Stand the Storm

by Breena Clarke

  Mary took her mother-in-law’s hand as Annie smoothed and tucked the bedclothes around her. “Mother, I want to please Gabriel.” She sounded like a small child and Annie put it down to her great weariness.

  “He’s a grown man, Mary. He don’t need no more pleasing,” Annie answered. She was eager to settle Mary’s unease before it grew.

  Aye, Annie was compelled to please Gabriel, too. But her indulgence was tempered with her control of him.

  “Brother, we have more proof of you. You have another daughter.” Annie came out to the back porch where Gabriel and his others sat on the porch lip.

  “Oh!” he cried, and stood up, spilling his lap work. Annie put her body directly in front of him and stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “Your Mary is disappointed not to have a boy for you,” she said. “Are you disappointed, Brother?” Annie would know a lie if he told it because her hand was over his heart. She knew this heart from long association with it. She had listened to it and ticked off its regularity from the first.

  “I can’t say that I am, Nanny. I love my children. I can’t think that a bigger joy could be possible,” Gabriel said thoughtfully, as if he’d already worked it out.

  “Go on, Brother. Be joyful,” Annie said. “This one is already fat and saucy.”

  The next morning Annie pursued Ginnie Claxtor’s well-meaning advice. She sought out another one of the Dodge women and this one led her to Callie Dodge, the jailer’s wench.

  “I don’t mind it much, Miz Coats,” the short pale gal with a ragged, faded-fancy dress told Annie happily in the alley behind High Street. She offered her right hand as a cup for Annie’s coins. “I’m used to him.” She laughed. “He an’ a mean man. He just got stiff whiskers.” She guffawed and spread her mouth wide. “I can get your Ellen out short time. He hungry and he like sweets. He trade his favor for what he likes.” She laid it out with shrugging shoulders. “I’m sweet, Miss Jessie say. I don’t know no better. I ain’t had no ma, Miz Coats.”

  Was the solution to every problem beneath the skirts of some gal or other? ’Twas no way else but this? Each and every time out of a fix they had to buy a man’s favor. Again and again Annie mused, “ ’Tis a man’s town.”

  Annie pushed forth another coin more. “Don’t go hungry. Get a buttered biscuit an’ a cup of coffee.” The girl laughed heartily. “Thank ye, Miz Coats. I get a drink of whiskey, though, and I like it better.” She guffawed again.

  Twenty-seven

  “I SHOULD PUT shoulder to wheel, Mary, if this fighting will bring about freedom for all the folk.” Gabriel explained his position to Mary in the bedroom. “Is’t not my duty to muster in—to join them? Those who are in a way to know have said that Black men are being given the opportunity to serve in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Literate, skilled men are needed to fill up posts of responsibility with their own. Here is a man —himself—who can read and write and figure. Have I—Black Gabriel Coats—not an obligation to go?” He spoke loudly and pointed at his chest.

  “Husband, you are making a speech,” Mary replied. She had listened to his arguments with equanimity. She sat on the side of their bed and her fingers traced a pattern on the counterpane. Perhaps he would interpret her calm as uncaring, but she did not want to hold him back if he wanted the war. The men wanted the war. Perhaps it was the Black man’s turn at the wheel. Let her excellent husband have the war if he wanted it! She would miss him. She had come to be so pleased with his ways and manners that she knew her innards would ache for him.

  Colored men were, at last, allowed to form up regiments! Locals shook their fists and declared it was high time for it and was a good way to get rid of niggers. “Send them to the front lines instead of wasting the lives of white men!” was an oft-repeated, cynical slogan. Colored men cheered the idea, for they wanted to fight.

  Reverend Henry M. Turner and Reverend Raymond of Israel Bethel Church dressed trees and boards throughout the Negro neighborhoods of Washington and Georgetown with posters calling out to recruit colored soldiers in the District. Champing at the bit to secure manumission for all colored, Gabriel had become impatient. He felt himself small and getting smaller because he was not in the fray. Should he not be one who leads? He had built a commercial concern. He had accomplished what had been thought impossible for colored. His family was poised on the cusp of this war, and their survival surely depended on his being here to run the business—to look after the women and children. Could he take the risk of joining up?

  Gabriel Coats had purchased freedom over and again as if it were quicksilver. As soon as the coin was handed over it seemed that the stuff of it—freedom—disappeared. It became something else that couldn’t be had or held. It chafed him. He was not fully free! He was only not as bound as others. For this he resolved to fight the war.

  He would go for the girl, Delia, too. A feeling he could not expel from himself was that he’d not done enough to help her case. He had offered the money to free her. Ridley would not have it. Perhaps if Gabriel had pleaded more Ridley would have capitulated. But Nanny and all of them had gotten her free and away. They had done that!

  The loose and volatile encampments of contrabands and other transients in every alley and public open area in the town threatened to upset a balance, and in the view of some who had been in town awhile longer, there was danger from these. The new, confused colored congregating in alleys had easily fallen into a tumble of behaviors that brought censure and caused many to cringe and turn sour on them. The free Blacks of long standing in Georgetown were nervous of these and sought to set themselves apart. Ah, a divide was there and Gabriel felt himself on both of its sides. The contrabands would hardly be his patrons for tailoring—bedraggled as they were. But they were a wave he had been awaiting. At long last they were seizing their chances and coming to fill in the crevices and fill up the town with colored. He had known this place to be freer and craved it for these as well. Did these not have a right to breathe this air? Gabriel knew the Union army was driving them and hoped this army would drive the secesh back into the south —into submission. Still it seemed to Gabriel that the free and newly freed in the District were caught together between this millstone and that oh so hard place!

  Newspapers were full of discussion of the Black man’s role in the conflict and Gabriel and Daniel stoked their passions upon these. Meetings and oratory regarding the formation of colored troops took place around town nightly. Gabriel and Daniel attended the meetings and Gabriel, unbeknownst to the women, verbally sparred with others like himself. Information at the nightly forums was fresher than newspaper reports because the daily influx of contrabands and newsagents brought updates on troops and what lay beyond the District’s borders.

  Provost officers, secesh sympathizers, and ruffians full of tanglefoot whiskey openly observed the meetings between colored and their friends. The protection of church sanctuary kept some violence at bay, but attendees were vulnerable on the streets to and fro. Many nights Daniel Joshua ran a ferry of attendees between the church and their homes with a couple of fierce clubs and his “near son” beside him.

  At one evening’s recruitment meeting, Gabriel was surprised to see Jacob Millrace seated alone at the back of the room. Gabriel’d been unsure of Millrace’s thoughts on the war. They did not discuss such in their commerce. Though he was aware of the respect Millrace afforded and he reciprocated, Gabriel did not imagine himself Jacob Millrace’s friend. The two of them had not talked of fighting nor had Gabriel overheard any comment. He understood that Millrace was a favorite of southern gentlemen who liked the hunt. Even watching Mr. Millrace’s face unobserved, Gabriel could not glean the man’s opinions.

  Gabriel and Daniel swept off their caps and relaxed their coats as they sat in Mount Zion Church. There were pockets of fellows they knew from previous meetings and there was a bumble buzz throughout the room. The looks upon the faces of the men in the church were emphasized by haunting shadows thrown by lamplight kept low
to disguise the doings. The fervor at previous recruitment meetings had stirred up hostile actions about town and the potent threat of more. Soldiers were detailed to keep an eye out for rowdies at the churches, but some inside doubted that the Union soldiers ringing the building were entirely trustworthy. The whiskey they drank could cause them to change their minds about what their purpose was this evening.

  Into the meeting came an important-looking figure. A journalist for the Philadelphia Press—perhaps the only newspaperman known to be colored—who reported on battles where the colored soldiers were fighting. The audience had come tonight to see him paint the picture from the colored man’s point. What were the conditions for colored troops in this war?

  Thomas Chester’s verbal pictures ignited flames of glory in the imagination. He spoke with spiraling pride of the valiant colored troops already fighting. As he concluded, he began to sound more like a rabble-rousing preacher than a journalist. He was stirring! Gabriel got beside himself and his natural reticence vanished. After Thomas Chester sat, he stood and applauded heartily.

  “I am no man of war nor a man who is wont to fight,” Gabriel began, addressing the assembled in a clear voice. “Even I know that the white men are not fighting for our freedom. If we are dependent upon them for our survival, then we have little chance of it. We had better raise the gun in defense of ourselves. We had better earn our freedom with the fighting. Let them give us a chance! While many whites chafe at defending the cause of abolition, Black men are being denied an opportunity they long for. And while the government is eager to take unwilling white men, they are passing on brave Black men more than willing to shoulder arms!”

  The men answered him with a full-throated “Hurrah!”

  Gabriel was swept with the warmth of the occasion. Until this moment he had never allowed his passion to overwhelm his control of himself. The race of events was shaking him wholly and remaking him. For the first time ever thoughts that came together in his mind were rushing out of his mouth. Gabriel looked around the knot of men gathered shoulder to shoulder in the pews and their eyes were riveted upon him. Their eyes were as enflamed as his were. Daniel Joshua jumped up and clapped Gabriel’s back with the force to wind him. They were ready! They had questions and fears, too. But they were ready! All of them!

  Jacob Millrace, enigmatic and drawn up straight and proud, was ready, too. Who is to say that his mind had not been firmly made when he entered the church? But Gabriel, the tailor, had convinced. Millrace was now ready to enlist. Now was their time to show. Now was their chance!

  When Gabriel returned home and entered the kitchen, he paused near the door. Mary looked at his face. She learned a thing there. Gabriel had an expression of great stimulation. His face was perspiring and Mary was alarmed that he might be ill. But the expression and the lather and the smell of passionate rumination were on him and gave him away. He had made the decision that would plunge them all into the conflict. It was as plain a thing as her nose.

  Mary’s face was not the same face he was wont to see ordinarily either. Some measure of his mood was spoiled.

  The talking to his mother took place in the kitchen workroom in the first light of the next morning.

  “It’s been a long time coming,” Annie said bluntly—simply. “I never expected to hold you, though I think you have stayed with me and worked so hard because of wanting to help me to freedom as well as yourself. You have done a good job for yourself and me and your sister and your wife, too. You have toiled us out of bond several times now. I thank you,” Annie said, and looked square in Gabriel’s eyes. She took his hands and kissed his palms and folded the hands together. With these hands she drew him to herself and held him awhile. He was docile in her arms. She pushed him away, but held him atether by his fingertips. “You’ve toughened up nicely. You go and do,” Annie said, and turned from him with dry eyes.

  “Aye, Nanny, too tough for a stew pot. I’ll survive,” Gabriel said to lighten her mood after she turned away.

  “Do that, pup,” Annie replied, unable to relinquish the last word.

  Twenty-eight

  TEARFUL FAREWELLS WERE daily and fashionable on Washington streets. The streets were lined with handkerchief wavers following the drill of departing soldiers. When the time came for Gabriel to go, Annie reached up to his lapels and pummeled his clothes with her stiff brush until the bristles bit down.

  “Come,” she said in that way from long ago that compelled him and caused him to smile and submit. Mournful indigo was the color of the suit of clothes upon him—his uniform. He was so vain of it and its color! Lord, Lord, Lord, it is low-down sad to look at, Annie thought.

  There was a small nut of worry—of sorrow—that rattled around in her skull at the sight of the cloth. When she dug into the back of his coat and scraped and brushed him, it was a feeling to take the place of hugging and kissing.

  Gabriel preened before the cheval glass dressed in the uniform he had solemnly sewn for himself while ruminating on his decision to join the combat. When he had been Abraham Pearl’s assistant, Gabriel had doubted his image would appear in the glass. For the longest time he had remained the wraith in the background of the oval. His young eyes were trained primarily to close work. When he progressed to measuring and fitting his customers, he began to see differently—in a different relation, but still oblique to the glass. This day Gabriel Coats looked in the glass straight on.

  He was vain of his military appearance, though reluctant to let Mary observe his failure of virtue. Before his wife, Gabriel sought to characterize his enlistment in the war as a noble duty. However, it had the pleasure of pomp and march, too. The excitement buoyed Gabriel and worked to carry him off.

  The assembly of colored men into the army was cause for riotous behavior in Georgetown and Washington City. There were knots of ruffians who jeered at any colored in a group, with any semblance of uniform and with anything that resembled a weapon. For this reason the recruits were told to report in their civilian clothes to the makeshift ferry at the river’s edge that was thrown up to take them to Mason’s Island. The isle, heavily wooded, was low-lying and swampy. The main camp was at the middle of the island and out of view of either the Georgetown shore or the Virginia side.

  Gabriel wore his uniform only briefly on the streets of Georgetown. When he left the shop—taking it upon himself to walk from the front of the shop in a jaunty manner—he was pursued down Bridge Street by a pack of lobster-colored boys with rocks. They were already in a high state of excitement when Gabriel emerged from the shop. They became more so at the sight of a colored man in a Union soldier’s uniform. Gabriel eluded them for most of a block, taking only a small missile to the center of his back. He then stopped in the doorway of a confectionary shop to remove his coat. Reluctantly he turned the proud jacket in upon itself, tucked it under his arm, and continued to the riverside.

  Annie pulled back from the group in the absence of Gabriel. She cast herself as grim leader of the band and sternly pronounced on what they must prepare—what to look to around each corner. She formulated plans into bit-sized chores and gave out orders in a steady stream. In truth she was frightened of their fears—Ellen and Mary, Naomi and Ruth and Pearl and tiny Hannah. Survival was perilous without Gabriel, and Annie upbraided them to keep them solid and firm and focused on their duties.

  Mary mitigated loneliness by throwing her energies into ever more laundry commissions and working socks through much of the nighttime. Annie’s carping directives were little pinch to her. They were an accompaniment—a constant. Oh, how Mary craved a constant now! With Gabriel gone, any a thing to hang a shawl upon! Annie’s concise delineation of household duties—“do this, do that”—was just such constancy as Mary looked for.

  Ellen emerged as the clerk in the shop in the absence of Gabriel and Aaron Ridley. Less productive in her needlework than before, she enjoyed her new duties.

  In the absence of Gabriel, Daniel Joshua made daily visits to the back of the shop.
He entered the back door after announcing himself with scraping his shoes, slapping his hat on his clothes to shuck off dirt, and expectorating what his lungs had gathered on his circuits. He checked for chores gone wanting and found little. Annie kept herself and the others hard at it. Lately it had become a regular occupation for him to read out of the newspapers or spin out a tale as the women worked. He enjoyed his role as diversion for the needleworkers around the table. Not wanting to thwart themselves by talking, they happily listened to Daniel Joshua. A bit of tanglefoot whiskey made him hold back less than he might usually do. If there was joy in this precinct without Gabriel, then it was on these evenings of all together—the women’s industry set to the sound of Daniel Joshua’s voice.

  Daniel spread the paper and brushed it smooth as the others waited. “ ‘Though the government openly declared that it did not want the Negroes in this conflict, I look around me and see hundreds of colored men armed and ready to defend the Government at any moment; and such are my feelings that I can only say, the fetters have fallen—our bondage is over.’ So says George Hatton of North Carolina,” he read out. Daniel thumped his own chest and looked away from the newspaper.

  “Who have fell, Daniel? What he mean?” Annie asked. “What fellers have fallen, man? Is’t our Gabriel?” Her voice was plaintive and frightened.

  “No, Mother. He is talking ’bout the freedom. Our Gabriel is ours yet,” Mary pronounced with certainty, but was unconvinced. As the least of the needleworkers, she was particularly attentive to the reading. She worked socks to keep busy, but she was keenest for information of the war. She wanted the news of Gabriel. “Brother Daniel, please read it slowly—again—so we can come around again,” she asked. And softly, too, she prayed to herself—to savor any mention of the colored men who were fighting.