Good Time Coming Page 29

  Her gaze met mine in the mirror. ‘I hope to God that’s a patrol from Camp Moore.’

  Kneeling on the tufted velvet settee beside the window, I carefully parted the lace curtains to see the street filled with soldiers in dark-blue coats and kelpies. Some were white men, their faces sweat-slicked and freshly sunburned. But most were black, the long barrels of their rifles gleaming in the golden light of the waning day.

  Forty-One

  ‘Folks are saying there’s a hundred or more cavalry,’ the innkeeper told us in a hushed voice as the Federal troops settled into the business of occupying the town. ‘Along with some artillery and maybe a hundred infantry from the New York Volunteers. But the rest is all Corps d’Afrique. Hundreds of ’em. That’s why they’re here – they’re recruitin’ whatever slaves is willin’ and impressin’ them that ain’t.’

  The innkeeper was a stout, full-bosomed Irishwoman named Maggie Dwyer, with blunt features and iron-gray hair and almost no teeth. I’d seen her ten-year-old son, Jesse, out in the street, darting through the troops, his sharp-featured face alert and watchful.

  ‘My Jesse says they’re gonna make the college their headquarters. Turned out all the sick and wounded what was there, they did.’

  I thought about the young, one-legged soldier who reminded me of Finn. ‘But … what are they gonna do?’

  ‘I’m putting up as many of ’em as I can here. But don’t you worry; I’m saving you and your momma a room. Ain’t nobody gettin’ out of Jackson as long as that lot is here. Jesse says they’ve posted pickets on all the roads.’

  My mother’s face took on the bleak-eyed starkness of someone confronting a disastrous but unavoidable march of events. ‘I have patients depending on me. I need to get home.’

  ‘We-ell,’ said Mrs Dwyer, turning the word into two syllables. ‘I reckon you could try appealing to the major what’s leadin’ them – he’s one of the Woodville, Mississippi Hanhams, if you can credit it. But if I were you, I’d stay safe indoors till they’re long gone. Pretty thing like yourself, you—’ She broke off, her gaze drifting to me, then grimaced and shrugged. ‘You know.’

  ‘But what if they don’t leave?’ I said.

  Mama just looked at me.

  By late the following afternoon, it was obvious the Federals were settling in for a prolonged stay. I came inside after watching them from the gallery to find my mother once more positioning her hat before the pier glass. I didn’t need to be told where she was going.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I said.

  She looked over at me. ‘It’s not safe, honey.’

  ‘I’m still coming with you. You’ll be safer with me than alone.’

  I expected her to argue with me, but she didn’t. Something was shifting between us, a subtle alteration in how we dealt with each other that had begun perhaps earlier, but had accelerated with the killing of Gabriel Dupont and his sergeant. I could sense that she was beginning to see me less as a child, more as someone she could rely on as our world became increasingly dangerous.

  It didn’t occur to me until later that a similar shift was taking place in the way I saw myself.

  We pushed our way across a raucous street boiling with shouting men and heavy wagons and balking mules, the air thick with the reek of manure and sweat and dusty cotton. It was obvious the Federals weren’t here simply to recruit new troops; they were also stealing cotton from the farms and plantations in the area. Piled high on confiscated wagons, the big bales would be hauled to Port Hudson and then floated down to New Orleans to be loaded on steamers destined for New York and the mills of New England.

  The fences that had until yesterday surrounded the college grounds were mostly gone, torn down for firewood and bedding boards to lift the sleeping soldiers out of the mud. Herds of cavalry horses grazed on the overgrown green, the hot August sun gleaming on their hides. Off to one side stood two big brass artillery pieces, their bores black and deadly. And it came to me that I was looking at the inevitable result of the fall of Port Hudson and Vicksburg; the massive forces that had once been focused on overrunning those two strongholds were now free to roam roughshod over us.

  ‘Hey there, gorgeous,’ called a man in a low, sultry voice. ‘Got somethin’ yer lookin’ to sell?’

  A group of men bunched beside one of the dormitory’s pillars laughed.

  Mama and I kept walking, our gazes fixed straight ahead.

  ‘What the hell you talkin’ about, Meacham?’ said another man. ‘I don’t buy nothin’ from no Secesh. I see somethin’ I want, I take it.’

  A hand reached out to close around my mother’s arm, jerking her around. The cluster of leering men shifted, encircling us. My vision filled with sun-reddened, whiskered faces, bloodshot eyes, and mouths full of rotting teeth. I sucked in a quick breath so fouled with the stench of rancid hair oil and hot male sweat that I wanted to retch.

  ‘Take your hands off that woman,’ someone ordered in a soft Mississippi drawl.

  I craned around to see a small, incredibly dapper young major descending on us, the brass buttons on his dark-blue frock coat gleaming in the sun, the sword at his side swinging with his quick step. He didn’t look as if he could be more than twenty-three or -four, with a neatly trimmed square beard and high cheekbones and a long, patrician nose.

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘What sorts of mothers raised you men? You’re a disgrace to your uniform, your nation, and your sex.’

  The men melted away as the officer drew up before us with a short, punctilious bow. ‘My apologies, ladies. I am Major James Moore Hanham.’ He gestured with an extended hand. ‘Please; may I escort you to my office? If it were up to me,’ he continued as he led us to what looked as if it might once have been a professor’s study, ‘men like that would be horsewhipped. Unfortunately my superiors don’t agree with me.’

  ‘Yet you fight for them,’ said my mother, drawing up just inside the office door.

  The major went to stand behind the broad mahogany desk as if it were his own. ‘I fight for my country.’

  ‘A country that no longer exists.’

  ‘It will again. And soon. Although not, I fear, soon enough to prevent the part of it that you and I both love from being left in such shambles that one wonders if it will ever be set right again.’ He removed one of the absent professor’s cigars from a box on the desktop, bit off the end, and clenched it between his molars without making any move to light it. ‘Please, won’t you sit down? I assume you were on your way to see me for a reason?’

  My mother stayed where she was. ‘My daughter and I wish to return to our home in St Francisville. I’m told we require your permission to leave town.’

  The major rested his knuckles on the desk’s surface and leaned into them. ‘You would, yes. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I can’t give it to you. You see, ma’am, the pickets we’ve posted around town are not there simply to warn us of the enemy’s approach. They are also intended to prevent any of the town’s traitorous citizens from slipping out and alerting the enemy to our presence.’

  ‘Yet your presence will surely in time become known.’

  ‘In time, yes. But we don’t intend to remain long. We’re here recruiting slaves for the Corps d’Afrique.’

  ‘Recruiting or impressing?’

  A musket popped in the distance, but he didn’t even look around. We’d been hearing occasional gunfire ever since the Federals arrived. It seemed as if they were always shooting at something: squirrels, ducks, chickens, cats, dogs, shadows.

  ‘Most enlist willingly,’ he said. ‘Eagerly, in fact. But those who don’t are impressed, yes, just like the Irish immigrants on the streets of New York City. The Democrats made them all citizens, and now they’re rioting because they can’t afford the three hundred dollars to keep from being drafted.’

  ‘And because, ironically, the Negroes on the streets of New York are not being drafted since they’re not considered citizens.’

  Another sputter of distant rifle fire
sounded.

  He pointed the unlit cigar at her and grinned. ‘Very true. Tell me: do you play chess?’

  ‘No.’

  I glanced over at her in surprise. She was always trouncing Papa at chess.

  ‘Pity,’ he murmured. ‘The thing is, the Negroes are a wonderful untapped source of manpower. If the South had enlisted them two years ago as some suggested, this war might be turning out very differently. But you and I both know the terror kindled in the Southern breast by the very thought of Africans with guns.’

  A shout went up on the far side of the green, then another.

  ‘A not unreasonable fear, under the circumstances,’ said my mother.

  ‘Perhaps. Are you certain you don’t—’

  He broke off as a bugle call cut through the air; from the open window came the distant thunder of hooves. I could see troopers running, horses sidling nervously as saddles were thrown on their backs.

  ‘What the— Excuse me, ladies.’

  He hurried to the door just as a dusty, hot soldier smelling of saddle leather and horse sweat appeared. ‘Force of rebel cavalry, sir,’ he said, panting hard. ‘Must be five hundred of ’em or more, comin’ in fast.’

  ‘Form up a battle line parallel to the street,’ shouted the major, throwing away his unlit cigar. ‘We’ll—’ He paused to turn and shout back at us, ‘For God’s sake, you women stay here. And keep away from that window!’

  Forty-Two

  The Confederate cavalry swept through the streets of Jackson, the fierce golden light of the setting sun at their backs, their horses’ hooves pounding on the hard earth. I watched frozen with fascination as they thundered down on the hastily drawn up line of Federal infantry. The silken colors of battle flags unfurled against the sky; drums rolled and bugles shrilled, and from hundreds of rebel throats came a high-pitched, ululating yell like a cross between an Indian war whoop and the scream of a cougar. An oddly mingled shiver of excitement and fear ran up my spine. I could not tear my gaze away.

  ‘Amrie. Please, get down.’

  ‘Hold your line,’ I heard someone shout. ‘Fire!’

  The splintering crack of hundreds of rifles cut through the air. I ducked down, my back to the wall, my hands splaying out at my sides.

  ‘Fire!’

  I could smell the drifting powder smoke, hear wood splintering from the oaks and strange thwunking thumps I realized must be the sound of hot bullets burying themselves deep into the trunks of trees.

  Or the bodies of men.

  I turned my head to meet my mother’s gaze. We had lived through more than two years of war, endured constant raiding parties and the shelling of Federal gunboats. But this was the closest we had ever been to an actual battle. I could feel the earth tremble with the pounding of hundreds of hooves. Then the reverberating boom of a cannon sent a shell whistling through the air to explode with a roar.

  The din was deafening, a confused tumult of men shouting orders, cheering, cursing, screaming. Horses neighed and squealed; men cried out in agony. Then a clash of steel joined the endless cough and crack of musketry. The gunpowder grew so thick it pinched my nostrils and stung my eyes. One of the windowpanes shattered beside us, spraying shards of glass across the bare floorboards, and I bit down hard on my lip to choke back a startled scream.

  I could not understand how anyone could survive such a maelstrom of tearing, exploding, ripping death. And it struck me that battle was a kind of infectious madness, a brutal, primitive, socially sanctioned excess of brutality and savagery that defied logic and required a rejection of everything truly good and noble about humanity.

  My mother said, ‘It sounds like some of our cavalry is sweeping around behind the building.’

  I realized the yelling was now coming from two directions. I heard someone shout, ‘Hold your line!’ Then: ‘Back! Back!’

  I said, ‘Does this mean we’re winning?’ How could anyone tell who was winning or losing in such a wild, smoke-billowed confusion? How could you know who was companion and who was enemy? Or did you just fire and hack and scream your way forward in a frenzy of terror-driven bloodlust and rage?

  Yet even I, blinded by smoke and crouching behind thick brick walls, could sense that the line of battle was shifting, that the Federals must be falling back toward Pine Street and Asylum Branch Bridge, their artillery now silent, the sustained crackle of rifle fire becoming more ragged and distant.

  Beside me, my mother shifted ever so slightly, her hand reaching out to clutch mine. And my world narrowed down to the mingled panting of our shallow breaths and an unnatural awareness of the blood coursing through my veins and the reassuring pressure of my mother’s living flesh against mine.

  We emerged into a hellish world of shredded leaves, splintered branches, and jagged chunks of bullet-torn wood that covered a hillside littered with the dark bodies of men and downed horses and every imaginable kind of debris. Wounded horses thrashed and screamed; someone somewhere was crying over and over again, ‘Momma! Oh, God; Momma …’ Someone else screamed in agony. The air was thick with the smell of blood and offal and a stench that reminded me of burning cane fields.

  ‘Jesus,’ whispered my mother beside me.

  We could still hear desultory rifle shots in the distance. Yet already the people of Jackson were emerging to spread out over the battlefield. I watched a boy of eight or ten yank the boots off a dead Federal who lay with his head thrown back, flies already circling his open mouth and the bloody pulp of his chest, his outflung hands curling into claws. Nearby a woman was shoving everything from cartridge boxes to knapsacks into a bulging old flour sack. To a people starved by two years of brutal blockade and stripped of the barest essentials by succeeding waves of raiding parties, every blanket roll and bowie knife, every canteen, every button or spent bullet was precious.

  A familiar, one-legged boy on a crutch was hobbling from one screaming downed horse to the next, systematically putting them out of their misery with a rifle. I saw one sobbing woman – slim, fair-haired, still relatively young – kneel beside a moaning, writhing soldier whose face ended in a bloody, bubbling mess, his lower jaw shot away. She eased the pistol from his belt, pressed the muzzle to his temple, and put up one crooked arm to shield her face from the splatter as she pulled the trigger. The report echoed through the foul, smoky air of the coming evening, and I jerked. I might have thought it an act of cold revenge had I not seen the fierce compassion that pinched her face. Nearby, a middle-aged man in a bowler hat and broadcloth coat was hunched over retching uncontrollably, the sour stench of his vomit making my own stomach heave.

  ‘Amrie,’ called my mother. ‘Grab some of those canteens and start taking water to the wounded. And you there,’ she called to the vomiting banker, ‘help carry this man inside.’

  Her face pale and set, she worked unflinching to separate the wounded from the hideously mangled dead, then corralled strong women and some of the less aged men to help carry the living up the hill to the dormitories. I kept expecting Captain Lamar Crowley to appear and start braying about the weakness of the fair sex. But someone said he’d hightailed it into the woods yesterday at the first sign of the Yankees.

  ‘Reckon he’s in Clinton by now,’ said Jesse Dwyer, sporting a new bowie knife on his belt and a fine pair of boots.

  I saw perhaps half a dozen dead and wounded men wearing ragged, patched uniforms of gray and butternut. But a hundred or more Federals lay sprawled over the college green and the surrounding streets. I moved from one moaning man to the next, their hands clutching my wrist as I held the canteen up so they could drink, the water running down their chins to wash clean rivulets through the grime and powder and blood. I recognized one of the dead as the man who had grabbed my mother. He lay with one leg bent, his head thrown back, eyes wide and staring, his belly a torn, bloody tangle of exposed entrails.

  I passed him by without another glance.

  My mother worked through most of the night, sawing off shattered limbs and sewing u
p saber slashes. At one point, the commander of the Confederate cavalry, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, intense colonel from Arkansas named John L. Logan, appeared and started to question her competency. She looked up at him, her face streaked and splattered with blood, and said calmly, ‘Do you care to take over, Colonel?’

  He backed from the room, hands splayed out to his sides.

  I found her just before dawn, slumped asleep beside a fair-haired boy whose bandage-wrapped chest jerked painfully with each breath. Her basket of medicines, which we’d found untouched in one of the debate rooms, rested at her side. It was now nearly empty.

  I started to creep away, but she awoke, a faint smile lighting her eyes when she saw me. ‘Why are you up, honey? You must be exhausted.’

  ‘I came to see how you’re doin’.’

  She glanced at the boy on the cot beside her. ‘I’m not sure he’s going to make it.’

  ‘Where’s he from?’

  ‘Vermont.’

  ‘So why do you care?’

  ‘Oh, Amrie … They’re just men – good, loyal men, like Papa and Uncle Tate and all the others – risking their lives for what they believe in.’

  ‘No, they’re not. If they were good men, they wouldn’t be down here burning our houses and shooting our cows and stealing anything and everything they can get their hands on.’

  ‘Amrie—’

  I ran from the room, my bare feet slapping against the cool brick of the walkway. The soft pink glow of the rising sun warmed the long row of tall white columns beside me, turning them a rich pastel hue. The damp air smelled of grass and wood smoke. I could see the dark, bullet-shattered branches of the live oaks silhouetted against the lightening sky, hear a cavalry horse nickering in the distance, the sound clear and disembodied by the morning mist.

  I ran on, following the path that led across the overgrown, abandoned railroad tracks to the burial ground that had been set up when Centenary College became a hospital. The bare earth of the new Southern graves showed dark and stark against the grass and, beyond that, I could see the trench that had been dug off to one side for the Federal soldiers, in case they ever chose to reclaim their dead.