Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  “So it just says that Julius is still missing?” I was disappointed, but at least I could still hope my brother was alive.

  “No,” the clerk said. “This is a list of men who left their post and shirked their sworn duty before their term of service was over.”

  “You mean —?”

  “Your brother is a deserter,” the clerk said, and if he said more than that, I didn’t hear him, because the blood was buzzing in my ears, and I saw the pictures in my mind of the deserter I’d run down with Dash, the coward who’d knifed me, the coward that Winslow’d shot dead in the cabin by the railroad tracks, and when I saw him in my thoughts, he wasn’t the red-bearded fellow I remembered. He had Julius’s face.

  For a moment, I wished the clerk had told me that Julius had died in battle, a hero’s death. Instead, the clerk had told me that my brother was a no-good coward, the kind of man who deserved to be chased down by dogs.

  “No,” I said, and I felt my blood running hot. The air in the room felt heavy, and I struggled to breathe. “No,” I said again, and I stumbled from the tent.

  I was outside again, Dash at my side. If Julius really had turned deserter, then the Home Guard would probably be looking for him somewhere. If somebody like Winslow found him, well, Julius would be in a world of trouble. I shuddered to think it.

  But if I found him first …

  I was the only one who could do it. I had to do it. I could make sure no one hurt him. I could bring him back to his regiment, and I could make him do his duty to defend our freedoms! I could find him and make him the hero he was supposed to be, and that way, I’d never have to tell Ma and Pa how he’d been a coward, run off just like all them cowards who ran off while our home and our town was burning.

  I knew why I’d come all this way. I knew how I could make up for the crime of letting that girl Susan get away. I wasn’t meant to find my brother to bring him home.

  I was meant to find my brother to bring him back to the war.

  I didn’t know where I might begin to hunt for my brother, but I thought that maybe someone in the big military camp might’ve known him, so I took Dash around to the rows and rows of small lean-tos where the enlisted men were laying about, cleaning their guns, playing cards, and boasting of this or that. Again, no one paid me much notice, but they did take a shine to Dash straight away.

  “Woo-ee,” said one young private, who had the accent of a Texan. “That there’s a mighty fine hound. Mighty fine!”

  “Best hound in all of Mississippi,” I told him, and I let him rub Dash’s head, which Dash liked quite a lot. In fact, he liked it so much, he took to flopping right down on the ground and rolling over on his back for a rub on his belly. Dash’s big lips flopped upside down and his ears splayed out on the dirt beside him, his paws spread open wide, and with his big teeth showing, it looked to all the world like he was smiling.

  The private laughed and gave Dash’s belly a good rubbing. The dog’s tail thumped at the dirt, and his back leg twitched when the private hit his ticklish spot, and that made us both laugh. It felt good to laugh and to see Dash happily rolling in the dirt. Took my mind off my worries for Ma and Pa on their way to Cousin Thomas, and off Julius, on the run from the law and from his rightful duty.

  The thought of Julius made me lose my smile real fast. “You know if the Fifth Mississippi Infantry is in this camp?” I asked the private. “Or any folks who fought at Chickamauga last September?”

  “Chickamauga?” The private stopped rubbing Dash’s belly and met my eyes with a steely stare. “Well, son, I don’t know about the Fifth Mississippi, but I sure fought at Chickamauga under General Gist. Our brigade lost 170 men in under an hour, and I tell you, it was a most fearsome sight. Men falling all over each other in the fight, and then falling all over each other worse in retreat. I ain’t ashamed to say I was scared in that battle, and if I don’t see another like it, that’ll be just fine with me.”

  “My brother was in that battle,” I said. I left out the part about him turning deserter. “I’m trying to find folks who might know what’s become of him.”

  “Gone missing, eh?” the private asked.

  I nodded.

  “A lot of that going around,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he meant a lot of men deserting their service in the army like my brother did, or if he just meant it like he said it. He didn’t explain and he didn’t pry, and I took that as a kindness.

  “Me and Dash are gonna find him,” I said, and that made the private smirk a little.

  “Listen here,” he told me. “Best thing you can do, if you want to find someone who maybe, for whatever reason, don’t want to be found, you gotta think like him. You ever use this hound of yours to hunt raccoons?”

  “Well, yes, sir, I have!” I said real proud, because Dash was the best coonhound in the state.

  “Well, when you hunting raccoons, you start just by letting him run off after whatever his nose can find?”

  “No,” I said. “I start by going to the right spot, like a creek bed or a corn patch where the raccoons sometimes forage, and then I let him loose.”

  “Exactly,” the private said. “So think of your brother like a raccoon right now. He’s runnin’ scared —”

  “I didn’t say —”

  The man held up a finger to hush me. “He’s runnin’ scared, like a raccoon. Where do they go when you’re chasing ’em?”

  “Up a tree,” I said. “Or they burrow into the ground.”

  “That’s right,” said the private. “So where would your brother’s burrow be? Where he run up when he runnin’? Back home?”

  I shook my head. He hadn’t run back home after all this time, and now, even if he did, there weren’t nothing there to run back to.

  “So where else might he find himself a little piece of safety?”

  My eyes went wide, because right then, I knew it.

  Miss Mary Ward.

  My brother had such a fancy for her, like he had said in his letters, and if he was gonna hide, then that’s where he’d go. If I wanted to pick up his scent, then that’s where I’d have to start. The only trouble was, Mary Ward’s family had gone to Jackson, which was in Union hands, and between me and them was the Union Army that’d gone and burned my house.

  “I see you’ve got an idea,” the private smiled at me. “That’s good.”

  “But I don’t know how to do it,” I said. “It’s a long way away, and Dash can’t walk that far and I can’t either.”

  “Where abouts you need to go?”

  “Well, I —” I didn’t think I should tell the man from Texas that I needed to look for my brother with Union sympathizers in Jackson. It was bad enough he’d figured out Julius had turned deserter. It’d be worse if he knew that I thought my brother had run to the Yankee side. That’d make him look more like a traitor than a coward. But I didn’t have no good answer to give him. I just stood there dumbly with my mouth hanging open, trying to think of something to tell that weren’t a complete lie. I guess Providence figured out a way to spare me the lyin’, because just as I was stuck on what to say, a trumpet took to sounding and that sent Dash howling, and suddenly the whole camp was all aflutter with activity.

  “Hurry, boys, hurry now!” a sergeant shouted, running through the rows of tents. “Marching out! We’re taking it to the Yanks now! Marching orders! Form your ranks!”

  The private started fumbling with his jacket straightaway. He grabbed his musket and stood tall above me.

  “They’re playing my music,” he said. “Looks like it’s time to dance.”

  “Sir?” I said, because I wasn’t sure why he’d be talking about dancing all of a sudden.

  “We’re on the move,” he said. “And you best get out of camp before you’re dragged into battle with us. They’re always looking for drummer boys your age.”

  I knew some boys from town who’d gone off with the army as drummers. They march in the front of the columns of soldiers and beat their drums to ke
ep time. Because they’re out front, it’s often them that get hit when the first shooting starts. Of all the drummer boys I’d known who went off to fight, ain’t one come back yet.

  “Cannon fodder,” Pa used to call ’em, like they was food for the cannons. I didn’t want to be cannon fodder, so I thanked the private and rushed to get out of that camp just as fast as I could.

  Men shuffled from their tents, loading gunpowder in their satchels, muttering prayers and oaths, and lining up as their officers took to shouting. The whinny of horses and the clatter of metal made for an even more clamborsome noise than before. I listened for drums, but didn’t hear none and that made me move double-time toward the gate, because I didn’t want someone gettin’ ideas on enlisting me, not when I had to go after Julius.

  “Hey, boy!” someone shouted, and my blood froze in my veins. I stopped and Dash stopped right beside me, and we turned to see an officer of the cavalry, sitting tall astride a massive gray mare with a flowing mane of brown hair. The horse stood stock-still and the officer on her back just about glowed in the afternoon light. His mustache was dark black, like his eyes and the polish of his boots. He wore a broad hat and his brass buttons shone. I felt a swell of pride that a man like that should even notice me, and I hoped, for just one blink, that he would ask me to join him in battle, to carry the drums and lead the charge of the cavalry.

  “That’s a lovely dog,” he said. And then he didn’t ask me to join him. Instead, he said, “How much you want for him?”

  “Sir?” I asked.

  “The hound,” he said. “I should like to take a fine dog like that into battle at my side.”

  Of course he didn’t have no interest in a scrawny kid like me — he wanted Dash to fight with him. It were just like Winslow and the Home Guard again, and I got mad. My face must’ve turned to red, because the officer raised his hands in the air and laughed.

  “Now, don’t fret, son, I was only asking,” he said. “Thought maybe you could use some money for your family, and I could use a fine hound dog. I meant no offense.”

  “Dash ain’t for sale,” I said.

  “Well, you take care of that dog, son,” the officer said again. “A good dog is a soldier’s best friend.”

  “I’m not a soldier,” I said.

  He just winked at me, then he turned his horse away. “Not yet!” he called back as he rode to review his troops assembling for the march into battle. I turned the other way and moved off.

  “Andrew!” I looked to the gate and saw Preacher William and his boy, Alfus, riding their wagon from the camp again. “Come along, now! Riding beats walking!”

  I trotted to catch up as I heard a bugle blow and then, finally, the sound of drums. They had a drummer boy after all, and I was strangely disappointed now that they hadn’t called on me to do it, even if I had never banged a drum in all my life.

  Dash jumped onto the preacher’s wagon with one leap, and I climbed on after.

  “Where you headed, Andrew?” the preacher asked, and I thought of lying again, but then I figured, I had no other ideas on how to get where I needed to go to chase down Julius, so I might as well ask. A sneaky pacifist could be just the man to get me through the Union lines. Worst the preacher could do was say no and toss me from his wagon for having a cowardly traitor for a brother. I guess that weren’t the worst he could do, but I didn’t figure a man of God would do me more harm than that, especially not since I had Dash for protection.

  “Well, sir,” I told him as we put the soldiers and the camp behind us. “My brother’s in a spot of trouble, and I aim to set him right … only, to do so, I gotta go over to Jackson.”

  “Jackson, eh?” Preacher William studied me. “I believe the Union Army is in control of Jackson now?”

  I nodded grimly.

  “Well, I suppose you could say we’re headed that way ourselves,” he said at last, and urged his mule on.

  “Doing the Lord’s work up that way?” I asked.

  “You could call it that. Yes, you could call it that indeed.” He smirked, and I can tell you I didn’t like the look of it one bit, but I rode on because I needed help, and this pacifist preacher was the only help I had. Well, him and Dash. A hunting dog’s time is the hunt, though, and we weren’t at that time just yet. But we would be, and soon.

  The country changed as we rode west. Rolling fields gave way to hills and then back to farmland again. We bumped along roads that’d been torn up by a thousand or more boots from soldiers on the march, and we passed by farms where not a soul was living, so burned and broken they were. I saw fences toppled by battle and the earth scarred from fighting, but in our ride, day after day, I didn’t see a soldier anyplace.

  When we was tired, we slept, and when we was hungry, we ate. Preacher William talked on and on about this and that, but to tell the truth, I didn’t have a mind to listen. Some men just like to hear their own voices, and I figured the preacher were one like that.

  It was the end of the third day since I’d left home, and I knew if I was to keep my promise to Pa, I’d have to turn around in just a few more days, so I was worrying over that when we made camp for the evening and I didn’t notice the dark figures coming from the shadowy woods. Dash noticed ’em right quick though. He took to barking and howling, which sent three shadows scurrying away again, but a fourth stood tall and still, his back straight and an ax in his hand.

  “Call off the dog,” he said, and I could tell by his voice he weren’t a white man. I called Dash to me, not because the fella told me to, but because I didn’t want Dash to get hurt by the business end of that ax. The three other figures peeked out from the darkness and Dash growled, but I held him tight at my side. I knew he wanted nothing more than to charge ’em. I couldn’t blame him none. I’d have wagered a dollar a Sunday for the rest of my days that these four was all runaway slaves headed to join up with the Union Army.

  “You got nothing to fear from us, friend,” Preacher William said. He stood, his hands open. “We are traveling servants of the Lord, and you are welcome to share our fire if you wish.”

  “They’s runaways!” I whispered to Preacher William, but Alfus gave me such a glare that I hushed up fast.

  That’s when I realized that he too was a runaway, and that Preacher William weren’t just a regular man of conscience, but an abolitionist, helping slaves steal themselves away. He was as good as a robber, sneaking the property and wealth of the Confederate States away in the night, and he’d gone and made me a conspirator with him.

  I thought on Susan, the girl I’d let go myself, and now, here I was, traveling in the company of another runaway, and about to camp with four more of them. I felt like a traitor, just as bad a traitor as Julius, in fact. I wasn’t making up for his cowardice at all. I was only making things worse!

  “All men are created equal,” Preacher William scolded me, and his face looked real stern when he said it. “I take those words to mean what they say and I do not abide the enslavement of any man. If you think different, Andrew, I urge you to reconsider or to find yourself some other conveyance to Jackson.”

  I didn’t like to be scolded like that, not in front of all these dark-skinned folks. I’d memorized the Declaration of Independence because Pa said I had to in order to be a good citizen, so I knew where that line of the preacher’s came from. The whole first part went “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  Like I said, my Pa didn’t approve of keeping slaves ourselves, but I never heard him say them words from the Declaration applied to slaves too, and I guess I never thought of it before. I’d only ever known things the way they was, with the dark-skinned folks serving the white-skinned folks. Slavery was always the way in Mississippi, and all the preachers I’d ever heard said that was the way it was always meant to be. But now, this pacifist preacher was telling me it weren
’t meant to be that way at all.

  I thought on the girl I’d let go, and how I felt bad for her out there looking for her mother, and it made me wonder if maybe I’d become an abolitionist myself. The thought was almost too terrible to think on. Ever since I’d seen Winslow shoot that deserter that me and Dash caught, I hadn’t been right in the head. I’d been lying and I’d been shirking my duties to the Home Guard, and now, worst of all, I was thinking on helping even more slaves run off on their masters. I wondered if maybe once you start to turn bad, you can’t keep from turning bad all the way.

  I sat down and looked away to pat Dash and rub his belly while the runaways joined our camp. Dash wasn’t comfortable, and I can’t say I was either. I guess the runaways was about as uncomfortable as me an’ Dash. They kept their distance and didn’t say nothing but “thank you” when the preacher gave them food.

  For his part, Preacher William didn’t say nothing else, neither, and I think he was disappointed in me. Seemed like no matter what I did, someone was disappointed in me. The only one that I could count on was Dash. I kept him close as I drifted off to sleep.

  We were roused in the morning by the sound of horses coming up the road, and the runaway slaves, all but Alfus, jumped up and hid. Dash barked after ’em.

  “Quiet your dog up!” Preacher William yelled at me, his voice mean like I hadn’t heard it before, and I thought it weren’t right for a man of God to go yelling at me like that, but I held Dash on his cord so he didn’t run off after the men. It was against nature to hold a hound dog back from the chase when every muscle in his body is crying out to run, but what could I do? I was at the preacher’s mercy if I wanted to find Julius. The only way I could set things right would be to bring Julius back to the war. Every wrong I did along the way would be made right if I succeeded. I felt that the fate of all the South rested on my success.