Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 (6 page)

There was but one difficulty with this sterling plan …

“It would seem that the Confederacy can add yet another item to its list of shortages,” drawled Bridgeford. “We appear to be somewhat lacking in trains, though not, perhaps, in fellow passengers.”

The depot was crowded with fleeing civilians and with wounded soldiers who had tottered out of the hospital, bandages and all, to escape the burning capital. The remnants of the Confederate
navy clustered together, hemmed in by frightened men and women and crying children. But there were no trains. Only a few unhitched passenger cars into which more refugees had packed themselves, waiting for someone in authority to appear and preside over their deliverance. Admiral Semmes took some of his officers and began to search the train yards. No one challenged their authority. All the railroad workers had run off the previous day, when the last of the trains had departed.

“Where are the trains?” asked Gabriel. He knew the Confederacy had a good supply of railroad cars. Many's the time Stonewall's troops had circled an evening campfire and told the story of Stonewall Jackson and the B&O Railroad. In May 1861, Thomas J. Jackson—then a colonel—and his troops had occupied Harpers Ferry, with more than a hundred miles of Baltimore & Ohio railroad track within the territory he controlled. The B&O was a lifeline for the Union, conveying soldiers and supplies back and forth between Baltimore and the Ohio Valley. Day and night those trains ran, carrying coal and grain to supply the Union and fortify it during the hostilities ahead. Under orders from Richmond, Jackson put up with the incessant trains as long as there was a chance of Maryland seceding to join the Confederacy, but
when that hope faded, Jackson was free to take on the B&O. The colonel complained to railroad president John W. Garrett about the endless procession of noisy trains steaming through the narrow river valley, disturbing the nightly slumber of his troops. Mr. Garrett, anxious to keep peace with the occupying army, canceled the night trains so that they would not disturb Colonel Jackson's sleeping soldiers. A few days later, Jackson persuaded the B&O president to reschedule the day trains so as not to interfere with troop maneuvers. Finally
all
the trains were running through Harpers Ferry between the hours of eleven
A.M.
and one
P.M
. Was Colonel Thomas J. Jackson satisfied with that? Indeed he was. He promptly sealed off both ends of the valley at Point of Rocks and at Martinsburg, and appropriated fifty-six locomotives and nearly four hundred railroad cars for the Confederacy. His men loved to tell that story around the watch fires. The laughter dulled their hunger.

But where were Stonewall's trains now, in their hour of need?

“Where are the trains?” echoed a steam engineer from the
Fredericksburg.
“Why, I reckon the government's took 'em when they lit out! Hustled away from here yesterday like rats down an anchor chain, and left the rest of us high and dry to face the fire and the Federals.”

“He's right!” called out an approaching officer, just back from inspecting the contents of
the railroad yard. “There's nothing out there now but a heap of spare parts. And there's one small locomotive, but there's no fire in her, and no railroad men to run her.”

“They've left us a locomotive?” roared the steam engineer. “Why, who needs railroad men if they've left us a working engine? I reckon I can run her. Haven't I kept the
Fredericksburg
afloat and sailing all these months? A steam engine is a steam engine, even on land. I say we fire up the damned thing, attach these railroad cars, and make off with it. Who's with me?”

“But what'll we use for fuel?” someone called out. “There's none of that!”

The steam engineer looked around. “I don't reckon the railroad will be needing that there picket fence,” he roared. “I say hack her down and throw her in the furnace.”

The pall of smoke overhead and the rumble of distant cannons left very little room for argument among the stranded sailors. Anything was better than staying in Richmond. Any gamble was worth taking. As the men surged forward to follow the ship's engineer, they were beset on all sides by the frightened townspeople, begging not to be left behind, but Admiral Semmes ordered them all turned out of the railroad cars.

“It's better for unarmed civilians to fall into the hands of the enemy than for armed soldiers to be left to face them,” the admiral told them.

“If our engine will bear the load, we'll takeall
of you that will fit aboard,” an officer promised a sobbing woman. “Once our troops are loaded.”

The other commanders were shouting, “Draw the cars together! Couple the cars!”

Gabriel Hawks wondered how long it would take a gang of sailors to assemble a train, and whether it would run if they did succeed in coupling the cars together. Would they be better off slipping away from the station one by one and trying to make it home? Surely the duration of the war could be counted in days. And it was planting time up home in Giles County. It might take him two weeks to walk it, but once he was west of Richmond, he was almost assured of a safe journey back to the mountains. He had been wounded. He had been both a soldier and a sailor. Surely, Gabe thought, he had done all that any government could ask of a man not yet twenty years old. But he looked at the anxious faces of the women, clutching their crying children and regarding the gaggle of sailors with such faith in their own deliverance. He looked at the gaunt cripples from the hospital, hobbling along to help assemble the train. Gabriel cursed himself for a fool, but he followed the throng down to the railroad yard. He knew he couldn't face his family if he ran out on these people now. Besides, his old commander Stonewall was dead; Jeb Stuart was dead; A. P. Hill was dead. Even the ironclad
Virginia
was dead. Who was he to outlive the war?

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING
Bill stumbled into the office well after nine o'clock, looking like the plaintiff in a hit-and-run case. Edith, ensconced at her receptionist's desk with the morning crossword, studied him silently as he tottered in the doorway.

“You ought to reconsider ambulance chasing,” she remarked. “You look like you could stand to catch one.” Edith's awe of attorneys had dwindled steadily in the days since she had been hired, a result of close proximity to actual lawyers, who were markedly less omnipotent than she had hitherto supposed. In fact, she would have bet money that she could have beaten both of them in Trivial Pursuit. So much for their fancy university educations.

“I just come to the office to rest,” groaned Bill. “My weekend was a nightmare. Have we got any aspirin?”

“Hangover?” asked Edith, looking him over with a practiced eye. Her daddy had been a
great one for the bottle and she knew the signs. In Bill's case, though, they seemed to be absent.

“No, but it's only a matter of time,” the sufferer assured her. “I spent the weekend in my parents' war zone. Besides, I have a sore back and every muscle in my leg feels like a stretched rubber band. I was helping my dad move the rest of his things out. Same as last weekend. And I think I carried all the heavy stuff.”

“Still no chance of a reconciliation?”

“Not on my account. The only thing they seem to agree on is my utter uselessness. Dad won't confide in me because I'm Mother's attorney, and Mother seems convinced that men are in some worldwide conspiracy against women.”

“Yeah, I've noticed it myself,” said Edith with a trace of a smile.

“So while I wanted to spend the weekend calming them down and infusing some reason into the situation,
they
insisted on spending two days bickering over the furniture. Mother refused to let Dad take a purple and gold tea service that his great-aunt Elinor left them. Mother says she ought to have it because she drinks tea and Dad doesn't.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“No, it doesn't. In the twenty-odd years that they've owned that tea set, they have never used it, and I know for a fact that Mother hates it. She refuses to admit that now, of course. And I thought we were going to have to call in the
U.N. to decide who got the TV with the remote control. I offered to go out and
buy
another clicker, but they ignored me and kept on arguing in that well-bred icy way of theirs. Snide.” He mimicked his mother's voice. “ ‘Of course it's none of my business, Doug, but do you really think you need half the pots and pans, when all you know how to do is microwave TV dinners?' ” Bill lowered himself into a chair with a weary groan. “I can't take much more of this. Where's Powell?”

“At the courthouse,” said Edith. “She's got another case. Guy accused of writing bad checks. I said, ‘Could we get him to pay us in cash, you reckon?' But she was not amused.”

“He's one of Powell's indigent clients, so I think the state will be footing the bill,” Bill pointed out. “Besides, we're not supposed to think he's guilty.”

“Uh-huh.” Edith did not sound convinced. “Maybe you're not. I have to see that the bills get paid, and I balance the books for this firm. By the way, you got a message this morning. Do you feel up to taking it yet?”

“Depends. Is it Mr. Trowbridge with another crazy question?”

“No. It's somebody calling about that house ad you had me run in all those newspapers up north. He sounded interested.” She held out a pink message slip. “Try not to sound too eager,
though. In real estate deals it makes people suspicious.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” said Bill. He ambled off to his office to earn his keep.

He was pleased that a response to his ad had come so quickly, but he wasn't really surprised. It was a wonderful house. He had gone by to visit it at the first of last week, and it really was a period piece. (As were its inhabitants, he thought.) The white colonial house with Corinthian columns and a circular portico was in need of minor repairs—new shutters, perhaps, and a coat of paint—but its interior of hardwood floors and high-ceilinged rooms rich with carving was in perfect condition, lovingly cared for by its house-proud occupants. From the sweeping oak staircase in the front hall to the dormer rooms in the well-swept attic, the house was wonderful. Bill wished he could buy it himself, but the asking price of one million, five hundred thousand was well beyond his means. In fact, he would be hard-pressed to afford the paint for the shutters at his current income level.

Still, he supposed that someone living in the exorbitant urban sprawl between New York and Boston might consider one point five million a bargain price for six thousand square feet of historic house on three acres of oak-shaded lawns.

Bill decided that he wouldn't have any trouble
conveying his enthusiasm for the property, which was just as well, because he thought that the conditions of sale verged on eccentric. They're little old ladies, he reminded himself. At their age, they're entitled to be a little strange. They were certainly charming when he visited them, though, dishing out slices of homemade chocolate cake with pecans and fussing over him as if he were a visiting prince. He wanted to sell their house for them as swiftly and profitably as possible so that they could retire to their suburban nursing home carefree and financially secure. The transaction would do wonders for his financial position as well. If it hadn't been for his bank's overdraft protection plan, Bill could easily have been another of his partner's bad-check cases.