Jacob's Ladder (61 page)

Marguerite cried, “Sergeant, that is all the money we have in the world. It was got honestly!”

“I don't doubt that for a minute. Bixby, how much you got there?”

“Must be a thousand damn dollars, and not a nickel in scrip. Just what we have been searchin' for all these weary days: a hoard of Confederate gold.”

“If you steal our horses and our money, you leave my family destitute,” Marguerite said.

“Climb on the coach horse, nigger. Leave the wench.”

“Mingo!” Kizzy's despairing cry.

“A man . . .” Mingo said. “Kizzy, a man's got to better himself!”

The sergeant spurred his horse, and when the horse reared, Marguerite crumpled against the coach and Jacob lifted his tiny fist to defend her and all the world was dust and rioting horses until they became a dust cloud far down the road.

“Please, Kizzy, sit down and take deep breaths. Jacob, fetch her water. Kizzy, do not waste your tears on him. Mingo is not worth your tears. These hoops are so inconvenient! Our respectability was less protection than I had hoped. Kizzy, you may remain with the carriage while Jacob and I go seek help.”

“No, please, ma'am. I can walk. Just don't walk so fast.”

“Jacob, I believe that is your waterproof beside that ruined trunk. Since we can carry no change of attire, it will be more practical than your dress jacket. Please, dear, turn your back while I remove my hoop. Perhaps, Kizzy, you will pass me one of my hats. No, not the bonnet, the wide brim. From the look of those dark clouds, I fancy we can expect rain.”

“Oh, Mistress, we lost now.”

“Then we shall have to get ourselves found. Can't we carry the smaller ham? Perhaps I can make a sling of my petticoats. I had not thought to see men take such pleasure slaughtering a harmless woman's underthings.”

Jacob lifted his tiny face. “Mama, where are we going now?”

“Are you strong enough to carry that canteen? What a brave boy! Oh dear, I believe these are raindrops. I do not know exactly where we are going, darling. But I am certain it will be better than here.”

LETTER FROM MRS. DUNCAN
GATEWOOD TO ABIGAIL GATEWOOD

R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
M
ARCH
21, 1865

DEAREST, DEAREST ABIGAIL,

Duncan and I were sorely disappointed you and Samuel and dear Aunt Opal could not attend our nuptials. I cannot thank you enough for the gown you provided, and your own mother's ring was a precious gift. Your own new daughter shall cherish it!

Dear Cousin Molly had hoped for a gala wedding. We were to have a reception in her parlor, and Molly had located three jeroboams of French wine (she has the most amazing resources). After Wicked General Sheridan wrecked the James River Canal and cut Richmond off, our guest list shrank to nothing, and Molly's jeroboams vanished into her cellar to await another event. Happy events for your cousin Molly are not “few and far between.” Hers is a sanguine disposition and she finds goodness even in these dark days. “After all, child,” she reassures me, “God does not give us burdens we are unable to bear.” Though I know that is true, I am sometimes unable to believe it. In the past, I was subject to much melancholy. Usefulness keeps my sadder humors in check.

Since General Sheridan fulfilled his martial ambitions (why must the Federals make war on civilians?) we are isolated from the world excepting the rattletrap Southside Railroad, which makes its hesitant, painful way up from Danville carrying necessities which keep our army and capital from starvation. Since Wilmington fell, we can obtain no medicines, and gravely wounded men rely on what succor nursing can provide. Each battle produces more wounded, and our patients were weak from hunger and exhausted even before the enemy's minié ball or case shot tore their flesh! How they endure it, I do not know! Rumors abound that General Lee must soon abandon the city, and if that is defeat, in our present circumstance defeat seems something to be envied!

The pure contrariness of Confederate nature has pitched the capital into a matrimonial humor, and young girls and brave soldier swains hurry to Richmond's altars to pledge vows that may endure a single day but are vowed for a lifetime!

Like so many well-wishers, I was in the gallery at St. Paul's when Hetty Cary married the North Carolinian General John Pegram. I had met the indomitable Miss Cary in society, and her sister Constance sometimes helps at Camp Winder. Three weeks to the day after the wedding, General Pegram took a minié ball in his breast and fell dead, the watch his lovely bride had wound for him that morning still ticking in his pocket. A second service, much graver, was held in St. Paul's, with her who had been so radiant in white dressed in somberest black, scarcely able to stand upright beside her young husband's bier. It is whispered that omens (a broken mirror, a normally reliable horse—President Davis's own—that refused the wedding carriage) foretold disaster, but what is one to do with such portents? Shun every worthy enterprise? Even knowing Hetty Cary Pegram's fate, had a mirror shattered on my wedding day it would have given me a start, but I should have proceeded willingly to the ceremony. If we cannot be broken by Grant's army, starvation, and the direst poverty, why should we shudder at omens?

When it was certain Duncan's dear family could not pass through General Sheridan's ring of destruction for our wedding, we decided to act “on the spur of the moment.”

When Molly consulted the rector he could not “fit us in,” but promised to marry us should any previously scheduled couple cancel. St. Paul's rector, Dr. Minnegerode, has a homely face that has seen much joy and too much sorrow. During Stoneman's raid on our capital, he was officiating at his altar when news arrived that his son was among the fallen lying at the railway station. The rector blanched, gave his duties over to his assistant, and made the sorrowful journey so many parents made that day, only to learn that it was all a mistake, the poor dead boy was not his son. How gratefully he celebrated Vespers that evening!

The very next Sunday, at breakfast, Dr. Minnegerode sent word that Duncan and I could be wed if we could be at St. Paul's at two o'clock sharp! Cousin Molly dispatched her servant to General Mahone's headquarters with a note begging Duncan's presence. Not only did General Mahone grant Duncan a furlough, he insisted on attending himself with two staff officers previously unknown to Duncan. Duncan confided afterward the general required these gentlemen's attendance because they were West Point. Apparently there is rivalry between West Point officers and those who attended VMI. Since General Mahone and my dear new husband were Institute men, the general thought to humble these grand officers by requiring attendance at an affair beneath their station. Are men sillier than women? What is your honest opinion?

Though the general's motives were not the noblest, these officers added dignity to what was, after all, a “makeshift” affair. At the reception in Cousin Molly's unready parlor (as we arrived, her houseman was whisking dust covers off the settees), after some awkward conversation, brilliant Cousin Molly bethought herself of the jeroboams, and petty rivalries were swiftly dissolved in pleasant gossip and laughter.

Camp Winder is presently “between battles,” so Surgeons Lane and Chambliss were able to attend our nuptials. Surgeon Lane lost his only son at Fredericksburg and speaks too frankly about the deathbeds he has attended. I have heard him damn our own officers with the same vigor he damns our enemies and feared a contretemps. Thankfully, Cousin Molly's jeroboams worked their magic, and the ruddy glow of comradeship replaced the divisive intercourse I dreaded.

As you know, I have married before, and that marriage was unhappy. After that experience I confess I was hostile to an institution so blessed by universal approbation. If my first marriage had caused me such pain, surely all marriages were suspect.

Duncan's kindness, forgetfulness of self, quiet courage, and steady good humor have so captured my heart that my mind must follow! Dearest Abigail, your son has conquered a proud woman and subjugated her with love. If, God forbid, he should fall before this dreadful war is over, my days of happiness with him will linger in my heart forever. I am made for joy, not sorrow!

We are humbled and privileged to have exchanged our precious vows in Confederate St. Paul's. The church is a model of graceful rectitude. The Virginia gentlefolk who have worshiped here have imbued it with their own delicacy and consideration. Its stained-glass windows light the interior with lambent joy.

“To love, honor and obey”—how beautiful those words! How they must have comforted you and Samuel through the years! Oh, I know that Duncan and I will have our “disagreements”! But I promise to you now, in the fullness of my joy, that I shall never forget that he is the author of all my happiness!

Can a mortal woman be so happy? A month ago, even a week ago, I should have said no! Doubts persisted even as I donned your beautiful gown and brushed my cheek with the humble daffodils which were to be my bridal bouquet. As Cousin Molly's carriage clattered toward Capitol Square, I chattered nervously. I do not know what I said! When we arrived at St. Paul's and I saw the gallant officers in the vestibule, breath left my body and I feared I would disgrace Duncan and myself by fainting away! Dear new mother, I am no coward. Some have said I exhibit too much spirit for my own good! But those beaming gentlemen were as frightening as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse! If, at that moment, without disgracing Duncan, I could have bolted, I should have done so. I would have run straight into General Grant's lines and claimed the comforts offered other deserters!

General Mahone greeted me, his famous hat swept low, and I ventured a trembling smile as he took my arm. “Miss Sallie,” the general said, “Major Gatewood is one of my most trusted officers, a gallant patriot. And you have devoted yourself to the care of our wounded. The major informs me there is no kinsman to accompany you to the altar. If you would deem me suitable to perform such a service, I would be greatly honored.”

I blushed. The gentle courtesy of a man who has risked so much for his country—when will we ever see such men again?

Duncan awaited me at the altar before the beaming Dr. Minnegerode. The rest was as a dream. My voice perhaps tremored as I made my vows, but I was not ashamed. A woman has a right to quake on that occasion! And when Duncan turned to put the ring on my finger, his own hand was not perfectly steady. I steadied his hand as he slipped his love upon my finger. Such joy!

Our nuptial home is in the back of a Petersburg house. Though it is on the Appomattox River side of the city, in October a Federal shell struck the house, and parlor and upstairs bedrooms are without roof. Our two small rooms look out on the garden, where, yesterday, I planted peas and lettuces. The door between our cozy home and the ruined portion is kept closed tight, and since we enter and leave through the garden, it is easy for me to pretend that our two rooms are the whole of the world! The larger room serves as dining room, parlor, and kitchen (there is no kitchen house). The patented cookstove is still warm when we emerge from our cocoon to face another dawn. Duncan must be with General Mahone at four, but his departure is routine, since most habitable houses on our street are occupied by officers and their families, who have endured dawn separations since this siege began.

My devoted husband accompanies me to the Richmond & Petersburg station, where I board a train with our wounded into Richmond. Duncan did ask that I resign my post, but I refused. “If I am to stay alone, all day long, listening to Federal guns, waiting for the furor that signals another attack, worrying about you, I shall go mad. At Camp Winder I am too busy to give you a thought!” I sealed my words with a kiss, and this, as much as my poor argument, carried his position, captured his colors, and occasioned his manly surrender!

I sometimes believe I am the only woman in the world who is so blessed! But so many women are married, so many have dear children, so many love their husbands no less than I. How is it that we can have loving marriages and war? How is it we women permit it?

Dearest Mother, I thank you for the gift of your son. I shall cherish him, I promise, to your maternal satisfaction.

Your Obedient Daughter,

Mrs. Duncan Gatewood

THE LANYARD

P
ETERSBURG
, V
IRGINIA
A
PRIL
2, 1865

“Whatever God in His Providence has laid down, that we must believe in and obey. Yet often we murmur against God's Providence, not knowing that His Providence is all for the best. It's like if we look on a leaf of this Bible; if we only reads what is on one side without looking underneath, on the other side, we can't understand its meaning; so we can't see through the ways of His Providence. For instance, take death! If every man had to say when he should die, he would live on to a hundred, a thousand years—he never would die. But you all has to go! And when Providence calls you! Death am universal!”

—Sermon preached by the Reverend John Jasper,

6th Mount Zion Colored Baptist Church,

Richmond, Virginia

WHEN THE FEDERALS
struck, Silas was dreaming about the river. He'd been relieved from the picket line at dusk, heard rumors of a disastrous fight to the south of them at Five Forks Junction, eaten his biscuit and salt pork, decided to save his precious coffee for morning, crawled onto his platform, laid his shoes for a pillow, and tugged his blanket over him, and though Federal guns complained through the night and firing on the picket line was fevered, Silas slept like a blessed baby.

In his dream he was sitting on a hogshead beside the river while stevedores unloaded a blockade runner. The ship might have been his own but might have been someone else's. Silas wasn't watching the work, he was watching the river. It was dawn and the river might have been two or a hundred feet deep. Softly, the silver river flowed past while silent men moved goods. In a moment Silas would understand everything . . .

Bam! Bam! A musket butt slammed the hut door and drums were yammering and officers were shouting, “I Company!” “K Company, to the works!” and Silas rolled off the platform part-awake and the floor-space was jumbled with men; through the door, grab his Enfield from the stand, loop the cartridge box over his shoulder, barefoot in the spring mud, into the works, onto the firing step and prime his rifle and poke it through the slot and pickets slipping through the jag in the earthworks and Silas blinked his eyes clear of sleep and drew the hammer back and someone was yelling, “On my command, boys! Give 'em a volley!” and Silas still couldn't see anything except musket flashes where pickets were being overrun and some Federal was yelling, “Christ! Watch out for Johnny's shitpits!” and an officer shouted, “Ready . . . fire!” and Silas pulled the trigger and a lance of flame shot from his muzzle and he twisted to reload and a horde of blue men came out of the blackness and struck the earthworks and started to climb and Silas jabbed his rifle muzzle into somebody's gut and somebody said, “Oooff,” and disappeared back where he'd come from and Silas clubbed his rifle at a Federal and something flashed over his head SWORD! and Silas blocked a terrible downward slash and his rifle butt punched the Federal officer but blue men were cheering, hurting Silas's ears with their hurrahs and he stepped off the firing step back from the works, jammed a load into his rifle, whipped his ramrod across a Federal's face, thumbed a primer into place, and kept backing until Confederates appeared at his elbow and then Silas aimed his rifle at the blue wave pouring over their works, fired, and reloaded.

Color Sergeant Robinson rallied a handful to the regimental colors and was shouting something Silas couldn't hear over Federal cheers and the racket of musketry. A bulge of blue licked out and enveloped Robinson and the colors briefly waved above the blueness but were sucked under. Musket flashes and Silas backed into a tree which knocked the wind out of him and he thought he'd been shot as he gagged and gasped for air. Rifle fire lit the North Carolinians as they retreated through the woods. Silas loaded, shot, loaded, shot, loaded, shot. A calm voice said, “Oh, I am slain.”

As the darkness started lightening, Silas broke out of the trees into cutover ground with a hundred other gray-clad figures, some walking backward.

Silas wondered why he was thirsty when he had to piss so bad. He unbuttoned himself, passed water as he stepped back, his urine splattering bare earth and grass grazed to stubble.

His left eye stung so he rubbed it clean of blood and patted his head to find the wound he hadn't felt, maybe the sword had cut him, something had. He pawed bloodflow away from his eyes.

On the Federal side of the woods, the huzzahs were continuous and moved south as the Federals rolled up the Confederate line.

A Confederate two-gun battery unlimbered long enough to fire, to no particular effect. Their lieutenant was vowing, “We took these damn guns at Gettysburg and we ain't givin' 'em back.”

His anger attracted stragglers, and Silas and other Carolinians rallied on the guns. Lieutenant Rigler had a battle flag. “Thirty-seventh! Fall in on me! Thirty-seventh!”

“Ain't many of us, is there?” Private Kissock noted.

“Never has been many of us,” Corporal McCall snapped back. “Only enough to do the job! Shut your damn mouth.”

Lieutenant Rigler wanted to know who had ammunition and how much. Men searched their pouches. One man complained, “Hell, I skedaddled so quick I didn't bring my gun.”

More stragglers joined them. Like Silas, many were barefoot. Most seemed dazed.

“Never saw so many bluebellies in my life,” one private said. “More'n at Sharpsburg, more'n at Gettysburg. That damn Grant must have a million men!”

Officers arrived on lathered horses and counted heads and galloped off. Men who had rations ate them. Private Kissock shared hardtack with Silas. Those with canteens passed them around; most knelt at puddles and drank. As the sun came up, clots of Confederates drifted north toward the thinly manned inner line, Petersburg's final defense.

Lieutenant Rigler hoped, “General Lee will rally us.”

“Rally who?” Private Kissock spat. “Our regiment is Federal prisoners, or dead.”

The sun was warm on their backs. Guns trundled alongside. Here and there, calm officers reformed broken regiments. A thousand yards behind them, somewhat uncertainly, Federal soldiers came out of the woods, their bayonets shimmering.

“We're done for, Omohundru,” Private Kissock said. “I reckon they can drive us through Petersburg plumb into the Appomattox River.”

“They aren't doing much now.”

“They come on too quick. Probably didn't expect to have it so damned easy.”

When the guns halted, the remnants of the 37th Carolina stopped too. A wagon clattered up, distributed ammunition, and raced away.

They trudged toward Petersburg.

A courier—he was an older captain with a white streak in his black beard—had orders for them. The two guns and hundred stragglers were to hold Fort Gregg.

When he pointed they could see it: a child's mud fort in the middle of a bleak treeless plain. The captain said, “Good luck,” and whistled tunelessly.

Inside the semicircular earthworks, the Confederates wrestled their guns onto earthen platforms. On three sides, Fort Gregg was protected by a shallow moat.

It was noon on a pleasant spring day. Stragglers in no particular hurry trudged past, and some waved. White smoke rose from where the old line had been, and men wondered if it was their huts burning.

With their colonel, two understrength Mississippi regiments came into the fort.

When Lieutenant Rigler returned from talking to the other officers he said, “The Federals have broken our lines all to hell and General Lee is withdrawing to the inner lines.” Petersburg's church steeples lifted over the hillocks behind them. It was Sunday. The churches would be bursting with prayers. “Longstreet's coming, but he hasn't got here yet.”

A flustered brigadier general rode into the the fort and cried, “Men, the salvation of the army is in your keep. General Lee asks you not surrender this fort. If you can hold out for two hours, Longstreet will be up!”

The crash of Federal artillery drowned out anything more he had to say.

Private Kissock yelled, “Tell General Lee we'll hold 'em!”

Between explosions, Lieutenant Rigler said, “Private Kissock, you in your right mind?”

Kissock scuffed the ground and mumbled, “Well, hell. Well, hell.”

Though the Confederate guns cracked defiance, Federal artillery began hitting the fort, and wood splinters and hot metal zinged through the air. Silas crouched on the firing parapet, his face pressed against a barky log. When the Federal guns stopped, Silas's ears rang.

Lieutenant Rigler put a glass to his eye. Three columns of Federal infantry were coming at them, bayonets sharp as spite.

“How many?” Silas croaked.

The lieutenant counted regimental flags for an unpleasantly long time. “Private Omohundru, I believe we are to be honored by the attentions of a full Federal division. I doubt that so few Confederates have ever been so honored before.”

Men lined up on the firing step, shoulder to shoulder.

“Six thousand men in a Federal division,” Private Kissock observed. “And every damn one of 'em ate breakfast this morning.”

Men laid spare cartridges and ramrods in the chinks. Bayonets were stabbed into logtops like a picket fence.

“Got a chaw?” Private Kissock asked.

Someone tossed him a plug, which he bit with some satisfaction. “Now if we'd had the troops and the Federals had the tobacco we'd have surrendered four years ago,” he noted. “Of course, if they'd had the whiskey and we'd had the tobacco . . .”

“Kissock, quit yarnin'.” Corporal McCall was drawing a bead. The three Federal columns were melting together.

“You will fire on my order,” Rigler said. “One volley, then reload. Steady now, steady!”

The Federals broke into double-quick, a blunt fist of men.

“You think General Grant wants us out of here?” Private Kissock drawled, but his voice was shriller than usual.

“Fire!”

The volley smashed the Federal attack, then a second volley and a third while they were reeling. Loaded with double canister, the two Confederate guns snarled and snapped. Hundreds of iron balls whizzed through the Federal ranks.

Leaving a carpet of blue behind, the Federals sullenly withdrew. Once again they formed and came forward at the double-quick, again volleys flamed from the walls of Fort Gregg, and again the Federal legions withdrew. Fort Gregg raised a triumphant rebel yell.

“Less of 'em every time.” Private Kissock upended a canteen and water splashed down his chin onto his filthy powder-blackened shirtfront.

This time the first volley did not check them, nor the second, and as the Federals neared they returned fire and Confederates started falling from the firing steps. A dip in the terrain funneled the Federals across the front of the fort.

Wounded Confederates loaded rifles and passed them to the firing step, and Silas could see faces of the men he was killing—old men, young men, fathers and boys who never would live to be fathers—spume of a great blue wave that should it break over the fort would drown them. In the blossom of smoke at the end of his muzzle Silas couldn't see if his aim was true but knew it was.

The two guns roared hot defiance but Federals waded into the shallow moat and with Confederate defenders silhouetted against the afternoon sky, took the advantage, and their volley swept the parapets clean. When one of the Confederate guns blew up, the gun layer clamped hands to his face and shrieked.

Inside the fort, men reloaded while wounded men crawled from corpse to corpse retrieving ammunition. The parapet was defended only by the dead.

The Mississippi colonel was down, wounded. “Steady,” he croaked. “Steady, boys.”

On the other side of the parapet invisible Federal soldiers caught their breath and ramrods clattered against rifles and men coughed. The faint splashing everyone heard was them coming through the shallow moat, wading, row on row.

“Steady!”

Terror clamped Silas's gut like an iron knot.

The Federal hurrah was louder than guns. In a lunge their banners spurted over the parapet, another lunge and men stood on top. The lone Confederate cannon blasted them and musketry tore at them. Color bearers fell with their colors. Soldiers poured over the parapet, and some paused to fire and some jumped onto waiting Confederate bayonets. Out of bullets, one Confederate hurled bricks.

The Federals concentrated fire on the sole remaining gun, and the gun captain set his primer before they shot him down.

In a soft voice, Silas said, “Would a gentleman be afraid?” He had a picture in his mind: Jacob, tearful but smiling, clinging to Marguerite's knees. Silas so wished things could have been different.

The hubbub was awful.

Although a Federal officer sabered the Confederate ramrodder, the gun was loaded and primed and a living wall of men fronted its spout. Silas snatched the lanyard cord and wrapped it around his fist.