Sergeant Hairston nodded. “Yeah, maybe they are. I tell you one thing, though, Bartlett. They give the niggers guns the way it looks like they’re gonna, them coons ain’t never gonna fight this good.”
Reggie thought about that. The Kiowas and Comanches-most of the Indians in Sequoyah-had done pretty well for themselves under the rule of the Great White Father in Richmond. As these young men had said, they wanted to stay under the Stars and Bars.
How many Negroes wanted the same thing? “Maybe they’ll fight for the chance to turn into real citizens,” he said at last.
“Shitfire, who wants niggers voting?” Hairston exclaimed. Since Reggie himself was a long way from thrilled at the idea of their voting, he kept quiet. It all seemed abstract anyhow. Wondering about if and how soon the Yankees would be able to haul their artillery forward through the thickening muck was a much more immediate concern.
Riding a swaybacked horse he’d no doubt rented at the St. Matthews livery stable, Tom Colleton came slowly up the path toward the ruins of Marshlands. Anne Colleton stood waiting for her brother, her hands on her hips. When he got close enough for her to call out to him, she said, “You might have let me known you were coming before you telephoned the train station. I would have come to get you in the motorcar.”
“Sis, I tried to wire you, but they told me the lines out from St. Matthews weren’t up or had gone down again or some such,” Tom answered. “When I got into town, I telephoned just on the off chance-I didn’t really expect to get you. I was all set to show up and surprise you.”
“I believe it,” Anne answered. Tom had always been one to do things first and sort out the consequences later. She pointed to the wire than ran to the cabin where she lived these days. “They finally put that in last week. If you knew what I had to go through to get it-”
“Can’t be worse than Army red tape,” Tom said as he swung down from the horse. He looked fit and dashing and alert; his right hand never strayed far from the pistol on his hip. The scar on his cheek wasn’t pink and fresh any more.
He also wore two stars on either side of his stand collar. “You’ve been promoted!” Anne exclaimed.
He gave a little bow, as a French officer might have done. “Lieutenant-Colonel Colleton at your service, ma’am,” he said. “My regiment happened to find a hole in the Yankee lines up on the Roanoke, and they pushed forward half a mile at what turned out to be exactly the right time.” He touched one of the stars signifying his new rank, then the other. “Each of these cost me about a hundred and fifty men, killed and wounded.”
Slowly, Anne nodded. Tom had gone into the war as a lark, an adventure. A lot had changed in the past two years.
A lot had changed here, too. He strode up to her and gave her a brotherly embrace, but his eyes remained on what had been the family mansion. “Those sons of bitches,” he said in a flat, hard voice, and then, “Well, from what I hear, they paid for it ten times over.”
“Maybe not so much as that,” Anne said, “but they paid.” She cocked her head to one side and sent him a curious glance. “And you’re one of the people who want to put guns in niggers’ hands?”
He nodded. “For one thing, we’re running out of white men to be soldiers,” he said, and Anne nodded in turn, remembering President Semmes’ words. Tom went on, “For another, if niggers have a stake in the Confederate States, maybe they won’t try and pull them down around our ears. We smashed this rebellion, sure, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have another one ten years from now if things don’t change.”
“This one’s smashed, but it’s not dead,” she said. “Cassius is still out in the swamps by the river, and the militiamen they’ve sent after him and his friends haven’t been able to smoke them out.”
“He’s the kind of nigger I wish we had in the Army,” Tom said. “He’d make one fine scout and sniper.”
“Unless he decided to shoot at you instead of the damnyankees,” Anne answered, which made her brother grimace. Then, suddenly, she noticed a new ribbon in the fruit salad above Tom’s left breast pocket. Her eyes widened. Pointing to it, she said, “That’s an Order of Lee, and you weren’t going to say a thing about it.”
She’d succeeded in embarrassing him. “I didn’t want to worry you,” he replied, which went a long way toward explaining the circumstances under which he’d won it. The Order of Lee was the Army equivalent of Roger Kimball’s Order of the Virginia: only one step down from the Confederate Cross.
“I’ve been worried from the beg-” Anne started to say, but that wasn’t quite true: in the beginning, she, like most in the CSA, had thought they’d lick the Yankees as quickly and easily as they had in their first two wars. She made the needed change: “I’ve been worried for a long time.”
Julia came up to them then, her baby on her hip. “Mistuh Tom, we got yo’ cabin ready fo’ you.”
“That’s good,” he answered. “Thank you.” He spoke to her in a tone slightly different from the one he would have used before the war started, even if the words might have been the same then. In 1914, he would have taken the service completely for granted; now, he spoke of it as if she was doing him a favor. Anne found herself using that tone with blacks these days, too, and noticed it in others.
Tom went back to his horse, detached the saddlebags and bedroll from the saddle, and carried them while he walked after Julia. In 1914, a Negro would have dashed up to relieve him of them. If he missed that level of deference, he didn’t show it.
And, before he went into the cabin, he asked, “You’re not putting anyone out so I can stay in here, are you?”
“No, suh,” the serving woman answered. “Ain’t so many folks here as used to be.”
“I see that.” Tom glanced over at Anne. “It’s a wonder you’ve done as much as you have out here by yourself.”
“You do what you have to do,” she said, at which he nodded again. Before the war, that hard logic had meant nothing to him. The Roanoke front had given him more than rank and decorations; he understood and accepted the ways of the world these days. As soon as Julia went out of earshot, she continued, in a lower voice, “We made a bargain of sorts-they do the work that needs to be done, and I make sure nobody from St. Matthews or Columbia comes around prying into what they did during the rebellion.”
“You said something about that in one of your letters,” Tom answered, remembering. “Best you could do, I suppose, but there are some niggers I wouldn’t have made that bargain with. Cassius, for one.”
“Even if you’d want him for a soldier?” Anne asked, gently mocking.
“Especially because I’d want him for a soldier,” her brother said. “I know a dangerous man when I see one.”
“I have no bargain with Cassius,” Anne said quietly. “Every so often, livestock here-disappears. I don’t know where it goes, but I can guess. Not that much to eat in the swamps of the Congaree, even for niggers used to living off the land.”
“That’s so,” Tom agreed. “And he’ll have friends among the hands here. Sis, I really wish you weren’t out here by your lonesome.”
“If I’m not, this place goes to the devil,” Anne said. “I didn’t get a great crop from it, but I got a crop. That gave me some of the money I needed to pay the war taxes, and it meant I didn’t have to cut so far into my investments as I would have otherwise. I don’t intend to be a beggar when the war ends, and I don’t intend for you to be a beggar, either.”
“If the choice is between being being rich and being a beggar, that’s one thing, Sis,” he said. “If the choice is between being a beggar and being dead, that’s a different game.” His face, its expression already far more stern than it had been before the war, turned bleak as the oncoming winter. “That’s what the Confederate States are looking at right now, seems to me: a choice between being beggars and being dead.”
He walked up into the cottage. Anne followed him. He tossed the saddlebags and bedroll onto the floor next to the iron-framed cot on which he’d slee
p. Looking around, he shook his head. “It’s not the way it was any more,” he said, half to himself. “Nothing is the way it was any more.”
“No,” Anne said. “It’s not. But-I talked with President Semmes not so long ago. He’s worried, yes, but not that worried.” She checked herself; if the president hadn’t been that worried, would he have introduced the bill calling for Negro troops? Trying to look on the bright side, she pointed to Tom’s tunic. “That was a victory, there in the valley.”
“And it makes one,” her brother answered bitterly. “I pray to God we can hold the ground we gained, too. We need every man in the CSA at the front, and we need every man in the CSA working behind the lines so the men at the front have something to shoot at the damnyankees. If everybody could be two places at once twenty-four hours a day, we’d be fine.”
“That’s why the president wants to give the blacks guns,” she said.
“I understand.” He sounded impatient with her, something he’d rarely done…before the war, that endlessly echoed phrase. “We’ve put them in the factories to make up for the white men who’ve gone. Maybe we can put enough women in to make up for the niggers. Maybe.”
She didn’t want to argue with him any more. “Supper soon,” she said. “Come over to my cottage and we’ll talk more then. Get yourself settled in for now.”
“For now,” he repeated. “I’ve got to catch the train day after tomorrow.” He sighed. “No rest for the weary.”
Supper was fried chicken, greens, and pumpkin pie, with apple brandy that had no tax stamp on it to wash down the food. “It’s not what I would have given you if things were different,” Anne said, watching with something like awe as the mountain of chicken bones on her brother’s plate grew and grew. “No fancy banquets these days, though.”
“It’s nigger food,” Tom said, and then held up a hand against the temper that sparked in her eyes. “Wait, Sis. Wait. It’s good. It’s a hundred times better than what I eat at the front. Don’t you worry about it for a minute.” He patted his belly, which should have bulged visibly from what he’d put away but somehow didn’t.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “If this is the best we can hope for once the war is over, is it worth going on?”
“Kentucky is a state in the United States again,” Tom said quietly. “The Yankees say it is, anyhow, and they have some traitors there who go along with them. The best may not be as good as we hoped when we set out to fight, but the worst is worse than we ever reckoned it could be.” He yawned, then got up, walked over to her, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m going to bed, Sis-can’t hold ’em open any more. You don’t have to worry about anything tonight-I’m here.” He walked out of the cottage into the darkness.
Julia took away the dishes. Anne got into a long cotton nightgown, blew out the lamps, and lay down. Off in the distance, an owl hooted. Off farther in the distance, a rifle cracked, then another, than a short volley. Silence returned. She shrugged. Ordinary noises of the night. As always, her pistol lay where she could reach it. She even carried the revolver when she needed to go to the outhouse instead of using the pot, though it was no good against moths and spiders.
Did she feel safer because her brother was here? Yes, she decided: now there were two guns on which she could rely absolutely. Did she feel he was taking on the job of protecting her, so she wouldn’t even have to think of such things as long as he was nearby? Laughing at the absurdity of the notion, she rolled over and went to sleep.
George Enos was swabbing the deck on the starboard side of the USS Ericsson when shouts of alarm rang out to port: “Torpedo!” He jumped as if someone had stabbed him with a pin. As klaxons began to hoot, he sprinted toward his battle station, a one-pounder antiaircraft gun not far from the depth-charge launcher at the stern of the destroyer. Someone, by some accident, had actually read his file and given him a job he knew how to do. The one-pounder wasn’t that different from an outsized machine gun.
“Torpedo!” The shouts grew louder. The Ericsson’s deck throbbed under Enos’ feet as the engines came up to full power from cruising speed. Thick, black smoke poured from the stacks. The smoke poured back toward him. He coughed and tried to breathe as little as he could.
The deck heeled sharply as the destroyer swung into a tight turn. The turn was to the right, not to the left as he’d expected. “We’re heading into the track,” he shouted.
At the launcher, Carl Sturtevant nodded. “If it misses us, we charge down the wake and pay the submarine a visit,” the petty officer said.
“Yeah,” George said. If it missed them, that was what would happen. But it was likelier to hit them when they were running toward it than if they’d chosen to run away. Enos did his best not to think about that. He was sure the whole crew of the Ericsson-including Captain Fleming, who’d ordered the turn-were doing their best not to think about that.
He peered ahead, though the destroyer’s superstructure blocked his view of the most critical area. His fate rested on decisions over which he had no control and which he could not judge till afterwards. He hated that. So did every other Navy man with whom he’d ever spoken, both on the Mississippi and out here in the Atlantic.
Something moving almost impossibly fast shot by the onrushing Ericsson, perhaps fifty feet to starboard of her. Staring at the creamy wake, George sucked in a long breath, not caring any more how smoky it was. “Missed,” he said with fervent delight. “Is that the only fish they launched at us?”
“Don’t hear ’em yelling about any others,” Sturtevant said.
Lieutenant Crowder came running toward the stern. “Load it up!” he shouted to Sturtevant and his comrades. “We’ll make ’em pay for taking a shot at us.”
“Yes, sir.” Sturtevant sounded less optimistic than his superior. The depth-charge launcher was a new gadget, the Ericsson one of the first ships in the Navy to use it instead of simply rolling the ashcans off the stern. Like a lot of new gadgets, it worked pretty well most of the time. Like a lot of sailors, George Enos among them, Sturtevant was conservative enough to find that something less than adequate.
Like a lot of young lieutenants, Crowder was enamored of anything and everything new, for no better reason than that it was new. He said, “By throwing the charges off to the side, we don’t have to sail right over the sub and lose hydrophone contact with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Sturtevant said again. His mouth twisted. George understood that, too. A hydrophone could give you a rough bearing on a submersible. What it couldn’t tell you was where along that bearing the damn thing lurked.
An officer on the bridge waved his hat to Lieutenant Crowder. “Launch!” Crowder shouted, as if the depth-charge crew couldn’t figure out what that meant for themselves.
The launcher roared. The depth charge spun through the air, then splashed into the sea. Carl Sturtevant’s lips moved. In the racket, George couldn’t hear what he said, but he saw the shape of the words. Here goes nothing-and it was just as well that Lieutenant Crowder couldn’t read lips. Another depth charge flew. The chances of hitting a submarine weren’t quite zero, but they weren’t good. The charge had to go off within fifteen feet of a sub to be sure of wrecking it, though it might badly damage a boat at twice that range. Since the destroyer and the submersible were both moving, hits were as much luck as in a blindfold rock fight.
As the third depth charge arced away from the Ericsson, water boiled up from the explosion of the first one. “Damnation!” Lieutenant Crowder shouted: only white water, nothing more. By the disappointed look on his face, he’d expected a kill on his very first try.
Another charge flew. The second one went off, down below the surface of the sea. Another seething mass of white water appeared, and then a great burst of bubbles and an oil slick that helped calm both the normal chop of the Atlantic and the turbulence the bubbles had kicked up.
“Hit!” Crowder and Sturtevant and the rest of the depth-charge crew and George all screamed the word at the same tim
e. Skepticism forgotten, Sturtevant planted a reverent kiss on the oily metal side of the depth-charge launcher.
More bubbles rose from the stricken submersible, and more oil, too. Peering out into the ocean, George was the first to spy the dark shape rising through the murky water. “Here he comes, the son of a bitch,” he said, and turned the one-pounder in the direction of the submersible. The gun was intended for aeroplanes, but Moses hadn’t come down from the mountain saying you couldn’t shoot it at anything else.
Vaster than a broaching whale, the crippled sub surfaced. English? French? Confederate? George didn’t know or care. It was the enemy. The men inside had done their best to kill him. Their best hadn’t been good enough. Now it was his turn.
Some of the enemy sailors still had fight in them. They ran across the hull toward the submersible’s deck gun. George opened up with the one-pounder before Lieutenant Crowder screamed, “Rake ’em!”
Shell casings leaped from George’s gun. It fired ten-round clips, as if it were an overgrown rifle. One of the rounds hit an enemy sailor. George had never imagined what one of those shells could do to a human body. One instant, the fellow was dashing along the dripping hull. The next, his entire midsection exploded into red mist. His legs ran another stride and a half before toppling.
George picked up another clip-it hardly seemed to weigh anything-and slammed it into the one-pounder. He blew another man to pieces, but most of the clip went to chewing up the submersible’s conning tower. The sub wouldn’t be doing any diving, not if it was full of holes.
As he was reloading again, one of the Ericsson’s four-inch guns fired a shell into the ocean twenty yards in front of the submarine’s bow, a warning shot that sent water fountaining up to drench the surviving men who had reached the deck gun. They didn’t shoot back at the destroyer. Their hands went up in the air instead.
“Hold fire!” Lieutenant Crowder said. George obeyed. A moment later, a white flag waved from the top of the conning tower. More men started emerging from the hatch and standing on the hull, all of them with their hands raised in surrender.
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