Confederates

by Thomas Keneally

  Searcy laughed indulgently. He couldn’t think of anything much worse than marrying a Texas woman, but then the man’s opportunities in England had probably been a little narrow. Searcy said, ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you in private, sergeant … I mean, captain?’

  ‘D’you mind, boys?’ the captain said to his horsemen. D’you mind, boys? They never spoke like that in the 11th Hussars. Searcy however was halfway willing to admit that that might well have been the 11th Hussars’ tragedy.

  Anyhow the others rode back into the woods and hid themselves again.

  ‘I wanted to know, captain,’ Searcy muttered, ‘if you intend to restrict my movements tonight. I have all manner of private interviews to make this side of the river and I would appreciate being allowed to proceed with them.’

  ‘I could give you a section of cavalry, Mr Searcy sir, to go with you.’

  ‘Well, a section of cavalry would tend to detract from the privacy of the arrangement, don’t you think?’

  ‘Mr Searcy, I know I can’t permit you, sir, to go about this area without supervision.’

  ‘Are you implying something, sir?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The captain thought awhile. When he spoke he was tentative, because the old English class difference was working on him when he spoke to Searcy, the same as Texan lack of class difference worked on him when he spoke to his troopers.

  ‘Mr Searcy, I know what I have been ordered to do. In the first place, this is a dangerous area for a man of your reputation, sir. Picket fire is likely to break out at any time …’

  ‘Allow me take care of my own safety, captain. Look here now. You’ve seen me in the Crimea, as you say. You know I am an English gentleman.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Searcy.’

  ‘If I gave you my word as an English gentleman that my purposes are quite licit this evening, and involve no danger to my Confederate hosts – would that suffice?’

  The captain got more thoughtful. ‘It would suffice no better than the word of any other man,’ he said in the end.

  Searcy turned his face away. ‘I consider your suggestion an insult.’

  The cavalry captain thought about this. ‘I think you’d better go home to bed, sir. I saw an English shipping agent hanged in New Orleans last year as a Union spy. You and I, sir, know these things can happen almost by accident …’

  ‘If I don’t, sergeant,’ said Searcy, making no bones now about himself being younger son to a baronet and the captain what Searcy’s mother called ‘an upjumped commoner’, ‘what would you do?’

  The captain had taken a pistol out and had it pointed. ‘Well, there is always arrest, and if I arrested you then your movements would be cramped worse than if you just went back now.’

  Searcy didn’t know whether to be grateful to him or not. If I can’t get through the lines, he thought, then I have no reason not to go down to Gordonsville and lay siege to Mrs Whipple. The only thing was: laying siege, even to a woman like Mrs Whipple, wouldn’t change the history of modern times. Getting over the river might.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Searcy snarled, but turned his horse’s head back towards the farmhouse where he was lodging. He could hear the captain breathe out. He didn’t have to tax his brain any more on what to do with a renowned London scribe.

  The scribe seemed pretty piqued anyhow and had now reined his horse in again, this time (the captain felt sure) to get a parting insult off his chest.

  ‘Tell me this,’ said Searcy. ‘What are you doing with this rabble? After what you’ve been used to in the Hussars?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the captain, letting a little Texas into his voice. ‘The boys are a mite rough, I admit that, and they’re no use at all for parade ground stuff. But for rough and independent work they’re adequate.’

  ‘But the cause, captain, the cause. What do you think of it?’

  ‘Texas gave me a home. It made me a rich man beyond my dreams. It gave me the rank of an officer. I figure you owe something to a place like that.’

  Searcy rode round in the dark a little longer, hoping on the long chance that some Union cavalry might raid across the Rappahannock and take him prisoner. By one a.m. it hadn’t happened, so the Hon. Horace Searcy took a long draw from his flask of whisky and went home to bed.

  27

  Early on the morning of August 27, Colonel Wheat led the Shenandoah Volunteers into a field within sight of the depot yards at Manassas. They were now, what with straggling and illnesses, some 247 men in strength. Bolly was still part of this strength, however, and so were Hans Strahl and Usaph Bumpass and Gus Ramseur. And so was Decatur Cate, conscript, two-minded but strong still in the legs.

  As they all eased their muskets and blankets off their shoulders and found a place that had shade or was in a fence corner, Colonel Wheat rode in amongst them and made the sort of speech they were used to from him.

  ‘They tell me, boys,’ he yelled, ‘that in the depot yards here are two-mile-long trains of goddam provender. Perhaps those of you with sharper eyes can jest about see them from this-here spot.’

  In fact, just down the road, the depot yard and the long lines of freight cars could be seen even by the short-sighted. Wheat could certainly see them too. And beyond the freight cars there were large storehouses, and between them there were sutler’s booths.

  The colonel said, ‘Then, by popular report, there’s goddam warehouses stocked through the provision of a foul Washington government and a glorious providence. I think it would appear even to the diminished intellect of a goddam colonel that if everyone was let go into the depot to choose goods at will there would be riot and impropriety. I think likewise that it might appear even to the same stamp of intellect that to forbid everyone to visit the depot yard would in the same manner stir up riot. In that case if I were in a colonel’s situation who had his regiment within a goddam spit of a plush depot, I would suggest that each company send off some ten men, no more than that, foraging amongst the plenty that’s fallen to our lot, while others rested and got their fires going in the event of a famous feast taking place. Of course, I ain’t by any means in this imaginary colonel’s situation. I mean to say there may be a depot round here for all I can tell, but I regret to say I got grits in my eyes coming down the pass yesterday and my vision is impaired.…’

  Well, the selection was pretty informal and Bolly seemed to want to go, to see the horn of plenty there at the railroad yard. So for sentimental reasons he was sent, as were Gus and Usaph to mind him, along with Hans Strahl, Danny Blalock, Ashabel Judd and some others.

  Two infantry regiments and the cavalry had captured the place the night before, taking eight pieces of artillery and 300 prisoners. As Usaph and the others got down the road towards the depot, they could see some of these prisoners across the yards, in the front of a warehouse, rolling and kneading dough, stoking field stoves, splitting fuel. Telfer was using them to make flourbread for the army that would come here today. And an army it would be, for Ambrose Hill’s boys were coming on behind the Stonewall, and Ewell’s were on their way up from Bristoe. But when Gus and Usaph and the others stepped into that great quadrangle of store buildings, with the railroad from Alexandria coming into it from its northern end, and the shanties and tents of Yankee sutlers, who were either prisoners or fled, leaving all their delicacies fit for confiscation, they felt like children who’d got to a carnival before the crowd.

  In spite of any sentries, boys from other brigades of the Stonewall Division were already breaking locks on box cars (if there were locks) and sliding doors back, and sentries seemed to be easily distracted in an opposite direction, or detained on the far side of a line of waggons. The first open waggon Usaph saw, there were boys in it handing down barrels to others on the tracks, and when the barrels were open, you saw cakes and pies in there done up in layers of greaseproof paper – Usaph had never seen anything like that, barrels of greaseproof pies as if they came from factories the way cannon did. It just showed you what manner
of society they had up there in the North.

  Someone from Guess’s Company put his hands up, took one of those barrels on his shoulder and disappeared towards the encampment with it. From a car some fifty paces further on, bags were being slung down which when you opened them were full of hams in cheesecloths. Boys began tipping hams all over the yard just to see more ham than would be got together in a month of Christmasses.

  Bolly Quintard laughed and hooted and yelled like his old self. ‘We ought open a waggon of our own, boys, that’s what we ought!’ he called.

  That was done quick by pulling a bar on the car door. Ash Judd got inside and pushed a hogshead out and Danny Blalock cut into the lid with his knife.

  ‘Tell us,’ said Bolly, ‘tell us what it is?’

  Danny cupped his fingers into a brown gritty stuff that lay inside and tasted what they picked up. ‘By dang, Bolly, if it isn’t coffee and sugar all mixed ready for brewing.’

  ‘Holy spook!’ yodelled Bolly. ‘Them goddam people of Mammon in the North, they’d put women in a barrel ready mixed with goddam Spanish fly to make ’em saucy. Well! Holy Delilah!’

  They had an argument who’d take this barrel of sweet mix back to the encampment, but at last Hans Strahl said he would, but he’d be back within a minute and a second, so not to find anything too delicious in his absence.

  They found bags of beans and potatoes and desiccated vegetables and syrup, and everyone made a trip back with something, except Bolly. When Usaph got back to the depot after taking potatoes to camp, his colleagues were standing about watching some Irishmen from the 5th Virginia talking to sentries in front of a sutler’s shop.

  ‘That’s where the genuine articles are,’ said Danny Blalock. ‘That’s where they have the marmalade and the wine and the lobster paste.’

  All over the yard and in the same minute, now that men seemed to be fixed for basics, they were crowding up to sentries in front of the sutlers’ stores. Ash Judd put his arm around a young sentry outside a store marked C. Semmler Army Sutler No Credit.

  ‘Where you from?’ he asked the sentry.

  ‘I’m from North Carolina.’

  ‘And you’re a fine boy, your maw must be proud of you.’

  ‘No use sweet talking me, you Stonewall boys. What’s in this-here store jest ain’t our property.’

  ‘And who’s this C. Semmler then? Friend of yours?’

  ‘You know he ain’t no friend of mine.’

  ‘Oh I thought you were so partic’lar about poor ole C. Semmler’s goods that he must have been kin of yours from the shores of the Carolinas. I thought he must have been a Tarheel after your own stamp.’

  ‘Goddamit, you know he ain’t kin of mine, you know he’s some Yankee Dutchy who skedaddled last night too fast to fetch his goods along with him. Listen, you boys, you keep away from that latch. Goddamit, leave that shutter alone now!’

  Usaph flung his arms around the sentry from behind. ‘You can tell your officer you was overpowered, son.’

  Now the shutters were down, and everyone could see the cans and the jars on C. Semmler’s shelves, jugged and canned and jarred sweet and good things, the tongue, the lobster, the nuts and candy, the pickles and catsup, the mustards, sardines and cigars, and the barrels of oranges and the soap, and those toothbrushes that only tidewater richies used. Usaph and the others climbed over the counter. They knew they’d earned all this, that no Tarheel sentry or even no officer was about to shoot them for taking this. Usaph put candy and sardines in his pocket, then three oranges. Even the act of looting made his mouth drip like a hound’s – he wasn’t proud to be so hungry for good things but there he was, with dribble down his chin.

  Under the counter he found a bottle of white wine with Dutchy writing on it and a picture of a castle. He escaped with it. Already, in the depot yard, there was a crowd three times as thick as when he’d first come in. Over by one of those switches railroaders threw to shunt trains about, a few of the foragers of Guess’s Company – Ashabel, Blalock, ole Bolly, Hans – were sitting down to picnic on what they’d found. Usaph joined them, then Gus with a modest jar of marmalade and a packet of crackers, his good manners still in operation, even when he was looting.

  Hans Strahl had two of those Dutchy bottles of something called Rhine Riesling and was passing them about and recommending them. ‘Call it licker?’ roared Bolly after a mouthful. ‘Why this is nothing better than bottled baby’s piss.’

  Though he didn’t like it much, Usaph did, and found that by the time the bottle had gone round some four or five sips a piece, there was a summery glow in his chest. And he looked at the crowds climbing into waggons and running about with barrels on their backs and breaking into the stock of those iniquitous Yankee sutlers. ‘Why this,’ he said, ‘must be the biggest goddam harvest party the world has ever seen. And I would like to raise my glass to my friend Hans there, whose kinfolk is responsible for putting this slow white nectar in these-here bottles.’

  Strahl nodded.

  ‘It’s some feast for them cavalry, anyhow,’ said Ash Judd, pointing to troopers loading up their horses with hams and bags of coffee. And cannoneers were using their horses to roll caissons into the yard and were burdening up their caisson chests with anything that would fit therein or atop.

  Danny Blalock joined in Usaph’s song of praise after taking a long draught of wine. ‘Yes, this is the biggest bazaar in all the east of the continent. And here it is in the hands and up to the mouths of the dirtiest, roughest, most hell-fired and all-eating boys that were ever born in a valley or dropped on a mountainside.’

  ‘Amen!’ yelled Ash Judd.

  ‘But I jest hope,’ said Gus, ‘someone is minding we don’t get the wrong guests.’

  ‘Damn you, Gus!’ Ash said. ‘You miserable goddam Dutchy.’ For they knew there wasn’t so much cruelty in the world that starving boys could be set on in the midst of a picnic. Sure, somewhere on the other side of town there were explosions now, but of a kind a sane man couldn’t work up a lather about.

  They wondered where Bolly was but then they heard him calling. ‘Quick, all you goddam slackroots! Quick now!’

  At first they couldn’t see where he was but then Usaph spotted his hoary ole face staring at them from behind a barred window of a nearby boxcar.

  They didn’t want to leave their party. ‘Later on, Bolly,’ Usaph called.

  ‘No now! Before them other ruffians gets on to it.’

  ‘You got something precious there, Bolly?’

  ‘You jest come and see.’

  They got up, carrying wine in one hand and food in the other, and Bolly, in the middle of all that great riot going on in the railyard, opened the slide door in a secret way and let them in. They stood in a strange interior. There was a great plush upholstered table right in the midst of the carriage. A good part of the roof was all glass and let the light of day straight down on this table. There were cabinets and hampers and chests and swing-out gas lights on all the walls.

  Ash Judd said, ‘Why, is this a cat house for goddam generals!’

  ‘No,’ said Gus. ‘This is a field surgery that runs on rails.’

  Usaph, just pleasantly tipsy, whistled a long blast. ‘Why you can’t beat these goddam Yankees. They’re so goddam cunning they’d put the gospel on wheels if you let ’em.’

  Bolly found his way through into a sort of back room of the boxcar. There was a cabinet in there that he’d broken open and from it he’d taken with one hand a bottle of whisky and with the other a bottle of Napoleon brandy.

  ‘And there’s more,’ he was chanting. ‘And there’s more.’

  That was Bolly, never one to keep a good thing to himself. Ashabel Judd had the story that Bolly sometimes lent wives to travellers who took his liking. Maybe it was true.

  Bolly was already drinking anyhow, first a gulp from the Baltimore whisky, then a gulp from the French brandy, and the others stormed into this little annex and found two dozen whisky there and at least eight
een brandy, for whisky and brandy were the great specifics of surgeons. Why, they would give it to you for fever or if they meant to cut off your leg, and they used it even if they wanted to clean your wounds. And some of them drank it in quantity too.

  That’s when the party got wild. Somehow the glass of the cabinets was broken and there were foul songs foully sung and everyone felt wonderful. Gus got sick in a corner and lay there, and as for Bolly, flattened out by the distillations of Maryland and France, he lay back like a corpse on the plush table, gave a querulous grunt in a high-pitched and nearly complaining voice, and wasn’t heard from any more. Usaph himself felt fine enough but very hot; he thought he might float round the roof like a balloon. He was still puzzling out this feeling when two surgeons broke in. He recognised one of them straight off as Abel Oursley, the regimental surgeon. Usaph went up and slung an arm round the surgeon. ‘Is bad luck,’ he said, like a friend. ‘We got on to all the goddam hootch afore you could.’

  Oursley pushed the boy’s arm away. God, he thought, they all know I’m a goddam tippler. Well, damn ’em. He knew what he was here for, he was looking for morphine and chloroform. Because a Yankee brigadier called Taylor had been brought to him with but half a chest left, and everyone seemed to think special efforts should be made for this poor bastard Taylor. Jackson seemed to have taken a shine to the poor son of a bitch at a range of half a mile.

  Oursley’s colleague was already in the annex. ‘There’s good and plenty here, Abel,’ he was calling.

  Oursley looked around at all these drunken boys. ‘All get out!’ he yelled.

  Gus went first; he was happy to go, to be under an open sky and have the breeze on his brow.

  ‘All go, do you hear, you goddam drunken whoresons!’

  Surgeon Oursley looked like he might hit them with something if they didn’t move. So they began to depart, in their slow, swimmy way. Maybe there was an intuition in their muddied brains that they might need his goodwill one day soon.