Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  For the next generation of peacemakers, that they may do better than those who have come before.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Manhunt

  Chapter 2: Caught

  Chapter 3: Picking Battles

  Chapter 4: The Letter

  Chapter 5: The Leaves of Fall

  Chapter 6: Contraband

  Chapter 7: The Higher Law

  Chapter 8: My Brother’s Keeper

  Chapter 9: The Things Men Do

  Chapter 10: Total War

  Chapter 11: The Preacher

  Chapter 12: Powerful Friends

  Chapter 13: A Clerk’s War

  Chapter 14: Thinking Like a Hunter

  Chapter 15: Crossing the Lines

  Chapter 16: Dog Fight

  Chapter 17: A Free Man

  Chapter 18: Two Brothers, Two Masters

  Chapter 19: Off to Fight

  Chapter 20: Wearing the Gray

  Chapter 21: Blue and Gray

  Chapter 22: Lost Cause

  Chapter 23: What Dash Found

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by C. Alexander London

  Copyright

  “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

  — Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  Hunting down a man ain’t like hunting down a raccoon. Raccoons are smart and quick. They move like summer lightning. They hide up trees or deep down in burrows, where you gotta smoke ’em out. Men don’t hide half so well as raccoons, and there weren’t ever one born that could hide from Dash. He was the best hound dog in the whole state of Mississippi, and he was gonna prove it that morning in the summer of 1863.

  A piece of gray cloth had snagged on a willow branch. I pulled it down so that Dash could sniff it and catch the scent of the man we hunted. He wagged his tail and his big jowls dripped with slobber.

  “Go get ’im, boy!” I said, and Dash took off, barking and running to beat the devil.

  One thing I knew for sure was that if I was on the run, I wouldn’t go leaving bits of my uniform snagged on branches for a hound dog like Dash to smell. The way I figured it, the man we were after was as good as caught.

  Dash was on the chase. I ran behind.

  The air hung wet and heavy, so my shirt was all stuck to me, and I wanted to tear it off and dive into a cool pond for a swim more than I wanted to chase through the woods, getting bit by critters and slapped in the face by stinging branches, but I had my sworn duty to do, and the cowardly rascal we was after weren’t gonna give me and Dash the slip.

  I couldn’t imagine what would make a yella-bellied coward desert the great Confederate Army, fighting to protect our land from the Yanks’ tyranny, but he’d have to be some kind of fool to run off and come all the way back here. We didn’t give army deserters no quarter, not in Meridian, Mississippi.

  My big brother, Julius, always said that Washington, DC’d burn to the ground before the good folks of Meridian gave up the cause of freedom. We were the heart of the Confederacy, as Julius said it. Julius may’ve been just sixteen years old, four more than me, but the Confederacy needed men, so Julius lied about his age so he could fight for the Southern cause and for our way of life.

  Also, they paid a fifty-dollar bounty for enlisting … but we hadn’t seen that money yet.

  We didn’t have no slaves because Pa didn’t approve and we couldn’t afford one even so, but Pa weren’t no abolitionist neither. As Pa would put it, we weren’t fighting for slavery. We were fighting against tyranny.

  Abolitionists wanted to outlaw slavery in the whole country and let free all the slaves there was. They didn’t have no plan what to do with all them folks after they was free, and the way I saw it, that was a problem right there. There weren’t enough work for folks like my Pa as it was. You add thousands of freed slaves looking for wages to the mix, and, well, it wouldn’t do, says Pa. But that’s just what the Yankees wanted, and that’s why Mississippi was the second state to stand up and secede from the Union. That’s what the war was all about. As Pa would say, we were fightin’ for Freedom, Justice, Honor, and the Great State of Mississippi.

  Pa said that if the South was gonna change its peculiar ways, then the South had to do it on its own and no Billy Yank from Chicago or Boston could force that change on us. Our way of life suited us just fine, and we weren’t forcing it on anyone else, so why should they wage war to force their way of life on us? I figured the slaves might say different, but folks said they was happier with the way things were too, and that weren’t really a concern of mine. I just wanted to do my part, like my brother.

  My parents were hoppin’ mad when Julius came home saying how he was off to fight, on account of him telling lies about his age and not asking Pa permission first and such, but Julius is a real smooth talker and he said “Freedom, Justice, Honor, and the Great State of Mississippi” right back to my father and, well, Pa couldn’t argue with that. He’d put those ideas into Julius’s head in the first place. You can’t plant wheat in the ground and get mad when wheat grows from the seeds.

  So we said good-bye, and he’s been gone a while now. I was jealous that Julius got to go be heroic when I had to stay home and look after the house and get educated and do my chores and such. I wanted to fight against tyranny too. But Julius told me I better look after his dog, Dash, while he was gone, and that’s what I did, because I figured we all find different ways to serve.

  It didn’t take long for me and Dash to find a job. Like I said, he’s the best coonhound there is, and the Home Guard came knockin’ on our door to see if we might want to use his nose to help them out. Northern spies were abroad in the countryside, and so were runaway slaves and deserters. The Home Guard was supposed to catch ’em. They said a dog like Dash’d sure come in handy for that.

  I wanted to do it right away, but Pa didn’t approve of that either. I won out because I learned to argue just like Julius, and the Home Guard got me doing patrols with them and chasing down no-good deserters. I couldn’t wait to catch one and give him what for.

  So instead of swimming in the pond or lazing about the afternoon, I ran.

  Dash jumped over a fallen tree, barking and snarling, then he turned a sharp left and skittered to a stop. His nose worked the ground, his big floppy ears swooshing back and forth as his head swiveled from side to side. I heard Winslow and them others from the Home Guard huffing along way behind us. They couldn’t keep up, which was fine with me. I wanted to catch the coward we was after by myself.

  “Slow down, Dash, I only got two legs to your four!” I told my dog.

  Dash didn’t slow down. He barreled through the brush to the edge of a field and slid right under the wooden posts. I had to climb over the fence, and I tore my trousers in doing it. I knew Ma would be upset about that, as I don’t have enough clothes to go ripping up the ones I was wearing, but I kept running because catching this deserter was more important than torn trousers.

  I recognized we were on the edge of Widow Parker’s farm, and I felt real sorry stomping through her fields like I was, just before harvest time too, but there was nothing to be done for it. I ran across with Dash, and then we found the railroad tracks on the other side of the field. A small lineman’s cabin sat beside the track, leaning heavily like the building itself was getting ready to lie down for a nap, and Dash ran right to it, jumping at the door and barking and slamming his big brown paws on the wood so hard, I thought for sure the building would topple.

  He circled and barked and wouldn’t budge no farther than that squat little shack.

  “He in there, boy?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest
. I couldn’t hardly contain my smile. I was about to catch my first criminal. “Okay, now!” I shouted. “You been caught fair and square. You come out now and surrender!”

  The only answer I got was a warm breeze over the fields, the rustle of grass, and the creak of old wood. I stepped closer to the door of the cabin. It was loose on the leather straps that held it closed. Through the slit of the door where it hung open, I saw nothing but blackness inside. The sun shined right down on us overheard, bright white hot, but I felt a chill go through me.

  I’d never seen a deserter before, but I figured they were cowards. Anyone who’d run from the army had to be a coward, but I never thought before how sometimes it was cowards who was the most dangerous of all. A trapped animal is the one that bites you.

  I should’ve waited for Winslow and the others, but Julius was off someplace fighting the Yanks, and what would he think of his little brother being scared of one lone deserter hiding in a lineman’s cabin? If Julius could take to the field of battle for the honor and glory of Mississippi, then I could sure enough capture the coward hiding in the cabin.

  I stepped up and pushed the door open with my toe.

  “Come on out now!” I yelled, but my voice cracked real high. It was always doin’ that at the worst possible times, and I looked around real quick to make sure Winslow and the others wasn’t around to hear it.

  Inside the cabin, it was silent as a tomb. Afternoon light slashed into the dim space. Dust danced in the light, but the cabin looked empty. It was no bigger than a pantry, and I didn’t see anyplace for the deserter to hide himself. For a moment, I thought maybe Dash had caught the wrong scent, but Dash never did lead me wrong on a hunt before. Why would he start now, when it was so important?

  I stepped inside the cabin. “Come on out!” I repeated. Dash whined, and I heard him circling the cabin on the outside. He weren’t allowed inside back at home, and I guess he figured the rules was the same out here. I sure would have felt better if he followed me in, though.

  The air was even heavier in that little cabin, and it smelled sour, like sweat and tobacco and turned meat. I wrinkled my nose. I couldn’t imagine a man choosing to hide here, no matter how afraid he was of being brought to justice. I wanted to turn and step right back out into the sunlight and the fresh air, and I was just about to do so when a hand clamped over my face and a heavy arm yanked me back.

  “Don’t you move, or I’ll snap your neck,” a man commanded as he pulled me off my feet and kicked the cabin door shut, with Dash still outside.

  Dash barked, and I heard his paws scraping the wood of the door. It shuddered, and I prayed the whole place would come crashing down around us so I could escape, but the walls held.

  “Call off your dog!” the man commanded me. “Quiet him down.”

  I felt the scratchy wool of his army uniform damp against my neck. His breath reeked of tobacco. His hand relaxed on my face so I could move my mouth. I wanted to scream but knew he’d kill me before any help could come to get me. I felt like a fool for falling into his trap, but I’d done it, and the best I could do now was obey him and hope he let me go.

  “Dash, hush!” I ordered, and Dash fell silent outside.

  I worried that Winslow and the others wouldn’t be able to find me at all. This deserter would just kill me and Dash and run off to hide someplace else. He’d get away with desertion and now with murder. I tried to twist around to see if he looked like a murderer. His grip was too tight, and I couldn’t turn to see him. I couldn’t figure what a murderer was supposed to look like anyhow, so I stopped struggling.

  “Mister,” I said. “Why don’t you just let me go? I promise I won’t tell where you’re hid.”

  I wasn’t used to lying, because Pa always said liars are just another kind of coward, and a brave man has nothing to fear from the truth, but I figured when a coward’s got you by the throat, sometimes you have to lie.

  “What’s your name, boy?” the man snarled.

  “Andrew,” I choked out. “Andrew Burford.”

  “Why are you chasing me?” the man demanded.

  “I’m just out hunting with my dog,” I said, lying some more. Lies are like bees. They don’t come just one at a time. You start messing with ’em and they swarm. Sometimes, I guess, they sting.

  “Hunting?” the man snorted. “Where’s your rifle?”

  “I —” He had me there. I didn’t think my lie through real clearly. I didn’t have anything like a weapon at all, except Dash.

  “You’re with the Home Guard,” the man said. “Bunch of criminals and cutthroats, you lot are.”

  “Don’t you go insulting them,” I snapped right back at him. “The Home Guard keeps folks safe. We do our part, like real men! Real men don’t run off like you done.”

  “What do you know about real men?” The man’s hand gripped my arm like a vise. It hurt, but I didn’t flinch. I didn’t want him to know it hurt. “You seen the elephant, boy?”

  I shook my head. The man was crazed. What was he talking about elephants for?

  The man laughed his toothy, yellow laugh. “That’s what they call the battle, you know. Seein’ the elephant. Ha-ha! I seen the elephant. I rode the elephant like a Persian king! Until you seen the elephant, you have no idea what kind of man you are. War ain’t like in books. Real men? Ha!”

  I squirmed, but he held me tight. It was so dark in that little cabin, I couldn’t see much but my feet dangling in the air. On the ground below ’em, I saw the man’s feet, bare beneath the gray trousers of his tattered army uniform. One of them looked all swollen and full of pus, and I imagined it was mighty painful to him. I was glad. I wanted the man to be hurting.

  “You’re a criminal,” I told him. “And you’re gonna face justice!”

  “I’m a farmer,” the man said. “I got a mother at home, just south of Jackson, and I come back for the harvest. That’s all.”

  “General Grant already took Jackson,” I said. “You’d be a fool to go that way. Union soldiers all over it.”

  The man snorted loud through his nose. “No matter. My mother can’t do the harvest alone, and she’ll starve if we don’t get the crops in. Yanks ain’t gonna help her, and we don’t have nobody to do our work for us. Not like these rich generals, who can keep their farms running with slaves while they keep us fighting and dying for ’em. No, sir. Their slaves live better than we do, you know that? I’m through with it, hear me? I ain’t dying and I ain’t killing for no rich man anymore. I done things on their account that’d make a grave robber chilled to the bone. I ain’t doin’ no more.”

  “You swore an oath when you joined up,” I said. “Just like my brother swore an oath. Only cowards go breaking their oaths just ’cause they afraid. Have you no honor?”

  The man laughed a raspy laugh. He spat a phlegmy wad onto the hard-packed earth floor of the cabin. “Big words for such a little runt. I bet your brother’s out there swearing new oaths of his own in the battle … if he ain’t crying and wetting himself when the Yank guns start blazing.”

  “My brother ain’t like you!” I yelled, and wiggled down to stomp his bare foot with my shoe just as hard as I could.

  “Gah!” he yelled, and doubled over, dropping me to the ground. I hit the earth hard and threw myself at the door. From the corner of my eye, I saw the flash of a knife blade as I pushed the door open with my fingertips. The deserter slashed at me. I felt the sting on my back as the knife sliced my skin, but the man didn’t stab it in.

  He didn’t have the chance.

  In a roar of fur and teeth and claws, Dash came leaping through the open door, lit up by the sun behind him. His big ears spread out like the wings of a hawk, and the dog crashed right on top of the no-good deserter, knocking him to the ground. The man lost his grip on the knife and it fell to the dirt, still wet with my blood.

  “Ah!” he screamed. Dash bit into the man’s shoulder, just south of his neck, and then the dog yanked his head from side to side, and I swear, Da
sh would have torn the man’s head from his neck if I hadn’t told him to stop.

  Dash growled, his floppy lips wobbling against the man’s skin. He didn’t let go, and the man moved to shove him off.

  “Don’t you do that, mister,” I said, “or I’ll tell Dash to rip you apart. You just lie still.”

  The man groaned but let his arms fall down his sides. He looked up at the ceiling of the cabin, and he was on his back right in the shaft of light through the door, and it was the first time I got a good look at his face.

  He had red hair and a scraggly red beard and a big scar running down his cheek, wide and winding like the Mississippi River. His eyes were blue as the sky, and they glistened in the hazy light, and I saw it clear enough as a tear rolled down his cheek and wet his sideburns. Then another. And another. His mouth quivered. I never saw a grown man weep before.

  “Oh Lord, what now? What now?” he cried, and I felt mighty embarrassed standing there, but what was I supposed to do? He had made an oath to the Confederacy to serve his time in the army with honor, and he’d broken that oath and run off. If he had anyone to blame for his troubles, it was his own fool self.

  “I gotta place you under arrest,” I told him, even though I knew he wasn’t talking to me. Pa always said that a man who pities himself leaves no place for the mercy of others, so I figured I better just stop the man from his self-pity right away. It was for his own good.

  “Oh Lord,” he groaned and wept. “Oh forgive me, Lord.”

  “You committed a crime, and uh …” I felt real bad now, and part of me wanted to call Dash off the man, but he had tried to cut me with his knife. What could make a man so crazed that one minute he’d try to kill a boy and the next he’d be crying and begging the Lord for mercy?