by John Jakes
The man on the packing box was staring out the window, southeast, toward the monuments in the city’s Jewish Burying Ground, which was separate from Shockoe Cemetery. His loathing was evident. With her voice lowered, Mrs. Pember said, “Found unconscious in front of the State House, some weeks ago.”
Pale and already exhausted by the ordeal of his rounds, the doctor studied the man with mingled disgust and sorrow. Once, the patient might have had a certain physical presence; he was tall enough. Now he looked decayed, shrunken. Skin striations indicated obesity at some past time. Privation had pared away all the fat except for a sizable paunch.
The patient’s left shoulder tilted lower than his right. He was barefoot and wore one of the hospital’s coarse gowns beneath a filthy old velvet robe donated to the Almshouse. On his head sat a battered plug hat. He glared at Mrs. Pember and the doctor.
Still whispering, the matron said, “He claims he’s in constant pain.”
“He looks it. Any history?”
“Only what he chooses to tell us. Sometimes he talks about falling from a high bluff into the James River. Then again he says his horse threw him at Five Forks, after the Yankees broke through General Eppa Hunton’s lines. He says he was with the reinforcements General Longstreet rushed from Richmond, too late to save—”
“I know all about the fall of Richmond,” the doctor interrupted, testy. “Does he have any papers?”
“Sir, how many men have papers since the government burned everything and ran?”
The doctor shrugged to acknowledge the point. He approached the patient. “Well, sir, how are we today?”
“Captain. It’s Captain.”
“Captain what?”
A long pause. “I can’t remember.”
Mrs. Pember stepped forward. “Last week, he gave his name as Erasmus Bellingham. The day before yesterday, he said it was Ezra Dayton.”
The patient stared at her with strange yellow-brown eyes that held a hint of malice. The doctor said, “Please tell me how you feel this morning, sir.”
“Anxious to be out of here.”
“In good time. At least do Mrs. Pember the courtesy of taking off that filthy hat when you’re indoors.” He reached for the plug hat. The matron uttered a warning cry as the patient jumped up and threw the packing box at the doctor with ferocious force.
The box sailed over the doctor’s head, thudding in the aisle. The patient lunged. The doctor jumped back, yelling for orderlies. Two country boys in stained smocks raced down the aisle, rushed the man, restrained him, and wrestled him onto his cot. Even with youth and strength in their favor, the patient’s flailing fists battered them badly. He hit one orderly so hard, blood oozed from his ear.
Finally, they subdued him, using rope to lash his wrists and ankles to the iron cot frame. The doctor watched from the aisle, shaken. “That man’s a lunatic.”
“All the other doctors would agree, sir. He’s positively the worst case in the Almshouse.”
“Violent—” The doctor shuddered. “A man like that will never get any better.”
“It’s such a pity, the way the war damaged them.”
Angered by the attack, he said, “These wards are too crowded to accommodate pity, Mrs. Pember. When he calms down, force laudanum on him, and a strong purgative. Tomorrow put him out on the street. Use the space for someone we can help.”
The fire set during the flight of the Confederate government’s highest officials on the night of April 3 had swept from Capitol Square to the river, burning away the commercial heart of Richmond—banks, stores, warehouses, printing plants—something like a thousand buildings in twenty square blocks. Even the sprawling Gallego Flour Mill complex was gone, as were the rail trestles over the James.
Few who walked through the burned zone in succeeding months forgot the sight. It was like prowling the surface of some world out among the stars, a world both alien and tantalizingly familiar. Its hills were mounds of brick and broken limestone. Black timbers were the charred bones of strange and mighty beasts. Sections of buildings stood like the grave markers of the alien race.
Two nights after the Almshouse incident, the patient came stumbling through the mammoth Gallego ruins between the millrace and the Kanawha Canal. He’d been given the shabbiest of used clothing and turned out. He would have paid back those who did it, but for the fact that more important prey demanded his attention.
This evening he was enjoying great lucidity. He recalled in detail his fantasy of parading in the Grand Review. He also remembered the identities of those who had kept him from taking his rightful place in the military history of his country.
Orry Main. George Hazard.
God, how much he owed those two. Ever since they were all cadets at West Point, Hazard and Main had regularly conspired to thwart him. Year after year, one or the other had turned up to interfere with his career. They were responsible for a dizzying succession of falls from grace:
Damage to his reputation in the Mexican War. Charges of cowardice at Shiloh Church. Punitive transfer to New Orleans, and desertion to Washington. Failure in Lafayette Baker’s secret police unit, and, finally, desertion to the South, whose people and principles he’d always despised.
All of it could be blamed on Main and Hazard. Their vindictive natures. Their secret campaigns to spread calumnies that had ruined him.
Sometime before he woke in the Almshouse, though exactly how long before, he couldn’t remember, he had made inquiries about Main in Richmond. A veteran had recalled Colonel Orry Main’s dying on the Petersburg lines. His other enemy, Hazard, was presumably alive. Just as important, each man certainly had a family. He remembered he’d tried to injure one of the Mains in Texas, before the war. Charles—that was his name. Surely there were many other relatives—
He tried to push all that out of mind temporarily and concentrate on the Gallego ruins. After an hour’s search he located what he believed to be the right spot. He knelt and dug through the rubble, hearing the sound of swiftly running water. It poured over a giant mill wheel that no longer turned. Like most everything in the South, the wheel was broken.
Sharp fragments of brick hurt his fingers as he dug. Soon the fingers were covered with dust and blood. But he found what he’d buried. His memory hadn’t abandoned him altogether.
Clutching the rolled-up oil painting, he moved to a rectangle of brilliant moonlight, there brushing dust from his treasure. The moonlight fell through a window frame high in a jagged section of brick wall. As he brushed the painting, the awl of pain pierced his forehead and began to bore in. Pinpoint lights began to flash—
He remembered his name.
He said it aloud. Beyond three walls standing at right angles to one another, a couple of black squatters by a bonfire turned toward the noise. One ambled over to investigate. After a look at the face of the man in the moonlit rectangle, he left quickly.
With greater power and confidence, the man said it again.
“Elkanah Bent.”
Thin, bitter smoke drifted along the spectral walls. The smoke choked him. He coughed while trying to recall the face in the painting … trying …
Yes. A quadroon whore.
Where had he gotten her portrait?
Yes. A New Orleans sporting house.
That cued an even more important memory—the purpose of his life. He had redefined it, dedicated himself to it, weeks ago, then forgotten it during the bad period in the Almshouse.
His purpose was to make war.
The other war, the war to free the evil nigger and raise him to the level of the superior white man, was over, and lost. His war was not. He had not yet begun to marshal his forces, his strategic cunning, his superior intelligence, to make war on the families of …
Of…
Main.
Hazard.
To make war, and to make them suffer by killing loved ones—old, young—one by one. A sweet, slow campaign of obliteration, carried out by the American Bonaparte.
“Bonaparte,” he cried to the moon and the smoke. “Bonaparte’s masterpiece!”
The squatters left their wind-tattered fire and melted into the dark.
He tapped his plug hat to seat it firmly on his head and squared his tilted shoulders as best he could. The claw-hammer coat they’d given him shone with age and grease in the moonlight. He executed a perfect military pivot and marched, like a man who had never been ill a moment. He strode into the sharp-edged shadow cast by another great broken wall, and there he temporarily vanished.
17
THE JACKSON TRADING COMPANY rode toward Black Kettle’s village surrounded by Scar and his braves. The Indians had relieved the white men of their weapons. Charles had refused to surrender his at first, but he relented when Wooden Foot insisted it was for their own good. “Don’t give ’em no excuse to kill us, Charlie.”
The day darkened. Wind drove the snow into Charles’s face with stinging speed. Suddenly he knew the nature of the wispy fringe on Scar’s coat.
“I should have recognized it. I saw scalps in Texas. That’s hair,” he said to Wooden Foot.
“You’re right. A Dog Society man can wear that kind of decoration if he counts enough coup and kills enough enemies.”
“Some of the fringe is yellow. There are no blond Indians.”
“I told you, Charlie, we bought a load of grief this time.”
The trader’s attention jumped back and forth between Charles and Fen. Straining in the travois poles, the collie barked and barked. Two braves rode up alongside, raising their lances to throw.
“Don’t you do that,” Wooden Foot yelled, reddening. The braves laughed and veered away, satisfied with the reaction.
The Cheyennes kept toying with their prisoners: riding close, touching them with their hands and coup sticks. Scar galloped next to the pack mules and with his lance slashed another canvas bag. Triangular pony beads cascaded to the snowy ground.
Charles raised his hand. Wooden Foot grabbed it to restrain him.
“Our hair’s worth more’n the goods. We just got to put up with them till we figure some way out.”
First they came upon eight boys in fur robes stalking game with blunt arrows. Over the next rise they discovered the horse herd, around a hundred ponies, guarded by more boys. A gentle slope ran down to the Cimarron, where tipis stood along the snowy banks. The wind brought the odor of wood smoke.
Quietly, Wooden Foot said, “No matter what they do, don’t get mad. Keep your wits, and if I give you a cue real sudden, take it.” Charles nodded, though the trader’s meaning wasn’t entirely clear.
Riding into the village, they created a stir. Old men, mothers with infants in cradleboards on their back, girls, children, dogs poured from the tipis and crowded around, chattering and pointing, and not in a hostile way, Charles thought. Scar was the hostile one. He jumped from his pony and signed for them to do the same.
Charles dismounted. He noticed buffalo hides pegged to the ground, and others stretched on vertical frames, but because of the bad weather, the outdoor work of the village had stopped.
As he looked around, his eyes made contact with the large, intensely curious ones of a girl in the crowd. She had regular, even delicate features, and shining black hair. She was about fifteen, he judged, starting to look away. She gave him a quick smile to show that not all in the village were his enemies.
Scar’s braves crowded around. Wooden Foot took the offensive with a flurry of signs and shouting. “Moketavato! I’ll speak to him.”
“I told you, Black Kettle is not here,” Scar said. “There are no peace chiefs to help you; only war chiefs.” He spoke to his men. “Take their goods.”
One of the Indians, in a cavalry fatigue blouse, started to slash open Charles’s saddlebags. Charles bolted forward to stop him. Wooden Foot yelled a warning, and someone behind him bashed his head with a rifle butt, knocking his hat off. A second blow drove him to his knees. The crowd exclaimed. Fen growled. Scar kicked the collie, making Fen yelp and snap.
The Dog Men swarmed around the pack animals. They cut and tore the bags holding the iron scrapers, hoe blades, tin pots. The crowd pressed forward. Playing to them, Scar ordered his men to distribute the trade goods.
Women and children pushed forward and clamored for this item or that. The young girl was one of the few who held back, Charles noticed as he picked himself up. Here and there, someone’s face reproached the display of greed, but most of the villagers paid no attention. Wooden Foot gazed around him with a peculiar expression, as though he had never seen tipis or Cheyennes before.
Suddenly Scar announced, “These whites are devils, who plan to do us harm. Their goods, and their lives, belong to us.” His men made gruff noises to agree.
Wooden Foot lost his bemused look. “Scar, this just isn’t right. It isn’t the way of the People.”
Scar squared his shoulders. “It is mine.”
“No-good little shit,” Wooden Foot said, loud enough to be heard. Scar understood, too. He gestured.
“Kill them.”
Charles’s stomach seemed to plummet a half mile. Wooden Foot flashed him a sharp look, snatched Boy’s hand, and lunged. The sudden move surprised everyone, allowing the trader and Boy to bowl through between two Dog Men. “Run for it, Charlie. This way.”
Charles ran for it.
An iron-bladed trade hatchet, hurled by a Dog Soldier, whisked by his ear. Women and old men screamed. Charles darted between two frightened grandfathers and out of the crowd. He didn’t understand Wooden Foot’s sudden show of cowardice. What good was running? They’d only be caught again.
Wooden Foot thrust his arm out to indicate a large heavily decorated tipi down a lane to his left. In front of it, snow melting on his gray hair and crossed arms, stood a heavy Indian with a dark, seamed face. Wooden Foot dived past him into the tipi, dragging Boy after him.
Charles kept running. He heard and felt Scar’s men close behind. Of all the stupidity, he thought. Cornered in a tipi. Wooden Foot had lost his mind.
He raced toward the old Cheyenne, expecting to be stopped. The gray-haired Indian flicked his eye at the tipi hole and nodded. Feeling hopeless, Charles nevertheless jumped through the oval opening. The Indian immediately stepped in front of it.
A small fire in a shallow pit gave off acrid smoke but little warmth. Crouching in the cold gloom, Charles picked up a stone-headed hatchet lying near him.
“Put that away, Charlie.”
“What in hell’s wrong with you? They’re right outside.”
Angry voices verified it. Scar’s was loudest. While he snarled, the older Indian spoke in a calm, low voice. The snarls took on a note of frustration. “We don’t need weapons now,” Wooden Foot said. He pointed over his head.
Hanging there, Charles saw what appeared to be a hat fashioned from the head of a buffalo. A pattern of blue beads decorated it and the horns were bright with painted designs.
“That’s the Buffalo Hat,” Wooden Foot said. “Sacred, like the four Medicine Arrows. The hat wards off sickness, and if some fool steals it the buffalo will go away for good. That old priest outside, he guards it day and night. Anybody who shelters where the hat hangs can’t be molested.”
“You mean this is a sanctuary, like a church?”
“Yep. Scar can’t touch us.”
Charles shivered, cooling down as his sweat dried. He felt unexpectedly disgruntled. “Look, the war cured me of inviting fights. But if a fight starts, it galls me to run.”
“You mean you think comin’ in here’s yella.”
“Well—”
While the priest continued to argue with Scar, Wooden Foot said, “Didn’t I tell you that you got to turn your notions upside down out here? Why do you think Scar’s so mad? We just did the biggest thing—I mean the very biggest—any Dog Society man can do. We was about to be beat, murdered, and we got away. That’s bigger’n the biggest coup.”
The Buffalo Hat priest stooped and entered the tipi. T
he old Indian smiled in a friendly, admiring way. Charles began to believe what his partner had just said.
The trader and the priest greeted one another with sign. “Half Bear,” Wooden Foot said, nodding and smiling. The priest said something in Cheyenne. To Charles the trader explained, “He just said my name. Man-with-Bad-Leg.” To Half Bear: “This yere’s my partner Charlie, and you remember my nephew, Boy. You know Scar didn’t tell it straight, Half Bear. We always come peaceably, just to trade.”
Charles understood when Half Bear said, “I know.”
“When’s Black Kettle gettin’ back?”
The old Indian shrugged. “Today. Tomorrow. You stay here. Eat something. Be safe.”
“Mighty fine with me, Half Bear.” Wooden Foot slapped Boy’s shoulder. Boy grinned. Charles did his best to rearrange his notions, the way Wooden Foot had advised.
“My dog’s still hitched to the travois, Half Bear.”
“I will bring him.”
“They took our guns and knives—”
“I will find those, too.”
The priest left. Soon Fen lay beside the fire, happily rolling in the dirt.
Charles had a lot of trouble believing that they’d covered themselves with honor by running. He continued to think about it while Half Bear served them berries and strips of smoked buffalo meat. After the meal, the priest arranged fur robes and woven headrests for their comfort.
Early next morning, Black Kettle rode in with a dozen braves. The members of the Jackson Trading Company, having rendered the inside of the tipi very fragrant out of natural necessity, were at last free to step into the open.
In the sunlight that had followed the snow, Cheyennes of all ages again surrounded them, including the pretty girl Charles had noticed. He found himself smiled at, patted, greeted with exclamations of “How!” which he interpreted as a word of approval. Of Scar he saw nothing.
Wooden Foot swelled up like an actor in front of a cheering audience. He grinned all over the place.
“No getting away from it, Charlie. We’re heroes.”