Art by Linda Parker
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Sept. 2003 Book Review Continued
 September 2003 Book ReviewConfederates by Thomas Keneally
Copyright, 1979 First U.S. Edition
The old slave still sat with her mouth agape, grinning, her hand up
palm-outwards to touch either of the soldiers. Gus Ramseur nodded towards her. She made one of those strange black noises no white
could ever fully understand.
'I met ole Travis in town,' Usaph told Ephie. 'There's a big crowd at
Main and Bank, discussing all the rumours-and Travis is among 'em.
They .....quizzed Gus and me, I can tell you that much. Ain't it so,
Gus? They quizzed us?'
'You got profane in that-there army, my love,' said Ephie. But then
she laughed.
'Travis says he ain't leaving Strasburg no matter if the armies of Hell
arrive. He says he'll mind our hogs and the milch cow-and he will,
he'll do it for the memory of my daddy...'
'Mind the hogs, Usaph? I bin minding the hogs like they was
Christian souls...'
'I ain't complaining of your care for my pigs, darlin' Ephie. But I mean
to put you on the road for Aunt Sarrie's and you're to tell her that as
she loved her brother and as she loves me her nephew, she's to care
for you...'
'This--here house?' Ephie said, still standing, still held by Usaph.
She put out her hand and touched the hot stonework of the house.
'This-here house?' she asked again in a voice he could only pity.
For Ephie had a crazy idea of the Bumpass house. It was nothing
more than a white frame farm dwelling of the kind you find every two
hundred paces up and down the Valley. But it was more of a house
than she ever expected to own, and now a harsh God was asking
her to pay it up too.
'You can come back to it in the proper season,' Usaph whispered.
'Cain't they be held, Usaph? Cain't they...?'
'Oh, Ephie. Banks...he has hisself some five divisions of ....New Y
orkers and other similar trash jest up there in Martinsburg.'
'Martinsburg?' she asked again, the way she'd asked Winchester?
earlier. She'd gone to market in both towns. How could there be five divisions of New Yorkers in a place she'd gone to market? 'What will
them slum-boys do to my kitchen?' she asked.
Usaph and Gus Ramseur looked at each other. Then Usaph decided
it was best not to answer that. 'You jest be sure you pack all your
clothes, Ephie Bumpass,' he told her with a false, jovial gruffness.
'Both the winter and the summer style, gal, for I wish you to stun the ...gentry down there in Bath.'
'I'll take the boy, Usaph,' Gus Ramseur suddenly called, thoughtful, scratching his tangled blond head. 'We'll put the horse in the shafts.'
Usaph went a kind of red beneath his smoked face. 'Obliged, Gus.
I'll jest help Mrs. Bumpass out with her oddments.'
Somehow Gus found the task of harnessing the horse to the dray
hard enough to keep himself and the boy out in the freezing barn for
a good hour. Ephie and Usaph left Lisa sleeping by the fire-too deaf
to know the journey that was ahead. Upstairs Ephie made little
complaining noises at the buttons that were stiff. She seemed to
have forgotten the immediate threat of Yankeedom. She was
undressed and trembling in the cold sheets while Usaph, his
shivering buttocks facing her, sponged himself with a rag dipped in
a pitcher of water. 'I don't have no camp lice,' he said, turning to her, spreading his arms innocently. 'Only them filthy Irishmen in the 5th
Virginia has got body lice. It takes an Irishman to pick up lice in the
winter.'
'I wouldn't fuss me if you did have lice,' she told him. 'But my, your
hair is so lank.'
Then, uttering little grateful whimpers, he descended on her.
After the hour they had was gone, she went about in her chemise,
throwing clothes and little pieces of china and shawls and sheets
into a chest. He watched her from the bed. The room seemed no
longer cold.
'What say you, Usaph?' She asked all at once, looking resolute.
'Do we burn the furniture?'
'What, Ephie?'
'I asked you will one of them Union generals with his sword and his...
fleas lie in our marriage bed?'
He thought awhile. Sure, the prospect Ephie had raised was a
painful one. The urge was there to burn the thing, to burn the house
for that matter. But he'd been born in this same bed in '38. This was
his parent's marriage bed. You couldn't burn something like that.
It came to him therefore that they should leave quickly now, before
any more questions of the same species arose. 'If you don't get off
to Aunt Sarrie's, General Banks might jest take it in his head to lie
in this here same bed with you.'
'And like Judith in the Bible, I would slice his ole head off while his
hands were so busy.'
Usaph was up now and dressing quickly. 'Gus and me...we'll see
you on your road.'
This made her stand stock still and her eyes filled up. 'Hurry there,
Ephie,' he said, slapping her hip. So at three in the morning, when
you could just about her the earth creaking under the hand of the
frost, Ephie drove a dray away from the back door of the Bumpass
farm. Her cargo was clothes, crockery, bacon, flour, coffee, soap,
a shotgun, and that one senile and shivering black slave called Lisa.
Travis had agreed to let his son travel with Ephie all the way to
Millboro Springs, where Aunt Sarrie would be known and could be
fetched. As payment for that service, Travis would retain two of the Bumpasses' hogs.
Usaph and Gus travelled with Ephie a few miles down the road,
Usaph riding at Ephie's side, Gus in the back at Lisa's side atop
the goods and the luggage. Usaph had not taken the reins and
Gus thought that was sensible of him. It was Ephie who had to
make the journey.
Around four by his watch, Gus called, 'We told Captain Guess,
Usaph, we'd be back near breakfast time.'
The words struck Ephie like a sentence. A little ugh sound came
out of her and turned to vapour in the cold air. Usaph began some
fast talking.
'Now you call in on the Rotes at Tom's Brook when you reach there,
d' you hear. Missus Rote was a great friend of my mammy's and
always fed me up tight as the bark on a tree, and she'll give you a
breakfast, Ephie, you won't soon be fit to forget.'
Gus had gotten out of the dray and bowed to all the company and
started out northwards. Travis's boy watched Bumpass and Ephie
knead each other again and cling together. And then Usaph jumped
down too.
'That was good,' said Gus later. 'You got her away from Strasburg
in good time.'
It was to turn out that before St Patrick's Day Federal cavalry would
be camped all over Travis's and the empty Bumpass farm, and U.S.
General Shields would enter town in a formal way, with bands and
infantry and all the rest, just a week after Ephie had packed up. By
the time a Union band was playing at the Strasburg crossroads
where the Valley pike met the road from over the Blue Ridge, Ephie
was nearly at Aunt Sarrie's place.
But it was not an easy journey. Lisa got an awesome fever and,
before that broke, took a fit she'd not get better from, not for the rest
of her life...
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