Heaven and Hell (54 page)

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"What I am about to show you, boys, is one of the incredible mysteries of the ages. Back in Chicago, somebody told me that way over in some old tombs in Egypt, there are pictures of a magician doing this same cups and balls trick. Here's the ball. An ordinary little sphere of cork."

He showed it between the index and middle finger of his right hand, then pushed it into his left, or appeared to push it, making it vanish.

"Shem, where's the ball?"

"Gone," Wallis said.

"Gone where?"

"Don't know."

"Why, come on. It's gone traveling." With zest, Magee raised the first cup to reveal the cork ball.

He took that ball, made it vanish in his hand, and revealed it under the second cup. Charles had watched him often enough to know the secret: four balls, one loaded in each cup beforehand and kept from wiling out by Magee's skill in inverting the cups and snapping them down fast on the hard ground.

Magee started his patter again, but Williams felt the doorway draft, raised a hand and reached for his sidearm. "Somebody out there?"

Charles opened the door wide and went in. "Only me, watching the show. I'm off, boys. I brought you this coat and cap. Sell them to whoever you can and put the money in the company fund."

A couple of muttered thank-yous followed, but that was it. Charles 342 HEAVEN AND HELL

felt self-conscious. So did the men. The smiles they tried were thin and sad. He stood there above the ring of black faces, his black hat slanted forward over his eyes. Snow was melting and dripping from the brim.

The corners of his gypsy robe scraped the dirt.

He cleared his throat. He felt as awkward and nervous as he had the first time he was called to a West Point blackboard to recite. "I just want to say--you men are good soldiers. Any officer would be--"

The words caught. He cleared his throat again. "Proud to lead you."

"We proud to have you lead us, too," Shem Wallis said. "They
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give you a bad deal, those generals."

"Yes, well, sometimes that's all there is to life. A hell of a bad deal." He shook his right arm gently. In the crook lay his rifle. "At least Colonel Grierson let me keep my Spencer and my horse."

Star Eyes got to his feet, rubbing his knuckles back and forth over his mouth. Charles noticed the scar from the man's hotel days. Haltingly, Williams said, "Since I was about the first man to speak against you, I guess I should be the one to take it all back. For a Southerner, you're a real white man."

The soldiers laughed at the unconscious racism in the remark.

Charles smiled. Flustered, Williams put out his hand.

"We'll miss you, C. C."

Charles's hand stopped in midair. "What?"

"He said C. C," Washington Toby answered. His leg was still bandaged, but he was able to get around.

"It means Cheyenne Charlie," Magee said. "Cheyenne 'cause you're so fond of them."

"Well. Cheyenne Charlie. I guess that nickname fits. I like it.

Many thanks."

He turned and started out. "Sir? I clean forgot," Williams said, reaching inside his plaid flannel outer shirt, one of two worn over his regular blouse and long underwear. "This was stuck in my desk for a week. Guess they put it there while we was riding the railroad."

Charles took the pale gray envelope, inscribed in a familiar hand.

He held it between thumb and fingertips, tapping it thoughtfully while his eyes froze again.

"Thanks. Night," he said, and left. The last thing he heard as he shut the door was Magic Magee calling out:

"Don't forget about the marker."

At the sentry post nearest the stable, a fire had been lighted againsi the freezing cold. Charles walked toward the tatters of flame driver horizontally by the prairie wind.

He'd put on gauntlets and he was carrying his Spencer in his let Banditti - 343

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hand, the stock leaning against his shoulder, the blued barrel jutting up behind him. His boots crunched the accumulating snow as he quickened his step, anxious to be away.

As he passed the sentry's fire, he tossed Willa's unopened letter into the flames. He was quickly hidden by the dark inside the stable. Ten minutes later the sentry heard hooves in the snow, receding fast,

the only sign of the rider's passing into the vast winter night.

1867.

FALL FASHIONS.

DUPLEX SKIRTS.

j. w. bradley's celebrated patented duplex elliptic (or Double Spring) skirts are the most durable and economical skirt made, each hoop being composed of two finely tempered steel springs, ingeniously braided firmly together, edge to edge, and while they are very flexible and easy to the wearer, they are also the strongest and most serviceable skirt worn.

They are made in the most fashionable and elegant shapes for RECEPTION, PROMENADE, OPERA, CARRIAGE,

CHURCH, HOUSE and STREET DRESS . . .

Madeline's journal

December i86y. Christmas nearly here and we are as close to starvation as we have ever been. Soon I will have to tell everyone--Prudence, the Shermans, the other loyal freedmen. For every

cent we earn, I pay out two. Unless I go crawling to George H., I see no alternative but to admit failure and inform Cooper that I lack the ability to manage Mont Royal successfully. The prospect of leaving this place, with my dream of rebuilding it a ruin, is exquisitely painful. Yet abdication, .if that is the right term, seems my only course.

If I choose to follow it, Andy, of all those here, will take it hardest, I think. He is proud and excited about going to Charleston as a convention delegate. Talks about it constantly . . .

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Des LaMotte talked about it, too, with Gettys and Captain Jolly, to Jolly's shanty.

It was two weeks before Christmas; dark, drizzly weather. Des

|^as worn to emaciation by his months in prison. Jolly in contrast looked l> Was sporting a new linen duster he'd stolen from a traveler. He was

344 ' HEAVEN AND HELL

busy with a greasy rag that he slid back and forth on the barrel of one of his Leech and Rigdons, burnishing it.

"We have got to do something besides talk," Des declared. There was a wounded quality in his friend's eyes, Gettys observed. Des would say almost nothing about his time behind bars, but it was evident that it had been a harrowing experience.

Jolly spat on the barrel and caressed it with the rag. "Shit, that's all we ever do, sit around and talk. She's sending her darky to the convention. Why don't I just hunt him up and blow him down?"

"Because then it'll be something else, some other issue or outrage, until she turns the whole district into high niggerdom."

"LaMotte, I'm tired of this," Jolly said. "Do you want to get rid of her or don't you?"

"You know I do."

"Then let's do it. Otherwise you're just a dog with a bark and no teeth."

The tall dancing master reached for Jolly's throat. The captain quickly set the muzzle of his revolver against Des's palm. He grinned.

"Go on. Try to choke me. I'll put a ball through your hand into your skull."

Red-faced, Des lowered his hand. "You just don't understand, do you? I want her dead but I don't want to go to prison for it. I've been there, in prison--" he was sweating--"terrible things can happen to a man of intelligence and sensibility. Vile things not even physical strength can prevent."

Gettys decided it was time to relieve Des's misery. He drew a packet from his old velvet coat. "If you all can stop your spatting, I think we've got the answer. My cousin Sitwell traveled all the way to
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Nashville for a secret conclave--" He saw Jolly's puzzlement and took pleasure in saying with a superior air, "Convention, Captain. Meeting.

He brought this back."

He showed a wrinkled broadsheet with a big, bold heading, tennessee tiger. The tiger, a steel engraving, crouched ferociously in front of a Stars and Bars. "Read the poem," Gettys said, pointing it out.

Des read it aloud. "Niggers and Leaguers, get out of the way. We are born of the night--" Captain Jolly's interest perked up. Des said,

"You mean they allow publication of this sort of thing in Tennessee?'

"And similar things in a lot of other places, Sitwell informed me.

You don't see any names, do you? Read on."

"--born of the night, and we vanish by day. No rations have ^e but the flesh of man. And love niggers best . . . the Kuklux Klan."

Des stared at the others with slowly dawning understanding. Loft"

ily, Gettys explained to Jolly, "The Kuklux is that club for skylarking Pi

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and scaring darkies. Sitwell says it's turned into something more. A white man's defense league. Klaverns are springing up all over the South."

"What's that?" Jolly said.

"Klavern? It means a Klan den, a local chapter. They have a regular constitution, called the Prescript, and a whole lot of fancy titles and rituals. And robes, Jolly. Robes that hide a man's face." Grinning, he tapped the Captain's sleeve with the broadsheet. "Know who's going 'round the South helping to set up the klaverns? The head man of the

Klan. The Imperial Wizard. Your old friend Forrest."

"Bedford himself?" Jolly's tone was reverential. Service with Forrest's cavalry remained the high point of his life, and for a moment he was in the past, remembering how they had campaigned. In the worst rainstorms, through winter sleet, riding with the blood up, faced always with the possibility of death and never turning from it, because they rode for the cause of the white race.

As Jolly thought of his great leader, he kept losing track of his surroundings, the shanty that smelled.of stale food, discarded coffee grounds, urine. He kept seeing the general on his great war-horse, King Philip. And the niggers. The wailing, terrified niggers of Fort Pillow--

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It was in '64 that Jolly had helped Forrest invest the garrison forty miles north of Memphis. After capturing Fort Pillow, Forrest had busied himself elsewhere, allowing his men to deal with the prisoners. They dealt with them with gun, sword, torch. Jolly had personally driven six nigger privates into a tent at gunpoint, then ordered his first sergeant to set fire to it. He could hear the niggers screaming now. The memory made him smile.

After Fort Pillow, the North howled "atrocity" and "massacre."

Forrest insisted that he hadn't ordered the killings, and had been elsewhere when they took place. But neither had he restrained his men.

Lowering his voice, Gettys said, "Cousin Sitwell's friends in York County have invited Forrest there to help start a klavern. I'd say we need one on the Ashley, too."

Des's carroty hair glowed in the light of the kerosene lamp behind him. "Can we get Forrest here? Send him a telegraph message?"

"Yes, and I'll pay for it from store profits," Gettys said with enthusiasm. "Got plenty to spare. Where do we send it?"

Jolly stroked his close-shaven face with the gunsight, raking the disfiguring scar because it itched like the devil. A nigger corporal at Tort Pillow had given him that with a skinning knife, a moment before

°Hy put one of his Leech and Rigdons against the buck's eye and fired.

"Mississip," Jolly said. "Sunflower Landing. That's the general's (Mentation in Coahoma County. Last I heard, he was trying to farm 346 HEAVEN AND HELL

again. You sign my name to the message, Gettys--No, shut up. Do like I tell you. Sign Captain Jackson Jerome Jolly. The general will come here for one of his officers, I promise you."

He leaned back, pleased. Again he dragged the metal sight back and forth over the Fort Pillow scar.

"Things is finally movin', boys. We're about ready to declare open season on uppity nigger women."

Have resolved to break the news of Mont Royal's plight no later than a week before Christmas. Meanwhile, there is some startling geologic discovery at Lambs, a short distance down the river. It has the entire district excited. Must find out why.

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38

The night local chugged up the Lehigh Valley in a thunderstorm.

Near Bethlehem, George's attorney, Jupiter Smith, fell asleep, leaving his client to stare out the window at the rainy dark.

The men rode in a private car at the back of the train. Built to George's specifications, the car had furniture upholstered in red plush, fine wood paneling, and etched glass dividers to screen the dining table.

Years ago, Stanley had bought a similar car for the Hazards; a rail accident had destroyed it. George had scorned the wasteful expenditure until a year ago, when he began to see a certain sense in it. Pittsburgh was fast becoming the state's iron and steel center. George wanted Hazard's to have an important part in that expansion, and he expected to travel there often. He decided he'd worked hard and deserved to travel comfortably.

The train was almost an hour late. Yawning, he rested his forehead against the window and watched raindrops on the other side. He wished the engineer would speed up. He'd been away four nights. He knew men who could leave thejr wives for weeks and enjoy it. He couldn't.

He imagined Constance in their warm bed at Belvedere. He'd be there soon, his body curled around hers, holding her as they slept.

Constance heard a strange sound.

She put down her hairbrush, rose and walked to the dormer nearest foe canopied double bed. She wondered about the noise, because both foe children were away at school and the house was empty except for **le servants in a remote wing.

Frowning, she pushed the window open six inches. Lightning glit|~red behind the laurel-covered mountains. The misty night sky was J^Qdened by light leaching up from Hazard's furnaces. Rain blew in, 347

348 HEAVEN AND HELL

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dampening her face and her powdered cleavage. She'd chosen the Chinese silk bed gown because George was coming home tonight. He was late.

She stared into the storm, trying to recall the sound. But it was difficult. She assumed some piece of debris had been lifted by the wind and flung against the dormer. It was two and a half stories above the lawn, but the wind was strong.