E. L. Doctorow: The March

Mattie hurriedly, pulled on her robe, her mind prepared for thealarm of war, but the heart stricken that it would finally have come,and down the stairs she flew to see through the open door in thelamplight, at the steps of the portico, the two horses, steam risingfrom their flanks, their heads lifting, their eyes wild, the driver ayoung darkie with rounded shoulders, showing stolid patience even inthis, and the woman standing in her carriage no one but her auntLetitia Pettibone of McDonough, her elderly face drawn in anguish, herhair a straggled mess, this woman of such fine grooming, this dowagerwho practically ruled the season in Atlanta standing up in the equipagelike some hag of doom, which indeed she would prove to be. The carriagewas piled with luggage and tied bundles, and as she stood some silverfell to the ground, knives and forks and a silver candelabra, catchingan the clatter the few gleams of light from the torch that Roscoe held.Mattie, still tying her robe, ran down the steps thinking stupidly, asshe later reflected, only of the embarrassment to this woman, whom totell the truth she had respected more than loved, and picking up andpressing back upon her the heavy silver, as if this was not somethingRoscoe should be doing, nor her husband, John Jameson, neither.

Letitia would not come down from her carriage, there was no time,she said. She was a badly frightened woman with no concern for herhorses, as John saw and quickly ordered buckets to be brought around,as the woman cried, Get out, get out, take what you can and leave, andseemed to be roused to anger as they only stood listening, with some ofthe field hands appearing now around the side of the house with thefirst light, as if drawn into existence by it. And f know him! shecried. He has dined in my home. He has lived among us. He burns wherehe has ridden to lunch, he fires the city in whose clubs he once gavetoasts, oh yes, someone of the educated class, or so we thought, thoughI never was impressed! No, I was never impressed, he was too spidery,too weak in his conversation, and badly composed in his dress, carelessof his appearance, but for all that I thought quite civilized in havingso little gift to dissemble or pretend what he did not feel. And what abitter gall is in my throat for what I believed was a domesticated manwith a clear love for wife and children, who is no more than a savagewith not a drop of mercy in his cold heart.

It was difficult to get the information from her, she ranted so.John did not try to, he began giving orders and ran back in the house.It was she, Mattie, who listened. Her aunt's hysteria, formulated oddlyin terms of the drawing room, moved her to her own urgent attention.She had for the moment even forgotten her boys upstairs.

They are coming, Mattie, they are marching. It is an army of wilddogs led by this apostate, this hideous wretch, this devil who willdrink your tea and bow before he takes everything from you.

And now, her message delivered, her aunt slumped back in her seat,and gave her order to be off. Where Letitia Pettibone was going Mattiecould not get the answer. Nor how much time there was, in fact, beforethe scourge arrived at her own door. Not that she doubted the woman.She looked into the sky slowly lightening to its gray beginnings of theday. She heard nothing but the cock crowing and, as she turned,suddenly angry, the whisperings of the slaves gathered now at thecorner of the house. And then with the team away, the carriage rollingdown the gravel path, Mattie turned, lifting the hem of her robe, andmounted the steps only to see that horrible child Pearl, insolent asever, standing, arms folded, against the pillar as if the plantationwas her own.

JOHN JAMESON was not unprepared. As far back as September, when thenews had come that Hood had pulled out and the Union armies hadAtlanta, he sat Mattie down and told her what had to be done. The rugswere rolled, the art was taken down from the walls, her needlepointchairs—whatever she valued, he told her—her English fabrics, the china,even her family Bible: it was all to be packed up and carted toMilledgeville and thence put on the train to Savannah, where John'scotton broker had agreed to store their things in his warehouse. Not mypiano, she'd said, that will stay. It would rot in the dampness of thatplace. As you wish, John had said, having no feeling for music in anycase.

Mattie was dismayed to see her home so depleted. Through the barewindows the sun shone, lighting up the floors as if her life were goingbackward and she was again a young bride in a new-built unfurnishedmanse and with a somewhat frightening husband twice her age. Shewondered how John knew the war would touch them directly. In fact hedidn't, but he was a man whose success gave him reason to suppose hewas smarter than most people. He had a presence, with his voluminouschest and large head of wild white hair. Don't argue with me, Mattie.They lost twenty or thirty thousand men taking that city. There's hellto pay. You're a general, with a President who's a madman. Would youjust sit there? So where? To Augusta? To Macon? And how will he ride,if not through these hills? And don't expect that poor excuse for aRebel army to do anything about it. But if I'm wrong, and I pray God Iam, what will I have lost, tell me?

Mattie was not allowed to disagree in such matters. She felt evenmore dismayed and said not a thing when, with the crops in, Johnarranged to sell away his dozen prime field hands. They were bound, allof them, to a dealer in Columbia, South Carolina. When the day came andthey were put in shackles into the wagon, she had to run upstairs andcover her ears so as not to hear the families wailing down in theshacks. All John had said was No buck nigger of mine will wear aFederal uniform, I'll promise you that.

But for all his warning and preparation she could not believe themoment had come to leave Fieldstone. The fear made her legs weak. Shecould not imagine how to live except in her own home, with her ownthings, and the Georgian world arranged to provide her and her familywhat their station demanded. And though Aunt Letitia was gone, she hadinfected them with her panic. For all his foresight, John was runningaround this way and that, red-faced, shouting and giving orders. Theboys, roused out of bed and still only half dressed, came down thestairs with their rifles and ran out through the back.

Mattie went to her bedroom and stood not knowing where to start. Sheheard herself whimpering. Somehow she dressed and grabbed whatever shecould from her armoire and bath and threw everything into twoportmanteaus. She heard a gunshot and, looking out the back window, sawone of the mules go down on its knees. Roscoe was leading another fromthe stable, while her older boy, John Junior, primed his rifle. Itseemed only minutes later, with the sun barely on the treetops, thatthe carriages were waiting out front. Where were they to seatthemselves? Both carriages were loaded with luggage and food hampersand sacks of sugar and flour. And now the morning breeze brought thesmoke around from the stacks where John had set the fodder alight. AndMattie felt it was her own sooty life drifting away in the sky.

WHEN THE JAMESONS were gone, Pearl stood in the gravel path stillholding her satchel. The Massah had only glanced at her before layinghis whip on the horses. Roscoe, driving the second carriage, had comepast her and, without looking, dropped at her feet something knotted ina handkerchief. She made no move to retrieve it. She waited in thepeace and silence of their having gone. She felt the cool breeze on herlegs. Then the air grew still and warm and, after a moment in which theearth seemed to draw its breath, the morning sun spread in a rush overthe plantation.

Only then did she pick up what Roscoe had dropped. She knewimmediately what it was through the cloth: the same two gold coins hehad showed her once when she was little. His life savings. Dey real,Miss Porhl, he had said. You putem 'tween yer teeth you taste how realdey is. You see dem eagles? You git a passel of dese an you c'n fly lakde eagles high, high ober de eart—das what de eagles mean on desemonies.

Pearl felt the hot tears in her throat. She went around the bighouse, past the outbuildings and the smoking fodder and the dead mules,and past the slave quarters where they were busy singing and puttingtheir things together, and down along the trail through the woods towhere the Massah had given leave to lay out a graveyard.

There were by now six graves in this damp clearing, each marked by awood shingle with the person's name scratched in. The older gravemounds, like her mother's, were covered with moss. Pearl squatted andread the name aloud: Nancy Wilkins. Mama, she said. I free. You toleme, Mah chile, my darlin Porhl, you will be free. So dey gone and I is.I free, I free like no one else in de whole worl but me. Das how free.Did Massah have on his face any look for his true-made chile? Uh-uh.Lak I hant his marigol eyes an high cheeks an more his likeness dan derunts what his wife ma'm made with the brudders one and two. I, withskin white as a cahnation flow'r.

Pearl fell forward to her knees and clasped her hands. Dear GodJesus, she whispered, make a place fer dis good woman beside you. Anme, yore Porhl, teach me to be free.

SLOWLY, THE SLAVES, with their belongings wrapped in bundles orcarried in old carpetbags, walked up to the main house and distributedthemselves out front under the cypresses. They looked into the sky asif whatever it was they were told was coming would be from thatdirection. They wore their Sunday clothes. There were seven adults—twomen, the elder Jake Early and Jubal Samuels, who had but one eye, andfive women, including the old granny who could not walk very well—andthree small children. The children were unusually quiet. They stayedclose by and made bouquets of weeds or pressed round stones and pebblesin the earth.

Jake Early did not have to counsel patience. The fear they had allseen in the eyes of the fleeing Massah and Mistress told them thatdeliverance had come. But the sky was cloudless, and as the sun roseeveryone settled down and some even nodded off, which Jake Earlyregretted, feeling that when the Union soldiers came they should findblack folk not at their ease but smartly arrayed as a welcoming companyof free men and women.

He himself stood in the middle of the road with his staff and didnot move. He listened. For the longest while there was nothing but themild stirring of the air, like a whispering in his ear or the rustle ofwoodland. But then he did hear something. Or did he? It wasn't exactlya sound, it was more like a sense of something transformed in his ownexpectation. And then, almost as if what he held was a divining rod,the staff in his hand pointed to the sky westerly. At this, all theothers stood up and came away from the trees: what they saw in thedistance was smoke spouting from different points in the landscape,first here, then there. But in the middle of all this was a change inthe sky color itself that gradually clarified as an upward-streamingbrown cloud risen from the earth, as if the world was turned upsidedown.

And, as they watched, the brown cloud took on a reddish cast. Itmoved forward, thin as a hatchet blade in front and then widening likethe furrow from the plow. It was moving across the sky to the south ofthem. When the sound of this cloud reached them, it was like nothingthey had ever heard in their lives. It was not fearsomely heaven-made,like thunder or lightning or howling wind, but something felt throughtheir feet, a resonance, as if the earth was humming. Then, carried ona gust of wind, the sound became for moments a rhythmic tromp thatrelieved them as the human reason for the great cloud of dust. Andthen, at the edges of this sound of a tromped-upon earth, they heardthe voices of living men shouting, finally. And the lowing of cattle.And the creaking of wheels. But they saw nothing. Involuntarily, theywalked down toward the road but still saw nothing. The symphoniousclamor was everywhere, filling the sky like the cloud of red dust thatarrowed past them to the south and left the sky dim, it was the greatprocessional of the Union armies, but of no more substance than an armyof ghosts.