Confederates (48 page)

‘Are you staying in this house, ma'am?' he asked.

She nodded. ‘I wouldn't have no chance of reaching home by dark.'

She saw his adam's apple bob. ‘My room is 38,' she told him.'

'38,' he whispered. ‘Obliged, ma'am. For that news.'

Well, thought Aunt Sarrie, there's nothing wrong with hugging a nice ole man if it brings some good. ‘One thing,' murmured Aunt Sarrie, her mind still working, ‘he has money of his own – I owe him $10 myself. It'd be a perversion of our intentions for the boy, Cap'n Stilwell, if he was able to buy himself a substitute.'

The old captain smiled in his grandfatherly way. ‘I'll blacklist him, ma'am, before the event, I'll blacklist him, so no substitute-broker'll touch him. By hokey, dear Mrs Muswell, I shan't give him time to look sidewise for a substitute.' Then he coughed. ‘Ain't you anxious, ma'am, that something bad will happen during this brief absence from your home? With the miscreant, I mean, and your nephew's wife?'

‘Don't worry, cap'n. I told my slave Montie to look out.'

Aunt Sarrie
had
done that. The problem was Montie didn't exactly know what she meant. If she had told him to watch out and make sure the painter and Mrs Bumpass didn't dance a reel, he'd have been in less doubt. But of course she couldn't have said any such thing to him.

That evening Montie knew this much: that the painter ate supper on his own, for Mrs Ephie Bumpass had said she wasn't in need of food. It seemed a good enough thing to Montie that the painter was left on his own like that. And by ten at night when all the doors were closed and Mrs Bumpass was safe in her room, and the painter had gone out to the barn, there seemed little much else to watch for. For Montie had reasonably enough thought that Aunt Sarrie meant,
watch the painter while he's in the house
.

From the barn that night, Cate could see a low light burning in Ephie's room. It seemed a hopeful sign to him, even though she hadn't been at supper. How could they have talked at supper in any case, with Bridie fluttering round them?

Part of the time while he waited he spent lying on his cot in the stall he occupied. And whenever he looked the light was still burning in her bedroom upstairs. I'll wait until a half-hour after midnight, he told himself; then I'll break in somehow. Love's burglar.

Ephie came just before midnight, by way of the front door so that Montie and Bridie could not see her from their bedroom at the back of the house. All Cate could say was, ‘You
came
.' That made it seem more miraculous than if he'd had to get into the house somehow, and without alerting that big black ploughman.

‘You touch me, Mr Cate,' she said insistently, seeking his hands, pulling them into her bodice. And perhaps the whole Cate–Bumpass mess started there. Because Cate thought, she can't wait to be satisfied, she has desired me so many long hours. Whereas Ephie wanted him just to be quick, so that she could forget what she was about, so she'd have a little holiday from the arguments her brain suffered under. Likewise, when she opened his britches and clutched him, he thought it was all runaway desire, when half of it was runaway shame.

His little camp cot seemed to him wider than a Louis XIV, for they were so close they needed little room except to writhe. And when at last he put his hand between her thighs and found her moist, again unwisely he took it as straight-out homage for Decatur Cate. And she said: ‘No delay, Mr Cate. Come in and no delay, oh dear God,' and he made the same mistake about that.

Cate had never known such a woman – she made such frank cries that he felt bound to put his fingers over her lips. When he flowed away into her, she was straight away grasping him again, demanding life of him …

And when she felt the mass of him in her she thought, I can't bide a war, I must have
this
, this which Cate is here to give. By hokey, I'll go to California with him.

After they had coupled a second time, Cate noticed how quiet she was.

‘You'll travel with me, won't you? Say you'll travel with me.'

‘Yes,' she said, but it was like a statement of despair.

She found her way back to the house ‘by owl hoot', as the locals said. It was some time after two. If I go with him, she was thinking, it'll mean I won't have to stick here to confess things to Usaph, to be shamed in front of him.

When Aunt Sarrie got home the next day she found that Ephie was baking away in the kitchen. The kitchen table was covered with apple and boysenberry and blackberry pies. Aunt Sarrie had rarely seen so many pies outside a bakehouse.

‘Why, Ephie, you preparing for a harvest party?' she asked.

‘No,' said Ephie, but did not smile. ‘Jest felt like baking.' Aunt Sarrie looked at her and inspected her in her movements. Ephie did not look at Aunt Sarrie, though. The older woman could tell from Ephie's manner and from this crazy number of pies that had been baked that something had happened. She could guess what too. She said gently: ‘You want to have a rest, gal?'

‘I do,' Ephie said, and started weeping. ‘Aunt Sarrie, I don't want to do no more sitting for Mr Cate.'

Cate came in to lunch, half bold, half wary, but found there was no one there to eat with.

‘Mrs Bumpass ill?' he asked Bridie.

‘I wouldn't know that,' said Bridie, and not too politely. She didn't know anything, though, she was just picking up her manners from her mistress.

All day Cate failed to sight Ephie and he was really in a sweat. ‘I need one more sitting from the lady,' he told Aunt Sarrie at suppertime.

Aunt Sarrie chewed slowly and stared at him. Then she took and opened the purse she had, right there at the table, and counted out ten silver dollars. ‘Maybe you'll have to abandon that portrait, Mr Cate.'

He looked at her through lowered lids, hating her frankly. ‘I'll finish it overnight,' he said.

‘Maybe you ought to get some rest,' she said, and smiled as if it were a private joke.

There was no doubt now. The hatred between him and that old widow was out on the table.

When he went to his bed that night, he took the canvas with him. On his pillow he found a note. ‘I sail go with you to Calliforn,' it said. He put the paper close to his lips. ‘Tomorrow,' he said. ‘Tomorrow.'

The day began sweetly enough. He did not go near the house, but he propped the portrait on a chair where the morning sun would catch it, and as the last of it dried, it faced her room. It waited there on the chair like his morning gift. Then he began to pack. There were some of his sketch books and oils still in the parlour, but he could fetch them later in the day or, if Mrs Muswell proved too hostile, he could leave them behind with a free heart.

In the early afternoon he failed to hear the small detachment of militia trudging up the path to the barn, and he was just fetching his mare from her stall when the old officer knocked on the barn door.

‘Mr Cate?' the old man asked.

Cate could somehow see the coming disaster in the old officer's old-fashioned braid. You didn't have a chance with those old boys. They had such a heart-and-gut interest in killing off the young.

‘I am Cate,' Cate said, feeling ill.

‘I don't want to get the wrong man. Is it Decatur Cate?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I am Cap'n Stilwell, recruiting-and-conscription official for Bath County. I give you notice that you are conscripted into the army of the Confederacy, young man. You got maybe half an hour to pack your things.'

Cate put a look of amazement on his face and looked about, grimacing. ‘I've got a horse and dray, Mr Stilwell. I can't very well pack them.'

‘You will of course ride them to the Staunton military depot, where you can sell them. You ain't likely to be needing a dray when you fight for Jackson, boy.'

But Cate smiled, for he'd just remembered the substitute system, and he knew he could sure afford a substitute.

‘I shan't need to do that, sir,' he said. ‘I do of course have a substantial amount of money for my use. I shall buy someone to stand in for me.'

‘No you won't.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir.'

‘I don't tolerate the substitute system in Bath County,' the old man said.

Cate chuckled at him indulgently. ‘It's provided for by Act of Congress. You don't have the power to disallow it.'

The old man, with an extraordinary quickness, had all at once got a great revolver in his hand. ‘You will not find a substitute-broker to deal with you, boy. Nor will you find any local boy to take your money. Bath County is pretty well cleaned out of possible conscripts now in any case, son. Let me tell you, I'm an energetic man and I sure believe in my work. I ought to remind you too, son, that if you resist conscription I am powered to confiscate your property. Now, if you obey me, I'll sell your horse and dray for a good price and hold the money for you or send it to your regiment for collection, jest whatever you like. You'll find it more satisfactory, I believe, than forfeiting everything. Come now, son, you're wanted at Staunton military depot, and you ain't got much time to pack.'

Cate looked at the four militia men who were waiting by the barn. The youngest seemed to be fifty. Escape must be a possibility, he thought. I'll tell him there are things of mine in the parlour, and then I'll escape out the back door and up into the woods. And then I'll send Ephie a message.

‘There are things in the parlour I have to collect,' Cate said.

‘Rob, Hennie,' called the old man, and two militia sergeants of more than fifty years apiece appeared in the door of the barn. They carried smooth-bore muskets. Loaded? Cate wondered.

These two marched him into the house, straight in the open door, and into the parlour. There were a few sketchbooks round and a tray of oils. The two militia men, as country people will, looked around at the walls and furnishings. Yes, Cate was sure, there was a chance here. As he picked up the tray from the sideboard he noticed something distracting though. It was a letter addressed thus:
To privet Bumpass, Guess Co., the Shenandoh Regment, Stonewall's Divishun, neer Richmun
. Ephie had written that at least three days ago and had left it there. She could have given it to Aunt Sarrie to post in Warm Springs yesterday, except there was so much for her to think of these past few days she clearly forgot. For a reason Cate could not understand – maybe as a gesture of victory over Private Bumpass – he put the thing in his pocket, then turned and faced the two rustic sergeants. ‘Look,' he said, and then hurled the tray of paints at them.

He edged between them and ran down the hallway. Through an open back door he could see the sky and the deep forests just a sprint beyond.

Then Montie stepped into that doorway – he'd been waiting on the back porch with Aunt Sarrie all that time. He took Cate in his arms and held him in a bear hug. There wasn't any breaking that fierce hold. Mrs Muswell's strong man had him neat.

The militia men caught up. Cate saw Aunt Sarrie looking up at him from the kitchen garden. She had a bowl of runner beans in her hand. Now that his flight had been stopped, he wanted to get at her and strangle her.

‘Let me go, you goddam black brute!' he screamed at Montie.

‘I thought all you Pennsylvania folk loved the black man,' said Mrs Muswell.

‘God rot your barren old womb, ma'am,' Cate screamed. At this insult to Southern womanhood, one of the militia men grabbed his hair and pulled his head backwards.

‘And you, sir,' said Aunt Sarrie, ‘you do your duty.'

The militia and Montie dragged Cate down the hallway. ‘Mrs Bumpass!' he yelled near the stairs. ‘Mrs Bumpass!' But Ephie did not show herself. ‘I'll come back!' he called, holding on to the door-jamb of the front door. But no one answered.

As they wrestled him towards the waggon they'd brought with them, ignoring his own horse and dray, he watched her window. But there was nothing to see. They've made her prisoner, he concluded.

Another boy of saner mind might have got the right meaning from Ephie's failure to show herself. Might have taken the meaning that the girl had decided against him. But Cate was too deep in love. They've made her a prisoner, he went on believing.

11

Thirty-seven Union regiments had struck the cut that noon. The body of Albert, who had tried to run his bayonet in Usaph, was one of the higher marks that tide had made.

Neat little Sean the fiddler, who hadn't a sort of obsessed guardian angel to guard his flanks the way Cate had guarded Usaph's, who had only Walter his boy-love to look out for him,
had
been bayoneted to death against the fill of that railroad cut. Sean lay on his side, his eyes open. Walter sat on in some species of trance, his back to Sean's. Lucius Taber couldn't get any answer out of him.

Danny Blalock looked down at Sean, at the open eyes and gritty face, the neat little mouth drawn back and the bones of the skull already pushing up through the flesh. Danny began to kick dirt over the serpent's nest of Sean's torn stomach. ‘You should be doing this,' he told the boy. ‘You should be doing this, you goddam sodomite.'

Walter didn't hear. He was staring mad. He would have to be carried away, but there was little chance of that, Danny Blalock knew. Even the wounded would be lucky to get litters by dusk. The mad had no chance.

Hans Strahl's father had, in the summer of 1861, asked his son: ‘Vat ist about dis var? I don' see dis schweine Lincoln at my damt farm gate, do you dis damt Lincoln see troublink your momma or me?'

It was a fair argument. But Hans still wanted to go to the war, for the war meant his liberation from that little German colony near Newmarket. Until the war began, the Lutheran way of things had seemed a good enough way to him. Sure, you could court a girl only under the heavy eyes of aunts, generally the girl's. You sat heavy-suited and squeaky-booted in the parlour of a good German farm and old women listened to everything you said to the girl and then denounced you in church the following Sunday if there was something they didn't like.