When Johnny Came Marching Home Read online

  Praise for When Johnny Came Marching Home

  "Heffernan swings his vivid tale back and forth between past and present, war and peace—a neat tour de force he pulls off with admirable assurance." —Kirkus Reviews

  "Sliding back and forth in time—before, during, and after the Civil War—William Heffernan creates a powerful, intriguing, and complex novel about the intricacies of friendship and the devastating effects of war." —Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Death Artist

  "When Johnny Came Marching Home evokes a young soldier's reluctant relationship to violence and brutality with a chilling realism that brings the reader face-to-face with the moral complexities of even the most noble of wars. Following in the literary tradition of Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, and Larry Heinemann, William Heffernan is able to somehow find grace and beauty amidst the horror of battle." —Kaylie Jones, author of A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

  "A carefully constructed and evocative Civil War–era tale that will hold you from first to last page. The author has a rare gift for transporting the reader in time and place. Put this one at the top of your list. No one does this kind of novel better than Heffernan." —John Lutz, author of Serial

  "Heffernan is a master of scene, setting, characterizations, plot, and dialogue." —Nelson DeMille

  "William Heffernan is one of the rare mystery writers who cares about soul." —Martin Cruz Smith

  "Heffernan writes in a way that challenges the mind and the soul." —Michael Koryta, author of The Silent Hour

  "A solid historical from Edgar-winning Heffernan." —Publishers Weekly

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, as well as events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2012 William Heffernan

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-127-1

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-135-6

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-143-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939263

  First printing

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover page

  Title page

  Praise for William Heffernan

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Bonus Materials

  Reading Group Guide

  Excerpt from The Dead Detective

  About William Heffernan

  About Akashic Books

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Stewart Dickson: journalist, novelist, stalwart Scotsman, and above all a true and loyal friend.

  I’ll miss ye, laddie.

  Acknowledgements

  A special thanks to Gloria Loomis and Johnny Temple for their continued encouragement and support; to my sons and daughters, who give me a sense of reality and never allow me to take myself too seriously; and to Nancy Williams, whose friendship keeps me sane.

  Author’s Note

  Liberties were taken in the writing of this novel that at times may seem to bend historical fact. This was done purely for dramatic effect.

  Prologue

  Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1850

  We were eleven years old when we found the old man's body.

  It was the dead of winter and just about as cold as it gets in Vermont, and the body was frozen solid, a thin film of ice covering the eyelids and nose and mouth, making the man's dark brown skin seem eerily lighter than it had been in life.

  "Tha's ol' Jesse, ain't it?" Johnny asked.

  We both turned to look at Abel Johnson. Abel's father ran the town store and Jesse Brown was the old Negro who worked for him stocking shelves and unloading delivery wagons.

  Abel nodded, his gaze fixed on the clouded, milky, dead eyes that stared back at him. He was a heavy boy, with plump cheeks that were now red with the cold. "I was jus' talkin' ta him this mornin'," he said. "He tol' me he was goin' out ta hunt up a squirrel fer his supper." Abel's voice was faint and distant, sounding as if he were talking more to himself than to us; his lips began to quiver as he spoke.

  It was midafternoon and we were in the woods about a hundred yards up from the dirt road that runs along the river, a favorite hunting ground for squirrel and rabbit and the deer that move down the mountain at night to graze in the open meadows below.

  The river cuts through our town of Jerusalem's Landing. It is a cold, fast waterway, fed by streams that live off the eleven-month snowmelt that runs off Camel's Hump Mountain. The town sits in the foothills of the mountain, its five hundred–odd souls forging a living mostly from dairy farming or logging, with the spring maple sugar season adding a few more necessary dollars. It is not a wealthy community, nor is it poor, and the people are largely content with their lives despite the hardships they endure.

  "Jubal, ya better go an' get yer daddy," Johnny said. "An' ya better have him tell my pa what happened. He'll be a wantin' to come pray over Jesse."

  "Ya better have him stop by the store an' tell my daddy too," Abel said.

  My father, Jonas Foster, is the town constable. Johnny's father is the minister of the Baptist church. The town store sits between my house and the parsonage, so we all live within walking distance of each other.

  "I'll tell him," I said. "You two better stay with the body to keep any varmints off him." I looked down at the old squirrel gun that Jesse had been carrying. "You better not touch nothin' less you have to," I said, trying to think what my father would want.

  "Okay, sheriff," Johnny said. His blond hair peeked out from under his cap and splayed across his forehead and he was grinning at me, adding to the teasing quality of his voice. I wondered then, as I still do now, how he could be so light-hearted with a man we had all known lying dead at his feet.

  An hour later I led four men up the wooded slope. They walked in a line behind me, my father first; Abel's dad, Walter Johnson, next; then Johnny's father, the Reverend Virgil Harris; bringing up the rear was the town doctor, Brewster Pierce, the one man we boys had forgotten. My father had not.

  Dr. Pierce went to the body straight off and confirmed what we already knew. He opened Jesse Brown's coat, did a cursory check of his torso, then removed his hat and checked his head and neck. "I don't see any signs of violence," he said, still looking over the body. "My best guess until we do an autopsy is that he had a heart attack or stroke." He glanced up at Walter Johnson. "How old was he, Walter?"

  Walter Johnson gave a small shrug. He was a moderately short, stocky man, with a prominent chin and deep brown eyes, a picture of what his son, Abel, would pro
bably look like one day. He toed the ground as if the question embarrassed him. "Sixty, maybe, but tha's jus' a guess. I reckon I never axed him his age. Don't know why, but I never did." He paused, thinking about what he had just said, then quickly added: "He was strong, though; could unload a delivery wagon good as any man half his age."

  "He was sixty-two," Virgil Harris said. "He cleared some tree limbs from the church grounds after that storm we had in September, and we got to talking. He moved here three years ago, as I recall, from somewhere in Connecticut. Said he had no family . . . just had himself to look after." Reverend Harris spoke with his chin elevated, just as he did when he was giving his Sunday sermon. He was tall and slender with unruly blond hair that he had passed on to his son, along with piercing blue eyes.

  "Was he an escaped slave?" my father asked. My father is a big man, a good four inches over six feet and heavy through the chest and shoulders, and he seemed to tower over the other three. I, too, was big for my age, and I hoped one day to be as big as he.

  "Never said that he was," Walter Johnson responded. "I always figured he was jus' like the other nigs who live hereabouts."

  The Negroes who live in Jerusalem's Landing—slightly more than one hundred—were never slaves, but the offspring of former slaves who had escaped to the North years before. It is a tight-knit community whose members have their own small church, but who send their children to school with the rest of us. One, Josiah Flood, was in our class and usually ran the ridges with the three of us when he wasn't doing chores at the Billingsley farm.

  My father stepped forward and placed the litter they had brought next to the body. He looked at Jesse for a long moment, then turned to Reverend Harris. "You go ahead an' offer yer prayer, Virgil," he said. "Then we'll load the old fella up an' take 'em down to Doc's office."

  We all removed our hats as Reverend Harris offered his prayer. It was short and simple.

  "Dear Lord, we didn't know this man well, but by all accounts he was a good soul, who worked hard and always offered his help when needed. We ask that You accept him as a favored child and offer him a place in the glory of Your heavenly kingdom. Amen."

  My father had been standing beside me and now he placed a hand on my shoulder. "You boys should go on down an' get yerselves warm," he said. "We kin take care of the rest of it."

  "Go on down ta the store," Mr. Johnson said. "My wife has some hot chocolate brewin' on the woodstove. It'll warm ya up quick."

  We started down the hill, the wind cutting sharply into our faces. The sun had begun to fade, as the night comes upon you quickly in a Vermont winter, and soon the cold would become even more bitter, more cutting. Before we were too far away I glanced back. My father and Doc Brewster were just lifting the body onto the litter. It was rigid and ramrod straight, like a board being loaded onto a pallet.

  When we got to the Johnsons' store Abel's mother fussed over us, concerned that coming across Jesse Brown's body had somehow been a terrible experience. Despite her mother's hovering concern, Abel's nine-year-old sister Rebecca kept asking us questions about the body and how we had come across it, and Mrs. Johnson repeatedly hushed her.

  Partly to get us warm, and partly to distract us, Mrs. Johnson fed us all cup after cup of hot chocolate. Later, when she went to take care of customers who had come into the store, Rebecca started in on us again. She was a gangly girl, with long legs and skinny arms, and her small jaw jutted defiantly when she spoke to us.

  "Tell me what happened, Abel," she demanded. Her voice had an edge to it, almost as if she were ready to stamp her foot.

  "Ma said not ta talk about it," Abel said, glancing off to where his mother had gone.

  Rebecca turned to me. "Jubal, you tell me," she insisted. "You gotta."

  I shook my head no.

  A large grin broke out on Johnny's face and he leaned forward and whispered into Rebecca's ear.

  Rebecca had inherited her mother's soft green eyes and strawberry-blond hair, and now those eyes became as large as saucers and her cheeks took on the tint of her hair, and she spun on her heels and hurried off to the front of the store where her mother was working.

  "What'd you say to her?" I asked, angry that Johnny had frightened her off that way.

  Johnny grinned at me. "I tol' her that old nig was as white as a ghost an' as stiff as a board. Then I tol' her they was puttin' his body in Doc's icehouse an' that I'd take her down there later an' show her."

  "You shouldn't of scared her," Abel said.

  "No, you shouldn't of. That was dumb and mean-spirited," I snapped.

  "Heck, it weren't nothin' ta be scared of," Johnny said. He was still grinning at us, unmoved by our anger. "It was jus' a dead man. It's the ones still walkin' aroun' ya gotta worry 'bout, least that's what my daddy always says."

  Reluctantly, Abel and I nodded in agreement, thinking it the manly thing to do, yet deep inside something told me we were wrong. But we were too young to know that. We were only eleven and right then none of us knew how many dead men we would one day see.

  Chapter One

  Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1865

  I came down the stairs using the banister for support, what remained of my left arm hanging limp and useless in the folded-up sleeve of my wool shirt. I had been home from the war for nearly six months, living off my father's charity, accepting his offer of a job as the town's deputy constable, and returning to my boyhood room in our small house.

  My mother had died giving birth to a stillborn brother when I was only a child, so there had always been just the two of us in the house, and it had created a strong bond between my father and me. Yet the idea of accepting his—or anyone's—charity ground at me. Of course my father refused to think of it as charity. But it was. In addition to the occasional police duties, for which he received a small stipend, a town constable earns his keep by collecting delinquent taxes and settling disputes over fence lines or the ownership of livestock. He receives a small percentage of the taxes collected and fees from the county for his mediation of disputes, which otherwise would have to go to the courts in Burlington. As the elected constable he is allowed to hire deputies when needed, but the number of disputes and the amount of taxes remain constant and all concerned get paid out of the same pot. So in reality my father was giving his crippled son half his income, a fact he justified as something that gave him much needed time off in his approaching old age.

  I entered the kitchen and went to the coffee pot my father had started earlier. He had left a note on the kitchen table, which also served as our office, explaining that he had ridden up to Richmond, a larger town to our north, to deposit tax revenues into the town bank account. It was a fairly long trip by horseback and it would be well into the afternoon before he returned.

  I finished my coffee and decided to make myself useful and ride up to the Billingsley farm to iron out a dispute about some stray cattle. I slipped on a red-and-black checked jacket and a broad-brimmed Stetson and went out to the barn behind the house to saddle up my horse. As soon as I stepped outside the crisp autumn air assaulted my senses. There is nothing like autumn in Vermont's mountains. We were still a week or two from peak color, but already the hillsides were awash in the red and yellow and orange of the changing leaves. Those that had already fallen lay stiff with the early-morning frost and crunched underfoot as I made my way to the barn.

  My horse, Jezebel, was an old bay mare who gave me a sad look as I pulled her saddle from a hook on the wall.

  "Don't want to go out yet, eh, girl," I said, soothing her. "It's too early for you, is it? Well, it is for me too, but it's gotta be done." I noted that my father had given her oats and fresh hay before leaving, and I patted her side. "You need the exercise," I said. "You lay about the barn too much and you're getting to be a fat old lady."

  Saddling a horse with one arm is a tricky proposition and had taken some practice to learn. But everything was a chore with one arm. Even half a missing limb affected your balance, sometimes making yo
u stumble, always making you feel clumsy and inept. I was setting myself to heave the saddle onto Jezebel's haunches when a voice stopped me.

  "Ya need ta be comin' with me, Jubal."

  I turned and found Josiah Flood standing in the doorway of the barn. His brown face, under his old Union military cap, had a fearful look spread across it, something I had not seen since I lay wounded in his arms in a Virginia meadow.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "It's Johnny Harris. He's dead. Somebody's gone an' kilt him."

  * * *

  Johnny's body lay in the rear of the barn behind his father's church. He was on his back, a large bloodstain covering the front of his white shirt. I reached down and needlessly felt for a pulse in his neck. His arms were thrown out, making a cross of his body, and his upturned face held an expression of surprise. The deep blue eyes he had inherited from his father had not yet begun to fade, but they were no longer the eyes I had known since childhood, full of life and laughter and cynicism.

  I could feel Josiah standing behind me, feel him staring past me at the body. When I turned back to him a look of angry satisfaction filled his face.

  "I ain't sorry he's dead," he said. "I wished 'em dead ever since that day in Spotsylvania."

  I nodded, knowing I felt much the same, although it was something I had never spoken aloud. "Don't go saying that to anybody else. They weren't there with us. They wouldn't understand."

  He nodded, then looked down at his boots. "I'll keep my place," he said.

  His words stung, but they were true enough that no reply was warranted.

  "How did you happen on Johnny's body?" I asked, pushing past the unintended insult.

  "I ran into Reverend Harris over ta the Johnsons' store las' night, an' he axed me if I could do some work here in the barn. When I came ta do it a bit ago, I found Johnny layin' here dead."