Annapolis, page 38
Steve Stafford folded his arms and listened in admiration. “You know, Uncle Jack, sometimes I think my grandfather is wrong about you.”
“So tell him, Steve. Tell him I want to talk to him. Get us together.”
Steve drank from his beer. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“There are things I need to know from him,” Jack went on, “and things I want him to know.”
“He fears that book,” said Steve. “He thinks it can hurt the navy, considering all that you’ve done in the past. And he worries about bad press these days, with everyone fighting for funding.”
Jack pulled several diskettes from his pocket and placed them on the table. “That’s why I want you to read the first six sections, so that you can see what I’m trying to do.”
Steve studied the diskettes, arms still folded, as if he did not want to touch them. “Is my father’s story in here?”
“I haven’t written about Vietnam yet. That’s why I need to talk to the admiral.”
There it was, thought Susan. This whole thing was somehow coming down to Steve’s father and Vietnam.
“This takes you through the Civil War,” Jack was saying.
Should she wait or push a little harder? This was delicate business, this matter of Steve’s father, and she had already put her foot in her mouth once that day.
“Civil War,” said Steve. “Brother against brother.”
“Even back then.” Jack looked out the window onto the harbor. Where slaves were once landed, where barrels of tobacco brought wealth to Maryland, where French troops embarked for Yorktown, boaters now showed off the fiberglass trappings of success and obsession. “If you think we have worries today—expensive submarines and so forth—imagine this place in 1861.”
Susan watched Jack’s eyes glaze over. It was as if all the boats melted away and he was seeing that sleepy harbor in 1861.
“Only one person in Annapolis voted for Lincoln. It was a southern town, with a bad war rushing fast. But the Staffords stood where God put them… on both sides.”
“What about the Parrishes?” asked Susan.
“Oh, they were here, too.”
“They were also here this morning,” she said, expecting more of a reaction than she got.
All Jack said was, “Oliver Parrish?”
“How did you guess?”
“I think we’ll be seeing more of him.”
“Are we talking about the same Oliver Parrish who knew my father at the Academy?” asked Steve. “The Washington attorney who’s always suing the government over things like Agent Orange and the disposal of nuclear waste from naval vessels?”
Knew his father. Something more to add to the mix. Still Susan decided to keep her mouth shut and listen, because these two were revealing plenty on their own.
But lunch was arriving: a burger for Steve, steamed mussels for Susan, and a big plate of crab cakes, a Maryland delicacy, for Jack.
Jack looked at those crab cakes as if a moment from his youth had just been restored to him. “Here is where I belong.”
“What about Oliver Parrish?” Steve asked.
“Don’t you worry about him,” said Jack, a little smile cracking the corners of his lips. “Just set up a meeting with your grandfather, so I can answer the important question.”
“What’s that?” asked Steve, falling into one of Jack’s joke traps.
“How did the seafaring Staffords go from the deck of the Randolph to the desk of a PR flack in just”—he counted on his fingers—“eight generations.”
“We all have a story to tell,” answered Steve.
“So read mine and tell me what you think.”
The Stafford Story
BOOK SIX
Brother against Brother
March 1861
Ethan Stafford stood fortieth in a class of sixty-three. As long as he was not last, he did not care. Nor did he care about his demerits, as long as he did not exceed the two hundred in a year that would disqualify him from the Academy. And on that warm March night, he did not care if he received a dozen more because Alexandra Parrish had moved to Annapolis, and he had to see her.
He had spent almost four years at the Naval Academy, against instincts that would have put him at a college where he might have had some fun. He would even have been happy to run the plantation at Stafford Hall, after childless Uncle Charlton had died. But that job had passed to his half brother Cecil because Captain Jason wanted another naval son.
It did not matter that his father’s eldest son, Tom, was now assistant superintendent of the Naval Academy, or that second son George was the assistant engineer at the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk. The Old Cap, as Ethan called his father, wanted to look through a younger set of eyes and see all the way into the twentieth century.
A man who knew the story of Philip Spencer should have known better than that, but the Old Cap was not a force to stand against.
Neither was the allure of Alexandra Parrish.
Ethan slipped out of his bed and pulled on his uniform: blue trousers, blue waistcoat, blue jacket cut at the waist with a double row of brass buttons. He even knotted his droopy black bow tie. Being off grounds would bring five demerits. Being off grounds out of uniform would bring seven.
It was eleven o’clock. Lights out. But the duty station at the entrance of the dormitory was always manned. So Ethan dropped quietly from his second-floor window to the spring-soft mud below.
The Academy that slept before him that night resembled a garden of Greek Revival buildings, some in neat lines, like the dormitories of Stribling Row, others in dignified little groups, like the pillared chapel and recitation halls. The school had tripled in size since Bancroft brought it to Annapolis. And the number of midshipmen had expanded so quickly that the frigate Constitution had recently been moored in the river to house the plebes.
Ethan prided himself on his lack of interest in naval tradition, but at night, when that venerable old frigate seemed ready to take sail in the moonlight, he felt something stir. She was one of those ships that had a soul. So he gave her a little salute. Then he slipped across the yard, past the grand old mulberry tree, then by the chaplain’s house, where lights seldom burned after ten and the shadows offered perfect cover for someone slipping over the old Fort Severn wall. Of all the drills, he knew frenching out the best.
He moved quickly through the streets, keeping to the shadows wherever he could. No sense encountering an instructor out for a stroll. But he could not resist stopping to peer into Aunt Antonia’s front windows. The lights were still burning, which meant she was probably up late, writing another article on the evils of slavery.
After a short stay in Washington, she had moved to Annapolis and rented a small house with her freed slave, Iris Ezekiel, who used her father’s first name as a surname. But that night Ethan needed no opinions about slavery, or about courting the daughter of a committed slaveholder like Dan’l Parrish. So on he went.
The Fine Folly was in darkness.
Although widowed Walter Parrish had lived there twenty years and his aunt Rebecca twenty before that, no one called it the Parrish House. Fine Folly was just too fine a name, except to local wags who called it Pussy’s Folly because Walter kept cats. He and his late wife, Hattie, had started with two strays picked up from an oyster shucker on Spa Creek. Now there were dozens, which was folly in itself.
Ethan grabbed a fistful of pebbles and flung them against her window. Then he gave a low three-note whistle, like the one he and Alexandra had used in their childhood summers on the Patuxent, when they had sailed and fished together, explored the riverfront woods, and kissed for the first time.
Somewhere nearby, a cat yowled.
But the window did not open.
So Ethan began to climb the wisteria trellis. It was mostly rotten, held together by the vine itself, and in a moment, he landed in the shrubbery with a grunt.
Now the window opened. “Why, Ethan… I been expectin’ you.”
“Evenin’, darlin’.” He went around to the east side and tested the drainpipe.
She opened the east window, and her teasing voice was like honey flowing down. “Why, whatever are you plannin’ to do?”
“Climb this drainpipe and kiss you.”
She laughed, low and throaty. “My daddy’d disapprove. Granddad, too.”
“They would’ve disapproved of what we did last summer, down by the river, and at Christmas, in your daddy’s hayloft, too.”
“I might disapprove now,” she said.
He stopped, with his hands wrapped around the pipe and his toes digging into the loose mortar between the bricks. “Disapprove of what?”
“You haven’t declared yourself.”
“I declare myself… every time I kiss you.”
“Don’t come another inch till you declare your loyalties. My brother Robby says he’ll secede, even if Maryland don’t. What about you? Will you be honor-bound to follow your state?”
“I’m honor-bound to do what I want, not what this Abe Lincoln tells me.”
“Then you’re honor-bound to visit my boudoir.”
In an instant he was leaning over the windowsill, pressing his lips to hers.
“My, my,” she whispered, “you’ve grown chin whiskers.”
“You like them?”
“I don’t know. I think I must feel them again to tell.”
She was the lustiest girl he had ever met. She had many beaux and had admitted a few of them to enjoy her most intimate charms, and if Ethan were a true gentleman, he would have scorned her. But he had known her forever, and despite an upbringing that had taught her how to sip tea and carry herself like a lady, she was a true child of the river, like him.
He looked into her eyes, and she gave him that lascivious grin. Her face was small and a trifle pinched, but there was something feral in those eyes, something wild about the curly red hair, and her kiss was the sweetest he had ever tasted. When he felt something rubbing just below his belt buckle, he knew that this was going to be a fine night. But it was only a cat on the sill, rubbing itself against two bodies at once.
“Oh, get away,” whispered Alexandra, and she threw the cat to the floor. “Silly old pussy… Now you may come in, my southern sailor man.”
And a voice snapped from below. “You’ve just earned yourself five demerits, mister.” It was his half brother, Tom. “Now come down here, or it’ll be ten.”
Ethan glanced at Alexandra, who stepped back from the window and, with another lascivious smile, opened her nightgown. “Come back soon, now, y’hear?”
And the drainpipe gave way all at once. Ethan grabbed for the windowsill, then for the lilac bush, and then he was sprawled on the gravel walk, his half brother’s face looming over him. “When you decide to french out, don’t stop by your aunt’s house, especially when I’m taking a late-evening stroll with her.”
Ethan scrambled to his feet. “No, sir.”
“Now, what’s this I hear about a declaration?”
“He declares his support of those states that want to keep their rights to themselves,” said Alexandra from above. “We hope you agree, whether Maryland goes out or not.”
Tom Stafford was childless, widowed, forty-five. He had been decorated for the Vera Cruz landings in the Mexican War and had sailed with Commodore Perry to Japan. The navy was both his mistress and his child. “My allegiance is to the Constitution, Miss Parrish. Now close your windows—and your nightgown—before you catch your death.”
“Lieutenant, you shouldn’t speak of a lady’s nightgown. It’s not gentlemanly. G’night, boys,” she singsonged and slammed down the window.
Tom shooed a mewling old cat away. “We’re on the morning train to Washington, Ethan. Pa’s gotten us tickets to the inauguration.”
“The inauguration of the Great Ape?”
“Speak respectfully of the commander in chief.”
“He’s not mine.”
The cats were swarming from everywhere now—marmalades and tigers, calicoes, bobtails, and toms.
“You took an oath,” said Tom, “and you’re a Stafford. Don’t forget it.”
“Aye, sir.” Ethan crouched down and petted one of the cats, causing a riot among the others for attention. “I took an oath to be as independent as one of you.”
ii
The Great Ape
No one in the Stafford family would ever forget the words of the Old Cap to the new president the next day.
It happened at the White House, after the inauguration.
The prairie lawyer, who had promised to stop the spread of slavery into the western territories, was standing in the East Room, under a painting of George Washington. His doughy little wife stood beside him, forcing the gaiety, as though the nation were facing nothing more than a tariff fight. But the guests—members of the new administration and their families—were appropriately solemn.
Nothing could have caused more solemnity than the secession of seven states. Nothing could have been more depressing than the sight of Capitol Hill ringed with cannon. And nothing could have been more frightening than the possibility that Washington might, in a short time, be ringed by enemies, as Virginia leaned toward secession and Maryland leaned with her.
But nothing could have been more somberly hopeful than the last words of Lincoln’s inaugural address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war.… We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
The best angel in Jason Stafford’s nature was still the angel of honor, and he would stand by it, whatever was coming. Standing by him that day were family members, gathered from Annapolis, Norfolk, and as far away as Massachusetts.
And whenever the line of guests lurched forward, Ethan stepped on Aunt Antonia’s heels.
Nothing, she thought, had changed with Margaret Stafford’s prize boy.
The Staffords were there because the Old Cap had served the navy into his seventy-second year, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles valued Jason’s experience. Now the serious, imperious, long-faced Welles, who made himself an unwitting figure of fun by wearing a wig that looked like a wave cresting on the top of his head, introduced the Staffords to the president.
Jason saw before him a big shambling beast with wiry black hair, skin that had browned and faded so many times, through so many prairie summers, that it was permanently yellowed, and new chin whiskers that did nothing to disguise those garden-spade cheekbones.
Though it was not the face of a poet, Jason had to admit there had been hard poetry in the president’s speech that day. But a fighter was needed now, not a poet, and no one knew what kind of fighter this Lincoln might be.
“Captain Stafford, of Annapolis?” Lincoln spoke with a hard-r prairie accent, in a voice that was surprisingly high-pitched for such a big man.
“Yes, sir.” Jason angled his head, displaying the Stafford jaw. His silver hair and still-perfect posture were a perfect contrast to the rumpled president.
“I hear Annapolis is a fine place,” said Lincoln, as if he did not know how disliked he was there.
Antonia reminded him: “At least my nephew Tom voted for you, sir.”
Lincoln complimented her on her writings and shook the hands of all the Staffords, then came back to the patriarch. “A fine-looking family, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Secretary Welles speaks highly of your work. We hope you’re prepared to do your duty.”
And Jason bristled.
A remark like that, even off-handed—coming from someone whose only military experience had been in a massacre called the Black Hawk War; someone who had opposed the Mexican War that gave us California, the southwest, and a long measure of military glory to boot—a remark like that, coming from this Abraham Lincoln, was an absolute insult, and more than a veiled reference to Stafford slaveholding.
Jason pulled himself up to the full extent of his height and said: “We are prepared to do our duty, sir. We expect you to do yours.”
“WHAT A THING to say to the president,” grumbled Antonia as they came out into the afternoon sunlight.
“Our father traded insults with George Washington and Tom Jefferson. I won’t stand in awe of that Great Ape.”
“Well said, Pa.” Ethan laughed. “Great Ape for certain.”
“It’s what they’re calling him in the press,” said Jason. “Imagine them saying that about a president. Imagine the kind of man he must be to let them say it.”
“I thought his speech was a marvel,” said Jack Browne, whose Boston wife and Annapolis mother each occupied an arm.
“Yes,” said Antonia. “It’ll make these southerners come to their senses.”
“We southerners have our senses,” said Margaret. “We know that without the slaves, we’ll be bankrupt.”
“We’ll make do if we must,” said Jason confidently.
“How?” asked Margaret’s son Cecil Harcourt.
“Sharecropping… hiring hands. It might even be cheaper than housing and feeding forty darkies.”
“Negroes,” said Jack Browne. “Call them a name that you’d call a human being, and then you’ll think of them like that.”
Captain Jason Stafford stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He was not accustomed to being corrected, especially by an abolitionist nephew. “Do not tell me what to call anyone, son, black or white. I don’t care how many pieces of lawful property you’ve managed to steal from southern masters and sneak back to Boston aboard your ships.”
