Jacob's Ladder (56 page)

A handful of Confederate officers strolled among the prisoners, asking the odd question, tilting a face for identification. “Master,” one man cried, “I is Jed. Belong to Master Tom Stephens, just down the road. You remember me, don't you? I surely am homesick. Surely would like to go back to Master Tom if you could help me out.”

“Wait here for me,” Spaulding said.

“I thought your family hadn't any runaway servants.”

“Wait here, will you? Give me your canteen.”

Spaulding ignored many imploring hands before picking a young colored soldier and giving him water.

Under an old tulip poplar, Confederate officers whose former servants wore Federal soldier's uniforms waited while a cavalry sergeant wrote out receipts.

“Master Duncan.”

The voice was so low Duncan couldn't identify its source. His eyes searched the disconsolate, the wounded, the dying, and the terrified. “Hello, Jesse. You hurt?”

Jesse was sitting back to a tree, hatless and shoeless; his shirt hung in shreds.

“No, Master Duncan,” he whispered.

“What do you want, Jesse?” Duncan was so stunned the only words he had were simple ones.

“Don't want to go to Andersonville,” Jesse said. “They kill me down there.”

“I got to think,” Duncan said.

Jesse whispered, “Never enough time to think, is there, Master Duncan?”

Spaulding was beelining toward them, his young negro following two steps behind. “Wheelhorse,” Spaulding hissed, “do me a service.”

“Spaulding, I don't . . .”

“Yes, yes! Look here. This Ethiopian and I have concocted a scheme of mutual benefit. I am to claim him as my servant and thus he avoids Andersonville and the near certainty some patriotic citizen will summarily end his life. Duncan, in the name of friendship, should yon cavalryman question my claim, you are to say that young . . . what's your name, boy?”

“Ben, Master.”

“That Ben is known to you as my servant, that he was my body servant at the Institute. Can you remember?”

Duncan lifted a hand tiredly, and Spaulding led the man away.

If Duncan simply walked away, who would know? If Jesse lived to tell, what difference would it make? “He was just another Federal prisoner to me,” Duncan might say. “He made his choice when he ran from Stratford.”

“You'll come with me,” Duncan said.

“Yes, Master.”

“Those are sergeant's stripes.”

“Yes, Master. Second sergeant, B Company, 23rd U.S. Colored.”

“I never would have guessed you'd make a soldier. The way your generals sent you in, you didn't have a chance.”

“Yes, Master,” Jesse said.

“You sure you're not hurt?”

Jesse's eyes were dull. “Hurt my pride. Buckra stole my shoes.”

Spaulding elaborated his yarn of runaway servants long after the cavalry sergeant ceased to care. “Yes, Captain, I don't doubt your word. You sign for him and the nigger's yours.”

“Well,” Spaulding said, “thank you. Ben, come along with me.”

Duncan signed for Jesse of Stratford Plantation, Virginia.

The Confederates rode, the coloreds walked behind. After a few minutes, Spaulding said, “A hickory-smoked ham . . .”

“What?”

“That's what I promised you, and that's what I shall produce. It was a great comfort to know you would vouch for me. Who've you got there?”

“Jesse. Belongs to my father.”

Spaulding chuckled. “How do they get up to it? Dressing them up in soldier suits, issuing them rifles, and sending 'em at us. At us!” Spaulding slapped his saddle. “Oh, I feel fine. I feel fine!” He turned. “Ben, what would you rather—go on the auction block or start that long march to Andersonville?”

Ben kept his eyes lowered, “I done told you, Master. I go with you.”

Spaulding rubbed his hands together. “Prime buck like Ben. What you think he'll bring at the auction? Four thousand? Five?”

“Oh, Christ, Spaulding . . .”

“Not a word, mind you. I wouldn't want this transaction advertised.”

Duncan reined in. “I never saw you today.”

“Meet me at Johnny Worsham's tonight, Wheelhorse, and we'll celebrate my furlough in grand style.”

Duncan said he had no heart for celebration and wished nothing so much as rest.

Spaulding rode off toward the Richmond & Petersburg railroad depot with his prize. Duncan and Jesse turned into the dooryard of a wrecked farmhouse.

Glass was out of the windows and irregular shell holes in the brick faced the Federal positions. Shade trees had been cut for firewood and the porch railings were gone. The front door hung askew.

The front parlor was empty of furnishings excepting a two-legged settee that slumped on the floor like an old dog. The mantelpiece had disappeared into somebody's cookfire, along with most of the wainscotting. Broken glass crunched under Duncan's feet. “I've got no food to give you.”

“Not hungry.”

“You fellows put up a hell of a scrap.”

“You broke us.”

“We've had considerable practice. You were green troops.”

“Ain't green no more.”

“Here, take this canteen to the well. Oh hell, I'll do it.”

“What you think you got a servant for, Master?” Jesse said. “Sure am happy be servin' my old master. Master Gatewood always been good to me.”

Duncan sat on the broken settee. He rubbed his eyes.

Jesse looked at him. “You shot someplace?”

Duncan said, “When I was young I thought everything could be made right, given time.”

“You sleep. I'll keep a watch.”

They did.

At dusk, when Duncan woke, his mouth was furred and his arm bloodless where he'd lain upon it. The windows were pale rectangles. A small fire burned in the fireplace. Duncan knuckled crust from his eyes and drank from the canteen. “I suppose I should see about getting us something to eat.”

“Don't trouble yourself on my account.”

“Jesse . . . remember those days on Uther's porch, learning our McGuffey's Reader? You and me, Leona and Sallie?”

“Like you said, some things can't be made right.” He told Duncan about Rufus.

Duncan swore. After a time he said, “When you were attacking at the Crater, you yelled, ‘No quarter!' For Christ's sake, why did you do that?”

Though his uniform was rags on his body, Jesse was not the servant he had been. He said, “How the hell should I know?”

“When we were young, I could have said anything to you that came into my mind. Anything at all.”

“I expect that time ended for me before it ended for you. Don't take long for a nigger to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

“Damn it, Jesse . . .”

“When we was tryin' to surrender back there, why did you fellows keep killing us? I saw many a colored man cut down with his hands raised.”

“Some good men chose their own damnation this day,” Duncan said. Wagons rolled past the house. “Christ, Jesse. You know I'm no deep thinker.” A teamster's whip cracked and a mule protested. Duncan offered Jesse the canteen.

“Sallie's been a hospital matron since summer '62. I have deep feelings for Sallie. I don't know they are reciprocated.”

“That can be hard. It hurts a man terrible loving a woman don't love him. Makes him feel the fool. What of the homeplace?”

Duncan was confused until he understood Jesse was asking about the Botkins. Duncan told of Uther's death and Aunt Opal's return to Stratford. They sat quietly for a while. Duncan said he'd get them something to eat.

“You gonna leave me here?”

“You going somewhere?”

It was a quick ride to Mahone's headquarters, where soldiers were enjoying Federal rations of mutton—a trainload of provisions had arrived in Petersburg.

Some men couldn't stop talking about today's fight. Others, like Duncan, couldn't speak a word, and nobody thought it remarkable when he halved a mutton ham and rode away with it.

“What time is it?” Jesse asked.

“Getting later.”

The two men shared chunks of undercooked meat washed down with well water.

“You want to go home to Stratford?” Duncan asked. “If Lincoln gets reelected, the Confederacy is done. God knows you'd be a help. My sister's failing. Catesby died at the Bloody Angle.”

Jesse stared out a ruined window. “I'm sorry. Mr. Byrd always seemed a good-natured man. We coloreds missed that fight. General Butler thinks niggers make good soldiers. Grant and Sherman aren't so sure.”

“ ‘Beast' Butler—that's what we call him. When he commanded in New Orleans he threatened to treat ladies like women of the street.”

“My, that's terrible. Don't know what I'd do if somebody threatened to treat my womenfolk like women of the street.”

Duncan held his tongue. “If I send you back to Stratford?”

“My back still aches where your father whipped me. Sometimes Master Samuel just can't help himself.”

Duncan joined Jesse at the window shell. The darkening landscape outside was treeless. Darkness pooled in the shell holes.

Duncan said, “The brothers I might have had didn't live. The twins were stillborn.”

“I heard your mama took it hard.”

“It won't matter who wins this war. Things will be the same—sorrow, sickness, and death.”

“I s'pose it's not likely men will quit their wicked ways.”

“Jesse, General Grant is a damn butcher.”

“I believe General Lee has created his share of widows.”

“Why . . . ?”

“Because we got to end this thing. You call me Jesse, I call you Master Duncan. Just usin' your name, ‘Duncan,' comes hard to me. You are a fine white gentleman, I don't doubt. And no man can help who he falls in love with or if the woman loves him back. It'll take a hundred, two hundred years to cure this slavery mischief, and if you win this war, it'll take more time yet.”

“If General Grant wins, we Virginians will be a conquered people. I don't know if I could bear that.”

“Don't seem so terrible to me. 'Course I been a conquered people longer than you have.”

Duncan laughed, and after a moment, Jesse laughed too.

“I never intended you harm,” Duncan said.

“It ain't what a man intends,” Jesse said. “It's what he does.”

Although the two men talked past midnight, Duncan did not mention Maggie, nor did Jesse. At two-thirty in the morning, at a thinly manned stretch of Confederate line, Duncan passed Jesse through, explaining to an inexperienced captain of militia that the nigger was a spy carrying false information to General Grant.

LOSS OF THE
WILD DARRELL

“
I WAS THE
best clerk Silas Omohundru ever had,” the old woman whispered, “although Silas employed me as proof of his positive indifference to ‘trade.' Isn't it odd how eagerly the weak pick up what the strong have no more use for?”

Although dusk was settling over the garden and lay musky in the old woman's garden room, the lamps were unlit, and the girl was drowsy. She sat up straight and asked, “Could I have another cup of tea?”

“There's a bell behind you, if Kizzy elects to answer it.”

The girl yawned behind her hand. “Excuse me. It has been a trying day.”

“Yes.” The old woman smiled. “My family plans to come here next month. Would you care to meet them?”

“Why, yes. Thank you.”

“They will try to persuade me to sell the bank. Mine was the second Virginia bank to reopen after Mr. Roosevelt's bank holiday!”

Vaguely, she added, “I just may oblige them,” but then her voice strengthened. “I have been a woman of business since eighteen hundred and sixty-four!

“You cannot imagine how I loved the unsullied pages of the ledger, the clean smell of newly imprinted bills and receipts, the office at Market and Water where I executed Silas's business. Every morning I'd arrive half an hour earlier than Silas's old clerk so I could neaten my office. ‘My office'—how sweet those words! Kizzy's husband, Mingo, drove me in and vanished until the end of the day. I often brought Jacob. Wilmington's businessmen were not unaccustomed to women—Mrs. DeRossette was not the only woman speculator—but my Jacob, playing quietly or sleeping in the little bed I'd fixed for him in a corner, my Jacob discomfited them. Jacob seemed satisfied to be with me, and his seeming indifference to other children suited our circumstances, but one day ragamuffins were playing noisily on the wharf, some improvised game with stick and ball, and Jacob watched them with the forlornest expression on his little face.

“ ‘Why dear, are those tears I see?' I asked.

“Jacob rubbed his eyes but kept them fixed on the other boys. ‘No, Mama.'

“ ‘Then what is it? Are you unhappy?'

“He turned to me then and in his most earnest voice asked, ‘Mama, will I always be lonely?'

“ ‘Dearest, you will lack for nothing. I will always love you. You know I will.'

“ ‘I am not like them, am I?'

“ ‘Those boys? Why, they are street urchins of . . . of the poorest class.'

“In a tone of absolute conviction Jacob pronounced, ‘I will always be lonely.'

“Though I prompted him on numerous occasions, Jacob never again spoke about the matter. Like mine, my son's will, once fixed, was unalterable.

“Silas left for Richmond, where he still hoped to influence government policies. His clerk thought Silas a fool to entrust his affairs to a woman. Randall, I believe the man was called. Perhaps it was Rawlins. The man did work when the
Wild Darrell
was in port but spent the remaining days of the month gossiping and nurturing his connections. Thus my insistence on regular hours discomfited him.

“Government purchase orders had to be executed perfectly. A single inadequacy in the description of a napoleon cannon—omission of the foundry name, batch number, or proof marks—would delay payment until the defective paper was corrected. In my first week, I unearthed dozens of defective unpaid purchase orders. Since our goods had, in some instances, been delivered to the army months ago and since the manifests had been discarded, I invented the details I could not provide, to the clerk's vocal dismay. Since the value of the Confederate dollar dwindled monthly and sometimes weekly, these delays were consequential, and the first improvement I made in Silas's fortunes was repairing and rebilling those purchase orders.

“I had never been in a bank before and will never forget my first interview with Mr. Shemwell, at the time president of the Bank of the Cape Fear. I required Silas's former clerk—was it Rendall perhaps?—to accompany me to Shemwell's offices at Front and Princess streets, and after I was introduced, I dismissed the man.

“Jacob accompanied me, his little hand in mine. Jacob could be restive when we were alone, but whenever I was doing business he was extremely well behaved.” She paused in her narrative. “Jacob was so young. I wonder now how much he understood of our circumstances. How I wish I could ask him now.

“Mr. Shemwell's office was a powerful male's lair. A portrait of President Jefferson Davis established Shemwell's patriotism, the enormous safe in the corner his wealth, and brass cuspidors testified to his vices. Though his desk chair had arms and cushion, his visitor's chair was poor and plain. Since the unfortunate seated in that chair would have been interrogated by the bland facade of his mahogany desk, I set Jacob in it, and when I could not locate a second chair I stood helplessly by until Shemwell himself fetched me one. I may have been the first woman to penetrate Shemwell's sanctum sanctorum, and he wasn't sure whether to be offended or ill at ease. Although he would have liked to refuse, at my request he produced Silas's accounts.

“I smiled helplessly. ‘Oh dear, Mr. Shemwell. I did not expect the records to be so extensive. Please could I remove them to study at my husband's office?'

“Since he finally had something he could deny me, Shemwell did so.

“ ‘In that case, sir, I shall have to examine them here. I hope it will not discommode you.'

“Well, of course it did, but he was well boxed, and I spent all day deciphering Silas's accounts. When Jacob needed to visit the necessary, I enlisted Mr. Shemwell's clerk to accompany him. Finally, at four o'clock, I was finished, and when Mr. Shemwell returned to his office, I was in his chair, my ledgers spread across his desk. Thumb tucked safely in his mouth, Jacob napped in the corner. With a parental nod toward Jacob, I whispered, ‘What does the Confederate dollar trade at?'

“ ‘Twenty-two to one, madam. That's twenty-two Confederate dollars to one dollar in gold,' Shemwell explained in a hoarse irritated murmur.

“ ‘I wish you to convert my husband's Confederate currency into gold. I also note that Silas has a substantial investment in Confederate nine-percent bonds.'

“ ‘Mr. Omohundru has subscribed to every new issue.'

“ ‘And what is the present discount for those bonds?'

“ ‘I fear, madam, buyers are not plentiful. Mr. Omohundru's cotton promissories are more negotiable. They promise payment in cotton on the Wilmington wharves one year after a peace treaty is signed, and British merchants still make a market in them.'

“ ‘You financial gentlemen are so clever. How I admire you. Please sell the cotton promissories.'

“Shemwell spread his hands helplessly. ‘Madam, Mr. Omohundru is a patriotic gentleman. I am afraid I could not close out his position without explicit instructions.'

“Since I had anticipated this difficulty, I handed him Silas's irrevocable power of attorney.

“Shemwell wiped his glasses, tugged at his beard, and seemed as if he might wish to utilize one of his spittoons. ‘Madam, I regret I cannot execute your instructions until Mr. Omohundru arrives back in the city and confirms them in person. I am so sorry.'

“Businessmen make me so angry. They are perfectly happy to sell to you but not to buy, perfectly pleased to hold your money but won't trust you to hold theirs. It is a boy's game, business, and not suitable for girls! I was furious. ‘Then, sir,' I whispered, ‘you must produce all of Mr. Omohundru's cash, gold, and certificates. I understand the Bank of Commerce is sound.'

“Shemwell neither wished to produce Silas's wealth nor to be seen as one who would not. He hated whispering to accommodate a child who had no business with him and shouldn't have been sleeping in his office. He said he would trade the cotton-denominated bonds, and I said I would trade the nine-percent bonds myself. Shemwell had no real choice, and deprived of the full volume of masculine speech, couldn't debate me. When he knelt before his safe, I woke Jacob and answered his little boy's questions. Yes, we were going home soon. Yes, he could ride up in the driver's box with Mingo. Yes, we'd go as soon as nice Mr. Shemwell fetched my bonds.

“Silas once told me that respectable widows made a livelihood by meeting at the Confederate Treasury to sign these bonds. The bonds are now worthless but bear signatures from the first families of Virginia.

“Fortunately, a blockade runner, the
Kestrel,
had been slow unloading and overstayed its safe departure. With no duties until the next dark moon, its crew took quarters at the City Hotel and determined to drink Wilmington dry. Like most blockade runners, the crew were young and reckless, and it occurred to me that young men with so much gold in their pockets might be willing to invest in nine-percent bonds, especially if approached late in the evening by a handsome but shabby young woman with charming airs. I visited the City Hotel during hours when respectable women were not abroad, and though the youths made suggestions to me that were not proper, they didn't force themselves on me, and when the
Kestrel
sailed its crew owned Silas's nine-percent bonds. I did not mention Silas to these young men, and if they believed me a Confederate maiden in reduced circumstances, well, they were young men, and I am certain their ownership of nine-percent bonds was no worse for them than the whiskey their money might otherwise have obtained.

“A week after my first visit, when Jacob and I again visited Mr. Shemwell, that gentleman informed me that the Confederate dollar was now trading at twenty-four to one, but he had hopes it would attain a better rate when Abraham Lincoln was defeated for reelection.

“ ‘How much of Silas's currency have you exchanged for gold?' I asked him.

“ ‘Madam, as I told you, in my considered opinion we will soon see a better rate.'

“ ‘And the cotton-denominated bonds?'

“Those he had managed to exchange. Some of them, he informed me, into his own account.

“ ‘The currency I asked you to exchange at twenty-two has not been exchanged and now trades at twenty-four?'

“He said that was unfortunate, but I had his assurances, his professional opinion, his long experience in these matters . . .

“I told Jacob that kind Mr. Shemwell was giving us a lesson in arithmetic to which he should attend, that Mr. Shemwell had proved that twenty-four to one was a better rate than twenty-two to one and he might soon demonstrate that thirty to one was better still.

“Mr. Shemwell was angry and wished to express sentiments unsuitable for the ears of a mother with a child of tender years at her side. With difficulty he restrained himself. To spare Mr. Shemwell further pain I instructed him to turn over Silas's currency and gold and the proceeds of the cotton bond sales, which were to have been, he would recall, denominated in that same precious metal.

“Mr. Shemwell was shocked. ‘Madam! That is a great deal of money!'

“ ‘Not so much as it was, sir.'

“From his safe Shemwell produced Confederate bills, a few—too few—British government bonds denominated in sterling, and four heavy bags of gold. While I counted, Jacob clinked gold double eagles and rolled them across Mr. Shemwell's floor.

“Armed toughs accompanied me down Princess Street to the Bank of Commerce, with which I established a satisfactory relationship. The sudden appearance of so much currency on an illiquid market depressed the rate, and I exchanged the last of it at twenty-seven Confederate dollars to one gold. In my early days in trade I had more fondness for gold than the metal deserves, but I was surely correct in valuing it more highly than Confederate paper.

“Federal cavalry frequently disrupted the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad. We could not bill for military goods until they were delivered, and our connection to Petersburg and Richmond was increasingly tenuous. Every afternoon, I visited Silas's warehouse to encourage his workers, to expend every effort to get our goods to the trains. My discreet gifts to railroad employees ensured there were cars for them. In this manner I kept myself occupied until Silas returned, on the waning of the moon, September 12th. Silas was wornout and despondent.