Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

by Donald McCaig

  “Society today is dominated by grandes dames. During the War, society was the creature of young unmarried girls. It was their parties everyone hoped to be invited to, their soirées that were attended by gallant Confederate officers.

  “Richmond society had been a society of families where invitations were rarely needed because everybody knew who was welcome. But as Mattie Ould said, ‘War is a great rearranger of aristocracies,’ and men tramped through Richmond’s parlors who never would have been admitted before the war. There was the Prussian, Von Borke, with his dreadful neck wound. General Mahone—a tavernkeeper’s son. Molly Semple—who had previously been regarded as wellborn but too free a spirit—Molly was inducted into the ‘Old Guard.’

  “Molly Semple was likelier to attend a levee than Mrs. Kirkpatrick (her kin by marriage, Richmond believed), but when the flood of casualties dwindled, Sallie Kirkpatrick would accompany her kinswoman into society.

  “Before the war, ladies prided themselves on their exquisite needlework and some notioned a lady’s quality could be determined from her stitches, but fancy work had become unpatriotic. At society levees, ladies stripped lint from family underclothing for Confederate bandages. Instead of embroidery, ladies manufactured socks, woolen vests, and suspenders. Older ladies brought down spinning wheels from their attics, and as during our revolution against the English, the steady thump and whir of spinning wheels provided harmony to music produced by ensembles of house servants. Mrs. Ould’s Henry was an excellent fiddler and in demand for his knowledge of French court tunes, although it was suspected that of the sheet music he so fussily arranged on his music stand Henry read not one note.

  “At one time, Sallie Kirkpatrick’s mouse-brown dress might have occasioned comment, but in a capital where many had sold spare clothing for food or converted the cloth into uniforms, her unvarying dress was unexceptionable. Family carriages had been requisitioned by the army, and many a dashing thoroughbred was pulling artillery limbers for General Lee.

  “It was believed Sallie had come from a plantation beyond the Blue Ridge. It was known she had lost her husband at Fredericksburg, though nobody knew his regiment or rank. But many a proud scion of the Confederacy died an anonymous private, and if Mrs. Kirkpatrick preferred to keep her grief to herself so be it.

  “At one gathering, several ladies inquired about the patients in Sallie’s care. ‘They bear the most frightful injuries with courage,’ Sallie said. ‘Even the youngest face death with resignation and calm.’

  “ ‘My dear—are they in good spirits? Do they ever jest?’

  “As her reply, Sallie described the young Baptist chaplain who preached to her ward one Sunday. ‘I do not believe he had been long with the army, and confronting so much pain discomfited him. When his invention flagged, he embarked on themes too familiar to my patients. He was dead set against drinking and cardplaying and awfully distressed by dancing. At this last, a Georgia corporal burst into laughter, and soon the entire ward was rocking with mirth.

  “ ‘ “Sir,” the chaplain cried, “are you not tempted to sin?”

  “ ‘ “No sir. I reckon I ain’t,” the corporal said. He flipped aside his bedclothes to reveal that both legs had been removed at the knee. That is the sort of jest our boys enjoy.’

  “At subsequent soirées, the ladies made grateful noises about Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s dedication, but never again troubled her for specifics.”

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA NOVEMBER 15, 1863

  Sallie Botkin carried a handful of wet bandages to the wringer and Molly turned the crank. Usually Camp Winder made do with lint wound dressings, but Chancellorsville had provided a wealth of Federal linen bandages.

  Earlier that day, General Lee himself had called on Cousin Molly at her home. “We had such an agreeable chat,” Molly said as Sallie fed the wringer. “The general’s a fifth cousin, connected through my mother’s side. He was so grateful for the care we give his men. Robert Lee has the most delicate manners.”

  Sallie wiped her forehead on her sleeve. “Had the general troubled to call on me, I should have told him that we would not need to care for his men if he cared for them better!”

  “Then perhaps, child, it is well you and the general did not make one another’s acquaintance.” Cousin Molly paused. “My dear, I wish you to look in on your childhood friend Duncan Gatewood.”

  “I cannot imagine Captain Gatewood wishes to renew our acquaintance any more than I do.”

  “He had recovered from his amputation and was anticipating a furlough home, but has contracted a fever, and Sallie, I fear for his life. Your familiar face would be a comfort.”

  Sallie hesitated. “I have been a convict,” she said.

  “Child,” Cousin Molly said, “Duncan is dear Abigail’s son.”

  Duncan’s forehead and arms were splashed with furious red stripes, and when Sallie lifted his blanket, his chest was the palest blue-white she’d ever seen. The left side of his face, the stretched burn scar which connected jawbone to hairline, pulsed sullen red. He’d sweated through his blanket and the blanket laid under him. When he opened his eyes, they swam around the ward. “Sallie? Where are we, Sallie? Am I translated?”

  Sallie touched his lips. She would not weep. She would not!

  All those childhood days in Uther Botkin’s sunny school: Leona, Duncan, Jesse . . . her father’s intelligent, questioning voice . . . No! To recall these things would make her helpless, and Sallie would not be helpless.

  In his fever, Duncan thrashed; he would not lie still. Fearing he might batter his stump or do some injury to himself, Sallie had him tied to the bed with linen strips. She bathed his body with cool water.

  He muttered. He sat bolt upright in bed to shout, “Christ, the skin on her! Under her titties was the softest place on God’s earth.” Her patient’s delirium prompted Sallie to have his bed moved into her own room, where Duncan would not distress his fellows.

  Duncan raved coarsely about Midge and called her Witchy. At other times he murmured tendernesses—that Midge had given herself to him as naturally as a flower opens from the bud. Why was Midge cold? Why was poor Midge shivering? “Young Master Jacob Gatewood! Young Master!” Duncan snorted and flailed his head so furiously Sallie clamped him between her palms. All of one night, Duncan raved scripture, one verse, repeated over and over: “It would be better for him if he should have a millstone hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea than he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.” His forehead was slick with sweat. At last, almost rationally, Duncan said, “Sold south, my own son. Oh, what will they think of that?” He never said who “they” were, whether angels at the Last Judgment or men upon this earth.

  The crisis came in the hour before dawn. Duncan sat upright, fever stripes writhing like snakes. “Will I perish?” he asked.

  “The surgeon has hope.”

  “What is that you’re knitting?”

  “A sock.”

  He croaked, “Where will you find the horse that requires one?”

  She laid her ungainly project across her lap. She smiled.

  “Am I so amusing?”

  “You have been ill.”

  “My soul has been sick since I lay down with Midge. Do you think she poisoned me?”

  Sallie brought water to his lips. Throat spasming, he swallowed; most dribbled down his chest. “More likely I poisoned her. She was sold to another master to be used as he saw fit. I prayed she would be sold as a field worker, not a house servant, because I know her perils too well. Duncan Gatewood, obedient son! Too obedient to defend my own son, my own . . . Midge. I was a coward—a damned coward.”

  Sallie wrung out a cloth and wiped bristling sweat from his forehead. She touched his burn. “Few would censure you for what you have done.”

  “Would you censure me? You who went to prison because of principle?”

  Sadness darkened Sallie’s features. “Censure cannot thrive in death’s presence. After enough men die, censure is confo
unded. I hardly recall the penitentiary. I scarcely remember Snowy Mountain or Aunt Opal or Uther or Jesse, who was more my friend than servant. How I pray Jesse has found his way to freedom, that he is not one of the anonymous corpses this war is laying up.” She turned to the table. “You’ve a letter from your father. Shall I read it to you?”

  Duncan shook his head. “He sees my lost arm as opportunity—wishes me to return to Stratford.” He sank back into his pillows. “Am I so very ugly now?”

  “No,” she said.

  His eyelids slid over his eyes. “Thank you, dear Sallie,” he whispered.

  Duncan slept for sixteen hours straight, and when he woke, his forehead was cool to the touch. If he ever recalled their conversation that fever-broken night, he never mentioned it. Sallie had Duncan moved back onto the ward. Even while Duncan was in death’s antechamber, other matrons had complained to Cousin Molly about the impropriety of an unmarried man and widowed woman sharing the same room.

  At this time, the only wounded soldier in the ward was a cavalry sergeant from Mississippi. Consumptives and pneumonias occupied the other beds.

  Sallie and Duncan resumed the easy intimacy they had enjoyed as children at Uther Botkin’s knee. When Duncan finally opened his father’s letter, it contained Catesby’s letter, forwarded without comment. Duncan smiled. “If ever a man was born to sing in the hallelujah chorus, Catesby is that man.” Judiciously he added, “I hope Catesby isn’t too sanctified around Samuel. Samuel won’t stand for it.”

  “And you, Duncan. What do you think?”

  He grinned. “It ain’t my soul, it’s Catesby’s soul, and he’s to have full disposition of it.”

  A week later Duncan was sitting up, and the next bright morning was helped outside onto a bench in the sun. Sallie kept him company.

  “Lord, I feel old. I don’t think I will ever be a young man again.”

  “Hush. Don’t be sillier than you must.”

  “The sun . . .”

  “Yes, it does feel good. Look, crows after a hawk.”

  Duncan shaded his eyes. “Hawk always gets the worst of it; he’s more’n a match for one crow but he can’t do much against four of them.”

  “Remember at the beginning of the war the newspapers were boasting how many Federals one Confederate could defeat?”

  “We talked some prime foolishness in those days. Federal soldiers take a fair bit of licking. They just haven’t had good generals. Let’s not talk about the war. Please, Sallie.”

  “I’d thought if you were feeling better on Sunday we might attend the Davises’ levee. It is their custom to open their home, and I have never been.”

  Duncan brushed his uniform and even polished his boots, though that was a complex task for a newly one-armed man. On the appointed day, they borrowed a hospital ambulance and, over Sallie’s objections, Duncan drove. “I can drive with one hand,” Duncan said. “And had better get used to it. Besides”—he flicked the leather over a horse well into his second decade—“I don’t think Dobbin will run away with us.”

  Outside the presidential mansion, militiamen were talking strategy with some Georgians who had traveled from their home specifically to advise President Davis on his conduct of the war.

  “Mr. Davis, he don’t take kindly to advice,” one private said dolefully. “And he’s in no humor since he got home from the west. Was I you, I’d talk to Vice President Stephens. He don’t care for the way things are run either, and since he’s from Georgia, might be he’d know some of your kin.”

  Some of the crowd in the entrance hall were civilians; most, like Duncan, wounded soldiers. The hall wallpaper was the faux wood grain so fashionable before the war. “My, doesn’t it look real?” Sallie said.

  “Wouldn’t fool me,” Duncan, the onetime sawyer, grumbled.

  Although it was late in the season, the mansion’s paintings were still draped by insect-proof gauze.

  Flanked by avuncular Judah Benjamin, President Davis bowed gracefully to each lady, extended his hand to each civilian, asked each soldier his regiment. After being received, the guests passed through French doors into the garden.

  Davis’s forehead was pinched with headache, and one of his eyes was milky and blind. “I am glad to make your acquaintance, Captain,” Davis said. “You have suffered in our cause.”

  “Not so much as some, sir,” Duncan replied. Then the devil took him: “Why is it, sir, that they feed us so much better in the hospital than with the army in the field?”

  Davis had already grasped the next hand but swiveled his gaze crisply. “Captain, that is so we might return you to ranks as swiftly as we can.”

  Duncan’s foolish grin fell off his face.

  Varina Davis and a few of her intimates gathered in a small sitting room adjacent to the public melee. Although Varina Davis was a staunch Episcopalian, this parlor was decorated with crucifixes and rosaries, carved by Confederate prisoners of war. An elderly woman summoned Sallie with big gestures.

  “Mrs. Stannard, how nice to see you . . .”

  “Oh, do come in, child. You and your gallant escort. Where is your delightful Cousin Molly? Captain, so glad to see you. All we Confederate ladies are fascinated by soldiers.”

  In her dark green hoop skirt and green jacket, Varina Davis looked like a doll, an exuberantly energetic doll. “Which is your regiment, Captain?” she asked.

  “Forty-fourth Virginia, ma’am. I lost this”—he patted his stump—“at Chancellorsville.”

  Almost swallowed in the upholstery of the couch, a withered old man pronounced, “Great victory. We drove ’em that day.”

  “Captain, let me introduce Mr. Edmund Ruffin, who had the honor of firing our first shot at Fort Sumter.” Courtesy satisfied, Mrs. Davis left to pour tea for her other guests.

  Ruffin said, “For years I argued secession from the northern oppressors. Years. Nobody listened to me then. Now we are seceded, nobody heeds me again.”

  “We met at John Brown’s hanging,” Duncan said.

  “Don’t remember you. I met too many people in those days,” Ruffin said.

  “I was the cadet guarding the scaffold. We talked in the moonlight.”

  “John Brown produced a pretty piece of work. He did more to cause this war than any man living. Tyrant Lincoln dances to John Brown’s tune.”

  “I remember it was a beautiful night.”

  “Was it? What will we do without General Jackson?”

  “I lost my horse Gypsy at Chancellorsville. Don’t expect I’ll ever find another like her.”

  “Do you equate your horse with the South’s finest Christian general?”

  Sally took Duncan’s good arm. “You’ll have to excuse him, sir. The captain is recovering from fever.”

  When Sallie had Duncan settled on a love seat in the corner, she fetched him a cup of tea.

  “I’m gonna miss Gypsy a damn sight more’n I’ll miss Old Blue Light,” Duncan muttered.

  “Yes, but perhaps this isn’t just the place to say so.” Sallie nodded at acquaintances across the room.

  “You think I should say that every time Old Jack attacked, the Federals fell down in terror? That God and General Jackson were hitched tandem?”

  The two looked everywhere but at each other. Citizens in the receiving line eyed Varina Davis’s intimates with frank curiosity.

  Sallie’s smile was stiff. “It is so nice to taste real tea again.”

  “If there ever were any tea leaves in my cup they long since departed for a happier land.” Duncan wanted to apologize, but his words came out wrong. He said, “Sallie, you never were so particular about pleasing other people.”

  “Yes,” Sallie whispered. “And see what it brought me to.”

  Following the Davis’s levee, Sallie found plenty to keep her occupied on other wards. Duncan took on orderly chores as his strength returned.

  It surprised Duncan how much he had depended on having two arms. To sweep with one arm was difficult, to collect a chamber
pot impossible. The cradling action of hands and arms was a ghost inside his body. Before his loss, Duncan Gatewood had faced the world head on, legs apart like a wrestler; now he turned toward life edgeways, a fencer. Simple operations—pulling on a sock, cutting a piece of beef without sending his plate skittering to the floor—taught him much about a body he had always taken for granted. How does a one-armed man open a jackknife? By setting the haft against his hip and plucking the blade between thumb and forefinger. A one-armed man winds his watch by clamping the instrument between little finger and heel of the hand while inserting the key. Shaving his burn-scarred face was too painful, so Duncan let his beard grow.

  Sometimes Duncan’s missing arm ached as if he were half corporeal, half shade.

  Saturday morning, Sallie arrived with a wicker basket tucked underneath her arm. “It is a lovely day,” she announced.

  Duncan leaned his broom against the doorframe. “Cooler at night. Won’t be too long before we roll the mosquito netting.”

  “Yes. In our mountains they will have had hard frosts.”

  He took a deep breath. “Sallie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you before the Davises.”

  “I believe I have forgotten the incident. Perhaps we could picnic on the James. I know a grassy bank within easy walking distance. I have managed apples, a loaf of bread, a flask of fresh milk, even half a chicken. I hope you will accompany me. Oh, I am so bold!”

  His face broke into a grin. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said and took her arm. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  The river ran over the stepped falls in a soft creamy whoosh. Its bow wave broke against a green canal boat sliding upstream. An osprey flashed into the mist and emerged, wings working hard, a heavy fish in its talons.

  Sallie unwrapped the cool flask. “One would never think . . .”

  “This makes war seem unnatural.”