by Ed Gorman
“The next one cakes that pointed head of yours clean off, mister. You better turn around.”
Smalls did as the soldier demanded. There was two of them, and it was gloomy enough not to see that he was black.
“Hey, Remmy,” a third one shouted, “McMahon has been cold-cocked.”
“Well, well,” Remmy said, moving forward. “’Pears we got us a sneak of some kind. But is he a thief or is he a blue-belly?”
“They wouldn’t jest send one,” another man offered. “What kind of scout party would that be?”
“A quiet one,” Remmy answered. He’d advanced far enough to get a good look at Smalls. It was just that the image refused to register with him. “Where’s your master, boy?” he said querulously.
“I was jus’ returnin’ Massa Simmons raf, boss,” Smalls replied, slipping into slave talk and dipping his head. At that moment, he was powerful glad he wasn’t in a Union uniform.
“Massa Simmons,” Remmy questioned. He violently thrust the barrel of his Sharps carbine into the other man’s nostrils, causing blood to discharge. “What in the hell you talkin’ about, darkie? John Simmons would no sooner let you have one of his rafts out than General Lee would let you shave him.”
“I swears, thas so,” Smalls embellished, hoping his act would buy him time. Goddamn Matthews must be wondering what was keeping him.
“Kill the nigger,” the third one who’d discovered McMahon said. “He attacked a white man, didn’t he?”
“But he ain’t here by accident,” the third one announced cogently. “He must be with the Union. I’ve heard tell they’s drafting colored soldiers.”
“With weapons?” the second one asked in utter dismay.
“Shut up,” Remmy, a sergeant, ordered his men. The rifle was still thrust into Smalls face. “You been sent to snoop on us, nigger?”
“Naw suh.”
“Uh-huh.” With that, Remmy butted him with the other end of the rifle and Smalls reeled back. His first instinct was to strike out, but he knew that would earn him a bullet in his brainpan. He stood, watching and waiting, his fingers touching the wetness around his mouth.
“He ain’t that big, but that buck sho cain take it,” the second one said. He crowded closer to Smalls too.
“Come on,” Remmy announced. “This is too important to make a mistake now. We gonna find out what this coon knows and what he’s doing here. Neville, you and Sykes git him over to tha platform.”
“Okay,” one of them replied.
The two men roughly grabbed Smalls and started to take him back toward the hill. Desperate, he broke free from one of the men and swung on the other. He connected and sent this one back more in shock than hurt.
“This nigger’s a wild animal,” the man he hit blurted.
Smalls had nothing to lose, as he knew death was close on his neck. He started to ran for it again but the third man was quick and landed on him. He clubbed him twice with the butt of his Leech & Rigdow .36.
Disoriented, the Johnny Rebs hauled Smalls between them to their encampment. He couldn’t see well and realized it was from being hit in the head and blood trickling into his eyes. He felt himself being lashed against a pole, his wet shirt torn from his body. A widow’s veil descended on his head and there was nothing but bliss. He stirred awake after water was thrown into his face.
“Time for some answers, nigger.” Remmy lowered the wooden bucket he’d used.
Smalls looked around him. The other two plus the man he’d originally fought, McMahon, were staring at him. Each had a hungry look in their eyes. That is except the one who’d said he was here for a reason. That one looked sorry for Smalls. He was roped against a pole that was part of a platform upon which were barrels of black powder covered in tarpaulin. The Rebs had made it that way to no doubt keep the powder dry and off the sand.
“Over here, boy.” Remmy stood with a dull pig sticker in his hand. “Git a fire going, McMahon.”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied with glee, as he set about his task.
“You got something to tell us?” Remmy jabbed the point of the Bowie knife into Smalls’s belly. The thrust was enough to prick but not go in deep.
His head was exploding but all he could do was grit his teeth and wish he was in Hannah’s arms. The worse was yet to be.
“Ain’t had no dark meat in some time,” one of them joked.
“Remmy, this ain’t right,” the only one to show concern said. “General Ripley will want to question this man.”
“We gonna soften this hard case up for him, Sykes, don’t you get your petticoats ruffled about it, here?”
“But—” the other man stammered.
“But nothing,” McMahon interrupted, “this here nigger acts like a white man. He’s got to be shown it’s jus’ plain wrong.”
The fire crackled beside the man as he knelt near its flames, warming his hands. “It’s ready.” A canine fierceness lit his eyes from within.
Remmy heated the deadly steel at the apex of the fire. No one said anything, anticipation or dread had locked their vocal chords. The sergeant turned and paced methodically toward Smalls.
“What you got to say, boy?” The tip of the knife was releasing steam.
Smalls couldn’t speak for fear he’d bust out praying. He’d be damned to two hells if he was going to give these crackers the satisfaction.
The white hot blade was laid against the skin of his chest and he cried out in pain. Again the side of the blade was applied and Smalls was on the verge of passing out.
“Throw water on him,” Remmy said.
The one called Sykes did so.
Then Remmy asked, taunting, “Well, nigger man?”
“I’ll show you,” he gasped, his mouth hanging open as if broken.
“What?” Remmy dipped his head closer.
“I’ll show you tha papers, boss, tha repot massa DuPont is spose to git.”
The Rebs knew who DuPont was. “What papers is this?” Remmy asked excitedly.
“The one I’s buried at tha beach. Tha one that they’s orders from that Grant fella.”
All the Confederates looked puzzled as he hoped they would. “How’d you get these papers, nigra?” McMahon piped up. They certainly didn’t think he had the intelligence to concoct such a tale.
“Sergeant Matthews, suh,” Smalls fibbed. “I was a rowin’ his boat, and he was lookin’ at your island here through one of them, ah, I don’t know wha you call ’em, suh.”
“Telescope,” Remmy said disgustedly. “And then what?”
“Well, suh,” Smalls added, making it up fast, “somehow the boat got tangled up on sumptin’. Next thing I knows, we tips over and well, suh, that fine young sergeant done drown.”
McMahon laughed uproariously. “This nigger cain’t walk straight, let alone guide a boat. He got panicky and got that Northerner drowned, probably flailing all about just to save his black soul.”
“Sumptin’ like that,” Smalls muttered.
Remmy took a swipe with the knife, making a diagonal scar across Smalls’s stomach. “And he left you with these papers?”
“He, he prayed to Jesus for me to get ’em to DuPont, yes suh.” The sharp but brief pain from that last injury actually cleared some of Smalls’s head. It was like getting slapped to wake someone from sleep.
“Where are these papers?” Remmy said.
“I got to show y’all, I cain’t describe it correc’ly wit words, naw suh.”
“He’s lying,” the Reb called Neville said.
Remmy scratched the side of his nose with the tip of his blade. “We got to check. The general trusts us to watch things here till he gets the men in place t’morrow. We got to check in case those Union boys is on to us.” He grinned devilishly at Smalls. “Sides, this boy is all through. What can he do ’gainst four of us? Even if one is weak-livered Sykes.”
The other two laughed.
Sykes got Smalls untied, who slumped. The young soldier helped him stand. For a m
oment their eyes met, and then the Confederate broke contact.
Smalls said, “It’s over where you fount me. I knows ’zactly.”
“Come on.” Remmy stood beside him as Sykes stood opposite. McMahon was behind and Neville was in from.
“Hurry up, boy,” McMahon declared, shoving Smalls. “We got us some skinnin’ ta do.”
“Yes, suh, boss, I sure hopes ya don’t—” and he whipped to his left, where Remmy was. He got a hand around the man’s wrist and summoned the strength that had made him foreman on the docks. In a wink he toppled over with Remmy as the others reached for him. The sergeant hit him in his seared flesh but Smalls, gnashing his teeth, couldn’t let up. He bore down and there was a snap.
“My wrist, he broke my—”
Smalls had the knife and came around and up with the steel. The thing went into McMahon’s soft gut and his breath, smelling of corn whiskey, rushed from his lungs. Sykes and Remmy jumped on Smalls. Neville had his gun out, but couldn’t get a clean shot.
“Git him up, git him up,” the man with the pistol repeated.
“Oh God, oh God,” McMahon wheezed, writhing on the ground.
“You’re dead, nigger, dead and gone,” Remmy promised, grabbing with his one good hand.
Smalls broke free from Sykes who had his arms around his upper body. That was where he was strongest. He poured everything he had left into an attack on the sergeant. Being black and telling white men what to do on the docks, Smalls had had his share of bare-knuckled contests. He pummeled Remmy into the dirt, his fists striking every open area they could find.
Breathing raggedly, he turned, the barrel of the repeater filling his vision. He saw his mother toiling in the sorghum field, his father taking a lashing for talking back to the master.
“Smalls, Smalls,” Matthews suddenly called from the beach. “Where are you?”
The man with the pistol looked at Sykes then toward the beach. That was his chance. Smalls dove and using that stevedore arm of his, scooped up sandy earth and threw it. A shot came through the cloud but he was already up again and hurtling at the gunman.
The two bodies collided as Smalls heard feet pounding toward them. Cold steel was against his rib cage and a shot was let off, just as he twisted aside. The bullet creased him and he yelped, but he couldn’t let up.
“You black demon,” the gunman swore. Frustrated, he bit the other man on the bicep.
This enraged Smalls and in a red fury, he beat at the other man until hands pulled him off his victim.
“That’s enough, enough,” Matthews said.
The river pilot was groggy, his whole body alive with hurt. It was an effort to breath, and something was blocking his left eyesight. It was blood.
“Good Lord, man,” Matthews looked around. McMahon was on his back, his arms outstretched, gazing vacantly at the heavens. The knife was like a growth in his chest. Remmy was on one knee, groaning, his hand holding his wrist. Neville was at Smalls’s feet, curled up, his form inert as if resting peaceably.
“Let’s get back … Mr. Smalls,” Matthews said. Vaguely, he waved his Colt at Sykes. “Tie your men up,” the Union sergeant ordered his prisoner.
Later, Smalls rested in a rowboat, his head lying against the edge. He longed to see his wife and children.
* * *
A month later, mostly healed, he was summoned to DuPont’s tent at Port Royal.
“Smalls,” the man said, a cigar rolling back and forth in his mouth. He stood and came around his desk.
“Sir,” the escaped slave replied.
DuPont regarded the shorter man for several moments, and then a hint of a smile creased his beard. “You certainly proved your measure on Cole’s Island, Smalls. I understand General Hunter is requesting Secretary of War Stanton to immediately raise five thousand negro troops.”
“So I heard, sir.”
“Raw recruits. Some of them free born and some, like you, who tore their way to freedom. But as long as the South has an army, they won’t be truly free, will they?”
“I suppose so sir.”
“Well,” he finally drawled, “that’s all for now, Smalls.”
“All right, Captain.” He turned to go.
“Oh,” DuPont said, “these new soldiers will need men to train and lead them, wouldn’t you say, Smalls?”
“Of course.” He started to walk off.
“Stop by the quartermaster and pick up your uniform, Smalls,” DuPont called out. “And your sergeant’s stripes.”
He turned around, a smile on his face now. “Yes, sir.” This time when he turned, he pivoted soldier fashion.
* * *
After the war, the real Robert Smalls served as a delegate to South Carolina’s constitutional convention in 1868, and was in both houses of the state legislature from ’68 to 1875. He also served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1889, he was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison collector of the port of Beaufort. He held that post for the most part until 1913. He died on February 23, 1915.
Edward D. Hoch makes his living as a writer in a way that very few other people can attest to—he works almost entirely in short fiction. With hundreds of published stories primarily in the mystery and suspense genres, he has created such notable characters as Simon Ark, the 2,000-year-old detective, and Nick Velvet, the professional thief who steals only worthless objects, to the calculating Inspector Leopold, whose appearance in the short story “The Oblong Room” won his creator the Edgar Award for best short story. He lives and writes in Rochester, New York.
Much of the espionage done during the Civil War was by Northerners and Southerners working against their own people. “Copperhead” was a term for a Northerner who worked against his own people, and the “copperhead” in this story is no less tricky.
THE COUNTERFEIT COPPERHEAD
Edward D. Hoch
Cranston first met Maggie Little in a sailors’ bar near the Toronto waterfront in August of 1864. The bar had an upstairs room that often served as a meeting place for American radicals of one sort or another. Some said it had even been a terminus for the Underground Railroad in those prewar years when escaped slaves made their way north by a devious route to freedom.
Now in this fourth year of the American Civil War, the room was being used for other purposes. A motley assemblage of two dozen men, and a few women, had come to hear Colonel Jacob Thompson, a middle-aged man with a short graying beard who bore the vague tide of Special Commissioner of the Confederate States Government in Canada. He stood now at the front of the room, speaking with one of his aides before the start of the evening’s program.
When he entered the room Cranston removed his hat and chose a seat next to a comely dark-haired woman in a slender black dress. The room was stuffy and she was cooling herself with a lacy French fan decorated with letters of the alphabet. “Are you a Copperhead?” she asked as they sat waiting for Colonel Thompson’s appearance.
“I am, and proud of it,” he replied. “The only way to end this insanity is to restore the Union to its prewar condition with continued slavery in the South. Too many lives have been sacrificed already.”
“My name is Maggie Little,” she responded, holding out her hand in a distinctly male gesture. “It’s a pleasure to meet someone who shares my views.” He could detect a trace of the Old South in her manner of speaking.
“William Cranston,” he said, gently accepting her hand. “Are you from the South?”
“Kentucky. A border state, but many of us side with the Confederacy.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a call for silence. A man brought in a flag, the familiar stars and bars of the Confederate States of America, and a woman at a piano struck up “Dixie,” the Southern anthem, while the spectators rose to sing. Maggie Little joined in with a full voice, covering Cranston’s uncertainty with the lyrics.
“I was never much of a singer,” he confided to her as they sat down.
“I could tell that,” she
replied with a bit of a grin.
A stocky man with a deep Southern accent introduced Colonel Thompson, who spoke with the quick, clipped tones of a military man trained to give orders. “As you know, the appalling casualties of Grant’s campaign against Richmond and Petersburg have left both sides looking for a way out of this terrible war. We greatly appreciate the work of the Copperheads who are trying to restore the Union to its previous grandeur. For those who say you cannot turn back the clock, I say that is preferred to smashing it with a sledgehammer.”
Thompson paced like an experienced politician as he spoke, ranging across the front of the crowded room so that all might see and hear him. “He’s good!” Maggie Little whispered to Cranston. “This is the first time I’ve heard him.”
“Next week the Democratic convention opens in Chicago,” the colonel went on. “There are many within the party who want this war ended at any cost, which means defeating Mr. Lincoln at the polls in November. The Confederacy has assembled a large number of operatives here in Toronto, under my leadership. I have a personal letter of instructions from Jefferson Davis that I intend to carry out. Our Copperhead friends in this room can do us great service, especially in those states where your secret action arm, the Sons of Liberty, is strongest. I want to introduce you now to Captain Hines, who will tell you a bit about our plans for Chicago.”
Hines was younger and physically smaller than Thompson, slim and dark-haired with lips that turned sinister when he attempted a smile. He explained in a careful voice that he had sixty men in Chicago, all wearing civilian clothes and carrying revolvers. Meetings had been held with the Illinois chapter of the Sons of Liberty, looking toward joint action during the Democratic convention. “What sort of action?” a man in the first row asked.
“That’s not for me to say in an open meeting.”
There was more general discussion of Chicago, and it became clear that several of those attending the meeting would be going there by train. When the meeting broke up Cranston followed Maggie Little outside and asked her about it. “Are you going to Chicago?”
