DECEMBER 22, 1862
The Lord uses the least likely to do his will, I suppose.
COLONEL MARKS ORDERS us to stay close to our posts. And though we’re out in the weather most of the time, it’s nice to have the pretty lace covered girls bring sweets or a blanket for the evening’s chill. Occasionally, we get invited by a good family to enjoy a true home cooked meal. Ma would be proud of these ladies making us feel like sons and brothers.
More than one pretty girl winks passing by, and it grabs my attention. I’m as red blooded as any man, but my mind is always on Susannah. Though far away, she’s close in my heart. J.A. feels the same about his wife and family. “Good company keeps good morals,” Granny used to say.
J.A. complains, “I don’t get it. So many of these boys got pretty wives waitin’ on ’em back home. How can they talk about their wives like whores, or worse, women they had before they married? They got such a bad case of red rooster they can’t talk about nothin’ else. I don’t want to be around them.” I nod. “I guess that’s why I cotton to you, Lummy. You try to stay right with the Lord, includin’ your rooster.”
“Makes me glad I ain’t the only one bein’ true to the most important things in life.”
J.A. hangs his head. “When you been with more’n one woman, I guess it’s like whiskey. The more you drink, the more you want. I’m glad I ain’t been with no one but my sweet wife.”
“Me, too. A man who can’t control his rooster can’t be trusted with important things in life.”
I was a little afraid of girls growing up because they were so different. My sister, Rebecca, is so much older than me, and Saleta passed about the time I noticed girls were made different. But when I met Susannah, I instantly knew things. God taught me how to be with her. I am glad we waited, but there was many a time I wanted to roll her in the sack. I can’t think on that very long.
Standing guard beats the boredom of the earthworks, though I do miss the hard work. We watch over army property, guard deserters, report shirkers and drunks, make sure everyone follows military laws, and keep a watchful eye for Yankee spies. Not much action but important work none the less. It’s still strange being a policeman enforcing the law. Heck, as a young man I tried to break as many laws as I could, that is, the ones that didn’t really hurt anybody.
I get a kick out of the little boys standing guard with us with their carved wooden pistols and stick rifles. They march so seriously in formation when we shift from street corner post to picket down by the river. I hope these young saplings never have to do this. Maybe it’ll all be over soon. I really don’t believe that.
It isn’t all fun and games though. Standing on our feet for hours, guarding the train depot and supply warehouses, and watching the streets and civilian homes is taxing. We occasionally get a bit of excitement if men from other units start a drunken brawl. It happens more often than it should. I had to knock a couple in the head last week to get them to the Warren County jailhouse. Sheriff Platner back home would be proud.
With the Yanks closer, suspicious people lurk around town. Colonel Marks warns, “Watch deserters. They have valuable information about our defenses, whether they sell it or get caught and the Yanks beat it out of them. Either way, Grant’ll have his information.”
A few deserters get caught, but I’m glad to say I haven’t had to shoot a gray coat yet. After shooting that sailor from the Essex, I find no satisfaction in killing a bluecoat, either. I’d hate to be part of a firing squad. But a spy is different.
Jed, from Company C, noticed a well-dressed man with a fancy top hat and nice overcoat acting strangely. “Somethin’ ain’t quite right about him.” Most of us were just enamored with the man’s fancy duds for which we’d have shot him. Not Jed. The man wandered around like he was conducting business, asking about our defenses, number of soldiers and cannons. He claimed to be a wealthy New Orleans merchant whose questions seemed legitimate in finding out what he could procure and deliver to the army. It didn’t fool Jed. After we arrested him, one of the colonels knew him to be an actor who played in the theaters of New Orleans and a Yank sympathizer. I’m not sure what happened. We just didn’t see him anymore.
Jed got promoted to corporal for that and crowed like a rooster, “Boys, I’m in the money now!”
J.A. laughs. “And when was the last time you got paid, Corporal, suh?”
Jed stopped crowing.
I never imagined being a law officer. Grandpa Temple told us Grandpa Cloud served as Constable of Chicacone in the Colony of Virginia back in the 1680s. I guess it’s only fair I take my turn keeping the law. Some lawmen never seem quite square to me, like some county judges back home. Often their judgments were based on if they had a good breakfast, were in a bad mood, were offered a bribe, or if they had a good roll in the sack with their wife the night before. A bit too slimey for me.
Crooked is the word.
Late one night back in ’58, I sneaked out to meet Susannah. I went through the back alleys of Bankston trying not to wake the town dogs. As I rounded the corner of the shoe factory, I heard glass break. Two sheriff’s deputies were carrying armloads of stuff from a mercantile. They drove off in a wagon when a third deputy threw a drunk inside. The owner ran downstairs yelling just as the other two deputies who’d hid the wagon came to the rescue and caught the thief. That sealed my beliefs about most lawmen. The law isn’t bad, just the crooks who claim to uphold it.
The next day, Pa came from town with the story of how “one of those damn vagrants who wander from town to town” broke into the big general store and got arrested for drunkenness and thievery. I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen. My secret about Susannah was greater than the need to tell him. But I felt bad for that man.
Pa leaned back in his chair after supper. “Serves him right. Three months in the Jackson prison doin’ hard labor will straighten him out.” The only salve for my conscience was that maybe the poor man would dry out, have food and a place to stay, and no whiskey.
I was ashamed of the law, my Pa’s attitude, but mostly of myself for being a coward. Funny, nobody asked how the goods got out of the store when the man was caught in the act.
The reverend preached last Sunday about how the locust and honey eater told soldiers to be fair and just. John the Baptist must’ve seen city guards misuse their power to fill their pockets. Sheriff Platner was different, even when I had a run-in with his nephew, Lester.
Lester was a devil around town but an angel to his momma at home. In her eyes he could do no wrong. It’s easy not to see what you really don’t want to in this world. She’d defend him to the death, like he was Jesus on the cross.
When we were around ten, my friend, Poole, and I had picked up empty whiskey bottles Mr. Wesson at the Bankston general store would buy. He’d give us a penny for every five we brought in. We collected twenty-five each and went to get our nickels. A boy could buy a good sack of candy for a nickel back then. We stepped up on the store porch, bottles clanging. The door swung open knocking Poole down and breaking a couple of his bottles. It was Lester and his half-pint punkish, loud-mouthed weasel of a cousin, Kneehigh.
Lester growled, “Dirty rotten son of a bitch. Yeah, Tullos, I said it.”
“Lester, don’t cuss me no more.”
“Why, bitchy boy? You gonna go cry to your niggah mammie? You like them black mammies, don’t you, bitchy boy?”
My ears pinned back, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, my eyes became narrow slits, and my voice got deeper. “I said, don’t cuss me no more.” Poole held onto my arm.
Lester and Kneehigh ran across the road in front of a wagon, upsetting the horses. Lester turned and grabbed his crotch. “Come get this, bitchy boy.” They started running.
Poole tugged on my arm. “Let it go, Lummy. It ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”
“I’ve had enough.” I picked up a rock about the size of an apple and let it fly. The stone hit Lester in the back knocking him to the ground.
He got up crying and spitting dirt. “I’ll get you, Tullos, just wait and see, you bastard.”
Poole howled, “Great shot! Didn’t know you had it in you.” Poole kicked the dust on the porch floor. “He’s goin’ straight to his witchy momma who’ll find his uncle, the sheriff, quick as lightnin’. I’ll wait for you at our fishin’ spot on the Big Black. I hope you make it, but I bet that sheriff will be out to your place pretty quick.” I went home, and Poole went to get his cane pole for the fishing trip we’d planned for the afternoon.
I’d just finished leftover peas and cornbread when a horse rode up. I thought about bolting out the back door like a rabbit but figured I didn’t do anything bad enough to run. I’d have to face it sometime anyway.
Sheriff S.C. Platner knocked on the door. “Anybody home?”
Ma answered, “Just a minute, Sheriff,” looking at me with a worried expression on her face. Thank goodness Pa was in the back pasture checking on a new calf.
Ma opened the door, and Sheriff Platner removed his hat politely. “Hello, Mary, I’m sorry to trouble you. Is Lummy around?”
Ma looked back at me and said, “Yes, come on in and have a seat. Would you like some coffee or maybe some buttermilk, S.C.?”
He wiped his forehead with a kerchief. “Cool water sounds good right about now, ma’am.”
Sheriff Platner eyed me. “Lummy, you know why I’m here, boy. Tell me what happened.”
I told the truth because there was no need to lie.
Sheriff Platner rubbed his chin. “His momma showed me the bruise on his back. It looks pretty bad, but not enough to take him to the Doc. She says Lester never would do anythin’ like what you said he did. She wants to press charges.”
My face got hot. “Lester is a damn bully, suh. Sorry, Ma. He takes the little kids’ pennies for candy when nobody’s lookin’ and threatens to beat them if they tell. He’s bullied me for years. He came out that store cussin’ me for no cause, knockin’ my friend, Poole, down, and breakin’ some of our whiskey empties. His momma don’t know the devil that boy is!”
Sheriff Platner held up his hands.
“Sorry, Sheriff, I asked him politely to stop cussin’ me, but he did it again in front of the store. I told the boy again to stop. Ask the clerk or Poole. They saw it all. We just wanted to sell our bottles and get some sweets.” I was so mad I was shaking.
“Take it easy. I know my nephew and his momma. She believes that demon is an angel. But I gotta do my job and won’t make it too hard on you, son.”
Ma asked tearfully, “What you gonna do, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Platner scratched his head. “Lummy, come to the jailhouse in Greensboro for a week, and we’ll call it square.”
Ma jumped in, “But S.C….”
“He can bunk at the jail. I’ll make sure he eats good. Mary, he ain’t bein’ put in jail. It’ll just look like it. I won’t even write it in the record. How’s that?”
“I understand. And I appreciate it.”
“Lummy, Lester’s gonna poke at you, but that’s part of your punishment and trainin’. He’s a rotten egg, that’s plain to see. You got promise, son. You need to get a handle on that anger, boy, or it’ll be the death of you one day. Maybe this’ll help you.”
“Yassuh.”
He thanked Ma for the cool water. She thanked him for the kind judgment.
“See you Monday mawnin’ early, Lummy.”
“Yassuh.”
After the Sheriff left, Ma let me fish with Poole. We caught enough for a good fish fry that night. The only thing Pa said as he finished his third bream was, “You can’t let the weak-minded of the world rule and sometimes you gotta nip it in the bud.” He grinned and winked.
Jasper and James laughed singing, “Lummy is a jailbird. Lummy is a jailbird.”
I raised my hand to swat them.
Ma cleared her throat. “There you go, boy, lettin’ somebody else get you all riled and watch you get the troubles for it.”
Pa snickered. “Hard head, just like his ole Pa.” Too much like my ole Pa.
I made it through the week without seeing Lester, but Sheriff Platner didn’t let me out much either. I learned a few things about law. He answered all my questions.
“Lummy, you interested in the law? Maybe you can turn this into somethin’ good.”
After that, I knew I’d never be a lawman. Too many rules and too much trouble I don’t need.
The meals at Elkins’s tavern across the street were good, though. Mr. Elkins’s Negro lady cook rivaled Ma’s cooking. Sheriff Platner even paid for mine and Poole’s when he came to visit.
Poole just had to see me in jail and laugh. “Yeah, Sheriff, it’s about time this wicked outlaw got his just reward for everythin’ he should’ve been caught doin’.” He meant it as a joke.
Sheriff Platner saw it as an opportunity. Poole sat up slowly as he asked, “So, Poole, just what have you two miscreants done I should know about?”
Poole stood up. “Better go. Pa has an order at the store. It’ll be lashes if I get home late. Thanks for the fine vittles, Sheriff.”
“I ain’t done with you, Poole. I’ll see you soon.”
Poole tipped his hat, winked at me, and got out the door in a flash. I waited for Sheriff Platner to start in on me. He didn’t. Just the possibility was enough to curb more foolishness out of us.
I walked patrol with the Sheriff every day. When we passed the blacksmith’s shop, Mr. Ayers would rattle chains. “About got them leg irons ready for your new prisoner, Sheriff. Bring him by anytime, and I’ll get him fitted.” He laughed and waved. “Be good, Lummy boy.”
The best part of my “imprisonment” was when the new schoolteacher, Lamech Edwards, came by after class to lend me books—history, poetry, and some with good stories. It was the most reading I’d ever done, and my skills sharpened up with his help.
Finally, Saturday came. Sheriff Platner said, “Lummy, it was good havin’ you, but next time on better terms, you hear?”
That night at supper, I held up a shiny new silver dollar the sheriff gave me for helping about the jailhouse. I handed it to Pa. The family could always use an extra dollar.
Pa laughed, “And they say doin’ wrong never pays.”
Ma popped his shoulder. “You know better’n to say that.”
We tried to hide our snickering.
———————————
THE NEWNESS OF serving as provost wears off soon enough. Standing post in town is nothing short of boring. Colonel Marks keeps us in tip top shape though. So much so the town men comment how safe their ladies feel with us around. Older gentlemen say they don’t even need to lock their doors or windows.
One sweet grandmother stops to chat one sunny afternoon. “Thank you, men. Why, I can set a fresh baked blackberry cobbler in my window and nobody’d dare take it.”
She reminds me of Granny Thankful. “Now, sweet lady, if you put that pie out there under our noses, you’d ruin our fine reputation.”
In her slow as molasses voice, she says, “Young man, I’m Granny O’Neil, and that was no temptation. That’s an invitation to supper tonight. Bring just four ’cause that’s all the room I have, all right? Come at 5:30 this evenin’. I could only find an ole rooster tough as shoe leather, but he’ll be good dumplin’s.”
“Granny, how’d you know that’s when our duty is over?”
She points up the street. “I watch everythin’ goin’ on around here, boy. Mine’s the white one. See you later on this afternoon.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Edrow shakes like a kid handed a piece of cool red ripe watermelon in the summertime.
“I see you grinnin’ like a mule eatin’ briars. Yeah, you can come along.” He jumps up and down like he just got paid. Just the thought of having a home cooked meal can do that to a man.