5

i ’ve heard it said that dogs and cats see haunts, and this black canine has given truth

to that legend. she prowls the library doorway with a ruff the envy of any lion, snarling while

peering straight at me. she makes me laugh, but i’m gratified to say, she distresses her mistress.

“c’mon, c’mon now, emma. stop that foolishness.” the dog looks at me out of the corner of

her eyes and growls one last time. the woman drags her away by her pink collar, glancing

furtively over her shoulder into the room, hoping to see nothing. sometimes this dog, when

contented, puts me in mind of old susie. an admirable creature, she showed up during the early

days in harpers ferry.

sam, tayloe, and i benefited mightily from others’ misfortune—finding an abandoned cottage

up on ridge street along the row of arsenal workers’ housing. the floor was littered with odds

and ends from a hasty departure: a baby quilt, yards of linen, woolen pants and coats, a book or

two, as well as chests and empty bedsteads too cumbersome to be hauled away. i fingered a

delicate lace glove dropped by the door and tried to conjure its owner. maybe she was a fair,

soft-skinned young woman. one with a waist so small i could span it with my two hands. but

sam’s call from within the house destroyed my reverie.

there were soon twelve of us competing for a spot to sleep. our place was as overrun as the

rest along that street—each crammed with boys persuaded that for daring an early raid they

deserved this luxurious shelter. thousands of latecomers squatted in flimsy tents ringing the

town.

about a week after we’d settled in, several of us reclined on the porch steps during sundown.

some swigged brew peddled by enterprising mountain folks who had found an eager market in

boys new to inebriants in such quantity and regularity. sounds and smells of retching wafted

through the evening air. imboden hadn’t foreseen the need for food, and the shelves of every

merchant had been swept clean days earlier. we prayed for the arrival of fathers, uncles, and

brothers driving wagons loaded with eatables.

“this entire town is nothing but a stinking hole, and this hovel’s no better,” tayloe griped.

“you don’t smell much like a rose yourself,” i said. “i bet those clothes you’re wearing

haven’t seen soap and water in weeks.”

“look who’s talking,” he said.

at that moment, we spotted one of the mississippi boys sauntering along the street, dragging

behind him a sorry yellow dog with a noose around its neck. its head bobbed low, and its tail

sagged along its flanks.

“say, hold up! where you going with that miserable creature?” sam had risen to his feet, top

hat at an angle. the scrawny lad stopped in his tracks. he was struggling to sprout a beard, and a

cowlick sprouted from spikes of greasy hair. he scratched his belly under his shirt before

answering.

“this is a goddamned union dog, left behind by those filthy lincolnites. the boys and i are

about to teach it something about the new confederacy.” we barely understood his drunken

drawl, but it was clear that whatever activity he had planned would be the animal’s last. she

yelped as he kicked at her skinny ribs.

sam’s eye fell on a piece of rope draped over a chair back. “wait a minute now. i have

something you may want more than that useless cur. an item that is rare and valuable, of some

historical merit. come over and take a look.” as the drunken fellow peered through the dusk at

sam’s hand, he continued. “this here was torn down from the gallows in charles town in ’59.

it was part of the rope that swung that devil john brown. i hate to part with it, but i’ve always

wanted to get myself a dog—and a yellow one at that.”

the boy paused. the idea of having such a thing clearly tickled his fancy. “where’d you get

that? i heard some chap is hawking genuine john brown souvenirs, but i don’t have the money

to get none. i seen chunks of a stump that governor wise dismounted on and strips of pine

planking from the gallows. but the rope that hung john brown would impress the bejesus out of

folks at home.”

“hell, this piece could have been the one to choke brown dead. right across his adam’s

apple.” sam angled his hand across his neck to make the point. he then held out his rope in

exchange for the one that throttled the dog. the mississippian agreed, smug with confidence he

had gotten the better deal. the dog used every last bit of her energy to put her paws on sam’s

knees and swipe a lick of gratitude across his cheek.

that’s how we came by susie louise dedrick, old susie for short, named by sam after a girl

back home who’d stolen his heart. it would be hard to find a better or more appreciative animal.

after giving up a profound sigh of contentment, she’d sleep at night with her head on one of our

chests, liquid eyes occasionally half-open to lather her saviors in adoration.

just as we thought we might starve due to imboden’s complete poverty of planning, my

father and mr. lucas drove three days to the ferry with a wagon loaded with hams, dried beef,

apples, potatoes, and bread. when pa jumped from the wagon to greet us, i almost knocked him

down with a hug. laughing heartily, he slapped me on the back. that food never tasted better,

even at home. old susie got the leftover fat and tough bits and licked crumbs from my chin and

fingers. afterward, she sighed with the same deep happiness that i felt as she curled at my feet.

every day, susie padded along to the arsenal as we dismantled any useable equipment for

shipment to richmond. she skulked about the thousands of heat-bent weapons while she tried to

rustle up a meal of river rats. i grew dependent upon her company, the feel of her warm head

under my hand, her silken ears between my fingers, and her exuberant greeting whenever she

spied us. she eased my growing homesickness.

one day in late april before tom jackson arrived to take charge, a group of georgia boys

hailed us to join them in some merriment. a united states mail train had been detained, and a

quantity of incoming harpers ferry letters lay undelivered in the rail cars. springing up through

the yawning doors, boys ripped into the bags, spilling envelopes and packages everywhere.

some lads perched on unopened sacks. others reclined on the car floor and read as sam and i

rifled in vain for love missives we could pretend were intended for us. susie had leaped into the

car and entertained herself pouncing through the stacks, envelopes cascading over her nose.

tayloe ripped through the envelopes like a man gone mad and then yelped, “got one! listen

to this!” in a falsetto voice, batting his eyelashes like a girl, he read a letter from a young wife in

virginia to her husband in ohio. sam and i howled like coyotes when he got to the part where

she described yearning to be enfolded in his arms again. susie added a yowl or two to our

chorus.

the georgians were looking for a different kind of declaration—one that linked the recipient

to the union. they were speedily rewarded with a letter addressed to william mccoy from a

relative in pennsylvania. mccoy was a neighbor close by up on bolivar street. as he strolled

past our cottage, i remarked in my homesickness that he was of my father’s age and bearing.

“let’s pay a call on this william mccoy and show him who’s in charge now,” one boy

hollered.

“huzzah, huzzah,” shouted others, pumping their fists. “let’s do it!” they jumped from the

mail car and huffed up the hill, snatching up stones as they ran. the three of us tagged along,

curious to see what they might do. when we arrived, sorely out of breath, stones were already

bouncing off the bolivar street house. glass had splintered into the hedges, and the picket fence

had collapsed under battering boots. somebody had kicked in the wooden door. mccoy

emerged with arms raised, shielding his face. nevertheless, rocks found their mark on his chest

and belly, and blood trickled from a cut above his bristling white eyebrows. his denials counted

for nothing against the accusatory shouts of his attackers. truth be known, i’m sorry to admit

that we heaved some stones too. sam, tayloe, and i trailed after as the mob prodded and pushed

the broken man to the town’s center. to his relief, i’m certain, he was locked up in the local jail.

his confiscated property immediately became officers’ lodgings, and we heard from our

culpeper captain that mccoy would be shipped penniless out to ohio.

later that month, not long after commander thomas jackson came to town to take control, i

passed near the same boys again strolling down bolivar street. i followed far enough behind not

to attract attention but listened to their chatter. they were mocking jackson behind his back.

“the man don’t know nothing about soldiering. he ain’t even got a uniform,” one said.

“he dresses no better than my daddy,” another said.

this was before commander jackson banned all liquor, demoted the ferry’s officers, formed

up daily muster and parade details, and forbade those troublemakers from coming into town. i’m

sure they had plenty worse to say about him then.

the smartest thing jackson did was to band all of us fellows from the same localities into

distinct companies. he knew we’d fight more fiercely to protect boys we had known at home.

tayloe, sam, and i joined the rest from augusta and neighboring rockbridge county in

company d, although it would be another month before there would be a real confederate

army.

and jackson worked us like dogs, unlike the officers who came with us to the ferry. he

forced us to parade in parallel rows six hours a day under baking sun and pelting rain. every

day, a number of us boys fell out from fatigue. my feet swelled in my boots until i had to fight

to pull them on, which was torture with so many seeping blisters. old susie lazed under trees on

the sidelines, scratched her floppy ears, panted, and occasionally chased after a squirrel. she

then padded at our heels as we trudged back to the house on the ridge. at the end of the day, the

adoring swipe of her tongue on my cheek and the love radiating from her brown eyes almost

made up for all the discomfort.

by late may, i doubted i was cut out to be a soldier. this was nothing like my imagining. we

had been ordered to wreck the rail lines passing through harpers ferry that carried coal from

western virginia east to the coast. this meant hefting a sledgehammer above your head and

smashing it down against iron rails. grunting and cussing, we’d then shove them beyond the rail

lines, and do it again. to make the time pass, i counted the strokes. as many as a thousand times

a day, i’d swing that leaden sledgehammer. as the sun dove behind the mountains, tayloe, sam,

and i dragged wooden ties to bonfires alongside the former track, where they were incinerated.

at night, my throbbing muscles seemed to have come unstuck from the bones.

“have you heard anything about union troops gathering for an assault on the ferry?” sam

asked one evening while we were resting on the porch. he leaned back on his elbows, allowing

his legs to slope down the porch steps.

i was studying the nimbus of clouds forming around the moon, a sure predictor of rain. “let

them come,” i replied. “it’ll give us something to brag about when we’re back home.”

jackson’s orders to destroy everything the yanks might find useful at the ferry led us to

believe they were coming for us soon. explosions under the baltimore and ohio rail bridges

were so loud that they rocked the house up on bolivar street. we could see the smoking metal

carcasses from the upper windows as their twisted struts were lapped by the river tides. every

day we attacked the water towers with sledgehammers until their supports finally began to

crumble. with an earsplitting crack, the wooden tanks slid sideways, and we leaped out of the

way before they toppled with a mighty crash. if townspeople thought our arrival had brought

chaos and destruction, our departure would be worse.

the wait for the yanks’ arrival dragged on and on. and then they never came. our captain

finally ordered us to cook five days’ provisions and said we’d be setting out in the morning for a

two-day march to manassas.

“hogsbreath. manassas? all this time we’ve been waiting to do what we came for in the

spring—to defeat the yanks at the ferry,” said tayloe. the others shared his disappointment,

and truth be known, fear.

“we know the ferry’s ins and outs,” i said. “i’d rather fight the enemy on familiar ground.

we don’t know anything about manassas!”

the sad day was drawing near when we would have to bid farewell to old susie. tagging

beside a regiment of soldiers with uncertain fates was no prospect for a dog. whenever there

was thunder, she’d tremble by my side and then burrow under my bedroll. i knew she’d suffer

greatly from the blasts of artillery fire that would roll across battlefields—if she had not first

been blown to smithereens. rebel sympathizers on our street had shared their meager food with

us before we were regarded as a scourge, and i persuaded them to take susie.

she must have sensed our intent because in the preceding hours she circled and whined, her

tail hanging low as one betrayed. she’d lean into our legs as she made her circuit, as if her touch

could persuade us to change our minds. it broke my heart to give her up. the family would be

taking her and moving on not long after the troops departed. the ferry would become a

wasteland, populated only by looters who wheeled barrows to the larger houses and carted off

what we hadn’t destroyed.

nevertheless, i kept a lookout for susie in the coming years as we circled around the ferry

area. i searched for her in the starving packs of dogs that occasionally begged around our

campgrounds, just in case. but i never saw her again. toward the bitter last, the population of all

creatures smaller than man sharply declined. i preferred to think that susie lived out her days

contentedly, away from the dangerous world that would soon be ours. i didn’t realize it at the

time, but giving her up would be the first of many heartbreaks.