News of General Lee’s surrender reached Stratford that same evening. Since it was unpatriotic to feel the heart leap at such doleful intelligence, neither Samuel nor his wife Abigail remarked aloud. But as she helped Franky prepare their supper of boiled poke greens and grits, Abigail hummed one of Mr. Foster’s sprightlier tunes and Samuel did not reprove her.
A week later when his grandson, Thomas Byrd, splashed his horse across the ford, Samuel felt such constriction in his chest he nearly stopped breathing.
“Hullo, sir.” Thomas dismounted swiftly, carelessly, and beat dust from his uniform with his hat. A scrawny chicken dangled from his saddle. “Well, it’s over.” He looked around indifferently. “I never thought we’d get whipped but I ’spose we did. Duncan’s all right. Not a scratch. He’s fetching Sallie.”
“Well, then,” Samuel Gatewood said, able to say no more. “Well, then . . .”
MOLLY SEMPLE WAS AWAKENED by a tapping at her door and the aroma of warm cornbread.
“Hullo, Cousin Molly. Do you remember me?”
Molly sat bolt upright. “My eyes aren’t as sharp as they were and you were a child when I saw you last, but if you ain’t Pauline Byrd, I am sorely mistaken.”
The young woman set down the tray and hugged her kinswoman. “It seems so long ago! I’m so glad you’ve come, Cousin. I’m so glad we’re together.”
“Sweetheart.” Molly smiled. “My, aren’t you grown.”
“I’ll be sixteen on my birthday.”
Molly shook her head wonderingly. “ You are a fetching young woman. You’ve your mother Leona’s complexion.”
The girl’s face clouded. “Poor, poor Mama . . .”
“God bless your mama, child. She loved you so.” Molly lifted the napkin that covered the tray. My goodness! Cornbread!”
“Oh, yes. There’s cornbread and there’s maple syrup—I lugged the buckets while Jack and Franky kept the boil. We made ten gallons. We have all the syrup we want! And here’s milk and butter and here’s an egg I boiled. Oh, Miss Molly, when I think of our poor negroes wandering the countryside with nothing to eat, it makes me so sad!”
“It is hard for them. Thousands have crowded into Richmond. They engage to work but then don’t appear, they find drink—I suppose one oughtn’t blame them. If these changes are difficult for us, think how much more difficult they must be for them. My Amelia has been with me since I was a girl and she knows no other work. My home has been her home. I told Amelia I had no money for wages but she could continue, as before, under my roof and share my food until I could pay her, but she said no, she wouldn’t, she was free now so she’d leave. Amelia is sixty if she’s a day, but could not be swayed from her purpose. Every night I pray for her.”
As Cousin Molly poured syrup on her cornbread, she said, “Now, child. Tell me about your beaus.”
On the cusp between womanhood and girlhood Pauline blushed to the roots of her hair. “Cousin . . .”
“Oh, dear, dear. Forgive this old spinster. We old maids take more pleasure from young people’s courting than is altogether decent. Be assured, child, I only wish you happiness.”
“Cousin, the truth is that no boy has come calling. Nary one. And I am not sure what I would do if one did.” The girl continued in a rush, “Sallie is so smitten with Duncan she hasn’t anything to say except, ‘Duncan, Duncan, Duncan.’ ” She made a face. “If that is what love is, I think I shall find love disagreeable. To ignore everyone else in the world”—her gesture included Muscovites and the heathen Chinese—“for one man. Cousin Molly, are women always so moony when they find a beau?”
Cousin Molly had never married, but that was not to say she hadn’t loved. “I believe we are, dear.”
“It seems so silly. They are husband and wife and of course they love each other. But do they have to love each other so much?”
“He will be all the world to her until she has a child. Then the child will be the world to her. Women turn toward love as naturally as flowers seek the sun.” She rested her fork. “That is the most satisfying meal I have had in ever so long. How is Thomas?”
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I mean, Uncle Duncan lost an arm and his face was burned, but he never talks about the war. Tommy was only in the army six months and wasn’t wounded, but he is so bitter. He says the scalawags and carpetbaggers are ruining Virginia.”
Cousin Molly said, “I am sorry to hear that. Bitterness is one emotion the vanquished can ill afford.”
“Poor Pompey. Some no-accounts—oh, they were Ira Hevener’s friends—deserters like him—they were bothering the coloreds at the Botkin homeplace and when Pompey tried to run them off, they shot him.”
Molly sighed. “How Pompey loved singing. His booming bass. The colored singers in the garret of that little church of yours made sure we whites couldn’t hear our own voices.”
“Grandfather buried Pompey and brought Aunt Opal home. She’s changed, Molly. Opal’s got her own house in the Quarters and eats out of our garden, but she doesn’t help with the work and she’s always cross when I speak to her. Why are people so awful to each other?”
“Child, our consolation is that no matter what we have lost—friends, family, riches—at last this war is over. ” Molly clapped her hands. “Enough of sorrowful topics. Child, tell me about yourself.”
Pauline had her mother’s blue-black hair and (Molly noticed with a pang) Leona’s gray-green eyes. But Pauline’s eyes were more determined than poor Leona’s had ever been.
“I am just a girl,” Pauline said. “And . . . I am sometimes lonely here. Cousin Molly, will you be my friend?”
And Molly embraced the girl and murmured into her hair that of course she would, honey. Of course she would.
DUNCAN AND JACK rolled a chestnut log off the skid. Duncan set the wedges and Jack swung the maul while Samuel led the horse to the next log.
In the old days they’d taken an hour at noon for supper. These days, unless the horses needed a rest, they worked straight through, and when Jack turned to him now, Samuel cautioned, “I’ll want these rails before sundown.”
“Yes, Master. I’d be obliged for a word.”
Samuel drank from his wooden canteen and offered it to Jack.
“It’s Miss Franky,” Jack said. “You know we been seein’ right much of each other.”
The couple had been living together in Jack’s cabin since Christmas, but since Samuel wasn’t supposed to notice, he hadn’t. He registered appropriate surprise.
“We was thinkin’ on gettin’ married.” Jack looked away. “I come to ask your permission.”
“Why, Jack, you old devil. You? Married?”
“Yes, Master. Now I’m free I thought to get married. I never thought to marry before.”
Samuel didn’t intend to pursue that rabbit into the briar patch. Heartily—falsely even to his own ears—he said, “Well, Jack, now you are freed you needn’t ask my permission—or any man’s. Should you wish to marry, you marry; simple as that. And I shan’t be the one to marry you either. You won’t be ‘jumping the broomstick.’ Preacher Todd will marry you.”
“Preacher Todd’s an upstanding white man, Master. And I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ against him. But Franky is wantin’ get married by the Baptists in Warm Springs. They got a colored preacher.”
Samuel nearly protested that Stratford’s people attended the Presbyterian church in SunRise, they always had. But he was changing a lifetime’s habits, and contented himself with the observation, “What a new world it is, Jack.”
“Yes, Master,” Jack said, relieved. “It is for sure.”
THAT NIGHT AFTER SUPPER, while the family caught up with Molly’s Richmond gossip, Sallie and Duncan slipped upstairs. Through the transom above their closed door the couple heard faint voices and laughter.
Shirtless, Duncan lay sprawled across the bed on his stomach. Sally knitted on a chest beneath the window.
A framed lithograph from Leslie’s magazine hung on the wall
; roses in a jar on the bureau offered their aroma and the window was open to the night air. The lap robe Sally was knitting owed its ruddiness to the pokeberries she’d used to dye the wool. “It is good to hear laughter again,” she said.
“I wonder, Sallie, if you’d rub salve on my stump. We hit a lick today.”
She set down her basket and eased spearmint ointment on his puckered flap. It was hot to her touch.
“You must let others carry more of the burden.” She kneaded gently.
“I do little enough as it is.” He sat upright. “It seems strange that while we were fighting, when I might be killed in the next skirmish, my amputated limb didn’t ache. Can we postpone pain?”
“Dearest . . . I know that some men suffer more from their amputations than others. Some have perished.”
“I sometimes wish . . .” Duncan began.
“Yes, dearest?”
Sallie winced at Duncan’s sardonic laugh. “What’s the point of wishing? I lived. Many men did not.”
“Do you still dream of becoming a horse breeder?”
He shrugged. “Oh, my dreams are real enough. Too real, at times. Damn the laudanum! I dream terrible things. You know how a wounded horse screams?”
“You are taking more laudanum.”
“A bottle every three days. But what am I to do? Without it, the pain would keep me from doing my part, and at night, no matter how weary I am, I cannot sleep without it.”
“You sleep better after our lovemaking.” Sallie smiled.
This time his laugh was real. “Then let us put me to sleep.”
CHAPTER 6
A HINCTY NIGGER
White Bull heard of a Hunkpapa wican who had cured a woman of Low Dog dreaming. The whiskey trader Pommerlau was traveling to the Yellowstone where this Hunkpapa had his winter camp. I went with him.
The third night, Pommerlau beat me with the butt of his whip and tied me inside his wagon. Because he was Catholic, he put his son outside the wagon before he raped me. I told him I had been baptized, that my Christian name was Mary, but he said that since I wasn’t Catholic I was just another squaw.
After Pommerlau raped me, I knew he must kill me, because White Bull would make him cry when he learned what he’d done. I was always tied, even when I had to make water.
As we approached the Yellowstone, Pommerlau raped me more times.
One night, while the father was sleeping, the boy cut my bonds and I ran away. The boy had a snub nose and his breath was as sour as his father’s.
Snow fell and covered my tracks. I found serviceberries and dug camas roots and snared a rabbit. I had no fire. One night, I slept in a bear’s den—a cave in the riverbank.
That night I dreamed of my husband. He was as black as obsidian.
COLORED SOLDIERS STOOD at ease on the 38th United States Colored Troops’ Galveston, Texas, parade ground. When one exuberant private boarded the wagon for the steamer, he tossed his forage cap high in the air. “Bottom rail’s on the top these days!” he yelled.
Private Edward Ratcliff grumbled, “I swear to God, Burns, I swear to God Damned God. That nigger got his back pay, his uniform, and he goin’ home to God Damn Charleston—Charleston!—thinkin’ things gonna be different for him. Ten minutes after that boy come home he’ll be shuckin’ that fine blue uniform.”
Sergeant Jesse Burns was big enough so strangers stared. Ratcliff was a short, hard man. Jesse read and wrote as well as most whites. When Ratcliff had been Top Sergeant (Sergeant Major) Ratcliff, Jesse had prepared his daily muster report. They became friends during the Petersburg siege.
Burns and Ratcliff sat in the rickety stand where the 38th’s white officers reviewed their dusky soldiers. Jesse Burns had collected his pay, paid his small debts, and packed his haversack. The uniforms Jesse threw away would have clothed three slaves for a year.
Ratcliff filled his clay pipe and tamped it. “You goin’ back to Virginia?”
“Edward, we must seize our chance. We have earned the franchise. We cannot let it slip away.”
Ratcliff laughed. “You think they’ll give niggers the vote? Hell, Jesse, everybody Virginia just elected to Congress is a reb or a sympathizer.”
“Edward, though you accuse me of being too trusting, you are playing the innocent now.”
Ratcliff snorted.
“Republicans are a majority in Congress until or unless the Southern delegations are seated, whereupon Democrats will be the majority. Edward, do you think Thaddeus Stevens will let that happen?”
“Those rebel congressmen were elected proper. What can Stevens do?”
“Mr. Stevens will think of something.”
“Uh.” Ratcliff lit his pipe and paused to draw in smoke. “Damn, Jesse, I thought I finally got to where I was runnin’ to. First time I ran away from Master I wasn’t but fourteen. Didn’t get five miles. Second time I run, Master sold me to a master wasn’t so tenderhearted. That bastard took a whip to me. Every blow he laid on my back made me worth less at auction, but he was singin’, ‘Hincty nigger, hincty nigger,’ as he whipped me. Afterward he say how much pleasure it gave him. Next time I run, I got so near Ohio I could see the damn river, so I was sold south where I’d have farther to run. Finally Union General Butler gets to Hampton Roads and I signs on for the army. How many niggers got to be a Top Sergeant? How many niggers got a Medal of Honor?” He patted his chest. “I thought I’d surely got where I was gettin’. I’d stay in the army and fight Comanches or Maximilian’s Frenchmen or whoever the army gonna fight. Instead they took my stripes and made me a damn mess cook . . .”
Jesse shook his head. “Edward, you know you cannot strike an officer. Certainly in this man’s army, you cannot strike a Custer.”
WHEN RATIONS MEANT for the 38th USCT disappeared in Austin, then–Sergeant Major Ratcliff had volunteered to ride to the Texas capital to sort things out.
Captain Nivens wrote the order himself. “Top Sergeant; volunteering? You?”
“Yessir.”
The captain signed with a flourish. “Rations get misplaced or lost all the time.”
“Yessir.”
“They say there’s some pretty Mexican girls in Austin.”
“That’s what I hear.”
Captain Nivens blew on the ink and fluttered the orders in the air to dry. “Is that it?”
Ratcliff thought for a moment before he spoke. “Sir, what was you before you was a soldier?”
“I taught at Bowdoin College. Natural philosophy.”
“I’ll bet you be glad to get back to that natural philosophy; glad to shuck this hot wool uniform and put on civilian clothes.”
The captain smiled. “I intend to resume a normal life.”
“Bein’ a field hand, Captain, was my normal life. ’Fore daybreak I’d go out with the gang and we’d hoe or thin or pick or sort or dry or pack tobacco until the sun drop out the sky. Master say, ‘Nigger do this’ or ‘Nigger do that’ and I done it. In the army I get my meals, my clothes, and they pays me too. Never used to pay us field hands nothin’. Other soldiers who ain’t no sergeant major, they got to cook my meals and pitch my tent and they say, “Yes, Top, I’ll get to it right away, Top.’ White officers like you—the ones who know how an army really works—they comes to me and ask, ‘What sort of soldier is Jones? Should we promote Jones or that rapscallion from E Company?’ ”
Captain Nivens folded his orders. “Ratcliff, the army is shrinking. Most of the officers who want to stay in cannot. Officers who were brevetted general for meritorious service or valor, are demoted to captains or lieutenants. Most white soldiers, and every colored soldier, are being discharged.”
“Suppose General Grant was to put a word in for me, or General Sheridan.”
“Perhaps, in that case . . .”
“Suppose Major General Custer . . .”
“He’s Lieutenant Colonel Custer these days.” Ratcliff’s captain gave him his orders. “Good luck in Austin.”
It was an easy thr
ee-day ride. Before he entered Austin, Ratcliff dallied by a meandering creek to wash and shave. He changed into his best dress uniform with the bright yellow sergeant major’s stripes. Tom Custer, the General’s brother, had won two medals of honor and Sergeant Ratcliff hesitated before pinning his medal on his tunic. Might be resented; might get him a hearing. On balance? Worth the chance.
Ratcliff rode through the dusty Texas capital as if on parade.
The tents in Custer’s north Austin camp were laid out in military fashion, and the horses were well groomed, but the soldiers watched Ratcliff through dull incurious eyes.
Regimental headquarters were a one-story adobe ranch house with a shaded front porch. The United States flag and regimental colors hung in desultory folds in the windless morning air. A dozen officers, most in hunting garb, lounged on the porch and as Ratcliff approached made remarks he couldn’t quite hear. He did hear, “My God, Tom, has the comic opera come to town?”
Stone-faced, Ratcliff dismounted and tied his horse to the porch rail. A slight, mustachioed lieutenant intercepted him on the stairs and returned his salute more casually than Ratcliff had offered his. “Sergeant Major. What’s that you’re wearing?”
Ratcliff barked, “Medal of Honor, sir.”
The yellow-haired man in buckskins half asleep in his chair: that must be George Custer. He tipped his hat back to squint at the phenomenon. “Say, Tom,” he drawled, “does that make you twice as brave as a nigger or merely as brave as a nigger two times?”
The officers snickered.
“Sergeant Major Ratcliff reporting to regimental headquarters,” Ratcliff snapped.
“Jesus Christ! You’re not joining the regiment?” Tom Custer blurted.
“No, sir. I’ve come to inquire about missing rations.”
Canaan Page 4