The March Read online

  Alone with Pearl, Emily Thompson removed her trousers and washed the blood from her leg.

  You know what this is?

  Yes’m.

  Is it the first time?

  Uh-huh.

  Are you hurting?

  Naw.

  It’s nothing to be scared of, is it?

  Take more’n this put a scare into Pearl.

  I do believe that, Emily said, looking into her eyes.

  And the two women smiled at each other.

  XIII

  SHERMAN’S GLASSES WERE TURNED ON FORT MCALLISTER, which guarded Savannah from the south, a formidably risen, parapeted earthwork with a ravine before it and obstructions of abatis made of felled oak trees, and chevaux-de-frise whose stripped branches had been honed into sharp spikes. It was late in the afternoon. He stood with Morrison, his signal officer, atop a mill roof on the left bank of the Ogeechee a mile or two distant. Above them on a crow’s nest hurriedly constructed by the engineers was Morrison’s signalman, who was in communication with one of Admiral Dahlgren’s squadron laying at anchor in Ossabaw Sound. So the navy was there with the clothing and shoes, provisions, and mail that the men had been yearning for these many weeks. But it could not come in up the river till the fort was taken.

  Entrenched in a great arc of siege in the swampland south and west of the city, Sherman’s Fourteenth, Twentieth, Seventeenth, and Fifteenth Corps were hunkered down in the pooling sumps of canal water and sand. His men were cold and miserable and hungry, having marched through a barren sandy territory that devolved into waterlogged rice plantations where there was no forage to be had. They could not light fires to warm themselves lest they invite grapeshot from the Rebel guns. Miles behind them was the wagon train with its hardtack and coffee and its beef on the hoof, but nothing could move forward into this chilled watery lowland until the city was taken.

  Your division will storm Fort McAllister, Sherman had told General Hazen. I won’t fuddle about. I’ve come this far and my army wants its prize. We take Fort McAllister and we’ll have Savannah.

  Now, he saw Hazen’s regiments moving into position through a woods and halting at its edge. Signal Admiral Dahlgren the assault is about to begin, Sherman said. Then order Hazen to begin. Yes, let it begin, let it begin, Sherman said.

  Within moments the blue lines appeared in parade at the edge of the open land and began their advance—a quick trot, arms at the ready, through the fields in the late-afternoon sun toward the fort some eight hundred yards away. Rebel Napoleons immediately boomed forth their round shot. The lines, he saw now, were converging from three directions—north, south, and along the capital—colors flying. My God, they are magnificent, Sherman cried. Within moments the smoke of the big guns enveloped the scene like fog drift, and the wind brought to Sherman the pungency of blown powder. And now only the caprices of the wind would let him see discrete moments of the action, tantalizing glimpses as if, he thought, the smoke were the diaphanous dance veil of the war goddess. And I’m seduced, Sherman said, aloud, to a startled Morrison.

  Yet even from these glimpses Sherman saw things that assured him the assault would succeed. The Rebels had left fallen trees in the field where his men could take cover and return fire. And the big guns were without embrasures: his sharpshooters would kill the artillerists. And as he listened the tempo of shot and shell seemed to slow. The white smoke of the battle began to lift, and now he could see his men clambering up the glacis from the ravine, some of them blown into the air by torpedo mines embanked there. But the blue lines came on, more and more of them, and the parapet was gained. He could see the fighting hand to hand. Sherman had to lower his glass, too overcome to watch. He loved a brave man. Regiments of them brought sobs of joy.

  How many minutes later was it when Captain Morrison called out, It’s ours, sir, I see the colors! And it was true. All at once the firing ceased, and they heard a great shout over the field. And through his glass Sherman saw his men waving their fists, and firing their muskets into the sky.

  IT WAS DARK when Sherman arrived at the fort. He made his inspection and complimented the defending commander, a young major who admitted that he had not expected an attack so late in the day.

  The moon had risen, throwing a chill white light over the dead, who lay where they had fallen. But among them lay his own sleeping soldiers. Sherman’s men had found foodstuffs and wine in the cellars, and now they slept.

  Sitting with crossed legs on a barrel, a cigar in one hand and a cup of wine in the other, Sherman contemplated how matter-of-factly his men accepted the dead that they could lie down, so casually, beside them. All of them asleep, though some forever. He barely noticed the coat thrown around his shoulders by his servant, Moses Brown. His thoughts ran this way: What if the dead man dreams as the sleeper dreams? How do we know there is not a posthumous mind? Or that death is not a dream state from which the dead can’t awaken? And so they are trapped in the hideous universe of such looming terrors as I have known in my nightmares.

  The only reason to fear death is that it is not a true, insensible end of consciousness. That is the only reason I fear death. In fact, we don’t know what it is other than a profound humiliation. We are not made to appreciate it. As a general officer I consider the death of one of my soldiers, first and foremost, a numerical disadvantage, an entry in the liability column. That is all my description of it. It is a utilitarian idea of death—that I am reduced by one in my ability to fight a war. When we lost so many men in the first years of the war, the President simply called for the recruitment of three hundred thousand more. So how could he, the President, understand death, truly?

  Each man has a life and a spirit and the habits of thought and person that define him, but en masse he is uniformed over. And whatever he may think of himself, I think of him as a weapon. And perhaps we call a private a private, for whatever he is to himself it is private to him and of no use to the General. And so a generalship diminishes the imagination of the General.

  But these troops, too, who have battled and eaten and drunk and fallen asleep with some justifiable self-satisfaction: what is their imagination of death who can lie down with it? They are no more appreciative of its meaning than I.

  AND SO WHO is left but the ladies? Perhaps they know. They bring life into being, perhaps they know what it is as afterlife. But often they talk of Heaven or Hell. I take no stock in such ideas as Heaven or Hell. And fate? In war a fate is altogether incidental. In fact, it is nothing as awesome as fate if you happen to raise your head in the path of a cannonball. That nigger who was killed the other day by the railroad track not ten yards from me—I saw the ball coming, a thirty-two-pound round shot, and I shouted, but as he turned it bounced up from the ground and took off his head. That was not fate. There are too many missiles in the air for it to be your fate to be killed by one of them. Just as the number of men set to fighting deem any of their deaths of no great moment.

  In this war among the states, why should the reason for the fighting count for anything? For if death doesn’t matter, why should life matter?

  But of course I can’t believe this or I will lose my mind. Willie, my son Willie, oh my son, my son, shall I say his life didn’t matter to me? And the thought of his body lying in its grave terrifies me no less to think he is not imprisoned in his dreams as he is in his coffin. It is insupportable, in any event.

  It is in fear of my own death, whatever it is, that I would wrest immortality from the killing war I wage. I would live forever down the generations.

  And so the world in its beliefs snaps back into place. Yes. There is now Savannah to see to. I will invest it and call for its surrender. I have a cause. I have a command. And what I do I do well. And, God help me, but I am thrilled to be praised by my peers and revered by my countrymen. There are men and nations, there is right and wrong. There is this Union. And it must not fall.

  Sherman drank off his wine and flung the cup over the entrenchment. He lurched to his feet and peere
d every which way in the moonlight. But where is my drummer boy? he said.

  XIV

  PEARL’S FIRST CITY SHE HAD EVER SEEN WAS MILLEDGEville, but it was not a city so grand as this Savannah, with its little parks everywhere with fountains and iron railings and the big old live oaks dripping with moss, and with the grand courthouse and customshouse and the ships in the harbor. And it’s true that some of the cobblestoned streets had been dug up and the stones piled at the corners for the Confederate soldiers to stand behind, but that didn’t happen. They had fled across the Savannah River to fight another day. Along the waterfront were shops and open warehouses where the Union troops were unloading comestibles. The sun was out, and she was riding in a carriage just like the Jamesons’, with Miz Emily and those two ambulance drivers up front escorting them for their tour. Every day it seemed there was another parade, and now they were held at the corner while one went by. She stood up to see it, and grabbed Miz Emily’s hand till she got to her feet to see it too. What mighty music this was, the drums spattering better than she could ever manage with her one-two thump, and the brass horns shooting out the rays of the sun like to their blare, and flutes and piccolos peeping from the top of the music like birds lighting on it, and the big tubas pumping away under it, and at the very back the two big bass drums announcing the appearance of the blocks of bluecoats in dress parade behind them. And all their Union flags!

  She heard below the music the sound of the soldiers’ footsteps all in rhythm, a soft sound, and after the band had gone down the street and the bluecoat companies kept coming all she heard now was the soft-shoe whisper of their footsteps marching, it was almost a hush, and if not for the cries of the sergeants at the side, and their pennants in the air to remind her, she would think it was so sad, these men with their rifles on their shoulders making a show of their victory but looking to her eyes like they was indentured as she once was, though maybe not born into it.

  CROWDS HAD GATHERED on both sides of the thoroughfare to watch the parade. Across the street, Wilma pulled Coalhouse Walker by the hand back through a wrought-iron gate and into the front yard of a house with a mansard roof and stood with him behind the hedges.

  What is it, Miss Wilma, he said in his deep voice.

  She could not answer but stood with her eyes closed, shaking her head and holding her fist to her mouth.

  Tell me, he said.

  It’s Miz Emily, she said finally. Judge Thompson’s who I was bound to. Look, but don’t let her see. She’s in a carriage driven by army men, and with another white girl. You see her?

  He peered over the top of the hedge. No, ma’m. Parade’s over, he said, everyone’s moving on. He turned and smiled at her. ’Sides which, he said, you free, you disremember that?

  Wilma burst into tears. He took her in his arms. Now, now. We come this far. You a fine strong woman that marched in the rain and cold and nothing to eat some days, and I never seen a tear in your eye. An here, with the worst behind us, in this free city with the sun shinin, ain’t you jes like a ordinary woman cries at the leastmost thing. He laughed.

  I’m sorry, Wilma said, and she laughed, though the tears were still brimming.

  At this moment a woman with a hound on the leash came out on the porch and stared at them.

  They left, closing the gate behind them, and walked on hand in hand.

  He was right, of course, this good man. He had lifted her out of the river and taken her for his responsibility. She had never seen a man as strong as this. He was enlisted as a pioneer, as the army moved forward he cut down trees and laid the logs across the road when it rained. She had seen him pry railroad track up from its ties, she had seen the fine, beautiful skin of his chest glistening with his effort under the sun, the muscle moving in his arms and shoulders—and then his back was turned and she saw the thick scars there and gasped, though it was as nothing to him. He was a beautiful man, his blackness of a rich purpled hue in the sunlight.

  By the grace of God they had met and all through the march he had managed to acquit himself at his duties and see after her as well, finding dry clothes for her and an army coat against the cold, sharing his rations when he had them, keeping her with him when that was possible and, if not, seeing that she was safe among the black folks. They were the same age, twenty-two, but he was inclined to make the best of things and with all sorts of grand ideas for their future together, and so she felt older by comparison but instructed by him, too, in the ways of hope.

  Yet the city that made him so cheerful filled her with misgiving. They were still black in a white world. Coalhouse had drawn his few dollars of army pay, but the merchants in the stores put out prices as if it was Confederate tender. He wanted to buy some sweet potatoes. Don’t buy, she urged him, I’d rather go without. And another thing was she knew Coalhouse’s company was camped outside the city in a rice plantation, but here he was roaming the streets with her like a man free of everything, including the army, and without the pass he was supposed to have from the officers. So there was something reckless about him too, and all that good cheer had a wild edge to it that caused her to look behind them where they walked and up ahead to see where the danger might lay.

  And now what was he up to as he took up an empty bushel basket from an alley behind a shop and led her to the river? Miss Wilma, he said, we are going to have a fine lunch. But what was he doing, getting out of his shoes and jacket and rolling up his trousers to his knees and walking onto the flat rocks and hunkering down there? And then before she knew it he had eased himself into that cold river water.

  And so this was how Wilma Jones, who grew up in the hills, learned about oysters. Coalhouse Walker came back with almost a bushel of them. He was sopping wet, and shivering and smiling broadly. They sat there in the sun on a flat rock and he shucked the oysters with his knife and swallowed them down raw, with his head thrown back. But she had no taste for any of that, and so they moved on in the lanes between the houses and the stables and found a kitchen with some black folks there, where she was welcome to use the stove.

  Wilma was now in a role that was familiar to her. She pan-fried the oysters with a bit of cornmeal and in their own juices, and it turned from a day full of worry for her to a good time with people she wouldn’t have known but for the holiday season and the freeing of Savannah. Everyone ate what she cooked, and there was real bread to go with it.

  Coalhouse surprised her, picking up a banjo and strumming it and singing some old song in his deep voice. She hadn’t known he could do that. People clapped in time, and a boy stood up and danced. She was among these new friends whose names she barely knew and would probably never see again, some still working where they’d been slaves, but they had a way about them now, and she supposed she was getting to it too, of celebrating off to the side just beyond the ken of the white folks. And somehow in her mind it all came from the spirit of Coalhouse Walker, like he had this way of making the people around him glad to be alive.

  Say, Miz Mary, what that on the pillow where my head orter be

  For sakes, it jes a mush melon, can’t you plainly see

  A mush melon on de pillow, oh yes I do agree

  But why it got a mustache an two eyes a-lookin at me

  There were young girls there from the kitchen and she could see what they were thinking, so she didn’t let him from her sight. And maybe from her serious mien, and her upbringing in the Judge’s house that taught her how to do most anything that needed to be done, Wilma knew that she was good-looking enough but that what made Coalhouse Walker take to her was just that soundness of her—that and because she knew how to read and write and would not lie down with him until they were properly wed. He honored that, and in her heart she knew she had nothing to worry about because she was the one he’d been looking for.

  They slept in a hayloft that night after some kisses and hugs that were not entirely pious, and in the morning she told him her idea. He went down to the river and by noon, in one of the town squares, with the
troops everywhere and the sky bright with sun, she stood behind a makeshift stand and pan-fried oysters over a fire Coalhouse had built in a steel drum. Coalhouse made newspaper sheets into cones, and kept up a smart patter. Miz Wilma’s very best fresh roasted oysters! he called, and they sold the catch to folks by the paper cone—soldiers and even officers, and finally some of the secesh townspeople themselves, who couldn’t abide the fate of their city but found the oysters as she roasted them too good not to partake of. And in this way she and Coalhouse sold off three bushels and found themselves at the end of the afternoon with thirteen real Union dollars.

  I will hold these, Wilma said, and turning her back, she lifted the hem of her skirt and tucked the folded bills under the waistband of her pantaloons.

  ARLY AND WILL had no trouble getting their new shoes—they just stood a while on a line, and when they got to the quartermaster they had only to show their feet. But drawing pay was different, it was done by name and regiment. You were checked off against the paymaster’s book.

  Well, what does God say to do now? Will said, looking down at his stiff shoes. They felt tight against his toes and the backs were already rubbing up into his ankles.

  He’s telling me to be patient and it will come to me, Arly said.

  They had leave from Colonel Sartorius only to get themselves outfitted, but they were in no hurry to return to the Savannah military hospital where his surgery was. The city having fallen without a fight, there was not much call for ambulance driving now, so they had been made over into nurses there in the army sick ward, emptying bedpans and doing other lovely chores.