Just at the moment when Pryce wondered where the slaves were, for he had never seen a town taken or a plantation passed when scores of Negroes did not come running out to greet their liberators, a few appeared around the corner of the house, and then a few more. In listless procession they came, most of them thinly dressed for the cold, some of them barefoot, the women with their hair in bandannas, the men many of them bent, unshaven, elderly, and children as well, quiet and with bowed heads like the adults, until finally perhaps fifty blacks were gathered before the porch facing the old man. Pryce nudged his mule forward into the ranks. Where some of the slaves’ jackets were rent he glimpsed raised scars on their backs. One man on crutches had no left foot.
All right, the old planter said, his voice deep and hoarse. Y’all see these Yankees come to free you up. Go ahead, turn around an look. There they be.
And some of the slaves did turn and look back dutifully at the troops, who were discomfited by this silent acknowledgment directed by the old planter. It was as if he had made them all, slaves and soldiers, relations of one another. The horses stirred. One of the troopers spit out a stream of tobacco juice. Another raised his rifle and took aim at an upstairs window and said, Powee! Pryce frowned. Was that all? Where was the intemperance he expected from bummers?
You been coddlin such thoughts of them Yankees, the old man said. You think I don’t know that? You think I doan know ever thought goes on in them heads of yorn? I know! I know what you think, Amos, and you Sally, and you Marcus, and Joseph and Silas and Blind Henry and every one of you—yes, down to the weeist pickaninny of your wicked makin. Because, free or not free, you will never be smarter than your massah.
At this the Sergeant awoke from his trance and sent a wagon and half a dozen troops around each side of the house to the outbuildings. The rest stood with him, and at his signal they unsheathed their rifles and held them at the ready.
Well I’m tellin you now, said the planter, you thinkin to go with the Yankees, why just you do that. Out there—he pointed—is a whole army of ’em. And they is all thieves. They is all beggars. You see how these gone sniffin around back now like a pack a hound dogs? They didn’t ride in here because they knowed you was here waitin, nosir, they come for my vittles and my stores, for my stock and my horses and my mules. They come for whatever their thievin souls can lay their hands on. So you go with them, go on, and good riddance if you do, ’cause they doan care one way or t’other. You be on your own and God help you, because I won’t. You won’t have the Massah to take care of you no more. Nor to give you a decent Christian burial when your time comes. Nosir. You’ll be no better than a wanderin Jew with no place in the world to lay his head down ’cept he fall dead in a ditch somewheres for the carrion birds to peck him clean. So you just go ahead and take it, this freedom of yorn, and may the Lord have mercy on your poor nigger souls.
At this the old man rose, the blanket falling from him, and he turned and strode into the house, all his family trailing after.
AN HOUR LATER, with the sun well up in the sky, the troops were lined up on the gravel road and ready to ride back to the march. The haul was spectacular, the two wagons loaded with sacks of cornmeal and rice and flour and potatoes, turkeys and chickens, hams, sides of beef, great wheeled cheeses, barrels of nuts and dried fruits, and cases of whiskey. A dray had been commandeered to carry pillage they had discovered hidden in a hayloft: rolled Persian rugs, several paintings, cotton bags filled with blankets and pillows, a brace of pistols, an old long-barreled flintlock, and crates of china emblazoned with the planter’s family crest. A string of fine mules stood patiently in tether to one of the wagons. The old man’s two black stallions were harnessed to his carriage. In the carriage, uncomfortably waiting, were five Negroes—three women and two men—the entirety of those who had chosen liberation.
Yet the Sergeant did not give the signal to move out but turned his mount and sat there looking at the house. He reset his hat firmly on his head. He adjusted his eye patch. Something was still to be done, there was unfinished business.
Pryce wondered if the plantation was to be set afire. General Sherman’s standing order was to burn no home where there was no resistance. Certainly there had been none here. The old planter had actually directed a slave to show them to the outbuildings. But there had been provocation in his manner. Was that it? He had refused to speak to the troops directly and had referred to them as beggars and thieves.
To the Sergeant, apparently, this was the problem. To help him think on the problem, the Sergeant now gave the order to break open a case of whiskey.
Pryce did not join the ensuing conference, although he did avail himself of a swig when the bottle came to him. The general feeling seemed to be that no soldier in Sherman’s Army of the West should let a slander go unanswered. That so few of the slaves had elected to leave was another affront. Not that the men were all that anxious to have a bunch of darkies trail along. But the old planter’s awful mental control of his slaves was a de facto insult to the Union liberationists come to free them. Wasn’t that a form of resistance? And if it was, were they not entitled to burn his goddamn plantation?
Pryce was impressed. Feverishly he scribbled his notes. That these ordinary soldiers of a rank no higher than sergeant could, in the midst of their perilous duties, stop to concern themselves with substantive moral issues seemed to him a flash of the quintessential American genius. He could not imagine Her Majesty’s rank and file in such a discussion.
By this time the troops were dismounted and walking about and talking among themselves like a peripatetic school of Aristotelian philosophers. Some of them had stripped to their shirtsleeves as if the sun were actually hot on this late February morning. There arose the question of what would happen to the slaves if the plantation was burned? Would they not bear the brunt? For, whatever the misery of their lives, the plantation was their sustenance, and of course they would suffer even worse hell when the planter turned his wrath on them as the cause of the destruction of his property.
Talking and imbibing, the men did not appear to be in any rush to rejoin the march. The black people sitting in the carriage talked worriedly to one another. Their faces full of trepidation, they were looking back at the house. It was quiet there, not a sound issued nor any sign that living people were within. And now Pryce, too, began to feel uneasy. He mounted his swaybacked mule and waited.
The door of the house flew open and a black child, a boy, came dashing down the steps. The boy saw Pryce and ran across the gravel road and raised his arms and gestured with his hands, indicating that Pryce should lift him onto the saddle. So that is what Pryce did.
At this point a soldier who had climbed onto the dray held up one of the plantation’s bone-china plates and, calling for everyone’s attention, scaled the plate into the air, an inspiration as far as the others were concerned, for as the plate made its parabola and fell, shattering, on the ground, they grabbed their rifles and urged him to repeat the exercise. Shortly they were having target practice with the house china, though who was hitting the flying target and who was missing was not possible to know, the shooting coming from several rifles at once.
The boy, in a fearful state, had taken the reins from Pryce and was attempting to snap them over the swayback to get it going. The mule, already frightened by the gunfire, balked and turned in a circle, whereupon Pryce saw a woman coming toward them from the house, a whip in her hand. His impression in the brief glimpse he had was that she was a younger woman in a gray dress, one of the planter’s daughters, perhaps, or a niece, pale, thin-lipped, with her hair tightly pulled across her skull, and those sharp cheekbones and narrow familial plantation eyes that now intended no good. He heard from the porch another woman calling, Martha, Martha, get back inside, Martha! The whip in the woman’s hand was not a horse whip, it was a shorter thong at the end of a stick, a slave whip, and she was brandishing it at the child. But somehow a soldier coming over to retrieve a plate that had not shattered g
ot in her way, and all at once in her rage, silent and white faced, she raised her whip and struck him. And at this moment whatever minimal controls of civilized behavior still prevailed on this February morning were burst as if from a bomb.
The soldier, a bloody slash across his face, caught the whip in his hand, pulled it to him, and knocked the woman to the ground. And now he began to beat her, shouting and raising the whip high and bringing it down on her as she screamed and attempted to crawl away. You’d whip me? he shouted. You’d whip me! But as she crawled so he struck, her cries inflaming him. This seemed even more of a diversion to the others than shooting at dishes and within moments several of the troops were gathered around the action, obscuring Pryce’s view. His urge was to step in and try to stop what was happening, but he knew he wouldn’t. This is not your country, he told himself. This is not your war. The Sergeant had come running over, shouting, She’s white, goddamnit, this is a white woman! It seemed a matter of urgency for Pryce to get the boy out of there, this awful business not for a child’s eyes. The woman’s screams had given way to wails. They were tearing off her clothes, and over the backs of huddled troops, hanks and shreds of the garments flew into the air.
The Sergeant, having been ignored, now made a determination that what was going on was evolved to a military event. He called to some men who were still at the wagon train and deployed them as pickets facing the house. Pryce, turning his mount to ride off, saw that the lord of the realm, having come out on the porch, stood there unmoving and impassive, as if what he was suffering at this moment must not be expressed lest it give satisfaction to the enemy. So to Pryce, riding away through the rose and azalea gardens with the pitiable shrieks and wails of the woman in his ears, the old man, too, subscribed to a war that conformed such things as this into military events.
HUGH PRYCE DIRECTED the animal down the long greensward, across the road, and over the fields to the opening in the stone wall. Some three hours had passed since he had ridden out of camp with the bummers. The line of march of a corps extending for miles, he assumed that by going back the way he had come he would find the column even if it had set off at dawn. And so he entered the woods, trusting to his sense of direction to guide him.
The boy had calmed down and, riding in front of Pryce, bent his little back and peered ahead. He was dressed in livery—tan knee pants and stockings, black buckled shoes, and a tan jacket with yellow piping. Pryce let him hold the reins, which seemed to please him. The dark woods were warm now and in their hush the mule proceeded at a leisurely pace. The boy’s name was David. He said he didn’t know his age. He could not remember a mother or father. He had been the household’s brush-fly boy, charged with standing behind the Massah’s chair and waving a big feathered fan. That was his main duty. He said sometimes he sat up in the carriage beside Cassius.
As they rode along, the mule of its own volition slackened its pace. Pryce sat back and looked right and left through the woods. The sunlight came in shafts through the tall trees, momentarily filling his eyes then leaving him in darkness. He would not need notes to remember this day. He was suddenly and uncharacteristically tired. This is not your country and not your war, he reminded himself. So what are you doing with this Negro child in your charge?
How old was David—eight, nine? The lad had made a decision that was beyond the capacity of most of the slaves on that plantation. It was true that at his age he would not think of the future or worry what fate would bring him, he would not have the thoughts that might constrain an adult, that would make an adult prefer the miseries he knew to the hazards he could not foresee. Children were of the here and now. Yet, like all of them, he had heard the lordly speech of the old man. And it hadn’t worked on him, that fearsome address. With his dash from the house the child had asserted his life to be his own. It did not have to be more than a moment’s impulse, but it was enough to set him free.
And now what am I going to do with you, David?
Dunno, suh.
Pryce could feel the boy’s delight to be in command of this animal which, of course, would go only at its own chosen pace regardless of the instructions it received. David didn’t seem to mind, languidly flipping the reins and giggling when nothing happened. And so they ambled along through the woods, Pryce with his hands on the child’s thin arms.
II
CROSSING THE PEE DEE RIVER INTO NORTH CAROLINA, Kilpatrick’s staff rode as his carriage escort. They posted with an élan despite their unshaven faces and bedraggled and battle-worn attire, each of them hoping for a glance from the General’s latest acquisition, the famous eighteen-year-old Southern belle Marie Boozer. And her mother, Amelia Treaster, seated on the other side of Kilpatrick, was not bad, either. The daughter was fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, and with a plump little bow mouth. Her great mass of golden curls pinned upward from her ears was crowned with a charming bonnet the size of a tea saucer. The mother was a brunette, her dark eyes alight with mischief. She was smoking a little cigar. And where Kilpatrick thought Marie’s allure was in the nature of a mystery still to be plumbed, Amelia Treaster’s was in the challenge of a well-loved woman. Their gowns spread out from their persons to fill the carriage like a great plume of rainbowed cloud. The two of them together were driving Judson Kilpatrick out of his mind.
He had found them in Columbia, self-attested as being Union sympathizers. And so of course they had to join the march. Nor were they without resources, the grand Victoria in which Kilpatrick now reclined being theirs, and the wagon directly behind carrying, in addition to the plunder Kilpatrick brought to them, as if the war ahead was to be an extravagant months-long picnic, their clothes and jewels, silver, china, and crystal.
While trying to maintain a conversation to keep the ladies amused—alluding portentously to General Sherman’s plans for the state of North Carolina—Kilpatrick was all the while devising his own strategy for the coming night, for he wanted nothing less than a total conquest, he wanted them both. Sack duty for you, madam, he thought while smiling at the mother. And for you, dear girl, he thought while throwing her a lovesick glance, an introduction to what we in the military call horizontal drill.
What, Kilpatrick wondered, could he do to impress these women? Of course, they appeared to be duly impressed with his rank, his authority, his bodyguard of riders, but he doubted their sincerity, Marie’s especially, who looked away from him every now and then to glance at one of his young officers riding escort. And both women appreciated the foolish puppy-loving competition the cavalrymen were engaged in, each man vying for the favored position at a canter alongside the carriage so as to pose straight of back, one hand loosely holding the reins, the other on his sword.
Kilpatrick was distracted, too, by his nephew, Buster, who was riding in the wagon directly behind. Damn the boy—he had found a sack of dried peas and was standing up beside the driver and blowing peas through a straw in an attempt to hit his uncle. Kilpatrick stood and motioned to the wagoner to stow the boy in the back. For his trouble, he received a pea sting on his defenselessly ample nose.
When Kilpatrick resumed his seat, the ladies were laughing. Amelia Treaster said, You’ve got yourself a sharpshooter, General Kilpatrick. And so he laughed, too. But he was thinking to murder the boy. Peas were all over the carriage, some distributed on the ladies’ skirts. He ventured to brush the peas away. Just like the rice thrown at weddings, he said.
THE CAVALRY, RIDING vanguard for the Fifteenth Corps, was intending to secure Fayetteville, some forty miles to the northeast. There had been reports that the Rebel force under General Hardee was demonstrating in that direction. Fayetteville was a stepping-stone to Goldsboro and Raleigh, the ultimate objective of General Sherman’s strategy.
Periodically scouts were reining up to Kilpatrick’s carriage and leaning over to report sotto voce that Hardee’s cavalry, under General Wade Hampton, was actually to Kilpatrick’s rear, shadow-riding and looking for a chance to attack. Hampton had ambushed him at Aiken and was looking do
so again. Over my dead body, Kilpatrick thought. But he found it hard to plan for a contest while enswathed in the perfumed presence of Marie Boozer. Again and again, as she chattered away, and gave him sidelong glances that revealed the perfect conformation of her tiny ear, he imagined her gasp of surprise when for the first time in her sheltered life of gallant Southern courtiers and elegantly phrased compliments she would find herself on her back and attaining, from one powerful thrust, revelation of the true nature of a man.
Kilpatrick halted his column at a clearing, ordered up some refreshments for the ladies, and, excusing himself, sat down among the pine trees with maps and his staff and plotted his strategy. He would lie in wait for Hampton and intercept him. If General Hardee in Fayetteville sought to make a stand, he would find himself deprived of cavalry. Kilpatrick ordered deployments of one brigade each to the two roads upon which Hampton was said to be moving, and a third brigade to a road farther north in the event Hampton chose the more roundabout route.
For his camp, Kilpatrick chose Solomon’s Grove, a swamp-bordered village several miles from the road he thought Hampton was most likely to take, and after he had given orders for the troops’ encampment, with genuinely sincere regrets he ordered that the ladies be taken there forthwith under escort, in command of his portly gray-haired adjutant, Brevet Colonel Melrose Mortimer, who was said to be the oldest active officer in the Army of the West.
Kilpatrick called for his horse. And, Melrose, he said, as he mounted, for he wanted personally to oversee his deployments and get a better idea of the terrain, tell Jean-Pierre I want a wham-bang dinner for three this evening. Tell him this is a Grand Cru night. Grand Cru, you hear me? This Solomon’s Grove will surely be a sorry excuse for a village, but take the best house and see to the ladies’ comfort. I’ll be along presently. You’re to keep my nephew quiet. Put him to bed. And, Melrose, this above all. If, at war’s end you hope to live out your life in receipt of a full colonel’s pension, do not let the women out of your sight.
The March Page 19