The March (15 page)

Yes. Like before. If we are going, we ought to go.

Live in the swamps, snakes bite you, guerrillas chase you. Shoot at your head.

You got us this far.

Oh, lady, don’t tell me you know what’s coming. Six, eight hundred mile before you even see your city.

He had stood and was pacing now, disturbed, agitated. So you heard your damn judge. A course. The fine things of the big city is made for the likes of the Judge. Is that the same city you expect, woman? Make your life? How? What can you do?

I can work at something. In cities they have jobs.

Yes, slaving. Wash the Judge’s underwear, wash the underwear of ten judges, a hundred judges.

I can read and write.

Well, damn it, I can’t. You understand, Miss Wilma? I can’t. What job do you think to be givin me to do in your fine city?

You know music. You play music. Got a fine voice. I heard you. You made those people happy, picking on that banjo.

Oh Lord, oh Lord. Coalhouse paced back and forth, wringing his hands. I thought she had more sense than Coalhouse, this good woman. But her mind is afflicted. Listen, he said, and got down on his knees before the bench. I am a loving man, Miss Wilma. I have no bitterness in my heart for what has been done to me all my life until now. I have the whip marks of that life forever after across my back to testify that I have endured. I am strong. But I can only give you what I have in me, and what I have is I know how to work the land. This paper in your hand is Mr. Lincoln presenting me with what I am owed—forty acres of good loam and a plow and a mule and some seed. And with that I will make a life for us. A man who owns his own land is a free man. Works for himself, not for nobody else. Sings and dances for himself, not nobody else. Puts the food on his table that he has brought from the earth. And you tell me what is better than that? At night, we will sit by the fire and you can teach me to read and write. Then we will go to sleep and wake up when the cock crows and do the very same thing tomorrow we did yesterday, under God’s warm sun. And if you don’t see the blessedness of that then I will go down to the river right now and drown myself.

You won’t.

I swear.

Wilma leaned forward, put her hand to his neck, and pulled him to her and kissed him. You very handsome, she said.

I know.

Shame to put an end to all those good looks.

He shrugged.

How about instead we find us a preacher, she said. You know any?

He raised his head and smiled. Can’t turn a corner and not meet one.

Come get up from there and sit beside me, Wilma said. Now, look here, you see on this paper there’s two lines to write in our names—one for you as head of family and one for me as real head of family.

Oh, how they laughed!

And so their course was chosen. They left the park square and hurried toward one of the black encampments. They were startled anew by the military movement through the city. Streets were clotted with wagon trains and marching troops. They waited at a corner.

What about your service? Wilma said.

When I threw off the tunic it was over, Coalhouse said. White officer can’t tell who’s gone when we all look alike, can he?

This is my man, she thought. He is brave and smart. And he’s right-thinking. Staking a claim, you stake out your freedom. After all, how had the whites lorded over everything all these years but by owning the land?

There was no doubt in her mind that he would give his life for her. But, Lord, what if it came to that? She knew what happened to stubborn, strong-willed slaves. But then, foolish Wilma girl, we are not slaves anymore, are we? Coalhouse is younger than me, but stronger in his convictions. He doesn’t think about things till he don’t know what to think. I will simply stop troubling myself. We have made our decision and I will stand by it.

But at the same time she knew that living the rest of her life in Georgia she would never be without misgivings.

After the parade had passed they continued on their way. How you want to be called? Wilma said. On the application I will have to write it in for you.

Say Coalhouse Walker, Sr.

Oh? She looked right and left. I don’t see no Junior hereabouts.

Miss Wilma ma’am, Coalhouse said with a big, wide smile. Just come along to the preacher, if you please, and I promise you before you know it there will be a Coalhouse Walker, Jr.

XVII

A
RLY AND WILL HAD NOT BEEN OUTDOORS FOR SEVERAL
days. They stood on Waterfront Street blinking in the gloom of the dark, cloudy afternoon as if the sun were shining in their eyes.

This is a strangely quiet city all of a sudden, Arly said.

Will ran to the end of the street. They’re gone, he said.

Who?

The ships.

Savannah was ghostly in the grayness of the day. They hurried along through streets that had not been swept. Many of the houses and shops were dark. The city looked devastated, though there was no visible damage. This town’s like a dog with its tail between its legs, Arly said.

Sherman was here, Will said.

Appears so.

At one point, a patrol appearing up the street, they hid in a park square behind some bushes. A few woeful stragglers were being marched along under guard.

The hospital gates were open. The courtyard was empty but for a Rucker ambulance wagon, its trace poles angled to the ground. The ward where they had worked was almost empty. A few of the hopelessly wounded were still there, gazing at them with the eyes of the dying, but the only doctor to be seen was a civilian.

Colonel Sartorius’s surgery was bare.

Now we’re in for it, Will said. While we been debauching ourselves the whole damn army has gone.

Don’t speak ill of debauching, Arly said. It is no mean feat to make camp for a whole week running in a whorehouse.

I told you yesterday something was going on when we were the only ones left with those women.

You did. But I was too happy being like the last man on earth to worry about it. Arly sat himself on the operating table. I don’t think you ’preciate that when we walked in there we had just enough for one tipple each until I discovered the poker game in the back parlor.

Well, you have the black eye for a medal.

He caught me one on the side of the nose, too. Some folks don’t understand pure luck. It is a endowment, and those not blessed with it think something untoward is going on. But for that fellow, the Union boys was mostly good sports about it.

Why not? You had that Ruby feed them liquor till they was cross-eyed.

Ah, yes, Ruby, speaking of endowments.

I didn’t like her laugh.

Her laugh, her laugh? Arly said, staring at Will in disbelief. I think I have wasted my time with you. You did understand what we were about in that house?

Of course. I went with that Lucille. She told me all about herself.

The skinny one with the buck teeth?

Well, I didn’t mind. She was a nice girl. She liked to cuddle.

Arly saw come over Will’s face a beatific gaze of recollection directed at the ground and, for once, he was at a loss for words. He found himself looking out the window at the ambulance in the courtyard. Hold on, he said. Just wait a minute. God has given me the answer, he said, and got down from the table.

What?

That hospital wagon out there. Go on and find us a mule and we will hightail it after the army.

How’m I to do that?

Jesus, man. Just find one and take it. This is a captured city. Are you not of the military authority that is running things?

And what do you do in the meantime?

I’m to think further on this plan. Arly looked back into the ward. We will need some wounded to take along for appearances.

IN THE COURTYARD
Will buttoned his tunic, brushed himself off, and set his hat on straight. At the gate he looked both ways down the street. I could just walk around till they pick me up, he thought. Maybe even turn myself in. What if I’m made for a straggler. I don’t care. Let them hang me, even. I’m owed that anyways. At least I won’t have Arly Wilcox telling me what to do day and night. But there were no patrols to be seen. He came upon a livery stable just a few blocks away. In the dimness it smelled used enough, but all the stalls were empty. Then he heard a nicker. Down at the end of the row was a small bay mare with a braided mane. She looked him in the eye. A sudden rush of happiness came upon Will. Hey, pretty one, he said. However did the troops miss you?

He led the creature out of its stall. The tail was braided as well. He took a harness down from the wall and, talking to her in a soft croon, put the collar on, the belly band, the crupper, the bridle. Draping the traces over her back, he led her out the stable doors. Confronting him there with a cocked pistol was an old man with a wrinkled face and sparse gray hairs poking out of his chin in the name of a beard.

You’ll have to get by me, son, he said.

This horse is now military property, Will said. Stand aside.

You’re just a thief far as I can see. That’s the Miz Lily Gaylord’s carriage mare, given a by from your Gen’ral Sherman hisself, which she has placed in my charge until she returns.

Well, the Gen’ral has countermanded that order, Will said. Now get out of the way or you will be put on trial for disputing the Federal gov’ment.

The old man raised his pistol. It was one of those old long-barreled pieces with a curved wooden grip and a tinderbox. He could hardly hold it still. Will laughed and moved forward. There was a sizzling sound and then a loud report. Will’s ears rang, and in the next moment he was trying to control a rearing horse and did not realize he’d been hit until, raising his arm to grab hold of the bridle, he noticed the hole in his sleeve. In the next moment his own bright blood pulsed forth with what he thought was something like a greeting.

The old man seemed surprised by what he had done. Will did not feel any pain, but a nausea rose in him and his legs threatened to buckle. It seemed to him absolutely necessary to show no alarm. All right, he said, you’ve shot at a Union soldier after the city has surrendered. That’s treason, old man, that’s a hanging offense.

The mare, skittish now, snorting and pawing the ground, Will led her by the throatlatch as he walked up to the old man and took the pistol out of his hand. It was a heavy piece, and he examined it as one would any antique. In the next moment the pain of his wound tore through his arm and, feeling a rage so great that he almost choked on it, he drew back and with all his might felled the old man with a blow of the pistol barrel to the head. He stood there a moment looking at the still form. Stupid old man, he said, dying for Miz Lily Gaylord.

A WHILE LATER
Arly was driving them across the bridge over the Savannah River. Will, lying on his back in the wagon, strained to hear him over the clatter of the wheels. His arm hurt terrible. Arly had said they shouldn’t linger.

We’ll find a surgeon on the march, Arly shouted as he snapped the reins across the mare’s back. Maybe even our own man. You’ll be fine.

Will was cold. His teeth were chattering. He couldn’t tell if he was shivering or accounting the ripples in the road. His sleeve was soaked. He held the arm upright as he lay on the side bench, and with his other hand pressed a finger into the wound to try to hold the blood in.

The shanks on this little horse is like toothpicks, Arly shouted. She ain’t made to pull four wheels. You would of done better to get us a mule, like I asked you. On the other hand, it makes things easier with you laying back there considering the trouble I ran into intending to load up a couple of those dying Rebs. Where would I be taking them, and for what? So you’re more like what someone would expect, Willie. And what with one thing and another we have to take the bad with the good and trust the Lord to guide us as he has done so far, even if he had to bleed you a little to get us past the guard posts.

I

T
HE RIGHT WING OF SHERMAN’S ARMY, GENERAL HOWARD’S
Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps, marching west from their landing at Beaufort, and the left wing, Slocum’s Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps, following the Savannah River in a northwesterly direction, the secesh generals would not know if it was Augusta they were to defend or Charleston. In fact, Sherman’s target was Columbia, and despite Morrison’s personal resentment of the man, he could not gainsay the genius of his strategy. It was a double-pronged feint, and though by now the secesh knew Sherman for the trickster he was, they could not amass their forces until he declared himself.

But what the Confederacy had by way of recompense was this hellish Carolina swampland and the weather to go with it. The rain poured off Morrison’s hat brim, a curtain of water through which the lighted pine knots men carried to see their way through the bogs were like glimmering stars. Up and down the half-submerged road were the shouts and curses of teamsters, and officers giving commands, and though he was a major with the cockade visible on his bedraggled shoulders, there was no deference to his rank on this night, everyone, enlisted man and officer, too engaged in the struggle to move forward to give a damn for him or his orders.