Jacob's Ladder (57 page)

“In Richmond, Silas had inventoried government warehouses which bulged with supplies while the army starved. When Secretary of War Seddon asked Silas to report on the movement of goods through Wilmington, Silas offended the man by saying what passed through Wilmington was of no consequence if it got no farther than a Richmond warehouse. The man in charge of those warehouses, Commissary General Northrup, was a distant cousin of the Secretary of War.

“After this meeting, Silas's opinions were not sought again. Without family connections, Silas had no authority beyond his experience and knowledge, neither of which impressed our government.

“When he returned to Wilmington, Silas was in a bleak humor. To raise his spirits, I detailed my accomplishments, but he was indifferent. He remarked that the railroad journey from Wilmington to Petersburg, which had once taken thirteen hours, now took twenty-four.

“The next morning, I closeted my hopes for Silas's approbation, and Jacob and I departed for the office. In the early afternoon Silas arrived at the warehouse, where Mr. Shemwell arrived soon after. Shemwell complained indignantly about my behavior and judgment. In Shemwell's opinion, the Confederate dollar would rise against gold, and cotton-denominated bonds were as good as gold. ‘Your wife has extracted every penny of your money from my sound banking establishment and entrusted it to . . .'

“Silas put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhh.'

“ ‘She has cashed your nine-percent bonds. Exchanged . . .'

“ ‘Shhhh . . .'

“ ‘Sir!'

“Finger pressed to his lips, Silas withdrew silently into the interior of his warehouse and when Shemwell would have pursued, closed the door in his face.

“That night, the first of the dark moon, Silas, Jacob, and I dined in a private room in the City Hotel and afterward waited on the wharf for the
Wild Darrell.
Neither Jacob nor I had ever seen the docking of our own blockade runner, and I don't know who was more excited. Every time Pilot MacGregor sounded the
Darrell'
s steam whistle, Jacob shrieked and covered his ears, and I knew exactly how he felt.

“The
Wild Darrell
was the most beautiful boat I have ever seen, low and gray and smart as a fresh-minted gold piece. Looking at her, I could have been satisfied if the war went on forever.

“As soon as the hawsers were wrapped, stevedores swarmed over her while the sailors rollicked ashore for their customary celebration. ‘Come,' Silas said quietly. ‘You must see this once. It will give the child something to remember.'

“A room on the second floor of the City Hotel was reserved for the
Wild Darrell'
s crew. In a city where many children went to bed hungry, the seamen's table was laid with hams and roasts of beef, chickens, crabs, oysters, and wooden buckets containing bottles of iced champagne. MacGregor was already drunk and boldly toasted Silas, ‘To him who has made our prosperity possible!'

Silas raised his own glass in salute, called for attention, and explained that I, his wife, was now clerk of the company and instructions from me were the same as instructions from himself. Silas said he was proud of their long association and glad to count such skilled seamen as friends. Silas said that words were poor thanks and proposed, as per custom, to promptly pay their wages in gold. He added—rather slyly, I thought—‘If my wife should approach you with nine-percent Confederate bonds, you needn't feel positively obligated to buy them!'

“Apparently my bond dealings were news in Nassau, because the sailors found this sally amusing.

“I took no drink and Silas took only what he could not politely refuse. A glass with the drunkard macGregor was a bitter draft, but Silas downed it manfully.

“When we returned home, I warned Silas that MacGregor might have been drinking during his passage through the blockading fleet and that our ship was imperiled.

“Silas wore such a sad expression on his face. ‘When I was younger, I thought success assured to those who pressed their endeavors with honesty, energy and honor. . . .'

“I was impatient with his despair and unfortunately I told him so. Without another word to me, Silas took his still packed suitcases to the railroad station, where he waited until morning for the Richmond train.

“In Silas's absence, I hoped to improve his opinion of me by attending to his business. The
Wild Darrell
sailed on time, but not before I told MacGregor his failings were remarked. The rogue swore he hadn't started drinking until safely across the bar in the Cape Fear River and next passage he would wait until he stepped off the
Wild Darrell
for his first drink. MacGregor loved that boat, and he was the finest pilot on the coast—a fact which comforted me more than it should have. In those days I overvalued talent.

“Other boat owners and speculators were surprisingly willing to share their hard-gained knowledge with a keen and flattering novice. That month was one of the happiest of my life and flew by so rapidly that Silas was back before I missed him. Silas didn't say much: they still would not listen to him in Richmond, his advice was unheeded, Lee's army starved.

“The first night of the dark moon, our little family dined at the City Hotel, and in a desultory manner, Silas asked Jacob what he had learned at the office. When Jacob recited his child's sums, Silas was briefly interested and called him ‘Marguerite's little tradesman.' That night we waited on the wharves for the
Wild Darrell,
until, at two-thirty in the morning, the fateful telegram was brought to us.

“Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, was an enormous ring of sand forts, surrounded by swamps and mosquitoes. From its parapets at dawn we could see onto Frying Pan Shoals, where the poor
Wild Darrell
had been driven by the blockaders. Though the crew had reached shore, the surf was too rough to salvage the cargo, and we watched as our beautiful gallant ship broke up. Silas showed no emotion, but I was sick at heart.

“Silas told me to pay the crew.

“I said, ‘But I am sure MacGregor was drunk. And the crew must take the same financial risks as we do. As we have lost everything, so must they.'

“Silas looked at me as if he had never seen me before, never known me, never seen me nurse Jacob, never listened to my singing, never touched my skin. He nodded. ‘As you prefer, madam. The company is yours. Run it as you see fit.'

“In silence we returned to the great house we had rented, and I took Jacob to Kizzy. Silas and I made love that day and three times that night with not one word spoken between us. In the morning Silas took the train north, and I never saw him again.”

IMPROVING THE RACE

N
EAR
P
ETERSBURG
, V
IRGINIA
O
CTOBER
9, 1864

The men who object to Sambo

Should take his place and fight.

For its better to have a nigger's hue

Than a liver that's wake and white.

Though Sambo's black as the ace of spades

His finger a trigger can pull

And his eye runs straight on the barrel sights

From under his thatch of wool!

So hear me all boys, darlings—

If he asks for rights, I won't laugh.

The right to be killed I'll divide with him

And give him the greater half!

 

—Poem popular in the Army of the Potomac

MOST EVENINGS WHEN
the 23rd USCT was in bivouac, First Sergeant Jesse Burns held reading school, but today was Sunday and the school's texts were Testaments the Missionary Society had provided. Jesse's reading pupils had grown in number, and Jesse asked the white officers to help out. Lieutenants Seibel and Hill—who'd been abolitionists before the war—were willing, and Captain Fessenden had had a real knack for teaching.

Reading school was the one place where officers and soldiers, whites and coloreds met as men, and their manners were courteous, even delicate. For it is a delight to both races when a forty-year-old once slave whose entire name is Dempsey first writes that name and traces each letter with his forefinger, and it is memorable when he discovers that the very marks on the page before him are the precious phrase “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death.”

It was a cool Sunday evening. Tomorrow, or next day, the Johnnies would try to reclaim some of the ground that had been so bloodily wrested from them, but this dusk was quiet, and around their cookfires the men talked low and a harmonica moaned.

Brass gleaming, uniform ironed, hands clasped in the small of his back, First Sergeant Jesse Burns stood at parade rest outside Lieutenant Seibel's tent and announced himself. “Sir, I'd like a pass tonight to visit the 38th. I've friends there. They were in that fight at Chaffin's Farm.”

Seibel wrote out the pass. “You'll be here at reveille.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That was some scrap. Tell your friends some of us admire what they did.”

First Sergeant Burns's pass warranted passage “within the area controlled by our forces outside Petersburg, Virginia.” When Jesse was living with Uther Botkin and courting Midge, he'd ask Uther for a pass so he could walk to Stratford. This army pass was not the same thing.

On the railroad platform, Jesse showed a provost's corporal his pass.

When Jesse was courting Midge, patrollers might ask, “Goin' to visit that Midge gal, Jesse? Wish I was. She's a pert little thing.”

It had shamed him, their talking about her.

Now, First Sergeant Jesse Burns stood impassively while a white corporal struggled through the document, moving his lips.

“Where you goin'?” the man finally asked.

“Anywhere within the area controlled by our forces,” Jesse quoted.

“God, I hate a hincty nigger,” the man said.

“Don't matter what you hate, Corporal.” Jesse climbed on the train. He had a flatcar to himself. Officers rode the passenger car at the end of the train.

The country along the Richmond/Petersburg line seemed the surface of the moon. Miles of stubby tree stumps had provided abatises and bombproof timbering and cookfires. Desperate brigades had contested for these empty, meandering red clay trenches and covered ways.

General Grant's City Point & Petersburg Railroad ran from the supply wharves to the front. Where it came nearest the lines, the tracks dipped through trenches to protect trains from Confederate sharpshooters.

The upper third of the balloon stack was dotted with red bullet holes. Heat and sparks blanked out a broad band of stars directly overhead. The empty flatcar jiggled and bounced, and Jesse clung to a stanchion when the train rocketed downgrade.

Officers got on at Parke Station and Hancock Station. At Meade Station a white sergeant vaulted onto the flatcar, but moved to another after he spotted Jesse.

The train passed artillery parks, hundreds of guns gleaming in the starlight, and wagon depots where ambulances, limber carts, and supply wagons lined up side by side and head to tail in a vast silent square.

They puffed past the huge naval mortar “Dictator”; its flatcar sidetracked for tomorrow morning's bombardment. The Dictator was squat and fat, and its iron mouth was commodious enough to scald a yearling hog.

The army was a sleeping beehive. A man could almost hear the somnolent buzz.

Jesse's heartbeat expanded into the evening. Who would he be? Would he ever find Maggie and Jacob? Should he stay in the army? Should he become a schoolteacher? Some of Jesse's men expected Master Lincoln to tell them what to do with their new lives.

When he got off the train, Jesse showed his pass to another provost's man and asked for the 38th.

“They're bivouacked at Broadway Landing.” The provost's man pointed to the road. “Them boys did a good job the other week. Couldn't get white brigades to make that attack. I've heard white troops are smarter than coloreds.”

“Maybe coloreds got more to prove.”

“Maybe so.” The man coughed. “Tell 'em . . . tell 'em they did fine.”

The road curved toward the landing in a slow white arc. The narrow moon was outshone by starlight, and shooting stars dove into the horizon.

A soldier informed Jesse that Sergeant Major Ratcliff was probably in his tent if he wasn't at the hymn-singing.

Ratcliff's tent was pitched on the slope above the river on sheltered level ground.

“Sergeant Major Ratcliff!” Jesse called. “First Sergeant Burns has the honor to pay a call.”

Last July, when news of the Crater debacle had flashed through the army, Ratcliff had brought a company from the 38th to help the survivors, and that night when Jesse reached the Federal trenches, Ratcliff and his men had still been working. “'Bout time you come home,” Ratcliff had said. “Me and my boys were thinkin' to go after you.” Though the moon was bright that night and Ratcliff wasn't three feet away, he didn't remark Jesse's teary eyes. “Burns, I hope you killed some Johnnies today,” he went on. “Because they surely killed a passel of niggers.”

In his abraded voice, Sergeant Major Ratcliff sang out, “Burns, get in here and have a drink. I'm celebratin' promotion to the highest rank an enlisted man can get. Far as I know, the highest rank any nigger ever had.”

Jesse brushed the tent flap aside. Cot, heap of unwashed clothing, a dropleaf table, one camp chair. “Now, Ratcliff, you know I don't drink.”

“I know you don't. I just don't know why you don't.”

“I'd like coffee,” Jesse said, as always, and Ratcliff bellowed, “Private Washington, fetch Sergeant Burns a cup of your miserable coffee and get along to the singing. I'll be along directly.”

The sergeant major's arm was in a sling, and a scab from a saber cut stretched from the corner of his left eye across his forehead.

“Ratcliff, you are the worst-dressed colored man in this army,” Jesse said.

Ratcliff plucked at the hem of his rough field blouse as if some stranger wore it. “Hell, Burns, General Grant dresses like a mule drover, why shouldn't I?”

“I am happy for your promotion,” Jesse said solemnly. “All of us are proud.”

“Ain't nothin' to be proud about,” Ratcliff said. “Major he gets out front a-waving his sword, so some Johnnie pots him, and the captain steps up, says, ‘Follow me,' and directly a Johnnie picks him off too. Now we are down to lieutenants, and, Burns, you'd be astounded at the temporariness of white lieutenants.

“By this time we are tangled in the abatis and Johnny is cutting us up, and by God I have become acting regimental commander of the 38th United States Niggers, so I say, ‘Boys, let's gut some Johnnies,' and be damned if we don't. White officers, they don't know how to talk to niggers. They say ‘Follow me' or ‘To the colors' when they should be saying ‘Let's grab buckra by he stones.' ”

“You suffered heavy losses.”

Ratcliff took a drink. “I lost some friends. Next day Johnnies pushed us back where we was. You know why we attacked? Lincoln's up for relection next month and Grant wants to prove we ain't stuck in the mud.”

Jesse recalled seeing Master Lincoln; Lincoln's weariness, the mightiest man in America but such a sorry damn horseman.

“Got your coffee, Sergeant Major,” said a voice outside the tent.

“Leave it, Private, and go singing. Come on, Burns, let's sit outside. Maybe the night air'll improve my humor.”

The James River curved wide and black, its slick current sweeping around the wrecks the Johnnies had sunk to block the Federal ironclads. Richmond was only eight miles upriver. Federal campfires dotted the riverbanks upstream and down.

The coffee in Jesse's cup was hot and sweet. “The whole army knows what you did. They think better of every colored man because of it.”

Ratcliff snorted. “First Sergeant Burns, you think a white man took over command of his regiment like I done would be promoted to sergeant major? White man be captain by now, and General Grant keepin' an eye on him.”

“It will be slow and hard work, improving the race . . .”

“It'll be goddamned never! Oh hell, Burns. Have a damn drink.” Ratcliff leaned over and poured whiskey into Jesse's coffee. “I got this from a Johnny captain. If you wonder why they're still fightin', have a taste.”

Jesse set the cup down. On the riverbank, hymn singers were gathered in a ring around a campfire, standing shoulder to shoulder. The singing began with a powerful hum, then melody, finally harmony.

“Edward, you have a wife?” Jesse asked.

“Got three, last I counted.”

“We're going to win this war, Edward. General Sherman has taken Atlanta and Lincoln will win the election and before long we'll capture Richmond. I've been thinkin' what it'll be like after.”

The song seemed to come from one voice, and trembled the night air.

Jesse said, “I had a wife, Maggie. Master sold her south.”

“One of mine got sold. Next one it was me sold away, and the last's still down by Norfolk I reckon. Want a wife, get down to the cribs at City Point. All the wives you want.”

“Never was another woman like Maggie.”

Ratcliff contented himself with a snort and a drink of whiskey.

The voices were strong and clear as new honey: “We are climbing Jacob's ladder . . .”

“You teachin' reading in the 38th?”

“Hell, Burns. Readin' is for white men.” He jerked his head. “Listen to that.”

“I'm gonna eat at the welcome table, I'm gonna eat at the welcome table . . .” The lead was a sweet high tenor.

“That's Private Washington. He can't read, nary one word, but ain't no white man sing like him.”

The chorus replied: “Yes, Lord, some of these days.”

Jesse said, “You think Private Washington could lay out Grant's railroad? Fifteen miles of track laid under enemy fire. Ratcliff, our bread, when it gets to the regiment it's still hot from the ovens at City Point. Private Washington—can he do that?”

“Can't see why not.”

“He can't read the damn plans!. Man can't read or write'll be the man toting rails and shoveling ballast. That's all Private Washington's good for.”

Sergeant Major Ratcliff said sweetly, “You can read and write, Jesse. It be helpin' you?”

The chorus: “Yes, Lord, some of these days.” Men around a fire used magic voices to drive back the night.

“It ain't gonna be different, Burns,” Ratcliff said softly. “We ain't never gonna be like them. Some ways, we better.”

“I've got a wife and a child . . .” Jesse said. “Master Gatewood married us, though she . . . Maggie . . . didn't want to.”

“So why in hell don't you go with some woman what does? Lot of women, Jesse. Even an ugly bastard like you can find some woman put up with him.”

“Maggie didn't have any choice. She was my slave same as I was Gatewood's. Ratcliff, how are we better than they are?”

Ratcliff stood up. “Sergeant, you'd talk the hair off a shoat. Let's go sing.”

The moon emerged and the broad curve of the river shone colder and brighter than the campfires.

“I'm gonna sit at the welcome table.”

“Yes, Lord . . . some of these days.”