Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  Mays could restrain himself no longer. He rushed up the steps, holding out the wooden case in both hands. “Sir… the boys all took up a collection. All the boys from home. Now that you’re a big staff officer and all, and a hero, we thought you ought to have—”

  “I am no hero, Mays. We’ll have no such talk. A man is not a hero for doing his duty.” The wind got in my eyes. “Why, couldn’t I tell you boys of heroes, though. If you could have seen Sergeant Pomeroy at Chillianwala, a hundredfold of Seekhs all raging bloody about him—”

  “Would the captain inspect his gift, sir?”

  He opened the box before me. Twas little enough light from the gaslamp on the corner and the parlor fittings behind the curtains, but the metal and plate shone high. The boys had got me a revolver, one of the new Army Colts. But it was a special-made thing. It looked like a silversmith had taken his hand to it. And a goldsmith, too.

  I am not one who holds firearms dear. They are the devil’s instruments, and I had long thought that part of my life behind me. But that is another story. This was a gift of good intent, and no mistaking it. I lifted the pistol out of its velvet bed.

  The men gave a little cheer, but one look put an end to that. We could not have a disturbance in the street.

  Still, Pierce called out, “We even miss your singing, Captain.”

  The pistol was a heavy weapon, balanced long in the barrel, but sleek and very fine as such things go. And Mr. Colt was an honest manufacturer who delivered on his contracts, so I faced no reservations there.

  “There is fine,” I told them at the quiet. Emotion must be mastered. “Though it is a wasteful thing you have done.”

  “It’s from all the boys,” Farmer spoke up. “Ever one. The new captain, he wanted to chip in, too. But we wouldn’t let him.”

  “You will be loyal to him,” I said fiercely.

  “Yes, sir. Only he wasn’t part of what…”

  “Yes, Farmer. But you are to mind your waywardness. You are given to an independence that does not become a private soldier.” Then I said, “Thank you, boys. I thank you all. A fine gift, this. Though extravagant.”

  The tooling was beautiful. If such things can be beautiful. The pistol looked too fine to use.

  “When you see it in the light,” Corporal Mays instructed me, “it got lettering put on it. Siney done that, the jeweler’s boy. It says, ‘To Captain A. Jones.’ And on the other side, there’s, ‘Hero of Bull Run.’ ”

  “That is excessive, Corporal Mays.”

  Now I will not lie to you. The boys made me proud that night. Though they had been wasteful of purse. But the rain was coming again, and the little ceremony was over, and I recognized it before they did. I had to let them go. In truth I know it was more for them than for me, the gift. They were good lads, and longed to make amends. They would never see that I did not fault them.

  “All right, men,” I said. “You’ll do the company and the regiment proud, I know it. But you’re never to let Pierce anchor the line, for he cannot tell his right from left. And Berry, you’re not to close both eyes when you fire. You are dismissed now. And do nothing in this city to shame your wives or mothers.”

  They come up to shake my hand, and most of them saluted. They were good boys, and had I not pitied them that first sad night I saw them struggling to drill themselves, I would have bided at home with my Mary Myfanwy and little John. But we all must go to our duty when we see it.

  I watched them leave, with the pistol case clutched to my heart. Twas not a gift I would have chosen, you understand.

  I was about to go in to Saturday dinner, when a figure like a ragged cat darted under the gaslamp. Twas Fine Jim, come with my paper.

  “Cap’n Jones,” he said, “I brung you something terrible.”

  Chapter 2

  By Sunday morning the gloom of the news was on the city, with the telegraph spreading it to the ends of the Union. The Reverend Abernathy was not a man to swerve from God’s plan or his own, and he went ahead with his sermon on temperance—I leave it to you to consider the usefulness of a lesson on the horrors of alcohol preached to a congregation of Methodists who would not touch ginger beer—but at the end he had his say on the matter of Anthony Fowler.

  “Is it not cause for sorrow,” he asked us, “and for mighty lamentation, when a young and noble crusader for justice, a champion of those encumbered by the bonds of human servitude, when the purest of souls, a stalwart lily in the Lord’s garden, is hewn down in his golden glory, slaughtered like a lamb in the service of his country, and murdered like a dog in his coat of honor?”

  The ladies wept in their pews, and not a few wailed like Baptists, for they all knew the slain boy by image and report. Myself, I felt our loss, but I must admit that I sometimes found the Reverend Abernathy’s enthusiasm for language alarming. In truth, I had yet to encounter a stalwart lily, or a lamb in the service of his country, or a dog murdered, let alone a dog murdered in a coat of honor. But let that bide. Old Abernathy was American-born, and even the Welsh blood on his mother’s side could not save him from the native imprecision of speech. He was a man of conviction, though, and that counts for much.

  “Weep today,” he concluded, “ye children of Jerusalem. For tomorrow you must rise up and carry on a hero’s labors. Seek to live your lives, my sons and daughters, in emulation of our fallen immortal’s stolen young life. The Lord’s mercy and blessing be upon Anthony Fowler.” He looked up, with his strained eyes searching eternity. “Go forth now, go forth, I say, in a torrent of cleansing fire.”

  The congregation dawdled in the nave, for the rain was still knocking on the door. Sarah Williams wept up a storm. None of the other girls could compete with her. Young Sarah declared that she must die of a broken heart, for her love for Anthony Fowler had been immaculate and complete. The grown ladies cried in that dour way we chapel folk have, for all knew of Fowler and his accomplishments. Twas an abolitionist congregation, our own, come down on the right side of the schism among the city’s Methodists. Washington was ever a strong Southron town, and even the children of John Wesley were sometimes blinded. When first I rose from my ward bed, a Georgetown chapel would not accept me in my coat of blue. I did not write of it to my Mary Myfanwy, who might have expected the like of high church folk, but not of our own kind. It was a terrible war that way.

  The Evening Star had printed the story the night before, hard by the news of General McClellan’s replacement of General Scott. And a frightful story it was. GOLDEN YOUTH ASSASSINATED! the paper proclaimed, UNION HERO MURDERED! Captain Anthony Fowler, famed abolitionist, lecturer, philanthropist, and volunteer officer, scion of the Philadelphia Fowlers and sporting champion, late of the University of Pennsylvania, had been found dead of a gunshot wound. He had fallen in the darkness to an assassin’s bullet, the victim of nefarious and insensate Rebel viciousness, murdered near the Virginia outpost line where he had taken his stand in defense of the Union. They wrote it fine and grand, they did, telling of his lecture tour with Mrs. Stowe and his eloquent defense of old John Brown. Another scribbler reminded us that Anthony Fowler had shone not only in grand society, but in the far poor winkles of the land, where he had campaigned for Mr. Lincoln and liberty, but, above all, for an end to the scourge of slavery.

  Women adored Anthony Fowler, but he remained pure, vowing chastity until the day when all men would be free on American soil. Calling cards with his photo were a rage among the girls, and young men copied his dress, which had been fastidious but for an oversizing of the neckcloth. Then he put on a uniform and a new set of images went up for sale, the profit of each transaction reserved for the education of former slaves and their transportation back to their African homeland.

  He had even touched my own life. My Mary Myfanwy had paid two dollars for tickets to hear him speak in a tent in Pottsville a year past. I could not go, for my work was not completed, and it clipped me to think not only of the extravagance of the dollar spent on my ticket, but of the ticket going unu
sed. Then my Mary Myfanwy come back near hysterical, which was a shock just short of the resurrection of the dead on a Monday, for she was ever a decorous woman on social occasions. She had a fit in the front room. And that in the company of Mrs. Perry, no less, who, though she was of English extraction herself, went to howling and barking like an Irishwoman jilted and bereaved at one blow. Twas all young Anthony Fowler’s doing, for he had described the infernal torments of human bondage till the audience thought the sky would open in an instant and pour down God’s wrath upon the land. They noted his beauty, too.

  “So pure he was,” my Mary Myfanwy said, with her eyes all wet and sweet. “If only more men were so.”

  I did not take it to heart, for I knew she would not have had me quite so pure as young Mr. Fowler.

  Then, when I left the convalescent ward for my work in the department, there he was. Not with me down in woolens and canvas, of course, but upstairs where they set out the sums for cannon and the great things of war. I saw him come and go, ever in the company of other young gentlemen of distinction, and would have spoken to him had I cause. For he was a beautiful man, such as I had only seen one time before, and that other the subaltern son of a duke, too fine for life and dead of the black cholera in fifty-four.

  Perhaps, I thought, such beauty and purity truly were too fine for this life.

  The rain let by, and I made my way homeward, thinking of the harshness of the world and Mrs. Schutzengel’s Sunday roast. But I was not to have my dinner. For a great, wicked cavalry horse stood tied to the ring by the gate and a trooper sat on Mrs. Schutzengel’s porch, heels up on the railing and spurs dangling. He looked familiar, but all I could think of was his impertinence in sitting that way. I could not believe Mrs. Schutzengel would allow such a thing. And surely she knew of his presence, for she had a nose for a bad intention a block away.

  When I stepped near, he dropped his feet and stood. Familiar he was, but still I could not place him. He tugged down his short jacket and pulled on the brim of his kepi, then come down to me in the street.

  “Captain Abel Jones?”

  “That I am.”

  “Confidential matter, sir. General McClellan wants to see you.”

  Now that stopped me like a brick wall. I took the time to wonder if it were not a mistake.

  “I… am not of the general’s acquaintance,” I stammered. “Perhaps you—”

  “Well, he sure knows you, Captain. He wants to see you quick.”

  A prisoner of old instincts, I straightened my uniform and my bearing. “I am at the general’s service, of course. When—”

  “You’re to come along right now. He’s waiting for you. Got yourself a mount?”

  “No, I—”

  “Then take mine.”

  I fixed the man then. He was the trooper who had pounded on the station door the morning past, opening the way for General Scott. Now he was in the service of General McClellan, which was a quick evolution of fate and a curious thing.

  “I’ll walk, thank you.”

  He looked down at my leg. “You don’t understand, Captain. The general—”

  Now I must make a confession. And I suspect it will not be the last. I am not a man for horses. I hate the beasts. They are great stupid things, and we have no business upon their backs. Cavalrymen and horses deserve each other. Oh, I admit it—the creatures frighten me half to death. I would as soon wrestle a Sindhi cobra of fifteen foot than mount one of those four-legged demons.

  I was rescued by Providence. A cab clattered down the street, fresh from stables and headed through to the prosperous quarter, for we were the walking kind in Mrs. Schutzengel’s neighborhood. I waved my cane and let off a shout. Now a cab is a shameful extravagance, and walking is grand for the health, but fate left me no choice. I was so relieved to avoid the great nostril-flaring beast by the gate I did not even ask the price before climbing in.

  The trooper led the cab to the big house on Jackson Square where General McClellan had made his headquarters. Out come two Frenchmen chattering. Twas a bad omen, I thought, for I have a difficulty with the French since the day I was forced to put a bayonet to one who was rallying the Seekh. I see the surprise on his face yet, the mystification in his eyes, and cannot sponge him out of my barrel. He was the first white man that I killed. But let that bide. High-smelling Frenchmen these two were, with their pointed little beards and gloves white as Easter. They forced me into the gutter, and my leg turned.

  We must master ourselves. I followed the trooper inside, and it was a place unlike the War Department. All was activity, Sunday though it was. Clerks scribbled, aides bounded, and colonels bent over maps. These were bustling rooms, full of the good noise of work. They took no notice of me.

  The cavalryman passed me off to a major who looked me up and down, and mostly down, I will admit. He was not twenty-five, and as confident of his own grandeur as any Frenchman.

  “You are Captain Jones?” he asked. “Captain Abel Jones?”

  “That I am, sir.”

  “Yes. Well. I have orders to conduct you to General McClellan.”

  He began to turn and I caught him by the sleeve. It was an improper thing to do, but he seemed such a boy that I did it without a thought. He looked coldly at my hand, and his eyes worried less about an offense to his rank than contamination.

  I took my hand away and looked respectful, the way I used to do in my sergeanting years. “Could you tell me, sir,” I asked him, “what the general’s concern might be?”

  “General McClellan has not taken me into his confidence.” He considered me. “Might be something to do with the invalid service. Or a reorganization of the kitchen staff.”

  The aide cracked open a door, and I heard an impassioned voice say, “Not less than a hundred thousand of them on the Manassas line, Allan. I am threatened on all sides. And they hand me this rabble in arms.”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” the aide said. “I have Captain Jones here.”

  The conversation broke off immediately, and a bad sort in a checkered suit slipped out past me. Had I been a teller of fortunes, I would have paid greater attention to the man. But the general pulled all of my attention and more.

  He burst from behind his desk, thick-necked and steaming with energy, though his eyes were sleepless dark. Double-breasted, his tunic was done up tight but for one button left open above the stomach. His dark hair and mustache shone with pomade. I saluted, but he only thrust out his hand. His grip was sure.

  “Jones? Good of you to come, man. Sit down, sit down. The leg bad?”

  “A minor matter, sir.”

  I will give him two inches on me, no more. He was a grand specimen of a man.

  He signaled the aide to leave us alone. “Well, sit down, Jones. We must talk frankly.”

  I sat, though unsure of the propriety of it while the general remained standing. “Sir,” I began, “the leg is growing better. There’s no need to dismiss me from service. I could keep the books and do my part with no legs at all. I am a good soldier.”

  He thrust his hand into his coat where he had left that button undone, a very Napoleon. “Dismissed? Who spoke of dismissal? Jones, you’re essential, vital to the cause.”

  Now any man likes to hear such things, and not least from a fine general.

  He took up a new stance between my chair and the fireplace, legs spread and arms folded over his manly chest. “Jones, do you understand the responsibilities under which I labor? I must command my army in Virginia, yet now I am given the burden of all the armies of the Union, as well. I am surrounded by amateurs. And the President has no grasp, Jones. Though I believe his intentions are the best.”

  “It’s a good deal for one man,” I agreed.

  He plunged toward me. “I can do it all, Jones. I can do it all. But I need men I can trust. Men… who can respect confidences.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You come recommended, Jones.”

  “Sir, perhaps there’s been a mistake…”


  He pulled a chair toward me as if drawing a saber. “I have been in telegraphic communication,” he said, sitting down. “Encoded communication, Jones. There are spies everywhere. I had to locate a man of flawless credentials.” He judged me with a surveyor’s eye. “You’re familiar with Mr. Gowen?”

  I thought on it. “I know a young Mr. Gowen, sir. A barrister.”

  “The man himself. Franklin B. Gowen, Esquire. Philadelphia man, quite sound. Scrapper in the courtroom, though. Represents the coal interests up there in your adopted city. You do know him, then?”

  “Not well, sir. He’s a society man. I’m not—”

  “Come, Jones. This is America. All doors are open. Anyway, Gowen knows you. And I know young Gowen. I trust his judgement.” The general perfected the tip of his mustache. “He tells me you’re a man who can keep a trust. A man of talent and discretion. Then there’s your bravery during the Bull Run affair…”

  “I keep honest books, sir. Bull Run was not the best of days.”

  “A man of military experience. In the very inferno of empire. ‘Thin red line’ and all that.”

  “That is behind me, sir.”

  “Crimean service?”

  “No, sir.”

  “War at its crudest, Jones. I was there, you know. As our government’s observer. A cruel and vicious war.”

  “I did my marching in India, sir.” I looked at him plainly. “I was not an officer.”

  His hand moved from his mustache to his goatee and his eyes changed. “You served… during the Mutiny?”

  Twas not an affair I chose to remember. “Dreadful affair,” he went on, careless of my hesitation. “Women and children massacred… the barbarity of it. Cawnpore. The name will stand for villainy till the end of history.”

  “I was not there, sir. Not at Cawnpore.” I almost told him I took part in the storming of Delhi, for a soldier’s longing to talk about that which he has seen is a sore that never heals entirely.