Call Each River Jordan

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “Look you, Mr. Barnaby. There is a thing I do not understand here. You do not favor the war. Yet you follow the Rebel flag.”

  Barnaby stopped before an outbuilding and the smell of a crusted forge pierced the veil of lilac. The girthy fellow stared at me in wonder. With night crushing the last glow against the hilltops.

  “I don’t, sir. Nothing of the kind. I follows Master Francis, sir, not that fool Welshman Davis and his lot. Begging your pardon, sir. Master Francis wants some looking after, though he don’t always see it himself.”

  “But . . . if I’m a judge, Mr. Barnaby . . . you have seen military service? In the past?”

  His joviality returned at that, and we walked on. With the horses growing restive as the barn swelled. “Oh, Barnaby’s et the Queen’s beans, sir. Still tells in me bearing, I expects. The 69th Foot, sir. The good old ‘Ups and Downs.’ And I took to it, sir, for it’s in me blood, it is. But the colonel was a meager man and said I cost too much to feed and how’s he could have a rifle company for half the fare. And out I went. It was a terrible blow, sir, for I was young and a bit addled still, and I admired the profession of arms, I did. There’s nothing like a uniform to give a fellow’s corpus a trim line, sir. Deadly to the ladies, begging your pardon.” The fellow stopped sharp at the open doors of the barn. “Bless me, sir, the stable’s empty!”

  It was not empty. I saw the heads of two mules and a gray in the faint light by the entrance. The lone horse nickered a welcome at us. Or perhaps it was greeting our mounts, grown weary of the company of its lessers. Beyond those front stalls, though, no shadows plowed the dark and we heard no sounds of life but whirling flies.

  “It’s enough to bring a tear to the eye,” Barnaby said, bending to light a lantern. “A stable fit for a baronet, it was. All lovely with horses bred proper. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, sir, how the mighty have fallen!”

  The prospect distressed the fellow terribly, which seemed uncharacteristic. He seemed a man who could sniff out roses in a lake of brimstone. But now he was cast down. Of course, it might have been the want of dinner.

  He instructed me in horsing matters. First we slung down the saddlebags and bedrolls, then undid the saddles and spread the blankets over the boards to dry the sweat. He had to help me with Rascal’s bit, for I remained too wary, but I recompensed the good fellow by bringing in buckets of water from the cistern, getting along nicely, if slowly, without my cane. Then I drew out the oats from the bin. Barnaby understood his fellow man and did not wound my pride by insisting he must help with the lugging. It was not laziness in him, I do not think, but the sense to know I would not be treated as a thing of diminished capacities. For when we tell ourselves we are defeated, we are.

  Rascal behaved admirably, and I even found the courage to brush the beast down. His pelt shone in the lamplight and I nearly could see beauty in his form. He seemed to like the brushing, though perhaps it was only my scattering of the barn flies that gratified him, for they come over him thick as beggars at a Hindoo temple. Meanwhile, I queried Barnaby further. For I like the story of a man’s life, when it is told without design or imposition.

  “So, Mr. Barnaby . . . after your regimental days, twas off to America?”

  He combed the dust from the mane of his master’s horse. Delicate of touch the fellow was. “Not directly, sir, not directly. First I reacquainted meself with London town. For I was young, sir, and still a bit addled. And I had a certain flair for the city, I did, although I lacked an equal flair for work. But I was young, sir, young and foolish. Then me governor woke up dead one morning. Though he reached the ripe old age of fifty, which was four years older than his own governor, if all the counting was done true. And Mother had wandered off some time afore. Oh, I ain’t one to gild the lily. We was poor, sir. And me brothers and sisters was dead from the start, for the close at the end of the alley weren’t fit for a beast. So I thought to meself how the old fellow was always talking about his own governor, and about going to America. To New Orleans, to put a clear name on it. You see, sir, me governor’s governor served with Wellington on the Peninsully. And then he took ship with Pakenham and enjoyed the battle of New Orleans, he did. Said it was a dreadful cock-up, sir. Worse than a Spaniard would’ve done it. He said what if he had it all to do over, he’d go on the American side, if only for the want of sense on our own. A sin and a shame, he called it, sir. And his mate got et by an alligator when they was retreating.”

  Barnaby towered over the lantern. The barn could hardly contain the shadow he cast. “Still and all, he liked the air or something. Always talked of going back, he did, though I hardly remembers meself. Me own governor told me all about it, sir, for he said I weren’t to forget our proud family history. Now I wouldn’t put stock in everything I heard, sir, for the old boy liked his gin, but America come to seem like mother’s milk to me. How me governor was always going on about it, though he’d never been and wasn’t like to go. For he had a position, sir, in the livery of an inn, and such luck don’t come knocking every day. But I was different, sir. Full of adventures, I was. I tried the livery yard, I did, but there was a dreadful row about the innkeeper’s daughter. Oh, I was a rogue, sir, I admits it, and a girl of spirit likes a man with a certain abundance of physicality to him. Well, it come to me right thereafter how’s a fellow ought to try what’s new, once he bites the old and finds it bitter. So off I went to New Orleans. By way of Havana, sir. Almost stayed among the Spaniards, sir, for the ladies was an excitement and I was young. But on I come in the end, for I had set a goal, sir, and Barnaby B. Barnaby ain’t the sort to fall short by an inch.”

  “I hear New Orleans is a sinful place,” I said.

  “Oh, that it is, sir! It’s lovely sinful, it is. Though I don’t think it’s no more sinful than the next city. It’s only how they are, sir. Displaying things what others hides away. They do take a great joy in their sinning, sir. Why, your creole can stretch more enjoyment out of a little sin than the rest of us gets from a big one. He don’t just gobble it up, but savors it like a cat toying with a mouse. But then they’re Catholics, the most of ’em, and get forgiven on a regular schedule. I ain’t Catholic meself, sir, but my little Marie was, and I can see where it’s got its inducements, the Roman Church does. If ever I was to go back to spoiling perfectly good Sundays with that sort of business, begging your pardon, sir, I just might tread the Roman way meself.”

  The fellow was clearly benighted. I struggled for words that would not give offense, but managed only to say, “You put little stock in religion, sir?”

  “Oh, I does and I don’t. I do believe He’s up there, sir. And looking down and watching. Shaking His head, most like. But I ain’t convinced He’s keeping score all day.” He paused in his brushing, hands resting on the horse’s back. “Here’s how Barnaby sees it, sir: If a fellow was a thoroughly bad lot, but went to sing his Sunday hymns most regular, would that save him, sir? And should it, sir? What if a fellow lives proper and treats the next man decent like, but don’t go for his regular snore in a pew? Will the Good Lord make a fellow like that to burn up in Hell, sir? I mean, it makes it all seem like a bad grammar school, don’t it? Where attendance is all what matters, and the master’s handy with the cane.” He switched the brush from one hand to the other and gave the horse a long stroke. “Give me the man what acts right, sir. Not the one what only makes a show of things. And I suspects the Lord thinks much the same. Begging your pardon, sir.”

  It was a lax theology. Yet, after the battle I hardly seemed a model Christian to myself. I brushed the conversation along the way I brushed the horse. With dull and regular strokes.

  “These Southron gentlemen seem much of your mind, Mr. Barnaby,” I said. “Not great chapel-goers, from what little I’ve seen.”

  “Oh, no, sir. Religion’s for the ladies, sir. Sport for the man, sir, sport for the man! Although they does appear for buryings. And births, when there ain’t any guilty faces in the crowd. No objections to Christmas, though th
ey finds Easter a bit glum. But them’s the gentlemen I’m speaking of, sir. Your poor might wander in and out of church a bit more often. For they like a good fright of a sermon, sir. If there’s no sporting matter on that particular Sunday. A horse or a blue-tick hound will trump a parson.”

  I brushed Rascal where he did not wish to be brushed. He gave a leap and kicked the wood, and I jumped back a yard. I still had a great deal to learn about horses.

  Perhaps the Catholic faith was not entirely in error and the horse was sent to bend me to my penance. I wondered what John Wesley would have said of the notion. Can we ever reckon the wisdom of the Lord? Why did he make the horse? Of course, he made the serpent and the Frenchman, and no one knows how they fit His design.

  “Keep the brush away from the dark parts,” Barnaby told me. Finishing with his master’s horse, he turned to groom his own.

  “New Orleans has a French influence, I believe,” I said. Meaning to turn the conversation away from his irreligion.

  Barnaby sighed. “French, and Spanish, too. And there’s Americans, and English come-latelies, and there I includes meself. You’ve got Africans running from Chinaman yellow to black as the devil’s behind. And not a few queer mixings in between, sir. If you takes the meaning of it. Oh, it’s a lovely place, New Orleans. An injurious climate for them what ain’t robust. But lovely as Eden with gutters.”

  “You were there a long time, Mr. Barnaby?”

  He sighed again, more deeply, and paused in his labors. “Not so long’s I’d have liked. No, not half so long, sir.” He made a face that forgot me and remembered. “I met me lovely Marie there, I did. Better than I deserved, she was. Better than any man deserved. Spanish blood, sir. All stirred up with the French. And other influences not to be spoken of, I always suspected. But I didn’t care, sir. All’s one, sir. And she was a lovely agglomeration. Sweet as a good cup of punch, sir. And give me two little ones, she did. I had a proper establishment in them days. Sold fittings to the gentlemen, sir, and the firm of Barnaby B. Barnaby was known from Mobile to Memphis! Then the fever rose, the yellow jack.” He lowered his face behind the horse’s neck. “Took all what mattered from me, sir. My Marie and the little ones both. I neglected me affairs after that, sir. Let things slide, I did. Let the clerk keep all the books and me never suspecting. Oh, never trust a clerk, sir. The fellow shot the moon to Hispaniola. Never thought I’d end a bankrupt, sir. A bankrupt and a widower. The last what I had went for the vault. For there’s no proper burying down that way, but you got to put your loved ones above the ground if you values ’em. If old Master Raines hadn’t taken pity on me—he’d always been a grand customer, sir, and a judge of cloth to shame a master tailor—if he hadn’t taken in old Barnaby, I might have ended me days down in Gin Lane. Or worse.”

  He let me have a glimpse of his face, of his shining eyes. “‘Come up to Natchez,’ he says to me, the old master. ‘For you’ve lost your wife to the yellow jack just as I has. And you’ve lost your little ones,’ says he, ‘and I’ve a son wants manners put on him, and I’m hardly the man to do it. Come up to Wrexham,’ he says, and I went and that was that. Oh, Master Francis was a lovely child, sir. And now he’s a lovely man, ain’t he?”

  I thought of the war, and of what it did to lovely young men. Twas as if Barnaby read my thoughts.

  “He’ll come through fine,” he said, “if Barnaby B. Barnaby has any say in the business.”

  The good fellow seemed overwrought, so I changed the subject. “That girl today. The young Negress . . .”

  “Paddycakes?”

  “Yes. Do you know what happened to her, Mr. Barnaby? That damage to her skull. It would appear to be a medical enigma.”

  He took a moment to answer, shutting his horse in a stall then stepping over to help me with mine. Standing close enough for me to smell the weight of the day on him, he looked into my eyes and said:

  “Master William struck her with an iron. Some years ago, of course. When Shady Grove was still a hunting establishment, sir, before Miss Emily come and the big house was begun. A child he was, and hardly responsible. Done something displeasing to him, the girl did. The Lord knows what. Master William took a fireplace iron to her head. We were on a visit at the time. For the hunt, sir. A great uproar and commotion it was. No one thought the girl would live. And Master William wouldn’t as much as say he was sorry. Not to the girl, I don’t mean, for she didn’t signify. But he wouldn’t apologize to his own father for what he done. A difficult child he always was, sir. Not like my Master Francis.”

  Now it was my turn to stare into his face. It showed yellow in the lantern’s light, as if memory, too, brought fevers.

  “Frankly, Mr. Barnaby,” I said in a voice of some bewilderment and not a little revulsion, “I’m surprised that you would tell me such a thing. It seems—”

  “Like a family secret what wants keeping?” He laughed, but it was the first time I heard spite in the man’s voice. He collected my brush from me. “Oh, you’ll learn more, I expects, sir. Me governor always said, ‘The first lie’s never the last, so don’t tell the first one and all’s well.’”

  He looked at me with more candor than the length of our acquaintance recommended. “Anyways, sir, Barnaby B. Barnaby ain’t a bad judge of men. And you’ve got eyes in your head, as a fellow can see, and ears wide open behind ’em. I don’t imagine you was sent down here by chance, sir. No, you’re like meself, begging your pardon, sir. All suited to root things out. For other men think you less than you are and let down their guard. Wounds the feelings, sir, but it do help a fellow get by.” He picked up the lantern. “Shall we go then, sir? You’ll want a bit of a wash before your supper.”

  And we went out, saddlebags over our shoulders and blanket roll in my hand. Not halfway to the great house, I smelled the ripeness of a good kitchen at work. The fragrance was as lush in the nose as the sunset had been in the eyes.

  “Auntie Dee’s a splendid cook,” Barnaby told me. “Eat like the Prince of Wales on holiday, you will.”

  After a few paces, the remark registered. “And you, Mr. Barnaby?”

  “Oh, I’ll eat even better, sir. For I’ll be in the kitchen. Wouldn’t be fitting for me to eat with the gentlemen. Master William wouldn’t fancy it. Though Master Francis don’t mind.”

  I could not reply. For his world was not mine. Just as, if the Confederates had their way, his country would not be mine. I had much to think on.

  As we approached the lighted windows of the great house, he said, almost idly, “Sometimes I likes the Negro more than I does me own race, sir. Excepting Master Francis, of course. Knocks me down, it does, how your black fellow can laugh, sir. Whip him in the morning, and he’ll laugh at the world that night. Finds his joys, he does. Where the likes of you and me wouldn’t have sense to look.” He paused. “I don’t say he’s as good as you or me, sir. Not on principle. But if suffering’s the path to salvation, sir, if the church folk are right about that, then he’s holier than priest or pope or parson. I’ll take me leave here, sir. Have the lantern, for Barnaby knows his way. You’ll want to go round by the front door.”

  I made my protestations, but he would not be dissuaded. When our hands touched at the lantern’s handle, I saw his uplit face and somber eyes. He lowered his voice:

  “You find them what killed the Negroes. Find the guilty party, sir. It cries for justice till the stars could weep.” He released the lantern. “There was better among them Africans than some what sits high at the table.” He ruffled his shoulders and jigged up his belly and swallowed his earnestness down. “Begging your pardon, sir, but Barnaby B. Barnaby had to have his proper say. Mum’s the word hereafter.”

  I detained him a moment longer, though I knew his supper called.

  “May I ask, sir, what your middle initial stands for?”

  “For ‘Barnaby,’ sir. After me governor’s governor. Him what was a soldier. Anything else, sir?”

  I BLEW OUT THE LANTERN and set it down, then opened
the front door. And got a devil of a fright. A creature of surpassing ugliness, the size of a gnome, shot from a chair beside the staircase and darted down the hall. Female it was, judging by what little sense I could make of the dress and shape, and black as a burnt-up sausage. She was a ragged thing, worse than a tinker’s widow, and bent. With matted hair like an Indian Sadoo fellow.

  Vanishing, she left me in lamplit opulence. I am no judge of furnishings, as my Mary Myfanwy has given me to understand, but I have seen the private apartments of a ranee’s palace before the boys of the regiment stripped them bare. Shady Grove had no such wealth as that, but wealth it had enough for any American.

  Every item gave a sense of newness, of having been made, or at least bought, within the past few years. The furniture was dark and weighty, the tables topped with marble. In the room off to my right, blue-velvet couches and chairs sat on display, plush as a fancy man’s promises. The lamps lit paintings of less than Christian subjects, and Orient carpets tricked the eye with color. Only the draperies seemed unfinished, for their heavy damask ends and tassled frills puddled over the floor in want of trimming. Though not as large, the place put me in mind of Mr. Cawber’s Philadelphia mansion.

  Before I could take in more, the high-dressed Negro fellow reappeared, stepping through a doorway at the end of the hall.

  “Major Jones,” he said, approaching me, “may I show you to your room, sir?” He looked me over, but his face did not betray the impression he received. Nodding gently at my saddlebags, he asked, “May I relieve you of your burden, sir?”

  Before I knew it, he had the leather pouches in his hand.

  “We have tried to anticipate your requirements, sir,” he continued, “but if anything is found wanting, you have only to ring the bell.” He smelled of toilet water like a white man. “The gentlemen will gather in the library in half an hour, sir. Just there, the second door along.”