Chapter 37

We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of the Confederacy put together, adopt any course that will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a Navy.

– Commander Matthew F. Maury, CSN

A cold front rolled through Yazoo City, foul weather out of the north.

Robley Paine pulled the collar of his heavy coat up around his face, felt the scraggly growth of ill-tended beard scrape on the cloth. He squinted into the wind, looked out across the water.

Yazoo City. The Yazoo River was tied up at one of the docks that jutted out from the trampled riverfront, a few miles west of the town. At the base of a series of low hills covered with a tangle of scrubby trees, coarse grass, the place where businesses that catered to the river traffic clustered. A few dilapidated machine shops, some carpenters, blacksmiths, boiler shops, they gave service to the great fleet of vessels which, in the days before the birth of the Anaconda, would come upriver to load cotton from Yazoo City’s wharfs.

Paine looked upriver. He could see part of the town itself from where he stood on the Yazoo River’s hurricane deck, the brick buildings and perfectly parallel roads, the bare trees like skeletal hands. The river looked as if it came to an abrupt stop right at the town’s waterfront. In fact it made a hard turn left at Yazoo City, a bend of nearly 170 degrees, as if the river had been rushing right for the town and had deflected off the waterfront, bounced back in the direction from which it came.

It was a dead time. February in Yazoo County had never been a bustle.

Too cold for Southern blood to do much, nothing to be done in the cotton fields, no bales piling up on the wharf for transport to the cotton mills of the North, and England.

It was even more dead now. Most of Yazoo County’s young men were off to war, commerce quashed by the blockade.

The Anaconda was circling, Robley could feel it, as if it was breathing down his neck. New Orleans would be next. Farragut was in command of

the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron. He had big steam frigates. He had mortar scows.

The forts to the north, Fort Henry, now Fort Donelson, on the Tennessee River, fallen to Grant. The Union gunboats would push down the Mississippi River, and Farragut would hit New Orleans, and the head and the tail of the serpent would move toward one another, down the Father of Waters.

Robley Paine shook his head. Can’t think on that, can’t think on that…

He let his mind wander down that route and it would dead-end in a brilliant red rage. The Anaconda closing in, and he was sitting on a river gunboat-just the thing that the Confederates needed to hold the snake off-and he could get no help in running the thing. Letter after letter with no response, gold sent out with an utter lack of discretion, but neither patriotism nor greed seemed to move anyone to help him in his quest.

He climbed down from the hurricane deck, down to the side deck and down the brow to the dock. It was a Tuesday morning, but there seemed to be no one around. He unhitched his horse and led it over to a step from which he could mount. His old wound ached too much now to allow him to put a foot in the stirrup and swing himself up.

He rode slowly into town, and as he approached he began to see people, who waved to him, bid him good day. Yazoo City was not the paradise he had dreamed of; there were no mechanics and carpenters and engineers and sailors who swarmed to help him, to fight the Yankee. But neither was it New Orleans, den of iniquity. He was known here. Respected. The people of Yazoo City thought he was mad-he could see that, he was not delusional-but still they treated him with the deference and respect that the name Paine warranted in that county.

He rode down the main street, stopped at the post office, and slid off his horse. With teeth clenched against the pain he climbed the granite steps, pushed the door open.

“Mr. Paine, good day,” the postmaster called out.

The first time Robley had shown up there, six weeks before, he had seen the fear in the man’s eyes. Robley seemed to inspire fear these days, but he did not care.

The postmaster told him then, coughing, hemming, stammering, that they had run out of room in the box, that he had sent all of the Paines’ mail down to Paine Plantation.

Robley did not care about that. That was before he began writing to Secretary Mallory, before he had begun shipping gold for railroad iron and guns and shells, before his real work had commenced. That mail was the detritus of the dead, something that had relevance once, when he was alive, but it meant nothing now, like Katherine’s dresses, which, he imagined, still hung in her wardrobe.

He had not returned to Paine Plantation to retrieve the mail, had not gone back to that place at all. He did not think he could bear it. He had steamed past, on his way to Yazoo City, looked at the hideous gargoyle he had made of the old oak, wondered what he had been thinking. Had he thought that was enough? Painting a tree? He did not understand then, as he did now, the sacrifice that needed to be made.

“I’ve got a letter for you, Mr. Paine,” the postmaster said. It took a moment for the words to register. A letter? Paine had been coming in every other day for a month and a half, and nothing had arrived for him. He had come to expect that, and the postmaster’s words caught him by surprise.

The postmaster held the letter out and Robley took it, stepped away, staring at the envelope. It was addressed to Captain Robley Paine, Yazoo City. In the upper left hand corner, preprinted, it read “Department of the Navy, Richmond, Virginia, Confederate States of America.”

For a long moment Robley just stared until his hands were trembling too much for him to read the return address any longer. He tore at the envelope, dropped it, retrieved it, tore it open. He pulled the letter out and unfolded it.

Dear Captain Paine:

I beg you to forgive my long delay in replying to yours of January 16th, but I am certain you can appreciate that matters of the service have me much diverted and in many different directions.

Your offer of the ironclad gunboat Yazoo River is a generous and patriotic one, and much in keeping with the grand spirit of the South and the magnanimous spirit of her people. It is a particularly timely offer, as it has become clear to me, by recent events, particularly those on the Tennessee River, that ironclad gunboats will be the deciding factor to winning the war on the Western Rivers, which, in turn, will be integral to winning the war overall.

On behalf of the Confederate States Navy I enthusiastically accept your offer to make the Yazoo River a commissioned vessel of the Confederate

States Navy, and your offer to act as her pilot, as our experience has shown that skilled pilots are very difficult to come by.

As to the manning of the Yazoo River, I am currently reviewing the names and qualifications of those men currently available, but I am in no doubt that the kind of men you seek will be found and transferred to the Yazoo River as expediently as possible.

Once again, allow me to commend you on your patriotism and selflessness as displayed by this act. I remain,

Your humble and obedient servant,

S. R. Mallory

Secretary of the Navy, Richmond

Robley read the letter, fast. He was breathing shallowly. He forced himself to breathe normally, read it again, then read it again. Thoughts crowded his head, fought for attention, the emotions swirled like smoke.

Confederate States Naval Vessel Yazoo River…The words sounded like music in his head. At last, at last…

Then the darker thoughts clawed their way up. He had exaggerated some in his description of the vessel. He had called her an ironclad. And if he had his way, so she would be. He had written, sent orders, money, to iron foundries throughout the South, had written follow-up letters, had his attorneys write follow-up letters. So far, nothing. Not a scrap of iron had arrived. The Yazoo River was still a cotton-clad.

He had overstated his own qualifications as well. Mallory called him

“Captain.” Naturally, the Secretary would assume an experienced river pilot would merit that title. Not a big problem-he could get around that one. Take a real pilot at gunpoint if he had to, so long as he was aboard when the CSS

Yazoo River got underway.

He read the letter again. He had to get back to his office in the Yazoo River’s wheelhouse. He had to write follow-up letters, find out where his gunboat iron was.

Jonathan Paine pushed open the back door of Miss Sally Tompkins’s house, clomped down the back steps. He held a big basket crammed full of filthy sheets and bloody bandages. The wind plucked at the red-and-white strips, pulled them out, set them flapping like banners. Jonathan turned a

shoulder into the wind, hurried across the yard, along the path worn down to dirt and fringed with brown grass.

Bobby stood at a cauldron hanging from a tripod over a blazing fire. He agitated the contents with a big stick, like one of Shakespeare’s witches.

Othello plays in Macbeth, Paine thought, and the thought made him smile. He stepped quickly across the yard. He was moving well with his prosthetic leg now, walking more like a man with a hurt leg than a man with no leg at all. The limp reminded him of his father. Of the three boys, he had always favored his father’s looks the most. Now the effect was even greater.

He moved within the radius of the fire, caught what warmth he could.

He and Bobby dumped the bloody bandages into the water and Bobby began stirring again.

For some time they just stood, enjoyed the warmth of the fire and the fresh air outside the stuffiness of the hospital, and said nothing. They were perfectly comfortable in one another’s company, could enjoy silent companionship. Jonathan wondered if this could have happened anyplace outside a hospital, where his wound and Bobby’s nursing had put black man and white on something like even ground.

“Been two months now,” Bobby said at last, never taking his eyes from the boiling water. A few itinerant flakes of snow began to whip around the yard.

“Month and a half. Since the last one.”

They were talking about letters home. Jonathan had written three, had been waiting for a reply. When he was healed enough that he could no longer stay on at the hospital as a patient, he stayed on as a helper, assisting Bobby in changing dressings, washing bandages, wrapping the dead. Not so many wounded now, mostly dysentery, ague, camp fever. What wounds there were were more often from accidents than the enemy. He nursed and he waited. He heard no word from his father.

“That like you daddy?” Bobby asked, looking up at last. “He the kind would jest not write?”

Jonathan shook his head. “No. No, that is not like him at all.”

Bobby nodded and stirred.

“Could be the mail isn’t getting through,” Jonathan said. “I can’t imagine things are running too well, as far as mail.”

“Could be. ’Course, ya sent three letters.”

Jonathan nodded. He did not believe that all three letters had failed to arrive. He could not imagine why his father had not written back.

“I have to go back,” Jonathan said at last. “I can’t wait to hear. I just have to go.”

He had not said that out loud before, because it frightened him. His world was closed down to Miss Tompkins’s hospital. The one time he left it had nearly killed him-he had been another two weeks in bed. Now the very thought of crossing the line of the white picket fence was terrifying.

He had never said it out loud, because doing so was like an announcement, a commitment, and he had not been ready.

Bobby nodded his head, and they were silent for a moment. “Yassuh.

You gots ta go. An if ya likes, well, I’ll go wid ya.”

Jonathan smiled. “That’s right kind of you, Bobby. But it ain’t like you can just up and leave.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Well…well, hell, Bobby, you belong to Miss Tompkins, for starters.”

“No I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“No suh. I’s a free man.”

“You are? How come you never told me?”

“How come you jest reckoned I’s a slave?”

Jonathan smiled, shook his head. He had just assumed. He did not know why.

John Scofield sat in his office, elbow on his desk, chin in hand. He stared out the big window that looked out over the outer office. The window made the office seem more a fishbowl than private work space.

Cold air blew in from the outside window, which was opened a crack.

Late February in Atlanta, Georgia. Generally not so cold, but a norther was blowing through, and temperatures plummeted.

He could hear conversation drifting up from the yard below, heated conversation, the hottest thing going in Atlanta. Generally, when the Scofield and Markham’s Gate City rolling mill was in full production, when the iron was pouring and the rolling mills rolling it out, when plate and bar and railroad iron was being loaded onto flatbeds in the siding, he would never have been able to hear something so quiet as a conversation three stories down. Not even a shouted conversation, as this one was.

But he could hear it now, because nothing was happening, no work being done. Prices were going up all over the Confederacy. Skilled men such as ironworkers were in great demand, and they knew it. The fact that their jobs kept them out of the army did not seem to impress them any more. They wanted higher wages, and just as Scofield came to expect from their ilk, they were not subtle about it.

He shook his head. He sighed. He could not make out all of the words, but he caught a few, mostly damns and y’all gonna be surprised when we…

and you sons of bitches… It did not sound as if it was going well.

The conversation below stopped abruptly. Scofield swiveled around, looked at the door beyond the empty outer office, wondered who would come through. He waited. Finally it opened. Frank Ouellette, haggard, defeated, came in, closed the door behind him with more force than necessary.

He walked into Scofield’s office without knocking. He flopped down in a chair. Scofield thought of the Yankees retreating after Manassas. They must have looked like old Frank.

“Well?” Scofield asked.

“They ain’t budging. Another ten cents a day, and they ain’t too happy with Confederate scrip no more.”

Scofield shook his head. The war was less than a year old. If the Confederacy lost, he wondered if it would be due to the Yankees’ fighting prowess or the greed of the Southern mechanics and laborers.

“I don’t know as we can do that…” Scofield said.

Ouellette shrugged. “I told ’em. They think you and Markham, and me, we live like damned kings, think we making money hand over fist here.”

The two men were silent for a moment, and then Scofield felt the first stirring of an idea. “I wonder if we might give them some little token, something that will inspire them to get back to work…”

“Such as?”

“Everyone’s worried about this here Confederate scrip. How’s about if we pay them-even give ’em a bonus-in specie. Gold. Ain’t a thing satisfies a greedy man like real gold.”

“Sure, but…” Ouellette began, paused, saw where Scofield was heading. “That fellow, wrote last month…”

“Exactly. Never did count what he sent, but I’m certain they’s enough to go around, a couple of times. That should get them all fired up for work.”

Ouellette nodded. It had been something of a shock, the day the package arrived. Gold in coins and an order for iron, preferably rolled out into gunboat iron, drilled for six bolts. Some rich lunatic building himself an ironclad.

They marveled, shook their heads, put the gold in the safe, set the order aside. The Confederate Army and Navy were desperate for milled iron.

There was no time to fulfill an order for some civilian with big dreams in the naval line. Perhaps in a year or so, but not now.

“You never had any intention of filling that fella’s order,” Ouellette pointed out. “You just gonna hand out his gold and let him flap in the wind?”

“No, no…I can’t do that. Wish I could, but I can’t.” Scofield rummaged through a pile of papers in a basket on his desk, pulled out a letter from near the bottom of the heap. “We’ll start handing out gold to our malcontent workers there, and if that induces them to get back to work, then I reckon this…Robley Paine…gets the gunboat iron he’s asking for.”

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