Alias Dragonfly (9 page)

A tall, young Negro man, a bandana wrapped around his hair, crept along through the trees, pausing just in front of me. Something about him rang familiar. What was it? He held the hand of a woman with an infant in a carrier cloth. A small child clutched her skirts. She was dressed in a ragged skirt with a brown coat thrown over her shoulders. He had a knife in his hand.

I sat up, closing my fingers tight around the gun. He held the knife out as though to attack me then and there. I remained stock-still, holding his hard gaze with my own. Just as he stepped closer, the knife outstretched, I motioned to Jake Whitestone sleeping a few yards away and put my finger to my lips. He paused. I was holding my breath. He lowered the knife, then nodded sharply and slipped by us. I exhaled for so long, I swore the air around me moved a fraction, and a startled spider jumped from a leaf to the ground.

I’d seen the man before. Or had I? I focused hard. The way he moved reminded me of the tall woman carrying the laundry basket in the alley. And the man I’d seen at the alley door? Were they one in the same?

I would tell no one what I’d seen, not even Jake. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him, yet.

I slept fitfully, but for how long? When I opened my eyes it was dawn, clouded and misty. I jumped up, trying to catch a sound from the soldiers’ camp. All was still.

“They’ve gone,” said Jake.

I ran to hitch up the horse, piling the blanket and food box into the carriage. Jake came limping behind me.

“Hurry!” I yelled.

We left the forest at a gallop.

“Follow the soldiers!” I shouted as I spotted horses streaming ahead of us, surrounded by swirls of dust.

“We’re going to the ridge up ahead,” Jake called out as the carriages thundered along.

“No! I have to get to my father!”

“You can’t! It’s too dangerous,” he shouted back.

I started to climb out of the carriage. My foot caught on the spinning wheels, pitching me back against Jake. I was gasping and kicking. Jake forced the horse to a stop, knocking us both forward.

“Get out, Miss Bradford. See how far you get.”

Not far, not far. How in heck would I get anywhere? I had to stay with him.

“I’m going to the ridge just ahead,” he said. “Staying or going?”

I slumped back down in the seat.

As we rounded a bend in the road, a woman with long, blonde hair unfurled like a flag galloped toward us, going away from the direction of the soldiers, back toward Washington City, just the way we had come.

When she drew closer, I recognized her immediately as the girl called Betty Duvall, the one I’d seen in the city who’d spilled her tresses between a man’s hands: the glowing, fine-featured face, scarlet cheeks, and ropes of shining hair.

Her horse was pouring sweat, and she was whipping the animal so hard that the foam flew from its mouth. She thundered along and was soon obscured by the dust kicked up by her steaming mount, swirling in circles over our heads, filling our noses and mouths.

And out of that swirl there came a sudden babble of voices as we neared a crested ridge. Bushes and trees exploded with all manner of men in dray carts: Negroes atop gleaming coaches with shiny horses at the head; gaudy, American flag-bedecked huckster women’s wagons with cakes, bottles of champagne, and cooking pots rattling as they bounced along; cigar-puffing, stovepipe-wearing gents, scribbling on pads, and holding maps up high as they jostled by. Elegant ladies with sunbonnets festooned with colored ribbons, others with their slaves holding umbrellas over their heads, carried picnic baskets. It was a ridiculous, festive air, with shouts of “On to Richmond! Damn the Rebels! Death to the Union! Fresh peaches, peaches fine! Pies, and honey cakes, ginger tarts!” I heard the excited whoops of children, acting like they were about to go to the circus.

A cannon boomed loudly in the distance, like a clap of thunder swallowed mid-sound, just before the lightning hits. We moved as a bubbling mass to the edge of the ridge, swept along like minnows swirling in a pond by this broth of spectators. Finally, we found a spot on the overlook.

“Huzzah!” someone shouted in a high-toned English accent. “It begins!” The shouting man jumped from his horse, pencil and pad in hand. He dropped to his knees, scribbling on the pad. He was portly and sweating in dress tweeds, with a sharp-cut black mustache in the shape of an anvil. “The time,” he yelled, “what hour exactly is it now?”

“Ten in the morning, Mr. Russell, sir,” a spiffed-up Negro in a linen duster called down to the kneeling man.

Jake Whitestone left the carriage, limped over, and squatted next to Mr. Russell on the ground. With a look of certain surprise, then scorn at the sight of him, though he tried to hide it, Mr. Russell said nothing, but quickly turned back to his writing pad, covering the surface with his arm. Did they know each other?

With like force, two more men, their paper pads and pencils clutched in their teeth, landed like pelicans, nearly atop one another.

“Make way for the
Charleston Courier
,” a small man dressed in black brayed like a donkey.

“Sure, Rebel,” another said. “I’ll write to the world of your defeat.”

Another resounding
boom!
A deep voice rose over the excited babble. “Our yanks have got Parrott rifles, bless them cannons!”

“They’re green and raw, those boys, but they bloody well shall not die without my tribute,” Russell said. He pointed to an elaborate carriage making its way through the crowd. “It’s the British delegation, come to witness,” he crowed. “Huzzah! Make way!”

“They’re British diplomats, judges, congressmen, and senators,” a woman shouted.

They were slapping each other on the back, with cries of “Bravo!” and “Isn’t this fine?”

A chicken leg landed square on the
Charleston Courier
reporter’s head. He jumped to his feet and punched wildly, hitting a woman right in the mouth as she balanced two pies in her hands. Berries and dough splattered everywhere.

Jake Whitestone lay on his stomach peering through his field glasses. I dropped down next to him and tried to see. All below was a tree-shrouded blur, save for a distant roadway beyond a small ridge.

More cannons rumbled.

I whispered, “Go to the Warrenton Turnpike. I see it in the distance. We can get closer.”
And then I’ll find my papa
, I thought.
My God, I hope he is all right
.

“How do you know these things? You’ve never been here!” He looked at me as though I’d dropped down from the sky.

I didn’t tell him about my fine-tuned memory. Why should I? Don’t you agree?

Jake Whitestone pulled me to my feet. We pushed our way to the carriage and were off, back down the overlook, nearly running over more celebrating women holding children, dragging wagons of hams, tin buckets piled with bread loaves, and more bottles of wine and sarsaparilla.

“
Rebels dancing at the end of a noose, bobbing like apples, fast and loose
,” someone sang.

Once we crossed the road out of Centreville toward the turnpike, it seemed we had lost most of the spectators who’d settled in for their Sunday picnic. I imagined them now sprawled, full of food, on the ridge, pitching marbles and chicken bones down into the trees.

F
inally we came to a point overlooking a stone bridge with a running stream about a mile away. Puffs of smoke and artillery fire echoed loudly. Was my father down there? Hurt? Dying? I was beyond worried for him.

We were no longer alone. Clustered about, with mouths agape, were gentlemen in stovepipe hats.

Jake pulled up alongside them. “What have you seen?” he asked. I waited for their reply, my heart in my throat.

“They rage! Our boys will triumph, you see?” one man said. “Down there are the Union brigades, crushing the Rebels like locusts.”

Jake pulled out a pair of field glasses. I grabbed them away.

For several hours we watched a massive tangle of men and weapons, impossible to tell one from the other. Sometimes they crashed together, exploding in fire and smoke. Then a sprawling line of others raced into the fray. I could hear the cries of the soldiers and the ungodly screams of horses. My own cry of “Papa!” melted into the air. Jake Whitestone tumbled and almost fell. I grabbed hold of his hand to steady him.

“A soldier in the know just passed this way,” a man said. “He reports victory is ours, surely. The Rebels have fallen back into the trees, chased hard by General McDowell’s diversion troops, against Beauregard’s left flank. Just there below!”

“Yep!” said another man. “If the Rebs don’t reinforce, the day is ours. God bless the boys of the Seventy-ninth New York, the Second New Hampshire, and the Twenty=second Massachusetts!”

The Englishman Russell, full of starch and strut, appeared again. This time he raced to the edge of the ridge like a charging bull. He must have followed us. “Bully day is saved!” he crowed. “Heard that Rebels and Yanks, all of them unused to being enemies, are swarming each other like bees.”

Then he jumped back into his carriage that was filled with reporters. “Washington City will be in celebration, no need to fear,” one of them shouted. “On to telegraph the world!”

“It’s over?” I asked, praying it was over.

“Maybe,” said Jake.

“I want to go back to the city, to wait for my father. I know he’ll find me,” I said, willing myself to believe it. “Are you coming?” I grabbed his jacket.

“No!” He said, his face set. “I
have
to stay.”

“I’m going now!”

“Then go!” Jake shot back, “and see how far you get.”

“Love the killing? Or fear the victory? Which side are you on, Jake Whitestone?” He let go of me then, and I fled through the crowd.

I looked around to see if I could hitch a ride on one of the carts and carriages that pitched and groaned all around me. I grabbed hold of the sideboard of an old cart driven by Negroes. It was piled with rakes, pitchforks and bales of hay. I threw myself in.

As it rumbled and teetered down the hill, I spotted Jake Whitestone limping toward two Confederate soldiers, their horses lathered, nearly falling. What was he doing with those Rebels? Jake Whitestone held out a hand to one of them, shook it, and walked up to a small tent. The entrance was jammed with men in civilian clothes scribbling on pads of paper. And Jake Whitestone was smiling.

I’d landed in the cart on a pile of blankets, nearly squashing a small boy burrowed underneath them. He yelped in surprise, his eyes wide at the sight of me. A young man freed the child, all the while aiming a pitchfork at me.

“Please! I mean no harm,” I shouted.

“Dropped on my boy like that? Git out this wagon!” The pitchfork was moving closer to my face.

“Let her be, Johnny,” an old man said. He was missing an arm, a sleeve tucked and sewn over the empty place. “Poor ragged thing, what ken she do to us?”

The little boy piped up. “I ain’t hurt, Pa. She don’t have much weight on her.”

“I need to get back to Washington City, to . . . to my house, to find my father. He’s a Yankee.” I shouted out over the din of voices, cries of horses, and the noise of wagon wheels, whistles, and yells.

The man lowered his pitchfork. “You got any money?”

“No, sir. Not a penny,” I said, bouncing in the cart.

“Like as not, she be a beggar,” the old man said. “If she gets out the wagon now, she could be trampled down.”

The younger man’s answer, or lack of one, was swallowed up again by the shouts and curses of soldiers, and the whinnying of riderless horses careening along.

“Hang on, now,” he yelled. “Hang on.” We plunged through a growing crowd, a teeming mass headed away from the battlefield in the direction of Washington City.

We crossed back over the Potomac River. This time the crowds swept past the guards. They didn’t give chase. There were too many coming, too fast.

I hung on to the top of the wagon rail for dear life, scanning the faces of the wounded, the walking, and the riding. Broken soldiers were carried on doors, planks of wood, anything that would act as a litter. Bandaged heads, bloody arms and legs, and the screaming of men in agony made me weak. Was my father among them? Was he even alive?