Charleston (37 page)

Rolfe helped Alex hitch the mare to an old dog cart Ham had bought from a man who used it to hunt. The slatted box beneath the seat still smelled of dogs. She set out for the Strong house. She was astonished when she saw Marion Square. It was chockablock with army tents, leantos, and shelters made from packing crates. Cook fires fouled the morning air. Crude stalls served as curbstone shops.

Signs everywhere announced temporary offices. On the corner of Meeting and Henrietta above Calhoun, a canvas banner on a two-story house identified
CRESCENT BANK—MARBURG BOOKS
. The Marburgs had been family friends for years. She must call.

A Union shell landed south of Calhoun, over toward the Cooper. Fiery smoke billowed above rooftops. People on the street took notice but appeared unworried.

Alex turned onto John Street; memories of Henry and his family came flooding in. When she stopped in front of the house, a mangy hound darted out to snarl and snap at the mare. Hamnet Strong's courtyard was littered with garbage, old saddlery, broken furniture. In the doorway of what had been Hamnet's shop, a woman sat on a tub, her dark brown breast bared to suckle a baby. A white youth in the ragged remains of a butternut uniform hobbled outside on a crutch. He shouted at Alex. “What you staring at? Go back to your Goddamn champagne parties.”

She understood the anger. Ham had described the parties and balls that had continued until the onset of the siege. “The elite went mad trying to pretend things were normal.”

At an upstairs window a white woman emptied slops
into the dirt near the nursing mother. Disgusted, Alex turned the dog cart around. Charleston's troubled past almost seemed attractive when measured against the present.

 

She called on the Marburgs next day. The bank was transacting business from flimsy tables in the parlor. Stacks of books filled the dining room. One small table held copies of the
Deutsche Zeitung,
Charleston's German newspaper. Marion Marburg and his wife received her on the upstairs landing, amid furniture arranged to imitate a parlor. All the bedrooms were occupied, Mrs. Marburg explained.

Marion Marburg, grandson of the Hessian soldier and present head of the family, was in his late thirties. He had his mother's tawny coloring and the characteristic carroty hair and blue eyes of the family, but not the usual stoutness. He reminded Alex of a long-legged heron. And he was tall, one of the few men Alex could talk to without looking down.

Marion and his wife, Esther, of the Charleston Cohens, had four sons at home: Joshua, Isaiah, Daniel, and Malachi, all under twelve. A fifth boy, Jeremiah, had died in a typhoid epidemic. Daniel and Malachi raced around the upstairs while Esther served tea brewed from the leaves and twigs of yaupon holly. “It has a poor taste. I'm so sorry,” she said with a sigh.

Marion's oldest sister, Helena, had turned into a gray-faced spinster. In Helena Alex saw a reflection of herself: a lonely middle-aged woman slipping downhill to the grave. She was relieved when Helena excused herself and went downstairs to watch over the books.

As for Marion's other sisters, Sophia was in Chicago, married to a rabbi. Margaretta had died of childbed fever; two daughters and her husband, superintendent of a gunpowder factory, resided in Augusta. Gerda, the youngest, was in Paris, studying painting. “Living a Bohemian life of which her mother strongly disapproves,” Marion said.

Malachi and Daniel fell out the door of a bedroom, pounding each other as they rolled on the carpet. Marion leapt up, spilling tea on his trousers. “Boys, stop that instantly.” They did, but each blurted an accusation of the other. Marion sent them off with a promise of punishment later. Wistful Esther sighed again. “Living with four boys is taxing. The oldest bullies the next youngest, and so on down the line. If only we had one girl to set an example of gentility.”

“Where am I? Where is everyone?”
The cry made Alex jump. Marion whispered, “My mother.”

“Naomi? Oh, may I say hello?”

“Alas, she wouldn't recognize you. She came into her dotage prematurely. She requires constant care.” When Naomi wailed again, Esther disappeared into a bedroom.

Alex and Marion discussed the war. He thought Jefferson Davis dictatorial and inept. “The Confederacy's going bankrupt because Davis and the Congress refuse to tax the citizens. The war is financed with bonds whose worth steadily declines. I know the secretary of the treasury, Mr. Memminger, he formerly practiced law here. He is a weak man, and stubborn. That is a particular failing of us Germans. Early in the war Memminger had an opportunity to sell cotton for a massive infusion of capital. He would not do it, but he had no alternate plan. At that time I began moving gold to Bermuda.”

“Because the South will lose?”

“Inevitably. I would hasten the day if I could. This is my city. I love it as my father and grandfather did, but I'm not blind to its errant ways and fatal mistakes. The war, fomented on these very streets, began with foolish illusions. Now it goes badly, and human nature reigns. We live amid frightened politicians and coldhearted buccaneers. Sorrowful times. It's grand to have your company again, but are you sure you want to remain in Charleston?”

“This is my home,” Alex said. Which wasn't an answer. She didn't have one.

 

Toward dawn on October 1 a volley of gunfire and a crash of glass brought Alex and Ham downstairs at a run. In the ground-floor office a jar stuffed with flaming rags had set fire to the oval rug. Choking on the smoke, brother and sister rolled up the rug and smothered the flames. Ham threw the carpet out the broken window and craned around to see the facade.

“They fired at least six rounds into the house.”

“A reprisal for defending the soldiers?”

“I would say yes, but Mitchell's had no such trouble.”

“Then who would do such a thing?”

“I'll write one name at the head of the list. Folsey Lark.”

“Because of the trial?”

“Perhaps, but I don't think so. Something happened between our families long ago. I'm not sure what it was, but I've known for years that the Larks feel great enmity toward us. Folsey is dangerous because he's duplicitous. At heart I think he's cowardly—he never dirties his hands but hires others. He and Gibbes are alike in that respect, though I consider Folsey the more violent of the two. You might load one of those pistols.”

“Already done. It's underneath my bed.”

They exchanged bleak looks. If they hadn't been isolated before, they were now.

 

On the night of October 5 a fifty-foot steam-driven boat crept out of the harbor. Most of
David
's hull was submerged. A torpedo bobbed at the end of a ten-foot boom on the bow.

David
approached the Union ironclad
New Ironsides
and rammed her. The explosion sent up an immense geyser of fire and water.
David
was swamped but managed to steam away to safety. The disabled ironclad had to withdraw from the blockade. Charleston enjoyed a brief euphoria and contemplated an amazing new kind of warfare.

 

A week later Cassandra woke from an afternoon nap and said she'd like to see the garden. Alex helped her
comb her hair and tie the ribbons of her robe. Cassandra was pale but cheerful as she clung to Alex and took the stairs one deliberate step at a time.

Rolfe was weeding in the garden. He snatched off his cap. “Afternoon, ma'am,” he said to each of the women. He'd listened to Alex playing her banjo twice more, asking politely each time. Music was mellowing him ever so little.

“What a glorious day,” Cassandra said. And it was: mild and dry, with light airs off the harbor to dispel insects. Sulphur butterflies sailed in and out of shafts of light falling through the branches of the live oak. Any child of the Low Country could tell from the sun's altered position that winter would soon come calling.

Alex settled her mother on the garden bench. “If you're not warm enough, I'll fetch a blanket.”

Cassandra smiled. “Always worrying. I'm very comfortable.”

“Then I'll work a bit. I'm planting four-o'clock. You don't wait years for the blooms.”

“
Mirabilis jalapa
. In my time we called four-o'clock the Marvel of Peru because of so many colors from a single plant. I shall sit here next year at this time and enjoy the beautiful blooms.”

Alex was delighted by her mother's good spirits. She pulled up her skirts and set to work with a trowel, looking up frequently to check on Cassandra. In half an hour she had all the seedlings planted where they would catch the sun. Cassandra had fallen into a doze, reclining against the iron bench with her mouth open. Time to take her upstairs. Alex brushed dirt from her skirt, stepped to the bench. “Mother?”

Her hand flew to her lips. She felt for a pulse. Cassandra's heart had stopped.

Snoo Bell sent a slave to deliver a maudlin letter of condolence, written on the back of wallpaper. From Ouida they heard nothing. Cassandra went to her rest beside Edgar in the shadow of St. Michael's black steeple. Above the steeple clock, 150 feet in the air, lookouts with telescopes kept watch on Union activity around the harbor.

Few attended the burial: the Marburgs and their unruly sons; Cedric Buckles and his wife with an infant in her arms; the widow Letty Porcher-Jones; a handful of tradespeople and two elderly ladies Alex didn't know. Of the sparsity of mourners Ham said, “She lived too long. Most of her friends have died.”

Alex was uncomfortable in a boned corset and layers of crinoline under a heavy dress of black bombazine. The crinolines were hooped from the knees down. The steel rings hit her legs at every other step. A Negro seamstress had sewn the mourning garb. The price amounted to banditry, but Alex couldn't bury her mother wearing Mrs. Bloomer's pantaloons. She was not that disrespectful of the traditions of death in Charleston.

Great Michael tolled as the gravediggers threw the first shovels of earth on the casket. The solemn moment was disturbed by a company of old men marching by, accompanied by a thumping bass drum. Gaudy letters painted on the drumhead identified the
GEN
.
HAGOOD CITY GUARD
. The decrepit volunteers sang, but not in unison.
“Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern rights hurrah.”

Ham drew Alex aside when the mourners had gone.
“You're free now. There's nothing to hold you here. I can manage by myself.”

“I admit I've been thinking about it.”

He put on his tall hat. Slender and stoop shouldered as he was, he resembled Lincoln. He slipped his arm around her waist. “I know you despise this place.”

It was true, yet in a small and contradictory corner of herself it wasn't. Coming home had awakened good memories along with the bad. The suffering she saw around her, the suffering of ordinary people of both races, tore her heart.

 

They arrived at South Battery to find a funerary wreath of sweet grass, painted black, nailed to the door on the piazza. Ham touched the wreath.

“Paint's still wet. This was not sent in sympathy.”

When he found Rolfe he said, “Burn it.”

 

It was sullen, uneducated Rolfe who planted the seed. It took root and grew in the teeming streets, where growing numbers of black refugees roamed alone or in ragged families. They huddled in alleys with their few possessions carried in sacks or wrapped in rags. They crowded rat-infested tenements near the Cooper River piers, sometimes ten or fifteen to a room, Alex heard. Were they freedmen or runaways? Did it matter? All their eyes had the same look of hunger, bewilderment, and fear.

One grizzled grandfather approached Alex with a child on his shoulder. The child sucked her thumb and hid her face. What Alex took to be rat bites marked the little girl's arms. The old man showed Alex a cardboard square with an address scrawled on it.

“Ma'am, can y'all read this? We been walkin' from Walterboro four days and Addie's near to dyin'. They say food's to be had at that place.”

Alex gave directions. The old man's effusive thanks touched her. That night she opened her small trunk, lit a
candle, and withdrew her late husband's Bible. To justify the risks he took, he'd often quoted Christ's words in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew:
He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man
.

She closed her eyes and prayed for guidance, as she hadn't prayed in a long time.

 

Next evening she and Ham sat down to supper together. Candles were reflected on the surface of the table she'd cleaned and polished. The meal consisted of greens with a few precious bits of pork mixed in, and what Ham called secession bread, a stone-hard loaf baked with rice flour. She revealed her idea while they ate.

“I would teach a few Negroes privately. Teach them their letters, and rudimentary reading. If I could help only a handful, it would be a start.”

“A start down a very hazardous road. Why do you want to do such a thing?”

“Someone must. Can you imagine what it would be like to be free but unable to read a simple contract, or a circular offering jobs?”

“Dear sister. Your idealism will get you killed one of these days.”

“There are worse ways to leave this earth. William taught me that.”

“We know we have enemies in Charleston. Wouldn't you rather go back to the North?”

“Sometimes I would, but there's no longer a need to preach abolition, the Union's fighting a war for it and it will come. I could be useful here.”

“Where would you conduct such a school?”

“Why not Bell's Bridge? It's virtually shut down.”

“And dilapidated.”

“I'll find money for repairs.”

“I can't dip into the law firm's cash box again.”

“Let me worry about it.”

“Can I possibly dissuade you from this?”

“No.”

“Then you might ask Marion to give you a loan. He
didn't send all his gold reserves to Bermuda. I do wonder whether you can find pupils. Wouldn't Negroes be too frightened of punishment if you were discovered?”

“Surely some are braver than others.”

“You do have a stubborn streak,” he said, not unkindly. “I retire in defeat.”

“Thank you. Charleston will fall one of these days, and the Confederacy. We'll have to put this country back together.”

He didn't argue with that.

 

To lure Rolfe she sat in the garden picking out a slow version of “All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight,” a Union song; a lot of Southerners liked it too. Presently Rolfe appeared in the twilight shadows, almost without a sound. He'd been repairing the mare's stall in the small stable building. “All right if I sit a while and listen, ma'am?”

“Yes, if you first allow me to tell you about an idea I have.”

Cautious but curious, he sat down on the piazza steps.

“It's a school. I want to teach a few of your people to read, to prepare them for the jubilee.”

Rolfe chewed his lip. “We talked 'bout this before. Nigger could get punished bad for trying to read.”

“That's true. We'd keep the school secret from everyone, even owners like your Miss Letty.”

“Cost money, this school?”

“No.” Her callused fingertips brushed the strings, the notes softly ringing in the air. A whippoorwill vanished into shrubbery to nest for the night. “Would you come to the school, Rolfe?”

After a silence: “Guess I would if you let me.”

She jumped off the bench and ran to him. “You'll be my first pupil.” She pulled him into a hug.

Perplexed and alarmed, he quickly separated himself. He didn't know what to make of a white lady touching him. Alex ran back to the bench to give him another song. He asked for “Lorena.” Soldiers and families on both sides liked the sweet, sad ballad. She played and sang it for him as the evening darkened.