Confederates (62 page)

Farmer Miller had his eye on the detachments of young boys straggling up the road towards the town he himself was leaving. They would get over to the side, these young men, to let the waggons of the Brotherhood past. Some of them would call. ‘Goin' to market, daddy?' and such, but they were mostly quiet. He felt right sad for them.

He was sad too about his thirty acres of corn in that big field by the Hagerstown pike. He guessed it would be trampled or stolen by one army or another or crudely harvested by cannon before he could ever get back to it. He'd felt since the sabbath that that crop was doomed but it was too late by Monday morning to start getting it in. Newspapers said generals were meant to pay for corn they consumed or trod down, but Miller – though he read newspapers – knew it was against God's law to take money off a general, especially if young men had suffered amongst the corn. As angry and sharp as he felt about his thirty acres of corn, he felt worse about the cropping of the young men that would happen. Of the young Georgians who'd camped by his corn on Sunday evening and had told him: ‘Yessiree, we mean to stand, Mr Miller. Did you think we was going back to Virginia without getting a better look at that-there McClellan …?'

The Shenandoah Volunteers, limping into Sharpsburg towards noon, saw these men in their black coats and wide, round-crown hats sitting up on the boards of their drays. Saw the wives and daughters with their hands in their laps and their faces hidden deep in wide-brimmed bonnets. And the young Dunker boys looking at the soldiers with that horror and that interest a country boy always has, be he one of the Brethren or not, when he sees soldiers marching.

Stubble-chinned Ash Judd called out some of the normal teasing remarks: ‘Going back to join the quartermaster corps, are you then, Mr Dunker?' For Judd was in good heart. While they marched back towards Maryland, he'd got his usual sight of the old man on a fence in a village called Leetown. The old man, as he often did, had a clay pipe in his mouth, and his eyes had that usual look, as if they were just about to wink at Ash, but that the old man didn't want to give the secret away to that extent.

Usaph didn't feel near as genial as Ash did. He had the usual bellyaches from eating two days' rations cooked in too much bacon grease. To add to his grief, he was carrying Cate's musket as well. Goddam Cate had kept slithering and shivering along with the regiment, keeping up somehow, and first a conscript had offered to take the goddam thing for Cate, and Usaph felt bound somehow to rest the conscript now and then. Deep in his belly, it made him itch and squirm for being so stupid. That feeling didn't help the pains he had already.

But the Shenandoah Volunteers, with pop-eyed Colonel Wheat at its head mounted on his mare, with Captain Hanks and Lieutenant Taber striding behind, and Daniel Blalock, schoolmaster of the Valley, carrying the flag with the insignia of Virginia on it, and with all the scrawny boys in its poor-formed ranks, now numbered just 83 souls. Amongst so few, Cate, a lean streak of misery, chattering and shivering in a blanket, stood out and couldn't be turned away from. That was how it seemed to Usaph, anyhow.

In spite of feeling foolish, Usaph and everyone else had this feeling as well that things were getting close to their end. Wheat had said at breakfast that morning, while they were resting at Shepherdstown: ‘It seems to me that we've whipped Pope and now our indicated task is to whip McClellan. And when that is done, then there's no one else on God's sweet earth left for us to whip.' And then Danny Blalock had spoken up in that sort of quiet excitement that was in everyone and said something they just about all believed. ‘They won't fight the way they did round Groveton and Manassas. Why, they spent all their courage there. You can't tell me they've got any more to spend.'

So this noon, even Gus was humming now and then. A straight-out tune, ‘Mister, Here's Your Mule', he was humming away at, just for the straight enjoyment of it.

And Usaph had said: ‘Gus, damn me if you ain't singin a straight-out tune.'

And Gus had grinned. ‘Damn me if you ain't carrying Cate's Springfield.'

‘No town to pay much mind to,' said Ash Judd as they went through Sharpsburg. Main Street lacked shops and was all quiet shuttered houses. An officer at the corner of Main and Jefferson pointed them north up the Hagerstown Pike. In the churchyard of the white Dunker church they fell out. The Stonewall Brigade. 300 boys. They stacked their arms. Usaph added Cate's to the stack. The church was closed up, its blinds drawn, just as if the Lord Christ was sleeping. Usaph fell on the ground without spreading his blanket and slept for a while in the September sun. He had a dream in which he was in an office. Jesus Christ sat behind the desk and he and Ephie stood before it. Ephie wept, and the Lord tried to explain something to Usaph on her behalf, something she had done that Jesus had forgiven but which Usaph felt offended by. In his sleep, Usaph knew what that something was. But when he woke there was nothing left of it except the flavour of grief.

4

Wheat was a profane and adulterous man. It hadn't escaped Usaph that to be his runner might not be a pleasant thing if the Lord all at once singled Lafcadio Wheat out for special vengeance.

Though the runner for someone as important as a Virginia colonel didn't need to do picket duty, Usaph was glad to take a few messages up to the picket line that night, just to avoid the colonel's speeches and stories. It wasn't that they weren't fine stories and eloquent speeches. It was just that they came on so ceaseless and without stint. Besides, Wheat had taken to winking at Usaph and calling him ‘the Reverend Bumpass'. The way he did it was half-mocking and half-begging and Usaph didn't like it.

So Usaph was happy to leave Wheat's campfire and move north down the Hagerstown pike, a fine straight pike amongst the smoky meadows of Maryland.

The pickets stood along the north end of the wood, just a little way from the Dunker church. Some of them were chatting low and chawing and huddling by the railing fence on the turnpike. Others were across the road by a big cornfield. Lucius Taber had charge of the fifteen or so Shenandoah boys who stood in this picket line. It had come on drizzly as Usaph delivered his letter to Lucius. Lucius stood by a stone fence looking north, reading the letter in little bursts and then raising his eyes again. The Yankees had crossed way up the Antietam stream and were off in the wood there, at least a good half-mile away. But sometimes you felt you could just about hear their whispering. It was like a shuffle of leaves, their conversation.

Usaph thought he could feel a joyfulness up here amongst the dripping leaves. There was a sort of breathiness in the way boys whispered, as if they couldn't wait till morning. It wasn't like that back where the rest of the regiment were trying to sleep against fences and in murky little ravines along the road. But the excitement was here, and as sweet as it was to taste, it made Usaph ill at ease.

Ash Judd, one of the pickets, was resting against a walnut tree. As Usaph turned back from talking to Lucius, Ash called to him.

‘Saph! Saph!' He pointed north with his thumb, as if the north was not dark but was lit up. ‘Tell me what you can see there, Saph?'

‘I can't see nothing,' said Usaph.

‘There you go!' Ash whistled, very pleased. ‘You see, they don't have no fires, Usaph, ole friend. Their goddam generals are pretending we don't know where they are and so no fires're permitted the poor sons of bitches.' And Ash whistled low and shook his head. To him it just showed what happened to Northern people all the time as a punishment for electing Lincoln and all them other Republican hoodlums. ‘They're up there chawing on dried coffee grounds and shivering to theirselves.'

‘You ain't much better off yourself there, Ash.'

‘Ain't I? Goddam, why I had a conscript bring me a mug of coffee up from that-there cornfield right there, and it was goddam nectar, Saphie, goddam nectar.' And Ash grinned up at Usaph like one man grinning up at another amongst the comforts of the lobby of the Virginia House in Richmond.

‘Tell me this,' Ash said then; ‘is ole Wheat still telling Gus back there them stretchers regarding his gran'daddy?'

‘When I left him, yeh, Ash. He was still telling away.'

‘I wonder what tales of
their
gran'daddies them Union colonels're telling the Yankee boys to keep 'em warm tonight?'

Far away, where the Union pickets must be, there was quite a clatter and yelling all at once. You couldn't tell what words were said, but it sure sounded like loud oaths. ‘Some goddam conscript of theirs must've tripped over a nag,' said Ash.

Going back to the shed by the pike where Wheat was sheltering from the drizzle, Usaph left behind all the temporary optimism young Ashabel Judd had given him. He felt clammy and scarcely knew whether it was drizzle or fever. The moon was thin when it came out over beyond the pike, and in the low pastures near the Antietam stream mists were forming. One more day, he promised himself. Just one more day of conflict. ‘Oh, Ephie, oh, Ephie,' he said out loud, without knowing he was doing it.

‘Be quiet there, boy,' said someone from the darkness.

5

That morning Dora Whipple received three sets of visitors in her cell. The last of the night's rain was dripping from the eaves when the first one arrived. It was her counsel. She could tell from his dismal face what he had come for.

‘There's no mercy,' she stated, looking up from her chair by the table where she was composing a long painful letter to Mrs Isabelle Randolph.

‘There is none,' he said. ‘My poor Mrs Whipple.'

She nodded like someone who had just found out that the storekeeper has run out of coffee. She was amazed herself at how tranquil she could be. She saw that her attitude was confusing poor honest Pember. ‘My dear sir,' she said, ‘it's a matter of what is inevitable, that's all.' She chewed the end of her pen a little. ‘Thank you for all you did. But a crime is a crime, sir.' She looked down on her letter as if re-reading it and placed a deft comma in one of the sentences. ‘Tell me, who is doing it?'

‘They are bringing the navy executioner from Norfolk, ma'am. He's said to be the … the best. By that I mean, ma'am, the least …
painful.'

They shook hands and he left. He said he would have stayed but … he had been ordered back to Richmond by his superior officers. She wondered if that was true.

She'd just about finished eating her breakfast when she looked up and saw standing in her doorway in silence her second visitor, a bulky man with a brown beard and wearing the uniform of a chief petty officer in the Confederate navy. She looked him fair in the eye, as was her manner, and he did not flinch away. He looked like all the others she'd been seeing lately – a serious, kindly man.

‘Ma'am,' he said.

‘Sir, can I help you?'

He shook his head. After some seconds he nodded to her and left. She rang her little hand bell and one of those elderly guards came.

‘Corporal!' she barked. ‘I don't want any visitor …
any visitor …
being brought in here without my being told. Do you understand?'

He said he did.

But later still, when he had gone off duty, she heard quite a crowd of people being let into the lockup. Oh my God, she thought, undertakers and all that rabble!

‘Friends of yours, ma'am,' the guard called as he turned the key in her lock. She went on writing even while these visitors were entering.

‘Mrs Whipple,' she heard in a voice that shook her ear and resounded through her body. She looked up and it was Searcy. He placed his forefinger on his lips while the turnkey locked up and went away.

‘I paid for four passes to see you,' he told her. ‘You see, help is feasible, and it has arrived.' He spread his arms.

She looked at those who'd come in with him. There was first of all a minister of religion, and then a middle-aged couple standing together, probably husband and wife. They all waited there, looking at her with the usual solemnity, the look she was getting used to.

‘It is not easy getting passes,' Searcy said with a wide smile. ‘But seeing you is worth every trouble, Mrs Whipple? He smiled and took her hand and pressed it against his lips.

‘I am in good heart, Mr Searcy,' she said, smiling remotely. ‘It is such a wonder to see you. I have a letter for you … I was trying to get someone to deliver it …' She frowned. ‘I hope you take no risk, coming here.'

‘They would not dare touch me, Mrs Whipple. In half an hour, I assure you, they will not dare touch you.'

‘Oh, they won't touch me anyhow, Mr Searcy. They won't touch me where I reside, I'm very happy to say.' And she tapped her chest, above her breasts, to indicate the place she resided so safely.

‘They will not touch you, my dear lady,' said Searcy exultantly, ‘because you will be my wife. The protection of my name and of my family will hang over you. This, Mrs Whipple, is the Reverend Archer, and this Mr and Mrs Brownley. They are of like mind to us. Mr Archer will marry us now, Mr and Mrs Brownley will be our witnesses. I shall drop our legal wedding certificate on President Davis's desk by this evening at the latest. He will then know that if he proceeds with harming you he will become a pariah in Europe –'

‘Amen,' said the Reverend Archer.

‘– that his name shall be synonymous with Bluebeard's and Genghis Khan's. If he did not even care about that, he cannot afford it in the political sense, madam. Therefore, I think I can say with humility, my dear Dora, that I've come to save you.'

She inspected him for a while. He's coming on a little strong, she thought. She closed her eyes and sat down again. While she loved him for going to this trouble, she was amazed how little bearing it had, how little it meant.

She waved her hand in a negative way. ‘Please, I am honoured by all your trouble …'