The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  “Most of ‘em have farms, though, to keep food on their tables”‘ Lewis said. On the edge of anger now, Caudell shook his head. Lewis shrugged. “All right, Nate, if that’s how you want it, that’s how it’ll be. You ever change your mind, all you ever need do is let me know about it.”

  “I will,” Caudell said, knowing he wouldn’t. Lewis’s concern touched him all the same, The captain’s children did not attend his school; Lewis could afford better. But he looked out for rich and poor in the country. Caudell had voted for him without hesitation last fall and was ready to do it again if he stood for reelection.

  Lewis made his good-byes and went off. Caudell was about to head back to his room when Raeford Liles called after him, “Got a letter for you, Nate. Let me open up again.” Caudell trotted back to the general store. Liles worked the key, threw the front door wide. He went behind the counter. “Here y’are: from that gal o’ yours Up Rivington way.”

  “She’s not my gal,” Caudell said, as he still did whenever he got a letter from Mollie Bean or sent her one.

  “Too bad for her if she’s not, on account of I wish everything and everybody in Rivington’d get blown to hell and gone, and if she was your gal I’d leave her out of that there wishin’.”

  “I wish you would do that, Mr. Liles,” Caudell said.

  “Only since it’s you as asks me, Nate.” Liles proceeded to curse the town of Rivington and its inhabitants with vigor and inventive wit whose like Caudell had not heard since an army mule driver tried to flay the hides off his beasts with his tongue one afternoon when they bogged down in a road a week of rain had converted into a true bog. “An’ the worst of it is, they all got money fallin’ out their backsides like it was turds. Three thousand one hundred fifty mortal dollars for that there mulatto wench? The devil fry me for bacon in the mornin’, Nate, what the hell’s he gonna get from her he couldn’t go down to the whorehouse an’ have for a few beans? It don’t feel no better on account of it’s expensive, now does it?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” Caudell said, after a small hesitation brought on by thinking of Mollie and of the trade she plied in Rivington.

  The storekeeper never noticed that his answer came a beat late. Liles was in full spate, like the Mississippi in flood season. He was also getting to what really bothered him: “Or that griffe Westly or that nigger Anderson, almost two thousand for the one and twenty-seven hundred for the other, by Jesus! I been to other auctions, too, and had the same thing happen to me. How’s a man supposed to get the help he needs when he can’t noways afford to buy it? Niggers is gettin’ so dear, it’s damn near cheaper to do without ‘em. An’ them Rivington men is a big part o’ runnin’ the prices up, ‘cause they just don’t give a damn how much they spend. What’s an honest man supposed to do?”

  “Go on as best you can the way you are—what else can you do?” Caudell said. Liles was not a wealthy man like George Lewis, but he was a long way from poor. Caudell had trouble sympathizing with his complaints, not when his own chief worry was figuring out how to stretch his summer money so he could pay the widow Bissett for his room and eat anything better than corn bread and beans.

  But Liles glared at him over the tops of his half-glasses. “Younger folks these days hasn’t got no respect for their elders.”

  Caudell glared back. At thirty-four, he hardly felt himself still wet behind the ears. And Raeford Liles, with his store full of good things and getting fuller every day now that the war and the blockade no longer pinched him, might have spoken a little more kindly to someone who’d fought to keep him in the storekeeping business. Allison High had been right—with the war over, memories of what it meant were short. He wondered how Allison was getting along, down in Wilson County, and realized guiltily that he hadn’t thought about him in weeks. Memories were short, all right.

  He said, “Never mind, Mr. Liles—we all have to go on as best we can the way we are, I expect.” Without waiting for an answer, he went back out into the baking sunshine of the town square. The bell over the front door jingled when he shut it.

  He walked slowly back to the widow Bissett’s house; moving any way but slowly would have invited heatstroke. He took off his black felt hat and fanned himself with it. The moving air briefly cooled the sweat that ran down his face and trickled through his beard, but the sun smote the top of his head with savage heat. He hastily replaced the hat.

  He’d baked outdoors, but found himself poaching instead when he went into his upstairs room. He did not stay long enough even to open Mollie’s letter. Grabbing a length of line and a couple of hooks, he headed for Stony Creek, north of town. Sitting on the bank under a tree—maybe taking off his shoes and letting his feet trail in the water—was the best way he could think of to fight the heat of a summer day. He might even catch his own supper, too, which would save him some money.

  He used his clasp knife to dig worms out of the soft soil, baited the hooks, and tossed them into the water. Then he lit a cigar, blew a ragged smoke ring, and, as near content as he could be in such weather, pulled the letter from his pocket once more and used the knife again, this time to do a neat job of slitting the envelope.

  Mollie went on for most of two pages. After nearly a year of correspondence with him, her handwriting was better than that of some of the twelve-year-olds he taught. Her spelling remained wildly erratic, but most of those twelve-year-olds had that problem too, Old Blue Back notwithstanding.

  Much of the letter was chatter about her day-to-day life: a dress she’d made, a cake one of her friends had baked, a complaint about the high price of shoes. Smiling, he thought she and Raeford Liles could have commiserated together. As usual, she said little about the way she spent her nights. She knew he knew what she did, and doubtless did not care to remind him of it unnecessarily.

  Living as she did in Rivington, though, even her day-to-day life was out of the ordinary. One passage leaped from the page at Caudell: “Last weak I come down with dyareaer worsen I ever get it in the army. Benny Lang he comes to see me and wen he sees how sick I am he gos off and wen he comes back he gives me sum pils to take and I takem and next day I am rite as rain. I wish we wood of nowed a bout it wen we was to gether on a count of a lot of good men who dyareared them selvs to deth could of been saved.”

  Caudell nodded, just as if Mollie were there to see him. Diarrhea had killed as many men, North and South, as bullets. With soldiers packed tightly together, eating food and water that were often bad—and the water frequently made worse by their own sinks nearby, or by men ignoring the sinks and doing their business straight into a stream—how could it be otherwise? Doctors could sometimes slow the illness, but they boasted no magical pills to cure it overnight—not outside of Rivington, they didn’t. Even the mention of Benny Lang, whose name showed up fairly often in Mollie’s letters, failed to annoy Caudell as it usually did: wonder overcame what he still refused to admit to himself was jealousy.

  And wonder and jealousy both surged in him when, toward the end of her letter, Mollie wrote, “One thing I may not have tole you a bout is that wen I went to a Rivington mans hous I mean one of the ones out in the woods last week I went in side and it was as cool as spring in ther you may be leev me or not just as you like. And it was not cool atall out side likely it weren’t in Nashvil too. That if you ast me is as big a thing as the lites that burn elextristy or what ever the Rivington men cal it. The thing the cool air comes out of is a box on the wall with a nob on it like the ones that makes the elextristy lites burn. I wish for it al the time on a count of hear in my room it aint cool atall. Dont you wish you was in Rivington to? Yor true frend al ways, M. Bean, 47NC.”

  Caudell wished with all his heart and sweaty soul he were in Rivington, or at least in that house. If any of Mollie’s letters had given him the slightest hint the town held enough children to support a school, he would have moved without a second thought. Rivington had to be the boomingest town in the state, the place where everything happened first, even ahead
of Wilmington and Raleigh.

  The railroad, the telegraph, and the camera had all come to North Carolina since his own boyhood. Now Rivington boasted these wonderful electricity-burning lights and cool air in summer. Both those things sounded as interesting as the camera any, day. He wondered when they would appear outside of Rivington and why he hadn’t heard about them in the newspapers. The railroad had been ballyhooed for years before it finally arrived.

  Just then, he got a bite. He tossed aside Mollie’s letter and his speculations, and pulled a bullhead out of the creek. The fish flopped on the bank; he had to grab it to keep it from wriggling back into the muddy water. It had swallowed the worm. He dug up another one, impaled it on the hook, and tossed in the line again to see what else he could catch.

  He waited with an angler’s patience for a fish or fat turtle to go for the bait. By the sun, he had an hour or so of daylight left. Maybe, he thought, he would make a little fire right here, cook his supper, and sleep out on the grass. The mosquitoes would eat him alive, but that might be better than tossing and turning in his hot bed. He plucked at his beard as he tried to make up his mind. If he didn’t hook anything more than one little bullhead, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. That wasn’t much of a supper.

  Something stirred in the clump of jasmine on the far side of the creek. He looked up, got a glimpse of brown hide through the leaves. Deer, he thought, and then, with a tinge of alarm, or maybe cougar. He sat very still. The big cats rarely attacked man unless provoked. With his sole weapon a clasp knife, he had no intention of doing anything provoking.

  The leaves parted. His breath went out in a startled grunt, as if he’d been kicked in the belly. Peering out at him, her lovely face frightened as any hunted wild thing’s, was the mulatto wench Josephine.

  Before either of them could say anything, before the girl could turn and bolt into the woods, hounds belled back in the direction of town. Josephine’s eyes, already wide and staring, showed white all around the iris. Her lips skinned back from her teeth. “Hide me!” she hissed at Caudell. “I do anything you wants, massuh, anything, long as I don’t gots to go back to that feller bought me. He a devil, he is. Hide me!”

  Caudell had seen her up on the auction block, naked as the day she was born and ever so much more tempting. The thought of her doing anything he wanted raised a dark excitement in him. But hiding a runaway slave was against every law in the Confederacy—and where could he hide her, anyway? More daunting than mere lawbreaking, too, was imagining the revenge Piet Hardie would take on him if he tried and failed.

  The hounds cried again, louder and closer. Josephine moaned. She plunged away through the bushes, leaving Caudell just as well pleased he had not had to tell her yes or no. He quickly got up, pulled in his line, picked up the bullhead he’d caught, and started back to town. That way he would not have to tell the Rivington man yes or no, either. He wondered what the fellow had done to Josephine to make her run so, then shook his head. Better not to know.

  When the hounds chorused again, they were only a few hundred yards away, and plainly on the scent. Caudell heard Piet Hardie shout, too, at the men who ran with the dogs: “Keep them on the leash. If they mark her, by God, I’ll pay you in paper instead of gold!”

  Barbara Bissett fried the bullhead crisp and golden brown on the outside and firm and flaky and white in the center. It was as fine a fish as Caudell could have wanted and, with hot corn bread, turned into a pretty fair supper after all. Even so, he hardly tasted it.

  The Georgia Railroad engine wheezed to a halt. The conductor came into the car in which Lee was riding. “Augusta!” he bawled. He hurried along, left the car, went into the next one. Faintly, through two doors, Lee heard him announce the stop again.

  He got to his feet. “Major, you may send me to a lunatic asylum if, having once returned to Richmond, I voluntarily board a train again at any time within the next ten years,” he said to Charles Marshall. “I am heartily sick of traveling from hither to yon inside a box”—he waved to show he meant the passenger coach—”as if I were a parcel to be delivered by the postman.”

  “For the good of the country, sir, I may find myself constrained to act as if I have not heard you,” his aide answered. “I beg you, however, not to take this as implying I fail to sympathize with your point of view.”

  Lee looked around as he got off the train. “The city is larger than I had thought it to be.”

  “About fifteen thousand inhabitants, I am given to understand,” Marshall said. He looked about, too. “Seems a pleasant enough place.”

  Among the gaggle of people greeting new arrivals and wishing Godspeed to departing loved ones was a rather corpulent middle-aged man who wore Confederate gray and a colonel’s three stars on his collar. He pushed his way through the crowd Lee always seemed to draw, as if he were a lodestone attracting iron filings. With a salute, the fellow said, “George W. Rains, sir, at your service.”

  Lee returned the courtesy, then extended his hand. “Delighted to see you, Colonel. Allow me to present to you my aide, Major Marshall.”

  When the formalities were complete, Rains said, “I have my carriage here. May I drive you to the hotel? I’ve arranged rooms for you and Major Marshall at the Planters’, which is by far the finest establishment in the city. Even English travelers, men with wide experience of the world, think well of the Planters’—with the exception, I fear, of the tea, which, one of them complained, was so weak he did not see how it got out of the spout.”

  “I should find that no great hardship, Colonel, preferring coffee as I do,” Lee said. “I am confident you will have done everything necessary for our comfort. Your exemplary management of the powder mills here throughout the course of the war makes me certain of your ability to tend to such trifles.”

  A bare-chested slave attached to the train station carried the newcomers’ bags to the carriage. Lee gave him a dime; having come from Kentucky, he still had on his person a fair sum of U.S. specie. The slave grinned, displaying uneven yellow teeth. Colonel Rains raised a quizzical eyebrow but said nothing. He flicked the reins to set the carriage in motion.

  “Your shops are busy here,” Charles Marshall observed.

  “They were even busier during the war,” Rains answered. “A large portion of the goods that came into Charleston and Wilmington through the blockade were sold here at auction, for dispersal all over the interior of Georgia and South Carolina.”

  “Is that a bookstore there?” Lee asked, pointing. “Perhaps I shall buy a novel, to commemorate my stay here. It’s been a good many years since I’ve had the leisure to enjoy a novel, but I just may indulge myself.”

  “They’re first-rate on a train,” Rains said.

  “As I was telling Major Marshall, Colonel, I feel at the moment a certain—sufficiency—in respect to trains,” Lee said. “On the off chance, however, that I may be forced to ride them more than I would wish, I shall have to investigate that shop. Merely an off chance, of course, as I say.” Lee admired Rains for keeping his face so straight. He wondered how many more thousands of miles he would put in rattling along over the iron rails before his career was done.

  They pulled up in front of the Planters’ Hotel. Slaves strolled out to take charge of Lee’s luggage. He and Marshall got down from the carriage. “I will leave you gentlemen here, to recover from the rigors of your journey,” Rains said. “If it pleases you, I shall return for breakfast tomorrow, then drive you over to the powder mill.”

  “You are very kind, Colonel,” Lee said. “That sounds most satisfactory. I’ll see you, then, at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, if that be not too early.”

  “Eight o’clock will be fine.” Rains saluted again. “Good day to you, sir, Major.” The carriage rolled away. Lee and Marshall went into the hotel. Spurred on by shouts from the white manager and clerks, the serving staff did everything but carry them to their rooms. Yet the shouts were good-natured, and Lee got the impression an ordinary guest would have received tre
atment no different from his own. He thought better of the Planters’ for that impression.

  Supper did nothing to disappoint him, and over chicory-laced coffee the next morning he told Rains, “Your establishment here compares quite favorably to the Galt House in Louisville, Colonel. Smaller, certainly, but very fine.”

  “I’ve heard of the Galt House, though I never stayed in it. I think, sir, if you were to say that to Mr. Jenkins behind the front desk, you would have to stand back quickly to keep from getting hit by the buttons that flew off his waistcoat as he swelled up with pride.”

  Lee smiled. “I’d sooner risk buttons than a good many other things that have flown through the air in my direction.” He drained his cup, got to his feet. “Perhaps this evening, when we return, I shall brave Mr. Jenkins’s waistcoat. Meanwhile, though—”

  The powder mill lay by the Augusta Canal, a couple of furlongs west of the Savannah River. The road ran past underground powder magazines, each separated from its neighbors by thick brick traverses. “Is that tin sheathing on the roofs of the magazines?” Lee asked.

  “Zinc,” Rains answered. “It happened to be more readily available at the time. Sooner than wait for tin to appear, I went ahead with what i had. That was what I had to do all through the war, if I wanted to accomplish anything. Pharaoh made the Israelites make bricks without straw. Looking back on all my contrivances here, I sometimes think I could have made bricks without clay.”

  Young Georgia soldiers had stood sentry around the magazines. More guarded the big wooden shed that housed the powder mill. They stared and pointed and lost almost any semblance of military discipline when they saw Robert E. Lee. Colonel Rains coughed drily. “They all wish they’d been bold in battle like you, General. The life of a soldier far from the cannon’s roar has little glamour to it.”

  Lee thought Rains was speaking for himself as well as for his men. Raising his voice so the Georgia lads could hear along with their commander, he said, “Without your labor, Colonel, and that of your garrison, the cannon never could have roared. How much gunpowder did you produce for the Confederacy here at Augusta?”