IN THE FRONT PARLOR OF The Grange, the Gentry mansion on the outskirts of Keyport, Colonel Henry Todd Gentry’s mother, Millicent Todd Gentry, was playing the grand piano with her usual heavy hand. Her grandniece Janet Todd was singing “The Bonnie Blue Flag” in a lilting contralto. In his cellar office, Henry Gentry asked himself who else but Todds would play—or sing—a Confederate war song in the home of the Union military commander of southern Indiana?
More than once, Gentry had come close to advising his friend Abraham Lincoln not to marry a Todd. Henry’s mother had reduced his father to putty before Willard Gentry died of heart disease when his son was nineteen. Henry was not surprised when Abe later remarked in a letter that one d was enough for God but not for the Todds. A more high-toned, imperious family never inhabited the earth.
Janet Todd seemed pressed from the same mold. At first Gentry was tempted to warn Major Paul Stapleton of the true proportions of the risk he was taking. Now he was encouraging the match in the name of military necessity. Irony. Gentry had begun to think this war was a story not of blood and iron but of blood and irony.
The colonel swigged from a bottle of bourbon on the desk of his subterranean headquarters. He had moved into the cellar when he returned from Shiloh minus his right arm. It seemed a good place to hide what was left of his body and his self-esteem. Not only was he a military failure—Lincoln’s Own regiment had taken casualties
of 50 percent at Shiloh—he was a lost soul. He resigned his colonel’s commission and stocked the cellar with enough bourbon to keep himself in a permanent state of amnesia.
Gentry could not begin to understand why God had chosen to disfigure Uncle Henry, favorite host of the playgirls of Louisville and Cincinnati. Walter Yancey and Andy Conway, his favorite freethinking partners in sin, tried to cheer him up, but the war had already begun undermining their friendship.
Lincoln had rescued Gentry from oblivion with one of his rarest letters. The president began with a refusal to accept Gentry’s resignation as colonel. Next, Abe reminded the self-pitying hero that he had been the worst right-handed horseshoe pitcher in Indiana. Maybe he could do better left-handed. As for the ladies of Cincinnati and Louisville, Abe was sure they would be delighted to learn Gentry was home from the war and had not lost anything essential. Finally, in a single pseudopompous sentence, he had appointed Gentry director of military intelligence and chief bashaw for the government in Indiana and signed it: “A. Lincoln, Dictator.”
The embattled Republican governor of Indiana, who depended totally on money Lincoln sent him from Washington, had made Gentry the commander of a three-county district along the Ohio. Gentry soon decided Lincoln needed military and political intelligence from the area and used his private funds to create a network of informers.
The intelligence director’s cellar office was especially suitable on this particular day. The business he was conducting was subterranean in every sense of the word. In the dim light from the half-window that looked out on the garden, Janet Todd’s body servant, Lucy, was reciting her owner’s latest letter. Lucy’s voice was low and the words were rushed and frightened. She knew what she was risking.
“She say you must come because nothin’ matter now but victory. Otherwise the dead won’t rest easy.”
“But she didn’t mention when the guns and money would arrive?”
“No s’r.”
“I need a date.”
“I’ll listen hard, Major. I surely will. What about my sister Maybelle? You found her in New Orleans?”
“I’m trying my best.”
“Federal government runs New Orleans now, don’t they?”
“I told you—I’m trying to find her. But it isn’t easy. They may have changed her name—”
“I won’t quit on you if you find her. I swears it ’fore God.”
Lucy was not stupid. She could read Gentry’s devious spymaster’s mind. She could see into the recesses of his hardened heart. Gentry understood, now, why no one in George Washington’s army wanted anything to do with spying at first. Nothing corrupted a man faster than intelligence work. To ferret out the truths necessary to win the war, the spymaster lied or told half-truths to almost everyone.
“We need a date. The exact day.”
“I’ll try to learn it.”
“Colonel Gentry! Can you spare me a few minutes?”
It was Major Paul Stapleton, back from the Fitzsimmons farm. Gentry realized the piano had ceased. Female voices rippled behind the major at the head of the cellar stairs.
Terror shredded Lucy’s oval face. “Just a minute, Major!” Gentry called. “Let me light you down the stairs!”
He signaled Lucy to vanish. In sixty seconds she had slipped out the storm cellar door into the garden between the house and the barn. Gentry lit a candle and lumbered to the foot of the stairs. Major Stapleton
clumped down the wooden steps in his cavalryman’s boots and followed Gentry into his office.
“I’ve got some unpleasant news to report,” Major Stapleton said. “We ran into an ambush at the Fitzsimmons farm. Four men, including Captain Otis, have been wounded. We killed one of the attackers. Maybe you can help identify the body.”
“What a hell of a thing. On the Fourth of July.”
“Another reason why I think it was an ambush,” Major Stapleton said.
“Is Otis badly hurt?” Gentry asked.
“He thinks he is. I’ve sent for Doctor Yancey. I trust he’ll treat my troopers as well.”
“I’m sure he will.”
They went out the cellar door and around to the barn where the troopers had deposited the wounded and the body of the dead ambusher. Gentry stared at the swarthy face of the corpse, the pupils rolled back in final agony. “My God,” he said. “That’s one of Rogers Jameson’s hired men, Frankie Worth.”
“Who’s Rogers Jameson?”
“He owns Rose Hill, on the Kentucky shore. He runs a big sawmill on this side of the river. He’s Andy Conway’s brother-in-law—and the chief backer of his newspaper.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“A friendly enemy would be more exact.”
“Is Frankie a deserter?”
Gentry shook his head. “He’s a Democrat. You couldn’t have gotten him or anyone else in his family into the army.”
“I’m in favor of delivering this body to Mr. Jameson—and searching his sawmill and his plantation,” Major Stapleton said. “They stole four of our horses.”
It was remarkable, Gentry thought, how the major’s boyish face could become an inflexible mask when he
assumed a military role. Did they teach such transformations at West Point? Or was it an inherited trait?
“That would be a rather cruel thing to do,” Gentry said. “Frankie’s mother lives just down the road from the sawmill. She might be there.”
“The bullets this fellow and his friends put into my men were rather cruel, too,” Major Stapleton said.
They faced each other there in the hot barn, the amateur and the professional soldier. “Do I have your permission to conduct a search, Colonel?”
“I think not,” Gentry said. “Rogers Jameson is too smart to leave any evidence around—if he’s linked in any way with this ambush. I’ll send one of my field hands to tell him to pick up the body.”
The clop of horses’ hooves interrupted them. Coming through the gate of Gentry’s property was a massive blond-haired man on a buckboard drawn by two fine white horses. As usual, Rogers Jameson was hatless in the summer sun. His face was tanned a mulatto brown. Beside him was a younger man who could have been a double for the dead Frankie.
“Here he is now,” Gentry said. “That’s Frankie’s twin brother, Pete Worth, with him.”
“Isn’t this a good argument to conduct a search? He’s obviously trying to head one off,” Major Stapleton said.
Gentry hurried across the lawn toward the buckboard as Rogers Jameson climbed down from the seat. The sheer size of the man was still intimidating. Jameson was about Gentry’s height—six feet—but twice as wide, with shoulders the size of a bull’s haunches and a huge head. Years of poling flatboats on the Ohio and Mississippi had given him arms the size of an ordinary man’s thigh. Age and good eating had added a layer of fat to his hulking torso, but he still moved with the agility of an athlete. Only one man had ever thrown Rogers Jameson in a wrestling match: Abe Lincoln.
“Does this visit have something to do with Frankie Worth?” Gentry asked.
“Where is he?” Jameson said.
“His body is in the barn.”
“Killed by your niggers. How can you face yourself in the mirror each morning, Henry?”
“He was killed by my troopers, sir,” Major Stapleton said. He had followed Gentry down to the dusty oval in front of the main house. “Killed after he and his friends fired on them without provocation.”
“That’s not what Pete here tells me,” Jameson said. “They were at the Fitzsimmons farm for a Fourth of July party. Pete here’s courtin’ Sarah Fitzsimmons. The niggers and their captain, John Brown Jr., just rode up, said they was deserters, and tried to arrest them. Frankie told them to go to hell and they shot him dead.”
“That is a complete and total fabrication, sir,” Major Stapleton said.
“I have no interest in listenin’ to lies told by Abe Lincoln’s hired scum,” Jameson said. He had his hand on a pistol in a holster on his belt. Major Stapleton had his hand on his pistol. They were seconds away from drawing and firing.
“For God’s sake, Rogers, control yourself,” Gentry said, stepping between the two men. “There are young women watching us.”
Janet Todd and Dorothy Schreiber, both in festive white, were peering out the parlor windows at the confrontation.
“Henry, you’ve always been an asshole. You were born a two-armed asshole; you’ll die a one-armed asshole. Events will soon prove you and your asshole friend Abe are a matched pair.”
The insult did not surprise Gentry. Rogers Jameson had been telling people in Hunter County that Henry Todd Gentry was a fool for a long time. The idea had
taken root with the pertinacity of ragweed. Hardly surprising, really. It gave a lot of people intense pleasure to think that Henry Gentry, inheritor of 6,000 prime acres on the Ohio, a threshing mill, a thriving general store and a ferry service, was a nitwit.
Jameson and Pete Worth strode to the barn, picked up Frankie Worth’s body, deposited it in the buckboard and rode away without saying another word. As they rattled out the gate, Major Stapleton asked, “Why didn’t you arrest them both? Are you going to let them bury that fellow without another word?”
“We’ll deal with them at the appropriate time and place,” Gentry said. Inwardly he winced at the disgust on Stapleton’s face. Maybe it was time to explain to this young man why he preferred to play a waiting game with Rogers Jameson and his Democratic friends.
“I almost forgot another matter,” the major said. “We caught a deserter. He wasn’t involved in the skirmish. Would you like to talk to him?”
“Of course. Where is he?”
The deserter was in the back of the barn in a stall that Sergeant Washington had fitted out as an office. The prisoner did not look more than fifteen years old. Gentry dismissed the trooper who was guarding him and asked the boy his name. “Robert Garner,” he said. “I didn’t plan to desert. I just come north to see my momma.”
“Why did you go to the Fitzsimmons farm?” Gentry asked.
“Joe Fitz’ was my friend in the army—the only friend I had—until he got killed at Vicksburg. They made us charge a Confederate battery. A cannonball took his head off. His blood covered me—my hands, my face. Ever since that happened I been sick. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.”
“Colonel?” Sergeant Washington loomed in the doorway. “Trooper Bowen give this to me. Says he saw this guy tryin’ to hide it in his shoe.”
The piece of paper was grimy with sweat and dirt. Gentry opened it and read: “‘I, Robert Garner, do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Confederate States of America, and that I will to the best of my ability support its Constitution and its laws, so help me God.
“‘Subscribed and sworn to before me, Post Commandant, at Richmond, Kentucky.
“‘Colonel William C. Danforth.’”
“I don’t mean a word of that,” Garner said. “I had to sign it to get through the Confederate lines. They control everything in southeast Kentucky.”
“What do you know about the men who fired on Major Stapleton’s troopers?” Gentry asked.
“I never saw them before. They came to the farm this mornin’. They wanted me to join them. I said I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t shoot a Union soldier. They cursed me for a coward.”
Garner began to blubber. “I don’t want to shoot anyone. I told them when they drafted me I wanted to work in the hospital. But they wouldn’t listen. They gave me a gun.”
Gentry sighed. Too many deserters told this story. After three years of slaughter, the Union Army could not afford to inquire where a man wanted to serve. They needed anyone who could carry a gun in the front lines.
“Escort him to the town jail. We’ll ship him to Indianapolis for trial on Monday.”
Stapleton followed Gentry through the dim barn to the sunbaked yard. “Can you spare fifteen minutes for a private talk?” Gentry asked.
“I want to make sure Doctor Yancey treats my wounded troopers.”
“Tell him I’ll consider it a personal favor,” Gentry said. “I’ll wait for you in my office.”
Twenty minutes later, Major Stapleton returned looking
satisfied. Dr. Yancey, still reasonably sober, was bestowing his considerable medical skills on the wounded black troopers. The man with the head wound had died but that did not seem to trouble Major Stapleton. He had no doubt seen enough casualties at Antietam and Gettysburg and other battles to make death routine. Perhaps they also taught that idea at West Point.
“Sit down, Major. I know you’re eager to go upstairs and charm the ladies. But there’s some business we ought to discuss first.”
“I’m feeling a bit derelict toward Miss Todd—”
“By coincidence, Miss Todd is the business I want to discuss with you.”
Stapleton looked wary. He probably assumed that Gentry was in cahoots with his in-laws to snare an heir to the Stapleton fortune for darling Janet. “As a mere observer, I begin to think Janet has some affection for you,” Gentry said.
“We’ve never discussed that idea in a serious way. Mostly we play a game of polite antagonism about the war.”
“I’m aware of that. I do the same thing with two-thirds of the people in Keyport. But there’s more to Janet Todd than meets the eye, Major. Behind her polite, cheerful antagonism lurks a Confederate agent.”
“You’re joking.”
“I have incontrovertible evidence. She’s part of a plot to revolutionize Kentucky and Indiana and take both states out of the war. With them might go Illinois and Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio. She’s been a courier, connecting Confederate agents in Canada to gunrunners in New York and the Confederate secret service in Richmond.”
“Remarkable,” Major Stapleton said. “I have new respect for her.”
“Major—this is a very serious matter. They plan to launch their revolution sometime this summer or early
in the fall, before the presidential election. With Lincoln already in trouble with the voters, this thing could have a terrific impact on the outcome of the war.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Major Stapleton asked.
“I want you to become a Union secret agent, Major. I want you to pretend to lose your enthusiasm for the federal cause. I want you to convince Janet you’re in love with her and persuade her to share the details of this plot, especially the date when they plan to launch their armed uprising.”
“Colonel Gentry—what you’re suggesting is more than a little dishonorable.”
“When it comes to winning a war, Major, honor must be sacrificed occasionally, like everything else.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that, sir.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you agree with it, Major. I’m issuing you an order!”
“I’m an officer in the regular army of the United States,” Major Stapleton said, his West Point pride vibrating in his voice. “I have severe doubts as to whether I’m required to obey such an extraordinary order from a volunteer officer who is at best on detached duty.”
“Why don’t you say it? Who’s a one-armed cripple.”
“I will not say it because I did not think it, Colonel.”
Gentry leaned forward in his chair. The major’s face dissolved in the dim light into a generic identity. He was all the proud confident young men Henry Gentry had never been able to match.
“Do you want an order from the President of the United States, Major? Your constitutional commander in chief? I can get it. I write Abe Lincoln a letter a week, telling him what’s happening in Indiana.”
“If he issued such an order, Colonel Gentry, I would think even less of him than I do now.”
Gentry glanced at the large framed photograph of Lincoln on the wall. It was taken before he grew his
beard. His hair was rumpled; it looked as if he were standing in a prairie wind. The photographer had combed Abe’s hair, and he had deliberately mussed it. “I told him otherwise my friends wouldn’t recognize me,” Lincoln had said.
“Why does everyone in the country think so little of this man? I’ve known him since we were boys together on Pigeon Creek. I’ve seen the loathsome cabin he lived in, eighteen to twenty Lincolns sleeping like hogs on the dirt floor. I saw his father, the meanest, stupidest Kentucky dirt farmer this side of Lake Ontario. I was there when Lincoln transcended that ancestral pigsty, when his soul expanded with his body. I saw the wonder and the beauty of the man’s spirit when it first flowered.”
“Colonel—if I may interrupt you—now you’re telling me that this wonderful spiritual being is prepared to write a letter, at your behest, ordering me to traduce the affections of a respectable young woman, in the name of victory? To become a despicable scoundrel in my own eyes and the eyes of any man who discovered it? Is this the kind of war we’re fighting? I’m prepared to risk my life in a fair fight at anyone’s order. But I absolutely totally refuse to obey this order, even if your noble friend Abe Lincoln comes here and delivers it to me personally!”
They sat there, antagonists, each wearing the blue uniform of the army of the United States. Through Colonel Gentry’s brain clanged the alarm bell he had heard a hundred, even a thousand times: You’ve messed up again, Henry. Why was he, reader of uncounted books, never able to find the right words in a face-to-face situation? Always men talked him down, either with frontal assaults à la Rogers Jameson or flanking movements à la Major Stapleton. His mother, Millicent Todd Gentry, his ex-friend Andy Conway and too many others to enumerate did the same thing.
Humiliation. It was impossible to face that word
without deciding it was time to take his service revolver and slowly insert the barrel into his mouth, let his tongue examine the round opening of the muzzle one last time, and pull the trigger. He had made the insertion more than once but something he neither understood nor valued had stayed his trigger finger. Was it Lincoln’s spirit, pleading against another desertion?
“I hope, at the very least, Major, you’ll conduct yourself like an officer of the U.S. Army and not reveal to Miss Todd even a hint of this conversation,” Gentry said.
“Of course.”
“Major, you’ve only been here four months. You don’t have any idea how serious this whole thing is. They could do it. They have an organization, the Sons of Liberty, with thousands of men enrolled. Rogers Jameson is one of the leaders. The dissatisfaction, not to say disgust, with the war is so strong, all they need is a show of support from the Confederate Army to rise in strength. Thanks to Miss Todd, they’re in a position to get that. In her latest letter, of which I have a verbatim account, she’s arranged for four regiments of John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry to cooperate with the Liberty men.”
“My respect for her grows by leaps and bounds,” Major Stapleton said.
“Major,” Gentry said. “Don’t you realize we could lose this war?”
“A larger question troubles me, Colonel. Whether we deserve to win it.”