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

by Donald McCaig

  Some soldiers seemed pleased, some indifferent. One veteran set his face in disdain. Catesby thought better of that man than of his lukewarm fellows. That man would attend a prayer meeting one day, and when he did, there’d be another soul saved. It was a common occurrence: a soldier would stand at the fringe of the meeting, then, gradually, ease deeper into the throng until he was indistinguishable from the other Christians. Jesus Christ knows no distinctions of rank and the poorest private is as welcome as a major general.

  When chaplains petitioned General Lee that men be excused for prayer meetings, the general acquiesced, saying, “I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.” Not every officer was as righteous as Lee or the deeply mourned Stonewall Jackson. A. P. Hill barely tolerated the revival in his division, but some whispered that General Hill had contracted a venereal disease as a young man and was perhaps too well acquainted with sin.

  En route to the prayer meeting, Catesby was waylaid by Private Mitchell, who said, “We’re gonna have better’n fatback and hard bread tonight. Special train from Richmond. Heard it from the commissary sergeant, and he don’t mistake such things. They’re bringing us a real Christmas dinner. Think on it.”

  Of course, Catesby couldn’t help thinking, and while the Alabama evangelist described the humble manger where the infant Christ Child lay, adored by wise men, shepherds, and angels, Catesby was mentally savoring ham in redeye gravy. As the preacher drew parallels between those ancient days and these—likened in darkness and sinfulness but illuminated by the Christmas star—Catesby was picturing the German tree in Samuel Gatewood’s parlor, a smiling Pompey hefting the platter of Christmas goose, his children, Thomas and Pauline, on the floor with their gifts, his dear Leona’s tremulous, pretty smile.

  The men sang “Shall We Gather by the River.” The preacher spoke of the peace Jesus gave His followers, how Jesus could wash away sufferings and sorrows, and Catesby knew it was true. No, Jesus hadn’t eliminated sufferings and sorrows, He had displaced them. Mere suffering was like Catesby’s skin: with him every moment of the day, but unnoticed.

  His loss of infant Willie, loss of messmates and friends, Armistead’s death, Garnett’s death, the gallant Pelham’s death, Duncan Gatewood’s maiming, all the other maimings—these could not affect Catesby anymore; he rested in his new faith like a babe in arms. Those were the very words that occurred to him: like a babe in arms. With his own eyes, Catesby had seen how narrow was the gap between the ferocious caterwauling Confederate and the dying boy crying out for the comfort only a mother or wife could give.

  Did Catesby believe that one day, in heaven, he would meet his poor dear Willie for the first time, that the infant would coo and burble and smile and take his father’s finger in his tiny fist? If he could not believe—not completely—it was only because Catesby’s faith was unfledged, too young to soar into the certainties the evangelists promised.

  The evangelist preached: “The Army of Northern Virginia is a Christian army—a New Model Army. Last month, five hundred tracts were distributed in Early’s brigade and a captain from General Longstreet’s division told me cardplaying and cursing are become practically unknown in their camps. Almighty Providence has often blessed Confederate arms, but we must be worthy of God’s blessings. With a firm belief in our Savior, Jesus Christ, let us be His soldiers. Let us pray.”

  Catesby lowered his head but was so comfortable he forced his eyes open so he wouldn’t doze off. The knuckles of his intertwined hands were reddened, and cuts cracked his fingers; the open sore at the base of his thumb was the size of a dime. A louse crept from underneath his shirt cuff, a single louse, one of the dozens that infested him. Instead of popping the louse between his thumbnails, Catesby flicked it away. Who could fathom God’s purposes?

  The evangelist invited the men at the fringe to come forward, confess their sins, and be welcomed into the peace Jesus could provide.

  Usually some came forward, but today they hung back in the shadows under the pines, even when the Christian soldiers beckoned and called: “Joe, you all come down here. Come in with the rest of us,” and “Sergeant Peters, you’re a Christian in your heart. I know you are. Think of how glad your wife will be.”

  But they shook their heads or smiled embarrassed smiles, so the evangelist launched into “Joy to the World” and those who’d been easing away came nearer to sing, and Catesby realized with a pang that they’d come to the prayer meeting in lieu of the Christmas services they’d always attended at home, that it wasn’t faith that brought them but memories of their families attending a small country church before returning home for Christmas dinner. For many this would be their final Christmas on earth, this prayer service the last opportunity the Holy Spirit would offer them. Catesby’s mind backed away, recognizing a danger point, a precipice looming. He forced his mind back to Christian peace, that peace defended by his newfound faith.

  After the service, Catesby told the evangelist how much he’d enjoyed the prayer meeting.

  The Alabaman’s sideburns framed his face. Burnsides, the style was called. “Thank you, brother,” he said. “Can I offer you a tract?”

  In Gothic letters, the tract asked, “Would the Lord play at cards?”

  Catesby’s mind shied, picturing Jesus at Johnny Worsham’s. “That was my sin before I saw the light.” Catesby took the tract and pocketed it before his mind could run away with him. “Cardplaying was like a sickness to me.”

  The evangelist’s smile stretched from sideburn to sideburn. “Jesus Christ is every sinner’s salvation,” he said. He cocked his head. “You will have heard about the train?”

  Catesby made a small gesture. “A rumor, surely.”

  “No, sir. I have it on the best authority. The good citizens of Richmond are providing a Christmas dinner. During the battles of the Seven Days our army divided its rations with the poor of that beleaguered city, and Richmonders have chosen this Lord’s Day to reciprocate. Truly, Cast your bread upon the waters . . .’ ” Catesby was startled by the evangelist’s wink. “The train will arrive at noon and the foodstuffs will be distributed by regiment instanter. Are you fond of yams, Lieutenant?”

  Catesby envisioned the orangy-yellow tuber as it might be after it had been buried in the coals of a soldier’s fire and extracted, skin blackened but yearning to burst open of its own accord. “A generous tuber,” Catesby said.

  “I defer to no man in my admiration for yams. My home county is second to none in its production of fine-flavored yams, and though these Virginia vegetables cannot compare, no doubt they will be delicious.” He bent to his knapsack. “I have more tracts, Lieutenant, and wonder if you would consent to deliver them to others perturbed by the cardplaying vice. Set a sinner to catch a sinner, so to speak.” The Alabaman enjoyed his own joke.

  Although the prospect of pressing tracts on Private Mitchell and Spotswood Bowles was unappealing, Catesby took the tracts because it was his Christian duty.

  A broad muddy path angled east toward the railroad, and, accompanied by other soldiers, Catesby walked that way. Last winter, whole regiments had engaged in snowball fights, but few had appetite for skylarking this year. Although most men kept to their own thoughts, a few drunks hollered to each other. Men could always find whiskey. To the north, Clark Mountain was a snowy haystack, white and smooth.

  What looked to be half of Rodes’s division was waiting patiently beside the Orange & Alexandria track.

  Since the Federals had torn up the track between the Rapidan and the Rappahannock and the Confederates had fired the Rapidan bridge, the Orange & Alexandria was truncated, not half the railroad it had been before the war.

  Catesby, who had been at the capture of Manassas Junction—was it only a year ago?—would never forget the blinding wealth of the Federal armies. There at Manassas, ragged butternut soldiers tore open railroad cars, emptied cases, gulped champagne, gobbled canned Danish hams, and smoked Havanas. When Stonewall started them marching, doze
ns of fine soldiers vomited into the ditches.

  Since he had become a Christian, Catesby had thought a good deal about what men needed and what men wanted and how much better off they were when they didn’t have everything they wanted. Was he a poor man because he owned one shirt, one pair of trousers, suspenders his wife had knit, and only one pair of shoes? Was he poor because he walked rather than rode? Was he poor because he had no importance, even to this army, as an individual, but only as part of an aggregate? Catesby was one soul in H Company, 44th Virginia Infantry, Coles’s brigade, Rodes’s division, General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Catesby was rich because General Lee commanded that army instead of Burnside or Polk or McClellan or Hooker. General Lee was coolheaded enough that Catesby’s mind could follow him, and daring as a schoolboy, which captured Catesby’s heart. Robert E. Lee was a Christian commander.

  Far to the south, a plume of brown smoke funneled into the clear winter air. A drunk yelled, “God damn, Elliot! It’s true!”

  When the train came near, five thousand men jostled for a place at trackside. Mule-drawn wagons lined up where provisions were customarily unloaded, and the men gave ground with good cheer.

  From its balloon stack, the big Baldwin locomotive puffed wood sparks and cinders. Behind the wood car came two cars heaped with hay, a trio of freight cars, and finally, a single passenger car.

  The soldiers swarmed over the hay cars, quickly emptying the forage onto the wagons. They welcomed returning convalescents from the passenger car with cheers and shared canteens of Christmas whiskey. Then they formed a compact circle around the three freight cars: one the color of a banknote, blue-and-black; one yellow-and-red like a child’s top; the third a mundane faded brown. The blue-and-black car contained barrels of powder. The yellow-and-red car held artillery shells in wooden cases. The brown car was full of shelled corn for the horses.

  “Look behind that corn, Captain,” one soldier cried. “Got to be hams in there somewhere.”

  The last man to descend from the passenger car was an army surgeon carrying a large wicker basket.

  “What you got in there?”

  “Where’s the rest of ’em?”

  “Where’s our goddamn Christmas dinner?”

  The surgeon climbed onto the rear platform and raised a hand until everyone got quiet. “A Richmond lady intends this Christmas dinner for General Lee,” he said. “But I know Marse Robert won’t take it. He never does. He’ll want his men to have it.”

  “I’ll take it,” one man yelled.

  “I’ll want a man from Rodes’s division, and one from Colston’s division,” the surgeon said. “Short straw out.” The soldier from Colston’s division drew and retired with a curse. “Now, between Early’s brigade and Coles’s. Step right up here. Turkey, ham, cornbread stuffing, some kind of pie—hell, every damn thing.”

  Men were drinking more openly and sharing their canteens less. Regiments that had lost waited beside those still in the running. The drawing continued until the basket was won by C Company of a Mississippi regiment, and the man who’d drawn the long straw claimed his prize.

  Catesby’s mouth was watering. He had his fatback for dinner, and perhaps Private Mitchell could scrounge more tea. Together they would make a fine Christmas dinner. A man didn’t need so much when he put his mind to it.

  The man who won, a sergeant, carried the basket through his fellow soldiers like an unexploded bomb. Head down, he hurried up the muddy trail, and everyone moved aside for him and his prize, but nobody looked after him once he had passed.

  CHARADES

  IT WAS TWO days after Christmas when the girl returned to the house on Clay Street. The small package she carried was tied with thin ribbon and a bow.

  “We’ve not seen much of you lately,” Marguerite said.

  Marguerite had a woolen shawl over her frail shoulders, and her chair was drawn so near the fire the girl wondered she didn’t set the shawl alight. Today the garden room’s French doors looked out on snow and the bushes were bright with icicles. “Winters were colder in those days,” Marguerite said.

  “Well, it’s cold enough for me!” The girl shivered emphatically. “The streets are filled with slush, and it’s worth a girl’s life to walk the sidewalk.”

  “You still seeing movies?”

  The girl sighed. “I don’t have any idea of going to a movie these days. I believe Daddy was right. What I needed was new responsibilities. That WPA was a real dead end. I’ll start a new job after the holidays. I brought this for you. Miller and Rhodes has new fragrances from Paris.” When the old woman didn’t take her package, the girl set it on the table. She flitted her eyes like a schoolgirl ready to flee.

  “Your daddy find your new job?”

  “I swear—everybody in Richmond knows Daddy. One evening—I swear I have never been so blue—I was in my room crying and he knocked on my door and came in and said, ‘Sugar, what’s the trouble?’ So I told him how I hated my job, how sick I was of asking questions of people didn’t want to give me answers.”

  “To get answers you must ask the right questions,” Marguerite said. Her dry cough was like a sheet of paper tearing. “Who are you working for?”

  “I’ll be starting as a private secretary at the Ethyl Corporation. It’ll be a six-month trial period.”

  “Yes, child. Who will you work for?”

  “Billy Dunster. Billy’s young but he’s already a vice-president.”

  “I see. Is Billy married?”

  “I don’t see what difference that makes.”

  “Lots of things you don’t see. ‘Never underestimate the importance of propinquity’—that was in Godey’s Lady’s Book. I read that in Abigail Gatewood’s bedroom. It’s strange what a person remembers and forgets. You’ll need to undo that bow. Too much arthritis in my fingers. Uncap it as well, if you would.”

  The girl removed the wrappings, then the tiny glass stopper, and cautiously dabbed fragrance on the old woman’s wrist.

  “Reminds me of the trees they had in Nassau. Big reddish-pink flowers. I wonder if they have any of those trees in France. I never did get to France. Silas, oh, he wanted to take me, but I didn’t want to go. ‘This is my country,’ I told him, ‘Same as yours.’ ”

  “Running the blockade must have been difficult.”

  “Do you think the games boys play aren’t difficult? They’re still games.”

  “It’s warm in here,” the girl said, unbuttoning her jacket.

  “Not too warm for me,” Marguerite said. “My blood isn’t as lively as it was. What ever happened to that boy you were seeing? That ‘dollar-a-year’ man?”

  “Phil? I believe Phil is engaged. I wish him every happiness, of course.”

  “Of course. Do they pay this Dunster boy a dollar a year?”

  “I believe Mr. Dunster draws a regular salary.”

  Marguerite nodded, “That’s good. You’ll want money and plenty of it to raise a family. Why don’t you sit down? Kizzy’ll fetch you a cup of tea. Tea was dear in those days. By January of ’64 tea was twenty dollars a pound.”

  The girl sat. “Just one cup,” she said. “I’m expected to meet Daddy later. The Dabneys . . .”

  “Virginius? I haven’t seen him since he was a boy. Awful boy. Nose ran constantly. This Dunster fellow going to be there?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Your daddy sure favors ‘propinquity.’ ”

  The girl wavered between anger and laughter until a giggle slipped past her guard. “Well,” she admitted, “Daddy is worried about me.”

  “You tell him about me? How I’ve been with three men and the one time I married was when I jumped the broomstick? How I’ve raised up my family?”

  The girl looked out the window. “I tell Daddy very little about you these days. Daddy doesn’t approve.”

  Marguerite snorted. “He wouldn’t. I knew him when he was a youngster, too. At our garden parties he wouldn’t come out from behind his mother’s skirt. Yo
ur mother was a handsome, well-spoken girl.”

  “I was just a baby. I try, but I can’t remember her.”

  “The influenza was a terrible scourge.”

  Kizzy brought tea, and the girl took off her jacket. “Did you ever see Duncan Gatewood again?” she asked.

  The old woman smiled. “Now you’re asking the right questions.”

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA JANUARY 8, 1864

  After midnight, snow began falling, and the clatter of passing carriages and horses’ thudding hooves were gradually muffled until, when the mail coach passed—this at five o’clock in the morning—it slipped silent as a wraith through a snow-muted universe. Snow fell on St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, on the Capitol, the Confederate Treasury, Mr. Davis’s mansion, and the Lee family’s rented house, where the women slept easier tonight because they had three men in the army, father, son, and nephew, and this snowfall meant there’d be no fighting along the Rapidan.

  A little before seven, Cousin Molly’s houseman tiptoed into Duncan’s room and laid a fire atop last night’s ashes. The kindling caught with a soft whoosh, and the man set a fire screen across the hearth to prevent sparks from popping onto the rug.

  Beneath two comforters, Duncan closed his eyes as the houseman tiptoed from the room. The air was cold, the tip of his nose was cold, and Duncan wouldn’t venture out until the room warmed. He wriggled his toes. Through the gauzy curtains, the light was a blunt white glare.

  As a young man he’d wakened every morning like this. He’d thought it ordained that Pompey would come in and lay a fire while, in the kitchen house, Franky would be frying ham and baking the cornbread that would already be on the table when the boy Duncan was ready to eat.

  Duncan decided that luxury was contrast and was so pleased with this reflection he rolled out of bed whistling. He had mastered dressing and could now get his clothes on as quickly with one arm as he ever had with two, except that he never wore shoes with laces or neckwear that needed to be tied.