by Джон Джейкс
When he returned to the brigade in Sussex County, he lied to Ab, saying the visit had been a fine one.
75
"Miss Jane, I have got to confess —"
He had walked her to the stoop of her cabin in the dusk, tightening up his nerve along the way. She smiled to encourage him.
"I love you. I pray for the day I'm a free man and can ask for your hand."
He had flirted with the declaration before but never said it outright. The words made her warm and happy. She looked at Andy against a background of cabins and overhanging trees and mist rolling in from the river to fill the spaces between. The hidden sun lit the mist to a dusty rose color. Softly, she said, "The day will come. When it does, I'll be proud to say yes."
He clapped his hands. "Great God! I'd kiss you if there weren't so many people watching."
Laughing, too, she said, "I don't see anyone." She pecked his cheek and ran inside. She leaned against the door, clasping her hands against the cleft of her breast. "Oh, my. Oh, my."
Then the smell assaulted her. The smell of a dirty body and spirits. It wrenched her mind, gripped her attention. He was lounging against the whitewashed wall, his eyes bleary. Where had he gotten whiskey? Stolen it from the house?
"How dare you sneak in here, Cuffey. Get out."
He didn't move. Giving her a sly smile, he reached down and fingered himself. "I heard what that nigger said. He loves you." The dark brown hand loosened one button after another until he could show her what was underneath. "He can't do it near as good as me."
"You drunken, foul-minded —"
Cuffey let go of himself and ran at her. Jane cried out and groped for the door latch. He caught her shoulder, yanking her so hard she stumbled. Then someone struck the other side of the door, driving her over to the other wall. She hit with a jolt, dazed, not seeing the door crash back or Andy peering in. Anxious blacks crowded the little porch.
Cuffey said, "Shut that door, nigger. Go do what you do bes' — kiss ol' Meek's backside."
Andy quickly took it in: Jane slumped by the wall, bracing herself with her hands, Cuffey stuffing his dangling organ back into his pants. Andy tilted his head downward slightly and walked into the cabin.
Cuffey picked up an old stool and swept it in an arc, striking Andy's head. One leg of the stool broke; somehow the splintered end drew blood from Andy's temple. The blood streamed into his eye as he jumped at Cuffey and aimed a powerful but mistimed punch. Cuffey easily avoided it, then jabbed at Andy's eye with the splintered leg.
"Let him be. Wait for help," Jane pleaded. If Andy heard, he paid no attention. He walked forward like a soldier in a skirmish line, upright, scared, but never wavering. He laced his hands together to create a double fist. Cuffey kicked him between the legs.
Andy doubled over, letting out a clenched, hurt sound. But he stayed on his feet. He lifted his joined hands and struck Cuffey where his neck met his left shoulder, a sideways blow that shot Cuffey against the wall and made him grunt explosively.
"You been begging somebody to do this," Andy said, looming over the other man, pounding downward with his joined hands. He slammed the top of Cuffey's head. This time Cuffey yelled. Andy began to hammer him like a nail, pushing him down to a crouch, then to his knees, working in sideways blows to the face for good measure. Cuffey's ear bled.
"Watch out, Andy, Mist' Meek comin'," someone called from the street. Jane stood, saw the blacks on the porch disappear and the overseer stride into view, pulling a pistol from his wide belt.
"Who's fighting in here?"
"Cuffey and Andy," a woman answered, just as Andy raised Cuffey by the front of his soiled shirt. Blood leaked from Cuffey's nose as well as his ear. He blew the blood and mucus into Andy's face.
"I kill you, nigger. You an' everybody on this place."
"Let him go, Andy," Meek ordered from the doorway. Andy turned toward the overseer. The blood from his temple blurred his vision a little. Cuffey saw his chance and gave his adversary a shove.
Andy staggered, thrown back against the overseer. Cuffey tore down the flour-sack curtains Jane had tacked over the back window. He flipped one leg over the sill. "Give me room to shoot," Meek shouted, pushing Andy.
Cuffey grabbed Jane and swung her into the line of fire. Meek jerked the pistol upward, and Cuffey dropped down outside the window. He bolted away into rose mist that was deepening to gray.
"Stop, nigger," Meek commanded, discharging one round. Cuffey disappeared behind a live oak. The mist stirred and settled.
Meek swore an uncharacteristic oath. "Andy, what happened?"
"I was outside and — I heard Jane cry out." The words were labored; he was still breathing hard.
"I came inside and found him hiding here," Jane said. "He said dirty things to me, then unbuttoned his trousers."
The listeners outside, especially the women, expostulated and groaned. Still angry at losing the culprit, Meek snorted, "If we gelded all you bucks, things'd be a sight more peaceful."
Andy glared: "Listen here —"
The overseer was too mad to pay much attention. And just then a voice rolled out of the deep rose mist behind the cabin.
"I'll kill ever one of you on this place, you hear me?"
"Get some men," Meek said to Andy. "Eight or ten at least. It's a bad night to chase runaways, but we're going to catch that one. Then I'm going to sell him off."
The pursuit ended three hours later, when the mist had become fog. By the light of a fatwood torch he was carrying, Andy reported the failure to Jane. "I 'spect he's gone for good. Toward Beaufort, most likely."
"Good riddance," she said. The dank night and the memory of Cuffey's wild face made her uneasy. She knew what kind of life Cuffey had led. His hatreds — Mont Royal, its owners, the more docile slaves — were understandable. Yet she nurtured the same hostilities and so did Andy, and neither had been ruined by them.
"Maybe I ought to keep watch here on the porch till morning," he suggested.
"He won't come back."
"You heard what he yelled after he jumped out the window."
"Cuffey's been a braggart ever since I've known him. We'll never see him again."
"Surely hope you're right. Well — good night, then."
"Good night, Andy." She touched his face below the strip of linen tied around his head to protect the clotted cut. "You're a brave man. I meant what I said about being proud to marry you."
His eyes shone in the flaring light. "Thank you."
He walked down the creaking steps into the fog. As soon as her door closed he extinguished his torch, faced about, and quietly lowered himself to the edge of the porch, where he intended to stay until daylight.
Although Jane was awake for some time, she didn't know he was out there. She heard instead the noises of the spring night beyond the window from which Cuffey had torn the curtain. She heard the doglike barks of the frogs, the three-note chant of the chuck-will’s-widow, the drone of insects. And, in imagination, she heard a voice promising vengeance. She lay with her hand clenched against her cheek, wishing she didn't hear the voice but unable to silence it.
76
In the early morning of April 28, Billy wrote by the light of a candle pushed into the mounting ring of a borrowed bayonet.
Lije F. and yr. obdt. are detached with a volunteer co. for duty with Gen. Slocum's three corps. We march upstream tomorrow. Some suspect a great sweep around Lee and a strike at his rear. The regulars and vols are cooking rations for 8 days. Pack mules numbering 2,000 will replace most of the supply wagons, further evidence of a desire for speed and surprise.
Weather is better — rains over, though roads & stream banks remain very muddy in some places; we will earn our pay planking the worst spots.
Among the army's current complement of vols, about half are replacements for deserters or the dead, wounded & sick; most of the greenhorns are foolishly excited at the prospect of battle — much happier to march forward than stay behind with those
corps which will apparently demonstrate against Lee's works in Fredericksburg, or below the town. One such corps is Howard's XI, the Germans, almost universally detested as radicals, revolutionaries — fugitives from the trouble of 1848 whether they be so or not. Almost without exception, the Dutchmen swear by Old Abe and his proclamation, while the rest of the army swears at them. We have not much tolerance — and I point the finger of conscience first at myself. Yesterday I saw two Negro teamsters in army blue and confess to being unsettled by the sight. Lije prayed twenty mins. longer than usual tonight. At supper, while a band played "The Girl I Left Behind Me," I asked why. He replied, Do not forget who is over in Fredericksburg. Two of the best — Bob Lee & Old Jack. Lije said he had implored the Almighty to confuse their minds and impair their judgment, though he stated this was done with regret, as both generals are staunch Christians. Wish I were, Brett. It might ease my soul. I am sick of the dirt and killing and cannot take any joy in what's to come, as the vols do. But they are boys yet. They will be something else before this spring's over.
Late the next day, Billy and a detachment of twelve volunteer engineers found a farmhouse with a sturdy barn and a smaller outbuilding from which the breeze brought the powerful odor of chicken droppings.
"What d'you think, sir?" asked the senior noncom with the group, a youth from Syracuse named Spinnington. He had been appointed corporal because he seemed less lazy and stupid than the other replacements; no positive traits recommended him.
From the roadside Billy studied the neatly kept buildings surrounded by a small orchard of peach trees. The detachment had fallen out around a wagon commandeered from another farm. Other detachments, with wagons similarly obtained, were roaming the countryside just above the Rapidan. Screened by Stoneman's horse, the army had marched with great secrecy and encountered no difficulties until reaching the chosen ford. The rain-swollen river could still be crossed, but its near bank was a bog where it should be solid.
"Sir?" Spinnington prodded. Billy continued to stare at the farmhouse, wishing he could give the order to move on. He felt tired enough to drop. He knew that had little to do with the forced march from Fredericksburg and everything to do with the task at hand.
Billy's beard had grown out during the winter; it was carelessly trimmed, and matted in places. Despite a natural stockiness, he had a curiously shrunken appearance. Seen with his brother George, he might have been picked as the older — or so he thought on those increasingly rare occasions when he saw himself in the scrap of polished tin he used as a mirror. The reflected face had a saggy look, as if it were made of melting candle tallow.
Spinnington fidgeted. Billy said, "All right."
There were whoops as the new replacements charged the house, the low-lying sun gilding an ax blade, the face of a boy with a crowbar. Their elongated shadows climbed up the side of the house.
The front door opened; a man came out. A tiny man with a white tuft of beard but huge strong hands.
Billy approached the porch. Before he could speak, a woman appeared behind the man. She weighed three times what he did and stood a head taller.
"Mr. Tate," she said, "get back inside. General Hooker's men who came by said we'd be shot if we stepped one foot in the open."
"It's a bluff," the old farmer said. "They're afraid we'll slip over the Rapidan and warn Bob Lee. I wouldn't do that. I have to protect this place. That's why I must talk to these boys."
"Mr. Tate —"
"What do you boys want?" the old fanner called over his wife's continuing objection.
Billy pulled off his kepi. "Sir, I regret to inform you that we've been sent to forage for lumber and siding. We need them because the Germanna ford is a mire and must be planked so General Hooker's forces can cross the river. I'll be obliged if you and your wife will go back inside and permit us to do our work."
"What work?" the old man cried, his white tuft twitching in the twilight breeze. "What work?"
He knew. Ashamed to look him in the eye, Billy bobbed his head at Spinnington. "Get them to work, Corporal. Take the barn first, and maybe we'll get enough to fill the wagon. Maybe we can leave the chicken house alone."
"It's taken me all my life to build this place," the old man said, clutching the porch post, angry tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"I'm sorry, sir. Truly sorry."
A nail squealed, a raw, screaming sound. Two volunteers pried off the first piece of siding. Another ran it to the wagon.
The old farmer lurched off the porch. Billy drew his side arm. The farmer hesitated, sat down on the steps, and gave Billy a look he would never forget. Then the farmer stared at his shoes as the engineer volunteers tore the barn apart. They brought out crosscut saws for the pillars and beams. They had it all down by dark, leaving the unpenned milk cows and plow horses wandering around the chicken house. Billy sat on the seat of the wagon as it rolled away and didn't permit himself to look back.
An entry in his journal, made sometime between sunset that evening and dawn on April 30, read:
I hate what I am becoming because of this war.
"It's the Dutchmen," Spinnington snarled. "The fucking Dutchmen caved in."
"Shut up," Billy said, naked to the waist, swinging the ax two-handed and bracing for the shock when it bit into the five-inch trunk of the elm.
It was just daylight. An hour ago, while the Wilderness burned, set afire by shells, Billy's detachment had been rushed from Slocum's Twelfth Corps to the relatively clear ground at the Chancellorsville crossing. To judge from the heavy presence of headquarters guards and all the couriers riding up and galloping away again, General Hooker was holed up inside the white manor house. No one professed to know what he was doing, but one thing appeared certain: Fighting Joe's great scheme had come to nothing.
Hooker had gained his planned position in the Wilderness, been poised to smash Lee from the rear — and had thrown away the advantage. Why? Billy thought, timing the ax blows to reinforce the raging repetition of the question. Why?
Yesterday Fighting Joe had started his men forward to a more advantageous offensive position — higher and more open ground beyond the edge of the Wilderness. When his men encountered enemy fire, he called off the advance. Corps commanders had not concealed their fury. Billy had heard what General Meade said; it had spread everywhere, like the fire in the woods: "If he can't hold the top of a hill, how can he expect to hold the bottom?"
But now they were preparing for precisely that. Swing; why? Swing back; why?
"Stand back," Billy yelled, pushing men as the elm swayed and tilted. The men scattered, the tree crashed, the volunteers leaped forward, stirring the raw, smarting smoke that came partly from the unseen cannon, partly from the fiery forest.
Yesterday, while Hooker shilly-shallied and lost his chance at a superior position, Bob Lee and Old Jack had been busy outfoxing him. Jackson had led his men on one of their famous lightning marches, this one a damnably risky flanking movement. But he had pulled it off without discovery and by nightfall stood ready to savage the Union right. Howard's Dutchmen were at ease there, enjoying their supper. Old Jack's whooping, screaming farm boys took them totally by surprise.
That was the start of the end of Hooker's great plan. Now the rebs were on the offensive throughout the second-growth forest. God knew where they would appear next — which was the reason Union soldiers were frantically preparing rifle pits to defend the open ground at the crossroads, while axmen, including Billy and his detachment, felled trees in front of the lines.
They slashed off branches, bound others together with ropes and vines, sharpened still others and fixed them to point toward the smoke where the rebs might be lurking. The abatis was a defensive fortification, not one employed by troops who meant to march ahead and win. Perhaps Fighting Joe had lost the advantage at the same mysterious spot where he had misplaced his nerve. Even rumors that a stray reb ball had wounded or killed Old Jack last night didn't lif
t the army's gloom, any more than daylight had lifted the choking smoke.
Chop and chop. Spinnington worked on Billy's left, Lije just beyond. On his right, bent over so as to minimize exposure in case of a sniper attack, was a volunteer whose name he didn't know. The man's posture didn't permit much work. Billy had an impulse to split the coward's head with his ax, but he supposed Lije would object.
White beard gleaming with sweat drops, Lije lifted his heavy ax with his right hand, as if it weighed no more than a straw. He pointed the ax at a tree larger than most, an oak about a foot in diameter.
"That one next, lads. She will fall to the right if we cut her properly. We may then turn her ninety degrees and fix points on some of those topmost branches to torment the enemy." Billy managed an exhausted laugh. What a rock Lije was. Every remark to his men was round and complete as a sermon sentence.
Lije also spoke loudly, which was necessary because of the continual noise: drumming and bugling, men shouting, small arms crackling, strays from the beef herd mooing as they ran down the narrow turnpike or got snared in the forest vines and bled from thorn pricks. Catching a nap at three in the morning, Billy had had his stomach stepped on by a wandering cow.
Now, renewed artillery fire increased the din. The firing came from south of Chancellorsville. Inexplicably, Sickles had been withdrawn from another piece of high ground, a place called Hazel Grove. Had the rebs moved fieldpieces into that favorable position?
Billy and Lije attacked the oak from opposite sides. Lije met his eye, smiled in a weary, fatherly way. Chop and chop. Billy wished he had the older man's faith. If God stood with the Union, why did Old Jack surprise and whip them every time?
They had notched a white vee into the trunk when, above the noise of men, horses, wheels, guns, Billy picked up a more ominous one: the scream of a shell. "Put your heads down," he shouted to those nearby. "That one's coming in mighty —"
