I Have Seen Him in the Watchfires

by Cathy Gohlke

  “Dear Will Sherman. You do remember me, don’t you?” Gen. Sherman nodded but looked like he did not. “We last danced at that lovely Washington City ball, all you handsome young men in your West Point uniforms!”

  “West Point was a long time ago, madam.” But a glimmer dawned in Gen. Sherman’s eyes.

  Ma’s laughter rang like bells. “Caroline Ashton, if I must remind you. My cousin, Albert—Albert Mitchell—introduced us, and we enjoyed a lovely waltz, with the promise of a second. Until—” and now Ma’s cheek colored, and she flashed her eyes toward me—”until he introduced me to Charles.” I felt my face flame. “I’m afraid we rather forgot everyone else.” Ma flipped her fan and adjusted her hoop, took her place on the settee, and smiled up at him. “So you see, Will, I really do owe you a dance.”

  Gen. Sherman looked as if he didn’t know what to make of Ma’s performance. He looked at me like I’d gone crazy, then looked again, more closely. “I remember Albert Mitchell. You can’t be Charles Glover, but you look a good deal like him—like him twenty years ago.”

  I stepped forward, between them, and held out my hand, tried to whisper, “I’m Robert Glover, sir—Charles Glover’s son.” I tried to motion toward Ma, hoping he’d understand that she was not in her right mind. Either he didn’t catch on or meant not to.

  “Robert Glover! Charles told me about you, young man. You are the spitting image of your father.” Then he frowned. “From all he said I would have expected to see you in blue uniform—” he looked at Ma and back to me—”rather than holed up in a secession mansion.” He pulled a cigar from his pocket, lit it, and ground the lucifer into the carpet.

  “That was my intention, sir.” I looked back at Ma, who picked furiously at her brooch, a string of emotions, all of them confused and frightened, flitting across her face. “May we speak privately?”

  Gen. Sherman nodded, watching Ma, maybe gaining some understanding. “Tonight, Glover. I’ve got some things to attend to now. We’ll be setting our headquarters here for a couple of days. You’ll cooperate, I trust.”

  “Yes, sir.” I realized that as much as we feared him, Gen. Sherman’s presence might mean protection from his men. “The ladies and children, sir?”

  “They won’t be troubled.” He frowned. “Why you’ve collected that infernal passel of darkie babies I saw up the stairs, I don’t know.” He waited, but I didn’t answer. He shouted, “Lieutenant!” The lieutenant must have been listening by the parlor door, quick and smart as he stepped in.

  “General.”

  “See that a watch is set before the ladies’ room. Every courtesy extended. That’s all.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Now Gen. Sherman turned toward Ma. “Mrs. Glover, I thank you for your hospitality.”

  That helped Ma find her ground, though the “Mrs. Glover” seemed to throw her. “Our West Point men are always welcome, General. I hope you will join us for a little supper at six.”

  Sherman bowed, flicking cigar ash on the carpet. “My staff and I will be delighted.”

  Ma picked up a porcelain dish and handed it to Gen. Sherman. “For your cigar, sir.” She lifted her chin, stretched to her full height. “You were a perfect gentleman when last we danced, Will Sherman. I trust you will behave every bit that gentleman now.”

  Sherman inclined his head, half-amused, but nodded in obedience. “Have no fear, madam.”

  Ma nodded slightly and glided from the room. Sherman looked at me, raised his eyebrows once, then turned his back. I was dismissed.

  Thirty-Three

  Supper was a nightmare. Ma and Gen. Sherman danced their words and memories across the table. Ma recollected every tidbit like it was yesterday, forever correcting the general’s version.

  Gen. Sherman talked about everything in the “long ago.” But he indulged Ma, just the same. I think it flattered him, the way she teased. It was hard to watch. He couldn’t help but see Ma as a beautiful woman. I guessed that had been true for Pa and Cousin Albert too.

  In some odd way the evening seemed to help Ma. She’d let up looking at me like I was Pa ever since I’d started the evening read—at least until that morning when she’d introduced me as “Charles” to the general. But over supper Ma seemed to find a more real sense of time. It flattered her to have Gen. Sherman there, paying her heed—not acting as though she was a young Southern belle, but a belle just the same.

  Ma talked on and on about Albert and Charles and how they both courted her shamelessly. I couldn’t look at Emily.

  “It’s understandable, Mrs. Glover. Charles was obviously the more fortunate man. You’ve a son to prove it, the image of his father.”

  Ma blushed. She looked confused but seemed to loop one memory onto another, forming some sort of picture in her mind. I wondered if she took in that I was her son, that she was my mother, that Pa was not here. I wondered if she’d ever realized, despite Emily’s care, that Cousin Albert was dead. If she did, or if she’d overheard our talk, I prayed she wouldn’t remember now, hoped she wouldn’t realize that Gen. Sherman was part of the army that imprisoned him, the head of the army that even now swept her South, blasting and burning everything she loved.

  Ruby and Emily had cooked all afternoon. Sherman’s men, who’d foraged the land liberally, brought more food to the kitchen door than any of us had seen for months. With Emily busy, I minded Ma and the children, who were quartered in Nanny Sara’s room.

  All six children, vexed and fractious from being stuck inside night and day, had quarreled and tussled through the afternoon. I’d tried to keep them busy with story after story but made the mistake of leaving to haul water. While I was gone one of the guards told young Lizzie that they were powerful hungry—so hungry, in fact, that he planned to roast her and the twins over an open spit and eat them alive. It set Lizzie to howling and screaming, and that started up a chain—one child after another screaming their heads off. Only Emily could convince her it was a lie and finally stay their tears. I wanted to strangle the soldier who’d teased her with that whopper.

  Ruby served the meal. Emily, exhausted and the picture of distraction, sat beside Ma. I don’t know what worried Emily most—Gen. Sherman and his men in her aunt’s dining room with the children upstairs or the looming threat of Ma and what she might do, might remember and unleash.

  After dinner the general shut himself in the parlor with his staff officers. The ladies retired to Nanny Sara’s room. On the stairway Ma paused, looked down to me, and said, “Good night, Robert.”

  My heart caught. I steadied myself on the newel post. Shed already passed up the stairs when my voice croaked, “Good night, Ma.”

  I cleaned up the kitchen, glad to help Emily in some way, then wandered to the backyard, needing to see Stargazer, to tell him Ma knew me. But Gen. Sherman’s men had searched the buildings and outbuildings right off. Most of Ruby’s hiding places had been discovered, the garden poked through with ramrods. Stargazer was penned with the Union horses. My best chance, my only chance to get him back—and it was slim—was to plead with Gen. Sherman. He’d promised to see me later tonight. I wouldn’t let him forget.

  Already the light through Nanny Sara’s window burned low. I didn’t know if the ladies slept or wanted Gen. Sherman’s men to think they did.

  It was well past eleven when the officers left the parlor. As the guard changed I told the new corporal that the general was expecting me.

  “Come in.” Gen. Sherman stretched his legs long, still in his unbuttoned coat and muddied boots. He puffed a stubbed cigar, nursed a brandy.

  “Gen. Sherman, may I see you now?” I waited by the door.

  “Glover,” he answered, swirling his brandy, “come in.”

  The fire burned low in the grate. “Would you like another log for the fire, sir?”

  “Soon. Sit and tell me what in thunder is going on with your mother.”

  Gen. Sherman carried a reputation for not wasting time. So I sat and told him, as best I could, how M
a had left home before the war, how Pa had left to help the Union after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, about the letter from Emily and my long journey to find them, how I’d found that Ma had retreated into the past during the war, how tonight was the first time she seemed to remember that she had a son, and that I was not my father. I never mentioned Fort Delaware, or Cousin Albert, or Slocum, or any of that. All the time I spoke the general swirled his brandy, staring into the dying embers. Ash from his cigar dropped onto the carpet.

  “War is hard,” Gen. Sherman said, grinding his cigar stub into Ma’s porcelain dish. “It needs to be so brutally, sickeningly hard that the civilian population cannot rise to fight another day. As long as they supply their soldiers this war will not end. When they stop supporting the war, when they can no longer support the war, the soldiers will be done, and we can all go home.” The general’s eyes flamed and ebbed.

  That explained the burning of mansions and barns, of cabins and lean-tos, the ripping out of gardens, the destruction of crops, the wholesale slaughter of animals, and the salting of land they didn’t need to forage. But I was sure the people of South Carolina and Georgia would never see this scourge as some lofty cause to end the war so everybody could go home. No wonder some called him crazy; some called him Satan; some called him the avenging angel.

  “Your father’s a good man … some radical notions to my thinking, to military thinking, but he came through for us. A great deal of the success of my campaign’s been due to our fine cartographers. Your father is one of the best.”

  “You’ve seen Pa?”

  He downed his brandy. “Two months ago. Before Savannah.” He set the glass on the table beside him. “I don’t believe he knows you’re here—or your mother. He thought her fairly safe in North Carolina.”

  “He doesn’t know. We’ve had no word from him since he left for the war—no way to get word to him. I knew from the beginning that his work is secret, that he couldn’t let me know where he was. It’s been hard not knowing if he was—”

  “It’s always hard.” Sherman rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I think there must be more to this, more you’ve not told.” His eyes roamed my face till I looked away. “For instance, how you all find yourselves in this hotbed of secession.” I didn’t answer. “Why it took you the better part of a year to find your mother. … Be that as it may, you need to get out of South Carolina immediately.”

  “We’ve no way to travel, sir—no wagon. Your men have confiscated my only horse.”

  He waved his hand. “Easily remedied. But you’ll leave in the morning, under my escort, or I’ll not be responsible for your safety or that of the women. My bummers, as they’re so irreverently called, comb a fifty-mile swath on either side of our march, and though I don’t sanction all their activities, I don’t nursemaid them.” He looked me over. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll see that you have passes and a guard well into North Carolina. I’ll have a map drawn up for you, which you will receive somewhere beyond the state line. If you decide to return to Maryland you’ll need to go unescorted. But I’ll provide you with passes through Union lines—and the safest routes to travel. Avoid Petersburg and Richmond at all costs. Do not deviate from the map, and do not share the map with any other eyes.”

  It was more than I could have hoped. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

  Gen. Sherman stood and loosened his collar, signifying the end of our discussion. “I owe your father this.” He reached for my hand. “Good luck, young man.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, Gen. Sherman.” Grateful, I shook his hand, wondering at the same time how much blood was on them. He turned his back. I was almost out the door when he called my name.

  “Glover.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “As soon as you take care of your women I expect to see you in Federal uniform—if we’re still fighting this war, which I hope to God we are not.”

  “Yes, sir!” I vowed. “Sir, if you see my father—”

  “I’ll tell him why you’re not in uniform, and that your mother offered me the dance he stole.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” I hoped he’d forget the part about the dance.

  Thirty-Four

  We pulled out just after dawn the next day, no matter that a cold and steady drizzle began during the night.

  We layered ticking and blankets for Nanny Sara across the back of the light wagon Gen. Sherman’s men had confiscated for Stargazer to pull, then covered the bed with oilcloth to keep out the rain and damp. General Sherman sent along a mule, a wagon with supplies for the journey, and a kindly note to Ma, which flattered her to no end. The ladies wore double sets of clothes, careful to keep the gold from clanking in their buttons, their hems. Emily tucked the Bible and a packet of papers beside Nanny Sara, then loaded the children in the supply wagon. She and Ruby would take turns minding them.

  The private, who’d hungry-eyed Stargazer from the moment he saw him, offered to swap Stargazer for a bigger horse, a farm horse born and bred for hauling wagon. I assured him we’d be fine and reminded him that Gen. Sherman’s order gave me back my horse. I didn’t tell him that Stargazer had spent most of the war in a Confederate field hospital, hauling wagons and ambulances and who knew what all. If the hills became steep, we’d walk. I’d do whatever Stargazer needed, and I wouldn’t leave him behind.

  Nanny Sara’s breathing ran wispy and shallow. She drifted in and out of consciousness. This trip was the last thing she needed, but we made her as comfortable as we could. Each time her eyes opened she whispered, “I’m going home. My Ruby’s going home.”

  Ma picked at her brooch every waking minute. Ruby soothed her, sang low, trying to ease the tension.

  “Did Will say why we are being transported in such a fashion?” Ma leaned forward from the wagon bed, anxious, and gripped my arm as I drove.

  “Gen. Sherman was worried about the soldiers coming. He wanted us to be safe, so he gave us this wagon.”

  “I see,” she said and sat back. Then, not ten minutes later she leaned forward again. “Where are we going? Are we going home, Robert?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, thankful she still knew my name, wondering what home meant to her.

  There were seven members in the escort—one drove the supply wagon, two rode in front, two beside, and two behind. We were as safe as Gen. Sherman could make us, and as imprisoned.

  Early on the second day I whispered to Emily that we’d made a wide turn from the way I came. “We’re avoiding Columbia,” she whispered back. “Gen. Sherman must be planning on taking the city, the railroad.”

  Sherman’s men eyed us suspiciously each time we whispered, so I pretended to brush Emily’s ear, to tease her as I would a girl I courted. It was an act, but it felt good to sit so close to her, to feel her hair against my cheek, beneath my hand.

  The children were played out with fussing and fear of the blue-coated soldiers. They kept us busy, and maybe that was good. We didn’t have time or ease to worry. Henry’s eyes searched out mine each time we stopped, begging me not to leave him. I reminded him I was in the wagon just in front of him. But I wondered what his young life had been that he was so fearful, and what would become of him with no ma or pa.

  On the fifth day we figured we’d passed the state line. The soldiers didn’t speak of leaving, and I have to admit I was glad of their help, glad of the extra wagon.

  Nanny Sara weakened by the hour. Ruby lay next to her day and night as we rumbled along, singing spirituals, sweet and low, in her ear. Ma absently patted Nanny Sara’s feet, soothed her legs, then patted her feet again until Ruby gently laid Ma down on the other side of her. At night she tucked all six children in and around Nanny Sara. They and all the women slept together in the one wagon. It was warmer that way.

  I was always glad of the morning, glad to see Emily’s smile, tired though she was. Whenever possible Emily rode on the wagon seat next to me. I
was glad for her company.

  We built a small fire the eighth night and sat around it, roasting old ears of corn and a few potatoes. Ruby tried to feed Nanny Sara a thin gruel, but she’d stopped eating.

  “We’ll be pulling out in the morning,” the captain said to no one in particular. “You’re a day or two from your county.”

  “Thank you for bringing us so far,” Emily offered. The captain looked up, nodded to her, held her gaze, and looked back into the fire.

  “You’ll need to keep moving,” he said.

  “Gen. Sherman said you’d leave us a map.” I hoped this man would carry out his orders.

  “I’ll give it to you in the morning.”

  “I’d like to look it over now. I want to be sure I’ve got my bearings before you leave us.”

  The captain smirked. “Don’t know your own neck of the woods, do you, son?”

  I held my temper. “I’ve got four women and six children to get home safely, sir—four women Gen. Sherman wanted escorted safely out of hostile territory. One of them may not see the new moon. I’d like to get her home to her own bed before that happens.”

  The captain straightened, threw the last of his brew in the dirt, and pulled a roll of paper from inside his shirt. He tossed it across the fire, barely missing the flame, and strode into the dark. I grabbed the roll from the dirt, smoothed it out, pocketed the passes, and studied the map against the low flames.

  A private emptied the last of the chicory on the ground and swirled water round the pot. “Don’t mind him. He’s always edgy before a skirmish.”

  “Shut up, Fitzhue!” the sergeant barked. “You talk too much.”

  Insulted, the private mumbled, “How would I know how much is too much?”

  “None at all would suit best!” the sergeant barked again, then threatened, “You’re still in the army, Private.”

  Fitzhue stood grim, saluted, then disappeared into the night.

  I recognized the Yadkin River and parts of North Carolina drawn across the roll of paper. The map had led us due north, then far west. It was not the fastest way, but after what I’d heard from Fitzhue, I wagered it had been the safest.