Enemy Women

by Paulette Jiles

  I don’t use it, said Adair. She seemed to be losing her anger, which had always sustained her, and now her voice was small.

  You’ll get used to things around here, said the woman. Her brown hair was pulled back so tightly and it was so dirty that it seemed she had a headful of wires, a telegraphic device. Then I’ll bet you’ll use it if you gets the chance.

  The redheaded woman crossed her arms and stared at Adair, and her volcanic hair erupted in savage reds and oranges, backlit by the fire. You’ll learn to get along. You got any money?

  No, said Adair.

  You got anybody sending you delicacies or dainties or comforters?

  No, said Adair. Her word dropped into the well of stone silence.

  Well what the hell have you got?

  What I got in my hand here. Adair kept her carpet-sack in closed fists. Clothes. I guess I could try to write some relatives or something. Out on Fourth Street, beyond their barred world of filth and stone, there was the sound of a fiddle and somebody dancing, thumping in heavy shoes. Then a scattering of applause.

  The stout woman snorted. Her fists were on her hips. These here women might be whores and thieves and fortune-tellers and drunks but they are loyal.

  And around her several women said yes, yes, in low voices. Adair did not look to see who had spoken.

  My name is Cloris and I am the head prisoner here. We wash outside on Mondays. They feed us stew twicest a day and bread besides. Take that pallet over there. Throw your things down. Whatever it is you got.

  Adair was not prepared to let go of anything she owned just at present. Her wet jacket smoked in the fire’s thick heat. Her skirts were heavy with damp. We were pretty well all burnt out, she said. Adair still did not know whether it was smarter to appease these women for the present or fight them right off. She did not know what would work. She had never met people like this.

  They was burnt out. The stout woman, Cloris, shook her head. Why, fancy that. Just burnt right out. Somebody come along and set they house on fire.

  But the rain put it out.

  Well, fancy that, said Cloris. She smirked a little but in reality did not know what to say to that. It seemed the work of a benign Providence, didn’t it.

  Adair said, God sent the rain and put it out, because the Union Militia who stole everything are bound for the devil’s kingdom. She stared at Cloris. They are going to drown at the crossing of the Current River. You will be able to see their faces underwater.

  See here! said Cloris. I believe that is disloyal!

  Adair kept her chin in the air and turned her black eyes from one woman to another. See if it don’t happen. She tried to look confident and evil, the sort of person no one wanted to cross.

  Is she a-talking against the Union? This was from a very old lady wrapped in a striped blanket. She inhabited the far shadows against the wall. Is she a-talking against the Union?

  How would we even know? said the redheaded woman. What goes on down there? They ain’t nothing down there but iggerant savages.

  And I’m one of them, said Adair. I dare any of you to lay a hand on me. She stood and waited.

  Well, well! We bunk out on these straw pallets! said the actress. If that’s what she was. Adair had never met an actress before, had never seen an entertainment upon the stage. The actress had bright red lips and cheeks, a white skin and her eyelids were sooty. Most of us are in here unjustly imprisoned. I was arrested myself on the charge of theft. I was hungry.

  You just steal out of habit, said the redheaded woman.

  We beat people who steal in here, said Cloris. Any information we get, we keep it to ourselves. If you get yourself a package of dainties you got to share some. That’s the rules. She stepped two steps toward Adair and grinned. Her teeth were yellow as if she had slaked herself on limestone.

  All right, said Adair.

  So you just open up that carpet sack and show us what you got in there.

  I don’t think I will, said Adair.

  Cloris stepped up to Adair so quick she could not react and struck Adair broadside across the cheekbones with a fist, yelling There! there! She hit her twice before Adair could even fall, fast as a copperhead.

  Adair fell with her hands out and skidded on the floor, tearing skin from the heels of both hands. She heard her dress rip, the bodice tearing loose from the skirt.

  Cloris regarded her own thick fist. That’s from workin’ in the Auxvasse silver diggins, she said.

  Adair got back to her feet in an instant, her skirts swinging around her. She looked around for something to throw at the woman or hit her with.

  Do you all just take this from this woman? Adair called to the rest of them. Her voice shook. Nobody moved. Adair’s hat had fallen onto the floor and her hair was coming down. It spilled out in a confusion of black hanks, a mass of it all down her back. She knew if the stout woman could get those leathern hands into her hair, she would be in dire trouble. The woman would break her neck. Adair twisted her hair into a hank and jammed it into her collar.

  The other women stood back. Rhoda Cobb retreated with her hand in front of her mouth and her mouth in an O. Adair reached then and pulled a heavy flaming stick from the fire.

  Come on, then, she said. If you want anything I got, come and take it. Cloris laughed and looked around at the other women, who dutifully laughed too. Cloris stepped two steps to Adair’s right, to the fire, as if she would back Adair into the shadows. Adair turned quickly and then realized the big woman was putting the fire behind herself to blind Adair with the light of it. The terrier barked like a mechanical thing.

  Adair drew the heavy stick back like a baseball bat and took two steps forward and swung. She smashed it into the stout woman’s uplifted arm and sparks flew from the flaming end and shattered over their skirts. When she struck it made a cracking sound on Cloris’s forearm. Cloris shouted several syllables that were not in any language Adair knew and reached and took the burning end of the stick and tore it from Adair’s grasp.

  Stop! Stop! Rhoda Cobb took hold of Adair around the waist and began backing away with her, and two other women jumped in between them.

  The stout woman stood holding her forearm with her burnt hand. Adair shrugged herself loose from the grip of the actress and the girl from Danville Academy.

  I don’t know how long I can stand listening to you tell me what to do, said Adair.

  Rhoda put out both hands. Everybody better sit down before the matron comes, she said. I don’t know if you all want something to eat tomorrow but I do.

  Adair put her carpet-sack down on the pallet, which she saw was the thinnest one of all, and sat down on it. She was shaking with small, violent tremors of rage and fear. She sat very still and upright to try to contain herself. Slowly, like hens settling on their poles at night in the confinement of the fowl house, the women sank on their skirts and wrapped hands around their knees. The black-and-tan terrier leapt into Cloris’s lap and stared at Adair.

  There was a long silence and out in the city the great bell in the tower of the St. Louis Cathedral rang out ten.

  Get that girl to sing something. Cloris waved a hand from her pallet by the fire. Or play that whistle she’s got. She blew on her burnt palm. I’ll settle things with you before long. Kisia, sing. The air inside the General Ward shook like a lazy jack from the tensions among them all.

  Levina, the blonde actress, said, Kisia, honey, sing us something. She stroked Kisia’s hair. My little niece here is just like my own child, and if we’d of had a chanct she would have sung on the stage.

  The girl sat up from the pallet. Her face was pale as oatmeal, dotted with a few freckles, her hair braided with knotted yarns. Her face was light boned and drawn, her eyes deep-set and of some dark color. She began to sing. Her voice was clear and strong, with a wild, vital vibrato.

  It was in old Wexford Town

  The judge come from afar

  A fair young lad with a tender heart

  Stood prisoner at the b
ar.

  Kisia sang four verses and then drifted off the last notes at the end. Then the girl lay down in her dusty homespun dress and she covered herself and her aunt with a woolen blanket.

  Adair lay and watched the dying fire. She was sleepless and vigilant under her shawl and the extra dress. She lay against the wall as close to the windows as she could get despite the cold for she was shut in and trapped and thus her deepest fear had come about.

  Adair drew the Log Cabin quilt out of its linen wrapping and examined it in the firelight, now that they were all asleep. She studied it with intense interest. The hearths were all velvets of varying reds. Carmine, scarlet, a garnet, a deep rose. Adair ran her dirtied fingers over the piecings in the vagrant light. There was a beautiful silk repeated over and over on the shadow side, which was dark brown with a figure in garnet that might have been the face of a clock. Adair spread her hand over one of the blocks as if over her home with its red velvet fire in the heart of her family, both living and dead.

  7

  For northerners . . . the enemy was neither the plantation-owner nor his slaves but poor southern white trash—“Pukes,” as northerners liked to call them. . . . Northern whites feared they too could be compelled back into a perceived impoverished barbarism, as they thought of the Pukes, away from the increasingly mature prosperity and moral tidiness by which northern freemen justified their individual existence and purpose of their society. Perhaps at some unacknowledged level there was something enticing about a wilder, unstructured life.

  Louisa Lovejoy wrote: “Think of this, my sisters in New Hampshire; pure-minded, intelligent ladies fleeing from fiends in human form whose brutal lust is infinitely more to be dreaded than death itself.” (Lovejoy to the Concord, N.H., Independent Democrat September 19, 1856, in “Letters of Louisa Lovejoy, 1856-64”) This beastly Puke attacked every civilized value. The beast must die.

  —FROM Inside War

  Missouri is known as the “Show Me State” supposedly for the proudly skeptical character of its natives. For some reason it is also known as the Puke State.

  —FROM Don’t Know Much About Geography, BY KENNETH C. DAVIS, AVON BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1992

  THE FORTUNE-TELLER WAS named Madame Rose. She sat on the floor beside the upside-down half hogshead, in the comforting shine of the fire. She drew a pack of cards from her coat pocket.

  She said, The cards care nothing for politics or the war of the Rebellion, nor General Lee nor General Meade. Only the war in the human heart. The forced marches of overweening emotions. The artillery of love. Piercings. Ambushes.

  The fortune-teller laid the cards out on the barrel top. They were a strange deck, elaborate with stormy, extravagant figures. Great suns and moons and Egyptian priestesses, things Adair had seen in Holland’s Pictorial History of the World.

  And this one, the Burning Tower, speaks of the passions that come first, and after the Burning Tower comes War. Marching. The cards tell us of the Lakes of Fire that lie within us, and this one, a smooth pool, see here, the dog drinks up the water and the water of this pool will cause him to become something that is half a man. She sniffed against a running cold and regarded the card. She was oblivious to the General Ward. Walking. Got a dog’s head upon his shoulders. He will weep and weep as he walks down toward Dougherty’s Tavern. He’s begging not to be made to drink anymore. And this is what crosses everybody, the Lovers, for they both join and disjoin again and again, and there is loss in the joining and pain in the separation. Life does not remain still, sometimes it is daft and makes no reason, but in every battle there are still moments. Her worn hands shifted the cards.

  The matron opened the barred door with a clanging of her keys. She was accompanied by two soldiers. The guards sat the heavy kettle of stew inside the General Ward and then backed out. Adair watched as the matron counted the number of women prisoners and then took out a dirty piece of paper and pencil stub from her skirt pocket and wrote something. Rhoda Lee had told Adair that the matron’s name was Buckley. The matron’s dress was made of a loud plaid in red and yellow and brown.

  Mrs. Buckley reached back and got a basket from a guard and set it inside too. Then she began to hand out tin bowls and spoons from yet another basket. She counted loudly as she handed them out. The matron was tall with knobby hands, and her fingers were covered with fawny rings.

  One two three four, she counted. Adair crowded up close, beside Rhoda.

  Oh Mrs. Buckley, she said in a firm voice. Mrs. Buckley, I want to send a letter to home.

  Six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve.

  Adair stood with ostentatious patience, her black hair sliding out of its braids and combs, now stiff as pasteboard with dirt. Her dress bagged at the waist where it had torn loose. She gripped the plaid shawl around her dress and jacket. I must send a letter, do you reckon that will be all right?

  No, said Mrs. Buckley. You’re not to be sending letters.

  I ain’t allowed letters? Adair stood and stared at her. I bet I am.

  Adair, I’ll tell you about the letters, let Mrs. Buckley do her job. Rhoda pulled at Adair’s sleeve.

  You’re not allowed anything at all until they look into your case. Major Neumann is in charge of your case. This prison is run by the provost marshal, girl. Mrs. Buckley then wadded up the newspaper from the basket and threw it toward the fire. One of the prostitutes snatched at it. She took the printed sheet and began to smooth it out with great care.

  You mean, the Missouri Union Militia?

  Those scumbags! Mrs. Buckley laughed. The Militia! No sir, this prison is run by the U.S. Army. If you’re goin to rant on about it, I’ll have that jacket of yours. Mrs. Buckley handed out the last bowl. Then she reached and took hold of the edge of Adair’s embroidered mandarin jacket between her fingers.

  Get your hands off of me, said Adair.

  Ssshhh, said Rhoda. Adair, be quiet.

  Take your dirty hands off me, said Adair. Adair reached up and shoved the matron’s hand away.

  The tall matron looked at Adair.

  Everyone else was silent.

  Well, miss, I think you and I had better learn to get along with each other.

  Adair paused. Good enough, I think so too, she said.

  Shake on it?

  All right, said Adair. She hesitated for a moment and then cautiously offered her hand. The tall woman in her bright plaid took it and crushed down with her considerable strength and Adair cried out. It seemed as though they were about to dance.

  Let go, said Adair. She knew she should not cry or fight back but stand there and show that she could take it. Let go of my hand.

  That’s what it takes to be a matron around here, Mrs. Buckley said. Then she jerked backward with all her strength and threw Adair to the floor.

  I am not unfair! Mrs. Buckley turned to the prison in general. I am not unhelpful to you dismal bitches! Am I?

  No, no, said the women. The guards laughed, but quietly.

  Adair got her legs underneath her, in her tangled skirts. She got up. Her head rang.

  You just keep your drawers on, you little Rebel bitch, said Mrs. Buckley. You’re going to be interrogated by the major before you get to write anything.

  THAT NIGHT WHEN most of the others were asleep she sat up in her blankets and took her piece of candle to the fire and lit it with a splinter. She looked in her little beaded bag for the tiny book of poems. She never read poems but there were blank pages in it. Then she tore out a flyleaf from Friendship’s Offering, and took up her pencil, and wrote a letter to her sisters at Dalton’s Store. It was very brief. She fell asleep with it in her hand.

  8

  As Missouri came under [Union] martial law, the Union military operated as the law enforcement agency during much of the war in most of the state, in effect superseding whatever civil legal structures remained in place. In such a position, the military had enormous discretionary power over civilians in the areas they controlled, unchecked by any truly effective appeals
system.

  —FROM Inside War

  Prisoner Mary Pitman testifying against Mrs. William J. Dixon, wife of the keeper of the St. Charles Street Prison for Women:

  “Forced Mrs. Carney, who was pregnant, to sew for the Dixon family and sleep in filthy rags. . . . on one occasion she demanded prisoner White’s new comforter. . . . Dixon then locked White in her room on half rations and without toilet facilities. . . . Dixon only allowed her to clean herself and her room when the Union Colonel who employed the Dixons came for one of his inspections. Dixon also arranged evenings alone in the parlor for one prisoner, Miss Warren, and Captain Keyser, a defense lawyer. One evening I saw her lying in his arms.”

  —INVESTIGATION OF THE ST. CHARLES STREET PRISON FOR WOMEN, ST. LOUIS, JANUARY 5, 1864, TWO OR MORE NAME FILE, 2635, RECORD GROUP 393, NA, QUOTED IN Inside War

  WHEN THEY WERE allowed out into the courtyard, Adair could hear the crowds in the streets with their tapestry of noises. People were flocking into the city in wagons, in streams of ragged folk, black and white, to get away from the incessant warring and burning in southeastern Missouri. Southerners who finally realized the only safe place was to the north, among northern civilians. They were all becoming street people, peddlers, ditch diggers, people who had once had homes.

  The winter air was still and unmoving, but warm air flowed out of the barred windows of the General Ward and stirred young Kisia’s frail hair. The girl held Adair’s hand in her own. I can come and go as I want, said Kisia. I am just here because my aunt was jailed for stealing and I ain’t got nobody else to care for me.

  Adair patted her hand and they walked on.

  How were you disloyal? Kisia asked. Were you spying or cutting telegraph lines?

  I killed a Yankee soldier, Adair said. I had a woman witch his horse and it threw him and broke his neck. He was a captain of artillery.