Jacob's Ladder (16 page)

LETTER FROM CORPORAL CATESBY
BYRD TO HIS WIFE, LEONA

C
AMP
B
ARTOW
, V
IRGINIA
S
EPTEMBER
16, 1861

DEAREST HEART,

Though we have been damp and moldering these last weeks, I am dry at last, feet before a fire. While Duncan and other officers of the gallant 44th are quartered with families in the village, Corporal Fisher and I have a nearly weathertight shed to ourselves and the amiable Private Ryals totes our water and hews our wood. The steaming socks dangling before our fire are a perfect reminder of the tired feet that have inhabited them during painful marches through these weary western mountains.

Your brother, Duncan, is an indifferent correspondent but promises he wrote you while in the hospital in Staunton. The measles that afflicted him sickened a good many others, and cholera has plucked several boys from our ranks—boys latterly so hearty and patriotic. Few avoid “soldier's disease”: the desperate quickstep to a necessary or the sinks we've dug. With sickness and desertion, our numbers are half those we mustered in the gay days in Richmond. How we paraded! What figures we cut! How jolly war seemed! The man who enrolled me in our country's service, Duncan's friend Spaulding, has departed for the army outside Washington. Though Spaulding's kinsman Colonel A. P. Hill did not distinguish himself at the battle of Manassas, when Hill wrote of a vacancy on his staff, Spaulding abandoned the gloryless 44th with no visible regrets.

Doubtless my ill humor will depart me after my socks dry and the sun plays once again upon the western mountains. When food was plentiful and meals regularly presented, I was an indifferent eater. Darling, I am cured! Hardtack soaked in coffee seems ambrosia to me now, and tonight when four of us devour a commandeered rooster, it will be a feast fit for a king.

Though these mountains are the same range that buttresses Stratford Plantation, extreme western Virginia is unlike the soft valleys of home. Here, instead of broad, fertile river valleys are hard ridges which climb sharply from narrow brush-choked bottoms. Instead of fat cattle and thick-fleeced sheep, starved creatures. Instead of plenty, poverty. Here are no enthusiastic patriots but sharp-featured men who shoot at our columns from the safety of the woods and slatterns who do not answer when we ask directions. Some of our soldiers mutter that we should let the Federals occupy all this land—that our Confederacy can do quite well absent western Virginia's wilderness.

Despite the success of Confederate arms at Manassas (why didn't Beauregard crown his victory by capturing the federal capital?), in these mountains we are everywhere routed. Our new commanding general, Robert Lee, designed a grand strategy which less failed than fizzled. Our regiment, I regret to say, got itself lost en route to the battle and was forced to hear the distant engagement from the wrong side of the mountain, our wagons, ambulances, and guns so deeply mired in the mud they skidded on their bottoms like children's toboggans.

That night, our morale already pretty well sunk, we bivouacked on a steep mountainside in the rain. About midnight a bear blundered into our encampment, smashing shelters and tents, entangling himself in tent ropes, and waking every sleeper with colossal roars. It was pitch-dark and pouring rain, and had the enemies of our new Confederacy been present to witness our brave boys rushing to and fro, lighting up the night with musket flashes, which proved more hazardous to ourselves than the bear (two men wounded—the bear escaped unhurt), I cannot doubt they should have taken great comfort from the sight.

I was so happy to come home and be with you and our children. Last month's idyll seems a lifetime ago. I trust that by now you know pretty well how things will be in nine months. Colonel Scott is reluctant to grant furloughs. The Tidewater boys hate all mountains, and after they go home to their loved ones, they find desertion more appealing than a return to this country of mildew and misery.

I know how much you hated closing our own dear home and returning under your father's roof at Stratford. I suppose it must seem as if you, our children's mother, have become once again your father's child. But I am not certain this war will end as swiftly as our patriots hope, and if it goes on longer the Federal blockade of our ports must start to bite, and you and the children will be better off where food is plentiful. Stratford has many hands to lighten your burden and look after you if you fall ill or must endure a difficult pregnancy.

I pray you seize an opportunity to speak with your father on Duncan's behalf. If Duncan sinned—and doubtless he did—his sin was no worse than the sins of countless other young boys faced with that temptation and no very strong proscription against it. Although I never took a servant wench, some of my young friends did, and I believe my chastity was less from better morals than lack of temptation—none of our house servants was as handsome as Duncan's inamorata. Duncan is punished not for what he did but for the sin of owning up to it, which, if we were honest, we would admire rather than deplore. Your father's actions caused Duncan great distress, though I cannot think what else Samuel might have done. Should he have let the two marry? I do not know if there is anywhere in either nation that would have accepted their union. And Maggie's child (I do not call it Duncan's child because it cannot ever be his child), what will become of him? Poor infant, so innocent of the world!

Your father sometimes has a blinkered view of what is best for his family, but he loves us all. Should you persuade Samuel to write, I believe Duncan would be happy to resume more familiar relations. Perhaps Abigail can put in a word with Samuel.

Though your brother lost flesh during his illness, he is improved and in good spirits. The most junior of the regiment's second lieutenants, Duncan is popular with the men, and his previous military training is of advantage. All this drill, this military punctiliousness, allows men who know each other only slightly to perform complex maneuvers in the fierce confusions of battle. (Though I confess I don't understand why we must as cheerfully obey a fool's orders as those produced by a man of sense.)

Duncan has just now come in, streaming wet, and is backed to our fire. He is damper than a raincloud come indoors! Duncan is eyeing our rooster with more avidity than seems proper.

Your brother sends you his affection. Please remember me to our children, and your mother and father.

I sign myself, your Devoted Husband,

Catesby

COUSIN MOLLY

R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
N
OVEMBER
12, 1861

SALLIE'S PENITENTIARY LIFE
was fragments overheard, dreams of the past, and her fingertips, adjusting the warp of her strands of wool. Forty warps, then five wefts; forty and five, forty and five.

Twelve hours at the loom, forty minutes for each meal, seated beside other silent women, the scrape of tin on tin, the relentless mastication of jaws; no more conversation than cows at a manger. Sallie sometimes thought to whisper to the wretch seated next to her—a pale-faced fat woman who mashed her food with blunt, toothless gums. Sallie might say, “Did you sleep well last night?” or “My home is in the mountains—where is your home?” But Sallie had learned a few things and would not give way to momentary satisfactions. If she broke her silence, warders would bear her from the room and take her to her the punishment cell, and there she would sit while eternity played itself out.

The warders talked as freely around the convicts as if the convicts had lost hearing as well as the exercise of speech. According to the warders, the confederate victory at Balls Bluff was a salutary check on the Federals' pride, but Sallie detected wishful thinking in their confidence.

Sallie's whitewashed cell was tall and airy, with a wooden hook to hang her dress. When the sun disappeared over the James, the barred window that was her sole source of light went to black. In the spring it would be warmer.

She had done more harm than good; she had held her head too high.

Thrice daily she saw Alexander when the women filed into the eating room the men were vacating. Alexander wore that look: that blank childlike expression—nothing could hurt him because nobody was at home. Wearing his slight smile, he marched mechanically, one hand upon the shoulder of the prisoner ahead. Alexander might march that way forever.

“The Professor,” the warders called him.

Most prisoners were mulattos or Irish from Richmond's Shockoe Bottom, imprisoned for assault, highway robbery, burglary. The women prisoners were passers of counterfeit or confidence tricksters, or accomplices. There were two murderesses, a tall gray-skinned mulatto from Norfolk who'd stabbed her lover as he slept, and the toothless woman who ate beside Sallie every meal. Who she'd killed Sallie never did learn.

The warders' talk fell upon Sallie's ears like the gossip of kings, each word cherished, to be examined in privacy afterward. The acting keeper, Mr. Tyree, was said to be a “hincty nigger,” which phrase she turned over in her mind for an evening. The prison was “lousy with Micks.” Jefferson Davis was “crazy as a bedbug.” (Once a month, she emptied her straw tick into the heap for burning, and she thought of Jefferson Davis while the bedbugs hopped and crackled in the flames.)

One afternoon, at her loom (“forty and five”), the workshop warder touched Sallie's shoulder and beckoned her to accompany him, which she did, made fearful by the novelty.

The keeper's house faced the sally port like a sentry's challenge. New prisoners were delivered to its whitewashed prisoners' parlor to become acquainted with the venerable traditions and mores of prison life. There a warder issued clothing with the alternating black and white stripes that had given the prisoners their nickname: Zebras. There were no female warders: a wizened black trusty found rags for their monthlies and attended to their complaints. The acting keeper, Mr. Tyree, was a free black who never made an appearance without his brushed homburg and ironed sleeve protectors. Mr. Tyree was invariably present when new prisoners were welcomed in that stony room, but he neither lifted a hand nor passed out clothing.

After the rules had been explained (ten lashes for disobedience, two weeks in the punishment cells for breaking silence), Mr. Tyree spoke his welcome. “I am Acting Keeper Tyree. If you repent, reexamine your conduct, and obey without exception those regulations to which your crime has made you subject, I will not speak to you again. If I speak to you again, you will wish I had not.”

Mr. Tyree's superior, the governor's appointed keeper, Mr. Blackwell, listed penitentiary duty among many other duties of a mercantile and governmental nature. The first Sunday of every month, Blackwell attended the penitentiary chapel, where he produced a homily for the prisoners' edification; day-to-day matters were left to Mr. Tyree.

Whenever Blackwell entered the penitentiary the smile wilted from his face, and Mr. Tyree's somber attitude did nothing to restore it. In truth Blackwell had no occasion for complaint: no drunken warders, no offenses to morality, and no escapes. The penitentiary books were exact and scrupulous: the income from the clothing woven for the madhouse and orphanages had produced a profit of some ten thousand the year before, and the present work manufacturing blouses for the Confederate army promised even better returns.

The penitentiary did not intrude upon Mr. Blackwell's attention, and he had Mr. Tyree to thank. Indeed, why should a penitentiary be merry? It should be a solemn place, officiated over by solemn men like Tyree.

If Mr. Tyree had a first name, the keeper didn't know it. If Mr. Tyree had a home in Richmond, a family, Mr. Tyree must have visited them on Sunday afternoons, which were the only hours he could not be found at his duties.

Sallie's warder banged the brass door knocker, which was shaped like a crouching lion. “Peters, sir,” he bawled, “with Female Convict Kirkpatrick.”

The entry hall had the smell of a room that wasn't often used, and moisture had invaded the glass that framed the lithographs. They were “Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham,” “Old Ironsides,” “Lafayette Arriving at Mount Vernon.” Sallie stood downcast and demure.

When Mr. Tyree stepped into the hall, he pulled the parlor door shut behind him.

“You are satisfied here?” His voice was austere.

“Sir?”

“Your treatment has been fair? You have received adequate nourishment?”

“Oh. Yes sir.”

“See that you say so. Are there signs of discontent among the other convicts?”

“I cannot speak for those to whom I do not speak.”

“And I will not abide insolence.”

“Having no knowledge of the overall management of this institution, I can hardly remark upon it.”

Mr. Tyree's eyes were black as hard coal, as if all the blackness in his chalky complexion had drained into them. His eyebrows were so thin Sallie wondered if he plucked them. He templed his fingertips. “If Jefferson Davis's daughter had been remanded into my care, she would receive treatment no different from, neither better nor worse than, that received by the bastard daughter of a scullery maid.”

He seemed to expect comment.

“In Keeper Blackwell's absence I am responsible,” he continued.

Sallie kept silence.

“A man who fails his responsibilities is a low creature.”

Sallie could think of nothing.

“Very well,” Mr. Tyree said. “Just so we understand each other.”

The unofficial parlor of the keeper's house was identical in size, though not in furnishings, to the grim parlor where prisoners were welcomed. The woman beside the inadequate fire was round on the bottom and round on top. She was round in the face and her arms were round and her hair was pulled back in a round bun. “Good afternoon, dear,” Cousin Molly said in a cheerful tone. “My, we have got ourselves into difficulties, haven't we?”

And that quick Sallie's eyes filled with tears and she couldn't do a thing to stem them.

“You may reply, Female Convict Kirkpatrick,” the acting keeper said. “Mrs. Semple has come to the penitentiary especially to interview you.”

“Why did you locate so near Tredegar's?” The round woman made a face. “The smoke is dreadful. Just dreadful.”

“I believe we predate Tredegar's, ma'am,” the acting keeper said.

“Can't you ask Tredegar's to smoke less? I know they must be forging guns and swords, but must they be so smoky about it? You'll have your share of respiratory diseases, I'd venture.” Her eyes were oval, brown, and shrewd.

“Why, I . . .”

“All these people in your care. Malefactors, to be sure, but none of their sentences include death by asphyxiation.” The round woman extracted a silk square from her half-moon recticule and coughed into it. Twice. “Never you mind,” she said, suddenly gay. “I suppose we must all make sacrifices. Now, Keeper, I would not detain you for another minute. I know you have important responsibilities. So many lives in your hands, just imagine. I am sure General Johnson has no greater responsibilities.”

“Well, I did think I might . . .”

“And I am certain you shall, Acting Keeper! I am certain you shall!” She held her beaming smile on Tyree until that worthy closed the door behind him. Cousin Molly took a deep breath. “You do remember me?” she asked in a kinder tone.

“From Christmases at Stratford, yes, ma'am. You always accumulate the children.”

“Say rather that the children accumulate me. They know a sentimental, childless fool when they see one. I am first cousin to Abigail Gatewood, on her father's side. He was a Semple from Southside. I have always thought Christmas is for children. We adults relive our joys through theirs.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Sallie looked at the floor.

“Well, dear. You have got yourself in a fix, haven't you?” She gestured at the shabby gentility of the keeper's parlor. “I mean, all this.”

Sallie looked up. “If you have come to condemn me, madam, there are others with prior claims.”

“Child, I . . .”

“Having no personal or familial acquaintance with me, you have satisfied your duty to your cousin and need not trouble yourself to visit again.”

Cousin Molly laughed, a round woman's laugh. “I begin to understand how you find yourself in this predicament. Abigail wrote and asked that I look in on you, but at the time we were overwhelmed by the Manassas wounded—I will not describe our confusion, crossed purposes, the needless suffering. By the time we put things right, it was October, and then we moved to Camp Winder and . . . Oh, dear, where was I?”

“I fear I don't know, ma'am,” and tears began leaking from Sallie's eyes, and she was ashamed.

Cousin Molly dove into her recticule for a fresh silk square. “My dear, my dear . . .”

While Sallie dried her eyes, Cousin Molly extracted neat packages from that recticule. “I am informed there is no prohibition against supplementing the Commonwealth's provisions,” she began, “and have provided you with the same parcel we provide to wounded soldiers: some good soap, a square of cheese, a huzzit for repairing one's garments. I have not included tobacco. You don't use it”—her eyes grew serious—“do you?”

“Oh no, ma'am.”

“Abigail writes that your father, Uther, is well, though not in the best of spirits. Abigail makes a point of speaking with him at church. Quite a pleasant chapel, SunRise's, so airy and light. And the singing from the colored loft, how unusually vigorous. In his sermon last Christmas, your Preacher Todd”—she glowered—“heaped overmuch praise on predestination. If a person cannot effect her own salvation, then what is the point of ironing her underthings?”

“Suppose, madam, one were suddenly upset on the street?”

Cousin Molly contemplated the imagined spectacle. “There is that. I suppose one must put a good face on things. Though one's face might be one's bottom.”

The two women eyed each other in silence for seconds before Sallie entrusted a timid smile.

“There is always a crowd of men outside the Exchange Hotel. The gentlemen, one hopes, would avert their eyes. One fears laughter. Or worse, applause.”

Because Cousin Molly visualized the scene so clearly, Sallie, who had never seen the Exchange Hotel in her life, nor its gentlemen, began to see it too. And it was Cousin Molly she pictured, upended, presenting her hind parts to their gaze, and Sallie smothered her giggles in her palm as Cousin Molly beamed.

Sallie begged for news. Cousin Molly said her nephew Duncan had been ill but had recovered. She said there was little war news, but the government had high hopes of British and French recognition. “Since the armies are in winter camp, things are quiet at the hospitals, and I shall certainly find occasion for visits. For my dear cousin's sake.” She paused. “It is a dreadful fix you find yourself in, but there's no use complaining. God did not grant us strength because He thought we wouldn't require it.”