Glory In The Name

dream.”

Bowater straightened. Wilson’s approval felt like a dirty thing, like Judas’s handful of silver. He saw, in that instant, Robley Paine for what he was, and Theodore Wilson for what he was, and he could not hate Paine, and he could only hate Wilson.

“Mr. Wilson,” he said, picking the words carefully, “I have never been deluded about the state of Mr. Paine’s mind, not since meeting him. And now that you tell me the cause, I must say, I can hardly find fault or weakness in him for what he has become. But understand this…Robley Paine has thrown everything that he is and everything that he has into fighting for the cause for which his sons died. His is the purest, most unadulterated patriotism. He will die like his boys, fighting for his country, fighting for all you men who lie abed while the guns are firing, and I, sir, as an officer of the Confederate States Navy, will be proud to be with him.”

Bowater picked up the mail sack. “Thank you for delivering the mail to us. Now if you will forgive me, I have an ironclad that requires building.”

He turned, walked back into the office. After a few minutes he heard the jangle of Wilson’s horse’s tack, heard the clomp of hooves as he rode away.

For a long time Samuel was too angry to move. Angry that he had been saddled with a madman’s project. Angry that men such as Wilson, who had the means to make the ironclad Yazoo River a real thing, would not. Angry that in this modern time, this age of reason, men could still fight a war in which some sorry bastard could lose his three sons in an afternoon and become the shell that was Robley Paine.

“Son of a bitch…” he muttered and dumped the letters out on the desk, shuffled through them, set them in piles. Three for Hieronymus Taylor, that was unusual, a few more for various men in the ship’s company, some addresses written with a neat, well-practiced hand, others with the nearly illegible scrawl of the barely literate. Bowater separated them out.

Three letters for him; his father, Wendy, and his sister, Elizabeth. He looked at his letters, considered opening them, stared for a long time at Wendy’s name. The anger was still burning in him, and he liked it, did not want to lose the sensation, like the taste of a fine meal in one’s mouth, and so he left all news from home aside, even word from Wendy Atkins, and it surprised him that he could. Time for amusements and distractions some other time. He set the rest of the letters aside to distribute to the men at the dinner break.

Richmond, Virginia, felt somber, oppressed. The string of Confederate defeats at Port Royal and Roanoke Island, Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, made it feel like a city under siege, even though the nearest enemy was one hundred miles away-General George “Little Mac” McClellan did not seem inclined to move out of Washington.

Jonathan Paine felt the dull panic. He knew he had to go, and he felt sharp fear. He felt the fear turn into frustration, and then anger, and that was good.

For some weeks after the decision to go home, after Bobby’s essential offer to accompany him, Jonathan still did not leave Miss Tompkins’s. A seeming epidemic of dysentery swept through the Confederate camp, boys skinny and weak and gray-faced were brought in in regular succession, crowding the already crowded rooms, filling the beds and then the extra beds brought in and then the pallets piled with straw on the floor. They moaned, called out, clawed the clothing of the people who came to help. They got better and went back to their units or they died and were buried outside of Richmond.

It was a nightmare scene, under cold, gray winter skies, and neither Bobby nor Jonathan felt they could leave until it was over. Finally, on the day that three young soldiers were dismissed from the hospital and sent back to their regiment, and not one new patient arrived, Bobby suggested that they go to the Mechanics’ Institute and find out what Jonathan needed to do to be officially discharged from the army, and to get a bit of money for his trip home.

Jonathan tasted the panic in his throat, felt the slight tremor in his palms. This is just damned stupid… he assured himself, but that did nothing to ease his fear. Indeed, if Bobby had not brought the buckboard around, had not helped him on with his coat, led the way out, if Bobby had not in his subtle way forced Jonathan to leave Miss Tompkins’s house, Jonathan doubted that he ever would have.

They arrived at the Mechanics’ Institute, and it was in every way the bedlam that Jonathan recalled from his previous visit.

Bobby battered a path through the crowd, excusing himself with bowed head and sincere pleas of “Beg pardon, suh,” “I’se sorry, suh,” “Massah, he gots a leg missin’, beg pardon…” He had the ability to cover his insolence and pushiness with a veneer of respect, and thus get away with it. It was just what soldiers did, Jonathan realized, what they called “flanking” the officers. Give them just enough respect so they could not call you for insubordination.

They came at last to the Office of Orders and Detail, stood in line until Jonathan’s stump began to throb. When finally they came up to the tall oak counter, Jonathan leaned his elbows on it, took as much weight as he could off his legs.

“How may I help you, Private?” the clerk asked.

“I lost a leg at Manassas. I’d like to go home. But I don’t believe I have been officially discharged from the army. Also, I’d like what pay is due me.”

The clerk looked at him for a long moment, then let out a sigh. “What was your regiment?”

“Company D, 18th Mississippi, but…” The clerk turned and left the room before Jonathan could explain the complicated circumstances of his situation.

They waited ten more minutes and then the clerk returned and informed Jonathan Paine that he was dead. Or missing.

“Well, sir, I never was dead, but I was missing for some time, but now I’m here.”

“Your discharge will have to come from your commanding officer. We will have to write to him and get him to sign the papers. Without that, you stand the chance of being taken up as a deserter.”

“Deserter? My damn leg’s been shot off. That isn’t proof enough I’m legally discharged?”

“You are not legally discharged, Private, without the letter from your commanding officer. And unless you have one written on your wooden leg, signed and sealed, I suggest you do this proper.”

Jonathan stared at the clerk, tried to think of some rejoinder, but he was beat and he knew it and the clerk knew it, too. The clerk reached under the desk, pulled out a preprinted form, lifted his pen from the inkwell and said, “Eighteenth Mississippi, was it?”

41

Thanks to the patriotism of the noble people of Yazoo City, I shall not need the guard that I asked for. The citizens here, though but a handful are at home from the army, will sustain me so long as I shall deserve their support.

– Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown, CSN, to General Daniel Ruggles, C.S. Army

Two days after Wilson’s visit, the wagons returned from Jackson with their sorry load of iron. The horses and men looked played out, as if they had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years.

None of them looked as tired as Robley Paine. Bowater physically helped him down from the driver’s seat of his wagon, leaned him back against the big wheel, not sure if the man could stand on his own. “We’re getting there, Mr. Paine, bit by bit,” he said with a concern he had not felt before. Paine looked up sharp. He heard the change in tone.

“It is not enough,” Paine said. Exhaustion stripped the words of their bite.

“It will be enough. Let me help you to your bed. You must rest.”

Paine nodded, put his arm over Bowater’s shoulder, and let himself be led away. They would leave again in the morning. But half a day of rest between trips was not enough, not enough for Paine or the other men or the horses. They could not keep this up.

The iron was unloaded, stacked, the horses tended. That night Bowater lay in his bunk in the makeshift barracks in the old carpenter’s shop, stared at the dark. He read and reread Wendy’s letter, five pages long. Tales of nursing, conditions in Norfolk. She had a flawless sense for how newsy a letter should be, and how sentimental