Jacob's Ladder

by Donald McCaig

  “I thought Federal soldiers found her gold.”

  “They found what gold she meant them to. Grannie M is a clever woman.”

  “Why hello—you must be the girl we’ve been hearing about.” The woman who took the girl’s hand had an amiable face and gentle grasp. “I’m Selah Omohundru, and this dope is my brother, Josh.”

  Excepting Kizzy, Selah was the darkest-skinned person here. Jet-black braids were coiled on top of her head.

  “Whatever happened to Kizzy’s child?”

  Selah knitted her brows. “Years ago, here in this house—I suppose I must have been my Jacob’s age at the time—I asked Kizzy why she didn’t have children of her own. Kizzy said, ‘My baby buried down in Goldsboro.’ There was terrible grief in her voice.

  “Kizzy and my father were very close. He phoned her on each birthday and they chattered for an hour. After the war, Kizzy was as much my father’s mother as Granny M. Father used to joke about it—said he was extra lucky because he had an extra mother. Granny M makes her business success seem inevitable, but I gather failure was a real possibility on more than one occasion. Did you know hers was the first Richmond bank to reopen after Mr. Roosevelt’s bank holiday?”

  “She’s a remarkable woman.”

  “Yes,” Selah said. “She is, though sometimes not entirely likable.”

  “Mama?” It was the boy, Jacob. “Can we go out to the garden and play? Cousin Elliot wants to play too.”

  With Selah’s approval the children slipped through the French doors into the sunlight. Kizzy had wakened and was sharing her cake with two of the youngest children, very much on their party manners.

  “It’s Kizzy’s gift,” Selah said. “Children trust her.”

  Josh said, “Marguerite sits on the board of the Historical Society. Last night, we were at a dinner party at this wonderfully photogenic plantation and everyone was talking about the biography Dr. Freeman is preparing of Robert E. Lee. Don’t you think it strange to make heroes of men who tried to break up our nation?”

  Selah winced, but the girl smiled courteously. “It seems less strange to a Virginian.”

  Selah said, “Josh, would you mix me a daiquiri?”

  “Sister, are you sure . . .”

  “Please, Josh, we’ve discussed this.” Selah steered the girl to a quiet corner. “I gather Marguerite has told you?”

  The girl took a deep breath and said, “Marguerite has spoken about her life as a slave, if that’s what you mean.”

  Selah looked her straight in the eyes. “Yes, I thought she might. Well, you’re the first outsider in on the Omohundru family secret.”

  “You knew?”

  “Oh yes. As soon as we were old enough to keep a confidence we were told. I can’t speak for Josh and Bill, but I found the news of our racial makeup horrifying. You know how much young girls wish to be indistinguishable from their friends. And it turned out I was different—hopelessly, everlastingly different. Oh, I cried and wailed and said hateful things, but Marguerite simply replied that willful innocence tempts Providence. Have you been to Europe recently?”

  The girl, who had never been, said as much.

  “I was in Hamburg in March and—I’m an art historian, you see—and the Warburg Library—we fear that if that wonderful library isn’t relocated outside Germany, the damn brownshirts will burn the books. Burn the books!”

  “One reads about such things . . .”

  Fiercely, “They are true! It is worse than you read! We Americans are hiding our heads in the sand.” When Josh arrived with Selah’s daiquiri, she said, “I’m sorry Josh, but I’ve changed my mind. Could you fetch me a glass of water?” To the girl, “Marguerite is so proud of her water. Hers is probably the last private well in Richmond. When she passes on . . .”

  “Is your husband here today?”

  Selah’s look was a challenge. “We are divorced.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I am not. I suppose I’ve inherited my realism from Marguerite. No Omohundru is likely to be ruined by dreams.”

  “Your father . . .”

  “Jacob Omohundru was the sanest man I’ve ever known. Because he was so calm, some thought him meek, but once Jacob set his course, no power on earth could dissuade him from it. Father didn’t make friends. He was ill at ease in society and turned down most invitations. Mother was killed in a trolley accident when we were quite young, and Father never remarried. I cannot tell you how much I miss him. My father was one of those men who carry on the honorable daily business of the world and never make a fuss about it. People trusted him. Do you find us ordinary?”

  Startled, the girl said, “I . . .”

  “I’m sure you must. Brother Bill is the kindest man alive, but he drinks too much. Joshua is forever saying the slightly wrong thing and loves his children to distraction. And I, divorced woman with child, junior professor of art history. People trusted my father. Is that so negligible?”

  “And Marguerite?”

  With a flourish, Josh presented Selah with her glass of well water and solemnly intoned, “ ‘I’ve been living beside the James too long to wish to drink of it.’ ”

  Selah’s smile was fleeting, and she continued as if she’d not been interrupted. “Those who create a family are never ordinary. Marguerite may be many things, but ordinary she is not.”

  Josh’s grin became a grimace—somewhat like Edward G. Robinson’s. “You gonna rat on us, sister? I mean—if this got out, Christ! I’m with the water authority, you know.”

  The girl said, “I supposed things were different in California.”

  Selah said, “I don’t think my university would mind. Bill’s studio wouldn’t turn a hair. But some of Josh’s political enemies might use it—this mixed-race business—against him.”

  “There are several prominent negro families in Richmond.”

  “Yes, but there are no prominent families that are negro. When I was young, Kizzy told me how the slaves prayed for the day of Jubilo. I have no doubt that day will come. But not now. Not yet.”

  “So you think Marguerite did the right thing?”

  “You must ask Marguerite.” Selah’s flashing grin was so pleased with herself and so mischievous the girl knew what little Midge must have looked like so many years ago.

  Josh went to help Kizzy scrub apple cake from good children’s faces.

  “Will I see you again?” Selah asked. “I am between terms and plan to stay in Richmond for a while.”

  “Meeting you,” the girl said, “all of you, today. I wish I could have known your father.”

  Selah smiled. “Like every ordinary man, my father had his glimpse of heaven. Just one glimpse.”

  Marguerite faced the remnants of apple cake, a mound of sticky candles. The girl came to sit beside her.

  The human voice is the last thing to age. Marguerite chuckled. “I see you’ve met our Selah.”

  “Yes.”

  “She reminds me of myself. As I might have been. Do you think I might have done better? Don’t patronize me. No one but a fool reaches the end of her life without regrets.” Her eyes followed the boys playing in the garden. Her great-grandson, Jacob, broad-jumped a low boxwood planting and covered his ears, giggling with pleasure.

  “After Silas was killed, I was never with another man. I was then twenty-one years old. It is difficult to remember how it felt to be twenty-one years old.”

  Sentimental tears glistening his cheeks, Bill leaned to give his grandmother a boozy embrace. He said that he had a train to catch, that they were starting a new picture, that Sam Goldwyn spent money like water. “We’ll be back for your hundredth!”

  “Not if you don’t stop drinking,” Marguerite said.

  Bill beamed, “Same old Marguerite! Promise you’ll never change!” He went to hug Kizzy.

  Marguerite sighed. “That is the hardest thing: that I can no longer protect them.” She nodded at the children in the garden. “I am thoroughly ready to die, but to see that
boy grow up, I would almost be willing to live forever. If you wonder what Duncan Gatewood looked like, look at Jacob: his ears, how he holds his head. Lord, how I loved him. I love him still.” Softly she said, “That boy is right fancy.”

  Oblivious to the old eyes which beheld him so tenderly, young Jacob tossed his head, laughing with the delight of being alive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN 1990, WHILE researching county records for a book which became An American Homeplace, I found an evocative court case. Samuel Gatewood was a prosperous mountain planter who owned a large plantation, a mill, and twenty-eight slaves. In February of 1861, Gatewood accompanied slave patrollers to the modest Kirkpatrick cabin seeking Jesse, Gatewood’s runaway slave. When Jesse was discovered, the Kirkpatricks might easily have disclaimed knowledge of his fugitive status, and surely that would have been the wiser course. (The record hinted such may have been Gatewood’s preference.) Instead, the Kirkpatricks were defiant. When Jesse was asked if he’d run again, he was unusually bold. “It’s a mighty big mountain up there,” he replied.

  It was a terrifying/thrilling time. Men of good reputation reported hearing cannon fire deep in the mountains. Fort Sumter was besieged by the new Confederacy, and though Virginia was still in the Union, its sympathies were with those states already seceded.

  In those days, when malefactors weren’t hanged outright, prison sentences were relatively light: two years for burglary, three for robbery and assault. Both Kirkpatricks were found guilty of felony (Jesse was Samuel Gatewood’s property) and sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary in Richmond.

  Kirkpatrick was not a local name. Apparently the land they lived on once belonged to Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s father. There is more known about the Gatewoods (which I did not pursue), but nothing more about Jesse or the Kirkpatricks. Penitentiary records were burned in the evacuation fire of 1865.

  You now know what I do about the real Jesse, the real Gatewoods and Kirkpatricks. In the pages of Jacob’s Ladder they are wholly fictions.

  The Confederate surrender at Appomattox disturbed U. S. Grant, who wrote, “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and so valiantly for a cause though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought and one for which there was the least excuse.” As a liberal, reared in the North, I shared U. S. Grant’s view—as I suppose most Americans do—and my first working title was “The Worst Cause.” I was off on the wrong foot, my research perplexed me, and several times I nearly abandoned the project. It was impossible to understand the Confederates who fought so gallantly. For what? The right to oppress another people? And given the disparity in military forces, population, even farmland (in 1860, the North grew more tobacco than the South, had three times as many horses, four times the wheat production), it was hard to understand what the southerners were thinking of, why’d they’d chance lives, fortunes, and honor in such a forlorn struggle.

  Twenty-five years ago, my wife, Anne, and I moved from New York City to a farm in the Virginia mountains. Though we cannot be natives, we have become Virginians, and this farm is our only home. During summer months, irregularly, my young neighbors hold what they call “deer/beer parties.” On the riverbank, deer steaks are barbecued while good old boys spin yarns and drink Old Milwaukee and Willy Nelson tunes blare from a pickup truck. My neighbors are proud, poor, crack shots, honest to a fault, the best of friends and least forgiving of enemies. At one such party while the southern stars slid overhead, I understood that if the year were 1861 we Virginians would be fighting for Robert E. Lee.

  But if by accident of birthplace I might have been a Confederate soldier, by accident of race I might just as well have been my or one of my neighbor’s slaves.

  The attempt to understand both experiences, Confederate and African-American, is the soul of Jacob’s Ladder.

  I determined to write these people’s stories as they understood matters at the time, before historians decided what actually happened and moralists determined what it all meant. My liveliest information came from memoirs, diaries, newspapers, sermons, and letters written before and during the war. I could not read these letters, so full of hope, fear, and vows to be better people, without admiring the men and women who endured the most terrible and consequential of American wars.

  The Civil War is the single most important event in African-American history, and the ex-slaves who became Union soldiers knew that perfectly well and resolved to standards of courage, dignity, and faith few of their white fellow soldiers could equal. As Medal of Honor winner Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, 4th USCT, wrote, “Here the negro stood in the glare of the greatest search light, part and parcel of the grandest armies ever mustered upon this continent, competing side by side with the best and bravest of the Union army against the flower of the Confederacy and losing nothing in the contrast.”

  These are happy times for researching the war. New southern historians are uninterested in justifying horrid racial practices and busy themselves revising our understanding of the lives and beliefs of ordinary southerners, blacks and whites alike. In July 1991, the definitive exhibition of antebellum slave life, “Before Freedom Came,” opened at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. For many black schoolteachers who brought their young charges to that exhibition, it was the first time they had ever set foot inside a museum that represented for them all that had been most hurtful in the South.

  Research is the historical novelist’s map, constraint, and purest energy. The events of the Civil War are so odd, ferocious, and poignant that fictional characters do well simply to inhabit them. I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

  Throughout I’ve given the names of real soldiers to my fictional characters. Had you been in Silas Omohundru’s hut during the bitter winter of 1864, you would have met Color Sergeant Robinson, though the real Color Sergeant Robinson may have been morose and gray where my fictional Robinson is undaunted. If you’d attended a hymn sing with First Sergeant (and Medal of Honor winner) Edward Ratcliffe you might have encountered a man less an angry realist than I’ve made him out. Robinson and Ratcliffe survived the war and may have descendants who honor them in memory or possess letters or their ancestor’s battered diary. I owe their descendants this apology for fictionalizing their family story. I also ask pardon of the family of Private Lawrence Barry of the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery, whose defiance symbolized the battle for Fort Gregg.

  Memoirs, diaries, and letters have provided insights and language. Chapter 12 is lifted in its entirety from an anonymous article in the Southern Planter of 1857.

  Not producing a bibliography is a novelist’s privilege I gratefully exercise. However, since they are not widely known sources, scholars may wish to examine master’s theses compiled by students of Dr. Eslie Lewis, at the Moorland Springarn Research Center, Howard University, and “From the Wilderness to Appomatox: Life in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, May 1864–April 1865,” a doctoral dissertation by J. Tracy Power, University of South Carolina. The former are the only regimental histories for U.S. Colored Troops recruited from Virginia and Maryland, and the latter is invaluable for anyone seeking to know what Lee’s soldiers were thinking near the end of their bitter struggle.

  I am deeply indebted to those who have abetted my research and ask those I’ve neglected to name to forgive me. Whatever I got right I owe to them, every misunderstanding is my own.

  Jack Ackerly, Richmond, Virginia

  Rick Armstrong, Millboro Springs, Virginia

  Charles Ballou,MD., Clifton Forge, Virginia

  Mary and David Britt, Reynolds Homestead, Critz, Virginia

  Dr. Chris Calkins, Historian, Petersburg National Battlefield

  Mary C. Coulling, Lexington, Virginia

  Shelby Foote, Memphis, Tennessee

  Dr. Warren R. Hofstra, Shenandoah University

  Professor Ervin Jordan, Curator Special Collections, Alderman Library,
University of Virginia

  Dr. Ken Koons, Virginia Military Institute

  Dr. Stephen L. Longenecker, Bridgewater College

  David Nicholson, Washington, D.C.

  Judge Oliver Pollard, Petersburg, Virginia

  Dr. James I. Robertson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

  J. Susanne Simmons, Fort Defiance High School

  Nancy Sorrells, Research Librarian, Museum of American Frontier Culture

  Lucinda Stanton, Historian, Monticello

  E. Gehrig Spencer, Historic Site Manager, Fort Fisher, North Carolina

  Evelyn Timberlake, Research Librarian, Library of Congress

  Tom Word, Richmond, Virginia

  My wife, poet Anne Ashley McCaig, weighed every sentence and denounced each shabby word, every mangled attitude. While I am deeply grateful for her months of hard work, I love her for that morning when things looked most bleak and she said, “We had to take this risk. It was the right thing to do.”

  Knox Burger has been my mentor, editor, and friend for as long as I’ve been writing prose. Jacob’s Ladder would not exist without him.

  Starling Lawrence found the warmth in Cox’s snow.

  I am grateful for the tangible confidence of Merle M. Dodson of Planter’s Bank and Trust Company of Virginia and M. Scott Glenn of Staunton Farm Credit.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the staffs of the Antietam, Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Spotsylvania National Battlefields; the Richmond National Battlefield Museum; the Petersburg National Battlefield; the Cape Fear Museum; Warwick House, Bath County, Virginia; the Bellamy Mansion, Wilmington, North Carolina; the Bath County Historical Society; Hollywood Cemetery; the Bath County Clerk’s Office; the National Archives of the United States; the Southern History Collection at the University of North Carolina; the Historical Collection, University of Michigan at Lansing; the Valentine Museum; and the Museum of the Confederacy. I thank the librarians at Washington and Lee University, the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, the Charles Town Public Library, the Virginia Military Institute, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Howard University, the Wilmington (North Carolina) Public Library, the Virginia State Library and Archives, and the Virginia Historical Society. And last but by no means least, my thanks to the redoubtable ladies of the Junior League of Richmond, who got me into the old Virginia State Penitentiary after it was closed but before it was torn down.