Faded Coat of Blue

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I hoped no harm would come to him from my willfulness, for Molloy was fully able to harm himself without assistance. And Mick Tyrone. What might they do to him? It hurt my heart to think myself the cause of his damaging. Isn’t friendship the Good Lord’s second gift, just after love? I hoped I had not done him more harm than the bullet he had already gotten for his troubles.

  At noon they fed me soup. A moment of weakness swept over me and I wept.

  They let me sit the day out with my thoughts. In the cell next, a reedy voice sang, ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag,’ and cursed us all between verses. Footsteps passed my door unseen. I simply could not believe they would make such accusations against me. But money has its ways to power, and power is its own law.

  I was as sober a man as ever you will find when they opened my cell door that evening.

  “You. Jones,” a voice called. “You’re wanted.”

  Even the weak gaslights in the corridor bothered my eyes after the gloom of the cell. I must have looked a bummer in my rags, my hair awry and tunic mottled. The jailer did not even call me “Captain.”

  “In there,” he said.

  Twas a simple room, and empty of the flesh. With only a table and bench, one desk and a few rough chairs. No lap of luxury, the Old Capitol Prison. But there was a full window, if a barred one. I looked out on the coaches swaying past. The guards hunched against the drizzle, their rifles inverted. The outline of the Capitol rose beyond the bare trees.

  The door opened again behind me. I turned to face a bearded man. He wore officers’ trousers, a civilian overcoat, and no badge of rank. I did not know him. But in my vanity, it pleased me that I had not been shackled.

  “You’re Jones?” he said, eyeing me as if about to make a purchase.

  “Captain Abel Jones, U.S. Volunteers.”

  “Right, right. Sit down.” He pointed at a chair and I took it. Sitting down on the bench, he leaned his elbows on the table.

  “Name’s Baker,” he told me. “Bad business, all this. One damned stinking mess.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who the Hell do you think you are?”

  There was a fine question.

  “I did what I saw as my duty.”

  He banged the table. “You’re a goddamned clerk. How the Hell… oh, forget it. Listen, Jones. I’m going to make you an offer. Straight up, man to man.” He tested his beard with his fingers. A vulture’s eyes the man had. “You swear to God almighty, and sign your name…” He drew a folded paper from his coat. “… that you will never divulge a single detail of all this… that you’ll just put it out of your head… and you can walk out of here tonight a free man.”

  “No.”

  I do not know if it was the quickness or the force of the answer that so startled him.

  “ ‘No’? You tell me, ‘No’? Do you have any idea of the nature… the extent… of the charges against you?”

  “They are lies. I will not be bullied with lies.”

  He shook his head, but kept those predator’s eyes upon me. “Hell, you’re pigheaded as a Carolina Democrat. And one damned fool.” His head stopped moving and the room seemed impossibly still. “You’re not afraid of hanging?”

  I had not thought that far along. “I am… afraid of many things. But I will not be a party to your lies. Anthony Fowler was—”

  “Right. I know. Our boy hero. Murdered in all his innocence. And you’re the avenging angel of the Lord.”

  “I would not put it so strongly.”

  “How would you put it, Jones?”

  “I… only want justice. For the Fowler boy.”

  He slammed his hand down again. “To Hell with justice. There’s a war to be won. Justice can wait. Do you have any idea of the effect this scandal would have on our nation? If it came to light? A scandal of this… this sordidness? Play right into the hands of the Rebels. Nothing but damned sordid. And the English interests who’d like nothing better than to take us on and rip away the South. They’re all just waiting for an excuse. And there are traitors here among us…”

  Someone knocked on the door. The fellow, Baker, answered it. I saw a lieutenant’s shoulderboards. The two men exchanged whispers.

  “You,” Baker told me. “Stay right there.”

  It had not occurred to me that I had a choice.

  I watched through the window and saw him go out in the wet. He stuck his head inside the door of a black carriage that had pulled to the side of the street. I saw the back of his head shake. Then he turned toward the prison again. I returned to my seat.

  He strode back into the room.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” he said. “Are you willing to close the book on all this, once and for all?”

  “No.”

  He grimaced. But there seemed to be a smile underneath it now.

  “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll try another brand of persuasion.”

  The rain was so light it would have been no bother, but for the cold of it. And I did not feel my best. Baker led me to the carriage. I limped along like a fool. The coachman did not look down at me, nor did the two cavalrymen serving as outriders show the least interest. I might have been invisible to the world, nothing but a damaged, little man.

  Its rain-streaked lamps shone golden, but the carriage was shut tight.

  Tight as a coffin.

  “Get in,” Baker told me.

  I would not let him see me falter and did as I was told.

  Mr. Lincoln sat inside.

  I must have looked a silly one with the face I got on. I stopped halfway, with my backside out in the rain. Baker gave me a prod. “Just get in there,” he told me. “It’s wet out here.”

  Mr. Lincoln. His knees come up higher than the carriage bench and bulged under his lap rug like the humps of a camel. He seemed too big for the compartment and thin as a cracker all at once. Baker slammed the carriage door behind me. A whip cracked.

  His eyes, though. That is what stayed with me. Lincoln was no beauty of a man, with his unkemptness and the lack of trim about him. His hair would go its own contrary way. The skin on his face was rough as a farmer’s, spotted and moled. His hands were gigantic and knobbed at the knuckles. He could have got them halfway round a horse. But it was those dark, deep eyes—the sheer painful seeingness of them—that made me feel my place.

  The carriage bounced along the bad streets, and he smiled. “So you’re the feller won’t let go of the bobcat?” he said. “And scratched half to death, it looks like.”

  “Mr. Lincoln… perhaps there’s been an error…”

  “Not if you’re Abel Jones. Laf Baker tells me you possess a head harder than hickory wood.” He smoothed the lap rug and drew his shawl closer around him. His hand half covered the gaunt chest. Twas a great spider of a hand when the fingers spread out. “He also tells me you may be the last honest man in Washington.”

  I knew not what to say. But saying was not my business.

  “I’m faced with a dilemma,” Mr. Lincoln told me. “I feel like the feller standing up on the top rail of the fence, with a bull all mad at him on one side and a nest of rattlesnakes stirred up on the other. I got a fine line to walk, and neither party’s much interested in helping me keep my balance.” He tapped me on my bad knee. “See here now. I’m just as sick as you are over this business. Lawyer sees a lot, and a politician sees worse. But this Fowler story takes the prize.” He sighed.

  “Mr. Lincoln, sir,” I tried. “The man behind it all, Major Trenchard, he’s taken off for the South and we—”

  He stopped me with a squeeze of my knee. Then he withdrew his hand. “I made the decision to let him go. Though I hear he won’t use that right arm again, if that helps any.” He closed his eyes for just a moment, then looked straight at me. “The Union… this country… we cannot afford the scandal of a trial. Not now.” And wasn’t there sorrow in him then? “We’ve already had scandals enough. And there’s going to be a passel more explaining to do about all this as it is.
But a trial? The country… could not bear it. Not now, not now…”

  A thousand other men might have said the same words and made no impression. But his eyes reached down into me, and his thin voice pierced my heart.

  “Jones… there aren’t but a few things I love truly. My family, that’s one. Mary and the boys.” He waved a hand toward the greater world. “This country, now that’s another. And last there’s the written law. But I… am prepared to sacrifice the first item and the third for the preservation of the second. That’s what a president’s got to do, when the choice comes up. It’s his duty to save the nation first, and pick up the pieces later on. Know anything about habeus corpus?”

  I was not one for Latin.

  “Well, I’ve already suspended it. And done ten dozen other things that trouble my heart as much as they do the Constitution. And it does sound to me like young Trenchard wants hanging.” He looked away. Far away. “But I let him go. I need his father’s support, the support of his class. I need Philadelphia. And I need a country that believes in heroes, and that country needs heroes to believe in. I’d take up with the devil himself to preserve the Union.” He brought his sad eyes back to me. “As a fellow lover of justice, I’m asking you to let this dog lie on down.”

  He tried to rearrange himself, and his rug and shawl both slipped. I helped him settle them again.

  “Poor George McClellan,” he said, “he’s lying abed, raging in a fever. He thinks we ought to hang you just to keep things tidy. But I’ll take that bear on.” He chuckled. His voice was so high and thin it might have made a man laugh. He would never be known for his speaking or his rhetoric. “The general gets confused even when he’s not feverish. He forgets which one of us is President.” He looked at me, and the slight smile fell away. “But I need him, Jones. The country needs him. The soldiers look up to him, not to me. They want a hero, and he fits their expectations.” He bulged his lower lip like a man who chews tobacco, though he chewed only words. “If Little Mac can win this war, I’ll swallow all the pride I can fit down my throat and sing his praises.” His eyes fell to the plaid of his blanket. “We must pray for him to get well. The country needs him. More, perhaps, than it needs me.”

  “Mr. Lincoln, sir…”

  “Much is needed. So very much is needed now. And there is so little time.” Unexpectedly, he grinned. Showing brown and yellow teeth, in two uneven lines. “You know, you owe a great deal to Allan Pinkerton. If he wasn’t willing to sell himself to everybody in sight like a scarlet woman, I might never have learned the details of all this. But everything Little Mac heard, I heard. Pinkerton would sell his mother down the Mississippi—and his own soul, too, if anybody’d give him half a dollar for it.” He drew a breath as if he badly wanted air. “Yet… we’ll need men like that, too. We won’t win this war with saints alone. Anyway, Laf Baker gathered up the rest of the story. You surprised the devil out of ‘em all, you know. Not a one of ’em thought you’d get so far.” He shared another smile with me. Twas a little, private one. “Of course, they never thought I would, either. I guess we’re two of a kind, Major Jones. Both of us figured for fools by men who thought themselves our betters.”

  “Sir… it is but Captain Jones, begging your pardon.”

  He gave his lip another chew and playacted looking me over. “Major, I’ve been hatching generals out of rotten political eggs by the dozen. I reckon I can make one major out of a fine old soldier.”

  “Sir…”

  He reached down into a carpet bag at his feet and brought up my Colt, the gift from my boys. It had been cleaned and polished.

  “Devil of a piece of weaponry,” he said, admiring it. “You like Sam Colt’s poppers?”

  “They do seem a fine gun, sir.”

  He nodded. “I’m trying to learn all that business. What equipment we should buy… how many men we really need… how we’re to get them… and the money… strategy…” He turned the weapon over and traced the tooling by the flicker of the lamp. “ ‘Hero of Bull Run.’”

  “It is a terrible exaggeration, sir.”

  He dismissed that. “Well, you’re no picture-book hero. And I sometimes think the American people elected me to prove they have a sense of humor. But I’m also starting to think the real heroes never are the picture-book variety.” He nudged his knees closer to mine. So high up they were I could have climbed them. He was a wonderful, awkward man.

  “You have done your country a good service, Major Jones. But now we must go forward, and not look behind. I’ve come out in the rain to offer you a choice. You can get out of this carriage tonight and go back to your work, taking that major’s rank with you—along with my thanks, for what that might be worth. Or you can help me.”

  “Sir?”

  “The situation of our government… is terrible. Worse than all those wise men out there know. It’s a close game, Jones.” He smiled the saddest of smiles. “Chase says we have no money. Even Seward’s losing faith. And Cameron’s nothing but a thief. Congress wants everything done right now, just so’s they don’t have to belly up and do it themselves. And the generals… our generals can’t seem to be got to fight. All they want to do is parade and buy up more supplies. And every day I feel this country slipping away…” He sat up straight, as if fighting his own thoughts. The top of his head scraped the roof of the carriage. “But I will not let that happen. I will do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to save the Union. And I need good men to help me.”

  “Sir… if there’s any way…”

  “Don’t go buying before you’ve had a look in the sack. Now I need an honest man… for private matters. Matters of great secrecy. Of great delicacy, if you want to put it fancy. The kind of business where a moral acrobat like Pinkerton could never be trusted. Nor even Baker, who’s a little prone to make his mind up in advance. I need a thoughtful man—and one who isn’t afraid.”

  “There is fear, sir, in each of us.”

  “But they’re different kinds of fear.” He twisted up his mouth. “I wonder if my fears aren’t much the same as yours.” He laid his great hand upon my knee a last time. “I need a man who’s not afraid to fail—which I’m beginning to believe is a problem of General McClellan’s. I need someone who can keep the end of the race in sight and not shy at every little obstacle along the way. A man who’s willing to take a bite out of the world’s hide and put up with the kicking and bucking that follows. Will you help me, Jones?”

  And what might I have said then?

  He handed me the pistol, holding it out by the barrel. Then he tapped his cane up behind the driver’s bench. The carriage jerked and the pace of the horses quickened.

  It struck me how sad it was that Mr. Lincoln had to turn to the likes of me.

  “Your friend,” he said. “That doctor. He’s just fine. Hardly a nick out of him. But that other Irish fellow gave us the slip. And Laf Baker was ready to hire him on. Born to be a secret agent, he said. Feller could fool his own mother.”

  I felt the good weight of my pistol as if he had laid an entire army in my hand.

  “This chapter’s closed,” Mr. Lincoln told me. “But I have a new job for you, if you’ll do it.”

  I looked at him and waited to hear more. But the carriage jerked to a stop. Mr. Lincoln leaned closer, just for a moment. With his cheekbones ready to burst through his skin and the woes of the world on his face. “When you get down, a feller’s going to come up to you. His name’s Nicolay. I trust him above all others. He’ll tell you what wants doing.” His lips tightened to the left side. “If you decide not to take the job, just walk away. With my thanks for what lies behind us.”

  “Mr. Lincoln… if I could just say…”

  But I did not know what I wanted to say. And he knew it. He understood his effect, and that of his position. I would come to know him well enough to see that he understood more than any of us. He was a great, good man, and I let him down in the end. As we all did. But let that bide.

  “Better get down no
w,” he told me. “Before the driver gets restless. I ain’t got him but half trained.”

  “God bless, sir,” I said, and got out of the carriage.

  I descended into a startling brightness. It took me a moment to realize where I was, and by then the carriage had pulled off.

  Twas the great gassy glow of Mr. Ford’s theater before me, with a performance going on inside. Now I find theatricals corrupting to the morals of youth, and little less dangerous for grown men, though I have read Mr. Shakespeare to my benefit. For his part, Mr. Lincoln had a famous weakness for the blandishments of players. He said they made him laugh. Yet do not judge too harshly. No man is perfect, and may the Good Lord save the rest of us from the shameless temptations of the stage and the wickedness of actors.

  A spry, quick fellow come up to me. With a neat little moustache and a shiny goat’s beard on his chin. His hair shone under his hat. He smelled of lotions and there was a touch of old Europe about him.

  “Do you think,” he said to me, “you should now put away the gun?”

  German. Though with little accent left. But when you have lived around them you can always tell. And I recognized that clerk’s fastidiousness they all have.

  I looked down at the pistol in my hand. I had forgotten I was holding it.

  “Unless you are making a robbery,” he continued.

  I stuffed the pistol down beneath my faded coat of blue.

  He held out his hand. “John Nicolay. Shall we work together, do you think?”

  “Abel Jones.” He had a good, firm grip. He had a good, firm grip on everything he touched, that man.

  “I think the rain is stopped,” he said. “Is your leg good for walking?”

  I could have marched thirty miles with a good heart.

  “Lead on, sir,” I told him.

  He gathered his coat around him and we strolled into the darkness.

  “The first thing I am to tell you,” he said, “is that it will be very dangerous. They killed the last man we sent up there.”