Chapter 16: At Fort Stevens

In the barracks behind Fort Reno, a broad bar of golden sunlight slid across Seth's face while the boy dreamed of his mother's sewing circle. His tiny grandmother Axminister, red-faced Aunt Hester who always smelled of camphor, his maiden aunt who was called Miss Vidy, and his mother were knitting at his house. He could hear the needles clicking. Annie sat on a stool playing with her doll. Seth crouched back in a corner, watching and listening. All the women were saying nasty things to his mother about Robert. About how he had gone and joined the Black Republicans and about how stupid he was to get captured and how inconsiderate he had been to leave her with just young children to do the farm work.

Seth nodded and, in his dream, said, over and over, "See, Momma, I told you so." His mother was not saying anything. She just sat, smiling and knitting. Annie giggled and hid her face behind her hands or held her doll up to her nose. Then someone was saying his name. Someone was calling from outside, "Seth, Seth." And he woke up. Jefferson stood at the foot of his cot, smiling.

"You was dreamin', boy, but you didn' look too happy. You was saying, 'See, see, ' an' makin' faces."

As the dream faded Seth remembered seeing Robert march away for the last time. He looked out the barracks' window at the cloudless sky that promised another day of exhausting heat. Seth pulled on his pants and shoes, and he and Jefferson used the fort's sinks and then had breakfast with some of the artillerymen.

Jefferson took some heavy-handed joshing from the black soldiers in the company. They called him "Gran'pa" and asked was he the real Uncle Tom they had heard so much about. Jefferson took it with patience, and then told his smiling persecutors that he was a "rich plantation owner from the shore," that Seth was his indentured body servant and that he had sold better men than they were. They laughed together and slapped each other on the back, trading tobacco and jokes. Seth felt left out of the grown-up horseplay and went to see Ben, who was eating very well and seemed happy to be with so many other horses and mules.

It was quiet all along the lines north of the city that Tuesday morning. Each side seemed to be waiting for the other to make the first move. Early's planned dawn attack had been called off when a midnight messenger brought news that perhaps the 19th as well as the 6th Corps had moved into the trenches before him. He figured that his 7,000 tired riflemen now faced more than 10,000 experienced and reasonably fresh soldiers in a strongly built fort and along well designed defensive lines. So he waited remembering Lee's orders to bring his army back, whole and entire.

The Sixth Corps' commander, Horatio Wright, had wanted to attack as soon as his men arrived, but a bitter dispute over who was in command made that impossible. So he, too, waited, fuming. Washington was full of generals.

Shortly after eight, General Hardin's aide found Seth sitting in a gun embrasure, looking up the road toward his home. Fort Reno's artillerymen had fired a few arching shots in that direction yesterday, shaking the fort and everyone in it. Now word had come from General Augur, surely the most bewhiskered officer in the Union army, that the black man and the Maryland youngster at Reno were wanted at Fort Stevens, post haste. Jefferson was found swapping stories with his new friends, and the aide explained to both that this was a request, not an order. When they found that they would have to ride horseback to Stevens, both boy and blacksmith almost changed their minds. Seth said he would rather walk. The young lieutenant had to promise Jefferson several times, with his hand over his heart, that he would personally look after Mr. French's rig and see to it that Ben was fed, curried and properly cared for.

Accompanied by a half dozen Illinois cavalrymen, they went by way of the narrow supply road that served the forts in the northern defenses. Below Fort DeRussy they passed the camp of a New York regiment, and the soldiers of the 43rd waved and pointed. We must look kind of funny, Seth thought, glancing at the huge blacksmith on the mount in front of him. Jefferson's legs hung well below the horse's belly, and he clung to his saddle when he waved back, his face unhappy.