High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  They sat in a gabled window high on the third floor overlooking Franklin Street. People carrying large umbrellas looked like black mushrooms as they hopped over puddles.

  “Wasn’t that funny when Kate’s mother came to the party and criticized Varina Davis to Kate’s face?” Di-Peachy leaned forward conspiratorially.

  “Uh huh.” Sin-Sin wore a violet and gold turban made from a piece of exquisite material Kate had given her.

  “Said Varina aped royalty by putting her servants in expensive livery.”

  “She knows Kate tight with the first lady. Jes needlin’ her.”

  “Kate said, ‘What are we to do, Mama? Are we to level down or raise up? If servants don’t wear livery in the President’s house, they should go naked.’ I thought the old lady would pitch a fit, but instead she laughed. Odd family.” She paused. “I’ve always thought of you as my family, Auntie.”

  “I loves you.”

  In a sudden outburst, Di-Peachy said, “I wish I’d known my mother.”

  Sin-Sin stared out the window. “She was a kind soul and very beautiful.”

  “Do you remember your mother?”

  “I see her face plain as I sees yours but it is queer to me, I cannot ’member one word my mother spoke to me, not nary a word. I ’member she brought me hot pot licker and bread in the mornings when I was small; but I been tryin’ to ’member some words she spoke to me and I can’t.”

  “Was she sold away?”

  “No. Lucius Chatfield, Henley’s father, din’ believe in breakin’ up families. Momma was killed in an accident with one of the horses. She was standin’ by the big carriage—”

  “The coach-in-fours?”

  “That one. Arnold, Ernie June’s daddy, dressed to sparkle, hung on the back. One of the horses went crazy rearin’ and screamin’, and the traces tangled up. He knock Momma down. She drug under those traces before Arnold could get her out. He was brave, that Arnold, ’cause he went right for the horses.”

  “I’m sorry.” Di-Peachy rested her hand on Sin-Sin’s.

  “Honey, that was a long yesterday—”

  “And a far tomorrow,” Di-Peachy cut in.

  “You gots the far tomorrows, not me. Tell me now, I knows you from little on up. What’s workin’ on your mind that you askin’ me ’bout the past? We haven’t had one minute to put our heads together since Mr. Henley told you the truth.”

  “Auntie, I feel I have the sin of both races in my face.” She covered her face in her hands.

  “Hush. I doan want to hear such talk! You got no stain on you. He got the stain. Yo’ poor Momma got no stain on her neither.”

  “I knew, I always knew. Do you know what it’s like to be loved, but never to belong?”

  “You belong. You belong to Chatfield. You belong to me.”

  Tears ran from underneath her hands. She pulled her hands away from her face to wipe her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I’m not black, and I’m not white.”

  “Thass a hard road. God provided you for it by giftin’ you with a wondrous mind. Solomon was black. Simon of Cyrea, he was black and he bore Christ’s cross as he wagged up Calvary Hill. You not useless. That brain in that body, no, thass not useless. Yo’ think you the only café au lait on this earth?” A light tone crept into Sin-Sin’s voice.

  “No.”

  “You be here to do good. Doan be wastin’ yo’ time cryin’ that you neither here nor there. You gots me and you gots Geneva and yo’ beau.” Sin-Sin wasn’t so certain about the beau.

  “I know I have you. I love you.” More tears fell through her hands. “But Geneva—she’s changed. We’re in two different worlds now.”

  Sin-Sin noticed a gust of wind pull an umbrella over a man’s head. He stood in the rain, furiously trying to bring it down.

  “Geneva told me,” continued Di-Peachy, “that Henley is going to free everyone at Chatfield on Christmas.”

  Sin-Sin took this quite calmly. “Zat a fact?”

  “But you know,” Di-Peachy spoke, “much as I want that for everyone, I think Henley’s doing it for his vanity. He’s more worried about his soul than he is about us!”

  “See what I mean ’bout your brain? Don’t hate the man for why he’s doin’ it. Good always mixed up with bad. He’s doin’ something! Thass more than you can say for most.”

  “And Lutie doesn’t want him to do it. She thinks someone like Braxton could go and make a living, but someone like Frederica would be crushed. Lutie’s subordinating the larger issue to individual people. Henley subordinates people to the issue.”

  “Who cares so long as we be free.”

  Di-Peachy wiggled in her seat. “If we were treated the way people in the North think we’re treated, it would be easier. We’re not bound by chains, Auntie Sin-Sin, we’re bound by ties of love. You love Lutie, and I love Geneva!”

  “I loves Lutie.”

  “Don’t you see, it would be so much easier if we could hate them.”

  “Hate’s cancer. Eat you right up. Listen to me, it take a long, long time to develop mother wit.” Sin-Sin smiled. “Lutie be worth my love. You worth it. I could no more break my invisible chains than fly! Love be my honor.”

  Di-Peachy said, “They say niggers and women have no honor.”

  “This nigger woman does!” Sin-Sin blazed. “Don’t envy the whites. They got chains, but they thinks they free. Least I knows my chains.”

  “I don’t want any chains!”

  “Then you don’t want to live, girl. We bound to one another hand and foot. This whole human race, I don’t give jack shit ’bout they color nor they sex, we bound hand and foot, and we goin’ to walk to glory or we goin’ to walk to hell! I used to cry ’bout bein’ a slave. Oh, yes, you wouldn’t know it now. I hated it. I still care but I’m an old woman. Makes no sense fo’ me to care too much. One day I heard God. I heard his sweet music in my soul and ever since then, I doan care like I used to ’bout what happens to this husk. No one owns my soul. You gettin’ like the white folks. You gettin’ seduced by they money and they power and they land, but they have no peace.”

  “The war will be over soon.”

  “For a smart girl you sure dumb. War be on the outside. Peace be in the heart. I pity white folks. Doan be imitatin’ them else you lose yo’ heart and you lose yo’ soul.”

  “But I’m swept up in their madness.”

  “Even Jesus swept up in madness, chile.”

  Di-Peachy looked at Sin-Sin’s dear face. “I think I have to live more before I can accept, if I ever can.”

  “You thinkin’ I laying down like a wiped dog? You think thass what I’m talkin’ about? We each climbin’ a mountain, and the top be where God and his angels waitin’ for us. Everybody climbin’ this mountain, Di-Peachy. Even little Chinamen climbin’ this mountain. The rich man, he stop to admire or grab glittery rubies and diamonds and whatever he can. He ain’t gettin’ too far. But I climbs straight up. This mountain is in our hearts. Acceptin’ doan mean you lie down. I ain’t no weak woman. I changes what I can. What I can’t, well, I prays for another day or another person someday, when I dead and gone, to change things. I can’t do everythin’, but I can climb. You can climb. We can redeem ourselves. Jesus shine a light for you on that mountain, but you gotta climb it!” Sin-Sin finished. A silence.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Must be that whirrin’ sound I hear.”

  “Sometimes I feel such a sadness wash over me. It’s like a tidal wave of grief, but I don’t know where it comes from.”

  “It means somebody dyin’ way off somewhere, and we doan know it.”

  “Someone I don’t know?”

  “God give each of us little pieces of other people’s souls even when we doan know them. When you sad like that, one of ’em dies. You see, honey, we all part of one another. Thass white folks’ terrible curse. They cuts off everyone from them. They thinkin’ they superior but they jes alone, and when they hear that coffin’s hollow moan, it too
late.”

  JUNE 25, 1862

  Just before sunrise, Lutie, Kate, Di-Peachy, Sin-Sin, and the other ladies of the Vickerses’ home hospital were awakened by the boom of cannon. The windows shook in the house. The ladies, together with the servants, Joseph and Gunther, quickly assembled in the conservatory. The cannonade rattled the glass with consistent rhythm.

  “It sounds quite close,” said Jennifer, who was observed talking loudly to thin air before she descended the curving stairway.

  “We knew the battle had to begin sometime.” Hazel sniffed the odor of redeye gravy coming from the kitchen.

  Bebe Austin entered the room. “I rushed over here as fast as I could. My information is that our men under John Bankhead Magruder have opened fire upon the enemy.”

  Rise whispered into Miranda’s ear. “Last night’s pillow talk.”

  “We might as well get used to the sound. It’ll go on all day,” said Lutie.

  The ladies dismissed for breakfast. They thought by nightfall the wounded would begin to arrive.

  Sin-Sin counted and recounted supplies. She couldn’t stand being idle. Di-Peachy finally pulled her aside.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.”

  “Good.” Sin-Sin beamed.

  “Does that apply to Ernie June? Is she climbing a mountain to God?” A malicious twinkle danced in Di-Peachy’s eyes.

  Sin-Sin bristled. “Even the Good Lord’s allowed a few duds!”

  Geneva and the regiment picked up General Stuart as they rode north on the Brooke Turnpike. The territory was familiar to everybody. This time the force was two thousand sabers plus Captain John Pelham’s battery. Another force of cavalry was assigned to watch the right flank of the enemy. These men covered the road to Charles City, Williamsburg, and the James River.

  Geneva again had three days of corn and bacon in her haversack and tea in her canteen. No baggage trains followed the column, so Geneva knew they’d be traveling light. If anything went wrong, they’d live off the land. If they were fortunate in battle, they’d live off the enemy.

  No Federals were in sight. The column, marching through intermittent rain, passed Yellow Tavern, perched in the middle of fields. By the afternoon they’d crossed the Chickahominy at Upper Bridge alongside the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. An entire brigade of infantry waited there. The men hollered at the horsemen. The cavalrymen usually didn’t deign to holler back, but they waved their caps.

  They bore left. The sound of cannon was faint now. “I heard that an entire block of Locust Alley has been given over to an army of scarlet women,” Geneva chatted.

  Nash hoped this war would be over soon. The longer Geneva was in it, the worse she got. Nash pushed his horse up next to hers and growled under his breath, “You disgust me. You’re not here because you love me. You’re here because it suits you. If I left, you’d stay.”

  She snarled back. “I joined because of you, and I’m staying because of you. Don’t say that you’d leave, because you won’t. I used to look up to you, but you’re not the end all and be all. I’m out in the world now, and I’ve got a mind of my own.”

  “That’s exactly why women should stay at home.”

  Banjo, riding behind them, noticed the mounting anger. “You two are like oil and water today. Jimmy, go on up and ride point.” Point was first man, ahead of the advance unit.

  “With pleasure!”

  Furious, she trotted forward. She neared Ashland Station and saw low clouds. These were dust clouds. She wheeled, cantering back to the advance guard. Fitz Lee was up front today. A reward perhaps for his tenacious covering of their rear during the three days’ ride.

  “Colonel Lee.” She saluted. “Jackson’s coming, sir. I saw the dust clouds. They should be at Ashland Station in time to bivouac for the night.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. You may return to duty.” What Fitz Lee didn’t tell her was that Jackson had been due at Ashland Station at sunup, not after sundown. The less the troops knew, the better. Why force them to bear the anxieties of a senior officer? If a man is captured, the less he knows, the less he can blurt out or unwittingly reveal to the enemy.

  Mars knew as well as Fitz Lee that the plan was for Magruder to make a demonstration on the center of McClellan’s line. Stuart was to screen Jackson’s advance on the left, once that general arrived from the valley. The other generals, D.H. Hill, A.P. Hill, and Longstreet, together with Jackson, would roll up McClellan’s right. There’s an old saying, Between a rock and a hard place. McClellan was between a swamp and a swamp and two rivers. The York River could afford him naval assistance; the James River could not. The only thing about the terrain was that the Confederates had to move through it as well as the Federals. Nature didn’t take sides.

  Before sunset a large, bright rainbow arched over the Confederate camps immediately outside Richmond. The raindrops sparkled like diamonds falling through sunshine.

  “What do you think it means?” Banjo asked Nash.

  “That we’re all dumb beasts on Noah’s ark.”

  JUNE 26, 1862

  From far away a toy bugle sounded. An army of elves was blowing reveille. Riding point along the Virginia Central Railroad, Geneva and Nash heard it.

  The pearl-gray haze grudgingly revealed an orchard here, a meadow there, a lean- to shed on a dewy meadow. Husband and wife were the two points on the railroad. Mars had fanned out scouts on every road and path. Their mission was to keep alert for Yankees.

  At sunrise, the advance of Stuart’s column was at Merry Oaks Church on the Ashcake Road. One mile east of the road ran the Virginia Central Railroad.

  The crackle of carbines told Geneva and Nash that they were lucky not to be riding down the railroad.

  The cloudless sky shone a robin’s egg blue.

  “I thought we’d hear cannon by now,” Geneva said.

  “Maybe we’re too far behind the line. Here, chew some hickory ’bacca. Takes your mind off food.” Nash handed her a strip of hickory bark, thin and sappy.

  They moved on. Two squadrons were about one mile behind them. If they ran into resistance, the squadron would be up quickly. If the resistance proved formidable, two squadrons ought to be able to hold them until the column hurried forward.

  Ahead lay Taliaferro’s Mill, a familiar landmark that they had passed two weeks ago.

  “Wish we had some of that ground fog back.” Geneva’s nerves sang a warning. A sudden hail of bullets tore into the trees and kicked up the dust around the horses’ feet. Nash wheeled and turned the squadrons with Geneva right behind him. “Bluebirds!” Nash sang out.

  Von Borcke, riding halfway between Geneva and the squadron, signaled them to move up.

  “They’re deployed along both sides of the road. They’ve dismounted.” Geneva reined in next to the Prussian.

  “How many?”

  “At least a squadron,” answered Nash. “They know we’re coming.”

  Mars rode up. “Dismount, fan out, and press forward. By the time the column comes up, they’ll be pinned by fire. When they break for their horses, we can mop them up.”

  Geneva crawled on her belly between Nash and Banjo. She fired her Henry rifle. “I’m not hitting the broad side of a barn.” Dust up her nose and in her mouth further irritated her.

  “Little whizzing over their heads ought to keep those boys honest. Doesn’t matter if you hit any or not.” Banjo squeezed the trigger.

  “There they go!” Geneva stood up.

  “Keep firing!” Mars bellowed as he stood and motioned for the men to run forward.

  The Yankees leapt on their horses and were quickly out of range, but the head squadron of the column now pursued them.

  Geneva kicked at the soft earth.

  Mars laughed at her. “Did I ever tell you about Epaminondas?”

  “No.” She walked next to him as they returned to their horses.

  “Up until the time of Epaminondas, whenever there was an armed dispute, men
just ran at one another pell-mell and that was it. But Epaminondas developed the echelon, a column of men who would obey orders—turn right, turn left, go forward, fall back. When he did that, war became a science. You’re still at the pell-mell stage.” He clapped her on the back.

  Henley Chatfield stayed at a respectful distance from General Robert E. Lee and President Davis. Headquarters for the army was the Dabbs’ House, on the north side of Nine Mile Road, perhaps one and one-half miles from Richmond. It was two o’clock.

  Apart from Magruder’s continued demonstration at the center of McClellan’s line, there seemed to be an ominous lack of activity on the enemy’s right.

  Henley hovered in the background on the Mechanicsville Turnpike. The earthenworks protecting the permanent gun positions rose out of the ground like red shoulders of half-buried titans. On either side of the road, men stood at attention by their guns. Most artillerists acted like old men, fussing at ammunition boxes, checking and rechecking harness, testing spokes of the gun carriages for light artillery. Heavy artillery men, though equally fussy, had the starch burnt out of them. Standing at their posts since sunup, they felt wilted by two in the afternoon.

  President Davis, a blackbird amidst gray catbirds, stood out among his entourage of staff officers. He wasn’t saying much.

  On the other side of the road, General Robert E. Lee affected a glacial composure. He betrayed neither anger nor irritation, but his glance swept to his left. Nothing was happening.

  General Magruder, for the second day, blasted away at McClellan’s center doing exactly as he was asked to do and in good form.

  Henley wondered if it was usually this calm at field headquarters. Sharp rifle fire snapped him out of his stupor. Officers quickly stared through field glasses. A young major with prodigious brown sideburns offered a pair of field glasses to Henley, pointing to the rolling hills dotted here and there with woodlands.

  “Over there, Colonel.”

  Henley observed figures of blue in a ragged line falling back from Meadow Bridges. This bridge over the Chickahominy was one and one-half miles from the village of Mechanicsville toward the northwest. The road leading to it was roughly parallel to the Mechanicsville Turnpike. The red Confederate battle flag unfurled like a tongue in the slight breeze. “We’re coming on in columns of four,” said Henley.