Enemy Women (17 page)

In 1860 about one Missouri family in eight (as opposed to one in five in the lower south) held slaves, nearly three-fourths of those holding fewer than five, and only 38 holding more than fifty. . . .Ninety per cent of Missourians lived on farms or in villages of less than 2,000 people. With the exception of St. Louis, there were no cities in Missouri . . .statistically, the average Missourian was a Methodist from Kentucky who owned a 215-acre family farm, owned no slaves, and produced most of the family’s subsistence.

—
FROM
Inside War

June 18, Saturday, 1864

At the Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, Mo., between the hours of 9 and 10 a.m., some prisoners exercising in the yard seized an axe from the kitchen and broke the lock on a gate leading into an alley. Some of the Rebel prisoners disarmed the guard from behind and several scattered in all directions. Troops from the 10th Kansas Infantry were sent after them and they were joined by other Union troops in the area. After a wild scramble over backyard fences, through sheds and outbuildings, and down alleys, two of the escapees were killed and three wounded. The remainder were captured and returned to prison.

—
FROM
Civil War Prisons and Escapes,
BY
R
OBERT
E. D
ENNEY,
S
TERLING
P
UBLISHING
C
OMPANY,
N
EW
Y
ORK,
1993

Great Heavens, my blood boils—women in this hole of filth and blasphemy! I could scarcely believe it until I saw it with my own eyes, Mrs. Mitchell, who is here with a little daughter five or six years old. She is charged with smuggling goods through to the Confederacy.

. . . One old man named Murphy has been added to our room, imprisoned, he says, for selling miscegenation photographs.

—G
RIFFIN
F
ROST,
Camp and Prison Journal

M
ISS COLLEY, HE
said. he shut the door behind her. i am very pleased that you have professed loyalty to the Union in your writing.

Well, good. Adair sat down. She felt lighthearted. Just being in the same room with him. The cough rose in her chest and she subdued it.

He nodded. Placed all his fingertips together as if completing some kind of interior circuit.

And other than that, I don’t have any information to give you about any one thing in particular.

He sat on the edge of his desk and looked at her. She had on a pair of sparkling earrings this time and an embroidered jacket. He crossed his arms across his chest.

He said, Do you have a mirror in your cell?

Oh, Major, how kind of you to ask, but I have a big hall looking glass, said Adair. And a dressing table and a clothes press and one of those things with pockets to put all my shoes in.

Can I not get a straight answer from you?

Adair said, I’m living in a filthy cell.

He lifted his hand. Well, then, here is my mirror, and I have brought you a brush. This is not proper, but we are not living in a proper world, here. He drew out his chair and placed it in front of the mirror near the stove. I have some reports to look at.

Adair took the brush from him and stood still for a moment without saying anything. Then she sat in front of the mirror with its beveled edges that caught the light in prismatic planes. She unpinned her
hair and drew it out stroke after stroke, entranced with her reflection, in the warmth of the parlor stove. After a few minutes she began to hum a Scotch slow air and listened to the traffic outside the window, people talking as they went past. She separated her hair into two long hanks and then took one of the hanks and divided it into three strands.
Black, black, black is the color,
she sang to herself in a whisper.

He read his reports, and dipped his pen in the inkwell without looking up. He said, Miss Colley, what are you going to do with your life after you get out of here?

Oh I have dreamed of raising horses, she said. She couldn’t imagine why she was confessing this to him. She braided one side and coiled the long braid. I guess I’m supposed to find somebody and get married. But I want to raise horses.

He shook sand on the ink and blew on it. And all that that implies, he said. Brood mares and a good stallion. I don’t know if they allow ladies to do that, he said. You may have to get a dispensation from the Pope or something.

Adair braided the other hank, regarding herself carefully in the mirror, turned her head from one side to the other. She could see the major lining up two columns of names side by side and comparing them. Well, I’ll just go to hell then, she said.

The major laughed. He opened a drawer and took out a cigar and cut the end of it off with a penknife. Lit it and blew smoke out of his nose. He went to open a window to let the smoke escape and threw the dead match out onto the sidewalk. A rush of cold city air and its coal smoke came in and he quickly shut it. He turned to watch her draw the braids around her head in a crown and lay down the brush.

He said, This is somewhat indelicate, Miss Colley. Ladies have no business with that kind of thing.

But it is so absorbing! It’s magic. She stood up and walked to him, took one of his hands and lifted it, and the ring glinted. Ink stained, she said. You are an inky man.

How is it magic?

The mare and the stallion gallop away together in the fields. Then my sisters and I go inside the house. Then, you been waiting eleven months and then there they are. Adair went to the window to see all the traffic in the street and then turned to face him, leaned against the sill with her hands behind her. She tipped her head to one side. You wake up one morning and the mare is standing back in the trees. Looking out, so carefully. She won’t move. Then you see little legs on her other side. The fog coming down off Courtois and Copperhead in long sheets, drifting clear over the meadow and there she is. This is how Dolly came to us. Adair turned and pressed her forefinger against her lower lip and stared out the window. They are made out of nothing. They come out of nowhere. Look there at that building going up. Now, you understand where all those buildings come from, but nobody understands how that young thing is made with eyes and everything. She sat in the chair again. Close to him.

They sat in companionable silence for a moment. Then he got up and cleared his throat, opened the stove door. Took up the tongs and placed several pieces of coal on the flames.

In some ways we understand but only in the most mechanical sense. We are a mechanical people.

Maybe
you
are, said Adair. Speak for yourself.

He smiled. And here you are in the city. Do you not want to be released, and then perhaps stay on here in St. Louis? The social events are endless.

Adair said, I don’t care for them. What, dances? She laughed. Entertainments upon the stage? She lifted her fist to her closed mouth and coughed a small cough.

Ladies’ clubs, he said. His eyes sparkled and he smiled at her. Charities and fawnings upon portrait painters.

Is this what you do? she asked. No wonder you want out of this cussed place.

No, he said. I’ve been to the theater but once. Major Neumann gave
a small shrug. It was a lie, but a minor lie, for he wanted her to know that at heart the two of them were alike. He had been to the Holly Street theater many times.

Adair sat down and rested her cheek on her fist. Leaned her elbow on the chair arm. Of course I want to get released. I have never seen the like of the women in this place.

You must get out of here as soon as possible. The major cleared his throat. He troubled the glowing coals with the poker. I can’t change things here. The solution is to get you out of here. He closed the stove door and turned the handle. When you are released, and you will be, have you ever thought about the western territories? To change the subject. The major indicated his books. Far away from cities. He sat down again close to her.

She said, I only heard about them. She got up and went over to take down one of his books. She ran the pages past her thumb. Is this where I can escape to, Major? She turned and smiled her brilliant smile. We had
Holland’s Pictorial History of the World
and it had California in it. We have had people start for California from our county and when they make up a band of wagons and start out, the morning they go they always sing “Awake Awake Ye Drowsy Sleepers.” She looked down at the book again. There was a page with hand-colored illustrations of Mandan Indians. Is this where I could escape to? You think I could keep my hair?

He could hardly keep himself from touching her. His desire was great. It was overwhelming. He saw her riding at a slow walk beside some reflective body of water, and the whippoorwill repeating itself in a cascade of liquid notes. It would be in a remote valley in the western lands, and the war far away. And there would be a trim small house beside the body of water and Adair in front of the fire combing out that long hair. In a nightgown. He wanted so to touch her.

He took her hand and said, Has the matron mistreated you?

Adair paused with her mouth open.

He said, Tell me.

Yes, she did, and I don’t like to admit it. Adair slapped the book shut. If I were a free person I would have knocked both her eyes into one socket.

What happened?

I asked her when I could mail a letter and insisted on my rights. She said we ought to get along and offered her hand. And when I did she about broke it, and threw me across the floor.

His mouth made a thin line and he got up and went back to his desk and wrote something in pencil, but in truth he was only writing down a small list of purchases to be made for himself,
coffee, pen nibs, buttons,
because he found himself possessed by a boiling fury and he needed to calm himself and so he wrote it all out again. Writing calmed him.

Well, there, I have made a note of it.

Major, you are such a stick, said Adair. Whatever happens you have to write up a report.

Well, Miss Adair, sometimes it works. Do not turn up your pretty nose at reports. The provost marshal’s department runs on paper. It is an engine fueled with paper. He paused and pressed down his collar. Am I such a stick? He smiled at her again.

No.

He reached out and drew his hand across her crown of braids. You look very nice indeed.

Thank you.

The clock on his shelf of books ate time, second after second, and the whistle sounded at the white lead factory.

It is time for you to go. He smiled. I’ll tell you what. He went again to his desk and took out a deck of cards. It is Christmastime. We are not allowed to give Christmas presents to the prisoners. But let’s you and I decide on who is to give who a gift. Leave it to chance. He fanned the deck and held it out. Take a card.

What for? Adair put out her hand and then hesitated. Explain this to me again.

Whoever draws the low card has to give the other one a Christmas gift.

I don’t understand this, you are up to something. But she drew the ten of spades.

He nodded, and then drew one himself. It was the trey of hearts.

William Neumann smiled brightly. I owe you a Christmas gift, he said.

She looked up into his eyes. You have engineered this, she said. You cheated.

I did not. He picked up the cigar and drew on it. Now, I am afraid we must address this business of your confession, he said. This will not do, Miss Colley. Although I couldn’t stop reading it. He held up the paper covered with her handwriting. Try again.

Adair looked again at her hands. She thought for a moment.

Then that’s not a confession?

No. He was not smiling and stood very still. I must ask you again.

Against my own people?

I want you out of this prison.

What if I went insane? From time to time I feel that I’m not myself. Not the Adair Colley I used to know. At one time I was so sweet and gentle I couldn’t pull a turnip out of the garden without weeping over the poor, dear thing. She put her hands together as if in prayer. You want something about my brother.

You must get out, he said. He reached out his hand and laid it in a light touch along her forearm. Women are dying here. He lifted his hand and touched her earlobe.

She turned her head away from his hand. But his touch felt very good to her.

Miss Adair. Write something.

I just did.

Information. Just some small thing.

Well then, she said. I’ll keep on.

He smoked his cigar in a long draw. Then bent the glowing end off
in a coffee saucer and left it lying there. He got up and opened the door for her. It’s Christmas Eve, he said. I don’t imagine Mrs. Buckley has prepared anything special for her charges.

Boiled rats, said Adair. With little red ribbons on their tails.

He laughed.

Miss Adair.

Mr. William.

And here is the Christmas gift I owe you. He handed her a box wrapped in red paper. Open it.

Oh my goodness! She tugged the paper loose eagerly. He noticed how she handled it and slowly separated one bright, crisp fold from another, cherishing the texture and the color of the paper. Inside were taffies wrapped in more red paper, and a small book of poetry. Translations from the Italian. New mittens in indigo and red wool. She held the package to herself. You did cheat.

I learned magic card tricks as a boy.

Then Adair put her forefinger on one of his chest buttons and said, That’s favoritism. Now you have to go and give everybody taffy.

Then it is favoritism. He bowed slightly as she went out the door. You are in my thoughts.

DECEMBER PASSED INTO
January and on January 9 she looked out her cell window to see Rhoda walking down the street in a confused, shambling way, carrying a carpetbag. Her head down. Adair did not know where she might be going in the confusion of the traffic but from what she had heard of her parlor talks with the lawyer it might well be to hell or a bordello.