Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

  Jesse burped a white frothy burp. “Farmer won’t miss this milk. Kill his calf, he’ll hunt us down.”

  Cow and calf wandered down the hill, the cow plucking grass clumps resentfully.

  Rufus hunkered on his heels surveying the wide valley, the small farms, the meandering river. “Where this Tygart River go?”

  “Up to the Ohio. Ohio goes on to the ocean someplace.”

  “Maybe we should make a raft,” Rufus said dreamily. “Just drift away to freedom.”

  “You can’t swim,” Jesse said. “Let’s run.”

  Milk was what they ate that day, the fifth since their escape. The sixth day they ate nothing. The night of the seventh day, they ate an opossum whose feigned death after they snared him soon became real enough. “I wish we could cook him,” Rufus lamented.

  The eighth day they hid in a tumbledown shed behind a burned-out log cabin. On the shale bank behind the ruin were a dozen apple trees, young trees not more than eight or ten years old. The fruit was sparse but full and perfectly formed, and that evening they rested beside the orchard spring chewing on apples.

  “What you fellows want with Grady’s apples?” The tatterdemalion white woman had a basket in her hand.

  “Looks like you were after Grady’s apples your own self,” Rufus replied. “Go ’head. We ain’t took them all.”

  “I got a right to those apples,” she said hotly. “Grady was second cousin to me and I’ve sat on his porch many a time eatin’ apples. He’d be glad to know I had them. Where you thievin’ niggers come from?”

  Wordlessly Jesse pointed to the south.

  “Figured. Where you goin’?”

  Jesse pointed toward the north.

  All the bristle went out of the woman. “Well, I suppose I can’t blame you. You comin’ up on Philippi. Was Federals there until May, but ain’t none there now. They off chasin’ the rebs. Some say it was rebs that burned Cousin Grady out, but some say it was Federals. Don’t matter to Grady, he’s burned out whoever done it.” She cackled. Her hands were cracked, her nails black and broken. Jesse borrowed her basket and picked apples.

  “Cousin Grady was a fool, but he knew where to plant an orchard. I’ll wager these trees will be here in a hundred years. You ever wonder what it’ll be like then? Of course some folks say the world is gonna end.”

  “I think it’s ended,” Jesse said.

  “Well maybe it has. But if you two boys stroll through Philippi yours will. Folks in Philippi don’t want to see no niggers. Don’t fill that basket plum to the brim, you’ll spill it.” Speculation flared in her eyes. “Got any money?”

  “Might, might not,” Rufus said.

  “You got cash for a hot meal? Can you keep a secret?”

  “Ma’am?”

  Her forehead puckered with the effort of deciding. “Silver coin,” she said. “We don’t take no scrip.”

  They followed her into thickets and brush on a trail she could see but they couldn’t. Half an hour later it got darker and low branches whipped Jesse’s face and vines caught at his legs and the sullen sky overhead was the only light in the world.

  They smelled cooking meat before they spotted the fire at the base of an overwhelming pale boulder. Ruddy light reflected over the black men in the clearing. A pole laid between uprights kept the meat above the fire. The largest man went three hundred pounds and his bare gut hung over the rope that encircled his trousers and his hair was slicked straight back off his head with grease and his eyes glittered like eyes glitter from dens within the earth. “Who you?”

  “I brought ’em, Ezekiel. They mine.”

  “Two more goddamn runaways. We got enough mouths to feed.”

  “They can pay for it. In silver. Can’t get whiskey without silver.”

  Ezekiel extracted an old horse pistol from the back of his pants. “You gonna give me your silver?” Suddenly he heaved with silent mirth. “Old Master Colander weren’t gonna give us his mule. Said he needed it. Mule’s on the fire. You got silver?”

  “Give you ten cents for supper and a safe place to sleep.”

  “They’s six of us not countin’ the white woman. Little Toby’s the youngest and he’s got a man’s growth. This pistol is loaded. I loaded it myself. Master Colander said he wouldn’t part with that mule. Lucky we don’t eat Master Colander too.” Though he shook with hilarity, not a sound came from him, and Jesse could hear the crackling of the fire, the spatter as grease flared up, a hoot owl in the forest behind. The old white woman hunched beside the fire gumming an apple. Men circled and those that didn’t have knives in their hands had clubs. Little Toby waggled his club.

  Rufus counted coins. “Here’s a dollar six bits,” he said. “I keepin’ four bits in case we get hungry again one day.”

  Ezekiel frowned but then he grinned and stuck out his hand and ceremoniously bit each coin, after which he made a sweeping gesture of welcome. “Come set,” he said. “How long you boys been runnin’?”

  Weapons were put away, and Jesse sat beside the white woman even though turning his back on Ezekiel raised his hackles.

  When the meat came off the spit, Ezekiel laid it on a flat rock and divided it into portions, one for each man, one for the woman, two for himself.

  Little Toby hunkered beside Rufus and asked where they’d come from and didn’t wait for his answer before saying that he, Toby, had belonged to a Master Talbott until the Federals came down from Philippi and Master Talbott ran and then white folks from yonder burned Master Talbott’s house and took everything they could carry including Master Talbott’s best rocker, so Toby wandered through the woods near starved until he met these maroons. “I stayin’ here till white folks quit killin’ each other. Then I go back, find Master Talbott. I never hungry a night when I was with him.” Little Toby said Ezekiel never killed people unless he had to, that they hadn’t killed old Master Colander, but they surely took his mule.

  “Not much different than beef,” Jesse said. “Sweeter, maybe.”

  “He were a young mule,” Little Toby said. He added that pickings were good on account of all the white folks going around burning each other out. He hadn’t gone to sleep hungry since he joined Ezekiel, and they could do worse to do the same. “We’d had to kill you if you didn’t give up your money,” he added solemnly. “We got to do what Ezekiel wants. He master here.”

  After they finished eating, Ezekiel produced a stone jug, which went around the circle until each man had taken one swallow. Ezekiel himself passed the jug to Rufus. Rufus wiped his mouth and shook his head. “That’s somethin’,” he gasped. He coughed. “God damn, that’s somethin’!”

  When Jesse said, “I don’t drink liquor, I took the pledge,” the smile fell off Ezekiel’s big face and he took two swallows and set the jug at his feet and glowered at Jesse.

  Little Toby started in with his harmonica, quavering notes, “Turkey in the Straw,” and though Ezekiel kept glowering, a couple men started dancing and pretty soon most were. The white woman was asleep against a tree.

  Ezekiel heaved his bulk around and abstractedly took two more measured swallows of the whiskey.

  Some of the maroons had partners, others danced alone, but other than Little Toby’s plaintive harmonica and the rhythmic thud of feet, the dancers made no sound. Finally, they threw themselves down by the fire. Again Ezekiel passed the jug for their single swallows and his two. Again he was angered by Jesse’s refusal. When the jug completed its rounds, Ezekiel set it between his thick feet.

  “Now if I was a young fellow,” he said, “runnin’ through the woods and breaks, hidin’ by day and runnin’ by night, if I was to come up to that mighty River Tygart where it rolls through Philippi and where there ain’t no ford, neither above the covered bridge nor below the covered bridge and always patrollers at that bridge, always, I’d lose hope. And if I was to happen to fall in with maroons, kindly-disposed outlaws of the wild woods, I’d think about joining them. I’d ask, ‘What you gonna eat tomorrow, Master Eze
kiel?’ and he’d say back, ‘Mule hocks,’ and I’d ask, ‘What you gonna eat the day after that?’ and he’d say, ‘There’s a widow woman by Parnassus got a couple fat ewes hid in a shed. And maybe some gold too if we was to ask her right.’ I’d say to myself, ‘Hmmm . . . these maroons are right and I might could travel with ’em for a spell. No more freedom anywhere than here in these wild woods.’ ”

  “Amen,” Little Toby said. Everybody looked around with satisfaction. The woman snorted a snore and somebody kicked her foot. After a pause which neither Jesse nor Rufus filled, Ezekiel shut his eyes and seemed to settle into himself, but he wasn’t sleeping, he was drawing attention. When he talked again he talked soft, almost womanly. “You all know how God made the heavens and the earth and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and he made ’em all in seven days, but he weren’t done creatin’ until he made him a nigger. Birds was hard to make and fish was hard to make and Adam was hard to make, but hardest of all was that nigger.”

  Although Ezekiel’s eyes stayed shut, his hand found the jug. The cork squeaked when he pulled it, tumped when he drove it home. “Until them Israelites got out of bondage there wasn’t no need for niggers. You remember how the pharaoh’s daughter found Baby Moses and when Moses growed to be a man he lead his people out of Egypt and across the River Jordan into the Promised Land?”

  “Oh, I remember,” someone said.

  “And he lead them into the land of milk and honey?”

  “I remember.”

  “And them Israelites they all work in they fields and they all milk they cows and all shuck they corn and preacher just as quick to hoe a row as sing a hymn.”

  “Milk and honey.”

  “They go on that way and they go on that way, long time. But directly some fellows lyin’ under a shade tree when everybody else finish they supper and go back in the fields, these fellows just wave and say they rest in the shade a mite longer. And some of the women discontent on account of how if they got a red scarf, all the other womens got red scarves too, and if they got a ham hock for soup, everybody else got one. Some of the women start to foolin’ around with them fellows under the shade trees. Preacher, he’s heard how Moses used to go up on the mountain and talk to the Lord, so he figures he’ll talk to the Lord too. He climbs all day and he climbs all night but that mountain lift up forever. No water to drink neither. Wasn’t no water on it. He gets to this big limestone ledge looks out over everything below, fields and cattle and houses and people, and he prays to the Lord, says how his people gettin’ unhappy because everybody’s got the same identical possessions and because nobody feelin’ bad, there ain’t nobody feelin’ good.

  “Well, a big black cloud covers the sun and rainstorm chase everybody out of the fields below but the sun keeps shinin’ on that ledge and Preacher hears this mighty voice louder than a railroad train. ‘All right,’ the Lord says, ‘but this the last thing I’m ever gonna do for you.’

  “And when Preacher come down the mountain, he finds half the people been turned into niggers. And from then on everything just fine. The masters happy because they got nothin’ to do except practice with they swords and shields and make war on each other. And the wives happy because not everybody got that same scarf, and maybe if they husbands do good in the war they might own everybody else’s scarves, and they get more milk and honey than they need or they children need so they pour it on the ground and pretty soon the master with the biggest mess of milk and honey outside his kitchen door, everybody start sayin’ what a great man he is and listenin’ close to every word he say. Whole world get divided into what’s nigger and what’s not. There’s nigger work, which is plowin’ and shockin’ and milkin’ and butcherin’ and scrubbin’ and carin’ for the children. And there’s masters’ work, which is dancin’ and racin’ horses and squabblin’ with each other. There’s nigger names like Mingo and Jim and Franky and Ezekiel and there’s master names like James B. Stoddard and Robert E. Lee. And worst thing can happen to a master is he lose his name so he become a nigger. He’ll fight to the death so that don’t happen: ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ that’s what Master say. What he mean is: ‘Please Lord, don’t make me no nigger.’

  “Now it ain’t so bad for that nigger either. He got to carry the water and tote all the wood, but he never have to fight in the wars. The masters afraid if the nigger learn to fight’, instead of killin’ the other masters’ niggers, he go crazy and start killin’ masters too. So when the fightin’ start, the niggers stay at home with the womens and children. And since the nigger ain’t a master, nothin’ that happen to him is his own doin’. He got a pain, Master make it to be. He work too hard, Master make it to be. He get sick and die, Master make it to be. Bein’ a nigger sets you free. You already the worst thing they is.”

  A log broke into the fire and flared up and Ezekiel got to his feet and farted a thunderclap fart and scooped up his blanket and jug and retired under the biggest tree. Everybody else stretched and yawned and followed his example.

  Four hours later, Jesse crept to Rufus and touched his shoulder and the two slipped away. It was slow going through the brush, but they were miles from the maroons by daybreak.

  All the next day and most of the night, they waited outside Philippi, and the moon was sunk in the west when they slipped through the town, flitting from shadow to shadow. They hesitated at the covered bridge until they were sure it was unguarded before they crossed.

  They stole through fields and woodlots. Sometimes dogs set up barking and twice lanterns blossomed in farmhouses and once a man came onto his porch and called, “Who’s there?” By dawn they dropped down beside the river where the walking was rougher. At first light Rufus put out a line and caught two rock bass and a smallish trout. “I ain’t gonna eat no fish raw,” Rufus said.

  Jesse said they should wait until night when nobody would see smoke, that they were too near Philippi, that from the alders where they were hid they could see men in a field just upstream picking corn. “Just a small fire,” Rufus pleaded.

  The wood was dry, the fire hot and quick, and they smeared the fish with mud and laid them in the coals. Scraps of steam issued from the mudpie they’d created.

  They lay quietly in the thicket. From time to time they heard a voice from the harvest field, once or twice horses’ hooves, and each time one particular wagon filled and drove away, they heard the squeak, squeak, squeak of its bad wheel. Crows cawed overhead and a buzzard circled until Jesse flicked a hand. Rufus shuddered. “I hate them things.”

  “Buzzards like the undertaker. Nobody’s glad to see him come but things be worse without him.”

  After dark they struck the railroad line.

  With the quarter moon on their shoulder they walked the pale trackbed. The stars were bright and Jesse searched among them for Maggie but he didn’t see her. Maybe he had to be quiet to see her. Maybe he had to be in chains.

  “Wonder why they ain’t no trains?” Rufus said.

  They crossed the river on a trestle, and a couple miles later they crossed again. A scattering of houses on the hill above them, none lit.

  “What’s that?”

  “That” was a wooden signal tower on the edge of Grafton’s railyards. Its signal blades hung down like a dispirited windmill.

  One track became two tracks became three tracks and the third track split in two.

  “How many trains they run at one time?” Rufus whispered.

  “Halt! Give the countersign!”

  Both men froze as a Federal soldier stepped from beneath a water tower.

  “We don’t know no countersign,” Rufus called. “But we ain’t no enemies of yours. We just followin’ these tracks to freedom.”

  “You swear you not rebs?”

  “You ever seen any colored Confederates?” Jesse drawled.

  The soldier was young and his rifle muzzle wandered nervously across their midriffs. A cloud choked the moonlight. “Well I’m damned,” the soldier said. “Now don?
??t you get to wiggling. Far as I know you might be scouting for ol’ Stonewall himself.”

  “We see General Jackson, we run like hell,” Rufus asserted.

  “You won’t be the first man to adopt that course.” The soldier relaxed. “You don’t run and I don’t shoot you. Sound all right?”

  “We been walkin’ long time to get here. . . .”

  “Yeah. I’m from Minnesota myself. Railroad to Baltimore and railroad to here and on my feet ever since. Suppose I’m lucky. Least I ain’t been killed.”

  The soldier led them past silent trains. Grafton Station was a square marble structure with an Italianate tower beside the somewhat larger and equally ornate Grafton Hotel. Every hotel bedroom was crammed with stranded passengers, lobby couches and settees were reserved for women and children, and when Jesse and Rufus passed through the station waiting room, they stepped over sleeping men’s feet.

  “Ain’t been no train in three days,” their escort explained. “Trains keep gettin’ here from the west, but they can’t go ahead on account of Stonewall Jackson.”

  In his smoky office, the telegrapher hunched over his brass instrument evaluating clicks and pauses, head cocked skeptically. “That’s not Lewis’s hand,” the telegrapher said. “I’d swear to it. Whoever it is says Jackson has loaded three trains with troops and sent them west to Grafton, says J.E.B. Stuart is coming up the Tygart to take us from the rear, but it’s not Lewis’s hand. He says he’s Lewis, but he ain’t.”

  The Federal captain was young, prematurely bald, sweating. “Oh God, we can’t fight Jackson.” He looked at Rufus. “Where you come from?”

  “We come from Stratford Plantation, biggest plantation on the Jackson River.”

  “We were below Philippi yesterday,” Jesse said.

  “Have you seen Confederates? Troops? Cavalry?”

  “No, Master.”

  “I’m not your master. I’m from Vermont. We don’t keep slaves.”

  Rufus grinned. “Then you just the master for me.”