The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  “Is that good?” Joyner asked.

  “Cain’t be beat,” Biggs answered positively.

  “Clear the parade ground,” Captain Lewis said. “Time for Company E to have their turn. Form column of fours.”

  Grumbling, disappointed they couldn’t shoot more, his men obeyed. Somebody sang out, “Enfield, Springfield, throw ‘em in the cornfield!” The chant ran down the column like wildfire. The men from the other companies that had already fired took it up again, too.

  “Whole army’s going to be singing that before long,” Caudell predicted.

  “Hope you’re right,” Dempsey Eure answered, “on account of that’ll mean the whole army’s got themselves repeaters.”

  Once they were back by their own shelters, the Castalia Invincibles regrouped around the men Benny Lang had instructed. “Now for the dull part: cleaning,” Caudell said. The men groaned. They groaned again when he showed them the cleaning rod and the kit in the stock compartment, and then how to open the receiver plate and extract spring, bolt carrier, and bolt. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he told them. “They go together like—this.” He reassembled the mechanism, closed the cover plate. “Now you do it.”

  They tried. The bolt proved reluctant to go back where it was supposed to. “Maybe for you it goes like this,” Melvin Bean said. “For me it just goes straight to the devil.”

  “Practice,” Caudell said smugly. Willingness to practice was a virtue teachers needed. His voice got deeper, more serious. “You all’ll keep practicing till I see you can do it. Watch me again.” He went through the process, very slowly. “You take another lick at it.”

  A couple of them succeeded in getting it right. Melvin Bean kept failing and swearing. Caudell walked over, took the private’s hands in his, guided them through what had to be done. “There. Do you see now?”

  Bean smiled. “Reckon so.”

  This time, everything went smoothly. “That’s a good job,” Caudell said, smiling himself. “Anyone else still having trouble?” Nobody said anything. “Good. Just don’t think that because you did it once, you have it by the tail. Keep working at it tonight. We’ll go over it again tomorrow, and the day after that. By then, I want you to be able to take that repeater apart, clean it, and put it back together in your sleep. If you can’t, maybe you should be toting a billet of wood instead.” The soldiers’ expressions sobered. Carrying a billet wasn’t onerous punishment, but there were better ways to pass a morning.

  Caudell hesitated before he taught the privates how to clean the magazine spring—why burden them with something they might not need to know? Benny Lang had said it was only occasionally necessary, and there looked to be plenty of banana clips about. But on second thought, Caudell did demonstrate the technique. What passed for the Confederate supply system could turn plenty into famine without warning.

  “More questions?” he said at last. “All right, then—dismissed.” Most of the men drifted away, still talking excitedly about the new repeaters they were carrying. The other groups had already broken up, some a good while before. Caudell cared nothing about that. Thoroughness counted here, and he was used to repeating himself any number of times until students caught on to what he was saying. Melvin Bean did not wander off. The private removed the receiver plate, took out the rifle’s works, tried to put them back together. Caudell watched. They proved balky. Bean swore softly, then said, “I just can’t make the pesky thing fit. Do you want to come back to my hut with me and show me what I’m doin’ wrong?”

  “I’d be glad to do that,” Caudell said.

  They walked down the straight muddy lane between rows of shelters. Bean’s cabin was small but neat; its one window even boasted shutters. No one else lived here, which was unusual, if not quite unique, in the regiment.

  Bean opened the door. “Go right on in, First Sergeant.” Caudell did. The private followed, closing and barring the door behind the two of them. “Now show me that trick of puttin’ this fool rifle back together again.”

  “You really were having trouble, then?”

  “I said as much, didn’t I? Thought I had it when you showed me before, but I lost the knack again.” They sat together on the blanket-covered pine boughs that did duty for a bed. Bean watched intently as Caudell went through everything. “So that’s what y’all were doin’! Here, let me have a go, Nate—I reckon I really have got it now.” Sure enough, the pieces went back together smoothly.

  “Do it some more. Show me it wasn’t a fluke,” Caudell said.

  Bean did, twice running. Caudell nodded. Bean checked to make sure the repeater’s change lever was in the safe position, ‘then set the weapons aside. “Good. I need to be able to do that.” Mischief sparked in the private’s eyes. “And now, Nate Caudell, I expect you’ll be lookin’ to find out how your own bolt fits.”

  “I’d like that a lot.” Bean had not waited for him to reply, but was already opening the seven-button private’s tunic. Caudell reached out and gently touched one of the small but perfectly feminine breasts that unbuttoning revealed. He smiled. “You know, Mollie, if you were one of those bosomy girls, you’d never get by with this.”

  “If I was, I could bind ‘em up, I suppose,” she said seriously. “It’d be as uncomfortable as all get out, though, an’ I do enough pretendin’ as it is. Melvin! Took me a goodish while even to get used to answerin’ to it.”

  Caudell’s lips followed his fingers. Mollie Bean sighed and pulled the tunic off altogether. A long, puckered scar marred the smooth skin of her left upper arm, outer mark of where a Minié ball had gashed the muscle. An inch or two lower and it would have smashed the bone and cost her the limb.

  “Here now.” She reached for him.” Ain’t hardly fair for me to be the only one gettin’ out of my clothes. ‘Sides, it’s chilly in here.”

  He held her close and did his best to warm her. He certainly forgot about the cold himself, at least until afterwards. When he sat up again, though, he found he was shivering. He dressed quickly. So did Mollie. Back in Confederate uniform, with her forage cap pushed down so the brim covered her eyebrows, she seemed just another private, too young to shave. The 47th North Carolina claimed more than a few of those. But she had been all woman in his arms.

  He studied her as if she were a difficult problem in trigonometry. She was very different from the hard-eyed Richmond whores to whom he’d occasionally resorted when he got leave. He supposed that was because he saw her every day and knew her as a person, not just a convenient receptacle for his lust, to be forgotten as soon as he was out the door. “Ask you something?” he said.

  She shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “How come you did—this?”

  “You mean, how come I came up to the fightin’?” she said. He nodded. She shrugged again. “I was bored down home. Wasn’t hardly nobody comin’ by the bawdyhouse where I was at, either, what with so many men bein’ away to the war. Guess I figured I’d come up and see it for myself, see what it was like.”

  “And?”

  Her face twisted into a wry grin. She still wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense of the word, especially with her black hair clipped off short like a man’s, but her wide, full-lipped smile made her seem much more feminine when she smiled. She said, “Didn’t like get tin’ shot worth a damn, I tell you that, Nate.”

  “I believe you.” He thanked his lucky stars he was still unwounded. Few bullets were as merciful as the one that had found her. The ghastly piles of arms and legs outside the surgeon’s tent after every fight, the screams of men shot in the belly, the dying gurgles of men shot through the chest.

  He was glad to forget those images when she went on, “But for that, though, y’all in the company are more like family ‘n anything I ever knew ‘fore I got here. Y’all care about me like you was my brothers, and y’all keep th’ officers from findin’ out what I am”—her wry grin flashed again—” ‘cause you know blamed well I ain’t your sister.”

  He laughed at that. He�
��d never asked before, though she’d been with the regiment a year. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear—perhaps something more melodramatic than her plain story. He took out the twenty dollars Confederate he’d won from Allison High, gave the bills to her.

  “Wish it was Federal greenbacks,” she said, “but it’ll do, Nate, it’ll do. Want to go another round?”

  He thought about it, but shook his head. “I’d better not. I can’t afford the time; I’ve been away too long as is.”

  “You care about what you’re doin’, That’s a good thing.”. Mollie made a face at him. “Or is it just I’m gettin‘ old? Cain ‘t think o’ many who would’ve turned me down if I’d asked ‘em when I was down in Rivington.”

  “You’re a damn sight younger than I am. You—” Caudell stopped. “You were in Rivington before you joined up? They say these new repeaters come from there, and the people who make them or sell them or whatever it is they do.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Mollie said. Caudell reflected that she’d probably heard it well before he did; she usually got news even before Colonel Faribault heard it. She went on, “Don’t know nothin’ about it, though. Them fellers weren’t there when I left the place a year ago. Not much else was, neither, ‘specially not men, so I got out. Sure you don’t want to go again?”

  “What I want to do and what I have to do are two different things,” Caudell said. “This is the army, remember?”

  Her laugh followed him as he returned to the cold and military world outside her cabin door. He looked down the lane toward the parade ground. George Hines was out there on his hands and knees, gathering up brass cartridge cases.

  * III *

  The locomotive snorted and hissed as it slowed. The shriek of the locked driving wheels against sanded rails reminded General Lee of the cries of wounded horses, the most piteous sound on any battlefield. The train stopped. There was a last jolt as the cars came together with a clanking clatter of link-and-pin couplings.

  Lee and the other passengers got to their feet.” All out to Richmond!” the conductor called before hurrying down to the next car to repeat the cry.

  Carpetbag in hand, Lee descended to the muddy ground outside the Virginia Central Railroad depot at the corner of sixteenth and Broad. The depot was a plain wooden shed; much in need of paint. A banner on the door of the tavern across the street advertised fried oysters at half price in honor of George Washington’s birthday.

  The banner made Lee pause in mild bemusement: strange how the Confederacy still revered the founding fathers of the United States. Or perhaps it was not so strange. Surely Washington, were he somehow to whirl through time to the present, would find himself more at home on a Southern plantation than in a brawling Northern factory town like Pittsburgh or New York. And, of course, Washington was a Virginian, so where better to celebrate his birthday than Richmond?

  A young man’s brisk voice brought Lee out of his reverie and back to the here and now: “General? I have a carriage waiting for you, sir.”

  He turned around, exchanged salutes with a lieutenant who wore a uniform nattier than any still to be found in the Army of Northern Virginia. “I hope you were not waiting long for me?”

  “No, sir.” The lieutenant pulled out a pocket watch. “It’s but a few minutes after four. The train was due in at a quarter past three. I arrived then, on the off chance it might be on time.” Both men smiled, knowing how unlikely that was. But a wise lieutenant did not take chances, not when he was meeting the senior officer of his army. He held out his hand for Lee’s bag, “If you’ll come with me, sir—”

  Lee followed him to the carriage. Its black driver tapped a finger against the brim of his tall silk hat as Lee got in. “Evenin’, Marse Robert.”

  “Hello, Luke. How are you today?”

  “Oh, middlin’, sir; I expect I’m about middlin’.”

  “That’s a fair enough place to be,” Lee said judiciously.

  The lieutenant put a snap of command in his voice: “Back to the President’s office, Luke.”

  “Yassuh.” Luke flicked his whip. The two-horse team started northwest up Broad Street. Like the lieutenant, both animals were in finer fettle than the beasts Jeb Stuart’s troopers rode. It was the same in Washington City, Lee had heard. He believed it. The farther one drew from the front lines, the easier one found comfort.

  Train tracks ran down the middle of Broad Street, connecting the Virginia Central depot with that of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac eight blocks away. Lee heard an engine coming their way, puffing at full throttle to haul a fully laden train up steep Shockoe Hill. The horses heard, too, and tossed their heads to show they did not approve. Luke calmed them with a few soft words.

  Before the bellowing, cinder-belching monster appeared, the carriage turned left onto Twelfth Street. It rattled through capitol Square on the way to the new building that had been the customhouse before Virginia left the Union.

  Off to the left, twin rows of oaks led to the governor’s mansion. To the right, Lee got a quick glimpse of the equestrian statue of George Washington before it vanished behind the severely classic bulk of the Virginia state capitol, now also the home of the Confederate Congress. The white columns and walls were remarkably handsome in spring and summer, when set against the rich green of the lawns and shrubbery and trees that surrounded them. Now the lawns were dead and yellow, the trees skeletal without their cloak of leaves.

  The Confederate flag waved bravely over the Capitol, red canton with blue saltire cross and thirteen stars on a white ground. The Stainless Banner would come down soon; sunset was near. It was both like enough to the Stars and Stripes and different enough from it to stir conflicting feelings in Lee. He remembered the day, almost three years gone now, when he had gone into the House of Delegates to take charge of Virginia’s forces. He shook his head. Four days before that, Winfield Scott had offered him command over the armies of the United States, to lead them against their seceded brethren. He still thought he had made the right—for him, the only—choice.

  The massive rectangle of the former customhouse took up a whole city block. Built from concrete and steel, it might have served duty as a fortress. Unlike most of Richmond’s major buildings, it was in Italianate rather than neoclassic style, its three stories shown by the tall windows with arched tops.

  Luke hitched his team to the rail in front of the building. The lieutenant said, “He will be at your disposal for the length of your stay in the city, sir. Now I will take you up to President Davis. Let me have your bag there, if you would.”

  “That’s very kind of you, sir.” Lee followed the lieutenant inside.

  The first floor housed the Treasury Department. Most of the time, busy men there would pause to look and point as Lee walked to the stairs. Those men needed to be busy, he thought with less than perfect forbearance, to print all the paper money that was pushing prices in the Confederacy to the sky. But even they had Washington’s birthday as a holiday.

  The second floor was always quiet, today no more so than usual. That floor belonged to the Department of State; no foreign nation had recognized the Confederate States of America, nor did any seem likely to unless the South won more victories than she had thus far.

  President Davis’s offices were on the third floor. The lieutenant tapped on a closed door. “Yes?” Jefferson Davis called from within.

  “I have General Lee with me, sir.”

  “Excellent. I will see him. You may return to your other duties.” The lieutenant opened the door, saluted Lee one last time, and hurried away.

  “Mr. President,” Lee said.

  “Come right in, General. I’ll be with you directly.” Davis was going around with a tallow dip, lighting lamps. His bearing was military—indeed, extraordinarily erect; he was a West Point man himself, from the class a year ahead of Lee’s. He came back to his desk last, and lit two lamps there. “Go on, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Thank you, sir.�
�� Lee waited for Davis to seat himself before he sank into an overstuffed armchair. The lamplight played up the hollows in Davis’s gaunt cheeks, lit his pale eyes within the shadows of their deep sockets. He was aristocratically handsome, while Abraham Lincoln had no claim to either breeding or good looks, but the two presidents, Lee thought irrelevantly, had faces of similar shape and leanness.

  Davis said, “How was your journey south?”

  “Well enough, sir,” Lee answered with a shrug. “I left this morning and am here now. If I am a trifle later than the railroad men claimed I would be when I set out, well, what train ever runs dead on time?”

  “None, I think; none on our railroads, at any rate.” Davis glanced to a tall clock that ticked in a corner of the office. His nostrils flared with exasperation. “Nor is Mr. Seddon. I had hoped him to be here half an hour ago.”

  Lee shrugged again. The Secretary of War had doubtless expected his train to run even later than it did; unlike the young lieutenant, he was sufficiently important in his own right to take such chances. In any case, President Davis was for all practical purposes his own Secretary of War. Lee knew he would sooner have been commanding Confederate armies in the field than governing from Richmond.

  As luck would have it, James Seddon walked into the office n()t fifteen seconds after Davis had complained about him. Lee rose to shake his hand. Seddon was tall, thin, and resembled nothing so much as a tired vulture. He wore his gray hair combed straight back from his forehead (it was thin in those parts anyhow) and long enough on the sides to cover his ears. At the president’s murmured invitation, he drew up a chair beside Lee’s. They sat together.

  “To business,” Davis said. “General Lee, I’ve heard great things of these new repeating carbines the soldiers are being issued. Even General Johnston has written to me from Dalton, singing hosannas in their praise.”