Jacob's Ladder

by Donald McCaig

  On the day of the battle I was in Danville seeking forage, and I did not return to the army until yesterday. Of my old comrades in the 44th, only Sergeant Fisher was still in ranks, and he told me what he knew about the night our dear Catesby perished.

  During the initial assault, a flood of Federals poured into our works, and those Confederates who did not promptly flee for their lives—like Sergeant Fisher—were overwhelmed. Fisher believes Catesby commandeered a horse to escape. After Sergeant Fisher reached the rear, he and other stragglers from our wrecked division were set to digging a new line where our desperate soldiers might retire. Through a long day and half the night they felled trees, dug trenches, and threw up breastworks. Sergeant Fisher said their last meal had been a single corn pone the previous morning. Despite hunger and fatigue, these men worked until they fell exhausted, knowing if the Federals should succeed, the army would be cut in two, and in all likelihood destroyed.

  Sometime after two in the morning, the new line was finished and manned and those troops who had been fighting nearly twenty-four hours without respite were withdrawn, Catesby among them.

  Catesby appeared briefly where the broken Virginia regiments were reforming. Though his appearance was ghastly, covered by gore, Catesby seemed calm. “Are you hurt, sir?” Fisher cried.

  “Oh,” Catesby said, with such weary indifference Fisher remarked it, “I suppose so.”

  “We must bring you to a surgeon.”

  “No surgeon can make me well.”

  Catesby was not unique in his appearance, dear sister. Many of the survivors of “the Bloody Angle” were literally bathed in blood and even now seem as if fires had burned too hot and too long behind their eyes. Sergeant Fisher told Catesby that the 44th was destroyed and could not be made whole.

  What Catesby then said was, so far as I know, his last words on earth. He said it would make no difference in the end, that Virginians would fight until every man and boy was dead. “Death is too precious to us.”

  Surely Catesby uttered these bitter words from despair. Catesby’s Christian faith had sustained him through terrible ordeals, but perhaps he asked too much of it. Perhaps he had simply endured more than mortal man was meant to endure. My dearest friend took his own life soon afterward.

  I found your husband resting peacefully, his back to a pine tree in the shade, pistol beside his right hand and a look of profound peace on his features. With my wetted handkerchief, I washed blood and powder marks from his dear face. I shall save his watch for Thomas. He had no Testament on his person.

  The battlefield where Catesby fought was the single most horrible sight I have seen. Some corpses were so shot they were but black/red jelly. Horses had taken so many bullets they were flattened to a foot thick, and wrecked cannons were splashed silver from the storm of lead bullets. Most remarkable was an oak tree some twenty-two inches in diameter, felled by rifle bullets. How can a man stand where an oak tree cannot?

  I loved your husband as well as I have loved any man. Together we marched and fought and starved and many a night shared a rude bed under the stars. He was a man who felt more deeply than most men and risked more—I think to ease the pain of feeling. He was always ready with a jest to lighten the day, and whatever he had he shared with me. Though my Christian convictions were not so profound as his, that produced no breach in our affections.

  Our beloved Catesby Byrd has gone to the Lord he trusted above all earthly things and he will find a loving welcome there.

  Your Grieving Brother, Duncan

  A NEW WOMAN

  WINDER HOSPITAL, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  JUNE 3, 1864

  AT DAWN, THE thunder of guns woke Sallie’s wounded men. This was the first time since McClellan’s ill-fated campaign that Federal armies had come so near Richmond. General Lee’s provosts swept the wards of every man able to carry a gun, and Richmond’s clerks and militia had been summoned to defend the city. The latest battle was being fought at the crossroads of Cold Harbor, though the guns sounded closer than that.

  Lee’s army had been fighting continuously since the first week of May, and the tattered creatures who arrived at Winder had not had a decent night’s sleep or changed their clothes since. Men with minor wounds as well as those with mortal ones—as soon as they were laid upon their cots, they fell into sleep.

  New arrivals kept the ward apprised of Lee’s latest strategy and prospects. All had been gloomy after Spotsylvania, despairing at J.E.B. Stuart’s death, more optimistic despite the losses at North Anna, but everyone said that if today’s battle went badly it would signal the end. “If Grant breaks through he’ll have Richmond in the palm of his hand.” The artillery lieutenant who spoke had lost both his when a Wentworth gun blew up.

  Sallie smiled at him and said that no doubt General Lee was doing his best to prevent that eventuality.

  The lieutenant stared angrily at the red stumps of his wrists and said, “Lee can’t do miracles, you know. He can’t hold them back forever.”

  “We are in God’s care,” Sallie Kirkpatrick said.

  After Surgeon Chambliss made his rounds, Sallie organized the convalescents into their routine work and stepped outdoors. It had rained all night, and the air was clear and fresh. It had become Sallie’s habit, during pauses in her work, to stroll to the promontory where a flat ledgerock provided a seat overlooking the James River. She sat on the right of the blocky stone, because when Duncan Gatewood was with her, he sat on the left so his right hand could clasp hers. While seeking after provisions, Duncan often passed through Richmond.

  With guns rumbling at her back, Sallie Kirkpatrick watched gulls swoop over the river and a boat’s ponderous passage up the canal. The gulls caught fish and the river tumbled toward the sea, and no matter what men did to one another the world was not coming to an end.

  Sallie Kirkpatrick could not number the dying men she had comforted. She had written so many letters: “He asked me to say that his last thoughts are of you,” “He begged to be remembered as one who died for his country,” “At the end he was at peace and relinquished his soul to the tender care of his Savior.”

  At boys’ deathbeds, she had offered assurance and been given it too: “Don’t you fret about me, Miss Sallie. I’m goin’ on to a place where I can’t get shot no more.”

  Cousin Molly Semple was as blood-smirched as Sallie, had heard as many deathbed confidences, had clasped the hands of her dearest friends’ sons during their last moments on earth. But as regularly as she attended St. Paul’s on Sundays, Molly Semple attended social gatherings during the week.

  “Child,” Molly told Sallie, “we cannot live for them and we cannot die for them either.”

  One midnight, during the overwhelming flood of casualties from the Wilderness, something changed inside Sallie. At first she feared she had broken. It was a coolness, an airiness, which spread from her heart to her fingertips. Sallie wasn’t heavy anymore.

  Although she continued to do all she had done before—comforted, nursed, encouraged—she did so more calmly. If horrors are unquenchable, death unmitigated, and all our best efforts come to naught, we must continue, because who knows God’s plan?

  Today the federal guns did not seem to be advancing. If Grant broke through into the city, Sallie’s wounded would become Federal prisoners. If Lee won again, newly wounded Confederates would overflow Winder again and the surgeons would once more beg Richmond civilians to take hurt and dying boys into their homes.

  The river tumbled at her feet. In September, Matron Sallie Kirkpatrick would be nineteen years old.

  EARLY YELLOW TOMATOES

  STRATFORD PLANTATION, VIRGINIA

  JUNE 13, 1864

  “THEY MAKE THE fattest, juiciest yellow tomatoes you ever ate. Louisa Hevener despises to let these seeds go,” Abigail Gatewood said with considerable satisfaction. It was a bright morning and Abigail and Aunt Opal worked either side of the row in the kitchen garden behind Stratford House, two gray-haired women setting out t
omatoes. Behind them, fourteen-year-old Pauline Byrd carried the basket of transplants. “That’s if it’s a good season. If it gets too wet, the skins burst. I don’t know what it is about tomatoes: crows leave them alone until one bursts, and then you can’t keep the crows off. Pauline, how is your mother feeling today?”

  Like Abigail, Pauline wore a bonnet, and her shaded face was pale as a nun’s. “She’s praying with Grandmother again.” Pauline’s eyes were large and so golden they seemed to glow. “All day long Mama cries and prays.”

  Aunt Opal said, “Child, there’s no tellin’ how grief take a woman. Some women cry, some dance, some pray. And no tellin’ how long to get through it. Some women never do get through it. When Miss Abigail’s done, bring your plants over here. I like to finish this row.”

  Abigail said, “I can scarcely believe we won’t be seeing Catesby Byrd in this world again. He had such a way about him. Honey, your poor mama has suffered about all she can bear. First dear Baby Willie and now your daddy.”

  The young girl’s indifference was so false and so frail. When she first learned about her father she had fainted and for two days afterward stuttered so badly she couldn’t be understood.

  “Old Uther too.” Aunt Opal put in a word for her losses. “Miss Leona was right close to that old fool. How lively they was, those children, taking lessons on our porch, Leona, Duncan, Sallie, and Jesse. Oh, they was right lively!”

  “Poor Jesse.” Abigail wiped her forehead. “We never wished him ill, but . . .”

  “Many a colored man run good until he outrun by somebody’s bullet,” Aunt Opal snapped.

  “Oh,” Abigail said, “I pray it isn’t so.”

  “These puny plants, something’s been eating at them. I believe I’ll throw them away.”

  “Aunt Opal, these are the last of our plants from our last seeds, and if they don’t yield this summer, we’ll have nothing for next year. Pray do plant them. Samuel promised Mrs. Seig some of our surplus, should we have any. I never knew weather like this—one day hot as a stovetop, next day pouring rain.”

  “Buggy plant draws bugs,” Aunt Opal grumbled, knuckling earth firm around the suspect plant’s roots. “Child, you come down this row here with the water bucket and splash ’em.”

  “Thomas promised he’d do the watering,” the girl said, not caring much what effect this intelligence might have.

  Abigail sighed. “Aunt Opal, why is that boy so contrary? Honey, you fetch the water bucket. These tomatoes can’t wait on him.”

  “That Dinwiddie boy—same age as Master Thomas, and he’s joined up. Why all the young white masters like to fight?”

  Abigail covered her eyes. “I pray—I often pray—the war ends before Thomas can enlist. Were he lost too, it would kill his mother.”

  “Master Thomas off in the woods. He rather be ridin’ around and huntin’ than doin’ honest work.”

  “Wasn’t Samuel planning to bring up hay this afternoon? He’ll want that horse.”

  “Master Thomas be back in time. ’Sides, Master Samuel don’t need no horse. He gonna use milk cows pull the hay wagon. Hah!”

  Any sharp reply Abigail might have made was blunted by the fact that both Stratford’s milk cows/oxen had come from Uther Botkin’s place and were in Aunt Opal’s care, as were Stratford’s remaining hogs and sheep. Every day, rain, sleet, snow, or mud, Aunt Opal slogged into the woods with feed. Sometimes she got young Thomas Byrd to help, most times she did it herself.

  In the spring, the government commissary men had taken all the livestock Aunt Opal hadn’t hidden away. Samuel protested that his son and son-in-law were in the army.

  “Then you’ll be glad to see them get fed,” a commissary man said.

  Samuel Gatewood’s family had been reduced. In May, Uncle Agamemnon died and was buried in the servants’ cemetery above Strait Creek. None of the servants the government had taken to work on Richmond’s fortifications ever came home, nor had any runaways. Samuel and Jack the Driver were the fulltask hands. Thomas Byrd was so moody one day he could do a man’s work, the next day it took a man to keep him working. Franky and Dinah Williams, Aunt Opal, Pompey, and Pauline Byrd did what they could. Samuel abandoned poorer ground to cedars and planted the best fields in wheat, oats, and corn. With so few animals, they had excess feed, which they sold when they could convey it to Millboro Springs. Samuel and Jack ground a little wheat and corn, but the sawmill was rusty and barn swallows nested in its rafters undisturbed.

  Age had stooped Samuel Gatewood and whitened his hair. Most evenings Samuel was in bed by dark; sometimes he was too tired to eat supper or wash. These days he took little satisfaction in planter’s work. Only when he got one of Duncan’s infrequent letters did Samuel cheer up and act his old self.

  Sallie Botkin was the more reliable correspondent and took it as her duty to report on all the county men who passed through Camp Winder and forwarded their news. Excepting Leona, who could not bear war news of any sort, all Stratford, black and white, gathered on the porch when Abigail read Sallie’s letters.

  “Sallie writes the whole capital turned out when they buried poor General Stuart. Sallie says General Mahone—who is Duncan’s superior—is a tiny man and keeps a milk cow tethered outside his tent. Mahone can be very profane. Oh dear. I don’t know why our general officers don’t set a better example. . . .” Abigail turned the page to read Sallie’s account of Cold Harbor. “She says Grant left his own wounded men on the field to die. Dear, dear. I don’t know how Sallie can bear all that suffering.”

  Aunt Opal said, “That girl ain’t like you and me, Miss Abigail. She a new kind of woman. Sallie ain’t gonna faint every time somebody looks at her cross-eyed.”

  “Her hardness would come from her penitentiary experience, no doubt,” said Grandmother Gatewood, who preferred to clip flights of fancy before they rose too far above the earth.

  Samuel wanted to disagree, but, as was her custom, Grandmother Gatewood had passed through the brambles by a path only she could navigate and any conversationalist who ventured after her was, likely to get scratched. Mistress Abigail sighed. In her lifetime, Grandmother Gatewood had inspired a hundred thousand sighs.

  Franky Williams was on the bottom step beside her sister. “How come Miss Sallie never say when this war be over?” She sniffed. “I tired of these hard times.”

  Jack the Driver said, “We still got cornbread and poke greens and hog meat and buttermilk. We stick together right here at Stratford—we all be fine.”

  “Amen,” Samuel Gatewood agreed.

  There had been local alarms. The Federal general Hunter had marched through Staunton and his men had been locusts on the land. Some of Samuel’s neighbors feared Hunter would turn west along the Parkersburg Pike and wreak havoc in the mountain valleys. Others hoped General Lee would see to General Hunter, as he’d seen to other Federal generals before. General Hunter had torn up so much Virginia Central track, Samuel Gatewood couldn’t ship what little flour he milled. Jack the Driver thought they should take a wagon to Lexington for the canal boat, but Samuel feared their old horse wouldn’t survive the trip. Too, General Hunter had burned the Virginia Military Institute and Samuel was reluctant to see that devastation.

  Every morning, Abigail, Aunt Opal, and Pauline gardened, starting when the dew burned off and working until the sun was high in the sky and tender leaves curled. Today, after they finished planting the early tomatoes, they retired to the porch for a glass of cool buttermilk. Abigail’s old spinning wheel was handy and anyone who had a mind to could take a turn.

  “I never thought to use one of these things again.” Abigail plucked a rolag of unspun wool from the wooden box at her feet. “Sometimes I wonder how our forebears had any time to live, what with the getting and providing they had to do.”

  “Plenty niggers to help ’em,” Aunt Opal sniffed.

  Although Aunt Opal’s manner had shocked her at first, Abigail had grown accustomed to her candor and only noticed it when neighb
ors dropped by. “If Grandmother Gatewood is to be believed,” Abigail corrected, “the whites worked as hard and long as the coloreds.”

  “If Grandma Gatewood’s such a worker, why we never see her in the garden?” Aunt Opal asked. “Seems all she does is pray. She gonna pray poor Miss Leona to death. It ain’t healthy stay in that dark old bedroom all the time.”

  The wheel droned at Abigail’s side. She said, “I would not dream of interfering with Leona’s mourning. I am told Grandmother Gatewood was a lighter-hearted creature before her husband was killed.”

  “He was where he hadn’t no right to be.” Aunt Opal spat.

  “Where was that?” Pauline asked, all ears. “I know Grandfather was shot, but nobody even tells me why.”

  “And you won’t hear it from me,” Abigail said firmly. “Silence is how we bury scandal. Aunt Opal, I would appreciate your keeping our confidence in this matter.”

  “Yes’m,” Aunt Opal said.

  Heat lay on the garden like a blanket. A few monarchs darted about, but most insects and birds had found shade.

  “That spotty-face ewe got fleece maggots again,” Aunt Opal said. “This is right weather for maggots: wet and hot. This evening I’ll want Master Thomas come with me to lay ahold of her.”

  “I swear I don’t know what’s come over that boy. He used to be so helpful.”

  “Bein’ a man’s what’s comin’ over young Master. If we don’t treat that sheep she’ll die.”

  “I can help,” Pauline said.

  Abigail laughed merrily. “Child, that’s such nasty work.”

  “If it’s not too nasty for Aunt Opal, why’s it too nasty for me?”

  Aunt Opal choked and coughed and set her buttermilk down. “Went down the wrong pipe, I reckon,” she said.