On Agate Hill (51 page)

But somehow I could not dismount. Nor could I remove my hat. Nor could they see me plain, you understand, for I had stayed back in a little grove of willows there by the creek, a good distance back from the house. I could see Kilpatrick there in the yard, or a man I believed to be Kilpatrick, who had recently been caught in bed with his mistress and escaped capture in his shirt-tails. They said that General Hampton had caused his own horse to buck up yesterday, so as not to have to shake hands with Kilpatrick. General Hampton was not in evidence now. We all knew that General Joe Johnson was inside, where he had been for hours. But then the door of the house opened. General Sherman stepped forth and called a man, apparently his clerk, who sprang forward, papers in hand. The door closed behind him. Officers and men standing in the Bennetts’ yard began plucking cherry blossoms as well as sprigs from the privet bushes for souvenirs. They carved pieces of bark from the large white oak tree in the yard. This sickened me.

I could not do it, no matter what sacred oath I had sworn. I accepted neither my ten days’ rations nor my parole. Though I cannot condone my actions then or now, still I must say in my own defense that I knew Alice
and her children had been taken in and provided for by Junius Hall at Agate Hill — far more than could be said for most widows and their children in that sad time. In any case I had no choice. Dark, broken, and in despair, I was not in a fit state of mind to help anyone, even had I the means to do so, which I did not. I had nothing.

I waited in the willows until cover of night then rode south down the Fayetteville road, one of hundreds scurrying down that rutted thoroughfare in the moonlight. No one stopped me or asked me any questions. Upon occasion it was necessary to ride around a person who had simply fallen in the road, whether dead or sleeping I could not say. The full moon sailed gaily through the puffy clouds all the while, and not for the first time I found myself thinking how beautiful the world is, how astonishingly beautiful, and yet it does not give a damn about any of us, nor any thing, nor does God, who would not be worth worshipping if he even existed, which He does not. For no god could condone such slaughter.

Thus I did not surrender — nor have I ever surrendered — but made my way south toward Perdido through scenes of unbelievable devastation along the way, the entire countryside plundered and destroyed. Railroads were torn up, schools and churches torn down. There seemed to be no work, as everybody — negro and white alike — roamed the countryside, most of them on foot, some of them pulling carts or wagons like a mule. One old man had simply stopped, sagging between the traces while the children in his cart cried and the rest of us surged on around him. Perhaps there were good Samaritans along that route, but if so, I did not encounter them, nor was I such a Samaritan myself, I am ashamed to say. Yet I could not help it. A vast blackness had descended upon me. I cared for no one. I passed children begging beside the road, I saw children picking through the cornrows in the field for even a kernel. I did not care. I kept a store of corn in my saddlebag for Atlas, feeding it to him out of my hand when we finally stopped for the night. I made a little fire and stirred my own ration into a thick gruel.

In three such days I reached the blackened heap of rubble and tall dreary chimneys which had been Columbia, its citizens all but disappeared, as if
they had never existed. The few inhabitants I encountered were clad in little but rags and wore that blank stare I came to know well, the look of survivors of some enormous natural disaster, such as an earthquake.

I passed down through the ravaged countryside toward Perdido, now under a low sky with a softly falling rain, the earth itself covered in a gray blanket of despair. I found conditions there to be far, far worse than they had been here, for the war had been slow to come to North Carolina, you will recall, and it had not borne the trial of the armies crossing it again and again like locusts, back and forth, taking or devastating everything in their path.

I crossed the Saluda River on a badly constructed new bridge, the old one having been destroyed by the war, of course, as all had been destroyed by the war. I rode onto the other side remembering the days when your father and mother and I ran those woods like Indians, all day long. I remembered swimming in the black-water Saluda, I remembered the very day I taught your mother to float. We were in waist-high still black water just below the old bridge. I put my hand on the small of her back.

“Just lean back,” I said. “Lean back, Alice, and close your eyes, and trust me. Lean far back. Let your feet rise up.” And she did, going back and back and back into the dark water with her eyes wide open, holding me in them, so that I could see myself there, upside down. Her shift floated out around her body, her hair floated out around her head. Her legs were long and white and wavy.

“Now I’m going to move my hand,” I said, and I did, and then she was floating for one minute, two minutes, three — I don’t know how long — while the current took her downstream a little ways into deeper water and I swam to keep up, and then she was struggling and yelling, trying to put her feet down.

“Alice, I’m coming, I’m coming,” I called. But she was furious and crying by the time I got there. I grabbed her and pulled her over toward the weedy shallows.

“Oh Simon, damn you,” she said, but then I had her, and then I kissed her wet mouth, a kiss that she returned, twining her wet arms around my neck.

“Alice? Simon?” Charles was upstream yelling.

I kept on kissing her.

“Here,” she called to him finally. “Down here, Charles,” and he came, and we never mentioned this incident again.

Pieces of railroad track lay broken and twisted among the blooming wildflowers and thick grasses along the lush riverbank, and there on the other side I found an old countrywoman I had once known, Mrs. Hatch, who had helped in the kitchens at Perdido.

I rode over toward her and reined in Atlas. “Can I help you there, ma’am?” I called out to her.

She turned her worn red face up to me, blinking in the bright hot sun. Her eyes were wide and strange. “Why, he’ll be coming back directly, won’t he, sir?” she said. “I believe he will be coming home any day now.”

“Yes ma’am, I am sure he will,” I said, tipping my hat to her, as I rode on, cursing for all those boys including myself who had gone off to fight a rich man’s war.

I reached Perdido at dark, riding down that long allee of live oaks with my heart in my throat to find nothing but a pile of rubble, only the huge white columns standing — five out of eight — across the front of what had once been the house. Bats flew round about, swooping low. I heard noise coming from the quarters, where I found an entire townful of people, both negro and white, disporting themselves in a lawless and lewd fashion everywhere in the light of burning flares. Perdido had become notorious, an outlaw haven along the levee. Not a man among them looked familiar as several met me at gunpoint.

Promising to take my leave, I did not, sleeping instead in the abandoned icehouse down by the river which I was fairly sure no one had yet discovered as it stood yawning dark and empty in the moonlight, vines growing
across its door. I tethered Atlas inside with me, and slept with my gun in my hand. I got up before dawn and rode all about the place — my childhood’s only home, as you will recall. Perdido was once an entire town unto itself, it encompassed a whole civilization, now vanished, as if it had never been.

I went out to the meadow where the barns and stables had stood, where I had shod so many horses, and trained others; there had been the oval track, the beautiful jumps and fences. Here I had led your mother around and around on her little gray pony Lucy, teaching her to ride. Here I had trained Desperado for Charles, from here I had ridden with him to victories at Charleston and Camden and even up in Virginia.

My father’s blacksmith shop was still standing, again in some sort of use. Despite the risk I dismounted and ducked inside. Here I could see him yet, my huge cruel silent father, hammer raised above the glowing forge. May the Devil take him! I thought. Here I had dodged his blows yet learned my craft, and it came back to me then that in fact I had once had a craft, other than war I mean, for war will take a man over utterly, especially if one is good at it, as I had proved to be. Upon impulse I lifted up a rock in the hearth and there it was, Alice’s little stirrup in the place where I had hid it years before. I put it in my pocket and was leaving as an old man appeared in the doorway to ask what I was doing there, and I said I had used to live on the place, and he said I had best be on my way then. So I left, in fact I could not leave fast enough, suddenly, spurring Atlas straight down the middle of the long allee of oaks, and be damned. The hell with it.

I would never go back. I had never been a member of that family, no matter how much I had willed it so. I had been neither brother nor sister nor lover, I had been more like a body slave with no knowledge of his enslavement, little more than the negroes on this place. And I had remained enslaved by it, by the very idea of Perdido, all these years. Such a child had I been, such a boy, and then I had gone to war and become another thing altogether, a horrible thing. I could not believe I was still alive. I had no wish to be alive. I carried Alice’s little stirrup in my pocket as I headed down the
levee and into the world, suddenly resolved to find another country altogether. For I had no hope and nothing to lose — a condition of total freedom, as I came to realize.

I was headed for Texas, from whence I planned to travel to Mexico — an idea much in the air at that time, put forward by many of our most illustrious leaders such as General Jo Shelby of Kentucky and our own General Wade Hampton himself, who had reputedly offered to take President Jefferson Davis with him.

Such was my plan until I fell in with a man at a public house who was bound for Brazil, his saddlebags full of rattlesnake watermelon seeds, a fruit he planned to introduce there in partnership with his brother, already established and farming. He gave me an article written by his brother which described Brazil in the most glowing terms, which somehow burned their way into my perhaps fevered brain: “Who can picture, who can paint nature as here exhibited? With wonder, admiration, and reverential awe, one may contemplate the vastness with which he finds himself here surrounded, the profusion of nature’s bounties, and sublimity of scenery, but to describe them, to picture them as they are, is beyond the scope of human capacity. Here we behold the great Amazon, by far the largest river in the world, located in the center of the world, with its vast tributaries embracing more than two million square miles, teeming with animal and vegetable life; a world of eternal verdure and perennial spring, of whose grandeur and splendor it is impossible to speak in fitting terms.”

Another country indeed. My resolve rose to meet such eloquence.

Consequently I turned south to New Orleans, a city which swallowed me for a time, as I was susceptible then to drink and to all manner of other vices, emerging however with a pocketful of cash and a set of blacksmithing tools for the journey.

At that time it was not necessary to join a colony. I secured passage on a large British sailing ship, the
Marmion
, carrying double the load of passengers for which it had been intended, most of them men from the Confederate Army, such as myself, also cattlemen from Texas and planters from
Alabama. The ship had been stripped bare during the war. We sailed without furniture, sleeping in canvas hammocks hung three deep, though I could not sleep much under those conditions. I stood at the rail for hours as we departed down the delta of the Mississippi River, my heart rising with every mile of muddy water that slid under our bow as I stood looking out at the long shining spread of water and sky before me. A storm came up just as we reached the Gulf of Mexico, driving us onto a giant sandbar already occupied by a grounded pirate ship — wreckers, they called them then. Seeing us, some of the men rushed out across the sand with their cups extended, begging piteously for water.

“Water be damned!” cried Jess Crocker, a big redheaded Texas planter standing beside me. “Get back!” They did not. He drew a pistol from his belt and shot the closest man twice in the stomach. This pirate died a screaming, writhing death upon the sands before us, while his compatriots turned back to their wretched ship.

“Shame! For shame!” The outcry rose all about us, but Jess Crocker was unrepentant, threatening to shoot anybody on the
Marmion
who disagreed with him. No one did. Apparently the captain was of the same mind, for Crocker was never chastised or disciplined in any way. As our journey continued, Crocker and I grew to be friends, or something like it, playing poker nightly, a game in which Crocker dealt with all disagreements strictly, in much the same fashion as he had handled the pirates.

Our meals were served from tin pans — boiled potatoes, bean soup, and salted beef. I had lived on worse. A woman and two children died and were buried at sea, unceremoniously, as the only minister on board stayed drunk the whole time, his private cure for seasickness.

The mouth of the Amazon turned the ocean a reddish brown sixty miles off the coast of Brazil. You could dip a bucket down into it and come up with fresh water. At dusk we anchored outside the city in view of the Raza lighthouse, the fort at the entrance to the harbor, and the lush green mountains which went right down to the Bay of Guanabara. Our fifty-six-hundred-mile voyage was at an end. By the light of the moon, we could see Sugarloaf Mountain
rising above all. I stayed awake that entire night, sitting on the bare deck, my heart brimming with fear, memories, and anticipation — a sensation oddly similar to the nights I had experienced before a battle.

We raised anchor at sunrise and steamed up to the city with its bright colors, tiled-roof buildings, and iron-railed balconies, not unlike New Orleans. I could fashion such railings myself. We disembarked and walked up huge white paving stones through an open iron gate. Here I parted company with Jess Crocker and most of my compatriots, for I had chosen to continue upriver to the village of Rio Doce, two days and two nights of further travel in wide canoes poled by men who walked up and down the runways on either side of the craft. Though plagued by mosquitoes, I was enthralled by the variety of handmade crafts on the river, the strange trees and vines beside us, the bright loud birds and big snakes sliding into the water.