Glory In The Name

as Bowater could tell there was no more than half of the original crew left, perhaps less. He looked for Babcock but did not see him. The old man would go down with the ship.

When the fantail was cleared of healthy men, they began to pass the wounded over, some able to help themselves a bit, some who seemed near death, who no doubt would be dead soon.

Last of all they passed Robley Paine over to the tug, and when he was over the young black man followed, and then Jonathan. Bowater noticed how very much he looked like his father. He limped as well, as had Robley, and needed a hand getting across to the tug.

And then it was Samuel Bowater, Hieronymus Taylor, Ruffin Tanner.

“Guess I don’t get my headstone,” Taylor said.

“Battle ain’t over yet,” Tanner said.

“War is not over yet,” Bowater said. Together they grabbed on to the tug’s bulwark, hoisted themselves over, as the men crowding the side deck made room for them. Fore and aft the lines binding them to the Yazoo River were let go. The Abigail Wilson turned hard, peeling away from the ironclad, her propeller digging in.

Bowater climbed up into the wheelhouse. Theodore Wilson was there, grim-faced. He seemed to have none of the boy-playing-at-soldiers quality Bowater had associated with him.

“Captain Bowater,” Wilson said.

“Captain Wilson,” Bowater said without irony.

“Don’t rightly know where to go. Can’t go upriver, unless we care to be blown out of the water.”

“Battle’s over. No sense in killing these men. You’ve done what you could.” They were silent for a moment as the tug continued her aimless course downriver. “Have to imagine there’s still a blockade at the Head of the Passes. I don’t imagine we’ll make it to sea,” Bowater continued.

Theodore Wilson nodded, and then the wheelhouse was lit up with the brilliant orange light of the Yazoo River exploding, followed by the deep rolling boom of the blast, as thunder follows lightning, and the concussion of the shock wave, the sudden heat that engulfed them.

Wilson, Bowater, the pilot, all the men in the wheelhouse spun around, looked upriver, beyond the tug’s starboard quarter. A great column of flame was rising up from the ironclad, like Moses’s pillar of fire shining forth in the night. The sound kept coming and coming. The great mountain of flame seemed like a solid thing as it hung there in the air.

The Abigail Wilson began to pitch and roll, and debris began to rain down around her, splashing in the water, on occasion hitting the deck or the boat deck, flaming bits that were stamped out by the crowds of men on board.

The column of flame collapsed, fell back down onto the shattered remains of the Yazoo River and burned there, a blazing patch of fire on the otherwise dark river. The funeral pyre of those brave men, the end of a ship for which so many had struggled, died, and still would die. Those men, that ship, they had fought their lives out, and now it was up to history to decide where in the whole story that struggle fitted.

Bowater watched the dying ship. He guessed that the casement had contained the blast, had funneled the shock wave straight up. That must have been the case, because, incredibly, in the light of the burning vessel, he could see the Confederate flag, still run up the ensign staff, still intact, still waving in the land breeze filling in with the coming dawn.

They steamed downriver to a mile or so above Pilot Town, but with the coming light they could see the Federal ships getting up steam, could see the Stars and Stripes waving over the town, so they turned and steamed upriver again. They tied up at a half-forgotten landing fifteen miles south of Fort Jackson. They buried their dead.

Bowater suggested they burn the Abigail Wilson, but Wilson hesitated, demurred, found reasons why that was not the best plan. In the end they left her tied up, hoofed it down the dirt road from the landing to the road running north. They carried the wounded on stretchers improvised from material aboard the tug. They found transportation among the growing convoy of wagons fleeing the coming bluebellies.

In New Orleans they were swept up in the general exodus, the panicked retreat from the city. The wounded were brought to hospital. Half of the remaining men melted away. But Bowater had saved enough money from his cabin, and Wilson had funds enough, and enough gold was found in Robley Paine’s coat pocket, to secure transportation for the rest of them. Samuel Bowater led his men north to Yazoo City. He had no other place to go.

And so it was, on a grim 1st of May, 1862, that Samuel Bowater and Hieronymus Taylor and Ruffin Tanner found themselves seated on an old oak log, staring out over the remains of what had once been their shipyard, out at the slow-moving Yazoo River. Telegrams had been dispatched to Mallory, reports, lists of dead, wounded, missing. They waited on orders.

Taylor sparked a cigar to life. Tanner took a long pull from a bottle of whiskey, which he then handed to Taylor, who drank and then handed it to Bowater. Bowater drank, returned to his thoughts of Wendy, handed the bottle back to Tanner.

New Orleans was lost. The Confederate Army had been beaten at Pittsburg Landing, and the Yankees were pushing downriver, closing the gap between the head and tail of the snake. The Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf were blockaded. McClellan was on the Yorktown Peninsula with more than 120,000 men and marching for Richmond. Soon the Gosport naval yard would have to be abandoned. Banks was chasing Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley with crushing superiority in numbers. McDowell threatened Fredericksburg and Richmond.

The elation that had followed Manassas was gone. In one year the swaggering confidence of the men who had fired on Fort Sumter had been changed to something else. Acceptance of war, a long war. Resignation. Despondency, in some cases.

But not defeat. Never defeat. The fire of resistance burned on, and it was not close to burning itself out.

The bottle came around again. Bowater took a pull, handed it back to Tanner. “Know what Robley Paine said to me? There when we were abandoning the ship?”

The others murmured no.

“He said he was the lucky one. Said he was getting what he wanted. The rest of us, we would have to keep fighting, fight on and on.”

The three men were silent.

“That’s what he said,” said Samuel.

Taylor took the bottle. Lifted it high. “Here’s to Robley Paine.” He took a drink, handed it to Bowater.

Bowater lifted the bottle. “Here’s to getting what you want.” He drank, passed it back to Tanner.

Ruffin Tanner lifted the bottle, looked at the reflection of the abandoned shipyard in the glass and dark liquid. “Here’s to fighting,” he said. “Here’s to fighting, on and on.”

Wendy Atkins brushed the tears away, gulped a deep breath. Happiness, relief, sadness, loneliness were all mixed together. She sat on the edge of her iron bed, read the letter again.

Postmarked Yazoo City. May 1st. A brief sketch of the Battle of New Orleans, assurance that he, Samuel Bowater, was safe, had come through with just the usual bruises and scrapes. But they had lost, the Union fleet had brushed them aside. They would make a stand elsewhere, Samuel said. Once he received orders.

She felt the tears come again, and now they were all sadness, now that his survival was assured, and the relief that came with that passed into memory. She cried because she read the profound sadness in the words. She cried because the loneliness was palpable and because she knew about loneliness, could take it herself, but could not endure the thought of Samuel, her Samuel, having to suffer so.

Wendy Atkins knew about loneliness. She had known about it all her life. But when Samuel Bowater left for Mississippi, she learned that there was a whole other level of which she had not been aware, like discovering a room in a house which you had not suspected was there.

She put the letter down, took a deep breath. Looked around the little carriage house, now crammed with a year’s accumulations. She looked down at the bed and remembered their night together.

Wendy stood and knelt by the bed, ran her hands underneath. At last they fell on what she was looking for and she pulled it out; an oversize carpet bag, empty now. She set it on the bed, opened it, considered what to pack.