Jacob's Ladder (54 page)

“Eight's plenty,” Alexander said. “If that boy keeps working those ropes, he'll get loose.”

Teamsters cracked whips and cursed midmorning curses.

The Federal officer's waxed black mustache was too fierce for his years. The veteran sergeant at his side kept his eyes roving.

The captured courier made no movement, but the mustachioed officer spotted him and was dismounting, even as his sergeant called, “Sir! Have a care!”

The sergeant was lifting his carbine when Captain Stump emptied his saddle. Baxter waited until the officer got one foot in the stirrup before he killed him. Partisan rangers crashed into the rear guard, those Federals who raised their hands in surrender were cut down, teamsters abandoned their wagons or whipped their teams off the road, where they upset, and Captain Stump and Baxter rode down the train shooting all those who did not flee into the brush.

Alexander killed the tied courier over and over again.

IN SHADY HOLLYWOOD

R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
J
ULY
24, 1864

“ ‘WITH THE ANGELS
now.' ” Sallie traced the blurred inscription on the sandstone tombstone. “After we are gone, will people wonder about us? Will those who come when we are gone think us quaint? Will they wonder why we wear hoops?”

“You don't,” Duncan Gatewood lazily took exception.

“Like the Brethren women, I am excused from hoops. Their exemption is from religious principle, mine occupational. Perhaps my attire must be drab, but it should not billow like a sail in the wind. Duncan, will they wear hoops?”

Duncan rolled over and plucked a blade of grass. “I predict . . . they will. Yes, I'm sure of it.”

Summer had been hot and dry, but vegetation which elsewhere had yellowed flourished in the deep shade of Hollywood Cemetery. Hollywood was popular with courting couples, who strolled its leafy avenues with chaperons a courteous pace behind. Duncan and Sallie reclined beside an eighteenth-century grave beneath the shade of a giant chestnut.

There weren't many trees in the new part, where dirt paths connected long rows of fresh mounds, each with its numbered unpainted wooden cross. Mourners, mostly old people and stunned children, visited there. Courting couples would rather stroll where old trees and green shade made death beautiful.

Eyes half shut, Duncan sprawled against the headstone. “You are in better spirits these days.”

“It is a new thing with me, Duncan, and tender. Please do not mock me.”

He leaned forward. “Oh, no, dearest girl. I am pleased beyond telling.” He laid his hand upon hers.

“I think I was ashamed. To continue on when so many who were so brave have been translated.” She fell silent as a cortege turned into the new section. An old man drove a rickety farmer's wagon carrying an unpainted coffin, and two women walked behind. Other mourners stepped aside incuriously.

Duncan said, “Mother writes that our Leona is failing. Her strength is less every day.”

“Poor dear Leona! All she ever hoped for in this world was to be loved.”

“She had Catesby for a time.” Duncan forced a smile. “You look pert this morning, my Sallie. Where did you find that yellow rose for your hair?”

“I committed theft from a flowering bush on Franklin Street. Oh, Duncan, we must seize what pleasure we can. Life is in no way improved by despair!”

Duncan grinned at her. “Of course.” He angled his neck to examine the leafy canopy overhead. “I go tomorrow to Scottsville. Captain Pickering's father has a plantation there, and according to the captain, his father greatly admires General Lee and possesses a thousand bushels of last season's corn. Unless we get some rain while this year's corn is tasseling, the crop will be poor.”

“God will provide.”

“That may be,” Duncan said. “Meanwhile I put my faith in Mr. Pickering. His plantation is near the canal, so it'd be no work at all bringing it to Richmond. Although General Grant has only besieged us since May, it seems forever.”

“It would be pleasant to leave Richmond. I wish I could go.”

“When was the last time you were in the countryside?”

Sallie's eyes brimmed. “No, no, I'll be all right. I hate my tears! It is commendable to mourn our poor slain boys, contemptible to weep because poor Sallie hasn't lately picnicked in the countryside.”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Duncan, you know I cannot. Soon Grant will make another attack, and I must be at Winder when the ambulances arrive.”

“You are as much imprisoned . . .”

“Do not say that, Duncan! It is not true! I am where I wish to be. It is not uncommon for some boy to recognize me and take heart from my presence. Last week a boy was brought in shot through the neck; it is his fourth time at Winder, and though he could not speak I am sure he recognized me.”

Duncan sighed. “I wish I could be as confident I am doing my duty. The feeblest militia officer could manage my job, and we lack experienced officers. I've asked General Mahone to let me go back to the lines, but he won't hear of it. Some fellows say when a man loses a limb, he loses his mettle, but I don't think that's so. Sally, consider our one-armed, one-legged generals. Our drums cannot sound attack until our generals are tightly strapped to their horses!”

Sallie covered her mouth. “I should not laugh, I should not,” and her eyes widened as she giggled into her palm. “It was the image in my mind,” she said, “of the flurry at army headquarters as General Hood, Ewell, and the others are attached to their steeds. I am sorry. I know it cannot be funny to you.” Sallie brushed grass from her dress. “Come, let us stroll. If we stay in this bower any longer, I'll surely fall asleep.”

They walked side by side, Duncan carrying their wicker picnic basket. “Duncan, what are your hopes when this war is over? Will you return to Stratford?”

“All that seems so long ago. I was a boy.”

“And now that you are an ancient?”

He smiled. “It seems silly. But I'm more at ease with the graybeards of forty and fifty who command our divisions than with the youngsters enlisting today. Mother writes that Thomas Byrd is determined to join up.”

“Oh dear.”

“We boys all believed that war was a swift path to glory, and sometimes it's true. Pelham, the gallant Pelham, was twenty-three when he died.”

“And if he hadn't died, Pelham would be twenty-four and perhaps wed!” Sallie returned hotly.

“Don't fear for me, Miss Sallie.” Duncan smiled. “These days I reserve all my gallantry for the ladies. One lady, anyway.”

Blushing, Sallie turned away. “The footwall of that grand tombstone will serve us as table,” she said. “It is well in shade.”

Duncan examined the epitaph. “This is President Monroe's grave,” he announced.

Sallie spread out a napkin upon which she laid delicacies. “I believe the gentleman has quite the loveliest view in Richmond.”

Duncan rummaged through the basket. “Eggs, bread, garden radishes. Few Federal generals will dine so well as this.”

Sallie made a face. “Must we always refer to the war? Can we not enjoy one outing free of it?”

“Tell me, Miss Sallie, where did you get that fetching bonnet? It is new to me, I swear.”

“A boy's sister gave it me in gratitude for easing his suffering.”

“Yes,” Duncan said. “By all means let's not talk about the war. That bird there, over the river, is that an eagle?”

Sallie giggled. “I believe it is a vulture, Duncan. But it is not a warlike vulture.”

“I wonder what we'll be like when this is over. I wonder will we ask each other, ‘Where were you the day of Gaines's Mill, or Chancellorsville, or Cold Harbor?”

Sallie said, “The convalescent who boiled our eggs has a vat large enough for dozens at a time and a slotted ladle to retrieve them. One might imagine he would mistake them, but he never does. When Surgeon Lane orders eggs soft-boiled for a patient, soft-boiled is how they come. When I request hard-boiled for our picnic, they are hard-boiled. Duncan, what will become of us? I am becoming a skilled hospital matron, a skill I hope never to employ afterward. And you are becoming expert at extracting grain from reluctant patriots.”

“I'll raise horses.” Duncan took an egg from the basket. “Sally, I dream about horses—foals on spring pasture, horses like Gypsy, fiery horses, sulky ones, horses that never reckon the cost. Our old neighbor Andrew Seig was famous for his horses.” He gave Sallie his egg. “Maybe I can break horses better than I can peel this egg.”

“I could learn to do it.”

“A woman horsebreaker? Sallie!”

“Who could object were I your wife?”

Duncan turned his face away. “Dearest Sallie. You could do better than me.”

“You forget, I have been married to a . . . whole man, and a choice between him and you is not so difficult.” She blushed. “Forgive me, Duncan, for being forward. Entranced by your dream, I forgot myself.”

Duncan seized on this change of course. “Some say the grass in the western territories makes such growth cattlemen make no provision for winter—their cows can paw through snow for their forage.”

“And in this new land, might not a woman become a horsebreaker?”

“Now Sallie . . .”

“Would fashion require she wear hoops?”

“Sally, you used to be such a pleasant, agreeable woman.”

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci, that's me.” Sallie laughed.

“Lincoln's Homestead Act allows any man to assert a claim to one hundred and sixty acres.”

“But Duncan, we are not citizens of that country.”

“Sometimes I forget,” Duncan said.

Sallie quickly touched his hand. “Did I mock you? I did not mean to; I meant only to amuse. Yours is a beautiful dream. Nay, call it a plan. But what of Stratford? Surely, after the war, Virginia will need good horses.”

He looked away. “I suppose.”

Hollywood's shady silence rang in their ears. A cardinal fluffed its wings in a hemlock's branches.

“Duncan, I had come to think of my life as something that happened when I lived with Uther and Opal and Jesse: that was my Golden Age, never to be reclaimed. Though I do dearly love horses, I am joking with you, Duncan, about becoming a horsebreaker, and my forwardness is only to make you smile.

“Marry whom you will, dear Duncan. But you should have seen your face! When I proposed, your face fell into bewilderment, and when I hinted we might rear horses in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, you turned entirely pale. Duncan”—Sallie made a grand gesture—“I release you from the promises you never quite made, those vows you have always avoided. I leave you to your own life, your undoubtedly well-mannered wife, who will think nothing of wearing hoops from sunup to sundown and may well wear them into the marital bed. I give you leave to go west, abandon friends and family, and slaughter wild Indians to your heart's content as you eke out a miserable living in the wilderness!”

Carefully Duncan folded napkins and laid them neatly at the bottom of the basket. The jug they had shared he set atop. He asked, “What shall I bring from the countryside? Pickering's father is supposed to be a great ham curer, and the peaches will be ripening.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Winder Hospital provides all I require.”

“Some cloth, perhaps? Some mills are still operating in Scottsville.”

Her look became most somber, and she lowered her eyes demurely. “A hoop?” she inquired.

“A what?”

“Since a hoop is important to you, I shall learn to wear one. I must no longer embarrass you.”

“What makes you think you do?” Duncan was honestly puzzled. “Why would I give a . . . a . . . drat about women's hoops?”

“But Duncan . . .” Tears came to her eyes. “There is something wrong between us, and nothing I do seems to right it.”

He took her hand. “Sallie, Sallie. There is nothing wrong, nothing at all. Will you marry me?”

“Oh, no. Oh, I don't know.”

He pressed his lips to hers in token.

After more tendernesses, she drew away from him, shaken. “Oh, Duncan,” she whispered, “I do not know. You must promise me you will not die.”

MASTER AND MAN

E
LLIOTT'S
S
ALIENT
,
NEAR
P
ETERSBURG
, V
IRGINIA
J
ULY
29, 1864

“WHEELHORSE!” THE CAPTAIN
grinned. “Blessed if you ain't a major now! Where'd you lose the wing?”

“Cadet Spaulding! What in the world?”

The former roommates grinned and shook hands vigorously. “You never know. You never know. It's got to the point where I hate to ask after old friends.” Spaulding wagged his head gloomily. “Preston, Billy Smith, MacIntyre . . .”

“We lost MacIntyre in the valley in '62. How long ago it seems. But you, Spaulding . . . ?”

Dusk at General Lee's headquarters. A fine old plantation house beside an enormous magnolia tree. Couriers came, officers gossiped around a campfire before Lee's modest field tent. Bats swooped and nighthawks uttered uncanny cries.

“Dear Cousin Hill keeps me under his wing—which means we are always where it's hot. Father says my present horse is positively the last he'll contribute, that if I can't keep this one alive I will be riding a mule. I tell Pa mules won't stand up to musketry, and Pa says he had previously believed a man smarter than a mule but now has doubts. Can you loan me five hundred?”

Duncan turned his pockets inside out.

“I'm to go on furlough Monday,” Spaulding said. “Papers all signed, but I've only fifty dollars to my name. You sure you don't have a gold piece squirreled away? Twenty blessed days at home, regaling the prettiest girl in the country with yarns of my derring-do. I'll pay you back one day, you know. Say, wasn't that Kernstown fight the damnedest thing? Early taught General Crook a thing or two.”

“We keep teaching them and they keep not learning.”

“I always did think yankees slow-witted. Now what the devil happened to you? That scraggly beard you've grown—does it conceal a wound?”

“Burn. Chancellorsville.”

“Well, you used to be prettier, that's the truth. Tell me, Wheelhorse, have you heard when we'll be paid?”

“Soon as they find paper to print the money. Say, I just came in from the countryside and possess a chicken which this afternoon was clucking in a farmyard, and I have cornbread too. Have you dined?”

“Having lately feasted on hardtack and hardtack, I'd be honored to join you, sir.” Spaulding bowed deeply.

Captain Spaulding's haven was beneath the magnolia's sheltering branches. His tent was torn, equipment helterskelter, and Duncan said, “It's a good thing Jackson hasn't got the inspection. Fifty, sixty demerits, sure.”

“Oh hell, Wheelhorse,” Spaulding said. “You were always the one who cleaned up.” Under his blanket he located a frying pan, which he wiped with his sleeve. A small fire, salt pork for grease, and within half an hour, the two listened to chicken parts crackling while they whisked smoke away from their faces.

“What brings you to headquarters, Wheelhorse?”

Duncan told how Planter Pickering of Scottsville had a thousand bushels of corn he'd sell to the army, nay
give
to the army, “if'n he got a note from Marse Robert himself. It's good feed and his corn cribs are only half an hour from the canal, and I don't know how General Hill is doing, but some of General Mahone's artillery horses are too poor to shift a gun.”

“General Lee going to write the note?”

“His aide, Colonel Venable, promises it in the morning. It's personal with Planter Pickering. Old man says he won't give ‘ary a ear of corn to Jeff Davis, but Marse Robert ken have what he wants.'”

Spaulding lifted fork and knife in salute. “Isn't that chicken about ready? It's got me drooling.”

The two didn't have much in common except the Institute, but weaker ties have cemented lifetime friendships, and without talking much as they ate, they contrived to say a great deal. Spaulding was worried about A. P. Hill. “Cousin Hill's been awfully sick. He's just skin and bones. But he comes out of bed soon as the guns start rumbling.” Duncan's old roommate repeated headquarters gossip. “General Lee says the Federals are digging underneath our lines, so our boys are digging to find them.” Spaulding shivered. “If I'm to die, let me die in the sunlight. All this digging and tunneling—there's nothing gallant about it.”

Duncan spoke of his dying sister, Leona, how she had lost all will to live. “Sometimes, when I'm in a grim humor, I know how she feels.”

“Don't be glum, Wheelhorse.” Spaulding tapped his pipe against his boot heel. “Die and you'll miss all the fun.” He grinned, and after a pause, Duncan grinned too.

Duncan told his old friend about Sallie, worrying her work at Winder Hospital was so important she'd not consent to be his wife.

Spaulding said, “Wheelhorse, what would you think of a man who shirked duty for love of a girl?”

“It's different for a woman,” Duncan said.

“You're too acute a thinker for me, son.”

Duncan stared into the fire. “And you? Anyone capture your fancy?”

Captain Spaulding described a neighbor's daughter, just sixteen when he went away. “And she said she'd wait for me,” he said. “For me! Can you believe that?”

Duncan took Spaulding's tobacco for his own pipe. “Frankly I cannot, unless she has confused conquering a Hill with surmounting a Spaulding.”

Spaulding laughed. “Wheelhorse, our repast would be complete with a single cup of real coffee. How I miss it.”

“Not two weeks ago,” Duncan said, “I was south of Bedford when an aristocrat of those parts invited me into his home, where a servant brought a cup of the finest coffee I have drunk since '61. My host was one of these fellows untouched by the war. His plantation is prosperous and his servants haven't run off. When I complimented him and asked wouldn't he join me, he said he wasn't drinking coffee until the supply was ‘more reliable.' I didn't ask when he thought that would be. I believe he expects to wake up one fine morning and find the Federal blockade dismantled and buyers for his tobacco again.”

“We've not been bothered much at home,” Spaulding confessed. “A few bucks ran off when Federal cavalry came through the country, but they came back when they learned the Federals wouldn't feed them.” Spaulding said that since they didn't have coffee, Duncan's excellent brandy would suffice, and when Duncan said he didn't have any brandy, Spaulding said, “Ah well.” He also said that Lincoln couldn't possibly win reelection, that the Federals were tired of fighting and would quit.

“Brother Rat,” Duncan said solemnly, “no doubt you are right. As for me, I will not think about it.”

The next morning they rose from their blankets and wished they hadn't finished the chicken the night before. Spaulding ragged Duncan about his beard, which he said strongly resembled a turkey gobbler's, while Duncan named the bearded Confederate generals and claimed, “Spaulding, your sweetheart will not think you a soldier without one.”

“It is of no consequence,” Spaulding grumbled, “unless I find money for my leave.” He jerked around. “Here, what's this!”

The courier came off his horse without hitching and ignored the sentry's salute. Officers were already assembling outside Lee's tent when, napkin tucked at his neck, Lee ordered Colonel Venable: “Ride quickly to General Mahone and have him send two brigades to Blandford Cemetery. Those people have exploded a mine beneath our lines and are attacking in strength.”

Duncan was already cinching his saddle. “I am Mahone's officer, Colonel,” he cried. “I will accompany you.”

They galloped across the Pocahontas Bridge, through neighborhoods which had been Petersburg's finest until the Federal shelling. Roofless, punctured, abandoned mansions strewed bricks into the road. Some had been reduced to brick heaps with only an end wall or fractured chimney still standing.

Their horses kicking up red dust, they hurtled down Jerusalem Road. Venable's horse was a terrific galloper and Duncan rode hard just to keep up.

By some fluke of terrain, neither the blast of the Federal mine nor the subsequent artillery barrage had been audible in Petersburg, but just beyond Blandford Cemetery the roar of guns sucked air from Duncan's lungs. A particulate haze hung over the crater where the Confederate lines had been blown up, and the air stank of cold clay and peppery gunpowder.

Around the next bend, the Federal cannonade was silenced as abruptly as if God had dropped a blanket over it.

Just short of Lieutenant's Creek, they left the plank road and splashed through shallows into the meadow where General Billy Mahone was waiting.

Before Colonel Venable had finished delivering Lee's orders Mahone was barking commands in his high, irritable voice. Mahone extracted Weisinger's Virginians and Wright's Georgians from the Confederate positions for a counterattack on the breached one.

The brigades started along Lieutenant's Creek, keeping below the sightline of the Federal signal towers. In an orchard filled with unripe peaches they were ordered to shed their knapsacks because they were going in for a fight. Men arranged their few personal belongings where they could recover them should they live.

When Mahone and Duncan arrived at General Bushrod Johnson's headquarters, only Confederate remnants—two hundred riflemen and a few guns—stood between the Federals and Petersburg. If the Federals took Petersburg and the railroads that supplied Lee's army, the army was done for. “Only two hundred men,” Bushrod Johnson said, awestruck. “Damn them! Damn them and their cowardly mine!”

“General,” Mahone spoke to the immobile Johnson with careful courtesy, “perhaps you'd escort me to a vantage point where I might inspect the enemy's dispositions.”

“Captain Frazier will accompany you, General,” Bushrod Johnson dismissed that idea.

Because Federal artillery was hitting Jerusalem Road, the three-man party dashed for the safety of a covered way. The noise was ferocious, tooth-rattling. Mahone yelled, “What do you make it, Major? A hundred guns? Two hundred?”

Duncan shouted back, “More'n a hundred. About the same they had at Fredericksburg.”

A thin stream of wounded soldiers hobbled down the covered way. “Hell is busted,” one whispered.

One man had been buried alive, had lost his trousers, was smeared with earth, and dirt dribbled from his nostrils. Another had his hands clamped over his ears and was yelling loudly, “They's niggers! Thousands of niggers! They's revengin' themselves for Fort Pillow! They's givin' no quarter!”

The covered way ended in a shallow ravine angling toward the fighting. Bushrod Johnson's aide pointed. “Up there. You can see the Federals from there.” The aide swallowed. “I'll hold the horses.”

When Duncan and the general topped the rise, they overlooked half a mile of Confederate lines.

The Confederate trenches had been deep enough for a man to stand without being shot, narrow so an exploding shell wouldn't do much damage. Circular earthen forts anchored the line, and rations and ammunition were brought forward through covered ways, protected from sharpshooters and artillery. The soldiers lived in bombproofs, some with brick chimneys.

But after the Federal mine exploded, the only unwrecked trench was a shallow communications trench behind the crater. There the Confederate survivors had rallied.

“God Christ Almighty!” Mahone said. “Jesus Christ Crucified! The bastards! The sons of bitches!”

The crater was thirty feet deep, 150 feet across, and it steamed: raw earth, turned bottom to top—gray over red—splintered timber, wrecked gun carriages and limbers, a crumpled tin stove, an officer's leather trunk half buried, a human torso—just the torso—its wounds cauterized by dirt, human limbs, some perhaps belonging to the dislimbed torso. So many bodies were dismembered that intact corpses were a relief to the eye.

From one wall to the other, the crater swarmed with Federal attackers. Two hundred rifles pop-popped at them, but it was their own stunned horror, more than anything else, that kept the Federal soldiers in the hell they had created.

Duncan was counting. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, a dozen, that's two dozen, make that thirty, thirty-one, thirty-three regimental flags. General, if those boys get out of that pit the war's over.”

Mahone smiled a hard smile. “It will be our duty, Major, to ensure they do not get out of that pit. Kindly invite Colonel Saunders to bring up his brigade. Ask him to come at the double-quick.”

Mahone's brigades hurriedly formed in a swale below the crest. The Confederates were red-hot: life was hard enough in the Petersburg trenches without they burrowed underneath sleeping men and blew them to tarnation. Life was awful enough without they sent niggers at you.

John Brown's mad fantasy of blacks slaughtering whites filled these men's minds. They told no nervous jokes and their officers made no speeches.