Jacob's Ladder (62 page)

“Surrender!” The officer lifted his bloody saber.

A small earthen fort on the plains outside Petersburg, Virginia, caught the attention of God's appalled angels. It was the silence that drew them; the quietude where a dozen Federals leveled rifles at a middle-aged, barefoot Confederate who held a lanyard in his hand. Some aimed at his belly. Some aimed at his head. The farthest wasn't twelve steps away.

“Surrender!”

“Let go that lanyard or we'll shoot!”

“Shoot and be damned!” Silas Omohundru yanked the cord and put paid to it.

A BURIAL PARTY

P
ETERSBURG
, V
IRGINIA
A
PRIL
2, 1865

THE ARMY OF
Northern Virginia began to die. Federals smashed its lines below Petersburg and rolled over its supply roads and railroads until, by day's end, only the Richmond & Danville Railroad was in Confederate hands. President Davis was at worship in St. Paul's when he received Lee's message that he could no longer protect Richmond and might not be able to save the army. Davis's face went pale but the President left the church with his customary composure.

Grant's army surrounded the capital on the north, east, and now the south, but Mahone fought on, Gordon held them at bay, Fort Gregg broke their heart, and the soldiers of Grant's army halted, knowing that tomorrow morning all the plums would drop into their hands.

Duncan Gatewood carried a message from Mahone to Lee.

Lee, his staff, and some of A. P. Hill's officers were mounted outside the farmhouse that had served as army headquarters until this morning. Federal guns were finding the range, and explosions made hearing difficult.

Robert E. Lee was dressed in an uncharacteristically fine uniform, complete with dress sword, and Duncan Gatewood wondered if Lee had prepared to be taken prisoner. Lines of Federal skirmishers crossed the field below, almost within rifle range, and the battery of Confederate cannon behind the farmhouse wouldn't detain them much longer.

Lee had just learned of General A. P. Hill's death and made no attempt to hide the tears in his eyes. In a choked voice he said, “He is now at rest, and we who are left are the ones to suffer.”

A. P. Hill's officers wept openly.

“Someone must inform General Hill's widow,” Lee said. “Captain Spaulding, I recall you are his kinsman.”

“Sir, I have the honor to be General Hill's cousin.”

“Break the news as gently as you can.”

A little desperately, Spaulding searched the officers' faces. “Sir, may I have the services of Major Gatewood here?”

Colonel Venable looked up from Duncan's dispatch. “Mahone is holding them, General. He will require no reply.”

“Very well then.”

When a shell crashed into the farmhouse the telegrapher bolted out the door, his instrument tucked under his arm, and flung himself upon a horse, which made a dozen startled jumps toward Petersburg before a shell burst directly beneath, amputating the animal's legs and dropping its rider onto the dirt. The telegrapher rolled, scooped up his precious machine, and ran down the road as fast as his feet would take him.

“General,” Venable warned.

Smoke poured out the farmhouse windows. Lee said distractedly, “They fire upon it because I stayed there. I should not occupy a private house.” Lee and his staff started toward Petersburg.

“Oh Christ, Wheelhorse, I'm glad you're here,” Spaulding said. “I'd rather lead a charge against Sheridan's repeating rifles than face Dolly Hill with this news.”

Third Corps headquarters was well inside the lines, and General Hill's wife and two children occupied a modest frame house across the road. Yellow tulips bloomed beside the doorstep, and they could hear a woman singing inside. There is no lovelier sound on earth than a woman singing in her home.

General A. P. Hill was brought to his headquarters, draped over his saddle, the back of his shirt bloodied, his cloak almost touching the ground. “For Christ's sake!” Spaulding said. “Find an ambulance to lay him in.” When he turned to Duncan, his eyes were desperate with appeal. “Wheelhorse . . .”

“No, Spaulding. I will not,” Duncan said. “You are Hill's kinsman.”

After Spaulding had been in the house a minute or so, a woman screamed. It was the shriek of a woman suddenly broken. When she quieted, the silence was almost worse.

Pale, Spaulding came outdoors. “Poor dear Dolly. She will be so unhappy now.” He mopped his brow. “She wishes her husband buried in Hollywood. ‘The Place of Heroes,' she calls it. When our ambulance . . . ah, there . . . but what in the hell is this?”

The horses were gaunt from starvation, and the ambulance's wheels had served previous wagons: one green, one blue, one red; and the near front was taller than the off-wheel.

Every sound wagon in the army was in use.

“Every one?” Duncan asked.

“We's skedaddlin',” the soldier/driver said. “It weren't easy gettin' this 'un.”

Hill's veterans laid his body on the ambulance floor and folded their general's cape over his face. Awkwardly, they removed their slouch hats. “Weren't he a fighter though?”

“Remember when we come up at Sharpsburg to save Longstreet's butt? We marched seventeen goddamned miles that day and I was ready to lay down by the roadside, but the genr'l poked me with his damn sword and I was so hot I kept on marchin'. We whipped 'em too.”

“Oh, when A. P. Hill hit, he hit hard.”

“He's out of it now. Lucky bastard.”

The soldiers replaced their hats and stood indecisive until a barefoot sergeant said, “Let's go back and hit us some Federals. It's what the genr'l would have wanted.” They started toward the nearest gunfire.

“Dear God, Wheelhorse,” Spaulding said. “Lee's told the government to evacuate Richmond, and our navy is to blow up ships and stores and the sailors are to be soldiers now. . . .” When the new widow came down the walk, both men uncovered. Dolly Hill's face was bloated by grief. Her daughters clung to her and wanted to wail but were afraid to.

“My husband . . . ?” the widow asked.

“Dollie, the general is not disfigured. . . .”

She lifted the cape. “His poor mangled hand still wears his wedding ring.”

Duncan boosted the girls into the ambulance, and they perched side by side on a narrow wooden bench, feet tucked, not quite touching their father's body.

Downtown Petersburg was bedlam. At the railroad station Longstreet's troops were coming out of the trains and double-quicked toward the fighting; a gray-haired woman begged a surgeon to come attend her wounded son even as the distracted man was directing badly wounded men into the train which would carry them to Richmond. With sheaves of currency, civilians tried to buy their way aboard any train.

The lop-wheeled ambulance creaked across Pocahontas Bridge and climbed into the heights where General Lee had his headquarters during the battle of the Crater. Closed up now, the mansion was shuttered, but the great magnolia was furry with new leaves.

For an hour or two, the ambulance made good progress, but outside the suburb of Manchester the first refugees appeared, those few who could afford sound horses and good carriages. Soon, fleeing civilians jammed the turnpike from ditch to ditch. Many were junior government officials in their Sunday best, respectable men with respectable wives, shepherding their straggling children. One man propelled a wheelbarrow carrying a large trunk set sideways. Pouring sweat, his best coat draped over the trunk, he did not speak to his wife beside him.

Two oncoming riders spotted the ambulance, and the younger stood in his stirrups to wave. “Spaulding! This is too bad. Oh, this is too, too bad!”

“Powell! Henry! Dear cousins, thank God you got our telegram,” Spaulding cried. “How is the way ahead?”

It was dark before the burial party reached the bridge into the Confederate capital, where it stalled. Mayo Bridge was clogged with fleeing citizens and infantry brigades, all coming one way. The ambulance stopped beside the esplanade where bridge traffic debouched.

Mrs. Hill was faint, her girls exhausted and hungry. Henry Hill suggested the family repair to his father's plantation, not far upriver. “You will be safe there while we cross into Richmond. Dolly, we shall bring our poor dear general to Hollywood. Will you take my horse? Cousin Spaulding will be your escort. Please, Dolly, for the sake of the children.”

Feet shuffled off the bridge, teamsters monotonously cursed; wheels creaked, military accouterments jangled. Spaulding helped Dolly Hill into the saddle.

“Spaulding—a word?”

They stepped behind the ambulance, and Spaulding's hands shook when he unscrewed his flask. “So this is how it ends. Grieving women and fear.” He touched the ambulance. “The general didn't wish to outlive the Confederacy. General Lee warned Hill this morning to be more careful. Lee himself warned him.”

“I should return to General Mahone.”

Spaulding clutched him. “Oh Jesus, Wheelhorse. You've got to accompany General Hill into Richmond. What chance do two civilians have of getting through that? Duncan Gatewood, you have always been a damn stickler. A stickler! Must I have Dolly Hill beg you?”

One of the general's daughters began to wail. The people crossing the bridge were irresistible and anonymous as the tide. Duncan thought the older of the two Hill girls would be about the same age as his lost son, Jacob. “I will accompany them.”

A quick handshake and Spaulding was lifting the girls onto the horses.

The moon punched through smoke and mist while the ambulance waited for traffic to ease. Upriver, two railroad bridges crossed the James. The Richmond & Petersburg was busy with trains shuttling troops to the fighting and wounded to the city; the Richmond & Danville had been (as Powell Hill told Duncan) commandeered by the Confederate government to carry its records, bullion, and officials out of the city. When the last Richmond & Danville train left, shortly after midnight, its lights illuminated the bridge's latticework like a line drawn across the river.

“That'll be Jeff Davis's train,” Powell Hill said. “Davis and his cabinet. If the Federals catch up to them, they'll hang them sure.” He paused. “They should douse those lanterns.”

“They can't hang all of us,” Henry Hill observed.

“They can hang us till their arms get tired. We're rebel traitors, aren't we?”

On the far side of the river, President Davis's engineer blew his whistle, and the echoes rang.

Although they provoked inventive cursing and were pressed hard against the railing by a regiment of Alabama troops, General Hill's burial party crossed Mayo Bridge into the capital of the Confederate States of America. When they came off the bridge, cavalrymen were rolling turpentine barrels under the bridge timbers.

The city pulsed like a heart at its limits. Gunshots, smashing glass, laughter more like howling than laughter. Glass crunched under the ambulance wheels, and Duncan clamped the reins under his stump to draw his revolver. The cortege rolled past shops burst wide open. Somewhere ahead a mob was in full cry.

They arrived behind the Confederate offices on Franklin Street and carried the body up the back stairs. Henry Hill's office was a wasteland of discarded papers, and the desk they laid the general's body on was littered with them. “They wouldn't take all my records,” Henry fussed.

One of the general's fine yellow gauntlets was black with dried blood. His shirtfront was stiff with blood. There was dirt in his eyebrows and beard.

“Look, cousin. They haven't washed his face.”

When Henry Hill unbuttoned the dead man's shirt and peeled it away from his chest, Duncan turned away. He was not kin and did not need to know the details of this hurt. Windows faced Capitol Square, where hundreds of convalescent soldiers, many on crutches, waited. Tomorrow they would be Federal prisoners. Behind the statehouse a dull red glow lit up the sky.

Henry Hill murmured, “The ball struck him through the heart. It passed through his thumb and then his heart.” He added, “Oh, dear brave kinsman.”

On the statehouse the Confederate flag drooped against the flagstaff.

While Powell Hill washed the general, Duncan and Henry Hill went after a coffin. They rattled down 10th Street onto Main, past Corinthian Hall and Crawford's, the saloon that had been turned into a hospital. Although the bronze front door of the Farmers Bank was bolted, the street was ankle-deep in Confederate currency and bonds. Their horses' hooves stirred paper into the air, and the ambulance was pursued by a blizzard which reddened when it fluttered into the firelight above the rooftops. Blevin's furniture store had disgorged its contents into the street: a broken gateleg table, a velvet ottoman upset in the gutter.

The interior was illumined by square holes where windows had been and rectangles which had previously framed doors. The coffins had not been disturbed, and they took the nearest. Henry Hill sincerely promised Duncan he would reimburse Mr. Blevin for his merchandise at some later date.

When the two men got the coffin back to the office, they discovered it was too small, so they laid General Hill on his side and bent his legs.

Having come so far, they could go no further. There was no official to grant permission for burial, so they decided to take Hill to the plantation where his wife, Dolly, had already gone. They would bury the general temporarily.

A. P. Hill's distraught cousins thanked Duncan volubly and shook his hand. They said when this dreadful war was over perhaps they would meet again, and Duncan said he was sure of it.