Call Each River Jordan

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I understood I was to end the same. The thought clogged my heart with ice.

  Tin Voice gave me the toe of his boot in the side, then in the buttocks. I scrambled up. The lisper’s efforts dwindled down as all the air drained out of him. He jerked forward and back, in rhythm, spending his last fires. Desperate still to slip out of that noose. Imagining that he might yet survive. His fingers had dug between the rope and his neck, clawing the flesh and leaving crimson streaks.

  He slackened and his hands fell to his sides. A man in a straw hat gave a snort of benediction. But the lisper would not die. He kicked again. At the end, we cling to life. With more tenacity than we bring to the living of it.

  Except for those whose hands sustained the rope, the Rebels watched him die with folded arms. A few joked low and hard, but most looked on in calm satisfaction. One lit up a smoke.

  “Don’t them Yankees squirm?” a boy called from the clutch of horse-holders. His tone sought manhood and failed.

  The lisper managed one last twist. Perhaps it was only a spasm. Then vulgar matters happened in his trousers, for hanging’s indignities continue after death. They let him swing till slime dripped over his boots.

  “Must’ve had him eggs for breakfast,” a man in a straw hat said. “Downright ignorant, him stinking up like that.”

  The men who held the rope let go. The lisper dropped, ungainly. Bones snapped. I shuddered, feeling the pain myself.

  I was afraid. With a degree of fear I had known but twice in my life. Once, when the Pushtoon got me down by Attock Fort. The time Molloy rescued me. And after Bull Run, when the surgeon tried to take my leg.

  In books, men seek nobility in death and mount the gallows spouting perfect speeches. But there is nothing noble in the rope. I would not beg, I told myself, but I did not want to die. Not that my thoughts were ordered. My words come out of my mouth without reflection.

  “I am an emissary,” I protested. Trying to sound confident and bold, but only spluttering. “From General Grant. To your generals. I . . .”

  A man sat back against a tree, with a belt around the thigh of his blood-soaked trousers. He had a pointed beard and a pallid face. “Jest git him hung.”

  You have heard speak of “pure hatred.” Twas in that fellow’s eyes.

  Hands grasped and dragged me. Past the body of a fallen Rebel, straightened tidy. Another of Lott’s men lay dead in the briars behind the Confederate corpse. A part of me could not believe what was happening. Yet, most of Abel Jones knew this was real.

  “This is against the custom of war,” I cried, looking about wildly for an officer. “I have a letter. I carry a letter. To your general, I’m sent to—”

  They stripped the noose off the dead man’s neck and pulled it over my head.

  I found my mettle at the last. I would not die a coward.

  How odd we humans are. Look you. Even faced with death, I thought of appearances and of the regard of strangers who would hang me. That is the truth of it, although I saw it elsewise in that moment. I could not bear for them to see me craven. There was no courage in me, only pride. And pride is a mortal sin.

  “Then damn you,” I said. “For damned you’ll be for hanging those poor Negroes.”

  The noose bit.

  A tall man pushed from the rear of the pack, revealing the shreds of a uniform. Broad he was, in every way, of face, at the shoulders and hips. The sort who could pull a plough as easily as guide it. I saw him clear, as you see all things at such moments. He had those cold gray eyes that frighten the Hindoo, all the brighter for his raw complexion and the sun-faded beard that framed it. He was not old at all, but his youth was dead, and his mouth had a savage set as he come on.

  He raised his hand.

  I thought its fall would bring my end. But it was a different signal he intended.

  “Hold on, boys,” he said. His voice was gruff as flat rocks clapped together. “He’ll keep a minute. Josh, you loose that rope, but don’t take it off.”

  The fellow stepped toward me. His big hat was a farmer’s brown, adorned with a loop of braid. The collar of his gray jacket was trimmed with yellow and stained where his neck bulged from it. He wore a captain’s insignia. And a pair of stolen U.S. Cavalry britches.

  He grabbed me by the tunic. Smelling of tobacco, labor and dogs.

  “Who hung what niggers?”

  “You,” I said. For I was up in a fury born of fear. “You and all these criminals of yours. You hung forty—no, you killed the forty. I don’t recall how many were hung. But hang innocent men you did. The way you hang your prisoners of war. You slaughtered women and children.” I looked around, spiteful of the very heavens, and noticed a fellow cradling his shattered jaw. “You’re worse than savages.”

  The captain slapped me hard.

  I would have struck him back, had his comrades not kept me in hand. Yet, a half-breath later, my terror returned, tormenting me with a vision of my wife, then of her and the child, left alone.

  The feel of that rope will ever haunt me.

  The captain began a tirade, from which I must extract the most offensive language. What remains is foul enough to scorch.

  “You little shitworm,” he said. “First off, no man riding with Micah Lott counts as no prisoner of war. No, he don’t. Hear? And we know all about them niggers. You all come down here like turds on two legs, all full up with your dirty Yankee lies . . .” And so on. With every word I felt the scratch and grip of the rope. Twas wet with a dead man’s sweat. And with mine, too.

  When he stopped for breath, I spoke right up. I still had that much spunk. But the voice I heard no longer seemed my own. A giddy waver spoiled it, and made it seem a traitor to my will. I looked him in the eyes, though. Straight up into those steely eyes I looked. Smelling the tobacco and sourness on his breath.

  “If you know everything about the massacre,” I said, “who killed them, then? If not you and your rabble, who did it? We will learn the truth, see. And the guilty will pay twice over.”

  He raised his hand to strike again. This time it had balled to a fist. But he held it at his shoulder. Looking down at me with peerless hatred. His fellows tightened their grips on my arms, steadying me for his blow.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “Oh, you’re a powerful, brave man, a very lion. If you didn’t kill them, who did?”

  He lowered the fist to his side. Reluctantly. He seemed a man who would rather break a thing than try to understand it.

  “I don’t know who did it,” he said. “But, by God, when we find out, we’ll hang ’em every one. And we’ll find out, all right. And put a rope to ’em like they was more of Micah Lott’s murdering, black-damned—”

  “That’s why I’m here, see.” I got the words out quickly. “To find the killers. Look you. There are letters in my pocket.” I tried to free my arm, but strong men held me. “Look in my pocket, damn you. In the left one there. You’ll find a letter from General Grant himself. I’ve been sent all the way down here from—”

  “Hang your letters,” he said and turned away. He stepped toward the man propped against the tree. The one I had shot in the thigh. “McGilley, how you doing there?”

  “Tolerable, Cap’n. Like to see that fella kick, though. That sure would put a better spirit on me.”

  “Bone all right?”

  The wounded Rebel looked down at his thigh. “Naw. That leg’s a goner. Lucky I got two, ain’t it?”

  A pair of fellows laughed.

  The officer stepped back toward me, with murder in his eyes and face and posture.

  “For the love of God,” I said. Of a sudden, weakness struck and my voice threatened to shame me. It is easy enough to be brave with comrades by you, see, but facing your end alone will test you proper. “Just read the letter in my pocket. It’s from General Grant, it’s—”

  “Gabe, you get that letter out,” the captain said abruptly. “And pass it here.”

  One of the men behind me loosened his grip and a hand prowled thr
ough my pockets like a rat in a commissary sack. He did not listen when I said, “The left one,” and he took his time finding the document. As if he did not want it to be there.

  The captain turned the letter over in his hands. Looking at it from one side then from the other. He looked at it from near and far away, holding it down, then raising it up to the light.

  “Open it,” I said. “Read it. It says I’m to cooperate with your authorities to identify the killers of the Negroes. Read it. Break the seal. Under the circumstances, I think we can—”

  I thought his face had shown all possible hatred. But I was wrong.

  “We’re not schooled that way,” he said. In a voice sharp as a dagger. “We don’t have your Yankee habits.” He glanced over my shoulder. And spoke as if the sentence caused him pain. “Take that rope off the little peckerwood.”

  The men did not obey immediately. “Aw, now, Buck . . . lookie what he done to—”

  The captain plunged toward me and my captors. Stopping just short of boxing his own men’s ears.

  “Do what you’re told,” he shouted. “This here’s a damned army. Hear?”

  They loosened the rope and ripped it over my face, burning skin off my nose.

  “I sure would like to see that sumbitch hang, Cap’n,” the fellow I had wounded called from beneath his tree. His voice come wistful, not the least irate. “Make my leg feel better, it sure would. And to think of poor Jake a-laying there . . .”

  “Later,” the captain said. He paced the ground, holding the letter as if it might have fangs. “After we spy into things a little.” Then he turned and stared straight back at me. “He’ll hang just fine tomorrow, or the next day.”

  THEY KEPT ME IN A CAGE until my birthday. Ten nights it was, shut in a coop with my ankles fettered. They tossed me scraps and said I should be grateful. Nor might I have a bucket for my wastes.

  I lived in filth and fear, veering between high hopes without foundation and despair. Was this a judgement on me for past sins? A retribution delayed, and cruder for the joys that I had learned through my wife and child, and the hope I had found in my faith? I wondered if we serve a vengeful Lord. And if some form of the rope awaits us all.

  India haunted me, until I seemed to catch a glimpse of madness. Even if the Lord forgives, our memories do not. Of course, by day I am the soundest of men. I am as you are. But a part of us is alone in the best of nights.

  My guards sat under a tree when the sky was fair, watching me through the gaps in the slats of my prison, but when it rained they leaned in the door of the barn. Their faces changed, but not their manners. Each man begrudged me life when his turn come to mind me.

  A shanty governed the farm where I was held. I had a view of its rear across a sty. The windows were small and had no glass, and dogs went in and out the open door. A woman served as mistress of the manor. She did her chores in a slattern’s rags and ignored me. She smoked a pipe in a shriveled mouth, but I do not think she was old. Whether the Rebels went off or come back, she hardly seemed to see them. She spoke to her hogs as she fed them, but not to the men. I never saw her smile.

  Again, I thought of India. Of the day something froze inside me and I could not soldier more. They put me in a cell, then in a swill, and made me empty cesspits with the natives. I was not spared a Bible by the English. Now, at least, I had my Testament. I told myself I was not badly off. With my own waste piled in a corner and the floorboards swarming at night. And the rope still knotted.

  I would not be broken, see. Resolved I was that the Rebels would shame me no further. A major must not beg, and a proper Welshman will not. Certainly not from the likes of my captors. Twas vanity and pride again, but perhaps there was a purpose. For anger makes our suffering easier to bear. The raging man feels little and sees less. And what man likes to sit and wait for death? Amid his own corruption? Perhaps my prideful nature was a blessing.

  Oh, life is not as simple as we paint it when we’re seated safe in chapel.

  They told me we had crossed into Mississippi. It rained at first. Then every day seemed hotter than the last. The leg irons chafed. I sucked on bones and slept with crawling things, dreaming of my wife and son and home.

  Most of the guards refused to talk, except the few who mocked me. Reminding me that the rope was tied and waiting. But they intrigued me, those Rebels. For I would know the reason why a clock ticks. Poor, they were as lean as any Pushtoons. And just as savage, though not near so clean. They dressed in shirts of cheap-spun cloth made up by country women. Their hats were random and their trousers patched. Long of beard, with hair unshorn, they did not value uniforms like city men. But weapons and horses were their silver and gold. Knives and pistols shone as they sat in their saddles, as easy when mounted as other men are on foot.

  The officer, whose family name was Wylie, looked commanding on a horse’s back, surrounded like a baronet by his hounds.

  And the horse’s back he sat on now was Rascal’s.

  I did not miss the horse, you understand. Still, I felt as though I’d lost my colors.

  I felt far worse about my Colt. I did not know which of them had it, though twice guards joked about “The hero of Bull Run,” asking if that meant I had run the fastest. That is how I knew at least one of them could read, see. Unless it was the woman, which I doubted. It grated on me to think of the pistol in an enemy’s hands. For though I wished all swords might become plowshares, as a Christian must, the boys that gave me the Colt were good of heart.

  I asked if I could wash and they guffawed. When I sang hymns, they howled along like dogs and asked if I was anxious for the rope. They mocked my voice. I only can conclude they were all heathens and despised religious anthems. For I am fine of throat, like all the Welsh.

  And that reminds me: I must tell you of the Welshman. He kept his distance for several days, a nut-brown little man. But we are ever drawn toward our kind, if only for the sweetness of the talking. Now, I had no idea of his origins. For men of many lands are dark and small, and I did not hear a single whisper from him. Until one day when his comrades went off patrolling and left him in the shade to keep the watch. Of a sudden, he said:

  “It is a pickle you are in, then.”

  How lovely kind it was to hear his tones! Oh, a Welshman has a handsome tongue in his head! Although I had no longing for Britannia, and loved America with all my might, I nearly wept to hear such music spoken!

  “A Welshman is it?” I asked, got up all proper to my feet. I peered through the slats at the bright of the day and into the shadows cooling my compatriot. “And a Glamorgan man, if I have not misplaced my ears?”

  He kept him to the shadows of the tree. “Cardiff and proud. But my mother come from your way.”

  “What way is that, pray tell?” I asked, a trifle huffed. For I am regular of speech and most American. My accent, if ever I did possess one, is gone sure as Glendower. I did not think that he could spot my birthplace. Not by my proper, modulated tones.

  “Oh, Merthyr up and down. With your vowels all in the baritone.”

  As if a Cardiff accent was a prize!

  “Well, I was Merthyr born, that I will give you.”

  He smoothed himself in victory and reclined. “It is a dreadful pickle you are in. I would not like to be where you are, see.”

  I did not like my habitat myself. But let that bide. I took a special care crafting my words:

  “They do not see the crime of it, then?”

  “Crime is it?”

  “Well, hanging me is a crime, sure.”

  The lowborn Cardiff pick-head shook his skull. “I do not see it. Nooo, I do not see the crime there. Noooo, sir.”

  “I’m a prisoner of war, man. No, not even that. I’m an emissary. Sent from one high general to another. Such don’t hang.”

  He thought about that. “Oh, many a sort may hang, when there’s a rope. Even an emmy-sary.”

  “It isn’t proper.”

  “You shot Jake Leakey dead. And took t
he lovely leg off poor McGilley.”

  “That was fighting. It was the luck of battle, man.”

  He ruminated. “Still and all, one’s dead. And the other is short of his walking instruments. And they are my butties, see. It is a great dilemma for a fellow. I would not wish to give offense to another Welshman, but what are wishes? Wishes are dust awaiting the broom. I think there is a hanging in your future.”

  A revelation struck me. Oh, the crawling Cardiff heathen.

  “I know a thing. A thing about you, see.”

  “And what is that, then?” he asked, unaffected.

  “That you can read. And likely write.”

  “Well, so can many.”

  “But when it come to my letter . . . with the noose around my neck . . . you did not tell them, did you?”

  He shrugged. “One of them knows, and that is enough. I would not be differentiated, see. A fellow must not get himself differentiated. It is a terrible matter to be differentiated.”

  “But they would have hanged me. And you a Welshman, too. When all you had to do was read out the letter.”

  “I would have been horrible differentiated then. And forever presumed differentiated. For these fellows are not great ones for the learning. Irish blood, see. A fellow must never get himself differentiated.”

  “Look you,” I said. “You do not want to be . . . to be differentiated. And I do not want to be hanged.”

  “There is true.”

  “But you would have let them hang me.”

  He nodded. “It is a war, see.”

  “But wars have rules.”

  “You rode with Micah Lott. They will not have it.”

  “He was my escort, and no more than that.”

  He shrugged. “A man is known by the company he keeps.”

  “And what is wrong with Captain Lott, then? Fierce he may be, but he is a solid, religious fellow.”