Mawr. A lovely place. With high fences. High fences with sharp spikes on the top. Know why those spikes are there, Jones?” I shook my head.

  “Well, it’s not to keep us peasants out. The place isn’t a country estate at all. It’s a loony bin. For the rich. For the relatives that have to be gotten out of the way. That’s where you’ll find the real history of Philadelphia. And you know who she goes there to visit, man? Her husband.”

  “Mr. Fowler died. In a shipping incident.”

  He smiled. “Go there, Jones. I’ll give you the address. Your uniform might get you in. One way or the other. Old Fowler’s eaten up by every disease known to man. He’s killing mad. The old bitch sits outside the bars and just looks at him.”

  He showed me his teeth as a mean dog will. “Now can you figure out why she can’t walk? And why she left China? Talk to a medical man. One who handles confidential cases. Oh, old Fowler loved the Chinese all right. He bedded every yellow whore he could find. Half a dozen at a time, from what I hear. And from what I know of Letitia Fowler, I can almost understand it.”

  “That is indecent, sir.”

  He strode over to me and put a hand on each arm of my chair, bending down to give me the sulfur of his breath and a good look at those pagan eyes. “No, Jones. I’ll tell you what’s indecent. Coming here to accuse an innocent man of murder, that’s indecent. Who do you think’s building this country up from nothing? Men like me, or phony aristocrats like them? They’re nothing but damned leeches. But maybe you’d like to hear more? How they brought old Fowler out of China in a cage? Or about the secret society the Trenchard brat and young Bates and the Fowler boy founded at the University of Pennsylvania? Now there was a scandal that got hushed up mighty fast. Must have cost a fortune to buy off the families of the girls. Half the medical faculty had to be retired on the quiet. Or how about old Lettie Fowler’s opium smoking? Oh, that family brought back plenty from China. Plenty. And not just the junk crammed into that haunted house off Rittenhouse Square.”

  “I have never met… a perfect man, Mr. Cawber. Anthony Fowler fought for the freedom of the less fortunate. He dedicated his life to the cause. There is much to be said for that, and youthful indiscretions are to be forgiven.” I was desperate to find some goodness somewhere. For the man’s words twisted my bones.

  Cawber ran his hands back over his scalp. The hair followed his fingers like the pelt of a wolf.

  “Well… it’s time somebody in that family did something good for somebody. But if Anthony Fowler had come anywhere near my daughter, I damned well would’ve shot him, and done it myself. Whole Fowler clan’s riddled with disease and dementia. The mother wants to raise the spirits of the dead, and the boy wanted to raise up the Negro. The father just wanted to raise every whore in China and set her down on his lap. I say, let ‘em go and good riddance. Let ’em rot, and be glad there’s no more of ‘em.”

  Cawber drew out his pocket watch. Its gold case gleamed.

  “Waste of damned time,” he said. “Listen, Captain. You go back and tell that peacock McClellan that Matt Cawber said he’s a horse’s ass and that I don’t believe he has the stomach to fight through a quilting bee. And if this is all some kind of plot to get me to sell out my railroad interests to his bunch, he’ll damned well have to try again. Matt Cawber won’t be bluffed or bullied by the likes of him.” He smiled down at me. “You know… the truth is that Georgie McClellan has no more credit with those old Philadelphia families than I do. They’re just playing him for a fool. They’ll see where he goes and drop him when he turns useless.” He picked up the cigar he had forgotten, registered its death, and put it down again.

  “McClellan does have friends, though. Ambitious men. Like himself. Less scrupulous men than me. He’ll always squeak through. Somebody’s always going to cut him in on the game. He’ll die a pillar of society, though it won’t be the society he craves.”

  He stroked his whiskers with his thumb, considering me. And his face took on an expression almost of pity. “Do you have any friends in high places, Jones? Is anybody going to deal you a winning hand? It looks to me like you’ve been everybody’s fool. And soon you’ll be out with the garbage. On your way now.”

  I am a flawed man. I know it. But I will not hide from my follies, or try to make them pretty. There is dullness in me when it comes to spotting evil. I always want to believe a man better than he is, or as good as he might be. I wish virtue where often there is none. As a Christian, I have a weakness for redemptions, and would raise a man up rather than put him down. More than once have I imagined light where there was only darkness. Nor was Cawber wrong when he said that our like must beware the blandishments of the great.

  The Good Lord knows I had believed in General McClellan—and wished to have faith in him still.

  How much had I been led to believe, and how much had I come to believe on my own? How much art was in the evil surrounding me?

  Twas a hard night, though I passed it in a clean bed. I found refuge in the little hospital set up behind the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. Now that establishment, I must tell you, was run by charitable citizens—it was not the sort of saloon where drink is dispensed. No, a place of brief comfort it was, for regiments headed south, and the strongest liquid poured was apple cider. The hospital of fifteen bunks was for soldiers taken ill on their journey to the war. But there were no sick or convalescents that night, and each pale bed lay empty, and they let me a place for kindness. Perhaps they saw the sickness in my heart.

  They gave me supper and tea—for the good ladies feared the stimulating effects of coffee on the male of the species—but I managed hardly a bite. I could not believe that General McClellan had treated me so shabbily, that he had made such a pure fool of me. Yet, neither could I believe that Little Mac was ignorant of all that I would come up against in Matthew Cawber. If the general knew even a quarter of the truth of it, he had no good cause to send me on such an errand. What could be the point of it?

  I believed Cawber, see. For if I want to believe the best of other men, that trait is balanced by my ability to recognize the truth when finally I do see it, or hear it, or smell it. I believed almost everything Cawber said. And yet I suspected there was error enough in the world for him to have his share of it, too. I would not believe only evil of the Fowler lad. No matter if his family had its devils and his schoolboy pranks had been harmful to the undeserving. I have never known a perfect man. Somehow, I continued to believe that Anthony Fowler had died wrongly, and undeservedly, and well befo
re his time.

  Before I went to bed, I sat over my cold leavings of tea and watched a Negro fellow sweep the floor of the saloon. He was old as Methusaleh and stooped, with a halo of hair that put me in mind of dirty wool. He looked a simple sort—I realized his race had not the makings of generals or men of government or business—but he was undeniably my human brother. Mick Tyrone was right about that. Now well you may laugh at Abel Jones, for you have seen in me fool enough. But I could not see the justice in keeping such a one as that poor sweeper in chains or subject to the lash, or in rending him from the bosom of his family. The Good Lord knows this is a hard world, and I do not see the virtue in making it harder for any of His creatures. Tens of thousands of people had believed that Anthony Fowler had dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery. They had believed in him. He had convinced the multitudes, and he had even convinced my Mary Myfanwy, who can tell a sound egg from a bad one while they’re both still in the basket. And I believed in him still.

  Perhaps it was the fairness of his countenance those times I saw him passing into the War Department, for beauty confounds us and we often confuse it with virtue. It might have been the adulation of the high-born against which Cawber warned me. Or it may have been the need I have to believe in something beyond our human smallness. With my vanity ravaged and my pride in ruins, I still wanted to know who had killed Anthony Fowler, and what had driven them to such a deed. I still wanted… to see justice done. But I felt lost, and friendless, and without hope. I had meant to do good, and emerged a braying jackass.

  An invisible limb had been broken out from under me, and I had fallen hard. I did not know if I could get back up.

  I drifted in and out of sleep and dreamed of horses streaming blood, of terrible fires and laughing men. Twas one of those nights when the difference between sleep and wakefulness is slight as a bubble, when your nightmares follow you well into the morning.