Glory In The Name

They were fifty miles from Forts St. Philip and Jackson when they heard the gunfire.

Bowater thought it was thunder at first, a late-day storm brewed up by the sea and humidity of the Gulf. It seemed too massive to be gunfire. But it rolled on and on, distant and muted and constant, long after thunder would have died away.

“Do you hear that?” He turned to Risley and the pilot nodded.

“Mortar boats.”

“Mortar boats?”

“Yeah. Twenty or so. Old schooners, mostly. They towed ’em up, got ’em tied up to the riverbanks. They each have a thirteen-inch mortar on board, dropping them shells right into the forts. They must be murdering them poor bastards garrisoning them places. Idea is to knock the forts out and wreck the chain they got across the river, then Farragut can take his ships right up.”

Risley took his eyes from the low gray cloud of smoke, visible now over the low marshy land to the south. “Hell, Captain, don’t they tell you nothin?”

Theodore Wilson stood on the dock, looked down the Yazoo River as far as he could see. Behind him rang the noise of packing up a shipyard, a shipyard which had come together out of nothing, had formed like Adam from the dust, a new thing. All of Yazoo County rallying to his, Wilson’s, call, and through his influence and leadership they had turned a madman’s dream into a reality, into a formidable weapon of war.

Wilson had to admit it, to himself, at least: the past month and a half had been the best time of his life. The energy surrounding the rebirth of the Yazoo River as an ironclad had been terrific, like an electrical storm, and him in the middle of it. In the directing of resources, the delegation, the supervising, he had felt like a brigadier general. In the sheer physical work he had found a new devotion to the cause of Southern liberty, more profound than he had thought possible.

When he had first confronted Samuel Bowater, he had thought himself a patriot. Now he could not even recall that person he had been, what that Theodore Wilson had thought and felt.

The Yazoo River steamed off for New Orleans, and Wilson felt as if he had, by mistake, left some part of himself aboard, forgotten to retrieve it before the ship sailed, like a coat left draped over a rail or a box of tools. He thought of tomorrow with dread. What was there now, now that the ship had gone without him?

He had considered sailing with her, of course. He had some seamanship, some piloting skills, from running the Abigail Wilson. But not enough to pilot a vessel like the Yazoo River. He had arranged for Risley to sail as pilot, aware of his own limitations.

So what else could he do? Nothing. He had no military experience, had never even seen a gun fired in anger. Manual labor, haul a gun tackle, run ashes up the ash hoist, that was it. Shovel coal. He would be subservient to Bowater, subservient even to Robley Paine, and that would not do. So he stood on the dock, watched her steam away, supervised the disassembly of the ad hoc shipyard.

He heard footsteps behind, a shuffling, limping walk, two people, someone to ask him what they should do next, and he did not know. He was tired of this work. It was anticlimax.

“Mr. Wilson?” The voice was strong, familiar, but he could not place it.

“What?” he said, exasperated, and turned around. His eyes met the face staring at him and he sucked in his breath, felt his heart charge, his limbs jerk with the involuntary reflex of shock and panic, an encounter with the supernatural.

“Dear God…” It was nothing supernatural-Wilson realized that in the instant he was sucking in his breath-but just as surprising.

“Jonathan Paine? What in hell are you doing here, boy? We all thought you were dead.”

“Nearly was.” He lifted up his pant leg, and Wilson looked with horror at the wooden appendage. “Lost that at Manassas. Robley Junior, Nathaniel, they weren’t so lucky. Both got killed. I got the idea my daddy thinks I’m dead, too.”

Wilson nodded. God, this sorry son of a bitch looks like hell!

Skinny as a stray dog, his cheeks sunk, unshaved, in a uniform that was torn and patched. He looked old, twice his twenty or so years. Of all the boys, Jonathan had always favored Robley the most, and now he looked even more like him-the wasted, mad Robley Paine.

Behind him stood a Negro of about Jonathan’s age, one Wilson did not recognize, a slave, perhaps, he had picked up along the way.

What am I going to tell him? Wilson wondered, but Jonathan spoke again.

“I been down to Paine Plantation. My mother’s dead.”

Wilson nodded. “I knew that, son. I’m sorry.”

“There’s only a few of the servants left. No one knew where my daddy was. Someone thought he was at Yazoo City. Fellow in town told me to look here.” Jonathan looked around, as if he still might find his father.

What do I tell him? His father went mad with grief, spent all of his money-all of his boys’ money-to build a machine with which to kill himself?

“Your daddy was here. You missed him by two days. He had a dream to build an ironclad gunboat, and damned if he didn’t do it. They went down to New Orleans, to fight the Yankees. Folks reckon there’ll be a hell of a battle.”

Jonathan nodded. There was a strange look in his eyes, not the flash of impetuous youth, not the wild, undisciplined thing that Wilson was used to seeing in the youngest of the Paine boys. “New Orleans…” Jonathan looked out at the river, as if he might fling himself in, let the brown water carry him to his father, to the sea.

Wilson looked down at the ground, the few blades of grass shooting up between the gravel, kicked at the loose rocks. He looked up. The old six-pounder from Yazoo River was sitting on its carriage near the edge of the landing. Robley Paine’s gun. Jonathan’s now, he reckoned.

He had opened his mouth to tell Jonathan that, that he was the proud owner of a six-pounder smoothbore-he could think of nothing else to say-when he stopped, and involuntarily he shifted his eyes to the Abigail Wilson, still tied to the dock. He ran his eyes over her bow, pictured the sweep of foredeck, then glanced back at the six-pounder.

“You looking to go to New Orleans, then?” Wilson asked.

The gunboat USS Itasca, 150 feet long, five hundred tons, steamed up the Mississippi River, farther than any Yankee had come in a year.

Lieutenant C.H.B. Caldwell, commanding the Itasca, stood by the big wheel, aft. He had been charged by Admiral Farragut with removing the heavy chain, supported by half a dozen derelict schooners, which the Confederates had stretched across the river. He and his consort, Pinola, had labored for hours under the fire of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. They had managed to pull one schooner free. Their mission so far, a failure. Caldwell was not ready to report as much to Farragut, doubted he ever would.

The mortar flotilla was firing a covering fire, trying to distract the Confederate gunners, keep their minds off the two Yankee gunboats moving upriver. Streaks of light arched up high overhead, dropped into the wide area between the walls of Forts St. Philip and Jackson, made great billows of light as they exploded.

The forts were firing too, blasting at the riparian intruders with rifled shells. Exploding ordnance tore up the river, peppered the Itasca and Pinola with iron, but Caldwell was too angry to care. He steamed through the narrow opening left by the removal of that one schooner. He was playing his last hand.

He turned to the midshipman beside him. “Go down to the engine room, give the chief my compliments, and tell him that when I ring full ahead again, I want every ounce of steam I can have. Tell him to throw pitch, turpentine, whatever on the fires. I need it all.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” The mid saluted, ran off.

Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred yards upriver the Itasca steamed, until the line of schooners was lost to sight, and visible only in the light of exploding ordnance. The shells dropped all around the gunboat, screamed down the deck, took off the head of the mainmast; it was like steaming into a hornet’s nest.

“Port your helm, hard aport!” Caldwell said. Fort St. Philip, which had been right ahead, its walls bristling points