Rhett Butler's People

  To his troopers’ surprise, Andrew came back from Charleston much subdued. Officers who joked about their Colonel’s liaisons—as had been their custom—were brought up short and Andrew shunned his favorite drinking companions. Cassius took to playing slow, sentimental ballads.

  When Jamie asked about the Atlanta widow, Colonel Andrew Ravanel had a rueful smile: “I’d rather face a Yankee division than Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton. ‘Colonel Ravanel. Get out of here and take your orchestra with you.’”

  Which is how Cassius was renamed “Andrew’s Orchestra.”

  Andrew asked Charlotte’s brother about his wife: what had Charlotte been like as a child? Was Charlotte present when he kissed Rosemary Butler at the Washington Racecourse? “I was so angry at Langston Butler, so humiliated, I would have done anything—so long as it was rash!”

  Jamie thought Andrew as faithful husband would take some getting used to, but was amused when ladies hoping to entertain “the celebrated Colonel Ravanel” were turned away with a smile and, “Madam, were I not a married man, your virtue would be imperiled.”

  Then came the Gettysburg, Vicksburg summer, and newspapers that once lauded Colonel Ravanel changed their tune. The Charleston Mercury recalled the Cynthiania fight and how a Federal officer had strutted down a public street wearing Colonel Ravanel’s hat.

  General Bragg, who would soon lose his command to General Johnston, forbade raids and used Ravanel’s Brigade as regular cavalry. That fall, Andrew took a second furlough in Charleston.

  Mr. and Mrs. Ravanel were never at home to callers and they ignored all invitations. Juliet Ravanel was uncharacteristically reticent when friends asked about the couple.

  On this occasion there was no scandal, and soon after Andrew returned to the army, Jamie got a letter from Charlotte. “Please don’t let Andrew do anything rash. I fear my beloved husband does not think himself worthy of me. I fear Andrew will do something foolhardy to burnish a reputation which is already bright as the noonday sun! Please, Jamie, keep Andrew safe for my sake and for our son!”

  Five weeks later, on a drizzly December afternoon, on a ridge overlooking Pommery, Ohio, Jamie Fisher was musing about church bells. “How could I ever have thought church bells were lovely? Didn’t church bells mean families promenading Meeting Street on Sunday morning?”

  Through his glass, Colonel Andrew Ravanel studied the village, whose church bells clamored like terrified geese: “The rebels are coming! Alarm! Alarm!”

  The interludes between Pommery’s bells were filled with fainter bells from the countryside.

  “They are God’s bells, Jamie. Shame on you.” Andrew snapped his glass shut. “Shall we ride through or around? Should we give the citizens of Pommery something to tell their grandchildren?”

  “No, Andrew. There’s bound to be some graybeard hugging his musket and dreaming of potting a Confederate.”

  Andrew Ravanel shifted in the saddle. “How close are the Federals?”

  “Three battalions two hours behind.”

  “They won’t get away this time.”

  “Ha-ha,” Jamie said.

  Andrew asked Jamie about their route home.

  “Cobb’s Ford was passable two weeks ago, but it’s rained enough to float the Ark.”

  Absently, Andrew stroked his horse’s neck. “Cassius can’t swim.”

  Jamie leaned to him. “If we ride hard, we’ll strike the Ohio River tomorrow night.”

  Andrew Ravanel stood in his stirrups to wave his men around this Yankee town. They were going home.

  Two weeks earlier, Andrew Ravanel had crossed the Ohio into Yankeedom with two thousand fresh, well-armed Confederate cavalrymen intending to wreck railroads, torch army storehouses, steal horses, and enlist sympathetic recruits to the Cause.

  The raid had gone badly. Alerted by telegram, Federal brigades pursued relentlessly. Only hard riding and Jamie Fisher’s cleverness avoided the fixed battle they could not hope to win.

  They’d run and ducked and fought through when they couldn’t avoid it. Their dead had been left unburied, their wounded abandoned at crossroads. Exhausted men simply sat down and waited for the Yankees to take them. Of their four field guns, they had one left.

  The three hundred survivors of Ravanel’s Brigade were bearded, dirty, and festooned with guns; they looked more like bandits than soldiers. The horses they’d bought from Ohio farmers (paying with Confederate currency) hadn’t the speed or endurance of the mounts they’d started with.

  That evening it rained, a cold rain that plucked dead leaves off the trees and mashed them on the road. To spare their horses, the troopers walked, clinging to stirrups. As the blood slowed in Andrew Ravanel’s veins, an all too familiar despair burdened Andrew’s heart and he shouted to Cassius, “Pick us a tune, boy!”

  Cross-legged on the gun’s limber box, a tattered umbrella protecting his banjo, Cassius tried to please, but his tunes were off-key or tunes Andrew had tired of long ago.

  Icy rain trickled off Andrew’s hat brim and down his neck.

  Cassius wrapped his precious instrument in his jacket and hunched over it, miserable and still.

  There was just enough moonlight for a man to see the man in front of him. Sometimes the color sergeant had trouble keeping to the road. Men gnawed biscuits while they walked. They stepped out of the column to relieve themselves and then ran to catch up. The rain worked through their collars and shoulder seams and boot soles. Their slouch hats collapsed. Their souls retracted. Sometimes when a trooper remounted, his horse protested. Sometimes an exhausted horse crumpled and sent its rider sprawling before weary men dragged the horse back onto its feet.

  When Andrew had left Charlotte at the Charleston depot, Charlotte had told him,

  “Dearest, I know you better than anyone on earth and do not doubt you have done things of which you are ashamed. Your shame proves you are a very good man.”

  Andrew had loved many women. Only Charlotte had kept him safe.

  On the fifteenth morning after they’d invaded Federal territory, the rain let up and a chill wind brushed the clouds away. As the sun rose, the earth sparkled. After scouting their back trail, Jamie Fisher reported they’d slipped their pursuers. “But they must have guessed where we’re bound.”

  “Yes, Jamie.”

  “They’ll block the fords.”

  “Jamie, you worry too damned much.”

  They crossed a broken plateau. From time to time, the road dipped into a ravine, where they forded tumbling, muddy streams with water up to their horses’ bellies. White-tailed deer went crashing away through the underbrush. They rode by deserted hardscrabble farms. As the day warmed, the plateau opened into flat pastureland and at midday they turned up a lane toward a two-story clapboard farmhouse. They heard the back door slam, then rapid, fading hoofbeats. The kitchen stove was still hot and side meat sizzled in a skillet. Jamie Fisher ate a piece, licked his fingers, and poured Andrew a cup of coffee. “We can reach Cobb’s Ford by dark,” Jamie said.

  Andrew sat at the kitchen table with the cup between his hands. The chipped cup was everyday crockery;

  Grandmother’s china would be in the china press in the parlor.

  Outside the house, the color sergeant was shouting, “Unsaddle your horses and rub them down! If you’re tired, they’re tireder. Murphy, wake up, man. Damn it, you ain’t dead yet!” Boots stamped through the bedrooms overhead and Andrew could hear drawers being pulled out. Had his men always been thieves? He remembered a Federal running down Cynthiania’s main street with a tall clock in his arms. Poor fool wouldn’t need to know the time where Andrew’s saber had sent him.

  There’d been so many poor fools.

  Jamie was going on and on about Cobb’s Ford.

  Andrew was so tired, so terribly tired. He lifted his coffee cup with two hands, brought it to his lips, and swallowed.

  Jamie said, “Andrew, they must not beat us to the river.”

  Where on earth did Jamie find his strength?
“Jamie,” Andrew said. “For God’s sake, Jamie.”

  Andrew managed to put the cup down without dropping it. His hands lay open and unresisting on the table.

  “Andrew, it’s five hours to Cobb’s Ford. Only five hours. Rest the horses for an hour if we must. We can cross before dark.”

  Andrew wished Charlotte were here. Charlotte always knew what to do. He’d resented that when they were first married. How badly he’d treated her then.

  When Jamie rapped the table Andrew raised his head. Jamie said, “Andrew, you cannot funk now.”

  Andrew said thickly, “I’ll be damned if I let some nancy boy tell me what to do!”

  Andrew Ravanel put his head down on his arms and closed his eyes.

  The men unsaddled and rubbed their horses down. They stripped and laid their clothing in the sun to dry. They crawled into stalls and haymows and slept.

  Two turkey buzzards circled overhead, studying the garment blossoms below them.

  Toward sundown that evening, the men woke and put on dry clothing and reprimed their pistols. In a hog scalder in the farmyard, they boiled a half dozen of the farmer’s hams and three bushels of potatoes. They fished their dinners out of the kettle with pitchforks.

  Men belched and lit pipes. The color sergeant said, “I never thought we was ever gonna get here.”

  “Might be we’ll stay and take up farmin’,” someone replied.

  Andrew never came out of the house. Jamie Fisher was off scouting or something.

  The sky was clear and washed with stars and once a meteor flashed into the earth.

  Cassius played “The Arkansas Traveler” and “Soldier’s Joy” and the young men danced hornpipes and jigs or whirled one another across the barnyard under brilliant watchful stars.

  At dawn, they mounted up, and a few hours later, the plateau ended at the edge of a fog sea. Across that a rumpled fog coverlet, just two miles ahead, the plateau resumed in the Confederate States of America.

  “If we could walk across fog,” Andrew Ravanel said.

  Jamie muttered, “Since you can walk across water, why not fog?”

  “Jamie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “You are such a bastard, Andrew.”

  “Old Jack left his mark on me. But you can’t doubt that I need you, Jamie. Just a little while longer. A few more hours and we’ll be home.”

  Jamie Fisher didn’t reply.

  The road angled down the face of the plateau onto cropland alongside the Ohio River. The husks of unpicked field corn were wreathed in fog.

  The Ohio was a mile across at Cobb’s Ford: a broad reach of shallow water to Macklin’s Island and a deeper channel beyond. The low island was two hundred yards of jumbled driftwood and brush. At low water, wagons could cross to the far shore, the Confederate shore, without wetting the wagon box. At high water, the Ohio River was navigable from Pittsburgh to New Orleans and shallow-draft stern-wheelers pushed barges through the deep channel.

  This morning, the island was invisible in fog.

  Jamie Fisher reined up at a mire of horse and wheel tracks. He heard the whuff and clink of shovels on Macklin’s Island.

  “They beat us here,” Andrew said. “A regiment?”

  “A full brigade.” Jamie pointed at some deeper ruts. “Those’ll be gun carriages.”

  Andrew Ravanel got off his horse and walked to the river’s edge, where the roots of a toppled sycamore fingered over the water like an unanswered prayer.

  Behind the island, on the Confederate shore, treetops emerged serenely from the fog.

  The remnants of Ravanel’s Brigade arrived behind Andrew and his scout. “I could sleep for a month,” Andrew said.

  Jamie said, “There’s a ferry at Parkersburg, but that’s thirty miles upriver.”

  Some men led their horses to water; others crossed a leg over their saddles and took a dip of snuff. They could read tracks, too.

  A trooper galloped in from the rear guard. “Colonel, there’s a Yankee brigade comin’ off the plateau behind us.”

  Jamie said, “They won’t get away this time.”

  Andrew said, “Jamie, I … I don’t know. …”

  Jamie Fisher said, “Andrew, you must lead. There’s no one else.”

  Andrew hesitated before he straightened into Colonel Ravanel, the legendary rebel commander. “Thank you, Jamie,” he said.

  The Federals on Macklin’s Island had ridden all night and had been digging since arriving at the island. They were tired and cross, and the soldier who carelessly threw a clod of dirt on another’s boots was cursed. They hadn’t had breakfast.

  That shriek, that ululating rebel yell, made Federal gunners jump for their guns. Cavalrymen dropped their shovels to snatch up carbines. They laid cool stocks against their sweaty cheeks and drew back the iron hammers.

  A squall of swirling Confederate horsemen appeared out of the fog, galloping, wheeling through the shallows, screeching their hair-raising screech, firing revolvers in the air. One hundred, two hundred, a thousand—God, how many were there?

  As suddenly as they’d appeared, before one Federal fired, the terrible host retired into the fog as two Confederate officers galloped toward the island under a flag of truce.

  A middle-aged Yankee major met them on the shore. As the horsemen reined up, the major adjusted his hat so it sat squarely on his head. Above the freshly turned dirt of new trenches, carbine muzzles tracked the Confederates.

  Ravanel eased into his saddle. “Major, do you remember when real soldiers didn’t burrow in the ground like moles?”

  The major sat his horse nearly as well as Andrew did. The major’s gear—like the man himself—was worn but well kept. “I had friends who wouldn’t burrow like moles. I remember them in my prayers.”

  Andrew Ravanel had known and despised men like this major all his life. These respectable, boring, sturdy, everyday men had disapproved of Jack Ravanel and they disapproved of Jack’s son, too. As the Ravanel fortunes leaked away, men like this had prospered because they lacked imagination to do anything daring or brilliant or amusing or something just for the hell of it.

  Looking into the major’s stolid face, Andrew knew before he spoke that his bluff would fail. “You know who I am. You know I’ve two thousand men and six field guns, and if I have to roust you off this island, I’ll roust you. Surrender, and I’ll parole you and your men. We’ll pass over and go our own way and you’ll be no worse off than you were yesterday. Resist, and your lives are forfeit.”

  The major nodded as if he’d expected Andrew’s threat and judged Andrew’s performance acceptable. “Colonel Ravanel, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Me and my boys have been hopin’ to learn if you are as all-fired terrible as the newspapers make you out. Sometimes, sir, newspapers don’t get things exactly right.”

  “Surrender, sir, and let us pass.”

  “Oh,” the Federal major said easily, “I reckon I won’t.” He smiled. “But you’re welcome to give us a try.”

  Andrew could see the channel on the far side of the island. Reach that channel and they could swim to the Confederate shore. “Glad to make your acquaintance, Major,” Andrew managed, and threw off a brisk salute before he and Jamie wheeled and splashed back into the fog.

  His men looked to Andrew expectantly.

  “They’ll slaughter us,” Jamie said. “I counted eight guns. Andrew?”

  Andrew turned toward the island. The fog had settled and he couldn’t see anything but spindly treetops. The far shore was more visible: the steep riverbank, then a belt of fog, then trees.

  Jamie was saying something.

  The fog was lovely, swirling and blown to wisps. He fancied he saw Charlotte’s face and Charlotte’s loving eyes.

  “Andrew!” Jamie hissed. “For God’s sake, Andrew!”

  He would never see Charlotte again. He would never see his son. There’d be a generation of Southern sons who’d never know their fathers. Andrew supposed that wo
uldn’t be all bad.

  Jamie was suggesting some other place they might cross, someplace he’d discovered when he scouted Cobb’s Ford. A few miles up the river. They’d have to swim.

  Why had he left Charlotte? He could no longer remember.

  Comforting darkness descended on him.

  “Andrew!” Jamie whispered urgently. “You mustn’t, Andrew!”

  Andrew Ravanel was accounted a brave man in a nation of brave men, but perhaps the bravest thing he ever did was throwing off that darkness, and shouting in a brigade colonel’s voice, “Follow me upriver, boys! It’s Rock Island Prison or home!”

  Filling the road shoulder-to-shoulder, Ravanel’s Brigade cantered up the river road through tendrils of fog. When an exhausted horse collapsed, the nearest man snatched its rider and swung him behind. More horses fell. In the cornfields beside the road, fog rose like smoke from ghost campfires.

  “Here!” Jamie shouted, and the Confederates quit the road for the riverbank. They reined blown horses beside a floating dock where a half-sunk rowboat was tied.

  The river was narrower here, half a mile maybe. Across roiled, muddy water, the Confederate shore was featureless.

  Jamie sang out, “If you want to have a good time, if you want to have a good time, if you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry!”

  A messenger from the rear guard: “They’s a-comin’. Federal brigade’s a-comin’.”

  Colonel Ravanel mounted the bank, where everybody could see him. “Boys, we’ve had our fun and it’s time to pay the piper. Across the river is freedom. This side is a Yankee prison camp. Men who can’t swim or won’t can stay here with me. We’ll hold ’em off while the rest of you get across.”

  Troopers lashed their boots to their saddles and kneed their horses into the turbulent brown river. Some clung to their horses’ necks, some swam, hanging to the stirrups. They angled downstream in the current.

  The gun crew unlimbered their solitary gun, unstoppered its muzzle, and pointed it down the foggy road where the Federals must come. Others dragged the rowboat out of the water to shield the gun crew.

  “Andrew, your horse can swim it,” Jamie said. “I’ll command the rear guard.”