Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  We sat in silence for a moment. I suppose I was expected to say something. But well I remembered my Mary Myfanwy’s caution. And it did give me an odd feeling of power to sit there knowing as much as I did then. With the general blowing his tin whistle for all it was worth. That feeling of greater knowledge was just strong enough to keep my rage buttoned up in my shirt.

  “Well, Jones?”

  “I will not be needed more, then, sir?”

  “No. No, of course not. But you did your best. I see that. No blame, no blame at all. Indeed, you have my thanks. Tell me… is there anything I can do for you? In reward of your service?”

  “I’m to go back to the woolen accounts?”

  The gas jets lit his mottled skin. “Exactly.” He looked at me. Struggling. As if the focus would not come to his eyes. “We’ll need your skills… your resolve… to clothe the troops for winter. Allan, it’s cold. Isn’t it damnably cold?”

  I watched Pinkerton watching the two of us. Poor McClellan sat shaking and trying to master himself. It was the typhoid on him, and it would lay him down until January, and save me his immediate wrath. But all I saw then was a frightened, shivering liar.

  “Then, sir, if you’ll allow me the boldness… I do have a request.” I put on the sort of mask a sergeant will, if something is needed on a day when the colonel has had problems at home. “I have let go my personal affairs these weeks, and have interests that want tending. If I might have your parole through the week, and a writ to travel…”

  “Of course,” McClellan said, relieved. “Delighted… that I have not risen so high up I cannot help a worthy captain. Good for you to get out of town for a bit. Hearth and home, I know the joys myself.” He looked around the room. “I’m awaiting my… own dear wife… you know…”

  He called to that aide again and had the young major write me out a pass, then he scolded the boy for not putting enough coal in the stove. The room was steaming, but neither Pinkerton nor I said a word about I it. Watching each other, we were. And for once I found joy in falling short in another man’s estimation.

  I declined the carriage and walked back to Mrs. Schutzengel’s, although my dinner would be that much the colder for it. There was serious thinking to be done.

  When I did come in, the dining room should have been dark. But who was sitting kingly at the table but that no-good Molloy, with a fine drumstick of chicken applied to his mouth.

  At the sight of me, Mrs. Schutzengel heaved to her feet.

  “You are ashaming yourself, Captain Jones!” she told me fiercely. “Oooch, now I know why you are liking them Irishes so.” She managed a tender glance down at Molloy, whose smile was ghoulish with the death of an innocent chicken. “You have only half a brother, and missing all these years! Und now der liebe Stiefbruder is founded again, but there is nothing you say to your friend, the Schutzengel…” Oh, the glare of her eyes upon me. “How a man who I am thinking so good will starve to death his own brother…”

  “Mrs. Schutzengel… I’m afraid—”

  But that no-good Molloy was on his feet and prancing. “Pay him no mind, good lady, for tis only the shock that is on him. I seen him like this a thousand times in old India, in the wake o‘ a hundred murdering battles, and he’ll be fiddlin’ his usual jig in the morning.”

  He thrust his arm through the crook of mine. “Oh, come now, brother dear, for I have news for ye from Phillydelphy.”

  As he led me out through the kitchen, there was Annie Fitzgerald, hard at the pots. When the girl saw me, she put a look on her face that gave me a richer reward than a hundred dollars in gold. Though no thanks was looked for, see. We stopped in the yard. Between the smells of dinner and coal smoke and privies.

  “What’s this about Philadelphia?” I demanded. “And just what do you think—”

  “Oh, a feller was here, he was. A great, awful messenger, like. With a great raging want o‘ your company. Only hanging about the kitchen, he was, and behaving all shameless with that Annie, and little enough to eat as it was, and wasn’t the time pressing on him like sin on a young girl’s heart? When I explaint I was your trusted agent, he give me the message for ye and off he went.”

  “What was it, man? What did he say?”

  “Oh, a fellow name of Cobbler or the like wishes to parley, and urgent as flames through the barn roof, thank ye, and he expects ye to just run off to Phillydelphy, like ye was at his beck and call, and ye a high captain now.”

  “I was going there anyway,” I said, and it was true.

  I had to make one more trip to Philadelphia. To know for certain. To look the full horror of it in the face. And if Cawber had something to tell me that might plug a few holes, all the better for it.

  I settled Molloy’s cock and bull with Mrs. Schutzengel, though not a few cross looks and snorts of disbelief I got from her for my trouble. Then I wrote a note to Tyrone, asking if he could meet my return train the day after next.

  The note went into Mrs. Schutzengel’s hand, just as she was about to ascend the stairs.

  “I have to make a trip in the morning,” I said, “though no one has use for the details of it. I need you to pass this message to someone you can trust—one of your German sutler friends perhaps—and have it delivered to that camp address tomorrow.”

  “A trip?” Mrs. Schutzengel said. “But the dinner of Thanksgiving is only until two days now! It gives everything gutes to eat! Such turkeys!”

  “I will be back. That very afternoon. Save me a plate, please, Mrs. Schutzengel. And don’t forget the note.”

  She pulled on her wounded face again. “Forget? Hilda Schutzengel should forget such a thing, when she is trusted? Meint er, denn, dass ich so eine polnische Wirtschaft fuhre?”

  Germans, see. You will never speed them up, but they will not let you down.

  “You are my faithful friend,” I assured her. “And don’t let that no-good Molloy in your house, see.”

  She grumped and groaned and lifted one leg onto the staircase. Then she looked at me, bless her, and said:

  “But the girl. That Annie. She is not so dirty after all.”

  I would not put stock in dreams, for it is unchristian to make too much of such things. Our guard comes down in the dark, and it is a time of temptation and illusion. Still, I will tell you of the dream I had that night.

  I might have sworn I woke, were I a man given to swearing. And there, all aglow at the foot of my bed, stood Anthony Fowler. His face had the chill of Little Mac’s, though a thousand times fairer it was, and he looked at me with eyes that encompassed all the sorrows of the poor. It was the face of a saint, and beautiful. with its blond radiance of hair. Then I noticed the blood pouring from his chest. Oceans and seas of it, a deluge upon the floor. I sat right up to tell him he had to stop that, since Mrs. Schutzengel would go mad over the mess, but he only put a finger to his lips and hushed me.

  “They’ll hear you,” he said. “You mustn’t let them hear you.”

  Then he walked out through the door, just as his mother had described him going.

  Oh, I woke up properly then. Sweating as if I had the typhoid fever myself. At first I thought my old malaria had come back, but a quick inventory assured me that the world and my insides were fine. Only my heart disturbed the quiet.

  I will have nothing to do with apparitions, or omens, or spirits, or the like, for they are empty things, and heathen, and lead us where we should not go. But I wonder to this day if I did not see him there, in his murdered innocence, standing before me.

  Perhaps the dead need settling before they sleep. Now you will say, “There is silly,” and I will agree with you. By daylight I will agree. But what if the poor departed must do up their accounts before the Good Lord takes them to his bosom? All sums will be credited, and all wages paid, see. It is a law of every counting house. And perhaps Anthony Fowler knew the value of a good clerk.

  Chapter 14

  Although you would not have thought it of him, Mr. Cawber was a great one
for books. He received me in his library, and it was a splendid room. Perhaps those books were only a display, as the newly rich are apt to make, but it seemed a grand thing to have in one’s own home, a luxury of merit, and I envied him. Keep your ballrooms and fancy salons, I would have a library. Even if only a small one. For I like a good book. Not your silly novels, mind. But the meat of men’s thoughts. I do not pretend to be a scholar, but I will tell you it makes a man feel wiser having books about him, even when he has no pause to read. Just to hold a good book is to shake hands with the soul of him that wrote it. Which is why I will have no truck with these French writings, see.

  All the while I hoped for just a peek at his wife, forgive me, though I did not envy him that greater pleasure. I might as well have envied the stars in the sky, such was her indelible beauty. A man must have some sense, to say nothing of loyalty. I had beauty enough in my life. I only would have liked to set eyes on her once more, but the lady did not appear.

  “Whisky?” Cawber asked. “Brandy?”

  “I have taken the pledge, sir.”

  He made a dismissive sound and said, “More fool you.” Then he poured himself a quarter glass from a decanter and shut the library door.

  “Come and work for me,” he said.

  Now that was a surprise. “Sir, I… cannot pretend understand…”

  His paw landed along a row of gilt spines. “Wouldn’t expect you to. You’re a horse’s ass, Jones. Now don’t get riled. That’s just one of the things you are. I’ve made inquiries, looked into the business. And I find you’re an honest man, with a full ration of guts and a good head for figures, to boot. Courageous, stubborn—stalwart, you might say—and not entirely stupid. There’s money to be made from such qualities.”

  “Sir… the war…”

  “Oh, to hell with the war. Fools enough for it.” His black hair bristled. “Strikes me you’ve done your part. And forget Washington. The place is nothing but a zoo where the animals eat each other. I can get you out of there anytime you say. Come up here, set your family up in a nice house, say over in Chester. Put you right to—”

  “Sir, I thank you… but I cannot do such a thing.”

  “ ‘Cannot’?‘”

  “I must stand to my post, sir.” He laughed as he prowled the room. “And just what post is that? Clerking? Under an avalanche of corruption?” He halted and gave me a look askance. “You like war, Jones?”

  “No, sir. I have learned better.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I will do my part. That is all.”

  He shook his head. “Jones, there are fortunes to be made. Right now. I’m not one of those sunny-siders who think the fighting will be over in the spring. I know how deep this business goes. Damned Southerners are crazy. We’re going to have to plough them right into the ground. Oh, we’ll win. Only a queston of capital, in the end. But it’ll take us another year, maybe even two. Meantime, the smart are going to get very rich. And the smartest of ‘em won’t have to bend a law to do it. War means opportunity.” He seemed an animal let loose in his refinement of books. His pelt glistened. “The men who come out of this war on top of business are going to run this country. It’s going to change things mightily. I’m offering you a place in the coach, man. And all I ask is that you be the one honest man I can turn to. To know where my business and I stand. Banks will open their doors to you… railroad offices… brokering houses…”

  “Is this General McClellan’s doings, then?”

  He made a face that set me straight on that. “Jones… this may be the first time in my life I have met a man who can be a pompous ass without knowing his own qualities. Nothing to do with that twit McClellan. On the contrary.”

  I shook my head, and not without a shred of regret, for there is greed and ambition in all of us. “I thank you, sir, but cannot do it. Is this the reason you wanted me to come, then?”

  He sat down in a red leather chair with gold studs and settled his glass on the table beside it. “No. Matter of fact, hiring you on just seemed like a good idea. Had to turn out a number of people from my company. When I looked into it, they were serving two masters. Made for a good housecleaning. Now I need good men, and soon. But that wasn’t the reason for the message.”

  For the first time, he looked at me almost as if I were his equal. “Jones, the morning after you left… Monday… old man Trenchard showed up at my door. Before I’d finished my breakfast. Wanted an immediate meeting. About ‘vital matters,’ he said. The old bugger. Came in and sat right where you’re sitting. Laid it out shamelessly. If I stopped giving money to the abolitionists and their newspapers, all of the ‘misunderstandings’ with the government would stop. And fat contracts to come. He said Secretary Cameron was anxious to help me out, as a fellow Pennsylvania man. Now what do you think of that?”

  “It sounds…”

  “Don’t reach for words. It’s damned corruption, at its worst. Terrible way to do business. Leaves you at their mercy. And Trenchard the most respected citizen of this town. To say nothing of that damned Cameron.” He cleared the ghost of a cigar from his throat. “They make a man puking sick.”

  “What did you tell him? If I may ask, sir?”

  Cawber smiled. “I told him, ‘Fine.’ Because he doesn’t know what I know. Cameron’s going to be gone by January. Hasn’t had the sense to bury his droppings, and the War Department stinks to high Heaven. Stanton’s coming in to replace him.” He smiled. “Never settle for knocking out an enemy’s teeth if you can rip out his heart. I’m going to set up old Dan Trenchard for the hard fall he deserves.” He reached for his glass again, but only cradled it in his hand. “Know why old Trenchard’s all wild to end this war and quick?”

  “Bonds, sir?”

  It was his turn to be surprised. He raised his brandy to his mouth, but lowered it without drinking. “Well, bonds it is. Old Trenchard’s bank is sick to death with ‘em. War caught him holding speculative bonds out of Charleston, New Orleans, Mobile… all backed up by the cotton trade. By slave labor, the glory of the South. Hell, man, if I was in those shoes of his, I’d want to end the war, too. And shut the mouth of every man, woman, and child who says, ’Boo,‘ about freeing the Negro. I figure… oh, by spring… the second-biggest bank in Philadelphia is going to go under. And there’s a lot of old Philadelphia money thinks it’s safe in those vaults.” He took a drink then ran his tongue over his lips. “That bank’s remaining assets are going to end up on the block. Cheap.” Those wolfs eyes fixed me. “I’ve always had a yen to go into banking. And I’m going to shake the cobwebs out of a few Philadelphia attics along the way. Sure you don’t want to come along?”

  “We each have our duties, sir.”

  He gave me a smile. “Jones… you’re priceless. How many men in this country do you think would pass up a chance like this? After all that blather about patriotism and the grand old Union is said and done?”

  “More than me alone,” I said. “And better men.”

  “It doesn’t take good men to stand in the way of a cannonball. There’s Irish and Germans and fools enough for hire.” He grimaced. “Well, the hell if you’re pigheaded, and stupid, to boot. A man makes his own fate. I take it you haven’t quit on this Fowler business?”

  “No, sir. Though I have been told it is no longer my affair.”

  He scratched his ear. You almost expected him to do it with a hind paw. There was something forever raging and clawing about the man. “Didn’t think you’d let go of it. Well, I hope I haven’t wasted your time… but I had some boys I trust take a hard, quick look at things. Comings and goings, that sort of thing. And one matter came up quick. Did you know young Trenchard was in town here the day before Fowler was murdered?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, he was. In and out quick. Just time for a shouting match with his father. And a three-hour assignation in private rooms with Miss Elizabeth Cathcart. Who, I believe, is elsewhere betrothed. Then a miraculous reconcilation with his father
at the old man’s office. Somebody saw the light, one way or the other. After that, there was one more very interesting visit. Young Trenchard—”

  I held up my hand to stop him.

  “That night,” I said, “he visited Mrs. Fowler. Am I correct?”

  I had surprised him yet again.

  “Really, Jones… how did you know that?”

  I did not answer the man, though he deserved a response. All my “Welsh reserve” was blasted to the four winds now. I was out his front door before the servant could get his fingers on the handle.

  I thought I had the puzzle done at last. In fact, I still had two pieces juxtaposed, but I would learn of that the day after. That night, though, I had enough of it put together to finish with Philadelphia.

  I ran. Yes, I know. “What about his leg?” you say. Well, now you have seen a three-legged man run, scooting along on a cane still strong for all its chipping and nicking. It is amazing what we can do when the fire comes up in us. And I was ablaze. You know by now the silliness in me, the blindness to the ways of the world. But I will not have injustice. I will not bear it. Laugh if you will.

  In the park square, the ladies and gentlemen were out, with their fur trimmings and pink cheeks and plumes of breath under the gaslamps. A few children ran down the paths, pursued by distraught nannies. Twas dark, but not yet the dinner hour for such high folk, and I suppose the holiday coming the next morning put them in a mind to parade their finery. There was strange to see them all so normal, and unsuspecting, when there was evil all around them. I remember one lovely hiding her lips with a velvet glove as she laughed at the sight of me. We must forgive the hard hearts of the young, for they do not know what awaits them.

  I whacked on the door of the Fowler manse like a bill collector gone mad. And I kept on whacking. Finally, with a great undoing of latches and locks, the old Chinese fellow peeped out through the cracked-open door. His little beard caught the draft. “Not at home,” he said, “not at home.” Forgive me for a bully, but I fair knocked him over. I shoved my way into that house of darkness.