Canaan

by Donald McCaig

  “You sure, Top?”

  “Christ, Ben. If you Johnnies couldn’t kill me, no damn indian can!”

  Ben Shillaber handed Ratcliff his Colts Patent revolver.

  At full gallop Ratcliff spurred through the gateway and cinders whirled up where the gelding’s hooves struck the ground. Ratcliff lay along the horse’s neck, nearly as flat as a Crow indian boy.

  Indian ponies came behind.

  Ratcliff raced for Fort Smith on the wagon track. The indians couldn’t spread out in the tall grass.

  Ratcliff wished they’d yell. He’d know how near they were if they’d yell.

  The fort’s low stockade was still a mile ahead when Ratcliff sensed a shape looming beside him. An indian pony’s white nose crept up on Ratcliff’s right. A cannon blasted from the fort. The shell whistled far overhead and exploded.

  The shape drew neck and neck and a war club rose and crashed down and the reins dropped from Ratcliff’s numbed hands. He slid over his horse’s shoulder into the high grass.

  Ratcliff struck the earth on his left arm and rolled onto his back. Stunned, he rose on an elbow. His vision was blurred, but he could draw and cock Shillaber’s revolver.

  The indian jumped into the tiny clearing Ratcliff’s fall had created. The Lakota’s red-and-green buckskin shirt was fringed with hair; his two eagle feathers were notched and red-tipped. The man’s face was scarred from forehead to chin and his left ear had been cropped, so his head seemed unbalanced. His knife was a cavalry saber broken below the hilt.

  In Lakota, he sang his kill song, “I have counted coup. Now I will kill you. I, White Bull, will make you cry.”

  The two men were alone in the circle of flattened grass. The grass wall around them was horse-high. Through a blood haze, Ratcliff squinted over his pistol at White Bull’s chest.

  In passable Lakota Ratcliff said, “I am Plenty Cuts. My wife, She Goes Before, will cry if I shoot her brother.”

  CHAPTER 25

  A PHILADELPHIA SANITARIUM

  KIDDER’S FARADIC APPARATUS WAS CASED IN AN OAK BOX RESEMBLING a tobacco humidor. Duncan, normally curious about mechanical devices, never asked how the Faradic Apparatus produced current. Dr. Parrish’s soft, stubby fingers attached one wire to the batteries and the other to the iron pipe which fed the room’s gaslights. The examination chair had stout arms which Duncan clenched, and thin leather padding through which he could feel every spline of the chair’s ladder-back.

  “There, Major Gatewood. How were your bowels today? Have you employed the rectal syringe?”

  Dutifully, Duncan reported.

  “Your appetite? Were you able to eat the beef at supper?”

  “I was satisfied with a boiled egg.”

  Dr. Parrish turned to his guest, a New York physician here to learn electricity’s curative properties. “Major Gatewood began taking laudanum, five drops daily, to relieve the pain of his amputation. By the time he determined to seek a cure his daily dose routinely exceeded two hundred drops. Sensitive or excitable men are more susceptible to opium than those with a more sanguine disposition. When Major Gatewood came to me, his skin was muddy, his appetite dull, and his digestion impaired. His muscular development was poor and his sleep was more dozing than true sleep. Often sleep was accompanied by terrifying dreams. Dreams which—he tells me—sometimes attend our sessions on the apparatus but do not otherwise trouble him.”

  One electrode was a brass ball at the tip of a rubberized rod. The other was a circular brass disk. “Major Gatewood, if you will hold the disk over the occiput, there, just behind your ear.”

  The gaslights provided the only warmth in the room and the electrode was cold. Though the doctors wore black woolen suits, Duncan was shirtless.

  “It is well to apply the negative pole first,” Dr. Parrish said. “The current from Bunsen’s cells is interrupted with this simple telegraph key.”

  When Parrish touched the brass ball to his skull, Duncan broke a sweat.

  Afterward his mouth was always dry and his ears always rang, but Duncan never felt the current. When the current struck, Duncan fell into memory, revisiting events he had not known were stored. One time he was a boy on his beloved horse Gypsy, jumping rail fences at Stratford, smelling Gypsy’s sweat, feeling the great horse’s muscles bunching under his thighs. Then it was Spotsylvania, the day after that terrible battle: servants loading bodies on wagons while kinfolk and friends sought loved ones among the dead. Through tobacco-stained teeth, Sergeant Fisher described the battle: how two armies had fought hand-to-hand for eighteen hours on opposite sides of a narrow breastwork. Sergeant Fisher pointed to a corpse that had been hit by so many bullets it was no thicker than a folded blanket, Fisher asking, “Got a chaw? It cuts the smell.”

  Duncan’s brother-in-law, Catesby Byrd, lay with his back against a pine tree. Though his boots were gone, they hadn’t taken his watch, which was still ticking. Absently Duncan wound it and put it in his pocket. He’d get it to Catesby’s son, Thomas.

  Duncan wetted his handkerchief and knelt to wash gunpowder from Catesby’s face. The bullet hole wasn’t large and hadn’t bled much. Duncan cleaned that too.

  “I reckon he jest got tired of fellas tryin’ to kill him,” Fisher said.

  “THE SUPERIOR, middle, and inferior cervical ganglia may be affected by galvanism.” Dr. Parrish removed the electrodes, bent Duncan forward, and thumped his spine.

  While the negro nurse, John Bingham, helped Duncan from the chair, the doctors inspected the apparatus. When Dr. Parrish tapped the key, it produced a six-inch spark.

  “Come along, Major,” the nurse said. “You bath be ready.”

  Laudanum’s ironical detachment had kept Duncan floating above his life. Though Duncan was Mahone’s chief briber, he wasn’t the only one. In a legislator’s office one afternoon, when he opened his green carpetbag, the legislator laughed. “You biddin’ agin’ yourself, Major Gatewood. I already been bought: lock, stock, and barrel.”

  Before the War the Commonwealth of Virginia had financed plank roads, canals, and railroads and taken stock in these enterprises. Although canals and plank roads lost money, several railroads, including Mahone’s, had been profitable and were returning to profitability again. Mahone wanted to buy Virginia’s shares of his railroads. The Baltimore & Ohio coveted the same shares.

  Mahone won. Despite military rule, despite negroes at the constitutional convention, white conservatives would not hand over the Common-wealth to Northern interests.

  The day after Mahone’s legislative victory, Duncan had told the General he needed a rest, that he had promised Sallie he would seek a cure for his laudanum craving.

  General Mahone drummed his fingers. “That damned constitutional convention is meeting and our military rulers will appoint another governor. Major, these are trying times.”

  “Sir, I cannot serve you ably.”

  Mahone’s smile was chilly. “I am aware of your infirmities, Major.” He paused. “You should know I have increased orders for your father’s crossties and”—he smiled—“I’m not so far in arrears. Eben Barnwell believes the British investors will respond to our recent success. I can spare you for a month.”

  “Sir,” Duncan said eagerly, “when I return I’d like different work. I’d make a reliable stationmaster . . .”

  “Major Gatewood, I have a glut of stationmasters. Do give my best to your wife. I will see you in December.”

  WHEN HE HELPED Duncan into the scalding tub, Nurse Bingham said, “Oh, I believe that’s hot enough, Major. Hot enough, sure.”

  When he arrived at the Philadelphia sanitarium, Duncan had been searched for laudanum by a white nurse who sympathized with Duncan’s war injuries and was glad when his inspection didn’t find a hidden supply. Nurse Bingham was less sympathetic.

  Although John Bingham had been born free in Philadelphia and never ventured south, he was obsessed with slavery. He reported lurid tales as gospel. Bingham was especially curious about girls sol
d into the fancy trade and girls ravished by their masters.

  When Duncan told him their black servants were considered part of the Gatewood family, Bingham gave him a sly look. “That’s why you havin’ all them mulatto babies by them negro women, eh, Major Gatewood? On account of how you is all family?”

  As a boy Duncan had had a son by Maggie, his father’s servant. He held his tongue.

  “You gettin’ red in the face, Major Gatewood,” Bingham observed. “That’s healthy. Yessir, that’s healthy. Major, if negroes was your family, how come you sell them to the fancy trade? You ever sell any of your white family?”

  In his first weeks, Duncan had taken three hot baths daily. Now he only bathed at bedtime. “We tried not to sell our servants,” Duncan said.

  “Did you ’deed?” Bingham poured a bucket of icy water over his head. “I wished I could have seen one of them slave markets. Them big ones in Charleston or Richmond. All them pretty women on the block and a man could look ’em over before he picked his pick. Oh, I would have liked to see that. Is it true you could ask the auctioneer and the woman would drop her shift so you could see everything? Is it true what they say?”

  After a second bucket of icy water, Duncan climbed nude onto a wooden table where Bingham dried him, pulled on a horsehide mitten, and rubbed briskly.

  “Go to Virginia,” Duncan advised. “Ask those who were slaves.”

  Bingham stopped rubbing.

  “No, sir. No, sir. I born and reared in the North and I stayin’. Major, how much would a high yellow, fourteen years, how much would you pay for such a gal?”

  DUNCAN’S ROOM CONTAINED a washstand, wooden chair, and iron bed. Its uncurtained window overlooked row houses across the narrow street. In the afternoons sometimes he watched the neighborhood children at play. He didn’t want for anything, didn’t miss his old life, didn’t yearn for a new life. Under cotton sheets and a light wool comforter, Duncan Gatewood, lately major in the 44th Virginia Infantry, slept like a boy.

  CHAPTER 26

  LETTER FROM JESSE BURNS TO EDWARD RATCLIFF (ENVELOPE MARKED BY TERRITORIAL POSTMASTER: “RETURN TO SENDER: ADDRESSEE DECEASED”)

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  APRIL 8, 1868

  Dear Edward,

  I am only now answering your letter. Hello, She Goes Before! Don’t take Edward’s ill humors to heart. He has a kinder nature than he pretends.

  I am wedded myself. I met a young woman at a church social and Sudie took my heart for her prize. She is a comely woman of twenty-seven years. Sudie’s son, Jimson, is accustomed to a slack rein. Jim-son’s friends are “The Knockabouts”: the rowdiest boys in Richmond.

  Sudie was a house servant and her gentle manners point up my own clumsiness. Sudie forgives me with many endearments.

  I have seen my first wife, Maggie. She now calls herself “Marguerite Omohundru,” is passing for white, and owns the bank she was entering! My beloved Sudie rescued me from confusion and despair, for Sudie loves me as Maggie never did.

  When I determined to turn loose of Maggie and all she once meant to me, an oppression was lifted off my shoulders. May God bless Mrs. Omohundru. May God bless Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Burns!

  I am employed as a printer at Richmond’s Republican newspaper, which subsists on state government business and donations from Northern Republicans. I am poorly paid. Sudie, Jimson, and I are obliged to dwell in two small rooms on East Third Street in a district which is boisterous at any time and dangerous after nightfall. But even here, Sudie has created a domestic paradise. She begged discarded fabric from her employers (Sudie is a laundress), and sewed neat curtains for our windows. Though the curtains are mismatched, they are stitched by the same hand and each sports bright tassels! Our marital bed once graced a suite in the Spottswood Hotel. New bed boards, ropes, and some nails made it good as new. Jimson sleeps in the kitchen beside our coal stove.

  How cold Montana must be! How do you bear it? Richmond’s winter froze me solid!

  We have completed the great work of the Virginia Constitutional Convention. Negroes registered in great numbers to pick delegates and, by the grace of God, I was elected.

  We met in the Virginia Hall of Delegates, that same grand hall where Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry once debated. I tell you, Edward, when I took my seat in that hallowed spot I did not feel grand; on the contrary, I felt wholly insignificant. Sometimes at night I wake with a start and must needs convince myself my life is not a dream, that come morning I won’t wake in Stratford’s negro Quarters for another day’s toil. I have met eminent statesmen: Judge Underwood, who guides our constitutional work; Thaddeus Stevens, who is attempting to impeach President Johnson; Frederick Douglass, surely the greatest man of our race; and even General Butler. We negroes invited our Army of the James commander to speak before the convention. White conservatives gnashed their teeth as the affable General Butler—the man who had led negro troops against them—instructed them how to write a constitution! Edward, the General you and I once saluted has shaken my hand!

  Stratford’s Thomas Byrd is the Staunton delegate and if this young man possesses every good trait of the Old Virginian, he possesses every ill trait too. Thomas Byrd is honorable, educated, and implacable in his determination that authority should remain in the white hands who have always wielded it. Edward, they are afraid of us! They fear to yield the tiniest point and they are outraged when we ask our due. They mock our clothing, our hopes, our morals, even our speech. We are caricatured in the Richmond newspapers. Each conservative speech is reported as solemnly as biblical exegesis, but they report every negro utterance ‘spelt out, like we was mo’ ignorant dan Ol’ Massa’s mule.’ ”

  Our leader Dr. Baynes rebutted them, “Do not the proprietors of these papers know that it is they and their people who have robbed the black man of education, who have taken the money and labor of the black man to support themselves in grandeur? And now they curse the black man because he is not a grammarian?”

  White Republicans like my employer, Mr. Chepstow, flatter negroes and favor negro rights so we will elect them. They speak confidently for us, even when they are ignorant of what we are saying amongst ourselves. Our voices are faint as a man shouting underwater.

  Dr. Baynes suggested we quit the white Republicans and start an entirely negro party, but cooler heads prevailed.

  Despite our travail, from this chamber that has known such greatness, negroes and whites together produced a new constitution for Virginia. The Underwood Constitution (for such it is named) will go to the United States Congress and then to Virginia voters. We have shown every fair-minded man that negroes can assume the full duties of citizenship. Edward, it is a proud day.

  Your fellow soldier,

  Jesse Burns, Delegate to the Virginia

  Constitutional Convention

  CHAPTER 27

  LETTER FROM THOMAS BYRD TO SAMUEL GATEWOOD

  THE BALLARD HOTEL

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

  APRIL 17, 1868

  Esteemed Grandfather,

  Since my last letter, the farce of High Life Below Stairs has been performed daily in the Capitol before the admiring crowd of idle blacks who crowd the galleries. The discussion concerns taxation, and Mr. Chepstow, that assiduous scribbler, asks for a minute on the floor.

  “No, I ain’t gwine to ’low you nary minit.” The very black Thomas Baynes proceeds to say that he has “sot here and hern ’em talk about taxation and he goes fer layin’ the taxation on de land” (expecting by this means to force owners to sell or give away lands to the freedmen).

  Mr. Baynes next advocates a capitation tax but is entirely opposed to a poll tax! A mischievous Conservative politely asks the speaker to explain the distinction and we are told that a capitation tax is on the head and a poll tax is on the roads! These are the same intellects who advise negroes that if they don’t support Republicans their children will be sold back into slavery! These are our constitution makers. The Conservative looker-on is filled wit
h indignation, disgust, and amusement all at one moment. Several yankees who have visited this Convention of Kangaroos were aghast at the spectacle.

  The charade winds down tomorrow. Although the delegates were willing to extend an engagement which has delighted Richmond audiences for so many months, General Schofield, our military governor, thought they’d rooted long enough in the public trough. The Republicans have collected their emoluments and dispersed.

  What has been accomplished here, after pettifogging wrangles and endless disputes over protocol which any educated man would have found beneath his attention, was, simply, the enfranchisement of Virginia’s most ignorant negroes and the disenfranchisement of the Commonwealth’s finest whites. Should the United States Congress approve the Underwood Constitution, those who cannot (or will not) sign the Ironclad Oath cannot vote.

  When Federal troops entered Richmond in April of 1865, negroes cried, “Bottom rail on top,” and so it is today. The least among us has become first!

  Our own Jesse is Charles Chepstow’s creature. Jesse, who served us Gatewoods, affronts us at every turn. Grandfather, when Jesse Burns approached me in the chamber hoping to ingratiate himself I snubbed him.

  General Schofield has found it impossible to find persons who could take the Ironclad Oath and fulfill the duties of office. I quote the General, “I have been able to find in some counties only one, in others two, and others three persons who could read and write and take the oath.” Yet the proposed Underwood Constitution would govern the majority with this minuscule minority.

  The new constitution proposes that all those capable of holding office cannot, and those who ought not must. If this weren’t so bitter it would be laughable.

  I dined last night with Duncan and Sallie. Duncan remains involved in General Mahone’s concerns. He is cured of the Soldier’s Curse, and I thank God for that! Sallie is great with child again and interrogates me about my romantic attachments. I replied that Miss Stuart and I are friendly, which never satisfies Sallie, who brooks no ambiguity where wedlock is concerned.