Jacob's Ladder

by Donald McCaig

  “On my command, boys!” Mahone cried. Twenty seconds they waited for the order, and a man could have lived a lifetime in those seconds, might have explored all the byways of love and fear and hope.

  “Forward!” Firing and yelling, graycoats toppled onto bluecoats, and Duncan strolled the crater parapet like an immortal, taking aim as if he shot straw targets. When his pistol clicked empty he dove into the melee where men wrestled and punched, bit and stabbed, and Duncan smacked a black corporal so hard with his empty pistol bone shards flew from the man’s broken head. “My Jesus,” the corporal murmured as he sank to his knees.

  “Surrender!” a Confederate colonel demanded.

  Other tongues raised the cry. “Surrender, God damn you!”

  Confederates were still bayoneting and shooting blacks, and those Federals who’d surrendered recovered the weapons they’d dropped and fought again.

  General Mahone yelled, “Why the hell won’t you fellows surrender?”

  A Federal officer turned aside a bayonet to shout, “Why the hell won’t you let us?” And he stabbed his white handkerchief with his sword and jiggled it over his head and firing died and General Mahone hopped atop a broken limber and shouted, “I guarantee your safety. I give my word of honor. I will have the God Almighty ass of any son of a bitch who touches a goddamned prisoner. These men are brave bastards. They are my prisoners!”

  The man beside Duncan was gasping. “Kill the damn niggers,” he said.

  “No! God damn it! No!.”

  A bareheaded Confederate snatched the hat from a Federal officer, and other Confederates followed his lead. Duncan captured an exhausted captain’s black hat. The hat was too big for him and settled over his ears. Some Federal officers clamped hands over their hats, but in a flurry most Federal officers were soon bareheaded.

  “No harm must come to them,” Mahone cried. “I have given my word. Clear away that barricade. Let’s get these prisoners out of here.”

  While the prisoners were gathering, Confederates raced to the back of the crater, dug firing steps, and began peppering the retreating Federals.

  When Duncan reported to General Mahone, the general said, “Major, you look like hell.”

  “It’s not my blood, sir.”

  “You’ll draw flies. Wash and find a fresh shirt. Go tell General Bushrod Johnson we’ve reestablished his line—should he wish, he can quite safely inspect it.”

  When Duncan passed Mahone’s message to Johnson, Johnson didn’t turn a hair. He said, “You are welcome to wash in the springhouse.” He added, “Your hat doesn’t fit.”

  Although Federal guns had holed Johnson’s headquarters, they hadn’t hit the springhouse, and Duncan dragged the thick door open and came into dim coolness and the music of trickling water. The spring box was long, narrow, eight inches deep, and when Duncan dipped his hand, the water was numbingly cold and blood swirled through the clear water. When he opened and closed his fist, streamers floated away, and Duncan rubbed crusted matter from between his fingers. He knelt on the cool stone beside the spring box, removed his new hat, and plunged head and neck beneath the water. How the water plucked at him! How cold it was! If a man stayed under long enough, he might pass through to a new world, the mirror image of this, where men did not punch tempered steel into each other’s bodies, where this day was only summertime.

  Duncan took a breath and immersed his head again, rubbing and plucking his hair to loosen the clots of another’s lifeblood. When he opened his eyes, the spring water was pink. He drank. He let water wash over his teeth. He’d been clamping his jaw, and it ached. He peeled off his shirt and dropped it into the water, and it drifted to the end of the box where an iron pipe discharged the flow.

  The springhouse doorway looked out at summer, and the guns had quit. Insects buzzed but didn’t come inside. Duncan set his revolver on the stone floor. The loading gate was broken and the hammer sprung. A clot of hair and something white, bone perhaps, were caught between cylinder and frame. Duncan put the pistol under water and fingered until he had the matter out. When he shook the revolver it rattled.

  After he sluiced his shirt back and forth he slapped it against the wall.

  His new black slouch hat had a braided leather hatband, and its silk lining was emblazoned with an eagle grasping arrows and its maker’s name: “Kravitz, Fine Hats, 15 Waverly Place, New York City.” The sweatband was stamped in gold: “M. M. Cannon, Capt. 40th N.Y.” Duncan wondered if he’d ever visit New York. He wished Captain Cannon’s head were smaller.

  He drew on his damp shirt, holstered his broken revolver, and went after his horse.

  At three that afternoon, Duncan met Spaulding at Lee’s headquarters.

  “Splendid, Wheelhorse! What a splendid hat! How I envy you.”

  Wordlessly, Duncan proffered it.

  “Oh no! I couldn’t! Wheelhorse—if you wear that hat to the next ball the ladies will flock to you. Tell me, was it a glorious fight?”

  Duncan said, “I’ve come for my blanket and groundsheet. I never got a chance to roll them this morning.”

  “They tell me two divisions hit our line—and just three of our gallant brigades repulsed them into confusion. How I wish I had been there!”

  “I wish I hadn’t.”

  One of Lee’s young aides told Duncan the general was inspecting the lines and hadn’t signed the note for Planter Pickering.

  Lee’s aide said, “Sir, I admire your hat.”

  Duncan asked Spaulding if he had anything to eat, and Spaulding said he knew a Petersburg family with a garden. “They are only distant connections on my mother’s side, but I am always welcome. We’ll graze in their garden on our way to Poplar Grove.”

  “What’s at Poplar Grove?”

  “Money, Wheelhorse. Enough money to finance my furlough.” Spaulding would say no more.

  Of Petersburg’s twenty-one churches only those on the Appomattox River side of town had undamaged steeples. The broad Augustan face of the mercantile exchange was pocked with holes. Bricks were piled neatly in the streets.

  A young colored woman answered Spaulding’s knock. “No sir,” she said, “Master and Missus ain’t home, and no sir, I can’t let you into our garden on account of they say you eat like a hog. Like a hog, Master!” She slammed the door.

  Spaulding shrugged. “As I said, Wheelhorse, they are distant connections. Never mind, I’ll bring you a ham back from my furlough.”

  Before the war, Poplar Grove had been a park where bands concerted on pleasant summer evenings. Now, fifteen hundred Federal prisoners were guarded by militiamen and boys. The prisoners sat with lowered heads or lay on parched ground. Most were black and most had been robbed. The only attention they received was provided by flies.

  A crude sign nailed to a tree advised: PERSONS WISHING TO RECLAIM SLAVE PROPERTY, SEE THE SERGEANT.

  “Then it’s true, Wheelhorse!” Spaulding rubbed his hands. “Niggers that aren’t claimed will be sent to Andersonville. That is,” he added, “if they aren’t dispatched along the way.”

  A handful of Confederate officers strolled among the prisoners, asking the odd question, tilting a face for identification. “Master,” one man cried, “I is Jed. Belong to Master Tom Stephens, just down the road. You remember me, don’t you? I surely am homesick. Surely would like to go back to Master Tom if you could help me out.”

  “Wait here for me,” Spaulding said.

  “I thought your family hadn’t any runaway servants.”

  “Wait here, will you? Give me your canteen.”

  Spaulding ignored many imploring hands before picking a young colored soldier and giving him water.

  Under an old tulip poplar, Confederate officers whose former servants wore Federal soldier’s uniforms waited while a cavalry sergeant wrote out receipts.

  “Master Duncan.”

  The voice was so low Duncan couldn’t identify its source. His eyes searched the disconsolate, the wounded, the dying, and the terrified. “Hello
, Jesse. You hurt?”

  Jesse was sitting back to a tree, hatless and shoeless; his shirt hung in shreds.

  “No, Master Duncan,” he whispered.

  “What do you want, Jesse?” Duncan was so stunned the only words he had were simple ones.

  “Don’t want to go to Andersonville,” Jesse said. “They kill me down there.”

  “I got to think,” Duncan said.

  Jesse whispered, “Never enough time to think, is there, Master Duncan?”

  Spaulding was beelining toward them, his young negro following two steps behind. “Wheelhorse,” Spaulding hissed, “do me a service.”

  “Spaulding, I don’t . . .”

  “Yes, yes! Look here. This Ethiopian and I have concocted a scheme of mutual benefit. I am to claim him as my servant and thus he avoids Andersonville and the near certainty some patriotic citizen will summarily end his life. Duncan, in the name of friendship, should yon cavalryman question my claim, you are to say that young . . . what’s your name, boy?”

  “Ben, Master.”

  “That Ben is known to you as my servant, that he was my body servant at the Institute. Can you remember?”

  Duncan lifted a hand tiredly, and Spaulding led the man away.

  If Duncan simply walked away, who would know? If Jesse lived to tell, what difference would it make? “He was just another Federal prisoner to me,” Duncan might say. “He made his choice when he ran from Stratford.”

  “You’ll come with me,” Duncan said.

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Those are sergeant’s stripes.”

  “Yes, Master. Second sergeant, B Company, 23rd U.S. Colored.”

  “I never would have guessed you’d make a soldier. The way your generals sent you in, you didn’t have a chance.”

  “Yes, Master,” Jesse said.

  “You sure you’re not hurt?”

  Jesse’s eyes were dull. “Hurt my pride. Buckra stole my shoes.”

  Spaulding elaborated his yarn of runaway servants long after the cavalry sergeant ceased to care. “Yes, Captain, I don’t doubt your word. You sign for him and the nigger’s yours.”

  “Well,” Spaulding said, “thank you. Ben, come along with me.”

  Duncan signed for Jesse of Stratford Plantation, Virginia.

  The Confederates rode, the coloreds walked behind. After a few minutes, Spaulding said, “A hickory-smoked ham . . .”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I promised you, and that’s what I shall produce. It was a great comfort to know you would vouch for me. Who’ve you got there?”

  “Jesse. Belongs to my father.”

  Spaulding chuckled. “How do they get up to it? Dressing them up in soldier suits, issuing them rifles, and sending ’em at us. At us!” Spaulding slapped his saddle. “Oh, I feel fine. I feel fine!” He turned. “Ben, what would you rather—go on the auction block or start that long march to Andersonville?”

  Ben kept his eyes lowered, “I done told you, Master. I go with you.”

  Spaulding rubbed his hands together. “Prime buck like Ben. What you think he’ll bring at the auction? Four thousand? Five?”

  “Oh, Christ, Spaulding . . .”

  “Not a word, mind you. I wouldn’t want this transaction advertised.”

  Duncan reined in. “I never saw you today.”

  “Meet me at Johnny Worsham’s tonight, Wheelhorse, and we’ll celebrate my furlough in grand style.”

  Duncan said he had no heart for celebration and wished nothing so much as rest.

  Spaulding rode off toward the Richmond & Petersburg railroad depot with his prize. Duncan and Jesse turned into the dooryard of a wrecked farmhouse.

  Glass was out of the windows and irregular shell holes in the brick faced the Federal positions. Shade trees had been cut for firewood and the porch railings were gone. The front door hung askew.

  The front parlor was empty of furnishings excepting a two-legged settee that slumped on the floor like an old dog. The mantelpiece had disappeared into somebody’s cookfire, along with most of the wainscotting. Broken glass crunched under Duncan’s feet. “I’ve got no food to give you.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “You fellows put up a hell of a scrap.”

  “You broke us.”

  “We’ve had considerable practice. You were green troops.”

  “Ain’t green no more.”

  “Here, take this canteen to the well. Oh hell, I’ll do it.”

  “What you think you got a servant for, Master?” Jesse said. “Sure am happy be servin’ my old master. Master Gatewood always been good to me.”

  Duncan sat on the broken settee. He rubbed his eyes.

  Jesse looked at him. “You shot someplace?”

  Duncan said, “When I was young I thought everything could be made right, given time.”

  “You sleep. I’ll keep a watch.”

  They did.

  At dusk, when Duncan woke, his mouth was furred and his arm bloodless where he’d lain upon it. The windows were pale rectangles. A small fire burned in the fireplace. Duncan knuckled crust from his eyes and drank from the canteen. “I suppose I should see about getting us something to eat.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself on my account.”

  “Jesse . . . remember those days on Uther’s porch, learning our McGuffey’s Reader? You and me, Leona and Sallie?”

  “Like you said, some things can’t be made right.” He told Duncan about Rufus.

  Duncan swore. After a time he said, “When you were attacking at the Crater, you yelled, ‘No quarter!’ For Christ’s sake, why did you do that?”

  Though his uniform was rags on his body, Jesse was not the servant he had been. He said, “How the hell should I know?”

  “When we were young, I could have said anything to you that came into my mind. Anything at all.”

  “I expect that time ended for me before it ended for you. Don’t take long for a nigger to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Damn it, Jesse . . .”

  “When we was tryin’ to surrender back there, why did you fellows keep killing us? I saw many a colored man cut down with his hands raised.”

  “Some good men chose their own damnation this day,” Duncan said. Wagons rolled past the house. “Christ, Jesse. You know I’m no deep thinker.” A teamster’s whip cracked and a mule protested. Duncan offered Jesse the canteen.

  “Sallie’s been a hospital matron since summer ’62. I have deep feelings for Sallie. I don’t know they are reciprocated.”

  “That can be hard. It hurts a man terrible loving a woman don’t love him. Makes him feel the fool. What of the homeplace?”

  Duncan was confused until he understood Jesse was asking about the Botkins. Duncan told of Uther’s death and Aunt Opal’s return to Stratford. They sat quietly for a while. Duncan said he’d get them something to eat.

  “You gonna leave me here?”

  “You going somewhere?”

  It was a quick ride to Mahone’s headquarters, where soldiers were enjoying Federal rations of mutton—a trainload of provisions had arrived in Petersburg.

  Some men couldn’t stop talking about today’s fight. Others, like Duncan, couldn’t speak a word, and nobody thought it remarkable when he halved a mutton ham and rode away with it.

  “What time is it?” Jesse asked.

  “Getting later.”

  The two men shared chunks of undercooked meat washed down with well water.

  “You want to go home to Stratford?” Duncan asked. “If Lincoln gets reelected, the Confederacy is done. God knows you’d be a help. My sister’s failing. Catesby died at the Bloody Angle.”

  Jesse stared out a ruined window. “I’m sorry. Mr. Byrd always seemed a good-natured man. We coloreds missed that fight. General Butler thinks niggers make good soldiers. Grant and Sherman aren’t so sure.”

  “ ‘Beast’ Butler—that’s what we call him. When he commanded in New Orleans he threatened to treat ladi
es like women of the street.”

  “My, that’s terrible. Don’t know what I’d do if somebody threatened to treat my womenfolk like women of the street.”

  Duncan held his tongue. “If I send you back to Stratford?”

  “My back still aches where your father whipped me. Sometimes Master Samuel just can’t help himself.”

  Duncan joined Jesse at the window shell. The darkening landscape outside was treeless. Darkness pooled in the shell holes.

  Duncan said, “The brothers I might have had didn’t live. The twins were stillborn.”

  “I heard your mama took it hard.”

  “It won’t matter who wins this war. Things will be the same—sorrow, sickness, and death.”

  “I s’pose it’s not likely men will quit their wicked ways.”

  “Jesse, General Grant is a damn butcher.”

  “I believe General Lee has created his share of widows.”

  “Why . . . ?”

  “Because we got to end this thing. You call me Jesse, I call you Master Duncan. Just usin’ your name, ‘Duncan,’ comes hard to me. You are a fine white gentleman, I don’t doubt. And no man can help who he falls in love with or if the woman loves him back. It’ll take a hundred, two hundred years to cure this slavery mischief, and if you win this war, it’ll take more time yet.”

  “If General Grant wins, we Virginians will be a conquered people. I don’t know if I could bear that.”

  “Don’t seem so terrible to me. ’Course I been a conquered people longer than you have.”

  Duncan laughed, and after a moment, Jesse laughed too.

  “I never intended you harm,” Duncan said.

  “It ain’t what a man intends,” Jesse said. “It’s what he does.”

  Although the two men talked past midnight, Duncan did not mention Maggie, nor did Jesse. At two-thirty in the morning, at a thinly manned stretch of Confederate line, Duncan passed Jesse through, explaining to an inexperienced captain of militia that the nigger was a spy carrying false information to General Grant.

  LOSS OF THE

  WILD DARRELL

  “I WAS THE best clerk Silas Omohundru ever had,” the old woman whispered, “although Silas employed me as proof of his positive indifference to ‘trade.’ Isn’t it odd how eagerly the weak pick up what the strong have no more use for?”