South of Shiloh

by Chuck Logan

  The spectators applauded when the cavalry trotted in twos. Then the Tennessee regiment marched to the far end of the field and formed in two long ranks. Rane tracked the SWAT guys as they parked their van down the road, and two of them got out wearing period, ankle-length slickers and Reb slouch hats and walked casually toward the trees. The undercovers had melted into the crowd of spectators.

  Rane studied the two men who had left the van. “Guy on the right is carrying something under his coat; a slinged rifle, probably a 308, hanging down under his right armpit. The other one’s also got something,” Rane speculated. A moment later the SWAT duo disappeared into the trees.

  “Got him a spotting scope and an M16,” Beeman said.

  The shoulder mike emitted a muted squawk: “Snipe, this is Bag Man. How do you hear?”

  Beeman grimaced. “Sniper with a sense of humor.” Then he keyed the mike. “Hear you five by.”

  “We’re thinking you guys should stroll up and down, kind of stay in motion. Make it a little harder for somebody trying to put your lights out.”

  “Roger,” Beeman said, showing the whites of his eyes.

  As they started to slowly walk perpendicular to the field, they both ducked when all four cannons fired at once and a long, low cloud of smoke spread out.

  “Oh boy,” Beeman said with a thin smile. “Does kinda pucker you up.” He was squeezing the buckeye in his right hand.

  “Do me a favor and put that away,” Rane said, half-serious, as he instinctively reached for the Nikon in his haversack. His hand, wanting the Sharps on Beeman’s shoulder, was indifferent to the camera. Beeman pocketed the good-luck charm, changed direction, and angled back toward the field. Now the cavalry was riding forward, eighty hooves thudding on the wet ground. The horsemen wheeled into line, advanced, reigned in, and dismounted. Every fourth man remained in the saddle and led the horses to the rear. The dismounted troopers spread out, kneeled, and began firing their carbines into the woods.

  “Jesus. That should make the SWAT boys feel real cozy,” Beeman said, ejecting a stream of brown spit.

  On the platform, an emcee with a microphone explained the demonstration to the crowd: “Now the cavalry has engaged a little more than they can handle in those woods so they’re sending back for the infantry to come up.” A mounted courier rode back and conferred with an infantry officer, who raised his sword and shouted orders.

  Rane half-heard. He was intent on the far tree lines, across from the demonstration.

  The emcee said, “Now the infantry is deploying in company front.” Rane glanced back to the field, where the long double line of gray was segmenting and reforming forward in a series of double ranks, one behind the other. As a drum began to beat a hollow cadence, the ranks set off in step. Rane found himself briefly fascinated by the earnest pageant of infantry advancing with measured tread; the dull flash of hundreds of rifles and the red flag furled in fits of wind in the center of the second company. At the other end of the field the meager screen of dismounted cavalry fell back and moved to the side.

  Beeman glanced over his shoulder and said, “Not bad for a bunch of fat boys, huh?” Then he jerked Rane’s sleeve. “Better keep moving.”

  They walked slowly, watching as the lead company of advancing soldiers began to pass between the spectators and the artillery. The cannons fired in sequence, flooding the field white.

  Rane squinted. For a fraction of a second, the soldiers became timeless shadows suspended in the vale of smoke. Absently, he thought, That’s the money shot. Then the smoke tattered away and the columns fanned out into a double line across the field.

  But now Rane had turned away and was watching the broad, grassy area leading to the parking lot and the woods beyond. He instinctively flinched when two hundred reenactors fired a loud volley behind him.

  As the sound echoed away, he tasted the acrid black powder trinity of carbon, saltpeter, and sulfur lightly spiced with nitrates. That’s when he caught the movement, felt it; a palpable sensation tiptoeing inside his chest. A man in gray lurched out of the trees next to the parking lot. He was carrying a rifle and he broke into a fast jog.

  “Beeman! Ten o’clock, three hundred yards,” Rane said in a loud, clear voice.

  They both went turtle when the reenactors behind them triggered another volley.

  Rane jerked at Beeman’s arm with one hand. “See him?” Out of reflex, he dropped his other hand to the Nikon.

  A second later, Beeman’s radio erupted in urgent static. “Beeman, get down, man, we got somebody moving your way…” Rane recognized the trained, hyper-controlled, Chuck Yeager voice of a police sniper clicking off the safety.

  Beeman, half-crouched, waved his hand to clear the film of smoke, and bared tobacco-stained teeth as he swung the Sharps off his shoulder by the sling. “Yeah,” he said. “I see him.”

  The figure in the gray uniform and swinging gear jogged in a brisk, stiff-legged gait, straight toward Rane and Beeman. His rifle dangled low in both hands, his arms loose, at the ready. He was coming straight on, with purpose.

  Rane quickly sorted details; two guys had jumped from the van. All four of the undercovers were running from the back of the crowd. In the distance, the flashers atop a Hardin County squad car started to rotate as it lurched forward.

  “Get down, Beeman,” the SWAT sniper said urgently in the radio.

  Rane raised his hand. “Stand down. Tell them to wait.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the guy from the bar. Darl,” Rane said.

  “Darl?” Beeman craned his neck. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Rane said.

  “Back it off. This ain’t the guy,” Beeman said into the radio.

  The man had slowed now, seeing the cops running toward him, plus two accelerating police cars swerving off the road, coming across the grass. Carefully, he leaned over and laid the rifle down. Hands half-raised, he continued walking toward Beeman and Rane until the approaching cops overtook him.

  Beeman turned to Rane. “It is Darl. But how could you tell?”

  “Saw his face.”

  “Way out there you saw his face?” Beeman wondered as they walked quickly to where the four cops surrounded a nervous Darl Leets. As they came closer, they heard snatches of Darl’s breathless conversation. He was gesturing, trying to explain he’d arrived late. “I should be on the field there,” he said, pointing, “with that Tennessee regiment.”

  Two of the cops, still kinked up with adrenaline, insisted on frisking Darl, checking his haversack and cartridge box. When they finished their search, they pushed him roughly aside.

  “Jeez, Bee, what the hell,” Darl gasped, wide-eyed, his baby face pale with sweat, “call off the dogs, man…”

  Beeman’s discussion with the pissed off security detail was drowned out by another musket volley, then a cheer from the crowd as the infantry fixed bayonets and double-timed forward, yipping and howling.

  The disgusted cops trudged back to the parking lot to regroup. Beeman and Rane stood over Darl as he stuffed strewn items back in his pouches.

  “That took some balls,” Beeman said.

  Darl shook his head, his eyes flitting. He gritted his teeth and said, “No, man. Not listening to Marcy, that would take balls.” Then he angled his eyes away from Beeman’s dour gaze, stood up with his repacked gear, and started back to where his rifle lay on the grass.

  “Okay, let’s have it,” Beeman said.

  As they walked, Darl said, “Marcy says you got to lose all the cops or it ain’t gonna happen.”

  Rane laughed and rolled his eyes. “Shit, they just made your security.”

  “Is he here?” Beeman asked.

  Darl ignored the question and said, “Where can I find you in the morning?”

  “At the Union camp by the Visitors Center.”

  Darl bit his lip, looked back across the grassy area to the parking lot where one of the cops was gesturing in frustration and kicking the tires of the va
n. “Look for me around nine,” he said. “But you gotta lose those guys or it won’t happen,” he repeated. Then he stared at the wet grass, bit his lip, and raised his tight brown eyes. “Won’t bullshit you. Mitchell Lee is snakeshit. This is strictly touch-and-go…”

  “And?” Beeman asked.

  “And I’m saying I got nothing personal against you, Bee. Donnie was a fuckin’ psycho deserved what he got. What I’m saying is you best watch yourself.” Then Darl turned with a nervous shrug of his shoulders and left Beeman and Rane standing alone, watching him march off toward the rows of white tents where the Tennessee regiment was filing back into camp to the beat of a drum.

  58

  RANE SAT WITH HIS BACK AGAINST A TREE IN THE grassy open space, midway between Hurlbut Field and the parking lot where Beeman stood conferring with the security detail. He sipped SWAT coffee from his tin cup and huddled deeper into Paul Edin’s greatcoat. Wood smoke drifting from camp fires put an autumn bite in the April haze.

  Fast and sharp had always been his style.

  He could not imagine living when his eyes and his body gave out. Among the few things he’d learned in his thirty-seven years was that the majority of people get trapped in little personal hells. Most of us settle for less than we want was the gist of what Jenny had said that night on her back deck.

  Kept his distance from the herd, rode the thermals. Where the bovine eyes saw a blur, he spied a mouse dart in the stubble and swooped.

  Rane plucked a handful of wet grass and threw it in frustration.

  And now here was Beeman in his life. He watched the Southern cop, who had no discernible bottom that Rane could fathom, leave the parking lot and walk heavily through the indigo early evening. Corny Beeman, steeped in primitive superstitions, who alluded to invisible shit in the air. Who took his family to church every Sunday. Coming at him in his Confederate cowboy suit and dragging his chain of ancestors behind him across Shiloh’s killing fields like Marley’s Ghost.

  Rane stood up in a clatter of leather bags and buckles and Beeman’s bayonet and useless rifle. He dumped the dregs of coffee from his cup, buckled it through his haver strap, and shook his head.

  Fuck a bunch of Tex Ritter bullshit. Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do dah do dah…

  “You tell them what Darl said?” Rane asked, knowing it was a rhetorical question before the sound was out of his mouth.

  “Nope.”

  “So what are they going to do?”

  “The Hardin County boys will give it till noon tomorrow.” Beeman squinted past Rane, over toward a campfire, where the cavalry horses were picketed along the woods. Beeman shrugged. “So we’ll play it by ear. See if Darl shows in the morning…”

  “Big if?”

  “Nah. He’ll show. And more I think about it I might be wrong about Marcy,” Beeman said philosophically, pursing his lips. “She probably ain’t the reincarnation of Louise Hatchcock. More like Bonnie fuckin’ Parker,” he added with his slow smile.

  “Riddles.” Rane shook his head, then opened his hands, “So?”

  Beeman nodded toward the parking lot. “So maybe we’ll have to give those SWAT boys the slip…”

  “Great,” Rane popped his eyes. “Go after him alone, into a fucking trap? With a rifle you’ve never shot? What if Mitchell Lee, Marcy, Darl, and the whole family is waiting out there?”

  “Calm down, John,” Beeman said mildly. “You was ready to go it alone.”

  Rane stabbed a finger. “That’s different. You know why?”

  “No I don’t. You gonna tell me?”

  “Yeah. Because I know I’m fucked up and arrange my life accordingly,” Rane blurted. “You don’t know you’re fucked up—you believe the local hype. Blood over brains. Chew tobacco and have a gunfight.” Rane had to laugh. “Jesus. I suppose I deserve this?”

  Beeman nodded. “Yep. For how you lived your life. What you call karma.” Beeman narrowed his eyes in the failing light. “Good place for it, don’tcha think? Sun going down on the Shiloh battlefield?” Then Beeman started walking and said, “C’mon.”

  “What now?”

  “Over in the parking lot I ran into a boy I know with the Tennessee Cavalry. They got a big pot of venison stew cooking. We been invited to spend the night.”

  The Tennessee troop camped along a tree line in a smog of wood smoke, damp hay bales, and wet horseflesh. As they approached, Rane detected an under-scent of sweet grains in burlap bags. The horses were tethered along a picket line and Rane noticed that saddles had been lashed to the trees in stacks of two and three and covered with waterproof ponchos.

  A dozen men in rakish cavalry jackets and high leather boots bristled with pistols and sabers and huddled, shoulders hunched, around the fire. “Oh shit,” one of them drawled, seeing Beeman and Rane walk in. “Here comes Beeman. Gonna bring fire down on our ass for sure.”

  “You got your Kevlar under that sack coat, Bee?”

  One of the men held out a copy of the printout with Mitchell Lee’s picture. “Could you autograph and date this? Might be worth something if you get yourself shot.”

  Beeman laughed, unhooked his tin cup from his haversack buckle, stooped, and poured coffee from the large pot next to the simmering cauldron of stew. He stood up and said, “Sorry about the fuss, boys. Probably nothing.”

  “No problem. Breaks the routine. This Living History can get monotonous after twenty years.”

  “Go easy on the bloodthirsty stuff,” Beeman said. “This here’s John Rane. He’s a photographer for a paper up North. Got eyes like an eagle and ears like a bat. Even got a camera somewhere.”

  Rane endured a round of grumbling. Someone piped up, “Ain’t bad enough you’re drawing fire, Bee. Now we been infiltrated.”

  As Rane shifted from foot to foot, one of the men finally hoisted the coffee pot in a gesture of welcome. He had a trim black mustache and was the only trooper wearing gray top and bottom. “Manners, boys,” he said amiably. Rane unclipped his tin cup from his haversack and accepted the coffee.

  A general discussion ensued about the Kirby Creek incident—probably, Rane thought, for his edification—then spiraled into an account of accidents at Civil War reenactments. The consensus seemed to be a lapse in safety when it came to pistols. The famous casualty at Raymond was cited; the wound being consistent with a .36-caliber pistol ball.

  “The problem with pistols,” one of the troopers said as he hefted up a Colt Navy and handed it to Rane, “is you have six charges to check, each one with its own cap. Infantry just slap on one cap, point the rifle at the ground and go pop.”

  Another man offered: “What happens is, guys will bring one empty cylinder for the safety check and a pouch full of loaded ones. Gets hard to monitor.”

  A natty fellow with a groomed beard and a stylish vest protested. “Remember at Gettysburg, that big Yankee sonofabitch stuck his pistol right in my face when we went over the wall…”

  “Well, now Kenny,” a tempered voice came from the circle. “You were tryin’ to grab the flag out of his hand now weren’t you?”

  “Was picking Cream of Wheat outta my face and eyes for a week.”

  “Cream of Wheat?” Rane wondered.

  “Use it to plug the powder charges in each cylinder,” said the man showing Rane the pistol, “otherwise the whole wheel can chain-fire when you pull the trigger. Blow up in your hand.”

  Rane asked, “And Kirby Creek, was that another accident?”

  One of the troopers pointed toward the horses where Beeman had wandered over to talk to a tall figure in a long duster and slouch hat. “They seem to be taking it pretty serious, don’t they?” he said.

  The talk frittered away diplomatically as the stew was ladled out. The man in the long coat disappeared into the twilight, Beeman returned, and he and Rane took their plates a little back from the fire and sat on a log.

  “Two of the SWAT boys will take turns staying up, watching us tonight. In the morning we change outfits and they’l
l trail us to the blue camp at the landing,” Beeman said between mouthfuls. “We’ll take the first picket watch. When it’s quieted down, then you and me can talk.”

  Rane nodded, scraped his plate, and then went through the motions of making his bed with poncho and blanket on a pallet of hay next to a row of shelter half-tents. Beeman kept the Sharps slung on his shoulder as he spread his bedding next to Rane’s. Then he left Rane alone and joined the circle at the campfire.

  Rane lay on his back as night closed in, listening to the banjos and carousing drift from the fires at the infantry camp across the field. Slowly, the partying and the fires burned down and a vast, starless quiet descended, punctuated by the stamp and shift of tethered horses and snatches of talk from the cavalry campfire.

  “You were on that Custer’s Last Ride event up the Little Big Horn?”

  “Yep, back in, jeez, was the early nineties when I still had a full head of hair.”

  Rane reached for a cigarette, decided against it, and instead stuffed his hand in his trouser pocket and closed his fingers around the manila card.

  “That story true, what happened out there?”

  “Uh-huh. See, we were playing Custer’s troopers, skirmishing our way up the valley with these local Indian boys from the Crow Reservation.

  “Those guys were seriously turned out and they could ride. I’d wrangled with some of them playing extra on a few pictures. So this one big dude trots up in all his feathers and he says, ‘You guys look like the real thing, you could be the Seventh Cav.’”

  Rane squeezed the crumpled card. Talk, Beeman said. He stared at the tremble of firelight, the way it played shadow peekaboo in the spidery canopy of branches, and tried to see it like Paul did. Father Abraham frowning down with black, tormented eyes.

  “So the ride is supposed to stop at the Custer Battlefield Park boundary, right? Park Service don’t want you burning powder at each other on their land. But this Indian says, ‘Shit, you guys look almost good as us and, you know, this is our reservation. So fuck a bunch of park rangers. Let’s do it.’”