TWENTY
GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON TO FLAG OFFICER JOSIAH TATTNALL
They stepped tentatively through the iron gates of the shipyard, Wendy leading, Molly following. They entered the way one might enter a stranger’s house where the front door was left open. Wendy’s first impulse was to call out “Hallo?” but she resisted, understanding that that was absurd.
They walked farther in, over gray cobblestones flecked with black soot. Molly said nothing, but she followed now without being begged or pulled along, and Wendy hoped some of the shock of Newcomb’s assault was dissipating, that her aunt’s senses were returning.
They could feel the heat of the flames, though the nearest burning building was several hundred yards away. The fires rose three and four stories high, brilliant even in the direct sun, and in the heart of the flames, black and half caved in, Wendy could just make out the huge A-frame ship houses, the buildings that housed ropewalks and storehouses and the various shops.
One year and twenty days before, the retreating Yankees had set fire to the shipyard in what the Confederacy regarded as an unprecedented act of vandalism. Now the retreating Confederates had done the same.
“Dear God…” Wendy said, looking wide-eyed at the destruction. Molly said nothing. They walked on, walked toward the only part of the shipyard where there were no burning buildings, the wide area where the dry dock opened onto the river, the only direction in which they did not meet a wall of flames.
“Molly, they might have sailed,” Wendy said, hoping to dull the blow to Molly if the fleet had gone, if Tucker had abandoned them. But her voice did not carry over the low-pitched furnace-roar of the flames, a dull, constant, near-deafening growl, punctuated with cracks and snaps and the shudder of something big collapsing in the inferno. Wendy shouted, “They might have sailed without us!”
Molly nodded but said nothing, and Wendy was not certain she heard, or if she understood.
They plunged deeper into the dockyard. They were surrounded by burning buildings now, to the right and left, the closest less than fifty yards away. The heat was sharp on Wendy’s hands and face; the black smoke rolled around them, engulfing them and then lifting on the breeze to give them a moment’s fresh air before falling on them again. They coughed and staggered on.
Wendy wondered if she had made a mistake, if she should not have tried to lead them across the burning yard. Surely the men who had fired the buildings were long gone. She felt the near approach of panic, wished above all things that there were someone to whom she could defer. She did not want to make these decisions. But there was only Molly, and Molly was like a sleepwalker now.
Wendy turned and looked back, wondering if they should go back the way they had come, leave the yard through the main gate before the flames closed around them and blocked that route. But she could no longer see the gate or the low brick wall that surrounded the shipyard. It was lost in the smoke and clouds of ash, in the orange and red flames. She was no longer certain of what direction they would walk to find the gate.
Then through the roar of the flames came an explosion, deafening even through the layers of noise, jarring like thunder right overhead. The ground trembled beneath their feet, and to their left one of the massive walls of flame lifted off, flame shooting skyward like a giant cannon pointed straight up.
Wendy staggered and dropped to the ground, pulling Molly down with her. She lay with her cheek pressed to the hot stone, hands clapped over her head. Debris fell around them, bits of flaming wood bouncing on the ground like rain. Wendy felt something hit her back, like a punch, but a weak punch. She looked up. A brass doorknob lay beside her, dented and smoking, rolling back and forth in a semicircle.
She glanced over at Molly. A shattered bit of lathe, burning like kindling, was lying across her back and the skirts of her dress. Her skirts were on fire, and in the heat and the noise and the shock Molly did not even know it.
“Oh! Aunt!” Wendy shouted. She pushed herself onto her knees, began beating Molly’s skirt with her hand, then snatched up her carpetbag and began beating the cloth with that until it was extinguished. Where the flowing skirts had been there was now a great charred hole, through which Wendy could see Molly’s chemise, dotted with black holes of various sizes, and through the larger holes, her bare legs.
Wendy struggled to her feet, checked Molly’s dress to make certain the fire was out, then offered her aunt a hand. Molly took it and Wendy pulled her to her feet.
“Must have been a powder store,” Wendy shouted. They looked around. There were flaming bits everywhere, most small but some the size of desks. Two of them actually were desks, or what was left of them. They had been lucky to have been hit by nothing worse than doorknobs and lathe. Wendy did not think they would be lucky again.
Together they turned and looked back the way they had come. The smoke was thicker now, the direction of the gate even more uncertain. “Let’s go on,” Wendy said. The words came out with more resignation in her voice than determination.
They collected their bags and staggered on through the smoke, through the heat that now felt like a thing of substance, like a massive tangle of spiderwebs through which they had to fight their way. Wendy’s head was swimming and she was coughing uncontrollably, holding her handkerchief to her mouth, but it seemed to do no good. She stumbled, recovered before she fell. Her eyes ached and tears streamed down her cheeks. She thought her sleeve was on fire and she batted at it, but it was only the heat from the flames.
She began to wonder if they would wander through that hellish place until they were overcome by smoke, if the flames would sweep over their unconscious bodies and reduce them to ash and smoke and extinguish everything that they were. No one would ever know what had become of them.
Then, as if stepping from one world into another, they were past the nightmare of flames and smoke. Before them, through clear air, lay the Elizabeth River. It was wondrous, like a miracle, like how it must be to die in violence and awake in heaven. They were upwind of the burning buildings now, and the wind that just a moment before had held them engulfed in smoke and killing heat now kept them free of it.
Molly looked at Wendy and Wendy at Molly. Molly’s face was smudged black, with whitish lines running down her cheeks where tears had carried the soot away. Even through the soot Wendy could see the awful bruises on her face, the dried blood, the swelling around her eye. Her hat was gone and her snood half off, so her long blond hair hung partway down her back, while the other half remained contained. Her eyes were red, her dress flecked with black soot and charred, torn, and burned through. Molly looked bad, and Wendy knew she did not look much better.
“We’ve reached the promised land,” Wendy said, but Molly did not respond.
In her relief at being free from the smoke and flames, Wendy had lost sight of why they were there, and it was only after she had sated herself with fresh air that she remembered. Tucker had promised them passage out of there, a place aboard a Confederate ship bound upriver to Richmond, ahead of the invading Yankees. They were here to catch a boat. But there were no boats to be seen.
“Damn it,” Wendy said softly. She walked fast toward the dry dock, where the USS
“Oh, damn it!” Wendy shouted now and flung her carpetbag to the ground. For Molly’s sake she was trying to be optimistic, but she was running short. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shoot someone-Newcomb, Tucker, Abraham Lincoln-some damn one whose death would give vent to her rage.
She turned to Molly. Looked for something there, anything, a suggestion, some encouragement. But Molly was sitting on one of the low capstans alongside the dry dock and staring out over the water toward Norfolk to the east. No emotion registered on her face or in her eyes. It was a blank, dead stare, the look of someone waiting her turn at the gallows. She said nothing.
Wendy felt the tears welling up, overflowing, running down her cheeks. After all this, all the hell they had endured, and now they were left behind by the man who had promised to save them, a man of supposed honor, who had abandoned them.
They could not go back through the flames, and the river in front of them was impassable. There was nothing
