Queen by Alex Haley
"Yes, Massa," she promised. "Good luck."
Family matters done, he was anxious to be away. He walked quickly to his
horse and mounted, and together he and Henderson galloped away down the
drive.
Queen ran to the edge of the lawn, to wave farewell. Easter had given
Lizzie to Sally's care and now walked slowly to join her daughter. They
stood together and watched Jass go.
Queen looked at Easter, with the question that was always
478 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
in her eyes. She had asked her mother outright, only a few days ago, when
Jass first enlisted. Seeing him dressed like a soldier had frightened Queen;
she didn't want him to go to war, she didn't want him to die. She ran to her
mother in the weaving house and poured out her distress. Easter, as always,
had comforted her and stroked her hair.
"There, now, chile, he'll come home safe, I promise," she crooned.
"You cain't know that," Queen muttered.
"I ain't never tole you a lie," Easter said.
It was true, Queen thought, her mother had never tied to her. But perhaps
she had never told her the complete truth, either.
"Then tell me true now," she said. "They say the Massa's my pappy. Is it
true?"
Even now, after all these years, Easter resisted it. She didn't believe it
could do any good for Queen to know, yet she knew Queen did know.
"It don't matter," she said, and turned away, but that was not enough for
Queen.
"It matters to me," she cried, "coz half of me is missing!"
She had to make her mother understand why it was so important. "I's black
but I look white. You're my mammy, the black side of me, and I love you. "
She turned her mother's face to her. "But who's the other side of me?" she
begged. "The white me. Where'd she come from? "
Easter was crying. She understood her daughter's need. "From love, chile,
I swear to you," she said. "From love."
They stood together now, in front of a grand house on a little hill, and
watched him fide away to war.
It could not matter now, Easter persuaded herself. And told Queen the
truth.
"Pray for yo' pappy," she said.
It was as if a great weight was taken from Queen's shoulders. In a
practical sense it made no difference to her lifeshe was still a slave-but
things that had never made sense to her now became clear. She knew she'd
always knownher father's constant visits to her mother, the way he had pro-
tected her and taken her into the big house, the way he had
QUEEN 479
treated her with some slight special attention, the things that other
slaves had told her-but it had been knowledge without knowing. To know the
truth for a fact was different from guessing it by rumor.
She waved to her pappy until she could no longer see him.
They rode for days, Jass and Henderson. At every village and town they
passed through, others joined them, and others again as they rode on,
until, by the time they reached the North, they were a great army.
But why that army fought, the purposes of its war, had never been
explained to those who were the ultimate cause of it, the slaves.
Sally believed that if the slaves did not understand the reasons for the
war, they could become the enemy. With so many white men away, discipline
would become increasingly difficult, the number of runaways would
increase, the work force would slowly disappear, and the problems of
running the new country would be insurmountable.
Someone had to make them understand why white men were ready to shed
their blood to defend the institution of slavery. It was not, in Sally's
mind, just for the benefit of whites. It was for the good of the slaves
as well.
She had Tom Parsons gather them together one evening, shortly after Jass
had left.
She stood in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by all her family,
for she had insisted on their presence, and Mrs. Henderson. The house
slaves stood to her right, the field slaves in front of her. Queen and
Easter stood together, but apart from the others, for they belonged to
neither group.
Tom Parsons cracked his whip and yelled at the slaves to be quiet, which
was unnecessary because no one was talking, and Sally stepped forward.
"We are at the beginning of a great adventure," she told them, her voice
crisp and clear in the warm night air. "And only the good Lord in heaven
knows how and when it will end. "
She paused for a moment. She had practiced the speech several times, but
it was important to her that they understood how passionately she
believed in what she was telling them.
480 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Some of you will have heard that this war is being fought for and against
slavery, but that is not true. The South is fighting to protect its own way
of life."
Tom Parsons had his eye out for troublemakers, but found himself paying
more and more attention to Sally's speech. He was young and impressionable,
and had never really understood what the war was about. He'd been excited
by the founding of the Confederacy, and had caught the general fever of
war, but his God-fearing parents had told him that it was the beginning of
the Millennium and heralded the Second Coming of Christ, which dashed his
exuberance. Sally seemed to have a more pragmatic view.
"The alternative is too dreadful to imagine," Sally continued, "especially
for you nigras. You have all heard the stories of your people in the North.
Of hunger, and sickness, and poverty. Of homeless nigras forced to beg for
crumbs of bread, of sleeping in gutters, dying friendless and alone."
Very few of the slaves had heard those stories. It was not what they knew
of the North, of freedom. And even if the stories were true, they did not
matter.
"That is not our way," Sally told them. "When you are born, we nurse you.
When you are hungry, we feed you. When you are sick we nurse you, when you
are old, we care for you, and when you die, we bury you. That is our
Christian duty."
She was completely unaware of an unspoken dialogue going on among some of
the slaves. Jeremiah, the blacksmith, simmered with anger. He was a skilled
and able tradesman, and he believed he could make a good living for himself
and his family, if given the chance. The chance was all. If it was his
destiny, which he did not for one moment believe, to die alone in a
Northern gutter, then so be it. He wanted the choice, he wanted to be free,
to succeed or fail, and no one, for all Missy Sally's fine speeches, had
the right to deny him that. He looked at some of the other slaves, and knew
he was not alone in his anger.
The slaves had discussed the war as avidly as any whites. Many believed
that it heralded the glory day of deliverance. John Brown had been the
harbinger, and Linkun was the new Messiah. Fervently believed rumors told
the slaves that 01' Linkun was amassi
ng a righteous army that would sweep
QUEEN 481
through the South, gather the dispossessed black peoples into its bosom,
and lead them to the mountain. A few, the old and less able, those without
family, were scared, for they had never known any other life than that of
a slave, and despite the tantalizing hope that freedom promised, it was
new, unknown, and frightening territory.
For some, mostly the able-bodied younger men, it could not come quickly
enough, and a few, like Jeremiah, were realistic enough to comprehend
that the South would not yield easily. The war would be bloody, and it
was possible the Yankees might lose, although it would be a cruel God who
gave victory to the South. All Jeremiah wanted was his chance, which
might, he thought, be now.
"I cannot believe, in my heart, that God, in His infinite wisdom, could
allow us to lose this war," Sally said. "But He helps those who help
themselves, and so it is our bounden duty to strive together, to keep our
houses and our fields in good order, until the blessed day of peace
comes, and brings our men safe home. I ask you to kneel and pray with
me."
Tom Parsons closed his eyes and prayed most fervently. The others knelt,
obediently.
"0 Heavenly Father," Sally led them in prayer, "our Creator and Provider,
we pray to You now in this our hour of need. We beg You for peace, 0
Lord. We beg that in Your infinite wisdom You spare lives that would be
needlessly lost in battle, but, if war it must be, that You grant victory
to our glorious Southern cause."
Queen and Easter were not praying for the war, or for the South, but for
Jass. As Sally did now.
"And we ask You to bless and protect our beloved son Jass, to keep him
from harm, and bring him safe home to the bosom of his family. But if his
time on earth is done, we pray that You receive him in Paradise, and
attend him with angels."
"Amen," Queen whispered.
"Amen," Easter whispered.
"Amen," chorused the slaves. Those that were left.
When Tom Parsons opened his eyes, he had a bit of a shock. He was sure
that a few of the slaves were absent. He said nothing to Sally, but when
she had gone back to the big house, he did a head count.
482 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Jeremiah and three field hands had gone missing during Sally's prayer, as
well as Alphis, Jass's new valet from the big house. Taking advantage of
the chaos that war must bring, and believing that the Massas had better
things to do than go chasing after a few niggers, they had taken their
chance. Away, away down Freedom Road.
Tom Parsons, who had been responsible for them, was too young, too callow,
and too scared to face the wrath of his employers, and ran away himself.
He spent the night in a friend's barn near Florence, crept into town before
dawn, and enlisted in the army.
56
When the bullet burst into Jass's chest, he felt as if he had been hit by an
invisible steam train. The brute force of it knocked him to the ground,
senseless.
He came to a little later, and had no idea where he was. It was still
daylight, and there was this awful pain in his chest. Around him, he could
hear a few whimpers for help and shouts of pain, and somewhere a long way
away, a distant cheering, but otherwise all was quiet. He moved his hands,
to see if he could, and then felt his chest. It was wet and sticky, and
Jass knew it was his own blood.
"I am dying," he thought, without any sense of fear. He prayed that death
would end the pain, which was becoming unbearable. Just when he thought he
could not stand it anymore, when he must scream to the very heavens to make
it stop, his body was kind to him, and he passed out again.
He drifted to the surface sometime later, and the pain was still there. It
was dark now, or nearly so, and he could still hear the cries of wounded
and dying men all around him. He tried to sit up, but that made the pain
worse. Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears, and their bites added to his misery.
He fell
QUEEN 483
back on the ground, waited for something to happen, and commended his soul
to the mercy of sweet Jesus.
Jass and Henderson had journeyed to the North, to Richmond, Virginia. They
were given some peremptory basic training, their horses were requisitioned
for other purposes, and their regiment was assigned to Manassas. It was
a road and rail junction on a stream, Bull Run, which ran into the Potomac
River. The commanding officer, General Beauregard, was a splendid veteran,
who kept his soldiers from boredom by long hours of training. At first,
the green troops responded well, and a sense of camaraderie developed
among them. They lived in tents, ate simple food in almost ample portions,
and spent the long, oppressive summer nights singing songs of their youth,
or telling tall tales, or writing to loved ones. Those who were illiterate
found educated friends to write their letters for them, and Jass, who
longed for action, was a popular scribe.
So the nights passed pleasantly enough, but oh, the days! The days were
hot and unbearably humid, and the steamy weather enervated them, sapping
their resolution as surely as it drained their energy. Their thick woolen
uniforms chaffed at their perspiring bodies, and the endless hours of
drill and instruction rubbed at their spirits. Chiggers burrowed into
their flesh, mosquitoes sucked on their blood, and lice nested in their
hair and clothes. They cursed their officers, cursed their wretched lot,
and, above all, cursed those wretched Yankees, who had brought them to
this hellhole, and were too chicken to fight *
The day will come, their officers told them. The day will come. Toward
the middle of July, rumors reached them that a vast Yankee army was
amassing a few miles away. They were put on alert, but no attack came,
and scouts reported that the Yankees seemed more interested in setting
up camp than waging war.
"All piss and wind," a disgruntled Henderson told his fellows, for he was
anxious to fight, to get it done, and get out of this accursed place. But
not to home. To some other, more congenial site of battle, and he prayed
that the war would not be short. Despite the miserable conditions and his
constant discomfort Henderson was actually enjoying himself. Secure
484 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
with himself, for he was, by his lights, a very successful man, his years
as an overseer, as an organizer, stood him in good stead. Older than many
of the volunteers, he found that the other men respected him and looked
to him to interpret their officers' commands. He became a sergeant by
natural process, long before he was promoted to the rank, and he relished
the rough and ready masculinity of a soldier's life. It was as if he had
spent the rest of his life in training for this time.
He'd never had much
fun, he'd worked hard to advance himself, he'd settled to a comfortable
married life, and now, suddenly, he was free of social ambitions and could
be the youth he had never been. He thought fondly of Letitia, and wrote
to her regularly, in simple terms for he was not well educated, but he
looked forward to some leave as a soldier because women of a certain class
loved soldiers and would do anything for them. Anything. He had a good
supply of wild oats that he had never sown when young, and when the chance
came he did not intend to be mean with them.
They lived on rumor and wild speculation, and when the news that the
Yankees had attacked spread through the camp like a grass fire, every man
stood to. And stood down again. It was only some small skirmish on the
other side of that deep stream. Still, something had happened. Southern
reinforcements were on the march to them, they heard, and, not quite as
green as they had been a few weeks ago, they knew a battle was looming.
When Sunday came, they knew this must be the day. for groups of civilians
were gathering on a nearby hill to watch the coming fray. Many came in
carriages, were elegantly dressed and had picnic hampers, as if to watch
soldiers die were a charming Sunday diversion. Southern spectators might
have done the same if the situation had been reversed, but the sight of
all these Northerners come to watch the bloodshed caused a deep and
abiding anger in many a Rebel soldier's heart.
Jass simply waited to be told what to do. His company was assembled, and
stood in ranks in the blazing sun, weapons primed and loaded. On a small
hill across the stream, cannon were being assembled by blue-coated
soldiers, aimed directly, Jass thought, at him. They heard distant cries
and gunfire, and
QUEEN 485
then silence again, and then a rumor swept the ranks that the Southerners
were retreating. Fear snaked through the men, and a few boys began to
whimper, convinced that this was their last hour on earth. Then other
rumors were whispered along the ranks. There had been a retreat, but
General Jackson and his men stood like a stone wall against the advancing
Yankees. The tide of battle had turned.
Jass was puzzled. He hadn't expected war to be like this. It was
possible, if the day went on like this, that he would not see any action
at all. He did not know what he had expected war to be, but he had not
thought it would be boring.
They were assembled about a mile from a stone bridge, hot and sweating
under the blazing sun. Still they could hear distant cries and gunfire,
but now the shouts seemed to be coming nearer, and hope started to blaze
in their hearts, for these shouts were not of anger, but of fear. The
sound of panic ran toward them at the speed of men in retreat, and
suddenly it burst upon them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, a great mass
at least, of Union soldiers were running toward the bridge, to cross to
the North, to safety. Now the cannon on the opposite hill started firing,
as if to protect the fleeing men.
Jass*s troop was given the order to charge, and hearts surging with glee
at the sight of the retreating Yankees, blood pounding with expectation
of a fight, fear of dying the adrenaline that made them brave, they
charged toward the bridge.
Jass had no sense of place or time. He was an animal now, intent on his
prey, in the middle of chaos and confusion. Sounds thundered about him,
of guns and screaming and, loudest of all, his own blood throbbing in his
ears. The very ground under him seemed to shudder as cannon balls landed
among them. He looked once toward the distant hill, where the cannon
were, and saw lines of soldiers dressed in blue and tiny puffs of smoke
coming from their guns, but he did not heai the sound of those guns until
some moments after the smoke had appeared
Then something hit him with the force of an invisible steam train. He
felt a searing pain in his chest, and fell to the ground, senseless.
Family matters done, he was anxious to be away. He walked quickly to his
horse and mounted, and together he and Henderson galloped away down the
drive.
Queen ran to the edge of the lawn, to wave farewell. Easter had given
Lizzie to Sally's care and now walked slowly to join her daughter. They
stood together and watched Jass go.
Queen looked at Easter, with the question that was always
478 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
in her eyes. She had asked her mother outright, only a few days ago, when
Jass first enlisted. Seeing him dressed like a soldier had frightened Queen;
she didn't want him to go to war, she didn't want him to die. She ran to her
mother in the weaving house and poured out her distress. Easter, as always,
had comforted her and stroked her hair.
"There, now, chile, he'll come home safe, I promise," she crooned.
"You cain't know that," Queen muttered.
"I ain't never tole you a lie," Easter said.
It was true, Queen thought, her mother had never tied to her. But perhaps
she had never told her the complete truth, either.
"Then tell me true now," she said. "They say the Massa's my pappy. Is it
true?"
Even now, after all these years, Easter resisted it. She didn't believe it
could do any good for Queen to know, yet she knew Queen did know.
"It don't matter," she said, and turned away, but that was not enough for
Queen.
"It matters to me," she cried, "coz half of me is missing!"
She had to make her mother understand why it was so important. "I's black
but I look white. You're my mammy, the black side of me, and I love you. "
She turned her mother's face to her. "But who's the other side of me?" she
begged. "The white me. Where'd she come from? "
Easter was crying. She understood her daughter's need. "From love, chile,
I swear to you," she said. "From love."
They stood together now, in front of a grand house on a little hill, and
watched him fide away to war.
It could not matter now, Easter persuaded herself. And told Queen the
truth.
"Pray for yo' pappy," she said.
It was as if a great weight was taken from Queen's shoulders. In a
practical sense it made no difference to her lifeshe was still a slave-but
things that had never made sense to her now became clear. She knew she'd
always knownher father's constant visits to her mother, the way he had pro-
tected her and taken her into the big house, the way he had
QUEEN 479
treated her with some slight special attention, the things that other
slaves had told her-but it had been knowledge without knowing. To know the
truth for a fact was different from guessing it by rumor.
She waved to her pappy until she could no longer see him.
They rode for days, Jass and Henderson. At every village and town they
passed through, others joined them, and others again as they rode on,
until, by the time they reached the North, they were a great army.
But why that army fought, the purposes of its war, had never been
explained to those who were the ultimate cause of it, the slaves.
Sally believed that if the slaves did not understand the reasons for the
war, they could become the enemy. With so many white men away, discipline
would become increasingly difficult, the number of runaways would
increase, the work force would slowly disappear, and the problems of
running the new country would be insurmountable.
Someone had to make them understand why white men were ready to shed
their blood to defend the institution of slavery. It was not, in Sally's
mind, just for the benefit of whites. It was for the good of the slaves
as well.
She had Tom Parsons gather them together one evening, shortly after Jass
had left.
She stood in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by all her family,
for she had insisted on their presence, and Mrs. Henderson. The house
slaves stood to her right, the field slaves in front of her. Queen and
Easter stood together, but apart from the others, for they belonged to
neither group.
Tom Parsons cracked his whip and yelled at the slaves to be quiet, which
was unnecessary because no one was talking, and Sally stepped forward.
"We are at the beginning of a great adventure," she told them, her voice
crisp and clear in the warm night air. "And only the good Lord in heaven
knows how and when it will end. "
She paused for a moment. She had practiced the speech several times, but
it was important to her that they understood how passionately she
believed in what she was telling them.
480 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Some of you will have heard that this war is being fought for and against
slavery, but that is not true. The South is fighting to protect its own way
of life."
Tom Parsons had his eye out for troublemakers, but found himself paying
more and more attention to Sally's speech. He was young and impressionable,
and had never really understood what the war was about. He'd been excited
by the founding of the Confederacy, and had caught the general fever of
war, but his God-fearing parents had told him that it was the beginning of
the Millennium and heralded the Second Coming of Christ, which dashed his
exuberance. Sally seemed to have a more pragmatic view.
"The alternative is too dreadful to imagine," Sally continued, "especially
for you nigras. You have all heard the stories of your people in the North.
Of hunger, and sickness, and poverty. Of homeless nigras forced to beg for
crumbs of bread, of sleeping in gutters, dying friendless and alone."
Very few of the slaves had heard those stories. It was not what they knew
of the North, of freedom. And even if the stories were true, they did not
matter.
"That is not our way," Sally told them. "When you are born, we nurse you.
When you are hungry, we feed you. When you are sick we nurse you, when you
are old, we care for you, and when you die, we bury you. That is our
Christian duty."
She was completely unaware of an unspoken dialogue going on among some of
the slaves. Jeremiah, the blacksmith, simmered with anger. He was a skilled
and able tradesman, and he believed he could make a good living for himself
and his family, if given the chance. The chance was all. If it was his
destiny, which he did not for one moment believe, to die alone in a
Northern gutter, then so be it. He wanted the choice, he wanted to be free,
to succeed or fail, and no one, for all Missy Sally's fine speeches, had
the right to deny him that. He looked at some of the other slaves, and knew
he was not alone in his anger.
The slaves had discussed the war as avidly as any whites. Many believed
that it heralded the glory day of deliverance. John Brown had been the
harbinger, and Linkun was the new Messiah. Fervently believed rumors told
the slaves that 01' Linkun was amassi
QUEEN 481
through the South, gather the dispossessed black peoples into its bosom,
and lead them to the mountain. A few, the old and less able, those without
family, were scared, for they had never known any other life than that of
a slave, and despite the tantalizing hope that freedom promised, it was
new, unknown, and frightening territory.
For some, mostly the able-bodied younger men, it could not come quickly
enough, and a few, like Jeremiah, were realistic enough to comprehend
that the South would not yield easily. The war would be bloody, and it
was possible the Yankees might lose, although it would be a cruel God who
gave victory to the South. All Jeremiah wanted was his chance, which
might, he thought, be now.
"I cannot believe, in my heart, that God, in His infinite wisdom, could
allow us to lose this war," Sally said. "But He helps those who help
themselves, and so it is our bounden duty to strive together, to keep our
houses and our fields in good order, until the blessed day of peace
comes, and brings our men safe home. I ask you to kneel and pray with
me."
Tom Parsons closed his eyes and prayed most fervently. The others knelt,
obediently.
"0 Heavenly Father," Sally led them in prayer, "our Creator and Provider,
we pray to You now in this our hour of need. We beg You for peace, 0
Lord. We beg that in Your infinite wisdom You spare lives that would be
needlessly lost in battle, but, if war it must be, that You grant victory
to our glorious Southern cause."
Queen and Easter were not praying for the war, or for the South, but for
Jass. As Sally did now.
"And we ask You to bless and protect our beloved son Jass, to keep him
from harm, and bring him safe home to the bosom of his family. But if his
time on earth is done, we pray that You receive him in Paradise, and
attend him with angels."
"Amen," Queen whispered.
"Amen," Easter whispered.
"Amen," chorused the slaves. Those that were left.
When Tom Parsons opened his eyes, he had a bit of a shock. He was sure
that a few of the slaves were absent. He said nothing to Sally, but when
she had gone back to the big house, he did a head count.
482 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Jeremiah and three field hands had gone missing during Sally's prayer, as
well as Alphis, Jass's new valet from the big house. Taking advantage of
the chaos that war must bring, and believing that the Massas had better
things to do than go chasing after a few niggers, they had taken their
chance. Away, away down Freedom Road.
Tom Parsons, who had been responsible for them, was too young, too callow,
and too scared to face the wrath of his employers, and ran away himself.
He spent the night in a friend's barn near Florence, crept into town before
dawn, and enlisted in the army.
56
When the bullet burst into Jass's chest, he felt as if he had been hit by an
invisible steam train. The brute force of it knocked him to the ground,
senseless.
He came to a little later, and had no idea where he was. It was still
daylight, and there was this awful pain in his chest. Around him, he could
hear a few whimpers for help and shouts of pain, and somewhere a long way
away, a distant cheering, but otherwise all was quiet. He moved his hands,
to see if he could, and then felt his chest. It was wet and sticky, and
Jass knew it was his own blood.
"I am dying," he thought, without any sense of fear. He prayed that death
would end the pain, which was becoming unbearable. Just when he thought he
could not stand it anymore, when he must scream to the very heavens to make
it stop, his body was kind to him, and he passed out again.
He drifted to the surface sometime later, and the pain was still there. It
was dark now, or nearly so, and he could still hear the cries of wounded
and dying men all around him. He tried to sit up, but that made the pain
worse. Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears, and their bites added to his misery.
He fell
QUEEN 483
back on the ground, waited for something to happen, and commended his soul
to the mercy of sweet Jesus.
Jass and Henderson had journeyed to the North, to Richmond, Virginia. They
were given some peremptory basic training, their horses were requisitioned
for other purposes, and their regiment was assigned to Manassas. It was
a road and rail junction on a stream, Bull Run, which ran into the Potomac
River. The commanding officer, General Beauregard, was a splendid veteran,
who kept his soldiers from boredom by long hours of training. At first,
the green troops responded well, and a sense of camaraderie developed
among them. They lived in tents, ate simple food in almost ample portions,
and spent the long, oppressive summer nights singing songs of their youth,
or telling tall tales, or writing to loved ones. Those who were illiterate
found educated friends to write their letters for them, and Jass, who
longed for action, was a popular scribe.
So the nights passed pleasantly enough, but oh, the days! The days were
hot and unbearably humid, and the steamy weather enervated them, sapping
their resolution as surely as it drained their energy. Their thick woolen
uniforms chaffed at their perspiring bodies, and the endless hours of
drill and instruction rubbed at their spirits. Chiggers burrowed into
their flesh, mosquitoes sucked on their blood, and lice nested in their
hair and clothes. They cursed their officers, cursed their wretched lot,
and, above all, cursed those wretched Yankees, who had brought them to
this hellhole, and were too chicken to fight *
The day will come, their officers told them. The day will come. Toward
the middle of July, rumors reached them that a vast Yankee army was
amassing a few miles away. They were put on alert, but no attack came,
and scouts reported that the Yankees seemed more interested in setting
up camp than waging war.
"All piss and wind," a disgruntled Henderson told his fellows, for he was
anxious to fight, to get it done, and get out of this accursed place. But
not to home. To some other, more congenial site of battle, and he prayed
that the war would not be short. Despite the miserable conditions and his
constant discomfort Henderson was actually enjoying himself. Secure
484 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
with himself, for he was, by his lights, a very successful man, his years
as an overseer, as an organizer, stood him in good stead. Older than many
of the volunteers, he found that the other men respected him and looked
to him to interpret their officers' commands. He became a sergeant by
natural process, long before he was promoted to the rank, and he relished
the rough and ready masculinity of a soldier's life. It was as if he had
spent the rest of his life in training for this time.
fun, he'd worked hard to advance himself, he'd settled to a comfortable
married life, and now, suddenly, he was free of social ambitions and could
be the youth he had never been. He thought fondly of Letitia, and wrote
to her regularly, in simple terms for he was not well educated, but he
looked forward to some leave as a soldier because women of a certain class
loved soldiers and would do anything for them. Anything. He had a good
supply of wild oats that he had never sown when young, and when the chance
came he did not intend to be mean with them.
They lived on rumor and wild speculation, and when the news that the
Yankees had attacked spread through the camp like a grass fire, every man
stood to. And stood down again. It was only some small skirmish on the
other side of that deep stream. Still, something had happened. Southern
reinforcements were on the march to them, they heard, and, not quite as
green as they had been a few weeks ago, they knew a battle was looming.
When Sunday came, they knew this must be the day. for groups of civilians
were gathering on a nearby hill to watch the coming fray. Many came in
carriages, were elegantly dressed and had picnic hampers, as if to watch
soldiers die were a charming Sunday diversion. Southern spectators might
have done the same if the situation had been reversed, but the sight of
all these Northerners come to watch the bloodshed caused a deep and
abiding anger in many a Rebel soldier's heart.
Jass simply waited to be told what to do. His company was assembled, and
stood in ranks in the blazing sun, weapons primed and loaded. On a small
hill across the stream, cannon were being assembled by blue-coated
soldiers, aimed directly, Jass thought, at him. They heard distant cries
and gunfire, and
QUEEN 485
then silence again, and then a rumor swept the ranks that the Southerners
were retreating. Fear snaked through the men, and a few boys began to
whimper, convinced that this was their last hour on earth. Then other
rumors were whispered along the ranks. There had been a retreat, but
General Jackson and his men stood like a stone wall against the advancing
Yankees. The tide of battle had turned.
Jass was puzzled. He hadn't expected war to be like this. It was
possible, if the day went on like this, that he would not see any action
at all. He did not know what he had expected war to be, but he had not
thought it would be boring.
They were assembled about a mile from a stone bridge, hot and sweating
under the blazing sun. Still they could hear distant cries and gunfire,
but now the shouts seemed to be coming nearer, and hope started to blaze
in their hearts, for these shouts were not of anger, but of fear. The
sound of panic ran toward them at the speed of men in retreat, and
suddenly it burst upon them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, a great mass
at least, of Union soldiers were running toward the bridge, to cross to
the North, to safety. Now the cannon on the opposite hill started firing,
as if to protect the fleeing men.
Jass*s troop was given the order to charge, and hearts surging with glee
at the sight of the retreating Yankees, blood pounding with expectation
of a fight, fear of dying the adrenaline that made them brave, they
charged toward the bridge.
Jass had no sense of place or time. He was an animal now, intent on his
prey, in the middle of chaos and confusion. Sounds thundered about him,
of guns and screaming and, loudest of all, his own blood throbbing in his
ears. The very ground under him seemed to shudder as cannon balls landed
among them. He looked once toward the distant hill, where the cannon
were, and saw lines of soldiers dressed in blue and tiny puffs of smoke
coming from their guns, but he did not heai the sound of those guns until
some moments after the smoke had appeared
Then something hit him with the force of an invisible steam train. He
felt a searing pain in his chest, and fell to the ground, senseless.