Coffee Bluff

by Willard White

adolescent.

  It promised to be a warm day for December on the coast, but I was deeply chilled. It seemed like I hadn't been warm for weeks. Fear and fatigue combined to keep a cold weight of dread in my gut. I looked forward to the heat from the pot-bellied stove at Frank's, accompanied by one more day of danger and making myself agreeable in the dark, damp lair of my enemies known as Frank's Chandlery.

  Frank's place was the only eating and drinking establishment left in the shanty-town of Coffee Bluff. Before the war, Frank Barclay had developed a significant business on the bluff overlooking the Forest River. He had built docks, and a barn for his cotton exchange and a chandlery, and there was a saloon where plantation owners rubbed shoulders with sailors and stevedores.

  Now Barclay was dead and so was most of his business. The blockade had stopped the cotton business completely. The town, which couldn't have amounted to much in good times, shriveled up and died like a poisoned gourd vine. The only thing that kept Coffee Bluff from being a ghost town was the soldiers at Schley Battery which overlooked the confluence of the rivers; Forest, Little Ogeechee and Vernon.

  I limped through the woods to the back door of my shack. I rented it for the cover, but had never actually slept there. I got myself up the two steps and in the door. I drew a pot of water from the pump, put it on the stove for my bath and started the fire.

  After bathing, my exhaustion retreated a little. Putting my right boot on, with a knee that bloomed with fire and pain when I bent it, brought tears to my eyes. With my fingers, I combed the pine needles and general detritus out of my hair and beard. I passed through the front room of my two room shanty, out the front door, and down onto the road. To anyone watching it would appear that I had just gotten out of bed. I looked forward to falling asleep in a chair against the wall at Frank's. It wouldn't be inconsistent with my persona of a war-damaged and alcoholic former rebel soldier, flotsam from the war, floated up to this particular backwater saloon. The bar-keeper, my old rival Chester Baker, would have cheese and bread available. Baker didn't remember me from before the war, but I remembered him. Three years ago, we had competed for the attention of lovely and precocious Julia Branch. I wondered if her father had ever found an acceptable husband for her. Of more immediate importance, Baker would have a batch of tea simmering on the pot bellied stove.

  Chester's uncle Frank had built a busy and profitable cotton factoring business and chandlery in the barn. The lean-to structure on the south side of the barn facing the river, which was all that was left of the business, was my destination; it housed the combination saloon and chandlery. Those days before the war, were the best days for the building. Over the years, the weather had widened the cracks between the boards, and the odors of spilled beer, sweat and vomit had been added to the atmosphere without losing the historic odors of horses and cows.

  The interior was poorly lighted by a single grimy south-facing window and a smoking gas lamp which hung above the card table. A few pots and pans and other hardware store items left over from better days were hanging on nails driven into the walls and rafters. The place was empty. I was the first customer of the day. Chester Baker stood behind the bar; he looked right at me and didn't speak. I pushed the door closed behind me and headed for the meat, bread and cheese on the table by the stove.

  Chester Baker's drinking customers would be coming in soon, and they were not the upper crust of Savannah. They were basically the dregs, unfit to serve in the military for one reason or another. Age, injuries, even insanity insulated them from the war, at least for the time being. They were also insulated against lucrative jobs, decent boots and clothes.

  Before the war, Chester's uncle had plantation owners and ship's crews drinking shoulder to shoulder in his establishment. The blockade had put an end to that. The barn was full of cotton and it was stacked and rotting on flats all around the business. Neither plantation owners nor sailors came around any more, only the unsuitables and a few off-duty soldiers visited the drinking establishment these days. Some were war-wounded like Chester, some were desperate criminals who would knife a man for ten Confederate dollars. I suppose that's why Baker wore a break-back revolver ostentatiously on his hip when tending bar. And he tended bar himself, for I'd learned that he had long ago let his last employee go.

  Julia was riding her horse at breakneck speed. Her bonnet had developed wings and flown away into the bright sky, and her hair was flying in the wind. She was low over the horse's neck with one hand on the reins and the other hand trying to hold the billowing skirt of her dress down. The horse seemed to have sprouted wings from his shoulders and was experimenting with them so that his hooves hit the ground only occasionally.

  I woke with a start and nearly crashed my chair to the floor. I found myself sitting against the wall in Frank's near the stove. I rubbed my face, then struggled to my feet, moved to the bar and ordered a pint. I'd been asleep for perhaps a couple of hours and my mind was a muzzy mess. It was before noon and I needed to be there in the bar, listening, in case anything useful was said. It didn't seem too likely, in this backwater place, that I would pick up anything of value. But I had to keep trying, time was running out. It was painfully apparent that Sherman needed to move on the fort soon.

  Frank's place was situated on the north shore of the Forest River, some two or three miles to the northeast of Fort McAllister. Those miles were covered in marsh grass and tidal canals, unnavigable under normal circumstances. We suspected that boats did navigate those tidal creeks with supplies and ammunition for the fort at night when the tide was high and there was no moon. Sherman had cut off the land routes from Savannah to Fort McAllister. My purpose in slithering around Coffee Bluff was to discover if the fort was being reinforced across the marsh in the night in preparation for Sherman's inevitable assault.

  In theory, putting a spy into Frank's was a worthwhile endeavor. Rebel troops could march down the road from Savannah and embark from the docks right in front of Frank's place. In reality this seemed to be the very backwater sort of place where absolutely nothing happened, ever. I surveyed the customers in the bar, and it was a sorry lot. An old man named Jake and a deranged man named Harry were playing cards at a table in the back with a couple of off-duty soldiers from the nearby Schley Battery. I considered that, in a little while, I would have to ask them if I could sit in. Perhaps one of the troops would let slip something useful about troop build-ups at Camp Schley, or of boats being brought up overland.

  I could tell from across the room that the soldiers had never been in battle. Their easy smiles, their jokes, their confidence and optimism made it clear that they had never seen combat. For another thing, they were gunners. From the perspective of an infantryman there was something disrespectful about maiming and killing men from a mile behind your own lines. To show proper respect, you have to look a man in the eye for a second before you pull your bayonet out of his chest.

  I didn't like playing cards with Jake and Harry. The cards were so greasy and dog eared they could easily be remembered. Jake and Harry played with that same deck every day and in a glance they could tell what you were holding. Harry cheated consistently and played poorly. He practiced his poker face and thought he was brilliant, but I could tell when he held a good hand, he leaned forward in anticipation. When he was bluffing, he leaned back slightly. I could have beaten him even though he had marked every card in the deck. Harry was abusive, however, and dangerously crazy. Although he cheated constantly, he was always accusing others of cheating, and would on occasion pull a large knife from its sheath beneath his left arm and stick it into the table top to make a point.

  Jake, on the other hand, was simply too old to go to war. He had no teeth and his face had collapsed around his jutting lower jaw. His folded over mouth leaked tobacco from the corner, and he had the unfortunate habit of brushing the juice back along the side of his face with his right hand. Consequently his beard was white on the left
side and brown on the right.

  The card games were risky for me because I was compelled to put up with poor players, poor cheaters, and insults. It didn't suit my cover to get caught up in a bar fight. I needed to avoid drawing attention to myself at all costs. So I gradually lost my Confederate dollars at the table and tried to listen to what the soldiers had to say.

  For now, though, my beer and the one-legged bartender had my attention. I had known the bartender slightly four years before, that is to say before the war started. He wasn't a bartender in those days, rather he was a young rake about Savannah. He had two legs back then, and so did I. Actually, I still had my right leg, it just would no longer bend at the knee. Fortunately for me, our acquaintance had been slight and my appearance had changed so much Baker didn't recognize me. Chester's appearance and status had also changed considerably in the last four years. Four years ago, I would have cheerfully killed him at dawn with a sword or a pistol, he could have had the choice.

  Julia's father had made a duel moot by ordering me to stay away from Julia. It seemed my family didn't have enough