Chapter 47

April 27, 1862- New Orleans gone-and with it the Confederacy. Are we not cut in two? The Mississippi ruins us if lost.

– Mary Boykin Chesnut

Bowater crawled out of the blackness, was dragged out of the blackness, a voice pulling him up by the weight of its authority. Bowater realized, as he kicked toward the surface, that the voice was Hieronymus Taylor’s.

His eyes fluttered open. Taylor was bending over him, the light of a fire flickering off his stained, soaked shirt, his unshaved face, his plastered hair.

“Come on, Cap’n, wake up now!” Taylor was saying. A command.

Bowater kept his eyes open.

He sat up on an elbow. His head was pounding. He looked around. The fire in the casement was not the blaze it had been, but it was not extinguished either. “How long have I…”

“Not above five minutes.” It was Tanner who spoke now. Bowater saw him standing behind Taylor.

Why are they here? Bowater shook his head, to clear it, to indicate he did not understand.

“Last shell took out the starboard paddle wheel. We dead in the water, Cap’n,” Taylor said.

Bowater struggled to his feet and Taylor helped him and together they climbed up the few steps to the pilothouse. The port side of the pilothouse roof was bent up and back, like a tin can wrenched open. Risley was lying on the deck, wide-eyed and dead. The helmsman was gone, Bowater did not know where. They did not need a helmsman anymore.

He looked to starboard, where the roof had once obscured his view. The round hump of the iron-encased wheelbox was ruined. Where it had stood in its elegant arc there was now a gaping hole with shards of iron and wood jutting out at every angle, the wrecked bits of the paddle wheel, buckets and arms and shaft, tucked inside what was left of the box.

They were adrift, sweeping downriver on the current. Yankee gunboats were passing them by, but the Yazoo River was not firing at them, and they were not wasting powder on an obviously dead ship.

Bowater looked aft. The fight was upriver of them now. He could see the smoke, like a fog bank seen from a distance, the glow of fire rafts, gunfire, the blazing defiance of the forts, and the Union fleet steamed past, as if all the preparations the Confederacy had mounted to defend their greatest seaport were no more than an annoyance, a show with lights and smoke.

He watched for a moment, two, looked at the battle the way he would look at a grand canvas depicting some long-ago sea fight, the Battle of the Saints, or Trafalgar or some such. Because that was what the Battle of New Orleans was to him now. History. He was no longer a part of it, any more than he was a part of the fight against Napoleon’s tyranny.

He turned to Taylor. “No engines?”

Taylor shook his head. “Concussion shattered the main steam pipe, port side. No steam, no fire pump.”

Bowater nodded. They could not maneuver, they could not fight the fire in the casement. Half the crew were dead or wounded. It was over. The Yazoo River was a shooting star which had arced across the dark river in a blaze of violence, burned out on her way to earth.

So how do we get off of her? Bowater wondered. No power…

And yet he was hearing a steam engine, and not so very far off. He turned and tried to look down the port side, but his view was obscured by the twisted metal of the pilothouse roof. He put his hands on the top of the casement, hoisted himself up so he could look around the edge of the wreckage. To his surprise he saw a tug, very like the Abigail Wilson, tied alongside, all the way aft. A voice, sounding very like Theodore Wilson, called, “Ahoy, the Yazoo River! Do you need to abandon ship?”

On Bowater’s orders they searched the casement, located the wounded, made certain the dead men were truly dead. The Yazoo River would serve as a funeral pyre for them, they would go down to their graves with the Confederate flag flying proud on the ensign staff.

Back on the fantail, Bowater was the last to step out of the sweltering, smoke-filled, burning casement. The air was cool and sweet in contrast, the sounds sharper. Someone was holding a lantern, the light falling on the miserable remnants of his command.

On the starboard side, Robley Paine lay on the deck, held in a man’s arms. Bowater stepped over, knelt beside him.

“Robley? Robley?” Paine’s head lolled over. Blood was running out of his mouth, a thin, dark line down his chin. He smiled a weak smile.

“Captain Bowater…” he said.

“We’re going to get you off,” Bowater said, but Paine shook his head and the man holding him said, “He’s bleeding bad…” He choked the words out, was on the edge of sobbing, and the emotion surprised Bowater. He had not believed anyone cared so much for mad Robley Paine. And then he realized he did not know this man.

He looked up sharp, into the face of a young man, but not so young. The face of a veteran, young eyes grown quickly old. He saw a patched army shell jacket, a battered kepi. Bowater squinted.

“I’m Jonathan Paine. I’m his son.”

Behind Jonathan Paine, a young black man was squatting, looking down at the old man as well. The situation was so odd, requiring so many questions, Bowater did not bother. He turned back to Paine.

Robley lifted a long, blackened hand, the fingers like the thin branches of a winter tree, and Bowater took it, gentle. “I am the lucky one, Captain…” he said, his voice so low Bowater had to lean down to hear over the distant artillery fire. “I have got everything I wanted, and merciful God has brought one of my boys back. Despite all my sins, he has brought my boy back…” He coughed, but he was too weak to cough with authority. “I am the lucky one. I can rest now. But you, Captain, you must fight on and on…”

Bowater gave his hand a little squeeze. “Godspeed, Robley Paine,” he whispered. He eased the man’s hand to the deck, stood, gave him his last minutes alone with his son.

One by one the men clambered over the tug’s low bulwark and spread out along the deck, helping their shipmates over. They moved fast, every man aboard aware of the fire creeping toward the powder magazine. As far as Bowater could tell there was no more than half of the original crew left, perhaps less. He looked for Babcock but did not see him. The old man would go down with the ship.

When the fantail was cleared of healthy men, they began to pass the wounded over, some able to help themselves a bit, some who seemed near death, who no doubt would be dead soon.

Last of all they passed Robley Paine over to the tug, and when he was over the young black man followed, and then Jonathan. Bowater noticed

how very much he looked like his father. He limped as well, as had Robley, and needed a hand getting across to the tug.

And then it was Samuel Bowater, Hieronymus Taylor, Ruffin Tanner.

“Guess I don’t get my headstone,” Taylor said.

“Battle ain’t over yet,” Tanner said.

“War is not over yet,” Bowater said. Together they grabbed on to the tug’s bulwark, hoisted themselves over, as the men crowding the side deck made room for them. Fore and aft the lines binding them to the Yazoo River were let go. The Abigail Wilson turned hard, peeling away from the ironclad, her propeller digging in.

Bowater climbed up into the wheelhouse. Theodore Wilson was there, grim-faced. He seemed to have none of the boy-playing-at-soldiers quality Bowater had associated with him.

“Captain Bowater,” Wilson said.

“Captain Wilson,” Bowater said without irony.

“Don’t rightly know where to go. Can’t go upriver, unless we care to be blown out of the water.”

“Battle’s over. No sense in killing these men. You’ve done what you could.” They were silent for a moment as the tug continued her aimless course downriver. “Have to imagine there’s still a blockade at the Head of the Passes. I don’t imagine we’ll make it to sea,” Bowater continued.

Theodore Wilson nodded, and then the wheelhouse was lit up with the brilliant orange light of the Yazoo River exploding, followed by the deep rolling boom of the blast, as thunder follows lightning, and the concussion of the shock wave, the sudden heat that engulfed them.

Wilson, Bowater, the pilot, all the men in the wheelhouse spun around, looked upriver, beyond the tug’s starboard quarter. A great column of flame was rising up from the ironclad, like Moses’s pillar of fire shining forth in the night. The sound kept coming and coming. The great mountain of flame seemed like a solid thing as it hung there in the air.

The Abigail Wilson began to pitch and roll, and debris began to rain down around her, splashing in the water, on occasion hitting the deck or the boat deck, flaming bits that were stamped out by the crowds of men on board.

The column of flame collapsed, fell back down onto the shattered remains of the Yazoo River and burned there, a blazing patch of fire on the otherwise dark river. The funeral pyre of those brave men, the end of a ship

for which so many had struggled, died, and still would die. Those men, that ship, they had fought their lives out, and now it was up to history to decide where in the whole story that struggle fitted.

Bowater watched the dying ship. He guessed that the casement had contained the blast, had funneled the shock wave straight up. That must have been the case, because, incredibly, in the light of the burning vessel, he could see the Confederate flag, still run up the ensign staff, still intact, still waving in the land breeze filling in with the coming dawn.

They steamed downriver to a mile or so above Pilot Town, but with the coming light they could see the Federal ships getting up steam, could see the Stars and Stripes waving over the town, so they turned and steamed upriver again. They tied up at a half-forgotten landing fifteen miles south of Fort Jackson. They buried their dead.

Bowater suggested they burn the Abigail Wilson, but Wilson hesitated, demurred, found reasons why that was not the best plan. In the end they left her tied up, hoofed it down the dirt road from the landing to the road running north. They carried the wounded on stretchers improvised from material aboard the tug. They found transportation among the growing convoy of wagons fleeing the coming bluebellies.

In New Orleans they were swept up in the general exodus, the panicked retreat from the city. The wounded were brought to hospital. Half of the remaining men melted away. But Bowater had saved enough money from his cabin, and Wilson had funds enough, and enough gold was found in Robley Paine’s coat pocket, to secure transportation for the rest of them.

Samuel Bowater led his men north to Yazoo City. He had no other place to go.

And so it was, on a grim 1st of May, 1862, that Samuel Bowater and Hieronymus Taylor and Ruffin Tanner found themselves seated on an old oak log, staring out over the remains of what had once been their shipyard, out at the slow-moving Yazoo River. Telegrams had been dispatched to Mallory, reports, lists of dead, wounded, missing. They waited on orders.

Taylor sparked a cigar to life. Tanner took a long pull from a bottle of whiskey, which he then handed to Taylor, who drank and then handed it to Bowater. Bowater drank, returned to his thoughts of Wendy, handed the bottle back to Tanner.

New Orleans was lost. The Confederate Army had been beaten at Pittsburg Landing, and the Yankees were pushing downriver, closing the gap between the head and tail of the snake. The Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf were blockaded. McClellan was on the Yorktown Peninsula with more than 120,000 men and marching for Richmond. Soon the Gosport naval yard would have to be abandoned. Banks was chasing Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley with crushing superiority in numbers. McDowell threatened Fredericksburg and Richmond.

The elation that had followed Manassas was gone. In one year the swaggering confidence of the men who had fired on Fort Sumter had been changed to something else. Acceptance of war, a long war. Resignation.

Despondency, in some cases.

But not defeat. Never defeat. The fire of resistance burned on, and it was not close to burning itself out.

The bottle came around again. Bowater took a pull, handed it back to Tanner. “Know what Robley Paine said to me? There when we were abandoning the ship?”

The others murmured no.

“He said he was the lucky one. Said he was getting what he wanted. The rest of us, we would have to keep fighting, fight on and on.”

The three men were silent.

“That’s what he said,” said Samuel.

Taylor took the bottle. Lifted it high. “Here’s to Robley Paine.” He took a drink, handed it to Bowater.

Bowater lifted the bottle. “Here’s to getting what you want.” He drank, passed it back to Tanner.

Ruffin Tanner lifted the bottle, looked at the reflection of the abandoned shipyard in the glass and dark liquid. “Here’s to fighting,” he said. “Here’s to fighting, on and on.”

Wendy Atkins brushed the tears away, gulped a deep breath. Happiness, relief, sadness, loneliness were all mixed together. She sat on the edge of her iron bed, read the letter again.

Postmarked Yazoo City. May 1st. A brief sketch of the Battle of New Orleans, assurance that he, Samuel Bowater, was safe, had come through with just the usual bruises and scrapes. But they had lost, the Union fleet

had brushed them aside. They would make a stand elsewhere, Samuel said.

Once he received orders.

She felt the tears come again, and now they were all sadness, now that his survival was assured, and the relief that came with that passed into memory. She cried because she read the profound sadness in the words. She cried because the loneliness was palpable and because she knew about loneliness, could take it herself, but could not endure the thought of Samuel, her Samuel, having to suffer so.

Wendy Atkins knew about loneliness. She had known about it all her life. But when Samuel Bowater left for Mississippi, she learned that there was a whole other level of which she had not been aware, like discovering a room in a house which you had not suspected was there.

She put the letter down, took a deep breath. Looked around the little carriage house, now crammed with a year’s accumulations. She looked down at the bed and remembered their night together.

Wendy stood and knelt by the bed, ran her hands underneath. At last they fell on what she was looking for and she pulled it out; an oversize carpet bag, empty now. She set it on the bed, opened it, considered what to pack.

It was just growing light when Jonathan Paine rose, sat up in the bed he had occupied since the time he had been taken from the family cradle, deemed old enough for a real bed. He looked around the familiar room. It was all gray-and-blue shadows in the weak light, but he did not need any light at all to know what was there. He was like an old man, visiting the scene of his youth, the shadowy remains of a life he had once had.

He swung his one leg over the edge of the bed. He fastened his prosthetic leg in place, pulled his pants on and his shirt. He did not wear his uniform anymore, the only clothes he had known for more than a year. He did not have to. All of his things were there, just as he had left them. His clothes fit loose now, but they fit.

All his things were there. Only his family was gone.

Jonathan stood, limped across the room and down the stairs. He could hear Jenny moving about in the kitchen. Bobby would be rising soon. He would want to help, but Jonathan did not want his help this time. Later, perhaps, but now it was his task alone.

He stepped quietly out the front door, climbed down the steps. The morning light was spreading, the scraps of fog hanging low over the river and twisting around the clumps of trees on the bank. Jonathan walked around the house, up the slight hill to the family plot. He stood for a long moment, looking at the place where his mother was buried, the fresh-turned earth beside it that marked his father’s grave.

Robley had died before the Abigail Wilson tied up. Jonathan had seen the body carried back with him. His father had been born and raised on Paine Plantation, had known all his greatest joys on that patch of land.

When his body rotted away and mixed again with the soil, it had to be that soil, it could be no other.

At last Jonathan tore his eyes from the twin headstones, walked back down the hill. In the shed he found a big felling ax. He swung it over his shoulder, headed back to the house.

Jonathan hobbled past the porch, up to the old oak, the earthly remains of his beloved tree. He looked it up and down, the horrible thing his father had created there. But not his father, not really. The gargoyle had been cut by a man driven mad by grief, and that man may well have looked like Robley Paine, but it was not him.

Jonathan hefted his ax, let it rest on his shoulder as he adjusted his grip, then brought it back and swung it at the base of the tree. He felt the good, sharp steel bite into the ancient wood. He wiggled it free, brought the ax back, and chopped again, and this time a chip flew.

It would not be easy. It would take a long time. He was alone now, with only Bobby to help him. His family was gone and the Negroes had mostly all run to the Yankees. But still he knew he would not stop until he had cut down this terrible thing that had once been the Paines’ precious tree, this nightmare the war had made. Rip the stump out, roots and all.

And then he would plant a new oak. It would not be the same-it could never be the same-but it too would grow tall and strong. He would raise it up from the ground, this new and beautiful and good thing.

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