Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

  A sergeant commandeered the two Negroes who'd carried him up to the top of the bluff. “Come on, damn you!” he yelled. “Don't stand there like lazy niggers, even if you damn well are. Plenty of bodies to dispose of.”

  Both blacks looked toward the lieutenant. He just shrugged, as if to say he was done with them. Off they went. The sergeant wasn't wrong. Negro and white prisoners were carrying their comrades-in-arms' corpses to the earthwork and throwing them into the ditch in front of it-the ditch that so dismally failed to keep out the Confederates.

  “There is a man who is not quite dead yet,” said someone: a white man, by his voice.

  “Put him down.” By the authority in the answer, it had to come from a Confederate officer. “If he dies in the night, we can throw him in come morning. And if he's still breathing at sunup… Well, we'll worry about it then.”

  Leaming started to say something to his fellow Freemason, only to discover the man no longer stood by his side. He looked around — where had the lieutenant gone? Leaming couldn't spot him. Was that his voice giving orders over by the sutlers' stalls? Leaming thought so, but couldn't be sure.

  He also thought the other man might have done more for him: might, for instance, have hunted up a surgeon to see to his wound. But, although still weak, he no longer feared he would die right away. His wound finally seemed to have stopped bleeding and he felt much better for the water the Rebel lieutenant gave him. He'd been dry as the Utah desert inside.

  Not far away, a Negro asked, “Reckon this here's deep enough, suh?”

  “Make it deeper, if you please.” Mack Leaming blinked in astonishment. That was Major Bradford, sure as hell, and he would have expected Forrest's troopers to kill Bradford out of hand. But the commandant went on, “I want to make sure the scavengers can't get at poor Theo.”

  “Whatever you say, suh.” The black man sounded resigned. Leaming heard first one spade, then another, bite into the ground. Dirt flew out and came down with wet smacking noises.

  Bill Bradford still breathing! Leaming shook his head in amazement even though moving hurt. Bradford had done everything he could to make the Rebs in west Tennessee hate him, so why was he still alive after they went on their killing rampage? Try as he would, Leaming couldn't fathom it.

  The sun slid below the horizon. Dusk deepened toward darkness.

  XIII

  Matt Ward looked at the hole in the ground in which Major Bradford was burying his brother. By now, it was deeper than the colored grave diggers were tall. It looked blacker than they did, too; in the fading light, it might have gone all the way down to China. Sure as hell, Theodorick Bradford was getting the fanciest send-off of any Federal at Fort Pillow — fancier than the Confederate dead were getting, too.

  When Ward glanced at Theo Bradford's body, that thought crossed his mind again. From somewhere, Bill Bradford had come up with a cloth to wrap his brother's corpse. Oh, the shroud was bloodstained here and there from the wounds the older man had taken. But for that, though, he might have died of natural causes.

  "Why don't you have some carpenters build him a coffin, too?" Ward asked.

  Sarcasm rolled off Bradford like water off a duck's back. "That won't be necessary," the U.S. officer answered. To the colored men roped in to help him, he added, "I reckon you've got it deep enough."

  "I reckon we done got it deep enough a while ago now," one of the Negroes said. Both of them tossed their shovels out of the grave. One black climbed out at a corner, then reached into the hole to help his comrade out.

  "Stick around," Bradford told them. "You'll need to fill it in when I'm done here." They looked at him. They looked at the shovels, and at their hands. They looked at the grave they'd just dug. Neither of them said a word. In their shoes (not that they were wearing shoes), Ward wouldn't have, either. Too easy to knock them over the head and toss them into the ditch outside the earthwork. Whatever happened to them, they wouldn't get a grave like this one. They wouldn't get much of a grave at all.

  Major Bradford slid his brother's body into its final resting place as gently as he could. Then he pulled a small Testament from the left breast pocket of his tunic. Almost everyone who carried a little Bible carried it there, in the hope that it would stop an almost-spent Mini? ball. Once in a blue moon, it did. Ministers preached sermons about the pocket Testament that saved a life.

  Like everything that had to do with Bill Bradford right now, the little book was soaked. He opened it anyway, and frowned. "Too dark to read," he said to Ward. "Would you get me a torch?"

  "I ain't your nigger. You can go to the Devil, for all I care," Ward said indignantly. "You want a torch, you can damn well get your own."

  "All right, then-I will," Bradford said. He wouldn't have to go far to find one. Plenty of them burned as the Confederates went on plundering Fort Pillow. He came back a few minutes later carrying not only a torch but also a jug. He set that down beside him and offered Ward the torch. "Would you be so kind as to hold it for me?"

  Grudgingly, Ward nodded. "Reckon I can do that much." "Thank you kindly." Bradford went through the pocket Testament with care, muttering, "Hope the pages aren't too soggy and stuck together." Then he stopped and nodded. "Here we are." His voice grew solemn: "'Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whomsoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?' "

  "I believe," Matt Ward murmured. The colored soldiers said something, too. The words were probably as familiar to them as they were to him and to Bill Bradford.

  Ward thought Bradford would let it go there, but the Federal read some other verses from the Book of John: " 'I am the door: by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture… I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so I know the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep… Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.' "

  Major Bradford closed the pocket Testament. He looked at Ward. Feeling something was called for, the Confederate trooper muttered, "Amen." One of the colored soldiers echoed him.

  The other one said, "You shoulda been a preacherman, Major. The words, they jus' come right on out."

  "I'm putting my brother in the ground," Bill Bradford said. "I don't think I could talk like that for anybody else."

  "You want we should cover him over now?" the Negro asked.

  "In a minute," Bradford answered. "There's another way to say good-bye to him, too." He picked up the jug. It sloshed. "I managed to get my hands on this before anybody else did. Theo would have liked it this way." He pulled out the cork, raised the jug to his lips, and took a pull. "Ahh!" He handed the jug to Matt Ward. "Here you go."

  "I thank you kindly." Ward remembered longing for whiskey early that morning. Had only a day gone by since then? It seemed more like five years. He swigged from the jug. Volcano juice ran down his throat. "Whew!" he said when he could speak again. "That's strong stuff." He started to give the jug back to Bradford.

  "Let the niggers have a knock, too," the Federal officer suggested. Ward started to bristle at the idea, but Bradford quickly added, "There's plenty to go round, and they're doing the hard work."

  "Well, hell. Why not?" What Ward had just drunk made him magnanimous-or maybe too tipsy to argue. He thrust the jug at the closer Negro. "Here, Go on."

  "Much obliged, suh." The black man took the whiskey jug, tilted it back, and then passed it to his comrade. "Mighty nice." The potent stuff didn't faze him at all. Ward wondered if he had a cast-iron gullet.

  When Major Bradford got the jug back from the second Negro, he wiped the mouth on his tunic before drinking from it again. Ward woul
d have done the same thing; he didn't want his mouth going where a black's had gone before it. Weren't Federals all hot for nigger equality? He wondered why Bill Bradford, who acted like a Southerner, chose the other side.

  Before he could ask, Bradford passed him the jug. Ward didn't mind drinking right after another white man. More tangleleg exploded in his stomach. He looked at the Negroes. "Get to work now."

  "Yes, suh," they said together. They weren't rash enough to ask for another pull at the whiskey jug for themselves. They had to know they were lucky to get one. They set to work with the shovels, throwing the dirt they'd dug out back into the grave. It thumped down on Theodorick Bradford's shrouded corpse.

  "He was a good man," Bill Bradford said. "He was one of the best." He nodded to Matt Ward. "You have a brother?"

  "Not that lived." Ward's head spun when he shook it-that popskull was mean as the Devil. "Had one who died when we were both little. I got me a couple of sisters and a big old raft of cousins." He took another pull at the jug, then offered it back to Bradford.

  "Thanks." The Federal officer raised it to his lips. "Cousins are all right, but they're not the same, you know what I mean?" He didn't seem like such a bad fellow once you talked with him for a while — and once you'd had enough whiskey to lubricate your brains a little.

  "Like I told you, I can't rightly say." Ward eyed Bradford, as well as he could by the torchlight flickering here and there. Now he asked his question: "What made you choose the wrong side, anyways?"

  "I don't reckon I did," the Tennessee Tory replied, stubborn even after disastrous defeat. "I believe in building things up, not tearing them down. The Union's lasted eighty-seven years now. There's hardly a man alive who wasn't born under the Stars and Stripes. Why go and tear that to pieces?"

  "On account of that damn Lincoln wants to take our niggers away and tyr-tyr-tyrannize over us." Matt Ward had to try three times before he could get the word out.

  "He didn't fire the first shot-you Rebs did that, at Fort Sumter. And we could have made some kind of arrangement about the niggers. We've had compromises before. We could have found another one. But Jeff Davis wanted to show what a big man he was, and we've been shooting at each other ever since."

  He trotted the arguments out smooth as you please. Ward remembered hearing he was a lawyer. But he couldn't talk around one thing: "This here is a Confederate state. If you aren't for the Confederacy, you're nothing but a dirty old traitor."

  "My loyalty is the old one. I'll stick to it." Major Bradford looked down at his brother's grave. "If you ask me to love the cause that killed poor Theo, I'm afraid you ask too much."

  "Quibble all you care to." Ward hefted his Enfield. "You damn well lost. "

  "And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" Bradford managed a mournful laugh. He had no weapon, but hefted the whiskey jug instead. "A sorrow I shall try to drown." He drank.

  "You already look drowned," Ward told him. "Let me have some more of that."

  "How can I say no? To the victor go the spoils." The Federal officer surrendered the whiskey. Ward raised the jug and took a long pull. Then he took another one.

  Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground. He didn't know how he'd got there. The whiskey jug sat beside him, though. That was funny. Laughing, he got up and drank some more.

  Bill Bradford laughed, too. Ward remembered that.

  "Come on!" Nathan Bedford Forrest shouted. "We've got to empty this place out, and we don't have a whole lot of time."

  He might have been-he was-the best cavalry general in the war. He was proud that his men would throw themselves at the damnyankees sooner than risking his displeasure. But even the mightiest man bumped up against the limits of his power. Forrest's men had fought like fiends. They'd licked the Federals, licked them and plundered them and slaughtered them. Now… Now they didn't want to do much more.

  Oh, they'd taken the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry's horses. You could never have enough remounts. And they would haul off the half-dozen guns they'd captured. Taking the enemy's cannon was proof of your own triumph. But…

  Bedford Forrest tried again: "We've got all these supplies here. We've got all these cartridges. We need to haul' em away."

  Nobody felt like listening to him. His soldiers had grabbed what they wanted and what they needed as individuals. Right now, he was the only one who seemed worried about grabbing what his ragtag army wanted and needed.

  A lot of Confederates had got into the whiskey the Federals put out to nerve their men. Forrest was angry at himself for not laying hold of that as soon as his troops got into Fort Pillow. He should have known better. He had known better, but he hung back to let his men have their way with the Negroes and homemade Yankees here. Now he was paying for it.

  "Hey, General!" somebody called, his voice full of good cheer and tanglefoot. "Look! We brung you your horse!"

  They must have led the animal up the side of the bluff. That surely took a lot of work and trouble. If only they would put so much work and trouble into the things that really needed doing. Bedford Forrest seethed. The worst part was, he had to make them think he was grateful. "Thanks, boys," he said as he climbed into the saddle. Maybe getting up there would do some good. A man on horseback was harder to ignore than a man on foot, even a big, loud man on foot.

  Forrest rode over a wounded black man. He thought the fellow was dead, but groans and a feeble effort to get away told him otherwise. The horse snorted and sidestepped; it was no more eager to step on a body, live or otherwise, than any other beast would have been.

  Down the slope toward the river, a Confederate who must have been talking to some V.S. prisoners said, "You damned rascals, if you had not fought us so hard but had stopped when we sent in a flag of truce, we would not have done anything to you."

  "We didn't reckon we could trust you," came the reply, probably from a Negro's throat.

  "How could you have done worse than you did?" the Confederate replied.

  "Kill all the niggers," another Confederate said-an officer, by the authority in his voice. A gunshot rang out-a tongue of yellow fire stabbing out down there in the darkness. Somebody screamed.

  "No!" another officer shouted. "Forrest says take them and carry them with him to wait on him, and put them in jail and send them to their masters."

  He was confused, but he had the general idea. Forrest rode to the edge of the bluff and called, "Yes, I do say that! There's been enough killing, dammit."

  A startled silence followed. "Godalmightydamn, that really is Bedford Forrest up there," somebody said.

  "Yes, it is. Come on up and help take things out of the fort,” Forrest said.

  But then someone shouted for him from over near the sutlers' stalls. He started over there. The animal hadn't taken more than three or four strides before more guns barked, down by the Mississippi. A voice floated out of the night: "There's another dead nigger."

  Forrest swore softly. He shook his head. The men didn't want to heed him or the officers set directly over them. What could you do? The river had run with blood for two hundred yards when the slaughter was at its height-so someone had told him, anyhow. Maybe that would demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers could not cope with Southerners.

  The horse walked over that colored artilleryman again. His leg was all bloody, and glistened in the flickering torchlight. "What is it?" Forrest called to the lieutenant waving to him from the stalls.

  "Sir, I caught this man pilfering goods." The young officer held a pistol on a middle-aged man in civilian clothes.

  "Well, what do you need me for?" Forrest said. "Deal with him like he deserves."

  "I was not pilfering, by God! " the man said. "I am Hardy Revelle." He struck a pose that suggested Bedford Forrest was supposed to know who he was and what that meant. Forrest stared back stonily. The civilian deflated somewhat. "I am a dry-goods clerk for Harris and Company, whose establishment this is."

  "And so?" Forrest growled. "Come to the point
and make it snappy, or you'll be sorry."

  "After what I've seen today, the murders in cold blood, I am already sorry," Hardy Revelle said. "But I am not pilfering. For one thing, this is my principal's property, so I have more right to it than-" He was likely going to say something like you thieving Rebs, but he thought better of it, which was wise. "-than you do," he finished. "For another thing, one of your captains already made me give him a pair of boots. And then after I did, that there captain took me to General McCullough's headquarters-"

  "He's Colonel McCulloch." Forrest bore down hard on the last syllable of McCulloch's name.

  "Whoever he is, that's where I went." Hardy Revelle didn't care about the correction. He went on, "His surgeon made me show him where the goods were, and a lieutenant with him made off with a bridle and saddle and some bits, and-"

  "Wait." Forrest interrupted again, holding up a hand. "What is the name of Colonel McCulloch's surgeon?"

  Hardy Revelle frowned. "Durrell? No, that's not right. Durrett." He nodded. "There. Now I have it. And the lieutenant was a big, gawky fellow called Hay. "

  Bedford Forrest nodded, too, for he was convinced. F. R. Durrett was the Second Missouri Cavalry's regimental surgeon, while J. S. Hay was Colonel McCulloch's ordnance officer. That left only one thing unexplained. "All right, Mr. Revelle-you got these things for the officers, like you say-"

  "I sure did." Hardy Revelle might have been the very picture of righteousness.

  "Well, fine." Forrest sounded mild-till he suddenly pounced: "So what in blazes are you doing here all by your lonesome? Looks like pilfering to me, by God."

  "No, sir. No, sirree. Not me." Now the dry-goods clerk shook his head. "I was just keeping things safe, like."

  "Sure you were." Forrest laughed. "Tell me another one."

  "What do you want me to do with him, sir?" the Confederate lieutenant asked. "Shall I give him what he deserves, like you said?" He made as if to pull the pistol's trigger. Hardy Revelle quailed.