Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

  And Lieutenant Leaming wouldn't leave him alone. “Sir, the reply to General Forrest? Whatever you say, you'd better say it fast. The time he gave us has to be almost up.”

  Bradford didn't like the sound of that. The only ploy he had left was buying a little more time. “Give me a paper and pencil, then,” he told Leaming.

  “Yes, sir.” Leaming handed them to him.

  The paper was dirty. There was no envelope. Major Bradford had to make do without them. Your demand does not produce the desired effect, he scribbled, and handed the scrap back to Leaming. “There!”

  His adjutant read it, frowning because it was none too legible and maybe for other reasons as well. “What does it mean, sir?”

  “Exactly what it says,” Bradford snapped. “Now take it out to Bedford Forrest! “

  For a wonder, Leaming realized he'd finally pushed too far. With a salute, he said the one thing an adjutant could say that was never wrong: “Yes, sir.”

  Jack Jenkins stood by the bank of Coal Creek, watching the Olive Branch steam up the Mississippi. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. If the Yankees tried landing troops nearby, repelling them would have been rugged work. But they didn't have the nerve. He had no idea where the bluebellies on that steamer were going. They could go wherever it was or straight to hell, and welcome. As long as they didn't stop here, everything was fine.

  “Look at those egg-sucking yellow dogs show us their backs,” somebody not far away said. “They haven't got the balls to try and stand up against us.”

  “Damn good thing, too,” somebody else said. “Ain't we got enough trouble with the sons of bitches in that there fort already?”

  “Well done, men!” Colonel Barteau said. In the watery afternoon sunlight, the three stars on either side of his collar glittered. “Our show of force has successfully deterred the enemy.”

  “Damn straight,” Jenkins said. “We made sure he didn't land here, too.”

  Clark Barteau smiled. Jenkins assumed that was because he'd agreed with the regimental commander. “Now some of you better hustle back up toward the fort,” Barteau said. “If the Federals don't give in, Bedford Forrest'll order the assault, sure as I'm standing here beside you.”

  “Some of us, sir? Not all of us?” Jenkins asked.

  “No, not all of us, Corporal,” Colonel Barteau answered. “I'll want some men to stay down here by the water. If we start overrunning the enemy position up on the bluff, what do you reckon the enemy there'll do? What would you do in a fix like that?”

  “Try and get down by the river, I expect.” Jenkins saw nothing out of the ordinary in a corporal and a colonel discussing tactics. By European standards, both the U.S. Army and the C.S. Army were loose-jointed creatures. The Confederates had less in the way of spit and polish than the Federals did, and Forrest's troopers less than most C.S. outfits. They fought better than most, though, which was all that really mattered. Jenkins added, “That damn gunboat isn't going away, worse luck.” He pointed to a crater in the dirt by Coal Creek that marked where a shell from the New Era had burst.

  “Wish it would,” Barteau agreed. “But if it doesn't, I reckon we'll make it sorry. And I think you're right. I think that whole swarm of niggers and Tennessee Tories'll come pelting down to the Mississippi once we get inside their works. And when they do…”

  “I see, sir!” Jenkins wasn't a man to admire officers just because they were officers. When they showed they were on the ball, that was a different story. “You thought that through real pretty.”

  “Glad you approve,” Barteau said dryly. “If you do see what I mean, perhaps you'll want to stay here.” Quite a few troopers were already moving away from Coal Creek along the ravine to get in position to swarm up the bluff against Fort Pillow.

  “Reckon I will. It'll be just like coon-hunting back home.” Jenkins laughed at his joke, even if he'd made it by accident. “Be just like coon-hunting back home.”

  Colonel Barteau rewarded him with a thin smile. “All right, Jenkins. Maybe you'll have some coons to hunt. You'd best remember one thing, though.”

  “What's that, sir?”

  “These coons can fight back.”

  “Sir, any coon'll fight back. Bastards are all teeth and claws and mean. A coon dog's a lot bigger'n any coon ever born, but sometimes they'll come out of a hunt lookin' like they been through a meat grinder. Haven't you seen that yourself?”

  “More times than I wish I had. I've lost some good dogs that way, who hasn't? — and I've had to doctor plenty more. But I would've had a lot more to worry about if the ordinary kind of coon carried rifle muskets like the ones in there.” Barteau pointed up toward Fort Pillow. “I'll leave doctoring bullet wounds to a real sawbones.”

  Jenkins shivered. Sawbones was a name that held too much truth. Too often, amputation gave the only hope of saving a wounded man's life. He clutched his own rifle musket. It is better to give than to receive, he thought.

  Ben Robinson stared out toward the Confederate officers gathered under the flag of truce. The rest of the colored soldiers in the gun crew were doing the same thing. Some of the Negroes inside Fort Pillow went on jeering at the ragged, skinny white men in butternut outside. Others grew more serious as the gravity of the situation sank in.

  Pointing to one officer in particular, Robinson asked, “You reckon that there fella's really and truly Forrest?”

  Sandy Cole nodded gloomily. “Reckon he is,” he said. “Ain't no use to say Forrest ain't here. I knows him too well fo' that. Any place where there's big trouble, Bedford Forrest, he gonna be there.”

  “You seen the man yourself? You know his face?” Robinson asked.

  “I seen him, all right,” Cole answered. “Ain't I a Tennessee nigger? Any Tennessee nigger ever been sold, chances are he been sold through 01' Bedford Forrest's slave lots in Memphis. Yeah, I seen him.”

  “How'd he treat you when you was there?” Having been sold himself, Robinson had a morbid curiosity about such things. No part of slavery was good, not from the slave's point of view. But being in a dealer's hands, being between masters, was worse than most of the rest. A dealer didn't need to worry about you for the long haul. He just wanted to turn you into cash as fast as he could.

  But Sandy Cole said, “Coulda been worse. He give us enough to eat-not fancy, but enough. We had mattresses-didn't got to sleep on the ground. He let us wash-now and again, anyways. Weren't too crowded. Yeah, coulda been worse. “

  “Sounds like it,” Robinson agreed. He'd known slave pens where none of what Sandy said held true. But it gibed with other things he'd heard about the C.S. general. Forrest wasn't cruel for the sake of being cruel, the way some dealers were. He was in the business for money, not for sport, and he'd made a pile of it. Even so, the colored sergeant said, “Shame we gots to keep the truce.”

  “What you mean?” Cole asked.

  Robinson pointed out toward Forrest. “There he is, damn him.

  That man deal in slaves. He deal in niggers. You done said so your ownself. Powerful good general, too-likely the bes' general the Rebs got in this part 0' the country. An' there he is. Don't got to be no great shot to put a minnie through the God-damned son of a bitch. Can't hardly miss, not at this range.” He mimed sighting a Springfield at the big man on horseback, mimed pulling the trigger, mimed Bedford Forrest falling over dead.

  Sandy Cole laughed, but he sounded a little scandalized, or maybe more than a little. “Can't do that, Sergeant, not with the white flags up.”

  “I know.” Robinson sighed. “But dat's how come it's a shame we gots to keep it.”

  He might as well not have spoken. Cole went on, “'Sides, s'pose we shoots the general. An' s'pose the Secesh gets inside the fort then. What you reckon they do to us after that? You tell me they don't shoot everyone of us, 'less mebbe they hangs some or burns some? I ain't brave enough to shoot no Bedford Forrest with the truce flags flyin'.”

  He had a point. Ben Robinson wished he didn't have to admit, even
to himself, how strong a point it was. But he said, “Do Jesus, Sandy, what you reckon the Rebs do to us if they gets in even if we don't shoot Forrest? We ain't sojers to them. We's jus' niggers. Onliest difference 'tween us an' the pigs is, they don't smoke us fo' bacon.”

  “No, sub.” Sandy Cole shook his head. “No, suh. There's another difference-damn big difference, too.” He patted the barrel of the gun they served. After more than half an hour of quiet, it was cool enough not to burn his palm. “Difference is, now we kin shoot back. “

  “Uh-huh.” Sergeant Robinson had thought that was a wonderful thing when he first put on the blue uniform. He still did. But it had a drawback he hadn't seen then: “What if we shoots back an' they licks us anyways?”

  By the way Cole's face puckered, he might have bitten down on a green persimmon. “Can't let them bastards lick us. Can't do it, Sergeant. They licks us, it's like they really is better'n we is, like they say.”

  “Long as I kin serve this gun, ain't no white man better'n me,” Robinson said. “Mebbe they kin kill me. Do Jesus, I knows they kin kill me. Like I say, they kin lick us. They gots mo' men out there'n we gots in here. But if they kill me, they gots to kill a man who's fightin' back. They ain't gonna kill no nigger, no darkie, no coon. You hear what I'm tellin' you, Sandy?”

  “I hears you, Sergeant.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I… I'm tryin' to, Sergeant,” Sandy Cole said, which struck Robinson as honest enough. The other colored artilleryman eyed him. “You believe your ownself?”

  'Course I do. The automatic reply sprang to Ben Robinson's lips. But Cole had given him the truth-or he thought so, anyway. He felt obligated to pay back the same coin: “I's tryin' to, too.”

  A Federal lieutenant approached the Confederate truce party on foot. Quietly, Captain Goodman said, “That's their post adjutant, sir. His name is Leaming, Mack Leaming. He's been carrying messages back and forth. “

  “I thank you,” Nathan Bedford Forrest said, also quietly. Then he raised his voice so it would carry: “Well, Lieutenant Leaming? What does Major Booth say? He used up all the time I gave him, by God!”

  And it didn't do him one damn bit of good, either, Forrest thought. Booth must have been banking on the Olive Branch. Too bad for him-that bank had gone bust. The steamboat full of soldiers was leaving Fort Pillow behind. The plumes of smoke on the Mississippi to the north were closer now. Forrest didn't worry about those ships. If this skipper didn't dare to try forcing a landing, theirs wouldn't, either.

  Mack Leaming started when Forrest called to him. Forrest wondered what he was so nervous about. Had Major Booth made up his mind to fight? Forrest wouldn't have, not in the Union man's position. But if he had, he had.

  “Here is my commandant's reply, sir.” Leaming held out a grimy scrap of paper.

  Forrest unfolded it. He scowled at the scrawl he had to try to read; it might have been worse than his own hand, something he had trouble believing. “'Your demand… does not produce… the desired effect,'“ he said slowly. Even after he'd read it, it left him unhappy, or worse than unhappy. “This will not do,” he told Leaming. “Send it back, and say to Major Booth that I must have an answer in plain, unmistakable English. Will he fight or will he surrender? Yes or no!”

  Lieutenant Leaming turned red. He gave back a salute of drill-field precision, a salute so grand it was almost an insult. “I shall do just as you say, sir,” he replied, and did an about-face every bit as fancy. He strode off toward Fort Pillow.

  Fussy fellow, isn't he? Forrest thought. He almost laughed at Leaming's retreating back, to see if it could get any stiffer than it was already. He had his doubts. Turning to Captain Goodman, he said, “People go on and on about how I'm an ignorant, uneducated son of a bitch, but by God, Captain, I know how to say what I mean! “

  “Yes, sir, you sure do,” Goodman said with a small smile. Captain Young and Lieutenant van Horn both stirred, but neither U.S. officer said anything. After a moment, Goodman went on, “Sir, you've done all you need to do right up here-all you need to and more. Might be a good thing if you moved farther away from the fort.”

  “Ah?” Forrest needed only a heartbeat to understand why. “Reckon so?”

  “I do, sir.” Goodman pointed up toward the earthwork. “The niggers yonder who' re skylarking… Well, they're a bunch of damn fools, but they're only a bunch of damn fools, if you know what I mean. But the ones looking our way, and the ones pointing our way… One of them's liable to pick up a Springfield and point with that instead of his finger. I know they're nothing but niggers, but they don't need to be sharpshooters to hit at this range. “

  Again, Forrest didn't need long to think about it. He fought ferociously and exposed himself to all sorts of dangers, but that was when his blood was up. It wasn't up now. He could see the good sense in what Captain Goodman said. “All right. I'll do that,” he said. “Bring me the Federals' answer as soon as they deliver it.” He touched the brim of his hat to Young and van Kirk. “Gentlemen.”

  “General,” both officers said politely. John Young saluted-not to show him up, as Leaming had, but to acknowledge respect even for an enemy.

  “You think Major Booth will give up the fort, sir?” Captain Goodman asked as Forrest turned his horse toward the south.

  “I am satisfied in my mind that he will,” Forrest answered. “In the spot he's in, what else can he do?”

  He rode back to the position he'd taken before the Federals demanded proof he was on the field. Among the soldiers and officers gathered there was his bugler, a German named Jacob Gaus. He brandished the bugle the way an ordinary trooper would have brandished a revolver. It was perhaps the most battered musical instrument in the war; along with the dents caused by hard travel were two that came from Mini? balls. “Shall I blow the charge, sir?” Gaus asked.

  “Not yet,” Forrest answered. “I still have hopes that they will see sense and surrender. “

  “And if they don't?”

  “If they don't, Jacob… If they don't, they'll wish they had for as long as they live-and most of 'em won't live long.”

  Mack Leaming was shaking in his boots by the time he got back inside Fort Pillow. He had no doubt that he'd spoken with Nathan Bedford Forrest. He would have believed it even if Captain Young told him the Confederate was an impostor. One look into the big Reb's eyes told him everything he needed to know. Only a killer had eyes like those hard and cold, always probing for weakness, and always finding it, too.

  Major Bradford came up to him. “Well?” Bradford asked. “What does he say?”

  “He says he wants your answer in plain English, sir.” Leaming took a certain small pleasure in relaying Bedford Forrest's literary criticism. He would have enjoyed it more were he less alarmed. “Will you surrender? Yes or no?”

  “I can't just come out and say that!” Bradford exclaimed.

  “Sir, I think you'd better,” Lieutenant Leaming replied. “They will assault this place as soon as Forrest gives the order.”

  “So that really is the famous Bedford Forrest, is it?” Bradford tried to keep his tone light, but made heavy going of it. “I saw Young nod, but I can hardly believe it. “

  “That is Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Leaming spoke with absolute conviction. “What are we going to do, sir?”

  “I won't decide by myself,” Major Bradford said. “This is a decision all the officers in the fort need to make.”

  The ones the Rebs haven't shot, Leaming thought. If only they hadn't shot Major Booth. Bradford no doubt meant well, but he was far out of his depth here. His adjutant knew too well he couldn't do anything about that. Major Bradford was what they had, what the fight left them. Leaming said, “If you're going to hold a council, sir, for heaven's sake do it fast. They are about out of patience with us there on the other side of the breastwork.”

  Bradford licked his lips. Leaming wouldn't have been surprised if they were dry; his own were. The commandant gathered up half a dozen lieutena
nts and captains, one of whom had a bloody bandage on his hand but was still at the parapet. “Bedford Forrest demands that we surrender to him at once if we're going to,” Bradford said. “I am inclined to fight it out. Does anyone have a contrary view? If you do, speak up now.”

  “What if they get over our wall here?” asked a lieutenant from the colored heavy artillery; Leaming couldn't call his name to mind.

  “We drop down to the bank then,” Bradford answered, “and the New Era will blast the Rebs from here to Nashville.”

  “I wish to God the Olive Branch could have dropped off her soldiers here,” Captain Theodorick Bradford said.

  “So do I!” Leaming said. “The Confederates moved up in the ravines to head them off as openly as if they'd captured the fort. We could have given them more trouble if the truce flags weren't flying.”

  “Forrest wouldn't have listened to us. We already talked about that. And the truce involves his men, the fort, and the New Era. The Olive Branch was not party to it. Technically, the Rebs were within their rights to refuse her the opportunity to put men ashore,” Major Bradford said.

  He was a lawyer. There were times when his passion for nitpicking punctilio drove Mack Leaming wild. This was one of them, and worse than most. “Sir, to hell with the Rebels' rights!” Leaming exclaimed. “We're talking about our necks here! “

  “We've held Forrest off for this long,” Bradford said. “If his men try another push against the fort and fail, I can't imagine how they would be able to nerve themselves for one more after that. I ask again-does anybody feel we should yield?”

  No one said a word.

  “All right.” Bill Bradford was brisk. He nodded to Leaming. “You say Bedford Forrest wants a clear answer, do you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leaming answered.

  “I shall give him one, then. Let me have paper and pencil, someone.” When Bradford had them, he wrote rapidly and handed the pa. per to Leaming. General-l will not surrender. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, L.F Booth, Major Commanding, Leaming read. “There,” Bill Bradford said. “I hope that will be clear enough for General Forrest even without his spectacles, as John Hancock said when he signed the Declaration of Independence.” He laughed at his own wit.