4

i n the kitchen this morning i saw the woman register the train’s whistle coming from

miles away, tilting her head as she swirled suds on the breakfast dishes. ellen’s finest, the ones

with delicate sprigs of corn flowers around the scalloped edges. my wife would be so grieved to

see that her porcelain plates are now chipped from careless use. christmas goose and sweet

potatoes, cara’s currant and rum wedding cake, and countless birthday feasts were served up on

that china. as the settings glistened on the linen cloth, pa’s face glowed with pride that his wife

and girls had once again created such a bounty from his labor. now look at those plates. but

dwelling on them will only deepen my increasing misery.

the long wail of the train reminds me of the frenzy of excitement when construction on the new

railroad line was finished a few years before the war, and staunton was finally connected to the

rest of the world. until the day i boarded the train with imboden’s militia boys, i’d never ridden

one of the new steam horses. it was an auspicious start for an adventure.

some older fellows, summoned so quickly there was no time to change, sported dress suits.

sam had arrived at the staunton rail station with a formal top hat perched at an angle on his

head, capping off his bandy-legged swagger. his slingshot, carved from a knotty hickory branch,

protruded from one pants pocket, and the sack of stones he’d collected from tinkling creek

along the bethel road, bulged the other. many fellows bristled with pistols strapped to their

thighs or stuck in their pants’ waistbands. sheathed hunting knives dangled from belts. i toted

one of pa’s hunting rifles.

the train chugged north through the valley. the boys boarding at orange were convinced we

were headed to the nation’s capital, but no one could imagine what we’d do there. at the

culpeper stop, a fellow who sat behind me swore we were off to alexandria. he’d heard rumors

about tearing up the docks and disrupting shipping. sam, tayloe, and i unlatched and pushed up

the windows. leaning out, we hollered at every living thing—men, women, children, cows,

horses, pigs, chickens—as the train plowed through the countryside. for most of us, the ride was

the greatest novelty ever. to celebrate, boys around us broke out flasks of liquor, fueling

boisterous boasts and cussing as the sun went down. ma’s voice was still too recent in my ears

for me to be tempted to share in the boozing, but sam gleefully guzzled the proffered spirits.

we rumbled along by rail all night, finally reaching strasburg in the early gray light. a

subdued crowd, we stumbled out of the cars, rubbing our eyes and hoisting haversacks for a

twenty-mile walk toward a winchester train. we hadn’t gone far when i heard a commotion in

the crooked line ahead.

“something’s going on,” sam said, and sprinted ahead to get wind of it. he hooted like a

banshee and tossed his hat in the air.

“it’s happened! we’ve seceded! the vote was 85 to 56 in favor!” he shouted. a hot buzz of

voices swirled around us. chest heaving, sam again fell into step next to me. then his face

suddenly became grave. the ham bone i’d been gnawing fell to the ground. the lines

straightened up, and each boy was, for the first time, a real soldier.

“sam,” i said in a low voice, “did you ever believe this day would come? now that it’s real,

there’s no turning back.” he didn’t answer. he just strode forward with a pensive air.

an older man overheard. “don’t be so glum, boys. have y’all forgotten? we’re a bunch of

farmers and hunters. we know how to use a gun.” he paused to shift a chunk of tobacco to the

other cheek. “those citified northerners who ain’t never shot nothin’ will scurry back home

with their tails between their legs. just like coon dogs who failed to git the coon.” he spat to the

roadside and bit off another plug. “we’ll be back in the fields before summer harvest.”

“i’m not so sure about that,” sam said. but the fellow already had wandered off.

by the time we reached winchester, heel blisters had risen and popped, and my shoulders

throbbed from the weight of the haversack. exhaustion had dampened our enthusiasm. it was

then that we heard we were bound for harpers ferry, famous as home of the country’s largest

gun-manufacturing plant and arsenal, the very place john brown had failed to seize two years

earlier. our goal was the same—to seize the arsenal and the weapons. but for the possible

confederacy this time, not a slave revolt. an anxious undercurrent coursed through the car.

“look what happened to john brown,” sam said. “the feds strung him up for treason and

ripped his gang’s guts out. i heard they cut off one fellow’s ears, shot and hanged some others,

and sliced off their arms and legs afterward. some weren’t even given a decent burial.” i felt the

blood rush from my face and saw others turn pale.

“that scum imboden tricked us,” sam growled. this was a side of sam i’d never seen, a sam

who was less sure he would come out ahead in any situation. i was shaken and turned away lest

he sense it.

tayloe looked like he’d seen a ghost. “what if we fail too? why would they treat us any

different than they treated brown and his gang?” the air seemed to thicken in our car and boys’

shoulders slumped.

this was the first time i’d faced the possible consequences of what we were doing. to buoy

myself, i reminded them that brown had only seventeen men; we had many more.

night fell. fellows propped their backs against the freight car walls or curled up on the floor

with their heads on knapsacks, unconscious until morning light pierced the cracks. sam dozed

within hollering distance while, too stirred up to close my eyes, i leaned against the wooden wall

all night and saw the industrial town as it came into view at dawn. carved out of limestone

cliffs, there was scarce room between rock and river for any buildings. an ominous curtain of

greasy black smoke stretched along the riverbank and hovered over rooftops. boys began to stir.

“what’s that stink?”

“i dunno,” one fellow said. “smells like a blacksmith forge to me.” he squinted his eyes and

sniffed the air.

the train brakes screeched to a stop on the trestles leading across the narrowest section of the

shenandoah river. the engineer waited for the signal to move forward. in the early morning

light, i caught sight below of a man squatting at the bridge’s stone base. his movements were

jerky; he seemed uneasy. twenty small wooden kegs lay about as he tinkered with something.

then he charged up the hill like his tail was on fire. without a word, sam thrust aside his

haversack, cast off his hat, and dove through the open doors. he almost flew down the hillside.

“well, there goes our first deserter. don’t take much to scare that fellow,” the boy who stood

next to me said.

we crowded the open rail car door, boys craning their necks to get a view. on the riverbank,

sam stomped on flames inching along a rope that trailed toward the kegs.

“dynamite! that son-of-a-bitch tried to blow up the train and kill us!”

the other fellows had finally realized why sam had leapt from the car. ashen-faced and fists

pounding, he raced uphill, leaping over rocks and clumps of wire grass to reach the train just as

it began to roll. he ran alongside, picking up speed with the freight cars. gasping for air, he

hollered my name, then tayloe’s. “come on,” i yelled. “we’ll pull you in.” he propelled

himself halfway into the car opening, legs flailing over the tracks. tayloe and i gripped his arms

and the back of his jacket and tugged him the rest of the way.

i whacked his shoulder, “you’re a war hero already.”

“boy, i sure couldn’t have acted so fast,” a fellow standing nearby said. i flushed with pride

that sam was my friend.

he bent half over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. his hair tumbled over his sweaty face.

“how did someone know that soldiers were headed to the ferry?” he finally sputtered.

“oh no. if the feds got word, they might have a full army there by now,” the fellow swaying

next to sam said. his eyes were huge.

“i knew it. i knew this was a bad idea,” said tayloe. he grabbed for the pistol he had stuck in

his belt and clutched it in a shaking hand.

safely across the bridge and into the station, we straggled off. i paused for a moment, feeling

newly alive now that death had passed us by. but sounds of four hundred confused and milling

boys, plus a nostril-searing odor of hot iron, quickly dispelled my sense of awe.

i was scared. tayloe kept running his tongue across his lips, a sign he was scared too. i think

the smell threw everyone off, including the militia commanders. this wasn’t what we’d

expected, even though i’d caught a glimpse of smoke from the train.

“prepare to march,” hollered the militia leaders, and the three of us fell into a scraggly line

behind some staunton boys. we nervously opened and closed our powder canisters and jiggled

minié balls as we waited, praying our weeks of practice at home would be enough. boys from

culpeper were an exception. they had no weapons. instead, they scouted the train yard for

sticks and then stuffed stones from between the rails in their pockets. nobody, not even the so-

called officers, appeared to know what was called for next. on command, our entire band of four

hundred hesitantly moved out into potomac street and saw something that made my jaw drop.

weapons clattered to the ground as boys gaped in stunned shock.

the armory was a smoldering mess of bricks and mortar, a few tottering pieces of wall,

molten lumps of metal, and twisted girders. small flames still licked at the building shell. there

were no feds.

all order collapsed, and despite the militia leaders’ protests, tayloe, sam, and i, along with

most of the other boys, wandered off to discover the cause. and if truth be known, to explore the

town.

beyond the armory debris on potomac street, we saw another astonishing sight.

townspeople strained at wheelbarrows piled with tools, clothes, hams, fowl, and children. it was

a noisy procession with parents urging older children to hurry and neighbors shouting to one

another. cruel jeers of “good riddance, lincolnites” and “take this, you unionists” followed

them as pro-secession youngsters hurled eggs and chunks of clay at their backs. infants bawled

and struggled in their parents’ hold, and toddlers swung onto their mothers’ skirts as the throng

surged forward, ignoring the insults and blows in their haste to depart.

sam and tayloe were impatient to explore, so i let them go ahead of me. i wanted answers

for why the armory had burned. i caught the eye of a sallow-faced man leaning against a

doorjamb watching the scene as he rolled a cigar. he poured a little more tobacco from a leather

pouch onto the brown paper and then licked the edge. after placing the unlit cigar in his mouth,

he seemed willing to talk.

“why isn’t a federal army here? did another rebel group beat us to the ferry?” i asked. my

boots crunched glass underfoot. not a window remained intact for several blocks near the

factory ruins, and building facades were marked with swaths of soot.

the man sucked on his stogie, hitched up his canvas pants, and replied, “another rebel

group? so that’s who you are. i knew i hadn’t seen your face before.” he looked as though he

was debating how much to tell me. finally, he said, “hell, no. the durn fool federals done this

to themselves. a fellow returned to the ferry yesterday evening from the virginia convention

and snitched to the armory guards that the state had seceded. that you boys were on your way

for weapons.”

“a snitch? i can’t believe it. of all the danged luck!”

“yep,” he said. “anyway, as of last winter, the arsenal commander had only a dozen guards

on hand. the poor fellow begged higher ups for more, but none were sent. now he and his men

have fled before y’all could get here.”

“can you tell me how it happened?”

“it was in the midst of a big uproar. you never saw folks so heated up when the news of

secession spread. why, even my neighbor and i threw punches at one another during a brawl in

our local tavern. i never suspected he’d be a union sympathizer. you can’t tell about folks

sometimes,” he said. “the fellow was getting the better of me, had my shoulders pinned to the

floor, until we both heard an explosion so strong that glasses behind the bar crashed to the

ground. that brought us and the other brawlers to our senses, and we ran outside to see what had

happened. word spread fast that the federal arsenal commander had blown the armory to

kingdom come to keep the weapons out of your hands. and the dangest thing was that he used

explosives left over from when john brown brought them to the ferry to blow up the arsenal.

how about that!”

we were both silent for a moment, taking in the strangeness of it all. then i remembered all

those pitiful folks at the end of potomac street.

“why are all of these people leaving town? who are they?” i asked.

“foreigners,” he said and then spat into the street. “damned european immigrants come

down from the north to work in the munitions plant. nothing but pariahs now that we’ve

seceded.”

just at that moment, i saw tayloe and sam stepping gingerly through the debris at the end of

the street. i thanked the man and hurried off in their direction to find lodgings.