The Bride of Texas, page 46
She hadn’t even had to concoct a story, as Shake assumed she had. Baxter was an innocent, a true son of the land where he was born. “Your mother couldn’t read?” Lida was astounded.
“No, she was from Ireland and she never went to school,” he said. “I taught her to read myself.” He swallowed. “I wrote to her about you.”
“Nice things, I hope,” she said, “or else!”
“I told her they married you off against your will. That happened to her too. Ma was fifteen when it happened.”
“But you were —”
“Her first husband died on the boat. She married my pa in America and went with him to California. Pa’s a Forty-niner.”
“You mean there was a rebellion here then too?” she asked.
“No. What was here was gold,” said Baxter Warren II.
So she didn’t have to concoct a story, she just mixed some realities and some silences about her life into a cocktail for innocents. Later, she realized she needn’t have bothered. Even had she told him the pure, unvarnished, European truth — about Vitek, old man Mika, the veteran, and Deborah the illegitimate, instead of Deborah with Huguenot blood coursing through her veins (she explained it to him just as Pegleg had explained it to her), which appealed to him, for all he knew of history was the Pilgrim Fathers, and in his veins there was an American aversion to oppression — even had she told him the naked truth, she wouldn’t have offended against any taboo. For despite his name, which to Lida’s Central European ears sounded so aristocratic, Baxter Warren II was a young man at the very beginning of his line, in a land at the very beginning of its history. A robber baron, he respected only money, which he possessed, and had opinions only about freedom. Freedom was the Union, that was what he had gone to war for. But Lida’s cocktail was better, after all, than the bare truth about her big brother and his Uncle Tom’s Cabin love story, better than silence around Vitek, Mika, and the causal chain of hatred that had led her to gamble on the wrong card. Instead of the truth and nothing but the truth, she offered a slight fabrication — an overbearing farmer father, a rich Southern bridegroom, a daughter Deborah with Huguenot blood, and a hatred of the peculiar institution that had frustrated her unfortunate brother’s love, a hatred that focused on her unloved, imposed, wealthy (she failed to add that he was wealthy no longer) husband.
“You’ll get a divorce,” said Baxter Warren II.
But fortune favours the fearless.
The maid banged on the white door of the white house. There was no response — nothing but silence.
“He’s probably asleep,” she said. “But it’s after ten.”
Across the street, Madam Russell’s Bakery was just waking up. A sleepy houseboy was sweeping the sidewalk. A woman with a large bosom appeared in an open second-storey window.
“He’s probably stinking drunk,” said the soldier with the terrible accent. “If it was me, I’d be drunk. She’s a real looker, too! What else can he do but get drunk?” He pushed the maid aside and pounded on the door with his fist. Nothing. “Wait here,” he said to the girl, and stepped over the low white fence protecting a flowerbed that ran around the house.
“Captain!” squealed the whore in the second-storey window. “One of your soldiers is trying to break into Mr. de Ribordeaux’s house!”
A fellow in shirt-sleeves appeared in the window. All he could see was the maid, who was sitting on the doorstep. The soldier had vanished around the corner of the house.
Two large shuttered windows faced out onto the garden. The soldier looked around. There was a love-seat in a bougainvillea-covered pavilion. He carried it to one of the windows, climbed up, opened the shutters, and peered in. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Something was lying on the carpet in front of the dining table. It looked like a club of some sort, but he soon realized what it was, for a year earlier he had spent a month in hospital with an infected thigh wound. Then he looked up at the ceiling. He jumped off the bench, ran around the front of the house, yelled at the maid to get out of the way, then threw himself against the front door.
The half-dressed captain in the second-storey window across the street yelled, “Private! What’s the meaning of this?”
The soldier looked around and saluted, more in mockery than in respect. The officer wasn’t in uniform, but it could only have been an officer; the civilians of Savannah hardly had time for tarts.
“He could still be alive!” he yelled back with his heavy accent. The soldier, whose name was Frank Vorastek, was a solid blacksmith’s apprentice from Manitowoc, Wisconsin. With good food and plentiful exercise during the march through Georgia, he had regained the strength he had lost in hospital. The door gave and he stumbled inside.
On the floor lay a wooden leg and overhead, suspended by a rope like a strange butterfly’s cocoon, hung a man with one leg, his swollen purple tongue protruding from his mouth. Two days before, he had learned of the existence of Captain Baxter Warren II, having observed him and Lida, as the sergeant had, through a window of the Grenier Hotel. He had confronted her, she had denied nothing, a final quarrel had erupted, and he had attached himself to her like a Pinkerton agent; then Cyril had intervened on the main street of Savannah and saved her future husband’s life. Later, up to his gills in bourbon, the cripple had wept on Cyril’s shoulder, babbling about the hellion named Linda and how he had lost everything he loved in the world. Cyril kept topping up his glass, horrified, hardly recognizing the man. He left the poor drunken wretch on the chaise-longue in the parlour of the big house — where next morning Lida would send Private Vorastek and the maid from the Grenier Hotel to get her things — and went to drink himself into oblivion as well, in the little house where Kakuska was making spurs out of clock gears.
And so there was no need for a divorce. And because it was wartime and Baxter Warren knew no taboos, the wedding could be held immediately. He was a Yankee, sober but in love. The war was still creating casualites, and if he left a widow and perhaps an unborn child, he didn’t want them to bear the name of a Rebel slave-holder. She had at last found good fortune — a substitute for the real thing, but still real in its way. Deborah was re-adopted by Baxter Warren II, who was either the prospective head of the Warren Bank in San Francisco, or a dead hero with widow and child. And she was his wife — Linda, formerly de Ribordeaux, née Towpelick, formerly Toupelik, from Lhota, Moravia, Austria, Europe.
“And you believe she wanted to rescue Dinah for you?” the sergeant said, shaking his head.
“Yes,” said Cyril. “I used to think she was bad. But she’s not. It’s just that life taught her —”
The fires in the turpentine forests were burning out. Storm clouds over North Carolina were bursting at the seams. Spring was coming. The final battle at Bentonville was approaching.
He could see disappointment in the child’s sleepy face. She hadn’t learned hypocrisy yet, and he was glad. The sergeant had never regressed to the point where he became an ordinary farmer with manure on his boots and hay on his clothes. He was a veteran warrior. A Springfield rifle hung on the wall over the wooden armchair. It was the same rifle he had cleaned every morning long ago in the Thirteenth Regiment of the regular army of the United States, polishing it until he could see his face mirrored in the metalwork. And every time, he recalled the one and only time his general, still a colonel in a tattered hat, had run a white-gloved index finger over the metal trim on that very same rifle and had seen his own creased face scowling back, slightly more wrinkled than usual since the metal trim had been struck by a minnie that had knocked the rifle out of Kapsa’s hand at Vicksburg, making a dent in the metal he never could even out. Yes, he was an old veteran. He had never missed a regimental reunion, and at the last one he had seen his general, who otherwise appeared to him only as a wild, spectral image in the metal trim of his old rifle. He was delighted with the disappointment of his daughter, who apparently thought her daddy was a shirker who had survived the war in a safe staff position.
“But I fired many shots, Terezka. At Vicksburg, at Collierville — I did enough shooting there to last me a lifetime. We attacked to the sound of music.”
“Music?” asked the girl, wide-eyed.
“That’s right. And General Sherman —”
They mounted their horses. It was already dawn. As the daylight grew brighter they rode hard to the north-east, past the apricot orchards, along the road they had travelled the day before to Howard’s headquarters. Sherman rode far ahead, and his staff followed behind on sweating horses, spurring them on to keep up. The sergeant rode with them. The general’s red hair — his hat had flown off when they rode into the first sunlight — shone the whole morning like flame. After noon, they reached Slocum’s post in the pine woods. To the east they could hear cannon and rifle fire and from time to time a Rebel yell.
The sergeant rested against the trunk of a pine tree and watched the general listening to Slocum’s report with one ear, and to the echo of the fighting with the other. It was ebbing and increasing, waning and waxing, like the irregular throbbing of a huge, sick heart. They all stood in a cluster around the general — Davis, Carlin, Morgan, Williams, Geary, Ward, Kilpatrick, and also Hazen from Howard’s corps, who had just arrived with his Second Division. Carlin had found time to change into a clean uniform that symbolically confirmed Slocum’s words.
“I think the day has been saved,” Slocum was saying. “Morgan held on, and his officers and men deserve the highest praise. The battle rested with them. If they hadn’t fought as they did, Johnston might have destroyed both divisions, Carlin’s and Morgan’s.” Slocum nodded appreciatively at Morgan.
Morgan, embarrassed, looked down at his feet. His left sleeve was torn off. He ran his fingers through his beard and a light dusting of ashes fell onto his coat; part of his beard had caught fire in the battle.
“Our position has been consolidated,” said Slocum. “After noon yesterday Baird’s division moved to the front line, and last evening and overnight all three divisions of the Twentieth Corps moved up too. Before midnight Hazen arrived, and we’re expecting more units of Howard’s army in the course of the afternoon. By morning we’ll have the advantage on them and we can attack.”
The pulse of the distant battle throbbed again.
“Will you have advantage enough?” asked Sherman. “Johnston knows he’s lost the benefit of surprise.” He stopped to listen to the distant cannonade. “I don’t understand why he’s still fighting —” He looked around. “Where’s Mower?”
“He ought to be here any minute,” said Slocum. “He’s on the far right wing.” He listened again to the thunder of the distant fighting.
Sherman began pacing silently around the clearing. That was unusual. As a rule, he would talk while others were silent. Then he stopped and pulled a notebook out of his pocket.
“Kilpatrick,” he addressed the horseman, who had removed his hat and was running a comb through his thinning hair. The comb was set with mother-of-pearl and did not appear to be government issue. “Can you name the units you identified from the prisoners you took?”
“Lee,” said Kil, raising a finger.
“Four thousand,” said Sherman, writing the number down.
“Cheatham.”
“Another four.”
“More like five,” said Kil. “Maybe even more.”
“Say five.”
“Hoke, a good eight.”
Sherman nodded, writing.
“Hardee —”
“Ten,” said Sherman.
“If not more,” declared Kil. “All the other units together, say another ten. Add Hampton’s, Wheeler’s, and Butler’s cavalries —”
“Nearly forty thousand,” said Sherman, and turned to Davis. “I made one blunder in this battle. I don’t intend to make another one.” He smiled at Davis.
General Davis laughed. “Right, Billy. After we almost got buried, I couldn’t help remembering your words of wisdom: ‘No infantry in our path, Jeff. Just a few squadrons of cavalry’!”
The general grinned. “It happens to the best of us, Jeff.” He looked at the others. “Perhaps it was one of the occasional fits of madness the gentlemen of the press have enjoyed attributing to me.”
They all laughed except Blair, who was just lighting a cigar.
“But I’m perfectly lucid for a change and I think we must avoid a general battle. Our numerical superiority isn’t big enough, and I have no wish to emulate Pyrrhus.”
“If you’ll permit me, Billy,” Carlin said.
The general looked approvingly at the neatly pressed figure, then glanced at his own muddy boots. “Now, there’s a soldier!” he said. “Not like me!”
“It’s my superstition,” said Carlin stiffly. “We all have our superstitions.”
“I wish I had yours,” said Sherman.
Carlin didn’t respond. Instead he said, “I think Johnston’s numbers are considerably lower than we’ve estimated. I saw Hardee attack. His regiments seemed more like companies.”
“Hmm,” said Sherman. “And even so, he really gave you what for. I understand you scampered like rabbits.”
Carlin’s blush was visible. “They had the element of surprise.”
“All day yesterday? Hardee at three o’clock, Bragg at five, and McLaws after dark? And artillery fire like at Gettysburg?”
No one said anything. Then Kilpatrick said tentatively, “Even if we subtract a third of them, it’s still almost thirty thousand.”
“Two to one,” said Slocum. “We can take those odds into a general battle.”
“Hmmm,” said Sherman. He started pacing again, his hands folded behind his back. The heart of the battle on the other side of the forest pounded harder. Sherman halted, listened, then resumed pacing. A messenger galloped into the clearing and handed Slocum a dispatch. Slocum read it, then said, “Billy!”
“Hmm?”
“Hardee just sent his junior reserve into the First Division’s sector. None of them is a day over eighteen. Their commander is a Major Clout. If he’s seventeen, I’m a hundred. You know what that means?”
“I do, I do,” said Sherman. He continued pacing in a circle, and when he got to Slocum he added, “They don’t even spare their children!”
As he walked he pulled out a cigar, then noticed Blair and the smoke from his cigar curling up in the sunlight. He stepped over to him and gestured for a light. Blair passed him the burning cigar; the general lit his own from it and, without thinking, tossed Blair’s cigar away. Blair stiffened indignantly and looked around at the others. Slocum and Hazen were trying hard not to laugh. Kilpatrick was grinning. So Blair smiled too, bent down, picked up the cigar, and lit it. The general approached him again. Deep in thought, he had forgotten to keep puffing and his cigar had gone out. He nodded to Blair for another light, but this time Blair hung onto his cigar while the general puffed his own back to life.
The general went on pacing. The shooting in the distance died away. Williams pulled a handful of peanuts from his pocket and a few of them fell onto the pine needles that covered the ground. A squirrel scampered down a nearby pine, grabbed one of them, and ran back up the tree. A bumble-bee flew past the sergeant. The general stopped.
“I don’t understand why Johnston hasn’t withdrawn. He was trying to destroy your flank, that’s clear, Henry,” he said to Slocum, “and he almost succeeded. That suggests his numbers aren’t as bad as all that. And that’s the only explanation — as far as I can see — why he hasn’t turned tail and run. But Johnston is no fool. He learned that we’re too much for him, and he has only one line of retreat, that last bridge across Mill Creek. I’m willing to wager he’ll wait until nightfall and withdraw to Smithfield under cover of darkness. You see, Henry, I’d still rather avoid a general battle. Of course —” he looked around at the others — “if Johnston leaves us no choice, we won’t deny him the experience.”
“Real music?” the little girl persisted.
“Yes, real music,” said the sergeant. “And on my orders.”
What happened at Collierville was a minor skirmish, not a battle. A mere twelve dead and twenty-four wounded. The general had been moving his army to Chattanooga, and the Thirteenth Battalion, functioning as a guard unit with the general’s headquarters, had gone by train with him from Memphis to Corinth. When the train stopped at noon at a depot near the village of Collierville, a nervous colonel stood waiting beside the tracks. From his report they learned that they had ridden into a trap. There were several squads of Rebel cavalry in the woods to the north of the depot. The scouts estimated their strength as at least three thousand, with a battery of field artillery. The colonel commanded fewer than five hundred men of the Sixty-sixth Indiana, half of them volunteers. He had positioned them in rifle pits around a little stockade with woods to the west and south of it. One unit was inside the stockade.
No sooner had the colonel finished his report than a rider with a white flag emerged from the woods. Everything was suddenly clear. The Thirteenth Battalion had about two hundred and thirty men, so the entire Union contingent now numbered under seven hundred, including Sherman’s staff officers and the group of wounded who had hitched a ride with them to Corinth. The Rebels outnumbered them four to one. Sherman sent the colonel to negotiate with the messenger, with instructions to delay matters but to refuse to surrender. The colonel ambled over to the messenger, who had reined in his mount in the middle of the meadow, while Sherman and his men got off the train.
Inside the depot, Sherman telegraphed General Corso, whose division was camped about ten miles from Collierville, with orders to relocate by forced march to the site of the impending battle. Then he and his staff took up positions in the woods south of the stronghold. Three platoons of the Thirteenth took shelter behind an earthwork in front of the stockade, five more were placed in the woods to the east and south of it. The sergeant and his platoon reinforced the unit inside it.
