Innocent Deceptions

by Gwyneth Atlee

  From across the street, a series of yelps attracted his attention. Alexander turned his head – and instantly, the problem with Charlotte vanished from his thoughts. He crossed the street – ignoring the man who pulled sharply on his horse’s reins and called him a bad name – and made a beeline for the wooden pen on the front stoop of the feed store.

  Three pups leapt against the pen’s slats, slapping their tails and yelping joyfully. Two of them were tan, while the third was a striped mix of reddish brown and black that looked almost like the picture of the tiger from his primer. Alexander was delighted with their licking tongues and enormous size. Why, they were much bigger than his cousin’s dog, Daisy, already. Without another thought he scrambled over the side of the enclosure.

  Alexander stayed with the puppies for a while; he wasn’t sure how long exactly. He was rubbing two pups’ bellies and fending off kisses from a third when he heard two men talking. He ducked lower, hoping they would not be mad to find him here.

  “These is gen-u-wine mastiff pups, bred from the finest slave catchers you ever did see. Why, if’n things weren’t as they is, I’d want plenty more for ‘em. I’m practically givin’ these dogs away for ten dollars apiece.”

  Alexander scoffed. Ten dollars for a puppy? Why, he’d be getting one of Daisy’s pups for free! Still, they sure were nice dogs.

  The other man mumbled something that Alexander couldn’t hear.

  “Yeah, they’re man-killers all right, but only if you train ‘em proper. So how ‘bout it? You pay cash money, I’ll give you one for eight. These fellas is eatin’ me straight outta business.”

  “I think I’ll take . . . this one.” The speaker reached down and lifted Alexander out of the enclosure.

  Alexander shrieked and tried to squirm away – until he saw that it was Captain Chandler holding him. He was smiling, too, as if he’d known where Alexander had been hiding all along.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t decide to make a snack of you,” the Yankee captain said. He glanced at the big-bellied shopkeeper before adding, “Them being such man-killers.”

  The storeowner’s face pulled downward. “You gonna ruin them dogs like that, pettin’ ‘em and all. You stay outta there from now on, boy!”

  Alexander stepped behind Captain Chandler’s leg. Then, after remembering what Charlotte had taught him, he edged out. “I’m sorry, mister. Guess I shoulda asked.”

  The man grumbled a halfhearted acceptance before retreating into the building.

  Captain Chandler looked down at Alexander. “Folks have been wondering where you’d got off to. I had a notion it might be here. I guess we’d better move on before he feeds us to these rascals’ mama.”

  Alexander smiled, liking this Yankee more than ever. If Charlotte had to go sweet on one of them, why couldn’t it be this one?

  The captain said, “It can be sort of dangerous for a man out here on his own. I’d feel a mite safer if you’d walk with me.”

  Alexander nodded. Though he would rather eat a spider than admit it, he felt relieved to see a face he knew. After playing with the puppies, he felt more confused than ever about the way back home.

  The captain asked him, “Would that be all right?”

  Alexander liked that, the way he asked instead of ordered. The boy nodded in answer.

  “So where are we going?” Captain Chandler asked.

  Alexander stopped. He couldn’t very well tell the man he had been planning to find his brother out at his aunt and uncle’s farm. Michael had twice made him promise not to say a word about his presence to the Yankees.

  Alexander decided he no longer felt like going anyway. Instead, he answered, “Home, I guess.”

  He paused, hoping the captain would start moving first, to point him in the right direction. In that moment’s hesitation, Alexander remembered what it was that he had seen this morning. He looked down at the man’s legs and wondered how he’d put the broken one back on.

  Captain Chandler bent forward and rapped his knuckles below his left knee. It sounded just like someone knocking at a door.

  “That one isn’t real,” he explained, not sounding one bit mad or upset about it. “I have to put it on each morning, the same way you put on a pair of shoes.”

  Alexander shook his head. “I’m real sorry, Captain. I didn’t mean to see.”

  The captain straightened and, just as Alexander had hoped, began to walk. “It’s all right. I know you didn’t, and besides, it’s not a secret.”

  When they reached an intersection, Captain Chandler turned left. Alexander followed, grateful that the man seemed so sure of the way.

  “Did you ever have another leg? A real one?” Alexander asked. Charlotte probably would have scolded him for the question, but it popped out before he thought about it.

  “I did,” the captain answered without hesitation. “But someone shot it, and I had to make a choice. I could keep my leg and die, or let the surgeons take it off so I could live.”

  “Was it hard to pick?”

  Captain Chandler didn’t say anything for a while as they walked. His cane added a funny third beat to his footsteps, but it didn’t seem to slow him much.

  Alexander started to worry that he’d said something wrong, like the night he’d asked if General Branard couldn’t keep Miss Tillie in line.

  But finally, the captain answered. “There are a lot of hard things that happen, Alexander. They happen to everyone sometimes. Yes, it was difficult deciding, but in the end I knew I wasn’t finished living. Or at least I didn’t want to be.”

  They were about to cross a bigger street, one teeming with people walking, riding, and talking as they went about their business. When the captain reached down, Alexander took his hand.

  “I’m glad,” he told the man beside him, but he didn’t say it too loud, so he wasn’t sure the captain even heard what he had said.

  After they had crossed, though, Captain Chandler answered. “I’m starting to feel glad, too, Alexander. I’m starting to feel like maybe I picked right.”

  God be our shield, at home or afield,

  Stretch Thine arm over us, strengthen and save.

  What though they’re three to one, forward each sire and son,

  Strike till the war is won, strike to the grave!

  Strike till the war is won, strike to the grave!

  -- from “God Save the South,”

  words by Earnest Halpin

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ben swore under his breath, frustrated by the way his mind refused to focus on the disaster spread before him on the desk. Damn it, this was the reason he’d been sent to Memphis. He could not afford to shirk it, especially not to dwell on whether Charlotte had yet broken the news to Alexander about their father’s death.

  Time and time again, he saw the child sitting cross-legged among the huge puppies. He saw the way the boy’s grin made his green eyes come alive. Before Ben had lifted him from heaven and then brought him home to face an unimagined hell.

  Ben felt a surge of gratitude that Charlotte had asked him only to find the boy and not to be the one to tell him. Even so, his mind kept poking at its own scar tissue, revisiting the way his mother had informed him that their world would never be the same.

  He could almost hear a female voice, a perfect blend of Charlotte’s and his mother’s, saying, “It’s going to be all right.”

  But for Charlotte and Alexander Randolph, could it ever be again? Ben thought of Colonel Franklin Randolph’s boatworks, which like his grand home and several other business interests, had been confiscated for the Union’s use. Surely, the family’s fortune would be crippled by the blow. What would become of Charlotte and her brother with no father to come home and restore the prosperity both took for granted?

  Ben wondered why it should matter to him. All over both the North and the South, this damned war was destroying families. Killing fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers; laying waste to homes and farms and businesses. His brother, Lucas, had
stayed with his pregnant wife and baby daughters to look after Mama and the ranch, but even in the Hill Country of Texas, things were changing for the worse. A handful of thieving bastards claiming loyalty to the Confederacy had driven off half of the cattle, and Lucas had been forced to hire gunmen in an attempt to hold on to those that remained. Though his family supported his decision to accept a Federal officer’s commission, Ben wondered every day if his absence – or his allegiance – was putting them at risk.

  Knowing what his loyalty to the cause of union had cost him, Ben told himself he had no business worrying about the son and daughter of one of the rich aristocrats whose stubbornness and greed had plunged the country – and himself – into this conflict. Instead, he needed to do his part to help end this nightmare soon.

  With a will, Ben refocused his attention on the snarl of orders General Branard had seen fit to issue. On the surface, most seemed rational, some even inspired. Taken as a whole, however, Branard’s orders sent infantry to capture one target, while supply lines were set up to support a different goal. Flag officers along the Tennessee River were sent orders clearly meant for those along the Mississippi, and – as had happened earlier, before Ben had been sent - General Grant would not receive the support he had requested.

  Was this the proof he had been asked to find? Clearly, if considered in combination with the other signs that Ben had spotted, these papers offered sufficient evidence to force Branard to step down. Yet Ben could recognize the strands of genius running through the morass. Would the Mississippi Valley campaign be better or worse off without it?

  Ben tapped an inch of ash off the end of his neglected, lit cigar. He knew that, in the strictest sense, he’d been sent to quietly bring down a legend. Yet his head rang with something Charlotte had told him earlier.

  “Are you happy, Captain Judas?”

  Hell, no, he wasn’t happy, especially considering the aptness of the name she’d chosen to describe him. Though some might feel he had betrayed the South and Texas, Ben understood his loyalties. But orders or no orders, destroying and disgracing Major General Hank Branard felt like treachery.

  Ben released a mouthful of smoke and watched it dissipate into the space above his head. Then he crushed out his cigar and worked for the next three hours to revise and coordinate Branard’s work without undermining any of the desirable elements.

  He was so intent, he at first mistook the person who had entered the parlor for one of the contraband women the general had hired to help keep the house presentable. He didn’t even look up until he heard a man clearing his throat.

  Colonel Gideon Williams stood before Ben.

  “Might I have a word with you?” Williams asked. For once, the man’s blue eyes looked somber, and his normally squared shoulders sagged. Perhaps without Charlotte to preen for, he could be almost likable.

  Ben began to stand in order to offer a salute, but Williams waved it off.

  “At ease, Captain.” Williams dropped into a chair opposite the desk that Ben was using. “This conversation is unofficial.”

  Ben watched him intently, recalling as he did Lieutenant Snyder’s clear distrust of the man, along with General Branard warning him to stay clear of Charlotte.

  Williams glanced over his shoulder as if to reassure himself that no one else was near. Apparently satisfied, he began in a low voice, “I’m concerned about Hank Branard.”

  Perhaps it was the daylight slipping through the gap between the heavy parlor curtains, but today there seemed more silver than ever at Williams’ temples. The effect made him look older than Ben’s earlier estimate of a man in his mid-thirties.

  Ben asked, “What makes you say that?”

  Until he knew much more, he wasn’t offering Williams a word about his own suspicions.

  “For one thing, his mind seems to be wandering. When we talk, he sometimes seems to think we’re fighting the Mexicans in South Texas. Hell, sometimes I’m not sure he knows Bobby Lee from General Santa Anna. And he keeps referring to Charlotte Randolph by the name of Emma.”

  “Apparently, she resembles his dead daughter. She died of consumption back in the Forties.”

  Williams shook his head. “I don’t think that’s right. I distinctly remember him telling me he’d always wished for daughters, but he and Mrs. Branard were only blessed with the one son.”

  “Perhaps he wouldn’t mention a lost child.”

  The colonel shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t explain the other problems. I was wondering if you’d noticed anything.”

  “What’s your interest in this?” Ben asked. From what he understood, Williams was involved in the administration and security of occupied Memphis, which had nothing to do with Branard’s duties.

  Williams gaze remained level, but his color deepened. Enough so that Ben wondered what it was he was not saying.

  After a brief pause, the colonel answered. “Purely personal. I consider Hank Branard a good friend and a fine man. But what is he? Seventy? Seventy-two? Maybe too damned old to --”

  “Too damned old to what?”

  Ben’s head snapped around to take in Hank Branard’s reddened face as the general strode into the room.

  Williams stiffened, but to his credit, he rose to his feet and looked Branard directly in the eye. “Too old to remember which war we’re fighting this time. Too old to recall that you and Mrs. Branard never had a daughter – or at least one that you’ve mentioned. I’m just trying to suggest, Hank, that maybe you should think about stepping dow--”

  “The hell you say!” the white-haired general roared. “And if forgetting’s a hallmark of the doddering, Gideon, perhaps you’re the one who ought to retire. I’ve noticed that whenever your eyes are roaming over my young guest’s bosom, the fact that you have a wife waiting back in New Hampshire seems to escape you.”

  “My wife’s an invalid, and I’ve been long away from home. So what if I enjoy looking at a pretty girl now and again? Show me a man who doesn’t, and I’ll show you a corpse.” Williams’ voice remained calm, but Ben sat close enough to see him shaking.

  “I wouldn’t be so concerned about the looking if I hadn’t heard so much about why you left New Orleans.”

  “From Captain Snyder, I presume. Or I should say Lieutenant. Did he tell you it was my report that cost him his rank?”

  No wonder Jonathan Snyder had looked so unhappy to see Colonel Williams. Ben would give his eyeteeth to know what had really happened between the two men. But he had the impression that the conversation was about to take a personal turn.

  “Would you like me to step out, sir?” he asked Branard.

  “No, Ben. You stay right where you are.” The general’s attention returned to Williams. “I’ve read Lieutenant Snyder’s file, and I’ve listened to his explanation.”

  “And you believed it?” Williams asked.

  “I believe enough. If I hadn’t, do you really think I would allow him on my staff? I’m not that feeble-minded.”

  Colonel Williams looked away, his expression troubled. When he spoke again, his voice rumbled with emotion. “You were my first mentor, sir. The things I learned from you back when we were fighting Mexico – I would not be the man I am without those lessons.”

  “Then why are you questioning my judgment?” Branard demanded.

  Williams met his gaze. “Because that’s what Hank Branard would do if he were faced with the same situation. No matter how difficult he found it, he would ask what needed to be asked, challenge what needed to be challenged. There’s been talk, sir, rumors about --”

  “Get back to your own damned duties, Colonel, and out of my headquarters. But before you go, I’ve got one thing to say. I don’t give a sow’s tit about any gossip. Never have and never will.” Branard shook his head, emphasizing his denial. “These rumors aren’t about me. They’re about some general or another who’s madder than a sack full of scorpions that I’ve been brought out of my ‘dotage’ to fill a position he thinks he ough
t to have. There’s not one bit more to it than that.”

  But there was more to it, Ben knew. The proof of it lay here before him, in the conflicting sheaf of orders he had spent half the day revising. Yet he said nothing. For one thing, he hadn’t yet decided whether Williams was an enemy or an ally. For another, he recognized the desperation in Hank Branard’s eyes. Desperation to believe that he was still the man he’d once been. Desperation to go out a hero one last time.

  Ben didn’t have the heart to take it from him. Not now, at least, while he could still cover for the old man’s mistakes and capitalize upon his incomparable expertise. Not until he could figure out a way to end the general’s career with the dignity that Hank Branard deserved.

  o0o

  Though Charlotte had earlier thrown open all four of the nursery windows, the day’s heat had risen to make the room a stifling chamber. Or perhaps it was the soreness of her eyes and the salty film of tears left on her face that had left her feeling wilted as a spent gardenia blossom. At least the sun was finally setting, offering some hope of respite for the night.

  At the sound of a knock, Charlotte rose from the rocker she had placed to catch the slight breeze. She made her way past Alexander, who had fallen asleep on the braided rug beside his bed. His wheeled horse was clutched to his chest and his soldiers formed a protective semicircle, as if to ward him from bad dreams. It was strange, she thought, how she could still feel grateful for such small gifts as nightfall and a child’s sleep on the day she’d learned of Papa’s death.

  As she opened the door, Charlotte swallowed back the threatening tears, determined to maintain the emptiness left in the wake of hours of grief. She needed time inside that shadowed land, time to recover from the onslaught of emotion.