When Johnny Came Marching Home (17 page)

"What's that, Jemma? What can I do for you?"

"Massah, my sistah, she still dere. Her name's Alva. Ya kin git a darkie ta bring her to ya, an' den ya kin bring her back ta me. She be lil'; she don' takes up no room at all."

I let out a deep breath. I tried to think how I'd feel if someone I loved, a child, was enslaved, and I thought, like Jemma, I'd risk anything to free them. I didn't want to dash her hopes but I doubted we'd be able to help her. I reached out and touched her shoulder. "I don't know if we'll get to the plantation, but if we do, and if I can find this tunnel without endangering the men, I'll see what can be done for Alva."

Jemma grabbed a twig from the ground and smoothed out a patch of dirt. "I makes ya a map shows how ta fine dis tunnel," she said. "It be real easy, Massah Fosta. Real easy."

 

* * *

 

We found Jackson's army encamped on a hill just southeast of Chantilly Plantation. My ten-man reconnaissance unit had struck out just before nine o'clock in a steady downpour and had finally located the Rebs at midnight just as the rain ended. My map identified the place as Ox Hill and showed the plantation just beyond. Circling the location on the map, I handed it to one of my men.

"You get this back to the brigade so they'll know where to attack in the morning." I turned to Abel and Johnny. "I want you two to come with me. The rest of you stay here and keep watch on the encampment. If for any reason they move before dawn, you send word back to the brigade. We should be back long before that, but in case we aren't . . . well, you know what to do."

"Where we goin'?" Johnny asked.

"We're going up to the plantation. I suspect the officers will be taking their comforts there, and we'll also be able to see if more troops are laying back in support."

"How we gonna get up close to that plantation without gittin' our asses blown off?" Abel demanded.

I smiled at him. "My ass isn't as big as yours, so I'm not worried. Besides, Jemma told me a way to sneak in close to the house without being seen."

"How the hell did she know that?" Johnny asked.

"She was a slave here," I said simply.

They were suddenly silent. It was the first time we'd been confronted with a place where someone we knew had been enslaved.

 

* * *

 

We came to the copse of pine just north of the main house where Jemma claimed the entrance to the tunnel was hidden. We had skirted the plantation but had not come upon another body of Reb troops, save a small detachment of cavalry guarding the main plantation house. It confirmed my suspicions that the ranking officers had taken up residence in the house.

Inside the copse of trees an old castaway door lay on the ground, partially covered in vines and debris.

"The tunnel's supposed to be under that door," I said. "She claimed the slaves dug it as a way to get far away from the house when they tried to escape. It leads into a root cellar, and we should come up against the back of a chest that we'll have to push out of the way. The root cellar is right next to the slave quarters behind the main house."

With Abel's help I removed the brush and vines covering the door and pulled it off to one side. There was a hole beneath large enough for a man to fit through, but I had no idea how far it dropped. I got down on my belly and leaned into the hole and lit a match. It appeared to be about a six-foot drop, and there were some boards fitted into the dirt walls to use as a ladder. I handed Abel my Spencer rifle and dropped into the hole, then turned back and told him to pass me all three rifles, after making sure they were unloaded. I grinned up at him. "Don't need another hole in my ass cause you got clumsy."

I leaned Abel and Johnny's Spencers against the wall, took my own, dropped to my knees, and began to crawl forward. The tunnel was about four feet high and the walls were barely wide enough for my shoulders to fit through. As I crawled I could hear some animals scurrying ahead and assumed the tunnel had become home to a pack of wood rats. I didn't want to think of what else might have scurried or slithered inside and quickly came to the realization that I would never make a living as a miner.

It felt as though I'd been inching forward for more than an hour, although it couldn't have been more than ten minutes, when I came up against a solid wood surface. I laid down my rifle and pushed as hard as I could. Slowly the wood moved back, and I found myself facing the interior of a large root cellar. I pushed the wooden chest to one side, then stepped into the cellar proper. Abel and Johnny crawled out behind me and began looking around.

Johnny immediately started searching for food; he found a jar of peaches, opened it, and began eating them using his knife as a fork. Abel followed suit. "Damn, these are good," he said.

"Make sure you take the empty jar out of here when we leave," I said. "We don't wanna let on there's a tunnel back there, and we sure don't wanna get some fieldhand whipped for stealing peaches."

The root cellar was cool and dark, and when I opened the outside door warm humid air hit my face. I peered up at the house. There were about a dozen horses tied together and I guessed they belonged to the men who were guarding Jackson and his senior officers. As I watched for a sentry patrol, an old Negro came shambling out of the nearest slave cabin, using a single crutch to propel him toward a battered outhouse with a door that hung loosely on one hinge.

I ducked back into the root cellar. "We got a job to do," I said to the others. "Jemma's little sister is here, and Jemma wants her to be free like she is. I told her we'd get her out if we could."

I had expected them to object, but nothing came. Finally Johnny nodded his head. "Yeah, let's do it," he said.

"You betcha," Abel said. "Let's get her the hell outta here."

I smiled at both of them. "Okay. Johnny, you cover us from this door. Abel, an old Negro man just went in the outhouse. We're gonna have him show us where this child is."

We cut across the rear yard and reached the outhouse just as the old man came out. He was painfully thin and his clothes were little more than rags. He had tightly curled white hair and a scraggly white beard and one of his ankles had been hobbled—smashed by a hammer so he could not walk without the support of a crutch. It was something, I'd learned, that was often done to slaves who'd been recaptured after running away. I clamped a hand over his mouth and raised a finger to my lips. He nodded beneath my hand, his eyes wide and terrified.

"Father, we're friends of Jemma, a girl who used to work here. Did you know her?" I whispered.

He nodded his head beneath my hand and his eyes grew calmer. I took my hand away.

"We're here to get her sister. A girl named Alva. Do you know her, and can you take us to her?"

A sense of pride swept through the old man's face and his back seemed to grow straighter. "I knows her," he whispered. "Y'all come wit me."

He led us to the third cabin in a row of weather-beaten structures and turned back to us. "Y'all wait."

Abel and I crouched down beside the door he had entered, giving ourselves as much cover as possible. He was back within two minutes, a little girl no more than seven or eight standing beside him, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

The old man bent down and placed his hands on her shoulders. "You go wit dees mens, Alva. Dey gonna take ya ta Jemma."

The little girl nodded, still sleepy. She had large brown eyes and the same creamy complexion as her sister. The old man leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You's gonna be free, girl." There were tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.

Abel handed me his rifle and scooped the girl up and pressed her against his chest.

"Thank you, sir," I said.

"Y'all go fight dem Rebs," he whispered. "Y'all fight dem and make us all free."

Chapter Fourteen

Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1865

Reverend Harris came home early on Monday morning, several days before he was expected. He had left his wife with relatives, in hopes they could help her overcome her grief, and when he answered my knock it was clear he could have used the help himself. In the short time since Johnny's funeral he seemed to have fared badly. His eyes were sunken from lack of sleep and there were deep fissures at the corners of his mouth. His hair seemed whiter than I remembered and his clothing hung loosely on his body. He appeared to have aged ten years in the short time since his son's death.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Reverend Harris," I began.

He waved my comment away. "I'm always pleased to see you, Jubal." He smiled weakly. "We were called to this church when Johnny was three years old. That's twenty-three years ago, and you've been part of my church family all that time. Come in, and tell me how I can help you."

I followed him into the sitting room where Johnny's body had been laid out in his Army of the Potomac uniform. The room had a closed-up, musty smell and I wondered how much it had been used since Reverend Harris had buried his only child.

I was guided to a horsehair sofa and the pastor took a Queen Anne chair directly across from me.

"Are you familiar with a friend of Johnny's from the war, a man named Bobby Suggs?" I asked.

"Yes, I am. But I'm not certain he was a friend of Johnny's."

I was surprised by his comment. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, I was here when he arrived in town, and I must confess that Johnny didn't seem all that pleased to see him. I overheard this Suggs boy asking Johnny if we could put him up for a few days, and Johnny said flat-out there wasn't any room for him here. He even told him he couldn't stay in the barn, and when I asked Johnny about it later he was adamant that he did not want this Suggs fellow staying anywhere near him." Reverend Harris placed his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. "It was such an unchristian act that it shocked me. We have never turned anyone away from this house, even travelers who we didn't know."

"Did he and Johnny have any kind of argument?"

"I wouldn't call it an argument, but I saw them talking a bit intensely about something, although I couldn't hear what it involved. It was my impression that Suggs was getting a bit agitated. It seemed as though he wanted a response from my son, and was upset that Johnny just dismissed whatever they were talking about."

"My father and I found Bobby Suggs in your barn on Saturday night. He claimed he was looking for a satchel that had some of his clothes in it."

Reverend Harris sat back. "Yes, I have that satchel. Johnny told him he could leave it in the barn while he searched for work. When my wife heard that, she insisted the satchel be brought into the house. We get field mice in the barn this time of year and she was afraid they'd get into the satchel and ruin whatever was inside.

"How long ago was this?"

"About a week before Johnny . . . passed on."

I was disappointed to hear that Suggs had been telling the truth, but still clung to the fact that he and Johnny had argued before Johnny was killed. "I'd like to look at the satchel," I said. "I'd also like to look around Johnny's room, just to see if I can find out what he and Suggs were arguing about."

"Of course, you're welcome to look at anything that might help you find my son's . . ." He struggled to finish the sentence. "Find the person who killed my boy." He paused and looked at me with a sense of urgency. "But please understand, Jubal, I really can't say they were arguing. I never heard
what
they were saying; I only noted their demeanors toward each other."

"I understand. Walter Johnson noticed the same thing outside his store. He said it seemed as though Suggs was demanding something and Johnny just laughed at him. So I'd like to look around to put my mind to rest."

Reverend Harris went into another room and returned with a carpetbag satchel. I opened it and rummaged inside. It was stuffed with clothing, including the wool shirt Suggs had told me about. There was also a map of Vermont, and I opened it and noted some crude penciled lines marking his route—first to Jericho, a town to our north, and then to Jerusalem's Landing.

I returned the maps to the bag and told Reverend Harris that Suggs would be stopping by later in the week to pick it up. Then I asked him to take me up to Johnny's room.

The room Johnny had lived in most of his life overlooked the rear of the house and the woods beyond, and I recalled how he often told Abel and me about the deer he saw moving through the trees, claiming he could sit in his room with a rifle and keep his family in venison the whole year through if his father would let him.

I hadn't been in Johnny's room for years, but I could not see much that had changed from the time when the three of us sat there planning our boyish adventures.

I turned to Reverend Harris. "Is there a special place where he kept things?"

"I don't know. Johnny was a bit standoffish when he returned." Tears began to well up in the reverend's eyes and he glanced away. "I always attributed it to the prison he'd been in. I've read that the men who were captured lived very primitive lives in the Confederate prisons, desperate lives, and that those who weren't dying of disease were slowly starving. The article said they became men who fought over scraps of food and who hid the barest of necessities from each other. It said they had to, or whatever they owned would be stolen. It was a question of survival." His voice broke but I couldn't tell if it was because of the suffering he knew his son had endured, or because of the way he had changed when he returned home. He walked to the door and turned back to me. "My son, he wasn't the same boy who left our home four years ago. All those things that happened to him, all those things . . ." He drew a deep breath, choosing not to finish the thought. "Please take all the time you need, Jubal. I'll be downstairs working on next Sunday's sermon. Let me know when you're finished."

I sat on the edge of Johnny's bed just as I had so many times in the past, this time thinking of what lay ahead for Reverend Harris and his wife. The reverend, at least, appeared to recognize how much his son had changed. But he didn't know the half of it. He didn't know what a monster his son had become, and I wondered if I could do my job and find Johnny's killer, and keep him from ever finding out.