Heaven and Hell (3 page)

"Oh, I finally found Thad Stevens. That's all."

"That isn't all. I can see it. Tell me."

George gazed at his wife, weighed down again by that feeling of hovering disaster. The premonition was not directly related to Stevens, yet he was a part of the tapestry.

A similar feeling had come over George in April of 1861, when he watched a house in Lehigh Station burn to the ground. He had stared at the flames and visualized the nation afire, and he had feared the future.

It had not been an idle fear. He'd lost Orry, and the Mains had lost the great house at Mont Royal, and the war had cost hundreds of thousands of lives and nearly destroyed the bonds between the families.

This foreboding was much like that earlier one.

He tried to minimize it to Constance, shrugging. "I expressed my views, and he put them down, pretty viciously. He wants congressional contfol of reconstruction and he wants blood from the South." George didn't mean to grow emotional, but he did. "Stevens is willing to go to war with Mr. Johnson to get what he wants. And I thought it was time to bind up the Union. God knows our family's suffered and bled enough.

Orry's, too."

Constance sighed, searching for some way to ease his unhappiness.

With a forced smile on her plump face, she said, "Dearest, it's
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only politics, after all--"

"No. It's much more than that. I was under the impression that we were celebrating because the war is over. Stevens set me straight.

It's only starting."

And George did not know whether the two families, already wounded by four years of one sort of war, could survive another.

We all agree that the seceded states,

so called, are out of their proper

practical relation with the Union, and

that the sole object of the government,

civil and military, in regard to those

states, is to again get them into that

proper, practical relation. I believe

that it is not only possible, but in fact

easier, to do this without deciding or

even considering whether these states

have ever been out of the Union, than

with it. Finding themselves safely at

home, it would be utterly immaterial

whether they had ever been abroad.

Last public speech of Abraham Lincoln, from a White House balcony, APRIL 11, 1865

Grind down the traitors. Grind the

traitors in the dust.

CONGRESSMAN THADDEUS STEVENS, after

Lincoln's assassination, 1865

1

All around him, pillars of fire shot skyward. The fighting had ignited x~A- the dry underbrush, then the trees. Smoke brought tears to his
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eyes and made it hard to see the enemy skirmishers.

Charles Main bent low over the neck of his gray, Sport, and waved his straw hat, shouting "Hah! Hah!" Ahead, at the gallop, manes streaming out, the twenty splendid cavalry horses veered one way, then another, seeking escape from the heat and the scarlet glare.

"Don't let them turn," Charles shouted to Ab Woolner, whom he couldn't see in the thick smoke. Rifle fire crackled. A dim figure to his left toppled from the saddle.

Could they get out? They had to get out. The army desperately needed these stolen mounts.

A burly sergeant in Union blue jumped up from behind a log. He aimed and put a rifle ball into the head of the mare at the front of the herd. She bellowed and fell. A chestnut behind her stumbled and w.ent down. Charles heard bone snap as he galloped on. The sergeant's sooty face broke into a smile. He blew a hole in the head of the chestnut.

The heat seared Charles's face. The smoke all but blinded him.

He'd completely lost sight of Ab and the others in the gray-clad raiding party. Only the need to get the animals to General Hampton pushed him on through the inferno that mingled sunlight with fire.

His lungs began to hurt, strangled for air. He thought he saw a

§aP ahead that marked the end of the burning wood. He applied spurs; sPort responded gallantly. "Ab, straight ahead. Do you see it?"

There was no response except more rifle fire, more outcries, more s°unds of horses and men tumbling into the burning leaves that carpeted le ground. Charles jammed his hat on his head and yanked out his .44

ahber

Army Colt and thumbed the hammer back. In front of him, strung 15

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HEAVEN AND HELL

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across the escape lane, three Union soldiers raised bayonets. They turned sideways to the stampeding horses. One soldier rammed his bayonet into the belly of a piebald. A geyser of blood splashed him. With a great agonized whinny, the piebald went down.

Such vicious brutality to an animal drove Charles past all reason.

He fired two rounds, but Sport was racing over such rough ground he couldn't hope for a hit. With the herd flowing around them, the three Union boys took aim. One ball tore right between Sport's eyes and splattered blood on Charles's face. He let out a demented scream as the gray's forelegs buckled, tossing him forward.

He landed hard and came up on hands and knees, groggy. Another smiling Union boy dodged in with his bayonet. Charles had an impression of orange light too bright to stare at, heat so intense he could almost feel it broil his skin. The Union boy stepped past Sport, down and dying, and rammed the bayonet into Charles's belly and ripped upward, tearing him open from navel to breastbone.

A second soldier put his rifle to Charles's head. Charles heard the roar, felt the impact--then the wood went dark.

"Mr. Charles--"

"Straight on, Ab! It's the only way out."

"Mr. Charles, sir, wake up."

He opened his eyes, saw a woman's silhouette bathed in deep red light. He swallowed air, thrashed. Red light. The forest was burning--

No. The light came from the red bowls of the gas mantles around the parlor. There was no fire, no heat. Still dazed, he said, "Augusta?"

"Oh, no, sir," she said sadly. "It's Maureen. You made such an outcry, I thought you'd had a seizure of some kind."

Charles sat up and pushed his dark hair off his sweaty forehead.

The hair hadn't been cut in a while. It curled over the collar of his faded blue shirt. Though he was only twenty-nine, a lot of his handsomeness had been worn away by privation and despair.

Across the parlor of the suite in the Grand Prairie Hotel, Chicago, he saw his gun belt lying on a chair cushion. The holster held his 1848 Colt, engraved with a scene of Indians fighting Army dragoons. Over

the back of the same chair lay his gypsy cloak, a patchwork of squares from butternut trousers, fur robes, Union greatcoats, yellow and scarlet comforters. He'd sewn it, piece by piece, during the war, for warmth.

The war--

"Bad dream," he said. "Did I wake Gus?"

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"No, sir. Your son's sleeping soundly. I'm sorry about the nightmare."

"I should have known it for what it was. Ab Woolner was in it Lost Causes 17

And my horse Sport. They're both dead." He rubbed his eyes. "I'll be all right, Maureen. Thank you."

Doubtfully, she said, "Yes, sir," and tiptoed out.

All right? he thought. How could he ever be all right? He'd lost everything in the war, because he'd lost Augusta Barclay, who had died giving birth to the son he never knew about until she was gone.

The spell of the dream still gripped him. He could see and smell the forest burning, just as the Wilderness had burned. He could feel the heat boiling his blood. It was a.fitting dream. He was a burned-out man, his waking hours haunted by two conflicting questions: Where could he find peace for himself? Where did he fit in a country no longer at war?

His only answer to both was "Nowhere."

He shoved his hair back again and staggered to the sideboard, where he poured a stiff drink. Ruddy sunset light tinted the roofs of Randolph Street visible from the corner window. He was just finishing the drink, still trying to shake off the nightmare, when Augusta's uncle, Brigadier "Jack Duncan, came through the foyer.

The first thing he said was "Charlie, I have bad news."

Brevet Brigadier Duncan was a thickly built man with crinkly gray hair and ruddy cheeks. He looked splendid in full dress; tail coat, sword belt, baldric, sash with gauntlets folded over it, chapeau with black silk cockade tucked under his arm. His actual rank in his new post at the Military Division of the Mississippi, headquartered in Chicago, was captain. Most wartime brevets had been reduced, but like all the others, Duncan was entitled to be addressed by his higher rank. He wore the single silver star of a brigadier on his epaulets, but he complained about the confusion of ranks, titles, insignia, and uniforms in the postwar army.

Charles, waiting for him to say more, relighted the stub of a cigar.

Duncan laid his chapeau aside and poured a drink. "I've been at Division all afternoon, Charlie. Bill Sherman's to replace John Pope as commander."

"Is

that your bad news?"

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Duncan shook his head. "We have a million men still under arms, but by this time next year we'll be lucky to have twenty-five thousand.

As part of that reduction, the First through the Sixth Volunteer Infantry Regiments are to be mustered out."

"All the Galvanized Yankees?" They were Confederate prisoners who had been put into the Union Army during the war in lieu of going to prison.

"Every last one. They acquitted themselves well, too. They kept le Sioux from slaughtering settlers in Minnesota, rebuilt telegraph lines

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HEAVEN AND HELL

the hostiles destroyed, garrisoned forts, guarded the stage and mail service.

But it's all over."

Charles strode to the window. "Damn it, Jack, I came all the way out here to join one of those regiments."

"I know. But the doors are closed."

Charles turned, his face so forlorn Duncan was deeply moved.

This South Carolinian who'd fathered his niece's child was a fine man.

But like so many others, he'd been cast adrift in pain and confusion by the end of the war that had occupied him wholly for four years.

"Well, then," Charles said, "I suppose I'll have to swamp floors.

Dig ditches--"

"There's another avenue, if you care to try it." Charles waited.

"The regular cavalry."

"Hell, that's impossible. The amnesty proclamation excludes West Point men who changed sides."

"You can get around that." Before Charles could ask how, he continued. "There's a surplus of officers left from the war but a shortage of qualified enlisted men. You're a fine horseman and a topnotch soldier--you should be, coming from the Point. They'll take you ahead of all the Irish immigrants and one-armed wonders and escaped jailbirds."

Charles

chewed on the cigar, thinking. "What about my boy?"

"Why, we'd just follow the same arrangement we agreed on previously.

Maureen and I will keep Gus until you're through with training
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and posted somewhere. With luck--if you're at Fort Leavenworth or Fort Riley, for instance--you can hire a noncom's wife to nursemaid him. If not, he can stay on with us indefinitely. I love that boy. I'd shoot any man who looked cross-eyed at him."

"So would I." Charles pondered further. "Not much of a choice, is it? Muster with the regulars or go home, live on Cousin Madeline's charity, and sit on a cracker barrel telling war stories for the rest of my life." He chewed the cigar again, fiercely. Casting a quizzical look at Duncan, he asked, "You sure they'd have me in the regulars?"

"Charlie, hundreds of former reb--ah, Confederates are entering the Army. You just have to do what they do."

"What's that?"

"When you enlist, lie like hell."

"Next," said the recruiting sergeant.

Charles walked to the stained table, which had a reeking spittoon underneath. Next door, a man screamed as a barber yanked his tooth.

The noncom smelled of gin, looked twenty years past retirement Lost Causes 19

age, and did everything slowly. Charles had already sat for an hour while the sergeant processed two wild-eyed young men, neither of whom spoke English. One answered every question by thumping his chest and exclaiming, "Budapest, Budapest." The other thumped his chest and exclaimed, "United States Merica." God save the Plains Army.

The sergeant pinched his veined nose, "'fore we go on, do me a favor. Take that God-awful collection of rags or whatever it is and drop it outside. It looks disgusting and it smells like sheep shit."

Simmering, Charles folded the gypsy robe and put it neatly on the plank walk outside the door. Back at the table, he watched the sergeant ink his pen.

"You know the enlistment's five years--"

Charles nodded.

"Infantry or cavalry?"

"Cavalry."

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That one word gave him away. Hostile, the sergeant said,

"Southron?"

"South Carolina."

The sergeant reached for a pile of sheets held together by a metal ring. "Name?"

Charles had thought about that carefully. He wanted a name close to his real one, so he'd react naturally when addressed. "Charles May."

"May, May--" The sergeant leafed through the sheets, finally set them aside. In response to Charles's quizzical stare, he said, "Roster of West Point graduates. Division headquarters got it up." He eyed Charles's shabby clothes. "You don't have to worry about being mistook for one of those boys, I guess. Now, any former military service?"

"Wade Hampton Mounted Legion. Later--"

"Wade Hampton is enough." The sergeant wrote. "Highest rank?"

Taking Duncan's advice made him uncomfortable, but he did it.

"Corporal."

"Can you prove that?"

"I can't prove anything. My records burned in Richmond."

The sergeant sniffed. "That's damned convenient for you rebs.

Well, we can't be choosy. Ever since Chivington settled up with Black Kettle's Cheyennes last year, the damn plains tribes have gone wild."