Jacob's Ladder (43 page)

Since he had become a Christian, Catesby had thought a good deal about what men needed and what men wanted and how much better off they were when they didn't have everything they wanted. Was he a poor man because he owned one shirt, one pair of trousers, suspenders his wife had knit, and only one pair of shoes? Was he poor because he walked rather than rode? Was he poor because he had no importance, even to this army, as an individual, but only as part of an aggregate? Catesby was one soul in H Company, 44th Virginia Infantry, Coles's brigade, Rodes's division, General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Catesby was rich because General Lee commanded that army instead of Burnside or Polk or McClellan or Hooker. General Lee was coolheaded enough that Catesby's mind could follow him, and daring as a schoolboy, which captured Catesby's heart. Robert E. Lee was a Christian commander.

Far to the south, a plume of brown smoke funneled into the clear winter air. A drunk yelled, “God damn, Elliot! It's true!”

When the train came near, five thousand men jostled for a place at trackside. Mule-drawn wagons lined up where provisions were customarily unloaded, and the men gave ground with good cheer.

From its balloon stack, the big Baldwin locomotive puffed wood sparks and cinders. Behind the wood car came two cars heaped with hay, a trio of freight cars, and finally, a single passenger car.

The soldiers swarmed over the hay cars, quickly emptying the forage onto the wagons. They welcomed returning convalescents from the passenger car with cheers and shared canteens of Christmas whiskey. Then they formed a compact circle around the three freight cars: one the color of a banknote, blue-and-black; one yellow-and-red like a child's top; the third a mundane faded brown. The blue-and-black car contained barrels of powder. The yellow-and-red car held artillery shells in wooden cases. The brown car was full of shelled corn for the horses.

“Look behind that corn, Captain,” one soldier cried. “Got to be hams in there somewhere.”

The last man to descend from the passenger car was an army surgeon carrying a large wicker basket.

“What you got in there?”

“Where's the rest of 'em?”

“Where's our goddamn Christmas dinner?”

The surgeon climbed onto the rear platform and raised a hand until everyone got quiet. “A Richmond lady intends this Christmas dinner for General Lee,” he said. “But I know Marse Robert won't take it. He never does. He'll want his men to have it.”

“I'll take it,” one man yelled.

“I'll want a man from Rodes's division, and one from Colston's division,” the surgeon said. “Short straw out.” The soldier from Colston's division drew and retired with a curse. “Now, between Early's brigade and Coles's. Step right up here. Turkey, ham, cornbread stuffing, some kind of pie—hell, every damn thing.”

Men were drinking more openly and sharing their canteens less. Regiments that had lost waited beside those still in the running. The drawing continued until the basket was won by C Company of a Mississippi regiment, and the man who'd drawn the long straw claimed his prize.

Catesby's mouth was watering. He had his fatback for dinner, and perhaps Private Mitchell could scrounge more tea. Together they would make a fine Christmas dinner. A man didn't need so much when he put his mind to it.

The man who won, a sergeant, carried the basket through his fellow soldiers like an unexploded bomb. Head down, he hurried up the muddy trail, and everyone moved aside for him and his prize, but nobody looked after him once he had passed.

CHARADES

IT WAS TWO
days after Christmas when the girl returned to the house on Clay Street. The small package she carried was tied with thin ribbon and a bow.

“We've not seen much of you lately,” Marguerite said.

Marguerite had a woolen shawl over her frail shoulders, and her chair was drawn so near the fire the girl wondered she didn't set the shawl alight. Today the garden room's French doors looked out on snow and the bushes were bright with icicles. “Winters were colder in those days,” Marguerite said.

“Well, it's cold enough for me!” The girl shivered emphatically. “The streets are filled with slush, and it's worth a girl's life to walk the sidewalk.”

“You still seeing movies?”

The girl sighed. “I don't have any idea of going to a movie these days. I believe Daddy was right. What I needed was new responsibilities. That WPA was a real dead end. I'll start a new job after the holidays. I brought this for you. Miller and Rhodes has new fragrances from Paris.” When the old woman didn't take her package, the girl set it on the table. She flitted her eyes like a schoolgirl ready to flee.

“Your daddy find your new job?”

“I swear—everybody in Richmond knows Daddy. One evening—I swear I have never been so blue—I was in my room crying and he knocked on my door and came in and said, ‘Sugar, what's the trouble?' So I told him how I hated my job, how sick I was of asking questions of people didn't want to give me answers.”

“To get answers you must ask the right questions,” Marguerite said. Her dry cough was like a sheet of paper tearing. “Who are you working for?”

“I'll be starting as a private secretary at the Ethyl Corporation. It'll be a six-month trial period.”

“Yes, child. Who will you work for?”

“Billy Dunster. Billy's young but he's already a vice-president.”

“I see. Is Billy married?”

“I don't see what difference that makes.”

“Lots of things you don't see. ‘Never underestimate the importance of propinquity'—that was in Godey's Lady's Book. I read that in Abigail Gatewood's bedroom. It's strange what a person remembers and forgets. You'll need to undo that bow. Too much arthritis in my fingers. Uncap it as well, if you would.”

The girl removed the wrappings, then the tiny glass stopper, and cautiously dabbed fragrance on the old woman's wrist.

“Reminds me of the trees they had in Nassau. Big reddish-pink flowers. I wonder if they have any of those trees in France. I never did get to France. Silas, oh, he wanted to take me, but I didn't want to go. ‘This is my country,' I told him, ‘Same as yours.' ”

“Running the blockade must have been difficult.”

“Do you think the games boys play aren't difficult? They're still games.”

“It's warm in here,” the girl said, unbuttoning her jacket.

“Not too warm for me,” Marguerite said. “My blood isn't as lively as it was. What ever happened to that boy you were seeing? That ‘dollar-a-year' man?”

“Phil? I believe Phil is engaged. I wish him every happiness, of course.”

“Of course. Do they pay this Dunster boy a dollar a year?”

“I believe Mr. Dunster draws a regular salary.”

Marguerite nodded, “That's good. You'll want money and plenty of it to raise a family. Why don't you sit down? Kizzy'll fetch you a cup of tea. Tea was dear in those days. By January of '64 tea was twenty dollars a pound.”

The girl sat. “Just one cup,” she said. “I'm expected to meet Daddy later. The Dabneys . . .”

“Virginius? I haven't seen him since he was a boy. Awful boy. Nose ran constantly. This Dunster fellow going to be there?”

“I believe so.”

“Your daddy sure favors ‘propinquity.' ”

The girl wavered between anger and laughter until a giggle slipped past her guard. “Well,” she admitted, “Daddy is worried about me.”

“You tell him about me? How I've been with three men and the one time I married was when I jumped the broomstick? How I've raised up my family?”

The girl looked out the window. “I tell Daddy very little about you these days. Daddy doesn't approve.”

Marguerite snorted. “He wouldn't. I knew him when he was a youngster, too. At our garden parties he wouldn't come out from behind his mother's skirt. Your mother was a handsome, well-spoken girl.”

“I was just a baby. I try, but I can't remember her.”

“The influenza was a terrible scourge.”

Kizzy brought tea, and the girl took off her jacket. “Did you ever see Duncan Gatewood again?” she asked.

The old woman smiled. “Now you're asking the right questions.”

R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
J
ANUARY
8, 1864

After midnight, snow began falling, and the clatter of passing carriages and horses' thudding hooves were gradually muffled until, when the mail coach passed—this at five o'clock in the morning—it slipped silent as a wraith through a snow-muted universe. Snow fell on St. Peter's and St. Paul's, on the Capitol, the Confederate Treasury, Mr. Davis's mansion, and the Lee family's rented house, where the women slept easier tonight because they had three men in the army, father, son, and nephew, and this snowfall meant there'd be no fighting along the Rapidan.

A little before seven, Cousin Molly's houseman tiptoed into Duncan's room and laid a fire atop last night's ashes. The kindling caught with a soft whoosh, and the man set a fire screen across the hearth to prevent sparks from popping onto the rug.

Beneath two comforters, Duncan closed his eyes as the houseman tiptoed from the room. The air was cold, the tip of his nose was cold, and Duncan wouldn't venture out until the room warmed. He wriggled his toes. Through the gauzy curtains, the light was a blunt white glare.

As a young man he'd wakened every morning like this. He'd thought it ordained that Pompey would come in and lay a fire while, in the kitchen house, Franky would be frying ham and baking the cornbread that would already be on the table when the boy Duncan was ready to eat.

Duncan decided that luxury was contrast and was so pleased with this reflection he rolled out of bed whistling. He had mastered dressing and could now get his clothes on as quickly with one arm as he ever had with two, except that he never wore shoes with laces or neckwear that needed to be tied.

The hall stairway was unheated, and he clattered downstairs to the dining room, where a grand fire roared behind the grate and the oatmeal pot stood on a trivet on the dark Honduran mahogany table, which, with its leaves inserted, could seat sixteen.

“A good morning to you, Cousin Molly.” Duncan lifted the pot lid. “Oatmeal and maple syrup: couldn't be finer!”

Cousin Molly said, “Burnt-bread coffee isn't so awful once a person gets used to it.”

“There's many a morning lately I would have been grateful for it.”

In the unkind winter light pouring into the room, Cousin Molly's face looked as if the portrait of a tired and wrinkled woman had been painted over the portrait of the charmer she used to be. Cousin Molly was knitting socks of yarn unraveled from a woolen vest her father had worn to the Continental Congress.

“The attics and trunks of Richmond are emptying,” Duncan observed.

“Yes, all our finery is refurbished for the army. It is no great loss. Those clothes of an earlier generation were used only for children's play and charades. Heaven knows why we kept them. Duncan, I do believe we had grown too rich, too complacent; this war is pruning us.”

Duncan bent to his breakfast.

“Will you visit the War Office this morning?” Molly asked.

“Yes, but it'll be a waste of time.”

“Oh, dear.” Cousin Molly dipped her spoon in the syrup and tasted it. “We are invited to Senator Semmes's home for charades and a light supper tonight. If her duties permit, Sallie might accompany us.”

“Sallie's too conscientious. Cousin, you will have noticed my deep feelings for her. I hate to see her so miserable.”

“We have no finer matron. I had hoped Sallie would do good service, and she has exceeded my expectations, but her methods are worrisome. Somehow, Sallie persuades the wounded man that he does not suffer alone, that he and she have combined strengths and when his would fail, hers will suffice. She hurls herself into the struggle as if she could save her patients by main force. She has successes, but whenever her patient dies, Sallie is shaken to the roots.”

Duncan, who was one of those Sallie had saved, made no reply.

An hour later, Molly's houseman drove Duncan to the War Office, where events unfolded much as he had predicted. For three hours, he waited in the musty anteroom with other supplicants. At first they waited in respectable silence, but before long they began making their cases—judiciously—to one other. Well-dressed gentlemen, seeking preferment, were pleased to allude to family connections and previous services performed for state and national governments. They were indeed worthy, their fellows agreed. The planters who'd come to beg the government to leave off tearing up railroad track in their county (because how could their goods get to market without a railroad?) found a sympathetic ear—wasn't the alleged military shortage of rails the grossest exaggeration? A Savannah merchant required merely a quiet office where his son could serve out the war. A delicate boy, intelligent but high-strung; completely unsuited for rough service in the field. This salon concurred: the boy deserved special consideration.

“And you, Captain? What do you seek?”

“Horse fodder,” Duncan said.

Late in the day, Duncan was summoned. Secretary of War Seddon was pale-skinned, puckered, and Presbyterian. The secretary examined papers on his desk as Duncan briskly explained that the army had enough fodder for three days and enough corn for two, and that the snow could not improve matters. “Without sound horses we can't move the guns when the Federals make their next attempt upon us. Aware of this, the Federals take satisfaction in targeting horses, ignoring even infantry to do so. General Stuart's division is removed to Danville because forage is still obtainable there, and General Lee may detach Wade Hampton's cavalry for the same reason, which will leave the army without its eyes and ears.”

The written reports, from Generals Hampton and Mahone, which Duncan laid on the secretary's desk confirmed his verbal report. The secretary gave them a cursory glance, signed papers he handed to his assistant, and said, “There is to be a train from Georgia tomorrow. The army's necessities will be forwarded promptly. Thank you, Captain. Next.”

Duncan walked back along Main Street, past Richmond's finer homes. In the street, a single lane had been cleared of snow and traffic jingled by. It began to snow again, blowing softly off the river, fat flakes that melted on Duncan's forehead, and he was happy as a child, all duties completed, anticipating Cousin Molly's agreeable hearthside.

Duncan felt mild pleasurable guilt. Lee's army was in winter quarters near Culpepper, where they'd be warm, odorous, hungry, and lousy. There'd be no drill, few patrols, plenty of prayer meetings outdoors or in rude pole chapels the men had built.

General Mahone, Duncan's new superior, had instructed him to try the War Office first, before traveling to North Carolina. Duncan carried letters from Hampton and Mahone, whose planter friends might respond to a personal appeal sooner than an official one.

Duncan walked on, daydreaming about foals dancing in the snow.

When Duncan looked about him, the houses were unfamiliar and smaller than those in Cousin Molly's neighborhood. When he inquired of a colored man shoveling snow, the man pointed back the way he'd come.

Cousin Molly's houseman greeted him at the door. “Miss Semple say you got to hurry, sir. We got to collect Miss Sallie.”

Hurriedly, Duncan washed his face, combed his hair, and brushed his uniform jacket. His boots were hopeless, blacking absent, leather too soaked to apply more. Duncan wore his dress sword. He drew on his glove with his teeth. He set his slouch hat at a rakish angle.

He waited in the parlor thirty minutes before Cousin Molly swept downstairs in a dark velvet gown fastened by a belt of gold rope.

“Ravishing.” Duncan bowed and kissed her hand.

Cousin Molly said, “After our drapes are exhausted, God help Confederate society.”

Cousin Molly's houseman proceeded them to the barouche. It was a moment's work to get Cousin Molly's hoops arranged satisfactorily.