Chapter 10
10
Forty dead men.
That was what they called it, because, Weybridge knew, most Union soldiers were allocated forty cartridges before going into battle. At least that was the intended practice. It was an inexact science and distribution. It was Eustis Marsh’s voice that he heard. He was saying something about ammunition. There was the smell of gunpowder, metallic and sulfurous.
“Forty dead men?”
A woman’s voice now. He opened his eyes and saw the Negro woman sitting in a chair beside him. He was in that lovely bedroom. The four-poster bed. It all came back to him as he emerged from whatever it was he’d been dreaming, the vision already less tangible than steam. She had a plate with fried eggs and a biscuit in her hands, and she wanted to feed him.
“Did I say that?” he asked her.
“You did. And your voice sounded good. Stronger than I’ve heard it.”
Sometimes he did talk in his sleep. Emily had told him.
“I didn’t kill forty men,” he murmured. “At least not at one time. Not even…”
“Not even what?”
“Not even altogether,” he said, but if one could ever tally all the Vermonters he had led into battle who’d died and all the rebels they’d killed, the combined total would dwarf that strange, biblical number. Forty. He looked at a small painting of hills on the far wall. Those hills were reminiscent of home. As he gathered himself, there was the usual ache from the remains of his leg and his hand, a further reminder of where he was. He pressed his right hand and his left leg into the mattress and pushed himself up into a sitting position.
“That looked like it hurt,” the woman said.
“A little.”
“But I’m guessing that means you want to eat.”
He did. “Do you have coffee?”
She laughed. “We ain’t had coffee in two years. We got boilt chicory. Small cup, maybe. You want some?”
“Drinkable?” He found himself speaking in short sentences. It was easier. But he did feel stronger than yesterday. Sleep and food would do that, he supposed. The body—perhaps even his—still wanted to mend.
“Barely.”
He smiled. “Sure.”
“But eat these first.” She started to slice off a piece of the egg with the side of her fork, but he stopped her.
“I’m sorry,” he said carefully. “I don’t remember your name.”
“Sally.”
“Thank you…Sally.”
“It’s nothing.”
“May I…”
“What?”
He put out both hands. “I want to try myself.”
She shrugged and placed the plate on the coverlet on his lap. She gave him the fork. He tested its weight in his right fingers, then glanced down at his left hand, still wrapped in ticking and lint. It hadn’t seemed to have oozed overnight.
“You can do it,” said Sally.
He thought about this, but paused. “Libby. Has she left?”
“She has. While ago. She and Joseph were off before sunrise. It was light out. But early.” She must have seen the anxiety on his face, because she reassured him, “Fighting’s over in Winchester. They’ll be fine. Joseph is smarter than most any man I’ve ever met. And Libby? Ferocious girl.”
“Girl.”
“Still a girl to me,” Sally said. “And you’re just a boy, even if you do have them captain’s bars.”
Girl. He could almost, but not quite, recall a quote from Cooper’s The Deerslayer. That all-seeing eye discriminating between the living and the dead. The unfortunate…girl. Lifted from…no, removed from…or beyond…human rituals.
There was more to it than that, but he was not going to remember.
“If they do reach Harper’s Ferry, no Union soldier will shoot them,” he said. “They might not believe Libby or give her what she wants…but they won’t shoot her.”
“You sure about that?”
“I am,” he said, but he wasn’t. It depended on how young and green or old and angry the pickets were.
“Mostly I’m worried about Southerners,” the woman told him. “I fret whenever Joseph leaves Berryville. People don’t know him.”
“May I ask you something?”
“?’Course.”
“You and Joseph…you’re slaves. But…”
“We ain’t slaves,” she corrected him, her tone firm. “I am a freedwoman and Joseph is a freedman. Peter Steadman freed us before the war.”
“Peter. Libby’s husband?”
“That’s right.”
“And you stayed?”
“Everyone else left, including our children. But Joseph wanted to run the mill with Peter and get paid for it. That was part of it. Other part? We were both too old and too set in our ways to start again somewhere else. And then came the war.”
And then came the war. He’d heard that construction a lot, as if the war were a northeaster that just appeared on the horizon, not the result of white men across the South wanting to keep people in chains. “What did you do on this property before Libby’s husband set you free?”
She stared at him intensely. Then: “You don’t know me well enough to ask some things, Captain. And there are parts of my life that ain’t your business.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I am very glad you’re here. You, your army. If it takes this war to set us all free, so be it. God’s will be done.”
He nodded.
“Libby will never treat me the same way she would a white woman,” Sally continued. “I know that. You know that or will find that out. Not sure she knew any Negroes in Charlottesville who weren’t slaves. But she likes Joseph and me, she respects us, and she knows the two of us are all she got. She figured out we are ’bout the only friends she has in these parts, given the way folks ’round here did not appreciate Peter Steadman setting us free. So, the best thing you can do for her or me or Joseph is this: eat and get better. You understand?”
“Yes,” he said.
She sat back and sighed. “I worked in this house,” she told him, answering his question now. “I cooked and cleaned and raised Peter and the children that lived, and tended the children that were sickly and died. I was there for them. Not for my own children. For the white ones.”
He forked some of the egg into his mouth. He chewed slowly because he had absolutely no idea what to say.
Late morning, Jubilee burst into the bedroom, a wild animal that had just scaled the stairs with a catamount’s speed, and then collapsed into the chair beside Weybridge.
“I am plum tuckered,” she said.
He was wide awake now. “You had plenty of energy a second ago,” he told her, struggling back into a sitting position. “It sounded like you were taking the stairs two at a time.”
She glared at him. “I have been workin’ all morning. Hours and hours. What have you done to earn your keep?”
“What would you have me do?”
“I would say husk the corn—we got some—but I don’t think you can.”
He imagined the logistics. She was correct; he couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve. But I’ll be thirteen soon,” she answered.
“I have two boys at home. Five and three.”
“So, how old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“My uncle, the man whose bed you’re lollygaggin’ in, is twenty-six.”
He was about to ask more, when she continued, “My own daddy’s ten years older ’n that. He’s thirty-six. He’s a captain—like you.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere near Petersburg or Richmond,” she said, and then shook her head. “See, you’re a jackal! That’s what I mean. I come in to rest a minute, and suddenly you got me tellin’ you things I shouldn’t!”
“There’s not much I can do with that reconnaissance,” he reassured her.
“I ain’t tellin’ you anything else of importance.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Not one thing.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” he asked. “Is that also a military secret?”
She seemed to think about this. “Last saw him in May.”
“Maybe he’ll be able to come visit you soon.”
“If he does, and if you ain’t dead yet, he’ll either kill you or send you packin’. A bluebelly in his sister’s bed and bleedin’ all over them sheets?” She rolled her eyes. “Disgusting.”
“I am.”
“A bluebelly or disgusting?”
“Both.”
“Well, hallelujah. There is one thing we agree on.”
“I’m sure there are plenty. But I think I’ve stopped bleeding.”
“And you’re talkin’ more than before. Are you gettin’ better, Captain Jackal, or just eatin’ our food before plannin’ to die?”
“I didn’t plan any of this.”
“My aunt is a crazy woman.”
“See? We agree on that, too.”
She leaned forward in the chair. “You think her tryin’ to save your life is crazy?”
“I do. I’m glad she’s making the effort, and I want her to succeed. But the effort is”—and he paused to frame his thoughts—“Greek in its hubris. Arachne. Icarus. Odysseus.”
“You just love to name people I ain’t ever heard of or ain’t ever goin’ to meet. When you’re not a bein’ jackal, what are you, a professor?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“A professor who travels this far just to kill my people? You really are as crazy as my aunt.”
He considered whether to defend himself. The fact was, he had traveled very far with the intention of killing people. He was a soldier now. And while the cause was just, he knew what he’d done. He lifted his left hand, swaddled, and stared at it. He had counted himself among the unlucky, but he was less sure now. How long before self-pity became self-loathing?
“Jubilee?”
“Yes, Jackal?”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She died.”
He had suspected as much. He’d hoped he was mistaken, and it was like a gut punch to have it confirmed. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t kill her. You can’t take credit for that.”
“Did you go to school? Before the war?”
“I went to school right up ’til my mama got sick. Then she died and I was brung here.”
“You’ll go back to school when the war is over?”
She shrugged. “Maybe some handsome cavalry officer will sweep me off my feet first. That’d be more fun.”
“You didn’t like school?”
“I liked it fine. But I was one of exactly three girls. And the teacher thought we girls was all dumb as biscuits.”
“But you can read and write.”
“Just ’cause I have not heard of the names you like to drop like pebbles in a pond does not mean I can’t read, Jackal. I can read and write with the best of ’em.”
A notion came to him suddenly. He tried to lift his right arm, but it was a struggle. He had planned to ask Jubilee for paper and a pencil, but he wasn’t sure now he had the strength to write more than a couple of words. He also wasn’t convinced that he was ready to use the remnants of his left hand to even hold a piece of paper in place. And so he had another idea. “If I wanted to dictate a letter to my wife, would you help?”
“You’re a professor and you can’t write?”
“I can—”
“I know the problem,” she said, a hint of levity in her voice. “I was just pokin’ you. Yes, dictate whatever lovey-dovey words you want. I’ll write ’em all down for you.” And then she was on her feet and at the desk along the side wall of the bedroom, withdrawing paper and pencil from the top drawer.
“This is gonna be good,” she said. “I can’t wait to hear what a Mr.Jackal says to a Mrs.Jackal.”