The Union forever; Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!
Down with the traitor; up with the star.
While we rally 'round the flag, boys,
Rally once again.
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
By contrast, the Rebs sang,
Our Dixie forever; she's never at a loss
Down with the eagle, up with the cross.
We'll rally' round the bonnie flags,
We'll rally once again,
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom.
To the Confederates in Fort Pillow, freedom seemed to mean freedom to loot. Another Secesh soldier called on Leaming a few minutes after the first one left. “Give me your money, you lousy Tennessee Tory, or you'll be sorry,” he said.
“Then I'll have to be sorry,” Leaming answered. “Another one of your fellows already took everything I had. “
“Now tell me one I'll believe,” the Reb said, and searched him with practiced ease that suggested he was either a sheriff or a bandit by trade. Leaming knew which way he would have bet. The Confederate swore when he found Leaming was telling the truth. “Well, I'll get something for myself, anyways,” he said, and stripped off Leaming's shoes. They proved too small, which made him swear again.
Then he cheered up a little. “Maybe I can swap 'em with somebody else who's got a bigger pair.”
“If you are a Christian man, please let me have some water,” Leaming said.
“I am a Christian man, and I hope to go to heaven,” the C.S. trooper replied. “But if we met in hell and you were on fire, I'd give you kerosene instead of water. That's what you deserve, you cowardly Yankee piece of shit, for putting guns in niggers' hands and making, em think they can rise up against their masters. God and Bedford Forrest will punish you for that.”
He didn't say whether he trusted more in the Deity or his commanding officer. He did go away, Leaming's shoes in his hand.
The right side of his torso one vast stabbing ache, Leaming lay where he had fallen. He looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking toward the western horizon, but hadn't got there yet. He wondered if he would die before it did. So much had happened so fast. Only a few hours earlier, he was parleying with Nathan Bedford Forrest himself. He'd never imagined it would come to this, to Fort Pillow lost, to finding out what having a bullet hole in him was like.
He grimaced. Some kinds of knowledge were too dearly bought. He'd always been a bright and curious man, but this once he wouldn't have minded ignorance.
A shadow fell across his face. It wasn't a vulture circling close to see if he was dead yet, although the way he felt he wouldn't have been surprised if it were. Not a vulture with feathers, anyhow: another Reb, seeing if he had anything worth stealing.
The Confederate soldier gave him a rueful grin. “Looks like I'm just about too late,” he said. “My pals done took all the good stuff off'n you.”
“Water?” The more Leaming asked for it, the more he was refused, the more he craved it.
He asked in vain again. The Reb might as well not have heard him. “Reckon I can get more use out of them trousers'n you ever will,” he said. “Hike your bottom up so's I can get' em off you.”
“I'm wounded,” Leaming got out through clenched teeth.
“I can see that-it's why I don't want your damned tunic,” Forrest's trooper said. “Ain't nothin' wrong with your pants, though — hardly any blood on them. So hike up and let me have 'em.”
Leaming's wound mattered to him only in so far as it made thievery inconvenient. The Federal officer didn't — couldn't — hike up. His tormentor stole his trousers anyway. Leaming begged for water one more time. He might as well have talked to a deaf man. The Confederate went right on ignoring his pleas. He thought of trying to shame the man, thought of it and decided not to. The trooper who'd stolen his shoes had his own brand of righteousness, however twisted it seemed to Mack Leaming. This fellow might also. And if he did, he might decide to use bullet or bayonet to silence what he didn't want to hear.
And even with the anguish of his wound, Leaming wanted to live. He aimed to die at home, at a ripe age, surrounded by a large and loving family. This muddy bluffside in the flower of his youth? This had nothing to do with what he had in mind. What God had in mind for him… he asked himself more and more often as the sun slid toward setting.
XII
When the firing at fort Pillow finally slowed, Nathan Bedford Forrest rode forward. His men had had their fun, or enough of it. He knew he couldn't have stopped them even if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. He'd warned the Federals he wouldn't answer for the consequences if they didn't give up. Every time he used that warning up till now, they either surrendered or beat back his men, both of which rendered the threat moot.
But it wasn't moot here. Fort Pillow did fall, and so it had to take the consequences. If he tried to hold his men in check after the fall — and if he managed to do it, which wouldn't be easy by a long shot — what sort of threat could he make the next time he wanted to shift some Yankees? He shook his head. None at all.
“Major Booth-no, Major Bradford-you are a damn fool,” he muttered.
“What's that, sir?” one of his staff officers asked.
“Nothing. Never mind,” Forrest said, annoyed the other man overheard him. He wondered whether Bradford still lived. He was inclined to bet against it, when the Tennessee Tory had so many men who wanted him dead. Bradford's bully boys had harried loyal Confederates in west Tennessee almost as savagely as Colonel Fielding Hurst's outfit. Well, they wouldn't any more-and neither would Hurst for a while.
Forrest's own men cheered him as he neared the position they had stormed. They whooped and grinned and waved their slouch hats. Some of them showed off the shoes and trousers and weapons they'd taken from the Federals. Forrest only grinned when they did. The Confederates had to make war pay for itself when they fought the richer United States.
One trooper waved to Forrest with a fist full of greenbacks. Forrest grinned at him, too, but said, “For God's sake, Lucas, stick that in your pocket! You want somebody to knock you over the head and walk off with it?”
“Anybody tries, I reckon he'll be mighty sorry mighty fast,” Lucas answered. With a pistol on one hip and a Bowie knife on the other, he looked ready to raise large amounts of hell.
“Put it away anyhow,” Bedford Forrest said. “The less temptation you stir up, the better off everybody is.”
Lucas thought about telling him no, then visibly thought better of it. Anyone who told Forrest no was likely to be sorry for it, and in short order, too. If Major Bradford remained alive, he had to wish he'd surrendered. And if he didn't, he would have gone on wishing it till his dying breath.
At the top of the bluff, Forrest dismounted. His horse couldn't cross the trench in front of the U.S. earthworks. But several planks now spanned the ditch. His troopers went back and forth as they pleased.
Under their orders — and under their guns — Federal prisoners were throwing dead U.S. soldiers into the ditch. Bedford Forrest nodded to himself. Why bother digging graves when they already had a big trench handy?
Two Negro prisoners picked up a body. One of them turned to the closest C.S. soldier. “Suh, this here fella, he ain't dead,” he said. “I done seen his hand move.”
“That's a fac', suh,” the other black agreed. “I seen it, too.”
“Set him down,” the trooper said. The Negroes obeyed. The Confederate soldier stooped for a closer look. His knee joints clicked when he straightened. “Pitch him in,” he told the prisoners. “If he ain't dead, he's too far gone for a sawbones to help. He'll be gone by the time they throw dirt on him-and if he ain't, it'll put him out of his misery. Go on-get your lazy black asses moving.”
The captives looked at each other. Then, with almost identical sighs, they obeyed. Nathan Bedford Forrest nodded again. What would happen if they refused? Their bodies would lie at the bottom of the ditch-and so would that of the prisoner, who, if he was alive,
wouldn't stay that way for long.
More prisoners, these white men, carried the body of a soldier in butternut to lie with his comrades. A junior officer stood over the Confederates' bodies. “What's our part of the butcher's bill?” Forrest called.
“Sir, we've got about twenty dead,” the lieutenant replied, stiffening to attention when he realized who'd asked the question. “About sixty wounded, I've heard, but don't hold me to that.”
“All right-thanks,” Bedford Forrest said. The young officer saluted. Forrest returned it with a gesture more than half a wave. Then he crossed into Fort Pillow. The planks that bridged the ditch groaned under his weight-he was half again as heavy as a lot of the men who served under him. Some Yankee general said small, young, single men made the best cavalry troopers. On the whole, Forrest agreed with him. But he was not small himself, he had a wife, and the pain from his many wounds reminded him he wasn't so young any more, either.
He jumped down from the broad parapet into the fort. Men in blue carried the bodies of their comrades toward the ditch. Forrest's troopers urged them along. If the soldiers in butternut urged blacks more roughly than whites.. well, too bad. Bedford Forrest shrugged a broad-shouldered shrug. He had no love for Negroes trying to soldier, either.
Other Confederates went on robbing dead and living Federals. Forrest did nothing to stop them. Without Yankee loot, the Confederacy would long since have folded up and died. Having to plunder the enemy to keep fighting him made the war harder, but it went on.
And some of Forrest's troopers went on killing the men they'd overcome. Forrest scowled. “That's enough!” he shouted. “Enough, damn your black hearts! Stop it, or I'll make you sorry!”
Without looking over his shoulder to see who had spoken, a Confederate growled, “Who the hell do you think you are, to try and give an order like that?”
Bedford Forrest trotted up to him and knocked him to the muddy ground, then stood over him with fists clenched. “I'm your general, that's who,” he said. “Who the hell d'you think you are, to try and disobey me?”
He waited. If the trooper wanted a fight, he could have one. But he quailed instead. Few men did anything but quail in the face of an angry Nathan Bedford Forrest. “I'm sorry, sir,” the man mumbled.
“I'll make you sorrier than you ever thought you could be if you go disobeying orders again,” Forrest said. “You hear me?” Miserably, the soldier in butternut nodded. Forrest thought about stirring him with his foot, but held back. Treating the trooper like a nigger might make him lash out with no thought for what happened next. Instead, Forrest told him, “Get up and do what you're supposed to do, then.”
As the trooper rose, a gunshot rang out not far away. Somebody let out a shriek: a Negro clutching a smashed and bleeding hand. The Confederate soldier who'd shot him cussed a blue streak and started to reload. He'd been aiming for the black man's head, not his hand.
“General Forrest said that's enough,” a captain snapped. “You shoot anybody else, or you shoot this miserable son of a bitch again, I'll put you under arrest. Do you want a court-martial?”
“No, sir,” the soldier said grudgingly. “But I don't want some dumb fucking nigger trying to kill me, neither.” Forrest turned away so the trooper wouldn't see him smile. The captain was right, no doubt about it. Even so, you could always rely on a Southern soldier to speak his mind.
Forrest started to turn back, then stopped short. His pale eyes narrowed. The U.S. officer crouching beside a body had gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. That made him a major. With Lionel Booth dead, he had to be Bill Bradford. Face grim as death, Forrest stalked toward him.
Major William Bradford had given his parole to a Confederate colonel. The Rebs deigned to take it after they couldn't quite kill him. The officer even gave him something to eat, though Bradford still had his soaked uniform on.
He didn't notice the thump of boots on damp ground till the noise was almost on top of him. He looked up in surprise-and up and up, for he didn't see such a tall man every day, or every week, either. That dark chin beard, that hard mouth, those smoldering eyes… With Theo dead, with Fort Pillow fallen, he hadn't thought any worse disaster could befall him. Now, as Nathan Bedford Forrest scowled at him, he wondered how long he could stay even as lucky as he had been.
His knees clicked when he straightened. Even on his feet, he still looked up at Forrest, who was at least six inches taller. “General,” Bradford said with such spirit as he could muster, and held out his hand.
The Confederate commander did not take it. Slowly, Bradford let it fall, his face hot with shame and rage. “You damned fool, why didn't you give up when you could?” Forrest demanded.
“Why?” Bradford shrugged. “Because I thought I could hold your men out. And because I feared they would act like beasts if they got in. And I was right, by God!” He pointed toward the heaped and tumbled corpses of Union soldiers, and toward the prisoners carrying bodies to the parapet and flinging them into the ditch.
“That never would have happened if you surrendered,” Forrest said.
“So you say now,” Major Bradford answered.
For a moment, he wondered if Bedford Forrest would strike him down where he stood. When Forrest grew angry, his whole countenance changed. He went red as hot iron, and seemed to swell so that he looked even larger than he was. “Are you calling me a liar, Major?” he asked softly.
If Bradford answered yes, he was a dead man. He could see that. “I did not trust your earlier assurances, sir,” he replied with lawyerly evasion.
“When I say I'll take prisoners, I mean it,” Forrest growled, some of that furious color ebbing from his face-some, but not all. “Over at Union City, Colonel Hawkins knew as much. He surrendered to my forces, and he and his men are safe today.”
“This makes twice he's surrendered to you,” Bradford said scornfully. “He's had practice, you might say.”
“Well, you're a damn sight worse off now than if you did show the white flag,” Forrest said, and Bradford winced. He could hardly deny that. The Confederate commander went on, “I told you I'd let you surrender, didn't I? Good Lord, I even said I'd let your niggers surrender, and that's something I've never done before and I'm not likely to do again.”
“I… had trouble crediting it when you did.” Bill Bradford picked his words with care, not wanting to inflame Forrest again.
“Too bad for you.” Forrest waved back toward the rises outside the Federal perimeter. “As soon as I got men on that high ground, I could cut you to pieces easy as you please. Your soldiers couldn't stick their heads up over the earthwork without giving my sharpshooters perfect targets. Any man with an ounce of sense would have seen as much, and thrown in the sponge.” One corner of his mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Well, I reckon that leaves you out.”
“Gloat all you care to,” Bradford said wearily. He pointed to Theo's body. “All I aim to do is give my brother Christian burial better than chucking him into that mass grave as if he were a butchered beef.”
To his amazement, all the high color drained from Bedford Forrest's face. “That's your brother, Major?” Forrest asked, also pointing to the bullet-riddled corpse. Bradford nodded. Forrest startled him again, this time by taking off his hat and holding it over his heart. “Please accept my deepest sympathy,” Forrest said. “I lost my own dear brother, Jeffrey, down at Okolona, Mississippi, a couple of months back — you may or may not have heard. But I expect you will believe I have some notion of the misery you feel.”
Major Bradford had heard that Jeffrey Forrest was killed in action. It didn't mean much to him at the time: just one more Rebel officer dead, and the wrong Forrest at that. But with Theodorick lying there all bloody, everything changed. Bradford managed a stiff if soggy bow. “I thank you, sir. No one who has not experienced the same thing can hope to understand it.”
“That is a fact,” Forrest said. “You may give your brother the burial you like.” He turned and shouted for one of his a
ides.
The man came up at a trot-when Forrest said something, people jumped to obey. “What is it, sir?”
“Detail a couple of captured niggers to dig a proper grave for Major Bradford's brother here,” Forrest answered. “Even an enemy can bury his dead.”
“Yes, sir.” No matter what the lieutenant said, he didn't sound happy about it. He looked daggers at Bradford. “Then what do we do with the god damn son of a bitch?”
“Well, we captured him. He gave his parole.” Bedford Forrest didn't sound very happy about it, either. “Now that we've got him, I suppose we have to keep him.” No, he didn't seem happy at all.
“I fought hard, gentlemen, but I fought clean,” Bradford said.
“Shut up, you lying bastard,” snarled the C.S. lieutenant. “What about that poor fellow who didn't like Yankees, and said so, and got his tongue tom out on account of it?”
Major Bradford gulped. “My men never did anything like that.”
To his relief, General Forrest nodded. “He's right, Sam. That wasn't his regiment — it was Hurst's. Too damn bad I didn't catch him instead of running him into Memphis.” But his gaze grew no friendlier as he went on. “What about the women your soldiers molested, Bradford? The women whose menfolks chose the other side?”
“I never gave orders for any such thing, General,” Bradford said, as he had before. “As God is my witness, I didn't. They would be an outrage against the laws of war.”
But Nathan Bedford Forrest only laughed in his face. “Of course you didn't. However big a jackass you are, you aren't that big.” That was a sardonic twist on Bradford's own thoughts. Forrest went on, “But you don't have to give order when you've got your boys all set to do what they crave doing anyways. You just look the other way and turn 'em loose. And your hands stay clean.”
Fort Pillow Page 21
