Love and War

Evening's dark red glinted on the river, lighting Orry's stricken face. He had searched the implement building and found what Quincy and his colleagues predicted: nothing. He had left the building a moment ago, closing its door on the dirt floor, straw-littered and unmarked by any boot prints save those of men. Some were his. Some surely belonged to Winder's operatives — and Powell's crowd. Or did they? Orry hadn't discovered a single imprint of a woman's shoe.

He felt angry, humiliated, baffled. He walked away from the bluff and searched the farmhouse. He found only dust and nesting rats. He searched the barn and chicken coop. Again nothing. By then night had come. He mounted and took a shortcut toward the main road, walking his horse across the same field he had crossed last night. The black of the plowed earth matched his mood exactly.

His meager supper of rice and corn bread untasted, Orry said to Madeline, 'Quincy's been bought. Winder, too, for all I know. Mrs. Halloran inadvertently stumbled on a conspiracy that must reach very high. I intend to find out just how high.'

'But the President is safe now, isn't he? He's been warned —'

'Yes, but I still have to know! At this moment, I wouldn't be surprised if Seddon and his wife were speculating on my mental condition. Am I a drunkard? Do I take opium? Did I see visions at the farm? I swear to you' — he went to her around the table — 'I did not.'

'I believe you, dearest. But what can you do? It appears they've opened and closed the case all in the same day.'

'I haven't. And I know someone who was at the farm. She's still in Richmond — I verified that before I came home tonight. I intend to start some detective work on my sister first thing tomorrow.'

But his vow went unfulfilled. In life's strange way of piling one crisis on another when it was least needed, the street bell rang at half past ten. Orry ran downstairs. It had to be for him; the landlady never received callers this late.

Covered with dirt, his head a mountain peak above clouds of cigar smoke, there stood Charles.

'Your letter took a detour to Atlee's Station, but I finally got it. I'm here to do something about Billy.'

100

Stephen Mallory arrived in Charleston that same night, after a hard trip in one of the dirty, unheated cars of the decaying Southern rail system. A telegraph message from Lucius Chickering had summoned him.

Cooper didn't know that. Following the incident on Meeting Street, soldiers of the local provost had borne him home, none too gently, and since then he had been in bed, not moving, not speaking, not touching any of the food Judith brought. The pattern with the trays was unvarying: each was left an hour, then removed.

Cooper did rouse a little — turn his head toward the door — when Judith opened it after knocking softly.

'Darling? You have a visitor. Your friend Stephen. The secretary.'

He said nothing. He lay beneath blankets layered too deeply for the mild weather. Everything within the dark, sweat-tainted room had a blurred quality. So did sounds from outside — birds in the garden, home guards quickstepping along Tradd Street to the accompaniment of a fife and a snare drum beating time.

'Might I see him alone for a moment, Judith?'

She glanced at her husband. His eyes were round and vacant. As they were every day. She was careful to hide her pain from the visitor.

'Of course. If you need me, there's a small hand bell on that table. Can you see it?'

Mallory nodded and pulled a chair to the bedside. Judith glanced sadly at the bell, which Cooper hadn't used once since being carried home. Mallory sat down. Judith shut the door.

The secretary stared at his assistant. Cooper's eyes fixed on the ceiling. Mallory spoke with the abruptness of a gunshot.

'They say your nerves are gone. Is it true?'

His voice lacked the treacle of conventional sickroom conversation. Cooper acknowledged that by blinking once. But he didn't move or reply.

'See here, Cooper. If you can hear me, have the courtesy to look me in the eye. I didn't ride the train all the way from Richmond to converse with a corpse.'

Slowly, Cooper's head tilted over toward the visitor, cheek resting on the feather pillow, graying hair spread above, fine and thin. But the eyes remained empty.

Mallory persisted. 'That was a scandalous thing you did. Scandalous — no other word for it. The enemy already considers us a nation of barbarians — regrettably, not without some justification. But for a government official to behave like a demented prison warden, and in public —' He shook his head. 'There may be a few brutish Southerners who would condone your behavior, but not many. I'll not pretend, Cooper. You damaged our cause, and you damaged yourself, gravely.'

Those words finally produced reaction of a sort: rapid movement of Cooper's eyelids and a compression of his lips. Mallory's face looked nearly as gray as that of the man in bed.

'I couldn't sleep on that wretched train, so I sat up trying to devise some polite way to request your immediate resignation. There is none. Therefore —'

'They killed my son.'

The sudden words jerked Mallory like a puppet. 'What's that? The prisoners you attacked and fought? Nonsense.'

Cooper's hands twitched on the counterpane, aimless white spiders without webs to spin. He blinked rapidly again, said in a hoarse voice, 'The profiteers killed my son. The war killed him.'

'And it was grievous and tragic; I'll not deny that. But in these times, if you except Judah's extreme youth, neither was it special.'

Cooper's head lifted. Anger flooded the holes of his eyes. Mallory pushed him down gently.

'Not special to any but you and your family. Do you know nothing of the figures? How many sons lost to how many fathers? It runs into the hundreds of thousands, all over the South. All over the North, too, for that matter. After a suitable period of mourning, most of those fathers manage to function again. They don't lie abed and weep.'

The secretary sagged a little then. The effort was a strain and, worse, unsuccessful. He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his cheeks. He smelled a chamber pot under the bed. One last try.

'You've served the Navy Department more than competently, Cooper. You have served imaginatively and, in the case of Hunley, with great bravery. If you're the same man who endured foul air and fear of death at the bottom of Charleston harbor for two and a half hours, I still need your services. We are not yet done with this war. The soldiers and sailors are still fighting, and so am I. Therefore I'd be inclined to substitute a letter of censure for resignation. But, of course, in order to come back to work — ' stern as a parent, he stood up '— you would have to get out of bed. Kindly send me word of your decision within seventy-two hours.'

He took pains to shut the door more loudly than necessary.

Downstairs with Judith, he mopped his sweating face again. 'That is the hardest thing I've ever done — concealing my sympathy for that poor man. It breaks my heart to see him so lost.'

'It's been coming for a long time, Stephen. An accumulation of fatigue, frustration, grief — I have no way to bring him out of it. Kind words won't do it; nor will angry ones. I decided some different kind of shock was needed. That's why I begged you to speak as you did.'

'I wasn't entirely playacting. I have had demands for his resignation. Strong ones, from important men.'

'Oh, I'm sure of that.'

'Our resources are depleted, our armies on the brink of starvation —' She wanted to say the civilian population soon would be, but she didn't. 'We have little left us but our honor, so a man who behaves as Cooper did