The Railroad War (11 page)

“You must eat.”

Noah shrugged. “I can’t. I have too much to do. But why don’t you come along with me and see what’s happening?”

“Well, at least take a drink then,” Captain Hottel said. “I have some decent brandy in my bag.” He pointed to a large leather
bag on the floor.

“You’re tempting me,” Noah said. “But I really must get back to the yard. I’ve been away too long already.”

“Don’t you have people who can handle things themselves?”

“Funny, but the general asked me that same question. The answer is no. There’s Gar Thomas, whom you’ll meet soon, I’m sure.
And there’s me. And now there’s you,” he said meaningfully.

“All right, then,” Captain Hottel said. “Let’s go to the yard.”

At that, Noah realized that what he really wanted was to be rid of Captain Hottel. “Wouldn’t you rather I found you some quarters
first?” he asked. “Someplace to clean up and change?”

“No,” Hottel said. “Not at all. My bag will be safe here.”

“All right, Captain. Come on, then.”

Damn it to hell! Noah thought. Fire and Blazes!

Though it was well after midnight, Jane Featherstone was wide awake. She sat in a rocking chair with an unread book in her
lap, and stared out of one of her windows, listening to the melody of the rain. In the distance shells were falling again.
But the noise didn’t disturb her. On the contrary, she liked the shelling, even when the occasional round fell near the building
where she kept her rooms.

The lamp beside her on the table was burning low and needed tending, but she did nothing about it. She was comfortable with
her private thoughts.

And she wished her solitude was not soon to be broken. She was expecting a visitor, and she wasn’t looking forward to the
visit.

All evening she’d been thinking about the Yankee captain who’d paid a call on her that morning. She’d liked him, and she’d
liked the effect she’d had on him—she’d made him so delightfully off balance. And she’d done it not by anything that she had
said, but by what she thought of as her sphinxlike manner. Yet he’d handled himself well and carefully. He was not about to
fall on his face over her, and she admired that. She liked the thought of the challenge he’d pose for her. Did he laugh much?
she wondered. She hoped so.

The visitor she expected was less controlled. He was ardent and passionate and earnest. These were not unendurable qualities,
but they made a man easier to manipulate. And at the moment, her manipulation of him made Jane Featherstone feel a little
guilty.

The truth was that, beneath her mask of mild softness, beneath her pose of feminine helplessness, she enjoyed being a spy
for the Union—not because she admired the Union cause, but because she enjoyed the excitement and the danger.

Her parents—high-toned, slavery hating, and quite strict disciples of Christ—had not provided her childhood with much excitement.
Her father had first been a merchant in Nashville, at which he had succeeded, and then an insurance salesman, at which he
had not just succeeded but prospered. Jane Featherstone had grown to despise the life where all risks—both here and in the
hereafter—were covered.

Now, having abandoned her parents and all the silliness they had tried to impose on her, she felt more vital than she’d believed
possible. And yet she wasn’t completely comfortable or satisfied with every situation she found herself in. For instance,
as much as the Yankee captain fascinated her, she didn’t like betraying her coming visitor’s confidences to him.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and then someone knocked softly at her door.

“Coming,” she said. She rose and started to draw her dressing gown about her, then thought better of it. She wore nothing
beneath the dressing gown because of the heat, but she was not unaware of the effect glimpses of her bare body would make
on her visitor.

When she reached the door, she paused. “Who is it?” she called softly, knowing perfectly well who was on the other side.

“It’s Noah, Jane,” the man on the other side said.

“Oh, Noah, my darling,” she said as she opened the door. “I had so hoped that you would come. But I feared that you wouldn’t
be able to get away.”

“As you see, I did,” Noah Ballard said. Smiling, he stepped through the open door and took her in his arms.

“My dear, you’re drenched,” she said, stroking his hair, which was plastered to his head by the rain. Even though Noah was
soaked, and even though her dressing gown instantly took on his dampness, she pressed her body close against him. “But I’m
so happy to have you here,” she went on in a whisper. “It must have been difficult to get away.”

“Well nigh impossible,” he said. “I’ve been running the trains for the general since…” He stared at the ceiling, trying to
remember how long he’d been on his feet working. Failing, he threw his hands up and went on, “But the general passed by and
saw that, in his words, I was about to fall on my face and drown in the mud. So he ordered me to go and get some rest.” He
pulled himself away from her, leaving his hands gripping her shoulders. “I knew that I would only get rested when I was with
you,” he said, smiling broadly.

She ran her eyes up and down his body. “But look at you! We’ll need to clean you up! Give you a change of clothes! Make you
comfortable!”

“But I have to leave soon,” he protested mildly. “Don’t bother.”

“I will not have you in my bed before you are dry,” she said imperatively, moving her fingers to the buttons of his tunic
to confirm her point. “Come into my bedroom,” she said.

He laughed, followed her into her bedroom, and helped her remove his clothes.

“Wait,” she said when he was stripped to his underwear. She left him for a moment. When she returned, her hands were holding
towels. Soon Jane was rubbing and stroking his back and shoulders, then his chest and stomach with one of the dry cloths.
She was doing it slowly and with great tenderness, while he stood there quietly, enjoying her attentions.

“If I had aromatic oil now,” she said, “I would anoint you with it, the way the women of the Bible do for their men.”

“Oil? My God, no!” he said. “What you are doing is perfect just as it is. And you are perfect just as you are. No need for
you to become a woman of the Bible for me.” Then he added, “And this is all I’ll have time for.”

“You’re not leaving so soon?” she said with a show of alarm.

“No. Hardly. It’s all I’ll have time for because I want to have more time for you….”

When he said this, color came to her cheeks and she felt her breasts grow warm and flushed.

“Take your clothes off,” he said. “Let me take you into your bed.”

“No. Wait. Not yet,” she said with a hint of coy delay. “I will brush your hair.”

At first he shook his head, but after she went to her dressing table and returned with one of her hair brushes and proceeded
to stroke Noah’s dark, curly, very fine hair, he relented. Her attentions were too pleasant to resist. She drew the brush
slowly from his hairline across the top of his head and down toward the back of his neck.

Finally she laid the brush down.

“Now,” she said.

He brought his hand up to her throat and gently drew her dressing gown away from her shoulders, letting his eyes drink in
her breasts and her smooth belly. Soon after, both of them were naked and in bed. This time he had a dry cloth in his hands,
and he was stroking her breast and flanks with it, for she was moist, not from the rain, but from the hot, humid air.

Then it wasn’t the cloth but his hands that were stroking her. She opened her legs and he slipped inside her, filling her.
They began to move against and with each other, until she and then he cried out.

*    *    *

Noah was standing before one of the windows in Jane’s parlor, still unclothed. But since it was still as dark inside as it
was out, he was sure his nakedness wouldn’t be observed. No one was about, as the hour was late and the Union troops had stepped
up the shelling. Meanwhile the rain had stopped, and there was a mist about. The shelling was indiscriminate, to make sure
no Rebs slept, Noah guessed. There was no special effort to aim for specifically military targets; the entire city of Jackson
was fair game for the Yankee gunners.

For a time shells were falling a block or two away on Yazoo Street. And then some were falling closer, close enough for him
to think of taking cover.

He was aware that Jane had slipped beside him from the bedroom. He glanced at her. She was as naked as he was. Her presence
next to him that way was unsettling.

“Aren’t you frightened?” he asked with a gesture toward the outside and the shelling.

“Aren’t you?” she answered with a sly, playful smile.

He took her hand and drew her close to him. “A little,” he said, “to tell you the truth.

“I don’t worry so much when they drop here and there, haphazardly. I don’t take cover then. If one of those catches me, well,
that’s the roll of the dice. But when they start bracketing where I am…”

There was a large flash a few houses down, and both of them jerked back from the window.

“Like now?” she asked, still smiling.

“Like now,” he agreed, and peered cautiously out.

But then, whatever governed the Yankee gunners turned their attention to another target and the shells started falling elsewhere.

Noah looked at her face, which was beaming excitedly.

“Am I right in thinking that you like this?” he said.

When she returned his look, he saw passion in her face. “I love it!” she said. She lifted her lips to his and kissed him.
“I
adore
it!”

He shook his head. “Why, in God’s name?” He was amused at her, but also perplexed. “It’s not right, Jane—and it’s not feminine.”

“Why is it that only men are permitted to enjoy a battle?”

“I don’t enjoy a battle,” he said. “It’s…” He didn’t finish the sentence, for her hand had covered his mouth.

“Hush,” she said. “You’re about to tell me a piety, and I despise pieties. You’re about to tell me that war is evil or hell
or some damn thing like that. And then you will go on to tell me that some chosen men are born to sacrifice themselves on
the altar of war for the sake of the common good. Blah. Blah. When the truth is that you love what you’re doing now. I’ve
never seen you so happily engaged as you have been during the past few days. Or so alive, Major Ballard.”

“But…” he sputtered through her fingers.

She playfully inserted her fingers into his mouth.

She laughed and then withdrew them. He shook his head and laughed along with her, more out of perplexity and wonder at her
than because he shared her amusement.

Exploding shells had lit fires in some of the buildings down the street, and in their light her body shone red gold.

“You
are
beautiful like this,” he said, continuing to wonder at her. “But truly, my love, I’m not happy to see the city under siege
and the shells falling. I suppose there’s excitement in it, but the product of the excitement is the waste of women and children—and
of good men, too. And of their livelihoods.”

“Then why have you been standing so long by my window, my love?” she said, tossing her hair. “What’s so fascinating?”

He thought on that a moment. Then he answered, “You know why I’ve been standing here—at least before you joined me. It wasn’t
because I’m fascinated by anything out there. I wasn’t fascinated by anything until you joined me.” She smiled at that. “It’s
because I’m worried. I’m worried about how many locomotives can dance on the head of a pin.”

“What?” she asked, smiling.

“I have to move cannon and ammunition and tents and food and mules and fodder and God only knows what else—including a good
portion of the men themselves. And I have one remaining rail line, with roadbed that’s either partially destroyed or run down
to near uselessness and equipment so ancient and worn out that it isn’t worth repairing.”

But I’M do it, he continued to himself, thinking thoughts that he did not feel he should express openly to her. And I’ll do
it well. I’ve put bridges up in a week after the Yanks destroyed them, bridges that originally took six months to build. And
I’ve got locomotives running that everyone else said should have been scrapped.

“And now on top of it all, they’ve sent a captain of the Richmond Railroad Bureau who has orders to take over everything I’m
doing.”

“You don’t like that?”

“Of course not!”

“You like doing what you think can’t be done?” she laughed. “You wouldn’t rather be back working on the fortifications?”

He laughed with her. “No, I like the trains,” he said. “They’ve gotten in my blood. They almost seem alive.”

“Like me?” she whispered deep in her throat, rubbing her breasts back and forth against the hair of his chest.

“Not like you,” he said, reaching down and pinching her buttock.

“Oh!” she cried, flinching away from him. “You beast!”

“They’ll never make a machine as bold and playful as you,” he said.

“They better not,” she said, closing in on him once again.

“You know?” he said, seeming not to notice her move. “I spent all day with the man—his name is Hottel—and at first I thought
I’d despise him, I thought he was a fool. But after several hours with him I began to wonder. Maybe he isn’t such a fool as
I thought. And that makes it even harder for me.”

“How so?”

“If he’s a fool, I can treat him like a fool. But if he’s competent…” Noah couldn’t finish the thought.

“Truthfully, Noah, you don’t want to give up your railroads?”

“No.”

“Even if it meant returning to real engineering—as you’ve always said you wanted to do?”

“No. The South may not win at all,” he said, uttering the thought that most southerners found unutterable. “We may lose even
if we have the railroads working well, but we will certainly lose if the railroads aren’t working well. And I aim to make
sure mine are working well.”

“ ‘Mine’?” she said. “Since when did they become yours?”