And There I’ll Be a Soldier

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Caleb wished he were back home with the Poland Chinas and Durocs. He took the brown bottle from Maryanne, and said: “Let me walk you back to the store.”

  She smiled, and briefly Caleb forgot all about the Secesh in the town square. He had taken only three or four steps when Captain Crane’s voice stopped him.

  “Ma’am, with your kind permission, will you allow Mister Cole and me to finish our conversation?”

  Carefully Caleb looked back at the Rebels.

  “You say you are not a coward,” the captain said, “yet you will not join our cause. So I ask you again … what are you?’”

  Maryanne gave him courage.

  “I’m just a pig farmer,” he said with a smile. And remembered something he had heard his father tell the Reverend McLintock a year or so ago. “A by-grab Andy Jackson Democrat pig farmer who’s not about to leave the Union and join a bunch of Secessionist rabble.”

  Chapter Two

  August 10, 1861

  Cedar Bayou, Texas

  His mother’s bright soprano voice filled the parlor, her high D notes bouncing off the walls, almost drowning out the cord on Ryan McCalla’s violin.

  I sigh for Jeannie with the light brown hair,

  Floating like a vapor on the soft summer air.

  Ryan concentrated on the music in front of him, and as his mother’s voice faded—she sounded as strong and youthful as always when she sang—he closed the song’s final notes, squeezing the strings, feeling the bow glide. It felt like poetry.

  It sounded, Ryan thought, pretty good. Applause led him to believe that his mother’s guests agreed, although they could have been clapping for his mother’s beautiful voice, or just to be polite.

  Lowering the violin, Ryan turned to face the crowded parlor, seeking out Matt Bryson standing in the corner by the window curtains, but having to look at Mrs. Tennebaum when she began to speak. After all, she was president of the Ladies Auxiliary Club of Harris County, and her husband a representative of the State Legislature.

  “That was wonderful,” Mrs. Tennebaum said, dabbing a silk handkerchief under her eyes. “Utterly delightful. You have given Mister Foster’s music such rhapsodical legerdemain. Master Ryan, your accompaniment was prodigious, and, Reine, you sound as if you were twenty, not forty …”

  “Thank you, Beatrice,” his mother interrupted, and she quickly rang the silver bell, summoning Fionala for refreshments.

  His mother’s blue silk taffeta skirts rustled as she crossed the rug and, smiling ever so sweetly, extended her hand. “I shall take the violin,” she said, her Southern drawl rich and musical even when she spoke, “while you study Mister Foster’s music so that at our next tea, you shall be able to play without relying on this. Why don’t you and Matthew step outside while we ladies …”—she winked—“gossip. I shall send Fionala outside with a pitcher of lemonade and some lemon cookies.”

  He knew what she meant, and it had nothing to do with music lessons or Saturday afternoon recitals for the Ladies Auxiliary Club of Harris County. It had to do with Ryan’s father, who at any moment would likely be coming home from the brick kiln and tannery he owned. Although the man who made the violin was a Frenchman named Miremont, his father had bought it at the New York Crystal Palace at Reservoir Square during the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in 1853. “It sounds as sweet as one made in the fourteen hundreds,” his father had said when he had given it to Ryan on his eighth birthday. Those times and feelings had long since faded. For the past two years, Josiah McCalla had refused to have anything “Yankee” in his home. Thankfully he had forgotten about the violin. So if he happened to find his only son and Matt Bryson sipping lemonade and munching on cookies on the front porch and his mother surrounded by a dozen chatting ladies in the formal parlor, he would not suspect that his home housed rough-scuff traitors to the Confederate States of America.

  Outside, Ryan settled into one of the oak rocking chairs on the north corner of the porch. The house was two-story brick—bricks, naturally, from his father’s kiln—with a hipped roof and double galleries, supported by columns, that spanned the entire home. The kind of house, his father said, you’d find in New Orleans, although Ryan would have to take his word for it. Josiah McCalla had never taken Ryan or his mother to New Orleans, or New York, not even Austin or Indianola. The house had been built in 1848. A white picket fence surrounded the lush green lawn, and phaetons, stanhopes, and barouches lined the street beyond the gate, their drivers waiting patiently to return the women of the Ladies Auxiliary Club of Harris County to their own homes.

  Matt sat beside Ryan, staring at the cover of Foster’s Melodies sheet music.

  “Man, that’s one beautiful girl.” Matt held up the portrait of the woman, as if Ryan had never seen it. The woman sat, gracefully poised, hands clasped, head tilted, a cross necklace on her throat. To Ryan, her hair seemed darker than light brown.

  “Mother says Foster wrote the song for his wife,” Ryan said.

  “What a lucky duck.”

  “Is that the only thing you think about, Matt?” He took the music and slid it inside his satchel. The music was published by Firth, Pond & Company. Of New York. His father would roar like a gale if he found such Yankee propaganda on his porch. From the satchel, Ryan withdrew a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Published by Bradbury and Evans in London, it was safe from Josiah McCalla’s wrath—at least, for now. If England ever refused to recognize the Confederacy, however …

  “No,” Matt answered in a solemn voice that grabbed Ryan’s attention. “I’ve been thinking of …” He looked toward the windows and door, then withdrew a folded piece of parchment he had stuck inside his shirt. “This!”

  Before he could pass the paper, the door opened, and the parchment disappeared. The two boys smiled as Fionala set a silver tray topped with two glasses of lemonade, a pitcher, a tray of sugar cubes, and a China plate of lemon cookies on the wicker table between the two rockers.

  “Is there anything else y’all needs?” the slim Negress asked.

  Ryan smiled. “No. Thank you.”

  “Yeah,” Matt echoed, reaching for the nearest glass and snatching up a handful of cookies. “These look great.”

  “Well?” Ryan demanded impatiently after the front door had closed behind Fionala.

  Mouth full of cookies, Matt stared at him blankly, then quickly remembered, wiped his lips with the back of his arm, set the glass on the porch floor, and found the parchment.

  To Arms! To Arms! To Arms!

  WANTED!

  Underneath that banner was a drawing of the Goddess of Liberty waving a blue flag with a single star in her left hand, toting a musket in her right, and grinding the American flag into the mud. Somehow, the goddess reminded Ryan of the girl on the cover of Stephen Foster’s sheet music. Under that:

  Able-Bodied Texian Patriots

  To Form a Company of Militia

  To Protect Us from the Yankee Hordes

  The Bayland Guards

  call You to Duty

  Enlistment applications to be addressed to

  Dr. Ashbel Smith,

  Evergreen Farm, Harris County

  Long Live Texas and the Confederacy!

  And in smaller script:

  Muskets Needed to Provision Troops

  Cannon Sought

  Glory Forever!

  With a tired smile, Ryan shook his head and returned the poster. He picked up his own glass of lemonade, leaving the cookies for his best friend’s disposal, and sipped the refreshing if tart juice in his left hand while thumbing through Charles Dickens’ book with his right.

  “You considering joining the cause?” he asked.

  “I already have.”

  His glass shattered on the porch floor. Ryan looked up, mouth agape, incredulous.

  Matt Bryson was only a month older than Ryan, but Ryan stood a good three inches tal
ler and weighed fifteen more pounds. Sandy-haired and fair-skinned despite living on the Texas coast, Matt’s blue eyes rivaled the bay. His father’s shipping line practically ruled Galveston Bay, and his father had sailed to just about every port in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, so, if Ryan had been one for gambling, he would have wagered that Matt Bryson would have joined the Confederate Navy and not some army being assembled by Harris County’s most famous doctor.

  “Bunch of us have,” Matt said. “Harry Cravey. Anson Jones’ son. And Little Sam.”

  “Little Sam?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ryan shook his hand. Anson Jones Jr. was the son of the last president of the Republic of Texas. That was big, but Little Sam? That was leviathan. Sam Houston Jr. was two years older than Ryan and Matt. His father was the hero of the Battle of San Jacinto, just a few miles away where Ryan and Matt often went to gig frogs. Just down the road, the town of Houston had been named after Little Sam’s dad. The elder Sam Houston had been general of the Texas army, president of the Republic, senator from Texas. He had known Andrew Jackson, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett. Sam Houston had been, Ryan always believed, the biggest hero ever to stride mortal steps across the Lone Star State. Or had been, until, as governor of Texas, he had refused to recognize the Confederacy even after Texas voted to secede, and had been kicked out of office and banished to his home up in Huntsville.

  You couldn’t speak Sam Houston’s name any more in the McCalla household. Not when Josiah McCalla was home.

  Little Sam had defied his father. Ryan shook his head, amazed that any son had such courage.

  “Well?” Matt asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Doc Smith asked me if you’d enlist, too.”

  Ryan leaned so far back in the rocker, he almost toppled over. He had to catch his breath. When he straightened, Ryan shook his head.

  “Ashbel Smith’s Yankee born,” he had heard his father say, “but Texas bred. Unlike that swine Sam Houston.”

  Sam Houston had appointed Smith surgeon general of the Republic’s army back in 1837. He had fought in the Mexican War, been secretary of state in the Republic years, negotiated a treaty with the Comanches, and served in the state Congress. Everybody around Cedar Bayou had expected him to take some big office in Austin. To serve the Confederate, and Texas, cause in government. Not form a militia. After all, Dr. Smith was well into his fifties, and the Mexican War had ended when Ryan and Matt had been toddlers.

  “I’m not cut out to be a soldier.” Ryan tried to laugh, but kept hearing his father tell his mother: “You’ve seen to that, Reine. I’ve tried to raise a son worthy of the McCalla name, but you’ve brought him up so that he’s likely to squat to pee.”

  Matt leaned forward. “It’s not like we’re going to do any fighting, Ryan. The guards will just protect the coast, and even Abe Lincoln’s Yankees aren’t foolish enough to try to invade Texas. Especially on Galveston Bay.” He drained his lemonade, popped the last cookie into his mouth, and resumed rocking. “Besides,” he said while chewing, “Doc Smith … asked for … you … personal.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not just all soldiering, marching and shooting and glorious stuff like that. My dad says that according to the Confederate Army regulations, a company needs to have two musicians.”

  “Musicians?”

  “Yeah. You’ve seen those parades before. Beating drums, blowing that whistle …”

  “Fife,” Ryan corrected.

  “Trumpets and things.”

  “Not a violin.”

  Matt shrugged. “Ryan, everybody in Cedar Bayou knows you can play anything you set your mind to. You play piano at the Methodist church every Sunday. You tooted that horn …”

  “Flute,” he corrected.

  “… at that meeting of the Ladies Auxiliary Club of Harris County two months back. I remember that. You played real well, too.”

  “Well …” He couldn’t make up his mind.

  “But …”—Matt lowered his voice into a conspiratorial whisper—“don’t think you’d just be blowing that trumpet or tapping out something on a drum. Doc Smith says you’ll train like the rest of us soldier boys. You’ll fire a musket. And if we can lay our hands on a cannon!” He slapped his thigh excitedly. “Anyway, we’ll get to dress up in real fancy uniforms. Some seamstresses are already making uniforms for us guards. We’ll be parading about every weekend for Texas dignitaries, and I bet every girl in the county will be wanting us to dance with them.”

  Ryan’s smile returned. “So that’s why you enlisted!”

  Shrugging, Matt refilled his tumbler of lemonade and saw the shards of glass beside Ryan’s rocker. “You want me to fetch your girl, have her clean up this mess, and get you a new …?”

  “No!” Having Fionala, not to mention his father’s two manservants and two other slaves, always made Ryan uncomfortable. He looked at the open page in his book and read: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …

  Matt sipped the lemonade. “Your father won’t mind. It would make him prouder of you than he’s ever been.”

  That was something Ryan couldn’t deny. He closed A Tale of Two Cities.

  “And your mother, she won’t raise any stink because it’s not like we’ll be marching off to old Virginy to fight those Abolitionist zealots. Unfortunately we’ll just be hanging around Galveston Bay, and you’ll be playing music most of the time. Or so Missus Reine’ll think. Besides, my father says the whole war will be over in six months. If that. You heard about the thrashing our boys gave the Yanks some place in Virginia, didn’t you?”

  Ryan nodded. His father had brought home news of the Confederate rout at Manassas last night. To hear Josiah McCalla talk, the war would be over in six weeks, not six months.

  “At least talk to Doc Smith,” Matt pleaded.

  Before Ryan could argue, Matt was standing, pointing to the phaeton that had brought him to his house. “Gibb Gideon’s been driving me and my folks for ten years now. He joined up, too. He can drive us to Tabbs Bay right now, and he’ll attest to everything you just heard from me, if you don’t believe me. Plus, you can talk to Doc Smith. He’ll tell you exactly how things will be. Then you can sign the papers and tell your parents. Once you’ve signed, it’s not like anybody can do anything about it. And your father, he won’t want to do anything. It can’t hurt to talk to Doc Smith. Can it?”

  The front door opened again, and Ryan feared the auxiliary club had finished its business. Instead, Fionala stepped onto the porch.

  “I …” She stopped as she saw the shattered glass.

  “I’m sorry, Fionala,” Ryan said. “It slipped from my hand.”

  “I’ll cleans it up, Master Ryan,” she said. “Missus Reine wants to know if y’all wants more lemonade or more cookies.”

  Ryan shot to his feet. “No. We’re fine. But could you tell Mother that Matt and I are going to drive out into the county? Just to pay our respects to Doctor Smith. We’ll be back. Real soon. I promise.”

  “That’s right,” Matt echoed. “Tell my mama that Gibb’s taking us out there, and I know how much she likes visiting with Missus Reine. If she doesn’t want to wait, I bet Missus Tennebaum would be delighted to take her home. And I’ll be home before supper. Tell her that, please.”

  They didn’t wait for the slave’s reply.

  Grabbing the satchel, Ryan bounded down the steps and on the path toward the gate, Matt at his heels. Ryan didn’t need to hear any of Ashbel Smith’s persuasive speeches. He had already made up his mind.

  Chapter Three

  August 7, 1861

  Putnam County, Missouri

  “Caleb, wake up.”

  Someone nudged his shoulder, and he tried to roll over, to pull the pillow over his head, but his mother’s voice sai
d urgently, though in a hoarse whisper, “Now, Caleb. Now!”

  That was just like his mother. Waking him up from a perfectly divine dream. He had been dancing with Maryanne on the town square. He had been about to …

  “Caleb. There are men outside.”

  His eyes opened, but he saw only blackness. His mother hadn’t even lit a candle.

  Another voice: “What did you tell those Rebels in town?”

  “Hush, Bessy,” his mother snapped. “Caleb, get up!”

  He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it? What are you talking about?”

  “There are a dozen men outside, Son. Your father’s talking to them now. They call themselves the K-something Methodist Rangers, and they are demanding to see you.”

  For the first time, he heard fear in his mother’s voice. Quickly he sat up as his mother rose from the bed. Pants dropped in his lap. “Dress quickly,” she told him. “Then you need to go outside. Hide in the broodmare pen.”

  “In the pen? Ma!”

  “Do as I say!”

  Socks, boots, shirt, and hat landed beside him. He fumbled in the darkness, not knowing why he had to go to all this trouble getting dressed to run and hide in a pile of …

  A gunshot ripped through the night. Outside, pigs squealed. His mother and sister sucked in deep breaths.

  He was standing, starting for the front door, but his mother’s hand pressed flat against his chest. He felt her breath as she whispered: “No.”

  Then, his father’s voice sang out: “I tell you men, my son is not here. He left this evening to visit his cousin in Centerville, Iowa.”

  Caleb’s brain felt dulled with cobwebs. As far as he knew, he had no cousin anywhere in Iowa.

  “No offense, sir, but a bunch of Secessionist rabble is not likely to take the word of a family of by-grab Andy Jackson Democrat pig farmers.”

  That voice, Caleb recognized, and fear jolted his spine. Captain Crane, the straw-hatted fellow with the saber, commander of the Keytesville Methodist Rangers. He couldn’t recollect the soldier’s first name. Benjamin. No. Wait. Benedict. Like that traitor from the American Revolution. Now he remembered everything that had happened at Unionville that afternoon. He wondered if Parker Pruitt had tagged along with them.