Day Nine

by Clayton Spann

Thursday, June 11

  Price watched Jackson play hide and seek with Peggy. The six year old girl stood behind the trunk of a nearby elm tree. Elms lined the lane leading away from the farmhouse. The elms were the only trees in sight not bearing fruit.

  “Ready or not, here I come,” Jackson shouted. It was easy to tell he spoke with mock sternness.

  No doubt the tone had been different at First Bull Run when Jackson exclaimed: “Then, sir, we will give them the bayonet!” A subordinate wanted to pull back just because the brigade had run out of ammunition.

  Price and Allison sat on the covered porch of the stone farmhouse. In the front yard Jackson removed his only hand from his eyes.

  “Oh, where did she go?” Jackson called. “I’ll never find that clever girl.”

  The elm did not completely conceal the child. The edge of her dress protruded. A lock of her white hair also peeked. Jackson however stomped about the yard as if confounded. Price reflected that the Yankees never got such kindly treatment when Jackson hunted them.

  Finally Stonewall announced he had to give up. With delighted squeals Peggy rushed from her hiding place. She pranced before the man that even in play stood ramrod straight.

  “You hide from me now, Billy.”

  Jackson obeyed, but made sure she discovered him without much trouble. Peggy was about to rope this lethal warrior into another round when her mother came out the front door. Susannah Cooper carried two willow baskets.

  “That’s enough bothering Mr. Wallis,” she said. “Come along. There are berries to pick. And jam to stew.”

  Delight fled Peggy. Jackson looked disappointed too. Price knew Jackson wasn’t faking; the man could never get enough of the girl’s company.

  Price rose from his chair. “Sue, I’ll take Peggy’s place.”

  The tall woman, whose hair was the buttercup yellow that her daughter’s would become, smiled wryly.

  “No thank you, Robert.”

  Price had botched his last attempt at picking strawberries. It took a delicate touch. He had bruised at least a third of what he pulled from the runners. And he had inadvertently stepped on adjacent plants.

  “Please let him, Mama. Billy wants to play.”

  Mock sternness returned to Jackson. “The Heavenly Father tells us we must always honor our parents, Peggy. Now go with your mother.”

  Susannah headed with her daughter toward the square patch between the sod covered root cellar and the outbuilding containing the cider press. Beyond waited blueberry and blackberry bushes for picking later in the summer. But “Amanda”, “Robert”, and “Billy” would be gone by then.

  Sue was an attractive woman, thought Price. A bit on the bony side for him, but she should have no trouble fetching a new husband. Whenever the accepted mourning period was over she probably would.

  But it wasn’t going to be Stonewall.

  Susannah did have her eye on him. Price strove to understand that. A one armed man would not be much help on an orchard farm, or any farm. Neither was Jackson blessed with charm; painfully correct best described his interaction so far with the widow woman.

  Price supposed reasons did exist. Susannah was lonely and vulnerable after losing her husband last December, when he fell at Fredericksburg. She saw Peggy would gladly accept Jackson as a substitute father. And Jackson was a moderately handsome man with that bush of a beard gone. He also shared her love of reading. But surely Susannah knew she could do better.

  Jackson should lay off with Peggy. The man knew he had to leave at month’s end. He wasn’t doing the child any favors by winning her heart. She was a happy child now, but loss of her father must have been a nightmare. Losing Jackson could bring it all back.

  He came to sit with them. He looked grave. Maybe he was thinking the same thing, how little Peggy would suffer when he left.

  Jackson sighed, then turned his intense blue-gray eyes on Allison. His lips moved. Nothing came out.

  “What is it, Billy?” she asked.

  That alias sounded so ridiculous. Allison should have picked something more appropriate. Like Mike, as in Mike Hammer. Or Attila.

  Jackson cleared his throat. “I know we must not question the Almighty. He who gives the blessing of life most assuredly has the right to take it. But I—what I cannot understand, try as I might, is why He would ever take away babes like Peggy.”

  This past winter Jackson had become fast friends with five year old Janie Corbin. In March the girl caught scarlet fever and died. Afterward Jackson had been inconsolable. And years earlier Jackson had lost an infant son and daughter.

  “Billy” cast imploring eyes at the woman he literally regarded as his guardian angel. An angel personally dispatched by God. Therefore she must be privy to the reasoning of her boss.

  Price braced. Jackson was about to get spiritual enlightenment from a person even less religious than Price. While not an outright atheist, Allison believed the controlling deity of the Universe was completely uninterested in the affairs of humankind. And to her Jesus the Christ was pure myth.

  Jackson, the fervid Presbyterian, of course doubted neither the existence of God nor his Son. Nor the duo’s unconditional love for humanity. Moreover God & Son foreordained everything, including the manner and hour of each man’s death.

  That belief helped give Jackson his great courage on the battlefield. When the Almighty wanted Old Jack out of the picture, He would take him out—but not a day before. Let the shot and shell fly.

  Allison hesitated in her reply. For an unnerving moment Price thought she might try to wean Jackson from his beliefs. In public Allison had steered clear of religion—if pressed, she cited separation of state and church—but in private she wielded rapier logic that could shake entrenched faith. That was the last thing they needed now.

  She steered clear. Allison smiled beatifically. “You remember what you said to Chaplain Lacy after he saw your arm was gone. I ask that you view Janie Corbin’s death similarly.

  “You said, ‘I believe it has been done according to God’s holy will. I acquiesce entirely in it. You may think it strange, but you never saw me more perfectly contented than I am today; for I am sure my Heavenly Father designs this affliction for my good. I am perfectly satisfied, that either in this life, or in that which is to come, I shall discover that what is now regarded as a calamity, is a blessing.’”

  Jackson looked amazed that she would know what he told Lacy, much less repeat it word for word. Then he nodded. The ability merely confirmed her angelic status.

  He nodded with more vigor. “Yes, yes. I do see. I should not have questioned.”

  Price refrained from rolling his eyes. You may think it strange? You never saw me more perfectly contented?

  Allison had left out an even more stunning admission to Lacy: “If it were in my power to replace my arm, I would not dare to do it, unless I could know it was the will of my Heavenly Father.” No wonder one of his generals had called him “the enthusiastic fanatic” and another “that crazy Presbyterian”.

  Doubtless Allison could have recited many more of his pronouncements. She had a mind like a sponge. During their stay at Camp David she read a half dozen biographies on the man, in addition to relentlessly picking Price’s brain.

  No longer did Price consider himself more knowledgeable concerning Stonewall Jackson. Before Allison’s swift education he had been. He attended Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson had taught and the cadets were marinated in his greatness.

  At the Institute Stonewall Jackson was a demigod. About the campus his sayings were literally carved in stone. Cadets were regaled with a thousand anecdotes illustrating his sagacity, nobility, and bravery. Unmentioned were his rigidity and rudeness, his petty and not so petty mistreatment of subordinates, and his lust for the blood of the enemy.

  By first class year Price had a bellyful of the legend. He dared write a thesis that tried to knock Stonewa
ll off his pedestal. Price related instance after instance he hoped would remove the luster. He backed everything up with ironclad references, and felt confident he could weather the inevitable storm.

  Strangely, listing Jackson’s flaws and lapses did not get Price in hot water. These defects were viewed as perhaps lamentable. But so what? In baseball and on the battlefield nice guys finished last.

  No, it was criticism of Jackson’s hallowed Shenandoah Valley campaign that invoked wrath. Price was not the first to assert that Jackson avoided destruction due only to the profound incompetence of the opposition. What the Institute resented was that one of their own seconded the libel. For a while Institute looked for loopholes to keep Price from graduating.

  Price still graduated, though the commandant and many instructors snubbed him up to and including the ceremony. His classmates were divided. Some revered the stone cold killer, while others too had enough of his canonization.

  Jackson thanked Allison for her guidance, then excused himself. He would do weeding in the vegetable garden at the side of the house.

  Naylor smiled as Thomas walked toward the garden enclosed by a low picket fence. Working in the plot had proved very therapeutic for Thomas over the past two weeks. Before the war, when he lived in Lexington, Thomas had whiled away many pleasant hours in his own garden.

  It was a nice day for him to work, too, cool and partly sunny. It was good for all of them to be out, after being cooped up the last two days with steady rain. Not that the downpour kept Thomas and Peggy from playing. The child’s squealing and laughing had reverberated throughout the house.

  She saw Aaron shaking his head.

  “He’s a piece of work.” Aaron lowered his voice to make sure Thomas could not hear.

  Unfortunately Aaron did not share her high opinion of Thomas. She had hoped Aaron would soften after direct contact. But Aaron still thought any positive qualities mere veneer on a curt, cold and vindictive man. Aaron could not let go that Jackson, at the outbreak of the war, had urged the Confederacy to take no prisoners.

  “He is a noble man,” she said.

  To the helpless and the powerless, he was probably one of the kindest people around. Her favorite instance was when, during the Valley campaign, a forlorn woman came up to him bearing socks. She had made them for her son. She knew only that he was in Jackson’s “company”. Could Jackson make sure her son got them?

  The staff officers around Jackson had smiled. Jackson commanded more than a company, fifteen thousand men in fact. Since the woman didn’t know the name of her son’s company commander, it would be too time consuming to comply with such a trivial request.

  Jackson thought otherwise. He immediately sent the staff scurrying throughout the marching ranks. It took awhile, but they found the son. The mother tearfully thanked Jackson.

  Aaron snorted. “No man is noble who owned slaves.”

  “Come on, his slaves loved him. And other slaves begged that he buy them.”

  “So what? He still thought slavery was God’s will.”

  “He taught slaves how to read. Which, I don’t have to remind you, was against the law in Old Virginny.”

  “Only so they could read the Bible. Not to better them.”

  Her face was heating. “I might as well as talk to a brick wall.”

  “You mean a stonewall.”

  His deadpan pun, bad as it was, forced her to smile. A laugh followed.

  Affection surged in Naylor. This was as close as they got to ever having a fight.

  She was so lucky this rock of a man loved her. He could have so easily deserted her—like everyone else—after she resigned. Instead he had grown closer.

  Naylor would be so happy to make him a father for the first time in his life. Of the four children she planned to bear, she hoped that at least two would be sons. Aaron would make the finest example possible of what constituted a sterling man.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll agree he’s not entirely an ogre. But I still can’t see how you think he will someday be president of the South.”

  “He will succeed Davis,” she said. “And he’ll win by landslide.”

  “His only landslide. Once in office he will antagonize his cabinet, the legislature, the newspapers, his generals, and everyone except little girls.”

  Naylor laughed. “I’m going to have a long talk about tact and diplomacy. To me he will listen.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He’s a good man, Aaron. Outstanding in so many ways.”

  “He has excelled only on the battlefield. At West Point he had few friends. In peacetime he was a lousy officer. As an instructor at VMI they almost fired him. Even this war, with all his success, his subordinate generals can barely stand him.”

  “If he’s so terrible, why does he have such a devoted wife as Anna? And why is Susannah falling in love with him?”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s another thing. You better have a talk with her too.”

  No, she wouldn’t. One woman did not tell another what to do with her heart. Anyway, her love or crush on Thomas could only help.

  Susannah had agreed to harbor them—and to keep mum about it—for five hundred dollars in gold, half in advance. In this era five hundred dollars would comfortably provide a family for a year. Love would help Susannah keep her mouth shut even more.

  It could not be said how much of the cover story Susannah believed. Naylor told her that Billy lost an arm at Chancellorsville—fighting for the Union, of course. Amanda and Robert, Billy’s aunt and uncle, were taking him home to Wheeling in the new state of West Virginia. But combat and amputation had shattered Billy’s nerves; he needed a quiet, isolated place to recuperate.

  During their stay—perhaps through the summer—they wanted no visitors at the farm. Unfamiliarity still spooked their nephew. Susannah could and should keep up her off farm routine. Continue to take applejack and jams to Abbottstown, resume going to church, visit neighbors—but no one was to stop by here.

  This was a good spot to stay isolated. The farm lay at the end of a lane running three miles to the York Road. The orchards hid it from the next farm on the lane. And that farm’s owner was a crusty widower on poor terms with the Cooper family, one who would not be poking his nose across the fence line.

  With Susannah now vested in Billy’s welfare, she would be doubly careful to shield him. No matter whether she believed Naylor. Of course, neither would she want to jeopardize getting the second half of the money. When they left Naylor would keep her silence with a surprise bonus of another five hundred dollars.

  Susannah would need the windfall. This farm had faltered since her father-in-law died this February. He had been a tireless worker despite his sixty plus years. With husband and father-in-law now dead, and local labor in short supply, prospects were grim.

  Before the three strangers showed up, Susannah was surviving off selling applejack produced after last fall’s harvest. She declared she and Peggy would make a go of it even if they couldn’t get help for the fall apple harvest. That was a laugh. She had eighty acres of orchards.

  Sue and her daughter would collapse by the end of October. Naylor guessed they would be lucky to harvest more than ten acres. And from what Sue said, picking was the easy part in producing decent apple brandy. Afterward came pulping, squeezing, filtering, fermenting, concentrating, fortifying, aging. It made Naylor tired just to listen. No way were those two going to make it on their own.

  Both Naylor and Aaron had grown fond of Susannah and her daughter. Both had plenty of spunk. Sue possessed a wonderful sense of humor, which was probably lost on Thomas. Peggy was impish but still a delight. Naylor was glad she could give them a financial cushion.

  Naylor wondered how Thomas felt about Susannah. He obviously tried to keep distance. Naylor had witnessed the deep love between Thomas and Anna. He might desire Sue, she was pretty and fine figured, but Thomas was the last person on earth
who would commit adultery.

  The little girl he did love. His face shone with joy whenever the two played. Thomas would feel the sting of leaving Peggy.

  Aaron had gotten up. He was observing Thomas toiling in the garden. In broad brimmed hat Thomas was on his knees, carefully weeding with his one gloved hand between the rows. Aaron was probably puzzled how a man who so embraced war could so tenderly nurture vegetables—and children.

  Naylor could not fully explain the dichotomies of the man either. Avenging angel might be the best description. Protective and warm to those needing protection, cool and correct to those able to fend for themselves, and ruthless to those he deemed evil—whether they were truly evil or not.

  Thomas reminded her of someone else. Someone who also viewed the world in terms of white and black. Someone a savior to friends and a scourge to enemies. Someone she had thought of often since her fall from office.

  Of all her transgressions that day in New York City, acquiescing in the planned murder of Jack Mauer was the most heinous. Naylor wished she could claim temporary insanity. More frightening than losing her mind, she had known exactly the crime she sanctioned.

  Jack Mauer was one of the bravest and most selfless Americans who ever lived. He had thwarted the enemies of the Republic so many times, usually at great personal cost. He had saved her own administration in its early days. She owed him her very life.

  And how had she repaid this noble man? With the vilest act of backstabbing ever. She would have let the minions of Charles Rogin, the antichrist himself, murder Jack. Afterward they would have disposed of his body without a trace. The body of a man who should have monuments built to him.

  Perhaps it was a tad to her credit that she called off the execution. Except by that time his life was ruined. Two vengeful governments had sounded the full hue and cry as he tried to escape.

  It had been a blow at Camp David to learn Jack was captured within a week of her resignation. Thankfully the Americans got him, not the Russians. The Russians would have likely disemboweled him for his same treatment of one of their operatives.

  Jack would still not get off easy. That dreadful day in New York he left an appalling trail of bodies. Not all were Russians. Additionally he had injured a number of legitimately acting Federal agents. Some members of the Secret Service would be permanently disabled.

  He would have to do time, no way around it. The government might decide super-maximum was the only secure cage. Jack would probably not believe it, but she had cried at the prospect.

  Aaron broke her depressing train of thought.

  “Our heights are holding up pretty good,” he said.

  “Yes, that is a break.”

  It was certainly a pleasant surprise. They had lost less than an inch, and they had been across Transit One six weeks now. That beat the record. The best pair previously measured two inches down at this point; the next closest pair three and a half.

  She and Aaron’s negligible loss proved the depth of their attachment. She had loved Henry—before his abandonment—but never with the passion and reliance she did Aaron. Aaron had loved Martha Rogin very much—but never with the passion and reliance he did Naylor. Theirs was a mature and trusting yet very vibrant love.

  Besides the joy their bond provided, the bond gave them a great tactical advantage. Naylor doubted any pair of agents sent after them could match what she and Aaron shared. Even newly weds.

  She and Aaron had entered 1863 on May 1st. Once Hightower learned what was up—Ethan would have smelled a rat and alerted him, both to Transit One and her college paper—Hightower would have sent agents into 1863 as quickly as possible.

  Fortunately agents would be looking to protect Lincoln and Grant. At least at first. But sooner or later they must see to the bottom of her ruse, and begin to look for Jackson. The closed casket in Richmond would likely be the giveaway. There had been no way around avoiding that.

  Naylor and Aaron should reach July 1st with height to spare. But agents not so emotionally bound would run out of time. As June lengthened, they would have to abandon the search or find themselves shrinking to nothingness.

  “What do you say we come back to live here?” asked Aaron.

  “What?”

  “Buy this farm. Live in this house. It’s stone and well built. It should still be standing in 1977.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “This is close to paradise we’ll get in this life. Tell me a better place to live.”

  “And pick apples? Make applejack?”

  “We’ll have one of those come and pick ‘em farms. We wouldn’t have to do much except watch ‘em grow.”

  Naylor laughed. She wasn’t sure if Aaron wasn’t pulling her leg. It was too isolated for her taste.

  But…this was an enchanting place. And probably superb for raising children. They would see.

  Susannah said she had been uncertain if she wanted to trade the refinements of city life for what she believed would be a backwoods existence. She had tried to talk her prospective husband, Elijah, into joining her father’s prosperous riverboat company. The company was based in Harrisburg.

  She had fallen in love with the farm at first sight. Eli brought her here for a visit in the spring, when the sight must have been incredible. Acres and acres of flowering apple, peach, pear and plum trees spread across gently rolling land. The blossom fragrances alone would have been irresistible.

  After that first sight, she never looked back. She took to orchard life with enthusiasm.

  Naylor had been surprised that the farmhouse contained a library. Not just a room called the library, with a desk and maybe a score books, but one brimming with tomes. Sue had brought them with her from Harrisburg.

  Sue was the only daughter of a doting and enlightened father. George Huffmaster was an abolitionist who also believed women deserved an education beyond the three R’s. He hired a tutor for Sue, then later sent her to finishing school.

  She met her husband through her father’s abolitionist activities. Both families were involved in the Underground Railroad. During the 1850’s Eli would spirit escaped slaves to the Huffmaster’s house, as the slaves completed another leg of their arduous and sometime hazardous journey to Canada.

  Eli often spent the night at the house before returning to the farm. As he and Sue’s fondness grew, the layover could extend to several days. By the time Susannah reached her eighteenth birthday the two had fallen irretrievably in love.

  Sue’s father liked and respected Eli. But he was not certain the country boy made the proper match for his prized daughter, however prosperous their farm. But Sue would have no other. That, and Eli’s unflinching devotion to the abolitionist cause, sealed the deal for her father.

  Her father became the less prosperous of the two families shortly after Eli and Sue were married in 1856. The Panic of 1857 ruined his steamer business. That, and consumption, put him in a grave the next year.

  Sue was heartbroken, but by then she had a daughter and a strong marriage to see her through. She thrived at the farm. She was an intelligent woman, with lots of curiosity, and she strove to learn every aspect of turning fruit into alcoholic beverage. By the time war broke out, she even dabbled in making a liqueur from blackberries.

  She was so thankful Eli did not enlist during the first heady days of the war, when so many others in Adams County rushed to the ranks. Only a few county men died at First Bull Run, but the numbers swelled the next summer. The terrible names—Seven Days, Second Bull Run, and Antietam—they produced dead and wounded by the score.

  Eli had refrained from enlisting because the war did not commit to end slavery. Why preserve the Union if the evil remained? But after the victory at Antietam Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and that changed everything for Eli.

  Despite Susannah’s frantic begging, he soon enlisted. His notion of compromise was to sign up for only nine months.

/>   By November he was a private in the Army of the Potomac. By December he was dead at Fredericksburg. He fell in an attack against troops commanded by Stonewall Jackson. Thankfully Sue would never know she housed the general.

  Naylor saw Sue and Peggy returning from the strawberry patch. Both carried a laden basket, both wore sunbonnet and calico dress, both smiled. Both had their eyes on Billy Wallis toiling in the garden.

  “Billy,” Susannah called, “would you like us to bring you some lemonade?”

  Thomas smiled back at them. Naylor had read he had the most endearing of smiles. Now, as an eyewitness, she could attest that was absolutely true. Sweetness poured from the fearsome warrior’s face.

  “Let me take it to him,” said Peggy as they stepped onto the front porch.

  “I will,” said Sue. “You stay here.” Her voice was firm.

  Peggy began to pout.

  “You can take him the next glass.” Her mother smiled conspiratorially.

  It only took Peggy a moment to think. The two females traded a subtle look of agreement. As a fellow traveler Naylor could not miss it.

  In the garden Sue would linger. To chat and try to further charm Billy. All as part of the continuing campaign to hook him before summer’s end.

  There were conspiracies, and there were conspiracies. Naylor’s would abruptly whisk “Billy” away in two weeks. Naylor felt for the pain that would cause Sue and Peggy, but there was no help for it.

  By this time next year good looking Susannah would likely be involved with another man. Peggy would latch to another would be father. Memory of the mysterious trio of the previous summer would fade, then vanish. Life would move on, as it always did.

  Sue shortly returned with a tall glass of lemonade. Perfectly unsweetened, precisely to Billy’s taste. Both Naylor and Aaron watched Sue advance on her never to be caught prey.

  Price watched Sue talking to Jackson in the garden only for a moment. His mind drifted back to his assertion to Allison, that they buy this orchard farm. Once they were done in 1863, and in 1901, he would press her on it. This slice of heaven was the perfect place to settle and raise a family.

  He never had children. His only marriage did not last long. His real marriage had been to the Secret Service.

  “Four is fine with me,” he had said to Allison’s question at Camp David.

  He meant it. This time around he would be a devoted husband, and an attentive father. What career path he would choose, he didn’t know. He had been there and done that with the Army and the Secret Service. Maybe running a farm would prove absorbing. Fortunately they would not have to worry about money, since Allison had all those diamonds.

  This go around Allison would be a full time mother. Or so she said. Price wondered if a woman of her talent and energy could settle for a thirty year run as a housewife.

  But, no matter what, they would be young again. That was the real secret of Transit One, probably the reason presidents so zealously guarded knowledge of its existence. He didn’t know what story Hightower had fed anyone sent after them, but Price was sure the agents didn’t get the full truth.

  Hightower probably said a person traveling back to a year in their own lifetime risked extinction just like a person going back beyond their birth. Instead the person, over a week or so, got younger until they reached their contemporary age. When Allison and Price entered 1977, she would end up twelve and he fifteen. They would shrink, but only to their body size at that age.

  Transit One was a potential fountain of youth. If its existence became known, the whole world would flock to the site on Catoctin Mountain. What an irresistible lure, the ability to start life over.

  It was the supreme compliment that Allison wanted to start over with him. She now loathed her former husband, but Price had asked didn’t she want to bring back her murdered son and save her jailed daughter? She said no, that while she loved them both, she had accepted their loss. She would start fresh with him, the man she knew who would never desert her.

  They would have to wait until Allison turned eighteen to marry. That would be a long six years, but it would of course pass. And they certainly could be intimate some of the interim. Soon as he graduated from high school, he would move to her hometown in Kentucky.

  He would also see his father again. The father who had died in Vietnam when Price was five. His mother had never really recovered from his death; now she wouldn’t have to. For his part Price only vaguely remembered the man, the man whose exemplary character he tried to match over the decades.

  Perhaps, though, he shouldn’t count on meeting his father. Even if the South won the Civil War, a lot had to go right. Germany could still lose World War I. World War II could still follow, as could both the Korean and Vietnam War. Even if he and Allison were going to kill Adolf Hitler and Leon Trotsky in 1901, nothing was guaranteed.

  But owning this wonderful spot in Pennsylvania could be guaranteed. If Price got Allison’s okay, he would buy it when he came of legal age. Then soon as possible they would marry and start their family. And they would live happily ever after, he swore it.