Sherman, it was said, had coined the phrase “War is hell,” and Old Iron Boots Riker’s diary seemed to confirm that assessment. An earlier entry, about a friend of Thaddius’s whose arm had been amputated in a field hospital by a drunken surgeon using a dull, rusted bayonet, had been as good a description of hell as any Will ever hoped to read. Will’s ancestor had indeed been through hell, but he had survived it.
Anyway, reading the diary had helped to take Will out of his own life and concerns, which was good because otherwise he’d have been thinking of nothing but Felicia day and night. There was nothing wrong with thinking about Felicia, he resolved, but there had to be limits, even to that. He wasn’t opposed to having a social life, even a romantic one, but he was at the Academy to do a job, to prepare himself for service to Starfleet, and even Felicia Mendoza had to take second place to that.
Will found the diary hard to read: its brittle pages flaked and chipped as he turned them, and Thaddius Riker’s handwriting was cramped and spidery. Sometimes blotches of water, ink, or something that Will thought might be blood obscured words or even whole sections. But even so, no matter where he dipped in, he found himself lost in his ancestor’s exploits, and only occasional mental images of Felicia’s radiant smile or the way her strong body filled out her Academy uniform could haul him back to the twenty-fourth century. For the past couple of days he had been turning to the diary as often as he could make the time, in between classes, other work, and little bits of social time.
William Sherman had been the kind of general Will could appreciate, and there were times, reading about “Uncle Billy,” that he wondered if his own parents had named him for Thaddius’s friend. After taking Atlanta, Sherman had chased General Hood around the South for a while. Tiring of that exercise, he had returned to his original plan for after Atlanta’s defeat—the march to Savannah. He moved in the exact opposite direction from Hood, leading his sixty-two thousand troops toward the sea. He left behind him all sources of supplies and communication—completely on his own, behind enemy lines, but with the intention of routing the enemy and showing them why it was a bad idea to continue fighting. All the way across Georgia they marched, torching fields, killing stock, liberating slaves, and generally making Confederate sympathizers curse Sherman’s name for years to come. The plan was reckless, foolish, utterly wrongheaded, and absolutely the right thing to do.
Thaddius Riker, at the head of the New York 102nd, was with Sherman for the whole thing. They had fought through the hills and forests of northern Georgia together; before and after taking Atlanta they had fought at Kennesaw Mountain and Allatoona and Rome. Thaddius Riker had taken a minié ball in the shoulder at a battle in a place called Pine Mountain, and had fallen, inside Confederate territory. Only the aid of a mysterious stranger helped him get back behind Federal lines, probably saving his life. “I had never seen this fellow before,” Thaddius had written. “But he came along at just the moment when I needed someone. Without him, I would not be here writing these words today. Later I tried to find him agin, to thank him, but he had vanished back into whatever regiment he came from. Whoever he may be, I owe my life to him, and he has my thanks forever.”
But it was near another small town called Garner’s Ridge that Thaddius showed his own strategic thinking.
Cut off from supply lines, Sherman’s men had to live off the land. As Sherman pointed out, if millions of Southerners could do it, his force of several thousand could too. But it meant raiding farmhouses, barnyards, and fields as well as hunting native animals. As an additional benefit, any crops or livestock the Union Army didn’t leave behind was food the Confederate Army couldn’t eat when they came in pursuit.
To further that end, Sherman sent his troops on foraging missions as they cut their swath to the sea. These foragers had express orders not to loot or pillage civilian homes, but to cause as much damage as they could to supply depots or arms warehouses, to put the torch to crops, to free slaves and to supply the Federals whenever possible. According to Thaddius’s diary, these orders were frequently ignored. “I seen three boys come around the bend this morning,” he scrawled at one point. “One wore a long white dress with bows and a bustle, over his uniform, with necklaces that looked like gold tied around his head. The next had outfited himself with a fine beaver top hat and a gentleman’s coat. The last one was covered in muck, and held a squealing baby pig in his arms.”
Thaddius himself, it seemed, had taken Sherman’s instructions to heart. He kept the New York 102nd in line and under control. Outside the tiny town of Garner’s Ridge, he had led a foraging party of seven, trusted men all. They had come across a large, wealthy plantation, with manicured fields and lawns surrounding an enormous white house. As the men approached the farmhouse, a blonde woman who Old Iron Boots described as “a natural Southern beautey” stepped onto the wide porch with a rifle in her hands, pointing it at the men.
“I reckon you gentlemen are lost,” she said bravely. “Y’all are in the Confederacy now, and those blue coats are not very popular.”
“No, ma’am,” Jim Railsback, a sergeant in Thaddius Riker’s regiment replied. “We ain’t lost at all. It’s just that the Confederacy is shrinking around you.”
“Well, this plantation is still a part of it, and I would appreciate it if you all were on your way.”
“We can’t do that, ma’am,” Thaddius said. “We need to have us a look around, see if you have any provisions here that we can use. General Sherman’s army is a hungry one, ma’am. We won’t come in your house or cause you any grief, we can avoid it, but if you’ve got a smoke-house or anything in your barn we’ll find it and help ourselves. You try to use that rifle you’ll find yourself asking for a lot of trouble you don’t want.”
Thaddius believed she was thinking it over, but then another soldier, called only Frankie in the diary, shouted, “Window, sir!”
Guns were drawn and pointed at a downstairs window, where Thaddius saw only a fluttering of curtain. “Who’s inside, ma’am? Soldiers? Children?”
“My children are soldiers,” the woman said, and now Thaddius could see that she was older than he had thought at first, but still trim and attractive. “Fifteen and nineteen, and if they don’t beat you, their children will.”
“You really think the war’s goin’ to last that long?” Railsback asked.
“Never mind that,” Thaddius Riker snapped. “Who’s inside the house? Speak up or we’ll have to go in and see for ourselves.”
The woman shrugged. “It’s just the darkies,” she said. “They’re hiding from you too. They’ve heard that y’all are tools of the devil, and it’s the gospel truth.”
Even as she spoke, though, the door opened behind her and Thaddius saw a black man step onto the porch. He was nervous, glancing at the Union soldiers and then at the ground, afraid to meet anyone’s eye. “Lucius,” the woman said. “Get back in the house and make sure the others do too.”
But Lucius ignored her command and came down the stairs, past his mistress and toward Thaddius. He was barefoot, and his pants and shirt had been patched so many times it was hard to tell what color they’d originally been. “Y’all are real,” he said. “I been told I’d see devils in blue coats for so long I was expectin’ horns and tails. But you men, you look like God’s own angels to me. Are y’all men or angels?”
“We’re men,” Thaddius said. “Just men who are tired and hungry and trying to live through this damn war. Is there anyone else in the house?”
“My family, sir,” Lucius said. “My wife and our baby. Rest is in the pen, ’round back.”
“No more white men, no soldiers?”
“No, sir. Miz Lily’s husband was killed, and her boys are off with General Hood, hear tell. Ain’t been around in some weeks.”
“And there are more slaves, in a pen, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show me. You have a problem with that, ma’am?”
“Besides the fact that y’all ar
e interfering with my private property?” she countered.
“Where I’m standing, old Lucius looks like a man,” Thaddius said. “You’re going to have to get over the idea that men are property you can buy and sell.”
She shifted the rifle in her grasp. “Not as long as I draw breath.”
“You’d best put down that gun,” Thaddius said. “Or you won’t have to worry about breathing for much longer. I told you we’re not here to hurt you or your kin, or damage your house. But we can’t hold with keeping human beings in a pen.”
“If I had a dog I suppose you’d take that too.”
“That would depend on the dog,” Railsback offered helpfully. “Yesterday we shot a hound that was used for tracking escaped slaves.”
“Y’all killed old Clarence?” Lucius asked, breaking into a grin for the first time. He displayed a ragged scar on his calf. “I wisht I’d’a been there for that. Dog has left his mark on me a few times.”
“I don’t know as it was Clarence,” Thaddius said. “But if it wasn’t, we’ll find him too. I’ll even give you the pleasure of pulling the trigger. Now let’s see that pen.”
Miz Lily didn’t stand in their way, so Lucius led the others to a low wooden structure behind the barn. It was unpainted, as if the slaves held inside were even less important than the animals in the neat, whitewashed barn. When Railsback broke off the padlock on the door and Lucius pulled it open, the stink washed over Thaddius like a wave. Inside, there were nineteen slaves, men, women, and children, in a space that might have accommodated six. They had wooden pails for toilets, a barrel with some water in it, and straw for beds. The men had been tied to beams with leather straps.
“These kind gentlemen is here to free us,” Lucius said. “Miz Lily don’t want none of it, but they won’t back down from her. It was a sight, I’ll tell you.”
The people inside burst into laughter and thanks, and some even began to cry, pray, or both. Children ran out into the yard and dashed in wild circles, exuberant at being let out of the pen without a chore assigned to them. One of the women told Lucius that she’d go into the big house to get his family out. He warned her to be careful of Miz Lily, but Frankie volunteered to go along to make sure she didn’t try anything.
“Where we gone go, suh?” one of the women asked Thaddius.
“Anywhere you want, I reckon,” he told her with a grin.
“Ain’t got nowhere special in mind,” she said. “But most places we go, someone will just catch us up again.”
“But you’re free now,” he said.
“You think so, and I might think so,” the woman argued. “Are most other folks in these parts gone think so?”
“I see your point,” Thaddius admitted. This had become a problem already—freed slaves, with no place better to go and no guarantee of safety anywhere in Georgia, had taken to following Sherman’s army around. But that meant more mouths to feed, slower progress, and more targets for Johnny Reb. There was no good solution to the problem, but Thaddius didn’t feel right about turning these people away now that he’d rescued them from a slave pen. “I reckon you can stay with us awhile if you’ve a mind to.”
The slave pen had been put to the torch and the smoke-house raided for stores of beef and pork. Livestock was shot and fire set to the edges of the fields and then, with twenty-two former slaves in tow, the foragers went to rejoin their regiment.
The trouble started on a wooden bridge over a slow, narrow river. From a copse of trees on the far side, shots rang out, and Private Joyce, one of Thaddius Riker’s men, was hit in the gut. He fell, and the rest flattened themselves, drawing their weapons. Thaddius waved the ex-slaves down. But then gunfire came from behind them, up a hillside that banked down toward the river.
“They got us pinned down here,” Railsback muttered. “It’ll be like target practice for ’em to pick us off.”
“That’s because we’re on the wrong side of the bridge,” Thaddius said.
“But they’re on both sides!”
“I’m talking about over and under,” Thaddius explained. “We’re over. We need to be under. Give ’em some hell, boys!” he shouted. “And let’s get wet!”
The men all started shooting then, setting up a covering barrage that drove the rebs back into the trees and those up on the hill into hiding while the Federals dove from the bridge into the lazily moving river. The water wasn’t very deep and the men were able to keep their guns and powder above its surface. In the shade of the bridge, they were at least somewhat protected from those on the hill, and the cut of the riverbank kept those in the trees from being able to see them, much less shoot them. But when the freed slaves joined them under the bridge, it became crowded, and the soldiers on the hill were able to pick off the people around the edges. Two of the slaves were hit, and Frankie took a ball in the shoulder, shattering bone and spraying blood into the water.
Thaddius knew this was only a temporary measure. They couldn’t stay in this water indefinitely, and the bridge would only offer protection for so long. It was just wood and eventually the Confederate shot would chew through it. Besides, when the men from the trees came to the river’s edge they’d be easy targets. He needed a plan, and he needed it fast.
“How many men you think they have?” he asked Railsback.
“Can’t be too many. We didn’t think they had any forces around here. My guess is this is a small patrol that spotted us and thought they’d make some trouble. A dozen, maybe, six in the trees and six up top.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Thaddius said. “Which means they still outnumber us two to one and have the tactical advantage.”
“Unless you count the Negroes,” Railsback pointed out.
“They don’t have guns, but I was just getting to that,” Thaddius said. “How well can you swim?”
“I swim fine, I guess. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Well, when we go underwater our rifles won’t do us any good. So we leave them behind with whatever of those slaves can shoot, and we just take bayonets.”
“Bayonets, sir? Against a dozen men? Or what we hope is only a dozen men?”
“I know the odds aren’t great,” Thaddius Riker said with a smile. “But that’s their own fault for joining the Confederate Army.”
He recruited another soldier and three of the strongest, healthiest former slaves, including Lucius. Each man was assigned a bayonet, and a secondary hunting knife. Rifles were left with those who would stay behind. At Thaddius’s signal, the little force under the bridge began firing up the hill, distracting the rebels up there, and Thaddius, Railsback, Clancy, and three ex-slaves dove under the water, swimming for all they were worth. They swam underneath until their lungs were fit to burst, then came up close to the near bank, where they hoped the men up the hill wouldn’t be able to see them. Then they ducked under again, and swam another distance downriver. Finally, they dragged themselves out and up the bank, dripping, cold, and weighted down with all the water they’d taken on.
Thaddius led the men by example and hand signal. They climbed up the far side of the hill, and within a short while were slipping down behind the armed rebels, who had taken up positions behind large rocks and downed trees. But those bulwarks protected them only from bullets fired from below. At Thaddius’s signal, his tiny force attacked. There were eight rebels, not six. One of them got off a shot, which tore through the wrist of one of the ex-slaves. But the bayonets did their dirty work, and in a few short moments the Confederates were all on the ground, bleeding into the dirt.
The wounded slave grinned at Thaddius in spite of his injury. “I ain’t had so much fun in years,” he said. “Y’all get to do this every day?”
“Not quite like this,” Thaddius replied. “But if you can handle a gun as well as you do that bayonet you might could find a place in this army.”
“Be a little tricky with but one wing,” the man said. “But I’ll gladly give it a try.” He took a musket from one of the
Confederate corpses and balanced it on a boulder, sighting down it toward the copse of trees. As Thaddius had hoped, the rebs there had grown restless and were creeping toward the riverbank, where they figured they would have easy pickings at those stuck in the water.
“Let’s see what you can do,” Thaddius urged. He helped himself to a gun and the other men did the same. The former slave fired first, and his target dropped. The others began firing, and the Confederates, all in the open now, were disposed of quickly. By the time Thaddius and his men came down from the hill, the rest of the Federals and freed slaves were out of the water, wringing out their clothes, stamping their feet, and helping themselves to weapons and ammunition from the rebel corpses.
Will Riker liked the tale because it demonstrated a trait that Thaddius Riker had in common with William Tecumseh Sherman, and one that he hoped he had as well—the ability to look unconventionally at a difficult situation and find a unique solution. Most leaders wouldn’t have abandoned their guns and attacked a larger force with lesser weapons. But without that creative response, the story of Thaddius Riker might well have ended in that cold, slow Georgia creek near Garner’s Ridge.
Maybe that was what he needed with Felicia, he realized. The two had talked for hours the other night, after they had made their peace. Since then he had seen her a couple more times, but usually in groups. They had touched a few times, hands coming together, but there had been little forward progress in the direction that Will had decided he wanted to go. He still didn’t know if it was what Felicia wanted, but he was more convinced than ever that it might be. He just needed to find out. And since he didn’t know quite how to go about it, he needed a creative way to force the issue.
As he got ready for bed, and then later in his bed as he tried to find his way to sleep, he worked on coming up with just that.
Chapter 18
Deny Thy Father Page 17
