The Bride of Texas, page 41
“Hardee’s men proceeded with effort, hindered by marshes that did not appear on the maps, which, as stated earlier, were far from reliable in other aspects as well,” read the girl. “They only arrived at the assault site in the late afternoon, to take their places on the right wing and provide power for the vice that General Johnston intended to use to pulverize Carlin’s division. Moreover, they were delayed by the fact that the only road leading from Bentonville to the battlefield was blocked by the rear guard of General Hoke, whose corps formed the axis of the vice. The left arm consisted of units under the command of General Bragg. The latter, his senses muddled by the fierce battle that ensued when Carlin’s reconnaissance units encountered the enemy, was convinced that the axis of the vice — Hoke’s corps — would be annihilated by the counter-attack from Carlin’s regrouped units, so he called desperately for reinforcements. Then General Johnston — who would later admit it was an error in judgement — ordered Hardee, who had only just arrived, to send McLaws’s regiment to reinforce Hoke. That left the right flank with only the division of Tali — Tali-for —” faltered the girl.
The sergeant prompted her: “Taliaferro.”
“Taliaferro,” she repeated in her earnest schoolgirl voice. The sergeant recalled his general bent over the map and Slocum’s dispatch, which had just been delivered by Lieutenant Foraker, and which the general had read aloud to his staff: “I consider it crucial that the right flank be repositioned forthwith to join us under cover of darkness. Also send all munitions and all available empty ambulances.” The sergeant had noticed how the general nervously ran his fingers through his reddish beard while reading about empty ambulances, and he knew what factor would determine the general’s decision. In the final analysis, it was always the same determining factor.
“I have reliable reports,” continued Slocum, “that I am facing the concentrated units of Hardee, Stewart, Lee, McLaws, Hill, and Hoke.” The general ran his fingers through his beard again.
“McLaws, guided by the same inexact and perplexing map,” read his daughter, “wandered for a long time among the marshes and swamps unrecorded on the map, before he finally took his place for the attack. So it happened that it was not until a quarter past three in the afternoon that all of Johnston’s units were in place and the planned assault could begin. Concealed behind hastily erected palisades, they faced the units of Carlin’s division, reinforced by General J.D. Morgan’s Second Division. Also approaching the battlefield was Slocum’s corps, with the divisions of Williams and John W. Geary as well as that of W.T. Ward, released for the purpose from its role of accompanying and guarding the munitions and supply train. That was the situation on the battlefield at fifteen minutes past three o’clock, when the Confederate troops launched their attack.”
First, metal showered down on the palisades in the pine groves, and on the stone barricades zigzagging across the open fields. Next, the defenders heard the delayed din of cannon. Then came the Rebel yell, a long ah-aah-aaaah! — the awful battlefield chant of this four-year-old war and perhaps its last cry. And finally they appeared, led by officers on horseback. They were dressed in rags, terribly handsome under their tattered company banners, marching quickly forward, rank upon ordered rank, with the long strides of veterans who had been through everything, Shiloh, Antietam, Perryville, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, morituri from the Devil’s colosseum.
They were handsome and tragic, strange “artists for art’s sake” of death. They were fighting only for honour now, their ranks depleted by growing desertions, men abandoning even honour and going home to defend their small farms, every man for himself. Leading them on a black horse, crutches clipped to his saddle, the one-legged General Bate galloped across the field towards Lieutenant Bellman, brandishing a ludicrous bare sword. Behind him the banners of rapidly advancing divisions, regiments, companies, flapped in the dazzling spring afternoon sunlight, as the troops marched with the confidence of veterans of obscure places that were now entries in the Devil’s dictionary of history — Little Round Top, Resaca, Lookout Mountain. Under those tattered banners their divisions had the strength of regiments, their regiments the strength of companies, their companies the strength of a mere handful of undermanned squads. And yet above them the terrible Rebel yell still sounded, and before them boomed the metallic explosions of canisters. Before he knew it, the lieutenant was running close behind the fleeing veterans of those same battlefields, leaping with them over the palisades, while behind them veterans were climbing over the palisades they were abandoning. General Bate kept twisting in the saddle, urging on his ragged, sunburned soldiers with his sword and a loud holler, all needlessly, for they knew all was lost, the Confederacy and the human property that most of them had never owned anyway. All was lost but honour. And they fought for that, professionally — that is, courageously. They fought for honour.
But his general didn’t see this scene. From Slocum’s dispatch he knew that a single division under Carlin was facing the onslaught of battalions under Hardee and Hoke and Lee and Stewart and Cheatham and Hill. He would not see, later that day, the ragged division banners fluttering over the heads of what were scarcely a regiment, or the regimental banners flying over squads. “Hardee,” General Howard said. “I taught his son Willie in Sunday School at West Point.” The general ignored him and started barking orders. “Hazen! He’s closest to the left flank. His division will immediately join Carlin! Woods, Smith, Corse, they’re at Cox’s Bridge.” The Rebels had set fire to the bridge, but while it was burning Logan’s engineers erected a pontoon bridge across the Neuse. The sergeant understood the general’s intention: “They’ll cross the Neuse and hit Johnston from behind. Blair and the entire Seventeenth Corps will move to Bentonville tonight!”
There wasn’t much night left. The marathon march of divisions and battalions continued through the day, while the huge battle raged at Bentonville.
“Why do you always use that perfume, little rose?”
“Does it bother you?”
“Of course not. I love the smell. But I always end up smelling like it too.”
“That bother you?”
“Not me. But you told me Étienne gets jealous.”
“He can’t tell. He’s so used to my perfume he never even notices it anymore.”
It made him feel sad and angry. “Yes, he’s used to it — I’ll never get used to it.”
“Wait till I’m yours,” she said. “I mean, I’m yours and only yours already. It’s just that I don’t belong to you yet.”
The light hoof-beats of a carriage-horse came in from the road. Dinah ducked down behind the machine he was assembling. She had stopped off at the lean-to on her way to take some medicine to sick Uncle Habakuk, the old patriarch of the plantation, who was at least sixty-five and who used up enormous quantities of rheumatism ointment that M. de Ribordeaux got sent from Galveston for him.
“He smears it on his bread,” said Dinah.
“His bread?”
“That’s right. Uncle Habakuk has peculiar tastes, all on account of an overseer named Mister Williams, who had it in for him back when Uncle Habakuk was still on Massa Butler’s plantation in Louisiana. Mister Williams, he was a mean overseer. He beat the niggers and did all kinds of things to them. He accused Uncle Habakuk of being lazy and, fact is, Uncle Habakuk was lazy, and still is. He’d rather practise fiddling in his cabin than pick cotton, and Saturdays he’d play the fiddle at dances.”
“And Williams let him? Maybe he wasn’t that mean.”
“He had to let him. Uncle Habakuk was so good at faking that he even had Dr. Benson fooled for two whole months, before the doctor caught him making a tongue paste and sent him back to work.”
Cyril was puzzled. Did she mean that Uncle Habakuk had a recipe for a spread made out of beef tongue? There were still gaps in his knowledge of English, or perhaps Dinah’s pronunciation had something to do with it. When she wanted to she could talk as well as the white gentry, and when she was alone with him that was how she spoke.
“No, it wasn’t a beef spread,” she said. “It was something he used to mix from mustard, dandelions, and God knows what else. He’d smear it on his tongue and the back of his throat and pretend he couldn’t talk and had the shivers. He knew how to fake shivers so bad it looked like he was chilled through to the bone. Dr. Benson tried to scrape the yellow-brown coating off his tongue but it held so strong he had trouble getting it off himself later on, when he was back in the cotton-fields. The only thing that would take it off was whisky. Not even julep would do the trick. So Uncle Habakuk’s throat was coated for weeks at a time, because whisky was hard to come by. On the other hand, it stuck so well that he could be sick for days at a time.
“Dr. Benson tried out all his cures on Uncle Habakuk. First he bled him, then he purged him, then he had him fast for a couple of days, bled him again, and when the film in his throat wouldn’t go away he sent Uncle Habakuk back to the cotton-fields.”
She had told him this story the second time they met in the arboretum; she hadn’t brought him a book to read. There were fireflies everywhere, midsummer Texas fireflies. Dinah’s eyes were full of mischief and he accused her of making the story up. Her eyes grew grave.
“Why would I make things up?” She glanced across the hedge to the white lights of the big house, and the yellow lights of the cabins beyond it. “I don’t need to make anything up.”
He realized she was right. With the life she led, why would she need to make things up?
She laughed out loud. “It’s Mister Williams who’s responsible for Uncle Habakuk’s strange tastes. Once he caught him taking a snooze among the tobacco plants. ‘You lazy bastard! So this is what you do! And I keep wondering how come there’s still so many caterpillars on my tobacco plants. You just wait,’ he hollered. ‘I’ll teach you.’ Then he ordered the niggers not to stomp any of the caterpillars they were picking off the tobacco plants, but to put them in a tin pot he gave little Sarah to carry. When the pot was full and it was time for lunch, he pulled out a spoon and ordered Uncle Habakuk to eat the caterpillars. Well, everybody expected him to throw up, but Uncle Habakuk sat down on the ground, set the pot in his lap, dug his spoon into that squirming mess of caterpillars — ugh — I get sick just thinking about it. I’d surely have thrown up if I’d been there. But I only heard about it from Uncle Habakuk.”
“And he didn’t make this up?”
“Where else do you think he got those strange tastes, like spreading rheumatism ointment on his bread? Anyway, Uncle Habakuk says his stomach did feel pretty awful. But then he shut his eyes, grabbed a caterpillar off the spoon with his fingers, and took a bite. ‘It taste a little like blackberries, girl,’ he told me. Uncle Habakuk actually took a liking to them and dug right in. When Mister Williams saw that, he threw up himself.”
Cyril burst out laughing.
“And so did five women who were expecting.”
“Now you just thought that up!”
“All right, I did,” she admitted, “but that was all I made up. That feast didn’t make Uncle Habakuk very popular with Mister Williams. In fact, it turned into a feud between the two of them that dragged on and on. But Uncle Habakuk came out on top in the end. You see, he could read, except nobody knew. And he also drew pictures, really beautifully.”
Lida sniffed. Like a cat. She was wearing a new dress Cyril had given her money for, with a bold décolletage and a hanky tucked into it. Her mother had shaken her head over the dress, and her little brother Josef had whistled when she was looking at herself in a mirror that was too small. She had taken that as a compliment and said, “Thanks.”
Now she sniffed. “You had that woman here again.”
“No I didn’t!”
She looked around the room, stepped over to the wide bed with its silk coverlet. She sniffed again.
“You swear?”
“I swear it!”
“You had no woman here yesterday?”
“I swear I didn’t.”
Impatiently, he went up to her and put his hands on her breasts. She pulled away and walked over to the window. “I believe you, but.…”
Outside Benjamin was walking by. He tossed her a lewd, knowing glance and then quickly looked away, as though he hadn’t seen her.
“But what?” asked Étienne uneasily.
“It’s not discreet enough here,” she said. “I found a sort of an — Absteig —”
“A what?” She sometimes resorted to words he didn’t understand.
“A place to meet so your niggers can’t spy on us.”
“Where?” he asked. He seemed baffled.
“It’s in Austin,” she replied sweetly. “By the river. In Baywater Street.”
He turned beet-red.
“My dear,” she said, her voice still sweet. “You will not cheat on me, because you cannot. And you will sell the woman who uses this perfume. Really sell her this time.”
He dropped to one knee — something he had learned to do even with his wooden leg — embraced her thighs, and buried his face in the front of her tight skirt. “I’ll sell her, Linda my sweet, I swear —”
“But you will sell her where I tell you to sell her,” she interrupted. She looked out the window. The cotton-fields sloped away to the setting sun. “I think I know who will buy her.”
“I’ll sell her to anyone you say, Linda!”
“And you will sell her cheap. As punishment!”
As he fled, Lieutenant Bellman could see General Carlin running ahead of him, his Schlachtanzug gleaming like a blue target, unstained by battle. The entire division was running away, driven by explosions overhead that sheared the branches off the pine trees. Minnie balls made the air buzz with their discordant funeral music. Just ahead of the lieutenant, a soldier fell to the ground, half his head tumbling bloodied to the grass. The lieutenant jumped over it and ran on. Another soldier beside him fell, grabbed his leg, and howled as blood poured from his wound. They could feel the Rebel yell driving them. General Carlin and a group of his staff scrambled into the black brush. Lieutenant Bellman joined them. All across the green meadow, men in tattered uniforms were rushing forward, their ragged banners flying victoriously in the sunshine. General Carlin pulled out a pistol and fired once, and then again, at the thin but furiously advancing line led by General Bate, his crutches bouncing up and down against his saddle. A group of Union riders tore past, pulling their field-guns behind them. A blue target, General Carlin stood towering over the black bush.
“Get down, general!” one of the mounted artillerymen yelled. “My battery’s the last one. Ain’t nothing but Rebel troops behind me!”
A rifle cracked nearby and a captain in Carlin’s staff grabbed himself by the arm; droplets of his blood spattered the general’s Schlachtanzug and quickly soaked into the fabric. Carlin broke into a run again, with his staff behind him, including the captain whose arm was spurting blood. Bellman came last, his mind on those impaled bugs. Now, when the end is already — he ran.
He must have run a whole mile, turning now and then to fire. The grey lines kept advancing, their banners shredded by gunfire and fluttering like butterflies high over their heads. General Bate brandished his sword. Lieutenant Bellman reached the palisade at the edge of the woods and clambered over it.
General Carlin was already standing there, talking with two excited men in blood-soaked shirts.
His girl told him that Uncle Habakuk had learned how to draw as a boy on the plantation of Massa Ripley, a real strange bird in North Carolina: a patriarchal abolitionist plantation-owner. Ripley was killed suddenly when his carriage overturned, and he didn’t leave a will — just a young son, James, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who had managed to rack up a gambling debt of two thousand nine hundred dollars and get expelled, thanks to the company he kept — a poet with the elegant name of Edgar Allan Poe. Fortunately for the young rascal — unfortunately for Habakuk, who was only fourteen and nobody’s uncle yet — James inherited the whole plantation, and offered Uncle Habakuk to his creditor as payment for the gambling debt, along with two handsome maids whom the creditor sold at a profit, keeping Uncle Habakuk as his personal servant. The creditor, young Master William Smithson, was, unlike young Master James, a fairly good student. Uncle Habakuk slept on a cot at the foot of the bed in his room when William and his cronies played cards and argued philosophy, so Uncle Habakuk got an education by listening and by reading Master Smithson’s books while he was away at classes. Massa Ripley had taught him to read. Master Smithson liked to draw too. He used to copy birds and plants from a book by a man called Audubon. When William had gone to classes, Uncle Habakuk would borrow a sheet or two from the large amounts of drawing-paper that Smithson kept around. He didn’t draw birds and flowers, though; he sketched the faces of the debating card-players from memory. One day Master Smithson caught him at it. Fortunately he was in a good humour that day — the night before there hadn’t been much discussing, and he had made fifty dollars — so he didn’t punish Uncle Habakuk. Instead he started showing him off. He got him to draw portraits of his friends and enemies, and soon the university was flooded with Uncle Habakuk’s work. In time, Master Smithson started taking him along to the big houses on nearby plantations, and to the homes of Charlottesville merchants, where Uncle Habakuk drew portraits that enhanced the beauty of the young ladies. He had an almost supernatural ability to draw the homeliest, plainest girl so that she looked like herself but also like a princess.
But the lot of a servant is seldom happy. Master Smithson got himself in the bad books of the stern and uncharitable Zebulon McIntyre, professor of classical languages and history, and persuaded Uncle Habakuk to draw the Latin scholar as Nero, in the nude and engaged in an act of love that may have been common enough in antiquity but was officially deemed not to exist on the campus of the University of Virginia. Professor McIntyre suited the role of Emperor Nero very well; he was a fleshy epicure who seemed to be modelled out of goose-fat, and was renowned on campus for his capacity for lobster tails and his love of roast pork. There was a pigsty behind his two-storey house, one of the several residences connected by the student dormitory, and the hogs would snort their comments on his students’ halting translations of Homer and Horace.
