Bill’s father came strolling out of the garage, wearing a pained smile that he usually reserved for bad puns and funerals. (Good God! She hadn’t locked him out, had she?) Other than that, he looked all right. He seemed a little scruffy in his old blue cardigan and paint-stained khakis, but he didn’t look haggard or distraught or anything else that would have sent Bill screaming into the shrubbery.
Bill hauled himself out of the car, feeling like a leper who has found work as a bill collector. “Hullo, Dad,” he mumbled, fiddling with his car keys. “How’s it going?”
“I can’t complain, son.” The pained smile reappeared. “It might be expensive.”
Bill winced. “Couldn’t we call a truce for the evening?”
Doug MacPherson sighed wearily. “I didn’t start this, Bill. You’d better clear your ceasefire with her.” He nodded toward the silent house. “She’s probably watching us from behind the living room curtains, so be careful what you do. Don’t laugh or anything, or she’ll be after you, too.”
“I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” Bill muttered. “From Mother I get sound bites. I’ve heard politicians who were more forthcoming.”
“Don’t expect me to make sense of it. Your mother says that now that you kids are grown, she wants to find herself. Says she’s not being fulfilled. Wants to live her own life. Whose life has she been living up to now? I asked her. That didn’t sit well, either.”
“Can’t she find herself without getting a divorce?” asked Bill. He felt a guilty twinge, knowing that he was discussing his client with the opposing side, but he ignored his lawyerly conscience, telling himself that the parental relationship superseded the legal one. “Can’t she just take a course in oil painting at the community college?”
“Apparently not. I suggested something of the sort and she shied one of her tole-painted candlesticks in my direction.”
“I’ll have a word with her,” Bill promised. “I still seem to be in her good graces.”
Bill picked up his overnight case and walked toward the front door. As he reached for the doorknob, his mother appeared, eyes blazing. “Having a father-son chat, are we? It’s disgusting how you men stick together.”
Bill attempted a deprecating laugh. “Oh, no, we were just saying hello, Mother.”
Margaret MacPherson’s expression did not change. “And did he tell you about his girlfriend?”
Bill MacPherson felt his appetite shrivel away to nothingness. This evening was going to last longer than the Seven Days’ Battle.
In a stately white-columned house on a country road near Danville, tea was being served. In a formal dining room gleaming with silver and well-polished mahogany, the residents of the Home for Confederate Women were listening to Flora Dabney, punctuating her remarks with the discreet clink of spoons on bone china cups. So intent were they upon her report that when Julia Hotchkiss reached for the last slice of date bread, no one contested it.
“I think we’ve found our lawyer, ladies,” Flora Dabney was saying. “I think he’ll do quite well by us.” She took a tentative sip of her tea, then added another dollop of milk.
“Has he agreed to sell the house?” asked Ellen Morrison. She seemed even more nervous than usual, and she almost whispered her question, as if she feared Union spies behind the velvet draperies.
Flora’s eyes twinkled. “Well, he was a bit reluctant at first, because the transaction sounded so complicated, what with eight owners and all-but I persuaded him that it was a simple transaction, and he has consented to take it on.”
“Oh, Flora! Are you sure this is wise?” Mary Lee Pendleton had an expression of such sweetness and serenity that she still looked beautiful at eighty-one. She loved to wear her fur coat to the shopping mall in hopes of being mistaken for Helen Hayes.
“I’m sure we haven’t any choice,” Flora Dabney replied. “And as to the wisdom of it, Lydia is supposed to have made sure that all goes well. Does anyone have an alternate suggestion?”
No one did. The others exchanged glances and worried frowns, but no one spoke up. Julia Hotchkiss slurped her tea in the silence, edging her wheelchair closer to the plate of oatmeal cookies when she thought that no one was looking.
“Right. Then I take it we’re all in favor of the transaction as it stands?”
“Did you tell him… everything?” asked Ellen, glancing nervously about her.
“No, of course I didn’t, dear. I simply told him that we wanted to sell our house as expediently as possible. That should be sufficient, I think. He was very sweet, and quite charmed to be helping a dithery old lady like myself.”
“And you’re sure about this lawyer?” asked Mary.
Flora Dabney smiled. “Oh, yes, dear! He’s perfect. An absolute nincompoop. More tea, anyone?”
Here we go, here we go,
The last parade of the circus-show,
Longstreet’s orphans, Lee’s everlastin’s
Half cast-iron and half corn-pone,
And if gettin’ to heaven means prayer and fastin’s
We ought to get there on the fasts alone.
– STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT,
John Brown’s Body, Book 8
RICHMOND-APRIL 3, 1865
IT HAD SEEMED like a sensible idea at the time: march the sailors to the railroad depot-and escape from the approaching federal forces by the fastest and most invincible means of transport: the iron horse. A southbound train could take them to Danville in a matter of hours, while the pursuing army would be on the march six days traveling the same distance.
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.