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John Jameson was not unprepared. As far back as September,
when the news had come that Hood had pulled out and the Union
armies had Atlanta, he sat Mattie down and told her what had
to be done. The rugs were rolled, the art was taken down from
the walls, her needlepoint chairs—whatever she valued, he told
her—her English fabrics, the china, even her family Bible: it
was all to be packed up and carted to Milledgeville and thence
put on the train to Savannah, where John's cotton broker had
agreed to store their things in his warehouse. Not my piano,
she'd said, that will stay. It would rot in the dampness of
that place. As you wish, John had said, having no feeling for
music in any case.
Mattie was dismayed to see her home so depleted. Through the
bare windows the sun shone, lighting up the floors as if her
life were going backward and she was again a young bride in a
new-built unfurnished manse and with a somewhat frightening
husband twice her age. She wondered how John knew the war
would touch them directly. In fact he didn't, but he was a man
whose success gave him reason to suppose he was smarter than
most people. He had a presence, with his voluminous chest 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 hell to pay. You're a general, with a President who's
a madman. Would you just 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 a Rebel army to do anything
about it. But if I'm wrong, and I pray God I am, what will I
have lost, tell me?
Mattie was not allowed to disagree in such matters. She felt
even more dismayed and said not a thing when, with the crops
in, John arranged to sell away his dozen prime field hands.
They were bound, all of them, to a dealer in Columbia, South
Carolina. When the day came and they were put in shackles into
the wagon, she had to run upstairs and cover her ears so as
not to hear the families wailing down in the shacks. All John
had said was No buck nigger of mine will wear a Federal
uniform, I'll promise you that.
But for all his warning and preparation she could not believe
the moment had come to leave Fieldstone. The fear made her
legs weak. She could not imagine how to live except in her own
home, with her own things, and the Georgian world arranged to
provide her and her family what their station demanded. And
though Aunt Letitia was gone, she had infected them with her
panic. For all his foresight, John was running around this way
and that, red-faced, shouting and giving orders. The boys,
roused out of bed and still only half dressed, came down the
stairs with their rifles and ran out through the back.
Mattie went to her bedroom and stood not knowing where to
start. She heard herself whimpering. Somehow she dressed and
grabbed whatever she could from her armoire and bath and threw
everything into two portmanteaus. She heard a gunshot and,
looking out the back window, saw one of the mules go down on
its knees. Roscoe was leading another from the stable, while
her older boy, John Junior, primed his rifle. It seemed only
minutes later, with the sun barely on the treetops, that the
carriages were waiting out front. Where were they to seat
themselves? Both carriages were loaded with luggage and food
hampers and sacks of sugar and flour. And now the morning
breeze brought the smoke around from the stacks where John had
set the fodder alight. And Mattie felt it was her own sooty
life drifting away in the sky.
when the Jamesons were gone, Pearl stood in the gravel path
still holding her satchel. The Massah had only glanced at her
before laying his whip on the horses. Roscoe, driving the
second carriage, had come past her and, without looking,
dropped at her feet something knotted in a handkerchief. She
made no move to retrieve it. She waited in the peace and
silence of their having gone. She felt the cool breeze on her
legs. Then the air grew still and warm and, after a moment in
which the earth seemed to draw its breath, the morning sun
spread in a rush over the plantation.
Excerpted from The March by E. L. Doctorow Copyright © 2005 by E.L. Doctorow. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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