Love and War: The North and South Trilogy (Book Two)

by John Jakes

  George could barely speak. “Was?”

  “He was ambushed and shot by a wounded man he was trying to succor—a cavalryman from your side.” Resentment crept in; Hoffman’s green eyes were less friendly. “The incident has been widely circulated as proof of the barbarity of General Grant’s troops.”

  “You say he was shot. You don’t mean he was—?”

  “Killed? Of course he was. Why else would anyone repeat the story? Well, Billy, the drink was refreshing, and I have enjoyed the conversation. I regret I am the one to inform you about your friend. I must go now. This business won’t last much longer, I think. I hope I am not hurt before it stops. I hope you are not either. I am sorry about your friend.” He tipped his grease-blackened kepi. “Good-bye.”

  George said good-bye, but so faintly the reb couldn’t possibly have heard him above the bubble of the stream. He turned slowly toward the railroad. Sunshine poured over his face, blinding him. Stick, he thought. Stick.

  He walked a less than straight course toward the sound of the hammering, stumbling twice. Just as the trestle came in sight, he had to turn back into the trees, where he hid and cried for five minutes, remembering his friend and the April fire.

  Work on the trestle was finished before noon. In the mess where George stopped for Sunday dinner, he sat apart, not bothering to introduce himself to other officers, as he usually did. The mess was located behind one of several redoubts he had passed on his way to get this food he found he didn’t want. The redoubts and adjoining trenches, packed with bored, yawning men, gave off increasingly noxious odors as the temperature climbed. He could smell the reek as he stared at his plate. It was the stench of ruin. Of a loss he could not yet accept or even believe.

  Dully, he raised his head in response to faint music from the siege lines. A fife or piccolo, soon joined by a cornet, then by an improvised drum—it sounded to George like a stick on a large tin can. The melody was “Dixie’s Land.”

  “There they go again,” a captain complained to others at his table.

  Out in the rifle pits, someone yelled: “Hey, Johnny, turn off that tune. Go home and beat your niggers if you have any left.”

  The response was a series of mocking rebel yells, more amusing than frightening today. George covered his face with both hands, then quickly dropped his hands to his lap when he realized others might be staring. They were. He didn’t look at any of them straight on. He was too miserable.

  “Here they come. Let the boys through with their instruments—”

  That, too, came from outside, as did a general commotion. Several officers hastily finished their meals, grabbed their hats, and hurried out. He wondered why as “Dixie” continued to ring merrily over the Union lines.

  Suddenly a second musical group, larger and including, from God knew where, a glockenspiel, began “John Brown’s Body.” Applause and cheers greeted the opening bars of the retaliation.

  Singly or in groups, more and more officers left, until George was the last man seated at the stained trestle tables. Wearily, he picked up his cap and trudged outside. Both bands played at maximum volume, each trying to drown out the other. George was astonished to see soldiers in shirt sleeves on the parapets of the redoubts. Others were leaning over the forward edges of the rifle pits, enjoying the sunshine or a puff on a cob pipe or some raillery exchanged with the other side.

  He walked slowly toward the stinking trenches. Looking beyond them, across the strip of scarred and trampled ground, he saw other soldiers, toy figures in gray and butternut, emerge from the fortifications; the lines were close here.

  The musical conflict quickly became mere noise, one melody canceling the other. Then, abruptly, George heard men repeating a word to one another. “Hush. Hush.” Someone else said, “Listen. “ Both bands fell silent.

  Raising his hand over his eyes again, he tried to see the source of the sweet, piercing cornet notes. At last he did. The player was a small, dim figure on the other side—a musician of very small stature or, more likely, quite young. He had climbed to the top of a half-destroyed redoubt, his tattered shirt fluttering at the elbows, his horn flashing like an exploding star whenever the sun struck the metal at a certain angle.

  George recognized the song before he heard the voices of the enemy soldiers who were climbing out of the rifle pits around the cornetist. It was the piece played and sung most frequently on both sides. Near George, an ugly top sergeant began to sing.

  “’Mid pleasures and palaces

  Though we may roam,

  Be it ever so humble,

  There’s no place like home.”

  A baritone joined in, a tenor added harmony. The voices swelled, on the Union side and the Confederate side, and reached out and fused to form a single, strong-throated chorus.

  “A charm from the skies

  Seems to hallow us there.

  Which, seek through the world

  Is ne’er met with elsewhere.”

  Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, they sat or stood in full view of those who, at other hours and other places, were devoted to killing them. One or two Union men waved to soldiers on the other side. Here and there the waves were returned. But mostly it was just singing—austere, sober, loud as a hymn from a fervent congregation—as though both groups of Americans charged with shooting down other Americans were saying there was a deep and private place in each of them where dwelled a resistance to that awful idea. They said it with the clichéd words of a sentimental ballad—and with tears, George saw suddenly. He counted at least a dozen men weeping while they sang.

  “Home, home,

  Sweet, sweet home.

  There’s no place like home,

  Oh, there’s no place like home.”

  The voices died away and then the last held note of the cornet. George donned his cap, giving it a smart tug. He felt a little more like himself again, conscious of his responsibilities. The song had reminded him of Belvedere. Madeline. He doubted she knew of her husband’s death.

  He loathed the thought of being the one to send the news. But it would be greater cruelty to refrain. No message from Richmond would ever reach her in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t even sure she would be informed if she were living in the South. He heard that all the amenities were breaking down on the other side. The task was his.

  As he set out to rejoin his men—they had taken their meal with one of the Negro regiments—he decided he must write immediately. He would send the letter to Constance, relying on her to know the best way to approach both Madeline and Brett.

  Laughing, joshing, the Union soldiers continued to sun themselves in the mild afternoon air. A shot rang out.

  “Damn you, Johnny,” someone shouted. “That’s a rotten thing to do.”

  Scrambling, men dropped out of sight with remarkable speed. The intermission was over. The concert of the guns was ready to resume.

  122

  FEBRUARY. IN THE DARK over Washington, a freak electrical storm boomed and blazed. The intermittent lightning lent an eerie glow to a large diamond pendant Jeannie Canary wore between her small pink-pointed breasts. She lay nude in the sweaty bed, happily playing with her new jewel.

  Stanley tied the sash of his dressing gown of royal blue velvet. Then he poured from the whiskey decanter. There was only a small amount left. In plush slippers, he walked to the pantry of the five-room flat in which he had installed his mistress. He returned with a fresh bottle of sour mash and topped off his glass.

  Miss Canary bounced the big stone in her palms; another lightning burst made it twinkle. “You’re drinking a lot tonight, loves.”

  “Oil for the machinery of the mind.” And defense against constant fear that all of this—the little dancer, the six million dollars that had accumulated in the profit column of Lashbrook’s, his power in Republican circles—would be snatched away because he was undeserving. He took a hefty swallow, a third of the glass.

  Miss Canary knew better than to be overly critical of the source of her securi
ty. She dropped the subject of drinking, substituting a familiar and, to Stanley, annoying complaint.

  “I do so wish you’d let me attend Mr. Lincoln’s inaugural with you.”

  “I’ve told you before, it’s impossible.” Isabel was returning from a long stay in Newport for the event. She had spent lavishly to convert Fairlawn into a year-round residence and had moved in without asking permission of anyone else in the family. The three brothers shared ownership of the property, but that fact was ignored when Isabel took it over last fall, just after she placed their incorrigible sons in a small Massachusetts boarding school. The school earned huge fees for catering to parents who wanted their offspring out of sight and mind. Aping their father, neither of the twins had any desire to don a uniform; resort to the school was unavoidable.

  Stanley and Miss Canary had argued several times about the inaugural, which was scheduled for the first Saturday in March. To compensate for his refusal to take her, Stanley had given her the pendant—paste, but she didn’t know the difference. Out of gratitude, she had an hour ago performed a certain act whose mere mention would have rendered Isabel catatonic.

  Now, however, he found the girl back on the subject again, whining.

  “But I have such a longing to see the President up close. I haven’t, ever.”

  “You’ve missed nothing, believe me.”

  “You talk to him often, don’t you?” Stanley nodded and drank more whiskey. He liked to maintain a slight blurring of his vision, a slight dulling of his senses, through all of the waking hours. “Is it true he doesn’t bathe?”

  “The statement’s highly exaggerated.”

  Miss Canary reached down to scratch herself. “But they say women avoid him because he smells.”

  “Some women avoid him because he tells an occasional off-color story. It’s the Western taste in humor. Farmerish,” he said with a disdainful shrug. “But the chief reason he’s avoided is his wife. Mary Lincoln is a jealous harpy. It prostrates her if her husband is alone with another woman for so much as five seconds.”

  “You don’t mean alone the way we’re alone?” Miss Canary giggled.

  What a pathetic mind she has, he thought. Her last name suits her. “No, my dear.” He slipped out of the velvet gown and began to dress. “I was referring to speaking with women at presidential levees. Public functions.”

  “Oh, that reminds me. Last night at the theater, I heard a terrible thing about the President. I heard that some actors are planning to kidnap or kill him. They’re all supposed to be Southern sympathizers, but I didn’t hear any names.”

  Buttoning his shirt, Stanley belched softly. “My sweet, if I had penny for every such story circulating in this town, we’d soon mass enough money for a sea voyage to Egypt.”

  Miss Canary sat up, the diamond hobbling in her cleavage. Are you thinking of taking me to Egypt?”

  Stanley quickly raised a hand. “Merely an example.” The poor child really taxed his patience sometimes. But he always forgave her when she demonstrated her sexual precocity.

  “Must you go, loves?”

  “I must. I’m receiving a guest at half past nine.”

  “Speaking of receiving—the draft for this month’s rent hasn’t arrived.”

  “No? I’ll slap the wrist of my bookkeeper. You shall have it tomorrow, first thing.”

  She gave him a long, deep taste of her tongue to show her appreciation. After one more stiff drink of whiskey, he donned his overcoat and slipped out the door, his last impression a vivid picture of her on her knees on the bed, left hand caressing the diamond, right-hand fingers flexing in a tiny, childlike wave.

  His waiting carriage bore him through rainy streets to the large house on I Street. With Isabel gone, he spent little time there. Sometimes, alone in the emptiness, he even missed the twins. He lever let that foolish sentiment best him for long, though.

  Servants had the gas burning and had set out refreshments. But the guest didn’t arrive until quarter to eleven.

  Ben Wade flung off his wet cape. The butler retrieved it from he floor. Stanley gestured sharply. The man left, closing the door.

  Wade paced to the hearth to warm himself. “Sorry I’m late. I waited until the River Queen returned.” He rubbed his hands, clearly pleased. “Mr. Seward and our beloved leader received the Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads, all right. However, I was told there will be no armistice.”

  “Still the same sticking place—?”

  Wade nodded. “The question of two nations or one. The President continues to insist on unconditional acceptance of the latter. Davis continues to refuse. That means you’ll have a few more months to sell footwear to the army,” he concluded with a sly smile. He left the hearth, took a plate and fork, and plucked a slice of turkey breast from the silver tray. “I have one more item of news.”

  “I hope it’s the news I’ve been waiting to hear.”

  “Not quite. I can’t get you the appointment as chief of the Freedmen’s Relief Bureau.”

  “You mean Congress won’t establish the agency?”

  “Oh, no. That will be done this month—next month at the latest.” The bureau had been under discussion since last year, when it became clear that the Confederacy would ultimately fall. The bureau’s proposed mission was the regulation of all matters affecting the millions of newly freed Negroes in the South. Everything from land distribution to resettlement. It was an avenue to immense power, but if Stanley correctly read Wade’s behavior—the senator seemed more interested in food than conversation—not only was the avenue closed, but the subject as well.

  This was to Stanley what the inaugural was to Miss Canary. “Ben, I’ve given the party a hell of a lot of money. Thousands last fall alone, just to defeat the incumbent—until it became evident that we couldn’t do it. I think my contributions should at least entitle me to the answer to one question. Why can’t I have the job?”

  “They—ah—” Wade seemed mesmerized by a morsel of turkey on his fork.

  “A straight answer, Ben.”

  Wade whacked the fork down on the plate. A pinhead-sized speck of Isabel’s precious gilt vanished from the edge. Wade jolted Stanley with the impact of his stare. “All right. They want a man with more administrative experience. They’re considering a general. Oliver Howard’s high on the list.”

  Stanley knew what the senator was really telling him. The radical cadre, which decided every important matter these days—the men who privately bragged that they needed no assassin to render the President powerless because they had already done it—had decided he was incompetent.

  Of course the word they was inappropriate, and both men knew it. Wade belonged to the cadre. He had cast a vote. No matter how much black ink filled the profit columns of Lashbrook’s, no matter how frantically Stanley diverted himself with variety-hall dancers or how much whiskey he consumed, he could never escape the truth of what he was. It hurt. He poured another glass of sour-mash medicine.

  “General Jake Cox is also in the running,” Wade said. “God help the rebs if he gets it. You’ve heard what he and Sam Stout propose, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Stanley said in a dead voice.

  Trying to jolly him out of his disappointment, Wade went on. “They propose we create a sort of American Liberia from the entire state of South Carolina. This new principality, or whatever the hell you want to call it, would be colonized and ruled by the niggers—whom we, of course, would diligently encourage to move there. Something in it, I’d say,” he finished, adding a chuckle, to which Stanley didn’t respond.

  Wade tried a more direct approach, crossing to his wealthy host and laying a companionable arm across his shoulders. “Look, Stanley. It was never guaranteed that I could obtain the post for you. I can and I will make certain you’re named one of the senior assistants, if you wish. The true power will reside on that level anyway—with the men who write the policy documents and operate the bureau on a daily basis. A Christian n
amby-pamby like Howard will be a mere figurehead. For that reason, I’m banking on him to get the job. When he does, those of us behind the scenes will be the ones who really make the colored people dance a Republican tune on Election Day. We’ll have the whole country dancing before we’re through. In a year, we can change our status from minority party to the only party—if we give the niggers the franchise but maintain control of it.”

  The glitter of Wade’s gaze, the quiet fervor of his words, soothed and convinced Stanley. Even lifted his spirits a little, much as alcohol did.

  “All right, Ben. I’ll take the highest bureau post offered to me.”

  “Good—splendid!” Wade started to clap his shoulder a second time, but Stanley was already in motion toward the sideboard and the decanters. “Old friend—” Wade cleared his throat “—forgive me for saying this, but I can’t help noticing you’re drinking a lot lately. Frankly, there’s been some talk.”

  Stanley pushed the stopper in, turned, and raised the brimming glass. He gazed at Wade across the shimmery disk of whiskey.

  “So I’ve heard. But if a man has money and distributes enough of it in the right places, no one listens to that kind of talk. No one wants to risk disturbing the flow of generosity. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

  Challenged, Wade chose to lose. He laughed. “Indeed it is,” he said, and toasted Stanley with his empty glass.

  As Cuffey had grown, so had his guerrilla band. It now numbered fifty-two, nearly a third of them white deserters. They inhabited two acres of heavily wooded, relatively solid ground at the edge of a salt marsh near the Ashley. They carried firearms taken from murdered whites caught on the roads, and they lived well on food and drink stolen from homes, small farms, and the rice plantations of the district.

  Three times Cuffey had personally led parties that pilfered hens from Mont Royal. The plantation itself he was saving for a special day. He watched the skies for telltale smoke and regularly sent one of his white boys to Charleston to report on the situation there.