Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  THE DAY OF THE PARADE, I did the prudent thing and packed a Colt’s pistol in the pocket of my militia uniform, knowing every man in Harford County would be armed. I had to saddle Jack and set off before dawn to make it there in time, and the air was still so frigid in the dark, I could not move my fingers, the first few miles extremely long and cold.

  But as I crossed the Susquehanna, the sun rose, and soon it was high and hot. Cardinals and robins sang out joyfully in woods made dense with laurel shrubs in bud. The smell of fresh-turned dirt hung in the air, creeks high with snowmelt leaping cold and bright, a sense of new beginning everywhere.

  Near Jarrettsville I took the King’s Road to the pasture where I knew Federal veterans and militiamen would mass, and sure enough, as I crested a hill, I could see a field full of blue uniforms. It was tufted with new grass, and on it soldiers were assembling rank by rank for the parade. I arrived and joined the cavalry unobtrusively, but many fellows there had not seen me for a while, and they called out with yelps of surprise.

  “Why, it’s McComas, I’ll be bound!”

  “Nick! As I live and breathe, it’s you!”

  “You old miscreant, where have you been?”

  They teased me about absconding from the scene of my many crimes, and I was grateful when they did not mention Martha’s name—or, God forbid, Sophie’s. Someone passed a flask, and the whiskey warmed me deeply going down. Jack was excited by the crowd, and he pranced, showing off, as we waited our turn to ride out.

  At last the signal came, a round of volleys fired to the sky from the infantry in front, and flag bearers marched out smartly with drummer boys, piccolos, and trumpets to a huge cheer from the crowd. Gold sun slanted at my eyes, and as we first began to trot, I couldn’t see, afraid to trample on the haunches of the horse in front of me.

  Then I remembered—if you turn away from the sun, you’ll see which way to go. It was a small thing, but it heartened me, and I turned my head and watched the rows of marching men and ranks of cavalry peel out the gates onto the road, allowing me to join them easily, Jack prancing side to side as I kept a rein on him.

  The crowd cheered tirelessly along the road, women standing up in open carriages and waving handkerchiefs, a few young girls dashing forward to hand a man a pink magnolia bloom. I scanned each face intently, looking for Martha, but she was not there. We rode past Jarrettsville to its far side, wheeled in fine style to drum-beats and trumpet blasts, and marched back the way we came, like an exercise in futility, trotting toward the pasture where we had begun.

  When the infantry was in the pasture, out of our way, and we were moving fast, the men in front starting to gallop, I saw a flash of white, a girl in white wool rushing toward my horse, holding something up, and my heart sprang high.

  But it was not she, just a girl I hardly knew, extending a white rosebud to me. I barely managed to grab it. “A rosebud in April!” I cried. “Where did you ever get it?”

  She did not answer, only flushed and stumbled as she whirled back to a pack of her girlfriends, all of whom squealed gleefully.

  The bud had a long stem, and I had to put it in my teeth to hold the reins, letting the thorns prick me lightly as Jack burst to a gallop and we streamed into the pasture, rank by rank. This time the crowd followed us, breathless for the military exhibition still to come. I put the rosebud in my buttonhole to be a boutonniere.

  I had not been to the rehearsals that year, but it all came back to me, and I rode out with my comrades as they galloped in figure eights, whole platoons at once, missing each other by inches as we crossed the middle. The crowd screamed with delight and we pranced through mock battles, jumping over obstacles with torches in our hands.

  By the time we finished, the spring dusk had started, the sky turquoise with pink clouds. The field emptied, leaving the grass trampled, one small banner stuck to flutter in the ground, and I followed the others wistfully, sure now that I would not see her that day. Maybe she was ill, or angry, and I knew I did not deserve to look at her or her son. Maybe I would never be allowed to see his face or lay my fears to rest.

  Somewhat disconsolate, I followed the other men to Jarrettsville, where lamps were being lit in the few houses. At the hotel I untacked Jack in the stable and saw that he had good bedding and lots of hay, since he would need a good meal and a rest after all he’d done that day.

  A crowd of men in blue coats milled inside the hotel and spilled onto the lawn and porch, already deaf with whiskey. They all shouted at once, made up stories about war and other forms of manliness, roars of laughter rising at the slightest opportunity.

  “And then there was the day I bagged that bear. Darned if it warn’t ten feet tall, I swear, and black as hell! It just stood there and roared, and my horse dumped me and galloped off, he was so scared. But I got him with one shot, right between the eyes.”

  Men laughed and clinked glasses, and it made me feel much older than the rest of them. I fought my way up to the bar and secured a large double whiskey—possibly produced by G. Richard Cairnes, a thought that made it almost too bitter to drink, but not quite.

  The men of my militia lounged around the porch outside, and I stepped out to join them there. But just outside the door I was accosted by Frank Street, a young man I had never met, though I knew he was a Rebel hotblood and a bully. He walked right up to me and gave me a shove on one shoulder, as if to push me back into the bar.

  “You got nerve coming here,” he said low and sinister, “after what you done. Ruined any ladies lately? Or is it true what people say, the nigra had her first, you couldn’t manage it? Damn, thought I smelled a rat out here. Shoulda brought my rat-shooter.”

  Laughter stopped around us, like they thought we might fight. With an icy feeling round my heart, I wondered if Frank Street had been among the ruffians who held me down across a bale the night Richard Cairnes flayed and sliced my back for bacon strips.

  But I was a Quaker now, and I walked calmly past him to one of the pillars holding up the porch roof. I was a little rattled, with a rushing in my arms and legs like they might shake, and I leaned against the pillar to steady myself, relieved when Street gave up staring at me and stepped through the doorway, back into the bar.

  I stood somewhat apart from the men I had served with, but near enough to hear them lie and tease each other like schoolboys. There must have been fifty men out there with glasses in their hands, all shouting at once in the pink sunset light, holding whiskey up against the western sky to see it glow.

  “Good Gawd, that day at Bull Run, you remember it? Galloped out of there so fast my clothes flew off, they did. Looked down and darned if I warn’t buck naked!”

  “Oh, go on, and how many Rebs you shoot that day buck naked, did you say?”

  “You think I’m lying? I’ll bet you anything!”

  A commotion in the bar distracted me, made me look that way, and I wondered if it was Street again. The roar in the bar stopped abruptly, except for a few sharp shouts and gasps.

  And without warning, there she was. My own dear girl, my Martha Jane! Slender again, in her blue velvet riding suit, looking, if anything, more beautiful than she had ever been. The sight of her electrified me, stole my breath. At last, here was another chance to make it right!

  I rose from the rail and reached for her, and she reached a hand toward me, her arm straight out, her eyes on mine. Something bright shone in her hand, but I did not look at it—her eyes shone large, clear, pale, her cheeks rosy pink. My girl. My girl!

  “Run! Run!” men yelled, as they all cowered behind pillars or ducked through the parlor door. But what was there to fear? My girl, my Martha Jane?

  Something burst inside my chest, a miracle of love and heat that lifted me off the floor and set me back against the pillar. A clap of silence fell.

  She spoke in a clear voice. “Gentlemen, you all know what it’s done for.”

  Her arm stayed straight out, and now I could see it, yes, it was a Colt’s revolver, engraved all ove
r with twirling vines and flowers, its nose eight inches long, too heavy for a girl to lift. Yet she could, she did, and fired it perfectly into my chest again.

  This time the beautiful explosion knocked me off the rail and over backwards into air. It seemed that I could fly. I landed lightly in the gravel yard below.

  I lay there on my side, the way I used to lie beside her on the grass beneath the apple trees, on hay or straw, or on the grassy hillside with two rivers meeting down below. Something red and white lay in the gravel a few inches from my eyes, and I examined it with curiosity, unable to move my head. Ah, it was the white rosebud, lately dipped in someone’s blood.

  She came down the steps to join me there, stood over me, and fired straight down. That one flattened me onto my back, and I was glad, since now I could see her, as she stood above me like she meant to lie on top of me and dally in the evening light. She shot again, and the bullet moved so slow I felt it carve up through my thigh muscle, not pain but heat, a trail of glory that made gold shimmer before my eyes.

  Somewhere in the yard a man’s voice shouted, frantic, incensed.

  “Come on here and get on your horse! Come on here, get on your horse!”

  She did not seem to hear it. Moving like an angel, she knelt and took my head into her lap and smoothed my hair. Her face twisted with grief, and her tears dropped on my cheeks.

  I tried to speak, but blood filled my mouth. I spit it out, but it filled again. I wanted to explain, to tell her everything, to say that I had always loved her, always would, and she would be my wife. She would. Death would not part us. She would be my wife on Earth and in heaven, forever and ever, world without end.

  But I could only say it with my eyes, as her dear face dimmed, and beyond her face, the sapphire sky.

  IV.

  We the People

  APRIL-MAY 1869

  CHARLES BOULDIN

  Harford County Sheriff

  IT WAS A PRETTY Sunday morning in Bel Air. Church bells ringing. Clear blue sky. Birds. You never heard so many singing their heads off.

  No one was in the jail, so I could make the wife happy and go to church. She liked it better if I stayed awake, and I did not succeed this time. But that made the sermon mercifully brief. A rousing hymn woke me, and soon they let us out.

  It was a while to dinner yet, and I took the wife home in the buggy. The side of beef my brother gave us was holding up well in the ice cellar, and I cut her a good roast and made sure she got the cookstove fired before I left to see if anything had happened at the jail.

  You never knew what Johnny Reb would get up to when good Union men marched out to celebrate that happy day four years ago and mourn its aftermath, when our president was shot. The Rebs had their own parade now, not for Appomattox but the firing on Fort Sumter, and they would swagger their puny selves in every little town and praise their hero, John Wilkes Booth, the low cur who had blackened the name of this fair town. Both days, men would get all liquored up, and anything could happen. Someone could get shot.

  This place, you wouldn’t know it from ten years ago. Or twenty anyway. It used to be a sleepy spot where peace officers never had a thing to do. Sometimes we had to round up drunken Negroes on a Saturday, throw them in the clink, and let them sleep it off.

  The most exciting thing I had to do back then was help to throw an ox. Belonging to Will Cairnes, it was, and it had stepped on a porcupine, got quills rammed up through its hoof real bad. It took six of us to throw it on its side. You tie a rope around it, and five men haul it over while someone mans the horns and twists them down. Damned if those quills weren’t in deep, too, wouldn’t budge. They can break off inside and make the animal useless. Had to get old Dr. Jarrett Sr. over there to do a surgery. And what do you think he used? A shell case. Shoved it in around each quill and cut it free. A bloody business, but Jarrett didn’t mind. He had hands like a lathe. That day Will Cairnes broke out the whiskey, and no one talked politics.

  The fifties changed all that. In the fifties half those fellows stopped speaking to the other half. Some of them got shot. Some in your basic barnyard murder. Some in that big barnyard murder they called the Rebel Insurrection. Those years, every meeting turned into a brawl. Men killed their neighbors with bare hands. The paper sent out messages in code to signal all the damn Dragoons and Rifles that it was time to blast a railroad bridge. Half the men in town got rounded up and thrown in stir until the war was done. Only place where you could trust a one of them. But they were out now, on the loose. Some said the war had never stopped and never would.

  But today it was spring, and I had seen most of those miscreants in church. It was a good day for peace. I wanted to enjoy it more, so I turned the horse out to graze and strolled downtown on foot. Bel Air wasn’t big, but it had two wide avenues lined with tall houses and church spires and the courthouse in the square. Whistling as I went, I touched my hat to ladies in spring dresses, their hoopskirts sweeping the cobblestones. My, yes, spring was a fine time.

  In the square, the usual collection of Negro ragamuffins dawdled by the courthouse in ragged pants and no shoes. One had a man’s felt hat so big, it dropped over his ears. Another had a gray Confederate jacket down to his knees. I gave them a good once-over with my eyes to let them know I was watching them. They all looked at the ground.

  “Eustace, Jimbo, Vance. You boys been good today?”

  “Yes, sir, Sheriff,” all three of them said quietly.

  “Good. Now you just keep it that way.” I crossed the street toward the jail.

  I was almost there when I saw a pretty girl in a blue riding suit, striding at me like she meant to do something for sure. I knew who she was, daughter of poor George Cairnes. A spirited girl. I looked around for her brother or uncle, but she seemed to be alone.

  “Why, Miss Martha, what brings you here all by yourself? Everything all right at home?”

  It shot into my head—of course, nothing was all right at home. The last time I saw her she had seemed broken, lying in a dark bedroom that smelled of blood. Day after she was delivered of a bastard child, poor thing. I had to go in there and get the father’s name from her own lips. She was almost too weak to speak. I had to ask her twice and bend my head down close to where she lay. I was careful to keep my eyes down and not look at her, for decency’s sake.

  I have to say, there was no child in evidence. Gossips in the neighborhood made out it had been born a shade too dark, if you take my meaning, and the Negro midwife took it off to be her own. If it was really black, I knew I would have to arrest Miss Martha sooner or later.

  But in this great country, we allow as how a person is innocent till proven otherwise, and that day I gave her the chance to confess or tell me different. And the name she whispered was no black man’s. Once I heard it, I got out of there fast as I could.

  But now she looked herself again. Same girl I called to account for disturbing the peace, galloping her horse through Jarrettsville. Boys in the saloon had a good laugh over that one. The memory made me grin at her, though she did not smile back. And what had she just said?

  “What, miss? What did you say?”

  She looked exasperated, face going red, then pale. “I tell you, I have killed a man. Arrest me now. I must be hung. I want those to be the last words I ever have to say.”

  I thought it was a joke. I chuckled. “Why, Miss Cairnes, that’s quite a thing to tell a man of a Sunday morning. Have you been to church?” You might wonder why I asked that. Maybe just to change the subject. Get back on familiar ground.

  But she waved her hands impatiently. “I tell you, sir, I killed Nicholas McComas last night in Jarrettsville at the hotel. Fifty men saw what I did. You have to hang me now.”

  The name shot through me. McComas—why, was that the name she gave as father of her bastard? My feet realized it first, and they could not hold still. They shuffled side to side and kicked around like some sort of dance. Like a woodcock showing off for his ladies. I tried to make them stop. But they
didn’t. I took her arm and steered her toward the jail, hopping and skipping like a little girl. I tried to get hold of myself.

  “Dead, you say? How many witnesses? And you freely admit . . .”

  I led her through the heavy oak door to the jail, past the wooden counter to a bench in front of the three cells. She tried to go in one, but I hauled her out.

  “Now, hold your horses. You stay out of there.”

  I led her to my office and offered her a chair. “Just sit quiet here.”

  She stayed stiffly on her feet. “Put me behind bars. I demand it.”

  Exasperated, I began to laugh. This was a new one on me. I tipped my hat back, thought better of it, and took it off. She was still a lady, so far as I knew.

  “Can’t do that. Got no warrant to arrest you. Ain’t no one brought this in yet.”

  She gave a little cry. “But I have brought it in! I admit to what I’ve done. I demand to hang right now!”

  I could not locate my desk, I felt so turned around. When I found it, I did a fast look through the papers there, to see if the bailiff might have heard of it and left a note for me. But I saw nothing of the sort. I squared my shoulders. Time to take this here situation in hand.

  “There’ll be no talk of hanging yet. First thing, I gotta have a warrant in my hand and I don’t yet. Hasn’t never been a lady in this jail. We need to get a place to keep you proper. Nobody’s in here right now but you never know. Sometimes we get drunks and Negro thieves. Folks round here wouldn’t put up with that, a lady in the jail with Negro thieves. We have a reputation to keep up, here in Bel Air. Now, you stay right here. I got to find a judge.”