Stand the Storm (25 page)

“ ’Tis not the time for clicking and clacking needles, woman. There is a fearsome sight on the river.”

“Ye, ye,” Annie cried, drew up her shawl, and followed Daniel.

The gentleman Gabriel waited upon in the shop twisted like a small boy in a stir and was impatient to fly to the riverbank and see for himself what had so many shouting out about what all. He wriggled free of the measuring tapes.

“Cut the coat.” The man tossed coins at Gabriel. “Start the work,” he said, and left Gabriel standing in the center of the floor with his tape between his fingers. Rather than watch the running panorama, Gabriel stared at his own hands and the tape. He recorded the figures of the man’s physique methodically, then put his equipment neatly into its place. Only then did he turn attention to what was going on. So much had happened and so much had been grim that he was more cautious now than ever. And he felt as if bruised—sore in some spots and fearful of bruising himself more.

Walking through to the workroom, Gabriel saw that all the others had left. He was surprised. He brushed threads from his own coat and went out into the thoroughfare to have a glimpse of the passing show.

Bodies floated like leaves downstream on the river. Word circulated that a great battle upstream had loosed these bodies to drift. Their uniforms, full up with decomposition, were gassed like balloons, and rodents clung to some of the inflated corpses. From shore the rats appeared to be seamen piloting their own skiffs.

The Coatses stood high on Prospect Street overlooking the activities below at the riverside. Figures scurried about the bank launching hooks and nets to snag and haul them in. The gassy bodies resisted capture and some floated past despite all effort and made for the Eastern Branch and the bay toward the open sea. These escaped floating bodies bobbed alongside downed branches and animal carcasses and other flotsam. Altogether the river looked like a pernicious stew pot.

“Cover the children’s eyes. T’ain’t a good thing for babes to see,” Annie said when she came back from dumbness. The small girls were summarily turned into their mother’s skirts and held there. A preacher stood on the bank below the prospect and called for repentance, citing evidence of things gone awry—the floating bodies, rats on the march, and highly painted jezebels.

At sight of all this, Washingtonians had been changed. No longer a picnic lark, war became war.

With ever more combatants billeted in the District, skillful navigation of the streets was required, for the thoroughfares were taken up with drilling men and frivolous, excited onlookers. Fortification and provisioning were undertaken around the clock, forcing citizens to become hoarders. Coming and going was a constant. Scavenging opportunities increased and there was someone to want most everything discarded by another. The stream of wagons, buckboards, and goat carts entering and leaving was likely carrying most any kind of contraband. And what was tossed aside by one was plugging a drip hole or cushioning a pallet in an alley for another.

Few dogs remained barking in Georgetown. The dusk was quieter without this small cog of sound. Folks had killed their own pets to have the meat of them before some other purloined the animal. Pet pigs and Sunday horses were likewise going this way.

Washington, the improbable seat of the federal government, was chock-full of southern sympathizers and bold agents working for the Confederacy. The town could not possibly be certain of itself. Every argument was heard expressed. No restraint was shown.

War intoxicated most of the men. Aaron Ridley was not immune. “By God, I’ll do what has to be done! No matter what my uncle says, this one Ridley will do what has to be done!” Aaron exclaimed as he packed his belongings to leave Georgetown. Working in the tailor shop as his uncle’s functionary and spy had lost its appeal for Aaron Ridley in the climate of war. The glamour of the fighting enticed him. Here was courage, dash, and exhilaration.

Aaron, born in Richmond, the capital of the new Confederacy, coerced himself to defend his mother’s honor and fight for the South. Clementine Stern Ridley’s blood whispered to him insistently as horses, men, armaments, uniforms, and breathless women came ashore in the District on the tide of the war. Aaron had watched the excitement build and could no longer stand life on the sidelines.

Aaron Ridley’s mother saw the conflict as an opportunity to reclaim the South she had lost when she had married and been swallowed up by the Ridley family. The Sterns were Virginians, not ambiguous Marylanders like the Ridleys. And her Aaron had a duty to his Virginia relations to defend the South! Clementine was firmly snagged in the romantic fervor of the Confederate war effort and she had written many breathless letters to her son. She cajoled him toward the war. She was thrilled at the handsome, heroic son defending her way of life. The picture came alive in anticipation.

Miss Violet Anne Marie Bristol also influenced Aaron. In her fast, elite circle the young swains were of the opinion that the war would be over quickly and would offer opportunities for conspicuous valor. Violet constructed a fanciful mental scene that she shared with her impressionable beau. Aaron Ridley, she imagined, would look handsome in his uniform as she fluttered a lace handkerchief embroidered cleverly with violets at his receding figure.

Aaron bade Gabriel, Mary, Annie, and Ellen farewell with warmth and ceremony. The irony of it struck Gabriel over and over like a small hammer. It was Aaron who had talked his uncle into taking Gabriel’s cash for the freedom. Jonathan Ridley had been lazy about it, but Aaron had prompted him. Aaron had worked to free the Coats family. Now it was he going off to defend the cause of slavery? Now it was he wringing the hand of his former slave as if both were joined in sentiment about the conflict? More surprising to Gabriel was Aaron Ridley’s leave-taking of the shop. Aaron thrust out his hand and colored up around the collar as he grasped Gabriel’s hand to pump and say that he would miss them all. He looked around at the bolts of cloth and the forms and needles and sighed wistfully.

“Take care of things, old boy,” Aaron said cheerfully. “I’ll be back pretty soon and we’ll take up where we’re leaving it.” It would have been a sorrowful parting if Aaron had not been so naively enthused.

“God grant you good fortune, sir,” Gabriel called out. He felt a breeze of sympathy for Aaron—hoping he might fall from his horse on the way, break a leg, and be unable to join up. Aaron Ridley was not for fighting. He surely had no business in the fray. He was too much a boy, even if ones much younger had gladly gone and made good use of themselves.

Aaron rode to Scottsboro to take leave of his mother and the Ridley Plantation before joining the Confederate army. He went as well to fortify his arguments. He packed a boyhood penknife and a family Bible in his haversack. Young Ridley, an inadequate horseman at best, left Scottsboro to join up astride a great-grandson of his grandfather’s favorite stallion.

Aaron’s mother stood on the gallery at Ridley waving him off. She said he was the image of his grandfather. Jonathan Ridley pronounced her a fool as she waggled her fingers and swelled like a toad.

Jonathan had thought his nephew a right fool, too, to join up to fight with the Confederacy. He could as easily have fought with the Union. Ridley sincerely wanted to offer his nephew and heir the opportunity of a wider world away from the plantation lifestyle. It was what he had always wanted for himself—a larger stage. The day was late for the gentleman farmer. Times were changing. Hell, times had changed.

One of the swains in Violet Anne Marie Bristol’s circle, Martin Tolbert, seized on fulfilling his obligation to the Confederacy by hiring the soldiering services of another man. He reasoned the Confederacy was getting a fitter man—someone with more vitality and fighting acumen to offer in the contest. Joe Bungate, eager to get free of a Virginia prison at any cost, was the proxy who sold his service to Martin Tolbert and the army of the Confederacy.

Twenty-five

A
NNIE HAD BEEN
more than dutifully fond of Gabriel and Ellen’s father, Bell. He was the man she had chosen. She had worked herself toward him and away from Jonathan Ridley in a plan. She had taken the gamble that the master would not go where his blacksmith had gone when she put herself in the way of Bell. Master might have killed or sold or beaten them both, but his need of their value had mitigated his anger. Both Annie and Bell had presentiment of tragedy from the first. Neither expected they would grow old together.

From the beginning, Annie refused to pull back caring for her boy though. As well as she knew that she toyed with sorrow, she clung to the child. Hope was a feature on his face. She had put it there and she resolved to be clever and keep him. And if he were lost, then it would be her portion to swallow, for she was committed to love him. She later pledged in her heart to Ellen, too, but she was less ardent with her. She had got used to the hurly-burly exercise of love when Ellen came and could easily choose between the two.

Annie guided Gabriel—nay, she had cut him if the truth be told. Here was a man she had shaped. She had trained him to be clever and she guided him to the clever path.

The woman helping her bring Gabriel had been short with her, impatient of Annie’s writhing and bucking labor. The woman handled the baby roughly when he emerged and let him squall long minutes before bringing him to Annie. “Don’t give him the tit too quick! He’s got to learn right off that he’ll wait for his vittles like everybody else. He ain’t no king on a throne,” she growled. But Annie took him up and clutched him, and he latched to her breast and sucked and would not be loosed until his head fell back sleeping and a trickle of milk came from his mouth.

“Ah, you’ll cry,” the irritable helpmeet pronounced as she left with her bandages and slop pans.

Child Gabriel did come hungry and Annie never pushed him off. The pleasantest moment was him waking up hungry and kicking his small feet against her stomach in the excitement to get at her breast. Her milk let down at his sigh. On this night, in this dark, Annie touched her nipples in pleasurable recollection of the past and palpated them.

Though it had become thin and manly, Gabriel’s face began fully round and soft. And in satisfied repose he was a lovely, moonfaced sweet bun. Ellen’s little face at the breast was heart-shaped—a perfect idea of a girl. She was a precious bundle and she was delight for Gabriel as much as for the parents. He lifted her and dandled her and cavorted for her entertainment. All of them together—Bell, Annie, Gabriel, and Ellen—that was the highest moment of joy captured in her mind’s eye. At the top of the stair was that lovely moment, and all else fell away.

Loath to run into the streets like a boy—to follow the parades—Gabriel did secretly enjoy the pomp and march of the men raised from firefighting units in New York City. They were the flavor of excitement, dressed in lobster-colored coats, white gloves, and pants so straight-legged! And their middles were cinched with leather belts of exquisite thickness and burnish —and jaunty caps!

The antics of the Fire Zouaves were like a traveling circus’s high-wire aerialists. They shinnied up light poles to delight crowds. Gabriel stood at the window of the shop and brushed at errant threads and lint on his vest. The sight of the marchers thrilled him and he was drawn away from his work. He walked out into the thoroughfare to gape. He had forgotten to remove the measuring strop from his neck, and it lay under his collar as an advertisement of his profession. Some small boys shrieked and pointed to the sky as they ran to the highest prospect along High Street. A startling globe rose into the air and commanded the attention of all.

“Nanny, come and see.” Gabriel’s voice was excited as he rushed into the kitchen—bursting through the curtain and surprising Annie and the girls. He yelled, but did not wait for her to answer or any other. He clapped his hands and ran back to the street. The loft of the thing took him and he was swept away with it.

The three young nougats had never heard so much exuberance in their father’s voice. They were startled and drew back toward their grandmother. They did not follow their father.

When Annie came out to the street, she wore the little girls upon her skirts like decoration. Their heights rose as stairs do: the one oldest, then the next girl a few inches smaller, and the third this same increment smaller. Their faces were much alike, too—a repeating pattern of round faces, molasses-drop eyes, and sunny cheeks.

Out on the avenue the girls clung shyly to their grandmother and used her shawl to cover their faces. Naomi, the eldest, peeped skyward, then giggled into her grandmother’s skirt. Each of the others took a turn.

Nanny’s patience with these little girls was amusing to Gabriel, for she had always been so firm against his clinging. Ah, she could move so quickly then. Her habit was to swat him away from her path and not be obstructed or slowed.

“Are you able to cut and sew a suit on commission for one as myself, sir?” A handsome, self-possessed colored man broke through Gabriel’s reverie. The man assessed him cannily. His voice was well modulated. Seemingly none but Gabriel heard him speak. The two stood shoulder to shoulder in the crowd lining the thoroughfare, watching the military parade.

Jacob Millrace was plum-colored. He had a particularly broad forehead that was unlined and quiescent. His eyes were small, but piercing, and his face belied the obstacles he must have overcome to reach the level of wealth suggested by his clothes. The cloth of his suit was fine. Gabriel inspected it out of the corner of his eye.

Gabriel wondered momentarily why the man was secretive. There was nothing illegal about tailoring. Yet it did behoove a free colored—as this well-dressed man must certainly be—to be cautious with all in all circumstances.

“I take commissions, sir—for tailoring, mending, and laundering. We—my mother, my wife, my sister, and I—produce knitted and embroidered articles also. A gentleman’s wardrobe can be augmented at our establishment.” Gabriel did not smile as he spoke but bowed his head.