God, I didn't even know we were under attack —'
Grinning, George said, 'I think someone else may have surrendered. Hear the music? Come on, let's find out.'
Away he went on his stocky legs. The other officer snapped his suspenders over his naked shoulders and ran after him. They soon came upon a whole mob of men piling out of tents. George could barely make sense of their noise:
'— sometime today —'
'— old Gray Fox asked Ulysses for terms —'
'— out by Appomattox Court House someplace —'
In an hour, Petersburg was bedlam. It was true, apparently; the Army of Northern Virginia was laying down its arms to stop the shedding of more blood in a war that couldn't be won. Under the Southern stars, George snatched off his kepi, tossed it in the air, and caught it, then began to take brain-pummeling swallows of busthead from bottles shoved into his hand by officers and enlisted men he had never seen before and never would again, but who were fine friends, closest of comrades, in this delirious moment of lifting burdens and spirits.
Pistols and rifles volleyed into the dark. Large and small musical groups blared patriotic airs. It occurred to George that, once he got home, he could sleep next to Constance every night for the rest of his life, with no one to tell him otherwise. He jammed his fists on his hips and danced a jig without knowing how.
Men swirled around him, jumping, dancing, staggering, drinking, cheering. He helped himself to more stiff drinks from the bottles being passed. He threw his cap in the air again, bellowing like a schoolboy.
'— rally round the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of —'
Singing lustily, jigging madly, he didn't notice the sink in the dark behind him, though he had certainly whiffed it. Luckily he only sank to his knees, though that was bad enough.
He cleaned up on the bank of the calm Appomattox River. Returning to the celebration, he noticed that other revelers didn't come as close to him as they had earlier. Still, he managed to get a few more drinks and, thus fortified, could regard what had happened as a humorous cap on an already glorious night. A night men would forever recall to fellow veterans, wives, sweethearts, children, and grandchildren, in terms of where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. George could not quite picture himself being truthful:
132
Peace had its own unique strains, Stanley realized late in the week. Washington streets mobbed with drunken celebrants extended a ten-minute trip to an hour — or made it impossible. Isabel said the patriotic illuminations glaring from the windows of most houses and public buildings gave her bad headaches, though why this should be so when she stayed home and saw very few of them, Stanley couldn't explain.
He was bothered by the loud reports of fireworks all night long, by the tolling bells, the endlessly parading bands, and the hoots and merrymaking of gangs of whites and blacks roaming at will, even in the best neighborhoods. Add to that Stanton's tense air and repeated expressions of fear of plots to kill Grant or the President, and it added up to a miserable week for Stanley.
Stanton wanted to see him to go over matters pertaining to his departure from the War Department to take up the new post Wade had arranged. Stanley was ready with his files at nine Friday morning, but Stanton was too busy. At eleven the secretary had to rush to the Executive Mansion for a cabinet meeting. It lasted several hours, during which time Stanley didn't leave the department. He was hungry and out of sorts when, late in the day, he was finally summoned to Stanton's office.
Even then, the stout man with the scented whiskers and round spectacles was preoccupied with his fear of murder plots.
'The Grants aren't going to Ford's, anyway. That's half the battle won.'
'Ford's?' Stanley repeated, blank because of fatigue.
Stanton was irritable. 'What's the matter with your memory? Ford's on Tenth Street. The theater!'
'Oh. The President is going to see Miss Keene —?'
'Tonight. He seems to regard the appearance as some sort of patriotic obligation. He has completely disregarded my warnings. Grant listened. He was only too happy for an excuse to whisk his wife out of town on a train for New Jersey.'
He stumped to the window, hands locked behind his back. 'It's been a queer day. In that long meeting, we spent nearly as much time discussing the President's latest dream as we did on the pressing issue of practical steps to restore the Union.'
Lincoln's strange dreams were a subject frequently gossiped about in Washington. 'Which one this time?' Stanley asked, since some of them were known to recur.
'The boat,' Stanton replied, staring out the window. 'The boat in which he sees himself drifting. He says the dream always comes on the eve of some great happening. Before Antietam he dreamed of the boat. Before Gettysburg, too. It's curious that he can describe the boat vividly but not the destination. It's merely a dark, indefinite shore. His words,' Stanton added, returning to his desk.
'It seems to me there's nothing indefinite about the future,' Stanley observed while the secretary settled himself. 'The war's over.' That was the consensus, even though General Johnston's army remained in the field somewhere in the Carolinas. 'What lies ahead is a period of intensive reconstruction — including, I trust, punishment for the rebels.'
'Yes, definitely punishment,' Stanton said. Stanley smiled. It would be his pleasure to help mete it out to former slaveowners.
They ran rapidly through the agenda Stanley had prepared. Stanton made notes — these records to be transferred here, those responsibilities assigned there. Stanley was thankful the secretary was overburdened and therefore impatient. It allowed Stanley to finish and leave the office two hours earlier than expected. He knew he should go home, but went instead, despite the traffic, to Jeannie Canary's.
It proved a bad decision. It was the wrong day for a carnal romp. And she was whiny.
'Won't you take me out this evening, loves? Surely we wouldn't be bothered, with so many drunken people everywhere. I'd love to see the play at Ford's.' She no longer performed at the Varieties. She much preferred lazing about and spending the allowance Stanley furnished.
'They say the President and his wife are to appear in the state box,' she went on. 'You know I've never seen Mrs. Lincoln. Is she as squat and beady-eyed as they say?'
'Yes, dreadful,' he retorted, made cross himself by her inability to make love just now.
'Couldn't you get tickets'''
'Not this late. Even if I could, we'd spent most of the time squeezed in crowds and wilting in the heat — on top of which, Tom Taylor's play is old and creaky. It would be a very disagreeable evening. A thoroughly dull one, too.'
It was as if a perverted Nature had brought forth a black spring. Crepe blossomed everywhere that Easter weekend: on coat sleeves, the President's pew at the York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the marble facades of public buildings. Stores remained open extra hours to sell it by the yard and by the bolt.
Booth had escaped. Stanton proclaimed that the whole South must be prosecuted. Even Grant spoke of retaliatory measures of
