“No one seemed the least shocked at seeing me in uniform when we arrived at Chatfield. Later, I found out that Mother had told everyone.”
Pointing to the worn boots standing next to the fireplace, Laura said, “I knew those were your cavalry boots.”
Geneva picked them up and ran her finger along the groove the bullet had made from heel to toe. “Look.” She handed them to her twenty-year-old granddaughter who held them as though they were a religious relic.
“I’m glad you’re finally telling me, Mahmaw, about your first husband and the war. No one would ever tell me anything.”
“You were too young to know about such things. Now that you’re about to be married, you’re ready, I guess.”
Laura, who bore a strong resemblance to her great-grandmother Lutie, replaced the boots next to the fireplace. “What happened then?”
“Di-Peachy slept in my room just like when we were children. I stayed in the big house. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t bear to sleep in the bedroom I had shared with Nash.
“Feeling began to return to me in about six weeks. I remember that. Banjo was already back with the regiment. They’d fought Second Manassas. Mars wrote that for two full days they protected our exposed flank against heavy Federal cavalry attacks. Very hard fighting. I felt guilty as well as desolate. I belonged with the regiment. Mother didn’t try to hold me back, but she told me to release my flood of tears first. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I was alive enough to cry. That probably sounds strange to you, but you haven’t known great loss. It took some time for the loss to sink in. The actual event, for me anyway, wasn’t as terrible as the aftermath. When I finally cried, I couldn’t stop, and I took sick for a while. Mother nursed me, and Sin-Sin would sit with me for hours telling me stories.
“As soon as I felt physically strong, I wrote the colonel and asked to rejoin the men. He and Banjo were the only ones who knew of my true identity. Banjo never spoke to me about it. He just accepted it with no fuss. In a strange way, fighting was all I knew. I had grown up in the army, and I belonged there.
“While I waited for him to reply, Gunther Krutzer, the Yankee prisoner who’d come back to Chatfield with Mother, and I began to lay out Sumner’s plans for Mother’s fountains. Little did I know at the time it would take sixteen years to complete the task.
“Well, the colonel wrote back and said that I could return. He offered no explanation other than that he needed the best rider in the Confederacy. And so I met up with the cavalry on November 11 at Culpeper, and there I stayed until April 9, 1865. At the end of the war I was still wearing the same boots I wore on that August day when Nash was killed. I was lucky. Aside from the slash on my face, I was hit only once, on the right shoulder. Took a piece out of me, but no serious mess.”
“I wish I’d been alive then!”
“You’re alive now. Make the most of it. When people tell about their war experiences, it sounds exciting. It was, but, honey, I saw things I’ll never forget. I remember seeing a man at Sharpsburg with two ribs sticking out of his body, flesh dangling on them, and he was walking. I saw men with their brains oozing out of their heads, and they lay for days in agony. I saw beautiful homes destroyed. More horses were slaughtered or suffered on battlefields than you can imagine. And by the end of the war, it was death and destruction, nothing but death and destruction. You didn’t see a woman, but what she wore black.
“Richmond was put to the torch. We blamed it on them, and they blamed it on us; said it was criminal elements that did it. It seemed as though the whole world died. Beautiful John Pelham was hit in the back of the skull with a shell fragment at Kelly’s Ford on March 17, 1863. Never forget that. Heroes Von Borcke had a metal casket made with a window over John’s face because John was such a beautiful man, and that’s how they sent him home to Alabama. Benserade was killed in a skirmish.
“I guess the worst death was Stuart’s. He was shot up through the liver at Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864. They got him into Richmond, and Kate Vickers wrote that a crowd assembled outside the house where he was lying. They stayed there all night weeping and through the twelfth, too, which got unseasonably hot. When he died, I think I knew the end was in sight. I believed he was invincible. When Mars heard—he was a brigidier general by then—he put his face on his horse’s neck and sobbed like a baby. We knew we didn’t stand the chance of a prayer in hell, but we kept fighting.”
“Didn’t Pahpaw get his father’s brigade?”
“Yes, that happened in 1863. Hannibal Vickers died at Gettysburg like the lion he was. Sentiment was such that the brigade, what was left of it, was offered to Mars. He asked Stuart if he could have myself and Banjo. Stuart made a great show of being reluctant to let us go, but he did. He even arranged a dance in Mars’s honor before he left. You know, every age and every generation has their heroes, but I don’t think we’ll ever see the likes of J.E.B. Stuart again. Not now, not ever.”
“People say that about you,” Laura shyly complimented her grandmother.
“Idle gossip. I wasn’t the only woman in the war. Once the dust settled, hundreds came forward. Some, like Loreta Velaques, even wrote books about it. More women fought on our side than theirs. I can’t decide if those Yankee girls were less passionate about their men or a damned sight more intelligent than we were!” She sighed and noticed Sin-Sin’s blue pot gleaming in the light. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You must have loved him very much, Mahmaw. Your first husband.”
“I did. Who’s to say what would have become of us if it wasn’t for the war? I know my wanting to be with him drove him away, and yet he tried. He was a good man and so young. An entire generation of men was wiped off the face of this continent, and most left no children behind. It’s as if they had never been!”
“The war must have been horrible.” Laura couldn’t think of another word.
“Yes, but what came afterward was hell. I never knew I could feel so bad and still want to live. We had no food. There was hardly a horse or mule left from Maryland to Florida. We were so hungry that we boiled the dirt under the smokehouse to get salt that winter. By the spring of ’66, we had some crops come up, but from the summer of ’65 to that late spring of ’66, you chewed sassafras roots if you could get them. Ernie June lost weight. You know, I thought Ernie would leave us once she was set free in ’62 according to the last wishes of my father. She was always an ambitious sort, but she stayed. Braxton left, but he came back after a year. Most of the other servants stayed. I think they stayed here because it was home.
“When the peace was signed, Mother called a meeting with everyone at Chatfield and told them she couldn’t pay them. Sin-Sin suggested that Mother divide up the land so that every servant had a share of fifty acres each. Then everyone would promise to pitch in to get a crop for Chatfield as well as their own crop. Lutie agreed. After all, if there was one thing we had, it was land. She gave out good land, too, not billy-goat land. When it was said and done, we still had about twenty-five hundred acres. Never sell one inch of it! Not one!” I won’t.
“See to it that your children don’t either. My God, we died for this land. You can’t put a price on it now.”
“What happened to Gunther?”
“It was Gunther Krutzer that saved Chatfield from being looted and burned when Sheridan’s men came through the mountains and swooped down on Charlottesville. We were still fighting. Gunther put on his blue uniform and met the Yankee squad that rode up the hill. He said he was in charge of this place and could he be of service to them. Cool as could be. He offered them what little food we had and they rode off. Now I don’t want to imply that Gunther was a traitor to the Union. He wasn’t, but he was grateful to Mother for saving him from Belle Island and possibly death. By that time, too, he’d fallen in love with Rise Rives’s younger sister, Caroline. After Appomattox, he waited until I came home and then left for York, Pennsylvania. He came back within the year to marry Caroline. He went into
the business with Beverly Fyffe, too, the South Carolina man he met at Kate’s when they were wounded.
“They started with their honey business and then they put their money in a machine shop—a factory, really—going up in York. Well, the place made money hand over fist.”
“I don’t remember Gunther.”
“You were too little. I pray for him most every night. A good man. Died of cancer of the throat, and he wasn’t but forty-eight.”
“When did Pahpaw get here?”
“Ha! That was something. He returned to Richmond, but their gorgeous home on Grace Street was ruined. Only the west wing was inhabitable. But Kate absolutely refused to leave Richmond. Kate asked him for a divorce. It took some time, and it did not go down well in Richmond, I can tell you. She married Baron Schecter, and they left for Vienna. I don’t know if Kate ever found love, but she did find power. She knew everybody who was worth knowing in Europe, and Mother said she had great influence. I never liked Kate Vickers. Not from the first time I laid eyes on her. Of course, Mother said that was because I was already in love with Mars, but too dumb to know it. I would disagree with that theory, but Mother’s not here to defend herself. Mother loved Kate. I believe Kate was more her daughter in ways than I was, or should I say, more like the daughter she would have liked to have had. I was neither fish nor fowl, although Mother and I got along much better once I was a soldier. Curious.”
“Yes, but when did Pahpaw get here?”
“Oh.” Geneva inhaled. “He knocked on our door during a wicked snowstorm in February, 1866. February sixth. It was J.E.B. Stuart’s birthday. Always have remembered that day because we used to make a fuss over him on his birthday. Well, there he was, cold, hungry, wearing his worn-out uniform. He’d lost everything, you see. Didn’t even have the money for a suit of civilian clothes. Sin-Sin opened the door, and he embraced her, and I remember Cazzie the cat jumped off my lap when the door was opened and ran to the front hall. She was a better hostess than I was! Sin-Sin hollered at the top of her considerable lungs, ‘Miz Geneva, the general is here!’
“I was in the library with Mother. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We’d been going over the account books, which was like a doomsday exercise. I wore pants, boots, and a shirt. I couldn’t see the point of a dress. Mother and I shot out of the library, and there he stood, shivering in the entrance hall with Cazzie looking up at him. He bowed and kissed my mother’s hand. He said, ‘Jimmy, I guess you know why I’m here.’ I said, ‘It’s good to see you, General.’ Mother asked him to please sit by the library fire, and she’d see if she couldn’t find a cup of coffee somewhere. It was make-believe coffee. Nobody had the real thing. You’d grind up molasses and other stuff. God knows what Ernie June put in there, but it was hot. He sat next to the fire, and said, ‘Kate has divorced me. I have no money. I have no trade. I don’t even know if I have a future. But I have two hands and a strong will. I can’t promise much in the way of the world, but I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I’d like to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?’
“Laura, I was struck dumb, and then I cried. I hated to cry, but I did. And the first thing I said was, ‘I’m not beautiful.’ Can you imagine? He said, ‘To me you’re the most beautiful woman on earth.’ I cried some more, I guess, but I said yes. He kissed me. He’d kissed me once before, during the Battle of Seven Days. He was delirious then, so I discounted that or pretended to. When I kissed him, I felt myself come to life again. It was the strangest thing, but I felt that we were one person, two people with one heartbeat. He cried, too. He got hold of himself and found Mother. He said, ‘Mrs. Chatfield, your daughter has agreed to marry me, but I would like your permission and your blessing.’ Mother threw her arms around him and kissed him, too. So we were married. Then Sumner was born, then Jeb, then your mother, Merriweather, and finally we had John Pelham Vickers, still the baby, no matter how old he gets.”
“Did Kate Vickers ever have children?”
“Yes, finally. She had two girls, and she named the first one Lutie after Mother. They stayed close and when Mother had her final illness, Kate sailed from Austria to be with her. I was fit to be tied, because Kate, who was in her fifties at that time, was still terrifyingly beautiful. Mars treated her like a sister. He said time changes things like that, and after I pitched a fit, he calmed me down. I actually think he was flattered that I could be so jealous. Anyway, Mother loved her.”
“Do you miss your mother?”
“Yes. I regret that you didn’t know my mother. She was a most remarkable woman. She wasn’t happy when I was a child. Socially she was brilliant, but at home she was in the grip of some melancholy. But after the war, when everyone else was falling to pieces, Mother gave off a bright light. She married Banjo. As soon as he arranged his affairs in West Virginia, as it was called after separating from Virginia, he came home for her. He’d bought all that land around Harper’s Ferry. He didn’t sell it, but he found workers, easy enough then, and put in a crop, found a manager, and then left. He bought more land, too, as his farm was a good producer, so he started speculating. You see, because West Virginia stayed in the Union, it made out quite well after the war. Years later, some of that land he bought had coal on it. I’m putting the cart before the horse. That was long after he married Mother.
“Now those two loved one another. She called him Darryl. She was the only person, aside from his first wife, who called him that. He was besotted with her. She’d come down the stairs in a dress ten years old—who could afford clothes?—and to him she was beautiful, and she was beautiful! Happiness makes people beautiful. Of course, Mother couldn’t have any more children. One day Banjo brought home a three-year-old girl. It was Benserade’s baby. His wife had died, and so had her people. But before she died, she’d written a letter to Mars asking, as her late husband’s commander, would he care for the child or find a home for it? Poor soul, she must have been desperate. Well, this little child with a note pinned to her dress came to the train station. It was pure D luck that Banjo was in town that day. He brought her back up the hill—I can see his eyes dancing—and he said, ‘Lutie, we have a baby!’ That was how you got your Aunt Rose, which you knew. One thing led to another and before long we had four orphans. Laura, I think those children were the joy of Banjo’s existence and Mother’s, too. They worked in the fields, and so did we. Even Mother. There she’d be, the lady of a great estate, the sleeves to her dress rolled up, and she’d be hoeing a row of carrots, laughing and talking. Hardships reveal the true person. Strange as it may sound to you, the years after the war made Mother joyful. She had a purpose. She had love. I believe she was blessed.
“It wasn’t as easy for your grandfather and me because we were younger. We’d rail against fate, and Mars would cross the street before he’d pass a Yankee soldier. Town was full of them. They threatened to burn Mr. Jefferson’s university, you know. Those people had no respect for the past, for traditions. They still don’t. Oh, I won’t start up on this subject. I’ve made my peace with the Yankees, but that doesn’t mean I want to be like one. They live for profit, those people. You can marry one, but for the love of God, don’t become one.”
“They’re not all moneygrubbers, Mahmaw.”
Geneva grumbled, “Most are.”
“When was Pahpaw elected to the state house?”
“Years later. We couldn’t vote or run for office until the U.S. Congress said we could. We were occupied. Mars didn’t run for office until the ’80s, and only then because everyone begged him to. Your grandfather is able to see things quite dispassionately. That and his conduct during the war made him a man other people turned to. They turned to Mother, too. In the last decade of her life, nothing important was decided in Albemarle County but what she wasn’t asked for her opinion.”
“Tell me about Di-Peachy and Mercer.”
“Not now, honey, I’m tired. That’s a sad story. They did get married, but the Fates and other people were not kind. I’ll te
ll you that one after your honeymoon.”
“I wish I’d known Auntie Sin-Sin and Ernie June!”
“Sometimes when I go down to the kiln, I feel Sin-Sin. I know she’s there with me. She was a gift from God, Sin-Sin was. As usual, you don’t know it until it’s too late.”
“And Boyd did come back, just like Sin-Sin said.”
“By way of Weeping Cross—and so did the Yankee captain who saved us in the orchard.” She stood up. “Now look, young lady, you’ve got plenty to do, and so do I.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Soothe your mother’s shattered nerves. She thinks she’s the only woman who’s had to be the mother of the bride.”
Laura reluctantly rose. “Did you ever see the Harkaway Hunt again?”
“No. Others have, though, discounting the stories of Jennifer Fitzgerald who claimed to have weekly sightings. She was quite unpredictable, that one. One time she looked me right in the face, it must have been the first year after the war, and she said, ‘The other day I met a zulu-tail-of-gold who sings and chants, keeps pennies in his pockets, knows mermaids, and listens to flowers.’ Extraordinary! I wrote it down. But aside from the questionable Jennifer, people have seen them. I guess I’ll see them when I’m supposed to.”
“Mahmaw, why don’t you and Pahpaw speak about your first husband?”
“Too painful, I guess. Mars hated him, and I loved him. That didn’t foster conversation.” She walked over to the windows to look out on Lutie’s magnificent marble fountains, their various levels glistening. “People close doors rightly or wrongly. It’s easier to keep them shut than to open them again.”
High Hearts Page 45