I made my request. He said he felt sure the bureau could obtain a teacher. He will notify me. I left with the feeling of having done some criminal deed.
Noting the time, I sent Andy off by himself and walked to Tradd Street to call on Judith before my meeting with Cooper. Judith surprised me by saying he was home, and had been since returning to dine at noon.
"Instead of going back to the company, I stayed here to work on these," Cooper said. At his feet on the dry brown grass of the walled garden lay pencil sketches of a pier for the Carolina Shipping Company. From the house came a hesitant version of the central theme from Mozart's Twenty-first Concerto, in C, played on a piano badly out of tune.
Cooper turned to his wife. "May we have some tea, or a reasonable substitute?" Judith smiled and retired. "Now, Madeline, what prompts this unexpected and pleasant visit?"
She sat down on a rusting bench of black-painted iron. "I want to start a school at Mont Royal."
In the act of bending to gather the penciled sheets, Cooper jerked his head up and stared. His dark hair hung over his pale forehead. His sunken eyes were wary. "What kind of school, pray?"
"One to teach reading and arithmetic to anyone who wants to learn. The freed Negroes in the district desperately need a few basic skills if they're to survive."
"No.'' Cooper crushed all the sketches and threw the ball under an azalea bush. His color was high. "No. I can't allow you to do it."
Equally emotional, she said, "I am not asking your permission, merely doing you the courtesy of telling you my intentions."
A flat-bosomed young girl poked her head from a tall window on the piazza one story above. "Papa, why are you shouting? Why, Aunt Madeline, good afternoon."
"Good afternoon, Marie-Louise."
Cooper's daughter was thirteen. She would never be a beauty, and indeed might be homely in maturity. She seemed aware of her deficiencies and worked hard to overcome them with tomboy energy and a great deal of smiling. People liked her, Madeline adored her.
"Go inside and keep practicing," Cooper snapped.
Marie-Louise gulped and retreated. The Mozart began again, with nearly as many wrong notes as right ones.
"Madeline, allow me to remind you that feelings against the nigras, and anyone who champions them, are running high. It would be folly to exacerbate those feelings. You must not open a school."
"Cooper, again, it isn't your decision." She tried to be gentle with him, but the message was unavoidably harsh. "You gave me management of the plantation, in writing. So I intend to go ahead. I will have a school."
He paced, glowering. This was a new, distinctly unfriendly Cooper Main, a side of him she'd never seen. The silence lengthened. Madeline tried to patch over the difficulty. "I had hoped you'd be on my side. Education of black people is no longer against the law, after all."
"But it's unpopular ..." He hesitated, then burst out, "If you goad people, they'll no longer exercise any restraint."
"Restraint in regard to what?"
"You! Everyone looks the other way now, pretending you're not — Well, you understand. If you start a school, they won't be so tolerant."
Madeline's face was white. She had expected someone, someday, to threaten her about her parentage, but she'd never expected it would be her brother-in-law.
"Here's the tea."
Curls bobbing, Judith brought a tray of chipped cups and saucers down the stairs. On the last iron step she halted, aware of the storm on her husband's face.
"I'm afraid Madeline is leaving," he said. "She only stopped by to tell me something about Mont Royal. Thank you for your courtesy, Madeline. For your own sake, I urge you to change your mind. Good day."
He turned his back and hunted under the azalea for the crushed drawings. Judith remained on the step, stunned by the rudeness. Madeline, concealing her hurt, patted Judith's arm, hurried up the noisy iron stairs, and ran from the house.
... There it rests for the moment. I fear I've made him my enemy. If so, my sweet Orry, then at least I have lost his friendship in a worthy cause.
A message came! And only two weeks after my visit to Col. Munro. The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal church, Cincinnati, will send us a teacher. Her name is Prudence Chaffee.
Cooper silent. No sign of retaliation yet
6
The U.S. Army trained cavalry recruits at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. The camp of instruction was located on the west bank of the Mississippi, a few miles south of St. Louis.
When Charles arrived there, a contract surgeon examined him for false teeth, visible tumors, and signs of venereal disease and alcoholism. Pronounced fit, he was marched away, along with a former corset salesman from Hartford who said he craved adventure, a New York City roughneck who said little and probably was running away from a lot, an Indiana carpenter who said he'd awakened one morning to discover he hated his wife, a chatterbox boy who said he'd lied about his age, and a handsome man who said nothing. When the recruits reached a ramshackle barracks, the white-haired corporal pointed to the silent man.
"French Foreign Legion. Can't hardly speak no English. Jesus an' Mary, don't we get 'em all? And for a rotten thirteen dollars a month." He studied Charles. "I seen your papers. Reb, wasn't you?"
Charles was edgy about that. He'd already drawn some sharp looks because of his accent, and had heard "Goddamn traitor" behind his back once. He wanted to snap at the corporal, but he remembered Jack Duncan's caution and just said, "Yes."
"Well, it don't matter to me. My first cousin Fielding, he was a Reb, too. If you're as good a soldier as him, you'll be more use to Uncle Sam than the rest of this flotsam. Good luck." He stepped back and yelled, "All right, you people. Through that door and find a bunk. Hurry it up! This ain't a goddamn hotel you're checkin' into."
Charles took the oath to support and defend the Constitution. He had no problem with that; he'd already taken it Once, at West Point. And when the war ended, he'd made up his mind to raise his son as an American, not a Southerner.
It did seem strange to be issued so much blue again. The light blue kersey trousers with the yellow stripes and the dull gray fatigue shirts reminded him of the Second Cavalry. So did the barracks, with its poor ventilation, smoky lamps, narrow slot windows at each end, and sounds of scurrying rodents at night. So did his Army cot, an iron-framed torture device with wood slats and stringers and a mattress shell filled with smelly straw. So did the Army food, especially the hardtack and the beef served up in tough slices at noon mess, then submerged in a sludgy gravy for supper; the meat tasted better with the gravy, which masked the faint odor of spoilage.
Jefferson Barracks proved to be not so much a training center as a holding pen. Recruits were sent out as soon as a regiment's required number of replacements could be gathered. So training could last two months or two days. That didn't speak well for the postwar Army, Charles thought.
Most of the instructors were older noncoms putting in time until they retired. Charles worked hard to look inexperienced and awkward in front of them. During a bareback equitation class, he deliberately fell of his pathetic sway-backed training horse. He fumbled through the manual of arms, and at target practice never hit the bull, only the edge of the card. He got away with it until one trainer got sick and a new one took over, a runty corporal named Hans Hazen. He was a mean sort; one of the men said he'd been busted from top sergeant three times.