Enemy Women (10 page)

In June, 1864, Major Jeremiah Hackett reported the arrest of a Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, caught while tearing down telegraph lines.

—
FROM
Inside War

A few days since, a party, several of whom were women, plundered the hospital at Ketesville robbing the wounded of their arms, clothing and money and the women taking the lead the latter whose presence in the hospitals should rather be to cheer the wounded than to terrify and rob them are now here prisoners along with several of the men.

—D
IARY O
F H
ENRY
D
YSART
,
PRIVATE IN AN
I
LLINOIS UNIT IN SOUTHEASTERN
M
ISSOURI, QUOTED IN
Inside War

We would frequently see a squad of Union Militia start out after the Smiths [Confederate bushwhackers] and possibly the next day would hear that the Federals had dined at a farmhouse and in less than an hour the Smiths dined at the same house. The houses of these men were burned and their wives taken prisoner, but by threats of retaliation [that the Smiths would] burn the homes of Union men, forced the release of the women.

—Reminiscences of Mrs. C. C. Rainwater, from 1861 to 1865,
S
PECIAL
C
OLLECTIONS
L
IBRARY,
D
UKE
U
NIVERSITY

T
HE FIRST NIGHT
the guards shoved her into the general ward, a large room thirty feet by twenty-five. Adair kept hold of her carpet-
sack and the quilt with both hands. In the dim light she saw other women shift and move in a sudden shrinkage of skirts. She heard sleet stuttering at the bars of the windows. In that wintry evening all the shutters were closed. The fireplace leaked a slow red light, and the bar shadows lined the opposite wall like thin soldiers or the wraiths of the prisoners gone before. Adair felt her hair slowly beginning to stand on end and her heart was wallowing and laboring in her chest and there was not enough air in the world. Her heart was crashing its two halves together like a boxer’s fists.

A strong woman with big shoulders and a head of pasty brown hair put her hands around her mouth and called out,

Say thing! Thing and sing and bring! Say on and dog!

Thang, sang, brang, jeered another woman. Oan! Doag!

The only light in the dark January evening was from the fireplace. The women’s figures were lit on one side only. Through the shutters, Adair could smell the latrines. It was like the Female Seminary of the netherworld. A ladies’ academy in hell.

Adair went and sat by the fire on a barrel, tipped her hat back a little. They were all looking at it. Adair clenched her cold hands together and tried not to stare around her. They had been rained and sleeted upon all the way from the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad terminal at Pine and River Streets. Now she could hardly keep her hands from shaking even though they were seized together.

What’s your name? said the big woman. She bent down to pet a small terrier that danced around her skirt hems.

Adair looked around at all of them in the light of the fire.

My name is Adair Randolph Colley, she said. From southeastern Missouri. From Ripley County. And I am here because somebody said I was disloyal.

Well,
are
you disloyal? The big woman put her hands on her hips and stared.

Me? Of course not, said Adair.

Some of the women were staring at her with inflexible expressions.

It will be all right, said a sweet-faced young woman nearby her. Adair turned her head to the girl. She had light brown hair and a soiled dress of dark lavender. I am from Danville, Missouri, and I too was denounced. But we must get along here with people of all different persuasions, I suppose. My name is Rhoda Lee Cobb.

How do you do, Miss Cobb, said Adair.

I was imprisoned because of my opinions, said Rhoda Lee. Snatched from the Danville Female Seminary.

A woman with a crown of violently springing red hair coughed explosively three times into her hand and looked up again. Wiped her hand on her skirt. Beside her sat a woman whose face was heavily chalked and painted like a clown or perhaps an actress.

We have nothing to offer you, I fear, said Miss Cobb. We will be fed in the morning.

Who says she would get anything even if we did have something to offer her? asked the stout woman in brown check. She was chewing tobacco and turned and spat into the fire. Don’t have any tobacco do you? She tried to stare Adair down.

I don’t use it, said Adair. She seemed to be losing her anger, which had always sustained her, and now her voice was small.

You’ll get used to things around here, said the woman. Her brown hair was pulled back so tightly and it was so dirty that it seemed she had a headful of wires, a telegraphic device. Then I’ll bet you’ll use it if you gets the chance.

The redheaded woman crossed her arms and stared at Adair, and her volcanic hair erupted in savage reds and oranges, backlit by the fire. You’ll learn to get along. You got any money?

No, said Adair.

You got anybody sending you delicacies or dainties or comforters?

No, said Adair. Her word dropped into the well of stone silence.

Well what the hell
have
you got?

What I got in my hand here. Adair kept her carpet-sack in closed fists. Clothes. I guess I could try to write some relatives or something.
Out on Fourth Street, beyond their barred world of filth and stone, there was the sound of a fiddle and somebody dancing, thumping in heavy shoes. Then a scattering of applause.

The stout woman snorted. Her fists were on her hips. These here women might be whores and thieves and fortune-tellers and drunks but they are loyal.

And around her several women said yes, yes, in low voices. Adair did not look to see who had spoken.

My name is Cloris and I am the head prisoner here. We wash outside on Mondays. They feed us stew twicest a day and bread besides. Take that pallet over there. Throw your things down. Whatever it is you got.

Adair was not prepared to let go of anything she owned just at present. Her wet jacket smoked in the fire’s thick heat. Her skirts were heavy with damp. We were pretty well all burnt out, she said. Adair still did not know whether it was smarter to appease these women for the present or fight them right off. She did not know what would work. She had never met people like this.

They was burnt out. The stout woman, Cloris, shook her head. Why, fancy that. Just burnt right out. Somebody come along and set they house on fire.

But the rain put it out.

Well, fancy that, said Cloris. She smirked a little but in reality did not know what to say to that. It seemed the work of a benign Providence, didn’t it.

Adair said, God sent the rain and put it out, because the Union Militia who stole everything are bound for the devil’s kingdom. She stared at Cloris. They are going to drown at the crossing of the Current River. You will be able to see their faces underwater.

See here! said Cloris. I believe that is disloyal!

Adair kept her chin in the air and turned her black eyes from one woman to another. See if it don’t happen. She tried to look confident and evil, the sort of person no one wanted to cross.

Is she a-talking against the Union? This was from a very old lady
wrapped in a striped blanket. She inhabited the far shadows against the wall. Is she a-talking against the Union?

How would we even know? said the redheaded woman. What goes on down there? They ain’t nothing down there but iggerant savages.

And I’m one of them, said Adair. I dare any of you to lay a hand on me. She stood and waited.

Well, well! We bunk out on these straw pallets! said the actress. If that’s what she was. Adair had never met an actress before, had never seen an entertainment upon the stage. The actress had bright red lips and cheeks, a white skin and her eyelids were sooty. Most of us are in here unjustly imprisoned. I was arrested myself on the charge of theft. I was hungry.

You just steal out of habit, said the redheaded woman.

We beat people who steal in here, said Cloris. Any information we get, we keep it to ourselves. If you get yourself a package of dainties you got to share some. That’s the rules. She stepped two steps toward Adair and grinned. Her teeth were yellow as if she had slaked herself on limestone.

All right, said Adair.

So you just open up that carpet sack and show us what you got in there.

I don’t think I will, said Adair.

Cloris stepped up to Adair so quick she could not react and struck Adair broadside across the cheekbones with a fist, yelling
There! there!
She hit her twice before Adair could even fall, fast as a copperhead.

Adair fell with her hands out and skidded on the floor, tearing skin from the heels of both hands. She heard her dress rip, the bodice tearing loose from the skirt.

Cloris regarded her own thick fist. That’s from workin’ in the Auxvasse silver diggins, she said.

Adair got back to her feet in an instant, her skirts swinging around her. She looked around for something to throw at the woman or hit her with.

Do you all just take this from this woman? Adair called to the rest of
them. Her voice shook. Nobody moved. Adair’s hat had fallen onto the floor and her hair was coming down. It spilled out in a confusion of black hanks, a mass of it all down her back. She knew if the stout woman could get those leathern hands into her hair, she would be in dire trouble. The woman would break her neck. Adair twisted her hair into a hank and jammed it into her collar.

The other women stood back. Rhoda Cobb retreated with her hand in front of her mouth and her mouth in an O. Adair reached then and pulled a heavy flaming stick from the fire.

Come on, then, she said. If you want anything I got, come and take it. Cloris laughed and looked around at the other women, who dutifully laughed too. Cloris stepped two steps to Adair’s right, to the fire, as if she would back Adair into the shadows. Adair turned quickly and then realized the big woman was putting the fire behind herself to blind Adair with the light of it. The terrier barked like a mechanical thing.

Adair drew the heavy stick back like a baseball bat and took two steps forward and swung. She smashed it into the stout woman’s uplifted arm and sparks flew from the flaming end and shattered over their skirts. When she struck it made a cracking sound on Cloris’s forearm. Cloris shouted several syllables that were not in any language Adair knew and reached and took the burning end of the stick and tore it from Adair’s grasp.

Stop! Stop! Rhoda Cobb took hold of Adair around the waist and began backing away with her, and two other women jumped in between them.

The stout woman stood holding her forearm with her burnt hand. Adair shrugged herself loose from the grip of the actress and the girl from Danville Academy.

I don’t know how long I can stand listening to you tell me what to do, said Adair.

Rhoda put out both hands. Everybody better sit down before the matron comes, she said. I don’t know if you all want something to eat tomorrow but I do.

Adair put her carpet-sack down on the pallet, which she saw was the thinnest one of all, and sat down on it. She was shaking with small, violent tremors of rage and fear. She sat very still and upright to try to contain herself. Slowly, like hens settling on their poles at night in the confinement of the fowl house, the women sank on their skirts and wrapped hands around their knees. The black-and-tan terrier leapt into Cloris’s lap and stared at Adair.

There was a long silence and out in the city the great bell in the tower of the St. Louis Cathedral rang out ten.

Get that girl to sing something. Cloris waved a hand from her pallet by the fire. Or play that whistle she’s got. She blew on her burnt palm. I’ll settle things with you before long. Kisia, sing. The air inside the General Ward shook like a lazy jack from the tensions among them all.

Levina, the blonde actress, said, Kisia, honey, sing us something. She stroked Kisia’s hair. My little niece here is just like my own child, and if we’d of had a chanct she would have sung on the stage.

The girl sat up from the pallet. Her face was pale as oatmeal, dotted with a few freckles, her hair braided with knotted yarns. Her face was light boned and drawn, her eyes deep-set and of some dark color. She began to sing. Her voice was clear and strong, with a wild, vital vibrato.

It was in old Wexford Town

The judge come from afar

A fair young lad with a tender heart

Stood prisoner at the bar.

Kisia sang four verses and then drifted off the last notes at the end. Then the girl lay down in her dusty homespun dress and she covered herself and her aunt with a woolen blanket.

Adair lay and watched the dying fire. She was sleepless and vigilant under her shawl and the extra dress. She lay against the wall as close to the windows as she could get despite the cold for she was shut in and trapped and thus her deepest fear had come about.

Adair drew the Log Cabin quilt out of its linen wrapping and examined
it in the firelight, now that they were all asleep. She studied it with intense interest. The hearths were all velvets of varying reds. Carmine, scarlet, a garnet, a deep rose. Adair ran her dirtied fingers over the piecings in the vagrant light. There was a beautiful silk repeated over and over on the shadow side, which was dark brown with a figure in garnet that might have been the face of a clock. Adair spread her hand over one of the blocks as if over her home with its red velvet fire in the heart of her family, both living and dead.

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