An upright and sober man all his life, Mr. Perdue had now become a suspicious and embittered one who whiffed betrayal and conspiracy everywhere. He was sick of a diet of white beans and a once-weekly portion of slightly gamy sliced turkey washed down with a tiny amount of apple brandy. He loved oysters and hadn't tasted one for a year, though he presumed King Jeff still dined on them regularly.
He hated the unseen, unknown powers who had reduced his poor wife and daughters to shabbiness. When they needed pins, they settled for slivers of palmetto. When they needed dress buttons, they dyed small bits of gourd. For his daughter Clytemnestra's eleventh birthday in December, the only present he had been able to find — and afford — angered him and broke his heart, too. It was a cheap little necklace of silvery iridescent flowers made from fish scales; price, thirty dollars.
The newspapers confirmed the approaching end in other ways.
Theatrical performances were advertised as sold out, the mobs enjoying a final orgiastic revel. Advertisements for runaway slaves appeared infrequently; some days, there were none. Owners knew they had little chance of recovering their property, thanks to the looming military disaster and the wicked pronouncements of the Original Gorilla.
Mr. Perdue's ears also told him the end was near. It was an unusual day or night that didn't include at least one interval of artillery fire from the defense lines to the south. The cannonading had become such a fact of life that it was worrisome if a day or a night passed without any.
On this particular morning, sunnier than most but still very cold, Mr. Perdue had left his wife in tears. For their daughter Marcelline's thirteenth birthday two days hence, Mrs. Perdue had struggled to find enough scrap satin to recover the girl's last pair of shoes. That would be her gift. At half past twelve last night, Mrs. Perdue had broken a needle, then broken down when she realized that her estimate of the amount of material needed was wrong. Half of one shoe could not be finished, and she couldn't buy any more satin to match.
His wife's plight was another stimulus of Mr. Perdue's anger. He looked even sourer than usual when he reached Goddin Hall, the four-story brick structure at Eleventh and Bank streets, just below Capitol Square. The first-floor post office shared the building with the Confederate patent office and various army functionaries. Mr. Perdue stuffed his three-fingered gloves in one pocket and started work next to his old post office colleague, Salvarini, the middle-aged son of a noted meat market proprietor who had lately closed his doors, refusing to butcher and sell dogs and cats.
Salvarini had already dumped two large pouches of incoming mail on the work counter, to be sorted into other crates or cloth and canvas bags lying about. There was little order in the post office anymore and no uniformity in what its employees did or how they did it.
"My wife's jaundiced color is worse," Salvarini said to his friend as they began sorting letters written on brown paper, wallpaper, newspaper — all kinds of paper. "I've got to find a doctor."
"They're all in the trenches," snapped Mr. Perdue. Hands warming at last, he began to whiz letters to the crates and bags or to various Richmond pigeonholes in front of him, with his usual dexterity. "Best thing you can do is consult a leecher."
"Is it safe? Are they clean?"
"I can't answer either question, but I know they're available. Read the papers. Dozens of them advertising. I did hear Mrs. Perdue remark that the one opposite the American Hotel is considered among the more reliable — here, what's this?"
He held up an envelope distinguished by the fact that it was exactly that — a genuine envelope, properly sealed with a blob of dark blue wax and addressed in a bold hand. The correspondent had identified himself in the upper corner as J. Duncan, Esq.
"The addresses are getting vaguer by the day," Mr. Perdue complained. "Look." He handed the envelope to Salvarini, who studied what was written on it. Maj. Chas. Main, Hampton's Cavalry Corps, C.S.A.
Salvarini nodded. "Also, there's no stamp."
"Yes, I saw that." Mr. Perdue scowled. "I'll bet some damn Yankee sent this by illegal courier and the courier didn't bother with a stamp when he posted it locally. I'll be hanged if I'll handle enemy mail."
Salvarini was more charitable. "Perhaps the sender's a Southerner who couldn't afford the stamp."
Lonzo Perdue, respectable husband, worried father, betrayed patriot, stared at the letter while his mouth turned downward still further. There was a distant rumbling, a whine of glass in the windows above them. Salvarini greeted the start of the bombardment with an expression bordering on relief.
"The rules are the rules," declared Mr. Perdue.
"But you don't know what this contains, Lonzo. Suppose it's important. News of some relative's death — something like that?"
"Let this Major Main learn of it some other way," his colleague retorted. With an outward snap of his hand, Mr. Perdue sailed the envelope into a wooden box already half filled with misaddressed letters, small parcels with the inking obliterated by rain or dirt — undeliverable items destined for storage and eventual destruction.
120
Charles felt increasingly alone, taking part in what was now beyond all doubt a losing fight. Even General Hampton no longer expressed confidence, though he swore to expend his last blood before he quit. The general had grown dour and, some said, revenge-crazed since his son and aide, Preston, had been killed near Hatcher's Run last October. Hampton's son Wade had received a wound in the same action.
Charles functioned — he rode and shot — yet his real self lived apart from daily events in some mental netherworld from which associates and friends departed one by one. Following his promotion, Hampton had gone up to staff, and Charles no longer saw him except from afar. Calbraith Butler and his division, after riding all night through the winter's worst sleetstorm to help drive back Gouverneur Warren's augmented Fifth Corps striking at the Weldon Railroad, were now bound for home. In South Carolina the men were to find remounts and, more important, defend the state against Sherman's horde.
All of this and January's cold wrapped Charles in the deepest depression he had ever experienced. The worst of it was a thought that marched into his mind at all hours of the day and night, as unstoppable as Grant's war machine. In leaving Gus, Charles was beginning to believe, he had made the worst mistake of his life.
His beard, white-speared, hung below the midpoint of his chest. His own smell was an offense to his nostrils; the army had run out of soap last autumn. To keep warm in the freezing weather, he used needle and thread from his preciously guarded housewife to fashion a poncho-like garment of rags and pieces of ruined uniforms. As the great robe grew longer and larger, it earned him a new nickname.
He was wearing the robe when he and Jim Pickles crouched beside a small fire one black January night. A bitter wind blew as they enjoyed their meal of the day — one handful of dried and badly burned corn.
"Gypsy?" Charles looked up. Jim groped under his filthy coat with a mittened hand. "Got some mail today."
Charles said nothing. He no longer looked for any for himself, hence never knew when deliveries were made. Jim tugged out a single soiled sheet and held it between index and middle fingers, well away from the fire.