Jacob's Ladder (53 page)

Silas extracted several coins without examining them.

“Oh, forty dollars. How generous, Mr. Omohundru. With a cargo worth tens of thousands, you find forty dollars for the brave men fighting for our new nation. You don't know my husband, Mr. Omohundru? No, I suppose not. Colonel DeRossette says all the best gentlemen are in the army.”

Silas bowed a deep mocking bow. “There is no need to thank me tonight, Mrs. DeRossette. No doubt I'll be seeing you again on the morrow.”

She flushed but withdrew with intact smile. Silas's clerk breathed quietly through open mouth and wished he were elsewhere.

MacGregor was the last man off the
Wild Darrell.
Deliberately, he uncorked a fresh bottle of whiskey and offered it to Silas before taking a pull. “After a dangerous voyage, that does taste good,” he said.

When Silas didn't reply, MacGregor beamed satisfaction. “Not that I'd touch a drop when I'm at the wheel. No sir. I've learned my lesson.” He watched the stevedores for a moment. “It's good to see the boys hard at it. I'll lift anchor Wednesday night with the tide. The Federals aren't near so sharp in the middle of the dark moon. What war news?”

“General Early's approaching Washington,” the clerk said.

“Well, maybe he'll take the city and put us all out of business.” MacGregor smiled.

“Fort Fisher's telegraph reported you had trouble tonight.”

MacGregor held his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart. “A bit. We were slipping into the New Inlet when some damn fool coughed, and one of their lookouts heard and fired a flare to fetch his pals. Now, several voyages past, in Nassau, I was talking to a whaler skipper who happened to have on board a full battery of the very same signal flares our Federal blockaders employ. So, what do you think? Soon as their lookout fires his flare, I start firing mine, only off to the south, you know, like I'm signaling that the rascal blockade runner is running out to sea. They believe my flares, and within minutes half the Federal fleet is steaming south after a will-o'-the-wisp.” He took another swallow. “May they continue until they strike Patagonia!”

“Patagonia,” the clerk agreed.

“You'll be along?” MacGregor asked.

Silas nodded. “As soon as I'm certain of the unloading.”

“Don't forget to bring our friend.” MacGregor pointed at the money bag.

Every window glowed in the City Hotel, and on the second-floor landing, a seaman had a whore pressed against the wall, skirt above her waist. When Silas passed, the look she fired over the seaman's hunched shoulder was so enraged Silas recoiled.

Silas's money bag deflated like an empty pig's bladder. MacGregor got his three thousand and notioned that next voyage he'd want five hundred more. The clerk summoned up courage to ask Silas for a raise, noting that capable shipper's clerks were much in demand. MacGregor was dancing with a fat young whore, whiskey bottle pressed against her back. Several sailors recounted the ruse with the flares. Silas sipped at his glass of rum, and when one of the British seamen started undressing his whore, he left quietly by the back stairs, where Mingo was waiting with his carriage.

Outside the blazing penumbra of the riverfront, Wilmington was asleep, and the clip-clop of their hoof beats was the only sound. Silas's rented mansion had been built four years earlier, only two blocks beyond the expanding city's streetlamps.

The house was enclosed by an elaborate ironwork fence. Silas clicked the gate open quietly.

Marguerite and the child were asleep on a settee. The child lay with his face pressed against his mother's neck. Silas could see so much of Marguerite in the boy. Her dimpled cheeks, her fine high forehead, her slightly pointed chin.

He dimmed the lantern, drew the drapes, covered Marguerite with the wrap that had slid to her feet. In the basement, Kizzy had a kettle on the stove, and Silas made himself a cup of strong Jamaican coffee.

He wound his watch. It would be light in an hour.

Upstairs, he pulled a cushion into the window seat and stretched his legs out. He sipped the scalding-hot brew.

“Silas?”

“My dear, I did not mean to wake you.”

“We waited for you, oh, forever. . . .”

“You know I must make an appearance at the crew's celebration. The crew must have their champagne and I must pretend to savor their merriment, although I would prefer to remain with the ship. MacGregor is drinking again. Though he does not drink on board—he knows I would not stand for that—he openly debauches in port. I pretend our earlier agreement is not breached. I nod and smile. Damn the man! He knows I cannot find another pilot.”

“It was a good voyage?”

“It was a near thing. They got through New Inlet by a ruse. The boys thought it quite the best joke. If MacGregor's stratagem had failed, they would have been driven aground, and on that shore, recovering our cargo would have been hopeless. Shoes for the army. Salt for preserving meat. Lead, fourteen stands of Enfield rifles, barrels of horseshoes, two Parrot guns . . .”

“Well, it did get in safely. And while the crew celebrates, you can sleep. Silas, I wish you wouldn't worry so.”

“Our new nation could use a great deal more worry! Worry is just the thing! Lee besieged by Grant in Petersburg. Sherman drives toward Altanta. I have told them in Richmond they must regulate the blockade-running, and they smile and eat peanuts and spit tobacco and do nothing. Tonight, the
Banshee
was full to its scuppers with gewgaws.”

“The ladies will have their new hats.”

“And they will have champagne and they will have silks. Mrs. DeRossette ships cognac-scented cologne instead of chloroform because chloroform does not return the same profit. And the DeRossettes are Wilmington's grandest family. Damn her! Tonight she had the effrontery to pun about ‘the bar.' The bar at the river mouth, or the bar sinister. These fine families lack every talent save one: by God they can sniff out bastardy. Wretched woman!”

Marguerite laid Jacob in the lined trunk that served him as a bed and quelled his sleepy protest with a kiss. When she opened the drapes, faint light foretold dawn. “Will you come to bed, darling?”

“I cannot sleep.” He rubbed his eyes. “I leave for Richmond Thursday. Will you accompany me?”

“Dearest heart, I wish to oblige you in every particular, but you know I cannot.”

“No man would dare denounce you.”

“Silas, if I am denounced, Jacob loses everything.”

“And the child is your chief concern.”

“Silas, do not set yourself against our son.”

“Our son? Your son rather. Somehow we have not been blessed with issue.”

“I . . .”

“Do you take me for a fool? Will you suggest your barrenness is my doing?”

“Please, Silas . . .”

“That damn pickaninny is not my son!”

“Yet you do not scruple, any more than his father did, to bring a colored woman to your bed! Oh, Silas, please stop. Our quarrel has awakened Jacob.”

The boy clambered out of his little bed and toddled sleepily across the floor with his arms outstretched. He clutched his mother's legs.

Like heart pine that burns hot but briefly, Silas slumped, clamping one white-knuckled hand over the other. “Dearest . . . I do not know what comes over me. At every turn I encounter new obstacles. I have been ungracious to you and rude to the child. Pray comfort him as you can.”

The child's tear-stained face tore at Marguerite's heart; Jacob's fear of Silas hardened it.

“I do apologize most sincerely,” Silas said.

She laid her hand on the boy's warm sleepy head. “Silas, we are drawing apart. You and I can deceive the world until the last trump. But you I cannot deceive. Jacob is just a little boy, Silas. His little heart loves you. Every evening he asks, ‘When Daddy come home?' in the most heartrending fashion.”

Thumb in mouth, the boy squirmed around to check on the big noisy man. He buried his face in the safety of his mother's legs.

“Silas, you are a good man. You are the best of men. You have traveled a great distance to become as you are. . . .”

“But?”

“I do not believe you will ever love my son.”

Silas leaned back and shut his eyes. His voice was so soft it was hard to hear. “As a boy, I was invariably invited to the Fourth of July celebration at the Omohundrus. My mother was anxious I attend, hoping, I suppose, that I might obtain preference among the family that had shunned her since my birth. On that lawn, among the gaily dressed family and guests, I was the only white bastard. My darker half brothers and sisters served punch and took coats and brought the carriages around. My father—as my legitimate brother so elegantly put it—‘would jump a knothole if it'd stand still.' ”

“Silas . . .”

“I always wore my best suit for the occasion—my mother brushed it scrupulously—but it was invariably out of fashion. I assumed my best manners, which were, I imagine, odd. They were always courteous to the strange boy. By no single word did they ever show less than kind awareness of my sensibilities—and inferior condition. They all had money—or had had money—or could marry money. They knew each other by first names or nicknames used only within their circle. They spoke of England as if they'd arrived on these shores last week and might return there tomorrow.

“Yet, my legitimate brother defrauded ordinary businessmen as if it were his right! What distinguishes man from gentleman if honor does not?”

“We are an impediment to you,” Marguerite said softly.

He opened his eyes. “Dearest, I have never loved another woman. Before I met you, I had thought I would spend my life alone.”

“I do not wish . . . I cannot accompany you to Richmond. Every moment I spend in the capital is an agony of apprehension.” She lifted the boy and snuggled him into her shoulder. “My darling, I too yearn for something better. If you and I are slightly . . . peculiar, Jacob can be completely, unarguably ordinary.”

“And we?”

“Silas, I am a colored woman, though I pretend otherwise and may, by the grace of God, make the pretense real. You are a man of business, respected by your government.”

“But no gentleman.”

“Silas, must you clutch every disappointment to your bosom? Oh, Silas—now I have hurt you.”

Cold light leaked through the windows over Silas's thin shoulders. He licked his dry lips. “My word is my bond,” Silas said. “I treat others fairly. I am courteous to inferiors. My fool clerk tells me I must pay him more else he will leave me, and I listen with a smile. I attend those seamen's damnable celebrations. Every one!”

“And your son will be a gentleman.”

“I sometimes think I am not brave enough. That with more courage I could sweep all before me. If I bought two more blockade runners with my profits, they could not ignore me.”

“Perhaps Mrs. DeRossette could not. But would she invite you into her home? Would she wish Jacob to marry into her family?”

“I dare not do it. I dare not. This business is nearly finished. Should Lincoln lose the election, the war is over, and if he is reelected, the Federals will grind us to dust. I cannot risk my fortune entirely. I cannot.”

Tenderly Marguerite kissed Silas's forehead. “Your coffee is cold,” she announced. “And it is dawn. I have become accustomed to our newfangled kitchen and hot water at any hour of the day or night and will make fresh coffee. Although I wish you'd sleep, you will return to the wharves to see to the
Wild Darrell.”

“And distribute gifts. I cannot trust my clerk to do it.”

Marguerite and Jacob went downstairs to make coffee. Her head was a swirl with possibility. She hiked the boy onto the counter. “You sit for a moment, Jacob. Kizzy'll make your breakfast soon.”

“Is Daddy mad at me?”

“Oh, how could he be, sweetheart? You are his dearest boy.”

Wrinkling his brow, Jacob pronounced, “Father is unhappy. Why can't he get what he wants?”

Marguerite was taken aback by the boy's penetration and smiled in lieu of an answer. It was too easy forget how much the child saw. She made coffee the way Silas liked it and poured it into his favorite cup.

When she came upstairs, gold sunlight silhouetted Silas in the window seat. “How many blockade runners docked last night?”

“Three, including the
Darrell.”

“But I understand the Federals have cut the railroad below Petersburg.”

“General Lee uses wagons to bypass the severed portion.”

“So nothing prevents our goods traveling where they are most in demand?”

He shrugged. “The Federal cavalry makes raids. They weren't so bold when General Stuart was alive.”

“Silas, do you think me prudent?”

He smiled. “Too prudent sometimes.”

“Please, do take me seriously.”

“Dearest, I have always taken you with the utmost seriousness.”

“Who does our household accounts? Have you ever had occasion to complain?”

He stretched. “How could I complain of perfection?”

“Silas! Please!”

“Shall we go down to the wharves and breakfast on oysters and crab cakes?”

“Of course we shall. And afterward we'll go to your office and you will instruct me in a clerk's duties. Your present clerk will remain in his post while I learn, because you will provide him with a comfortable bonus. While I do the mundane work of your business, you can stay in Richmond advising the government. Oh, do not say no. Consider, Silas. Your new clerk will be perfectly loyal, cannot be seduced away, will always have your best interests at heart. Silas, if we are condemned to be peculiar, let us be peculiar indeed.”

JINE THE CAVALRY

N
EAR
B
OYCE
, V
IRGINIA
J
ULY
22, 1864

If you want to have a good time,

If you want to have a good time,

If you want to have a good time,

Jine the cavalry!

THAT WAS THE
tune Ollie was plucking on his banjo when the Federal courier rode into the partisan rangers' camp. Baxter was sharpening a saber, Captain Stump was smoking his pipe, Alexander was getting drunk, a dozen others were already rolled in their blankets. Perhaps from their mismatched blue uniforms the Federal courier mistook them for friends; probably he didn't expect partisan rangers to be bivouacked so near the Federal army. It was after midnight, and maybe he was tired enough to mistake their campfire's glow for comfort.

The courier had grit; credit him. When he recognized his mistake, he drew his revolver, leveled it at Baxter, and cried, “Surrender, sir!” He swiveled to call into the darkness behind him, “Sergeant Maxwell! If these rebels don't lay down their arms give them a volley!”

Baxter dove for the bush, and blankets flew as men rolled out.

Captain Stump said pleasantly, “Will somebody please shoot that boy's horse?”

Pistols cracked and the horse dropped to its knees as though somebody'd poleaxed it and the revolver flew from the courier's hand and he went over his horse's neck as the horse collapsed with a groan.

Ollie picked up his banjo. One of the rangers collected the courier's pistol. “Jack Smith, you got any use for a forty-four?”

The courier got to hands and knees. Like most of the Federal couriers he was slight, no more than 130 pounds.

“If you run for it, you'll soon be dead as your horse.” Captain Stump tamped fresh tobacco into his pipe and commenced puffing white smoke. “What outfit you with, boy?”

“Vermont Brigade.”

“Long way from home, ain't you?”

“Been farther. Gettysburg, Cold Harbor. Farther. What kind of outfit's this?” The courier picked up his kepi and knocked it against his leg. He was pinch-faced, fair-haired.

“We”—the captain gestured—“are Stump's Partisan Rangers. You'll find us where the fight's the hottest, where the minié balls are flying . . .”

“Where the wallets are full,” Alexander Kirkpatrick added, “and the gold watches numerous. We are hell-raisers, we are.” His whiskey was coarse and hot, and he gagged and belched bile.

“Always did want to shoot that boy.” Ollie picked out “Cavaliers of Dixie” on his tinny banjo.

The captain smiled benevolently. “Hell, the Professor provides refinement.”

The rangers who'd been rudely awakened stood just inside the campfire's circle pissing into the darkness.

Captain Stump shook his head. “Alexander, how 'bout you share your whiskey with our prisoner. It was Federal whiskey once.”

Alexander made to toss the bottle, but the courier declined with a contemptuous glare.

“Baxter,” Stump said, “raise up and pluck them government saddlebags from that horse and fetch them here. Vermont, don't give it a second thought. My men are crack shots and you wouldn't get ten feet. How'd you get them corporal's stripes? Didn't know the Federals were promotin' foolish boys.”

The courier's face was deadpan. “Got 'em for killin' Johnnies. Was a sergeant until they busted me. I'm workin' my way back. Two, three more dead Johnnies and I'll be sergeant again.”

Ollie set his banjo down.

“Naw, Ollie. You keep playin' music. We won't need you just yet.” Captain Stump extracted an oilskin pouch from a saddlebag, untied a document, and crinkled his face. “Professor! My eyes are hurtin'. Tell me what this says.”

“Nothing more hurtful to the eyes than the written word,” Alexander remarked.

“I ain't killed you yet!” Captain Stump aimed his pipe at him.

“And I am everlastingly grateful,” Alexander replied. He flipped through the dispatches: “Communications between the Federal War Office and General Crook. Two of his officers are promoted, a court-martial report, orders for Crook to move on Kernstown, da, da, da, cooperate with General Hunter, da, da, da, drive General Early's army from the Valley.”

“You think Early should see that?”

“Has he got anyone with him who can read?”

“Oh hell, they're regulars. 'Course they can read!” To the courier, Captain Stump said, “He talks funny, but the Professor's all right. He's got one of your Spencer carbines. Alexander can't shoot good, but he can shoot fast. Want to bet he can't hit you before you reach the woods?”

“Only him?” The boy's eyes lit up with interest.

Stump scratched his head and inspected his discovery. “How about him and Ollie?”

The boy snorted. “Naw. He's got to shoot better'n he picks the banjo.”

Ollie looked up with interest. “You pick?”

“Naw. But I heard it picked.”

“Cap'n, how 'bout we kill this son of a bitch?”

“Ollie, you are meaner'n a cross dog. Suppose you carry that dispatch to General Early. Ride hard and you'll strike Early's pickets before daybreak.”

Ollie wrapped his banjo and tied it behind his saddle. “I got a sister down by Woodstock,” he said. “I'll be back in a couple days.”

“If that girl is your sister, what you do with her is gonna get you condemned to the hottest part of hell.”

“So long as you be there with me.” Ollie clucked and disappeared into the night.

“Here's something in our line of work,” Alexander said. “A supply train from Leesburg, small cavalry escort, rations, medical supplies, officers' dunnage. That'll be whiskey. Coffee, molasses, no mention of a payroll. They think a Federal army can fight forever without pay?”

“Speaking of pay, Vermont, I'll have your pocketbook.”

Wordlessly the courier tossed it to Captain Stump, who grinned at its contents. “My, you are a thrifty lad. I'll have your watch.”

The boy balked. “It was my father's.”

“Is he among the living?”

“No. Last November he . . .”

“Then he'll not be needing it any longer.”

The boy flipped it contemptuously, and the captain had to grab to keep it from shattering. “Is that the respect you show for your own father's possessions? Did he know you as an ungrateful son?”

“Reb, I ain't discussin' Father with the likes of you.”

Captain Stump studied the boy sorrowfully. “Dear God, give me strength. I do not wish to shoot this pup. But he provokes me. . . .”

“Use him as bait,” Alexander suggested. “Have him draw the Federal escort.”

Alexander's new life fit him like a silk glove. He carried the aforementioned Spencer carbine, which fired seven bullets as fast as he worked the lever, and a foot-long butcher's knife hung from his belt. Though he goaded Captain Stump, the captain treated him with the affection one might have for an unusual pet, a talking crow. Alexander had found a world where mermaids swam in the sea and all things were possible.

Alexander had become the partisan rangers' strategist, because his ideas were more profitable than those of Captain Stump, who had a quixotic streak and would spare a rich target for a poorer but more gallant one. Regular Confederate officers despised the partisan rangers, and the information the captain forwarded was not always received respectfully. General Early had refused to meet Captain Stump, saying he had no time for men of his “ilk.”

Happily, Captain Stump was made of resilient stuff and did not let snubs distress him.

The captain beamed. “Well then, Vermont, you must be hungry. Or might I offer you a libation?”

“I don't drink with traitors.”

“ ‘Traitors,' Vermont? Harsh words for brave men who fight only to see their native land free of brutal invaders, who seek only to be let alone.”

“Once we string you up we'll let you alone.”

A scowl convulsed the captain's features. “Alexander. Talk to this boy. Advise him of his circumstances. Persuade him where his interests lie.”

Alexander waved the boy to a seat. “What did you do before this war?”

“Farmed. Some logging.”

“Are you married?”

The boy had pale blue eyes and his hair was straw-colored and his teeth were small and irregular. “Nope.”

“Anybody in mind?”

“Yep.”

“And . . . ?”

The boy spat. “Don't figure to talk to you about her.”

“Honesta turpitudo est pro bono causa.”

“That Latin?” the boy asked. “What good's a language nobody speaks anymore?”

Alexander felt a chill of relief. “Why, it's no good,” he said. “Not a blessed bit of good at all.” He added, “He'll kill you, you know. Anger him and Captain Stump will kill you.”

The boy shrugged. “Better men than me been killed. I reckon I can stand it.”

“You know,” Andrew said happily, “I know exactly what you mean. Half the time I don't care whether I live or die, I . . .”

“Pass me that Spencer and I'll settle your confusion,” the boy said.

A second chill, less agreeable, passed down Alexander's spine. “It's going to hurt,” Alexander hissed. “It's going to hurt like hell.”

“Won't hurt forever,” the boy said. “What were you before the war?”

For a moment, Alexander couldn't remember. “I was . . . I was a schoolteacher,” he said.

“Bet you was a dandy.”

Alexander hated to think of the wretch he had been. Alexander was born for war, born for a hot life! He had been created for this war! When he drank again the fumes made him sneeze.

“God bless you,” the boy said automatically.

“Well . . . well, the hell with you, you damned dunce! You would bless me? Dunce, you rode into a Confederate bivouac like a man asleep!”

“Wasn't the best idea I ever had.”

“I can kill you now and dump you beside the road and the buzzards will pick your eyes. They go for the eyes first.”

“If you're gonna do it, do it.”

In a white heat, Alexander groped for his Spencer, but Captain Stump was there to pluck it away. “This boy provoking you, Alexander?”

“He isn't afraid of me!”

Captain Stump smiled a sad, knowing smile. “Alexander, a fair number of bluebellies probably ain't. You got to get used to it. Baxter, tie this boy to that white pine over there and keep an eye on him. Alexander, if you got any notion of going to him after we're asleep like you did that Federal we caught at New Market, I want you to think again. Baxter, you heard what I said. If Alexander comes creepin' around, put a ball in him.”

“My pleasure, Captain.”

“What you did to that man, Alexander, turned my stomach. I never seen such a goddamned mess in my life.”

Alexander curled up. His brain was tinted red and his mental pictures were successive red washes like blood coursing down a windowpane. In Rome they knew what to do with insolent prisoners. They filled their mouths with boiling lead! Alexander pictured the ladle filled with melted-down minié balls, the rags he'd wrap around the handle so he wouldn't burn himself, the odor of the molten lead stinging his nose, and the prisoner's mouth pried open, the tilt of the ladle . . .

Cuddling the bottle to his chest, Alexander went to sleep. In the middle of the night he sat bolt upright to vomit, and as soon as his throat stopped convulsing he swallowed whiskey to kill the taste. He was awfully tired but wide awake.

Alexander was half sitting on his scabbarded knife, and the belt pulled at his stomach. Why couldn't he ever get comfortable? The campfire was sullen embers and the moon lit the clearing with pale clotted light. Head on chest, the courier was slumped against his pine tree.

How angry would Captain Stump be? If Alexander was quick, there wouldn't be much noise. Then he'd slip away, and after a week or so, after Stump had a chance to cool down, he'd return, like the Prodigal Son.

No! No place Alexander had been ever wanted him back. If Alexander had been the Prodigal Son, they never would have killed the fatted calf.

Baxter stepped out of the shadows. “What's the trouble, Professor? Lose your nerve? I kinda hoped you'd try for the boy. Ollie and me got a bet which of us kills you.”

The ambush was atop a rise where the Federal mules would be pulling hard and the road too narrow to turn. Ollie and most of the rangers hid in cedars at the bottom of the hill; Captain Stump, Alexander, and Baxter waited behind a horse barn at the top. They'd lashed the Vermont courier to a locust tree beside the road and gagged him with his own shirtsleeve.

About ten that morning, the Federals came into sight, two cavalrymen at the head, another pair at the rear, outriders who drew in when the wagons started up the hill.

“I thought you said there'd be ten wagons,” Captain Stump whispered hoarsely.