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

by Donald McCaig

  Mary Custis Lee gestured at the stoop. “I sat here, right here, with a bucket of water while our capital burned. I don’t know what I might have done.” She smiled at herself. “But I was certainly resolute. I thought we should go into the countryside. Your General Weitzel offered to pass us through the lines, but Mother refused to leave this house. We have nowhere to go.”

  “I’m sorry, Missus,” Jesse said politely.

  “Tell me,” Mary Custis asked, “when you were with your master, didn’t you take pride in his plantation, his crops, in his children?”

  “Old Uther’s crops weren’t much to brag on. He was too dreamy to be much of a planter. But I was proud of his daughter, yes I was. Miss Sallie, she was a natural wonder.”

  “And didn’t Master Uther take care of you?”

  “Yes, Missus, best he could.”

  “When I was small, whenever I’d come home to Arlington I’d run straight to the Quarters and greet everybody with hugs: Little George, Mical, Cassy . . . How I missed them. I loved them so.” She paused. “We will always be connected. No matter what. We need each other.”

  Jesse thought that was so, but not exactly the way Mary Lee meant it. “Them coloreds you used to hug when you was a child. They with our army now?”

  Mary Custis winced. “I do not believe you can conceive the misery of ‘free blacks’ in the North. Life for them is far worse than servitude. Those wretched abolitionists, promising so much and delivering nothing but starvation, contempt, and disease.” She inspected Jesse. “What would your master say if he saw you in that costume? I believe it would just break his heart.”

  “Master Uther, he was fond of Thomas Jefferson. You married, Missus?”

  “I have not had that honor.”

  “Since June of 1860, I been thinking of myself as a married man because me and Maggie jumped the broomstick—we promised ‘until death or distance us do part.’ Master wanted us married, on account of, well . . . and Maggie was so fine. I plain couldn’t get enough of her. Maggie, she didn’t want to be married but didn’t have her choice in the matter.” Jesse looked away. “It was wrong,” he said. “And I don’t know if it can be made right. I’ll look for Maggie and ask her does she want to be my wife again. I pray she’ll say yes and I’ll try to persuade her, but I can’t make Maggie love me. Unless Maggie’s free to not love me, she can’t love me either. Missus, I believe you love your coloreds. I believe that. But how could they love you unless they’re free not to?”

  In a soft almost dreamy voice, Mary Custis said, “Every night I pray Father is not killed on the battlefield. You people would kill my father if you could.” And she went back into the house.

  A half hour later the old auntie came out with a small wicker basket. The checkered napkin that covered it had been washed so many times the checks were ghosts. She set it on the stoop. “Nigger, if you hasn’t et, Miss Mary says you should.”

  Jesse lifted the napkin. A leg of chicken and some warm cornbread. “I thought the Johnnies was starved,” he said.

  “People take care of Marse Robert’s family,” she said.

  “Uh-huh. Well, he’s runnin’ now.”

  “You’uns better pray he don’t stop.”

  When Jesse was finished with the meat, he gnawed on the bone.

  The colored houseman came out a side door and passed by Jesse as if he were invisible. The houseman walked downtown toward Capitol Square.

  The afternoon lingered. Two white men went into the ruin of the church across the street and shifted burned timbers and extracted blackened objects they heaped on the curb. It was hard to make out what the objects had been, but Jesse thought he recognized a crucifix and a candlestick. After a time, the two men went away.

  It was dark when a detail of white soldiers marched down 7th Street, a white corporal counting cadence, “Hup, hup, hup.”

  Sergeant Major Ratcliff strolled along behind. “You relieved, First Sergeant Burns.” Ratcliff took out his pipe and fussily stuffed it. “Corporal, take some men around back. Be sure all the doors are locked. No telling what some crazy nigger might elect to do.”

  With a clatter of equipage the corporal’s men did his bidding.

  Ratcliff tried and failed to get his pipe lit. “It’s enough to make a man chew,” he said. “You dip snuff?”

  Jesse shook his head no.

  With his second match, Ratcliff puffed smoke. “I don’t know about you, Burns. I give you this job to increase your understanding of who you are, which is a nigger, and what you are, which is a nigger with authority which you had better enjoy while you got it because you ain’t gonna keep it, and what do you do? You offend the Lee family. General Grant, he sends a message to General Butler, and Butler, he climbs on Weitzel, and General Weitzel says to me, ‘What kind of a damn fool you post at Mrs. Lee’s? Mrs. Lee has complained that we posted a nigger cavalryman outside her home as a deliberate insult.’

  “I say, ‘Jesse Burns ain’t no cavalryman,’ and General Weitzel gets that look on his face. So I say I posted the best man I know in front of General Lee’s house. I say my man can read and write and is a fine soldier. General says he’s nobody to be trifled with and a medal can be took away as easy as given and there are plenty men hopin’ to wear sergeant major’s stripes, if I took his meanin’. I said I did. I told him, Jesse, that you was just a country boy who never been whipped and you were so trusting that it would never cross your simple mind that guarding the Lees was different from guarding any other white family.”

  Jesse said, “They gave me supper.”

  Ratcliff nodded. “Horse won’t work if it ain’t fed, nigger won’t either.”

  Jesse said, “They didn’t cause this war.”

  “Well, one thing for certain: ain’t no nigger caused it. Gonna be white men get the credit for fightin’ it and nobody ever remember the U.S. Colored Troops. Jesse, you and me forgot already.”

  SPRING OATS

  STRATFORD PLANTATION, VIRGINIA

  APRIL 8, 1865

  FRANKY HAD A platter of buckwheat cakes in her hand. “Mistress Grandmother ain’t eatin’ it, Master Samuel. Says so long as Marster Lee’s army ain’t eatin’, she ain’t eatin’ neither.” Her hoarse confidential whisper echoed to the farthest corners of Stratford House. “She tired of buckwheat cakes and syrup. She’d eat allright if we was to bring her a mess of ham. She eats eggs when we has ’em and makes speeches when we hasn’t. Anyway, she says she is prayin’ for Master Duncan and Master Thomas and asks me tell you you be prayin’ too.”

  Samuel Gatewood managed a smile. “Thank you, Franky. If you don’t want Grandmother’s plate, you may carry it down to Agamemnon.”

  “Can’t.” Franky raised her eyebrows.

  “Oh dear. Of course—I had forgotten. Feed it to the pullets, then. I won’t have them reheated for my supper. If we are to do planting work, we’ll need meat, and as I recall there are a few scraps of sidemeat in the smokehouse.” Samuel went on, “If you see me before supper I’ll entrust you with the key.”

  “Yes, Master. I sure wish Auntie Opal had stayed here with us.”

  “As do I. I’m afraid she thought more of those hogs than she did of most people.” He mocked, “ ‘These ain’t Jeff Davis’ hogs, these is my hogs, and I ain’t givin’ ’em up.’ ”

  “There was justice in what she said,” Abigail said from the doorway.

  Samuel Gatewood got to his feet and poured Abigail’s cup of sassafras tea. “Alas, justice is the least honored of the virtues. If justice were well served, Richmond would still be our capital and Mr. Davis would not be a fugitive.”

  “Have you any news?”

  He folded his hands in front of him. “Amos Hansel stopped at daybreak. Oh, he was so hungry and tired it wrenched my heart. He said he had ‘left the army.’ When the lines were broken at Petersburg, he lost hope. Amos said the army is in deplorable condition, without food or ammunition, the merest ghost of an army.”

  “Had he . . . is there
any news of . . .”

  Samuel Gatewood shook his head. “Amos was with Pickett’s division. He said Pickett was thoroughly smashed. Hansel was an artilleryman: how could he persist when the Federals had captured all his guns?”

  “General Lee persists.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we all must. I pray every morning for Duncan and Thomas.”

  “My mother has loosed such a barrage of prayers in their behalf, God cannot ignore them.”

  “Oh dear. I do hope they are kindly prayers.”

  Samuel smiled. “Mother’s is the God of Battles, a jealous and angry God. If any God can interpose Himself between our boys and General Grant, Grandmother Gatewood’s God is surely He.”

  “Please, Samuel . . .”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t mock. Anything that will bring those boys home, honor intact . . .”

  “General Grant has so many men, so many guns. His army is rested and well fed. I fear an Armageddon!”

  “Come, dear.” Samuel took his wife’s hand. “Let us consider how fine it will be when they do come home. Our servants will return to Stratford, and Duncan and Thomas—it will be just as it was before.”

  “Samuel, why do you think the servants will return?”

  “Where else have they to go? Who will care for them?”

  She patted his hand. “Husband. Dear husband . . .”

  “Jack and I are making plans. We’ll repair the old harness, split new shakes for the barn roof. We’ll get the mill turning again. Virginia will need all its mills when our boys come home. If our servants do not come home, we will hire new servants.”

  “And how will we pay them?”

  “Oh, dearest, we will sell the silver. We shall become hard-trading yankees, and won’t give a damn for anyone. Perhaps we will purchase one of Mr. McCormick’s machines and be shut of servants forever.”

  “It will be so much lonelier, Samuel.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  Abigail smiled. “You might hire those runaways presently abiding with Aunt Opal at the Botkin place.”

  “When the boys come back from the army we’ll clear those scalawags out of there.”

  “Oh, Samuel, what harm do they do?”

  “They are runaways. I’ve known some of them since they were children. Billy from Warwick, Yellow Jim from Dinwiddie’s, Pompey, and our Dinah . . . I never would have thought . . .”

  “Hush, Samuel. Franky will hear.”

  Samuel started to say he didn’t care if Franky did hear but restrained himself. “The Botkin place belongs to Duncan now.”

  “Sallie wouldn’t mind Opal living there. You know she wouldn’t.”

  “She’d mind every scamp in the county abiding with her. There must be a dozen people in that house.”

  “And as many hogs in the woods.”

  “She didn’t have to take all we had.”

  “Aunt Opal said since you’d given half her hogs to the government, if we wanted hogmeat, we could just ask Jeff Davis for it.”

  Samuel sighed. “We’ll deal with that after the boys come home. I hope Duncan’s horse survives. We have work for that horse.”

  “Samuel, what if General Lee breaks through?”

  Samuel Gatewood’s eyes unfocused. “I fear for our people. The Federals burn our crops and barns, slaughter our livestock, and leave our dead unburied. Though at home they may be God-fearing citizens, here in the Confederacy, they have become thieves, and arsonists. Their generals incite excesses. We have made them doubt their virtue, and each time they despaired and nearly quit—they hold those moments against our account. Only Mr. Lincoln’s influence restrains them. If Lee eludes them again, I cannot imagine what they will do. I dread their revenge.”

  Abigail shuddered. “I feel as if someone just walked across my grave.”

  Samuel smiled and patted her hand. “My dear, I am so sorry. My gloomy notions should be confined to the nightbed that engendered them. Come, let us step onto the porch.”

  Man and wife took the air on a fine spring morning. It had rained the previous night and the grass was wet and sparkling; a thrush gurgled from the fire-in-the-bush. Early crocuses had been succeeded by white and yellow jonquils with their brave stalks and fragile transparent heads.

  The Quarters were swallowed by unmowed thatch. Only Jack the Driver’s cabin was neat, only his garden had been opened, and his path to Stratford’s back door was the only path cleared.

  The big meadow was yellow with dead bluestem. When the tall grass died back and lodged it provided shelter for rabbits and groundhogs and raccoons, foxes and moles. Deer dropped their fawns in that tangle with perfect safety.

  No path led to either of the barns, and an unfriendly wind had peeled twenty feet of cedar shakes from the smaller one. Franky had collected the broken shakes and used them for kindling.

  Stratford’s millrace was choked with joe-pye weed.

  Abigail said, “I love the way spring grass shimmers in the wind. It reminds me of the ocean. Did I ever tell you, Samuel, about Cousin Molly’s plantation on Carter’s Creek? When I was a child we’d go there in the summer and gig for crabs and the water was that peculiar milky shade of gray . . .”

  “I trust Cousin Molly will endure the Federal occupation.”

  His wife sighed. “She may welcome it. Her last letter said that even the hospitals were low on food and medicines were unobtainable. I do suppose the Federals will share provisions with our wounded, won’t they?”

  Samuel Gatewood shrugged. “They are such a bitter people. And what have we done to them? We did not wish to be a part of their country. We wished to freely leave a union our own fathers had formed. Why . . .”

  “Hush, Samuel. We must look to the future and hope we can bear it. Our son is still living—I daily pray—and our grandson too. Pauline is in the milking barn with poor old Rosey, who produces what milk she can. Compared to so many, Samuel Gatewood, we are blessed.”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “Come now, Samuel. Our task today is novel and we will not master it with words. While you and Jack make ready, I’ll go indoors and put on my old dress and high shoes. Do you think I’ll ever learn to go barefoot? I went barefoot as a child—at Carter’s Creek I was invariably barefoot.”

  In his neat but clumsily patched work clothes, Jack the Driver was waiting outside his cabin’s front door. “Mornin’, Master Samuel. It looks to be a fine cool day.”

  “It does.”

  “I said a prayer for Mr. Duncan, this morning. Prayed he’d come home soon.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jack rolled his head to get a crick out of his neck. “Those scamps over at the Botkin home place—some of those boys are fulltask hands. They living on rabbits up there. Rabbits! While mighty plantations going to rack and ruin!”

  Samuel Gatewood spoke softly. “Miss Abigail suggested we might hire them. We couldn’t pay them a full year’s wage—unless they’d take Confederate . . .”

  Jack boomed out his laugh.

  “But we could pay two men for six months. We’d pay them the same as what we used to rent servants for.”

  “Maybe you could let ’em stay right here in the Quarters,” Jack suggested. “Mr. Samuel, since Agamemnon died, it gets awful quiet here at night. Everybody gone!”

  “Rent them their homes?”

  “Mr. Samuel, I don’t care how you does it.”

  “And you, Jack. How shall I treat you?”

  “Why, just the same as you has been.”

  “I mean, now you’re . . .” Samuel Gatewood coughed. “. . . free.”

  Jack the Driver’s slow smile. “Master?”

  “You and I, Jack, we’ll want to do things differently.”

  “But I likes things just the way they is—or was—before this foolishness got started. I want a young gang and an old gang in the woods. I want fulltask hands in the fields and half task milking the cows and slopping the hogs and tending the horses. This my home, Master, and I
want Stratford be the finest plantation in the Jackson River Valley, all its babies and horses fat!”

  Samuel Gatewood turned from the look in his driver’s eyes. “Yes,” he said softly.

  “We ever be happy again, the way we was?”

  Sam’l Gatewood put out his hand. “Shake my hand on it.”

  For the first time in his life, Jack the Driver shook a white man’s hand.

  Cleaned and oiled, the old-fashioned shovel plow shone like silver on the floor of the barn. The two men dragged it onto the stoneboat and laid the harness they’d modified beside it.

  “I never thought . . .” Samuel Gatewood laughed.

  “Me neither,” Jack said glumly. “Not in this world.”

  The two dragged the stoneboat into the river field and set the plow on the ground.

  “You’ve set the coulter properly?” Samuel said.

  “Took a file to it yesterday afternoon.” Jack attached the harness to the plow. He was less sure about the hitch end and flipped straps and buckles first one way and then the other.

  “It’ll come right in the end,” Samuel said. “Here’s Abigail now.”

  Abigail Gatewood wore a straw hat fastened around her chin with a pale yellow scarf and gloves of the same color.

  “Dearest,” Samuel said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more charming field hand.”

  “Never mind about that, Samuel. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  “We have seed oats for three acres,” Samuel said. “I estimate we can prepare a half acre each day.”

  “You always were clever with figures, Samuel,” Abigail said. “What do I do?”

  “You’ll steer toward that cedar tree. When you come parallel to the millrace, that’ll be your headland—where we’ll turn around.”

  The men set the plow upright and balanced it, and Jack showed Abigail how to grip the handles. “Keep the plowsole flat, Missus. Don’t let it dig in. It starts to dig, sing out.”

  The field was flat, and there was plenty of bare earth under the stubble. Moss grew here and there, and Jack vowed to put lime on the field soon as the mill was running. Frilly clouds slipped by overhead, and a raven cawed from the fenceline.