Galilee (59 page)

Rachel looked at the clock. It was time to go, but she didn't want to stop reading, so she slipped the letters and the photographs back into one envelope, and the book back into the other, and took them both with her. As so often happened in this city the weather had changed suddenly: a warm wind had blown the rain clouds upstate, and for once the streets smelled sweet. As the cab bounced and rattled its way toward Soho she took out the journal again, and began to read.

T
he battle of Bentonville began on Monday, the twenty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-five. It was not, by the standards of the war between the states, a great, decisive or even particularly bloody battle: but it has this distinction: it is the last hurrah of the Southern Confederacy. Thirty-six days later General Joseph E. Johnston would meet William T. Sherman at the Bennett farmhouse and surrender his men. The war would be over.

Captain Charles Rainwill Holt did not desert on the night before the battle, as he had intended to; he thought better of it. The weather, which had been inclement during the march, became fouler still, and he judged his chances of getting away in the darkness without some harm or other coming to him less than good.

On the following day the battle began, and from the beginning it was a mess. The terrain was in places forested with pine, and in others swamp and briar. The men on both sides were exhausted, and there was scarcely an encounter through that first day and night that did not end chaotically. Men lost in smoke and rain and darkness firing back upon their own comrades. Charges led upon lines that did not exist. Earthworks abandoned before they were half dug. The wounded left in the woods (which had been set alight by cannon fire despite the rain) and burned alive within earshot of their fellows.

There was worse to come, and the captain knew it, but as the hours passed that stupor from which his son had come to stir him fell upon him again. More than once he saw an opportunity, and could not bring himself to take it. It was not fear of a stray bullet that kept him from moving. There was something leaden in him, like a weight that war had poured into his bowels, and it kept him from his escape.

It was Nickelberry the cook who finally persuaded him to leave. Not with words, but with his own departure.

It was just after dusk on the second day, and Charles had gone out from the encampment a little way, to try and put his thoughts in order. Behind him the men gathered round their cautious fires, trying by whatever means they could to keep their spirits up. Somebody was plucking a banjo; one or two exhausted voices were raised to sing along. The sound came strangely between the trees, like the sound of phantoms. Charles tried to bring to mind the garden in Charleston where he'd proposed to Adina; he'd calmed his troubled spirits many times thinking of that spot. Of the fragrance of its air; of the nightbirds that made such melody in the trees. But tonight he could not remember to perfume of that place, or its music. It was as if that Eden had never existed.

As he stared off into the darkness, lost in these melancholy thoughts, he saw a figure moving between the trees not ten yards from him. He was about to challenge the man, when he realized who it was.

“Nickelberry . . . ?” he whispered.

The figure froze, so still the captain could barely distinguish him from the trees amongst which he stood.

“Is that you, Nickelberry?”

There was no reply, but he was certain that it was indeed the cook, so he began to walk in the man's direction. “Nickelberry? It's Captain Holt.”

Nickelberry responded by moving off again, away from the camp.

“Where are you going?” the captain demanded, picking up his pace to catch up with the cook. The briars slowed the advance of both men, but Nickelberry in particular. He had walked into a very thorny patch, and flailed at them, cursing in his frustration.

The captain was almost upon him now.

“Don't get any closer!” Nickelberry said. “I don't want to hurt you none, but I ain't staying and you ain't gonna make me stay. No sir.,,

“It's all right, Nub. Calm down.”

“I'm done with this damn war.”

“Keep your voice down, will you? They'll hear us.”

“You ain't gonna try and turn me in?”

“No I'm not.”

“If you try—” The captain saw one of Nub's meat carving knives, pale silver, between them. “I'll kill you before they take me.”

“I'm sure you would.”

“I don't care no more. You hear me? I'd prefer to take my chances out there than stay and be killed.”

The captain studied the man before him. He could barely see Nub's expression in the darkness, but he could bring the man's broad, expressive face into his mind's eye readily enough There was cunning in that face; and tenacity. He wouldn't make a bad companion, Charles thought, if a man had to be living by his wits out there.

“You want to go on your own?” Holt said.

“Huh?”

“Or we could go together.”

“Together?”

“Why not?”

“A captain and a cook?”

“Makes no difference what we were back there. Once we run we're both deserters.”

“You're not trying to trick me?”

“No.
I'm going. If you want to come with me, then come. If you don't—”

“I'm coming,” Nickelberry said.

“Then put away the knife.” Holt could feel Nickelberry's gaze on him, still doubtful. “Put it away, Nub.” There was a further moment of vacillation; then Nickelberry slid the knife back into his belt. “Good,” Charles said. “Now . . . did you know you were headed toward enemy lines?”

“I thought they were east of here.”

“No. They're right there,” Holt said, pointing off between the trees. “If you look carefully, you can see their fires.”

Nickelberry looked. The fires were indeed visible; flickers of yellow in the enveloping night.

“Lord, look at that. I would have walked straight into their arms.” Any lingering reservations he might have had about the captain's allegiances were plainly allayed. “So which way we goin'?” he said.

“The way I've reckoned it,” the Captain said, “our best hope is to head south toward the Goldsboro Road, and then make our way from there. I want to head home to Charleston.”

“Then I'll come with you,” Nickelberry said. “I ain't got no better place to go.”

None of what I've just recounted found its way into the pages of Holt'sjournal. He did not write in it again for almost two weeks, by which time the battle of Bentonville was long since over.

This is what Rachel read, as the cab carried her down Madison Avenue:

We came into Charleston last night. I can barely recognize the city, such is the violence that has been done to it by the Yankees. Nickelberry kept asking me questions as we went, but I had not the life in me to answer. When I think of how this noble city stood before the war, and the way it is laid waste now, such despair rises in me, for truly all that was good seems to me to have passed away. This city, which was so fine, is now a kind of hell: blackened by fire and haunted by the dead. Entire streets I knew have disappeared. People wander the rubble, their faces blank their hands bloody after turning over brick upon brick upon brick looking for something by which to remember the life they had.

    We went straight way to Tradd Street, expecting the worst, but found a strange thing. Though much around in the street lay in ruins, my house was almost whole. Some damage to the roof windows blown in, and the gardens all withered of course, but otherwise intact.

    But, oh, when I went inside, I almost wished a volley had blown it to smithereens. My house, my precious house, had been used as a place for the dying and the dead. I do not know why it was so chosen—I cannot believe Adina would have allowed this; I must assume it was done after she had departed for Georgia. I only know that every room seemed to contain some sight more sickening than the one before.

    The living room had been stripped of furniture, but for the mahogany table which had been fetched from the dining room and used for a surgeon to work upon. The floor around it was black with old blood, the table the same. And all around the room, the remnants of the surgeon's craft: saws and hammers and knives. The kitchen had been used to make poultices and the like, and stank so badly that Nickelberry, who I may say has a stronger stomach than most, vomited. I did the same, but I went on from room to room despite Nub telling me I should not.

    Upstairs, in what used to be the bedroom in which Adina and I slept—the bedroom where Nathaniel was conceived, and Evangeline and Miles—I found an empty coffin. The bed had gone; looted, I presume, or used for firewood. And in the other bedrooms filthy mattresses, blankets, bowls and all the accoutrements of the sickroom. I cannot bring myself to write further what vile signs I found of the souls who had passed their last there.

    Nickelberry kept urging me away, and finally I went with him. But before I left I said I wonted to go out into the garden. He begged me not to; said he had come to like my company on the road and was fearful for my sanity. But I would not be persuaded to depart until I had seen the place where I had sat in the years before the war, and taken such joy. Somehow I knew that the worst would be there; and I would not be finished with this business until I had laid eyes upon that worst, whatever it was.

    I know of no place that proffered such fragrances as that little plot of ground: jasmine and magnolia, tea olive and banana shrub; all lent the air a sweetness that could make my head swim on summer nights. And now, despite the harms all around, nature was still doing its best to grace the air. Some of the smaller trees and shrubs had survived the destruction, and their branches were budding. There were even a few flowers underfoot.

    But these little victories could not compete with the terrible sight that lay in the middle of the garden. The surgeons' accomplices had dug holes there, to bury the gangrenous parts hacked from the wounded. They had done their job poorly. Upon their departure dogs had come and dug up this horrid meat, and picked it clean. Here, where my children had played, and my darling Adina walked in love, were human bones in their many dozens. I think my coming out had disturbed some of the animals, because in places the dirt was freshly turned, and as yet undevoured trophies lay. A leg, its foot still booted. An arm, severed at midbicep. Much else I could not make sense of nor wanted to.

    I have seen every kind of misery in these three years, and endured everything as best a man may be expected to endure such horrors. But to find sights that rank with the worst I have witnessed in this place, where my children played, where I spoke words of devotion to my wife, where—in short—I made my heaven, is nearly more than I can bear.

    Were it not for Nub, I should now surely be dead by my own hand.

    He says we should leave the city tomorrow. I have agreed. For tonight, we are sleeping on the steps of St. Michael's Church, where I am presently writing this. Nub has gone off to beg or steal some food (which he's very good at doing) but the thought of what I saw this evening makes me so sick to my stomach I doubt I shall eat.

The little club where Danny had arranged to meet Rachel was thronged with the late-night crowd, and she had to search it for several minutes before she located him. She felt strangely dislocated, as though she'd left some part of herself behind her in the pages of Captain Holt's journal. There was nothing in her experience that remotely approached the horrors he had described, but the fact that she was holding in her hands the book which he'd had in his pocket when he'd walked into his house on Tradd Street made the vision he was evoking all the more immediate. It was the crowd before her which seemed unreal; their alcohol-flushed features smeared in the murk.

Even Danny, when she finally located him, seemed remote from her, viewed through smoke-thickened gloom.

“I was beginning to think you weren't going to come,” he said. His voice was a little slurred with drink. “You want one?”

“I'll have a brandy,” Rachel said. “Make it a double, will you?”

“Why don't you go sit down? I'm sorry about the crowd. I guess somebody's having a birthday party. Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“No, I'll just have a drink, and give you the stuff, then—”

“—you don't have to lay eyes on me again,” Danny said. “That's a promise.” He didn't wait for Rachel to protest, which she would have done out of politeness, but headed off into the midst of the birthday celebrants.

Rachel went to an empty table at the back of the room, and sat down. She was sorely tempted to take out the journal again, though this was scarcely an ideal place to be reading it. The lights were so dim she probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it, she told herself. To distract herself she looked for Danny. He was still at the bar, waving a bill to attract somebody's attention.

Without consciously planning to do so, she reached into the envelope and pulled out the journal again. At a nearby table a group of drunken partiers had started to sing a birthday song. Several of them attempting vainly to harmonize. The cacophony troubled her as far as the end of the first sentence. Then she was back with the deserters, in the silent city.

    I am writing this two days after we came into Charleston, and I am not certain I know how to describe what has taken place since my last entry.

    Best to keep it plain, I think Nub came back to St. Michael's a little before dawn, and he not only brought food, good food, the best I'd seen in many months, he also came with news of a strange encounter he'd had.