“Don’t be so damned unhelpful,” Ridley said, then scowled through the window at a city being pounded by rain. Grace Street was almost empty. There was just one carriage clattering toward Capitol Square and two Negroes sheltering in the doorway of the Methodist Church. “Does Mrs. Richardson have anyone who can get rid of babies?” Ridley turned to ask. Mrs. Richardson presided over the brothel in which his half-brother had such a significant investment.
Delaney gave a delicate shrug that might have signified almost anything.
“Mind you,” Ridley went on, “Sally wants to keep the bastard, and she says if I won’t help her then she’ll tell Washington Faulconer about me. And she says she’ll tell her father. You know what he’ll do to me?”
“I don’t suppose he’ll choose to have a prayer meeting with you,” Delaney chuckled. “Why don’t you take the inconvenient bitch down to the Tredegar works and leave her on a spoil heap?” The Tredegar Iron Works by the James River was Richmond’s filthiest, darkest and grimmest place, and not many enquiries were made about the tragedies that occurred around its satanic edges. Men died in fights, whores were knifed in its alleys, and dead or dying babies were abandoned in its filthy canals. It was a corner of hell in downtown Richmond.
“I’m not a murderer,” Ridley said sullenly, though in truth he had considered some such extraordinary and saving act of violence, but he was much too frightened of Sally Truslow who, he suspected, was hiding a gun somewhere among her property. She had come to him three nights before, arriving at Belvedere Delaney’s rooms in the early evening. Delaney had been in Williamsburg, swearing a will, so Ridley had been alone in the apartment when Sally had rung the front bell. He had heard a commotion at the front door and gone downstairs to find George, his brother’s house slave, confronting a bedraggled, wet and angry Sally. She had pushed past George who, with his customary and dignified politeness, had been trying to keep her from entering the house. “Tell this nigger to keep his hands off me,” she screamed at Ridley.
“It’s all right, George. She’s my cousin,” Ridley had said, then had arranged for Sally’s bedraggled horse to be stabled and for Sally herself to be shown upstairs to his brother’s parlor. “What the hell are you doing here?” he had asked her in horror.
“I came to you,” she announced, “like you said I could.” Her ragged clothes dripped water onto Belvedere Delaney’s fine Persian rug that lay in front of his red marble fireplace. Wind and rain howled at the casement, but in this warm and comfortable room, insulated by the thick velvet curtains under their deep-tasseled valances, the fire burned softly and the candle flames scarcely flickered. Sally turned about on the rug, admiring the books, the furniture and the leather chairs. She was dazzled by the reflection of candlelight from decanters, from the glint of gilded frames, and from the precious European porcelain on the mantel. “This is nice, Ethan. I never knew you had a brother?”
Ridley had crossed to the credenza where he opened a silver humidor and took out one of the cigars his brother kept for visitors. He needed a cigar to help recover his poise. “I thought you were married?”
“I’ll take one of those cigars,” Sally said.
He lit the cigar, gave it to her, then took another for himself. “You’re wearing a wedding ring,” he said, “so you are married. Why don’t you go back to your husband?”
She deliberately ignored his question, instead holding her ring finger up to the candlelight. “The ring belonged to my ma and she had it from her ma. My pa wanted to keep it, but I made him give it me. Ma always wanted me to have it.”
“Let me see it.” Ridley took her finger and felt the thrill he always felt when he touched Sally and he wondered just what accident of bone and skin and lip and eye had made such a terrible beauty out of this foul-mouthed, sour-minded child of the hills. “It’s pretty.” He turned the ring on her finger, feeling the dry lightness of her touch. “It’s quite old, too.” He suspected it was very old, and perhaps quite special and so he tried to pull it off her finger, but Sally jerked her hand away.
“My pa wanted to keep it,” she looked at the ring, “so I took it away from him.” She laughed and drew on the cigar. “Besides, I ain’t married proper. No more proper than if I jumped a broomstick.”
That was precisely what Ridley feared, but he tried not to show any apprehension. “Your husband will still come looking for you, won’t he?”
“Robert?” She laughed. “He won’t do anything. A gelded hog’s got more balls than Robert. But what about your lady friend? What will your Anna do when she knows I’m here?”
“Will she know?”
“She will, honey, ’cos I’ll tell her. Unless you keep your word to me. Which means looking after me proper. I want to live in a place like this.” She turned around the room, admiring its comfort, then looked back at Ridley. “Do you know a man called Starbuck?”
“I know a boy called Starbuck,” Ridley said.
“A good-looking boy,” Sally said coquettishly. A length of ash dropped off her cigar onto a rug. “He was the one that married me off to Robert. My pa made him do it. He made it sound all proper, with a book and all, and he even wrote it down to make it legal, but I know it wasn’t proper.”
“Starbuck married you?” Ridley was amused.
“He was nice about it. Real nice.” Sally cocked her head at Ridley, wanting him to be jealous. “So then I told Robert he should go for a soldier, and I came here. To be with you.”
“But I won’t be staying here,” Ridley said. Sally watched him, her eyes catlike. “I’m going to the Legion,” Ridley explained. “I shall just finish my business here, then I shall go back.”
“Then I tell you what other business you’ve got to finish, honey.” Sally walked toward him, unconsciously graceful as she crossed the rich rugs and wax-polished boards. “You’re going to find me a place to live, Ethan. Somewhere nice, with carpets like this and real chairs and a proper bed. And you can visit me there, like you said you would. Ain’t that what you said? That you’d find a place where I could live? Where you’d keep me? And love me?” The last three words were said very softly and so close that Ridley could smell the cigar smoke on her breath.
“I said that, yes.” And he knew he could not resist her, but he also knew that as soon as they had made love he would hate Sally for her vulgarity and commonness. She was a child, scarce fifteen, yet she knew her power and Ridley knew it too. He knew she would fight to have her way and she would not care what destruction she caused in the fighting, and so, the very next day, Ridley moved her out of his brother’s Grace Street rooms. If Delaney had returned to find any of his precious porcelain broken he would never have agreed to help Ethan, and so Ridley had taken a front room at a boardinghouse on Monroe Street where he registered himself and Sally as a married couple. Now he pleaded for his brother’s help. “For God’s sake, Bev! She’s a witch! She’ll destroy everything!”
“A succuba, is she? I’d like to meet her. Is she really as beautiful as your sketch?”
“She is extraordinary. So for God’s sake take her from me! You want her? She’s yours.” Ridley had already tried introducing her to his friends who met to drink in the Spotswood House Saloon, but Sally, even though dressed in newly purchased finery and hugely admired by every officer in the hotel, had refused to leave Ridley’s side. She had her claws deep into her man and would not let go for the unknown opportunities of another. “Please, Bev!” Ridley pleaded.
Belvedere Delaney thought how much he hated being called “Bev” as he warmed himself by his small, glowing fire. “You’re not willing to kill her?” he asked in a dangerous voice.
Ridley paused, then shook his head. “No.”
“And you won’t give her what she wants?”
“I can’t.”
“And you can’t give her away?”
“Damn it, no.”
“And she won’t leave you of her own accord?”
“Never.”
Delaney drew o
n his cigarette, then puffed a reflective smoke ring at his ceiling. “A toasted bridge! I do find that amusing.”
“Please, Bev, please!”
“I showed the newspaper to Lee this afternoon,” Delaney said, “but he dismissed the account. None of our men, he assured me. He reckons the bridge toasters must have been mere brigands. I think you should find a way of letting Faulconer hear that verdict. Brigands! The word will annoy Faulconer considerably.”
“Please, Bev! For God’s sake.”
“Oh, not for God’s sake, Ethan. God wouldn’t like what I intend to do with your Sally. He wouldn’t like it one little bit. But yes, I can help you.”
Ridley gazed at his brother with palpable relief. “What will you do?”
“Bring her to me tomorrow. Bring her to the corner of, say, Cary and Twenty-fourth, that’ll be out of the way. At four o’clock. There’ll be a carriage there. I may be there or I may not. Find some story that’ll get her into the carriage, then forget her. Forget her altogether.”
Ridley gaped at his brother. “You’re going to kill her?”
Delaney winced at the question. “Please do not imagine I am so crude. I am going to remove her from your life and you are going to be grateful to me forever.”
“I will. I promise!” Ridley’s gratitude was pathetic.
“Tomorrow then, at four o’clock, at Cary and Twenty-fourth. Now go and be nice to her, Ethan, be very nice, so she suspects nothing.”
Colonel Washington Faulconer ignored Starbuck for almost the entire journey home. Faulconer rode with Captain Hinton, sometimes with Murphy, and at other times alone, but always setting a fast pace, as though he wanted to distance himself from the scene of his raid’s failure. When he did speak to Starbuck he was curt and unfriendly, though he was hardly any more forthcoming with anyone else. Even so, Starbuck felt hurt, while Truslow was merely amused by the Colonel’s sulking. “You have to learn to walk away from stupidity,” Truslow said.
“Is that what you do?”
“No, but who ever said I was a good example?” He laughed. “You should have taken my advice and helped yourself to the money.” Truslow had made a fair sum from the raid, as had the men who had gone with him into the train.
“I’d rather be a fool than a thief,” Starbuck said sententiously.
“No you wouldn’t. No sensible man would. Besides, war’s coming, and the only way you’ll get through a war is by thieving. All soldiers are thieves. You thieve everything you want, not from your friends, but from everyone else. The army won’t look after you. The army shouts at you, shits on you and does its best to starve you, so you get by as best you can, and the best getters-by are the ones who thieve best.” Truslow rode in silence for a few paces. “I reckon you should be glad you came to say a prayer for my Emily, ’cos it means you’ve got me to look after you.”
Starbuck said nothing. He felt ashamed of that prayer he had uttered beside a grave. He should never have said it, for he was not worthy.
“And I never thanked you for not telling anyone about my Sally, either. How she married, I mean, and why.” Truslow cut a slice of tobacco off the plait he kept in a belt pouch and shoved it into a cheek. He and Starbuck were riding alone, separated by a few paces from the men before and those behind. “You always hope your children will do you proud,” Truslow went on softly, “but I reckon Sally’s a bad one. But she’s wed now, and that’s the end of it.”
Is it? Starbuck wondered, but was not so foolish as to ask the question aloud. Marriage had not been the end for Sally’s mother, who had subsequently run off with the small, fierce Truslow. Starbuck tried to picture Sally’s face in his mind, but he could not piece it together. He just remembered someone who was very beautiful, and someone he had promised to help if she ever asked. What would he do if she came? Would he run away with her as he had with Dominique? Would he dare defy her father? At night, lying sleepless, Starbuck wove fantasies about Sally Truslow. He knew the dreams were as stupid as they were impractical, but he was a young man and he so wanted to be in love and thus he dreamed the stupid and impractical dreams.
“I’m real grateful you said nothing about Sally.” Truslow seemed to want a response, perhaps an affirmation that Starbuck had indeed kept the night wedding a secret instead of making fun of the family’s misfortune.
“I never thought to tell anyone,” Starbuck said. “It’s no one else’s business.” It was pleasant to sound so virtuous again, though Starbuck suspected his silence about the marriage had been prompted more by an instinctive fear of Truslow’s enmity than by any principle of reticence.
“So what did you make of Sally?” Truslow asked in all seriousness.
“She is a very pretty girl.” Starbuck gave the response equally seriously, as though he had not imagined riding away with her to the new western lands or sometimes sailing east to Europe where, in his daydreams, he dazzled her with his sophistication in palatial hotels and brilliant ballrooms.
Truslow nodded acceptance of Starbuck’s compliment. “She looks like her mother. Young Decker’s a lucky boy, I suppose, though maybe he ain’t. Prettiness ain’t always a gift in a woman, especially if they own a mirror. Emily now, she never thought twice on it, but Sally.” He said the name sadly, then rode in silence for a long time, evidently reflecting on his family. Starbuck, because he had shared a moment’s intimacy with that family, had unwittingly become a confidant of Truslow who, after his silence, shook his head, spat out his tobacco spittle and declared his verdict. “Some men ain’t intended to be family men, but young Decker is. He’d like to join his cousin in the Legion, but he’s not the fighting type. Not like you.”
“Me?” Starbuck was surprised.
“You’re a fighter, boy. I can tell. You won’t wet your pants when you see the elephant.”
“See the elephant?” Starbuck asked, amused.
Truslow made a face as if to suggest that he was tired of single-handedly correcting Starbuck’s education, but then deigned to explain anyway. “If you grow up in the country you’re always being told about the circus. All the wonders of it. The freak shows and the animals acts, and the elephant, and all the children keep asking what the elephant is, and you can’t explain, so one day you take the children and they see for themselves. That’s what a man’s first battle is like. Like seeing the elephant. Some men piss their pants, some run like hell, some make the enemy run. You’ll be all right, but Faulconer won’t.” Truslow jerked a scornful head at the Colonel, who was riding alone at the head of the small column. “You mark me well, boy, but I tell you Faulconer won’t last one battle.”
The thought of battle made Starbuck shiver suddenly. Sometimes the anticipation was exciting, other times it was terrifying, and this time the thought of seeing the elephant was scaring him, perhaps because the raid’s failure had shown just how much could go wrong. He did not want to think about the consequences of things going wrong in battle, so changed the subject by blurting out the first question that came to his tongue. “Did you really murder three men?”
Truslow gave him a strange look, as though he did not understand why such a question would ever be asked. “At least,” Truslow said scornfully. “Why?”
“So how does it feel to murder someone?” Starbuck asked. He had really wanted to ask why the murders had been committed, and how, and whether anyone had tried to bring Truslow to justice, but instead he asked the stupid question about sensation.
Truslow mocked the query. “How does it feel? Jesus, boy, there are times when you make more noise than a cracked pot. How does it feel? You find out for yourself, boy. You go and murder someone, then you tell me the answer.” Truslow spurred ahead, evidently disgusted with Starbuck’s prurient question.
They camped that night on a wet ridge above a small settlement where a smelting furnace blazed like the maw of hell and seeped the foul stench of coal smoke up to the ridge where Starbuck could not sleep. Instead he sat with the guards, shivering and wishing the rain would stop.
He had eaten his supper of cold dried beef and damp bread with the other three officers, and Faulconer had been livelier than on the previous nights and had even sought some consolation for the raid’s failure. “Our powder might have let us down,” he said, “but we showed we could be a threat.”
“That’s true, Colonel,” Hinton said loyally.
“They’ll have to post guards on every bridge,” the Colonel claimed, “and a man guarding a bridge can’t be invading the South.”
“That’s the truth, too,” Hinton said cheerfully. “And it could take them days to clear that locomotive off the track. It was dug in brutally deep.”
“So it wasn’t a failure,” the Colonel said.
“Far from it!” Captain Hinton was resolutely optimistic.
“And it was a good piece of training for our cavalry scouts,” the Colonel said.
“Indeed it was.” Hinton grinned at Starbuck, trying to include him in the friendlier atmosphere, but the Colonel just frowned.
Now, as the night inched by, Starbuck was plunged deep down into a young man’s despair. It was not just his alienation from Washington Faulconer that oppressed him, but the knowledge that his life had gone so utterly wrong. There were excuses, good excuses maybe, but at heart he knew he was the one who had gone astray. He had left his family and his church, even his own country, to live among strangers, and the ties of their affection did not run deeply enough or strongly enough to offer him any hope. Washington Faulconer was a man whose bitter disappointment was as sour as the reek of the smelter’s furnace. Truslow was an ally, but for how long? And what did Starbuck have in common with Truslow? Truslow and his followers would thieve and kill, but Starbuck could not see himself behaving so, and as for the others, like Medlicott, they hated Starbuck for being an intrusive Yankee, an outsider, a stranger, a favorite of the Colonel’s who had become the Colonel’s scapegoat.
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