Stand the Storm (31 page)
In the
National Republican:
However terrific the fire of the enemy, however fearful the contest, or however much outnumbered by the foe, with all the threats of death, if captured, staring them in the face, they nevertheless stood to their post firm and unbroken, unless when thinned out by the deadly fly of the enemy’s missiles.
Regiments on their right and left have flagged and succumbed to the paralyzing effects of battle strife. But the Fighting First, as they have been called, have in no instance dishonored the nation’s glorious escutcheon. This has been the proud career of the Fighting First through eleven engagements. And now, as the war is over, it will undoubtedly return when its time expires (next June, unless sooner discharged) to its friends and relatives in Washington, with a name unsullied with cowardice; while it has not escaped the fate common to all regiments, having a few bad men in its ranks, it has to all ordinary considerations escaped the fortune of cowards.
Withal, there is not a man in their midst, officer or private, but feels it a special honor to acknowledge his identity with USCT.
T
HE AIR WAS
owned by the sound of concussion. There was little or no escape from the noise and the feel of the booming. The air was brightly colored blue also by the invective shouted by soldiers at recalcitrant and frightened mules collapsed in mud puddles. Daniel Joshua put his hands on Annie’s shoulders, squeezed her heartily, and bade her go to ground in the cellar. Armed with a fierce club as well as numerous other iron files and blades to defend his horse and wagon, Daniel put in with a volunteer militia of colored men that was forming to defend the town block by block.
Perhaps it will be cooler below ground,
Annie thought. Sheltered from the damnable sun and the putrid air, they might be better off. But Annie feared being trapped and suspected the other women did, too.
They stayed in the darkened back room of the shop listening and speaking quietly. Provision was made and the hide was ready. They kept themselves behind the boarded shop windows and no lamp was brought to the front rooms. All the storefronts along the avenue were poised for the siege.
The Coatses urged Winnie Wareham to join them and she consented. Inactivity fed Winnie’s fears. There was no longer a routine of meals at the Holy Trinity rectory. The priests remaining—the committed unionists—were absorbed with nursing, and their meals were had at odd hours. Reverend William Higgins, not the least ambivalent about the rightness of the struggle, was not averse to bearing arms. He no longer slept or ate at the rectory.
“When the city’s hands change, it ain’t goin’ to be nice. We be run over! They’ll come like ants over a hill and we be run over and it be a time you won’t know hither from thither,” Winnie said, and rocked herself for comfort. She’d lost all of her remaining courage in the days anticipating the Confederate raid. The Coats women were shaken by Winnie’s collapse. Ellen and Mary hoisted under her arms and walked with her to the rectory to retrieve her possessions. She insisted on getting a Bible to clutch to her breasts when the secesh came.
“If it ain’t save me from a bullet, it be my ticket for the glory train!” Mary and Ellen fought not to chuckle at their dear friend’s distress.
Winnie had absorbed the teachings of the priests from her proximity and with respect to the charity in them. But she was no true papist. The practice of Catholicism suited her some, for there was pomp to it. But she well enjoyed attending the other churches at which there was more singing of the old, heroic hymns. These she knew by heart, but was always surprised to hear them burst forth from herself, for she had no ordinary consciousness of them. They did burst forth. When she returned to the Coatses’ kitchen, she slipped to the floor and crouched near the fireplace. Winnie sang and did sing. And with her singing came tears.
Beyond the Coatses’ barricaded back door, the white people’s social whirl continued only slightly abated by the war. Though muted, parties went on and outings for entertainment were common for those of means and leisure. The street lamps remained lit. Lights on hilltop mansions blazed with reverie at night and some residents worried that signals were being transmitted to the enemy. Mrs. Millicent Beech refused to curtail her social rounds because of the war. She kept her dinner parties bright. She ordered a stream of decorated shawls and gloves and was a regular, though perennially irritable and impatient, customer of the Coatses.
“At last your indolent brother is where he should be,” Mrs. Beech shouted at Ellen in the shop. She seemed to mistake Ellen’s reticence with her as deafness. “If they put the niggers on the battlements, this war will soon be over and our boys returned home!” she continued loudly. “Perhaps then you will be shut of your brother once and for all.” The young woman turned away with her purchases and walked toward the door.
Ellen stared at Millicent Beech’s back, though she’d wanted to look deep into her face. She’d been too frightened to stare, but was curious to know from what place this animus toward her brother sprang. They—the Coats women—all prayed and clutched themselves with worry and harrying angels to keep Gabriel safe, and this young matron would toss his life away.
The swirling, pretty Millicent Beech draped herself up decoratively in a ball gown and accompanied her husband to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. The town had been nervous of the election and concerned for the president’s safety and its own self. But the grand ballroom of the Patent Office was doing duty for the festivities. This precinct that housed wounded and held the fascination of scores of tourists was lit to its rafters and glittering. The happy young wife’s diamond earrings sparkled near to her chin, though the packed ballroom allowed of no other dancing. Gold frippery and elegant laces, jewelry of all descriptions, and a plethora of feathers and silk crowded out the plain and were worn shamelessly in the battle-weary town.
A month later cannon boom signaled the surrender of Petersburg, Virginia. Twice as much cannon accompanied news that mighty Richmond had fallen to the Union army. Small babes cried out at the booming and the rattling of windows, but all others took the great cracks for a call to jubilation. The throbbing meant the end was upon them. Residents cocked their windows open and stood doors ajar to guard their glass from concussion.
When finally the haughty little general of the Confederates surrendered his starving army at Appomattox Courthouse, the rapid firing in celebration caused a furious thunderstorm. Washingtonians crowded the streets and were drenched and took the rain for a great washing and purging. Annie Coats was sorry for not having more barrels to collect water.
Some five days later when the great man was shot—killed —shouting awakened the Coatses, then shrieks of horrible shock at the news. Early that morning, after the long night of the president’s dying, his wife screamed and throughout town church bells sounded. The air all around was torn with the violent tolling.
The Coats women came out the kitchen door peeping around like turtles to take the temper of the town. After all the wearying revelry of the past several days, the dull thud of this news struck a devastating blow. A secesh plot had succeeded! How far did it go? Always conscious of—always fearful of—a large, more malevolent other who would punish them, the Blacks of Washington and environs were not surprised that Father Abraham had been killed. They should not have thanked him. They should not have revered him, for they had sealed his tragic fate!
On the day of the funeral, Annie came out with a dress of black coal cloth that had been stored away. It had lain like an infant in the bottom drawer of a chest—cherished above all. She laid it reverently on the table and sat to a cup of tea and gazed on it. It was still the finest and blackest piece of cloth that Annie had seen. In all the years that she’d kept it since her mentor’s death, she had never failed to be impressed with its simple darkness. It was bombazine and embellished discreetly with black jet. Over the years the dress was subject to brushing, conscientious washing, and careful mending. It had persevered. Rescued from a fire by Knitting Annie, Widow Campbell’s discarded mourning dress had become a solemn costume for Annie. Aye, it was beautiful on her. Over the years she was careful and frugal of wearing it.
People of every hue went about weeping publicly, bawling in fact. And many raised their fists to curse the conspiring secesh, to revile Jeff Davis, and to call for his hanging. A great many of these had on previous occasions cursed Abraham Lincoln himself. Now they sang a different tune. Now nothing would do but to dress the windows of the town in black. Annie put up a pretty funeral swag on the facade of Ridley & Ridley Fine Tailoring. A pity that Gabriel was not able to do the cutting, for he was a skilled hand at scissors and setting a bow.
Streets so lately full to overflowing with celebrants at news of the fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox were filled with criers. Cannon fire repeated, and more. The town that celebrated the end of the war with bonfires and drunken dancing, with singing and speeches, now was fallen to tears. Sorrow had seemed nearly stanched but for this additional blow.
On the day of the funeral procession colored folk were determined to line the byways and see Father Abraham off to his glory. Annie Coats applied her brushes to the children’s black clothes—to which the girls submitted quietly and the grandmother was hardly gentle. She pounded—was furious to destroy nits and to flick any tiny bit of lint no matter how small that would spoil the solid, mourning black. Mary and Ellen also submitted their garments to Annie’s pummeling and picking and fussing over.
Many were fearful and many jostled for a place from which to watch. Regiment after regiment assembled at the head of the funeral cortege leaving on that afternoon to carry the president’s body to the Capitol. Word flew through the knots of colored citizens—some who’d bought the spot of ground they sat upon by their ceaseless vigil since the word had come to them—that their own would lead the procession. Most were hopeful, but they were prepared to take whatever role was given, for they were accustomed.
An old woman dressed in dark and dusty clothes stood a spot nearby the Coats family. She was planted on High Street when they took up their places. Her eyes were directed toward the roadway and she seemed to notice nothing else. Her hands were folded across her stomach as if attached with hooks. There was no fidgeting of her body.
A great surge was felt among the assembled when the soldiers came into view. The tremor at the appearance of these colored troops was a potent, electric blend of grief and exhilarated pride. The dark soldiers were crisp. Their uniforms were be-ribboned and they held themselves with exquisite military precision.
When the colored troops marched past sharply at the head of the cortege, the solitary woman dropped to the ground in a swoon. The old woman’s heels drummed against the pavement. She lost control of her anus and pungent gas was let loose in the air. Mary and Ellen bent to right the old woman and hoist her to a sitting position. She convulsed at their touch, then ceased and died.
P
RAYERS IN TIME
of war are simple:
Please bring him home. Please send him back with both of his arms. Please set him upon his pins and send him walking home!
Lincoln had been taken home for burial. The thoroughfares were now full of outbound commerce. Combatants in both uniforms stumbled toward their homes in the countryside. Folks carried bits of news from Virginia and told further what they knew about the movement of the troops. They were all said to be coming homeward now. When the joyful victory cannons had fired, the Coats women had thought that their beloved Gabriel would appear next day at their doorstep. But where were the colored troops now? How were Gabriel and Mr. Millrace getting back home?
Most of the soldiers Gabriel passed on his trek home from Richmond were as stunned as he not to be dead. They were not inclined to impede him. He trudged toward Washington in a loosely bonded group of his own company. Much of the order that had kept them upon their duties had fallen. The soldiers’ guts were in a quandary. They were used to killing and being ready to die. It was as if only the merest luck, not soldierly skill, had caused one or another to be yet alive. Gabriel had seen men who were far better soldiers fall next to him. Most often they had fallen back on their haunches, grabbed their bellies, and died at the wonder of it. So much blood had run into the ground around these men! What sodden, miserable crops from these fields if people returned to planting in them!
The thing Mary noticed as Gabriel walked over the cobblestone streets of Georgetown and came toward the shop was that he had shrunk inside his coat. If she’d been made to choose him out, she would not have said that this gaunt figure was her husband. With each step, Gabriel took the weight of his haversacks and was pushed down. He had to push back and rise to advance himself. He accomplished this laboring advance with regularity, and his glazed-over eyes brightened at sight of the sign over the store. This was home! He had managed to reach the threshold.
“Nanny!” Gabriel called first. “Mary! Sis Ellen,” he said, and dropped his packs to open his arms and collect the four little running girls who came to him. These names he fumbled, calling each one, but not being sure which belonged to which. “Naomi, Ruth, Pearl, Hannah!”
Mary, Annie, and Ellen had been looking out for Gabriel for a month as word of the valorous discharge of colored troops had wafted back to them. There had been one of them posted daily to watch for his arrival through the front window of the shop. Aaron Ridley was known to be dead and the women had assumed operation of the shop. The girls were not reticent in this precinct and they exploded toward Gabriel through the front door. Their grabbing set him off balance and he wobbled to keep upright.
When Annie rushed to catch sight of Gabriel, she hoped he stooped only because he was burdened down with the things he carried. She took a haversack from him and found it to be light. Nevertheless Gabriel revived a bit upon being relieved of it. The pack was burdensome, but not heavy. He stood straighter and clamped his mother’s face to look down into her eyes.
