May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel

by Peter Troy

  And there wasn’t even the anger in Micah that such an idea might’ve once stirred in him. Just the rest of the cleanin’ on his mind. Then finally to sleep on the pile of straw in the corner.

  For one more night, anyway.

  And the idea of a new Massa and a new home not even something he let himself think on for long. Just hoped a dreamless sleep would come to him soon. All he ever hoped for.

  Anymore.

  RICHMOND

  APRIL 1861

  It was a strange sorta thing working for Massa Longley insteada Dunmore. Just as much work, more even, since Richmond seemed like it was growin’ by the minute. But right from the start, Micah had a one-room cabin all to himself. Two sets of workin’ clothes. Plenny to eat. And about forty other slaves living right there all around him in the quarters behind the sawmill.

  Of course Micah didn’t hit it off with them from the start. Once they heard how much money got spent on buyin’ him. Once they saw how Massa Longley drove along with him on those first few jobs. Once they saw how Micah kept to himself just by his nature. Like he was better’n them, they musta figured. And not like he wasn’t used to havin’ people to talk to for some time now. So life stayed mostly the same for him. Work sunup to sundown six days of the week. Only now with Sunday to rest some. And be alone.

  It was his fifth job that was unlike anything he’d done before. Massa Longley told the man who owned the place that Micah’d built an entire house all by himself back in Charlottesville. Which wasn’t altogether true. But the man who owned the shop and the one next door to it musta believed it ’cause Micah was there very early the next morning. The shopkeeper’s name was Kittredge, but he didn’t do none of the explaining about what was to be done. The man just stood there alongside as his wife pointed out to Micah what she wanted. Closin’ off most of the storeroom to make two smaller fittin’ rooms, whatever that was. Then opening up the storeroom and adding on to it out back so it was even bigger than before.

  Micah figured it’d take two weeks at least, but then Mista Kittredge explained one more thing. Said it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to be workin’ around the shop when all the ladies were there. Said he’d planned it out with Massa Longley that Micah’d work from sunup ’til ten o’clock, when the shop was opened. Then come back after it was closed, and work ’til ten at night by the light of the oil lamps. During the day he’d be free to rest and make whatever cuts were necessary back at the sawmill. Or so Mista Kittredge said. But Micah knew Massa Longley’d find some other jobs in town for him to do in the hours the shop was open. So he set his mind right there to three four weeks at least of workin’ sixteen seventeen hours a day. At least. And that night in the cabin he thought for one minute that the one good thing about Dunmore was that he was a lazy man. Too lazy to do anything more than wait for folks to come and hire Micah out. But it seemed like Massa Longley had his mind set on riding this mule ’til it dropped.

  The next mornin’ was all the measuring and writing down the cuts and lumber he’d use during the first few days. He was sure to use only numbers or pictures. No words, of course. And when it was done he waited ’round back of the store and out of the way, like Mista Kittredge told him. Waitin’ on Massa Longley to come and get him. And prob’ly take him to some other job to fill up the next few hours.

  Then he saw her.

  She walked along the cobblestone path like she wasn’t walkin’ at all. Such easy steps that didn’t disturb her dress more than an inch to one side or the other. Straight-backed and chin held up to let the world know she was there. Graceful. And beautiful as anything he’d ever seen. Like the sun dippin’ down over the Blue Ridge in the distance. Demanding, with a whisper, that a man stop and take notice at what God had done here.

  And just as she reached the storeroom door she saw him standing by the corner of the alleyway where Massa Longley’d told him to wait. She did nothing at first ’til she got to the top of the steps. But then she turned toward him before opening the door. Smiled enough to make it seem like more than just good manners. And she curtseyed. To him. With something in the action that made him reach for his hat, take it off, and bow slightly. Forgetting for that moment that he’d ever felt like just a mule. ’Til she was gone inside. And the hundred feet or so between the house set back off the street and the storeroom door became hallowed ground to him. To think that he might see such a thing each morning for the next three four weeks. At least.

  ETHAN

  UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK

  APRIL 20, 1861

  Jesus I’ve never seen so many people in one place in my life, Finny says. I heard one of the Wall Streeters sayin’ there was probably a hundred thousand.

  He looks over at Ethan for confirmation of the estimate, as if he’s an expert on such matters. But Ethan looks back at Finny with wide eyes and a shrug of his shoulders and a how the hell am I supposed to know, Fin, look on his face, and the two of them go back to scanning the crowd.

  Can ya see the Sumter flag over there? Ethan asks, and points to the opposite end of the square.

  They look over at the mounted statue of George Washington, the one that’d just been put in five years or so ago, with the makeshift flagpole and the giant scarred flag that had flown over the fort in South Carolina that none of them had even heard of until two weeks ago. Now there are a hundred thousand people assembled in Union Square just to get a glimpse of it in their fervor of righteous indignation. One hundred thousand people who were ready to secede themselves now gathered around to support the Union; one hundred thousand people who became Lincolnites the minute the guns opened on Sumter; one hundred thousand people who, for now anyway, want nothing more than to teach the Reb bastards a lesson.

  I knew we shoulda got here earlier to set up by Old General Washington there, Ethan says. Now it’ll be nothin’ but shots of the crowd with the Sumter flag a ballfield away in the distance.

  And Finny paints the metallic solution over the plate and hands it to Ethan, watching closely as he inserts it into the side of the box camera, then lowers himself beneath the curtain around back again.

  I don’t know ’bout that Perfessor, Finny says while Ethan focuses in on another shot. Seems to me the story’s not so much about the flag … or about Sumter even. I mean, who gave a rat’s arse about either one of’m a coupla weeks ago? Seems to me the story’s ’bout the hundred thousand folks ready to string up the Reb bastards that shot holes in th’damn flag.

  There is the click of the shutter lens and then Ethan lifting himself out from the curtain, a smile upon his face as he slides the new glass plate negative into the black cloth sleeve in Finny’s waiting hands.

  Fin, Ethan begins, with a triumphant sort of look, you’re absolutely right! That poor old fella over there’s gonna have nothing but a picture of a flag mounted on a statue. We’ll have the hundred thousand who came to see it. These’ll sell for five dollars apiece easily. Gimme another plate Fin …

  And they spend the next half an hour lining up all manner of photographs to be taken from every imaginable angle along the Washington Square, with Fin counting out what twenty percent of Ethan’s fifty percent of Mr. Hadley’s enterprise might be. There are speeches, and bands playing, and vendors all along the square selling little flags and God Save the Union buttons, and such, ’til Smitty finally finds them up on the steps of this house beside the square.

  I saw a line of about a hundred lads over on Sixteenth Street waitin’ to sign up for their ninety-day hitch, Smitty says. Saw a coupla dozen more that looked like they were headed up to the all-Irish regiment up on Twenty-Fifth.

  And Ethan and Finny know immediately what that could mean. Lincoln’s only called for seventy-five thousand recruits from the entire Union, and if there are a regiment’s worth of them at either of those places, they might miss out on their chance. They’d only talked about it for the first time the night before, and all of them figured they could get away easily enough from their jobs for such a cause, though Smitty was
in the stickiest spot, being married and such. Still, every one of them liked the idea from the start … Finny and Smitty mostly for the adventure, Harry because no Reb bastard was gonna get away with that, and Ethan for altogether different reasons … thinking that there were perhaps grander principles hidden amidst the vengeance and escapade, though he hadn’t been able to find the words to express them.

  We better get over there, Finny says.

  But there’s the camera and all the glass plates already in their sleeves to consider. They’ll be worth five dollars apiece if they’re even a little clear, ten for the really good ones. And since the half dozen other cameras posted around the square all seem lost in the middle of the throng, not on the edge of it looking in the way Ethan is, he might just be able to corner the market.

  Fin—how’re we gonna get these pictures out of here? Ethan asks.

  I’ll carry’m, Perfessor, he says.

  It’ll be nothin’ at all for the three of us, Smitty adds.

  Not that … it’s just that they’ll only be worth a dollar apiece if we don’t develop ’em first. And then we still gotta take …

  And his voice trails off as he realizes the foolishness of missing out on this opportunity for such a trivial matter. All right, gimme a hand here, he says, and they get quickly to it.

  It’s not the first time Finny has served as Ethan’s assistant of sorts at an assignment. Mr. Hadley still ran the shop and took most of the portraits, but Ethan brought in twice as much money by taking pictures that newspapers and periodicals could convert to dot image engravings on their front pages as a means of selling more copies. And this would be as big a story as there had been in months, and as big a payday too—but first things first.

  Which one are we goin’ to, the one on Sixteenth or the one up on Twenty-Fifth? Ethan asks, looking at Smitty.

  Harry’s probably up at the one on Twenty-Fifth already, Smitty says. He told me that if he didn’t show up here for the rally it’s ’cause he’d gone straight to the recruitin’ station.

  And now Ethan and Finny stop their work and look at Smitty for the verdict. Through no fault of his own, Smitty—Walter Smythe—is mostly Scottish, with a little bit of Welsh mixed in there somewhere. He’d been their friend since he settled in Red Hook with his widowed mother a few years after Ethan arrived. And though there had been some moving about, different jobs, and even Smitty’s marriage to pull the old friends apart, baseball and Saturday evening visits to Feeny’s had overcome all obstacles so far. But this one was potentially the most difficult of all, and one that they hadn’t resolved the night before, when they all decided to enlist.

  Harry had been the one to say that they should all go up to the recruiting office on Twenty-Fifth Street, where he’d heard about an all-Irish regiment, and Smitty hadn’t resisted, joking about how I spend all my free time with a buncha Micks already, what’s a few more. But he and Ethan and Finny even were concerned that they wouldn’t let Smitty in and that they’d end up in entirely different regiments. Christ, it’ll be the first time anyone got thrown outta someplace fer NOT bein’ Irish, Harry’d answered. And they’d left it at that.

  You know Smitty, if you go first, and they give you a hard time, me an’ Finny an’ Harry can just go with you to the office on Sixteenth, Ethan says. And that finally settles the matter.

  Sure enough, Harry’s there waiting for them when they arrive, their arms full of glass plates and the box camera and tripod. Harry’s talked to one of the corporals standing guard at the door and knows everything there is to be done, how they’ll stand in the same line so they get put in the same squad, how there won’t be any problem for Smitty being Scottish but maybe it’s best he doesn’t mention it right off either, how the war’ll almost certainly be done before their ninety-day enlistments are even up. And it’s an easy enough thing to have the doctor look at them with shirt off, listen to a breath or two, check the eyes and look at their tongues, then nod to the recruiting sergeant who tells them where to sign, and that’s that. They are to report for duty in three days and that’s when they’ll get their uniforms, they’re told. But that doesn’t stop Ethan from setting up the camera across the street and taking a couple of pictures of the lads of the new Sixty-Ninth New York, sure to be the meanest, toughest regiment in either army in this here war! they say. And it’s on to Richmond one and all, with maybe a night at Feeny’s to celebrate their leaving and to talk about how they’ll teach them Rebs a lesson they’ll not soon forget.

  If we can get these pictures developed and sold off, Ethan says, we can start th’evenin’ with a steak dinner. I’m buyin’.

  And Ethan and his three assistants, civilians for just a few more days, are soon off for the ferry. Then On to Richmond!

  MARCELLA

  NEW YORK

  JULY 25, 1861

  They had gone off on their frivolous adventure three months before to the sounds of marching bands and cheering crowds. Their departures were made as conspicuous as possible, with entire regiments sometimes marching right up Broadway in the middle of the day, just to be seen by adoring crowds. Now they came stumbling back, some by train, some by ship, but all with different looks upon their faces.

  For Marcella, Catherine, and Mrs. Carlisle, it was a most depressing sight. After the debacle at Manassas Junction—what the northern press was calling the Battle of Bull Run—it had become clear that this was not going to be as simple a procedure as originally anticipated, and now New Yorkers were getting the chance to see what the face of war looked like up close. They tried to welcome the boys home as cheerfully as they had sent them off, but there was something missing in their cheers.

  “So many of them are wounded,” Catherine said with grave concern. “Look at all the bandaged heads and splints and crutches.”

  She covered her open mouth with her hand and tried to hold back her tears. Marcella put her arm around her friend and tried to comfort her, knowing that Catherine had been the most optimistic of all of them that a successful campaign would somehow encourage President Lincoln to free all the slaves. It seemed a preposterous notion now.

  “These boys are at least free from their enlistments,” Mrs. Carlisle added. “Their suffering is over.”

  And time for the next batch of recruits to take their turn, Marcella thought.

  The three of them watched quietly as the exhausted men marched slowly past. Someone along the sidewalk recognized the regimental flag from a newspaper account and shouted out for all to hear: “That’s the Sixty-Ninth! Those are the boys that took on that Stonewall Jackson!”

  A cheer went out from the crowd and a few of the men acknowledged them. According to press accounts of the battle, two legends had emerged. The “fighting” Sixty-Ninth New York had shown the most courage on the field amongst the Union Boys in Blue, and the General who had led the Rebs that stopped them had picked up a nickname that papers both north and south could not resist. The men of the Sixty-Ninth—almost all of them Irish, the paper had said—seemed bolstered by the crowd’s enthusiastic welcome. Their steps livened somewhat, and they marched in unison now. One of the men within the lines, a sergeant it looked like, broke form a little and shouted, “We’ll be back at ’em. Right, boys?”

  And the men around him shouted in approval.

  “We’ll be signing back up tomorrow if they’ll let us,” the sergeant said. “Those Rebs’ve not seen the last of the Sixty-Ninth!”

  It was the sort of braggadocio Marcella generally despised, but there was something reassuring to it now. And as she and Catherine and Mrs. Carlisle watched the last of the regiment march past, she knew that she had to find a way to do her share as well. She broached the subject at dinner that evening, and Mrs. Carlisle’s and Catherine’s reactions were yet another confirmation that she’d made the right decision in leaving her father’s house.

  “What a wonderful idea,” Mrs. Carlisle said after Marcella simply mentioned wanting to get involved in The Cause more. “What do you think we sh
ould do?”

  “We could organize the ladies to write letters to President Lincoln urging him to emancipate the slaves,” Catherine said.

  Dear, sweet, passive Catherine, Marcella thought.

  “Oh yes, you should bring that up next Friday,” Mrs. Carlisle confirmed. “And I have a friend in Washington who just might be able to deliver them to the President personally!”

  Marcella only smiled as the two of them planned out what they could say in the letters and how the Ladies Abolition Society might carry on this new phase of The Cause. And she could see how, in one manner at least, she had surpassed both of them. Despite the treasure that was their friendship, they were society women through and through, and too accepting of their limitations.

  “I mean to become a nurse,” Marcella blurted out. “I mean to volunteer to take care of the wounded.”

  Mrs. Carlisle’s eyes went wide, and Catherine seemed frozen by the very thought of the idea. But neither of them contested what Marcella had said so much as sought to understand how she would carry it out. And she hadn’t fully thought through the details in the time between that afternoon and this very moment.

  “Does this mean you will be leaving us?” Catherine asked after Marcella had talked about going to the local recruiting station tomorrow to inquire about the matter of nurses. There was a look of such genuine concern for losing her that Marcella thought about the expression on Pilar’s face when she left the house in November. And the thought now of leaving behind the two friends who had replaced her family seemed almost too much to bear, even for a woman of her strength.

  “There will certainly be hospitals here,” Mrs. Carlisle said. “Look at all the wounded men who were in the carriages at the end of each regiment. Surely they’ll need care.”

  And Marcella smiled at the thought of it.

  “I will inquire about them tomorrow,” she replied.

  “Oh … the thought of all that blood!” Catherine added with a shiver.