Chapter 15: Jefferson Story

After the first rush of confusion produced by the sound of the big guns to the east, the men of Fort Reno settled back into an afternoon of disciplined routines. Now only the occasional crack of a sharpshooter's rifle reminded General Hardin's men to keep their heads down as they went about their tasks. They fired off a few heavy rounds to harass the people on the old turnpike and then settled back to wait and watch.

Jefferson and Seth found a safe place for flop-eared Ben and Mr. French's wagon in the stable area and some food for themselves at the fort's large mess hall. They were sitting in the shade of large elms near the log buildings behind the fort's walls when word came from one of the lookouts in the tower that the first 6th Corps units had reached Stevens. Ragged cheering swept through the ranks at Fort Reno, and Jefferson smiled at Seth and took the boy's hand in his huge, callused grasp. Seth thought he saw a tear in the big man's eye and wondered why it was there.

"We did it Seth, by damn," he said. "Your brother'll be so proud of you. And yer momma, too. You an' me, we stopped them Rebs, boy. Tell you the truf, when I seed that big dus' cloud this mornin', well, I thought we was on a fool's journey. Yassuh, didn't think we had a chance. Them Rebs must'a ketched that McClellan's sickness, got the slows." He laughed a rumbling cackle.

"They looked awful tired this morning, Early's men did, and they'd come a long ways, from Frederick. What's that, thirty miles? I 'spect this hot day and the dust slowed 'em down," Seth said, rubbing at his bruised face. "I saw them lying about in the shade along that mill road."

He felt proud of what he and Jefferson had accomplished. He was vaguely disturbed to be surrounded by soldiers in blue when for three years he had dreamed of wearing Confederate gray. A lot of things were unsettling and confusing: his uncle's store burned, Jefferson's freedom, Caroline's freckles, the trooper's staring eye.

"Anyways," said the smiling Jefferson, 'we kin ree-lax oursefs." The ex-slave brought out his battered pipe and thumbed tobacco into its huge bowl. He leaned back against the roughly finished log wall and sighed. "Army life 'pears to be a whole lot like slave life, heap a'work but a lot a'waitin an' always somebody tellin' you what ta'do."

Seth rested quietly beside him, savoring the praise the old man had poured on him and the smell of his pipe which seemed to remind him of his long-dead father. He thought about the Maryland sergeant back near River Road and wondered why he let them go. He did know me, the boy thought, for sure he did, smiled when he waved. He remembered his uncle's bruised face and Mr. Bouve's sadness and anger. Hope his little horse came home. He thought about Lance Corporal Wainder, and wondered if he was alive or dead, awake or asleep? He hoped Wainder was long gone, back to Virginia. And he thought again of Jefferson's and Caroline's well-kept secret, a real puzzle, a strange surprise.

"You were going to tell me how you got to be a free man, an' how come I didn't know nothing about it," Seth said as one of the big guns in the distance boomed.

The blacksmith puffed in silence. "One good thing 'bout a pipe, keeps most'a them bugs away," he said thoughtfully, exhaling a stream of blue-gray smoke toward a busy cloud of gnats.

"Come on, Jefferson, we got time. Tell me, please."

"All right, aw'right, goodness as dat Caroline like to say."

"You were down in Virginia learning smithin' when your owner went broke," Seth said, trying to find a less painful way to sit.

"Yes, yes. Old Curtis, he was resident slave-smith when I got there; he had a 'prentice, too, but I cain't 'call his name." Jefferson made a scratching sound by rubbing his chin in thought. "Nope, well, I ast around an' heard tell a'slaves buyin' their own freedom. So I came on the idear a'smithin'. Did I tell you all this?"

Seth shook his head and got more comfortable. A little breeze stirred the air, and a few fluffy clouds appeared as they often did on hot afternoons, false promises, fools'gold. An occasional artillery boom echoed in the distance, scattering the birds and shaking the ground.

"The overseer, meanest black man I ever did meet, say that one 'prentice smif was enough. I thought a bit then talked with Curtis 'bout marryin' his oldest girl, Leesa. Was all arranged by spring, and we married 'fore Easter. Gran' party, lasted two whole days, as I recollect, an' by the end of the party Curtis's 'prentice - you know it's funny I can't 'member that man's name - he jus' up and decided smithin' warn't suited to him. Ast the overseer could he go back to the fields." Jefferson stopped to puff his blackened pipe and scratch his graying chin once more, eyes squinted closed. It made a sound like sandpaper on dry wood. He snorted and stretched out his legs.

"Now, some folks say, 'Oh, ain't his face all swole up' and such stuff as 'Walking like his side hurt, ain't he?' but I didn' notice, being a newly married man and all." His laugh was a deep rumble, and Seth joined him in laughing, having figured out what happened.

Union cavalrymen clanked by on the other side of the log structure, and Seth ran to see them disappear down the hill toward the Pike. The boy plunked himself back beside Jefferson McKenzie who was tamping down the red-hot coals in his pipe with a forefinger hardened by forty years of forge work.

Jefferson puffed a while, eyes closed, obviously contented. "Then, like I tole you, when I was jes' catchin' on to smithy work, the plantation busted, and they sole off ever'thing and ever'body. Man gambled it away, some said. Leesa an' our baby girl was sold down South somewheres, Mississippi, I heard tell. Man in Richmond bought Curtis an' me for his iron works, place called Tredegar." Jefferson stopped and Seth didn't pester him.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as the war went on. Now and then the musket fire from the trenches in front of Fort Reno sounded like the Fourth of July celebration, and they could hear and feel the thump of cannon on the other side of Rock Creek. Shouted commands suggested that Reno was preparing to fire its own big guns again, and Seth was tempted to go watch.

Jefferson seemed more serious when he resumed. He hunched forward and pulled up blades of dried grass and tossed them to the breeze. "So I learned my trade as a smith, an' a farrier, an' a wheelwright, too. I was bought by three different men, and each time the price went up. Sometimes they hired me out, and mos' let me keep some of my earnin's. When I was thirty-some I got 'volved in what they call a 'broad' marriage, but it didn' work out. When Mr. French bought me from that feller in Bal'more, neither me or that gal shed any tears. She done married again. I heerd 'bout her a time or two. Slaves has ways, Seth, a'getting messages around."