So I knew God was listening to me thrash it out with myself. But was Pa? Or was he just dead? I took a quick look upward, half afraid I’d see Pa’s face up there staring down at me. There was nothing but a cloudy sky. Still, I blushed when I did it, and looked back down at the mules again.
When I got home I gave Ma all the arguments—how it was safe as churches, and could make a lot of money.
She set her lips and shook her head.
“Don’t even think about it, Johnny. You promised your pa.”
“But it isn’t the same as fighting, Ma. I’m not going to fight, just drive the mules. Pa’d want me to do it, so as to get money for the family. Suppose the bluecoats come back and clean us out? It’s for the little ones. Pa would say so himself.” Well, Pa wouldn’t have said that. But the feeling to go was on me so strong I couldn’t help what I was saying.
“How much could you earn?”
“Four hundred dollars, Jeb says.”
Her eyes widened. “That much? Which Jeb is that?”
“Wagner. From over to Stanardsville.”
“He’s going?” she said. “I don’t know him well, but he seems like a sensible man.”
“He says there’ll be fifty Mosbys to guard us. It’ll be safe as churches.” I began to blush again, for Jeb didn’t say that. He said there was a risk in it. But Ma’d never let me go if I said so.
She nodded. “I’ll speak to Isaac Reamer to see if he thinks it’s safe.”
“It’s my duty to Virginia,” I said. I blushed again when I said it.
She gave me a look. “There’s no rush. How many times have I told you, ‘He that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.’ I’ll ask Isaac Reamer when I have a chance.”
A couple of days later we went over to Conrad’s Store to see Mr. Reamer. He had a little cider left and we had a cup of it sitting in a patch of sun on his back steps. “You say Jeb Wagner’s going, Johnny?”
“Yes. He was the one who gave me the idea.”
“And he thinks it’ll be safe?”
“He says we’ll have fifty Mosbys with us.” That was true.
“The Mosbys ain’t magic,” he said. “You sure Jeb thinks there’s no danger?”
“I reckon he wouldn’t be going if he figured it was risky.” I took out my pocket hanky and dabbed at my eye, like I had something in it, so they couldn’t see my face.
Ma said, “How long would it take Johnny to get over there and back?”
“Four, five days each way, I reckon. You can’t be sure, for they’ll probably have to go along back roads and such.”
She thought. “I could spare him that long, I guess. But not much longer.” She looked at me. “You’re sure about the Mosbys?”
“That’s what Jeb said.” I hoped that Pa wasn’t looking down at me just then.
Chapter Four
I left a week later with the mules and the wagon. I’d put a little time into seeing that the wagon was in good shape. One of the wooden hoops that held up the canvas had split, and I took it out and bound up the split. I patched a couple of holes in the canvas, and greased the axles, for if you didn’t grease them regular every day they made an all-fired awful screeching as the wheels went around. And I fed the mules up good, for all they’d get to eat along the way was whatever grass they could snatch at. I even gave Bridget a couple of last year’s old, dried apples to put her in a good temper. She loved apples, and if I happened to be eating one when I was currying them or harnessing them up, she’d put her nose right up to my face to see if she could get a bite. Generally I’d end up giving her the core anyway.
The wagon road went through the Blue Ridge Mountains by way of Swift Run Gap, up and down hills on the narrow dirt road. It was rough countryside, mostly woods, with here and there a lonely farmhouse and barn sitting in the midst of fields and orchards, where somebody had carved a farm out of the woods. But it was pretty all the same, hawks floating in the sky high up, little streams purling through the woods and over the road to run on down the mountainside. I’d driven the mules through it lots of times, and I always liked to see it.
But this time it was different. I wasn’t just going to Stanardsville with a load of corn, I was doing something for the honor of Virginia and the whole South against the Yankees. I looked back into the empty wagon. Great-grampa’s sword was stuck through a loop of rope I’d rigged up, where I could grab it fast if I had to. Ma didn’t know it was there.
She thought it was still stuck down in the hay in the hayloft where we hid it from the bluecoats. I wished I dared wear it in my belt, but I didn’t, for if I twisted the wrong way I might stick Regis, the mule I was riding on.
Besides the sword, I’d stuck a little book of psalms in my pocket, so’s I had something to while away the time with, for it was going to be a lot of long days with nothing much to do but sit on Regis and look around.
I knew I ought to feel sinful for what I’d done—telling Ma that Jeb said there wasn’t any risk to it. But I didn’t. I felt brave and daring, like one of King Arthur’s knights off on an adventure. It was the first time I’d felt happy since Pa died, and after a while I started to sing at the top of my lungs:
In Dixieland where I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin’,
Look away, look away,
Look away, Dixieland . . .
But I couldn’t do much singing, for the mules liked for me to pay them some attention. Bridget was out front to lead, with Regis and Molly side by side just in front of the wagon. I generally rode on Regis, although at times I’d get off and walk, especially when they were pulling uphill or over a bad piece of road and the going was slow. Mules aren’t really ornery, the way a lot of folks think. It’s just that they have their own ideas about things. They’re real smart, too. Once you get to know them, you understand their likes and dislikes, and you can generally persuade them to go along with you.
For example, Bridget was a real tourist and liked to take in the sights. Every so often she’d stop to look around. I’d learned it was best to give her a minute or two to look at the view. Then I’d give her a special shout I had for her—sort of “ayeeeooo.” It was a kind of warning that she’d had her look and would get a lick behind her ears with the whip if she didn’t start moving. Mules are mighty testy about those long ears. They don’t like it any to have people fussing with them.
With one thing and another it was near nightfall by the time I reached Stanardsville. I went around to the store, where they loaded the wagon with beef packed in wooden barrels. Then they told me to head off through town until I came out the other side, where I’d see some teamsters camped in a woods. I was to wait there until the wagon train formed up over the next day or so.
It was dark when I got there. There were a few campfires spotted around the woods, with two or three teamsters at each one. I pulled into the woods, unhitched the mules, and curried them with the brush I brought along—you got to curry the mules regular, or their pores’ll clog up with dirt and sweat. By the time I got finished I was good and tired; it had been a hard day. I ate a chunk of bread and cheese I brought along, had a pull from my water jug, rolled up in my blanket, and went to sleep in the wagon.
When I got up in the morning I saw that three or four more wagons and teams of horses had come in during the night. There was nothing much for me to do but wait.
Along about noon Jeb Wagner rolled into the woods with his wagon. I gave him a chance to get his horses settled, and then I walked over to where he was hunkered down on his haunches with two other teamsters, chewing the fat. They were arguing about a wagon train they’d been in—when it had been and where it had been, and who had been in it.
“No, Jeb,” one of them said. “You ain’t got a brain in your head. It wasn’t nowhere near to Port Royal, it was just west of Winchester. I remember it, because when we was riding through town I seen a sign Winchester Soap Company, and I thought to myself, ‘Why that was Granny’s name.’ ”
“What
was, Baldy?” Jeb said. “Soap?”
“No, you idjit, Winchester. That was Granny’s name.”
The third one put in, “I’ll be blamed if I knew you could read, Baldy.”
“Sure, Baldy can read,” Jeb said. “And write, too. I seen him practicing writing his own name. Got it right a couple of times, too.” He gave me a glance to see if I appreciated his joke and I smiled, so as to let him know I did.
“How come you knew he got it right, Jeb?” the third one said. “You was having trouble figuring out which day of the week it was the last time I seen you. I believe you don’t know the days of the week.”
“Oh, yes, he does too,” Baldy said. “I heard him saying them over to hisself the other day. He knows every last one o’ ‘em. Now all he’s got to do is put ‘em in the right order.”
The third one nodded. “He’ll do it, too. Just give him time. Then he can start on the months. That’s a sight harder, for there’s only seven days, but heaps of months to keep in line. I doubt if you’ll be able to manage, Jeb.”
“All right,” Jeb said, “if you’re so wicked smart, let’s hear which months has thirty days and which ones has thirty-one.”
“Oh I know that. It’s easy. Lemme ask you how many days February has.”
Jeb thought about it a minute. “Thirty,” he said.
Before I could stop myself I blurted out, “Twenty-eight, except on leap year when it has twenty-nine.” Before I even finished saying it I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
Jeb looked kind of sour, but Baldy began to laugh. “You two fellas think you’re so powerful smart and here comes some bitty fella that’s hardly out of his crib, knows more than you do.”
I didn’t much like being called a bitty fella, but I’d brought it on myself. “I’m fourteen,” I said.
Baldy squinted at me. “Ain’t you a little young to be getting yourself mixed up in a jaunt like this?”
“My Pa was killed by the Yanks and I aim to get even for him.”
Baldy looked me up and down. “I don’t doubt but what you got the fighting spirit in you, but what’re you going to fight the Yanks with—your teeth?”
“I got my great-grandpa’s sword. He got it in the Revolution.”
The three of them busted out laughing. I went red. “What’s wrong with a sword? All the officers have them.”
“That’s for jabbing at their own troops when they break and run. Them swords was all right for King Arthur, but they ain’t much use against a repeater rifle. Old Billy Yank’ll have six holes in you before you get close enough to throw it at him, much less stick him with it.”
I felt pretty foolish and resolved I wouldn’t mention Great-grampa’s sword again. “Well, anyway, I’m going to fight them if I get the chance.”
“Bound to get revenge for your pa, is it?” Jeb said.
I wondered. Was that the whole reason? Everybody seemed to have a different idea of it—states’ rights, honor of the South, slavery. Why were these fellas in it? Of course, they weren’t soldiers, but so long as they were carrying goods for our side, they were taking a risk. “Pa said we got to fight for states’ rights.”
“Well, I don’t know about states’ rights,” Jeb said. “That’s all too much for me. What I won’t stand for is having a nigger put up as good as a white man. I don’t care what old Abe says, there never lived a nigger that was as good as a white man. If them Yankees want them black bucks sittin’ down to dinner with them, why, that’s their business. But they ain’t gonna tell me I have to do it. You can’t trust a nigger far as you can throw him.”
Baldy looked solemn and nodded. “That’s God’s truth, Jeb. If He’d of wanted them to sit down with the white man, He wouldn’t of made them black. He done it so as they could be told apart from whites. It’s right there in the Bible. Noah put a curse on Canaan and turned him black, and that’s where niggers come from.”
“Baldy, you don’t know no more about it than you do the days of the months. It wasn’t Canaan, it was Cain, and it wasn’t Noah who cursed him and turned him black, it was God. Cain, he walloped his brother and the Lord turned him black for it.”
It was plain to me that neither of them knew the first thing about it. We didn’t get to church all that much, because of it being so far away, but all those years I was growing up, Pa read a chapter out of the Bible every morning before breakfast and every night before bed. After Pa went to fight, Ma did it, too. I reckoned we’d got through the whole thing three or four times, though I wasn’t sure. I knew the story of Cain and Abel and the story of Noah and Canaan, too, and I couldn’t see where it had anything to do with the colored.
But it didn’t seem sensible to start explaining the Bible to these fellas, so I said, “Over where I come from most folks don’t have any slaves. It doesn’t much matter to them whether the colored are free or not. Letting Virginia have her constitutional rights is what they care about.”
Baldy looked me up and down. “They’ll get over that the first time some big buck comes walking down the sidewalk pushing white folks into the street. Yessir, I’m for states’ rights, all right—states’ rights to keep their slaves.”
Jeb yawned. “Blame me if I couldn’t use a little drink just now. Where’s that whiskey jar of yours, Baldy?”
It seemed like a good time to leave and I skedaddled. It was confusing, all right. How come some people were fighting for one reason and some for another? To be honest, I wasn’t so sure all those people back home were as hot for states’ rights and the Constitution as Pa was. I never heard much talk about it. It seemed like a lot of people were fighting the Yanks just because they were here.
Chapter Five
The Mosbys clattered into the woods on horseback toward suppertime. They were pretty fierce looking, all right. They were dressed every which way—some of them wearing regular Confederate uniforms, or at least parts of uniforms, some of them in ordinary shirts and trousers, some of them wearing pieces of clothing they’d captured from the Federal bluecoats. A lot of them had beards and moustaches, and most of them had big Bowie knives tucked into their belts, along with a pair of Colt .44 revolvers. Some of them had another pair of Colts stuck into the tops of their boots. I could see why they scared the Yankees, for they scared me, and I was on their side.
We spent two days in that patch of woods, waiting for more wagons filled with supplies to come in. We were all a little nervous just resting there, for we’d be sitting ducks for Federal troops. But the Mosbys kept scouts out circling around and about.
On the third day we got up while it was still dark and got ready to move out. That early in the morning nobody was doing much talking. We got little fires going and boiled up coffee. Those who had a little beef or bacon fried it up. Those who didn’t had to content themselves with hardtack.
I harnessed up the mules. It’s not easy if you aren’t used to it, but I could do it with my eyes closed. First you slip the collar over the mule’s head. Then you slide the harness on, fasten up the lines, and hitch the evener to the shaft. You got to make sure that everything’s not too tight, not too loose. You get a knack for it after a while.
Then, as the sky began to lighten up, we moved out. Some of the Mosbys went first.
Others rode alongside the wagon train as skirmishers, a little way out from the road so as to flush out anybody hiding in the woods and fields. Another bunch came along behind.
There was about a dozen wagons in the train, most often pulled by teams of six horses. I was the only one with a mule team. The horse teams looked mighty handsome, but I wouldn’t swap ‘em for our mules. The mules didn’t need as much fodder as horses and didn’t take sick so easy. A mule could do more work than a horse, too. Mules are good-hearted, and willing to do their share. You couldn’t help liking them.
We headed out of Stanardsville on the turnpike, aiming for Gordonsville about twenty miles away. It’d take us a long day to get that far. Then we’d take another turnpike to a place called Louisa Court Ho
use and from there on down to a road that ran into the James River near Richmond. Then we’d load the stuff on barges and take it into the city by the river.
We ambled along. A wagon train can’t make the time that a single team can. If one team near the front runs into a problem, the whole line is held up. It’s always stretching out and closing up. Being down at the end I was forever waiting, and then suddenly I’d have to fly into a trot to catch up. But I didn’t mind, for there was a bunch of Mosbys right behind me.
Going slow allowed me to look around a good deal. Except for my trip to Charlottesville, I’d never been farther from home than Stanardsville, and it was all new and strange to me. It was exciting to see different places, always something new around each twist in the road—a kind of barn I’d never seen before, a deep black lake, a couple of little boys who ran alongside the wagon giving the Rebel yell.
There were other things to see that weren’t so precious nice: houses with the windows and doors blown out of them; barns burnt to the ground; whole groves of trees broken and splintered where cannon balls had smashed through them, leaving tall stumps sticking up like bayonets. Once we passed a scattering of dead horses lying on a distant hillside, rotting and bloated. Even from far away we could smell the rotten flesh—an ugly stink that would make you gag if you took a mouthful of it.
Along about ten in the morning it began to rain, a slow drizzle, bit by bit coming on a little thicker. I hunched down inside my clothes, trying to stay dry, but of course that wasn’t any good, and after a while I gave up and drove on wet and shivering. The rain soaked into the dirt road. For those up front it wasn’t too bad, but by the time the rear of the wagon train came along, the road had been trampled on by a hundred horses and rolled over by fifty big wagon wheels and it was churned into pea soup a foot deep.
With Every Drop of Blood Page 4
