Читать книгу Nobody's Hero - Frank Laumer - Страница 10

3

Ransom Clark stayed in the employ of Judge French for two years and two months. When he left for the army in the spring of 1833, he looked much as he had when the judge had brought him in. A closer look would have revealed subtle changes, however. He was cleaner, stood taller. Though he spoke rarely, he spoke well. The profanity of earlier years, which he had learned so well from Benjamin, was heard only in moments of extremity, and never when the judge or his daughter was near. The changes that Ransom had undergone were principally internal. From an ignorant country boy he had become a moderately well-read young man.

The judge had not intended to hire a laborer, a boy to muck out the stables, but a man who could learn in time to handle horses, to learn at least the rudiments of the business of horses. To understand the business of horses, or any other for that matter, the judge said, he must have some knowledge of the world, the fundamentals of developing a product, whether it was horses, crops, printing, or buggy-making, and how and why and when to buy or sell. On these things a man made or lost his money, in some cases his life. The surest way to that world was experience and reading. It was evident that the young man knew his letters. The judge thought he saw in Ransom a man in his youth, ignorant but intelligent, unskilled but strong, a young man who would rest but never quit. As it turned out, he was right.

In less than a year Ransom had learned all the judge knew about horses, and more. He could ride as though he were a part of the animal, whether in a walk, step, canter, trot, or gallop. On occasion the judge, while watching him run a fine horse, had heard cries come down the wind, curses in all probability, sounds made by a man in the awakening realization of his own power, his youth, his ability. The judge, on his feet now but using a cane, smiled. Joie de vivre, indeed.

Nor was his subtle training all physical. Eunice Luceba French, the judge’s daughter, had seen to that. Her mother was an invalid, her life’s strength having gone into the creation of ten children, of whom Eunice was the oldest. With the help of a hired girl barely older than herself she had taken over the management of their home. Like Ransom, she was twenty years old. When her responsibilities allowed, she played the piano, sang, and read.

Four months after Ransom started work, the judge had offered him the room over the single stable at the rear of their lot. It was clean, dry, and secure. With a wash basin, a rope bed, and a lamp, Ransom began to understand what it meant to have more than shelter, to have a home. While Lucy, as her father called her, never entered his room and he only rarely had entered their home again, she had begun to take small chores to the back porch, sitting in a rocker, shelling peas, sewing, sometimes reading, when he came to the steps on Saturday afternoons for his pay.

The first time, after he and the judge had settled their business, as Ransom had nodded to her, turned to go, she had spoken. “Mr. Clark?” He had turned, looked directly at her. “Ma’am?” He was in no way bold, but he was direct. For an instant she had found herself at a loss, though she had set her mind at a question. She looked down, then back at his hazel eyes, his slightly raised brows. He stood straight, arms at his sides. He didn’t fidget. He stood immobile, waiting. “Do you read?”

The job with Judge French had been reason enough to stay, Lucy had become the reason to strive. He had come to sense that she was a doorway to a world he had not known existed, a doorway though which even he might pass. Finally she became the reason that he must go.

It had begun with her reading aloud a piece or two from the newspaper while he sat, transfixed, on the step. The reading led to talk, the talk to more reading. An hour here, an hour there. She had not only attended the common school but had completed the course of instruction at the Livingston County High School. She read newspapers, she had even read her father’s law books. She had learned to read and speak in the French language, a liquid, sensual sound. He asked her to read in the French and gradually he had picked up a word here and there, alphabet, numbers. She and her father talked, she said. Really talked. He told her of cases that had come before him, told her of the accused and the accuser, the reasons. She fairly glowed with knowledge. Within a year Ransom came to the steps whenever he was free and she was there, following her words like a plant follows the sun. She loaned him books. She opened his eyes. She lifted his heart. He had lived for nineteen years imagining that, except for his mother, he was alone against the world; it cared nothing for him and he sought nothing from it except survival. The cares and concerns of others were nothing to him, only survival. He had once seen in his path a butterfly, unsuccessful in shedding its cocoon, wings glued together, dragging itself along the ground, crippled, doomed, but driven to live. Now, with Lucy, his wings were coming free.

The hours with her were gold, the rest were lead. He had come to believe she was an angel, a miracle. She had laughed. “Oh no, Mr. Clark. I am not a miracle, or if I am, then everyone is a miracle.” She was no longer laughing. “I believe that every woman, and man, and child, is a miracle. Whoever we are, wherever we live, whatever our race or nation, we are each unique.” She drew a breath. “No one of us has ever lived before. We will never live again. Thousands of people over thousands of years had to have met just when they did, had children just when they did, for you, for me, to be here. Do you understand?” She paused, leaning slightly toward him, holding her small hands together in her lap, her eyes locked on his, her face straining with the urgency of her message.

She straightened, took a breath, sat back in the chair. “I think sometimes of each of us as actors on a stage. We are each part of a vast story that we don’t understand. We don’t know how or why the story began, or how it will end. The goal in living is to try to understand. But we have no script. We have only a little time. Sometimes our audience calls out suggestions. We can take them, or we can simply say and do what we believe to be the best to carry the story forward. Then our time is up, our part of the story ends.” Again she paused, her face tilted down, her eyes looking up, her lips smiling, shy. “These years are our time, Mr. Clark. We must do the best we can.”

They had sat on the porch at the end of many days, an hour taken before they parted, she into the house, he into his loft. For a few weeks in the winters of his youth between the end of harvest and the start of planting he had gone to the common school, had learned to read, to write a fair hand, to calculate, but more from the desire to escape Benjamin’s heavy hand than through a love of learning. Lucy had encouraged him, had loaned him spellers, histories, books she had used in high school. Now, by candlelight he would read, study, sometimes practice his handwriting. He had heard her some evenings playing the piano, singing. He had wondered if she knew that he listened, staring into the night, filled with ideas he could not understand, longing to be near her.

She had talked to him of books and music, poetry, of the great falls near Buffalo, of the canal building from Buffalo all the way to Albany, of the railroad, nearly a thousand miles of track for trains that could speed at thirty miles per hour, of the wonders of the world, of the wonders that would be. She had talked of places, peoples, of the Irish newly come to the area, of Indians, the Seneca, a powerful tribe of the Iroquois who had lived thereabouts for a hundred years and more, subdued by General John Sullivan fifty years gone, now rarely seen. “This is really their land,” she said, opening her arms. “Their people, others like them, have been here, all across the continent, for a thousand years, maybe more.” A sadness came to her eyes. “Every white person, every black person in America is a foreigner. Our parents or grandparents took the Indians’ land. We’re still taking it.” Her voice was soft, hushed, almost as though she were talking to herself. She seemed not bitter, not pitying of the Indian, not condemning of the whites, simply explaining her belief of conditions of the world in which she lived.

He had hardly known what to make of it. Benjamin had always spoken of the Irish, Germans, all white people who were not native to the area, as foreigners, people to be ridiculed, not to be trusted. As for Negroes and Indians, Ransom had never known anyone to speak of them as fully human, as creatures with thoughts and dreams, capable of kindness or caring, of love and hope. Why, they didn’t wear decent clothes or live in houses. Their skins were not white. They were not Christians. He had never thought of taking land from Indians as different from taking land from deer or bear. Indians just lived on the land, they didn’t own it. He had always thought of land as being for white people. But if Lucy believed these things, he had better think about it.

In late spring of 1833 he had seen a poster in town, a call for volunteers to join the army, go to Florida, protect the settlers from the Seminole Indians. He had stared at the poster for a long time, wondering about the army, travel, Indians, fighting. Lucy had talked to him of travel, the wonders to be seen, but he had never really thought of leaving Livingston County, his work, Lucy. He had learned through Lucy that the United States extended a thousand miles west and twelve hundred miles south, that what was referred to as “the west” began not far from Griegsville, that the American people represented a great diversity of cultures and economies, from barbarism to refinement. The white population had grown from four million to fifteen million. Suddenly a door to the world seemed to open, a chance for him to try a life that promised more than farming and horses.

The law had just been changed, a fellow could enlist now for three years instead of five. He could join up, travel, save money, come back his own man, not the judge’s hired hand. Maybe one day he might build a house. He could cut the trees, rive the boards. There was plenty of stone. A porch, a fireplace. Then, perhaps, Lucy . . .

He had put a shirt, a pair of socks, his knife, in a small worn carpet-bag Lucy had given him. It would be a fifty-mile walk north to Rochester. He had stood on her back porch, knocked. The judge had come alone. Ransom could hardly hear the judge’s words for the disappointment ringing in his ears. Something about returning after his enlistment, taking up the work again. The judge had shaken his hand, gripped Ransom’s right shoulder with his left hand. “The army is a school, Ransom, a hard one. You can learn a great deal, some of it good. You’ll travel, see things. Do your best. Come back, boy. You’ll have work with me as long as I live.” Ransom nodded, felt his eyes burn. Then the judge had turned, gone inside. Ransom turned, took a step.

“Mr. Clark?” It was Lucy. She had taken the place of her father, her back pressed to the door, one hand behind holding the knob. She stood looking into his eyes, lips parted, close to words. “Mr. Clark, my father says you may write to me if . . . if you like.” She didn’t drop her eyes. She held out one hand. He had never touched her. Now he took her hand in his fingers. It felt as fragile as the cup in which she had sometimes served him tea. At the touch he felt his own lips open, tried to swallow down what seemed to be a peach pit in his throat. “Yes.” A moment longer they stood, then her hand slid from his, she turned, opened the door, went inside. The door closed.

•

While it was true that the army provided food, clothing and shelter, the beef and pork were often rancid, the bread or “ship’s biscuit” moldy, the coffee weak, and all were to be prepared by the soldier himself if he was serving in the field. Clothing was of cheap and coarse material, too large or too small, with boots that sometimes fell apart within weeks. Shelter at the frontier posts where Clark had served were either drafty log structures with wooden bedsteads that slept two to four men, their only mattress being forty-four pounds of straw issued monthly for each pair of men, quickly infested with fleas and bedbugs, or in the field, tents with straw mattresses. It was common knowledge that the food and bread ration, the rough ill-fitting clothing and the housing had changed little in half a century, but some thought it a great advantage that just this year regulations had ruled that each man be issued eighteen ounces of baked bread rather than flour, though in reality it made the post bakery into a money-making machine, since it took less than eighteen ounces of flour to make an equal weight of bread. To augment the regular ration of raw or boiled meat and bread, men were encouraged to garden, fish, and hunt.

And it hadn’t been as easy to save money as he had thought, what with a sutler’s temptations. The army had authorized the establishment of a business at every fort to offer for sale to soldiers as well as civilians “necessaries,” which might include cheese, fruit, nuts, and tea, as well as needles and thread, books, paper and pencils, and, of course, whisky, beer, and wine. Clark had never indulged in liquor, only rarely had a glass of beer, but the fruit, nuts, writing paper for a labored letter to Lucy, and sometimes a book, broke the monotony of garrison life. The paymaster made his rounds every two months, and Clark had known men who spent their entire pay and more on luxuries and liquor. Meanwhile, the sutler had the right to sit at the pay table and take up to half a soldier’s pay to satisfy his debts. Still, he had traveled a thousand miles and more, had gained some understanding of the world and its peoples that only travel could provide, had managed to put at least a little money aside. He would keep saving, take it back to Lucy. In spite of Benjamin, he had begun to believe that he was worthy, that he was a man. He knew hope. He had dreams.

From Rochester he had been sent to join his regiment at Fort Mitchell on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River in Alabama. The fort had been built in 1813 along the Federal Road that connected Washington City with New Orleans. The road was created by the linking together of the various post riders’ paths, cleared sixteen feet wide through almost unbroken pine forest, the center eight feet cut close to the ground, sufficient for moving supply wagons, cannon, and men on horseback or on foot. Swamps and streams had been causewayed and bridged. It ran through the territory of the Muscogees, known as Creeks by white men. The fort had been named for the then-governor of Georgia, David Mitchell, and was located a mile west of the Chattahoochee River. It was the first stockade in a series built about a day’s travel apart west of the Chattahoochee and served as a supply base.

It was now a base for troops sent to protect friendly Creeks from the whites. Settlers crowded and tumbled along the road past the fort in battered wagons and on foot. Along with their worldly goods they carried psalm books, whisky stills, and flintlock rifles. Here and there along the road they dropped out, took up land, built one- and two-room cabins, and settled down to raise cotton and children.

Clark had not known an officer, and few enlisted men, who did not feel more sympathy for the Indians than for the white settlers. The treaty forced upon the Creeks by Andrew Jackson in 1814 had driven many of them into unity with the Seminoles of Florida. The taking of Indian land, the ill-famed removal of the southern tribes to Indian Territory in the west, was not only disagreeable to most soldiers but shameful. General Winfield Scott had issued an order that “every possible kindness, compatible with the necessity of removal, must be shown by the troops.” His aide, Erasmus Keyes, had admitted that he “felt like a trespasser, one of a gang of robbers.”

Though a large part of the tribe had already been moved west, the Creeks remaining in the vicinity of Fort Mitchell had thought to placate the whites, to deal fairly and be dealt with fairly. Then gold had been discovered some fifteen miles south of the Fort Mitchell. Whites of the surrounding country had, without permission of the Creeks, entered their land, opened mines, were digging and washing the ore. They had built villages of log houses and set up trade with one another. There had been skirmishes between the Creeks and the gold-diggers, murders committed, and preparations on the part of the affronted Indians that seemed to threaten a general war with their nation.

A federal marshal sent to evict the intruders had to call for help. Colonel Twiggs, commanding the regiment, ordered out a detachment of Fort Mitchell troops. Clark’s Company B, 2nd Artillery, under command of Capt. Francis S. Belton, was given the task of protecting the Creeks and their gold from the white intruders. Belton, a forty-one-year-old career officer who preferred the security of an office to the risks of the field, delegated the job to Lt. Walter Scott Chandler, West Point, 1830. Chandler, with Clark and twenty-five others, had gone to village after village, burning the log houses, driving the white inhabitants off Creek land.

At one such settlement called Yamacraw along the Augusta River, they found the white inhabitants, a mob of fifty or sixty in number, armed with clubs, axes, hoes, brickbats, and broomsticks, ready to fight. Clark wrote to Lucy of the excitement. “We had been ordered to load our muskets with blank cartridges, but on seeing this, orders were given to draw the blanks and load with balls. No sooner did we do this than the foe dropped their weapons, and scampered for the woods, as fast as fleet heels could carry them.”

But there were more squatters than soldiers and, when push came to shove, the Southern-led government backed the whites. Perhaps Indians were considered a step above Negroes, but a short step. The Creeks of Alabama and Georgia, in spite of the treaties that guaranteed their reservation “forever,” would finally, in handcuffs and chains, be set upon the road to far Oklahoma, the “Trail of Tears.”

In February of 1834 Clark’s company and another under Capt. Upton Sinclair Fraser were ordered to Fort Morgan on Mobile Point, the single tooth in the mouth of Mobile Bay. They marched across the state to Mobile, boarded the steamboat Sangumon for the thirty-five-mile trip down and across the bay and, on March 7, were the first troops to garrison the vast new fortress, completed after fifteen years of labor by thousands of slaves laying eight million bricks.

A year passed. Nothing threatened except the weather. Men fought only among themselves. They ate, slept, hunted, stared out at the occasional boat passing in the distant channel. In January of 1835, Belton assigned Lieutenant Chandler, Acting Quartermaster, the task of taking a crew up the bay to Mobile for pay and supplies. He had been on detached service for almost a year, first on recruiting, followed by service at Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. He had only returned to Fort Morgan in November. He chose Sgt. W. Grant for his crew along with Privates Leavenwise, Finn, and Clark.

Mobile Bay was known for its capricious winds, called “northers,” and suddenly rough water. Five men in a small sailing boat could have their hands full, but the trip to Mobile, five miles west across the bay, thirty miles north, was uneventful. It was a cold day and clear once the morning fog had lifted. Heavy winter coats, wool jackets and trousers, and Jefferson boots kept the men warm, though a dash of sixty-degree spray felt like ice water on exposed fingers that held the tiller or worked the sail. They kept well out of the channel, far from the risk of collision. Clark was glad for the change; a boat trip and a night in Mobile a rare treat, an adventure for men who were garrisoned in the most isolated post in the country where fatigue duty was the order of the day.

They started back the morning of the twenty-fifth. The sky was overcast. A civilian messenger had joined them. They carried all the provisions the skiff would hold. With the cargo plus an extra man, there was little room to move about and the six men moved carefully, taking their positions with their feet among the bags and barrels. Clark found a place to sit on a bag of flour, his feet on the gunnel, enjoying the rare chance to travel by boat. They had little freeboard but the bay was calm, fog shrouding them like a winding sheet. By nine o’clock the fog was thinning, the sky bright, a breeze pushing them down the west side of the bay, the water a little choppy now, slapping against the hull. The wind freshened and they were under easy canvas. They passed the mouth of the Mobile River and were coming up on Dog River, six miles out of Mobile, two miles south of Choctaw Point.

Without warning a freak of wind was on them, slamming against the sail, throwing the boat over, sail flat on the water, catapulting the men into the bay along with the provisions and sacks of coin. Clark, gasping with the shock, struggled back to the capsized boat. In an instant the water had penetrated his heavy clothing, seeming to squeeze the air out of his lungs. The others floundered, shouted. The boat, unable to complete its roll because of mast and sail, unable to right itself with half a load of water, lay on its side, a low half-moon of gunnel that offered a place to hold but nothing more.

Chandler, hat gone, wet hair plastered to his face, gasping for breath, regained the boat, shouted at the others to swim, get to the boat. He grabbed out at one man who was shouting in terror, choking, unable to swim, flailing helplessly. He brought him in. Another man was trapped under the sail, his hands punching up at it, unable to free himself, Chandler went to him, reached under the heavy cloth, grabbed him by the collar. Clark had followed Chandler. They dragged the man out, got him to the boat. Gasping from the struggle, the leaden weight of water-logged clothing, boots, dragging at them, Chandler told them to hang on, get out of their coats and boots. Shirts and trousers would hold any body heat a little, keep the cold water from direct contact.

Only the men’s hands and heads were above the water. They were hardly able to speak for the chattering of their teeth, splashed and choking on the waves that broke against the hull. Under Chandler’s direction they tried to right the boat but their efforts only tended to settle it further, risking the loss of equilibrium, sending it to the bottom. Spontaneously, desperately, they shouted for help, singly, then together. The fog swallowed the sound, there was no reply.

Silent then, the men looked to the lieutenant, at each other. They were far from shore, out of the channel. Who would see them, hear their shouts? Should the strongest swimmer strip and head for shore? But in the confusion, the fog, they had lost all sense of direction. If their strength held until the fog burned away, if land was not too far . . . But the cold was taking hold, bodies shuddering, hands and feet, arms and legs, going numb.

A long time passed, or seemed to. The fog had lifted, the shore was visible, impossibly far away. Even if a ship should pass in the distant channel they would never be seen. Talk dwindled to oaths, prayer. Suddenly a man was gone, vanished. Terror joined fear, cold. Clark was aware of Chandler’s voice, others, then silence. He held. Then a shout. Chandler was struggling with a man, trying to hold him to the boat. Clark’s numb hands gripped the gunnel, face resting on his hands. He was unable to move, only to endure.

More time, and then the sky was darkening, night was coming. Clark looked down the boat’s side, not sure where he was, what he was doing. He was alone. Night, and he knew only that he must hold on, must not let go. He tried to hold to the image of Lucy, a future, but his mind was growing as numb as his body, feeling nothing, knowing nothing, except that he must not let go, must not go down in the dark water to die in the mud.

He heard something. He opened his eyes. The fog was back, thick and bright. Morning. The sound was almost on top of him, a persistent mooing sort of sound. He had heard that sound before. The Sangumon, the steamboat that had brought his company the last leg of their march to Fort Morgan. The whistle. A steamboat whistle! He tried to move, to shout. Suddenly the boat was visible, side like the wall of a barn. Men were shouting, calling to him from the huge ship. They had seen him, he was saved.

The steamboat Watchman, out of New Orleans bound for Mobile, had got out of the channel on account of the fog, crewmen had seen Clark in the moments of passing the overturned skiff. He was hauled aboard, wrapped in blankets, given hot rum. They took him on to Mobile, put him in the hospital. In a clean bed, warm, well fed, he recovered in three weeks, could return to duty. A reporter from the Georgia Enquirer came to him before he returned to Fort Morgan, asked how he survived when all the others were lost. Clark stared at the man, remembering the shock, the cold, the fear. Why had he held? Lucy had said, “This is our time, Mr. Clark. We must live.” He told the reporter only, “Lucy.” The man stared, shook his head, turned away.