North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Salvarini nodded. “Also, there’s no stamp.”

  “Yes, I saw that.” Mr. Perdue scowled. “I’ll bet some damn Yankee sent this by illegal courier and the courier didn’t bother with a stamp when he posted it locally. I’ll be hanged if I’ll handle enemy mail.”

  Salvarini was more charitable. “Perhaps the sender’s a Southerner who couldn’t afford the stamp.”

  Lonzo Perdue, respectable husband, worried father, betrayed patriot, stared at the letter while his mouth turned downward still further. There was a distant rumbling, a whine of glass in the windows above them. Salvarini greeted the start of the bombardment with an expression bordering on relief.

  “The rules are the rules,” declared Mr. Perdue.

  “But you don’t know what this contains, Lonzo. Suppose it’s important. News of some relative’s death—something like that?”

  “Let this Major Main learn of it some other way,” his colleague retorted. With an outward snap of his hand, Mr. Perdue sailed the envelope into a wooden box already half filled with misaddressed letters, small parcels with the inking obliterated by rain or dirt—undeliverable items destined for storage and eventual destruction.

  120

  CHARLES FELT INCREASINGLY ALONE, taking part in what was now beyond all doubt a losing fight. Even General Hampton no longer expressed confidence, though he swore to expend his last blood before he quit. The general had grown dour and, some said, revenge-crazed since his son and aide, Preston, had been killed near Hatcher’s Run last October. Hampton’s son Wade had received a wound in the same action.

  Charles functioned—he rode and shot—yet his real self lived apart from daily events in some mental netherworld from which associates and friends departed one by one. Following his promotion, Hampton had gone up to staff, and Charles no longer saw him except from afar. Calbraith Butler and his division, after riding all night through the winter’s worst sleetstorm to help drive back Gouverneur Warren’s augmented Fifth Corps striking at the Weldon Railroad, were now bound for home. In South Carolina the men were to find remounts and, more important, defend the state against Sherman’s horde.

  All of this and January’s cold wrapped Charles in the deepest depression he had ever experienced. The worst of it was a thought that marched into his mind at all hours of the day and night, as unstoppable as Grant’s war machine. In leaving Gus, Charles was beginning to believe, he had made the worst mistake of his life.

  His beard, white-speared, hung below the midpoint of his chest. His own smell was an offense to his nostrils; the army had run out of soap last autumn. To keep warm in the freezing weather, he used needle and thread from his preciously guarded housewife to fashion a poncho-like garment of rags and pieces of ruined uniforms. As the great robe grew longer and larger, it earned him a new nickname.

  He was wearing the robe when he and Jim Pickles crouched beside a small fire one black January night. A bitter wind blew as they enjoyed their meal of the day—one handful of dried and badly burned corn.

  “Gypsy?” Charles looked up. Jim groped under his filthy coat with a mittened hand. “Got some mail today.”

  Charles said nothing. He no longer looked for any for himself, hence never knew when deliveries were made. Jim tugged out a single soiled sheet and held it between index and middle fingers, well away from the fire.

  “This was writ at home ’bout six weeks ago. My mama’s dyin’, if—” he cleared his throat, his breath pluming “—if she ain’t gone already.” A pause. He watched his friend closely to gauge the impact of what he said next.

  “I’m leavin’.”

  The announcement wasn’t unexpected. But Charles’s voice was as cold as the weather when he answered it.

  “That’s desertion.”

  “So what? There’s nobody else to care for the young ones after Mama’s gone. Nobody but me.”

  Charles shook his head. “It’s your duty to stay.”

  “Don’t talk about duty when half the army’s already took to the southbound roads.” Jim’s mouth, chapped and raw, grew thinner. “Don’t give me that stuff. I know shit when I smell it.”

  “Makes no difference,” Charles said in a strange, dead voice. “You can’t go.”

  “Makes no difference if I stay, either.” Jim flung the last of his small ration in the fire; that should have warned Charles to be careful. “We’re whipped, Gypsy. Done for! Jeff Davis knows it, Bob Lee knows it, General Hampton—everybody but you.”

  “Still—” Charles shrugged “—you can’t go.” He stared. “I won’t allow it.”

  Jim rubbed the palms of his mittens on his stubbled face. Beyond the perimeter of firelight, Sport whickered in hunger. There was no decent forage; the animals were eating wastepaper and each other’s tails again.

  “Say that again, Gypsy.”

  “Simple enough. I won’t permit you to desert.”

  Jim jumped to his feet. No longer burly, his body appeared shrunken and frail. “You damn—”

  He stopped, swallowed, regained control. Great leafless boughs above him moaned. Scattered through the chasm of the night, other little fires flickered and flared in the wind. “Back off, Charlie. Please. You’re my best friend, but I swear to Jesus—you try to stop me, I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt you bad.”

  Feeling heavy and tired as he rested on his haunches, Charles continued to stare from beneath the dirty brim of his old wool hat. Jim Pickles meant it. He really meant it. Charles had his army Colt under the robe, but he didn’t reach for it. He remained motionless, the robe’s hem dragging in the light snow left from the afternoon’s fall.

  Sadly: “Somethin’s made you crazy, Charlie. You better straighten yourself out ’fore you try workin’ on the rest of us.”

  Charles stared.

  Jim curled his mittened fingers against his palms in a tense way. “So long. Take care.”

  The breath plume vanished as he turned and shuffled away, his step slow and deliberate. In December the sole of his right boot had worn through, requiring him to stuff papers or rags into the bottom to keep out the mud and damp. These always came loose, though, and did so again now. Bits of paper were deposited in Jim’s footprints. And red spots, Charles observed. Bright red spots in each print in the new snow.

  He heard Jim’s horse leave. He stayed crouched by the dying fire, using the tip of his tongue to clean the gooey residue of parched corn from his sore upper gum. Somethin’s made you crazy. The list was not hard to compile. The war. Loving Gus.

  And his final, calamitous, mistake.

  Two days later, Charles and five other scouts, all wearing captured Yankee uniforms, rode out once again to observe the Union left, which they reached by passing the Confederate works in front of Hatcher’s Run, near the point where the White Oak and Boydton plank roads intersected. In the half-light before dawn, with new snow falling, the scouts bore southeast in a wide arc, pushing toward the Weldon rail line. Presently the snow stopped and the sky cleared. They spread out in order to cover more ground, each man on his own, out of sight of the rest.

  Charles gauged his position and headed Sport left, or northward, again, intending to scout the Union works built down to a point on Hatcher’s Run. He was passing through a deserted stand of trees as the sun rose, bright and surprisingly warm despite the cloud cover. Great shafts of light descended between the thick trunks. In the silence, walking Sport forward with his shotgun resting across his thighs, Charles could almost imagine he had entered some fantastic white cathedral.

  Screaming broke the illusion. The screaming of a man in agony. It reached him through thick ground haze directly ahead.

  He held Sport back; the bony gelding had heard the outcry, too. Charles listened. No small-arms fire. Odd. He was sure he was near, perhaps even a bit east of, the last Union trenches on the left of the siege line. He had to discover who was doing the screaming—a second man’s voice joined the first—but he must go carefully to avoid blundering into videttes.

  He murm
ured a command. The gray started forward at a rapid walk. After about an eighth of a mile, Charles saw orange smudges in the haze. The source was further obscured by the brilliant, sharply defined shafts of sunlight. He heard piercing screams again and a loud crackling. He smelled smoke.

  He edged Sport ahead more slowly, began to discern mounted men against a wash of firelight, some structure burning. But why the screams?

  A little nearer, halted and partly hidden by a tree, he was able to count ten men, several in gray, the rest in butternut. He saw a white-topped wagon and six more men, in blue uniforms, standing next to it, menaced by the pistols, shotguns, and squirrel rifles of the others. One of the ten—the larger group had captured the smaller, plainly—turned his horse around in order to speak to someone. Charles saw an open officer’s coat with gold frogging. Then he saw a clerical collar with geneva bands; a Protestant collar.

  Something clicked. He knew of this band of local partisans.

  Behind them, a partly demolished farmhouse burned brightly. Charles decided he had better make his presence known. But first he had to get out of the Union blouse and roll it up. That took a minute. He was still struggling with a sleeve when, mouth dropping open, he saw the rider in the clerical collar wave a gauntlet. Two of his men dismounted, strutted around the frightened Union soldiers, then yanked one from the group and shoved him forward at gunpoint. “Walk in there, Yank. Jus’ like the other ’uns did.”

  The prisoner started screaming before the flames touched him. One of the partisans ran a bayonet into the back of both his legs, so that he fell facedown, engulfed by fire, whirling the smoke. His hair ignited; then the smoke hid him.

  Shaken, swearing, Charles spurred Sport out of the trees, waving his shotgun. “Major Main, Hampton’s Cavalry. Hold your fire!”

  It was well that he shouted that last, because the partisans turned and leveled their weapons at the first sound of his coming. He reined up among the unwashed, mean-looking civilians, the kind of irregular unit whose depredations had become a scandal in the Confederacy. This bunch was led by the gaunt, graying rascal wearing the parson’s collar, confiscated dress sword, and gray coat with dirty fragging.

  “What in the name of hell is going on here?” Charles demanded, although the billowing smoke and the screams and a sickening smell something like that of burned meat told him.

  “Colonel Follywell, sir,” said the leader. “And just who are you to ask such a question of us, and so arrogantly?”

  “Deacon Follywell,” Charles said, suspicions confirmed. “I’ve heard of you. I told you who I am. Major Main. Scout for General Hampton.”

  “Have you the means to prove that?” Follywell shot back.

  “I have my word. And this.” Charles lifted his shotgun with his gloved hand. “Who are these prisoners?”

  “Party of enemy engineers, according to their commanding officer.” Charles didn’t follow the deacon’s pointing finger. “We came across them desecrating this abandoned property—”

  “Taking the lumber, that’s all, you murdering bastard,” one of the prisoners yelled. A partisan on horseback clubbed him with the butt of a squirrel rifle. The Yank fell to his knees, clutching the spokes of a wagon wheel.

  “—and so, as is our custom, we are extracting recompense for numerous Yankee atrocities, including those of the Dahlgren raid, while we fulfill, at the same time, the apostle Paul’s promise to the good Christians of the church at Thessaly: ‘The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels’”—the deacon shook a ministerial finger at Charles—“‘in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.’”

  Charles’s tightened lips showed his disgust. Deacon Follywell was indifferent. With a hint of threat in his watery brown eyes, he said, “We trust we have satisfactorily explained ourselves. We will therefore, with your kind permission, continue our work.”

  Again Charles smelled the vile odor from the blazing house. He would just as soon shoot a Yankee as spit on him, but if the South had to rely on this kind of defender—this kind of tactic—then her cause richly deserved to fail.

  Sport raised and gently plopped his right forefoot in the snow. Charles shook his head. “You sure as hell don’t have my permission, Deacon. Not to burn people alive. If Dahlgren was sent to commit atrocities in Richmond, he was killed before he had the opportunity. I’ll take charge of these prisoners.”

  He counted on the partisans responding to commands of a regular army officer; Follywell’s colonelcy was undoubtedly self-conferred. He realized his mistake when Deacon Follywell pulled his saber and shoved the point against Charles’s chest.

  “You try, Major, and you will be next into the flames.”

  Charles grew genuinely frightened then. He couldn’t order or shout this band into obedience. Nor, he suspected, could he ride away from the scene easily, even if his conscience would have allowed it, which it didn’t. Instantly, he saw his only means of saving the Yanks and preventing more murders. He had to form a temporary alliance.

  He looked at the remaining prisoners for the first time. His stomach wrenched. The stocky, bearded officer in charge of the party was Billy Hazard.

  Billy recognized him; Charles saw it in his friend’s shocked eyes. But Billy was careful to give no sign.

  What about the rest of the Yanks? Would they fight? Considering the alternative, he suspected they would. Could they overcome twice their number? Might—if Charles evened the odds slightly. What he contemplated was a departure from the road he had traveled since Sharpsburg, but somehow, in this weary winter, he had come to understand too late where that road led.

  Only a moment had passed since the partisan leader spoke. Charles lowered his head and returned Follywell’s stare. “Don’t threaten me, you ignorant farmer. I’m a duly commissioned officer of the Confederacy, and I am taking these men to—”

  “Pull him out of the saddle.” Folly well waved a couple of his louts. The horseman on Charles’s right reached for him. Charles gave him the shotgun point-blank.

  The pellets sieved the man’s face; blood streamed from his eye sockets and all the other holes. Follywell roared and pulled his sword arm back for a killing thrust. He got the other shotgun barrel. The blast lifted him from his saddle with his head tilting forward over his tornaway neck.

  “Billy—the bunch of you—run!”

  Charles had pared the odds to eight against five. But the eight had weapons, and the prisoners were dazed, slow to react. The wagon horses stamped and whinnied as a partisan turned his roan toward Charles, who was hurriedly dragging his Colt from the holster. Two of the Yanks leaped on another partisan while the one near Charles kneed his mount to steady it, raised his left forearm, and laid the muzzle of his revolver across it, all within seconds.

  Shouts, oaths, struggle erupted just as the partisan fired. Charles would have been hit but for the stupidity of another of Follywell’s men, who rode up from the rear and smacked Charles’s head with the barrel of his long squirrel gun.

  Knocked sideways, Charles started to slip off the left side of his saddle. He kicked his right boot free of the stirrup. The partisan with the squirrel gun coughed hard; the shot fired by the other man had gone in and out of his right shoulder.

  The snowy landscape and towering fire tilted. Falling backward, Charles tried to free his left boot and couldn’t. He felt a sharp twist in his thigh as his shoulder and the back of his head thumped the ground. He shot upward at the first partisan, missing. Sport was stamping and shying, feeling the unnatural drag on the left stirrup.

  The rest happened swiftly, yet to Charles each action seemed harrowingly slow. Another partisan, dismounted, stamped on Charles’s outstretched right arm. His hand opened. He lost the revolver.

  The partisan flung himself on top of Charles, left hand choking, right hand pressing a pistol muzzle against Charles’s body, up high near his armpit. He braced for the shot, seeing against a backdrop
of misty sun shafts the first partisan, still on horseback, still maneuvering so that he, too, could shoot.

  With no warning, weight and shadow crashed in from the left, knocking away the partisan kneeling on Charles. The man’s pistol discharged; someone cried out. Only then did Charles understand that Billy had come on the run and dived and bowled the partisan back, taking the bullet himself.

  The partisan on horseback fired. The blast was followed by an animal’s bellow. Charles screamed, “Sport!”

  Billy, wounded, wrestled the other partisan underneath the belly of the gray gelding. Punching, thrashing, kicking dirt and snow, the men struggled until Billy turned the partisan’s own gun back on him by pressuring his wrist. Billy’s finger slipped over the other man’s, forcing him to fire into his own stomach.

  Charles stared at Sport’s left shoulder where the partisan’s bullet had entered. The angle of fire would carry the bullet rearward and down. Not deep, he thought. God, don’t let it be deep—

  He retrieved his Colt, rolling to the left again. The mounted partisan tried to shoot him but was slow. Charles clasped his revolver in both hands. Two rounds killed the partisan and sent his horse galloping away through the shafts of sunshine. The dead man hung forward over the animal’s neck.

  Breathing hard, Billy scrambled from underneath the gray. The other engineers were locked hand-to-hand with Follywell’s men and were by no means out of danger. Charles lurched to his feet. So did Billy, whose uniform had a moist patch of brilliant red on the upper left front. Beyond his friend, Charles saw more blood; it streamed down Sport’s elbow and forearm to his left knee.

  “Go on—while you can.” Billy’s breath plumed out. For a moment he locked his teeth against pain. “That’s—one less I owe you.”

  “The slate’s clean.” Reaching out quickly, Charles squeezed his friend’s sleeve. “Take care of yourself.”