Enemy Women (25 page)

The ticket seller unfolded it, held it to the light. I been seeing nothing but counterfeits lately, he said. Adair stood off to one side so she could watch the thin man being humiliated. Soon it would be her turn.

Well, that isn’t a counterfeit, said the thin man. What in hell is wrong with it?

The ticket man handed the pass back.

Well, it’s got fried potato grease on it now, he jeered. Too bad. Where do you want to go?

The thin man bought a ticket to Gray’s Summit. He bought it angrily, throwing down a Boatman’s Bank note for fifty cents. Outside Adair could hear the roaring boilers of the engine.

She came up to the window. The hot sweet potatoes felt warm in their brown paper. The ticket man glared out of his brass bars.

How much is a ticket to Iron Mountain? she said.

Seventy-five cents. Where’s your pass?

Adair stood resolutely and looked up into his face. His eyes were beset with wrinkles and pouches.

I don’t have one. Why do I need one?

The ticket man bent forward. To get to Iron Mountain, that’s why you need one.

Well, where do I get one? Adair bent forward too. I have just got to have one.

The provost marshal’s office at the Customs House, he said. He looked past her. Next!

Well, sell me a ticket now and then I’ll go get one, so I don’t have to stand in a line again. I am traveling alone. It cain’t be helped. I don’t care for standing in line. Please?

He chewed on his mustache a moment.

No, he said. If you want to get somewhere, start walking.

ADAIR BEGAN TO
walk south on the Carondelet Road. Three miles south of the city she passed an old stone house on the river bluffs, and a group of quarrymen living there called out to her. She walked on. She carried her stolen grip and walked slowly and rested frequently. Her lips and palms were hot with the persistent fever and she could feel the heat of it in her mouth.

Soon there were more and more spaces between the houses and then the houses sat in the midst of a few acres. Wagons passed her by and offered her a ride.

No, she said. I am just going down the road a ways.

Now it was quiet. The lethal noises of the city fell behind her block by block and then lot by lot and then field by field. Before long, the road turned away from the river and into the Meramec River bottoms. She stopped by a farmhouse beyond Dutch Bottoms to ask for a drink from the well. A woman came out and drew up a bucket of water, looking with concern into her face.

Adair tipped the gourd back and drank deeply of the clear water. It was the first clear water she had had to drink in a long time. She drank so much and so fast that she got the hiccups. The woman made her sit down and take a spoonful of molasses with a dash of black pepper on it. Adair breathed deeply with her mouth closed, her nostrils flared. At last the hiccups stopped and she thanked the woman and went on. She was now on the Military Road, or the Nachitoches Trace as it was called, and also called the Wire Road. The telegraph lines were all up and still standing.

In the middle of the Wire Road Adair stopped and began to turn around and around until her skirt hems flew out in a circle, her arms loaded with the centrifugal force of her carpet sack in one hand and the bundle in the other.

Hard times, hard times, come again no more

Many times you have lingered around my cabin door, oh!

Hard times come again no more!

That night she slept in an old stagehouse. It was made of stone and the roof was half gone but for one room. It had been long abandoned because of the railroad. She said her prayers for her family. She prayed that a large stone from some of the construction in St. Louis would fall on Mrs. Buckley and crush her like a toad and her legs would be sticking out one side and her head on the other and her face would be as dead as the earl of hell.

Although it was early March and yet cold at night she slept there well enough. She lay on the linen cover and the quilt, and put the Sutherland plaid wool dress over herself and slept very heavily.

The morning following she had a difficult time awakening. She coughed until the iron taste of blood came to her mouth and then she lay back carefully until it stopped. After a while she took up one of the handkerchiefs and wiped her mouth and hands. She ate one of the sweet potatoes and then spread out the Log Cabin quilt to repair it and spent several hours at it with needle and thread. All the edge binding was now sewn back. It was not such a long task.

She turned the twelve-inch hem on the brass-colored silk twill that she had stolen, that had waved its angel arms at her, and cut strips from it. She began to replace the disintegrated silk organza with them. Several times she heard a troop of teamsters and perhaps soldiers go by but she scrunched down in the corner and didn’t look out.

Always in the distance she could hear the sound of the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad engines, their long wailing. Like the beginning note sounded by a choirmaster for a phantom choir that never sang.

The next morning she did not cough so much, or at least there was no blood. She combed her hair and rebraided it. The ankle-jacks had entirely busted out, and the soles were coming loose from the uppers. She sat and stitched them together again with the sewing thread and she knew they would not hold much longer. The Military Road was broad and well traveled.

Lord! she called out in a strenuous voice. What do you want? She walked on down the road. What do you want that I might live? That I might find my family all well and then go with the major to the western places?

At the town of DeSoto she saw the United States flag flying over the post office. She walked into the small brick bank and asked the man behind the counter if he could change the twenty-five-dollar gold piece. She had spent all her silver dollars looking after her little sisters and now had only this gold piece that their father had left to them. She lifted her round black eyes to the clerk.

Well, of course, Miss, said the clerk. Of course.

The clerk gave her twenty-five U.S. silver dollars and a small canvas
sack to carry them in. So she crossed over the town creek on a wooden bridge with her long heavy hems dragging. She went into a general merchandise store to see what they had.

There was a good stock of things come from St. Louis. She bought a warm jacket. It was a bright red Zouave jacket with black cuffs. Some soldier’s jacket abandoned for regulation blue. Although it was somewhat too big Adair liked it very much and was pleased with it. She bought hard crackers, dried beef, and a wheel of cheese. She chose some Lucifer matches and a small steel saucepan. She paid too much for the saucepan, but it was very good and she had never seen a steel one before. This was all she would buy, for the rest of her money had to last her, as far as she knew, for the rest of her life.

She drank a pint of milk sitting in the store. While she drank it she heard the noise of a troop of men marching, their step and the concerted clash of their equipage. It was a squad of Union mounted infantry and at the front an officer on a yellow horse. The clerk went to the window to look at them.

Adair stayed in the store. The one street of the town was filled to the brim with the noise of fifty horses clattering through and the windowpanes in the stores reflected them piecemeal. The soldiers fell out of formation and tied their horses. One stood guard and the others walked off to go and sit on the raised boardwalks or drink at the town well. One dropped the bucket and cranked it up for the others to fill their canteens or bottles. The windlass made a shrieking scree-aw scree-aw sound.

The officer came into the store. Adair sat on a barrel with her carpet sack and bundle at her feet and drank her milk. He regarded her for long seconds in her bright red jacket and her lilac straw hat and her green brocade bedroom slippers.

We’re missing a man, said the officer.

Well, said the clerk.

Some of the men come to drink at Mosier’s Grocery and they all came back to barracks but one.

The clerk said, Mosier’s Grocery is half a mile on down the road.

I know it, said the officer. But people drink there that come from all over.

Well, I never seen a lone soldier or heard anything about it, said the clerk. He was nervous. I never even seen anybody go past. But I live back on the old Blackwell Ferry Road.

All right, said the officer. Hildebrand is running loose all over this part of the country and you know it and I know it. He’s stealing horses and shooting Federals.

Well, I don’t know, I live back there on the Blackwell Ferry Road and never see much of anything of an evening. The clerk lined up several boxes of biscuit powder and wiped his hands on his wool pants.

Young woman, said the officer. Are you from this town here?

Adair said, No, sir. I have a commission with the Lord.

He paused. Well, are you staying here?

I’m going down to the St. Francis to see my sister. I come from Carondelet.

Do you have a pass to travel?

No, sir. We got word she had twins and I just started out directly to help her. They wouldn’t let me on the train. Adair looked into her milk bottle and swirled the milk around. So I don’t know, I just started.

Well, get a pass here before long. Get one at Iron Mountain.

All right.

You just fill out the application. Can you read and write?

Yes, sir.

Well, get it done.

He turned out the door and left and Adair and the clerk watched him go. He crossed the street to the blacksmith shop.

The clerk said, You got to have a pass just to go from one town to another. Ain’t that something?

Here’s your bottle. Adair handed him the bottle and two cents. I’ll just sit here till they go.

You make yourself at home, said the clerk. So Adair sat in the warm sunlight coming in the window until she saw the Union troops had all left.

Then she stood in the road and yelled after them,

Y’all come back soon. Don’t be a stranger!

19

[Missouri Union Militia] troops frequently upset the security of the civilians they were supposed to be protecting. Federal officers themselves often reported being driven frantic by the mob-like activities of the troops ostensibly under their command. The Lieutenant Colonel who had just taken command at the [Union] garrison of Warsaw [Missouri] in August 1863, wrote his commander that “our soldiery” had committed “six murders within the last ten or twelve days. . . .There is a feeling of insecurity universally prevailing with the peaceable citizens . . .all in this place that can get conveyances express an intention of leaving. There is no discipline whatever exercised over the soldiers here, which, added to the indiscriminate sale of liquor, renders the soldiers fiends rather than soldiers. The best citizens here have been menaced with death by the soldiers.”

—L
IEUTENANT
C
OLONEL
T. A. S
WITZLER TO
B
RIGADIER
G
ENERAL
E. B. B
ROWN,
W
ARSAW,
M
ISSOURI,
A
UGUST
11, 1863, OR,
QUOTED IN
Inside War

In 1863 . . .I was to go to Maryland [from Warsaw, Missouri] and visit relatives until peace was restored . . .because of threats to burn the house over my mother’s head if I remained inasmuch as my husband was in the Rebel army. In 1864, while in Maryland, I received word that Major Rainwater had been dangerously wounded at Ditch Bayou and wished me to come to him. . . .[After arriving in St. Louis] the plan was to go by boat, be transferred to the gunboat patrolling between Helena, Arkansas, and Vicksburg, and get the Captain to put us ashore at Columbus Arkansas. . . .There was a detective on the boat whose duty was to search all baggage for contraband goods, such as
Confederate gray cloth, letters, gold coins &c. . . .We had all gray cloth in make-believe underskirts. . . .To our dismay we passed the patrol gunboat in a fog at night. . . .About dusk the Captain and his Lieutenant came up to see
how we were getting along. . . .almost immediately we heard the report of a gun and then another. . . .in a moment the firing seemed general and we thought the Confederates had made a dash sure enough. Our own Captain, Miss Miller, was equal to the emergency. Her order was, come help bar the door and now girls drop on the floor and be out of range of the bullets.