Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
JARRETTSVILLE TOWN CENTER
I. - Fourth Anniversary of the Confederate Surrender at Appomattox
MARTIN JARRETT, M.D. - Confederate States Army Veteran
JOSHUA JARRETT - Youth
ALEX MCCOMAS - United States Army Veteran
MRS. AYRES - Farmer’s Wife
II. - Martha Jane Cairnes
III. - Nicholas McComas
IV. - We the People
CHARLES BOULDIN - Harford County Sheriff
HENRY FARNANDIS, ESQUIRE - Attorney at Law
ISABELLE CAIRNES KIRKWOOD - Mother of Seven
THOMAS ARCHER - Member of the Jury
G. RICHARD CAIRNES - Distiller of Fine Whiskey
MARY ANN BAY CAIRNES - Mother of the Accused
MARTHA JANE CAIRNES - The Accused
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
In memory of my mother, Jean Cairnes Nixon Blickman
JARRETTSVILLE TOWN CENTER
Scale: Approximately 100 yards to one inch
I.
Fourth Anniversary of the Confederate Surrender at Appomattox
APRIL 10, 1869
MARTIN JARRETT, M.D.
Confederate States Army Veteran
MY HOUSE WAS right across the road from the hotel, and I heard the shots. At first I thought it was the usual high spirits, the Yanks congratulating themselves all over again. Every damn year since Lee betrayed us all and signed the truce, they got themselves up like peacocks, plumed hats, gold braid, and swords they did not know how to use, and pranced around a meadow for the ladies to admire. Then they would repair to the hotel that I was cursed to live too near and pour whiskey down their gullets all night long. They got so full of themselves, they would sing weepy battle hymns and lie about the glory they had shed. I could hear them perfectly.
“Wish we could rout out Johnny Reb again!”
“By gad, we’d kill us a bunch more of them yellow-bellied sapsuckers this time!”
Every one of those fools had a pistol in his pocket, and I sometimes had to patch up one or two. The guns could go off inside a pocket and hit a knee or worse. Last year some ignorant young lout shot his own pecker off, and I imagine he’s regretted that.
Not that all Yanks were idiots. My own brother Jimmy followed his conscience, or so he said, when he enlisted as surgeon for the Union side. I did the same for General Lee, and I supposed in some way we cancelled each other out.
One day at Manassas, however, I was damn glad he had gone with McClellan’s mighty league, “Army of the Potomac,” as they styled themselves. The Rebel line had broken and let through a nasty band of rough-handed gents in blue, who surrounded my tent, snatched me away, and locked me in a barn that reeked of pigs. But they happened to be from my brother’s regiment, and in the middle of that pitch-black night he cut the chain on the loft door and let me out. He even smuggled me some Yankee bacon and a flask, both much appreciated as I slunk through Virginia bogs, trying to find my own army again.
Tonight I felt at least as outnumbered as I had then as I put my horse into the barn and listened to the mob across the way. I was exhausted, having delivered a woman of a hefty boy she could not squeeze out through her narrow hips. I had to use the forceps, always a tricky business, and she screamed so loud she broke her own eardrum. But I had made it home, and when I heard the pop-pop-pop , I hoped it was just bullets wasted on the ceiling or the sky.
But now the crowd roar ceased, and voices shouted, “RUN! RUN!”
I stepped out of the barn and saw a gun-flash in the dusk, on the dark porch of the hotel, not straight up but aimed level, and a man fell backwards off the rail and hit the ground. Men were leaping off the porch, crouching or flattening along the ground, shouting incoherently.
A dark figure moved quickly, lightly, down the steps into the yard, and I thought I saw a skirt. Was that a woman with a gun? She stood over the downed man, her arm pointed straight at him as the gun flashed two more times. I snatched my bag and ran across the road, hesitating not one second, though I knew she might shoot me, too.
Nearby a young man’s voice bellowed like an abandoned calf.
“Come on here and get on your horse! Come on here and get on your horse!”
The lady dropped the gun, sat down in the dirt, and took the man’s head on her lap. She cradled him, crooning and quivering with sobs. Quickly I knelt by them.
“Bring a lantern!” I commanded no one in particular, and no one moved.
Blood pumped straight up from the man’s aorta like an ornamental fountain, and when I put my fingers in the hole, made by about three bullets entering on top of each other, I knew he did not stand a chance. The hole in back, where they exited, would be larger, his lifeblood draining straight into the ground.
When someone finally brought a light, the crimson torrent was subsiding to an ooze, and it soon stopped. Dark heart’s blood pooled in the center of his chest, glistening, starting to congeal. I worked fast, trying to pump his heart. I knew it was too late, but I was duty-bound to try, and it was a while before I glanced up at his face.
I could not quite place the man, but when my eyes lifted briefly, I saw the woman holding him was Martha Cairnes—my Martha, I had once thought, my Martha Jane, before she threw herself away on a Yankee bastard, son of a thieving Abolitionist who helped steal contraband. I supposed this could be he. The wounds showed that she had spared his face but aimed to hit his heart. She was a crack shot and could have picked one button off his coat and never nicked the skin, if she had wanted to. I still felt some tenderness for her, though I was lately married to a sweet young girl, a paragon of purity. On the whole, I felt I had been spared a world of trouble when Martha Jane did not choose me.
About fifty men hung over the porch rail, gaping, and a few had lost their dinners, filling the air with the acid smell of vomit laced with whiskey.
And whoever was bellowing had not desisted yet.
“Come on here and get on your horse! Come on here and get on your horse!”
It sounded like her yellow-bellied brother, Richard—no doubt terrified some Yank would shoot him just for being there, when his sister was so brave and had risked everything.
I reached up and closed the dead man’s eyes, and Martha wailed. Misgiving slid below me like a bank of sand. When the men around us got over their immobility, would they take her life in their own hands?
I fixed her with my eyes and used my stern physician’s bark. “Go on now. GO!”
She did not move, and I glanced around for someone who might take her from the reach of all these armed and drunken men.
My youngest brother, Josh, stood not far off, shaking so hard I thought he might fall down. He was skittish and could never pay attention long enough to take much in.
“Damn!” he kept saying, like it was the only word he knew. “Damn! Damn!”
“Josh,” I called. “Come here and help Miss Cairnes get to her horse.”
But her cousin George Andrew was there already, and he tried to lift her up.
“Come away now, dear,” he said gently. “Come away with me.”
I lifted the bloody head off of her lap so she could stand, but she did not.
Fixing my eyes on George Andrew, I could hear the fear in my own voice. “Tell her not to say a word of this to anyone. You neither. They’ll find out soon enough.”
It took Josh and G. A. both to lift her up, and she sobbed like her heart was being torn out of her chest. But in a moment she was gone, and I heard two horses gallop off.
It took a while to get any man to come in close enough to help me tote th
e body in.
“Come on, gunshot wounds are not contagious. Lend a hand.”
Finally, two young men came down, saucer-eyed with fear. The dead man was not tall, but his bones were big, and as a dead weight, any man is heavy. I let the others pick up his extremities and assigned myself his messy torso, the still-warm, sticky blood soon gluing me to him. There was a gun in his pocket, and it pressed into my forearm as we lugged him up the stairs. He would not need it anymore, so I let it drop onto the porch.
The crowd of Yanks parted, gasping, as we staggered through the door to the saloon.
Tom Street, the innkeeper, cleared glasses from the bar. “Here. Lay him out right here.”
“It’ll make a mess,” I warned, but he shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter. Put him here.”
At times like this I wished I was a Romanist. Priests were never at a loss for words, and if there had been one here, he would have said a solemn benediction. Just fifteen minutes had passed since this body was a man, who like all men had noble capabilities, whatever use he made of them. And now he was no better than a side of beef. Soon the worst indignities of death would start: eruptions of gas and noxious ooze, the stiffening. Mrs. Street bustled to help me lay him out, close his mouth and tie his chin with string, put pennies on his lids, mop up the blood.
I did the best I could, crossing his hands over the crater in his chest, not quite saying a prayer, because he was a Yankee after all.
JOSHUA JARRETT
Youth
I WAS A GROWN MAN, eighteen years old, but I ain’t never seen the like, nor did I ever expect to again in my whole life. A woman, a frail girl, pretty, too, popping off a man with a six-shooter! Damn! I could not get over it, no matter how I tried.
And now she was galloping so fast, I kept losing her in the dark. G. A. had ordered me to follow her, gimme his horse and his Colt’s, too. Told me to protect her with my life. I was trying to do that, but damn! She was fast!
Panting in the cold air, riding so hard I thought I might pass out, I could see her dimly as she bolted past the turn to her own place. Where was she headed? Some of those Yanks back there would want to string her up. It warn’t safe out here a-tall!
“Miss Cairnes!” I called. “Hold on! Wait up!”
At the fork for Cooptown and Bel Air, she careered south, and I spurred George Andrew’s horse to catch her up. This time I got close enough, so she heard me, and she stopped and whirled around. I thundered up so fast, I overshot and had to turn around.
“Please arrest me now!” she cried, her pale face glowing in the blue dark. Her horse was white-eyed from the gallop, keyed up, dancing and clinking under her. Mine was, too, and I could barely hold it as my voice cracked shrill.
“I saw it all! I never thought to see the like!”
“Then arrest me, please,” she cried and held both her slender wrists toward me.
“I’m not the sheriff, miss. Don’t you know me? Josh Jarrett, Martin’s brother. You know me. George Andrew told me to chase after you. This here’s his horse.”
She was panting, out of breath. “I don’t need you. But tell me quickly, have they left him on the ground?”
What was she on about? She sounded horrified, like cold dirt could hurt him now.
“Reckon he better get used to it, since he’ll be under it before too long. What a piece of work you did! Plugged him on the first try, you did, by gum. Next two went wild, and I expect they’ll find them in the eaves or maybe in the roof. But your aim was true on those last two! I saw it plain. But they were shot in a dead man. Your brother could not have done it half so good. Richard’s afraid of him, you know. But you took care of that!”
My horse shied away from her excited mare, and I reined it back around.
She spoke slowly, carefully, like to an idiot. “Josh, tell me quick. Did they carry him into the hotel?”
I could only gape at her. “Don’t know. George Andrew said I ought to go with you, and he give me his horse. His gun, too.” I flourished it to show her, the long barrel glinting blue.
Without another word she turned and galloped off.
“Hold on, now!” I yelled. “Hold on! You got to wait!”
It took a second, but I got the horse to take off after her. She didn’t answer, only rode, and I had no choice but to try to catch her reins and run her off the road.
My horse crashed into hers, and we both shot off into a crackling field of old cornstalks. Her horse snorted and threw its head, but it couldn’t get away from me.
She yanked at the reins. “Let go! This is none of your affair. I’ve got to find the sheriff!”
“Sheriff won’t be round this time of night, no how. They had a parade in Bel Air, too, you know. Come on, Miss C., got to get you safe home. Your lane’s back this way. You missed the turn. But God be praised, that’s all you missed this night.”
I kept a tight hold on the mare’s reins and spurred my horse. Both mounts exploded north, hers taking off beside mine like a greyhound. I herded her straight to Richard’s lane and barely made the turn, we were on so fast. But we galloped right down it to the house.
I hopped down and hauled her from the saddle like a bundle, carried her up the porch steps, and set her down.
“George Andrew said I got to see you go inside the house and stay here and guard you with this gun. Now, go on in. Don’t you say a word of what you did. Not to no one.”
I crossed my arms and stood foursquare, tall as I could, until she went inside.
ALEX MCCOMAS
United States Army Veteran
I DID NOT GO to the parade. I had hated army life, which was like living in a pigsty in the snow, and I had left a little earlier than was quite legal, a fact my family did not know, but someone at the celebration might. No, I had spent the last months of my enlistment productively, learning dairy farming from an old man in Ohio, which is where I went missing. I spent the Appomattox anniversary productively as well, helped not one but two cows calve and used the cultivator on my mother’s fields, where I now grew hay. After a pleasant supper with my wife, I read the papers at the table, enjoying the warm fire nearby, while she took the children upstairs to prepare for bed.
I was not expecting anyone, so I was surprised to hear fast hoofbeats in the lane, two horses or more, and in a hurry, which was odd for this time of evening. A moment later my wife’s brother, George Andrew, burst in our front door without knocking. He looked pale and shaken, and right away I tried to kid him out of it. He was a big kidder himself.
“Too late for supper again, poor fellow!” I called without getting up. “Afraid we polished off every last scrap. Might scare up a crust of bread and water. Bread and water, that’s your favorite, right? You seen a ghost or what?”
He came toward me and took hold of my shoulder, and I felt him shake. “Your brother has been shot. He rode in the parade, and he was shot. I think he’s dead.”
I heard only a few syllables of this, refusing to take it in.
“Can’t be,” I said reasonably. “He’s up in Pennsylvania. Hasn’t ridden down this way for months. Must be someone else.”
George Andrew closed his eyes and shook his head. “I wish that were true, but it’s not, and you’ll believe me when I tell you who did it. It was my cousin Martha. She shot him more than one time in the heart.”
I leapt to my feet, wanting to punch him in the jaw. But he was not the murderer, only her cousin, and my wife would never have forgiven me. He was her kid brother, the only son in a big family, and his seven sisters all revered him like he was the second coming of the Lord.
Instead I left him there and walked away, out to the barn. I got my gun, got on my horse, and rode pell-mell to the hotel, not sure who I meant to kill, but it would be someone.
The sight in the bar was sickening, silent white-faced men standing and staring at my dead brother laid out on the bar like a bad drunk, a bloody hole in his chest big as my fist. It was indecent, and to keep from throwin
g up, I started to shout.
“Stop staring at him! Don’t just stand there, clean up the blood! Where is that vile woman? Someone get the sheriff, now! You, Jarrett! Did you even try to save him? Why couldn’t he have a damn Federal physician at least? God, can you tell me that? You should all be arrested, every one of you! Did you even try to take away her gun? Won’t someone at least clean him up? His mother should not have to look at him like this! Where the hell is the sheriff?”
I went on in that vein awhile, until Tom Street put a glass of whiskey in my hand.
“Toss that off straight. Sheriff won’t be round tonight and maybe not by morning either. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Don’t you worry, he’ll hear about it soon enough, and he’ll see justice is done. Here.” He handed me my brother’s pistol and shook his head.
“He never even took that out.”
He got another whiskey, and I swallowed that one whole as well. It turned hatred into tears, and I wanted to weep like a woman. Wasn’t it enough that someone cracked our father’s head open and trampled on him with a horse? Our father always told us we must turn the other cheek. But I knew the other cheek could be murdered, too. My father had been killed, and now my brother. I had no cheeks left to turn.
The barkeep’s wife had two men carry him upstairs, and she cut away his uniform to wash him properly. Another militiaman took off his own uniform and gave it to her to put on him. It was too big, and it had gaudy gold epaulets and gold on the pants, stuff my brother would have ridiculed. But at least our mother would not have to see the wounds, and we could bury him in it.
The thought of another cold grave gaping in the ground sent me downstairs for a third whiskey. He was not in Pennsylvania. He was dead. Dead like our father. Dead like Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ.
All right, my brother was no saint. You don’t get challenged to a duel at age sixteen by a wronged husband if you’re a saint.
Jarrettsville Page 1
