The Bride Fair

Max stood where he was, ignoring the fact that the sergeant major clearly expected him to take a seat in the chair behind the cluttered desk. He was not yet ready to delve into the stacks of papers his predecessor had left scattered about, nor was he ready to let go of his pique. He knew that Colonel Hatcher’s departure had been precipitous—the state of the man’s office confirmed that—but he had expected some attempt on Hatcher’s part to effect an orderly change of command.

Max walked to the window and looked down at the street below. The crowd was still there in spite of the rain—and growing, he thought. The woman who had brought him here was trying to drive the buggy through, and she was immediately surrounded by bystanders. But whatever questions were being put to her, she didn’t answer. She kept shaking her head and finally used the buggy whip to send the horse on, giving the crowd no choice but to let her pass.

“Your name, Sergeant Major?”

“Perkins, Sir.”

“What do all those people downstairs want?”

The sergeant major carefully held out a steaming cup of coffee instead of answering.

“I asked you a question, Sergeant Major,” Max said sharply.

“Yes, Sir. Petitioners come to talk to the new colonel, Sir.”

“How is it they knew I was arriving today? Do you ordinarily keep the civilian population privy to the army’s comings and goings?”

“Well, Sir. Sometimes telegraphing gets intercepted up the line—old tricks die hard for some of these so-called ex-Rebs. If the message ain’t got nothing to do with us, they’ll send it on through, like as not. If it does…well—maybe they will and maybe they won’t—either way, word gets out as to whatever information happens to be in them.” He shrugged. He also offered the tin cup of coffee again. This time Max took it.

“These ‘petitioners.’ What exactly do they want?”

“Some of them would be wanting the Oath of Allegiance, Sir. People what finally got wore down enough to come in and ask to take it—so’s they can get some food on the table.”

“It’s taken them three years to get here?”

“Well, I expect you know what the Rebs are like, Sir. Especially the women. They hold out as long as they can. I expect the war would have been over a good year or two before it was, if it weren’t for them.”

Max agreed wholeheartedly—in spite of a noted general’s assertion that he could buy any one of them with a pound of coffee—but he didn’t say so.

“All of them can’t have just decided to take the Oath,” he said. He took a sip of coffee, surprised to find it was quite good. He’d forgotten that some of the best coffee in the world came at the hands of sergeant majors. The skill seemed to come with the rank, regardless of the fact that this particular one didn’t appear old enough to have it.

“Well, Sir, one or two of them are here because they can’t take it,” Perkins said. “Them what carried the Reb flag a little too high during the late war—or them what own too much property and ain’t about to get rid of it. They couldn’t get nowhere with Colonel Hatcher, so they’d be here to ask you to pardon them, so they can swear allegiance and get all the benefits thereof. Then there’s the usual civilian complaints, Sir.”

Max decided to sit down, after all. He was tired. He looked healthy enough these days, but he still suffered from a noticeable lack of stamina. The long train ride from Washington and then the visit to the prison grounds had taken its toll. He took another sip of the coffee, then tried to find a place to put the tin cup among the stacks of papers on the desk. “What kinds of complaints? The men in blue accosting their daughters?”

“No, Sir—not that there ain’t plenty of accosting going on, mind you. There’s some real pretty girls in this town and don’t nothing stir up a soldier’s juices more than running into one of them and knowing she’d just as soon gut you as look at you. The boys take it right personal, Sir, if you know what I mean. And they get to feeling all honor-bound to do something about it. Ain’t nothing builds a man up like turning some little old girl’s head, especially if she thinks she hates the air you’re living on.

“But we don’t generally hear about any of that up here. If the accosting’s mutual, it’s either ship the girl off to her relatives or let ’em get married, which is likely what some of them downstairs have come about—permission for a marriage. Getting married to an army officer is pretty popular here of late—what with the latest batch of local females coming of age. They was about too young to get all worked up about the Cause during the war. All they know is there ain’t nobody left much to marry—except one of us. Sometimes you’d think it was a regular bride fair around here and a man could just go out and take his pick.

“But now, if the accosting ain’t mutual, sooner or later, the accoster gets hisself waylaid some dark night and he don’t come out of it looking as good as when he went in. If you get my meaning. And the boys, well, they do have their pride, Sir. They don’t want to say they got the bejesus kicked out of them by some unarmed Reb daddy or big brother. The tales I’ve heard, Sir, about low-hanging tree limbs and stumbling in the dark on the way to the sinks. It’s enough to make you think this here town is the most perilous place in the world for a man to go heeding the call of nature after the sun goes down—begging your pardon, Sir.

“No, Sir, there ain’t many complaints about ‘accosting’ coming our way. I’d say some of them people downstairs are wanting to get paid for the goods the army commandeers and for billeting officers in the private residences. It was Colonel Hatcher’s policy not to get in a hurry about that. He wasn’t exactly what you would call accommodating to the townsfolk.”

Max looked at him, recognizing a prelude when he heard one. “How far behind are we on paying them?”

“Well, Sir, I’d say about as many months as the colonel was here—but that ain’t the main thing. The main thing is all these here fires, Sir. Six of them, so far. Folks pretty much hold us—that is, Colonel Hatcher—responsible for all the incendiary activity that’s been going on.”

“Why?”

“Well, he got to saying how the townsfolk didn’t suffer enough for having the prison here during the war and whatever bad things happened to them was just what they deserved. It didn’t take long for some to take that as an invitation to run wild with a torch.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Not yet, Sir, but there’s been some close calls. One of the men barely got a little child out of a house when the fire spread the other night. I guess it’s mostly that what’s got folks gathering out front like they are. They’re wanting you to do something about it.”

Max drew a quiet breath. If he had dared hoped for some quietude here, it didn’t appear likely that he was going to find it. He could feel the sergeant major waiting for him to do his job and take command of the situation. He moved a pile of papers instead and uncovered a battered red-velvet box. It contained a pair of garnet-and-pearl earrings of significant quality and value.

“What’s this?”

“Those, Sir? I’m thinking Colonel Hatcher meant those for his…ah…”

“His what?”

“Well, his woman, Sir.”

“What woman? His wife?”

“Whore, Sir.”

“His—”

Max abruptly closed the box and tossed it on the desktop. He was no prude, but it was one thing for an officer to have his entertainments—and something else again to have his staff so privy to them. And Colonel Hatcher’s departure must have been even more precipitous than he’d thought.

“Sir, I reckon they might be a problem, too,” the sergeant major said after a moment.

“For whom?” Max asked pointedly, and he had to wait for the sergeant major to make up his mind about how much he wanted to tell his new commanding officer.

“For you, I reckon, Sir. This here whor—I mean, woman—I seen her downstairs just now, and I reckon she’ll be wanting them.”

“Then give them to her.”

“Well, they ain’t exactly hers, Sir, even if the colonel did promise them to her. Colonel Hatcher, he called them contraband, because of who they really belong to—but I’m thinking it’s too late in the day for them to be that.”

Max stared at the man, trying to follow his convoluted tale.

“‘Who they really belong to,’” Max repeated. “Yes, Sir. Miss Maria Rose Markham. Colonel Hatcher billeted hisself in her daddy’s house. Them earbobs belong to her and they went missing. See, the colonel had a bit of interest in the lady, but she wouldn’t have it—she had two brothers and a fiancé killed at Gettysburg—her brothers gave her them earbobs before they went off to war—one of them weren’t but fifteen. But even if she hadn’t lost her brothers and her beau like that, she just weren’t the kind to be impressed with the—”

Perkins abruptly stopped, and clearly had no intention of continuing.

“Speak freely, man,” Max said, but Perkins still had to think about it. It was not a sergeant’s prerogative to assess a colonel’s character, even when asked.

“Well, Sir,” he said finally, “Colonel Hatcher, he was fond of telling people that his family came from these parts—he said he had this here relative what was a big Indian fighter and military advisor a hundred years ago. Only these people here keep records of everything, and somebody found a mention of a Hatcher in the court accounts—how he was put in stocks all the time for drunken and lewd behavior—insulting decent women and the like. Didn’t take word long to get around.”

“No, I don’t expect it did.”

“People were kind of laughing behind their hands about it, and that got Colonel Hatcher all the more determined about Miss Markham. Some thinks the earbobs was a kind of punishment for her. That it might have amused the colonel to take something what was dear to her and give it to a whore. Or maybe he thought he could make her trade for them. Sir,” the sergeant major added as an afterthought.

Max sat there. He had enough trouble with the apparently ongoing arson in this town. He had no inclination whatsoever to deal with the epic drama his sergeant major had just revealed.