Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

by Donald McCaig

  “Uh-huh. The nigger’s sleepin’ right in the house. Hell, everybody knows.” He spat.

  The patrollers’ faces were stone. “Never heard a word,” Amos mumbled.

  “Let us be about our business,” Samuel said. The road zigged up a dry wash hummocked with old snow.

  The cabin was set against a clay bank. The log-and-stone structure next to the cabin was the root cellar, and the kitchen garden lay uphill, between the cabin and the springhouse. Broken cornstalks crossed the top of the garden like a religious procession. Frozen britches and a quilt hung rigid from the clothesline.

  “Leona told me Sallie lost her baby,” Catesby said.

  “Yes, poor dear Sallie. Abigail said the poor child was crazed with grief.”

  “Abigail saw no sign of Jesse?”

  “None.”

  “Nearly daylight, Cap’n.” Pierce found a pepperbox pistol in his saddlebag.

  “Master,” Jack said. “Don’t harm that boy. He big but he ain’t got any meanness in him. I never seen Jesse lift his hand to any man.”

  Most of the stars had been washed out by gray light on the horizon. Heat blurred the blackness above the cabin’s chimney.

  “Shot nigger aint’ no good to anybody,” Pierce said. “What you think your master’d say was I to shoot you? Think he’d thank me? Pistol’s just to affright him. Cap’n, I ain’t tellin’ you your business, but in my experience if you jump ’em when they’re asleep, they don’t act up.”

  The cabin logs were new, the chinking smooth as pottery. Its single window faced the shallow front porch and boasted four panes of real glass. The door was rough-hewn oak.

  “Amos. Billy. Do your duty,” Samuel Gatewood said.

  The two patrollers dismounted, and Billy passed his horse’s reins to Jack. “If she ain’t tied to something,” Billy whispered apologetically, “she starts for home.”

  Both patrollers held the short bullwhips that were their badges of authority, and Amos used the butt of his to bang on the door.

  “Alexander Kirkpatrick! Patrollers to inspect your premises! Alexander Kirkpatrick!”

  Pierce moseyed around the side. Most of these mountain cabins didn’t have a back door, but you never could tell.

  “Alexander Kirkpatrick!”

  A thump in the cabin—in the loft maybe. Sounded like a cat jumped off a chair.

  “Bust out the window,” Pierce shouted. “That’ll fetch ’em.”

  “We wait,” Gatewood said. “I have waited three months already and am no worse for it.”

  Amos drummed on the door. “Mr. Kirkpatrick! If you don’t answer, by God I’ll bust your window!”

  “What do you want of us?” A man’s muffled voice behind the rough-hewn door.

  “Kirkpatrick, this is Samuel Gatewood. We are searching for my servant, Jesse. For God’s sake, sir, open the door and let us get this disagreeable business concluded.”

  “This is a white man’s home,” the voice replied. “You have no rights here.”

  “Kirkpatrick, let us search and we will trouble you no further.”

  A hissed exchange of words inside, and a lantern flooded the window with light. The door jerked open to reveal a woman dressed in a patched blue flannel nightshirt, barefoot. In her arms she held a short-barreled flintlock musket. She dragged back the hammer with both thumbs.

  “Sallie!” That was Samuel Gatewood.

  “Ma’am!” That was Amos, stepping backward.

  When Samuel Gatewood regarded this scrawny girl, he was ashamed. He might have stopped by this lonely cabin to see her, should have come by to mourn her baby. When Sallie was expelled from the Female Seminary, President Timberlake had written Samuel of her fall from grace. The planter had said nothing, not even to Abigail, nor had he exposed Sallie’s seducer—her husband now. But Samuel should have visited. He should have. “Sallie,” he said, “I must speak to your husband.”

  “Samuel? What brings you out so late? Night air can bring on the ague. Aunt Opal nailed Father’s window shut, so deleterious is night air.” Absently, she leaned her musket against the wall. “Alexander is dressing. Alexander is particular about his appearance. It is admirable in my husband, his particularity.”

  Samuel Gatewood handed the musket to Amos. “Let us step inside. Child, you’ll catch your death.”

  The cabin was rectangular, low-ceilinged, a ladder to the loft overhead, fireplace on the weather wall.

  Alexander Kirkpatrick was stretched out in the only chair, pants beneath his nightshirt, feet stuck out to the fire.

  Coats, pants, shirts, and dresses hung on pegs. Their table was stacked with the household tinware: knives, forks, and spoons in a stoneware crock. An iron kettle and frypan were overturned on the hearth, their blackness flecked with ash. The Kirkpatricks’ bed was a heap of quilts in the corner.

  “First time you’ve honored us, sir.” Kirkpatrick said. “If you’d arrived at a more civilized hour I’d have offered refreshment.” He was smiling, but Samuel couldn’t tell what he was smiling at. He gestured at the stout log walls. “Welcome to the home you built for us.”

  Samuel Gatewood said, “I did what any neighbor would.”

  “I should be grateful for this hovel, and damn it, Gatewood, I am. I can’t tell you how disagreeable it was to sleep in my father-in-law’s house: one small room with that gentleman snoring, Auntie Opal passing gas, and a wife with bony elbows. Damned if I’m not . . .”

  “Your language, sir. The presence of a lady,” Samuel Gatewood murmured.

  “Sallie? Sallie doesn’t mind. Sallie’s studied Catullus. I tell you, sir, if you can read Catullus, you needn’t shrink at simple hells and damns. Isn’t that so, dear wife?”

  Plain and quiet as a woolen cloak, Sallie held her hand to her mouth.

  Samuel Gatewood pulled an overturned washtub beside the rocker and put his hands toward the dying fire. “Mr. Kirkpatrick, you were not born in Virginia? You came to us from the North?”

  “I was a clerk at Buell & Peters, New York City. Export, import, letters of credit. An ill-paid clerk, I might add.”

  “Sir, you are not native here and cannot understand our ways. Please indulge me when I assure you that customs which may to the naive eye appear harsh are necessary for the management of our domestic institutions. Men as wise as Jefferson, Calhoun, and Clay have contributed to our debate. Better minds than yours or mine have wrestled with it. There are, if you’ll permit me the term, ‘Yankees’ who simplify our concerns. Theirs is a world of vivid blacks and whites, ours is swirling gray.”

  “I have studied the Romans, sir.”

  “Then you will understand Virginians’ willingness to defend our mores against those who would destroy them. Sir, do you require proof of my affection for Sallie?”

  Alexander stretched and yawned. “Our present domicile is proof enough.”

  When Samuel tried to hold the younger man with his gaze, Alexander’s eyes roamed, darting from lamplight to shadows. For a moment Samuel wondered if the arrogant whelp wasn’t, in fact, scared out of his wits, and he spoke deliberately, as if overloud expression, might drive the man into trembling panic. “For Sallie’s sake, let me construct a theory. Suppose a young couple were living in the back country in winter. If a colored man came to their door begging sustenance, should they in conscience refuse him? Perhaps they knew the man from happier times. Perhaps he failed to confess his fugitive state and the samaritans knew nothing of it. Suppose the couple fed and housed him of Christian charity.”

  Alexander Kirkpatrick’s dark brown hair fell down one side of his face. He steepled his fingers like a cleric. “Suppose they were wearied of each other, this hypothetical pair? Suppose the wife had nothing to offer the husband but angry silence? Tell me, sir. What can a husband do with a wife who despises him?”

  Samuel Gatewood spoke as to a slow-witted child. “It is for the wife I speak, sir. It is in her that our affection resides. The husband is nothing to us.” His weary voice raspe
d on, “In Virginia, sir, harboring a fugitive slave is a felony—a theft of valuable property. Although Mr. Jefferson designed our penitentiary, its accommodations are not salubrious and its regimen is punitive by design. Sir, am I plain?”

  “You could not be more so, sir.”

  “This pitcher—it is drinking water?”

  “Mr. Samuel,” Sallie said timidly, “it will be stale. Let me fetch fresher from our spring.”

  Samuel poured, took a long swallow, and turned the earthenware cup in his hand as if it were fine Venetian glass. He spoke as if each word were a bomb fused and sputtering. “After I sold his . . . mate, my servant, Jesse, ran from Stratford Plantation. Since Christmastime, Jesse has been a fugitive—a ‘maroon.’ Pursuit was perfunctory: I trusted that when time had healed Jesse’s heart, he would return home to Stratford. Provided Jesse is repentant—nay, provided he merely promises to run no more—Jesse need fear no punishment. If my servant is restored to me, nothing more need be said.”

  Samuel Gatewood extended a hand to Sallie, but she was shaking her head, mute, desperate, implacable. “Understanding that the matter can be treated as simple misplaced kindness, I ask you: Is Jesse beneath your roof?”

  Alexander Kirkpatrick shrugged. “You must ask my wife. She may speak to you.”

  “Sallie, is Jesse here? If you say no, I shall be satisfied and depart. By the time I reach Stratford the cook will be bringing the cornbread from the oven. How an early-morning ride improves the appetite. Why, it is the finest thing, quite the finest thing . . .”

  “Tell him, wife! Having lost my child, certainly you can lose another.” Kirkpatrick yawned prodigiously.

  In her dull voice, Sallie said, “You dreamed of a child as if it were salvation. A child couldn’t have satisfied you any more than I can.

  “Mr. Gatewood, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer fresh water? It’s only a moment to fetch it.”

  Samuel Gatewood looked down at the floor and whispered something—the word “duty” was audible. He went to the door and threw it open.

  Amos Hansel was bulky with winter garments, and those garments were none too clean. A shabby, comfortable young man, Amos. His bullwhip dangled from his hand. “Ma’am,” he said.

  Gatewood said, “Mr. Hansel is a duly appointed officer of the county. It is his duty to regularize servants’ movement, to enforce the curfew and apprehend runaways. Mr. Hansel may enter any domicile in pursuance of his duties, and in the execution of his duty Mr. Hansel may use what force he deems necessary. Once Mr. Hansel takes action, matters are out of my hands. I ask you a final time: Is Jesse in this house?”

  Sallie turned to the wall.

  “Very well. Amos, search the house.”

  “Billy,” the patroller bawled. “Fetch me that bull’s-eye.”

  Amos used his broad shoulders to lift the loft trapdoor aside, and Billy handed the lantern up to him. Clumsily, they climbed through the trap; their bootfalls and lantern light through the ceiling cracks marked their progress.

  Sallie’s tears washed her cheeks. The patrollers’ boots clumped overhead. The first feet back through the trap wore heavy boots, the second were black and bare.

  Jesse’s good body was starved. His ribs stuck out, his skin was more gray than black, and his feet were cracked and raw.

  “Jesse, you look like you could use some breakfast,” Samuel Gatewood said quietly.

  Jesse’s eyes were empty. His hands were clasped in front of him.

  “He was hidin’ behind an old trunk,” Amos said.

  “He didn’t give us no trouble,” Billy Stuart piped.

  “We were concerned about you, Jesse,” Gatewood said. “It has been a bitter winter.”

  Jesse licked his lips. His yellow wool jacket had once belonged to Samuel Gatewood. Years ago, Samuel had worn it to a ball at Warwick. How glittering that evening, how charming the ladies! His Abigail had been the most widely admired woman there.

  Pierce came in. “That your nigger, Cap’n? Big son of a bitch, ain’t he? Auctioneer be glad to see a buck like him. Them Mississippi plantations got more gold than they know what to do with. All their agents be bidding for a boy like him. I heard tell of a hand just last week brought two thousand dollars. ’Course, that boy hadn’t ever run away and he couldn’t read nor write. They discount for writin’. Cap’n, you want, I take him with me. I keep five percent of his price and his feed comes out of my own pocket. Silas Omohundru won’t do you no fairer’n that. Five percent and I’ll forget the reward.”

  “Well, Jesse, what about it? Do you wish to be sold south?”

  The black licked his lips. After wait enough to make the white men impatient he said, “No.”

  That quick, the haft of Billy Stuart’s bullwhip tapped his cheek. “Show respect, boy. You ain’t up the mountain no more.”

  Jesse put a hand to his face.

  “What do you say, nigger, when you’re talking to a white man?”

  “Master,” Jesse said, like they’d dragged it from his gut.

  “Thought you said this boy was smart,” Pierce said. “Couple days walkin’ after my horse into Staunton, I venture he’ll be smarter.” Pierce’s eyes had the hot look men’s eyes get when the dogs have treed a coon and there it is, frozen in the lantern light.

  When Samuel Gatewood stepped toward him, Pierce involuntarily retreated. “Mr. Pierce. As you see, your information has born fruit. You shall have your reward from Mr. Byrd.”

  “In gold. No shin plasters.”

  “Fifty dollars in gold as agreed.” Gatewood called to his son-in-law. “Catesby, please settle with Mr. Pierce.”

  Jesse’s chest rose and fell.

  “Jesse, will we require shackles?”

  Jesse did not respond, and Samuel’s voice betrayed irritation when he summoned his driver.

  Jack was the best driver in the valley, but this morning, he was just a gray-headed colored man with heavy shackles draped over his arm. He kept his eyes fixed to the floor and shuffled.

  “Oh, no!” Sallie cried. Alexander Kirkpatrick uncurled himself from the rocker. The tips of his ears were red.

  “Say nothing, sir!” Gatewood commanded.

  The driver knelt at Jesse’s feet. “I surely do hate to be doin’ this, son,” he said. “But you been caught fair, and now you got to make the best of it.”

  Each shackle clicked shut on an ankle. The short chain connecting them permitted Jesse short clumsy steps.

  “Wait! Oh, wait!” Sallie rushed to her knitting basket. “He cannot go out in the snow. His feet, can’t you see his feet?”

  “I fell into Strait Creek and lost my shoes,” Jesse said dully. “Bark tied ’round my feet do pretty good but snow gets in.”

  Sallie brought a pair of woolen socks, one completed, the other lacking only the toe, and knelt at the prisoner’s feet. “I was knitting these for him. These are all I can do.”

  The shackled black supported his weight on Amos Hansel’s shoulder as Sallie fitted a sock on one foot, then the other.

  In the dawn light, the snow seemed dingy and gray, the horses smaller and dingier too.

  Catesby Byrd’s breath puffed short frozen clouds. Leafless oaks and maples seemed unwashed, the pines looked black. One last star in the west. Catesby thought it might be Venus.

  They unshackled one of Jesse’s ankles to lift him onto the mule, and reshackled under the mule’s belly. Jack sat behind, fed the reins around the prisoner, and clucked softly. The burdened mule started down the hill.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Gatewood said to the patrollers. “I am obliged to you for this night’s work.”

  “What about them two?” The slave hunter grinned. “Them that hid that boy? You bringin’ ’em to jail?”

  Samuel Gatewood rubbed his eyes. Stiffly, he mounted his gelding. “Is there nothing that can be done?” he asked Catesby.

  “These patrollers—these witnesses—are officers of the court,” Catesby Byrd replied. “As am I.”


  Samuel turned toward the modest cabin, its gaping doorway. “Catesby, I am sick at heart. Do what you must.”

  His son-in-law shook his head. “They have brought this on themselves, Samuel. You did all you could. Go home, friend. It has been a hard night for younger men than you.”

  Amos Hansel had stationed himself before the cabin door, feet stolidly apart, bullwhip clasped behind his back. Samuel Gatewood set his face for home.

  SO GALLANTLY STREAMING

  LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA

  APRIL 1, 1861

  FOUR HEFTY UNIONISTS strained as the tip of their flagpole soared skyward and its base slipped into its socket with a thump. One wiped his forehead on his sleeve, another rubbed his hands together: job well done.

  Dr. Junkins, Washington College’s president, waited calmly on the courthouse steps, speech in hand. Other Union sympathizers flanked him: storekeepers, two doctors, a cluster of lawyers, mechanics uncomfortable in their Sunday suits, half a dozen foundrymen, arms crossed over thick leather aprons.

  It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and the plump clouds that streamed unconcernedly overhead were casting swift shadows over the United States of America, the Confederate States of America, and those states, like Virginia, that hadn’t decided. The Stars and Stripes of the federal government dangled lifelessly from the brand-new thirty-foot white pine flagpole.

  Lexington, Virginia, was the prosperous terminus of the James River/Kanawha Canal. Its foundries manufactured iron pots and firebacks, Monmouth Mill wove woolens for the Richmond market, potters produced salt-glaze vessels, local plantations thrived, and two colleges added a cosmopolitan air to the town. Students at Washington College and the Military Institute were fighting a war of flags. One night, some miscreant climbed Washington College’s roof and replaced the Stars and Stripes with the bonny blue flag of the Confederacy. At Dr. Junkins’s direction, workmen undid the exchange, only to have their federal flag stolen again two nights later. Dr. Junkins made an impassioned speech to his attentive students, but not three nights later the banner of the Confederate States of America flew again over a college in a state which did not belong to the Confederacy. Union sympathizers now guarded the college flag at night and took up a collection for a new flagpole and flag for the courthouse.