Glory In The Name

were genuine able-bodied sailors, the rest ordinaries, culled from the army and from the coastal defenses and sent to man the newest ironclad. At their head was Lieutenant Asa Quillin, executive officer, quiet, efficient, a thoroughgoing navy man whom Bowater had known briefly on the South American station.

Six weeks after the former Cape Fears had arrived in Yazoo City, a month and a half after Samuel Bowater had been greeted with the possibility that the ironclad Yazoo River might be no more than a madman’s dream, there were over 150 men working on the ship, six forges set up on the riverbank, a crew of seventy-five experienced seamen, and any number of local men ready to sail aboard the ship in the unskilled berths.

Once, Samuel Bowater recalled, he had told Taylor the Yazoo River had to get up steam and leave in six weeks’ time. He had made that number up. He would never have guessed then that they would actually be underway just a week later than that.

Richmond was getting nervous, and so was Jonathan Paine. On the 1st of April, General George McClellan had begun loading his vast army on board steamers, bringing them down the Potomac, down the Chesapeake Bay to Fortress Monroe for a push up the Peninsula to Richmond. He would be only fifty miles from the Confederate capital before he encountered his first Southern soldier. Grant and Farragut were moving on the Mississippi, to Jonathan’s worried mind closing in on Yazoo City.

It was just a few weeks shy of one year since the moment his body, riddled with bullets, had been flung to the dirt on Henry House Hill. During that time, the long slow climb out of despondency and self-flagellation, the difficult work of regaining interest in his life, Paine Plantation had taken on a mythical quality, an El Dorado, a Canaan, promised but unattainable. It called to him. It frightened him.

The Army of the Confederate States would not give him leave to go there.

Then finally, as the spring flowers were beginning to dot the drab landscape with color, and green leaves filled in the spaces between spindly branches like a painter adding another layer of pigment on a canvas, just when Jonathan Paine was considering going once more to the Office of Orders and Detail, though it was clear from the last three visits that his badgering was not appreciated, a letter arrived.

Bobby brought it into the drawing-room ward, where Jonathan was writing a letter for a corporal of the 4th South Carolina who had broken his arm in a fall from a horse. “Jon’tin, you gots a letter…” Bobby said and for a moment Jonathan could only look at him, and down at the letter.

Confederate States Army, Office of Orders and Detail… The words were printed in neat block type on the envelope, and Jonathan’s name and address handwritten below. He tore it open, his stomach twisting. He knew what it should be, but he still feared it was something else.

He pulled out the paper within, unfolded it. A preprinted form, lifeless save for the intricate decorations featuring eagles and flags and cannons sprawling across the top. The blank spaces were filled in in a hurried, largely illegible hand, but Jonathan Paine could certainly read it well enough to puzzle out his own honorable discharge from the Confederate States Army. There was as well a bank draft for the amount of ten dollars.

Jonathan looked for a long time at the two documents. There was a time when ten dollars would have been meaningless to him; his family spent more than that on sundry amusements on any given month. But now it represented his entire net worth. It was not just money, it was the way out of the desert.

“You still want to come to Paine Plantation with me?” Jonathan looked up at Bobby. “Help me get home?”

“Yassuh.”

“Then let us go.”

It did not take them long to pack. Jonathan had only his knapsack, the tattered remnants of his uniform with someone else’s uniform pants, someone not so fortunate as he, he imagined, in regards to wounds. Everything that Bobby had fit easily into a haversack and a bedroll. They said their goodbyes to Miss Sally Tompkins, the volunteers and patients at her hospital, ambled out into the crowded streets. Jonathan was not afraid. It was springtime.

They purchased tickets to ride the Richmond amp; Petersburg Railroad out of town. Bobby helped Jonathan aboard the car, making a path with his finely honed ability to knock people aside in a subservient, humble way. He set Jonathan down on a seat, set his haversack beside him, said, “All right, then, Missuh Jon’tin, you gonna be jest fine here. I’s gonna go to da car where da colored folks ride.”

“Very well, Bobby. Remember, we get off at Petersburg, at the junction with the Weldon amp; Petersburg Railroad.”

“Oh, I remembers, Missuh Jon’tin,” Bobby said, and with a smile he disappeared into the crowd.

It was a scene they played out many times over the next ten days, as they made their way laboriously south, then west. The trip would have been a simple matter, except Tennessee was in large part in Union hands.

So they went south on the North Carolina Railroad, the Wilmington amp; Manchester Railroad, the South Carolina Railroad, rattling up over the Appalachian Mountains before falling back down to Atlanta, Georgia, where they changed to the Alabama amp; Georgia Railroad, which took them through the low, hot, humid country of Alabama, to the old Confederate capital of Montgomery, and from Montgomery, by steamboat and rail, to Jackson, Mississippi. Eleven hundred miles of choking, rattling railcars, of waiting at depots while soldiers, bound for the front, took precedent over wounded soldiers going home, of eating just enough to stave off hunger, and no more, because they had so little money and no idea of how long it needed to last.

During those long hours flopped on benches in deserted depots or standing off to one side while men jostled for the cars, Jonathan told Bobby about Paine Plantation, about the beautiful lawns rolling down to the water, about the welcoming oak tree, about the summer nights when the fireflies made their own living constellations in the tall grass by the Yazoo River. They talked about all that, but they did not discuss Jonathan’s parents, because he had not heard from them and he was afraid.

From Jackson they had just enough money to secure a ride on the coach to Yazoo City, with Jonathan riding inside and Bobby on the box with the Negro driver. They walked from Yazoo City south, following the river.

It was all so familiar, it all fitted into place like the pieces of a puzzle. The smell of the bougainvillea and the pine, warmed in the sun, the river smell, mudbanks and rotting weeds. From the woods that lined the dirt road came the raucous call of the blue jay, the chickadededede of the Carolina chickadee. Cardinals flashed red against the dark green. The cooling breeze carried on it woodsmoke and warm, turned earth. It was delightful to Jonathan. It made him afraid.

At last they came to a dirt drive that branched off the road and Jonathan stopped and Bobby stopped and Jonathan said, “Here we are.”

“This you home?”

“This is it.”

They were quiet for a moment, Bobby letting Jonathan do as he wished, in his time. No bullying now, there was no need. “Very well…” Jonathan said at last. “Let’s go.”

They walked down the drive and soon, from the distance, the edge of the white house peeked through the trees. They walked on, the trees yielding to open space, the house emerging from its hiding place.

The lawn was overgrown; little care had been given to it. He could hear no sound from the house, nothing to indicate it was occupied. He felt his stomach churn, wondered who he would encounter first, if he would encounter anyone at all.

They pushed through the knee-high grass, Jonathan leading the way, circled around the house, giving it a wide berth, as if it was something to be wary of. The edge of the wide porch and the distant river came into view. Jonathan stopped short.

“Dear God…”

The limbs of the oak tree had been hacked off, save for the two lowest, which stuck out like skeletal arms. The remaining trunk had been painted, the paint peeling off in big flakes but still visible.

Jonathan limped slowly around the front of the house, eyes on the tree, mouth fixed. From the front he could see that the tree had been cut to look like some sort of monster, a gargoyle or some such. It rose thirty feet off the ground, leered at the river with its hideous mouth, hacked from the living wood and painted. Above the mouth, the painted remnants of eyes glared north. There was no new growth on the truncated limbs. The tree was dead.

“Dear God…”

Jonathan looked at Bobby, and Bobby’s eyes were wide, as if he had seen the thing that the tree had been painted to represent. “That ain’t right, Missuh Jon’tin…” Bobby managed to stammer.

Jonathan looked up at the front of the house. Paint was peeling there, too, and the path to the porch was all