by John Jakes
Questions without answers tormented him during his waking hours. Could they raise enough rice to sell off a little, retaining the rest to help them survive the coming winter? Would the South be occupied by hostile troops for years now that the North was reportedly set on harsh reprisal because of Lincoln’s murder? How would he ever learn what had happened to Orry’s body since Richmond had been burned and, presumably, many army records destroyed? One soldier who had stopped described the mass graves around Petersburg, hundreds of corpses dumped in each with little regard for identification.
Questions hammered at his head till it ached as much as his body while he scratched the Carolina soil in the steaming sun. He was bent at the task one afternoon when Andy called his name sharply. He raised his head, wiped his sweaty eyelids to clear his vision, saw Judith dashing along the embankments separating the squares.
From her haste and her reddened face, he could tell something was wrong. He ran to meet her.
“Cooper, it’s your mother. I went in during her nap, as I usually do, and found her. If I can judge from her expression, her passing was peaceful. Perhaps painless. I’m so sorry, darling—”
She stopped, cocking her head, puzzled and a little frightened by his queer half-smile. He didn’t explain the momentary recollection that produced the strange reaction. Memories of Clarissa airily wandering about in the midst of the guerrilla attack. She had walked where guns were firing and never been scratched.
The odd smile disappeared; practical matters intruded. “Do you suppose we can find any ice at all for the body?”
“I doubt it. We’d better bury her right away.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.” He slipped a throbbing arm around her, tears filling his eyes. They returned to the yellow-pine house for the rest of the day.
Cooper had discovered long ago that life had a perverse way of surprising you with the unexpected when you least needed it. He was sweating with Andy in the dusk, hammering together a coffin for Clarissa, when Jane appeared.
“We have three visitors.”
Cooper swabbed his wet brow with his forearm. “More soldiers?”
She shook her head. “They came by railroad as far as they could—they say it’s been reopened part of the way. Then they managed to buy an old mule and a wagon, both about done for—”
Testy, he said, “Well, whoever they are, you know what to tell them. They’re welcome to camp and use the well. But we have no food.”
“You’ll have to feed these people,” Jane said. “It’s your sister and her husband and Miss Madeline.”
When he thought it reasonably safe, Jasper Dills went down to occupied Richmond.
He was appalled at the destruction that had accompanied the collapse and flight of the Confederate government. A Union officer told him that while the fires raged, small-arms ammunition and more than eight hundred thousand shells had detonated over a period of several hours. A few substantially fireproofed buildings remained standing, but there were blocks and blocks destroyed. It was the heart of springtime, and the air should have smelled of flowers and new greenery. In Richmond it smelled of smoke.
The rutted streets were dumps for broken and abandoned furnishings, clothing, rags, bottles, books, personal papers. Even more distasteful to the little attorney was the human litter. Destitute white families roaming. Confederate veterans, many as young as fourteen, sitting in the sun with starved faces and vacant eyes. Crowds of Negroes, some strutting outrageously. And everywhere—on foot, astride saddle horses, driving wagons—soldiers in the blue of the conqueror. They were the only whites in the city who smiled, Dills noticed.
He was in a high state of nerves when he reached the sutlers’ tents set up, complete with outdoor tables and cheap chairs, on the lawns of Capitol Square. At one such establishment, identified by its canvas banner as Hugo Delancy’s, he met his contact, a former operative of Lafayette Baker’s whom Dills had hired at a high price, dispatching him to Virginia to attempt to pick up a trail that was, perhaps, nonexistent.
The operative, a burly fellow with a cocked eye, took Dills to an outdoor table at Delancy’s. He swilled lager while Dills drank a pitiful watery concoction passed off as lemonade.
“Well, what do you have to report?”
“Didn’t think I’d have a blessed thing till six days ago. Tramped up and down the James almost three weeks before I turned up something. And it still isn’t much.”
The operative signaled a waiter to bring another beer. “Early in July last year a farmer saw a body floating in the James. Civilian clothes. The body was too far from shore to be retrieved, but the description—an obese man; dark-haired—roughly matches the one you provided for Captain Dayton.”
“Last July, you say—?” Dills licked his lips. The stipend had continued during the intervening months. “Where did this happen?”
“The farmer was on the east bank of the river, about half a mile above the Broadway Landing pontoon bridge the army built later in the autumn. I spent another three days in the neighborhood, asking questions, but I didn’t turn up anything else. So I’ll take my money.”
“Your report’s inconclusive. Unsatisfactory.”
The operative seized the lawyer’s frail wrist. “I did the job. I want the pay.”
Dills’s strategy to save some money failed. He surrendered the bank draft from inside his jacket. The operative gave it a moment’s suspicious scrutiny to embarrass him, then pocketed it, gulped the rest of his beer, and departed, leaving Dills between two tables of noisy whores, not far from the magnificent statue of George Washington.
Had Starkwether’s son deserted to the enemy after Baker discharged him? If he had been killed, was it the result of a military mission or something more sinister? Was the body in the river actually Bent’s? He had to know. If his periodic reports stopped, so would the stipend. He thumped his fist on the table.
“What happened?”
Two of the sluts to his right heard the loud expression of turmoil and made remarks. Dills composed himself. The trail had run out. Starkwether’s son was dead, merely another casualty of the long, distasteful, and ultimately purposeless war.
On reflection, the lawyer decided that an inconclusive report was better than none at all. Was valuable, in fact, if interpreted correctly. Since it said nothing to the contrary, it allowed him to continue writing the periodic memoranda, confidently asserting that Bent was still alive. It permitted him to continue to generate income indefinitely with those little pieces of paper—a huge return on a minuscule investment.
Less upset, he relaxed in the sunshine, ignored the odors of smoke and cheap perfume, and ordered a second glass of lemonade.
137
THEY BURIED CLARISSA GAULT Main in the half-acre of fenced ground that had received Mont Royal’s dead, white and black, for three generations. Jane cried longest and loudest of any of the small band of mourners. She had developed a great affection for the gentle little woman whose aging mind had long ago freed her of ordinary human burdens. Jane had always taken special pains to see to Clarissa’s needs, as she would those of a child. Aunt Belle Nin had once told her that for many people the process of growing old was one of reversal, a return to the state of the child, who needed a special kind of care, patience, love.
Andy stood at Jane’s side and wept with her. Brett and Madeline were more controlled in their grief. Their greatest shock and emotional catharsis had come immediately after Billy escorted them up the lane, when Madeline saw that Orry’s home was gone, and they learned about Clarissa.
Cooper showed the least emotion. He felt it his duty to remain steady, an example in a difficult time. Before the burial, he read verses from the New Testament—Christ’s dialogue with Nicodemus on everlasting life from the gospel of John. Following the reading, Andy and Billy lowered the coffin into the ground, and each mourner tossed in a handful of sandy soil. For the closing prayer Cooper deferred to Andy, who praised Clarissa as a kind and generous woman, and movingly
commended her to God’s care.
A moment of silence followed the murmured amens. Then Andy said, “I’ll finish the rest. You all needn’t stay.” Billy put his arm around Brett and walked out through the gate in the badly rusted fence. Wrought iron, he noted. Hazard’s iron would have lasted longer. He was momentarily embarrassed by the thought.
Cooper and the others trudged after the young couple. Suddenly Brett stopped, gazing through the live oaks to the black ash heaps where the house had stood. Tears came again, but only briefly. She shook her head and turned to Billy.
“Mother’s passing just now—it’s a kind of watershed, isn’t it? The end of something. That house, this plantation—it never was quite what it seemed to be. But whatever it seemed to be is gone forever.”
Madeline overheard and nodded melancholy agreement. It was Cooper who replied, quietly but with a fervor surprising to his younger sister.
“We have let the worst go, but we’ll rebuild the best. And fight for it with every breath.”
Who is he? Brett asked herself in wonderment. I hardly know him. The old Cooper wouldn’t have said such a thing. I am not the only one the war changed.
Three days later, following the arrival of a soiled letter misdelivered to the nearest neighbor, Charles reappeared in the lane riding his mule. Brett ran to greet and embrace him. He pressed his bearded cheek against hers, but it was perfunctory. She found him sullen and withdrawn; alarmingly so. When she tried to ask him about his experiences with Hampton’s cavalry, he brushed the questions aside with terse, empty answers.
Before the evening meal, Madeline found an opportunity to speak to him. “How is Augusta Barclay?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in some time.”
“Is she still in Fredericksburg?”
“I hope so. I’m going there in a few days to find out.”
After dark, he and Cooper strolled the riverbank near the site of the ruined dock, at Charles’s request. Before they got down to their talk, Cooper reported a piece of news.
“We’ve received specific information about Orry. It came day before yesterday, in a letter from General Pickett, much delayed. Orry’s body was not put in a mass grave. It was shipped south together with a number of others when it became possible to locate enough draft horses to portage the coffins around a break in some rail line below Petersburg.”
“The Weldon,” Charles said with a nod.
“That took place many weeks ago. Unfortunately, there was an accident.”
“What kind of accident?” Cooper told him. “Jesus.” Charles shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”
They walked on in silence for five minutes. Charles collected himself and informed his cousin that he wanted to leave for Virginia as soon as he felt those on the plantation were safe from danger.
“Oh, we’re safe enough,” Cooper said with an empty laugh. “Starving, perhaps, but safe. May I ask what takes you back to Virginia?”
“Something personal.”
How closed and somber he’s become, Cooper thought. “Will you be returning here?”
“I hope not. The trip involves a lady.”
“Charles—I had no idea—that’s wonderful. Who is she?”
“I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.”
Mystified and a little hurt by the rebuff from the cold stranger Charles had become, Cooper bobbed his head to signal acceptance, then fell silent.
It was their season for callers, it seemed. The following Monday, as Charles prepared to leave, Wade Hampton arrived on horseback. He was bound for Charleston but stopped off because he had heard of the burning of Mont Royal and Clarissa’s death. Though never close, the Hampton and Main families had known each other for three generations. Most of the great planters of the piedmont and low country had at least a nodding acquaintance, but in this case it was Charles who had strengthened the ties.
Besides visiting Clarissa’s grave alone and expressing his sympathy to the family, he had another reason for calling, he said. He hoped to hear something about one of his best scouts. To his surprise, they met face-to-face. Hampton was visibly appalled to find Charles in such a scruffy state, and so dour.
No longer in uniform and grayer than Charles remembered, Hampton wore a holstered side arm beneath his coat. His favorite, Charles observed. The revolver with ivory handle grips.
Because of his high military rank, Hampton had been denied the amnesty given the majority of Confederate soldiers after the surrender. The general carried this burden openly. Bitterness was particularly apparent when he stalked all around the rubble that had once been the great house.
“As bad as Millwood,” he said, shaking his head. “We should take a photograph and mail it to Grant. Perhaps it might teach him the real meaning of what he calls ‘enlightened war.’”
Later, in the hot May dusk, the men sat on crates and small casks on the grass in front of the pine house; it had no piazza. Hampton had brought a bottle of peach brandy in his saddlebag. They shared it, using a collection of unmatched cups and glasses.
Hampton questioned Charles about his last days in the cavalry. Charles had little to say. Hampton told them briefly of his own experiences. He had indeed wanted to continue the fight west of the Mississippi. “What they did to my son and my brother and my home persuaded me that I was not morally bound by the surrender.” So he had ridden on in pursuit of the fleeing President and his party.
“I would have escorted Mr. Davis all the way to Texas. Even Mexico. I had a small company of loyal men, or so I thought. But they dropped away, gave up, one by one. Finally I was alone. At Yorkville, I chanced to meet my wife, Mary. She and Joe Wheeler—General Wheeler—persuaded me that trying to find the President was futile. I was tired. Ready to be persuaded, I suppose. So I stopped.”
Cooper asked, “Do you know where Davis is now?”
“No. I suppose he’s in jail somewhere—perhaps even hanged. What a disgraceful end to the whole business.” He tossed off the last of his brandy, which seemed to calm him.
Hampton went on to say he was living in a house belonging to a former overseer. “My daughter Sally’s to be married in June. I have that happy event to anticipate, along with the work of rebuilding this poor, wracked state. I’m glad you’re on Mont Royal again, Cooper. I remember where you stood at the time of the secession convention. We’re going to need men like you. Men of sanity and good will. Patience, strength—I think the Yankees will press us hard. Try us—punish us—severely. Booth did us incredible harm.”
“Has there been any word of him?” Billy said.
“Oh, yes. He was caught and shot to death a couple of weeks ago on a farm near the Rappahannock.”
“Well, gentlemen—” Charles stood up and set the fruit jar from which he had been drinking on the log that had been his chair “—I’ll excuse myself with your permission. I have business in Virginia, and I want to be on the road by daylight. I leave you to your high ideals and the reconstruction of our glorious state.”
Billy was baffled by this sourness. His old friend stood out in memory as lighthearted, quick to laugh. This shabby, bearded skeleton wasn’t Bison Main, but someone much older, of much darker temperament.
“Someone must champion the South,” Cooper declared. “We must defend her with every peaceful means, or there’ll be nothing left for generations but burned earth and despair.”
Charles stared at him. “That isn’t what you used to say, Cousin.”
“Nevertheless, he’s right,” Hampton said, some of the old authority in his voice. “The state will need many good men. Including you, Charles.”
With a bow toward the visitor, Charles smiled. “No, thank you, General. I did my job. Killed God knows how many fellow human beings—fellow Americans—on behalf of the high-minded principles of the high-minded Mr. Davis and his high-minded colleagues. Don’t ask me to do anything else for the South or its misbegotten cause.”
Hampton leaped to his feet, his stocky frame
silhouetted against fading light in the west. “It is your land, too, sir. Your cause—”
“Correction, sir. It was. I obeyed orders until the surrender. But not a moment longer. Good evening, gentlemen.”
Charles left before dawn, while Billy and Brett were still asleep with their arms around each other, squeezed onto the rickety cot provided for them. Billy had gone to bed saddened because his best friend had said so little to him. Charles had withheld something of great personal importance and had walked away every time Billy tried to mention his heroic behavior during the Libby escape. He had ridden off without a word of farewell, as Billy discovered soon after he awoke.
Smelling imitation coffee brewing, he gently touched Brett’s middle—it was now certain that she was pregnant—kissed her warm throat, and slipped off the creaky cot. He lifted the cloth partition and found Andy at the stove. Andy confirmed that Charles had gone.
“Strange fella,” he said. “Was he always so moody and glum?”
“No. Something happened to him in Virginia. Something other than the war. He was courting a woman. A widow. He cared for her very much—”
“Never heard a thing about any woman.”
“He didn’t tell me, either. Madeline did.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Andy said, nodding. “If he thinks he lost her, that could account for it. A woman can tear up a man almost as much as goin’ to war, I guess.”
He smiled, but Billy didn’t.
The passing days showed Brett how radically conditions and relationships had changed in four short years. Cooper toiled in the rice fields like one of their father’s people. Madeline, who had been the chatelaine for a time, tied up her skirts, wrapped her black hair in a bandanna, and sweated right alongside him. Despite Billy’s protests, Brett did, too. She insisted it would be a few months yet before she was unable to do her share.
Despite the joy of the new life growing within her, Mont Royal disappointed Brett because there were no blacks who wanted or needed her help. The kind of teaching Jane had done for a while, for example.