Call Each River Jordan

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  Raines leaned in. “Billy, you—”

  “Be quiet, Drake. Hold your peace. This is my affair and I’m explaining something to the major. No, sir. My wife didn’t like the way we did things. Came down here with all that claptrap in her head about the torments of the Negro. Didn’t know a damned thing about it. And didn’t like what she learned, because it wasn’t what she expected. Wasn’t all as clear and easy as it looked from Old North Church, I suppose.” He took a drink of whisky that half drained his glass. He did not so much as grimace at the swallowing. “Sure now. Old Beauregard didn’t fire the first shot at Sumter. The man’s tardy. Slow. Emily’s one Yankee didn’t wait to be fired on. She shot first. Up and left long before Mississippi ratified the secession.” He glanced at the splendor around us. “Nothing could hold her.”

  Now you will find it strange, but I was relieved to learn the last bit. For I had feared she left him after his injury, when he was no longer the man whom she had married. Men and women do ferocious things. Marriage is not only for our pleasure, though some think it so these days.

  “What day is it, Drake?” he asked, turning so suddenly he almost lost his balance in his catch pan.

  “It’s Sunday, Billy.”

  “No. What day of the month? What month, for that matter? I lose track.”

  Raines thought. I knew the date, of course, but would not interfere as I had done with General Beauregard and his staff officers in the matter of Lieutenant Raines. When we seem to know too much we learn too little.

  “I believe it’s the twentieth of April,” my escort said.

  “April. April twentieth. Then she’ll still be in Boston for a good while yet.” He looked at me. “She’ll go to Newport for the summer, though. With that steel-nosed family of hers. They go despite the New York people, Major. She’s not a snob, you see. Not Emily. She has the Yankee democratic spirit.” He drained another glass. “What about you, Major? Do you have the democratic spirit?”

  “If you mean—”

  “Do you have that Yankee democratic spirit to tell other men what’s right and what’s wrong? What they should do and what they shouldn’t? To care more for some prettied up idea of the nigger than for the reality of a husband?” He smiled. And calmed. “But I forget myself. I’m being a poor host, and my father would not approve. Isn’t that right, Drake?” He looked up at the portrait with the pure hatred that is a continuation of love. “Any more than Emily would approve.” He chuckled. “Proper behavior is important, if society is to function. Not just appearances, though that contents most folks. No, sir, our behavior must be immaculate. And I have been keeping you gentlemen from your supper. Samson? Would you serve? I believe we’re ready now.”

  I WAS CAREFUL OF MY TABLE MANNERS, although I ate with relish and had seconds. For in a war you never know the composition of your next meal, no matter the apparent safety of your surroundings. My host ate little, picking like a lady come for tea. But he drank steadily. It did not seem to impair him, but only put a harshness in his voice, as if the liquor stripped away its coating.

  Ham there was, indeed, and chicken, too. Those meats played king and queen to a court of vegetables, and there were biscuits better than any I had eaten. Not what we Welsh call biscuits, mind, but puffing little breads you coat with butter.

  At last I took my napkin from my neck, for I could eat no more. My belly was slapping full.

  “Captain Barclay,” I said to my host, “you keep a good kitchen, you do.”

  My host’s lips flicked and failed to restore his smile. “Sure now. You hear that, Samson? You tell Auntie Dee she’s pleased her another Yankee.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And fetch the French brandy. Clear this all away and get the brandy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Samson?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You know what this Yankee major journeyed all the way down here for? All the way down here from Washington? You know what he’s doing down here? He wants to know who went and killed our niggers. Ain’t no business left the Yankees don’t count as their business.”

  “Indeed, sir.” The black fellow shifted plates of scraps to a silver tray. He reached for Barclay’s. But my host leaned over his plate as if protecting it, balancing with his elbows on the tablecloth.

  “What do you think about that, Samson? About Major Jones here? Prying into nigger killings and such things?”

  “Shall I finish clearing, sir?”

  Barclay looked up. With much the same expression he had loosed on the portrait. “Answer me, goddamn you. What do you think about this Yankee chasing after our dead niggers?”

  “It’s not my place to think about it, sir.”

  At that, Barclay smiled and sat back. The Negro captured the plate.

  “Hear that now, Major? Samson’s what you call a ‘good nigger.’ Finest nigger either side of the river, in my opinion. Understands which side his bread’s buttered on. Doesn’t go thinking he’s a white man and getting himself all swelled up and confused. Do you, Uncle Samson?”

  “No, sir.”

  Barclay leaned toward me, balancing himself on the edge of the table again. “Sure now. That’s why Samson didn’t run off when all the rest of them did. Or Auntie Dee. A smart nigger likes things just the way they are. Doesn’t want trouble.” He smiled his broadest smile of the evening. It was the first time he had showed an expanse of teeth and I saw they were not of the quality of his other features.

  “Wasn’t always that way, though. Was it, Uncle Samson? Now you just hold on a minute. Those dishes can wait. I’m trying to teach our guest something about the reality of things down here.” He twisted back to me. “See, Major, Samson wasn’t always this well-behaved. No, sir. He was one bad-tempered buck nigger when he was young. Had a mouth on him. Always sneaking off for a lie-out. Stirring up the women in the quarters. Fancied himself a fighting man. Even caught him with a razor once, I hear tell. Yes, sir. Samson took some breaking.”

  His eyes were cold as stones on a winter’s day. “Now you think about my daddy, and the grief that caused him. My daddy wasn’t a whipping man. Not as a rule. No, sir. Hated to bring out the cat. He was more in the nigger-lover vein. Like Emily. Or young Drake here. Not that Drake loves a nigger the way she’s meant to be loved.” He slapped toward Raines, but his hand only clattered the table’s remaining fixtures. “Couldn’t even get that boy to go under the hill in Natchez, let alone down the hollow for a change of luck. Our young Galahad here.” Barclay braced himself up straight, defying the gravity of the liquor. “My daddy wasn’t a whipping man, but he sure whipped the hell out of Samson. And it did him a world of good. How many times you get yourself whipped, Uncle Samson?”

  “I didn’t count, sir.”

  Barclay laughed out loud. “See there? Nigger can’t even count how many times he’s been whipped. But he wants to run off.” He smacked his hand down on the table and grimaced what was meant to be a smile. “And to where? You think he’s going to be welcome up there in Boston when he shows up with ten thousand other niggers and twice that many shit-ass brats? Just run off and get himself killed is all he’s good for. But not our Samson here. He got sense, for a nigger. Got it beat into him. Only way it takes hold. He knows which side his bread’s buttered on. Samson, where’s that brandy? I told you to fetch the brandy.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Negro said, with his customary bow and no hint of emotion on his face.

  “Well, you just go and—” Barclay’s torso quivered and he winced. In seconds, the smell of excrement pierced the air.

  With a look of rage, my host wheeled himself from the table. Banging into furniture along his way. A silver bowl, not empty, crashed to the floor.

  “Samson,” Barclay called. “Come here. I need you.”

  I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SPREAD MY ARMS and clutch the night air to me. Sweet it was. And chill enough to fresh a fellow up and make his movements a pleasure. After the heaviness of the house, twas lovely as a swim in
a river to wander the grounds.

  I stopped and closed my eyes, drinking the dark sky down.

  I had excused myself from the table before young Raines could start apologizing for his friend. I was sour and did not want to hear a word. I will not insist the Negro’s emotions are as highly developed as our own, but Barclay’s treatment of the old retainer had repelled me. The Negro is a man, and all men feel. I know we must allow for the weight of suffering on the next fellow’s shoulders, and Barclay had endured much. Still, he seemed to me at least as great a producer of pain as he was a consumer of it, and I could not like him.

  Nor would I grant him the plaint of too much drink. Alcohol is never an excuse. For drunkenness does not turn men to monsters. It only frees the monsters that we are.

  My contrary mood come from more than my embarrassment at being caught with the French book, so do not think that I am shifting blame. And do not tell me that a crippled man must be indulged. We are all crippled, if we have lived at all. My leg is not the worst-shaped thing about me. The worst things are inside.

  And what of you? I do not mean an insult. But are you free of scars? Who among us bears no imperfection? Would you abuse a wife or child or servant, blaming the deed on the pain of childhood spankings? Past sufferings do not excuse our vices. The war that matters is our daily life. Our cause must be to rise above our injuries. We must engage to keep our persons upright, and not blame Joseph when we, his brothers, fail.

  Barclay seemed to me no more than a schoolyard bully off his luck, and I did not wonder that his wife had left him. I only wondered that such a woman as the one in that painting would have married him in the first place. But no young woman is wise, nor young man, either. I fear, though, that I was unfair to Raines. My ructious mood spilled over onto him, and he had done nothing.

  But look you. Perhaps that was the problem. Raines had done nothing. He sat and let his old friend rant and rave.

  I had left him in the dining room with the portrait of Barclay’s wife.

  Resuming my stroll, I stopped again almost immediately. Turning at a sound. It was the girl. Paddycakes. I saw her in the moonlight Heaven parsed us. Her eyes shone as if lamplit. Then she scrambled off into the garden, pale rags fading from view. Perhaps she had believed young Raines about the appetites of Yankees.

  Was this war for them? Or was it for us? Was the Negro but another excuse to unleash the Devil in men? Did we fight to preserve the Union? Or to impose it on a land grown alien? Such questions were too large for me that night. And, yet, they gnawed, disguised as petty pains.

  I heard another stirring in the undergrowth. Paddycakes, perhaps. Or an animal. The Southland was as rich in life as in hatred. The rustling ceased the moment I looked round.

  I found a marble bench blue in the moonlight and sat me down, new cane at rest by my side. My eyes had learned the night well enough to trace neglected garden plots. As long and straight as graves they were, with their former beauty ruined. The trellises might have been a line of gallows.

  No. That is morbid. Twas a place for soft hands to help flowers, the domain of Woman, who spites one rose and bids another flourish. I wondered if Barclay’s wife had shaped this yard? His wife, or her desires? Or a young man’s notions of a woman’s wants?

  I had a good muchness to ponder. To what degree was my interest in Shady Grove and its inhabitants no higher than a gossip’s curiosity? Which hints had to do with murdered slaves? And which with private sorrows? Could the two matters be cleaved? Was I a seeker after truth, serving the cause of Justice? Or just a small man peeking in a window?

  But we are flesh. My thoughts slipped from my duty, and soon I sat dreaming, homesick, of wife and son. The reverie summoned pity for young Barclay. Is there a harder fate than a loveless life? A man may do without his legs, but not without affection. We need someone to give to, that is the soul of it. My joy was at my hearth, in honest embraces and fatherly hopes for John. A simple meal with loved ones beats a feast shared with a king. I longed for Pottsville, for our small house and its certainties. It seemed to me there was no deeper happiness than to sit of an evening beside my Mary Myfanwy. With John asleep upstairs, as safe as life allows.

  All is fragility. Love is robust, but our small lives are not. It does not take a war to break a heart. We smother like those flowers in the brambles. We are clipped back before we start to bloom.

  I fear I come near weeping.

  The night birds were not those I knew, nor were the smells that ghosted through the air. I was alone in a foreign place. Even in India, comrades had brushed my shoulder. Here I was alone. And I felt no courage. Only the fear of failure in my duty. Perhaps it is a soldier’s way of thinking. Regretting choices made, but marching on.

  I told myself that each small justice matters, but what mattered to me was far away that night.

  I heard a snap behind me and I turned. The figure of a man stirred through the dark, blocking a window’s light, then revealing it again. He strode toward me with a purpose.

  Twas Samson. I rose. Such is my habit. Though I am told we must not rise for servants.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said as he approached. “I regret any disturbance.”

  “Not at all,” I said. For the disturbance had been within me, not without. How we are glad of another human presence when we feel glum.

  “Captain Barclay regrets the haste of his withdrawal, sir, and wishes to know if you have any desires.”

  I had desires enough for a thousand men. But let that bide.

  “No, sir. I thank you. As I do Captain Barclay.”

  I thought that would be all, just fancy courtesy. But the Negro did not seem of a mind to go.

  “May I be bold, sir?” he said at last.

  “Go on.”

  “Sir . . . Mr. B. describes you as a Christian. He believes you to be a good and trustworthy man, although your acquaintance has been short.”

  “Mr. Barnaby’s a good fellow himself,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. A magnificent fellow, if I may be permitted the judgement. But . . . may I ask, sir . . . are you a Christian?”

  Twas a question I took seriously, though posed by a Negro. I took a drink of air and gave it back. “I call myself a Methodist,” I told him, “and would like to think myself a proper Christian. But there are times when I do find it hard.”

  “Yes, sir,” the fellow said. The moon and the windows of the house were behind him and his face was a puddle of shadows around the wet glow of his eyes. “It is hard. Sometimes I think being a Christian is harder than being a slave, sir. The vineyard of the Lord is a harder row than any in a cotton field.”

  I agreed, but said nothing. I find it hard to speak of faith out loud, beyond the simplest affirmations. I can peel off a proverb now and then, but do not know the words to speak of souls. Perhaps that’s why a Welshman loves a hymn. It lets him sing the faith he feels but cannot put in words to tell his neighbor. I wonder at the faith of those who chatter.

  “I overheard, sir,” Samson continued, “your conversation with Captain Barclay. Even the faithful servant cannot shut his ears. Do I understand that you wish to put certain questions? And that Captain Barclay has approved?”

  “There is true.”

  “Perhaps you have a question for me now?”

  I had so many questions I could not see a clear way to begin. An insect nipped my wrist and fled my slap.

  “My questions . . . may be indelicate,” I said.

  “I have not enjoyed a delicate life, sir.”

  No. I supposed that he had not. Still, it is hard to ask certain things of a man. A Welshman is born with a healthy curiosity, but he is not mean.

  “All right, then. When Captain Barclay questioned you during the dinner . . . he said you were too intelligent to run off. In fact, you did not run off with the others. Why not? And why didn’t this Aunt Dee go? She is your wife, I take it?”

  “She is my wife. To the degree such things are permitted. I believe she is my wif
e in the eyes of Heaven, sir.”

  “But why didn’t you run off?”

  Twas his turn to sigh. “Oh, we were tempted, Major. My Dee and I were tempted to go. Though my desire was perhaps the stronger. My wife’s world is her kitchen, sir. She clings to what she knows. But who would not want to taste the air of freedom? Just once, before he dies? To stand on soil where no man has a right to call him to serve, or to whip him when he comes too slowly? To choose whom he should love . . .”

  He shifted to face me directly. “Perhaps it will amuse you, sir. But I have always wanted to go into a shop and buy myself a book. With money of my own. Not to fetch one for a master. But to choose and pay and hold my book in my hands. I wanted to go north, sir. To follow that selfish dream. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to it.”

  “Why not, man?”

  “Because of Captain Barclay, sir. We had almost made the decision to go with the others. Then Captain Barclay returned. With his flesh so cruelly punished. He cannot do the simplest things for himself, sir. We could not abandon him.”

  “You feel affection for the man, then?” I know such things occur. The beaten wife clings to the cruel husband, and the soldier gives his life for men who despise him, laying his love at the feet of thoughtless officers.

  “No, sir. No affection, sir. It would be easier if we did. We longed to escape. At least I did. And my wife had warmed to the thought. But, after Captain Barclay returned, my Dee and I decided we could not go. God has sent us that broken boy as our cross, and it is our duty to carry him until the end. Had we gone with the others, sir, how could we have described ourselves as Christians?” I thought I marked a gentling on his features, but the darkness might have fooled me. “And you see what happened, sir? We did our Christian duty, and lived. Had we fled it, we would have died with the others. There are rewards on earth, as well as in Heaven, and we have been blessed. And do not be too hard on Captain Barclay, sir. He has suffered deeply,” the slave said.