The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

by Daren Wang

  “Captain?” Yates raised his eyebrows.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Compson said. “And by the way, your nigger is dead.”

  “Dead?” Yates said. “How would you know?”

  “The same way I know all about you,” Compson said. “It is my job. He died in the Yankee jail years ago. You’ve been chasing a ghost.”

  “Kidder said they freed him,” Yates said. “That he was heading here.”

  “They did indeed free all the contrabands,” Compson said. “But he wasn’t among them. There’s no record of Joe Bell being released at all. They must have tossed him in the potter’s field.”

  “He’s still alive,” Yates said.

  “He’s not,” Compson said. “And I’ll not let you tear this escarpment up trying to find your ghost.”

  Yates looked down at his filthy hands. “Take me to the hotel,” he said.

  * * *

  The Riley Hotel sat on a dirt road half a mile up from the Niagara River. The rooms were small and shabby, but the castoffs spent all their time in the lobby.

  The two camps of men segregated themselves. The escapees, gaunt and hollow-eyed, stayed for a night or two before boarding a barge up the Welland Canal to Lake Ontario where they’d get passage through the Saint Lawrence and back down to the Confederacy.

  Then there were the operatives. Like him, they could not go home. They shuffled through their days like shades on the shores of Styx waiting for a way to move on.

  Some told of their heroic acts and the bad luck that had landed them there, and in those Yates recognized the smooth, rehearsed ways of liars. Those men he knew to be cowards. They meant nothing to him.

  It was the other ones that weighed on his mind. Most days they sulked in corners smoking. But when they had too little or too much to drink, their mood would change, and they’d join in the storytelling. And the stories they told had Yates propping a chair under his doorknob each night just to sleep.

  Yates learned that Compson had been sent north by Jefferson Davis himself to wreak as much havoc on the northern fringe of the Union as he could manage. The Abigail steamed around the Great Lakes, going as far west as Windsor or north to Toronto or Montreal. It had a reserved berth at Fort Erie in Canada and at the Buffalo marina where Compson had paid off enough officials to have it deemed a pleasure boat.

  If there was a leader, it was Erastus Dratch. He was a burly man, barrel chested with a bushy beard who sat at the same table in the lobby all day long.

  Compson came to the hotel once a week to pay the bills and sit with Dratch as they doled out assignments. They would gather a selection of the deserters around the little table in the corner of the lobby and distribute gold pieces and the men would be gone the next day. The ones who came back bragged of slipping across the border and blowing up rail lines or scuttling boats on the Union docks.

  For the ones that didn’t return, Dratch would open their rooms and take anything of monetary value before letting the rest of the men scavenge the rest. Letters and photos and other useless things were burned in the lobby fireplace.

  Dratch made it clear that he had taken a disliking to Yates. Compson introduced them by saying that given his family name, he was to be treated with respect, but the privateer was not of the same mind, and his opinion held sway over the others.

  When the men gathered for their rotgut in the evening, they would all move away from wherever he sat. Every time Yates asked for an assignment, Dratch would tell him that it was beneath His Highness’s status and the others would laugh.

  When boredom set in and too many of operatives talked of leaving, Dratch would gather a hunting party and send them over the suspension bridge into Buffalo to hunt down fugitives. There were always easy pickings around Dug’s Dive by the canal.

  Dratch claimed that he’d seen a description of Yates hanging on the guardhouse at the border, and disqualified Yates from such pleasure trips.

  That was fine with Yates. If Joe was over there, the marshal would have offered him up. There was nothing left for him over the border.

  No, Joe wasn’t in the city. But he wasn’t dead, either. Everything Compson said stank of deceit. Yates could feel Joe in his bones, and he knew he wasn’t dead.

  When the others went across the border, Yates would strap on his pistol and wander the back roads around Fort Erie. He’d been through nearly all the settlements by then, but there were a few he’d check again.

  It was in a little town called Pelham that he thought he’d caught up with Joe.

  The buck had the same straight-backed arrogant walk, the same quick stride. Yates jumped him from behind, rolled him over, and shoved a knife tip up to his chin.

  When the face wasn’t Joe’s, Yates hesitated, and in that hesitation, the darkie’s hands were on Yates’s throat. Yates barely had time to get his gun from the holster and shoot the mongrel.

  He was swarmed before he could get to his feet, and he was bloodied by the time the sheriff arrived and took him to jail.

  It was weeks before Compson came for him.

  “You have managed to become eligible for hanging in three nations in the course of two years,” Compson said. “That is a rare accomplishment.”

  “Why’d you leave me here so long?” Yates asked.

  “Dratch didn’t mention you were missing,” Compson said through the bars. “Nobody there seems to like you much.”

  “I didn’t know it was required that I make friends,” Yates said.

  “It would have been … helpful if you’d made the effort,” Compson said. “They’re not obliged to take orders like slaves.”

  “Aren’t soldiers required to take orders?” Yates asked.

  Compson cocked an eyebrow.

  “Given your current circumstances that’s quite the thing to say,” Compson said.

  “It was self-defense,” Yates said. “He would have killed me.”

  “And what were you doing there in the first place?” Compson asked.

  Yates shrugged.

  “I have a mission for you,” Compson said. “You can rot in here or take it.”

  “If I must,” Yates said.

  Compson called for the guard.

  As they rode down to the waterfront in a black-lacquered carriage, the commander pulled a few British notes from a roll in his pocket and handed them to him.

  “You’ll need to buy provisions,” he said.

  Tied up next to the Abigail was a sail canoe with the word “Swan” painted on her scuffed hull.

  “We have people at Windsor in Ontario. Over on the west end of Erie,” Compson said. “Go there. You’ll be using the Swan to run escapees over from Sandusky.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Yates asked, looking at the broad expanse of Lake Erie. “I don’t know how to sail.”

  “If you don’t make it, I’ll make sure the report says you died bravely, in the line of duty,” Compson said.

  “I’d rather stay here and fight,” Yates said.

  “If you stay, the only fighting you’ll be doing is with the others,” Compson said. “I’m surprised you haven’t been knifed yet.”

  “I don’t know how to sail this,” Yates repeated.

  “Buy a compass,” Compson said. “Just go west, you’ll find it. Windsor, across from Detroit. Hard to miss. And don’t get any ideas about staying around here. I’ll set those boys on you for sport.”

  Yates watched as Compson boarded the Abigail and gave the order to set sail.

  He knew he should be angry, but instead there was lightness in his step as he spent the morning at the general store buying provisions for the trip. He was on the water by noon.

  He struggled to make the sail work, trying to remember how the sailors on his childhood trip had driven the ship into the wind by angling the sail just so.

  The waves of Erie were tiny compared to the ocean, but the little boat nearly capsized several times, and he was perpetually soaked from the spray. Eventually, he stowed the sai
l and paddled, but the wind pushed him back as quickly as he could move forward.

  He’d covered no more than two miles of shoreline by the time the sun went down, and he could still see the lights of Buffalo across the water. He didn’t have the strength to put up the tent or start a fire, and huddled under his blankets eating a cold can of beans.

  In the morning, he could barely move his arms and his hands had blistered, but the wind had shifted and he was able to make progress with the sail. The morning was rainy, and he huddled under an oilcloth as the boat rocked slowly west. The afternoon cleared and the wind came up stronger. He stayed on the water later, trying to make up for lost time. As the sun went down, he spotted a fire in the dense woods of the north shore.

  There was another boat on the rocky beach, and Yates could make out a man and woman in the camp. She was hanging a line of gutted fish over a smoking fire and he was stretching a raccoon hide on a rack.

  “What the hell are you?” the man asked with a laugh as Yates pulled the Swan up onto the shore. “You look as lost as lost could be.”

  He was wiry and balding with sideburns that extended to his jawline.

  “Can I warm myself?” Yates asked, his voice cracking.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the man said. “Nelda, we got us a Southern boy here so lost he’s sailed himself to Canada. Can you get this deserting fool some food?”

  “I’m busy here,” the woman shouted back at him. “You know where the bowls are. Feed him yourself.”

  “I thought you’d be happy to see a fellow Confederate,” the man said.

  “Just because I’m from Georgia don’t mean I want anything to do with that nonsense,” Nelda said.

  The trapper stood and offered his hand.

  “I’m Scott,” he said, and led Yates to the fire, dug a bowl out of a pack, and ladled it full from an iron pot hanging over the campfire.

  “I’m not a deserter,” Yates said.

  “Then what are you doing here?” Scott asked.

  “I am on a mission.”

  “What kind of mission has you here?” Scott asked. “There’s nothing up here but fish, bears, and beavers.”

  He handed Yates a mug of rum. “You handle that boat like you’re infantry.” He grinned as he turned back to stretching the hide. “That little yawl of yours should move like a dream. I’ll give you a few pointers in the morning.”

  Yates gulped the warm stew and sipped the rum. Nelda finished with the fish and helped him pull his gear out of the boat and put up his little tent.

  “You surely are a lost little thing, ain’t you,” she said. She mussed his hair like he was a ten-year-old. Yates took off his boots and propped them to dry by the fire while she draped him in a coarse blanket. The night fell quickly, and the couple came and sat around the fire and ate.

  Scott told stories of their life in the woods. Nelda interrupted often, and the two of them argued about the details he gave.

  “That wasn’t a grizzly,” she insisted at one point. “There’s no grizzlies this far east.”

  “That’s my point though—it was a grizzly. Why would I tell this story if it was just another black bear?”

  “Come on, poppy, I was right there, pointing a shotgun at her and it wasn’t a grizzly.”

  “Then it must have been High Hat, ’cause that wasn’t no black bear.”

  She punched him in the arm.

  “Poppy, you are an idiot. High Hat is just Haudenosanee nonsense. There ain’t no ten-foot wild creature with Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat roaming the woods.”

  The eyes of wild things reflected firelight from under the low hanging trees, and Yates worried about what a High Hat was, but he said nothing as he sipped his rum and listened with a smile on his face.

  “Those Haudenosaunee have been here a lot longer than us. I tend to believe what they say,” Scott said.

  “Okay, then it was a grizzly,” Nelda said, but her tone made it clear that the issue was not resolved.

  In the morning, Scott woke Yates by nudging the bottom of his foot with a muddy boot.

  “I don’t have all day,” he said. “Let’s get out there.”

  The sun filtered through the mist on the water as Nelda handed him a mug of the best coffee Yates had ever had. He took three biscuits with him and climbed into the boat. Scott pushed off with the paddle and the Swan glided onto the glassy water. The air seemed dead still to Yates, but Scott lifted his nose to the wind, raised the white canvas sail, and caught a phantom breeze. The boat jerked to life and headed out into the bronze-tinged expanse of Erie.

  Away from shore, the wind was stronger and the mist cleared in the sun. The Swan picked up speed and it seemed the hull barely touched the water. Scott showed him how to tack and gybe and pushed Yates’s head down as he brought the boom around each time. He showed him how to set the sails and tie them into place, how to set a course, and how to make knots that slipped off easily when pulled one way but held firm when pulled the other. They made their way out to the middle of the lake, and he had to squint to make out any sign of either shore. The boat slowed and Scott furled the sail, reached into his pocket for a flask, and settled into the bow, his arms resting on the gunwale.

  “Now you get us back,” he said.

  Yates pulled the sail back up, eyed the telltales, and pulled the boom into place. The wind caught in the canvas, pushing them back toward the north shore.

  “There you go,” Scott said. He offered the flask, and frowned when Yates shook his head.

  The Swan moved much more slowly under Yates’s hand than Scott’s, but it made steady progress, and the trapper pointed out this fix or that as the Confederate shifted around the boat.

  Yates was beaming when he jumped into the shallow water and pulled the boat back onto the beach. Nelda was splitting limbs into kindling with a hand axe. His tent and blankets were bound up tight and waiting to be loaded.

  “Well, you didn’t get yourself killed,” she said. “That’s a start.”

  She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked at Scott.

  “Poppy, you better check those traps on the east line,” she said. “If there’s any creature in them, they’re most surely dying in misery.”

  Scott hopped out of the boat and grabbed the packed tent and stowed it in the bow under an oilcloth.

  “The key to a happy marriage is to know when to listen,” he said.

  “That’d be true if you’d ever married me,” Nelda said.

  “Of course I married you,” Scott said. “We stood under a starry sky and I declared myself to you.”

  “But there wasn’t no preacher,” she said. “How’s it a wedding without a preacher?”

  Scott rolled his eyes and Yates couldn’t help but smile.

  “I got a couple old nets I could sell you cheap,” Scott said, inspecting the Swan one last time. “I suppose I’d have to show you how to fix them up. This little boat wasn’t meant for war. There ain’t even a place to hang a flag on it. But you could have a nice life hauling fish out of this lake.”

  Yates surveyed the neat little camp, and the redheaded woman waved and smiled back at him.

  “Anybody sets a man out into this lake and doesn’t show him how to sail ain’t expecting him to live,” she said. “You should just skip out. They’ll think you drowned or got et by High Hat or something.”

  “I have orders,” Yates said and climbed into the boat.

  Scott pushed it into the water.

  “You used to be a fool who couldn’t handle a boat,” Scott said with a laugh. “Now you’re just a fool.”

  EXILE

  JUNE 23, 1863

  TO: JEFFERSON DAVIS

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  Dear Jefferson,

  Mr. Bell is cocked and loaded and of significant enough caliber to inflict real damage. But like so many ordnances at our disposal, he will be difficult to aim, and as likely to cause harm to us as to the Union.

  I have tried to find a way to save him u
p for the appropriate task when it comes.

  Our plans for Buffalo unfold as hoped, and I expect it will come to fruition just as the campaign in southern Pennsylvania comes to a head. The twin defeats may be the dagger in the heart we hope for.

  MY BEST TO WINNIE AND THE CHILDREN,

  JACOB COMPSON,

  FORT ERIE, ONTARIO

  Leander shivered in the cool night air as the width of New York State passed under the train’s steel wheels. Even the Union soldiers who crowded the aisle refused to take the seat next to him.

  The fifteen-hour trip had taken him a week.

  Three times his dry heaving and fever had convinced the other passengers that he had typhoid and he’d been forcibly removed from the train. And once, outside of Ithaca, the conductor shook him awake for screaming himself raw and left him on the platform.

  He stopped in Attica, a little town twenty miles east of Alden. In a surprising act of mercy, Fuller had shoved a few notes in his pocket when he dumped him on the train. He fingered their remnants in his jacket pocket as he walked the town looking for a barber. He hoped a shave would steady his nerves before he rode into Town Line.

  “Did they pick your number?” the barber asked as he lathered his face.

  “I’ve been in already,” Leander said. “They don’t want me back.”

  “Aren’t you the lucky one?” the barber replied. “They’re going door-to-door around here, rounding up our boys at gunpoint. It’s not going over too well, though, I tell you. There’s pamphlets floating around.”

  Leander grunted.

  “It’s ugly here but nothing like it is down in the city. People are learning what this war’s all about. I wouldn’t go to downtown Buffalo right now for all the tea in China. A powder keg, I tell ya.”

  “What this war’s about?” Leander repeated.

  “Yeah, the real story. Not what the politicians say. It’s all those negroes down there in the city. Where’d they come from? They brought them up here to take honest men’s jobs is what. The papers say it’s all about freeing the slaves, but that ain’t it. They don’t want to be free. Hell, I hear there’s even an island down near Cuba set aside for them all to move to if that’s what they want. Why don’t they go there instead of coming here? No, they want our jobs. That’s what’s going on. Send the white man off to die, get the negroes to do the job for half the price.”