Chapter Two

It was a long journey to Pennsylvania. Sarah was excited to be riding a train for the first time, but after hours of clinging to the narrow seat while the coach danced on the uneven track and breathing a heady mixture of soot and cinders, she fell asleep nestled against me.

To be truthful, I was as excited as she was. I had traveled by carriage from Waterside to Washington City several times, and from Washington to Baltimore by horse, but I had never gone toward the west. It was exciting just to know that I could travel by the train all the way to the Mississippi if I were free to do so. I remained alert on into the afternoon, watching the valley of the Potomac slip by at the astonishing rate of twenty miles an hour.

It was nearly nightfall when we reached the great bridge at Harper’s Ferry. On our left as we approached, one half of the bridge carried horses and wagons, while the right side carried the tracks of the railroad. As we passed beneath the roof of the bridge, the smoke from the engine boiling in through our open windows became almost unbearable.

I left Sarah asleep on the seat and stepped out onto the platform to look around. Just a year ago Harper’s Ferry had been the center of the nation’s attention as the crazed abolitionist John Brown raided the Federal arsenal there.

John Brown had not raised the slaves to revolt. He had only killed a few innocent people and they had hanged him three months later. Yet even in failure, he had succeeded. After John Brown’s raid, the South had looked northward with even greater distrust. It had made compromise even harder than before. Now the widening split between the two halves of America had led to the election of the one man the South could not tolerate.

Now, as I looked on the place where the nation’s fate had been sealed, I had no idea that I would return there in so few months. Nor, in my wildest dreams, could I ever have imagined the circumstances that would draw me there.

*****

Historical novels require accuracy, but the bar is somewhat lower than historical non-fiction. Either type of literature is subject to error. Perfection is not possible, and historians are always correcting one another.

It comes down to a balancing act between a desire for accuracy and the needs of the story, refereed by the likelihood of reader catching your error.

In this case, I sent Matt and Sarah’s train through Harper’s Ferry because I wanted to bring it into the story early. The railroad is real; in fact the Harper’s Ferry train and wagon bridge is well known among enthusiasts of early railroads. When I later found an early railroad atlas which showed that the sensible route from Washington to Gettysburg left the B & O before Harper’s Ferry, I retained the error in order to get John Brown into the story early, along with a foreshadowing of coming events.

In point of fact, Matt may not pass through or near Harper’s Ferry in chapters yet unwritten. I know he is going to return to the South on a mission he can’t even imagine at this point of the story, but his route at that point is uncertain to me now. If he doesn’t pass through Harper’s Ferry, it will be a simple thing to come back and make a slight change in this part of the ms.

Before we move on to Chapter two, here is a longer “note to self” that I dropped in with no intention of sharing it with anyone. I normally think in long, convoluted sentences and my first drafts – depending on the day and my mood – sometimes become quite dense. I spend a lot of time chopping the weeds out of my sentences so that only the grass remains.

In this brief piece, I have only cleaned things up enough to tone down the worst of the confusion.

The tone and tenor of this story will depend in part on how old Matthew is when he tells the story. If it is told as if we were looking over his shoulder as he experiences it – as it mostly is now – then it will have a callowness and lack of depth due to his immaturity. If he is looking back from age 20ish, as if he were narrating at the age he is in the prolog, it will have greater maturity. It will now have a greater sense of the depth of time, but will lose some immediacy. If he is telling the story to his grandchildren at age 70ish, he will have to explain some things to them which will be beneficial to the modern young reader, and will take away some of the stiffness and the feeling of dialect in the voices of the slaves.

He might, for example, say, “Bonnie, I know no one says Massah anymore. That’s cause there aren’t any slaves any more. It sounds funny? No there was nothing funny about it.”

This could smack of Conrad’s “Ah, youth. Pass the bottle.” but despite that it is still legitimate form of storytelling and it gives that distancing effect, that storytelling effect, that allows the author to comment on old mores, which is something the narrator can’t normally do.

If the Conrad reference is unfamiliar to you, Joseph Conrad’s story Youth is told in flashbacks by a narrator during a drinking bout some years after the events it describes. The narrator’s calls of “Ah, youth!” and “Pass the bottle!” become tedious and eventually laughable. Don’t let that scare you off, though; it is a minor flaw on a fine story.

Something I did not discuss in the “note to self” is person. Voices has to be first person; it is about Matt’s internal struggles, and no other form would work.

I normally prefer third person for its flexibility, and because it allows me to comment on the protagonist. The only other first person novel I’ve done is Raven’s Run. If I had made it third person, it would have an entirely different tone, less reflective and more hard edged. I like it like it is, but in third person it might be easier to sell.

My first real novel, Jandrax, was written in first person. It didn’t work, so I rewrote the whole thing into third person and Ballantine snatched it up. I did cheat a little. I managed to leave two chapters in first person, one as a narrated flashback, and the other presented with the feel of a folk tale.

Chapter one, concluded

“But we will have to fight for our freedom,” I said, “and I could hardly call myself a man if I let others do my fighting for me!”

“I understand your feelings, but listen: Lincoln doesn’t become president until March. The southern states won’t wait for that to happen. They will begin to secede immediately, and it is possible that President Buchanan will let them go with only a token show of resistance. It could all be over before Lincoln ever comes to the Presidency.”

“I don’t see how that changes anything.”

“Son, you are still fifteen. Give me your word that you will stay with your sister in Gettysburg until your sixteenth birthday, and I will release you from any further obligations. By that time we will know better what is to happen, and I will trust you to act on your own conscience.”

???make this 16 & 17???

(I love computers. They allow me to drop little “notes to self” right into the text where I can’t forget them. Of course this would be a disaster if you were the type to send off first drafts unchecked.)

I did not want to give my word. The South had no navy. That meant that if it came to war, they would be fitting out privateers and I wanted to be in on the action. If my father’s predictions were right, I might miss the whole thing by waiting until April to enlist.

Yet, when I looked at my father’s face, I could not refuse him. I said, “I will wait.” He shook my hand on it. Then he reached into the side pocket of his coat and handed me a package wrapped with paper.

“Don’t open that until you get to Pennsylvania,” he cautioned, “and then do so in secret. You will find a pistol, caps, power, and shot inside. Load it, then hide it. Don’t let your Aunt Rachel know about it. As a Quaker, she is not supposed to force her ideas on anyone, but she might refuse to have it under her roof. She is a strong willed woman, and a foolish one sometimes. If you ever need to defend your sister or yourself, I want you to have the means.”

I slipped the heavy package into my pocket. More than anything so far, it brought home the seriousness of our situation. I said, “When will we see you again?”

“When God wills it, if he ever does.”

Then he put his arms around me briefly, and I confess that I had to wipe moisture from my eye before I turned to face Sarah again.

*****

So ends chapter one. I’ve reread the chapter dozens of times, tweaking little things, and I am still not satisfied with it. It is full of exposition necessary for the coming story, and full of conversation between a father and son who are just a bit stiff and distant with one another, during a formal historic era.

If this were science fiction, or fantasy, or a thriller, I would chuck the whole chapter and start over. Or, to be more precise, I would have written it differently in the first place.

There are two things at play here. The story I am trying to tell in a tale of morals, and much of the most important action is internal. Nevertheless, the story has to move, or readers will simply close the book and go on to something else.

Beginning with chapter two, things speed up a bit. When I complete Voices, I will leave chapter one as is and drive on the the last page. Events that have yet to be written may change my view of this first chapter and make changes easier.

Here is a rule to live by: Chapter one doesn’t have to be perfect while you are writing a book, but it had better be perfect before it heads for the publisher.

Chapter two is two posts away. Next post, a diversion.

Chapter one, continued

Eventually the tour ended and Sarah was brought out. She ran into Father’s arms, then greeted me with a curtsey and a shy smile.

Sarah was six years younger than me, so I had rarely played with her when we were young. The Kemp twins from the plantation just down the river were my age, and we spent our childhoods together, with no time for little sisters.

Sarah was a baby and I was six when mother died. Father was a U. S. Representative by that time and had little time for us, so Sarah went to live with Father’s sister in Richmond and I was sent to a boarding school in Williamsburg. Father would bring us both back to Waterside with him when Congress was not in session. That remained the pattern of our lives for a decade.

Sarah was my sister, but she was a stranger. Except for our few months at Waterside each season, I had not lived in the same house with her for some years.

Now I looked closely at her. Her hair was blonde and done up in ropy curls. Her eyes were more gray than blue. The dress she wore was tight in the bodice and flared at the hip, well tailored and trimmed with lace. Her clothing, her stance, and the look on her face were all designed to make Mrs. Davison feel that she had produced a perfect little girl. I had no idea what was really going on inside her head. I’m sure Mrs. Davison knew even less than I did.

We went out to the carriage with Sarah between us, holding each of our hands. She was chattering gaily, but after the first five minutes I stopped listening. It was all about the life she lead at Mrs. Davison’s and the daily crises and intrigues of her playmates. James took the reins, snapped the horses into motion, and we pulled away. Sarah had both of Father’s hands in hers now, as if she were trying to squeeze the juice out of every second she would be with him.

At the train station, Father left Sarah with James long enough to take me aside. “Son,” he said, “I don’t know what the future holds for any of us, but it does not look pleasant. It will certainly be war. The question is how hard and how long the North will fight. I am hoping that the whole thing will be over by mid-summer. I would prefer that you stay out of the fighting if you can.”

I knew that my father had been no war hawk, but this advice sounded strange to my ears. I said, “Father, that hardly seems honorable.”

Father frowned and asked me, “Do you remember Representative Collins?”

I did. Collins was from Ohio; he and Father had been friends for years and he had visited Waterside several times, although they had drifted apart recently.

“Arthur Collins has a son just your age. I would not care to have you looking down a rifle barrel at his son, nor would I want his son firing at you. We have been members of the same nation, however quickly some men forget.”

“But we will have to fight for our freedom,” I said, “and I could hardly call myself a man if I let others do my fighting for me!”

Chapter one, continued

Father had much to say to me. He was telling me the things I would have to know if he died before we met again, and we both knew it.

When I finally made it up to my room, I was drugged with sleep and sadness. All my life, I had planned to go to sea. It was a family tradition. My great-grandfather had been captain of a privateer during the Revolutionary War. Our plantation was bought with prize money from his three cruises. My grandfather was a lieutenant on the Constitution when she captured the HMS Java in 1812. Even Father had served on coasting bugeyes when he was a boy, before he had run for office. I had been about to follow in their footsteps. With an appointment to the Naval Academy, the dream had been so close I could almost touch it. To lose it now seemed too much to bear.

But . . . when the southern states seceded, they would surely need a navy. That thought cheered me considerably.

(Even though it doesn’t seem so now, this is a precursor of things to come. The fact that Matt’s family has seen a world beyond the South is instrumental in preparing for his later change of heart. He will contemplate this himself, in coming chapters. Having this paragraph here both shows his present state of mind and prepares the reader for changes which are to come later.)

*****

The next morning James readied the carriage and drove Father and me across town to the boarding school to pick up Sarah. Until a few months ago she had stayed with Father, but during the hopeless battle to keep Lincoln from being elected President, he had not had time for her.

Apparently Father had sent instructions ahead, because there was a pile of trunks on the ground outside the carriage house. We left James and one of Mrs. Davison’s slaves to load them while we went inside. (We associate Washington, D. C. with Lincoln and the Union, but at this time it was a city full of slaves.) The house was full of the early morning sounds of young girls awakening and getting ready for the day. We could hear scurrying and laughter in the rooms above, and the hallway where we waited was full of the pleasant smell of bacon and grits.

Mrs. Davison was short and round, in a hoop skirt that made her look rounder still. Cosmetics made her cheeks red and her eyelashes long and black, even so early in the morning, and her hair was elaborately done up. She was full of sighs and flutters, gesturing with her fan and declaring how she “didn’t know what she was going to do without Sarah. The girl was such an angel!” If she had been twenty years younger and sixty pounds lighter, she would have been the picture of a southern belle; instead she was a parody of one.

Since Sarah was still eating, Mrs. Davison took us on a tour of the lower part of her house. Father endured it gracefully, but I could see it was hard for him to listen. The nation was falling apart around him; all he wanted was to see his little girl off on her way to safety so he could get back to the business of saving what could be saved. Father’s strained courtesy made Mrs. Davison even more silly in my eyes.

Eventually the tour ended and Sarah was brought out. To my relief, she was sensibly dressed for traveling, in a dark dress of linen with no hoops to get in her way. She ran into Father’s arms, then greeted me with a curtsey and a shy smile.