Heaven and Hell (11 page)

A flat-bosomed young girl poked her head from a tall window on ne piazza one story above. "Papa, why are you shouting? Why Aunt Madeline, good afternoon."

62 HEAVEN AND HELL

"Good afternoon, Marie-Louise."

Cooper's daughter was thirteen. She would never be a beauty, and indeed might be homely in maturity. She seemed aware of her deficiencies and worked hard to overcome them with tomboy energy and a great deal of smiling. People liked her; Madeline adored her.

"Go inside and keep practicing," Cooper snapped.

Marie-Louise gulped and retreated. The Mozart began again, with nearly as many wrong notes as right ones.

"Madeline, allow me to remind you that feelings against the nigras, and anyone who champions them, are running high. It would be folly to exacerbate those feelings. You must not open a school."

"Cooper, again, it isn't your decision." She tried to be gentle with him, but the message was unavoidably harsh. "You gave me management of the plantation, in writing. So I intend to go ahead. I will have a school."

He paced, glowering. This was a new, distinctly unfriendly Cooper Main, a side of him she'd never seen. The silence lengthened. Madeline tried to patch over the difficulty. "I had hoped you'd be on my side.

Education of black people is no longer against the law, after all."

"But it's unpopular--" He hesitated, then burst out, "If you goad people, they'll no longer exercise any restraint."

Page 69

"Restraint in regard to what?"

"You! Everyone looks the other way now, pretending you're not--

Well, you understand. If you start a school, they won't be so tolerant."

Madeline's face was white. She had expected someone, someday, to threaten her about her parentage, but she'd never expected it would be her brother-in-law.

"Here's the tea."

Curls bobbing, Judith brought a tray of chipped cups and saucers down the stairs. On the last iron step she halted, aware of the storm on her husband's face.

"I'm afraid Madeline is leaving," he said. "She only stopped by to tell me something about Mont Royal. Thank you for your courtesy, Madeline. For your own sake, I urge you to change your mind. Good day."

He turned his back and hunted under the azalea for the crushed drawings. Judith remained on the step, stunned by the rudeness. Madeline,

concealing her hurt, patted Judith's arm, hurried up the noisy iron stairs, and ran from the house.

. . . There it rests for the moment. I fear I' we made him my enemy. If so, my sweet Orry, then at least I have lost his friend11 ship in a worthy cause.

i

I*

Lost Causes 63

A message came! And only two weeks after my visit to Col.

Munro. The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal church, Cincinnati, will send us a teacher. Her name is Prudence Chaffee.

Cooper silent. No sign of retaliation yet.

The U.S. Army trained cavalry recruits at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri

. The camp of instruction was located on the west bank of the
Page 70

Mississippi, a few miles south of St. Louis.

When Charles arrived there, a contract surgeon examined him for false teeth, visible tumors, and signs of venereal disease and alcoholism.

Pronounced fit, he was marched away, along with a former corset salesman from Hartford who said he craved adventure, a New York City roughneck who said little and probably was running away from a lot, an Indiana carpenter who said he'd awakened one morning to discover he hated his wife, a chatterbox boy who said he'd lied about his age, and a handsome man who said nothing. When the recruits reached a ramshackle barracks, the white-haired corporal pointed to the silent man.

"French Foreign Legion. Can't hardly speak no English. Jesus an'

Mary, don't we get 'em all? And for a rotten thirteen dollars a month."

He studied Charles. "I seen your papers. Reb, wasn't you?"

Charles was edgy about that. He'd already drawn some sharp looks because of his accent, and had heard "Goddamn traitor" behind his back once. He wanted to snap at the corporal, but he remembered Jack Duncan's caution and just said, "Yes."

"Well, it don't matter to me. My first cousin Fielding, he was a Reb, too. If you're as good a soldier as him, you'll be more use to Uncle Sam than the rest of this flotsam. Good luck." He stepped back and yelled, "All right, you people. Through that door and find a bunk.

Hurry it up! This ain't a goddamn hotel you're checkin' into."

Charles took the oath to support and defend the Constitution. He had no problem with that; he'd already taken it once, at West Point.

64

Lost Causes 65

And when the war ended, he'd made up his mind to raise his son as an American, not a Southerner.

It did seem strange to be issued so much blue again. The light blue kersey trousers with the yellow stripes and the dull gray fatigue shirts reminded him of the Second Cavalry. So did the barracks, with its poor ventilation, smoky lamps, narrow slot windows at each end, and sounds of scurrying rodents at night. So did his Army cot, an iron-framed torture device with wood slats and stringers and a mattress shell filled with smelly straw. So did the Army food, especially the hardtack and the beef served up in tough slices at noon mess, then submerged in a sludgy
Page 71

gravy for supper; the meat tasted better with the gravy, which masked the faint odor of spoilage.

Jefferson Barracks proved to be not so much a training center as a holding pen. Recruits were sent out as soon as a regiment's required number of replacements could be gathered. So training could last two months or two days. That didn't speak well for the postwar Army, Charles thought.

Most of the instructors were older noncoms putting in time until they retired. Charles worked hard to look inexperienced and awkward in front of them. During a bareback equitation class, he deliberately fell off his pathetic sway-backed training horse. He fumbled through the manual of arms, and at target practice never hit the bull, only the edge of the card. He got away with it until one trainer got sick and a new one took over, a runty corporal named Hans Hazen. He was a mean sort; one of the men said he'd been busted from top sergeant three times.

After a saber drill, Hazen drew Charles aside.

"Private May, I got a queer feeling you ain't no Carolina militiaman.

You try to look clumsy, but I saw some of your moves when you thought I was watchin' somebody else." He thrust his chin out and shouted. "Where were you trained? West Point?"

Charles looked down at him. "Wade Hampton Legion. Sir."

Hazen shook a finger. "I catch you lyin', it'll go hard. I hate liars near as much as I hate snobs from the Point--or you Southron boys."

"Yes, sir," Charles said loudly. He kept staring. Hazen looked away first, which shamed him to anger.

"I want to see what you're made of. A hundred laps of the riding ring, quick time. Right now. March!"

After that, Corporal Hazen stayed on him, yelling, criticizing, questioning him daily about his past and forcing him to lie. Despite Hazen--maybe, in a strange way, because of him; because Hazen rec°gnized an experienced soldier--Charles felt happy to be back in the

^nny. He'd always liked the dependable routine of trumpet calls, as 66

HEAVEN AND HELL

Page 72

semblies, drills. He still felt a shiver up his backbone when the trumpeters blew "Boots and Saddles."

He kept to himself and didn't find a bunky, a partner. Most soldiers paired up to ease their work load and share their miseries, but he avoided it. He survived three weeks that way, although not without some sudden bouts of despondency. Thoughts of the past would return suddenly, the burned-out feeling would grip him, and he'd call himself a prize fool for donning Army blue again. He was in that kind of mood one Saturday night when he left the post and crossed the main approach road to the nameless town of tents and shanties on the other side.

Here a lot of noncoms lived with their wives, who took in post laundry to supplement Army pay. Here civilians hawked questionable whiskey in big tents, docile Osage Indians sold beans and squash from their farms nearby, and elegant gentlemen ran all-night poker and faro games. Charles had even seen a few earnestly stupid recruits betting on three-card monte or the pea and shells.

Other amenities were available in any tent with a red lantern hung in front. Charles called at one of these and spent a half hour with a homely young woman anxious to please. He walked out physically relieved but depressed by memories of Gus Barclay and a feeling that he'd dishonored her.

Two young boys ran after him as he walked through the tent town.

They taunted him with a chant:

"Soldier, soldier, will you work?

No indeed, I'll sell my shirt ..."

The public certainly held the Army in high esteem. As soon as the war ended, soldiers had again become the unwashed, the unwanted.

Nothing ever changed.

He'd been at Jefferson Barracks four weeks when orders came through: He and seven other recruits were given twelve hours to prepare to leave on a steamer bound up the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, all the way across the state of Missouri. Established in 1827

by Colonel Henry Leavenworth, the great cantonment on the right bank of the river was the most important post in the West. It was headquarters for the Department of the Missouri and the supply depot for all the forts between Kansas and the Continental Divide. At Leavenworth they would find transportation, they were told, to carry them to duty with the Sixth Cavalry, down on the northern Texas frontier. The prospect pleased
Page 73

Lost Causes 67

Charles. He'd loved the natural beauty of Texas when he was stationed at Camp Cooper before the war.

While a thunderstorm flashed and roared above the barracks, he packed his carpetbag and a small wooden footlocker in which he kept his Army-issue clothing. He put on his blue blouse, which had a roll collar, and his kepi with the enlisted man's version of the cavalry's crossed sabers. The storm quickly diminished, and he walked through light rain to the tent town, whistling a jaunty march version of the little tune that reminded him of home.

The storm had toppled some of the smaller tents and muddied the dirt lanes. Charles headed for the largest and brightest of the drinking tents, the Egyptian Palace, whose owner came from Cairo, Illinois. The tent was shabby. A piece of canvas divided an area for officers from the one for enlisted men and civilians. The whiskey was cheap and raw, but Charles felt a rare contentment as he sipped it.

Right after he'd ordered a second drink, a trio of noisy noncoms stumbled "in. One was Corporal Hazen, wobbling. Evidently he'd been drinking for some time. He spied Charles at the end of the plank bar and made a remark about a foul smell.

Charles stared at him until he looked away and shrilly ordered a round for his friends. Charles was thankful Hazen didn't feel like pushing it. He felt too good.

That lasted ten minutes.

Passing by on his way to the officers' entrance, a small, slight man saw a familiar face among the enlisted men inside. He looked away, took three more steps, then halted, his mouth open. He about-faced and peered into the smoky tent--

There was no mistake.

Color rose in his face as he went in. The men noticed his look and stopped talking.

The officer walked toward the end of the bar with an aggressive swagger--probably to make up for standing only five feet six. His shoulders were pulled back with the stiffness of someone preoccupied with Army formality. Everything about him suggested fussiness: the waxy points of his mustache, the impeccable trim of his goatee.

Yellow facings and trouser stripes identified him as cavalry. A lieutenant colonel's silver-embroidery oak leaf decorated his shoulder
Page 74

straps. He marched down the bar and, as he passed a burly, bearded civilian wearing a notched turkey feather in his hair and a buckskin coat

decorated with porcupine quills and gaudy diamond-shaped pony beads, he accidentally bumped the man's arm, spilling whiskey.

A

68 HEAVEN AND HELL

"Hey, you jackass," the man said. As he turned, the beads on his coat shot darts of reflected light through the tent. A brindle dog at his feet responded to his tone and growled at the officer, who strode on without apology, tightly clutching the hilt of his dress sword.

"Cap'n Venable, sir," Charles heard Hazen say as the officer reached the three noncoms. The silver oak leaf was from a wartime brevet, then.

"Hazen," the man said, striding on. Charles watched him, and the back of his neck started to itch. He didn't recognize the officer. Yet something about the man bothered him.

Venable halted two feet from Charles. "I saw you from the street, Private. What's your name?"

Charles tried to place the accent. Not truly Southern, but similar.

One of the border states? He said, "Charles May. Sir."

"That's a damn lie." The officer snatched the whiskey glass from Charles's hand and threw the contents in his face.

A sudden uproar of talk; then, just as suddenly, silence. Whiskey dripped from Charles's chin and ran off the edge of the plank bar. Charles wanted to hit the little rooster but held back because he didn't understand what was happening. He was certain there was some mistake.

"Captain--" he began.

"You'll address me as colonel. And don't bother to keep on lying.

Your name isn't May; it's Charles Main. You graduated from West Point in 1857, two years before I did. You and that damn reb Fitz Lee were thick as this." The officer held up two fingers. Instantly, the bearded face acquired a past that Charles remembered.

He bluffed. "Sir, you're mistaken."

"The hell. You remember me, and I remember you. Harry Venable.

Page 75

Kentucky. You put me on report four times for a messy room.

Twenty skins each time. I damn near accumulated two hundred and took the Canterberry Road because of you."