“Bet we don’t see nothin’ like New York,” said Merrick.
“Maybe Richmond,” I said.
“Be over before we get that far.”
“I hope not.”
“Doubt we get our heads put on stakes.”
“You believe that story?” I said.
“Sure,” said Merrick.
“That story scared me.”
“Since I heard it,” said Merrick. “I swore nobody’d ever get a jump on me.”
“I thought they were watching me.”
“Them heads ain’t lookin’ at nothin,’ Ro.”
Darkness came. Card games sprung up but we preferred each other’s company. I was glad we were together. It was the only way to leave the North Country. I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t have to. We drifted in and out of sleep. It was a cool lake night. A big moon rose and made a white path over the water. Then we kept awake and each told a story. A story for when neighbors can’t listen and tongues wag. I mentioned Helen and her nerve in coming to the mill, my nervousness, not taking her seriously at first, the blossoming of sympathy as I understood her rebellion against her parents’ religion. How much I got to appreciate her insight about things, people, life. Even the Battle of Sandy Creek.
“I could talk to Helen the rest of my life,” I said, and wondered how much life that might be.
“It’s love,” said Merrick. “If you want to talk to her the rest of your life, that’s love. Yes, ma’am. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
The moon played hide and seek with a gnarled bank of clouds, men snored and rolled on deck. Merrick talked.
“In another town, way out in the fields, there’s a house. Near Little Sandy. Found it looking for a dog.”
“Find the dog?”
“Nope. Found a woman.”
This, unfolding in deep night, far from home, was different from Merrick’s usual hunting or fighting stories.
“A late-night story’s got to be women or ghosts,” I said.
“A woman lives there but don’t nobody see her. One of them country women that don’t go outside. Not so anyone sees anyway.”
I knew such women. They flit behind curtains and don’t come to the door. No one sees them for years at a stretch.
“She can’t abide visitors,” said Merrick.
“Maybe it’s men she can’t abide.”
“Can’t abide no one.”
“Did only you see her? Like a dog seeing a ghost?”
“Ro, she don’t live alone. Got a mother and sisters. Cows and chickens too. Somebody provides.”
Yes, women provide. Even for ghosts. Town people get odd, but lonesome farm folk get weird strange. Such women aren’t rare. Every time and place produces odd ones—witches to the Puritans, seers to the Indians, root doctors in the South. In the North Country they’re just there. Spirits in lonely houses, but not to be confused with the newly dead. If a woman dies in childbirth or hangs herself in a terrible winter in a terrible marriage, she may haunt a graveyard or prowl about her house. This is different. These women are real.
“This weren’t no ghost,” said Merrick. “This was something nobody but me seen. I’m sure of it.”
Two months before, Merrick surprised this white spirit in the flesh. She surprised him too—in the woods by a pasture near her house. Instead of screaming or running, the woman put her finger to her lips. They looked at each other for a full minute and Merrick returned the next day. She was there. After a week of staring, she came toward him. After another week, they touched. Silence was their magic. They looked. He held out his hand. She took it. They communicated by eye and glance and excruciating inch-by-inch exploration. Then words. But only a few. They kissed and explored and then it wasn’t excruciating. She brought blankets and covered them. They made love.
“Like jumping off a rock. Nothing holds you back. Don’t know her name. Don’t want to.”
“Sounds like a dream or fairy tale,” I said. “Not that I don’t believe it. It’s just…I wished for such a thing. Many times, behind the sacks at the mill. I used to dream women would bring more than milling. It never happened.”
“Dreams got a price,” said Merrick. He listened to see if anyone moved and lowered his voice. “She’s old.”
“How old?”
“Not too old, a little old. You know.”
I didn’t, but said, “Yep.”
“Old enough so you might not want to be seen with her.”
“Ahh,” I said. Fairy tales—wolves, hags, bargains.
“I love her, Ro.”
“Then it makes no difference how old she is.”
“I don’t think that’s so,” said Merrick.
We listened to the breathing, rustling, and water around us. Everything was regular and safe. Merrick told more. They kept meeting. He kept looking for that dog. “Christ, if I ever found him, I’d have to kill him to keep going out.” They warmed each other under blankets, talked, did things. Things Merrick had never done.
“We done things shame a farm animal. Things I wouldn’t tell.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Leave it unsaid.”
“What’s the point of being wild if you can’t tell?”
“Is it over?”
“Yep.”
I felt sad. I tried to imagine the woman in the woods. Was she old as Merrick’s stepmother? I didn’t ask. She was tender and passionate, but something was wrong. Was it never being able to say “I love you” in front of another living soul? Never introducing her to family? Never going in public?
One day, when the sun broke through the alders and oaks, she looked old. Old in a way that meant it was time for Merrick to go. How did he tell her he wasn’t coming back?
I thanked God Helen came to the mill in the light of day. I was glad we only held each other. Thankful I took her promise, not her body. We did right. I touched the tintype.
Merrick spoke softly. He shaped memory, shaped the secret he carried to war. He was finding a place for what he found in the woods—for the person he was in the woods. Some carried a bible over their hearts. Merrick carried this. This thing that couldn’t be in the world, shouldn’t have been, but for a while, was. A gift received young. The wild, unknown person he could be. The wild, unknown person a woman could be.
“Did I do wrong?” said Merrick.
“Maybe you gave what she missed,” I said. The wind rose and the deck moved.
“I’m glad for this war. What comes of seein’ a ghost?”
8
Military training in ‘61 was drilling. How useless this was for battle wasn’t learned till we got to battle. The generals never learned. We trained in Elmira. Twenty new, rough, wooden buildings, each housing eighty men, had been built a mile from the center of town. Drill was supposed to instill discipline. Useless activity was a big part of military training. The Regiment had many men from Oswego who had been in the Oswego Guard, and knew how to drill. The country boys had no idea and looked awful. “A goose could march better,” said Merrick, who found it funny the men of G Company couldn’t march, and not funny when Oswego men called us “Greenhorns.”
Merrick and I didn’t mention the loves that blossomed so quickly for me and mysteriously for him. I had the advantage of mail from Helen and thought about little else during hours of marching. I had sewn the tintype inside my uniform over my heart. Its smoothness was a constant reminder.
I had never seen Cousin’s gentler side. He had a quiet side, to be sure, which can be a habit for men who grow up working alone in field or barn. I was surprised by the depth behind Merrick’s fists and capacity for work. He found more than passion in the woods. He found sadness and got deeper. But Merrick’s love was secret, so was the depth secret too? Is secret love really love, or just secret? I milled this while educating my feet to the rhythm of drill. I had a different love. A love for the world to see, if Helen waited, and I believed she would. Did Helen show another side of me? How many sides was the question! I thought I
knew her completely because she made me feel complete. I hoped the campaign would be quick. I wanted to remember everything so I could share it with her.
If Merrick now had a gentle side, it took three days in Elmira for the ungentle side to show. After a hot, miserable drilling session, when the lines kept splitting over knowledge of left and right, the dismissed company finally returned to barracks too tired to do anything useful. Merrick, David Hamer, me, and handsome Lyman Houghton from Orwell, decided to see if we could stack our Springfield muskets so they’d stand. We were on a flat stretch of ground where the grass had been worn away by boots and wagon wheels. The late afternoon was warm, the sky dotted with thin, summery clouds. The green hills beyond the Chemung River made a nice backdrop beyond the town. The first few times we stacked the muskets, the guns clattered to the ground. We were wiping the unloaded muskets when a half dozen Oswego men strolled over from the barracks. There was a big fellow, a talker, and hangers-on—the usual breakdown of a crowd. They smirked and laughed at cracks the talker got off in a voice just loud enough so the Company G men couldn’t hear the cause but couldn’t miss the effect. The talker led the way and for some reason decided Merrick was the man to ride. Merrick still looked like a farmer, his sleeves too long, his blue trousers too short. The talker, who was Merrick’s height but not as solid, said, “Hey, fella, which way’s town?”
Merrick didn’t say anything.
“Let me be specific.” The talker was very impressed with the word specific. “Is it left or right?”
This brought quite a laugh from his audience. We country boys stood by our muskets. No one spoke. “Still thinkin’ about that?” said the talker. The big man at his side had sandy brown hair, a nose that had been broken, and a scar over the left eye. Cuts, I figured, got in saloons, not at work.
The Company G men said nothing. Looking is country. Talk is city. The Oswego men would have done better watching Merrick’s eyes instead of guffawing and elbowing each other.
“See here,” said the talker. “This is my left,” he held up his left hand, “and this is my right.” He held up his other hand. “But since I’m standin’ opposite, this is your right and this is your left, which is my left and your right and my right and your left.” His pards, especially the fighter, couldn’t contain their laughter and gave each other little shoves.
The second the fighter took his eye off Merrick, Merrick hit him as hard as he could in the jaw. David Hamer smashed the talker in the nose which broke in a splatter of blood and the other Oswego men backed away. Lyman Houghton and I went for them but they ran.
The big man tried to knee Merrick in the crotch, but got a leg as Merrick head-butted him and threw him to the ground. They rolled over. Merrick punched, the other gouged. Both grabbed and bled. Men came out of the barracks to watch. The gouger said later, “Some of them God damn farmers is plenty strong.” City people assume a rube lacks the violence of the street; farmers can’t believe someone who hasn’t worked on a farm can stand pain. In this case both were wrong. Merrick was strong and took satisfaction in inflicting and receiving pain. The gouger, who probably would have used a knife if he hadn’t just joined the Union Army, absorbed hits and kept fighting. He got on top of Merrick and swung wildly at Merrick’s face, which he couldn’t see as blood poured from a gash that opened the scar over his right eye. Merrick got splashed with his own and the gouger’s blood, which also flowed from the big man’s mouth and nose. Merrick caught a pummeling hand and bent back a finger, which sent the gouger off him with a howl. Merrick got on top and pounded the man’s face and stomach. Then Merrick jumped up and started to deliver a savage kick, but didn’t finish. David Hamer and Lyman Houghton grabbed him before he could change his mind. Merrick smiled, wiped his face and surprised the crowd by reaching down and helping the man up. Merrick shook his hand and said, “You’re damn good.”
David Hamer went up to the talker, who was trying to set his nose, and said, “That was a right.”
9
The 24th was billeted outside Washington in a sea of tents that made another city surrounding the capital. Washington City was jammed with men in uniforms, clerks, women of ill-repute and black-coated gents cutting every sort of deal. The citizens feared invasion, welcomed Federal troops, got sick of drums and drunkenness, and waited for victory by either side to rid themselves of the blue horde. Southern sympathizers—and there were many, way too many—thought the Yankee rabble staggering in front of whorehouses, cooking in the basement of the Hall of Representatives, or climbing the unfinished dome of the Capital, would run when confronted with Reb valor. This wasn’t all wrong. Many Federals were state militia, enlisted for ninety days, and trained to march in parades. The militia was the legacy of Lexington and Concord—the peckerheaded notion citizens and the right to bear arms can win a war. Southerners said we’d skedaddle.
Somewhere in this churning sea of whiskey, ambition, and greed was the six-foot-four-inch new President, whose election made seven states secede and whose face in photographs over the next four years would get lined and haggard, as if it would break in parts like the country itself. He was a practical, not a military man, and wanted a quick victory, though unlike the boldest in Congress, he didn’t think the Confederate Army would disappear at the sound of the first Federal drum.
The 24th drilled and waited, heard rumors and tried to get used to the heat and humidity of a southern summer. Company G was not a ninety-day militia. We enlisted for two years, at eleven dollars a month, and unlike fellows volunteering later, got no cash bonus.
In June, now a corporal, I posed for a photograph with my new Enfield rifle at Matthew Brady’s studio. Brady would get famous for war photography, though after the battle on July 22nd, he rarely left Washington. My photograph was an ambrotype—an image produced by light exposed over time to a colloidal solution on a glass plate. A million of these slightly brownish-red images would be made in the next four years.
Mine was typical.
A young man poses with his rifle. The soldier is new. The rifle is new. The uniform is clean. His face is full and despite a new beard, young. He looks serious, alert, ready. He can hold the pose long enough for the photograph. The parade ground taught this. Even so, behind him, looking like a third foot, is the base of an iron neck-stand to help those who have not endured drill remain still for the time needed to make an image. He stands on a linoleum floor which has a checkered pattern, like a kitchen floor. The cloth backdrop is dark. The soldier wears a .44 standard Army pistol, borrowed for the picture, a big US belt buckle, polished bright as the seven brass buttons down the front of his dark uniform. The kepi hat, cloth with slant top and short leather visor, provides some protection from rain, none from bullets, and is hot in summer. The photograph is used for a cartes-devisite, a palm-sized image on cardboard, to be left, traded, cherished. Ambrotypes will be put in embossed leather cases, displayed, kissed, wept over. The portrait is the last record for many families. Unnatural as the pictures were, they’re the only part of the war the bereaved saw. The rest they must imagine.
Mine shows a young man wary, proud, not overconfident.
Most of the men in these photographs, owing to the time they must sit or stand, look somber, lonely, isolated. No one can hold a smile, artificial or not, for the time needed for an image to settle on the emulsion on the glass plate. The men leave no fleeting glimpse of personality, no revelation, no joke or nervous unease. They are alone and anonymous. The portraits have a standard-issue quality. They stare at fate.
10
Camp Keys
Arlington
July 4, 1861
Dear Father,
Before we go into Washington City to see fireworks, I’ll take some time to write. We are camped on the grounds of Robert E. Lee’s mansion. It has a fine view of the Potomac and the city. I hope Mr. Lee never sets foot on this ground again, and he won’t if the 24th has any say in the matter. His house has the biggest damn pillars outside a government building I
’ve ever seen. It makes the Scripture place look like a dollhouse.
I understand you have been recruiting men for the Regiment. The boys and I thank you, and are in the process of raising money to help your effort.
I’m starting to get used to soldier life, but summer in Sandy Creek is nothing like this humid, heavy, mosquito-breeding heat. The streets of Washington are dusty and crowded, and the Virginia mud is hell to march in. Rain brings some relief, plus more mud, and a variety of things that fly.
We call ourselves boys but I see men born in this Regiment. It’s not just feet that are hardening. Somewhere between routine and exhaustion, toughness creeps in. There was friction between the country and city fellows. This has been resolved, largely by your nephew. Let’s just say both sides now have mutual respect. Captain Ferguson is a fine officer. You know he’s a good man in Sandy Creek. He’s a good man here. I don’t know what it would be like to command men. It’s more than giving speeches.
Lyman Houghton is the model for us all. Lyman never complains and there isn’t anything he can’t do, especially shoot. The Regiment has many fine marksmen. The Bass boys are excellent shots, but Lyman is the best in our Company. He’s always doing something useful, or writing his girl at home. That activity, I can tell you, is very comforting. Helen writes faithfully. I hope you and Mother are taking good care of her.
Here’s how some of the fellows are doing. Dan Buck complains about everything but I think he’ll be all right in time. David Hamer and David Crocker want to fight and hope we see some Rebs soon. Tom Cox doesn’t say much. I think he thinks about home a lot. Martin Dennison takes to military life, except for reveille. He wonders why we get up so early with no cows to milk. Everyone wonders who’ll be dependable. The men I mention, even Dan, look like they’ll be fine. We’ll find out soon enough. Dan, by the by, might like to hear more from folks, and maybe some of our people could write him. We would all like to read The Pulaski Democrat, so if you could send a copy, we’d be most appreciative.
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