The Bride of Texas (20 page)

Cyril’s father stopped reading. The size of Lesikar’s holdings had stunned him. He stared at the bowl of potatoes, a look of astonishment on his face. It was more than Mika had, and at home the Lesikars had had no more than four roods square, though he had made a bit of money on the side with his tailoring. Toupelik went on reading:

“As soon as possible my two sons and I started building, and now we live in a decent farmhouse with four rooms to it. We have a stable and a team of oxen and riding horses, and a cotton gin. I was able to buy more land and now I have 109 acres.”

That was the moment old Toupelik made up his mind. He folded the letter carefully, placed it in a chest along with some other documents, and, though it was already dark, went outside to his field
.

The truth was that his general sometimes did find pleasure in other people’s troubles. Once, before Vicksburg, trouble caught up with three reporters who were stirring things up in his army. Sherman believed in two things, both sensible in his profession: accuracy and secrecy. Journalists are not famous for either. But whereas a half-fabricated news story could at worst
destroy a man’s reputation as a commander, or perhaps, on the other hand, confuse the enemy, the premature disclosure of facts could bring despair to the very mothers, wives, and children the journalists loved to appeal to. The general came by his convictions honestly. For example, he hadn’t known that he was launching the attack on Chickasaw Bluffs alone, which would have been madness, because neither Grant’s nor Banks’s courier had arrived. Perhaps the two generals had forgotten to send them in the confusion, or maybe they had been killed on the way. Forrest and Van Dorn’s cavalry had cut Grant’s supply routes and his telegraph link, so Grant was unable to join Sherman’s attack from the east. Nor did Sherman know that Banks, softened by the gentler New Orleans climate, had fallen ill in the harsh Mississippi weather, so that his attack from the south, which was to have taken place at the same time as Sherman’s, had to be postponed. The reporters knew nothing of these things either, nor had they made any effort to find out. All they knew was that the offensive that was intended to catch Pemberton’s division in a three-way vice and thus open the way to Vicksburg had dwindled to Sherman’s lone attack on Chickasaw Bayou. Pemberton was able to shift his division quickly from the front to face the immobilized Grant. Sherman, convinced that Grant was attacking with him from the east and Banks from the south, attacked as planned and suffered the consequences. He lost 1,899 soldiers, and he was superseded — though only temporarily — by McClernand, intent on taking Vicksburg as a wedding present for his bride, who was with him on the battlefront.

The solo attack on Chickasaw Bayou seemed like insanity, but Sherman wasn’t insane. Yet the war correspondents tried to make him look as though he were, because, in their ignorance of the facts, they had no other explanation. Moreover, they included some persistent backroom gossip about the state of
Sherman’s mind, because a mad (and, if possible, drunken) general sold more papers than a man who had all his wits about him. They therefore portrayed him as a butcher who brought tears to the eyes of the mothers and widows and children who were, of course, nearest to the journalists’ hearts.

Sherman had a low opinion of correspondents, and banned them from his army camps. He described them in words they themselves couldn’t print. And he found considerable pleasure, and let it be known that he did, when he heard that three “damned scribblers” (one of his milder expressions) named Richardson, Browne, and Colburn had attempted to slip down the Mississippi past the Vicksburg batteries on a boat that night — an act of insanity, though they weren’t insane, just ignorant — to escape Sherman’s clutches (with good reason) and seek refuge in the camp of General McClernand, who enjoyed seeing his name in print. Their boat, of course, did not elude Pemberton’s gunners, who were experienced in shooting at floating targets and turned it into a sieve. Sherman was delighted: “Good! Now it’s news from hell that we’ll have before breakfast!” He only regretted that he had already banished Thomas W. Knox from his camp. Sherman had had Knox, a reporter for the
New York Herald
, arrested and court-martialled as a spy, but the man had been released by the court. In his eagerness for a scoop, Knox would certainly have ended up in hell with the drowned trio.

In fact, however, the trio were not in hell, for they hadn’t drowned. They had merely dropped, one by one, into the Mississippi and, confused by the barrage, had swum to the wrong shore. There the Rebels seized them and locked them up in Andersonville Prison for almost two years, without benefit of a trial.

The capture of the trio was an innocent divertimento that may have relieved Sherman’s boredom during the forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg. A few days before, however, other
reporters had caused some mischief that might well have brought extraordinary anguish and grief to mothers, fiancées, and orphans — and blame to Sherman — had the Confederate Captain Grimfield controlled his urge to practise the gentleman’s art of sarcasm.

The general had discovered the Achilles’ heel in the Vicksburg fortification, and had decided to take advantage of it. To do this, he needed to move three batteries of artillery into position unseen. He came up with a devious scheme — devious, that is, considering the Southern code of honour. But, thought the sergeant, what was left of that code by the spring of ’63?

The general called a truce and sent negotiators into Vicksburg, and then went himself and deliberately got involved in lengthy and repetitive talks about an exchange of prisoners. While negotiations were going on, a cease-fire was in force. At Rebel headquarters the general became very argumentative about the terms of the exchange. He demanded time to think them over, continually took offence and then was conciliated; he made excessive demands, and protested against excessive demands made of him. The Rebels welcomed these protracted negotiations. It gave them a chance to rest and round up provisions, for supplies were dwindling inside Vicksburg. And all the time he was putting on this show of diplomacy, Sherman was silently, cannon by cannon, repositioning his artillery.

But he forgot — and this may be an unforgivable lapse, given his familiarity with the ways of journalists — that a few correspondents remained in his camp, all of them hungry for a scoop. One afternoon, after two hours of talk, Sherman once more demanded a recess until the following day and prepared to return to his camp. That night he planned to move the last cannon into position. As he was leaving, the Confederate Captain Grimfield approached him in an unusually clean uniform.
(The negotiations had given his black orderly, Billy, a chance to attend to the captain’s appearance.) Smiling like a gentleman, Grimfield suggested that the general not use his recently repositioned guns the next day, since he was scheduled to be best man at his commanding officer’s wedding and it would be rather unpleasant if the wedding was disrupted by artillery fire.

The general looked like a beggar caught stealing apples red-handed. He regained his composure, however, and said coldly, “I congratulate you on your spies, captain.”

“And I, sir, congratulate you on your correspondents,” declared Captain Grimfield.

The general rushed back to his headquarters and ordered up all the newspapers, which he hadn’t had time to read that morning because he’d been conferring with Captain DeGress about putting the last cannon in place.
The Memphis Bulletin
contained a strategic analysis by its reporter (one of the rats who, a few days later, failed to drown in the Mississippi) which concluded from the secret gun emplacements that an attack on the Achilles’ heel of the Vicksburg fortifications was imminent.

The general exploded. He ordered the arrest of the correspondent, who got wind of his wrath and went into hiding until he could board the boat that, regrettably, did not take him to hell. The general started to call loudly for censorship or, better still, for all war correspondents to be barred from the theatre of operations, or, best of all, for a ban on all war reporting until victory had been declared. And he called for violators to be shot. (The sergeant wondered if that was possible here in America; three times through the gauntlet would have been a more suitable punishment, since the correspondents’ writings were always dangerous, often demonstrably damaging, and usually wrong.)

Everything civilians needed to know about the war, the general felt, they could learn from the letters that soldiers wrote
home, for, unlike men in the armies of Europe, most were literate. They enjoyed writing letters and, because they were risking their lives in battles, they were notably more accurate than journalists.

Thus the general did not call for censorship of soldiers’ letters to their loved ones at home.

“What do you intend to do about it, neighbour?” asked old man Toupelik. Mika stood scowling and silent. Sweat ran down his forehead, but it may have been just because of the hot noonday sun
.

Despite the vast difference in wealth between the two men, Toupelik and Mika were friends. Both of them fiddled at village dances, Toupelik for the extra income, Mika because he had music in his blood. When times were bad, he had even been known to help Toupelik out. Though Toupelik’s daughter had done him this mischief — as Mika saw it — he would certainly not have her father roast in hell for it. So Toupelik waited for Mika to speak
.

“Do you want to marry her off?” Mika growled after a while
.

His reaction was just what Toupelik had expected. “You mean to your Vitek?” Mika didn’t reply, and finally Toupelik said, “Or are you saying you’d give the mother of your grandson a dowry, maybe even help find her a husband?”

He knew Mika had thought of that. In those years finding a husband among the poor who lived in cottages on small holdings for a girl with a small dowry would have been child’s play, and even if the bride was pregnant, that obstacle could be easily resolved by throwing in a few ducats. And Mika had plenty of ducats to throw
.

“How much?” Mika growled
.

“Fifty gold pieces,” said Toupelik
.

Mika’s eyebrows rose. “That’s hardly enough for a husband.”

“She doesn’t need a husband,” said Toupelik. “What I want for her and the rest of us is boat tickets to America.”

Mika put out his hand to shake on the deal
.

“That’s not all,” said Toupelik
.

“What else?”

“There’s Cyril,” said Toupelik, “and the crimps are on the prowl. Last week they were conscripting in Petakov.”

Mika furrowed his brow. “That won’t be easy.”

“No, but it can be done,” said Toupelik
.

It could be done and it was, though what it cost to bribe the doctor, added to the price of the boat tickets, would have made a handsome dowry. The doctor discovered that Cyril had a weak heart, rheumatism in his left leg, extreme myopia, and chronic enuresis. And so the fictitious cripple wound up in Texas instead of in uniform, where he was suddenly and miraculously cured. Before spring planting began, his sister gave birth to a daughter, and christened her Deborah to remind her as little as possible of the old homeland. Lida began calling herself Linda, and not long after that she began signing herself Linda Towpelick
.

“Linda Towpelick,” Cyril mimicked bitterly. “We came to America young enough to pick up English. If I’d come years later I’d probably be talking like my old man, right, Corporal Kaykashka?”

“Dat’s right,” said Kakuska, switching from Czech to English without looking up from his spurs
.

Outside, moonlight poured down on the sycamores
.