Notes

"How can our nation bear another war so soon?" Lee groaned.
"It may not come to that, General Lee." Judah Benjamin's perennial smile
grew broader. "Having lost the war, Lincoln must show as much strength
now as he can. His 'final' word may seem much less so after the eighth
proximo. If he wins the election, he will no longer need to posture before
the voters, and so may be more inclined to see reason. And if he loses, he
may consent for fear the Democrats will offer us greater concessions come
March."
Lee stroked his beard as he considered that. After a few seconds, he bowed
in his seat to the Confederate Secretary of State. "Were my hat on, sir, I
would take it off to you. I see yet again that in matters political, I am but a
babe in the woods. Deception is an essential element of the art of war, yes,
but in your sphere it seems not only essential but predominant."
"You manage nicely, General, despite your disturbing tincture of honesty,"
Benjamin assured him. "The proposition the Federals are considering came
from you, after all."
"Honesty is not always a fatal defect in a politician," Alexander Stephens
added. "Sometimes it even becomes attractive, no doubt by virtue of its
novelty."
Page 184
The two veterans of the political arena chuckled together, Benjamin deeply
from his comfortable belly, Stephens with a few thin, dry rasps. The Vice
President's eyes flicked over Lee, who wondered if Stephens knew of
Jefferson Davis's plans for him and, if so, what he thought. Stephens might
well have wanted the Presidency for himself and resented Lee as a rival.
If he did, he gave no sign. All he said was, "As no further progress seems
likely before the United States hold their elections, we may as well recess
until those results are known. Unless one of you gentlemen objects, I shall
so communicate to the Federal commissioners."
Judah Benjamin nodded. So did Lee, saying, "By all means. Nor will I be
sorry to gain a further respite. After so long in the field, I find being in the
bosom of my family exceedingly pleasant. Indeed, if you will be kind
enough to excuse me, I shall head for my house this very moment." Again,
no one objected.
Nate Caudell hurried into the Nashville general store. Raeford Liles looked
up at the tinkle of the doorbell. "Oh, mornin', Nate. What can I do for you
today?"
"You can sell me a hat, by God." Caudell ran his hands through his hair and
beard. Already wet, they came away wetter. Rain drummed on the roof, the
door, the windows. "I lost my last one up in the Wilderness and I Ve been
without ever since."
"What d'you have in mind?" Liles pointed to a row of hats on hooks up near
the ceiling. "A straw, maybe? Or a silk stovepipe, to get duded up in?"
"No thanks to both of those, Mr. Liles. All I want is a plain black felt, same
as the one I lost. Say that one here, if it fits me, and you don't want half my
next year's pay for it." They haggled amiably for a while. Caudell ended up
buying the hat for thirteen dollars in banknotes. Confederate paper had gone
up now that the South was no longer at war. He knew he could have had the
hat for a silver dollar and a little change, but like most people he spent
specie only when he had to. He jammed the hat down low on his head,
braced himself to brave the rain again. "Don't go yet," Liles said. "Almost
forgot-I got a couple of letters for you here." He reached under the counter,
handed Caudell two envelopes. Then he cocked his head and grinned. "This
here Mollie Bean up in Rivington, you courtin' her? Pretty gal, I bet."
"She's a friend, Mr. Liles. How many times do I have to tell you?" Caudell's
cheeks heated. His flush must have been visible even in the dim store, for
Raeford Liles laughed at him. That only made him blush harder. To give
himself a moment in which to recover, he looked at the other envelope. It
was from Henry Pleasants, down in Wilmington. Caudell grinned when he
saw the engineer's name. Pleasants had indeed been snapped up by the
Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, at a salary a good many times the one
Caudell made for teaching school. He opened the letter, quickly read
through it. Sure enough, everything was still going well for Henry: "I
expect to escape my rented room here before long, and buy myself a proper
house." Caudell could not evade a pang of jealousy at that. He was living in
a rented room on Joyner Street, and had no prospect of escaping it.
Pleasants went on: "I do wonder that you Carolinians ever built a railroad at
all, or kept it running once built, with your dearth of men trained not only in
the mechanic arts but also in any sort of skilled labor. I Page 185
have written to several miners in Pennsylvania, some of whom I knew
before the war, others who1 served in my regiment, urging them to come
hither. I hope they take me up on this soon, while travel arrangements
between U.S.A. and C.S.A. remain pleasantly informal."
Caudell hoped so, too. As Pleasants said, the South needed every sort of
skilled workman. The engineer's last phrase brought him up short. Proud as
he was of belonging to an independent nation, he kept encountering
implications of that independence which hadn't occurred to him. One of
these days, and probably one day soon, he would need a passport if he
wanted to visit Pennsylvania. The last time he'd gone into that state, his
only passport had been a rifle.
He folded Pleasants's letter, returned it to its envelope, and put that
envelope and the one with Mollie Bean's letter in a trouser pocket. Raeford
Liles chuckled knowingly. "You ain't gonna read that there one where
anybody else's eyes might light on it, is you? Must be from your sweetheart,
I says." , "Oh, shut up, Mr. Liles," Caudell said, which only made the
storekeeper laugh harder. Giving up, Caudell went out onto muddy
Washington Street. He ran a block to Collins Street, almost fell as he turned
right, ran two more blocks and turned left onto Virginia, then right onto
Joyner. The widow Bissett's house was the third one on the left.
Barbara Bissett's husband, Jackson, had died in camp the winter before.
Now she rented out a room to bring in some money. Her brother and his
family shared the house with her and her boarder, so everything was
perfectly proper and above reproach, but Caudell would have had no
interest in her even had the two of them been alone there together. She was
large and plump and inclined to burst into crying fits for any reason or
none. He would have sympathized if he thought she was mourning her lost
Jackson, but she'd been like that before the war, too.
Once inside his own upstairs room, he took both letters from his pocket.
The rainwater had blurred Henry Pleasants's fine round script on the
envelope, but the paper inside remained dry. And Pleasants's letter had
shielded Mollie's from the wet. Her hand was anything but fine and round,
but this was the fifth or sixth letter she'd sent, and with each her writing
grew more legible.
He opened the envelope and drew out the single sheet of the letter;
Pleasants had gone on for three pages. "Dear Nate," he read, "I hope you is
wel sinse I last rote. Got this hear paper at the Notahilton, wich sels like it
was a ginral stor. But Rivington is a cawshun al ways, as you seen for your
ownself. I bin out to Benny Langs hous wich is one of the ones out in the
woods like we saw when you was there. He dident reckonize me on a count
of I was warin a dres in sted of my old youniform." Caudell clicked his
tongue between his teeth and made a sour face. Mollie didn't say why she'd
gone out to Benny Lang's place, but he could paint his own mental pictures.
He didn't care for them. Scowling still, he read on:
"The hous is poorly"-after a moment, he realized Mollie meant purely-
"remarkabul. Benny Lang he dont us lanterns or even gas lights. He has a
thing ware you pres a nob on the side of the wal and a light corns on up top.
I ast him how do you do that and he laffs and tels me eleksity or som thing
like that wat ever it may be. Wat ever it may be it is the best light for night
time you cood think of ever in yor born dayes. Its more remarkabul than the
AK47 if you ask me."
Caudell whistled softly. After those repeaters, desiccated meals, and gold
paid, dollar for dollar, for Confederate paper, he supposed he shouldn't have
been surprised by anything that came from Rivington, but a fine light that
went on here if you pushed a knob there! He wondered how electricity-if
that was what Mollie was trying to write-could do that; so far as he knew, it
had no use past the telegraph. Page 186
Her letter continued: "May be on a count of this light making night into day
wich sounds like Good Book talk and giving him time to read Benny Lang
he has hole cases fill of books. May be one of them tauks about eleksity. If I
get the chans I wil try to find out on a count of it sounds like a thing worth
noing. Yor true frend al ways, M. Bean, 47NC."
A reliable light by which to read at night... The notion roused pure, seagreen
envy in Caudell. Even on a gloomy, rainy day like today, reading in
front of a window was less than comfortable. Reading at night, with one's
head jammed down close to both book and a dim, flickering, smoky candle,
brought on eyestrain and headaches in short order. Though he had scant use
for Abraham Lincoln, the stories of how the U.S. President studied law by
firelight raised nothing but admiration in him. To sit down with a law book
in front of a fire night after night after night, after a hard day's work each
day, took special dedication-and perhaps special eyes as well. He wondered
how Lincoln could see at all these days. He also wondered whether Lincoln
could possibly be re-elected after leading the United States into a losing
war. With both Democrats and Republicans split, the North was growing
more parties than it knew what to do with. Caudell read newspaper reports
of their bickering with detached amusement, as if they were accounts of the
unsavory doings of an ex-wife's kin. Not for the first time, he thought the
Confederacy well free of such chaos. Where the North had too many
parties, the South had none. The war had been too all-consumingly
important to let such organized factions develop. He hoped they would not
emerge now that peace had taken the strain off his country.
Writing in bad light was no easier than reading, but he sat down on his bed
to compose replies to Pleasants and to Mollie Bean. He knew no better way
to spend a Saturday afternoon, and also knew that if he did not answer now,
he probably would not get another chance until next Saturday. He would be
at church tomorrow and teaching school from sunup to sundown the rest of
the week.
"I hope you are well," he wrote to Mollie. "I hope you are happy in
Rivington with all its wonders." In his mind's eye, he saw her on a bed with
Benny Lang, maybe under the sunlike glare of one of the lights she'd
described. He shook his head; even imagining anything so shameless
embarrassed him... and left him wishing he were there instead of the
Rivington man.
Thinking about the light helped him pull his pen back toward the
impersonal: "If you learn more about electricity and how it burns in the
lamps there, let me know. If the Rivington men will sell it outside their
town, it sounds better than whale oil or even gas. And tell me more about
these books you mentioned. Are they just print on paper like our own, or
are they filled with colored plates to go along with the words?" If even the
lights in a Rivington man's house were something special, what would his
books be like? Caudell chose the fanciest thing he could think of, and
smiled at the power of his own imagination. He went on, "Your letters keep
getting longer and more interesting. I hope to have many more of them, and
hope that you now and then remember the wide world outside Rivington."
He hesitated, then added,
"I also hope to see you again one day. Your friend always, Nathaniel N.
Caudell." He looked down at that last line, wondering whether he ought to
strike it out. Mollie might think he meant only that he wanted to have her
again. Or she might show up on the doorstep of the widow Bissett's house,
either in tart's finery or in her old Confederate uniform. He wondered which
would stir up the greater scandal. But in the end, he decided to leave the
sentence alone. It was true, and Mollie had sense enough not to read too
much or too little into it. He waited until the ink dried, then folded the letter
and put it in an envelope. He thought about going back to Raeford Liles's
store to post that letter and the one to Henry Pleasants, but only for a
moment. Monday would do well enough, if the rain had let up by then.
Lightning cracked. While it lasted, it lit his room with a hot, purple glare
and turned every shadow black Page 187
as pitch. He blinked, afterimages dancing inside his eyes, and wondered if
the eleksity lights were that bright. He hoped not. Too much light could be
as bad as too little. Thunder boomed overhead. He set the letters on top of
the chest of drawers by the wall opposite the bed, then went back and lay
down. The rain kept coming. Another bolt of lightning lit up everything in
harsh relief, then died. Thunder growled again. Children-not a few grown
men and women, too-were afraid of it. He'd had his own anxieties, until
Gettysburg and the Wilderness and the ring of forts around Washington.
After a few cannonadings, thunder was nothing to worry about.
He pulled his new hat down over his eyes so the lightning would not bother
him anymore. Inside of five minutes, he was snoring.
* * *
Boys and a few girls, their ages ranging from five up toward full adulthood,
crowded the benches of the Nashville, North Carolina, schoolhouse. The
building, on Alston Street several blocks south of Washington, was near the
edge of town and hardly deserved to be called a schoolhouse at allschoolshed
would have been a better word for it. The walls were timber, the
roof leaked-though the rain was done, wet, muddy spots remained on the
floor as reminders of its recent appearance. "Get away from there, Rufus!"
Caudell shouted at a small boy who was about to jump in one of the wet
places. Rufus sulkily sat back on his bench. Sighing, Caudell stood between
two of his older students, who had a geometry problem chalked on their
slates. "If these two angles are equal, the triangles have to be congruent,"
one said.
"Are the angles equal?" Caudell asked. The youth nodded. "How do you
know?"
"Because they're-what's the name for them? Vertical angles, that's what they
are."
"That's right," Caudell said approvingly. "So you see mat-" Before he could
point out what the budding Euclid was supposed to see, a girl gave a
piercing shriek. Bored with sitting on his bench, Rufus had yanked her
braids. Caudell hurried over. He habitually carried a long, thin stick; he'd
been using it to point to the figures in the geometry lesson. Now he
whacked Rufus on the wrist with it. Rufus howled. He probably made more
noise than the girt whose hair he'd pulled, but it was noise of a sort the
students were used to ignoring.
Without breaking stride, Caudell went back and finished the interrupted
lesson. Then he walked over to three or four nine-year-olds. "You have your
spelling words all written down?" he asked. "Take out your Old Blue Backs
and we'll find out how you did." The children opened their Webster's
Elementary Spellers, checked the scrawls on their slates against the right
answers. "Write the proper spelling of each word you missed ten times,"
Caudell said; that would keep the nine-year-olds busy while he taught
arithmetic to their older brothers and sisters. He also thought fleetingly that
Mollie Bean could have done with some more work in the Elementary
Speller.
From arithmetic, he went on to geography and history, both of which came
from the North Carolina Reader of Calvin H. Wiley, a former state school
superintendent. Had everyone in the state been as heroic and virtuous as
Wiley made its people out to be, North Carolina would have been the
earthly paradise.
The discrepancy between text and real world did not bother Caudell; school
books were supposed to inculcate virtue in their readers.
Page 188
He went over to his youngest students, said, "Let me hear the alphabet
again." The familiar chant rang out: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G-"
"Mr. Caudell, I got to pee," Rufus interrupted.
"Go on outside," Caudell said, sighing again. "You come back quick now,
mind, or I'll give you another taste of the switch." Rufus left nastily. Caudell
knew the odds of his return were less than even money. And by tomorrow
morning, he would have forgotten all about being told to come back. Well,
that was what the switch was for: to exercise his memory until it could
carry the load for itself. For a wonder, Rufus did return. For a bigger
wonder, he recited the whole alphabet without a miss. Knowing he wasn't
likely to get a bigger surprise that day, Caudell announced a dinner break.
Some children ate where they sat; others-though not as many as in springwent
out to sit on the grass. The youths to whom he'd taught geometry came
up to him while he was eating his sowbelly and hoecakes.
"Tell us more about how you all got into Washington City, Mr. Caudell,"
one of them said. The down was beginning to darken on their cheeks and
upper lips. They wondered what they'd missed by staying home from the
war. Had it gone on another year or two, they would have found out.
Having seen the elephant, Caudell would willingly have traded what he
knew for ignorance.
"Jesse, William, it was dark and it was dirty and everybody was firing as
fast as he could, us and the Yankees both," he said. "Finally we fought our
way through their works and then into the city. I tell you, pieces of it I don't
remember to this day. You're just doing things in a fight; you don't have
time to think about them."
The two boys stared at him in admiration. The smaller children listened too,
some of them trying not very well to pretend they weren't doing any such
thing. "But you weren't afraid, were you, Mr. Caudell?" Jesse asked,
obviously confident of the answer. "They made you first sergeant, so they
must've known you'd never be afraid."
One of the reasons Caudell had been made first sergeant was that the man in
that position did much of his company's record-keeping and so needed to
have neat handwriting. He wondered what Jesse and William would say to
that. Their idea of war did not include such mundane details. He answered,
"Anybody who isn't scared when people shoot at him, well, he's a fool, if
you ask me." The youths laughed, as if he'd said something funny. They
thought he was being modest. He knew he wasn't. As with Raeford Liles, he
faced a chasm of incomprehension he could not bridge. He finished his last
hoecake, wiped his hands on his pants, went out behind a tree himself, then
walked back into the schoolroom and resumed lessons.
He sometimes thought that, if he ever quit teaching, he could join a circus
as a juggler. With a roomful of children of all different ages, he needed to
keep busy the ones he wasn't actually instructing at any given moment.
When the eight-year-olds were doing addition in Davies' Primary
Arithmetic, the twelve-year-olds were parsing sentences from Bullion's
English Grammar. Meanwhile, Jesse and William practiced their elocution,
William putting fire into Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me
death," Jesse giving William Yancey's tribute to Jefferson Davis on Davis's
becoming provisional president at Montgomery less than four years before:
"The man and the hour have met," William declared loudly. Some of the
younger children clapped.