Queen (80 page)

    that the war would not be short. Despite the miserable conditions and his

    constant discomfort Henderson was actually enjoying himself. Secure

484 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

with himself, for he was, by his lights, a very successful man, his years

as an overseer, as an organizer, stood him in good stead. Older than many

of the volunteers, he found that the other men respected him and looked

to him to interpret their officers' commands. He became a sergeant by

natural process, long before he was promoted to the rank, and he relished

the rough and ready masculinity of a soldier's life. It was as if he had

spent the rest of his life in training for this time. He'd never had much

fun, he'd worked hard to advance himself, he'd settled to a comfortable

married life, and now, suddenly, he was free of social ambitions and could

be the youth he had never been. He thought fondly of Letitia, and wrote

to her regularly, in simple terms for he was not well educated, but he

looked forward to some leave as a soldier because women of a certain class

loved soldiers and would do anything for them. Anything. He had a good

supply of wild oats that he had never sown when young, and when the chance

came he did not intend to be mean with them.

    They lived on rumor and wild speculation, and when the news that the

    Yankees had attacked spread through the camp like a grass fire, every man

    stood to. And stood down again. It was only some small skirmish on the

    other side of that deep stream. Still, something had happened. Southern

    reinforcements were on the march to them, they heard, and, not quite as

    green as they had been a few weeks ago, they knew a battle was looming.

    When Sunday came, they knew this must be the day. for groups of civilians

    were gathering on a nearby hill to watch the coming fray. Many came in

    carriages, were elegantly dressed and had picnic hampers, as if to watch

    soldiers die were a charming Sunday diversion. Southern spectators might

    have done the same if the situation had been reversed, but the sight of

    all these Northerners come to watch the bloodshed caused a deep and

    abiding anger in many a Rebel soldier's heart.

    Jass simply waited to be told what to do. His company was assembled, and

    stood in ranks in the blazing sun, weapons primed and loaded. On a small

    hill across the stream, cannon were being assembled by blue-coated

    soldiers, aimed directly, Jass thought, at him. They heard distant cries

    and gunfire, and

    QUEEN 485

then silence again, and then a rumor swept the ranks that the Southerners

were retreating. Fear snaked through the men, and a few boys began to

whimper, convinced that this was their last hour on earth. Then other

rumors were whispered along the ranks. There had been a retreat, but

General Jackson and his men stood like a stone wall against the advancing

Yankees. The tide of battle had turned.

    Jass was puzzled. He hadn't expected war to be like this. It was

    possible, if the day went on like this, that he would not see any action

    at all. He did not know what he had expected war to be, but he had not

    thought it would be boring.

    They were assembled about a mile from a stone bridge, hot and sweating

    under the blazing sun. Still they could hear distant cries and gunfire,

    but now the shouts seemed to be coming nearer, and hope started to blaze

    in their hearts, for these shouts were not of anger, but of fear. The

    sound of panic ran toward them at the speed of men in retreat, and

    suddenly it burst upon them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, a great mass

    at least, of Union soldiers were running toward the bridge, to cross to

    the North, to safety. Now the cannon on the opposite hill started firing,

    as if to protect the fleeing men.

    Jass*s troop was given the order to charge, and hearts surging with glee

    at the sight of the retreating Yankees, blood pounding with expectation

    of a fight, fear of dying the adrenaline that made them brave, they

    charged toward the bridge.

    Jass had no sense of place or time. He was an animal now, intent on his

    prey, in the middle of chaos and confusion. Sounds thundered about him,

    of guns and screaming and, loudest of all, his own blood throbbing in his

    ears. The very ground under him seemed to shudder as cannon balls landed

    among them. He looked once toward the distant hill, where the cannon

    were, and saw lines of soldiers dressed in blue and tiny puffs of smoke

    coming from their guns, but he did not heai the sound of those guns until

    some moments after the smoke had appeared

    Then something hit him with the force of an invisible steam train. He

    felt a searing pain in his chest, and fell to the ground, senseless.

    He was found later that night, unconscious and bleeding, lying in a field

    of dead and wounded men, by a friend who did not recognize him.

486 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

Wesley was a veteran of killing, an able and eccentric fighter, who had

spent the past twenty-five years in a wild and lawless life. He was a gun

for hire, an Indian fighter mostly, who spent his days slaying braves, and

his nights in sweet domestic comfort with his Comanche squaw. They lived in

a little shack by a pleasant river in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains,

and Wesley had a fine collection of Indian artifacts, and several Redskin

scalps. But already the frontier was not what it had been; settlers were

slowly occupying the pristine territories of Wesley's youth. Federal

soldiers were building forts and govemments were whining about law and

order. Although there was land enough to spare, and adventure enough for any

man, the wilderness was slowly being tamed. Wesley wondered if he was simply

getting old, for the chase had lost its thrill, his squaw and half-breed

children bored him, and he was disgusted by the ambitions of so many of the

settlers, who lived in fear of the hunting grounds and were deten-nined to

bring a bourgeois civilization to what had been primeval. The Indians were

not his enemy anymore; the white man was.

    When he heard of the possibility of war between the North and the South, he

    knew where he wanted to be. He made provision for his family, saddled his

    horse, and rode to Richmond, where he offered his services, by old family

    connection, to General Beauregard, as a scout.

    He cut an unlikely figure. His hair was long and held back in a ponytail;

    his face was weathered and gnarled. He scomed a traditional uniform, but

    wore fringed leather decorated with several small Indian totems to ward off

    the evil ones, and a tanned human scalp hung from his belt. He lived rough

    and alone, in a small teepee he had made for himself, and men laughed at

    him behind his back, but feared what he represented.

    He was an excellent scout, and it was he who had warned of the first Union

    reconnaissance of the day, which had been routed. He was furious at the

    initial Southern retreat, for a man stood and fought, and he won or he

    died, but he did not run. He had approved of General Jackson's exhortations

    to his men to stand firm like a stone wall before the Yankees, and he had

    nodded in satisfaction at the subsequent Yankee withdrawal, which turned

    into a panicked rout.

    QUEEN 487

    Now he wandered the battlefields alone. He was not averse to scavenging

    from dead men, but his true purpose was as an angel of mercy. If he found

    a man alive but mortally wounded, Wesley used his hunting knife to help

    that man into the dark night. If he found a man alive but simply wounded,

    he would call the medical orderlies, for they, as green as the soldiers,

    had no experience of the carnage of war, were overwhelmed by the numbers

    of the injured, and could not always differentiate between those who

    would live and those who would die.

    So it was that he found a man who seemed familiar to him, and carried the

    wounded Jass, fireman-fashion, to a medical tent, for this one, Wesley

    knew, would live.

    ,Duty done, he slipped out into the night again, back to the killing

    grounds, and went about his business.

Sam, Sawbones Sam, bright medical star of the Kirkman family, had traveled

with his mother, Elizabeth, to Richmond to stay with friends, for he knew

his services would be needed. When news of the battle reached him, he went

to Manassas and offered his services. It was Sam's first experience of

war, and when the bodies, hundreds upon hundreds, were brought to the

medical tents, he had initially been appalled at the useless carnage. But

his training served him well, and he patched and sewed and cut and

amputated, and comforted those who were beyond his help.

    Like the young soldier, who could not have been more than eighteen, who

    had fallen under some horses and had been fatally trampled.

    "Am I done for, sir?" the boy had asked, and Sam had told him the truth.

The boy was silent, and then admitted his most private fear.

"I'm scared, sir," he said.

Sam was used to death, although never in such quantity.

    "It's easy," he told the dying boy. "You will see a great light, and all

    you have to do is follow it."

    The boy was silent again, but had another awful fear. He had not joined

    the army for any great cause, although Dixie, glorious to him, was cause

    enough. Bored with his life on a small farm, he had enlisted for

    excitement, for adventure. In

488 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

other times, he might as easily have escaped the monotony of his life by

seeking his fortune in a big city, and he had left home with a solemn

promise to his mother, which both of them knew was useless, to avoid

harm's way.

    "What will my mother say?" he said so quietly that Sam could hardly hear

    him.

    He closed his eyes, and Sam knew he would never open them again. He sat

    with him for a little while, for his own benefit as much as the dying

    boy's. It was nearly dawn, and he was exhausted by blood and pain and

    death.

    It happened quietly, peacefully, and no one but Sam marked the boy's

    passing. Sam sighed, and turned to the man lying on the next blanket, who

    would live. His awful chest wound had been bound with bandages, and he

    had been sleeping from the effects of the laudanurn that Sam had given

    him from his small, private stock, but now he was drifting to the

    surface. He opened his eyes.

"How is it, Jass?" Sam asked.

    "Bloody dreadful," Jass replied, for the effects of the opium were

    wearing off, the pain was filtering through his lungs again.

    He tried to focus on the face smiling down at him, and a fragment of

    memory came to him.

"Sam?" Jass almost smiled.

    Sam nodded, and Jass closed his eyes, for Sam would protect him. If he

    could be protected. He looked at Sam again.

"Am I dying?" he asked his nephew.

    "No, Jass, you'll live," Sam told him. "I worked my guts out to save

    you."

    Relief flooded through Jass, but then he winced in pain. Sam gave him a

    little more laudanum. The army did not approve of lulling drugs for

    enlisted men. They were too costly, and might lead to addiction, but Jass

    was not a soldier anymore, only Sam's uncle.

    "You had a bullet through your lung," he said softly, as if it was good

    news. "And you'll be no more use to the army."

    Jass could not begin to assimilate the implications of that, for

    something else had a greater importance.

"Did we win?" he asked.

"Yes, we won," Sam said.

    QUEEN 489

    Jass almost smiled. "Then God be thanked," he whispered. "I wouldn't have

    wanted to die for nothing."

    Two days later they moved him to an army hospital at Richmond, where

    Elizabeth, his half sister, took charge of his nursing.

    He was released from the hospital and honorably discharged from the army,

    but he was still unfit to travel and spent the early fall recuperating

    from his wounds at the home of friends in the lovely Virginia

    countryside.

    "It is the end of the war for me," he began a letter to his mother, but

    then put down his pen in bitter disgust.

He had not expected it would end like this.

    57

Queen didn't know what to do. Her father was coming

home. Much as she longed to see him, she felt she had not

lived up to his expectations of her. She had been charged by

him with a most sacred, solemn duty, the protection of his

family while he was away, and she had failed. It might have

been easier with a full complement of fellow slaves to share

the burden, but they were reduced to half their number. Julie,

the cook, was dead. There had been a brief epidemic of ty