He touched his cousin's trembling shoulder to console him, then began to limp up the grassy incline. When he was still a good distance away, he felt the oven heat of the rubble. Here and there coals gleamed like imp's eyes. Slowly, wonderingly, he circled around the great chimney.
Cooper and Andy approached more slowly. Charles disappeared beyond the chimney. Suddenly Cooper and Andy exchanged alarmed looks. They heard Charles laughing like a crazy man.
'Hurry up,' Cooper said, already running.
They dashed around the chimney to the darkening, tree-lined driveway. A few limbs near the house still smoked. Some others had burned away completely. Charles stood near the corpse of the blond boy, pointing and howling like a lunatic. The object of his mirth stood further down the drive: a flop-eared mule with rope halter and rein.
'Cuffey's mule,' Charles gulped between bursts of laughter. 'Mont Royal is wiped off the earth, but I've got a remount. Praise God and Jeff Davis! The war can go on and on and —'
The crazed voice broke off. He gave them a shamed glance and stalked away to the nearest live oak. He braced his forearm against it and hid his face.
128
That Sunday morning, the second of April, Mr. Lonzo Perdue and his wife and daughters were kneeling in prayer when the messenger rushed up the aisle of St. Paul's to whisper to the President. Mr. Perdue watched the Chief Executive, white-haired now, leave the church with an unsteady step. Mr. Perdue leaned close to his wife's ear.
'The defenses have broken. Did you see his face? It can't be anything else. We must pack and get on a train.'
After the service, they wasted no time conversing with friends. They went straight home, packed three portmanteaus, and set out for the depot. They found all outbound trains were being held, though no official would explain why. During the afternoon the crowds grew steadily larger and more unruly, milling, pushing, overflowing the platforms and waiting room. Ultimately Mr. Perdue and his family found themselves encamped just outside the station entrance.
They heard glass smashing in nearby streets. Mr. Perdue trembled. 'Looting.'
'It must be the niggers,' said his wife.
By dusk, the streets surrounding the depot were packed with more people than Mr. Perdue had seen for months. As night came, rumors flew. Lee had pulled out of the Petersburg and Richmond defense lines. He was in wild and confused retreat to the west.
Tempers shortened. There were incidents of pushing, fistfighting, rough treatment of the civilians when squads of soldiers had to quick-march into the mob to restore order. Then came the first explosion.
'Oh, Papa,' cried Mr. Perdue's daughter Clytemnestra, cringing against her equally terrified father. 'What are they doing?'
'Demolishing buildings. I think that was the Tredegar Works.'
His daughter Marcelline began to shriek and babble as if taking leave of her senses. Without hesitation, Mr. Perdue slapped her several times. That took care of that.
By eleven, the city was an asylum lit by spreading fires. Davis arrived in a carriage surrounded by heavily armed soldiers. In the smoky lamplight, Mr. Perdue watched him pass into the depot. A train for Danville was waiting, someone said.
Mr. Perdue began to smell betrayal as he glimpsed certain other persons entering the station, each escorted by at least one soldier. He saw the scoundrel Mallory, who had wasted so many precious dollars on his worthless naval schemes. Trenholm, who had replaced Memminger at Treasury, arrived in an ambulance. Then came the damned Jew, Benjamin, sleek and cheery as ever. The privileged were to be carried to safety, away from the steady detonations of gunpowder, the brightening light of fires, the threat of hooligans looting —
'The boxcars of the special train will be opened,' a railroad official shouted from the depot steps. 'I repeat, the boxcars will be opened, but no baggage will be allowed. None!'
Screaming, shoving, the crowd surged forward. Not everyone could squeeze through the station doors at once. People began striking and clawing one another like enemy soldiers. Mr. Perdue saw a child fall, trampled, a short distance to his left. He didn't try to assist the girl; he was busy dragging his wife relentlessly toward the platform.
'Oh, but Lonzo — no baggage? I can't leave these few precious things —'
'Then you'll stay here without me. Girls, kick those women if they won't move.' Thus the family won a place on the 11:00 p.m. out of Richmond.
As the train started up slowly, chugging and jerking, desperate laggards trampled and pushed one another, still trying to climb into boxcars already filled to capacity. In his car, Mr. Perdue and several other men manned the open door and protected their families by booting the faces and stamping on the hands of those attempting to board.
Marcelline tugged her father's coattail and pointed to a waving, yelling group on the platform. 'Papa, it's Mr. Salvarini and his family.'
'Yes, too bad,' said Mr. Perdue as he reached down to a soft hand with two wedding rings on the fourth finger. Like some tenacious deep-sea creature, the hand had emerged from the mob to fasten on his trouser leg. He gripped the middle finger and bent it backward. As the hand released, he heard a bone pop. A stout woman sank from sight.
The tangle of bodies fell away at a faster rate; the train gathered speed and moved onto the trestle. Mr. Perdue's coat and cravat were in shreds. He was exhausted but happy — very satisfied and pleased by his untypical display of heroism in the face of danger.
Upriver, great light pylons showed where other James River bridges had been set afire. Perhaps I should have gone into the army after all, Mr. Perdue thought as the train bore him away into the night.
The soldiers, chiefly wounded veterans, had organized a rear guard to sweep through the government warehouses on Thirteenth and Fourteenth, putting matches to the cartons and crates of official records. One grizzled man, who was twenty-five but looked forty, pried open a wooden box and exclaimed, 'Here's something new — undelivered mail.'
'Burn it,' said his sergeant, whose pant legs, like those of his men, were soaked with whiskey. They had waded through gutters filled with it. The looters were breaking open everything.
The soldier stuck in his match. When a few letters caught, he plucked them from the box and used them to fire a second one, then a third and fourth. With the blaze roaring nicely, he dropped the original packet of letters on the plank floor, already hot, and hurried away to safety.
129
Outside the
By midday on Monday, the third of April, the excitement brought work to a standstill at Hazard's and swept through Belvedere like fire in a dry spell. Madeline was the only one who retreated from it, going to her suite of rooms and shutting the door.
She was thankful the end seemed near. The dispatches did not say positively that General Lee had abandoned his hopeless position in front of Petersburg and the Richmond lines as well, but that presumption was
