MacPherson's Lament

But where were Stonewall’s trains now, in their hour of need?

“Where are the trains?” echoed a steam engineer from the Fredericksburg. “Why, I reckon the government’s took ’em when they lit out! Hustled away from here yesterday like rats down an anchor chain, and left the rest of us high and dry to face the fire and the Federals.”

“He’s right!” called out an approaching officer, just back from inspecting the contents of the railroad yard. “There’s nothing out there now but a heap of spare parts. And there’s one small locomotive, but there’s no fire in her, and no railroad men to run her.”

“They’ve left us a locomotive?” roared the steam engineer. “Why, who needs railroad men if they’ve left us a working engine? I reckon I can run her. Haven’t I kept the Fredericksburg afloat and sailing all these months? A steam engine is a steam engine, even on land. I say we fire up the damned thing, attach these railroad cars, and make off with it. Who’s with me?”

“But what’ll we use for fuel?” someone called out. “There’s none of that!”

The steam engineer looked around. “I don’t reckon the railroad will be needing that there picket fence,” he roared. “I say hack her down and throw her in the furnace.”

The pall of smoke overhead and the rumble of distant cannons left very little room for argument among the stranded sailors. Anything was better than staying in Richmond. Any gamble was worth taking. As the men surged forward to follow the ship’s engineer, they were beset on all sides by the frightened townspeople, begging not to be left behind, but Admiral Semmes ordered them all turned out of the railroad cars.

“It’s better for unarmed civilians to fall into the hands of the enemy than for armed soldiers to be left to face them,” the admiral told them.

“If our engine will bear the load, we’ll takeall of you that will fit aboard,” an officer promised a sobbing woman. “Once our troops are loaded.”

The other commanders were shouting, “Draw the cars together! Couple the cars!”

Gabriel Hawks wondered how long it would take a gang of sailors to assemble a train, and whether it would run if they did succeed in coupling the cars together. Would they be better off slipping away from the station one by one and trying to make it home? Surely the duration of the war could be counted in days. And it was planting time up home in Giles County. It might take him two weeks to walk it, but once he was west of Richmond, he was almost assured of a safe journey back to the mountains. He had been wounded. He had been both a soldier and a sailor. Surely, Gabe thought, he had done all that any government could ask of a man not yet twenty years old. But he looked at the anxious faces of the women, clutching their crying children and regarding the gaggle of sailors with such faith in their own deliverance. He looked at the gaunt cripples from the hospital, hobbling along to help assemble the train. Gabriel cursed himself for a fool, but he followed the throng down to the railroad yard. He knew he couldn’t face his family if he ran out on these people now. Besides, his old commander Stonewall was dead; Jeb Stuart was dead; A. P. Hill was dead. Even the ironclad Virginia was dead. Who was he to outlive the war?

Tuesday, probably

Dear Bill,

What do you mean, you’re drawing up lists of property and assets? Are you out of your mind? Our baby pictures! The green leather chair in the den that we used to fight each other over. How can you hold these possessions hostage in some emotional chess game?

Shouldn’t you be trying to talk Mother and Daddy into getting counseling, for heaven’s sake? They’ve been married forever, you know. You can’t just help them to throw all that away. And yet, from what I’m hearing, you’re docilely filling out your little legal forms and making motions as if these were two total strangers.

Don’t you care? Surely you’re not so hard up for business that you’re going through with this just to keep yourself working! How much are you charging Mother for this, anyhow? And isn’t Daddy furious? He did, after all, pay to put you through law school, only to find you used against him in court as a weapon, like an ungrateful trained shark.

None of this makes any sense. But I cannot come over right now. Not that I’m doing all that well with my job interviews. I’m so worried about the family soap opera that I can barely concentrate on the questions. I tried talking about this with Cameron’s mother, but she professes to know nothing of such matters. “Fortunately I was widowed,” she said. Whatever that means.

Has there ever been a divorce in the family before? I think not! A murderer, yes, but never a divorce.

Please try to be more forthcoming in your future correspondence. It is bad enough to be stuck over here without feeling that things are being kept from me as well.

As well as can be expected,

Elizabeth

“ He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

– JULIA WARD HOWE,

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

CHAPTER 3

ON MONDAY MORNING Bill stumbled into the office well after nine o’clock, looking like the plaintiff in a hit- and-run case. Edith, ensconced at her receptionist’s desk with the morning crossword, studied him silently as he tottered in the doorway.

“You ought to reconsider ambulance chasing,” she remarked. “You look like you could stand to catch one.” Edith’s awe of attorneys had dwindled steadily in the days since she had been hired, a result of close proximity to actual lawyers, who were markedly less omnipotent than she had hitherto supposed. In fact, she would have bet money that she could have beaten both of them in Trivial Pursuit. So much for their fancy university educations.

“I just come to the office to rest,” groaned Bill. “My weekend was a nightmare. Have we got any aspirin?”

“Hangover?” asked Edith, looking him over with a practiced eye. Her daddy had been a great one for the bottle and she knew the signs. In Bill’s case, though, they seemed to be absent.

“No, but it’s only a matter of time,” the sufferer assured her. “I spent the weekend in my parents’ war zone. Besides, I have a sore back and every muscle in my leg feels like a stretched rubber band. I was helping my dad move the rest of his things out. Same as last weekend. And I think I carried all the heavy stuff.”

“Still no chance of a reconciliation?”

“Not on my account. The only thing they seem to agree on is my utter uselessness. Dad won’t confide in me because I’m Mother’s attorney, and Mother seems convinced that men are in some worldwide conspiracy against women.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed it myself,” said Edith with a trace of a smile.

“So while I wanted to spend the weekend calming them down and infusing some reason into the situation, they insisted on spending two days bickering over the furniture. Mother refused to let Dad take a purple and gold tea service that his great-aunt Elinor left them. Mother says she ought to have it because she drinks tea and Dad doesn’t.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“No, it doesn’t. In the twenty-odd years that they’ve owned that tea set, they have never used it, and I know for a fact that Mother hates it. She refuses to admit that now, of course. And I thought we were going to have to call in the U.N. to decide who got the TV with the remote control. I offered to go out and