Call to Arms

by Frederick Nolan

  ‘My God!’ Abby said. ‘My God, Travis, your face!’

  From the hairline to the jaw, in a ragged, ugly arc, a terrible scar marred the right-hand side of Travis’s face. It drew his right eye into a leering wink, and the right side of his mouth down into a snarl. His bleached-blond hair was streaked with pure white and he looked haggard and worn.

  ‘The prodigal returns!’ he shouted. ‘Shafe from a field o’ barrel!’

  ‘You’re drunk!’ Sam snapped.

  ‘Not drunk!’ Travis said, lurching. ‘Not drunk if you can lie onna floor without holding carpet, ‘swhat I allus say.’

  ‘For God’s sake, come inside!’ Abby said, her self-possession returning. ‘And stop shouting. What happened to – to your face?’

  ‘Ah, scarsa barrel,’ Travis said. ‘Come on, you!’

  He hauled on the rope in his hand and a stupendously ugly bull terrier appeared. ‘Come on, Byron!’

  ‘That’s the damned ugliest beast I ever saw!’ Sam said.

  ‘Thassa whole idea,’ Travis said, stumbling to a chair. ‘I needed something that looked worse inna morning than I do. You got a drink around the place, Pa?’

  ‘You’ve had enough,’ Sam said.

  ‘They ain’t made that much,’ Travis said. His bleary eyes met Louise’s. A slight frown touched his face. ‘And how is the love of my life?’ he said.

  ‘None the better for seeing you,’ Louise said, her chin coming up.

  ‘You look – different,’ Travis said. ‘You even talk different.’

  ‘I am different,’ Louise said. ‘I’ve got a decent life now, Travis. Something to look forward to.’ Her voice had a pleading note in it. Don’t spoil it, please. Don’t spoil everything just when it’s all looking so good, she seemed to be saying.

  ‘Well, well,’ Travis said, and that baiting mockery they all remembered so well was back in his voice. ‘So the little whore’s gone respectable, has she?’

  ‘Don’t do that, Travis!’ Sam said sharply. ‘Louise is trying to forget all that. We all are!’

  ‘Tryna forget it?’ Travis said, getting to his feet. He stood in front of Louise, glaring at her. ‘Tryna forget, are you, whore? Dancin’ buck nekkid onna shable for drunken trappers? Jumpin’ ina bed with two—’

  The sound of the slap was shocking and loud. The marks of Louise’s fingers stood out vividly on Travis’ face for a moment. Then he threw back his head and laughed wildly, almost madly.

  ‘What do you know?’ he said. ‘The bitch hit me!’ Without warning he backhanded Louise across the room. She reeled backwards, hit the wall, and slid down it to a sitting position, blood trickling from her broken mouth, her eyes fuddled.

  ‘Goddamned whore!’ he shouted. ‘No goddamned whore hits me!’

  Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him around …

  ‘Damn you, Travis, you crazy bastard!’ he shouted. He started to say something else, but before he got the words formed Travis hit him. Sam reeled back, fell over a chair, slumped to the floor, his face stricken. He tried to get up, but his legs were all splayed. Blood pattered from his nose, staining his shirt. His eyes had the look of a kicked dog.

  ‘Nobody’s gonna hit me!’ Travis shouted. ‘Nobody inna world’s ever gonna hit me again. Bassard with a sword hit me at Get’sburg! Hit me! Shot him off his damned horse, chopped him to bits with his goddamned sword!’ The light in his eye was wild, insane. He was reliving something none of them could ever imagine.

  ‘Travis,’ Louise whispered. ‘Please. The babies—’

  ‘Babies,’ he said, frowning. ‘Thass right. Babies, thass what I came for.’

  ‘What?’ Abby said. She was helping Sam to his feet. He slumped into a chair, a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding nose. The stricken look was still in his eyes. He looked at Travis as if he were some strange kind of alien creature.

  ‘Gonna takem with me,’ Travis said. ‘Babies?’

  ‘I had twins, Travis,’ Louise said. ‘Their names are Joab and Jonathan.’

  ‘Joab’n Jon’than,’ he muttered. ‘Twins.’ He grinned, swaying a little. ‘Twins, eh?’ He looked at Louise, ‘Gonna go back to Texas,’ he said. Louise had got to her feet and wiped the smeared blood off her face, ‘Wanna come?’

  ‘No,’ Louise said.

  ‘You’re m’wife,’ Travis said, frowning again. ‘Whizzer thou goesh.’

  ‘No, Travis,’ Louise said. ‘That’s finished. That was finished the day you walked out on me in New York!’

  ‘Gave you the money, di’n’ I?’ he said. ‘Had to enlist to get it. This—’, He touched the livid scar on his face. ‘This what I got!’

  ‘Travis, I’m sorry you got hurt,’ Louise said. ‘But I’m not going with you. Not to Texas or anywhere else!’

  ‘You’ll goddamned do what I goddamned say, whore!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Travis—’ Abby said. ‘Listen to me—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Travis snapped. ‘I don’t want to hear a word from you. Unnerstan’ me? Not a fuck’n word!’ His eyes menaced her and a chill touched Abby’s heart. He was going to say it. That mad light in his eye meant only one thing. He was going to tell Sam.

  ‘All right!’ Travis said, lurching to the door and opening it. ‘Don’t need you anyway, whore! Don’t need anyone! I’ll take the kids an’ we’ll manage without you!’

  ‘No, Travis!’ Louise said. She ran across and tried to stop him from leaving the room. He pushed her away and she fell awkwardly, her head striking the brass fender around the fireplace. She lay quite still.

  ‘Whore!’ Travis said and turned to leave the room. He found Abby barring his way. ‘Don’t try to stop me,’ he growled. ‘I mean it – don’t try to stop me!’

  ‘You’ll not touch those children!’ Abby shouted. ‘You hear me, you crazy devil? You leave those children alone!’

  ‘Get out of my way, mother!’ Travis snapped, the warning clear in the crazed blue eyes.

  ‘No!’ Abby said defiantly. ‘No!’ He looked at her for a moment and a smile of triumph touched his lips. He turned back into the room and stood looking down at Sam.

  ‘Look at me!’ Travis said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you!’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Sam said. There was a broken sound in his voice, as though he did not care about anything anymore. ‘Nothing you could say would interest me.’

  ‘This will,’ Travis said. ‘Won’t it, mother?’ He looked around for Abby’s reaction and as he did Abby hit him with the poker that she had picked up from the fireplace. It bent slightly around Travis’ forehead and he went sideways, bouncing off the wall and falling to his knees, groaning.

  ‘Jesus, Abby, no!’ Sam shouted as she raised the poker again. ‘You’ll kill him!’

  ‘Get out of my home!’ Abby screamed. ‘Get out of my home!’

  Travis looked up at her, his eyes clouded. He saw her upraised arm and shielded his head with his arms. She hit him again. They heard the bones crack and he howled like an animal and fell to the floor. Abby kicked him.

  ‘Out!’ she shouted. ‘Out, out, out!’

  Travis crawled, groaning, into the hallway. Abby kicked him again, still shouting. Sam lurched out to wrest the poker from her hand before she hit Travis with it again. Travis was a ghastly sight, blood pouring from the wound in his head, his left arm trailing crookedly. He squirmed towards the door with the squalling, kicking figure of Abby pursuing him. Travis scrambled to his feet as Abby threw open the door. His face was black with hatred. He lurched at Abby with his good hand curled into a claw.

  ‘No!’ Sam said.

  Travis took another step and Sam fired the pistol he had taken from the drawer in the hall table into the floor. It made an enormous sound in the enclosed space. Travis stopped and looked at Sam through the curling gunsmoke.

  ‘She’s cheated you,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you? She’s cheated you all these years!’

  ‘If you say another word, boy, I
’m going to shoot you,’ Sam said.

  ‘She gulled you!’ Travis shouted. ‘She foisted another man’s son on you, you blubber-bellied moron!’

  Quite dispassionately, Sam shot the top off Travis’ ear. Travis screeched with pain and shock and looked at Sam as if Sam had suddenly turned into Satan. For the first time there was real fear in his eyes.

  ‘You – no, you wouldn’t … ?’ he whispered.

  ‘One more word, boy, and I will!’ Sam said. The gun held in his hand was rock steady. Travis stared at it. The one thing Sam was very, very good at was shooting.

  ‘Get his dog!’ Sam snapped to the maid, May, who was standing on the stairs, her eyes wide with curiosity and alarm. She scurried into the kitchen and dragged the animal into the hallway.

  ‘Take it!’ Sam said. ‘And don’t come back. Don’t ever come back, Travis!’

  Travis stood in the street, the whitened blond hair gleaming in the light spilling out of the house. He threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘You dumb old bastard!’ he shouted. ‘You always were a dumb old bastard!’

  ‘I won’t tell you again,’ Sam said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going!’ Travis said. ‘But you’ll see me again, all of you! You’ll see me again – in Hell!’ He yanked on the rope and the dog followed his lurching progress down the street. Sam shut the door and laid the pistol on the table. His hands were trembling. He put his arm around Abby. Her face was stricken as she looked up at him.

  ‘It’s all right, Abby,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘But, Sam?’ she whispered. ‘Those things he said …’

  ‘I knew, Abby,’ he told her. ‘I’ve known for years.’

  She stared at him incredulously. ‘You knew?’

  Louise came out into the hallway, rubbing her head. ‘Is everything all right?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Abby said. The pain at the top of her arm was suddenly a great, booming immensity. She felt her whole heart leap inside her chest as if it had burst like a boiler. She turned to Sam to tell him what had happened but before she could, a swirling redness enveloped her mind.

  ‘Abby!’ Sam shouted as she slid to the floor. ‘Abby, what is it?’

  Her eyes opened, and for a moment they were filled with a beautiful sadness. ‘Sean?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

  She died two hours later without ever having regained consciousness.

  Twenty-Eight – The Story of Jedediah Strong

  September - November 1864

  ‘Hold it right there, Reb, or I’ll blow your fuck’n head off!’ the soldier shouted. Jed turned slowly. The soldier was pointing a carbine at his head and Jed almost groaned at the irony: it was a Carver seven-shooter.

  ‘I’m not a Reb,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to get back to my outfit. ‘

  ‘Come on up here where I can see you,’ the soldier said, and as he spoke others appeared from the trees behind him. Jed’s hopes sank. He might have been able to talk his way around one man, but not a whole damned patrol. The River Chattahoochee gleamed invitingly ten yards away. Once across it, he would have had a chance of skirting the Federal troops.

  ‘All right, what’s your name?’ a tall man in the uniform of a captain asked him officiously.

  ‘Jedediah Strong, sir,’ Jed said. ‘I’m with Twenty Corps, Wood’s brigade.’

  ‘Who’s your division commander?’

  ‘General Butterfield, sir.’

  ‘And your regimental commander?’

  It was no use. Jed had picked up enough information from the soldiers he had met to be able to bluff his way past a few casual questions. But this sharp-eyed officer wasn’t going to be quite that easy to fool.

  ‘I thought as much!’ the man snapped. ‘All right, take him in!’

  The privates marched Jed back the way he had come. They were quite amused at his attempt to lie his way out of trouble.

  ‘What outfit you really from, Johnny?’ one of them asked, as they tramped along the path towards their camp.

  ‘First Virginia Cavalry,’ Jed said.

  ‘Didn’t know they was down these parts,’ the second soldier said, but he did not ask any further questions. The camp was up ahead; Jed cursed his luck. To have made it this far and then be taken!

  In a way, he supposed, he could blame all his troubles on old Uncle Billy Sherman. Soon after Grant launched his big push south at the beginning of May, Sherman had decided to march the hundred miles from Chattanooga to Atlanta, lighting his way by the fires of Southern towns and plantations. With an army of a hundred thousand men, which included twenty divisions of infantry, four of cavalry, and over two hundred and fifty field guns, bearing down on his ragbag army of around forty thousand, Old Joe Johnston could do little except fall back.

  ‘In this army,’ one Confederate soldier with whom Jed had shared hardtack said, ‘you tell a captain by the fact he has only got one hole in his pants. A lieutenant’s got two. An’ a private ain’t got a seat to his pants at all!’

  Sherman’s advance had speared into Georgia, with Johnston bloodying him badly for each mile he advanced. Richmond was not impressed by Johnston’s fighting retreat and in July he was relieved, to be replaced by the reckless, one-armed, one-legged Hood, who rode into battle strapped to his horse and was said to be crazy enough to attack Hell with a bucket of water.

  Now Atlanta was besieged, and Federal cannon battered it every hour of the day. And the Federal line extended right across the route that Jedediah had been taking south, more difficult to cross than any natural barrier.

  He was marched to the provost-marshal’s tent and from there to a compound full of other prisoners. There was no food and only a bucket of brackish water with a dipper in it to allay the merciless heat of the sun. Some of the prisoners had made shade by putting their uniform tunics on sticks and squatting beneath .the awning thus made.

  After about three hours two guards came into the compound and called Jed’s name. He stepped forward. The other prisoners looked on indifferently.

  ‘Where they taking me?’ Jed asked one of the soldiers who had come to fetch him.

  ‘Colonel wants to talk to you,’ one of them grunted.

  ‘Did he say why?’

  The private grinned. ‘How long you been in the army, Johnny? You oughta know colonels don’t talk to the likes of us!’

  There was a wooden hut off to one side of the camp, a ramshackle affair of planks and logs that might once have been a forester’s hut. It was to this hut that Jed was marched. Inside, sitting at a folding table covered with papers, sat a Federal colonel, his bald head bowed over his work. He looked up as Jed was brought in.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Look what the cat dragged in!’

  It was Jonah Harvey. The beaky nose, the deep-set brown eyes were as Jed remembered. Jonah’s thinning hair was all but completely gone. He was a little thicker around the middle than Jed remembered him from Texas but just as stoop-shouldered, just as reticent-looking.

  ‘Jonah,’ Jed said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘What the Hell are you doing this far south?’ Jonah said. ‘The captain who brought you in said you were First Virginia Cavalry. That’s old Stonewall Jackson’s outfit. They’re fighting up north of Richmond somewhere.’

  ‘I deserted, Jonah,’ Jed said. ‘I was on my way to Texas.’

  ‘I see,’ Harvey said. He looked disappointed, as though Jed had let him down personally. He pursed his lips, and leaned back in his chair, frowning slightly.

  ‘We’re sending prisoners back to Chattanooga,’ he said. ‘Then north to prison. I don’t want to send you to prison, Jed. For old time’s sake.’

  Jed said nothing. Jonah was eyeing him speculatively, as if wondering whether to say what was in his mind. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘What was your rank when you – left the army?’

  ‘Colonel of cavalry,’ Jed said.

  Jonah smiled. ‘You didn’t do any better than I,
then.’

  ‘Why should I have done?’

  ‘I always thought you’d go to the top, Jed. That you were a better soldier than me.’

  ‘No,’ Jed said. ‘No, Jonah.’ He was thinking of a talk they’d had, a long time ago, after the fight with El Gato at Brownsville in Texas. Jonah had confessed to being scared before the fight. He had been surprised when Jed told him that he was, too, that everyone was.

  ‘This is what I thought we might do, Jed,’ Jonah said slowly. ‘You’re no longer a Confederate soldier. If you’ll swear the oath of allegiance to the Union, I’ll talk to Division. I’m sure they’ll sanction your serving with us.’

  ‘You want me to become a Federal soldier?’ Jed said. ‘Turn my coat?’

  ‘Join the winning side, Jed,’ Harvey replied. ‘The South is done for.’ He saw Jed’s hesitation and misread it. ‘Jed, listen to me. I’m making a very special exception of you. If I put in a personal recommendation, Division will endorse it. You might even get a commission.’

  ‘They’re giving commissions to one-armed men in your army?’ Jed asked.

  ‘I wasn’t going to ask. Where did it happen?’

  ‘Gettysburg,’ Jed said.

  ‘I was at Vicksburg,’ Jonah said, as if to exculpate himself. ‘And the answer is, yes. We’ve got lots of officers who’ve had amputations. You’re otherwise fit?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jed grinned. ‘Just lousy.’

  ‘Jed, you’re stalling,’ Jonah Harvey said. ‘I want an answer.’

  ‘And if the answer is no?’

  Jonah’s face hardened and for the first time hostility lit the dark eyes. ‘That really would be very stupid!’ he said.

  ‘One more question,’ Jedediah said. ‘What happened to my pistol?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Jonah said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I took it off El Gato,’ Jed replied. ‘I’d like to have it back.’

  ‘You’ll swear, then?’ Jonah looked relieved. He reached into a foot-locker, behind him and pulled out the great pistol. He handed it to Jed.