Charon's Daughter

PART I

WAR

IS

THE

CRUCIBLE

1

ZIONSVILLE

Indiana

February 11, 1861

A cold late afternoon shroud of nor-east air had pushed down out of Canada, embraced the landscape, and coaxed a light drizzle into powdery snow, which scurried across the streets and walks of Zionsville, Indiana. During that afternoon’s brief period of indeterminate progression, from day to night, you could see the sundial in front of the courthouse, but it cast no shadow across its face. A crow cawing portended a time for malevolence, a time for unseen evil acts.

The lamplighters on foot and horse had not yet made their rounds so that the yellow-orange aura that emanated from the kerosene lamps of the Heavenly Sounds Musical Clock Shop provided a sharp contrast with the darkened windows of nearby stores and the gray-white backdrop of the sky.

Inside, three people, their backs to the window, stood close together, bending over a workbench, in intense concentration. As they worked, they moved and turned, a dance propelled by the incessant ticking, clicking, and chiming of clocks, which crowded together across the room’s walls and tables.

I have a present for you, Mr. Lincoln, said Lucretia Mitchell smiling at the assembly of wires, clock parts and dynamite.

Hold the striker flange, then fold the coiled band down and under this clip and start the barrel moving. Let go of the flange and close the lid gently, said Ben Slokem to a man he and Lucretia called Günter, as he folded the connector wires and placed the music box, with its carved ivory angel guardians, into a black-tooled leather satchel. You have ninety-three seconds to get away. There are a hundred screws, wheels, and levers in this old beauty, enough to punch holes in any living thing within a radius of thirty feet. Plenty enough for a narrow train platform or coach compartment, Ben added, closing the satchel and placing it on the floor next to the workbench.

Günter paused for a moment with his eyes closed and said, The magnolia blossoms. He then picked up the satchel and opened the cover flap. The aroma of cedar chips, which lined the bottom of the satchel and held the dynamite sticks in place, was faint but noticeable. He reached inside and drew out the music box, opened the lid with its angelic motif, and released the striker against his finger, quivering slightly from the sting of the sharp snap. He deftly lifted his finger, inserted a rubber wedge under the striker, closed the lid, and centered it in the satchel on top of its deadly charge. Bending over to see more clearly, he unclipped a wire, closed the satchel, and placed it back on the floor.

Günter looked up and smiled, reached out with his open hands, one to Ben Slokem and one to Lucretia Mitchell, in a farewell gesture. In his lightly pinstriped jacket, neat dark tie, and crisp collar, he looked like an attorney or perhaps political advocate. His closely cut hair, light complexion and widely set eyes made him a double for hundreds of other Washington people.

Lucretia was said to be comely with auburn hair, five foot three inches tall, piercing grey eyes, heavy black lashes modishly tilted upwards at the ends. She was busty and thin-wasted, which she put on display with a tightly fitted Basque that presented her breasts well. Her lower self was encompassed in a grey striped yellow dress which billowed over hoops. Her flat healed slippers with gold accents completed the picture of a real Southern beauty. There was something about her eyes though, that created an unsettling feeling in those who would engage her in conversation that strayed beyond banalities. She had a hard way of looking at, and through, people that, despite their trained defenses, pierced their self-image and made them feel vulnerable. Her chatter, though, was lusty and willful, and was quite distracting to the men who surrounded her.

Benjamin Slokem was a short stocky rough-hewn country boy who had served their Southern cause faithfully for several years. He was cunning, and though he had little formal schooling, he was technically proficient in the chemistry of bomb making. The three clasped hands and bowed their heads in a moment of prayer and mutual acknowledgment of this dangerous and critical undertaking.

Ben and Lucretia looked at each other without expression. They were talking and praying with a man whose name they did not know, and did not want to know, but whom they called Günter. His real name was not Günter, but for Lucretia, the men who carried out her unpleasant projects, disrupting social events or fixing a local election, were always called Günter. Her reputation among all the Günters they employed was good. She paid promptly and well for a completed job.

The Lincoln inaugural train left Springfield at eight o’clock this morning, Ben said to Günter. You will board here at the Zionsville Main Station tomorrow. Lincoln will address Zionsville citizens from the coach’s platform. Your credentials show that you are a government official planning the inauguration. You will board during his speech, from the opposite end of the car, away from the platform. There are usually about fifteen people in his party and only a single engine with tender pulling it along, so you won’t have a lot of railroad types to deal with. Here is a schedule of stops and crew changes. Strike when the opportunity presents itself. Here is your ticket. Ben presented the paper slips. All the hopes and dreams of your Southern brothers and sisters ride with you. Good luck.

This Lincoln lunatic must be stopped. We will never have any peace, nor will our property be safe until he is dead. You must accomplish this assignment, said Lucretia, her tightly drawn lips twitching from emphasis.

May the Lord be with you on this sacred mission, said Ben.

A cold gust of air swirled through the room as the man called Günter opened the door, stepped out, and pulled it shut behind him. Ben and Lucretia shuddered, her body from the cold, his from the anticipated deed, and they turned towards each other. Ben put his arm around Lucretia and said in his coarse voice, Well, we’ve started.

Yes, I have, said Lucretia Y’all know I used to think that we could live with the Yankees. But this Abraham scoundrel has changed everything. He wants to take our property, our Negroes, away from us. Deny our legitimate ownership. He does not honor our state’s rights.

Well, they are our property, after all. Even the courts agree on that, said Ben.

Yes, and so we will have to fight for our rights, our property. However, our esteemed Jefferson Davis believes that there will be no war. He does not know this Abraham monster as I do. I have studied his speeches and talked with many who have worked around him. Lincoln will not start a war, but he will cause a war to start, and we need to beat him at his own game. I have felt for some time now that killing him was the best way to deal with him. But now, tonight, this feeling has come over me, this feeling of certainty, that killing him is the only way. I know that Günter will be successful. Old Abe will be no more. I am exhilarated. I am so excited. I could keep my pelvis in melodic motion for hours, she said with a shimmy.

He does seem bent on destroying our world, agreed Ben, blushing and looking down at the floor.

As God is my witness, as long as he is President of the North, he will never be safe. Sooner or later I will get him. I will kill him. I will, she said, her knuckles turning white from squeezing her fists in rage, and her eyes glistening. Lucretia stood silently. Her hands now unclenched, began to tremble. Ben, I had a terrible dream last night.

I heard you tossing and talking. Tell me.

I was creeping up on a tall bearded man. He was wearing black formal clothes with a tall stovepipe hat. I could not see his full face but I knew it was Lincoln. I had a small pistol, and I shot him right in the head. The blood spattered all over me, but he didn’t fall. He turned very slowly, laughing loudly, laughing, and laughing. As he turned his face began to change. It became a woman’s face. Still laughing and laughing, she reached into the back of her head, pulled out the bullet, put it in her mouth, and spit it at me. It knocked the gun from my hand. My whole body was frozen. I could not move. She started walking towards me, still laughing. I woke up. My heart was pounding.

I warned you about eating those pickled hog jowls.

You know who the woman was? It did not look like the drawing you gave me of her much, but, I think that’s who it was.

Who, pray tell?

That damn Lahey. That’s who. I think you missed her in the raid on that abolitionist place years ago. You know they never found her body and the papers never reported anything about her, and now I have to pay for your stupid blunder.

We did not see her at the time, but the whole place was in chaos. People were running every which way, crying and shouting. We are not sure she survived. She could have died in the woods. No one has heard about her since. Where could she have gone?

I thought we would be done with her. If she did make it, and she comes back and goes traipsing around my husband, I will have her head. Her little Yankee head will be on a platter.

I can ask around if you would like.

Oh, Dixie Damn, swore Lucretia, re-clasping Ben’s hand and slumping against his body, in urgent need of physical contact to quell her rising anxiety. She turned slightly away from him so that her bodice opened. The warmth of his body was reassuring. She needed warmth and reassurance, desperately.

Outside, flakes of snow thickened and strongly swirled around as evening began to descend around the now lit gas street lamps, mounding into white cotton drifts. The few people out on the streets, bundled against the harsh cutting north wind, rocked and bobbed somewhat stiff-legged along the board sidewalk, glanced briefly as they passed by the clock shop display window at an ornate bronze music box decorated with angels. Across the window they saw a painted sign that proclaimed, Our music bursts with joy. If they listened closely, they could hear a faint metallic tune, the fragile music of life submerged into a cacophony of ticking.

***

On February 13, 1861, the Indianapolis Daily Journal reported that the Lincoln Inaugural Train had been the target of an assassination attack that destroyed the passenger coach while approaching Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. Lincoln was not aboard at the time. The article went on to note that this was the third such attack on Mr. Lincoln, and all had failed so far. A railroad spokesman denied that Lincoln had been dressed as a Scotsman as lampooning cartoonists had suggested.

2

CLAXTON COUNTY

Claxton County

May 1861

The sun at zenith above Claxton County, Indiana, always seemed hotter than over neighboring counties. Though the topography presented the same low rolling hill and wooded glen with meandering creek, its spring and summer humid heat always felt more oppressive to Shannon.

Out in mid-day, with a wrinkled cap, red bandana, and loosely fitting Pay Day bib-overalls, the lower part of which was cut apart and shaped into a box-like skirt, Shannon Lahey, a thirty-year-old woman, with piercing grey eyes and coal black hair, and with outbursts of earthy language, cussed a pair of mules with plow, across a hoped for corn field. The dirty, ill-fitting clothes, covering a large strong body, concealed a very handsome and sophisticated woman. That she had trained and published in mathematics at a world famous university, had been on the faculty of a college, and was made Dame Grand Cross in the Order of Bath, by the Queen of England, was now hidden from the world.

Shannon wiped her neck with her bandana with one hand and a loud Geeeee, pulled the long rein with the other to begin a quarter turn. The team’s steps on the soft field did not mask the sound of a horse approaching at a steady pace. The hoof clops continued to get closer and closer until she could hear the horse’s breathing and snorting. It stopped abruptly. She turned to face the rider.

Here, Miss Lahey. Says it’s from the Executive Mansion; all the way from Washington, postmaster Tom Connors said as he leaped from his horse.

Shannon could feel her body tightening. Thought I should bring it myself, he said, panting a bit from the exertion of a long steady ride.

She stopped the mule team and wiped her hands on the backside of her bib overalls. He thrust a letter in front of her face.

Thank you, Tom, she said taking the letter. People always seem to thrust paper in my face when it contains information I would rather not have, she mused. Looking down at the envelope she could see a brightly decorated picture of a Federal soldier carrying the American Flag and a banner that declared, Preserve the Union. The postmark was clear and crisp, April 16, 1861. It was kind of you to come all this way for a letter to me.

Most important letter ever to come through our little station. Yes ma’am. Most important. At least, since a few years ago, when you got a letter from the Queen’s Palace in England. This one must be serious, don’t you reckon?

Why, yes, I guess it must be.

Would you like for me to wait?

No, thank you, Tom. I am not sure I want to read it. I am afraid that if I do, I will have to leave my little valley here. I am terrified of confronting the hatred and killing again. You remember, it was only a few years ago, when my wonderful Kentucky school, my Biretta, was attacked and most of the students and teachers tortured and killed. I was away, and did not get back in time to stop the killing. I had nightmares for a long time. Now, I am afraid the pleading looks of my helpless students might return. I feel safe here on the farm. I have had some correspondence with Gauss and other mathematicians, and I am happy with my simple life here.

That was over three years ago, Miss Lahey.

I can feel my heart pounding already. I know what’s in this letter. It compels me to do something. To give up my security. To leave my safe place here. Those murderers do not know if I am dead or alive. If I accept a public roll they will find me. I would be killed!

Miss Lahey, it’s from the Executive Mansion. That Lincoln fellow has been in office only a couple of months now, so it cannot be for reelection. Must be something special. Maybe it’s about those assassination attempts we keep hearing about. One of them was not far from here, over in Indiana somewhere near Indianapolis as I remember. Something must have gone wrong in that one. The killer guy blew himself up. You are an American. You knew this fellow Lincoln when he was your neighbor. You must open it.

I know it. Shannon looked again at the letter. She brushed her hands off on her box-skirt turning the letter over and over from hand to hand as she wiped each one. There was nothing else to see. She folded the letter carefully and placed it in her upper bib pocket. She turned to Tom and said I will open it later. When I am back home. Tom, thank you so much for your concern. I will let you know what it says.

Well, alright, but I still think you should open it. What if it is money?

If it were, Tom, it would come from the Treasury Department. I will let you know.

Tom remounted his horse and with a frown, rode very slowly back towards the County road. Shannon stood for a long time, gazing past the mule team, past the long furrows, past the distant fence line, and on to infinity, with no images cascading through her mind. It was numb. It was blank. At length, a loud snort from one of the mules brought her back. Her gaze refocused. She was again standing behind the now impatient mule team. Shannon knew she shouldn’t wait, couldn’t wait. Her fingers moved along the seam of her bib pocket and felt the letter and something else. Slowly, as though it were an act of theft, she pulled the folded paper from its protective denim-hiding place, and held it up to the sun. A darkened shape, the shaded outline of a folded piece of paper, was all she could determine. She carefully made a small tear in the end of the envelope, inserted her little finger and pulled the flap upward. She slipped the paper out and unfolded it, moving the other piece of paper behind the envelope. In one downward glance she took in the entire page beginning with an awkward yet poetical Lincoln salutation and family pleasantries. Her eye flicked to the ending sentences. It read,

"So I ask you to follow in your father’s footsteps serving our Nation, and help me in this great struggle. You may be the only one who can do what must be done. I have enclosed a rail pass for your journey. Please see me at the Executive Mansion, as soon as convenient for you. Signed, Abraham Lincoln."

She remembered Abraham from when she was a little girl and the Lincolns were neighbors. She remembered him as a funny, kindly, intelligent man, full of life. Would she feel safe with Lincoln, this kindly man, whom she had known for as long as she could remember?

Oh God, I am not ready. Shannon forgot the mules and the fields she was plowing. She wandered across the torn-open dirt in large looping circles talking, screaming at the sky, at the birds, and at nothing. Men, why don’t they leave me alone? Let me do my work. But, I also want to have a lover. I want to have men friends. I am intelligent, I am educated, I am nice looking, I am told, so where are you my man? She paused and recaptured her thinking. This request of Mr. Lincoln is not a romantic gesture. Yet, he has many competent men at his command. Why me? I am sure, whatever it is, will bring fear and suffering.

She paused for a while, patted her mules, and then went on with her monologue, My problem is not men; my problem is me. When I needed to fight, when my students desperately needed me, when my school was raided by those murderous Southern gentlemen, I was not there. I was late getting back to school. I am a hunter and a marksman, and yet, I could not track down and kill the men who murdered my students, my lover, and my friends. I was impotent. They all know I cowered. I could do nothing. I am a coward! I still dream about that dreadful night. The accusing eyes and pointing fingers of those students are now my ghosts. They expected me to act. I did not act. Will I ever be free? Can I ever redeem myself?

Shannon wandered and babbled for several hours. It was growing dark and she could feel the pressure in her bladder. Shannon bent her knees, hiked her skirt, spread her feet and urinated as she mused. Us farm gals are more puzzling than infinite sets. Perhaps it’s a fertility thing, huh. Giving back to the earth from whence we came, yeah.

She stood erect and looked out across the field where she had been harrowing. She knew that the time had come for her to reengage her life. To rejoin that wonderful circus of wizards and clowns, devils and angels, the sweet of breath and the foul, the lame and the athlete, altogether called humanity. She knew that this man, this Abraham Lincoln, would not use her for her sexuality. He would be using her by the country, and for the country, for the One Nation Indivisible, as he himself was being used.

I am coming, Mr. President. I will serve if I can. Lord God, if you are my lord, save me from myself. I sense a lot of killing is going to happen. Perhaps even me. Lord, help me to do what I must, she cried out as a storm of mental anguish and chaos spun through her head.

3

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

Richmond, Virginia

May 1861

Lee Mitchell gently closed the seldom-used private side door of his town house, hoping to avoid the watchful eyes of the servants, and strode out into the swirling late spring snow towards the main square area of Richmond. As he reached the front walkway, he paused and turned to look at his new creation. He had built the large two-story house, complete with carved falcons perched on the roof extensions and magnolias and daggers subtly carved into the shutters, just a year ago, close to the new government offices, because the plantation big house was too far out of town to coordinate with the new government and give direction to the Friends of Dixie, the secret force behind the new confederacy.

Those roof tiles give it a nice dignified air, he thought. Lucretia is enamored with them. I am pleased to do something that makes her smile with twinkly eyes. We were happy once, I suppose. I loved the parties, the deference by important people, the gayety of it all. Lucretia is a vibrant woman and a sensuous loving one. All this power and prestige was brought about by the joining of our two estates. I believe that we are now the largest and most prosperous plantation in the South. We are a city unto ourselves. Our Negroes have every skill imaginable from wheel wrights, silversmiths, furniture makers, and stonemasons, even two who make those fancy china dishes. I and a small group of neighbors have our own railroad to carry cotton bales to the ports. I cannot bring myself to tell her that it is no longer ours. How could I tell her that the very thing that gives meaning to her life is no longer ours, no longer hers? I know, in my heart that she will never forgive me for what I am doing, transforming our agricultural wealth into a diverse array of industry, banking, and distribution enterprises. Perhaps after the war, when the South has been destroyed. She will understand, if she lives through it all, if she could adapt to a new way of life.

He wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell of the cold snow-tinged spring air and could feel the tickle of the misty spray that rode the gusts of wind up his pants leg and swirled around his calves. He stomped his legs and pulled his jacket tightly against his chest to fend off the chill. The town clock, which was mounted almost at the top of the courthouse steeple facing the public square, just under the watchful eye of Thomas Jefferson, indicated five forty. I suppose I have plenty of time to see the Senator. I left a note saying where I would be going. But it was just an excuse to be away from the house. Perhaps I will just wander a while. It has been a long time since I have done nothing with purpose, he thought.

Lee was glad to be far away from Lucretia, from the clock-shop, from all of it. He was no longer a believer in the invincibility of the South, or the righteousness of its cause. Yet, because he was leader of the Friends of Dixie, how could he ever tell them what he now believed? What he knew? What they did not want to know? What they would never want to hear?

He had been a student of military history at England’s Cambridge University. He was well traveled both abroad and in the North, and knew well the North’s industrial capacity and the South’s lack of it. He knew that with the election of Lincoln, the South would go to war, and lose, and lose its actual way of life, which was perhaps for the better, and its fantasy about life in the South, which would clearly be for the better of the poor.

The truth was that most of the people of the South were poor. Even more than that, his own life experiences had led him to doubt the institution of slavery, that peculiar institution, as the more educated of the South would say, both on moral and economic grounds. Slavery as a means of production, along with the depletion of the soil, was constraining the economy of the South to levels of zero growth in comparison to the energetic, freewheeling, and rapidly industrializing North.

He could see war coming. So, over the past few years he had created a web of companies and personal businesses, stretching far from Richmond to Liverpool in England, to Canada, to Mexico, and the Caribbean, that were so convoluted and lightly documented, that it was almost impossible for his wife, or his business associates, or anyone else for that matter, to see that he had moved a great deal of personal wealth outside the South.

Lee had bought mills in England, farms in Missouri, a wagon works in Illinois, and most important, a bank in Pennsylvania. He used the bank in Pennsylvania to purchase Southern currencies at a very small fraction of their face value. It made him appear patriotic to have sacks of Southern currency stacked in his office, and nicely covered his other money movements. And of course his purchase of the Musical Clock Shop in Indiana along the inaugural train route as a front and safe house for espionage was well-known to his associates. Yet with all that, he maintained himself as the head of the Friends of Dixie, the Golden Eye of Knowledge, as they called him. He was, despite his wife’s aggressive behind-the-scene maneuvering, the official, if generally unrecognized, leader of the Southern strategy. Did not that make him a fraud? A traitor? A traitor to whom? To truth? To life? He wondered. The course of future events was now set. Southern States including Texas had announced their succession from the Union, and had elected Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America.

In just a few minutes he arrived at the center of Richmond. The central square was well lit. As he approached the square, he could see a man leaning casually against a streetlight apparently waiting. His posture was aristocratic, his clothing stylish and expensive.

Dixie damn, it’s a nigger, and well after dark, Lee exclaimed loudly. Probably waiting for someone to conk on the head and grab their watch, he thought to himself. I suppose the curfew for those people is not being enforced. His own feelings immediately repulsed him. Lee was a Southerner. He was born and raised on a plantation. He was schooled in the ways of the races since he was very young. Though his adult life experiences outside the south, especially in England where he studied at Cambridge, and where he encountered Negro students and thinkers from around the world, allowed him to observe that Negroes could be smart and energetic, even learned. Those rational thoughts had not altered the deeply ingrained Southern culture in him.

What on earth are you thinking, Lee Mitchell, he said quietly to himself. His instinctive reaction was to cross the street to avoid confrontation. He stopped, looked down for droppings, and began to step off the board sidewalk.

Lee, said the Negro softly, Lee Mitchell.

You talking to me, boy? Lee said as he paused and turned towards the man. They both stood quietly for a few moments, staring at each other. Then raising his arms into the air and looking skyward as though searching the heavens, the Negro began to shout.

Oh, Lord, Oh Lord, I thought I would never hear you say that to me again, he said, his body shaking. He dropped his arms and turned towards Lee Mitchell. Lee, it is me, George Clay, George Washington Clay, he continued, with great agony on his face. Lee felt his stomach tighten, his hands tremble, and he ran to the man and threw his arms around him. He pushed his face directly into his. He had seen this face, nose to nose, just like this when he had begun to awake from a coma, in the arms of this same man so many years ago. Then, Lee was eighteen and George was only sixteen. Only then George was lying down and could barely move. The same black face, with large searching brown eyes, flared nostrils, and the same toothy challenging smile. His mind race back in time.

Drink, massa? George had said, offering him a mug of strong-smelling reddish liquid. He could see little black insect like objects swirling around.

We call it Njugbu. Good medicine. Come from old country, before time.

Where am I?

You be at secret camp, not far from river. You be thrown from horse into river. Caught under log, almost drown. Break arm, break leg, hurt back. You be here two week. You not in right mind. Not able to move. I take care of you. Make you well.

Why would you do that? After that little wiping you got, I would think you would just sit there and watch me die, watch me slip away to hell.

We be people. God’s people. We not do that. I could not do.

Two weeks? How come I have not been found? What about the dogs?

By the time you were awake and could move, I had been gone too long. I would be hunted. They might chop off my foot. This secret place. Taboo. Closed. Cut off by river. High rock all around. I carry you across river. Dogs cannot find. They follow horse. Soon, now, I take you back to where you will be found.

So you are my Charon. You are my ferry across the river Styx. We did indeed cross the river of hatred, said Lee.

What you mean, Massa.

The warm breath exhaling from George’s nostrils and the rumbling of his deep voice brought Lee back to the public square in Richmond. Lee released his embrace. He was embarrassed, morally ashamed, of his behavior towards this man. He began to cry himself.

Lee, I owe you my life. The old one that I left behind and the new one which you made possible. You set me free. You sent me to school. First to the Nuns and then to the Jesuits. You broke some laws, your family code and tradition, and you put your own money out for me.

George, I also owe you. I owe you my life. I owe you for showing me that Negroes are people. Real five-fifths people. But, I guess I need to be reminded.

We are even, yet, we live in very different worlds. We are even, yet, we are forever in each other’s debt, said George.

George, why did my moral compass fail me just now? I called you nigger. I called you boy. You, a man I truly love. You, who have made a real man out of yourself. How did I do that?

The fears and habits of a lifetime are hard to change. My own people do not change. Maybe they do not know how. Moses kept the Jewish people in the desert for generations. They had to overcome the effects of Egyptian slavery on their tribes. To teach them to be real people. How to live with one another in love and graciousness as God’s children. You have got to believe in yourself.

George, I cannot undo the past. But, I can, we can, together change the future.

What needs changing? said George with a chuckle.

This country is about life and liberty. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness for all. You and I must make sure the South loses this war. This war that is about to happen.

"You take Lincoln