Corporal Jenkins strolled up and stood over him and slowly and deliberately reloaded. “You shit-eating bastard, you got by me once, but I'm damned if you'll do it twice,” he said, and aimed the rifle musket again.
“No,” Bradford moaned through blood in his mouth, through nerves telegraphing torment, though darkness swelling before his eyes.
And the rifle musket boomed once more, and the darkness rose up and swallowed everything. Through the rising flood, he heard a laugh and the words, “Shot trying to escape,” and then it overflowed, and he never heard or saw anything again.
Illinois. The land of liberty. Abe Lincoln's very own state. A free state. A state where owning a nigger was against the law. Ben Robinson knew there were places like that, but he'd never imagined he would come to one. It was an awful lot like getting to heaven, and nearly made getting shot worthwhile.
Nearly.
He lay on an iron-framed military cot in Ward N of the Mound City general hospital. A big sign said it was Ward N. People talked about it a dozen times a day. Now he knew what an N looked like. Benjamin Robinson. He had four of them in his name. It wasn't much of a start for learning his letters, but a start it was.
Colored soldiers from Fort Pillow, a couple of dozen of them, crowded the ward. Charlie Key was here, and Sandy Cole, and Aaron Fentis, too. They'd all survived their wounds, same as Ben had. Dr. Stewart Gordon, the white surgeon who ran the ward, said they were all likely to get better. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and to know what he was doing, too. Only one man had died since the Silver Cloud and the Platte Valley brought them up here, and poor Bob Hall had been in a bad way: a Reb had hacked up his head and his hand with a saber while he lay sick down at Fort Pillow. Another soldier, Tom Adison, had lost an eye and a chunk of his nose to a Mini? ball. He wasn't in good shape; Dr. Gordon looked worried every time he examined him. The rest were going to make it.
Every time Dr. Gordon changed his dressing, Ben stared at his own wound. Every time, he liked what he saw. Oh, yes, he would have liked not getting shot in the first place ever so much better. But the edges of the gouge in his thigh were healing together. The wound wasn't festering. It didn't have pus dripping from it. It didn't stink. It was-he was-getting better.
One morning-Ben thought it was ten days after the fight at Fort Pillow, but he might have been off one either way-the surgeon came into Ward N earlier than usual. “I want you to listen to me, boys,” he said. “Something's up.”
He was younger than a lot of the colored soldiers he was talking to. But he'd treated every last one of them, and was plainly doing the best he could with them. Ben traded glances with Sandy Cole and Charlie Key, but he was inclined to give the surgeon the benefit of the doubt.
“Something's up,” Gordon repeated. “We're going to have men from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War visit you today: Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch.”
Even a colored artilleryman who'd been a soldier for only a little while knew about the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. When something went wrong with the Union war effort, the members of the committee swooped down like eagles-some said like vultures to pin the blame on whoever deserved it (or whoever they thought deserved it). They could blight an officer's career. They could, and they had, and by all accounts they liked doing it.
“Do Jesus! Us niggers gonna be in trouble for losing the fight?” Robinson asked in more than a little alarm.
But the surgeon shook his head. “No, no, no. So help me, no. As far as they're concerned, you're heroes for fighting as well as you did. No, what they're after is making Bedford Forrest out to be a monster on account of the massacre. They aim to use it to fire up people in the North to fight the Rebs harder.”
“I got you,” Ben said, but he couldn't help adding, “If you was ever a slave, you already got all the reason you need to fight them Confederate bastards hard as you can.”
“There are no slaves up here,” Dr. Gordon reminded him. “A lot of people up here have never set eyes on a colored man, let alone owned one. The men from the committee want to remind them what the war is all about. There's an election coming up, you know. If Honest Abe doesn't go back to the White House, the Democrats will give the damn Rebs whatever they want.”
“Do Jesus!” Ben said again. He'd imagined the Federals beaten. He knew the Confederates fought hard. But he'd never dreamt the United States might just give up the fight.
He felt better when he saw the members of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Congressman Daniel Gooch was about forty, with a round face, reddish hair and beard, and worried eyes behind small, oval spectacle lenses. Senator Benjamin Wade was at least twenty years older, and quite a bit tougher. He combed his graying, thinning hair straight back. His eyes were narrow and shrewd, his mouth a disapproving slash across his clean-shaven face. He effortlessly dominated the proceedings.
“We are going to get to the bottom of the bad faith and treachery that seem to have become the settled policy of Forrest and his command,” Wade declared in a rasping voice that brooked no argument. “We must convince the authorities of our government of this fact. Even the most skeptical must believe that it is the intention of the Rebel authorities not to recognize the officers and men of our colored regiments as entitled to the treatment accorded by all civilized nations to prisoners of war. And at Fort Pillow the brutality and cruelty of the Rebels were most fearfully exhibited.”
A secretary took down his words as he spoke them. This man means it, Robinson realized. He'd always known the Rebs were in grim earnest. He'd sometimes doubted his own side was. Here, though, here stood a man with as much iron in his spine as even Nathan Bedford Forrest had.
Congressman Gooch started questioning the colored man closest to him, Elias Falls of Company A. Falls spoke of what he'd seen and heard during the fight. He said Bedford Forrest had ordered the firing stopped, and that a Secesh officer had threatened to arrest a soldier for shooting a Negro. The secretary wrote down his words just like Senator Wade's.
When Falls finished testifying-he didn't take long-Ben Wade spoke again: “That will be about enough of that. We are here to show the people of the United States what monsters the Rebels are. We are going to do that. If you men want to testify to anything else, do it before the Confederate Congress. Do you understand me?” After that, no one talked much about officers trying to stop the shooting.
Congressman Gooch asked most of the questions. Senator Wade chimed in now and again. They worked their way through the ward, coming closer and closer to the cot where Ben Robinson lay. At last, the secretary told him, “Raise your right hand.” When he did, the white man said, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“Yes, suh,” Robinson answered, impressed by the gravity of the phrases.
“I have sworn in the witness, sir,” the secretary said formally to Daniel Gooch. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you.” Gooch's voice was a light tenor. His New England accent gave Ben a little trouble, but he managed. “Were you at Fort Pillow in the fight there?” Gooch asked.
“Yes, suh,” Ben said. The secretary scribbled, taking down his words for all time.
The Congressman took him through what had happened and how he got shot. Gooch asked if he had seen the Confederates burn any soldiers. He said no, because he hadn't. Gooch's mouth tightened a little, but he went on to ask about burials, and whether Ben had seen anyone buried alive. Robinson mentioned the one Negro who was still working his hand when he went into the ground.
“Were any Rebel officers around when the Rebels were killing our men?” Gooch asked.
“Yes, suh-lots of them,” Robinson answered.
“Did they try to keep their men from killing our men?”
“I never heard them say so.” Ben explained how Bedford Forrest had ridden his horse over him three or four times.
Daniel Gooch let him finish, then asked, “Wher
e were you from?” “I come from South Carolina,” Robinson replied.
“Have you been a slave?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Thank you, uh, Sergeant.” Gooch went on to the colored man in the next bed, a private from Company B named Dan Tyler. He asked him the same sorts of questions he'd asked Ben. He and Senator Wade continued through the ward till they'd heard the stories of most of the Negroes there. Even badly wounded Tom Adison got to speak his piece.
“Thank you, men,” Ben Wade said when they finished. “Thank you for your bravery down South, and thank you for what you told us here today. We aim to make it so that everyone in the whole country will remember Fort Pillow for as long as this nation lives. It deserves remembering, and that's a fact. Men will go into battle crying, 'Remember Fort Pillow!' And we will pay the Rebels back in their own coin. Never doubt it, men, for we will!”
He lumbered out of the room, Congressman Gooch and the secretary hurrying along in his wake. “We was part of history,” Ben Robinson said in wonder as the door closed behind them. “We reckoned we was just soldierin', but we was part of history. I be damned. Me-a part 0' history.” Up till now, history, like freedom, had been something for whites only. In an odd way, a completely unexpected way, he felt more of a man than he ever had before.
Mack Leaming wasn't happy, and the pain from his wound wasn't the only thing to make him unhappy. Like everyone else who'd lived to come north from Fort Pillow, he knew the officials from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War were on their way west to find out what went wrong.
He knew when they reached Mound City, and he knew when they questioned the Negroes who'd survived Bedford Forrest's murderous attack. Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch got to the coons before they asked the white survivors a single question. And if that wasn't wrong, Lieutenant Leaming had never run into anything that was.
Not until the following day did Wade and Gooch and their obsequious secretary come to Ward B, where Leaming lay recuperating. The surgeon, a tall, thin, doleful-looking man named Charles Vail, came early in the morning to change his dressings. Vail also stopped by the bed of Captain John Potter, who lay not far away. He looked at Potter-who'd led Company B of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry-and shook his head.
“No change?” Leaming asked.
“I'm afraid not,” Dr. Vail answered. “With a head wound like that, he's in God's hands, not mine. And God hasn't doled out many miracles lately. Potter's almost hopeless. I wish I could tell you different, but…” He spread his hands.
While Leaming was digesting that, the secretary who'd accompanied Messrs. Wade and Gooch to Mound City came into the ward. He spoke with Vail; the surgeon led him over to Leaming's bed. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” the secretary murmured. His voice and clothes were prissily precise. A cornholer? Leaming wondered. Wouldn't be surprised.
But that was neither here nor there. “Good morning,” Leaming said.
“I hope you continue to improve,” the secretary told him.
“He's making good progress,” Dr. Vail put in. “His prognosis is favorable, unlike poor Captain Potter's.”
“I am glad to hear it.” The secretary gave his attention back to Leaming. “The gentlemen from the Joint Committee are most desirous-most desirous, sir-of presenting the massacre at Fort Pillow to the people of the United States in terms as emphatic, and as condemnatory of Bedford Forrest and his brigands, as possible. Any assistance you can offer towards that end will be greatly appreciated. Do I make myself plain?”
“I think you do, sir,” Leaming answered. Wade and Gooch wanted him to slang the Rebs, and they wouldn't mind if he stretched things a little to do it. Neither would he. After everything that had happened at Fort Pillow, he wanted to pay them back any way he could.
The effete secretary withdrew, to return a few minutes later with the Senator and the Congressman. He administered the oath to Leaming, then took out his notebook and pen while Daniel Gooch started the questioning. With the secretary's encouragement, Leaming wasn't above stretching things when he talked about the truce. He complained that the Rebs who'd come down to the riverside to meet the Olive Branch took advantage of the white flag to improve their position. Because the steamer was not a party to the cease-fire, that wasn't exactly so, but it felt as if it ought to be. Congressman Gooch nodded gravely. The secretary's pen slid across the paper.
Leaming told how he'd been shot and robbed and succored only by his fellow Freemason. When he described how he'd been carried aboard the Platte Valley, Senator Wade took over for Gooch. He wanted to know who'd been drinking with the Rebs. Leaming hesitated about putting U.S. officers in hot water, and truthfully said he hadn't seen anyone doing so. Wade did not look happy. Leaming got the idea he seldom looked happy, but he looked even less so now.
“Do you know what became of Major Bradford?” Wade asked. “He escaped unhurt, as far as the battle was concerned,” Leaming answered. “I was told the next morning on the boat that he had been paroled. I did not see him after that night. “
A little later, Congressman Gooch asked, “What do you estimate Forrest's force to have been?”
“From all I could see and learn, I should suppose he had from seven thousand to ten thousand men,” Leaming answered. Major Booth hadn't thought so, but Major Booth was dead… and the larger number better suited the Union cause. A few questions later, Leaming got the chance to trot out one more rumor: “I have been told that Major Bradford was afterwards taken out by the Rebels and shot. That seems to be the general impression, and I presume it was so.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Gooch and Wade said together. “No further questions,” Wade added.
After the secretary closed his notebook and put away his pen, Daniel Gooch nodded to Leaming. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That was very effective testimony.”
“I was doing my best to help, Your Excellency,” Leaming replied.
“Well, your best is damned good, son,” Ben Wade rumbled.
“We'll hold Bedford Forrest's toes to the fire with what you had to say-just see if we don't.” His face darkened with anger. “And we'll put a stop to the despicable practice some of our officers have of treating white men on the other side better than they treat colored soldiers in their own uniform. Despicable, I say, and we will stamp it out.”
“Er — yes, sir.” Till he'd seen the Negro artillerymen at Fort Pillow fight, Mack Leaming would have been that kind of Federal officer himself. Fighting for the Union and fighting for the Negro had seemed two very different things to him. They still did, as a matter of fact-but he had more sense than to admit it to the implacable Senator from Ohio.
“If I may be permitted to say so, Lieutenant, your testimony was exactly along the lines envisioned by the committee when it voted to send Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch west to investigate this tragic incident,” the secretary observed.
You told them what they wanted to hear. Leaming heard the words behind the words. “Good,” he said. The secretary had told him what the distinguished gentlemen wanted, and he was glad to oblige. This was a war of soldiers and cannons and gunboats, yes. But it was also a war of politics. He could see November ahead, just as Wade and Gooch could. If Lincoln failed then, if the Democrats prevailed then, all the Union's sacrifices would be for nothing.
He and his comrades had lost the battle at Fort Pillow. They might yet win the struggle to define what happened there, and winning that struggle would go some little way toward winning the war as a whole. Leaming shifted carefully on the cot. His wound still pained him. Wounded or not, though, he might still pain Nathan Bedford Forrest.
“Shot trying to get away, was he?” Bedford Forrest said, stalking through the parlor of the Duke house in Jackson as he had while ordering the attack on Fort Pillow.
“Yes, sir,” Captain Anderson said stolidly. “So the men who were bringing Major Bradford and the other prisoners here report.”
“Well, Lord knows he's n
o loss. He's a gain, by God.” But Forrest studied his assistant adjutant general. “So they say, eh? But you don't believe 'em, do you?” Anderson shook his head. “How come you don't?” Forrest asked.
“Well, sir, for one thing, among the men who were supposed to be bringing him in was Corporal Jack Jenkins,” Anderson answered.
“Corporal…? Oh!” A fortnight after the fight at Fort Pillow, Forrest needed a moment to place the name, but only a moment. “The fellow he gave the slip to getting out of the fort!”
“The very same,” Anderson said.
“You reckon Jenkins got his own back, then?”
“Sir, I can't prove a thing. All the men tell the same story,” Anderson replied. “And it certainly is something Bradford might have done, when you consider that he did break his parole in leaving Fort Pillow. “
“Uh-huh.” Forrest wondered what to do-but, again, not for long.
“Well, Charlie, I don't suppose I need to ask any more questions. Bradford got what was coming to him, and by my lights he earned it. If anybody ever kicks up a stink about it-and who would kick up a stink about a skunk like that? — 'shot trying to escape' ought to quiet things down, eh?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose so.” Captain Anderson didn't sound overjoyed at his decision, but he didn't sound as if he wanted to make a fuss, either. That suited Bedford Forrest fine. Major Bradford hadn't been worth a fuss while he was alive, and sure as hell he wasn't worth one dead.
“Anything else I need to know?” Forrest asked.
“News from Memphis is that a couple of Federal Congressmen are nosing around, trying to figure out where the blame goes for losing Fort Pillow,” Anderson said.
“Are they, by God?” Forrest said. His aide nodded. Forrest threw back his head and laughed. “I'm glad to hear it, the Devil fry me black as a nigger if I'm not. I was starting to believe our side was the only one with fools in Congress.”
“They're shouting and wailing about how we massacred all the poor darkies-and the homemade Yankees, too,” Anderson said.
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