MacPherson's Lament Read online

  A. P. Hill frowned into the leering face of a large marmot, who was stuffed and mounted in a standing position. Moreover, it was dressed in a black satin gown that might have been judge’s robes or graduation attire. “Hmm. I don’t suppose it occurred to you to buy a filing cabinet or two instead? Maybe some office supplies?”

  “Oh, there’s enough money left over for that,” Bill assured her. “Especially if we buy secondhand stuff. But this fellow was too wonderful to pass up. He’s one of a kind. I thought we’d call him Flea Bailey. Get it? Like F. Lee-”

  “Yes, well. Keep him in your office, okay, Bill?”

  Bill remained cheerful and unoffended at this dismissal of his prize. “I thought I would,” he agreed. “After all, you’ve got a mascot of your own, haven’t you?” He pointed to a Lucite paperweight on the otherwise empty desk. Embedded in the clear plastic was a round bit of bone, like the center shank in a slice of country ham.

  “It’s a present from my folks,” said A.P. “Family tradition. When the original A. P. Hill went off to join the Confederacy, his mother gave him a ham bone as a good-luck piece. He kept it with him all through the war.”

  “And that’s why he made it through safely, you think?”

  “Well, no,” said the general’s namesake. “Actually, he was shot by Union soldiers in 1865 and didn’t survive the war. My great-grandmother was born a couple of months after he died. But he was a hell of a general, so I guess my folks figured it might inspire me to greatness in the law.”

  “If they’d throw a little business our way, that wouldn’t hurt either,” Bill pointed out.

  His partner shrugged. “Cousin Stinky takes care of most of the family’s legal stuff. But maybe our newspaper ad will bring us clients.”

  There was a knock at the door, and a well-dressed woman came in, carrying a beribboned potted plant.

  “There!” said A. P. Hill triumphantly. “A client already! Unless you’re here to interview for the secretary’s job?”

  “Neither, I’m afraid,” said Bill MacPherson. “Hello, Mom.”

  As she set the housewarming gift on the secretary’s desk, Margaret MacPherson managed a tight smile. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, hugging her son. “Actually, I am a client. Bill, could I see you in private?”

  A. P. Hill spent the next couple of minutes profusely apologizing to her partner’s mother, whom she had met briefly at graduation, but had not recognized in the present instance. Their exchange of pleasantries was cordial but strained. Margaret Chandler MacPherson looked anxious, as if she could hardly keep her mind on the conversation. Inventing urgent tasks to attend to, A.P. retired to her office, leaving Bill to confer with his distracted relative. In her clean but spartan office, A.P. sat in her swivel chair for all of one minute before restlessness overtook her. Then she dusted a spotless desk, adjusted books that were perfectly straight, and resharpened all her pencils. Pride did not come cheap, she thought, looking around the shabby office with its threadbare green carpet and its battered old desk.

  With her grades and family connections, she could have taken a job at any number of prestigious law firms in Richmond or northern Virginia. There the offices would have been considerably grander, but that would have meant working for the Silverbacks, as she liked to call them. She’d found Silverback in a National Geographic article on gorillas. It was the term used for the large, overbearing males who attempted to dominate the group, and right away she recognized the similarity between gorilla troops and law firms.

  Her new partner, Bill MacPherson, although large and male, was definitely not a Silverback. He would be hard put to dominate anything more assertive than goldfish, but he was reasonably competent, rather good-looking once you got used to him, and unfailingly even-tempered and amiable. For someone who considered coffee one of the four major food groups, the contrast of Bill’s placid temperament was invaluable; it counteracted her own tendencies toward anxiety and overwork. The legal world might see William D. MacPherson as the crucial member of the team, the presentable young male eligible for membership in the old-boy network, but A. P. Hill knew for a fact it was her talent and ambition that would make the firm succeed; Bill was along for decoration and emotional ballast, and because her one weakness was a genuine affection for hopeless innocents. Somebody had to see that he didn’t starve, she told herself.

  Besides, A.P. had a hobby that was more or less a secret, and she didn’t want the pressure and visibility of a high-profile law firm. There’s no telling who might see you there. Sleepy little Danville was both convenient and private for her extracurricular activities.

  When the telephone rang, A.P. considered posing as the secretary they didn’t have, but she couldn’t figure out how then to take the call as her real self, so she abandoned pretense and said into the receiver: “MacPherson and Hill. A. P. Hill speaking.”

  “Yes,” said a woman’s voice. “I saw the announcement in the paper that you had just opened for business, so I thought I’d give you a call. I need something rather unusual in the way of legal services.”

  A. P. Hill glanced apprehensively in the direction of her law books. “Could you be more specific?” she ventured.

  “Well, I’d like to put an attorney on retainer as a birthday gift to my husband.” The woman laughed. “My name is Frances Trowbridge. I know it may sound strange to give your husband a lawyer as a present, and of course he has legal representatives for his business, but this is different.”

  “Is it a personal problem?” asked A.P., still puzzled.

  “It certainly is! He’s driving me crazy. My husband is a born complainer, you see, and he’s always fuming about something-wanting to know if it’s legal. Suppose we’re out in the car, for instance, and he sees a policeman drive by in a patrol car. If the policeman has a cigarette in his hand, Calvin will want to know if it’s legal for policemen to smoke while on duty. Or he’ll wonder if the taxpayers will have to pay for repairs to the seat covers if the policeman burns holes in the car’s upholstery. Well, there’s no use asking me things like that. I’m no more of a lawyer than Calvin is, but that doesn’t stop him from droning on about it until I could scream. So finally-I mean, I have put up with this for years-I hit upon a possible solution. I want to hire an attorney for one year to look up every one of Calvin’s stupid questions.”

  “So, as I understand it, you wish to put us on retainer to research legal questions for Mr. Trowbridge.” A. P. Hill was making notes on a yellow legal pad.

  “Exactly! So if Calvin suddenly wants to know if he can make a citizen’s arrest of someone taking up two parking spaces at the mall, he can call you, instead of boring me with it. You can look it up for him, give him a precise legal answer, and he’ll be happy. Can you do that for a yearly flat fee?”

  It wasn’t as if there were any other cases demanding their undivided attention. “Well,” said A.P., “what if we gave you fifty questions a year for a flat fee, and then billed you for anything over that amount?”

  Mrs. Trowbridge considered the offer. “That ought to be about right,” she declared. “Once a week is about as often as he gets a real bee in his bonnet. The rest of his quibbles are things he’ll forget five minutes later. And some of them probably won’t take you any research at all. Can you do it for $2,500?”

  Visions of rent receipts danced in her head. “Yes, Mrs. Trowbridge,” said A. P. Hill. “My partner Bill-er, Mr. MacPherson-will be delighted to handle the matter for you. Why don’t you come in later to work out the details? We can type up a document for you to give Mr. Trowbridge on his birthday.”

  She was still tinkering with the rough draft of the Trowbridge agreement when Bill MacPherson walked in, looking like a clairvoyant on the deck of the Titanic.

  “Has your mother gone already?” A.P. asked him, still intent upon her work. When there was no reply, she looked up. “What’s the matter, Bill?”

  “Got my first case,” he said woodenly. “I tried to talk her out of it, of course, but s
he insisted.”

  “What is it?”

  Bill managed a bitter smile. “Apparently,” he said, “I am handling my mother’s divorce proceedings.”

  A.P. set the pen down and stared at his stricken face. “Not an example of your family’s bizarre sense of humor?” she ventured.

  “I thought of that. ‘A little lawyer humor to brighten up the old office-warming?’ I said cheerily to Mother. But she gave me that look that I haven’t seen since Elizabeth and I used Miss Clairol on the cat, so I think we can assume that she is not joking. Imagine the surprise of the only son, yours truly. I mean, they’ve been married nearly thirty years. You’d think they’d be resigned to one another by now.”

  “I’ve heard that men get strange once they pass fifty,” said A.P. thoughtfully. “They seem to want loud plaid jackets and sports cars the size of roller skates. I suppose that the old wife doesn’t fit the new image.”

  “Mother was rather vague about that,” said Bill. “I gather that something pretty disastrous has transpired at home. Lipstick on the collar, perhaps. Anyway, the old girl’s gone ballistic. She wants me to file the papers right away, ask for alimony, and generally take poor Dad to the cleaners.”

  “I don’t think that handling divorces within one’s own family is such a good idea, Bill.”

  “I know! And I said so like a shot! But then she misted up on me, said she supposed one couldn’t trust any man if her own son wouldn’t even come to her defense in her time of need. She went on in that vein until I was ready to disembowel myself with the tape dispenser. Finally I just said I would represent her. I’d have said anything by that time. Probably have chipped in for a hit man if she’d asked me to.”

  A. P. Hill shook her head. “You must learn to be firm with people, Bill. Besides, didn’t it occur to you to recommend counseling before they break up a decades-old marriage?”

  “She wouldn’t hear of it. Said something like, ‘I’m not the one who needs professional help!’ ” He groaned. “I suppose I’d better review the stuff we have on divorce procedures.”

  “You have a client coming in this afternoon. I was just drafting the agreement.” Briefly she told him about Mrs. Trowbridge and her querulous husband.

  “She’s putting us on retainer?” said Bill. “Let me get this straight. Mr. Trowbridge asks whatever silly questions he wants and I root around in the law books and come up with an answer for him.”

  “Right.”

  “And he doesn’t want to sue or press charges against offenders or anything like that? He just wants to know-for his own satisfaction?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “And she’s paying us for that?”

  “Fifty dollars per question. In advance. Almost the whole year’s rent.” A.P. permitted herself a triumphant smile. “I’ll just go and type this up so that we’ll be ready when she gets here. Don’t forget to write to your sister and thank her for the check.”

  “My sister!” cried Bill. “You’d better believe I’m going to write her!”

  “Share the bad news, huh?” said A.P. “How do you think she’ll take it?”

  “You know that legal phrase in loco parentis?”

  “Yes. And that’s not what it means at all.”

  “It ought to,” muttered Bill. “It describes her perfectly.”

  We don’t know how it started

  But they’ve invaded us now and we’re bound to fight

  Till every last damn Yankee goes home and quits.

  We used to think we could lick them in one hand’s turn.

  We don’t think that any more.

  – STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT,

  John Brown’s Body, Book 4

  RICHMOND-APRIL 2, 1865

  GABRIEL HAWKS RECKONED he wasn’t in the navy anymore. It was amazing how fast a peaceful afternoon could turn into a foretaste of hell. He still hadn’t taken it all in. After the admiral had given the order to sail the fleet up to the signal station at Drewry’s Bluff, there had been scarcely time to think. The sailors had been like ants scurrying around the ship, almost knocking one another over in their haste to get things done. And there was a strained silence to the work, not like the usual bustle on board when the men chaffed one another and larked about as they worked. Now they communed with their thoughts and hurried through the tasks, tight-lipped and pale. It seemed that the end was coming, and while it hadn’t exactly been a surprise, it was still a shock to find that the inconceivable had come to pass. They were retreating. Richmond would fall.

  They brought the provisions out of the hold and began to hand them out in packages, one to each member of the crew. These were rations to last who knew how long as they journeyed to who knew where. Suddenly Gabe had more food than he’d seen in weeks, but he wasn’t hungry anymore. His stomach felt like a bucket of James River water. The men gathered up their few personal possessions, unlashing hammocks and scrounging for canteens and blankets, muttering all the while among themselves about what this might mean.

  “We’re for it now,” declared one grizzled veteran of the seas. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Some of the younger crewmen, impressed for duty from army regiments, looked bug-eyed with fright, just like Gabe felt. “What’s it mean?” asked one.

  “Why-defeat!” roared the old salt. “I reckon we’ll all be civilians come morning. And then we better get ’way from here quick as we can, lest we all be shot! By the Federals! Oh, they’re a-coming all right. You just watch the sky, boys, and you’ll see.”

  Sure enough, not five minutes after he’d made this prediction, as they were up on deck stowing their gear away as best they could, somebody shouted, “Lookee yonder!” They turned the way he was pointing to see the whole sky on the north side of the James aglow with the fires of Richmond.

  “It’s the Yankees, come from Petersburg!” someone called out.

  But an officer nearby overheard, and he said, “Not yet it isn’t, boys. That’s our soldiers burning what they can’t take with them before they head south. That’ll be material and barracks going up in smoke.”

  “What’s going to happen to us, sir?”

  The officer scowled as if he didn’t want to answer, but finally he replied. “You’ll be boarding one of the wooden gunships for now. That’s all you need to be told.”

  Tom Bridgeford leaned over and whispered to Gabe. “You think there’s any chance of making a run for it?”

  Gabe looked up at the orange sky over Richmond. He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fittin’ to run away,” he said. “Besides, doesn’t look like there’s too awful many places to go.”

  It was well past midnight when the crew of the ironclads were finally provisioned and allowed to board one of the fleet’s five wooden gunboats. Gabe and Tom Bridgeford found themselves wedged together on the deck of the Roanoke, their faces illuminated by the glare from the burning ironclads. Admiral Semmes had ordered that the ships be torched rather than left to fall into the hands of the enemy.

  “He could have just scuttled them,” said Gabe, watching the flames dance across the deck of the Virginia.

  “Maybe he thought that time was getting short,” said Bridgeford. “Besides, what’s one more fire in the midst of this conflagration?” He pointed toward the sky over Richmond, still bright with the evidence of the night’s destruction.

  “What do you think is going to happen now?” asked Gabe.

  “Depends on how Lee has fared in Petersburg,” said Bridgeford. “If he still has fight in him, we might move the government south and keep fighting. Charleston would make a nice capital. Or Wilmington.”

  “But we’re going upriver,” Gabe said.

  Bridgeford stared off at the dancing fire shapes, pretending he hadn’t heard. Gabe wondered what he ought to do now. Pa could sure use him at home for the farm work this time of year, and it didn’t look like the Confederacy had much longer to live, but still he didn’t feel right about leaving just because things were going b
ad. If you gave your word on something, you stuck it out.

  The Roanoke, moving steadily upriver, away from the burning ironclads, had not gone more than a quarter of a mile before an explosion shook the water, making the vessel lurch to starboard and tremble like a sapling in a hurricane. The flames had reached the ironclad’s magazine, whose loaded shells had not been removed by the departing crew. When the shell room exploded, it lit the shells’ fuses and catapulted the live ammunition high into the air above the river, giving the navy a send-off of spectacular fireworks. But no one cheered.

  The ships endured an hour’s wait at one of the drawbridges between Richmond and Drewry’s Bluff, while the troops who had set the evening’s bonfires were allowed passage across the bridge. The route they had taken was punctuated with patches of leaping flames as the Confederates-literally-burned their bridges behind them. While the sailors were waiting for the span to be raised, the sky began to go from black to gray, and finally first light gave them a glimpse of the devastation.

  Whole city blocks were now ablaze, and the Tredegar Iron Works flamed like hell itself, rending the morning air with the shudders of the exploding shells within it. A dense cloud of smoke hung over the city, like a blanket laid over a corpse. There wouldn’t be much left for the Yankees to take now, and the people of Richmond knew it. A great throng of them were gathered on the Manchester side of the river, trying to escape the conflagration.

  The gunboat docked, and the men of the James River fleet tumbled ashore, weighted down with all their belongings, too stunned from the rush of disasters to think what to do next.

  “I hope they don’t expect us to march any considerable distance,” said Bridgeford. “Most of us couldn’t do more than a couple of miles at the best of times, not being used to it.”

  “I reckon I can walk,” said Gabe Hawks. “I followed Stonewall from one end of Virginia to t’other. But I ain’t no damn pack mule.”

  “Ah, Hawks, but at the moment you look like one.” Bridgeford laughed and pointed to the jumble of necessities they carried: a mess-kettle, bags of bread, chunks of salted pork, pots and pans, tea, sugar, and tobacco. Which of these precious items could they leave behind in their flight? And what would become of them if they did not?