“They are a tiny group of radicals, then,” Lee breathed. Goldfarb gave him a curious look. He took no notice of it;
“Shall I go on?” Goldfarb asked.
“Wait.” Lee was thinking hard. If mankind’s opinion—”the rest of the world,” Blankaard had written—had decisively turned against these self-admitted Afrikaner outlaws a hundred fifty years ahead, then what better, more logical reason for their return to the Confederacy than an effort to build another nation that favored “white power” to become South Africa’s friend and collaborator in a changed future? Rhoodie had said as much, and everything the Rivington men had done here fit in with that goal.
The Confederate States of America had not been formed for outlawry: just the reverse. That alone would have made Lee oppose the AWB with everything he had. But the men from the future had given him other reasons. He heard again Bishop Johns’s prayers over Mary’s casket. “They shall not have their way.”
“Sir?” Goldfarb asked.
“Never mind,” Lee said. “No, you need go no farther in that book now; I have heard enough.”
“Yes, sir.” Goldfarb slapped the volume closed, stared all around. “What a strange place,” he said, to which Lee could only nod. Goldfarb pointed to an object—Lee knew no better word for it—on one of the desks. “What is that thing, for instance?”
“I cannot tell you, Mr. Goldfarb, for I do not know.” Lee had curiously tapped the artifact in question a couple of times himself, as he walked back and forth past it. Its main piece was shaped like a box, taller than it was deep, but it had a thin metal tube projecting upward from one comer of the top. A spiral cord joined the boxlike part to another one which was small enough to be held in the hand.
The front of the boxlike part was covered with switches and knobs. One said ON-OFF. Lee flicked it from the latter to the former. A light went on in the glassed-in upper part of the box. A low hiss, rather like distant surf but more steady, came from a metal-covered grill. Lee moved the switch back to OFF. The light went out; the noise faded and was gone.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Goldfarb said, “but what is it good for?”
“Again, I do not know,” Lee answered, though the AWB men doubtless did.
“Or what about this other thing next to it?”
“Still another mystery, I am afraid.” Lee ran his hand over the gadget close by the one that hissed. It was hard, but did not feel to the finger like metal, wood, or glass—though glass did seem to cover the large, dark, greenish square that dominated the center of the oyster-gray, upright cabinet.
Connected to that small cabinet by another spiral cord was a low, flat box with letters, numbers, and symbols printed onto upraised studs. For no reason Lee could fathom, the letters were scrambled, and there were two sets of numbered studs, one above the top row of letters, the other off to the right by itself. He poked a couple of studs. They clicked and went down under the pressure of his touch, but otherwise did nothing.
“Maybe it is a qwerty,” Goldfarb said, pointing to the nonsense word formed by part of one row of letters.
“Maybe it is,” Lee said, quite seriously. Then he pointed, too, at the words beside the sole decoration on the otherwise severely functional device: a stylized apple with rainbow stripes and a bite taken out of one side. “Or maybe it’s a Macintosh IVQL.”
“I wonder what it is for,” Goldfarb said.
“So do I.” Lee turned away from the qwerty—he liked the merchant’s suggestion better than his own—and found another book with Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging on the spine. “Tell me what this one contains, Mr. Goldfarb, if you would be so kind.”
* XVII *
Judge Cornelius Joyner nailed a sheet of paper to the notice board in front of the Nash County courthouse. To Nate Caudell, who watched from the middle of a crowd of silent, grim-faced people, each stroke of the hammer sounded like a bullet slamming home. He squeezed Mollie Bean’s hand. She squeezed back, hard enough to hurt.
The justice of the peace tossed aside the hammer. The thump it made against the damp ground reminded Caudell of a dead body falling. He sternly reined in his runaway imagination. Judge Joyner turned and faced the men and women who packed the square. “I know not all of you have your letters, so I’m going to read this out loud for you. You’d best listen and pay heed, too.”
He turned back to the notice he’d just posted. His deep voice was big enough that Caudell had no trouble hearing him: “The following proclamation is published for the information of all concerned: By virtue of the power vested in men by law to declare the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in regions threatened by rebellion: I, Robert E. Lee, President of the Confederate States of America, do proclaim that martial law is hereby extended over the counties of Nash, Edgecombe, Halifax, Franklin, and Warren (in North Carolina), and I do proclaim the suspension of all civil jurisdiction (with the exception of that enabling the courts to take cognizance of the probate of wills, the administration of the estates of deceased persons, the qualification of guardians, to enter decrees and orders for the partition and sale of property, to make orders concerning roads and bridges, to assess county levies, and to order the payment of county dues), and the suspension: of the writ of habeas corpus in the counties aforesaid. In faith whereof I have hereby signed my name and set my seal this fifteenth day of March, in the year 1868. Robert E. Lee.”
Caudell added his sigh to the dozens that went up around him. Read all at once, as Joyner had read it, the proclamation felt like a boulder rolling over him. He hung his head in shame at having his home county branded throughout the South as a “region threatened by rebellion”—but then, Rivington lay within Nash County. Till word came down of what people were calling the Richmond Massacre, he’d been mildly proud to have Rivington close by, no matter what he thought of some of the men who’d settled there. Now he wished the place were on the far side of the moon.
Judge Joyner said, “Don’t go away yet, folks. There’s more.” He raised his voice again: “Lieutenant General Forrest, commanding Confederate States forces in eastern North Carolina, is charged with due execution of the foregoing proclamation. He will forthwith establish an efficient military police and will enforce—the following orders: All distillation of spirituous liquors is positively prohibited, and the distilleries will forthwith be closed. The sale of spirituous liquors of any kind is also prohibited, and establishments for the sale thereof will be closed.”
Now the noises that rose from the crowd sounded more like mutters than sighs. Most of the grumbles came from farmers who were used to turning part of their corn into whiskey. The Liberty Bell saloon had a shiny new padlock on the front door, though Caudell suspected that would not keep Wren Tisdale from selling a spirituous liquor or two out the back.
“I’m not done,” Cornelius Joyner warned. “You all had better listen to this: “All persons infringing the above prohibition will suffer such punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial, provided that no sentence to hard labor be for more than one month by the sentence of a regimental court-martial, as directed by the Sixty-Seventh Article of War. By command of the Secretary of War. S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General.”
“A month working on the roads for selling a man a drink?” Raeford Liles said. “I don’t believe it.”
“You’d better,” Caudell warned him. “That’s just what you could draw from a regimental court. If they haul you before Forrest, now—” He let the words hang. Liles turned a faint green. Having met the new Confederate commander for eastern North Carolina, he figured he might hang if he violated an order Forrest was charged with enforcing.
Judge Joyner picked up his hammer and stood aside. George Lewis stepped out of the front row of the crowd to take his place. Lewis wore a gray civilian jacket and a shirt to which a three-barred stand collar had been hastily sewn. Must be none of his old uniforms fits anymore, Caudell thought, smiling a little.
&nbs
p; Lewis said, “I am ordered by General Forrest, and authorized by Governor Vance, to recall to duty Company D, 47th North Carolina Infantry, for a period not to exceed 180 days, said company to serve as military police for Nash County and perform such other duties as may be duly assigned by proper military authority.”
Mollie squeezed Nate’s hand again. He wondered if that meant she intended to rejoin the Castalia Invincibles herself. He was afraid it did. She’d returned from Richmond wearing a wig that nearly matched the dark curls he’d shorn so she could go there in disguise. She wore it in public all the time. If she took it off, she could easily play the man once more.
Caudell wished she wouldn’t. The two of them had stayed together since she’d got back from Richmond. He feared she would take up her old ways if she found herself among so many men. But he feared even more that she would be hurt or killed if she took up a rifle again. His memories of combat were too recent and too horribly vivid for him to make light of its risks, as he had before he signed up with the Invincibles in 1862.
But if she wanted to put the uniform back on, how the devil was he supposed to stop her?
Lost in his own worries, he’d missed some of what Lewis was saying. He started listening again: “—report here for duty tomorrow at noon. Wear your uniforms if you have them still; we’ll give out armbands to everyone who doesn’t. And we’ll furnish weapons.”
“Repeaters?” someone asked eagerly.
“That’s right. If you’re going to soldier, you’ll carry soldiers’ weapons. I said that loud and clear down in Raleigh.” Lewis puffed out his already massive chest, as if to say it was only through his political pull that the Castalia Invincibles had obtained AK-47s. More power to him if that was so, Caudell thought. Lewis went on, “Get word to anybody you know who lives in the county but isn’t here in town today. We may give a few days’ grace, but we won’t stand for deserters.”
Caudell stuck up a hand. Lewis pointed at him. He said, “What do we do if we run into Rivington men? God only knows what’s going on north of here. That proclamation’s dated the fifteenth, but here it is the twenty-sixth, and it’s only just now got here.”
“I know it.” George Lewis’s face was rounder now than when he’d last led the Castalia Invincibles, but no less determined. “We aren’t called up to go after the Rivington men; we’re supposed to be military police. But if you see one of the bastards, shoot him. They’ve wrecked the railroad track up near Weldon, and they’ve torn down all the telegraph lines they can get to. Far as I can see, Nate, we’ve got ourselves a little war here.”
All through the town square, heads bobbed up and down. Nate nodded with the rest. As far as he could see, it looked like a little war, too. Probably the only thing keeping it from turning into a big war was that there weren’t enough Rivington men to make it one. But even a few would be ungodly hard to get rid of. Uneasily, he remembered the armor Benny Lang had worn under his mottled clothes. It had turned a Minié ball; would it stop a round from an AK-47? He had no way of knowing, but he thought it likely.
Lewis waved to show he was done. Cornelius Joyner went back inside the courthouse. Singly and by small groups, people began drifting out of the square, talking as they went. Caudell started to say something to Mollie. She beat him to it: “I already know what you’re gonna tell me, Nate. I don’t wanna have to hear it.”
He spread his hands in front of him. “But, Mollie, it isn’t right. It—”
“Why ain’t it? I’m as good a soldier as any o’ them others, ain’t I?” Her voice was low but very determined. “You know damn well I am, Mister Nate Caudell. ‘Sides, I reckon all this is part my fault—leastways, Marse Robert made an almighty much about that book I brung him. That was your idea, too, remember? Wouldn’t hardly be right, makin’ a mess and then not helpin’ put it back together.”
“But—” Caudell kicked helplessly at the dirt. Mollie had ruined half the argument he’d had in mind, but only half. Trouble was, he knew no safe way to say the other half.
Mollie did it for him. “You’re worried I’ll go back to whorin’ again, I reckon,” she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. “Can’t say for certain I won’t. But if I do, Nate, then you won’t have to have nothin’ more to do with me, an’ that’ll be that.” She set her hand on his arm. “I don’t want it to end that way, I swear I don’t.”
“I don’t, either. It’s just—oh, hell.” Caudell kicked the dirt again, Foolish to take Chances, he thought—would you use a one—time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel? Well, maybe, if you were sure he’d changed his ways. Was he sure about Mollie? He knew he wasn’t, and knew he couldn’t say so, not unless he wanted to kill the still-fragile bond between them.
He also knew he had only to say a couple of words to Captain Lewis to keep her out of the muster…but that would cost him Mollie; too. He scowled fiercely, first at the street and then at Mollie. She wrinkled her nose in reply. “Hell of a thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Here I am not even back in the army yet, and I’ve already lost a fight.”
The tunic with the first sergeant’s stripes still fit. It was ragged, but it had been ragged four years ago, too. Caudell wore one of his regular pairs of pants and his black felt hat. He laughed at himself as he headed for the square. He didn’t look much different from the way he had when he’d got home from the war. No, come to think of it, he’d been missing a hat then.
Some of the men who joined him in front of the courthouse still had their old tunics, some didn’t. Only one or two wore proper forage caps. They were a motley band, but hardly more so, Caudell reflected, than when they’d paraded through Richmond in triumph.
The men stood around in little groups, talking about fights they’d seen. George Lewis walked through the square, exchanging banter with them and checking their names off on a list. Not far from Caudell, he paused in perplexity. “I don’t recall your serving with the 47th, sir.”
Henry Pleasants grinned at him. “No reason you should, Captain. I was with the 48th—48th Pennsylvania, that is.” He tapped the silver oak leaf on the Union shoulder strap he’d sewn to his checked flannel shirt.
Lewis’s eyes widened. He could read Northern badges of rank, though they differed from those the Confederacy used. Quietly, he said, “I mean you no disrespect, Lieutenant Colonel—you’re Pleasants, aren’t you? I’ve heard of you—but only those who served with the Castalia Invincibles have been summoned to duty.”
“I don’t claim the rank, Captain Lewis, nor seek to raise trouble,” Pleasants said. “I would happily join you as a private, so long as I may join. This is my country now, and Lee my President—and if anyone tries to foully murder him, how may I call myself a man unless I help hunt the villains out?”
“Hmm.” Lewis rubbed his chin. “You speak smoothly enough, that’s certain. Did you command that regiment?”
“Till Bealeton, yes, but as I say, I know I have no rank in the Confederate army.” Pleasants waved his hand. “Put it to your. other men. If they say no, I’ll go home and tend my farm. If they say yes, you’ll have one more soldier.”
Like most regiments raised to fight in the Second American Revolution, the 47th North Carolina had always done without much military formality. “By God, I’ll do just that,” Lewis said. He raised his voice: “Invincibles, shalt we admit to our number Henry—it is Henry, isn’t it?—Pleasants, who had the misfortune to spend the war wearing a blue coat rather than our good Confederate gray?”
Nate Caudell spoke up at once: “Hell, yes, let him in. If he’s crazy enough to want to live here, he’ll fit right into this company.”
“Thanks, Nate—I think,” Pleasants said, laughing.
“Sure, let him in,” Dempsey Eure said. “The more we have, the less for each of us to do.” Four years of peace had not diluted his soldier’s pragmatism.
But Kennel Tant shook his head.” Don’t want to let no damn Yankees into this here
company.” Several other Invincibles echoed that, some of them profanely.
The men argued back and forth for a few minutes. Then George Lewis said, “All right, we’ll have a show of hands. All those for letting Henry Pleasants join us—? Those against—?” Looking around, Caudell saw that Pleasants had won the vote. Lewis saw the same thing. He turned to Pleasants. “All right, Private, I’ll put your name on the list.” More softly, he added, “I may pick your brains every so often, too.”
Henry Pleasants came to attention, saluted. “As the Captain wishes.”
“You’re under my orders too now, Henry,” Caudell said, touching the stripes on his sleeve.
“Now there’s an appalling notion,” Pleasants said with an exaggerated shiver. “Captain Lewis, may I please reconsider?”
“I’ve already written your name. Do you want me to have to scratch it out and make my list untidy?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” Pleasants allowed. “Just keep me away from this wild man here.”
“I love you too, Henry,” Caudell said. He might have gone on teasing with his friend, but suddenly he had no heart for it. Mollie Bean had just walked into the square. She was wearing gray.
Caudell hoped someone, anyone, would speak up and greet her by her right name. It would take only one voice. Then captain Lewis would have to send her away, and she would stay safe. Several of the men who lived in town stared first at Mollie, then at Caudell. They knew the two of them had taken up with each other. But no one said a word.
Mollie went up to Lewis, gave him a crisp salute. “Melvin Bean reportin’, sir.”
“Bean.” He went down his list, checked off the name. Then he took a longer look at her, snorted laughter. “Good God, Bean, haven’t you managed to raise a beard yet?”
The Guns of the South Page 59
