MacPherson's Lament

He soon sent them off with a flea in their ears!

They reached Danville around midnight on April 4 and slept in the cars until sunup. Later, when news of the fighting farther north filtered into Danville, they learned what a narrow escape it had been. After turning Lee’s flank at Five Forks, Sheridan’s cavalry had attacked the Southside Railroad. They had torn up the rail at Burksville Junction just an hour and a half after Admiral Semmes’s train had passed through there.

The orders to join General Lee in the field no longer stood. Admiral Semmes-now a brigadier general-organized the four hundred sailors left to his command into brigades. Hawks and Bridgeford were still serving under Captain Dunnington, who was now an army colonel.

“But we’re still bottom of the heap,” said Bridgeford. “Seems like the more it all changes, the more it stays the same for boys like us.”

They were in the trenches on the outskirts of Danville now, defending the new capital from raiding parties, and waiting to see if the Union Army would turn its might on this last stronghold. The green of spring and the budding trees made a welcome change from the devastation of the blackened city they’d left behind, but a steady drizzle made the landscape drab, chilling them as they huddled in their mudholes. Sunshine would have made their watch more pleasant, but it would have done little for the scenery: no place in Virginia was really beautiful that May. The fields were untended stubble, with weeds and broken fences; everywhere the neglect of the war years showed in Danville’s shabby appearance. Still, she was a luckier town than most of her sisters to the east.

“This is how I started out in this war,” Gabriel Hawks replied. “Stuck in a mudhole with a rifle, waiting to get shot at. Things sure do stay mostly the same, don’t they? You reckon they aim to pay us one of these days?”

Tom Bridgeford brushed the raindrops out of his face, making little rivulets in the streaks of dirt. “Hawks,” he said, with an exasperated sigh, “what in Tophet does it matter? What salary do you draw now that you’re an army private?”

“Eighteen dollars a month.”

Bridgeford nodded. “Eighteen dollars a month Confederate scrip. That is correct. And how much is a barrel of flour going for in Danville these days?”

“If one could be had? A thousand dollars, maybe.”

“And a turkey?”

Gabriel shrugged. “A hundred dollars easy. If they’d take your money.”

“They’d a dern sight rather have gold. And it’s more than fifty of our scrip dollars to buy a dollar in gold. So tell me, Hawks, what do you want your pay for? You tired of wiping your butt with corncobs, is that it?”

“I thought I might try to send some money home.”

“Hawks, your kinfolk in the hills may be better off than we are, as long as there are deer in the woods and fish in the creek. But it does you credit to worry over them. I no longer have that burden.”

Gabriel looked away. He knew that Bridge-ford’s parents and sister had passed away in Wilmington’s yellow- fever epidemic in the fall of ’62. Most likely that accounted for his bitterness about the state of the world. “I wish we could do something besides sit here,” he said.

Bridgeford gave him a weary smile. “You could go home. Johnson has. Willets left last night. Every day a few more men sneak away when the officers’ backs are turned. I don’t believe Captain Dunnington has cottoned on to how easy it is to jump ship when you’re in a ditch a hundred miles inland. How far is your farm from here? Fifty miles? Seventy? Why, you could-”

“Hold it! I saw something moving on the road!” Gabriel Hawks pointed to a shape just visible through the pines near the bend in the road. He shouldered his rifle. “Something’s coming at us.”

Bridgeford squinted into the distance. “It’s wagons, looks like. And saddle horses alongside.” He pushed Hawks’s rifle barrel away from its aim. “Put that down. They’re our people. I see a gray greatcoat in that first wagon. Don’t suppose it serves a man well in this rain, though. Better than nothing, maybe.”

Hawks shook his head. “I reckon they’re another swarm of fugitives separated from their lines. Poor Danville! They might rather be invaded by the Federals than these starving Rebs-at least they’d bring their own provisions.”

The somber procession tottered closer to the trenches. It was a sorry remnant of an army: walking skeletons shrunken inside their rags, wounded men barely able to stand and others on scarecrows of horses that looked as if they were walking their last mile. One soldier in oilskins clambered out of his trench and waved down the battered wagon. “Where ye from?” he hollered at them. “What news?”

The rain pelted down, making creeks of the wagon tracks in the muddy road. From the wagon the gaunt faces stared back at them, showing no emotion but weariness. Finally the driver of the wagon, a chalk-faced soldier in the tatters of a uniform, looked down at the questioner with an expression that could have been grief-or disgust. “Guess y’all ain’t heard,” he said. “We abandoned the lines near a week ago. Lee surrendered his troops today at Appomattox Courthouse. Somebody said the rest was here, so we come on.”

As the word spread from man to man, soldiers began to crawl out of the sodden trenches, congregating together on the road and questioning the ragged refugees, who seemed anxious to stagger on toward the town. “What must we do now?” they kept saying.

A newly appointed captain, formerly an officer on the Virginia, herded them back to their posts. “Our orders are to guard this town. The Federals may soon be coming after our president. We protect them until somebody tells us different.” He looked around at the men under his command. “Hawks! Bridgeford! Escort these fugitives into town and see that their news is reported to Admiral-er, General Semmes. Tell him that we await further orders.”

Still dazed from this thunderbolt of news, Gabriel felt himself stagger out of the ditch like a stunned ox. He felt Bridgeford’s hand steadying him as he teetered on the edge of the embankment. “Is the war over, Tom?” he whispered, blinking away the wetness from his eyelashes.

“Not for us,” muttered Bridgeford.

“ I wish I was in the land of cotton.”

– DANIEL D. EMMETT,

“Dixie”

CHAPTER 4

THE FLIGHT TO Danville, Virginia, might have been relatively pleasant if it had started later in the day, and if they hadn’t had to change planes in Pittsburgh. Still, it was too much to ask for a direct flight to such a tiny place, Kimball supposed. The possibility of arriving by turnip truck had crossed his mind. He had read all of The New York Times with more than customary thoroughness and had given up trying to find something worth reading in the in-flight magazine when the pilot made the landing announcement. Mr. Huff, who had slept fitfully for most of the journey, was still stretched out in the adjoining seat, dreaming with an unpleasant expression that suggested that he was playing the villain in his own nightmare. Kimball hated to awaken the sleeping dragon, but it had to be done. With some misgivings he nudged Mr. Huff gently and whispered, “We’re coming into Danville, sir.”

With reptilian alertness Huff opened his eyes and leaned over Kimball to peer out the window. “Call that an airport?” he growled.

Kimball longed to point out that Mr. Huff’s own local airport, that of Westchester, New York, was about the size of a potting shed and contained tin-sheeted wooden baggage carousels that did not revolve, but he refrained from comment, rightly suspecting that the comparison would not be appreciated.

They gathered up their briefcases and made their way down the commuter plane’s metal ladder onto the tarmac. A flight of steps took them inside the terminal to a small glassed waiting area, which was empty except for