Glory In The Name

but overgrown. Just a narrow strip of flattened and trampled weeds indicated that anyone had gone in or out of the house recently. The front door gaped open. There was no one around.

“Come on,” Jonathan said. He began walking slowly toward the porch, and after a pause he heard Bobby following behind. He climbed the steps with the now-familiar sound, creak, clomp, creak, clomp, of leather shoe and wooden leg. He crossed the porch slowly, stepped through the door.

The smell hit him first, the familiar smell of the plantation house. It was wood polish and leather and cooking smells and dust. It was a living smell, and it made Jonathan think the house was not a dead place, that there was still life there.

Behind him, he heard Bobby stepping into the foyer. He turned. His friend was looking around, his eyes still wide.

“Welcome to Paine Plantation, Bobby,” Jonathan said. “I fear it is not everything I made it out to be.”

Bobby nodded. “You gots any notion where da folks is?”

Jonathan shook his head. “Hallo?” he shouted, and his voice bounced around the empty space. “Hallo? Is there anybody here?”

The two men waited. There was no answer. “Come along,” Jonathan said, led Bobby deeper into the house, every inch a perfect fit with his memory, every little bit of the place sparking one memory or another. Bobby was absolutely right to think the place haunted.

He led Bobby into his father’s study. There was dust on the surfaces, unlike in the foyer or the hall, as if it had not been entered in some time. That did not bode well, not for any hope of his father’s being alive. Jonathan could not recall a day going by that Robley Paine, Sr., had not sat in his study.

On the desk was a stack of mail, and Jonathan began sorting through the letters. Letters from agents, creditors, letters to his mother and father, a few to him or his brothers. He found the letters that he had written, unopened, halfway down in the stack. He went through them all. They told him nothing, save that his father had not read his mail in the better part of a year.

He saw a few papers scattered on the floor, stooped with some difficulty and picked them up.

Dear Sir:

We regret to inform you of the death of Lt. Robley Paine, Jr., Company D, 18th Mississippi Regiment, 3rd Brigade…

Jonathan dropped the letter. It was old news. Old news to him, old news, apparently, to his parents.

He crossed the room, picked up two more papers, lying one on top of the other.

Dear Sir:

We regret to inform you that, as of this date, Private Nathaniel Paine, Company D, 18th Mississippi Regiment, 3rd Brigade, and Private Jonathan Paine, ditto, are missing…

He turned the other over, sucked in his breath when he saw it. It was a message from another world, a message written by him in a former incarnation. Nathaniel James Paine, Company D, 18th Mississippi, 3rd Brigade, son of Robley and Katherine Paine, Yazoo, Mississippi. Please God send me home to be buried in my native earth.

Jonathan read the words, and as he did he was back on Henry House Hill, the bullets plucking at his garments, the grief pouring from him as his beautiful brother Nathaniel lay dead at his feet.

Robley confirmed dead, Nathaniel confirmed dead. Their father would take it for granted that Jonathan was killed as well, with no word from him, the army calling him missing.

Oh, God, Father, where are you? What have you done? Jonathan wanted to fling himself to the ground, wrap himself in the house, the only familiar thing left to him. He would have fallen then and there, pressed to the floor by his grief, if a noise from beyond the room had not jerked him from his sorrow.

He looked up sharp, and Bobby did, too. There were footsteps in the hall, soft, approaching stealthily. Jonathan had opened his mouth to demand identification when the person in the hall called out, “Who dere? Who dat?”

It was a woman’s voice and it sounded very much like Jenny, the old cook. “Jonathan Paine,” Jonathan replied.

They heard a sound like a grunt, and then the back door of the room burst open and there stood Jenny, fat and squat, a shotgun in her hands. Their eyes met and Jenny’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open and the shotgun fell out of her hands and discharged, blowing the leg off a Queen Anne chair.

Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth, began backing away. “Oh, Lord, you’s a ghost fo sartin…”

“No, no, Jenny…” Jonathan took a step toward her, reached out his hand. “It’s me, really me…I’m alive…”

Jenny still shook her head, but she stopped backing away.

“Jenny…where is everyone?” Jonathan asked, as soft as he could.

“They’s all run, Massa Jon’thin…they’s all run in-country, on account o’ dem Yankees, comin’ down de river…”

“Yankees?” Jonathan could not imagine the Yankees had penetrated that far into Mississippi.

“Yassuh. I’s de only one dat stayed…” Her voice trailed off, and she cocked her ear toward the front door. “Oh, Lord, I hears dem now!” she exclaimed, apparently as frightened as she had been of the vision of Jonathan’s ghost.

In the silence Jonathan listened, and he heard, far off, the huffing of a steam engine. “Come on,” he nodded to Bobby, and the two of them crossed out of the study, down the hall, and onto the porch once again.

Half a mile upriver, and heading down, trailing twin plumes of black smoke from two stacks, a paddle wheeler was brushing the water aside. Jonathan looked for a long time, let the boat get almost abreast of the plantation, before he could figure out what it was he was looking at.

He had seen paddle wheelers all his life, but he had never seen one like this. It rode low in the water, and the superstructure was flat and not ten feet in height, save for a small house on the top and forward, where the wheelhouse would be, though the one on that boat was more the dimensions of a doghouse.

There were three square windows in the side, and two in the front bulkhead. The entire thing, including the wheelbox, seemed to be made up of wide planks painted a dull brown.

“Dear Lord,” Bobby asked, speaking softly. “What in da hell is dat?”

Jonathan watched the boat as it steamed past. “It’s an ironclad. An ironclad gunboat.” Jonathan had read of such things in the papers in Richmond, but had never laid eyes on one.

“Dey Yankees?” Bobby asked, but even as he asked, Jonathan’s eyes were resting on the flag, flapping astern from the tall ensign staff. The stars and three broad stripes, red, white, red.

“No,” Jonathan said. “It’s a Confederate ship.” The serpent was close. Men in Yazoo City were sallying forth to beat it back. He had returned just in time.

43

April 15-The enemy brought up his whole fleet… Orders were repeatedly given to Captain Stevenson, of the river fleet, to cause the fire barges to be sent down nightly upon the enemy; but every attempt seemed to prove a perfect abortion…

– Report of Brigadier General Duncan, C.S. Army, Commanding New Orleans Coast Defenses

The order came from Secretary Mallory.

NAVY DEPARTMENT, C.S.

Richmond, April 15, 1862

Sir:

Work day and night to get the Yazoo River ready for action. The preparation of ordnance stores and the drilling of the crew should all progress simultaneously. Not an hour must be lost. Spare neither men nor money. Put the best officers you can get on board the ships, if those we send don’t arrive in time. Proceed at the first possible convenience to New Orleans and place yourself and your vessel at the disposal of Commander Mitchell, CSN.