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

  The officer hurried right past Rufus’s joke. “Have you seen cavalry in the Tygart Valley?”

  “Nary a one. Seen plenty farmers, plenty burned-out farms, but nary a Confederate.”

  “He’s telling you the truth, Master,” Jesse said.

  The captain calmed. To the telegrapher: “Send a message that five Federal brigades are expected in Grafton within the hour.”

  “Master,” Rufus said, “we’re hungry. We work for a meal, sweep up, polish your boots, clean your saddle, anything.”

  When the telegrapher’s fingers quit, the officer leaned forward into the silence. “There. That’s given the lying bastards something to think about.” He motioned to a pasty-faced sergeant. “Bennett, get these men some rations. They’ve done a service for us tonight.”

  “Begging your pardon, Captain. These niggers ain’t told us anything we don’t already know.”

  Rufus said, “I’m a farrier. I’ll bet you gentlemens don’t care to be shoein’ your own horses. Any of you bettin’ men, I can do racing shoes so neat and small, horse don’t think he wearin’ anythin’.”

  The captain’s attention was riveted to the silent telegraph. “Uh- huh . . .” he said vaguely. “Get them fed.”

  “You brung ’em,” the sergeant said to the sentry. “You feed ’em.”

  Rufus “Thank you, Master’d” all the way to the rations shed, where the sentry gave them hardtack and salt beef.

  “You got any shoes in there?” Jesse asked. “Think you could let me have a pair of shoes?”

  “Naw. Sergeant Bennett’d skin me alive. Track goes east and west. West is Ohio. East is Washington.”

  “Be fightin’ to the east,” Rufus said.

  “McClellan and Lee are lined up for a hell of a fight. Old Bobby Lee will whip Mac again and he’ll retreat and lick his wounds.”

  “What if Gen’r’l McClellan wins?”

  “Well, then, this war is over and we can all go home.”

  Jesse said, “Ain’t got no home.” He started down the track, and Rufus hurried after.

  “Why we goin’ this way?” Rufus asked.

  “We go ask Master Lincoln what to do.”

  Rufus walked for half an hour thoughtfully. “What if he won’t talk to us?”

  On the gray gravel right-of-way, they walked through that night and into the next day, the rails stretching ahead, two rusty promises that joined at the horizon. The telegraph line which paralleled the track might have been carrying encyclopedias of talk but they never heard one word. The gravel abraded Jesse’s feet and by noon he was limping. After they rested and ate, Rufus took off his shoes and passed them over.

  When the rails divided they knew they were nearing a town and swung wide, taking to the rough country to pass.

  The morning of the second day out of Grafton, the railroad tracks disappeared into a hole.

  “You think there’s railroad wagons in there?” Rufus asked.

  “No tellin’ what’s in there.” Jesse slowed his pace. “We ain’t seen no trains since Grafton.”

  There was enough light in the hole they could see to walk.

  “How come this hole twice as wide as the track?” Rufus asked.

  “Might be they puttin’ in another track later.”

  “Two tracks? Can’t be enough trains in the world to keep two tracks busy.”

  It was cool in the tunnel and damp. Seeps darkened the rockface and trickled toward iron grates set in the floor. The spot of light at the far end swelled into a circle and redefined itself as a half-oval; the tunnel floor was the base. The tracks leapt out into space.

  The trestle arced away from the tunnel, clinging to the bare rock cliff before hurling itself over a roaring river. The river was vigorous and murky, smashing into great boulders, throwing spume into the air.

  “I can’t . . .” Rufus said.

  Jesse, who’d stepped on to the crossties, paused. “You want to wear the shoes?”

  “Come back for a minute, let me catch my breath. I can’t bear it, you standin’ over the air.”

  “You sick? You look awful pale.”

  “What happens a train come along while we out there?”

  “I suppose we’d grab one of these upright timbers and swing out until the train passes.”

  “What if the bridge fall down?”

  “If it’ll hold a whole railroad train it won’t have trouble carryin’ two niggers. Rufus, we can’t stick here. There’s nothin’ for us here.”

  White-faced, a step at a time, with never a downward glance, Rufus followed Jesse across the six-hundred-yard trestle until they entered the tunnel on the far side, where he crumpled, his trembling back and hands pressed against the stone.

  “Jesse,” Rufus gasped. “Maybe the masters right. Maybe whites ain’t the same as us. What nigger could’ve built that thing?”

  Jesse walked back out on the trestle and set his hands on his hips. “Me,” he said out loud.

  Two days later, outside Cumberland, when the tracks made a loud random click it startled both of them. Dark smoke pillars rolled at them from the east, and they lay down in the bushes.

  Two trains, one on the heels of the other—furred with soldiers: soldiers in the cars, on the roofs of the cars, on the platforms between cars. There were soldiers on the coal car and lying in rows on flatcars. Many were bandaged, some were shirtless, most didn’t have hats. Jesse lifted his hand in silent greeting. A knapsack toppled off a flatcar, maybe intentionally.

  “They look like they been in a fight,” Jesse said.

  The knapsack held a spare shirt, two days’ rations, and a packet of ground coffee. Rufus hefted the empty knapsack and grinned. “This just the thing for my horseshoeing tools. Just the thing.”

  That night, on the banks of the Cumberland, they boiled coffee in their metal cup. Holding the cup with a bit of rag, Rufus said, “If I knew this was goin’ to be so fine, I’d’ve run last year.”

  “We ain’t there yet.”

  “What you gonna do when we get north?” Rufus asked.

  “I been studyin’ on that. I don’t know as how I want this war to pass me by.”

  “Hell, Jesse. They ain’t no colored soldiers.”

  “Maybe not. But I can tote for the soldiers and bring their firewood and drag ’em off the field when they’re shot. I can do some good.”

  “You still hate the master for sellin’ Maggie?”

  “I don’t think I ever did. He didn’t have no more choice than I do. For a master, he wasn’t so bad.”

  “Then why we runnin’?”

  “When God told Moses to bring His people out of Egypt, you don’t think some of the Israelites didn’t have good jobs under the pharaohs? Good many were drivers, some overseers too. But they all packed up and left, just like Moses said. Probably some of ’em were married to Egyptians. Probably some had Egyptian children, but that didn’t matter. Sometimes you don’t have any choice. When it’s your day to run, you run.”

  Through wild country that day, the track clung to the river, but finally it veered south again.

  Jesse consulted his map. “We’ll be near Martinsburg by night. Next day, Harpers Ferry. That’s where John Brown tried to set us free.”

  “Was he crazy like they say?”

  They were in flat country and it was near dark when they spotted the horsemen, a dozen of them, silhouetted on the horizon. “Step like you got no care in the world,” Jesse said. “We belong to Master Williams in Martinsburg.”

  The riders trotted along beside the tracks and onto the railbed. Some wore homespun jackets and cavalry boots, others horsemen’s dusters. One man had a black silk stovepipe set square on his head.

  That man had plump dirty cheeks and a twinkling expression in his tiny eyes. “Where you boys headed?”

  Jesse jerked his head. “Martinsburg, Master. We been to visit our gals and now we goin’ home to Master Williams, just where we belongs.”

  “Baxter, you lived in these
parts. Anybody named Williams in Martinsburg?”

  “Three or four of them, Cap’n.”

  “Which Williams you goin’ to, boy?”

  “Master Jack Williams, Master. He be expectin’ us before dark. He don’t like his servants out after dark, no sir.”

  The man who drew up beside their interrogator was as thin as the first was plump. His hat boasted a turkey feather.

  “You be Master Stuart?” Jesse asked tremulously.

  The thin man was startled but recovered with a grin. “You think I’m Stuart?”

  “If you not Master J.E.B. Stuart, you his spittin’ image,” Jesse said. “Lord, you have made some rides!”

  The thin man produced a flask from his saddlebag, sucked it, and tossed it to another. “Come on, Cap’n,” he said. “I don’t like to come into the picket lines at night.”

  “Just rest yourself, Ollie,” the twinkling man said. “Don’t make overmuch difference if we come in today or tomorrow in the full glare of daylight. If Gen’r’l Lee wants the services of Cap’n Stump’s Partisan Rangers, by God he’ll sign us on. If he don’t we keep on going it alone. Plenty of Federals for everybody.”

  “I was thinkin’ pickets might pick us off, we come in at night,” the thin man drawled.

  Fiercely hot, abruptly: “Well, there’s two can play at that game.”

  Thin man laughed like the cawing of a crow. “Ain’t you the one. Cap’n Stump. Ain’t you the one.”

  There wasn’t a blade of cover for five hundred yards, and Jesse’s knees were trembling. He hoped his pantlegs weren’t quivering. “Master Jack Williams, he waitin’ on us, Master Stump.”

  “If we hold you up we’ll inconvenience him. That right?”

  “No, Master. Nothin’ you do incon . . . veyance anybody.” Deliberately mispronouncing a word he could spell, goddamn spell, so a man who probably signed his name with an X could be comfortable in his superiority.

  Suddenly bored. “Don’t lie to me, boy. Look at yourself. You been on the road as long as we have, and there ain’t no Master Williams in Martinsburg, not that we’d give a damn.”

  A couple riders dismounted and led their horses to the creek to water them.

  “Oh, Master Williams, he’s a hard master, but he fair, he . . .”

  “Oh, shut the hell up, boy. Don’t matter if he’s real or not. Not now.” A smile dawned on his face. “You mean you ain’t heard? Hell, I thought nigger telegraph would have give everybody the news. By Jesus, you really don’t know?”

  Jesse was tired but he wasn’t foolish, and the first word out of his mouth was, “Master . . . heard what, Master?”

  “Why you’re free, boy. That Black Republican Abraham Lincoln has e-man-ci-pated your black ass. You just as free as me and Ollie here. You want my horse?”

  “Master?”

  “I mean, hell, it ain’t like it belongs to anybody. Courier who used to ride it won’t be needin’ it no more. Belongs to any free man who can take it.” He extended the reins to Jesse.

  “Master . . .”

  “So, we free men,” Rufus said. “And that a free horse, no strings to it.”

  “Nope.”

  “Old Master, he used to ride a horse like that. Great big damn horse. Wouldn’t want to go messin’ with Master’s horse, no sir.” Hands clasped behind his back, Rufus walked around the horse inspecting it. “This here horse branded ‘US.’ I don’t read so good but I’d venture that how they mark them Federal horses. And I see this saddle blanket is spankin’ new and blue and gold. And I see here down the bottom of the saddle a stain in the leather turnin’ red-brown here at that girth strap. Master, I don’t believe this horse always a Confederate. Horse be a convert, praise the Lord.”

  A couple riders grinned and Cap’n Stump showed his teeth, but Ollie’s brow wrinkled in irritation. “I always did enjoy a smartass nigger,” he drawled, slow as he could.

  The grin dropped off Rufus’s face and fell to the sharp gravel.

  “You free now,” Cap’n Stump continued. “Ain’t there anything you want to do?”

  His sidekick lifted himself in his stirrups. “Cap’n, we better get a move on.”

  “Hush. I’m learnin’ what a man wants when he’s free.”

  “I want to be a farrier, Master. Want to shoe horses.” Rufus unslung his knapsack and took out his hoof rasps. “Master, I shoe all you horses. Won’t be chargin’ nothin’ either.”

  Cap’n Stump nodded. When he slung a leg over the saddle horn, his saddle creaked. “Last week we run into you two, we take you down to the slave pen in Winchester. Jim there give us twenty dollars a head for runaway niggers. Jim takes all the newspapers, Staunton Examiner, Winchester Star, Harrisonburg Herald, and sorts out which niggers belong to who, sends ’em up the valley and collects his reward. But soon as the niggers got emancipated Jim closed up his jail. How much your master pay for you, boy?”

  Despair changed to defiant pride in Rufus’s face. “Eighteen hundred dollar. In gold. I can fell, limb, skid logs, operate a sawmill, plow, do farm work. I’m a good farrier. I got most my teeth.”

  Stump shook his head sorrowfully. “Yeah, but you free. Don’t belong to nobody but yourself. You’re worthless.” And with his sudden pistol he shot Rufus in the chest and Rufus sat on the gravel leaning against his hands.

  “Master.”

  “I done told you, you ain’t got no master.” At the second shot Rufus jerked stiff for a moment before he fell onto his side and his feet commenced drumming.

  “Boy been runnin’ so long he’s runnin’ after he’s dead,” Ollie said.

  Jesse wanted to bolt, to dodge, to hold Rufus’s feet from that terrible kicking, but he could do nothing but watch the black hole of Stump’s gun muzzle.

  “If I shoot you, who’s gonna bury your friend?” Stump complained. “I don’t mind killin’ but anytime I get a whiff of that death stink, I lose my victuals. I never got no nearer to the Sharpsburg battle than a mile, but I upchucked till my gut ached. Christ, what a slaughter pen! Nigger, you gonna bury that boy?”

  Jesse nodded until his neck hurt.

  And that quick, everything was different; like quicksilver they were riding off and Jesse was alone on the railbed with the stink of the gunpowder, the stink of Rufus’s bowels, and the spasmodic jerking of Rufus’s heels.

  “I’m going away now, Rufus,” Jesse said. “But I won’t go far. I need to find dirt soft enough to dig with our cup. I won’t put you in the ground until you’re quit running.”

  A LETTER FROM SERGEANT

  CATESBY BYRD TO

  HIS WIFE LEONA

  CAMP NEAR OPEQUON CREEK, VIRGINIA

  SEPTEMBER 20, 1862

  MY DEAREST DARLING,

  Although we have fought a fearful battle at Sharpsburg, I am by God’s mercy unwounded. Your brother, Duncan, rejoined the army in time to march with A. P. Hill’s division. Hill’s footsore men arrived on the field late in the day when the Federals had broken our lines and our cause seemed lost. I am told Duncan distinguished himself in sharp fighting.

  Our brigade was posted to the extreme left of the line, supporting J.E.B. Stuart’s horse artillery, in woods behind the Hagerstown Pike. When the Federals charged the woods, we caught them enfilade, with volley after volley, broke them and pursued through the smoke and crash of musketry. Excepting the pungency, I might have thought we were fighting in a fog, so dense was the powder smoke. Our company blundered into a clearing which the Federals were vacating. The farmer for whose land we contended had cut his winter’s firewood and stacked it. When a cannon shot struck one woodpile it hurled sharp wood splinters into our ranks and cut down our captain. Undaunted, we rushed forward and delivered a devastating volley into unsuspecting Federals who had not realized their flank had been turned by Virginians. Determined to hold their ground, the Federals returned our volleys with interest, and their fire grew so hot that I lay down in a depression behind fence rails. I was joined in my refuge by a Texan who had surviv
ed the fighting across the turnpike. If we lay absolutely flat we were safe enough but could hear minié balls chunking into the fence rails just at our head. In our forced intimacy, his face next to my ear, he cried his name. He was E. P. Hagwood from Galveston, Texas. He shouted his wife’s name, it might have been Linda, though I cannot be sure I heard right on account of the roar of guns and musketry. He shouted the name of his regiment and his regimental colonel who’d been slain and the names of his comrades, one after another: all slain. I suppose we had lain there for ten minutes though it seemed like hours before an officer rode by crying we should fall back to regroup. I never saw that officer again but the instant we stood, my acquaintance took a bullet in the throat. He tried to say more, more names of those he loved, but could not. His blood gushed from the horrible hole.

  Providence spared your husband. I ran to our regiment through a positive hail of musketry, and though my sleeve was plucked twice by importunate bullets, I was unhurt. One of our batteries was withdrawing when a shell felled an artilleryman and cut the leg from a horse. The surviving gunners cut the horse out of its traces, but the horse hobbled after them on three legs.

  Our regiment tried to go forward anew but were confounded by overwhelming Federal fire. We took up a position behind a ridge and our sharpshooters exchanged rounds with their sharpshooters. Every hour of that awful day was filled with musketry, cannon blasts, faint cheers, and the shrieks of dying horses and men. The Federals tried our center, which held firm. Finally they tried our right, which was having severe difficulties until General Hill’s fortuitous arrival.

  Not long after dark the cannons stopped thundering and litter bearers from both armies came unchallenged onto the field, freely intermingling, directing one another to fallen comrades. In one forty-acre cornfield the dead lay so thick I might have walked across on men without once touching the ground.

  We waited the next day for the battle to resume, so weakened from our efforts that had the Federals tried us again, we surely should have been overwhelmed. The following morning, my regiment withdrew across the Potomac onto Virginia soil.

  In the weary quiet that follows a great battle, I thought about geometry. I fear that Mr. Euclid’s discoveries have had too slight a hold on our son Thomas. Thomas takes more delight in boys’ games than rigorous theories, and I deplore his laxity. I pray you urge Tommy to be a better student. I deeply regret that old Uther is too unwell to take on another generation of scholars.