Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge

  —Colonel Jones, the uniformed man said, the members of the Raintree County Post of the Grand Army of the Republic wish to give you this little medal commemorating your valiant efforts in their behalf. As the poet laureate of this organization, I have composed a little pome I would like to read:

  In the forefront of the battle

  For Union and Freedom and his Nation’s Life,

  He fought, nor once was daunted

  In that fierce and bloody strife.

  And when the battle’s breath was through

  And scream of shot and shell,

  Did he forget his soldier-comrades true

  Who for their country’s flag had fought and fell?

  The Good Old Cause he fought for

  He never did let lag,

  But fought right on in Congress and Nation

  For the rights of the men who saved the dear old Flag.

  Mr. Shawnessy swallowed audibly, and the Perfessor winced visibly.

  —Comrade, the Senator said, deeply moved, I am deeply moved. I have no prouder recollection than the fact that I had a small, humble, and inconspicuous part in that Great War for the Preservation of our nation and for the perpetuity of Human Freedom. And you have my word for it, sir, which I hope you will transmit to my comrades-at-arms all over this County, that I do not mean for the Nation to forget the men who saved the Union. You, sir, have touched me more than I can express by the tender lyric which you have seen fit to dedicate to me.

  Mr. Shawnessy could not get close to the Senator, who strode down the street shaking hands, swatting backs, and dispensing cigars.

  —We have fallen upon degenerate days, John, the Perfessor said. Is this the heir of all the ages?

  —Pardon me, gentlemen, said a young attaché of the Senator. I have here some little pictures of the Senator which I would like to circulate unobtrusively during the day. No political motives involved. Only the Senator’s desire to gratify old friends who might be interested in a likeness of the most illustrious statesman of our time.

  —Let me see, Mr. Shawnessy said, as the Senator’s secretary lifted from a briefcase a bundle of cheap prints, three-by-five leaflets bearing a bold engraving of the Senator’s face and the simple caption:

  GARWOOD B. JONES, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE

  —I’ll leave the distribution of these entirely up to you, Mr. Shawnessy said.

  —I’ll take a pad, the Perfessor said. I am positive I can put them to good use.

  When the secretary had moved on, the Perfessor said,

  —I have an idea for a vast promotional stunt. Suppose Garwood contracted with leading toilet paper manufacturers to have his likeness faintly impressed upon every sheet of——

  The Perfessor began to shake soundlessly.

  —Thank you very much, said the President of the Sitting and Sewing Society, accepting a leaflet from the Perfessor. By the way, what does the B stand for?

  —Give you one guess, said the Perfessor.

  Mr. Shawnessy holding one of the likenesses in his hand walked on, smiling faintly. From the paper in his hand stared vacantly the face of Senator Garwood B. Jones, Bumwiper Candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

  A face fluttered down on a republic of his memory, raining grayly on hundreds of court house squares in the time of the prophets and martyrs.

  Blow ye the trumpet, blow!

  Blow the lone far bugle of the conscience abroad in the Republic in ancient days! Send the hornnotes crowding in the court house squares all over the Republic! Awaken the conscience of the sleeping North! Blow ye the trumpet, blow, and let the blind walls crumble.

  I saw the bitten granite of the face. I could not bear the bitter sadness of those eyes in the Court House Square.

  Blow ye the trumpet, blow the gladly-solemn sound!

  But (you will remember) I was he who lay with one of the daughters of those Babylonian valleys. Let all men everywhere know that I was forgetful of duty. Beneath a tree in summertime, I was held long, long on the flanks of a daughter of Egypt. The precious seed of the chosen I gave to guilty ground stained by the bondsman’s blood. Let all men know how I slunk from the bosom of my parents, guilty and afraid.

  Let all the nations know, to earth’s remotest bound . . .

  Let it be repeated by word of mouth, by letter, by items in the corners of the inside pages of the wellthumbed weeklies how I sinned with a daughter of the Philistines.

  Who was it then that I took by the supple waist? With whom did I taste of a scarlet fruit close to serpent waters? Whence did they come, those darkskinned patient generations, to bear witness to my guilt? Was my flesh their flesh?

  The Year of Jubilee is come! Let it be known all over the Republic. Let it be told by trumpets and by proclamations and by

  October 19—1859

  A LETTER AT THE POST OFFICE WAS ALWAYS A BIG EVENT IN RAINTREE COUNTY,

  and on being advised that there was one there for him, Johnny had lost no time getting into Freehaven. But as he came through the Square, he saw the big crowd around the railroad station a half block north. The excitement there seemed so unusual that he went up to see what it was.

  At the depot the crowd was even bigger than he had thought. There were scores of people sitting in buggies or standing in little groups. The telegrapher at his table just inside an open window was taking a dispatch. Garwood Jones and Cash Carney were in the group of men crowding around the window.

  —It was a fool thing to do, Garwood was saying, and I hope they string him up.

  —String who up? Johnny said. What’s going on anyway?

  Garwood turned and took the cigar out of his mouth. His sleek face was streaked with sweat and flushed with excitement.

  —I keep forgetting you hillbillies don’t get into town but once a month, he said.

  Cash Carney, impeccably dressed as usual, said with an air of detachment,

  —There’s been a big insurrection of slaves at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. A man named John Brown that used to do all that feudin’ in Kansas seems to be at the bottom of it. This old Brown, near as we can find out, got a band of armed men and captured the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. They plan to give out arms to the slaves and spread a revolt through the South. But according to the last report Federal troops have surrounded the place. Brown and his men have been holding out for two days.

  —By God, I hope he succeeds, a citizen said.

  —That’s talkin’, Bill, a second citizen said, thrusting his way into the crowd near the window.

  —Say, what do you fellows want, anyway? Garwood said. Civil war?

  —Civil war! Shucks! What are you talking about! Civil war!

  —Why, man, Garwood said, didn’t you hear? He attacked the Federal Arsenal. That’s an attack on the People, on the Government of the United States, on the Constitution.

  —It ain’t an attack on any government I want any part of, a man said.

  —Why, man, Garwood said, that’s treason. Much as I feel for the lot of the Black Man, I can’t see any justification for a deed of bloody violence that will hurl the whole country into civil war. Things can’t be settled that way.

  —If they won’t give the niggers their freedom, seems like the niggers ought to have the right to fight for it, the man said doggedly.

  But Garwood got much the best of the argument, and a majority of the people on the Square seemed to agree reluctantly with his point of view.

  Meanwhile Johnny got hold of the latest paper and read the reports of the raid. He remembered how he had read years ago of this same John Brown fighting in Kansas. There had been an undeclared war between slave and free elements, but it had been beyond the Mississippi where men were always fighting something anyway—Indians, buffalo, Mexicans, the earth itself. That wound in the flank of the Republic had closed; the arid West had drunk and dried the gore of those old fights as if they had never been at all. Their distant tumult had dwindled and become lost in the headlines of onward-pressing
days. And yet the name ‘John Brown’ had been a tough seed waiting in darkness. Now it had sprung to bloodier fruition in Virginia, Mother of States and Presidents. It was almost as though the deed had been done in Raintree County, so vast and instantaneous was the shock.

  Someone had dared to defy the most anciently rooted wrong in the Republic, a wrong grown sacred in the very measure of its age and enormity. Someone had shed blood on the porch of the Republic.

  One man had taken the jawbone of an ass to shatter an army. It was sheer act, founded on sheer faith. It restored the age of miracle. The people of Raintree County waited for word of this amazing madman in the hope that an enterprise of such grandly crazy proportions would have a success equally grand and crazy.

  —Say, he’s a tough old scoundrel. By God, it wouldn’t surprise me any did he cause a lot of trouble, men were saying on the Square.

  —A few more men like him, and we’d see about all this talk of slavery and disunion.

  —By God, we need more men with gunpowder in their guts.

  —Walked right into a United States Arsenal and held the place up. In my opinion, John Brown is the Greatest Living American.

  Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Johnny walked back to the Post Office.

  —Do you have a letter there for John Shawnessy?

  —Just a minute, the postmaster said.

  He sorted through some letters and brought one over. It had a New Orleans postmark. Johnny took the letter and started out. There was a dark passageway between the office and the street, where he stopped and turned the letter over and over in his hands.

  —One against a thousand, a citizen outside said. But they’ll hang him as sure as shootin’!

  —What’s the latest? a second citizen said.

  —Still hemmed in and fightin’, I guess. The whole goldern U.S. Army! What’s a man to do?

  Johnny began to tear the letter open. It was only words, inklines on an envelope. It had come to him from beyond the walls of Raintree County. It had come from a remote earth, jasmine-scented, where it was always summer. He unfolded the letter and read it over once quickly. He felt as though he could have written the words himself, so often had he dreamed them. The words said what he had always feared, what he had known would come to pass.

  He didn’t want to leave this passageway. Outside there were a thousand eyes. People who had no worries were on the lookout for a tender flesh to crucify. He fumblingly put the letter in his pocket, drew it out again, minutely inspected the outside of the envelope, put it back into his pocket and felt—but conquered—a burning desire to take it out again. He stuffed a handkerchief down on it. He leaned against the wall and waited. Someone would come in and find him leaning insanely against this wall and would know that he was guilty of something. He panted, trying to breathe the hot blush of guilt from his face. Footsteps approached. He walked swiftly out of the door, almost ran into someone.

  —Hello, Johnny.

  It was his mother.

  His mind had just been filled with the exotic image of Susanna Drake. He had been thinking of her young pouting face, her love-talented body in a costly gown. Now suddenly this image was shattered by the apparition of Ellen Shawnessy in her drab little farmwife’s dress. He saw as never before his mother’s small weathered face, her bony, workroughened hands, her skyblue eyes, her slender body, which to him was neither masculine nor feminine—but simply maternal, this body which had had its anguish of childbirth many times and which was now saved from it by the blessing of the life-change.

  —Any mail?

  She peered blithely at him, her face heavily lined in the sunlight. She wore a fussy little hat that she had had for years.

  —I—guess not, Johnny said.

  —The news is exciting. I suppose you’ve heard.

  He pressed his hand on the letter in his pocket.

  —What? he said. You mean——

  —The raid. This man Brown.

  —O, Johnny said. Sure.

  —I’m afraid nothing can be mended that way, Ellen said. Still it was the act of a brave man. God rest his soul.

  —Is he—is he dead?

  —Dead or dying. News just came over the wire.

  As his mother walked slowly away, he saw a picture of an old man dying heroically from gunshot wounds. It was sweet to die a hero for the right, in an absurdly brave act. In the Act there was no remorse for things past. In the Act, there was only the living present.

  A throng of people came up the street. In the middle Garwood Jones was shouting, sweating, waving his arms.

  —I tell you, Garwood said, they’ll hang ’im. What else can they do? The local courts will have jurisdiction since a number of people were killed right there in the town.

  —It was a foolish thing to do, Cash said. The old guy didn’t have a chance. There’s no future in that kind of thing. Seventeen men or so against the country! The niggers’ll never revolt. What did he expect to accomplish? It was blood thrown away.

  —A few more men like that would blow things wide open in this godforsaken country, a man said.

  Garwood Jones began to sound more and more like an orator. He drew apart from the other men, and they turned their faces toward him and formed a group.

  —Fellow Americans, Garwood said gravely, it was treason. Technically, legally, what he did was directed as much against the North as the South. It was an affront to the whole country. I personally yield to no man in my desire to see the Negro gradually acquire as many rights as he is capable of exercising intelligently, but just to shove a gun in his hand and say, All right, Sambo, go out and start shooting every white man you see, why, men, that’s madness—or—what’s worse—coldblooded murder. I’d like to know what the Republicans——

  —Who said anything about the Republicans? a man said hotly. The Republicans never had anything to do with this.

  —Well, Garwood said hotly, what have they been doing all along but inflaming the minds of people and keeping this issue alive! No, sir, Douglas is right. Let them——

  —O, the hell with Douglas! a man said. By God, if we had more politicians from the North with a little of John Brown’s guts, we’d not be allays backing down when——

  —All I say is, Garwood said, his big handsome face flushed with anger all I say is that——

  —What a story! Niles Foster said in passing. I’m getting out an extra. First time in the paper’s history. Folks are demanding it. I guess I can do it.

  —What kind of trial will he get down there! a man said.

  —If they give him justice, Garwood said, he’ll get hanged. Nothing can save that man but a war.

  —Justice! a man said. What was he trying to do but free some slaves?

  —He killed some people, didn’t he? Garwood said. He tried to overturn the Government. He broke into a United States Arsenal. You talk about justice. Why, the man’s a murderer!

  —Some people have a funny idea of justice, by God!

  Words had never been so hot and fierce before in the Court House Square.

  —Cash, Johnny said, pulling him aside, I want to talk with you.

  He got Cash Carney out of the crowd, took him to a quiet place off the Square, and told him everything.

  —I just had to tell someone, he said. What am I going to do?

  —Jesus, John, Cash said, you’re in a mess!

  —I know it, Johnny said.

  The muscles of Cash Carney’s face twitched. He looked as if he had just got hold of a fat deal for making some money. He rubbed his hands together and puffed happily on his cigar.

  —Jesus, John, I didn’t know you had it in you.

  He gave Johnny a quick look in which respect, sympathy, and a kind of veiled pleasure were mixed. He threw away his half smoked cigar, bit off the end of a new cigar, and covered his face with his cupped hands.

  —You got raped, he said.

  —No, Johnny said. It was both of us.

  —By God, I thought there was someth
ing queer about that dame. Here, let me see that letter.

  He read it over.

  —One-Shot Johnny! he said. Why’d she put it off so long, telling you? Three, four months already. My God, she’s no right asking a man to marry her after that. She’ll stick out.

  —I know, Johnny said.

  —Now, don’t worry, Cash said. We can lick this thing.

  We’ll think of something. What if your folks found out?

  —I know, Johnny said.

  —But don’t worry, Cash said, throwing away his second cigar and biting the tip off a third. Yes, sir, she’ll stick right out. What kind of a marriage would that be, John?

  —I know, Johnny said.

  —That little dress has been off before. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. Say, do you suppose Garwood’s been in there?

  —I don’t know, Johnny said.

  Cash finally got the cigar burning. He leaned back against a fence, opened his coat, hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, and considered the situation calmly. It appealed to his imagination.

  —I see just how it happened, John. On top of that whiskey, which under the circumstances wasn’t exactly your fault, you drink cider, which happens to be hard. You swim a little, and you’re a little tired and dizzy, it’s hot, you lie down, you find this girl on top of you, and you—

  —I know, Johnny said.

  —It could have happened to anyone, John.

  —I know, Johnny said.

  —Listen, Cash said. Why’nt she write sooner? Why’d she go South? There’s something fishy here.

  —I don’t know, Johnny said.

  —Now, listen, John, Cash said, don’t worry about this thing. It can be fixed up. There must be a way to get you out of this. Does anyone else know?