The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

  “Have you ever thought, Duncan, about the nature of infinity?”

  Duncan only cocked his head.

  “Well,” Quentin said, his voice high and odd, “imagine a line made up of discrete points. One, two, three, all the way on. All the numbers that exist. All right?”

  “Yes sir,” Duncan said.

  “Now that line would stretch on forever, wouldn’t it? Because there’s no final number. No matter how big the number you can always add one. Do you understand?”

  “Well, all right, sir.”

  “That’s most men’s idea of infinity. Everything. The whole universe. Going on forever. But there is another kind of infinity as well. Imagine the distance between two points. Between zero and one. Can you imagine it?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “That distance is infinitely divisible. Do you see what I mean? It can be divided in half. Than that half can be divided in half, so that we are left with one-fourth. And then the fourth can be divided in half. And so on. No matter how small the distance between two points, there is always another point somewhere between those points. Do you understand? Do you?”

  Duncan was smiling now, jingling the gold jewelry in his pocket. Smoke was beginning to pour out of the windows of the little cottage.

  “What that means is it is not merely the universe that is infinite,” Quentin said, “but that infinity is contained in every single thing. The universe contains everything, and everything contains a universe. Do you see? To know one thing, in its entirety, is to know everything. Everything! Do you see?”

  “Oh yes sir,” Duncan said, smiling, as the fire steadily grew behind him. “I think I’m beginning to understand just fine.”

  14

  The Confederates, exhausted by their long march and their late night, slept until well after nine o’clock. Sevenkiller was the last to awake, and then they all had a small breakfast of dried apples and hard biscuits.

  When they were finished at the inn they crossed the bridge to the east bank of the Ocmulgee River and took a little dirt track north from the main road. After a fifteen-minute walk they arrived at Captain Thomas Jackson’s property.

  The cornfield was desolate, shorn of its crop, the stalks rustling in the gentle wind. The house was tall and painted white, with an expansive porch and wide pillars, but as they drew closer they could see the paint was flaking, the steps were green with moss, and grass was growing up between the boards.

  Stoga knocked. Eventually the door opened inward, revealing a bald man, shorter than average, brutally thin. The man coughed, and it sounded tearing and nasty.

  “Captain Jackson?” Stoga asked.

  “Nah,” the man said. “My name’s Early. Who are you all?”

  Stoga introduced them. Upon hearing that Stoga was a lieutenant, Early stood a little straighter.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, sir,” Early said. “I been out of the army since February of sixty-three. The cold got into me in the mountains and it never seemed to get out.”

  “That’s all right,” Stoga said. “We’re all doing what we can.”

  “Why don’t you come in?” Early said. “I’ll get the captain. Your boy can’t come in this way, though. He can wait outside or come round the back.”

  Sevenkiller tittered, while he sweated under the wooden box on his back.

  “Captain’s a stickler for that sort of thing,” Early said. “He said it’s easy to let it slide during the war but we have to keep up our standards.”

  “Of course,” Stoga said.

  Stoga and Bill followed Early into Captain Thomas Jackson’s parlor and sat down on the couch. The dark wooden floors were covered by an intricate carpet and the furniture was all very solid and serious. Solemn portraits of Captain Jackson’s ancestors hung on the walls. The bay windows were open and the morning breeze ruffled the papers on the writing desk.

  Early had a particularly violent coughing fit and the handkerchief he held to his mouth came away stained with blood.

  “Are you all right?” Stoga said.

  “Oh, you know,” Early said. “You fellows want anything to drink?”

  “No,” Stoga said. “No alcohol, please.”

  “Your loss,” Early said. “The captain’s daddy made some mighty fine whiskey in this place, and there’s still plenty of it down in the cellar.”

  “Thank you, but no,” Stoga said.

  “All right,” Early said, sitting down in a wooden armchair.

  After a few minutes Captain Thomas Jackson came into the room. He was young and blond and powerful across the chest, but he was leaning on a crutch and walked with a marked limp.

  “Don’t get up,” Tom said. “I just want to sit down as quickly as I can anyway.”

  He collapsed into an armchair across from the Cherokee, then introduced himself.

  “Pleased to meet you, Captain,” Stoga said. “I’m Lieutenant Timothy Stoga. This is Private Bill Bread.”

  “And the Negro outside?” Tom asked. “Who’s he?”

  “My slave,” Stoga said.

  “What brings you gentlemen to Planter’s Factory?” Tom asked.

  “We were in Thomas’s Legion,” Stoga said.

  “That right?” Tom said. “I heard you boys fought well. You had some rough going in the Shenandoah.”

  “Hrmm,” Stoga said.

  “I thought you’d been transferred back to North Carolina.”

  “Well, they took the two Cherokee companies, what was left of them, under seventy men, and put them together. They sent us down here from North Carolina, just in time for the Battle of Atlanta.”

  “It’d be a shame to have missed that,” Tom said.

  “We were taken prisoner.”

  “How’d you get loose?”

  “My slave,” Stoga said.

  “Your slave?” Tom said incredulously.

  “Yes,” Stoga said. “He slipped into the Yankee camp and cut us loose.”

  “Well, goddamn,” Tom said. “Early, perhaps you’d be so good as to take him out a dram.”

  Early glanced inquisitively at Stoga, who shrugged.

  Bill watched, hungrily, as Early left the room, and listened carefully to the sound of the lock and Early’s footsteps on the stairs down into the cellar.

  Tom noticed Bill’s expression.

  “He’s a quiet one,” Tom said.

  “Hrmm,” Stoga said. “He is a good soldier.”

  Bill’s gaze flicked to Tom briefly, then returned to the floor.

  “Didn’t want to come with you, did he?” Tom asked.

  “He acquitted himself well in many battles,” Stoga said.

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “But from what I heard, eleven hundred men left North Carolina with Thomas’s Legion. And only a hundred made it back. Maybe your boy figured he’d acquitted himself well enough for one war.”

  His tone was gentle, and nothing in Bill’s face indicated he took offense. But Stoga raised his voice, and shouted, “It’s not that! It’s drink, drink, drink. He has been ruined by drink. Corrupted by drink. Demon drink. It has unmanned him. I will take him home; I will dry him out. He will right himself.”

  “Well, all right,” Tom said. “No offense intended.”

  “Hee hee hee!” came Sevenkiller’s laughter through the window. The sound startled Tom; he glanced over at the window, then back at his guests.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Stoga said. “Let me explain to you why we are here. Almost all of the slaves in town have run off. They say that Union foragers are near and that the army is behind them.”

  “Why would the army be coming here?” Tom said. “I thought they were going to Macon.”

  “Still, the slaves are gone,” Stoga said.

  Tom cocked his head, then motioned to the writing desk.

  “Lieutenant, there’s a map of Georgia on that table,” he said. “Could you get it for me?”

  Stoga got the map and laid it out.

  “Sherman took Atlanta,” To
m said. “Now, he could go south to Macon or east to Augusta. We’re right here.”

  His pointed at a tiny dot southeast of Atlanta, halfway between Macon and Augusta.

  “There’s nothing in this town,” he said. “There’s nothing past here either. Milledgeville, I suppose, but other than that nothing but forests and hamlets all the way to the sea. And where would he get his supplies from? How would he run his cracker line? He couldn’t bring his supplies all the way from Tennessee, not with raiders from Macon and Augusta picking off his wagons.”

  “I do not understand,” Stoga said.

  Tom leaned back in his chair.

  “Well then, how about this,” Tom said. “I know you all are just passing through. And I know you don’t want to run the chance of getting taken prisoner again. I appreciate all that. But how about your boy Sevenkiller and Early head back to town and see if they can’t grab one of these bummers. If we learn anything, you can share it with the good folks in Milledgeville or Augusta on your way back to North Carolina. And even if we don’t, maybe we can let some of these sons of bitches know that this is my neighborhood and these are my neighbors, and if they want to tear this place up, they’re going to have to pay.”

  “All right,” Stoga said.

  “Your whiskey is very fine,” Sevenkiller called through the window. “Very fine indeed!”

  Early and Sevenkiller left within a few minutes, Early coughing wretchedly. Tom excused himself and retired to his bedroom, explaining that he felt much better with his leg propped up. Stoga took a book off the shelf and began to read, with difficulty, his lips moving as his eyes moved over the page.

  Bill Bread waited. He could feel the drops of sweat forming on his brow and sliding, one by one, down the side of his face. His stomach had steadied and his head was clear. The sunlight from the window didn’t threaten to cut through to his brain any longer. He felt better. He was mostly dried out. His mind turned to the corn whiskey in the cellar. He stood up.

  “I want to get some water,” he said. “From the pantry.”

  Stoga watched him go out of the room and gave him a few minutes. Then he walked quietly to the pantry door and threw it open. Sure enough, Bill was crouched up against the door to the cellar, trying to jimmy the lock.

  “Look at yourself,” Stoga said, his voice heavy with disgust. “Just look. You lied to me. I can’t trust you, my own nephew.”

  Bill looked down at the floor.

  “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Stoga waited, but Bill remained silent.

  “Don’t you care about anything except getting another drink?” Stoga asked.

  No response.

  “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Stoga asked.

  Bill looked up but did not speak. There was nothing to say.

  Except this:

  That he had gone to war as a boy. That he had tasted whiskey after the legion’s first victory. That the roaring feeling of goodwill, of invincibility, of happiness, had marked him forever. That he had struggled to find that feeling again. That even as his pleasure in drink evaporated his compulsion to drink escalated exponentially, as if he could drink enough he would find the joy he had lost. That the rest of his life became a dull gray exercise he had to pass through in order to get a drink. That it had become crucial to assert that his drinking caused no harm. That such assertions had been easily made in the army because Bill, drunk or sober, had always managed to be at least an average soldier, even on the days when he woke up drunk and his breakfast was whiskey in a tin cup he could not hold without shaking. That the war had concealed his sins, as it had for so many others. That he could never go back to the peace. Never.

  Other than that there was nothing to say. And so Bill looked back down at the floor and said nothing.

  “Get back in the parlor,” Stoga said.

  “I need to use the privy,” Bill said.

  Stoga frowned.

  “All right,” he said.

  They walked out together. Bill shut the door behind him and sat down on the toilet. From underneath his shirt he removed a pint bottle of vanilla extract.

  Shame stayed Bill’s hand as he raised the bottle to his lips. The shame of lying again, the shame of being unable to control himself, the shame of stealing. But it was his shame also that whispered to him that he would never be able to quit, that he was too weak, that his life was not worth saving in any case. He stared at the bottle, and each moment he did not drink was a kind of triumph. But a thousand triumphs could be undone by a single defeat.

  He drank.

  15

  Sergeant Gordon Service and his men, including Reginald Keller and Augustus Winter, had spent the night in a farmhouse owned by an old woman named Mrs. Williams. In the morning, she treated them to a breakfast of eggs, bacon, coffee, and grits and did everything in her power to be amicable. She told Gordon that she had always viewed secession as a disastrous enterprise and remained loyal to the Union in her heart, although she had kept those feelings to herself, for fear of her neighbors.

  It did not matter to him whether Mrs. Williams was lying or not. If she was willing to give him bacon for breakfast, he was willing to see that her house was spared. At least until the main body of troops came through; after that, the fate of Mrs. Williams and her property would be anybody’s guess.

  They were making quite a pleasant morning of it when the back door banged open and Winter came in.

  “Private Winter,” Gordon said, barely glancing up from the bread he was buttering. “So nice of you to join us.”

  “You been outside yet, Sarge?” Winter asked. “There’s something out there you might want to see.”

  Sighing, Gordon followed Winter out the door onto the back porch then came to a sudden stop.

  “Goodness gracious me,” he said.

  More than a hundred slaves were camped behind the house, crammed in the little space between the vegetable gardens and the pigpens. Men, women, little children. Not making much noise, just waiting.

  At the sight of Sergeant Service, one of the older men stepped up.

  “Are you a Union soldier?” he asked

  “Yes,” Gordon said, “I’m Sergeant Gordon Service.”

  All of the blacks leapt to their feet and began to applaud and cheer. Gordon raised his hands and started to try to quiet the crowd, but they would have none of it and instead broke into song. Many of them were weeping openly.

  “All right,” Gordon said as he walked forward. “All right, quiet, quiet now! That’s enough.”

  After the song was finished and the cheering and whistling finally stopped, Gordon addressed the old man who had spoken. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Croesus, sir,” the elderly slave said.

  “Well, all right,” Gordon said. “As I said, I’m Sergeant Service of the Union Army, the Twenty-Sixth Illinois. We’re pleased to tell you that you’re free and that you’ve rightfully been free since January of 1863. You are free to come and go and do anything you wish.”

  Another tremendous cheer, and the slaves rushed him, gathered around, and started hugging him, the children grabbing his legs and the women kissing him and the men just tugging on his clothes and laughing and dancing on the spot.

  “However,” he shouted, “however, please, however, you should know that the Union Army is not coming this way. We are merely a foraging party. So you should know that we cannot guarantee your safety.”

  “Oh sir,” Croesus said, with a trace of contempt. “We ain’t worried about that. We’re ready to die for our freedom, sir. Ain’t no rebel soldiers around here anyhow. They all down in Macon, waiting for General Sherman.”

  “Well, my lieutenant will soon be here and I trust he will know what you should do,” Gordon said. “Until then, take care of yourselves, and please, don’t hurt your former masters—we don’t want that.”

  The slaves quieted a bit at this and glanced at one another. Toward the back of the crowd, Gordo
n saw one particularly large ex-slave squatting on his heels. The other slaves seemed to be keeping their distance from him.

  But before Gordon could think of anything to say, there was another great burst of applause. Quentin Ross and the three Empire brothers came around the side of the house on horseback. Johnny Empire was waving the Stars and Stripes in the air. Quentin dismounted and walked up to Gordon on the porch.

  “Lieutenant,” Gordon said. “I’m glad to see you.”

  “Sergeant Service,” Quentin said, warmly acknowledging his salute.

  “As you can see, the Negroes have heard of our arrival,” Gordon said.

  “Quite right, quite right,” Quentin said. “Let me have a word with them.”

  Quentin turned and faced the crowd. There was another cheer as Johnny madly galloped back and forth, swinging the flag in the air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,” Quentin called out. “Please! Please! Your attention, please!”

  The crowd quieted.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this country was founded on the belief that liberty is the inalienable right of every man. On the other hand, the cornerstone of the Confederacy is that the Negro is inherently inferior to the white man, and that slavery is his natural condition. They believe that it was so ordained by the Creator. They are wrong!”

  More cheering.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Confederates have set their faces against the natural and moral laws of the universe. They have split the country in two. They have driven us to war. And now their armies have been beaten and scattered and our troops are marching through the heart of their false republic. And still they will not surrender. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have only one task left ahead of us. We must show them they are beaten.”

  Gordon’s mouth turned down a little, as if he had seen a small child take a nasty fall and was expecting a wail.

  The ex-slaves made a satisfied sound that was not quite a cheer.

  “They made this war,” Quentin said, “and only they can end it. We must show them the folly of their actions. We must teach them that their government cannot protect them. For that I will be enlisting your help. If you’ll excuse me, I must speak with my sergeant.”