When This Cruel War Is Over (5 page)
Read When This Cruel War Is Over Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Garner began to blubber. “I don't want to shoot anyone. I told them when they drafted me I wanted to work in the hospital. But they wouldn't listen. They gave me a gun.”
Gentry sighed. Too many deserters told this story. After three years of slaughter, the Union Army could not afford to inquire where a man wanted to serve. They needed anyone who could carry a gun in the front lines.
“Escort him to the town jail. We'll ship him to Indianapolis for trial on Monday.”
Stapleton followed Gentry through the dim barn to the sunbaked yard. “Can you spare fifteen minutes for a private talk?” Gentry asked.
“I want to make sure Doctor Yancey treats my wounded troopers.”
“Tell him I'll consider it a personal favor,” Gentry said. “I'll wait for you in my office.”
Twenty minutes later, Major Stapleton returned looking
satisfied. Dr. Yancey, still reasonably sober, was bestowing his considerable medical skills on the wounded black troopers. The man with the head wound had died but that did not seem to trouble Major Stapleton. He had no doubt seen enough casualties at Antietam and Gettysburg and other battles to make death routine. Perhaps they also taught that idea at West Point.
satisfied. Dr. Yancey, still reasonably sober, was bestowing his considerable medical skills on the wounded black troopers. The man with the head wound had died but that did not seem to trouble Major Stapleton. He had no doubt seen enough casualties at Antietam and Gettysburg and other battles to make death routine. Perhaps they also taught that idea at West Point.
“Sit down, Major. I know you're eager to go upstairs and charm the ladies. But there's some business we ought to discuss first.”
“I'm feeling a bit derelict toward Miss Toddâ”
“By coincidence, Miss Todd is the business I want to discuss with you.”
Stapleton looked wary. He probably assumed that Gentry was in cahoots with his in-laws to snare an heir to the Stapleton fortune for darling Janet. “As a mere observer, I begin to think Janet has some affection for you,” Gentry said.
“We've never discussed that idea in a serious way. Mostly we play a game of polite antagonism about the war.”
“I'm aware of that. I do the same thing with two-thirds of the people in Keyport. But there's more to Janet Todd than meets the eye, Major. Behind her polite, cheerful antagonism lurks a Confederate agent.”
“You're joking.”
“I have incontrovertible evidence. She's part of a plot to revolutionize Kentucky and Indiana and take both states out of the war. With them might go Illinois and Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio. She's been a courier, connecting Confederate agents in Canada to gunrunners in New York and the Confederate secret service in Richmond.”
“Remarkable,” Major Stapleton said. “I have new respect for her.”
“Majorâthis is a very serious matter. They plan to launch their revolution sometime this summer or early
in the fall, before the presidential election. With Lincoln already in trouble with the voters, this thing could have a terrific impact on the outcome of the war.”
in the fall, before the presidential election. With Lincoln already in trouble with the voters, this thing could have a terrific impact on the outcome of the war.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Major Stapleton asked.
“I want you to become a Union secret agent, Major. I want you to pretend to lose your enthusiasm for the federal cause. I want you to convince Janet you're in love with her and persuade her to share the details of this plot, especially the date when they plan to launch their armed uprising.”
“Colonel Gentryâwhat you're suggesting is more than a little dishonorable.”
“When it comes to winning a war, Major, honor must be sacrificed occasionally, like everything else.”
“I'm not sure I agree with that, sir.”
“I don't give a damn whether you agree with it, Major. I'm issuing you an order!”
“I'm an officer in the regular army of the United States,” Major Stapleton said, his West Point pride vibrating in his voice. “I have severe doubts as to whether I'm required to obey such an extraordinary order from a volunteer officer who is at best on detached duty.”
“Why don't you say it? Who's a one-armed cripple.”
“I will not say it because I did not think it, Colonel.”
Gentry leaned forward in his chair. The major's face dissolved in the dim light into a generic identity. He was all the proud confident young men Henry Gentry had never been able to match.
“Do you want an order from the President of the United States, Major? Your constitutional commander in chief? I can get it. I write Abe Lincoln a letter a week, telling him what's happening in Indiana.”
“If he issued such an order, Colonel Gentry, I would think even less of him than I do now.”
Gentry glanced at the large framed photograph of Lincoln on the wall. It was taken before he grew his
beard. His hair was rumpled; it looked as if he were standing in a prairie wind. The photographer had combed Abe's hair, and he had deliberately mussed it. “I told him otherwise my friends wouldn't recognize me,” Lincoln had said.
beard. His hair was rumpled; it looked as if he were standing in a prairie wind. The photographer had combed Abe's hair, and he had deliberately mussed it. “I told him otherwise my friends wouldn't recognize me,” Lincoln had said.
“Why does everyone in the country think so little of this man? I've known him since we were boys together on Pigeon Creek. I've seen the loathsome cabin he lived in, eighteen to twenty Lincolns sleeping like hogs on the dirt floor. I saw his father, the meanest, stupidest Kentucky dirt farmer this side of Lake Ontario. I was there when Lincoln transcended that ancestral pigsty, when his soul expanded with his body. I saw the wonder and the beauty of the man's spirit when it first flowered.”
“Colonelâif I may interrupt youânow you're telling me that this wonderful spiritual being is prepared to write a letter, at your behest, ordering me to traduce the affections of a respectable young woman, in the name of victory? To become a despicable scoundrel in my own eyes and the eyes of any man who discovered it? Is this the kind of war we're fighting? I'm prepared to risk my life in a fair fight at anyone's order. But I absolutely totally refuse to obey this order, even if your noble friend Abe Lincoln comes here and delivers it to me personally!”
They sat there, antagonists, each wearing the blue uniform of the army of the United States. Through Colonel Gentry's brain clanged the alarm bell he had heard a hundred, even a thousand times:
You've messed up again, Henry.
Why was he, reader of uncounted books, never able to find the right words in a face-to-face situation? Always men talked him down, either with frontal assaults à la Rogers Jameson or flanking movements à la Major Stapleton. His mother, Millicent Todd Gentry, his ex-friend Andy Conway and too many others to enumerate did the same thing.
You've messed up again, Henry.
Why was he, reader of uncounted books, never able to find the right words in a face-to-face situation? Always men talked him down, either with frontal assaults à la Rogers Jameson or flanking movements à la Major Stapleton. His mother, Millicent Todd Gentry, his ex-friend Andy Conway and too many others to enumerate did the same thing.
Humiliation.
It was impossible to face that word
without deciding it was time to take his service revolver and slowly insert the barrel into his mouth, let his tongue examine the round opening of the muzzle one last time, and pull the trigger. He had made the insertion more than once but something he neither understood nor valued had stayed his trigger finger. Was it Lincoln's spirit, pleading against another desertion?
It was impossible to face that word
without deciding it was time to take his service revolver and slowly insert the barrel into his mouth, let his tongue examine the round opening of the muzzle one last time, and pull the trigger. He had made the insertion more than once but something he neither understood nor valued had stayed his trigger finger. Was it Lincoln's spirit, pleading against another desertion?
“I hope, at the very least, Major, you'll conduct yourself like an officer of the U.S. Army and not reveal to Miss Todd even a hint of this conversation,” Gentry said.
“Of course.”
“Major, you've only been here four months. You don't have any idea how serious this whole thing is. They could do it. They have an organization, the Sons of Liberty, with thousands of men enrolled. Rogers Jameson is one of the leaders. The dissatisfaction, not to say disgust, with the war is so strong, all they need is a show of support from the Confederate Army to rise in strength. Thanks to Miss Todd, they're in a position to get that. In her latest letter, of which I have a verbatim account, she's arranged for four regiments of John Hunt Morgan's cavalry to cooperate with the Liberty men.”
“My respect for her grows by leaps and bounds,” Major Stapleton said.
“Major,” Gentry said. “Don't you realize we could lose this war?”
“A larger question troubles me, Colonel. Whether we deserve to win it.”
CONFEDERATE AGENT.
THE WORDS CORUSCATED through Major Paul Stapleton's aching head as he strolled with Janet Todd on the Gentry estate overlooking the Ohio. The river was almost a mile wide hereâan inland sea dividing North and South. Would this new knowledge interfere with the onset of love that his brother Charlie called crystallization?
THE WORDS CORUSCATED through Major Paul Stapleton's aching head as he strolled with Janet Todd on the Gentry estate overlooking the Ohio. The river was almost a mile wide hereâan inland sea dividing North and South. Would this new knowledge interfere with the onset of love that his brother Charlie called crystallization?
It was a French idea, discovered by Charlie in the outpost of France in the American South, New Orleans. Paul liked it from the moment he heard it, because it made the business of love seem vaguely scientific and impersonalâsomething that happened to a man whether he liked it or wanted it to happen. He had tried it with one or two women but the demands of West Point and in swift succession the U.S. Army and the war had aborted the experiments before they were even close to maturity. Seeing Janet Todd almost every weekend for the last three months had given him the crucial ingredient, time, for crystallization to occur.
Paul gazed steadily at Janet in her white lace summer dress, white stockings and white shoes. She was not beautiful. But Charlie, Paul's expert on love, had assured him that supremely beautiful women were difficult if not impossible, to love. The essence of crystallization was the slow discovery of new aspects of beauty in the person you desired, discoveries that multiplied the pleasureâand the potential painâof the experience.
The pain was as important in the equation as the pleasure. For Paul, love was essentially riskâand that
redoubled its appeal for a professional soldier. As
Confederate agent
penetrated his consciousness, he saw that it multiplied the riskâand the attraction. It was a new kind of crystallization that Charlie, who had lived and died on risk, would heartily approve.
redoubled its appeal for a professional soldier. As
Confederate agent
penetrated his consciousness, he saw that it multiplied the riskâand the attraction. It was a new kind of crystallization that Charlie, who had lived and died on risk, would heartily approve.
Janet Todd was not beautiful. But she had thick, lustrously dark hair that seemed to multiply its blackness against her white skin. Her mouth was a bit too wide, but it was strong and expressiveâand more than a little knowing. It was a surprisingly worldly mouth for someone who had grown up on a Kentucky plantation. But she had gone to a school in Indiana run by French nuns. Daughters of many wealthy midwesterners, city girls from Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, went there. Who knows what young women exchanged in whispers in their rooms over flickering candles? Perhaps sentiments and secrets almost as shocking as those Paul had heard at West Point.
Janet's eyes were brooding blue beneath black brows and long delicate lashes. When she lowered them, she looked unexpectedly vulnerable. A sentence from one of Charlie's letters flashed through Paul's mind:
Nothing is more favorable to the birth of love than a mixture of depression and solitudeâand a few infrequent and eagerly anticipated balls.
Was this Fourth of July party the Indiana version of a ball?
Nothing is more favorable to the birth of love than a mixture of depression and solitudeâand a few infrequent and eagerly anticipated balls.
Was this Fourth of July party the Indiana version of a ball?
They entered the deeper shade of a line of immense cottonwood trees. A modicum of the cool air that filtered up from the river seemed to survive here. The softened light helped Paul admire the strong line of Janet's jaw, the suggestion of willfulness, pride, in the tilt of her head, her remarkably straight back. Her figure was not notably curvaceous. The dress revealed a tantalizing glimpse of breasts that were, at best, average size. But Paul had never been one of those orgiasts who slavered after excess in that department.
A certain broadness in Janet's hips and shoulders
gave her body a compact almost masculine quality. But it was compact with female emotion. Feeling throbbed in her voice, reminding Paul of the lower reaches of the cello.
gave her body a compact almost masculine quality. But it was compact with female emotion. Feeling throbbed in her voice, reminding Paul of the lower reaches of the cello.
“You ask me if I'm attracted to you, Major. Of course I am. Every woman in the vicinity is attracted to you. You're dangerously handsomeâand rich. What more does one need to set a woman's heart fluttering?”
“You sound as if you dislike this attraction, Miss Janet. As if there were a censor of some sort sitting in judgment on your feelings. Does it have something to do with the color of my uniform?”
“I would consider myself an extremely prejudiced woman if that were the case,” Janet said. “As the daughter of a man who called for Kentucky's neutrality, I try not to pass judgment on anyone for the color of his uniform.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” Paul said.
“But I won't deny I sympathize with the men you spent the better part of the afternoon fighting. To them you represent a
tyranny,
Major. That may be hard for you to understand.”
tyranny,
Major. That may be hard for you to understand.”
“Not at all,” Paul said. “As I've told you, I come from a family of Democrats. My mother wanted my father to do exactly what your father didâurge New Jersey to remain neutral. If a few more border states such as Maryland and Missouri had done it, the war would have stopped before it started. But the senator couldn't bring himself to abandon the Union.”
“You know what I really think, Major? Instead of trying to comprehend my ambivalent heart, you ought to pay some attention to poor Dorothy Schreiber. She's
hopelessly
in love with you. She's confided to me that your
coldness
has driven her to the edge of genuine
despair.”
hopelessly
in love with you. She's confided to me that your
coldness
has driven her to the edge of genuine
despair.”
Paul felt a vibration of pure pleasure. He was well aware of Dorothy Schreiber's infatuation. She was living
in the Gentry household. It was the inflections in Janet's voice that produced the pleasure. He loved to hear southern women express themselves. Every important word was colored by emotion.
in the Gentry household. It was the inflections in Janet's voice that produced the pleasure. He loved to hear southern women express themselves. Every important word was colored by emotion.
“Dorothy's only sixteen. Am I to be reduced to robbing the cradle?”
“Women marry at sixteen all the time around here.”
“Why haven't you married, Miss Janet?”
She looked away from him. “I told you. I've promised myself to a man who's fighting for the Confederacy.”
“But that was only three years ago. I know it's impolite to mention a lady's age, but I've discovered with Colonel Gentry's help that we're both twenty-five. In fact, we came into this world on almost the same day in the year 1839. Where was this Confederate hero between your sixteenth and twenty-second year?”
“He was pursuing me. And IâI was resisting him.”
“Poor fellow. He has my deepest retrospective sympathy. Why were you resisting him?”
“Perhaps I disliked the idea that marriage is not only the most interesting event in a woman's lifeâit's the
only
interesting event.”
only
interesting event.”
“So this pledgeâif that's not too extravagant a word in the light of what you're confessingâwas extracted from you by the war itself?”
“You could say that. I decline to confirm whether your assertion is true or false, or a mixture of both things.”
“But I've been told by some people in a position to know that you've hinted this pledge is no longer binding in your heart.”
“Until I see the gentleman and discuss it, face-to-face, it must beâunless I met another man who stirred my heart in an unexpected way.”
Paul took her hand. It was exquisitely soft and moist. “Miss Janet,” he said. “Why can't you abstract the idea of risk and apply it to a professional soldier? A man who doesn't fight for causesâbut who summons courage because
it's an essential part of his profession. It seems to me a woman's heart could find poignancy in that sort of man. She might admire his devotion to duty and honor for their own sakes. She might want to share his determination to challenge fate in the name of glory, without the least illusion that glory is anything more than the tinsel of the season. It seems to me that two people, pledged to each other that way, would focus all the emotions of love with the sort of intensity created by a magnifying glass held up to the sun. They might achieve a love that would all but consume themâwith joy, with pleasure, with a happiness that approaches salvation.”
it's an essential part of his profession. It seems to me a woman's heart could find poignancy in that sort of man. She might admire his devotion to duty and honor for their own sakes. She might want to share his determination to challenge fate in the name of glory, without the least illusion that glory is anything more than the tinsel of the season. It seems to me that two people, pledged to each other that way, would focus all the emotions of love with the sort of intensity created by a magnifying glass held up to the sun. They might achieve a love that would all but consume themâwith joy, with pleasure, with a happiness that approaches salvation.”
“Majorâyou are absolutely amazing. How did someone born in New Jersey learn to talk like a southerner? If I closed my eyes, and added a touch of accent, those words could be coming from the lips of a dozen men I know.”
“I had a southern roommate for four years at West Point.”
“Where was he from?”
“Georgia.”
“So he's probably fighting General Sherman at this very moment.”
“Possibly.”
The Gettysburg wound fired a bolt of pain through Paul's skull.
You are getting to be a really gifted liar, Paulie. To hear you now, you felt next to nothing when you walked Thomas Jefferson Tyler to the steamboat dock for his journey south.
You are getting to be a really gifted liar, Paulie. To hear you now, you felt next to nothing when you walked Thomas Jefferson Tyler to the steamboat dock for his journey south.
Not true, not true, I remember everything: the beads of perspiration on Jeff's upper lip, the tears dampening the lashes of his lowered eyes. We were beyond words, beyond politics, beyond anger, beyond fate itself in a world of absolute emotional purity.
“What?”
“I asked you, What is your roommate's name?”
“Tyler. Thomas Jefferson Tyler. We called him Jeff.”
“You were fond of him?”
“I loved him.”
She was wide-eyed. Was it amazement or a species of wicked hope? For a moment
Confederate agent
became an impenetrable barrier between them. But Paul thrust it aside with the reminder that he had known from the start this woman supported the South.
Confederate agent
became an impenetrable barrier between them. But Paul thrust it aside with the reminder that he had known from the start this woman supported the South.
“Everyone in the class loved him. He was generous, honest, true in every imaginable sense of the word. Even the most obnoxious abolitionists had to confess that Jeff Tyler was as close as any of us came to moral perfection. It utterly baffled them that he could own slaves and yet attain such a spiritual ascendancy.”
“Yet you have no sympathy for the cause that Jeff Tyler is risking his life to defend?”
“On the contrary, I have enormous sympathy for Jeff Tyler's cause. For your cause. What made our farewell so heartbreaking was the knowledge we sharedâand expressedâas professional soldiers, the night before we parted, that the South couldn't win the war.”
He raised her hand to his lips. She permitted him. It was the sort of proof he was seeking. It added passion to his words. “That's why I feel capable of offering you my affection, Miss Janetâeven though I'm wearing the wrong uniform. I believe I've been chosen to console you for the Confederacy's inevitable defeat.”
She freed her hand and stepped back a pace, as if she no longer wanted to be too close to him. “How can you say that when Lincoln's own party loathes him so much, they almost refused to renominate him? When the Democrats of Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio are rising in a virtual
mass
of rage and disgust against Republican tyranny?”
mass
of rage and disgust against Republican tyranny?”
“Wars aren't won by politics and politicians. They're won by soldiers with the training to organize and concentrate superior force. I was General John Reynolds' aide until he was killed at Gettysburg. He was the finest
soldier in the Union Army, and his loss remains a tragedy. I sat at his dinner table and listened to him predict and describe in detail the defeat of the Southâa fact that saddened him as much as it distressed me. He even predicted the precise strategy that General Grant and General Sherman are pursuing at this momentâbattering attacks on the Confederate armies in Virginia to hold them in place while Sherman executes a vast flanking movement to penetrate the heart of the Confederacy from the west.”
soldier in the Union Army, and his loss remains a tragedy. I sat at his dinner table and listened to him predict and describe in detail the defeat of the Southâa fact that saddened him as much as it distressed me. He even predicted the precise strategy that General Grant and General Sherman are pursuing at this momentâbattering attacks on the Confederate armies in Virginia to hold them in place while Sherman executes a vast flanking movement to penetrate the heart of the Confederacy from the west.”
“Why did you decide to become a professional soldier, Major?” Janet asked.
The question threw Paul off balance like an unexpected attack on an exposed flank. He groped for an answer. “My grandfather was a West Pointer. He was killed in Canada in 1812. My father fought in Mexico. Soldiering was in my blood, so to speak. But I suppose the real reason wasâ”
“What?”
“It offered a life that had nothing to do with politics.”
He was shocked by the bitterness in his voice. Why was it seeping into his soul after all these years? As the youngest brother he had tried to remain neutral as his brother Jonathan denounced the South as a region of slave drivers and his brother Charlie defended it as the last bastion of gentility and honor against the crude commercialism of the North where everything had a price. While their mother watched, Sibyl-like, defending neither side but subtly demonstrating in a thousand ways that she agreed with Charlieâand their senator father spouted remonstrations and appeals to George Washington's ideal of an indissoluble union.
Paul tried to remember how moved he was by West Point's motto, Duty, Honor, Country. How he believed it promised him a kind of spiritual haven in which he could escape the quarrels and contradictions that had
ravaged the Stapleton family. For a while he had found it in the military academy's mathematical and scientific approach to war. But soon the quarrel between North and South was raging in the barracks and the classrooms; insults far worse than any exchanged by Charlie and Jonathan echoed in the crisp air and the brotherhood of the corps collapsed into fistfights and duels with swords and pistols.
ravaged the Stapleton family. For a while he had found it in the military academy's mathematical and scientific approach to war. But soon the quarrel between North and South was raging in the barracks and the classrooms; insults far worse than any exchanged by Charlie and Jonathan echoed in the crisp air and the brotherhood of the corps collapsed into fistfights and duels with swords and pistols.
Suddenly the Gettysburg wound was mocking him again.
Is there a sort of calculus of honor being devised here? Duty requires seduction and lies and honor requires confession and truth? Is this whole thing a moral experiment, the sort of game Charlie liked to play with women? If duty is given a value of one and honor is given a value of one is the result zero? Will that entitle you to do as you please, Charlie style? Plunder her pathetic little secrets, take your pleasure, and depart? What about country? How does that fit into the equation?
Is there a sort of calculus of honor being devised here? Duty requires seduction and lies and honor requires confession and truth? Is this whole thing a moral experiment, the sort of game Charlie liked to play with women? If duty is given a value of one and honor is given a value of one is the result zero? Will that entitle you to do as you please, Charlie style? Plunder her pathetic little secrets, take your pleasure, and depart? What about country? How does that fit into the equation?
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