Savannah, or a Gift for Mr. Lincoln, Page 4

  Hattie might have behaved during the visit but for an incident an hour before. Outdoors, among the magnolias, a brown canebrake rattler slithered from the spartina grass in hot pursuit of a dune rat. The rat escaped when Hattie inadvertently tripped over the snake.

  The annoyed serpent showed off its fangs and rattled its tail. Hattie jumped, caught a strong lower branch of the magnolia with both hands, and kicked up her feet. She hung by her hands and ankles until the rattler lost interest and left.

  Red-cheeked, her heart pumping, Hattie waited until her wrists ached unbearably. Then she somersaulted down from the tree. She was sometimes criticized for being a tomboy, but it had its benefits.

  When Sara made her poetical announcement, Hattie was still a bit overwrought. She ran to the kitchen window in time to see the Drewgoods tumbling out of their gaudy carmine depot wagon. Adam held the reins. Hattie had always considered Adam the acme of handsomeness, but the judge’s last remaining slave was plagued with rheumatism now, slow to bend and walk—an old man unnoticed by his owners except when they gave orders:

  “Find a shady spot. Take a nap. I’ll call you when I want you,” the judge said to Adam, whom Hattie liked better than this whole potful of relatives combined.

  Sara and Hattie’s connection to the Drewgoods was Ladson Lester’s older sister, a portly and phlegmatic lady of forty. In the finest confusing Southern tradition, she’d been handed a man’s name, Leonidas. Everyone called her Lulu. She stepped aside deferentially to permit her husband, the judge, to march up to the front entrance.

  Judge Cincinnatus Drewgood had been thrown off the Chatham County bench, allegedly for rendering favorable tort verdicts in return for cash. Hattie remembered her father railing against the judge’s “peculations, speculations, and Lord knows what other aberrations and abominations.” What galled Ladson most while he lived was the judge’s studied air of piety. At church, from his front pew—the amen corner, Ladson had called it—the judge always sang the loudest and prayed the longest. Ladson believed his sister must have been temporarily deranged when she accepted Drewgood’s proposal of marriage.

  The judge was ten years older than his wife, with a little white goatee and big booming voice useful in intimidating defendants. The elbows of his bottle-green frock coat were shiny; a certain false hauteur was much reduced by wartime. Hattie disliked his eyes, of a peculiar, oddly menacing pumpkin color.

  “Why, hello, Judge—hello, Lulu—hello, children—do come in,” trilled Sara, ever the polite Southern hostess. “Wouldn’t Adam like a cold drink of well water?”

  “The nigger’s all right,” the judge said, handing his tall beaver hat to Hattie. There was an elaborate ballet as, one by one, the ladies tilted their steel-hooped crinolines and squeezed sideways through the door. The judge’s two older children were nineteen. Merry, the pretty and buxom one, dressed neatly; Cherry, her squinty, small-bosomed fraternal twin, never combed her hair or rouged her cheeks, as if set on spitefully enhancing her drabness. Napoleon, age eleven, a late arrival, was white and pudgy, with a tendency to whine and pick his nose in public. It happened now; Lulu smacked his hand and chided him. Napoleon’s eyes flashed murder for a second.

  “Things are mighty dire in Savannah,” the judge announced as he sat down without invitation. The cluttered parlor was roomy, but occupied by three ladies whose skirts measured eight feet across, each, a crowded feeling prevailed.

  “That Yankee devil has passed through Louisville,” the judge continued. “He may be in Millen already.”

  “More than halfway to Savannah,” Lulu added as her dolorous contribution.

  The judge wrung his hands. “Beauregard wants to confer with Old Reliable, but Hardee won’t go to Charleston. Says things are hot here and sure to get hotter. The vandals are liable to arrive before Christmas.”

  “I hate the holidays anymore,” Napoleon declared. “That old Sherman man ruined them.”

  “Didn’t he just,” said Cherry. “We’ll get no big dinner, no gifts—they might as well tell Saint Nicholas to stay clean out of Georgia.”

  “I should hope he stays away,” the judge said with a sniff. “He’s a Yankee concoction. Christmas is the day niggers expect presents from their masters. We exchange gifts the correct way, at New Year’s.”

  Hattie rolled her eyes at this. Napoleon slyly stuck out his tongue at her.

  Sara, as per the demands of courtesy, offered the guests some of her precious ersatz tea. Napoleon seized his throat and made a gagging noise. Cherry sniffed and said, “We drink the English kind, from Fernandina.”

  “Now, now, no bragging,” Lulu cautioned. Merry, seated with her hands folded in her lap, looked similarly embarrassed.

  The judge said, “The tea was a gift from a client. If it came through the blockade, I have no knowledge of it. We don’t welcome contraband in our house, no indeed. Refreshments aren’t necessary, Sara. I merely want to inform you of the worsening military situation, and renew my offer.”

  Sara sat placidly in her rocker, though Hattie guessed she must be starting to boil. The judge arrived with his pleas and his offer with tiresome regularity. Sherman’s surprise departure from Atlanta had increased the frequency of his calls. Hattie could feel the tension in the sunny parlor. Since the rattler incident, she was feeling a little snaky herself.

  Sara maintained her outward calm. “You have heard my answer, Judge, many times.”

  “But you have three hundred valuable acres and no slaves to work them. I have access to the capital to buy the property and make necessary repairs and refurbishments. Why continue to burden yourself?”

  “Because this is the Lester plantation. For five generations, since the first Lester came down from Virginia in 1768.”

  “A penniless indentured servant—an illiterate Liverpudlian,” the judge said with ill-concealed contempt.

  “True enough, but he was a free man after six years up there. He saw opportunity here. That’s why he signed a second indenture.”

  “Chasing the silkworms—I know all about it.”

  So did anyone conversant with Savannah history. By the early 1770s, the dream of a fabulous silkworm culture had gone glimmering, leaving nothing but a few dying mulberry trees scattered around the county, and a book of engravings showing lush orchards and lavish estates, produced in England to promote the scheme. The Swiss to whom the first Lester had indentured himself in Savannah disappeared into the trans-Mississippi West, escaping a host of debts but freeing his servant at the end of four years rather than six. The first Lester in America applied for and was granted twenty-five acres, the foundation of the family lands. Slowly the holdings accreted; Hattie’s grandfather owned three hundred acres along the Little Ogeechee and Grove rivers. Hattie’s father, Ladson, died before he could increase the family holdings, but three hundred was an attractive number to the judge.

  Hattie fidgeted at her mother’s elbow. Papa always claimed the judge was a mediocre lawyer, but she supposed crooks had other ways to get their “capital,” as he called it. He pretended he was helping a relative, but Mama said the judge didn’t have much of a law practice anymore and would do anything to get his hands on a new means of livelihood. He wanted Silverglass at a sacrifice price.

  And he was persistent: “I am equipped to make this a working, producing plantation again. When peace is restored, the niggers will come back. They’re like children: They only want three squares a day and a master who doesn’t beat them excessively. It’s become altogether too hazardous for you to stay out here alone, you and your”—he screwed up his mouth as though tasting a sour pickle—“lovely daughter. That debased rascal Sherman has no morals or civilities. He released many, many evildoers from the state prison.”

  Sara nodded. “Yes, we heard.”

  Hattie clapped her hands. “Do you suppose Jo Swett was one of them?”

  Had she uttered a blasphemy or some purple oath favored by Savannah River stevedores, the silence couldn’t have been deeper, or
more freighted with disapproval. Merry began to weep into her cotton gloves. Lulu sat rigid as garden statuary. Cherry crucified Hattie with her squinty eyes. Napoleon watched his father like a volcano sightseer awaiting an eruption. They all reminded Hattie of the rattler.

  She smiled prettily for them. “Do you suppose Tybee Jo would come back? If he did, I bet he’d be mad as hornets.”

  The judge puffed up righteously. “None of your business, Miss Hattie. You need lessons in deportment. Maybe even a good tanning.”

  Sara took Hattie’s arm. “Apologize to the judge and his family, please.”

  “All right. I apologize.” A deep breath—then an outburst: “But everybody knows Jo Swett was arrested and sent to Milledgeville because he was courting Merry”—Merry boo-hooed forcefully—“and he wasn’t good enough for her.”

  Napoleon stamped to the center of the circle, on the barricades: “Jo Swett was a robber. He broke into old Jew Bettelheim’s hardware store and stole a pistol. There was a witness.”

  Paid for by whom? Hattie wondered. Gently but firmly, Sara said, “According to the paper, Tybee Jo swore the gun was sneaked into his room by someone else.”

  “He perjured himself when he appeared before me,” the judge declared in a wrathful bellow left over from his bench days. “My sentence was just. That boy won’t come back. He’s trash, and a coward besides.”

  “Don’t forget orphan. And fortune hunter,” Lulu said, receiving general approval from the family.

  “A coward is incapable of taking revenge,” the judge said.

  “Jo had a temper, but I liked him,” Hattie said.

  The judge pronounced sentence: “Sara, this child of yours definitely is ill-bred.”

  “I’m ever so sorry. I’ll speak to her about—”

  “Won’t do a blessed bit of good. She’s had too much education.” He gestured at the piled-up books. “Too much reading. Bad for females.” In an aside to Lulu he remarked, “The child’s twelve going on ninety.”

  “How true. My poor brother would be heartbroken to see it.”

  Hattie was ready to heave some books at the Drewgoods, but Sara saved the moment by rising, smoothing her skirt, and saying, “I’m very sorry you drove all the way out here for the answer you’ve heard before. Silverglass isn’t for sale.”

  “You’ll change your mind.”

  “I don’t think so. Are you sure I can’t serve you some tea?”

  “We are going. I only hope we won’t be called back to survey smoldering ruins, or the grave of innocents mercilessly butchered by invaders.” His pumpkin-colored eyes flicked to Hattie, leaving no doubt as to which innocent he meant.

  “Lulu, fetch my hat.” She responded to her husband’s command obediently. “Napoleon, run out there and wake up Adam. Good day, Sara.” And out he marched, followed by smirking Cherry, sniffling Merry, and last of all, his wife. Hattie twisted her apron.

  Sara said, “Well?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I was bad. They just make me mad as snakes, is all.”

  “Unfortunately they never give up.”

  Hattie waited. Sara paced. At last Hattie said, “Do you want me to bend over so you can tan my bottom?”

  “Don’t say bottom; it’s indelicate.” Sara frowned in a thoughtful way. “I should do it, though, shouldn’t I? Indeed I should, I—oh, stop.” She stamped her foot. “Tell the truth, Sara Lester. They made me mad too. You’re a brave girl, Hattie. You said what I should have. I wish Jo Swett would come back and settle accounts.”

  She hugged her daughter, smiling. The smile produced a giggle. Sara covered her mouth and began laughing.

  A tear tracked down Sara’s cheek, then another. Pretty soon Hattie felt it was all right if she laughed too. Before long they were both rolling on the floor, convulsed, tearful—laughing beyond all control.

  “They set a fire yet?” said Mr. Davis of Harper’s Weekly, never looking up. The sketch artist perched on his stool, charcoal stick flying over the pad on his knee.

  Stephen watched the anthill of activity along and across the railroad tracks. “Not yet, but I’d hurry up and finish.” Mr. Davis continued to draw furiously. Stephen stood at his shoulder; Davis didn’t seem to mind.

  One Davis generated thoughts of another. The Jefs—General Davis’s XIV Corps—were somewhere to the east, demonstrating up toward Waynesborough to alarm Augusta while actually slanting southeast toward a ferry crossing on the Savannah. Stephen was due and overdue to interview XIV’s controversial commander.

  Five miles from Millen, at the rail junction known as Station 7, he was watching Sherman’s men busily rip up rails and ties of the Georgia Central and the Augusta & Savannah lines. The soldiers cursed, as soldiers will, and they sweated; it was a hot Saturday morning. The work was made all the hotter by bonfires of ties. Other gangs heated rails in the flames; then, hands protected by heavy gloves, they ran the rails to nearby trees and twisted them into useless corkscrews—“Sherman’s neckties.”

  Theo Davis leaned back and visually critiqued the sketch that would one day be an engraved illustration. Across the tracks, other soldiers tore apart the interiors of Station 7’s depot, two-story frame hotel, and storage buildings. Stephen heard walls being knocked down, floors being axed. Sudden flames gushed from under the depot eaves. “Boys couldn’t wait for orders, could they?” Davis grumbled.

  Stephen squinted at the clear December sky. Almost noon. He resettled his floppy black hat on his sweaty forehead. “I have to leave, Theo. Reluctantly.”

  “Not your favorite subject, old Jef?”

  Stephen shrugged. “He’s a big bug in the army. Sherman likes him.”

  “I hear plenty of others wish he’d—um—meet with an accident.”

  “My editor charged me with talking to him. Any man who kills a fellow officer and gets away with it is news.” Jef Davis of Indiana had put a bullet in Gen. William “Bull” Nelson after an exchange of insults in a Louisville hotel. Gov. Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Davis’s friend and a Union stalwart, witnessed the shooting and intervened; Davis was never charged.

  “You headed east?” Stephen said he was. “Watch out for Wheeler’s scouts. I hear they’re thick in those swamps.” Stephen thanked him and untied Ambrose from the fire-scarred trunk of a dead pine.

  An hour later, having crossed the county line, he had occasion to recall the warning. He was on a grim little road twisting between black-water ponds in a dank cypress swamp. With no warning, halloos and a fusillade scorched the air.

  He ducked his head, booted Ambrose down the mud track. A swift look back showed four pursuers, rebs riding recklessly with reins in their teeth and pistols in their fists.

  Bullets whistled right and left of Stephen. At any moment he expected to be blown off the mule and into the scummy black water. Stephen’s revolver was an expensive Belgian-made pin-fire bought at an exclusive Manhattan shop. He’d fired it for practice but never in anger. He managed two shots at his pursuers. All he got for his trouble was an overhanging branch knocked down, and derisive hoots from the rebs.

  Just as he thought it might be all up, the road curved, then abruptly widened. Ambrose carried him onto a grassy little island. Marching from the other side came a squad of boys in blue, preceded by their lieutenant, a patrol from the XIV Corps, as it turned out. Stephen reined up, gesturing and yelling. “Rebs. Wheeler.”

  One volley from the Union patrol, and the butternut boys turned and fled. Thus Stephen arrived, rattled but safe, at corps headquarters some ten miles farther on.

  A spotty drizzle set in as he rode through the camp. To reach the headquarters tents, he had to pass the smoky fires of a Negro encampment. Clusters of raggedy runaways watched him with hungry eyes and downcast expressions. He tried to count the black people. There were too many—he guessed two hundred or more.

  He presented his credentials to an aide under the canvas awning of the largest, not to say the only, wall tent. “I’ll carry in word, Captain, but you’re liabl
e to have a fruitless wait. You can imagine that the general has more pressing concerns than pleasing the press.”

  Stephen stifled a complaint and went into the warm rain to find forage for Ambrose. All he could cadge for himself was hardtack. He chipped a tooth on his third bite. In the dusk an unknown tenor sang “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” The air clouded with gallinippers, huge mosquitoes that kept Stephen swatting.

  The aide sought him a half hour before midnight. “He’ll allow you ten minutes.” Stephen scrambled off his borrowed camp stool.

  The wall tent reeked of wet wool and cigars. Lamps glowed yellow orange. Stephen spied a Sibley stove tucked in a corner, unlit. Brig. Gen. Jefferson Columbus “Jef” Davis sat at a field desk littered with orders, maps, ink pots—the paraphernalia of command. Stephen saluted; Davis returned it. “Sit if you want. Your name’s Rockwell?”

  “Hopewell. Thank you, sir.” Stephen presented an engraved card, to which Davis barely gave a glance. Davis’s flat, countrified speech offended Stephen’s Eastern ear. A Hoosier hayseed with a thin layer of education in the military was how Stephen assessed it.

  No denying the man had a reputation as a competent soldier. He’d been in the army since the Mexican War, even turned down West Point to stay in the field. Middle thirties, Stephen estimated, with pale, calculating eyes. Like so many senior officers, Davis wore a bushy beard that hid most of his mouth, chin, and collar. Reputedly he was a master of profanity, indeed, said to be the champion cusser of the entire army. Stephen jotted the word overbearing.

  “General, they say the extreme left of the army is a place of honor,” he began.

  “It is, and it’ll remain so. I intend to be the first to cross into South Carolina.”

  “Is that General Sherman’s plan?”

  “I haven’t consulted him yet.”

  “Do you believe the march is going well?”

  “Absolutely. Our biggest problems are all the lies the enemy spreads about us. That we burn everything in sight. That we roast babies alive. That we capture nigras and shove them in the front lines.”