by C. S. Harris
I said, ‘That’s Trudi Easton’s locket, isn’t? What’re you doin’ with it?’
‘I found it in Captain Dupont’s pocket.’
I wondered why she hadn’t shown it to me yesterday. I said, ‘What’re you gonna do with it?’
‘I can’t decide.’ She held it up so that the locket swung gently on its chain, twisting first one way, then the other. ‘What do you think I should do?’
I was both startled and flattered that she would ask my opinion. ‘Well, it seems almost mean not to give it back to her, when we know she must be grieving at its loss. But—’
I broke off.
My mother finished the sentence for me. ‘But if I give it to her, she’ll realize I know how she lost it. And I’m not convinced that wouldn’t be even worse.’
‘You could lie,’ I suggested. ‘Tell her you found it.’
The heart was twirling faster now, the crystal winking in the sunlight.
‘Well, I can hardly tell her the truth, can I?’ She closed her fist around the spinning locket.
I stared out the window, to where Checkers had bestirred himself enough to half-heartedly chase a squirrel up a tree. I said, ‘Did I do wrong? Was it wrong of me to shoot that man … To kill him?’
Her features contorted in a look of pinched horror. ‘Oh, Amrie … No.’ She rose from her chair and came to wrap her arms around me, hugging me close. ‘You saved my life. You saved all our lives – and the lives of who knows how many other women and children those men might have gone on to kill.’
‘Does that make it right?’
She drew back, her hands sill clutching my shoulders. ‘Of course it does, honey. Sometimes we need to do things that otherwise would be wrong because the consequences of doing nothing are worse.’
It seemed to me that kind of argument could be used to justify a heap of awful things, including this dreadful war. I felt tears sting my eyes, and tightened the muscles of my face to keep them from falling.
She cupped my cheek with her hand, and I saw that her eyes were as wet as mine. She said, ‘I wish to God you’d never been thrust into the situation those men put you in, Amrie. But I’m proud of you for what you did. It took quick thinking and courage and a fierce determination to do what needs to be done – to overcome doubts and hesitancy and react calmly in a moment of intense pressure.’
‘I wasn’t calm. I was shaking so hard I missed that sergeant by a good two feet when he came at me.’
‘Honey, you can’t feel bad about that. I … I’m sorry I’ve been so caught up in other things that I haven’t taken the time I should have to talk to you about what happened. About how you’re feeling.’
‘But that’s just it. When I shot him, I didn’t feel anything. The first time I killed a deer, I cried all night. Yet I killed that Federal captain, and I didn’t feel nothing.’
Her brows twitched together, and I thought she must be horrified to discover that she’d raised such a daughter. But all she said was, ‘Maybe it’s because that deer didn’t do anything wrong. He was just living his life, being a deer in the wood. But those men … They came to us, Amrie. They came intending to do us terrible harm. We stopped them. No one – not God, not anyone – can say that stopping them was wrong.’
I wanted to believe her.
But I couldn’t.
Only two tangible remnants of the dead Federals’ disastrous intrusion into our lives now remained: Trudi Easton’s locket and the leather pouch heavy with gold coins.
‘We should’ve buried that money with them two down by the bayou,’ said Mahalia as we sat on the front gallery, trying to decide what to do with our unwanted wealth. The sky was still blue overhead, the afternoon hot and airless, the Spanish moss hanging gray and still from the spreading limbs of the live oaks in the yard. Mahalia’s pretty round face shimmered with perspiration, and her features were troubled. ‘It be bad luck, keepin’ it here.’
Mama stared out over the gallery’s railing to where Checkers was rolling in the dust. ‘Yet it seems wrong to simply throw it away when so many are in want.’ Specie had disappeared early in the war, making the contents of that purse precious indeed.
‘That be blood money,’ said Mahalia. ‘How you reckon that golden-haired Federal got his hands on all that gold? He stole it, that’s how – and likely killed whatever poor man or woman he took it from. I’m tellin’ you, ain’t no good gonna come of that money.’
‘We could give it to Reverend Lewis,’ I said.
They both turned to look at me.
‘Well, we could, couldn’t we?’ I said.
‘I reckon we could,’ Mahalia said slowly. ‘If anybody can overcome the evil attached to that gold, it’s the good Lord himself.’
So Mama tied the pile of twenty dollar gold pieces up in one of Papa’s plain old linen handkerchiefs, and burned the leather pouch. We decided to tell the reverend the coins had been dropped by a band of Federal raiders. Mahalia said it didn’t seem right, lying to a man of the Lord that way. But Mama said the less Reverend Lewis knew about the true history of the money, the better for him, which made sense to me.
Mahalia suggested I should be the one to take it to him, because I lied better’n Mama – which is exactly the sort of thing Mahalia would say. I stuck out my tongue at her, but she only laughed, and so did Mama, and after a moment’s hesitation, I joined in.
The afternoon sun was already slipping in the sky by the time I headed into town. The live oaks lining the lane throbbed with birdsong, and a warm breeze rippled the tall, vivid grass of the verge.
Most of the fields on either side of me lay abandoned and were already growing up thick with saplings and brambles. The rows of neat fences that had once lined the road were gone, torn down by Federal troops and burned for firewood or just in spite. When I reached the old Jenkins’ place, I started to quicken my pace, for the house had stood empty ever since the Federals wrecked it last September. Its windows and doors were now just gaping black holes, and it always gave me the jitters, passing it. Then I spotted Ira Jenkins’s skinny old orange cat, Juicy, peering at me from a thicket of rambling rose, and paused to try to coax her to come to me. But she shot away, tail flicking as she disappeared into the underbrush. The only two people she’d ever really warmed to were the Widow Jenkins and her son, Eddie. But Eddie died of measles at Camp Moore back in ’61, and after the Federals destroyed her house, Ira Jenkins just kinda shriveled up and died the way so many folks seemed to be doing.
I walked on, conscious of a heavy weight of sadness settling in my chest. Too many were dead, too much of what we’d spent years building up had been destroyed, too much anger and bitterness and hate had seeped into the fabric of our being to ever be rooted out. And I was filled with a sudden rage – at the obscenely rich planters and land speculators and arrogant politicians who’d dragged us into secession, and at all those North and South who’d arrogantly, stupidly believed war could be quick and easy and glorious. But most of all, I was filled with rage at God, for allowing all this to happen.
I clutched the bundle of coins to me, my breath coming shallow and quick, the heat of the day slicking my face with sweat, and walked on.
As bad as the countryside looked these days, St Francisville was almost worse. The Albatross and the Hartford had been tacking up and down our stretch of the river for months now, periodically lobbing shells at us. Reverend Lewis told me once he thought they used his church for target practice, sighting on the bell tower to see how close they could come to hitting it. If that was true, they were lousy shots. Most of their shells seemed to fall on the nearby houses, or slam into the new domed courthouse across the street, or plow through the tombs and graves of the churchyard to churn up bones and bits of scorched coffin.
As I walked down Ferdinand Street, I wondered if they’d just had another shelling, because there seemed to be a heap of folks milling about, and the crowds grew thicker as I neared the church. A cluster of men wearing the tattered gray shell jackets, sl
ouch hats, and black boots of Confederate cavalry had gathered in front of the white clapboard Masonic lodge that stood just across the street from the battered courthouse. As I drew closer, I recognized the tall, lean man in a silk officer’s sash as William Leake. My mother had delivered Margaret Leake’s last baby, and I called out, ‘Hey, Cap’n Leake,’ as I turned into the churchyard. He smiled and raised his hand to me.
Confederate soldiers lucky enough to be serving nearby could sometimes make it home for a short leave. It was dangerous, of course, since they had to be careful not to be caught by one of the Federal raiding parties that were always sweeping through the area. But as I cut across the shell-ravaged cemetery, I couldn’t help wishing Papa hadn’t been sent all the way to Virginia so he could come home sometimes, too.
There were more folks gathered about the graveyard, and I started worrying maybe I’d stumbled onto a funeral, although I hadn’t heard of anyone dying lately. I cautiously pushed open the door to the church, figuring it was as good a place as any to start looking for the reverend, and was relieved to see him sitting alone in one of the pews near the back. He didn’t look like he was praying; just had his head tipped back against the rear of the pew like a man who was feeling tired.
I hesitated, the door closing softly behind me with a snick. He lowered his head and turned to see me.
‘Ah, Amrie,’ he said, pushing to his feet and coming toward me. The church must have taken another hit from the Albatross, because new cracks showed in the plaster ceiling and a couple more stained-glass windows had been shattered and were now boarded over. ‘This is a pleasant surprise. Is there something I can do for you?’
It was one thing to sit on our gallery with Mama and Mahalia and talk about lying to Reverend Lewis, but something else entirely to actually stand in the church and do it. I tried to tell myself I had a good reason for lying, but it didn’t make any difference. I still felt dishonest.
I set the bundle of gold on the table that stood behind the last pew and had once held church bulletins, back in the day when there was paper for such things. The coins clinked heavily, and I saw surprise and puzzlement pucker the reverend’s heavy gray eyebrows.
I said, ‘We found this. Some … some Federal soldiers dropped it. We didn’t want to keep it so we figured the best thing to do would be to give it to you, to … to help the poor soldiers’ wives and widows in the area.’
Still faintly frowning, he reached to untie the knots in the handkerchief. The crumpled linen fell open, and even in the dim light of the half-boarded-up church, the gold gleamed. He stared at it as if not quite comprehending what he was seeing.
‘Good heavens, Amrie.’ His gaze shifted to me. ‘Are you certain? This looks like a lot of money.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean … Yes, sir; we’re certain.’
I heard a shout from the street outside, followed by another. ‘What’s goin’ on out there, anyway?’ I asked. ‘Did somebody die?’
‘Not one of my parishioners.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’
He scooped up the coins. ‘Wait here while I put this someplace safe, and I’ll tell you about it. I think this is something you ought to see.’
Thirty-Seven
What happened that day would, in time, become a part of the lore of St Francisville; a single, heart-wrenching moment of humanity that glowed all the brighter in our collective memory because of the dark horror of the years that surrounded it.
It actually began the previous afternoon, when the USS Albatross once again dropped anchor off the ruins of Bayou Sara and the people of St Francisville braced themselves for another round of random, senseless shelling. What they didn’t know was that the Albatross’s commander, John Hart – a man, ironically, from the same New York town as our own Reverend Lewis – lay in his quarters wracked by swamp fever. As his delirium mounted, he seized his revolver, thumbed back the hammer with a trembling hand, put the muzzle to his head, and squeezed the trigger.
‘Did you know him?’ I asked Reverend Lewis as we walked across the churchyard toward the street. A hush had fallen over the crowd; the only sound the swish-swish of the ladies’ fans.
‘No,’ he said, squinting up at the hot sun. ‘But then, it’s been many years since I was in Schenectady. I’m told he leaves behind a widow and two young children. It’s tragic. Very tragic.’
‘Why’d he do it?’
‘Who knows? They say he was in great pain from some other, long-standing malady. Perhaps it simply proved too much for his fevered mind.’
I stared down the bluff toward the river, where a longboat flying a white flag rocked gently against Bayou Sara’s dilapidated old wharf. A warm wind kicked up choppy white caps on the water and brought us the smell of fish mingling with the pinch of old charred wood from the burned-out town below.
It seemed that before his death, Commander Hart had expressed a wish that he be given a Masonic burial rather than having his body consigned to the muddy waters of the Mississippi. And so his fellow officers had put ashore early that morning under the same white flag to ask if there were any Masons in the area.
In fact, St Francisville was home to Louisiana’s oldest Masonic lodge. Not only that, but the Senior Warden, Captain William Leake of the 1st Louisiana Cavalry, just happened to be in town on furlough. He met with the Federal Navy men and assured them that as a soldier he was duty-bound to cooperate in the burial of his enemy’s dead, and as a Mason he would be honored to perform the service for a fallen brother.
And so, standing beside Reverend Lewis at the edge of a cemetery plowed by the Albatross’s shells, I watched three blue-uniformed ship’s officers step ashore, followed by sailors and a squad of Marines at trail arms. The sun glistened on their brass buttons and brought a sheen of sweat to their faces. They loaded the plain wooden coffin of the Albatross’s commander onto a simple cart drawn by a black mule and started up the hill, a snare drum beating a slow, mournful dirge.
‘Them Yankees is luckier’n they know. Where the blazes did Leake find anyone hereabouts with a mule and cart?’ muttered someone, and a few people nearby tittered softly.
As the funeral cortege neared the top of the bluff where Captain Leake and his fellow Confederate Masons waited, I drew back. I didn’t want to be anywhere near any Federals, alive or dead. But I didn’t feel like I could leave, either. And so I watched through the silent, moss-draped oaks and lichen-covered tombstones as the men in blue and gray uniforms, together, lifted the simple coffin to their shoulders and carried it through the bomb-ravaged churchyard.
I stayed well back from the others, wandering the churchyard as I listened to the two funeral services, Episcopal and Masonic, drift on the warm breeze.
‘… through our belief in the mercy of God, may we confidently hope that our souls will bloom in eternal spring …’
The solemnly intoned words seemed to echo off the shattered belfry above us. I stared down at the bits of blue and red glass at my feet, fragments from the broken stained-glass windows that sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. And I found myself wondering how anyone who believed in a Christian God could use one of His churches for target practice, or how men truly dedicated to His teachings could lob shells into a town filled with nothing but terrified women and children.
‘Most glorious God, Author of all good and giver of all mercy …’
I realized my steps had led me without conscious thought to Simon’s grave, and I sank down into the grass. Drawing my bare feet up under my dress, I wrapped my arms around my bent knees and listened to the voices drone on and on.
Then, finally, I heard a clink of arms and a guttural shout. ‘Ready. Aim. Fire.’
I jerked, the boom of the discharging rifles startling the sparrows from the leafy oak overhead so that they rose up shrieking into the clear blue sky.
‘Ready. Aim. Fire.’
I flinched again, and then tensed in expectation of the third volley.
‘Ready. Aim. Fire.’
The pungent odor of burnt gunpowder carried on the breeze, followed by the melancholy sound of a bugle that floated over the churchyard. The haunting call swelled, one clear, piercing note following the other. I felt the poignant melody of the piece wash over me, pure and sweet and so mournful it was like a physical ache inside me. I pressed my face against my knees, the worn homespun cloth of my dress rough against my skin.
How could men who considered each other deadly enemies also see themselves as brothers, I wondered? Why could they stop a war for a day to cooperate in the burial of one man, yet not find a way to end that war and save the lives of hundreds of thousands?
The last of the bugle call faded away. I heard the tramp of marching feet, the tap-tap of the drum, the soft murmur of voices. I stayed where I was.
It was some time later when a shadow fell over the sun-spangled grass beside me, and I looked up to find Reverend Lewis watching me.
He said, ‘It was a fine thing, was it not?’
The afternoon heat had brought a warm flush to his cheeks, and he had a faint smile on his face. I noticed for the first time just how rusty and threadbare his cassock was, and where his surplice was singed from when the vestry took a hit in one of the Federals’ recent shellings.
I wanted to say, Was it really, Reverend? Instead, I said, ‘Are they gone?’
He nodded. ‘They invited Captain Leake and his men aboard the Albatross for refreshments, but the captain declined.’
‘Reckon maybe he thought the Yankees would arrest them.’
‘Oh, Amrie … I don’t think so.’
I stared out across the churchyard to where the aged sexton was shoveling dirt into the Federal commander’s grave, the scrape of the metal against earth carrying clearly through the trees. ‘Seems funny, him lying here amongst our own dead. After all the Albatross has done to us.’
‘We are all the same unto the angels and are all the children of God, being the children of the resurrection,’ said the reverend softly.
I thought about the two Federals that Mahalia and I had killed, lying now in unhallowed ground deep in the swamps below the bluff. And I felt the urge to blurt out the truth of it all to Reverend Lewis, to seek his gentle wisdom and guidance, or maybe simply to ask for his forgiveness and God’s absolution.