Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  I untied Dash and we made the long walk home, with nothing to show for our hunt but a torn shirt and bellyful of guilt. I shook my head. I was just about the worst son of Mississippi there ever was.

  That night we ate a root vegetable stew with no meat in it, and even for that, I didn’t have much of an appetite. I told Ma I’d snagged my shirt on a tree, and she sighed real big but took it off me to mend, and I got another of Julius’s old ones to put on. It was a little moth-eaten, but it’d have to do for now, Ma said. I couldn’t be trusted with nothing nicer. I kept my mouth shut, but I wanted to tell her I didn’t deserve nothing nicer, not after how I’d let that girl escape.

  After eating supper, I read my lessons with Pa, reciting some passage of that big old book about a hero named Sarpedon, a mortal son of the god, Zeus. When he died in battle, not even his powerful father could save him, so the minor gods of sleep and death came down over the battlefield and carried his body away. While I recited it, Pa had tears in his eyes, and it troubled my thoughts even worse than they was already troubled.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  He shook his head and waved me away, and I figured lessons was over for the night, which suited me fine. I had my own troubles to think on. I went out to the porch and sat on the wood planks beside Dash, whose side rose and fell with heavy breaths. Every time he snored, his eyes twitched and his big ears flopped and his lips spluttered. Even his paws twitched. I was amazed the dog could sleep through his own sleeping, it was so loud.

  I rubbed his side and I stared up at the stars in the sky. Julius was out there somewhere, fighting to protect our way of life, and here I was, safe at home, messing it all up.

  I’d quit the Home Guard, and now I’d let a runaway slave go free. It was a bad crime, what I’d done. For all I knew, the girl would go spying on all our defenses and tell ’em right to that nasty Union General Sherman and his army of bums. She could be a spy or a witch or any wicked thing, and I let her slip away because I felt bad for her.

  But everything I’d learned told me I shouldn’t feel bad for her. I’d been told that the colored folks was better off under slavery, that the Southern civilization was good for ’em, and a sight better than how they lived on their own, all savage and brutish and whatnot. Some good Christian taught Susan to speak properly and to tie bandages, and for all I know, even how to read. What’d all the abolitionists do for her? Just made the war that killed her master and set her bleeding through the woods on hope.

  False hope, if you asked me. Over the summer, we might’ve lost Vicksburg and Gettsyburg, but we was gonna win this war, and Susan and them folks like her was gonna be restored back to their rightful owners. Things were gonna go back to the way they was.

  But even so. She cried for her momma.

  I never did think the colored folks felt sentimental like we white folks did. I’d been told they didn’t feel emotions like us, but she sure seemed to. She said words the same way Julius said ’em, and my brother was just about the smartest, most feeling boy I knew. If that runaway felt like he did, who could say she should be made to stay in Mobile if she didn’t wanna? How’d I feel if I got my momma stolen away from me like that?

  I’d feel like crying and running away, myself.

  But that didn’t change nothing. She was still a slave, and it weren’t right for me to let her run off. It was against the law, and like the preacher said, it was also against the “natural order of things.” So I’d broken man’s law and heaven’s law by letting her go. I was a criminal and a sinner.

  But in the North, man’s law had changed to wipe out slavery. And all those abolitionists, like Mary Ward’s father, said they had heaven’s law on their side, that all men should be free. North and South couldn’t both be right, could they?

  I felt sick about it. Any which way I looked at it, I done wrong. I done wrong against the law and against my brother’s bravery and the Southern cause, and I done wrong against heaven, and I didn’t even bring any meat home for supper. I sure wished Julius was around to tell me what was right.

  Inside, I heard Ma and Pa whispering to each other, urgent and heavy with worry. Then I heard Pa’s heavy footsteps on the floor, the clomp, clomp of his crutch as he came to the door and stepped outside. Dash woke up with a start and looked at Pa a long moment, then sank his head back onto the wood planks with a heavy thunk.

  “Andrew,” Pa said, his voice all grave and grim. My heart froze like winter ice. He knew what I’d done. I was sure of it. I was in trouble now. I swallowed hard.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice cracking again. I could already feel the sting of the whipping I’d get for what I’d done.

  “I have some terrible news,” Pa said, holding a letter in his hand. “Your Ma thinks you ain’t old enough to hear it plain, but I think different. I don’t want no tears now, boy, understood? Your Ma has enough of those for all of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” I repeated, this time at no more than the smallest whisper.

  “Julius went missing after a battle with Union forces at Chickamauga,” he said. “He ain’t been seen since and his regiment fears the worst.”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to hear those words, didn’t want to think ’em.

  The worst: Julius, missing.

  The worst: Julius, dead.

  For some reason, I couldn’t stop swallowing.

  I felt Dash’s wet nose on my hand. A dog knows when he’s needed. His tongue licked my fingers. He knew something was wrong and thought to comfort me the only way a dog knows how.

  But I didn’t want comfort.

  This was all my fault, I just knew it. I was no good. Pa didn’t know nothing about my crimes, and he weren’t gonna punish me for ’em. My punishment came from heaven itself. I’d helped that girl steal herself away, so heaven saw fit to steal my brother away.

  I know Pa told me not to, but I just started crying. I couldn’t help myself. I bent down and pressed my face against Dash’s neck, breathing in his dirty dog smell and just weeping into his fur. He didn’t put up much of a fuss. He let me cry on him. I felt Pa’s hand resting on my back, gently, full of kindness that I didn’t deserve.

  “I — I —” I started to tell him, to make a full confession, but he shushed me and he stooped down to my level, even though it pained him to do it.

  “I haven’t given up hope yet, Andrew, and nor should you,” he told me. “Soldiers go missing all the time, and they turn up all the time too, sometimes with a different regiment, sometimes in a field hospital, sometimes — yes — as a prisoner of war. But missing is not the same as gone. Don’t you forget it.”

  Then he pulled me away from Dash and held me to his chest.

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” I said, but he shushed me again and told me I had nothing to be sorry for. He just held on to me, and I knew his little speech was as much for himself as it was for me. I wanted it to be true, even if it wasn’t. I wanted to hope.

  I woke up next morning in my bed, though I didn’t remember getting there. When I came out, Ma had cooked up some eggs and hoecakes and fried-up salt pork. I didn’t think we’d had any pork in the house and figured she must have gone out to get it while I was asleep. I guess she needed something to do to keep her mind from running to Julius.

  Even though I still didn’t have much of an appetite, I ate the food. It was hot and it warmed me from the inside out.

  Neither Ma nor Pa said anything, and the quiet was hard on me. I couldn’t bear it, so I stood up, not knowing why at first. They looked at me, startled by my sudden move.

  “I’m taking Dash into town,” I said.

  “How about you fix them shutters today?” Pa suggested.

  “I got to go see Winslow,” I told him. “Maybe he knows … something.”

  “Oh Andrew …” Ma put her hand over her mouth, distraught.

  “I have to try looking,” I said. “He’s my brother.”

  “Andrew, be reasonable, now,” said Pa.

  “
Or maybe I can help the Home Guard again,” I told him. “With Julius gone missing, somebody in this family got to help the cause.”

  I glared at Pa and felt a swell of anger inside me. It was anger at myself, for what I’d done, but I’d turned it around and I threw it at him because he was at home while Julius was gone, and it should’ve been the other way around, if it weren’t for Pa’s bad back.

  My words struck Pa like a blow. His face twitched, and I felt bad for it as soon as I said it, but words are like musket shots. Once you fire ’em, you can’t take ’em back.

  I didn’t wait for Pa to holler at me, and I didn’t stay to apologize. I knew if I started to apologize, I’d tell them everything, all about the deserter getting shot and the girl I let go and how Julius going missing was all my fault. So I stormed out to the porch and I whistled for Dash.

  It took most of the morning to walk into town. When I got there, the streets were bustling with men in the gray uniforms of the Confederate Army, preparing the defense of the city. They wore beards and many of them smelled something awful, but their officers looked mighty fine overseeing them, with pistols and swords, tipping their hats when ladies walked past.

  A few slaves were at work building fortifications and digging trenches, and they hummed some colored songs to keep time with their shovels. Dash walked by my side and eyed the slaves warily. I heard him let out a low rumbling growl and I made him hush. The men eyed him as he passed, but they didn’t stop their humming or break the rhythm of their digging. The soldier with the whip standing over them had his eye firmly fixed on their labors. I guess he feared they’d run off, just like Susan had.

  Working under the hot sun like that’d make me think of running off too.

  I avoided the soldier’s gaze. I knew he didn’t know about Susan, but I still felt ashamed to meet his eyes. The city needed every worker it could get, and Susan had looked mighty strong, strong enough to swing a shovel. Did slave girls do digging work like the men? Had I robbed the city of a worker it needed? Had my crime made our defenses weaker?

  I shook my head. Surely, one runaway slave girl weren’t enough to make the Confederate States lose the war. No, my crime was much smaller and the punishment for it was personal. Not the fall of my city, just the loss of my brother.

  “Come on,” I said, urging Dash along.

  With the soldiers in town, there wasn’t much for Winslow and his friends on the Home Guard to do. The army officers frowned on them taking food and supplies from ordinary citizens and didn’t like them running about causing a ruckus. I knew where to go looking for Winslow in his idle times. I didn’t like to set foot there, but I didn’t have much choice.

  The saloon.

  At least I had Dash with me to scare off the drunks.

  Standing by the entrance down a side alley, I could smell the stale smells that drinking men carry with them. There was moonshine and sweat and tobacco and all kinds of other, even worse smells. Dash stood rigid next to me, his nose working on all those sour scents, one paw lifted off the ground, with a sharpness in his eyes, like he was out in the woods on a hunt. He knew where we was headed was filled with danger. I stepped inside and the good dog stayed right with me, even though he didn’t normally follow me into buildings. Like I said, a dog knows when he’s needed.

  It was dark and the air was hazy with smoke. Men spoke in low, grumbling voices. Three men with hats pulled over their faces played cards at a table in the corner. An old man stared into an empty cup beside the window, dreaming some private dream. As soon as I took two steps inside, the barman yelled at me: “You take that dog and get! This ain’t a place for dogs or boys!”

  All the grizzly faces turned to me, and I felt like I’d made a big mistake coming here. Dash felt the threat of the place and did what came natural to him. He started barking.

  “I said get!” the barman yelled. Dash didn’t take kindly to his tone one bit. Barking, he lunged for the bar, and it took all my might to catch him and hold him back. I slipped the cord around his neck and pulled him quickly outside, but I didn’t scold him. I liked that he’d seen fit to protect me. I liked it a lot. Dash had been the only one to witness me let the slave girl go, and he still cared for me. That was something, anyway. Ain’t no crime too great that a dog can’t forgive you for it. Sometimes I think dogs are a whole lot better than people, at least in that regard. I wished I could forgive myself as easily as Dash forgave me.

  “What are you doing down here, Andrew?” Winslow had peeled himself out of the saloon and stood blinking in the sunlight in front of me. His cheeks were red and he looked unsteady on his feet. I didn’t see Rufus and Wade, but I was sure they were inside too.

  “I came looking for you,” I said.

  “We ain’t seen you in a bit,” Winslow said. “Figured your Pa kept you away on account of us patriots not being suitable companions.” He stumbled for no reason and caught himself on the wall. Then he glared down at me, almost daring me to mention his near-fall.

  I didn’t dare.

  “What can I do for you, sonny?” He smiled real big, his crooked yellow teeth stained with tobacco juice. “Ready to take Dash out and hunt us a runaway slave?”

  I almost gasped, but I contained myself. He didn’t know about Susan. He couldn’t know. He was just making talk.

  “My brother’s gone missing,” I said. “Fighting in Chickamauga.”

  “And?” He spat. “What do you want me to do about it? Your brother’s the hero after all.” He spat the word hero like it was a curse word. Then he laughed a cruel laugh, and I regretted coming down this way at all.

  “I thought you might … know something?”

  His whole body rumbled with laughter and his red cheeks tore open with a gruesome grin. “Oh Andrew, oh! That’s a good one! Me? Know somethin’? You and your brother are the ones with book learnin’! I don’t know nothin’ at all!”

  “I meant about my brother,” I said. This conversation was even more frustrating than arguing with the slave girl. At least she talked sense.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that.” He shook his head. “These regular army boys don’t think much of old Winslow, I’m afraid. My service don’t count for much in their eyes.”

  Now he’d made regular sound like a curse word.

  “You best go to talk to them. I was you, I’d start at the hospital on the hill,” he said. Then he held his finger up for me to wait and disappeared back inside. He came out after a minute, stumbling, and he held a tin cup out to me. “You might want this before you go. Fortifications.”

  I leaned forward and sniffed the cup. Whatever liquid he had in there smelled like it could melt the ties off a railroad track. I held my hands up and thanked him. Said I wasn’t thirsty just then, and me and Dash backed outta that alley just as fast as we could.

  Winslow stood there with his cup out, watching us go and muttering curses all the while. I guess my Pa was right all along. The farther I kept away from Winslow, the better off I’d be.

  But he had been helpful in one way. Now I knew where I needed to go, though I dreaded it worse than the saloon.

  I had to go ask about my brother at the army hospital.

  As we climbed the hill toward the big brick building that had once been the finest hotel in town, I saw tired-looking nurses step outside to take in fresh air. One of them was dabbing herself with some kind of perfume in a little glass bottle, and I quickly came to understand why.

  I felt bad for Dash. Even to my human nose, from fifty feet away, a mob of stinking smells assaulted us, and the closer we got, the stronger the smell of human misery rose up to repel us. Though my thoughts screamed at me to turn back, my legs pushed forward to the door.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” I approached the nurse who’d doused herself in perfume as polite as I could. She eyed my raggedy shirt and my hound dog and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “This is no place for dogs,” she said.

  “I’m looking for my brother,” I told her.
“He fought at Chickamauga.”

  “Why, son, that is over three hundred miles away!” She shook her head at me. “We’re treating the wounded from just ten miles around. General Sherman’s on the rampage, and you think your brother’d come through all that to our little hospital? How do you expect he’d do that?”

  I shrugged, not really knowing distances, myself. Hearing her say all them miles of fighting between where Julius gone missing and where I stood, I felt my own hopes draining away. I almost wanted to collapse right there, but I bit the inside of my cheek and puffed up my chest and forced myself to keep on hoping. Julius got lost, so he wouldn’t be any place a person would expect him to be. Otherwise, they couldn’t say he was lost. I figured then, he must be someplace a person wouldn’t expect him to be. And a hospital three hundred miles away from the battle he’d fought seemed as unexpected a place as any.

  So I told myself, anyway.

  I wondered if the lies you tell yourself count as lies.

  “Well, you can’t bring that dog inside,” the woman said.

  “Sorry, Dash.” I scratched his ear and tied him to a hitching post.

  “Not there,” the woman scolded me. “That’s where they bring the wounded in! Tie him up by that tree.”

  Dash grunted when I pulled him over to the tree. He’d walked a long way into town and wanted to lie down. “I’ll be right back,” I said. I don’t reckon he could understand me, being a dog and all, but just the same, it felt good to talk to him. Calmed my nerves for going inside.

  Dash flopped himself onto the ground in the shade of that tree and took to sleeping straight away. I was mighty tired myself, but I marched back over to the front door, past the nurse who smelled of lavender perfume, and stepped inside.

  The smells that assaulted me were nothing compared with the noises. Men coughing and groaning and talking and praying. There were screams of agony where surgeons worked as well as the wheezing breaths of consumptives fighting for air. Nurses and doctors spoke in hushed tones, but the patients themselves didn’t bother with quiet. There was too many of them, anyway.