Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I last took out my watch at thirty-seven minutes after nine. There was a great bustle of business sounding through the walls and out in the corridor now, but still I sat alone. I settled back to the documents.

  There seemed little confluence between those cannon which had been approved for order, those which had been ordered, those which had been paid for, those which had been delivered to the government, and those which had been forwarded to the troops. I could barely make out if we had bought one Napoleon at two thousand dollars, or two thousand Parrotts at one dollar. Young Fowler might have been an excellent orator and exemplary Christian, and perhaps he would have made a good soldier, but he would never have made a quartermaster in the village militia.

  A great thundering ruckus of laughter and footsteps come down the hall, and the door burst open.

  Three young men rollicked in, happy as miners on payday.

  The instant they saw me, they stopped, and a terrible quiet settled on the room.

  In battle, you learn to spot your enemy’s leaders. I do not mean so much the high-horse generals, but the natural sort, the ones who need killing if you are to turn the melee and buy your bayonet a rest. Now the boys that stormed in—and they were all but boys, ranks notwithstanding—sorted themselves out in a moment. A major, a captain, and a lieutenant. The major was a dark fellow, the confident sort who ruins women’s lives just by strolling through the parlor. He was the ranking man, but he would have been the leader of that pack had he been but a private soldier. Twas he that spoke.

  “Who’re you? What are you doing at that desk?”

  The others drew up to either side of him, but remained a touch behind. The captain was a rusty-headed lad of the type who never starts the bullying but is glad to pile on. The lieutenant looked thin to consumption and his eyes had no steadiness. That one might have been playing dress-up soldier in his father’s uniform.

  I rose to my feet. “Abel Jones, captain of Volunteers, at your service, gentlemen. I am sent to join you in your work.”

  “That’s Fowler’s desk,” the lieutenant said. He had a high voice that would never make a singer. His remark aimed more at his companions than at me.

  “I understand Captain Fowler is no longer with us,” I said. “I am sorry for the loss of him.”

  The major strode forward. He had hair and a mustache the blue-black of anthracite. Strong of body, he seemed about to strike me, the gentleman’s cut of him notwithstanding. I felt a permanent rage in him, barely contained by manners. He halted before the desk.

  “What in the name of God could they be thinking?” he said, looking down at me. “Sending us a burlap just off the boat. To take Anthony’s place.”

  His companions cackled a bit.

  I stood there as tall as I could make myself. I was sorry I had unbuttoned my tunic at my work, for a soldierly appearance matters at such times.

  “I have some experience at figures and inventories,” I said, gesturing toward the stacks of documents. “And the papers seem to want attention.”

  The major laughed, and there was no charity in it. “A clerk?” He turned to his comrades. “The man’s a clerk” They snickered as wanted, and the major looked back to me. “Do they think this war’s going to be won clerks?”

  Now I wished to be a Christian man and temperate in my remarks. But Washington had already filled me up with these men whose greatest battles had been with their tailors and who crammed the government offices and hotel bars by the hundreds. Certainly, two of the three men before me would have done for the field, leaving the paper duties to such as me.

  “The war will not be won,” I said, “by prancing peacocks, but by soldiers of the line and the officers leading them.”

  The major went as white as the best quality flour. It was a thing to see. The two behind him waited for his judgement.

  In a voice from the soul’s winter, the major said, “You… little monkey. How dare you question my honor?”

  It’s always “honor” with that sort.

  Oh, there was madness in him, true enough. He drew out his sword. The sliding metal rasped as he pulled it free. The blade shone in the dull light.

  It was an insanely disproportionate act, amazing. The seconds stretched themselves thin.

  He raised the blade, slow and queer, and I saw a blind brightness in his eyes. I had seen that look before, in the eyes of fanatics and smokers of hashish.

  His hand trembled and sent a shiver down the blade. It was stupid, that drawing business. Twas the gesture of one who did not understand his circumstances and who rarely had need to care, of a man unaccustomed to facing the consequences of his actions. Nor did the major understand the use of the sword. He held it like a butcher’s cleaver. And now that he had started the business, he did not know how to stop. Had he not been shivering, he would have made a very statue of vengeance, standing there with that blade held high. He had gone too far, and did not know how to retreat.

  I took up my cane from behind the desk and marched out to meet him.

  He glanced down at my leg. Twas a mistake. In a blink, his sword had gone banging free against the wall and I laid him down on his back. Never underestimate a Welshman. Or a former instructor of bayonet drill.

  I stood over him, with my cane tipped against his throat. His butties made not a move.

  Now I should not have done it. Even dispensing with the difference in our ranks, it was a foolish way to introduce myself. But my Christian nature thins when you push me hard enough.

  “Honor,” I told him, “is like wages, boy. And must be earned.”

  They made a joke of it all, as gentlemen do. Pretending to ignore me, they settled into that nervous sort of banter that is too loud and clumsy of rejoinder. They called each other by their last names, copying young Englishmen. The dark major was Trenchard, the rusty-haired captain was Bates. The lieutenant, a starved bird, was Livingston.

  They had arrived late for duty because they had been “sculling” on the river. A sentry had taken a shot at them and they found that a great joke. Perhaps the man had thought their boats to be secret vessels, or torpedos? They laughed at the stupidity of the recruits, all immigrants and farmboys, who could not recognize a sporting boat.

  They spoke, too, of the Schuylkill River. It did not take me long to understand that they were all old friends, all from Philadelphia, all from a university they called, “Penn,” and that Anthony Fowler had been one of them. Yet, I could not see that at all. These boys seemed to care about nothing but themselves, while Fowler had set out to save the world.

  I listened closely, given my charge from the general to learn all I could about Anthony Fowler. But my own curiosity was in play, too, I will admit it.

  When it come time for the middle meal, they got up together to go. They had put up some plan while I was deep down in my work, for Bates, the captain and the great laugher of the three, gave the others a wink. He hefted a great stack of documents from his desk and walked over to where I sat.

  He dropped the papers before me.

  “There you go,” he said. His voice had the confidence of a sound banknote. “Since they sent you here for your skills, old man, you can use ‘em on these. Won’t be jealous in the least.”

  They all laughed.

  Major Trenchard followed with another stack. “Scribble, scribble, Jones. Set us right, won’t you?”

  The lieutenant aped the actions of his friends, but did so timidly, as though I might jump up and sink my teeth into him.

  I was ashamed of my earlier outburst, for control of the self is both manly and Christian. But Providence had taken up my cause, making these three officers its servants. I had been aching to have a look at their papers. Where they meant insult, I took a gift.

  “Good appetite, gentlemen,” I wished them.

  They went off laughing, as they had come.

  Major Trenchard and Captain Bates did not return in the afternoon, and I did not expect that Lieutenant Livingston would come back, eith
er. I took it they had the authority to grant themselves a holiday and kept to my work. I finished the sugar biscuits from my Mary Myfanwy, for I admit to loving a good sweet, and stole but a moment to go down to the yard around three.

  When I returned, Livingston was sitting at his desk, or near it, anyway. He was drunk as a priest on Christmas.

  “Good afternoon,” I told him, and went back to my work. Twas clear I would need weeks, if not longer, to begin to untie the knots that had developed between contracts, deliveries, and requirements.

  The lieutenant sat at a slump. I barely marked him from the corner of my eye and thought him asleep. His uniform was wasted on him.

  The choice of country did not matter. Wherever you went, it was the same. The wickedest sons of the gentry hid out on the staffs, while the poor sweating butties went at it with sticks and stones to make widows. I would not preach disorder, and I see that society must have its organization, but I do not always like the injustice of the world.

  A voice as thin as workhouse soup come to me. Twas the lieutenant.

  “Why did you have to bother us?” he pleaded. “Who are you, Jones?”

  Chapter 6

  “Who are you, Jones?”

  Twas a fair question, but I put the boy off with more blather about the figuring of accounts. I remember him well, Lieutenant Livingston, sitting there wretched with drink and looking like he had been put together with broomsticks. He was a sad one, and you knew at a glance he was one of those lads who never know how they have arrived where they are and have not a hint where they are going. He was a fellow who would make few real decisions in his life, and most of those bad ones. Perhaps I would have a tidier tale to tell had I taken more time with him that afternoon.

  “Who are you, Jones?” Like most men, I could not say more than where I had been and what I had done, and I did not say even that much to Livingston. I was a man of thirty-three, in the prime of life. I sought to be a good Christian. I was a captain of Volunteers. The rest was accumulation.

  “Who are you, Jones?”

  I did not tell the lieutenant, but I will give you the shreds of it.

  My father preached a chapel in Merthyr Tydfil, tending the souls of workmen and worse who trickled down from the ovens of Cyfarthfa or up from “China,” those black slums by the bridge. I remember my mother only as kindness in a gray dress. They tell me she ministered with even less fear and more heart than my father, and that even the Unitarians were scandalized by her indulgence toward the poor. Now it is an easy thing to paint your parents pretty when they are dead, but I never heard a man or woman worth a listen speak badly of my father and mother. They must have had great faith, for their times were bitter.

  Half the children of Merthyr died before their fifth year in those days. The mills made the town terrible. I recall the hellfire of the furnaces at night and the blackness of the days. My parents had already lost two children, a boy and a girl, when I fell to them. By all accounts, they loved me the more for it. We might have made a happy family, but my father was not born for such a fate. During the rising, when I was but three, he took the side of the workers and lost his chapel for it. They tell me he stood in the street, begging the Highlanders to stop firing on the women and children, but that may be an exaggeration. Perhaps he only tended to the fallen. It would have been enough in ‘31.

  He found work as a carpenter in Ebbw Vale after that, for his hands were as good as his heart, and carpentry, too, had been our Lord’s work. On the Sabbath, he praised the Lord at a chapel in the hills, up where the poor could not pay for their faith. I remember his strong arms carrying me toward the sky. The sky is nowhere so blue as it is above the Welsh valleys in summer. In my memory, he is forever carrying me toward Heaven. I make much of the recollections I have, see, for they are few.

  The cholera struck in ‘32. My father and mother tended the sick, Christians to a fault, and died in their turns. My father went first. I do not remember his going, but my mother’s death is burned into me. There was fear in the streets, and charity was tested. I was four, and small, and could not undo the locks to get out of the house. My mother stared at me with those great open eyes that never moved and the vomit dried over her. The look of her is scorched into me, and I remember sitting by her in the dusk of the parlor, waiting for her to awaken. I recall how cold she was when I pulled at her hand. They told the Reverend Mr. Griffiths it was three days before I was brought out of there, but I do not know how they reckoned it. Then they put me in the pest house and waited for me to die, too.

  I did not sicken. Eventually, the Reverend Mr. Griffiths appeared, a black man in a black carriage. I thought he was death come for me, as a child will. I am told I wept and fought to stay out of his rig, though I do not remember that part of it myself. At first I was put out to a farm family on the high scratch above Tredegar, and I stayed there long enough to dust all threat of cholera from me.

  I remember cows.

  Then come the fateful day. The Reverend Mr. Griffiths was church, not chapel. He said he took me in from Christian charity. He repeated that every time he beat me. I do not think I was a bad child, see. But I remember the whippings well enough. I feel them still.

  He would bare me and bend me, saying, “Abel will be caned, and I will cane thee, Abel.” He was a man of rigor.

  But that come after. When the black man with the black carriage drove up to the farm to fetch me, he was not alone. He brought with him a woman who looked as though she bore a great and painful burden. Twas his wife. A girl of two rode with them. I had never seen a thing more shining and beautiful, and have not to this day. My Mary Myfanwy looked down at me and pulled up her nose and said, “Dirty.”

  She was my guardian angel, ever wiser than her years. She was as kind as her father was cruel or her mother frightened. For Griffiths never harmed the girl, but loved her. He taught me little enough, but twas from him and his affection for his own child that I learned there is love lurking in the hardest heart.

  He took me in and raised me after a fashion, but hated the doing of it. I was a clever sort—“the wicked cleverness of the lower orders,” he called it—and did well when put to my books. Children did not eat at table in such houses in those days, for that was a sure sign of poverty, and my joy was the little cat’s corner I shared with Mary Myfanwy in the kitchen. She gentled my heart, and wept when her father beat me over causes I could not fathom. I believe her intercessions lessened my punishments, hard though they remained. Years later, she told me that her father once had asked my mother’s hand in marriage, but had been turned down. Looking back, I believe there was a great loneliness in Mr. Grifflths’s heart, though little mercy.

  My world broke apart again soon enough. Miss Mary Myfanwy Griffiths was forbidden my company at the little table. Her father said I gave her common habits, and that my father’s blood was telling in me. I still saw her when Griffiths was away, for the mother was not so hard of heart, but the distance grew between us.

  When I was ten, I was put out, apprenticed to a tanner. Mills nor mines would take a boy so young and small in body then, but the tannery was a low business. Hughes the School begged Griffiths to let me study on. I heard the conversation myself. But Griffiths said I was become a man, and had the evident weakness of judgement that had damned my father and dragged my mother down, and that work was the only thing for me.

  I was glad to be shut of the beatings, but would have endured them for the sweetness of the schoolroom. For I loved to learn and got my lessons quick. They tell now how all schoolmasters were brutes in my time, but it is not true. Mr. Hughes had more kindness in him than any fifty deacons. His eyes grew wet when he patted me goodbye.

  The tannery was a horror. Better I had gone to the mills. I have always been sensitive to foul odors, and a tannery stinks like brimstone. It is a place of death without hope of rebirth, of flaying, blood and horror, of skins stretched and pounded as if torment does not stop at death. I was always small, and when my achievement was
too little in the yard, Williams the Hide shut me in with his draft horse, a mean biting beast, in a stable that was dark and never clean.

  My Mary Myfanwy brought me a book, but ran away when she saw the place and me. I thought I should never see her again. But I did. She steeled herself to it. She knew what she wanted even then, the girl did, and she would have it no matter the cost. Mr. Williams did not make a commotion, though not out of kindness, I do not think. Rather, he feared her father’s imagination, that any whisper of her presence by the tannery would bring the blame down on him for conspiracy and collusion. He closed his eyes and let our secret be. For the Reverend Mr. Griffiths was a man of authority in Merthyr, sponsored by no less a gentleman than the Marquess of Bute himself. So I saw her, once a month perhaps, me in my rags and her proper as a duchess.

  When I was sixteen, I had grown muscle enough for the mines, and they liked banties to work the narrow veins. Williams the Hide let me go as worthless, though I was not, and I went from blood and leather to dust and darkness. I was a Dowlais man, which held promise then. But there were too many Church people about above ground for my good. My Mary Myfanwy come to me on the wrong side of the moon, and a hard heart saw me kiss her. Now twas a daring thing, and wrong perhaps, but she wanted it of me as much as I wanted it of her. Twas but a child’s kiss, our first, and the tongue that reported it to her father should be damned for meddling cruelty, Lord forgive me. The old man packed my Mary Myfanwy off.

  I went after to find her. I walked as far as London— a place of frightening confusions to a boy—and halfway back again. But I failed.