Confederates (46 page)

‘Chance of what?' asked Thad. ‘What chance could they handle other than the chances they have already?'

‘Joe Lightburn says for a start they ought to be taught to read so they can read the Bible.' Joe Lightburn was a respected friend of Uncle Cummins. ‘I think they should be too.'

Thad Moore had made one of those Southern rumbles in his throat. ‘I don't think you should make known them views, Tom. Why, they're regular Nat Turner views, those ones, and if they was carried out, we'd have to end up blacking our own boots.'

‘That's no big thing,' Tom Jackson at seventeen had said. ‘I black mine only on Sundays and even then not in the winter months.'

By this fire in northern Virginia years later, Tom Jackson was getting similar ideas from watching the way Jim Lewis poured and brought the coffee.

The General sat on a camp stool Jim had placed and sipped away. Tall young Dr Maguire came up and stood at his side. Maguire began reporting on the casualty numbers and the health of officers Jackson knew who'd been wounded that day. He talked of Forno, the Louisiana general, and General Isaac Trimble. And then he said: ‘And there's young Billie Preston with a wound in the chest. The right lung is perforated. There's nothing to be done.'

Billie Preston was one of those Lexington boys whose fathers had been professors with Jackson at the V.M.I. Professor Preston had married one of the Junkin girls of Lexington as Stonewall had himself. Then he'd gone into business with Stonewall – they'd brought some land in Randolph Street, Lexington, and a tract about eight miles distant in the Blue Ridge. As well, he'd been Jackson's chief aide for a time in the Valley. Now his seventeen-year-old boy was dying.

Jim Lewis, who as a house slave in Lexington had known all these boys – Sandie and Billie Preston and the others – sat and began to rock with grief and to wail when he heard the news. Stonewall stood still for a while but then turned like nothing so much as a judge on Maguire and grabbed his shoulder. Stonewall had that mountain-man kind of strength to him, and Maguire could feel it in the punishing force of Stonewall's fingers.

‘Why did you leave him?' he asked Maguire.

‘Why … he isn't aware any more who's with him and who isn't.'

‘Do you know this will kill his father? Kill him, sir!'

And then Tom Jackson walked away into the shadows. Maguire felt a little insulted. We're not back in peaceful Rockbridge County, he thought. It's not such a strange thing these days for young men to die.

Two minutes later Stonewall returned to the camp stool, straddled it, picked up the coffee mug from the ground and held it out to be filled again by Jim, who had by now also finished his thrashing and rocking.

Hunter Maguire said in a low voice: ‘We won today by the hardest kind of fighting I've seen.'

Jackson spoke gently. ‘Hunter,' he said, ‘we won it by the grace of God.'

Hunter shook his head. ‘That too,' he muttered.

8

Dora Whipple had gone to sleep that evening of her first day of captivity in a happier frame of mind than she had up to now enjoyed. You can teach yourself to tell the mere truth, she promised herself, you can teach yourself to refuse to answer some questions and to mystify the judges.

She woke when the morning train from Charlottesville hooted in the dawn of the next day. She was eating a breakfast of eggs and coffee when Mrs Randolph, wife of the Confederate Secretary of War, a sweet-faced, brown-haired woman, was brought in the front door of the lockup by the old grey-haired colonel.

The old man did not know what to do. He could not very well lock up in a cell the wife of such an important man; so in the end he led Mrs Whipple out into the outer office, and then left the two women alone.

Mrs Randolph was wearing a light green dress and a pink hat, which was wise of her, since the day was starting out hot. She said, with a musical laugh: ‘I got to Orange as soon as I could, Dora. We'll have you drinking tea in the parlour of the Lewis House by this evening, my dear gal. I mean, this is ridiculous, isn't it?'

Dora Whipple's eyes flinched. She wouldn't lie to this good, intelligent friend. She could find therefore nothing to say.

‘Isn't it ridiculous?' asked Mrs Randolph, starting to frown.

‘There was always the danger this would happen, Isabelle,' Dora Whipple said. She could not look at Mrs Randolph's eyes any more.

Mrs Randolph thought a while, but then decided to chuckle bravely. ‘I mean, Dora, this
is
a joke. Isn't it so? You're playing at being jailbirds; you're waiting for them to discover their mistake so you can make them feel their own foolishness, so you can cut them to pieces, the way … you have to admit it … the way you often do with people, Dora, the well-known Dora way. Tell me it's so!'

‘You know I come from Boston,' said Dora, half turning away.

‘What has that got to do with the business?'

‘Isabelle, just listen to me. I love you like a sister, that's no news to you. But your whole cause, Isabelle is … a disease. And that's all.'

Dora Whipple saw Mrs Randolph's eyes widening. A statement like that terrified her. ‘Shush! Hush yourself there, Dora! If you say that kind of thing, no one can help you.'

‘It's likely no one can, Isabelle.'

Mrs Randolph shook her head, wrapped up with the struggle of believing all this. ‘Dora,' she said, ‘did you use our dinner table to …?'

Mrs Whipple did not answer that.

‘How could you do it to us, Dora? To decent men like Randolph?'

Mrs Whipple, having nothing to say still, plopped on the edge of a chair and tried to control her tears.

‘Don't worry, Dora,' said Mrs Randolph. ‘The loss of Yates Whipple was too much of a shock for you. Even if you go to jail, we'll look after you … your head's been turned, poor creature …'

Dora looked up at her. ‘I'm not weeping for myself. I'm weeping for the South. For your husband. For Buchanan, for Davis. For the slaveholders. For the sod-busters. For the mad cause!'

‘I've never seen anyone weep for the South,' ‘Isabelle said. And she began to shed tears too and sat down beside Dora Whipple. And they held each other. ‘It don't matter, you couldn't help yourself, Dora. Randolph and I will stand by you, as I said. Or I will, even if Randolph won't.'

The idea of the Randolphs standing by her was suddenly more than she could tolerate. What was the sense in fighting against the Confederacy if its champions insisted on standing by you when you were caught? Mrs Randolph's simple decency filled that cell like a terrible reproach.

‘Isabelle, I don't want you to visit me again,' Mrs Whipple said, mopping up the tears.

‘But I've come all the way to Orange,' Mrs Randolph said, aghast.

‘Under the idea that the arrest was a mistake, you came to Orange. Now you know it wasn't.
I
know it's different now. We can't be friends again, Isabelle; we can't be sisters.' She thought about this a while. ‘No, I don't want you to visit me.'

‘We
can
still be friends,' said Isabelle Randolph, her voice edged with a sort of panic that made Dora Whipple's need to get rid of her sharper still. ‘I forgive you, Dora. Your mind was turned as I say …'

Dora Whipple shook her head. ‘Get out! Please, Isabelle!'

‘I'll bring you lunch,' Isabelle promised frantically.

Dora Whipple couldn't take that. She reached towards Mrs Randolph and slapped her face.

‘Ugh!' said Mrs Randolph.

‘Get out when I tell you,' said Dora. ‘Your charity means nothing any more. At least allow me my cell. Leave and don't come back!'

Mrs Randolph backed to the door, still too forgiving, holding her face, her jaw open. It seemed that the pain of the blow got to her only after half a minute, for she became angry then, after having been understanding at such lengths. ‘I hope they punish you good, Dora! I can't understand how you could do this, it surpasses my understanding, ma'am.'

She went out and dragged the heavy wooden door of the lockup sharply closed behind her. From outside she called: ‘And don't expect any more visits in prison from
me
!'

Mrs Whipple felt so desolate then. The best of friends is gone, she thought. But at the same time she was frightened Mrs Randolph would forgive her and appear again by lunchtime.

Isabelle Randolph did not. Later in the day the grey-haired colonel said the wife of the Secretary of War had caught the train back to Charlottesville.

9

‘Again,' called Lafcadio Wheat. ‘Again, boys. And it's fresh'uns for us.'

It was the harshest morning of the summer. A sharp-as-needle sun sat high over Virginia, sat like a heathen god sure of itself. It didn't intend to move. That sort of morning is bad enough for farmers who sow and crop the corn. And it has even more malice on a morning when the Yankees are still trying for that railroad cut as they have been since first light.

The Yankee regimental colours over there on the fringes of the woods looked so fresh and untorn and such a fierce confident blue and gold that the Volunteers grew silent. Usaph saw this boy and that looking over his shoulder, making mental ciphers of the distance back to the shelter of the woods. Wheat noticed it too.

‘I don't want no boys looking for lines of flight,' he called. ‘You fellers ain't going to need no lines of flight.'

But everyone was thinking, so many of them! So many!

The flags that had come up the slope towards the cut earlier this morning had had
Michigan The Beaver State
written all over them. These new ones said
Vermont
and underneath, the
Green Mountain Boys
. Oh God, a far place, Usaph thought. All them fresh blue boys from a fresh, far, green place.

The look of those well-dressed boys awed everyone and no one was talking along the railroad cut; or if they did it was in whispers. Even Wheat didn't talk straight out but in mutters: ‘If we have to get, Usaph, I want you to get the fastest of the lot of us and take the news to Colonel Baylor. Mind you, I don't want no premature getting. But you know what I mean.'

When hollow case exploded in the air above the Vermonters there'd been these noises like an axe to a man's skull.

All at once some three or four or six Vermonters somewhere in the line would be heaped atop one another and there'd be a sudden show of raw meat and white limbs with the blue clothing ripped off them by the bang of the shell. But this officer who you couldn't see – he was striding behind the boys' shoulders – would call: ‘Remember ole Ethan Allen, you Green Mountain Boys. Steady and close up and remember Ethan Allen.'

‘Ain't he a talkative son of a bitch?' Wheat murmured. ‘Can't you see him, Usaph?'

‘No sir, Colonel Wheat.'

‘He must be a stumpy whoreson. If you can get a sight on that-there orator, Usaph, shoot the son of a bitch through the heart.'

It was a season of grass fires. Flames might start of their own mysterious accord, and a shell came down in the sere crabgrass in front of the Vermonters and shattered there and started fire. The flames went fast along the slope towards the Green Mountain Boys.

The thing that tipped Cate's reason happened then. There was a Michigan soldier who'd been wounded on that slope an hour before. He began heaving on his arms to get himself out of the fire's way, but it caught his blue coat. And he must have had cartridges in his pockets the way soldiers often did, for as he screamed as frightful as anyone in history ever had, the rounds in his pockets went off and tore his side away.

Usaph looked away. He saw Walter, the fiddler's fancy boy, begin to weep and slide down the fill and curl up on his side in the rank grass.

Sean went down after him and began to kick him as if he was a troublesome stranger.

Meanwhile Cate had rolled on his back and started gasping. ‘Jesus Christ,' he called, loudly addressing the high sun, ‘do you enjoy these things? Do you goddam enjoy them?'

Wheat overheard this but didn't seem to know who it was who had spoken. ‘Who was it blasphemed?' he yelled. He knew what ill fortune it was to blaspheme on the edge of a battle. ‘What son of a goddam sow blasphemed there?'

‘God damn us all!' Cate screamed even louder. Now he stood up on top of the cut, the better to be shot at. His chin was back; he was still roaring at the sky. ‘God damn us all. It is my sin. My goddam crime …'

Usaph was flabbergasted to hear Cate talk that way. To use a word like
sin
. Did it mean the son of a bitch wasn't a total godless mocker? But if he believed in sin, what sin was he talking about?

Lucius Taber stood up beside Cate. He had one of the lumps of granite that seemed to be scattered up and down the cut. Holding it in his two hands he brought it in a slow but mighty swing against the side of Cate's head, knocking Cate's forage cap off. Then Cate and Lucius fell together down the embankment, as if Lucius had done himself as much damage as he had to the conscript. But Lucius got up in the end and crawled back into his place atop the cut. It was Decatur Cate who didn't move. Usaph could see a patch of Cate's face and it looked pale and there was blood from his temple.

‘I hope the son of a bitch is finished,' he muttered to himself. But he knew it was a lie. Because you can't get the dead back to question them. And there was that thing Cate had said about sin and crime and damnation.

Colonel Wheat called out as if it were a battle order. ‘I want no more goddam insults to the Almighty.'

Bumpass's mouth was making water now. He wondered why? Why under this sun?

Well, it was a frightful reason and it came to him. The smell of meat was the cause. The grass fire burned the Union dead and there'd be this stammer of sharp noise whenever the flames got to a dead boy's cartridges. Usaph spat the guilty saliva from his mouth but more took its place. Best to ignore it.