Flashback (5 page)

The prisoners of war are to be released, but no one yet knows when. Colonel Battersea's wife has a wasting disease, and Joseph has been trying to affect his early release but has yet to succeed.

Where was I? Ah yes: getting ready for our show. I'd secured the mirror and the lamplight from Tilly and was setting about trying to blot out with the paint pots the ravages of the years. I'm still as slim and upright as when last you saw me (being "condemned to barrenness," as Joseph so kindly puts it, has its compensations). My hair is no longer strictly light brown. There are marked incursions of white. But, by parting it left of center and wearing my braids wrapped round my head I can hide the worst of it. My skin is what gives me away as very nearly forty. Much as I try, the sun has me looking like the selfsame field hand Molly used to tell us we'd resemble if we didn't wear our bonnets.

For a time I painted and primped and powdered-my work cut out for me as I've said. Tilly stood at my shoulder burbling with "compliments": "Oh, Raffia, you don't look nearly so old with rouge. You know, from a distance, if only there weren't all that gray in your hair, you could almost play the part as well as me."

At that, I said, "No thank you. I am perfectly happy to be the shadowy background against which your brilliance can show all the more brightly." That kept her from heaping more coals of kindness on my head for a few minutes while she worked out whether I was being cutting or genuinely humble.

Into my hard-won silence came another of those terrible screams, this one in a dying fall, almost as if it changed after it was uttered from the cry of a human being to the wail of the wind through the casemates. It gave me a turn, I don't mind telling you. I had that sudden cold and shaking sensation Molly told us came when "a goose steps on your grave." This was most definitely a whole flock stomping on mine. Tilly slammed the window and the change in the air upset the light. In the sudden dance of the flames my face didn't look like me.

It frightened me so badly I did the only thing I could think of and yelled at Tilly for closing the sash with such violence.

"I'm going out there," Tilly yelled back. She stepped behind the screen in the corner that I use for dressing. Bits of clothing flew over the top.

"Don't you pull your skirt over your head," I warned her. The amount of paint on her face would ruin the fabric.

She stuck her head out and said: "I'm not having everything spoiled after we've worked so hard." The fright the last cry had given us sliced years off her. She sounded like a peevish little girl again but, even through the stage makeup, I could see, along with fear and selfishness, was compassion.

"No you are not going out there." I snapped back. "This is army business and no concern of ours." I had been of half a mind to go try and stop the wailing myself, and not for the good of our theatrical evening. Hearing myself utter those words: "this is army business and no concern..." decided me. I cannot tell you how many times over the eighteen years I've been married I have heard Joseph say exactly those words. Each time I tried to right some small wrong, help some needful person, or even, God forbid, ask Joseph where he'd been when he came in at two or three or four o'clock in the morning, he said: "it's army business and no concern of yours."

Of all the phrases in language and literature, hearing myself parrot that one upset me nearly as much as anything that had happened heretofore.

"We'll both go," I said.

Most everybody had already gone to the mess hall or was shut up in their quarters getting ready to go on stage. Still I told Tilly to hush. Luanne had been set to watching Mrs. Caulley's three children, and I don't know which of the four shrieked the loudest at not being allowed to watch the entertainment. I was afraid the sound of our voices would start the weeping and pleading all over again.

Tilly promised to be "quiet as a mouse," as she has since she was three, but I took it as a sign she'd matured when she refrained from making those tiny squeaky mouse sounds as she walked.

"We've got to hurry," I warned. "Major Tanner is making his curtain speech at eight, and Joel Lane is singing 'Take Me Home' right after," I said quickly. Calling of Private Lane to mind was oddly prophetic-pathetic-as you shall see if I ever finish this letter-become-tome.

The mention of Joel's singing stopped her planned argument, as I knew it would. In this topsy-turvy place where our enemy prisoners are here for more sanguine reasons than the prisoners of our beloved Union, this story I'm about to tell isn't as peculiar as it might seem.

Both Tilly and I had taken notice of Private Lane, a prisoner, a Johnny Reb and a secessionist, when he was set to hauling crushed shell to refurbish the walkway across the parade ground. Given that litany of his crimes against society, I was yet to find out the worst.

Private Lane is imminently noticeable. Six foot or taller with black hair, blue eyes and a smile with no teeth knocked or rotted out of it. Handsome as he is, it's his voice that docs the damage. Training or natural talent has turned his native drawl into a weapon I expect few women could resist without effort. I know this because Tilly, being no better than she should, spoke to him.

That might well have been the end of it, but fate chose to make Private Lane a part of our lives. Not two days later, the prisoners, along with the engineers and laborers brought in from New York, were put to hauling eight-inch Columbiads-fearsome cannons-to the third tier. Raising and placing these great guns is something to see. Tilly and I and a couple of the other ladies decided to brave the heat of the day to watch the process.

Because manpower and life are the only things held cheap here, the men were lifting with block and tackle, using ropes, pulleys and the strength of their backs. The heat had melted the rules, and the officer in charge allowed the prisoners to work with their shirts off. As they began lifting the cannon, easily as long as two men put end-to-end and weighing lord knows how much, the confederate soldiers started singing.

I suppose it was a song they'd grown up knowing, a working song used by field slaves. The Negroes on the other lines picked it up, and as they hauled, they sang. A clear tenor rose, singing counterpoint: Private Joel Lane, muscles bunched, half naked, voice soaring.

Well, Miss Tilly's breath sucked in so audibly I thought she'd stepped on a nail or a scorpion till I saw where she looked.

When the cannon was seated and the show at an end, Tilly and I and the rest of the ladies started down the spiral stairway that connects the tiers in that section of the fort. Tilly was just ahead of me, not paying attention, and I was focused on not treading on her skirt tail where she let it drag over the steps. Of a sudden she says in the most casual of ways how intelligent Private Lane looked.

Hah! I, too, admired his "intelligence" till he put his shirt back on.

Three days after this display of Joel Lane's intellect we were to see him again in a more intimate setting.

As I've mentioned, this has been a difficult summer. The end of the war but prisoners (and soldiers) not yet free, the heat, endless storms, bad food and water, yellow jack and bone-break fever rampant, has morale at a dreadful low. I'd not thought it could get worse when word came that the Lincoln conspirators were to be sent here to serve out their sentences. Fort Jefferson is a violent place, but with this unwelcome bit of news, violence, soldiers on prisoners, Negroes on whites, unionists on confederates, officers on men, has become epidemic.

In an attempt to raise morale, the post surgeon, Captain Caulley, chose to organize a theatrical troupe. It was an excellent effort. Much of the agony and anger the men suffer is borne in boredom. I'm sure Captain Caulley's motives were altruistic, but it also appealed to him on a practical level. It is he and his corps who are called upon to attend this increase in gunshots, knife wounds, broken noses, heads, teeth and knuckles. Joseph, not a lover of the arts in any of their guises, was in favor of anything that would stop activities that keep guards and prisoners off the work rosters.

In accordance with the surgeon's plan, the call went. Anyone who had a talent was to report to the officers' mess after parade the following day. One hundred and fifty-three men and seven of the women including Tilly and me answered. The men were excited for the first time in a long while over something other than gambling or brawling.

Private Joel Lane was among them, with his dark hair and angel voice and, unfortunately, his shirt. That's the day I learned the worst of him. The boy is not a deserter, a killer or a thief, but neither is he the son of a rich plantation owner. He is an actor. Before the war he traveled with his father's theatrical company, making his living singing in comic operas and playing the female leads in his father's Shakespearean productions.

Needless to say, Joel was cast in Captain Caulley's production. Because of their matching youth and beauty, he and Tilly were given a romantic duet in the third part of our entertainment. I immediately volunteered to play accompaniment on the harpsichord and have watched them ever since with a hawklike intensity that would do Molly proud.

This, then, is why I'd invoked Private Lane's name to get Tilly through quarters and to the parade ground quickly and quietly.

There are no rules about where the women here can go-or very few at any rate. The laundresses often go to the cells of prisoners whose families send them money to pay for laundry and such. The prisoners are, of course, paid for the labor they do in building the fort, and the women will walk to the store on the quay to buy their necessaries. I've never felt any fear moving around the fort, night or day.

This night was markedly different. Perhaps I'd not completely shaken the chill I'd felt at the last cry. Or perhaps it was the edges of the storm that flirted with us, though, Lord knows, I've had plenty of experience with weather of all kinds here. The parade ground was empty. I've seldom seen it empty. On an island not more than ten acres-not large enough for the fort, the moat extends into the sea itself-with eight to twelve hundred souls, there simply is no space where one can be truly alone. This night the parade ground was uninhabited but for the wind, which was fitful and sudden.

The walkway out from the officers' quarters is edged along both sides with whitewashed cannonballs. It can look quite grand-or as grand as we can muster here. Either my fancy or the moonlight twisting through the scudding clouds tricked my eyes and, for a moment, they appeared as human skulls.

Few of the closed casemates showed lights at their small windows, and the open casemates looked blacker than black. The unfinished barracks and armory looked ready to come to life, great unimaginable beasts but with claws and fangs.

Add to this the skittery racket made by the wind through the dry palm fronds tossing in sudden frantic life then falling silent as if the winds of all the world had died forever and perhaps you'll understand my uncharacteristic drama.

"Don't they look like a bunch of skulls all laid out in a line by some demented ogre?" Tilly said.

Hearing her echo my unpleasant thought, I nearly jumped out of my skin. To comfort myself and bring us back to the ordinary, I pinched her arm hard enough to make her squawk. I marched her firmly forward. She balked and said: "Maybe this isn't proper behavior for the wife and sister-in-law of a commanding officer." Apparently I was not the only one suffering from the megrims. I suppose she, too, felt the whispering of demons and bones. However, I had no intention of letting her wriggle out after she had pestered me half to death about the whole thing not three minutes before.

I said, with what I think you would agree was laudable courage, "Let's get this over or it will be you and not the screaming that spoils the show."

Holding on to Tilly both for comfort and control, I hurried us down the walk and into the blinding shadow under the stand of palms between the officers' quarters and the sally port. I had little doubt but that was where the moaning had emanated from. It's there and behind the unfinished armory nearby most of the corporal punishments are carried out.

I'm not sure what impelled me at this juncture. Tilly would have been willing to abandon the project. Certainly I had no notion of righting wrongs, changing army ways or, heavens forefend, be thanked for trying. Base curiosity of the variety that kills cats must account for it.

"Watch your step," I whispered. "With all the construction there's bound to be nails. You don't want to step on one and get lockjaw because-"

"Because you'd have to knock out my front teeth to feed me and, with no teeth, nobody will marry me and I'll end up an old maid like Molly," Tilly finished for me.

I suppose I said some such before, but I'm sure I never added the part about being an old maid. There are worse fates to be sure. Her mimicry of me was so perfect I was hurt despite being used to Tilly being Tilly.

"When did I get so old?" I said. One should never ask a question to which one does not wish to hear the answer.

"It was having those miscarriages one after the other for years and years."

"There'll be the guard now," I said. We were near to the sally port and I had no intention of pursuing the subject of my age and failures. "Hello the gate," I called.

No one responded. The prickly feeling at the back of my neck returned. First the abandoned parade ground, now no sentries at the gate. The moaning began to build after what had been a comparatively long respite. The fretful wind gusted into the stone and brick cavern that provides egress from the fort. Flames in the lamps secured there jumped then died. In that brief flash I saw-or thought I saw-what caused the crying.