Things are going well, Abby thought. Keep on like this and I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t all end up rich. She smiled fondly at the sleeping babies in their crib. Louise had called the twins Joab and Jonathan. Well, it looked as if Joab and Jonathan would have a secure future. The Carver carbine was fast becoming the standard weapon of the Federal Army. Sam said they couldn’t turn them out fast enough. The factory was on round-the-clock shifts. Sam was opening a new one in Philadelphia. He worked an eighteen-hour day without complaint. Once in a while he slept at the plant. Abby didn’t mind. She had the babies. It was like having Travis and Henry all over again, without the anguish. They had money now, a nice home, no worries. That made a big difference to the way you brought up your children.
Well, they all deserved good luck, she thought. Nothing but bad news the year before, David’s death in Culpeper, Travis disappearing, the visit from young Billy Christman to tell them that Little Jed had lost an arm at Gettysburg and to put a full stop to the story of Mary Strong that Sam had brought home from Washington.
She remembered that day so well, so joyous and yet somehow slightly sad. They opened a bottle of champagne and celebrated Sam’s success. Abby was pleased and happy because his faith in himself, which had been so sorely tested for so many years, had at last been vindicated.
They dined at Delmonico’s with Ezra Carver and Louise; and Ezra, who was usually stiff and formal, unbent and even flirted with Louise. She was one of the family now. Sam, although he had balked a little when Abby first brought her home, had taken a real shine to Louise. And for Abby it was wonderful to have a friend and confidante. Her old fears were finally buried beneath more recent, happier memories.
She wrote to Henry in Cincinnati and told him that Louise had moved in with them. Henry wrote back that he was shocked and appalled by their taking Louise in, and said that he would never spend a night beneath any roof where such a creature lived. The letter was full of Biblical quotations, the fiery damnations of the Old Testament. Abby decided that Henry had gotten religion. He was seeing the daughter of a minister, he said, Ann Beecher. She was a decent, God-fearing girl who viewed the fleshpots with as much anathema as he. They planned to devote their lives after the war to missionary work in Africa, he wrote.
As for Louise, he was adamant. ‘The woman Travis brought to your house is unclean,’ he wrote. ‘And God will judge you harshly for condoning her sins by giving her shelter. You may be certain, Mother, that I would never expose dear Ann to the presence of that brazen strumpet. As soon as the war is over Ann and I will be married. Obviously, we would have wished for your presence at our wedding, but you must understand that we could never countenance the attendance of a scarlet woman. I leave you and Father, and that fallen creature, to the mercy of our Almighty Father.’
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, Abby thought as she laid the letter down. Henry was a long way away. Louise was here and the children were here. She would worry about what was right and what was wrong when the war was over, which didn’t look to be for some time yet. Sam said that President Lincoln had kicked ‘Old Brains’ Halleck upstairs and made Andrew’s commander, General Grant, the chief of the army. Sam said that if Grant had been at Antietam he would have demolished Lee and that if he had been at Gettysburg, the Confederates would never had gotten back across the Potomac. Grant was moving his headquarters down to Culpeper according to Andrew, whose letter had arrived only a few days ago. He explained how he had found Aunt Betty and that Washington Farm was in ruins. Sam told him that he had the family Bible and Grandpa Davy’s broken sword, which had been sent north by David.
‘We’ll put them back where they belong one day,’ Andrew wrote. ‘But there’ll be many a battle before it comes.’
Aye, there will, Abby thought, and I wonder in which of them my son will die, if he is not dead already? The only cloud on her horizon was that she did not know what had happened to Travis. It seemed obvious that he had ‘substituted’ for someone able to afford the three hundred dollars it took to buy out of conscription, and given the money to Louise. But in which regiment had he enlisted and in which battles had he fought? He could be alive, he could be dead, and no one would know. Thousands had died, on battlefields and elsewhere, to be buried nameless in unmarked graves. She had heard that soldiers went into battle so sure of impending death that they wrote their names on slips of paper and pinned them to their clothes so that they would be identified later. She didn’t want Joab and Jonathan to grow up without a father. Yet, paradoxically, she didn’t want Travis to come back and spoil everything either. He would take them away, God knew where. And they were all so happy: Sam, the babies, Louise.
Yes, Louise was as happy as a puppy dog with two tails. She had asked Sam to find her a job, anything at all, at the factory.
‘You ought to stay home,’ he said. ‘Look after the babes.’ He was very easy with her, Abby thought fondly, like a father with a favorite daughter. But then, Sam had always had a way with the ladies.
‘Samble, my brain’ll explode if I don’t find something to use it for!’ Louise said. She had nicknamed him ‘Samble’ and it had stuck: Abby sometimes found herself using the sobriquet herself. ‘Don’t forget I know a little something about running a business!’
‘Well, harrumph, yes,’ Sam said, as if he’d just as soon not get into any discussion about how Louise had run her ‘business’, as she called it. ‘But that’s not the same as working in a gun factory.’
‘You have an accounting department, don’t you?’
‘Well,’ Sam said. ‘Sort of. I handle most of that side of the business myself.’
‘How about if you had an assistant?’ she said perkily. ‘Good at figures? Makes coffee? Don’t even swear anymore?’ She gave him her best, mischievous, cornflower-blue-eyed look and Sam laughed.
‘Won’t pay much,’ he said. ‘I’m a mean old devil!’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll weasel it out of you!’ And they all laughed. Abby didn’t mind being left to look after the children. If she’d been Louise’s age, she’d have been the first one to want to get out and do something too.
Better start stirring your stumps and think about supper, my girl, she thought. Sam and Louise will be home soon. They usually rode in together in the carriage Sam had bought soon after the first army order was paid for.
‘Hell, I know it’s extravagant!’ he smiled when she had protested. ‘But I reckon a man of fifty’s entitled to a little extravagance, ain’t he?’
And with that, she couldn’t argue. Dear Sam, who had worked so hard all his life to give her good things. If anyone had told Abby, that first day when he came into the scullery and looked at her and she knew what he had in mind, if anyone had told her then, that one day she would love him so warmly, so truly and so completely as she knew now that she did, Abby would have laughed in their face. But it was true. Dear Sam. She got up and went into the kitchen, rubbing her upper left arm. There was a long, nagging pain up there, that throbbed in time with the beating of her heart. You’re getting old, Abigail, she told herself as she passed the mirror in the hallway.
June came.
The dreadful toll of the great battles in the South went endlessly on. More than three years of carnage, and nothing to show for it but two hundred thousand graves of Northern boys staring at the sky, Sam said. Greeley’s Tribune kept a standing headline: ‘The Great Contest’, On May 11, 1864, such a bulletin announced: ‘Our Losses So Far Forty Thousand’. That was after the battle of the Wilderness. It sounded almost Biblical, Abby thought. Every day the newspapers carried long, long lists of the dead and maimed. When Sam went to work, Abby would go through them name by name, always empty with apprehension that today, this time, she would find the name of her son among them. But she never did. The day never passed but that the papers blared, beneath banner headlines, ‘The Rebels Fly By Night!’
‘Lee Terribly Beaten!’ And then in small print, you would get the facts of it. At the Wilderness 5597 killed, 21,463 wounded, 10,677 missing on the Federal side. On the Confederate side, rounder figures: 2000 killed, 6,000 wounded, 3400 missing. At Todd’s Tavern, at Spotsylvania, at Varnell’s Station, at Swift Creek, at Cloyd’s Mountain, at New River Bridge, at Beaver Dam Station, at South Anna Bridge, at Yellow Tavern, where the dashing ‘Jeb’ Stuart was cut down by the bullet of a lowly private. Tens, hundreds, thousands of names, in print so close-set it made her eyes blur, and she would read them all again in case she had missed one, the vital one, Travis Strong, named for the hero of another battle in a time as remote now as Agincourt.
‘Hell of a battle going on,’ Sam said as they sat in the parlor after dinner. ‘Some place called Cold Harbor. Not even a town, according to the Tribune. Just a crossroads someplace down near Mechanicsville. They’re fighting over the same damn ground they fought over in ’62!’ He looked at the two women over the top of his spectacles. ‘Think maybe that General Grant feller meant it, when he said he was going to fight it out on that line if it took him all summer. ‘
‘Who wants some more coffee?’ Louise said, getting to her feet. As she did there was a thunderous hammering on the front door of the house. Abby jumped, almost dropping her knitting: she was making little woolen suits for the two babies.
‘What in the name of all that’s holy …?’ Sam said.
‘I’ll get it!’ Louise said. ‘I’m already up!’
She went out into the hall and they heard her tell May it was all right. Then there was a little silence and then a scream. Abby ran out into the hall with Sam close behind her. They found Louise cowering back from the doorway. In it, his wild eyes bright in the lamplight, stood Travis Strong!
‘My God!’ Abby said. ‘My God, Travis, your face!’
From the hairline to the jaw, in a ragged, ugly arc, a terrible scar marred the right-hand side of Travis’s face. It drew his right eye into a leering wink, and the right side of his mouth down into a snarl. His bleached-blond hair was streaked with pure white and he looked haggard and worn.
‘The prodigal returns!’ he shouted. ‘Shafe from a field o’ barrel!’
‘You’re drunk!’ Sam snapped.
‘Not drunk!’ Travis said, lurching. ‘Not drunk if you can lie onna floor without holding carpet, ‘swhat I allus say.’
‘For God’s sake, come inside!’ Abby said, her self-possession returning. ‘And stop shouting. What happened to – to your face?’
‘Ah, scarsa barrel,’ Travis said. ‘Come on, you!’
He hauled on the rope in his hand and a stupendously ugly bull terrier appeared. ‘Come on, Byron!’
‘That’s the damned ugliest beast I ever saw!’ Sam said.
‘Thassa whole idea,’ Travis said, stumbling to a chair. ‘I needed something that looked worse inna morning than I do. You got a drink around the place, Pa?’
‘You’ve had enough,’ Sam said.
‘They ain’t made that much,’ Travis said. His bleary eyes met Louise’s. A slight frown touched his face. ‘And how is the love of my life?’ he said.
‘None the better for seeing you,’ Louise said, her chin coming up.
‘You look – different,’ Travis said. ‘You even talk different.’
‘I am different,’ Louise said. ‘I’ve got a decent life now, Travis. Something to look forward to.’ Her voice had a pleading note in it. Don’t spoil it, please. Don’t spoil everything just when it’s all looking so good, she seemed to be saying.
‘Well, well,’ Travis said, and that baiting mockery they all remembered so well was back in his voice. ‘So the little whore’s gone respectable, has she?’
‘Don’t do that, Travis!’ Sam said sharply. ‘Louise is trying to forget all that. We all are!’
‘Tryna forget it?’ Travis said, getting to his feet. He stood in front of Louise, glaring at her. ‘Tryna forget, are you, whore? Dancin’ buck nekkid onna shable for drunken trappers? Jumpin’ ina bed with two—’
The sound of the slap was shocking and loud. The marks of Louise’s fingers stood out vividly on Travis’ face for a moment. Then he threw back his head and laughed wildly, almost madly.
‘What do you know?’ he said. ‘The bitch hit me!’ Without warning he backhanded Louise across the room. She reeled backwards, hit the wall, and slid down it to a sitting position, blood trickling from her broken mouth, her eyes fuddled.
‘Goddamned whore!’ he shouted. ‘No goddamned whore hits me!’
Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him around …
‘Damn you, Travis, you crazy bastard!’ he shouted. He started to say something else, but before he got the words formed Travis hit him. Sam reeled back, fell over a chair, slumped to the floor, his face stricken. He tried to get up, but his legs were all splayed. Blood pattered from his nose, staining his shirt. His eyes had the look of a kicked dog.
‘Nobody’s gonna hit me!’ Travis shouted. ‘Nobody inna world’s ever gonna hit me again. Bassard with a sword hit me at Get’sburg! Hit me! Shot him off his damned horse, chopped him to bits with his goddamned sword!’ The light in his eye was wild, insane. He was reliving something none of them could ever imagine.
‘Travis,’ Louise whispered. ‘Please. The babies—’
‘Babies,’ he said, frowning. ‘Thass right. Babies, thass what I came for.’
‘What?’ Abby said. She was helping Sam to his feet. He slumped into a chair, a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding nose. The stricken look was still in his eyes. He looked at Travis as if he were some strange kind of alien creature.
‘Gonna takem with me,’ Travis said. ‘Babies?’
‘I had twins, Travis,’ Louise said. ‘Their names are Joab and Jonathan.’
‘Joab’n Jon’than,’ he muttered. ‘Twins.’ He grinned, swaying a little. ‘Twins, eh?’ He looked at Louise, ‘Gonna go back to Texas,’ he said. Louise had got to her feet and wiped the smeared blood off her face, ‘Wanna come?’
‘No,’ Louise said.
‘You’re m’wife,’ Travis said, frowning again. ‘Whizzer thou goesh.’
‘No, Travis,’ Louise said. ‘That’s finished. That was finished the day you walked out on me in New York!’
‘Gave you the money, di’n’ I?’ he said. ‘Had to enlist to get it. This—’, He touched the livid scar on his face. ‘This what I got!’
‘Travis, I’m sorry you got hurt,’ Louise said. ‘But I’m not going with you. Not to Texas or anywhere else!’
‘You’ll goddamned do what I goddamned say, whore!’
‘No!’
‘Travis—’ Abby said. ‘Listen to me—’
‘Shut up!’ Travis snapped. ‘I don’t want to hear a word from you. Unnerstan’ me? Not a fuck’n word!’ His eyes menaced her and a chill touched Abby’s heart. He was going to say it. That mad light in his eye meant only one thing. He was going to tell Sam.
‘All right!’ Travis said, lurching to the door and opening it. ‘Don’t need you anyway, whore! Don’t need anyone! I’ll take the kids an’ we’ll manage without you!’
‘No, Travis!’ Louise said. She ran across and tried to stop him from leaving the room. He pushed her away and she fell awkwardly, her head striking the brass fender around the fireplace. She lay quite still.
‘Whore!’ Travis said and turned to leave the room. He found Abby barring his way. ‘Don’t try to stop me,’ he growled. ‘I mean it – don’t try to stop me!’
‘You’ll not touch those children!’ Abby shouted. ‘You hear me, you crazy devil? You leave those children alone!’
‘Get out of my way, mother!’ Travis snapped, the warning clear in the crazed blue eyes.
‘No!’ Abby said defiantly. ‘No!’ He looked at her for a moment and a smile of triumph touched his lips. He turned back into the room and stood looking down at Sam.
‘Look at me!’ Travis said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you!’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Sam said. There was a broken sound in his voice, as though he did not care about anything anymore. ‘Nothing you could say would interest me.’
‘This will,’ Travis said. ‘Won’t it, mother?’ He looked around for Abby’s reaction and as he did Abby hit him with the poker that she had picked up from the fireplace. It bent slightly around Travis’ forehead and he went sideways, bouncing off the wall and falling to his knees, groaning.
‘Jesus, Abby, no!’ Sam shouted as she raised the poker again. ‘You’ll kill him!’
‘Get out of my home!’ Abby screamed. ‘Get out of my home!’
Travis looked up at her, his eyes clouded. He saw her upraised arm and shielded his head with his arms. She hit him again. They heard the bones crack and he howled like an animal and fell to the floor. Abby kicked him.
‘Out!’ she shouted. ‘Out, out, out!’
Travis crawled, groaning, into the hallway. Abby kicked him again, still shouting. Sam lurched out to wrest the poker from her hand before she hit Travis with it again. Travis was a ghastly sight, blood pouring from the wound in his head, his left arm trailing crookedly. He squirmed towards the door with the squalling, kicking figure of Abby pursuing him. Travis scrambled to his feet as Abby threw open the door. His face was black with hatred. He lurched at Abby with his good hand curled into a claw.
‘No!’ Sam said.
Travis took another step and Sam fired the pistol he had taken from the drawer in the hall table into the floor. It made an enormous sound in the enclosed space. Travis stopped and looked at Sam through the curling gunsmoke.
‘She’s cheated you,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you? She’s cheated you all these years!’
‘If you say another word, boy, I’m going to shoot you,’ Sam said.
‘She gulled you!’ Travis shouted. ‘She foisted another man’s son on you, you blubber-bellied moron!’
Quite dispassionately, Sam shot the top off Travis’ ear. Travis screeched with pain and shock and looked at Sam as if Sam had suddenly turned into Satan. For the first time there was real fear in his eyes.
‘You – no, you wouldn’t … ?’ he whispered.
‘One more word, boy, and I will!’ Sam said. The gun held in his hand was rock steady. Travis stared at it. The one thing Sam was very, very good at was shooting.
‘Get his dog!’ Sam snapped to the maid, May, who was standing on the stairs, her eyes wide with curiosity and alarm. She scurried into the kitchen and dragged the animal into the hallway.
‘Take it!’ Sam said. ‘And don’t come back. Don’t ever come back, Travis!’
Travis stood in the street, the whitened blond hair gleaming in the light spilling out of the house. He threw back his head and laughed.
‘You dumb old bastard!’ he shouted. ‘You always were a dumb old bastard!’
‘I won’t tell you again,’ Sam said.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going!’ Travis said. ‘But you’ll see me again, all of you! You’ll see me again – in Hell!’ He yanked on the rope and the dog followed his lurching progress down the street. Sam shut the door and laid the pistol on the table. His hands were trembling. He put his arm around Abby. Her face was stricken as she looked up at him.
‘It’s all right, Abby,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’
‘But, Sam?’ she whispered. ‘Those things he said …’
‘I knew, Abby,’ he told her. ‘I’ve known for years.’
She stared at him incredulously. ‘You knew?’
Louise came out into the hallway, rubbing her head. ‘Is everything all right?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ Abby said. The pain at the top of her arm was suddenly a great, booming immensity. She felt her whole heart leap inside her chest as if it had burst like a boiler. She turned to Sam to tell him what had happened but before she could, a swirling redness enveloped her mind.
‘Abby!’ Sam shouted as she slid to the floor. ‘Abby, what is it?’
Her eyes opened, and for a moment they were filled with a beautiful sadness. ‘Sean?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’
She died two hours later without ever having regained consciousness.