Coffee Bluff

by Willard White

wealth and status. Julia had then tearfully refused to run away with me. Rebels had occupied Fort Sumter and President Lincoln was calling for volunteers. Rather than stay around and make her miserable, I took myself back home to Baltimore and the war by the next boat, leaving her to give her undivided attention to young Chester Baker. Evidently Branch hadn't been impressed with Baker's credentials either.

  Sadness and fatigue lowered my shoulders, I sat my half-full glass on the counter. My eyes went out of focus and my mind drifted, as it often did, back to happier times. Before the war, long before I began skulking about Savannah in a disguise, I had visited Savannah as the guest of a family named Winston who lived on the same square as the Branch family.

  Julia was pregnant and standing in our front yard just inside the white painted gate. Luke Junior was standing beside her, against her leg, holding his chubby arms up to me. I didn't have to decide which to hug first. I picked little Luke up and cradled him in my left arm and drew Julia against me with my right.

  “Would you like another round?” Chester was leaning over the bar expectantly.

  Reluctantly, I came awake. My jar was empty. “Sure.” I said. I rubbed my face and the urgency of my mission settled on my shoulders.

  When Chester set my beer in front of me, I dropped one of my dollars on the bar. “There should be enough there to buy our card-playing friends a round, Chet,” I said.

  “Don't call me Chet,” he said tersely. “My name is Chester.”

  “Say, ahh, Chester. Do you know Leon Timkin, up in Savannah?”

  “No, I don't recall anybody by that name.”

  “He's in the Savannah Guards, the armory on Bull Street.”

  “I never go into Savannah.”

  “Leon tells me they just received a shipment of those new Spencer repeating rifles.”

  Baker shook his head. “I wouldn't know anything about that.” He stood up straight but he didn't go away, he just stood there and stared at me. Then his posture got more aggressive as he put his left hand on the butt of his revolver and leaned over me. I leaned back reflexively.

  “Let me tell you something about your 'card-playing friends',” he said. “They're going to murder you if you're still here at sundown.”

  I leaned back even more and fought off rising panic. How could this be happening? What had gone wrong?

  “We know you're a spy,” he continued. “Jake thinks we should just turn you over to the soldiers. Down at the camp, they have a tabby wall they use for small arms target practice. They would be delighted to stand you up in front of it and use you for a target.”

  My mouth was dry. I was afraid to speak.

  “But they would just keep everything. We've already divided you up, you see. Jake and Harry will divide your clothes and your counterfeit money, I'll get your boots.”

  “You only have one foot,” I pointed out inanely.

  Baker smiled a smile that didn't comfort me at all. “I'm going to carve myself a new leg, one with a little foot on it to keep the boot straight. I'll drill a hole through the instep of your boot and put a lag bolt through it to hold it on my leg.”

  “How did you catch on to me?”

  “Your first mistake was that you don't stink. Then I noticed that you have too much money and you ask too many questions. Harry wants to use you to send the Yank navy a little message. Here's what he wants to do: It will be high tide here at the dock at about five-thirty in the morning. He would put your naked body into the river at about six-thirty. The tide and the current should take you down into Ossabaw Sound by mid morning. Your blockading friends can fish your partially eaten carcass out of the water. How do you like that?”

  I shook my head. I couldn't talk.

  “Have you ever seen a Gar?”

  I knew it was a particularly ugly fish. I saw no reason to discuss it.

  “A Gar, is a much scarier looking fish than a shark, Homer Delessops, or whatever your name is. They infest the river, they usually run about eighteen inches, but the first six inches is all mouth and teeth. They will go for the soft parts first, like your privates, then they'll chew your ears and the tip of your nose off. Your eyes will be a delicacy for them, Yankee spy.”

  His words had the desired effect on me. My mouth was dry; it felt like there was a gallon of cold water settled in my lower stomach. “Why are you telling me this?” My voice was tight, I had been holding my breath for some time.

  “Because I have a better idea. I want to get a message to your General Sherman.”

  I waited. I didn't trust my voice. I began to suspect Chester Baker was no ordinary bartender.

  “I know that the fort won't hold out more than a couple of days,” Baker said. “Sherman is going to get his ammunition and supplies. Here's the message: If he will resupply and rest his troops for a week or so, the Savannah Garrison will just vanish.”

  It took me a while to comprehend what he'd just said. “Vanish? Just like that? How are they going to vanish?”

  “I'm not going to tell you how. Just know that if General Sherman will give his troops some respite for a week or so after taking Fort McAllister, the Savannah Garrison will evacuate and leave the city open.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Are you a turncoat?” I didn't believe for a minute that Chester Baker was a turncoat. “Are you trying to set a trap?”

  Baker laughed a humorless laugh. “You don't trust me? That's understandable. But what's he got to lose? If I'm right, he can march into Savannah without taking a single casualty.”

  “You can't stand the idea of Savannah being shelled to rubble and burned like Atlanta,” I said. An idea grew in my head like a shell-burst. “But this isn't about Savannah at all. Military isn't the only intelligence I've gathered in these last two weeks. I've also learned a thing or two about you, Chester Baker,” I lied. “This is about a woman, isn't it? I know that, before the war, you were a gentleman about Savannah with a horse and a carriage. You even courted a banker's daughter. You can't endure the image of your woman, I almost said her name, being dragged out into the street and raped and killed.”

  Now Baker was on the defensive. He moved away from my face slightly. “Not at all,” he said primly. “Just get that message to Sherman, OK?”

  Baker pulled himself down the counter and began to wash jars and set them up on a rag on the counter to dry. I was left looking at my untouched beer and considering running for the door. I calculated that I could get perhaps twenty yards down the road with my bum leg and my cane before the young soldiers overtook me. The firing squad actually seemed a pretty good option compared to what Harry wanted to do to me. On the other hand, Baker must have intended for me to escape with my message. If I kept my wits about me, I would finish my beer then head for the door as if everything were normal. If Baker meant what he said, I could just walk away with my message.

  I noticed my 'card-playing friends' were all headed for the door, then I heard it myself; the click and clop of a team of shod horses approaching on the road. Judging by their pace, they wouldn't be freight horses bringing still another flat of cotton to rot on the dock. Baker grabbed his hat and crutch and hobbled behind his customers out the door. I took up my cane and followed; this might be the diversion I needed.

  I took my place, last in line of a disreputable row of dead-end characters. We were confronted by an elegant phaeton and four. Four matching black horses drew up so that the carriage was directly in front of us. The driver and his helper were heavily armed and dressed in matching brown livery, livery that I recognized. They eyed our row of recalcitrants warily and kept their hands free. Behind them in the carriage, we were treated to the sight of Savannah's gentry. The canvas top had been lowered and it was apparent that the two couples who sat facing each other on the leather upholstery were out on a social day trip. They were dressed to the nines. The women had removed their dust-coats and were opening a wicker picnic
basket in the middle of the carriage. They wore white and yellow frilly dresses and they each sported a tiny white parasol to fend off the rays of the sun. The older woman was Julia's mother. The younger was Julia.

  The forward facing gentleman was a portly fifty-ish man who held his head unnecessarily high and gave the impression of royalty condescending to speak to a the line of ragamuffins.

  “Where's the best place to watch?” he said.

  You don't recognize me now, do you Mr. Alexander Branch? Before the war, before I was injured, I was not quite good enough to court your daughter. Now my beard hides my scars and my identity. You never even bothered to look at me anyway.

  “What you be wantin' to watch?” Baker said, acting the part of a country bumpkin.

  “The battle, man! You mean you don't know?”

  Baker didn't speak, nor did his customers. I cast a glance to the side; the six of us, each scruffier than the next, stood in line with open mouths and observed the elegance.

  “Sherman, man.” the overbearing Mr. Branch said impatiently. “He's going to attack Fort McAllister at any time. We came all this way to watch him get his ass whipped.”

  My mouth tightened. So it is today. I knew the 200 or so old men and boys in the fort were in a hopeless situation, as they knew themselves. I also knew there was no escape. Their fate was to fight an army that outnumbered them by at least thirty to one,