Call Each River Jordan

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “At the hospital over to the hotel, most like,” a colonel said. He had sunny hair, a sunny face, and handsome riding boots. “That fella’s been cutting on folks day and night since he got here. And cussing like a sailor at anybody what comes near him.”

  That was, indeed, the Mick Tyrone I knew.

  I WAS SCRUBBING MYSELF in a tent when Mick appeared. He embraced me. The Irish are an emotional lot.

  “I thought you were dead and buried,” he said. “Sure, I thought you were food for the worms.”

  When he released me, the print of my chest showed wet on his uniform. He was embarrassed by his outburst of affection, for I was not emboldened to reciprocate with like abandon, though glad I was to see him. There was a moment’s awkwardness and his next words come out in shreds.

  I did not mind the passion of his greeting, see. It showed the very soul of honest friendship. But proper folk do not hug their fellows so. Certainly not Methodists. And not when one of the two is half undressed.

  I shook his hand heartily in recompense.

  “I never thought to see you alive again, bucko,” he went on, with his eyes unsteady and damp.

  “Well, I am a bad penny and will turn up,” I said. Oh, wasn’t I glad to see him, though? Perhaps a better man than me would have hugged him back, despite the impropriety. But let that bide. I touched my own eyes with a cloth, for soap suds had annoyed them. “I hear you have made a great stir on my behalf, Mick. I thank you for it.”

  He gave his head a cock fit for the theater. The Irish think the world an endless stage. “And have you had a look at them, then? At these great Rebels? Oh, holy terrors they are, that’s sure. The sort that can barely be got out of bed for their breakfast.” He waved a hand at Heaven. “I’ve never seen such a grand carelessness. And their medical treatment isn’t fit for the veterinary service. Doctors, they call themselves. Doctors! Nothing but country butchers, the lot of them.” He smoothed his anthracite hair. Ash had begun to stain his temples. “Well, you’re none the worse for wear, by the looks of you. Where’ve you been, man?”

  “In an animal pen, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “The structure may have had another purpose. Unpleasant it was.”

  “Micah Lott told Sherman you’d been shot. That you were dead, and little doubt of it.”

  “Shot I have not been, Mick. Though I did fall off my horse, which proved to be an indiscretion. But I do not understand how you are come here? Though a welcome sight you are.”

  “Halleck sent me down. At Grant’s urging. Halleck’s a damned nuisance, by the way. Little Mac with a lesser tailor, and that’s putting a ribbon on a pig. All puffed up like a schoolmaster proud of his Latin, with his bluster and bulging eyes.” Mick pulled a face. “I’m not sure how you’d choose between him and this Beauregard. Oh, it’s a grand war we have before us, laddybuck. With Grant shoved aside and fools in command North and South. And we know who’s to pay the butcher’s bill.”

  “Well, that is war, Mick. But I still do not see the thread of your involvement.”

  He sat himself down on a camp chair and I went from my scrub to my shaving.

  “You said yourself that a man in my position hears things, Abel. I was treating one of Sherman’s staff lads for a filthy, damned pox—by the way, don’t go drinking the water here, for it’ll kill you faster than a bullet, and pity us if we do take the fair city of Corinth from the Rebels. But this fellow of Sherman’s . . . the blithest of morons he was. With a dreadful disease set to rot his meat and bones, though all a lark in the country it was to him. And he’s wailing like Sheilah on wash day that his work is never done and now he’s got to make a report to Halleck about an agent gone missing. And all to do with Micah Lott and murders it was, and with those that won’t be disciplined according to high regulations. Then didn’t I put together another pair of things I’d been hearing?”

  Mick made a face as if he’d been splashed by a chamber pot. “I know what hopeless buggers the lot of them are, so I went to Grant myself to find out what was in the kettle. And Sherman had him riled with the business already. So it’s off we go to Halleck, and doesn’t the pop-eyed bastard treat Grant the way his lordship treats a bog boy? Why is he being bothered with the minor consideration of a missing major, by your leave? When the Rebels are all reinforced and mighty and poised for a counterattack at any moment? Oh, he’s so crammed full of strategy it’s dripping out his arse. A fine one he is, that Halleck. If it wasn’t for Washington’s inquiries, he wouldn’t have budged till doomsday.”

  That invisible night-pot gave Mick another soaking. To know Mick is to understand the thousand degrees of disgust a man can express in the course of a day. For he is not a friend to things done poorly.

  “No, you’ve got Sam Grant and a timely telegraph wire to thank for your deliverance, Abel. Your Mr. Nicolay in Washington spunked up at the hint of your loss. The wires must have been flaming, to tell you the least of it. You’d think they’d been fattening you up all year for the fair and Paddy made off with you. And didn’t that bring Halleck’s heels together? Then someone had to carry a message to the Rebels, and I told them I was the man to do it. For at least I’d recognize the body after the crows were done. So off I went, though not before lancing a great spurting boil on Halleck’s backside, with him howling like an infant all the while.”

  “Well, there is good.” I toweled my face, a new man. “For you have saved me a hanging, Mick. And I have never liked the thought of a rope.”

  His mood shifted again. Mick had a spirit that could not hold still. “And all because of your carelessness, bucko. For the needless risks you’re taking, and you with a wife and a child. And that leg of yours a ruin already, and the traces of typhoid still in your eyes from December.” He ran his eyes over me, for my promised garments had not yet been delivered. “And it looks like you’re touched with the jaundice, for that matter.”

  Had Mick been a spitting man, he would have spit. “What’s wrong with you, Abel? You’ve done your part and won’t let others do theirs. Do you think you can win this war all by yourself? Is that what you’re after?” He shook his head in disgust. “Hanging would have taught you a lesson. And here I am, taken away from my duties, when we’ve got a fine, new tent hospital set up grand in the open air, and the needfulness of sanitation pressed upon the medicals, at least. And I have to come traipsing after you through half the Confederacy, in all your glorious, thick-skulled Welshness. And next thing I know I’m in this sorry excuse for a town, hacking the legs off of Rebels who can’t even keep their bowels shut for the length of an amputation. Oh, I’ll tell you again, man, don’t go drinking their water without giving it a long boil. And there’s an end to it.”

  “It is good to see you, Mick.”

  “Oh, go on with you,” he said, with that affected hardness of his. “You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you first came bothering me.”

  “WELL,” MICK SAID, “it’s a small world, if not always a pleasant one. At least I’ve received a bit of good news from all this.” He leaned forward, shifting in the canvas chair. “Do you recall a letter I wrote to you, when you were chasing your banshees all over the hills of New York? A letter in which I mentioned a Rebel officer wounded at Donelson? Both legs sawed out from under him and not so much as a whimper during the cutting?”

  “The one who gave you the horse,” I said, sitting down on a cot.

  “Exactly.” Mick gave me a nod. “Bravest man under the knife that ever I’ve seen. Or the stupidest. Anyway, I’ve learned that the fellow survived. The odds weren’t with him, I’ll tell you. It’s almost enough to make a man believe in your holy miracles.”

  “Miracles happen every day, Mick. It is the only way we get along.”

  He dismissed that. “Oh, now I’ve let the bird out of the cage. Next he’ll be singing to me about Jesus.”

  “Sing I will not. But I did pray night and day for my deliverance, Mick. And here we are.”


  He rolled his eyes. “I’m hardly the angel of the Lord, bucko.”

  “The Lord may choose what tools He will.”

  Poor old Mick held up his hands to stave me off. “Just let me tell you about my own handiwork, would you? For I’m spanking proud, and not ashamed to say it. At least not to you. I wasn’t sure I could bring it off, you know. The rot was already on the poor lad. But damn me if he hasn’t survived.” Mick looked askance and dusk crept into the tent. “For all the good it’ll do him, considering the parts he’s missing.”

  He drew his fingers through his whiskers and a fly drifted off. “He was a curious one, though. I believe I wrote a good deal about him, didn’t I? Could not get the fellow out of my mind. There are patients like that.” He smiled darkly. “You’d think a man would remember the pretty girls, the ones he pulled through or didn’t. But it’s the odd cases that cling.” Those gales stormed in his eyes again. “You know how I feel about all that Walter Scott nonsense, Abel. Yet . . . the boy seemed almost a figure out of a book, the truth be told. There was something grand, something . . . something frankly heroic about him. Except that in novels the heroes don’t lose their legs. And their intimate parts, besides.”

  “He gave you a horse,” I repeated. “A grand horse. The kind of horse that wants a proper rider.”

  Mick snorted. “And I’m hardly that. But what’s the horse got to do with this?”

  I shook my head. “It is not the horse, see. It is the fellow himself. His name is Barclay, is it not?”

  “Well, you’ve got a memory on you, laddybuck.”

  “No, Mick. It is not memory. It is the fitting together of things. The name come up today. As you have said, it is a small world. This great lot of slaves who were murdered belonged to the fellow. And there is something else, besides, though I cannot grasp it yet. Something queer. And I am not certain it is heroic. But I was in no position to put questions.”

  Mick thought for a moment. “Well, if you run into him, give him my regards. And tell him . . . tell him that, after the war, he should see Dr. Smithson in New York City. I won’t intrude further on his privacy. Just tell him to visit Dr. William McAdoo Smithson. The fellow’s a real doctor, not a butcher like me. Can you remember the name? Smithson?”

  “If I see him, I will tell him.”

  Mick leaned back a little, legs crossed and hands clasped over the high knee for balance. “Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have let the poor boy die.”

  Suddenly, he sat up. Slapping his hand to his breast. “Good Lord, I’m a sorry excuse for a friend. I’m forgetting your letters.”

  Letters? That is one of the beautiful words in our language.

  He thrust his hand—scrubbed raw, it was—into his tunic and drew out a lovely pair of rectangles. Extending them to me.

  It is impolite to examine letters in the presence of others. But I tore them open.

  There were three missives, for one was folded in another. The first was from my Mary Myfanwy. To my surprise, it contained a communication from none other than Mr. Matthew Cawber, the great industrialist of Philadelphia whose acquaintance I had made in the course of the Fowler affair. The last come from dear Mrs. Schutzengel, my Washington landlady.

  I looked at Mick, hesitating over the beautiful fineness of my sweetheart’s penmanship. Oh, there was love in the loops, and dreams in the dots, and joy in the ink itself. A grand birthday it had turned out, after all.

  “Go ahead and read them, would you?” Mick said. “You’re slavering like a dog at the sight of his dinner.”

  I dare not compromise my darling’s confidences. Suffice to say that she and young John were well and missed me. There was one matter I would need to ponder, though. I will tell you of that, for it is not a matter of intimacies, but of general relevance in these unsettled times. She asked me, did my love, if I might approve of her establishing herself as a dressmaker with the great Singer sewing machine I had sent her from New York?

  Now her talent lay beyond dispute, for she was to cloth what one of these Michael Angelo fellows is to paint pots or marble. Although I do not imply that she has Latin vices, of course. Far from it. Yet, was it proper for my wife to go into business? What might our congregation think? And our neighbors? And the good people of Pottsville in all?

  Twas not a matter of vanity, see. I would not make it an issue of pride. But a wife who works implies the husband is insufficient, and the regard of our fellows is not without value. Nor is commerce a fit domain for the female sensibility. A woman’s province is the home, and isn’t that a blessing? Our little John wanted constant care and minding. Who might provide it should his mother work?

  Lastly, it saddened me to think of my Mary Myfanwy stitching her days away for pay, when she had been a governess to a high family and possessed a most grandiose education for a woman. My lass had a mind that wanted using. She was better than a piecework laborer. She was a creature of intelligence, far more so than the fellow she had condescended to marry. Though it shock you, I would sooner have placed her among the high professions than set her to work with her hands down in the trades. But such is not the lot of woman, for the female is not steady when dismayed. And the thought of her sewing tediously, of rich folk looking down on her and chastising her with complaints, oh, that gave me an itch that had nothing to do with ant bites or Confederate fleas.

  Still, I would think on it. For I do not like to deny her. And perhaps a small endeavor would do no harm. There would be extra income, which never hurt a household. Even true love likes a prosperous hearth.

  And then . . . what if I were lost? What if they had hanged me? That fear still ghosted in me, I will tell you. Oh, war is a great spoiler of dreams. I did not like to picture my wife as a dressmaking widow, but she had the skill to feed herself and John, if need there was. Might my strictures spill them into poverty? Because I spurned the making of a dress? Were my reservations naught but the sin of pride again?

  She missed me, see. And wanted occupation in my absence. An empty house is heavy, and even a son will not replace a husband. Not if the marriage is sound.

  Twas a hard decision. To sew, or not to sew?

  Mick stepped out to have a smoke and my clothings had not come. So I read the note from Cawber next. Not that I valued him more than I did Hilda Schutzengel. But I was curious as to why such a grand fellow would write to me.

  This 10th Day of March 1862

  Dear Jones

  Dont you take the cake you little bugger. A man gets a report of some new fellow nibbling at the railroad shares he is backing and he starts to wonder. Damn me if I didnt look into the matter myself. I visited that Pottsville of yours. Its a black enough place. I saw that fool Evans at the Miners Bank. He thought he wasnt going to tell me anything but he found out. I could of shit my pants when I found out YOU were the bugger buying into the railroad with me. I had you pegged as a smart customer. I wasnt wrong.

  You must of gone sneaking around to learn what you did. But that is how it is done.

  I put a scare into Evans to keep his yap shut. As for you I know you understand the value of a secret. The truth is you dont have enough shares to start any trouble and wont. So I was worried about nothing at all. You hold onto them. Buy more if you can. It is all right between you and me. This war is going to make the railroads. But arent you a sneaky devil. Next time tell me and I wont have to waste my time.

  Maybe I like you because we are both sneaky fellows but honest. Drive a hard bargain but dont lie. Thats what I say.

  I still shake my head about that Fowler commotion. They tried to keep it quiet but nothing is quiet from me. So I know what happened. You know how I feel about their society. They will do anything for money but what is decent and what a man deserves.

  My offer stands. If you ever come to your senses and take off that silly soldier suit I will take you on as my private secretary and chief accountant. I cant trust the turd who works for me now to keep his mouth shut and that is the most important thing in b
usiness. So I am writing this myself: This whole country is in a state. But its a good state to make a profit in. So stop being a fool. Come work for Matt Cawber and if you dont end a rich man we will both die in the poor house. Cawber Iron & Steel is just the beginning. I bought that damned bank too. Just the way I said I would. Old Bates is nothing but a dirty bankrupt now and not just him. You should have heard Philadelphia howl.

  Thats all. Its late. Olympia is not well. Its nothing I am sure. But I want to look in on her. Sometimes I sit there and watch her until the morning. I could sit longer too. There aint nothing like a good wife. And the children too. But mostly the wife. There is not one thing better. Not all the money in the world. I will take her abroad for her health if she dont improve and business will let me go. She is my treasure and I will tell that to anybody. But if they have eyes to see they already know.

  Come to your senses Jones. Come to Philadelphia. And dont tell anybody else about the railroad shares. Or it will all be spoiled.

  I am Sir

  Your earnest correspondent

  M Cawber

  He was not a proper educated fellow, Cawber, as you can tell. But he was a lion of business and the richest man I knew in those days. And his wife was, perhaps, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. He was one of those fellows who draw others to them. But he would not draw me, of course. Not as long as the war required the services of honest men. And I am not sneaky. It is not a Welsh trait, no matter what the English will tell you. It is the English who think the truth is clay to be shaped to our wants.