Sue Mundy Read online

  SUE MUNDY

  Kentucky Voices

  Editorial Advisory Board: Wendell Berry, Billy C. Clark, James Baker Hall, George Ella Lyon, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Richard Taylor, and Frank X Walker

  Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York

  Frank X Walker

  The Cave

  Robert Penn Warren

  Famous People I Have Known

  Ed McClanahan

  Miss America Kissed Caleb

  Billy C. Clark

  Sue Mundy: A Novel of the Civil War

  Richard Taylor

  The Total Light Process: New and Selected Poems

  James Baker Hall

  SUE MUNDY

  A NOVEL OF

  THE CIVIL WAR

  RICHARD TAYLOR

  Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant

  from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

  Copyright © 2006 by Richard Taylor

  Published by the University Press of Kentucky

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

  663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

  www.kentuckypress.com

  Images courtesy of Kentucky Historical Society.

  Maps by Dick Gilbreath.

  10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Taylor, Richard, 1941-

  Sue Mundy : a novel of the Civil War / by Richard Taylor.

  p. cm. — (Kentucky voices)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-2423-0 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-8131-2423-9 (alk. paper)

  1. Clarke, Marcellus Jerome, 1844-1865—Fiction. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3570.A9515S84 2006

  813′.54—dc22 2006024022

  This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Member of the Association of

  American University Presses

  For my children,

  Willis and Julia

  and

  In memory of

  Philip Richard Taylor

  (1978–2003)

  “We are a short time here,

  a long time gone.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Over the nearly thirty years taken to complete this novel, many friends have given me assistance and encouragement in writing about the brief and violent career of Marcellus Jerome Clarke, whose nom de guerre was Sue Mundy. I am grateful to them.

  Parts have been published both early and late, including “Logan County, 1855,” “Aunt Mary Tibbs,” “Cockfight,” “The Pond,” and “Magruder” in The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Volume One, Issue One, Northern Kentucky University, July 1984. “Sequestered,” “Out the Newburgh Road,” and “Simpsonville” appeared in volume two of the same journal, September 1985. “Logan County, 1855” was printed in Hard Scuffle Folio ’82, Winter Edition, Nana Publications, Louisville. “Recessional: Louisville, March 15, 1865” appeared in a chapbook titled Shackles, Richard Taylor and George Wolfe, Frankfort Arts Foundation, 1988. More recently, David Batholomy will publish an excerpt titled “Caldwell” in Open 24 Hours, Brescia University, Owensboro, Kentucky. Kentucky River, the literary magazine at Kentucky State University, will publish an excerpt called “Home Life.” “Redemption” has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Kentucky Studies.

  Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for awarding a creative writing fellowship that granted me time to research and write a first draft and to Jack Shoemaker of Counterpoint for having the manuscript critiqued, giving me valuable insights when I took up the work again years later. Thanks to Kentucky State University, which awarded me a faculty research grant to travel to Washington, D.C., to dig up military records and court martial proceedings in the National Archives. Thanks, too, especially to my chairperson and friend George Shields for his support of a sabbatical during the fall semester of 2004 to research, rewrite, and complete the manuscript. Thanks to George Weick and the late David Orr (my literary godfather), who sampled the manuscript and pointed out more than one bird that wouldn’t fly. Warm thanks to James Baker Hall and Jeff Worley for reading the manuscript and making many helpful suggestions. Thanks especially to my dear friend Michael Moran, who uncomplainingly combed many kinks out of the text and offered helpful medical and literary therapies relating to Jerome Clarke’s evolution from the perspective of an escaped English major who now practices psychiatry. Thanks to historian Jo Fisher of Midway, who generously provided information relating to the raid on Woodburn Farm. Thanks to Harold Edwards of Perryville and Steven L. Wright of Elizabethtown, scholars both, who know more of the guerrilla war in Kentucky than can be found in books or fiction writers can imagine. Thanks to the Kentucky Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society, and Special Collections of the Margaret I. King Library at the University of Kentucky for their assistance in securing photographs. Photographers Gene Burch and Bob Lanham printed and digitally improved the photographs in this book and, in one instance, resurrected the intentionally marred photo of Sue Mundy and Mollie Thomas from nearly complete visual obscurity. And thanks to Cheryl Hoffman of Hyattsville, Maryland, for her astute copyediting. I especially am grateful to Steve Wrinn, director of the University Press of Kentucky, who, with the hardworking staff, gave me encouragement and full partnership at every stage of preparation. Finally, I am beholden to my wife, Lizz, with the assistance of Kenny Bates, for her patient technical aid to one whose computer skills remain unreconstructably antebellum.

  SUE MUNDY

  SUE MUNDY: A PORTRAIT

  Several likenesses of Marcellus Jerome Clarke, aka Sue Mundy, survive him. All are daguerreotypes taken during the war years, most between 1864 and the early months of 1865. The best presents a boyish figure seated—slumped, really—on a simple chair, right leg crossed over left knee, booted ankle resting forward on the cap of the knee, too far forward for comfort, strained momentarily for the eye of posterity, obviously a pose. The impression is studied repose, the upper half relaxed, the lower self-consciously and rigidly fixed in an attitude just short of swagger. The arms, superfluous before the camera, billow slightly from the narrow shoulders (not a man’s shoulders) and drop to either side, the thumb of the right hand braced against the chair seat, fingers curled under, a little tense. The jackboot extends up the shin beyond the knee, running diagonally across the lower half of the body and jutting into the foreground. Unnaturally large, it gives the overall image an exaggerated sense of depth. A blaze of intense light adheres to the buffed leather of the boot.

  The face, no longer a boy’s face, is fringed by shoulder-length hair, thick girl-like tresses that fall back over the shoulders. The head is surmounted by a felt hat turned up on the sides, worn high and angled downward in a graceful curve. To the right rear of the hat, dropping over the shoulder like a foxtail, is an outrageous plume. Possibly an ostrich feather, though it is dyed darker, as dark as the hat. Minus boots and mannish style of knee-crossing, the form is arguably feminine.

  Features are distributed evenly over the face, the wide
-set eyes focused on the camera’s lens, the mouth similarly broad but down at the corners, forming a gradual arch, full underlip set firmly. The chin is prominent, high cheekbones contributing to the feminine countenance. Elusive and fluid, the expression caught is earnest and desperately resolute, yet with no malevolence, no sign of the felon, the fanatic, the sadist. Pride, yes, and latent defiance in the firmly set mouth, the thrust of the chin. The composition is the sum of its gestures. No theme is stated for us, the expression holding itself intact, obediently neutral. The overall impression is tension held in check, motion and energy disengaged, suspended temporarily like the torso of a dozing boxer. Opposing this slumbering resilience is the softer cast of the features, the warm sepia tones of the original plate, the intricately wrought curlicues and arabesque tooling of the frame whose swags form a series of buttocks or bosoms. The right eye is bleared slightly as if irritated by the photographer’s artificial light, an eye resisting the inclination to blink, intent on perpetuity.

  He is wearing a cavalry uniform. Cavalryman: horse-man, chevalier, cavalier, chivalry-man. The short, single-breasted, woolen jacket, called a roundabout, is studded with brass buttons unfastened in fashionable disarray, except for the topmost, which secures the plain, square, clerical collar. Without frill, ascetic, this collar contrasts sharply with the courtier’s plume. While the sleeves are cut of proper length, the jacket appears ill-fitting, snug, which may account for the unbuttoned front. Probably the jacket is ready-made, sized and fitted out for the frame of a hypothetical patriot. Underneath is a vest or waistcoat and an invisible row of closely set buttons. At the neck is the hint of a chemise. The total effect of this outfit is androgynous—a young woman masquerading as a male, a male masquerading as a young woman.

  On both hips ride revolvers, probably the much-favored Colt, butts forward in the style for ease and quick cross-drawing on horseback, the long barrel removed from the holster with the opposing hand, lifted less awkwardly and thrust clear in one sweeping motion. On the butt of each is a metal plate to which crescent-shaped grips are attached, modeled to fit the hand efficiently. Each handle is covered with a leather flap that buttons or snaps to the holster, a precaution when riding. Not seen is the silver crescent said to have been pinned to his hat for luck. His face seems depleted, melancholy, a little wistful but somehow familiar. What part of him is none of us, what part all of us?

  PART ONE

  There is something in the very air of Kentucky which makes a man soldier.

  —The Baltimore Patriot

  His appearance was striking, namely six feet in height, slender but sinewy, straight as an arrow, face smooth and full (he was not yet 21 years old) with long dark hair reaching to his shoulders; it seemed so strange, so sad to associate such resounding villainies with so seemly a form and so juvenile an actor.

  —C.V.S., New York Times, March 16, 1865

  The moral effect upon the young of the nation on the perusal of such a life as that which is here faithfully detailed, with its awfully ignominious end, can not fail to be of the most salutary kind, and dissuasives to crime will be found in its own history.

  —Major Cyrus J. Wilson,

  Three Years in the Saddle:

  The Life and Confession of Henry C. Magruder

  LOGAN COUNTY, 1855

  Uncle Nether led the way through woods a mile from any path Jarom knew. The old man shambled like a bear, his bulk borne forward in an easy rolling motion lighter than his years. He was thick, ageless as the stump in the Tibbses’ kitchen yard, his caramel-colored skin free of creases and hair, the mappings of age. Crossing the wide bottom, he led Jarom through what seemed to the boy an ocean of nettles, acres of black silt that flooded and bogged each spring like the Nile, the river in Egypt he’d read about in Woodbridge’s Modern Geography. The ground was nearly treeless, the rises drowning most roots except for a fringe of willows and stolid sycamores along the creek and a few maples whose undersides were silver—trees that tolerated high water.

  There had been a shower, and the laps of Nether’s jacket raked water from the heart-shaped leaves, stems switching to one side as they passed, whipping back against Jarom’s hands. Tromping a path through the nettles, Nether, rumpled collar half covering his grizzled head, seemed legless. Wading, he wore the weeds like a girdle, his arms outthrust above the stinging hairs. Jarom watched as he navigated his way toward higher ground, each step high and cautious against what he could not see. Shorter, the bucket bumping his side, Jarom could hold only one hand free. The bucket hand, pulled down by the weight, dragged dangerously over the invisible barbs, and Jarom knew he could not both escape the stings and keep the bucket. The first ones were sharp and tingling, prickling his wrist with a thousand tiny needles, telegraphing pain through the conduits of his nerves, skin puffing red. The smarting shot up his arm faster and more painful than he could keep from showing. They walked a few yards farther before Nether uttered his warning.

  “Don’t let those stickers take and bite you,” he said. “They’ll sting you till you want to cry.”

  They walked nearly a mile through the creek bottom before the nettles opened onto a mudflat, a creek bed brilliant with white stones, its banks cracked in crazy patterns. Jarom sensed they were stepping from the nettle world to the water world. He was soaked, his pants legs clinging to him like flour-meal paste, pinching and slowing him as he stepped into unhindered space. Looking up, he saw a buzzard lofting over the ridgeline, its wingtips balanced and curled under like wind rudders.

  For a time they stopped while Nether studied the way, then tottered across the rocks to go at the nettles again, Jarom fighting through until they reached firmer footing on the slope that rose out of the bottom. Imitating Nether, he used the trees as handholds, pulling himself up with the help of saplings and vines. Halfway up, Nether turned, Jarom turned, to look back on the quiltwork of green filling the low ground to either side of the branch, a trail of silver ruin where they had tramped through, light pricking the tree tops, pearly spittle in the leaves. Listening, he could hear the scritching of birds and the fidget of woodlife among the trees that was as much a presence as a sound.

  Jarom carried the bucket, Nether the ax. He clutched it by the neck as he had taught Jarom, hurting edge to the world. The ground as they climbed gave under layers of sodden leaves whose undersides smelled to Jarom like the cellar under his aunt’s house. Where the going was steepest, Nether planted the heel of his ax in the mulch, grasping the handle as he would a staff to steady himself. Each step they took etched a path in Jarom’s memory—the snapping of twigs, the bird-twitter that grew louder uphill among the sheltering oaks, specks of light that filled his vision and registered almost like sound. He followed the split seam running up Nether’s back, the coat he wore dropping shapeless from the mound of shoulders like a blanket. One elbow was out, and the nap had worn from wool that was dove gray and darkened in places with colonies of stain, one mean red cocklebur riding the hem. From behind, Nether’s head looked to Jarom like a spit-thistle, perfect but for an umber slab of baldness scooping down the stubble onto the bull neck. His smell was overheated rooms and bacon.

  Where the ground flattened at the crest of the ridge, Nether hunkered against a sugar tree, the breath sucking into his chest in measured gasps. The sun was high now and dazzled off the rocks. Jarom could feel the globules of sweat pop as they beaded on his face, the pain in his wrist now a persistent itch. Laying the ax by, Nether worked one arm and then the other out of his jacket. His black galluses formed bands down his shirtfront, his sleeves wet with gray patties of sweat in the pit of each massive arm. He was thick about the middle, but Jarom could detect no slackness, no cables of fat. From his pocket Nether drew forth a red bandanna and wiped the beads from his forehead and the hollows of his neck. His pink tongue swiped once across his full lips. Palm over his mouth, he turned to look at Jarom sitting across from him, legs crossed Indian style. He watched as Jarom rubbed the crease in his bucket hand.

&nb
sp; “That bucket too heavy for you?” he asked.

  “Not yet it isn’t,” Jarom said, turning his palm down to hide it.

  And that was all. After they had gone another quarter mile, Jarom, his arm now aching with every step, had to ask him how much farther.

  Squatting, Nether looked into the trees ahead as if to measure the miles.

  “Not much farther,” he said, nodding somewhere indeterminately ahead. All Jarom could see along the ridge were outcroppings of stone and a few scraggly cedars rimmed with brush. He’d expected him to point toward the bluest feathering of trees on the farthest ridge.

  “Fact,” he said, “right here’ll do just fine.” Jarom could see him grinning for the first time. “One spot will suit as well as another when you just come down to it. It isn’t the place that counts so much but what you bring to it.”

  “But how will I know this is the right place?” Jarom asked.

  “You just will,” he said. “You just will.”

  Carefully hanging his jacket on a limb, Nether set to work, picking up the ax and swiping at the undergrowth, cutting and piling the scrubby cedars to one side. Using the blade of the ax as a flail, he beat back the brambles, swinging the handle in low, wide arcs. Though to Jarom he seemed to make little progress, soon bush and stalk bent and broke, humbled under the punishment. In a few minutes Nether had cleared a bare spot about six feet across.

  “Now fetch the bucket,” he said, and Jarom brought it back to him.

  Picking up a thumb-sized stick, he stirred the corncobs in their bed of honey and sorghum molasses into a lumpy mush.

  “See that rotting log over there?” he said. “Bring me a slab of its bark about the size of a shovel’s face.”