The March Page 4

  And what about dobbin here?

  We’ll tend to her feed later. Right now we want a good, safe tether so someone don’t steal her away.

  At that, Arly rode the horse up the porch steps and through the front door into the entry hall and hitched her to the newel post at the foot of the stairs. This was just the thing to get the Union boys laughing and the old woman shrieking.

  And so Arly and Will were in the game, rummaging in the pantry and then the root cellar, where they found sacks of sweet potatoes. Will was wary that they wouldn’t have a Christian welcome from this victory party of revelers all from the same company, but when he and Arly came out and dumped their contribution by the fire that was entry enough, given that most of the men were half drunk anyways.

  Tears came to Will’s eyes. There were chickens on spits and potatoes on the coals and pans frying with bacon and cabbages. There were jars of put-up summer fruits and vegetables, and loaves of real bread. A sergeant poured generously from his bottle into Will’s tin cup. Will sat down cross-legged in the grass and set about the best meal he had had since leaving home. His mouth full, his chin dripping with grease, he considered the possibility that all men are brothers.

  Later, as the moon came up, Arly smoked a cigar, and recounted with some modesty his heroism at the Oconee River, for which he was attended with respect by his listeners, though his lieutenant’s cockade might have had something to do with it.

  But Arly didn’t just talk, he listened, too. After he and Will said good night and they had found fodder and a stall for the horse in a barn behind an abandoned house, and they were getting comfortable in the house, up on the second floor, in a sitting room, Arly told Will that the army was moving out at dawn. The cavalry will feint to Augusta, but it is to Savannah the army will go, he said.

  Does Gen’ral Sherman know that? Maybe you ought to tell him.

  Son, this general he’s almost too smart to be a general, and if there is a force waiting in Augusta, as is the impression of everone I talked to, why go there? Besides which there is a Union navy, as I understan it, and in those ships waiting off Savannah, as they are sure to, will be the mail and ordnance and new shoes and soldier’s pay we ain’t had since Hector was a pup.

  We? We ain’t had? I thought we was Reb spies.

  Well, so what? Their money is good. In fact a damn sight better than the paper Jeff Davis thrown at us.

  They broke up some chairs and desk drawers and made a nice, warm fire in the hearth. Arly took the sofa and Will the floor, with the cushion from an upholstered chair for a pillow. For blankets they sliced up some rugs with their bayonets.

  Outside, some Union men were singing:

  The years creep slowly by, Lorena,

  The snow is on the grass again;

  The sun’s low down the sky, Lorena,

  The frost gleams where the flowers have been . . .

  There was still occasional shouting in the streets as indication the troops were settling in for the night. Will thought what a strange thing it was, an army, making its camp always the same whether in some woods by a stream or amidst homes and public buildings. The rifles are stacked, the pickets are sent out, and the bugler plays taps no matter if you are in a forest grove or a metropolis of civilization.

  No need to get up with them at dawn, Arly said. We’ll wait for the commissary wagons and the ambulances and such. That’ll be a while. You want to hang back where the army is comprised of doctors and cooks and clerks who know no more of soldiering than ladies in a tea room. They won’t take roll calls back there.

  WILL STARTED AWAKE long after he had heard reveille. He roused himself up on his elbows to listen for the rattle of the wagon trains or the brigade drums as the long end of the Twentieth Corps trailed after the regiments. He heard nothing. The sun shone all over the floor. It was like high noon in this place. He crawled to the window. The street was empty.

  The army was gone.

  He woke Arly, and moments later they were rushing down the stairs and out the back door to the barn.

  Someone was leading their horse by the bridle. A Johnny Reb in his grays. Will’s heart leapt up. He might in that instant of his confusion have hailed the boy. But Arly rushed to the attack. As the two of them went down, the Reb didn’t let go of the bridle and the horse, twisted down by the head, planted her forelegs to keep from going over. But she was screaming.

  Will slowly realized there was more of a racket than there should be if Hood’s men were in town on the heels of the Union army. He looked down at his uniform.

  Now the Reb had let go of dobbin so as to have both hands available for fighting. He was a heavier boy than Arly, if not as fit, and so they went rolling over each other, rolling, punching, and grunting, as the dust rose. Will! Arly shouted. Will! He meant the horse, who nearly knocked Will over as she reared and cantered away around the side of the house to the street.

  Will, off in pursuit, noticed the bed of chrysanthemums planted along the side of the house, a society of modest yellow and white blooms crowned with ash and shuddering in the breeze. He thought what blessedness there was in the immobility and unthinkingness of plant life, that there might be something to say for it, as in the street now, beyond the front yard, two Rebel cavalry were a-gallop after the free running creature and another three horsemen had turned their mounts toward him, one with his sword drawn, another with his pistol cocked, and a third with a big smile and a couple of front teeth missing on his unshaven face.

  Will stopped in his tracks. He held out his arms in what he might have thought of as a welcoming recognition, a kind of embrace in the air, but which these guerrillas preferred to take as surrender. They laughed, and the wielder of the pistol joyfully shot a ball into the ground at his feet.

  People came into the street from the homes where they had been hiding. They were ecstatic to see their own troops arrived to save them. Will stood immobilized, his gesture frozen. The wind pasted a newspaper sheet to his legs. Ash settled in his open mouth. Up in the blue sky, the smoke from the smoldering ruins of the penitentiary scurried off like the departing army that he had been depending on. One of the riders trotted past him back to the barn. Will prayed that Arly would have lost his encounter. For if he had not, if he’d killed the Reb, then they would be executed, after all, here in Milledgeville, though perhaps with less ceremony than he’d expected as a deserter. But he didn’t want Arly to have perished, either, Arly being the flickering if not entirely gutted hope Will had for his unhappy life other than his wish, in this latest wretched moment of his nineteen years, to have it end entirely.

  A FEW MINUTES later Will, Arly, and some straggling drummer boy the Rebs had found were being marched through the street with their arms roped to their bodies. A growing crowd followed them. Every once in a while one of the horse soldiers looked down from his saddle and spit. Someone threw a rock, and it hit the drummer boy in the back. The boy stumbled along, tears streaming down his face.

  Arly said something and had to repeat it, because Will couldn’t understand the words. Arly’s cheek was puffed out, an eye was half closed, his lower lip was swollen, and he’d lost a few teeth. Also, he was limping because, as he had gotten up off his opponent with his hands raised, he’d received a kick in the ribs. Your own kind, is what Will made out.

  My own kind? Is that what you’re saying?

  Arly nodded. He gestured with his head to people running alongside, laughing and jeering. Folks you come fum, he said.

  V

  CLARKE KNEW THAT HIS ATTENTIONS TO PEARL WERE a source of cynical amusement to the men. Pearl wasn’t the first freed black girl to get special treatment. The lighter-colored, especially, were being picked up all along the march and ensconced in the wagons. They were given choice edibles and clothes pillaged from the plantations. This was a different situation entirely, but he knew better than to try to explain. He couldn’t even make sense of it himself. He was terribly moved by this child in a way that took him completely by surpr
ise. He wanted to do things for her. He wanted to take care of her. Yet, at the same time, he knew he was attracted inappropriately. He noticed the way she carried herself, with a kind of head-high grace that was unlearned and entirely natural. He found himself comparing her to women of his generation back in Boston. Everything they did and said was learned comportment. They were unoriginal girls, argued by propriety out of whatever genius they might have had. They practiced the arts as inducements to marriage.

  He thought that perhaps Pearl had some royal African blood, or else how would that angry intelligence, so commanding, have come to her. She missed nothing with those cat-pale eyes of hers. She was suspicious of him. She was critical of the men. She thought they were filthy and told him so: You white mens smell like de cow barn back at Massah’s. No worse, dat how bad.

  That, he said.

  That how bad, she said. Lord! Even stinky brudders one an two back home more tolable dan dis.

  Than this, he said.

  Than this. Dese mens doan never wash off demselves in no netherpart, jus shit in de groun and move on like dumb animal do.

  Animals. Dumb animals, he said.

  Thas right. An de gun grease gone sour in dere hair, and God know what else grown fum dere hide and dere feet dat stink so. Phewy! Dint dey hab mothers to teach’m?

  Didn’t, he said.

  I ’spect not.

  Pearl bathed herself with hard soap and a basin of cold water every evening in Clarke’s tent while he stood guard outside. Then she went to sleep in a fly tent he’d put up next to his own. He wanted the men to know that she was under his protection but that his behavior was honorable. After the first few days of snickering and talking among themselves, they seemed to understand and accept the situation at face value. They, too, became protective. It was Sergeant Malone who came up with a drummer-boy uniform for her. At first she was pleased. They were camped in a pine grove at the time, and she came out of her tent, having wriggled into the tunic and trousers, and stood for all of them to admire her, though everything was just a mite too big. There was a hat too, and silver buttons that she rubbed to a shine. But then she grew thoughtful.

  I ain’t never played no drum, she said.

  Nothing to it, Malone said. We’ll show you how.

  Sompun wrong bein a white drum boy, she said to Clarke.

  What?

  I too pretty fer a drum boy. I not white, neither, if white I be.

  Clarke said, By and by, Pearl, the black folks will have to go back. Those are the standing orders of General Sherman. You don’t want to go back, do you?

  You burned de house, took de vittles. Back to what?

  Exactly. When the war is won, the authorities will work out the legalities for freed slaves to own their own land. But now if they trail along they are too many mouths to feed. The young men we can enlist, but the women and children and old men, they will fall by the wayside and then where will they be? So it’s best this way.

  Well, a gul chile not much good fer shootin neither.

  Clarke was astonished at the aplomb with which he was subverting orders. You can beat the drum when we’re marching, he said. And you can ride in the wagons when we’re foraging.

  Pearl was not persuaded. She began to feel that staying with Jake Early and the others was what she should do. The prospect was unsettling, and she didn’t know why she felt that way. They had never been kind to her, but there was something wrong in their being sent back while she went on. She enjoyed having a fuss made over her. She had never had that—it came of being free—but she thought now of the plantation, where she loved the fields and the stands of trees. She knew every inch of that place she had lived on all her life. She knew every stream, every rock, every shrub. But, most of all, she worried that if she was not there her mother’s grave would be forgotten, with nobody to care about it or tend to it. The slave quarters were still standing. And if she was free, wasn’t she free to go back if that’s what she wanted? To starve, if she wanted to? To be John Jameson’s slave chile again, if she wanted to?

  In this state of mind Pearl sat down near the fire in her new uniform and joined the men for supper. She was given a tin plate with a roasted chicken leg and sweet potatoes and corn bread with sorghum. This in itself might have been persuasive, but at that moment Jake Early appeared out of the darkness along with Jubal Samuels, he of the one eye. They were under escort, two privates with rifles at the ready.

  Sergeant Malone said, Jesus! What’s this?

  Should be plain we ain’t Johnnies, Jubal Samuels said.

  We been lookin fer dat chile, Jake Early said, pointing at Pearl.

  Here she be, Pearl said.

  Ifn you know yo Bible, Miss Porhl, you ’member ’bout dat Jez’bel. You bes cum wiv us, Jake Early said.

  I ain’t no Jez’bel.

  I see you wiv dese soljer. You got a white pap like to put you sinnin in a white skin. You bes come wiv yo gibn folks now, lest you be some Jez’bel fer de army like your mam been to der Mass’ Jameson.

  Pearl put her plate down and got to her feet. My mama she a po slave lak you, Jacob Early. But wiv a warm, sweet soul, not de cold ice you got in yo heart. You never take no heed of Porhl, you Jacob, nor you, Jubal Samuels—no, non of youn. All dat time only dat Roscoe a frien to me. Lak he my pap. Gib me from de kitchen when I hongry. Watch out fer me. But you ain never be gibn folks to Porhl, no sir, not den and not now.

  Clarke stood and addressed the two privates. Get these men back where they belong, he said.

  Nobody doan never have touch Porhl! When I little, de brudder try. Oh yeah. I raise up dis bony knee hard in his what he got dere, and dat were dat and nobody since! You hear dis gul, Mr. free man Jacob Early? And nobody since! An I ain’t no Jez’bel, she screamed.

  In this way was Pearl’s decision made, and by the time they were on the march through Milledgeville she was drummer for Clarke’s company. She just hit the drum once every other step and they kept the pace, some with smiles on their faces. She looked straight ahead and kept her shoulders squared against the shoulder straps, but she could tell that white folks watched from the windows. And none of them knew she wasn’t but the drummer boy they saw.

  EAST OF MILLEDGEVILLE the weather changed and the terrain grew swampy. A hard rain spattered on the palmettos and snapped in the muck. Pioneers had corduroyed the road with fence rails and saplings. Clarke, in the vanguard with his foragers, was the first to lead his wagons across the pontoon bridge at the Oconee. Thereafter the land rose and hardened, the rain slacked off, and they left the army behind as they rode toward Sandersonville. Clarke wanted to pick the town clean and wait there. He had thirty men mounted, six wagons, and as many pack mules.

  Clarke knew from maps that the country played out east of Sandersonville and from then on, as far as Savannah, it would be progressively poorer takings, with the lowlands good only for growing rice. And how in God’s name would the army hull rice? His foraging detail had got much praise from the regiment, and he’d been running a kind of competition with Lieutenant Henley’s squad.

  At a bend in the road a quarter mile west of the town, he called a halt. Sergeant Malone rode up to confer. This was more formidable than a plantation. They could see over the treetops a church steeple and the roof of a public building, probably a courthouse.

  Evening was coming on. Clarke smelled no chimney smoke and saw no lights.

  Sergeant, take two men with you. On foot and off the road. Tell me what’s going on there.

  The patrol moved off, and Clarke waited. Behind him, softly in the dusk, the leather traces creaked, the animals breathed and snorted. Clarke rode back to the wagons and found Pearl the last in line, sitting up beside the driver. Her eyes gleamed out at him from the darkness, as if they had drunk up what light there was, invisible to him but imperially available to her.

  He rode ahead to meet the patrol. Malone reported that the town was quiet, the streets empty, but there were lights in the houses. He did not look at C
larke as he spoke but at the ground, which meant, in Clarke’s interpretation, that he, Clarke, was acting as was only expected of a prissy New England Brahmin.

  If that’s what Malone thought, so would the others. A fog was rolling in. Clarke ordered the men to unsheathe their rifles, and the company rode on into Sandersonville.

  WHEN THE FIRING started, the driver of the last wagon was in a crossroads at the town’s edge, so that, shouting and cursing, he was able to turn the panicked team around. Pearl left the box and clambered into the wagon and looked out the rear. Nobody was following. She heard screams. She saw men falling off their horses in the instant flashes of musket fire. The driver was whipping the mules and the wagon was rolling. Pearl jumped, landing on her hands and knees. She limped into the brush and cowered there.

  Moments later two riderless horses galloped past. A minute later three or four of the Union men, and then two of them on one horse. She couldn’t count how many after that. She prayed that the Lieutenant would not leave her.

  Clarke couldn’t have retreated even if he’d thought of it. He was not thinking, just trying to rein in his panicked rearing mount with one hand while, with his Enfield musketoon wedged in the crook of his arm, firing at every looming shape and shadow. The Rebs had ridden out of the side streets and come together as one charging line. In an instant, it seemed, they were riding past on both flanks. Sergeant Malone, standing in his stirrups to aim, was hacked by a passing sword. He looked at Clarke, his neck bleeding like a mouth widening in astonishment, as he toppled to the ground. The Rebel yells made of them screeching phantoms in the fog, unholy apparitions appearing and disappearing. Clarke was screaming as well. He felt no fear until his rifle stopped working. At that, he put his head down and bent over his horse like a jockey and tried to urge her forward—in what direction he had no idea. But his mount was stepping on bodies and then a wall of mounts and riders rose around him. As he straightened up he felt a pistol at the back of his head and heard the cock of the hammer. He sat quite still and it was as if he had given an order, as gradually the tumult subsided, and all he heard was the heavy breathing of horses and men.