Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  The sight of it made me mad, and I thought about setting Dash on ’em, but I figured we was all tired from the day we had, and I didn’t know their stories. Maybe they weren’t deserters at all. Maybe they were heading to find their own units to get back in the fight. If Julius was out there, lost, I’d want him to have a campsite to lie down in safely for the night.

  I declared a truce then and there in my head that I wouldn’t hunt no deserters until I found my brother safe and sound. I’d already let a slave girl go, after all. If these men was deserters, it didn’t make no difference. I couldn’t bring them to justice and escape justice myself, not for the crime I’d committed.

  I approached a small fire beside a wagon hitched to a sorry-looking mule. There was just an old man and a black boy a little younger than myself sitting cross-legged by the fire, roasting up a measly few squirrels they’d caught. The old man wore the collar of a preacher, and I took comfort in that, so I asked if I might join them for a spell.

  “You on your own out here, son?” the preacher asked me, and I said no, sir, I had Dash with me, and he took to laughing at that in a real kindly way. “Why don’t you stay more than a spell?” he suggested. “We got room around our fire for one more, and the roads at night ain’t no place for a boy an’ his dog on their own. Bandits at large, son. A lot of dangerous folks come out in dangerous times.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, sitting down by the fire, just as darkness settled over everything, heavy and smoking from the burning day.

  “Call me William,” the preacher said. “And this here is my boy, Alfus. He don’t speak, but he listens nicely, and I’m sure he’s tired of my voice going. I’ll bet he’s glad to have another voice to hear just about now.”

  The dark-skinned boy smiled and nodded, watching the fire with a sparkle in his eyes. I’d never sat round a fire with a dark-skinned boy before, but I’d never lost my home or walked the road alone with Dash before neither, so I figured it was a day for firsts.

  “I’m Andrew,” I said to the preacher. “And this is Dash.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Preacher William stretched his limbs. “Where you headed?”

  “Well, sir,” I said. I had to think on it. “I guess I don’t know. I’m looking for the Fifth Mississippi. My brother fought with them, you see, and I’m trying to find him, on account of our house being burned. He’s gone missing, they say, and I think my dog and me — I mean, my dog and I — can track him.”

  “The Fifth Mississippi?” The man rubbed his chin. “I travel all over these lands, spreading the gospel. Let’s see…. I do believe they’re fighting under the army of Tennessee right now. The command post is just a day or two’s ride to the east of us. Their officers will surely know where to find your brother’s regiment.”

  “Really?” My face cracked a wide smile. It was the first good news I’d heard in ages. I hopped to my feet.

  “Slow down, young Andrew.” The preacher raised a hand in the air. “You need your rest. Why don’t you camp here with us for the night, and in the morning, I’ll ride you over myself.”

  “You sure?” I asked, taking my seat again. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” he said. “The Lord’s work takes me wherever I’m needed, and I imagine their officers have need of a preacher as much as anyone else at times like these.”

  I was glad to hear it, and I imagine, if he could understand a word of it, Dash would’ve been glad too. Dogs don’t like to go on long walks for miles and miles, especially not hound dogs like Dash. He was tuckered out already and snoring in a floppy heap of fur at my side. The ground was hard, but Dash’s fur made as soft a pillow as I could ask for. I slept about as well that night under the stars as I’d ever slept in my life. I was sure that soon, I’d find my brother, Julius.

  I rode with the preacher all the next day and into the day after. Dash sat beside me in the wagon, watching the people on foot. We passed more burned farms and scorched fields, and to see the land I loved turned so desolate just about broke my heart. It was like every place a field was burned, a little piece of hope had burned up with it.

  Preacher William fed me and told me stories about his travels, how he preached to the troops at Vicksburg and at Jackson, how he moved from regiment to regiment, all over the land, spreading hope and prayer to all those who needed it, and how folks was sufferin’ but their hearts was strong.

  “You see a lot of battles, then?” I asked him.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I have seen the elephant.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “My faith gave me courage,” he said, “as it gives all men in times of trial.”

  “We sure are having a time of trial,” I said.

  He nodded gravely. “We are indeed.”

  I asked him, “You think we’ll win this war?”

  He considered it a long, long time while the mule dragged us along. It looked like Alfus was listening carefully for the answer too. “I don’t know if anyone rightly wins a war,” he said. “And this war, well … I don’t think either side knows what winning is anymore. When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.”

  “The grass?” I asked. I didn’t really understand him. “Like all the burned fields?”

  “And the people who tend them,” he said. “We’re the grass. Our towns, our people.”

  “You don’t believe the war is just?”

  “I’m a pacifist, Andrew,” he said.

  I didn’t know what that was, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking. I guess he could tell, though, because he just went right on and explained it.

  “A pacifist is a person whose conscience will not allow him to bear arms or to kill. My faith tells me that all lives are sacred. The lives of white men and of slaves both.” He glanced down at Alfus. “The lives of Southerner and Northerner, man, woman, and child. I bear no ill will toward my fellow man and will not bear arms against him for any cause.”

  His words sounded like treason to my ears, but he was such a nice man, and I didn’t want to insult him, so I kept my mouth closed and thought on it. He sounded an awful lot like the nurse back in the hospital. In fact, it seemed to me, the folks I’d met who’d seen the most of war were the least inclined for it.

  But our cause was just! I knew that to be true, and some things had to be worth fighting for, no matter if they was dangerous or bloody. Pa’s big book about heroes said so, and Julius said so, and everything I’d ever learned said so. I guess, for the preacher, things was different, but I weren’t no preacher and didn’t intend to be. I was ready to fight for my home and to send those Yankee invaders running scared back to where they’d come from.

  I didn’t say anything else because I didn’t want to get into an argument, and anyway, we started to see more and more soldiers on the road, and pretty soon we was the only ones on the road who weren’t soldiers. I looked at the big men with thick beards and tattered gray uniforms with wonder. These were the heroes! These were the ones fighting the good fight!

  They all looked mighty tired. They didn’t cast friendly glances up our way.

  Suddenly, an officer in a wide-brimmed hat, his chest all pinned with medals, approached on horseback and ordered us to halt. He had a waxed mustache about as wide as the brim of his hat, and his shining sword dangled at his side all the way down to his polished boots in silver stirrups. He looked like a fine gentleman, and I was pretty excited to meet him.

  “What’s your business?” he snapped, and there was nothing fine or friendly in his voice.

  “We’ve come to minister to the Regiment,” Preacher William said, removing letters from his cloak and passing them down to a foot soldier, who ran them up to the officer. The officer studied the pages with a raised eyebrow. He looked us up and down.

  “You know President Davis?” the officer asked.

  The preacher nodded, and my eyes near bugged out of my head. He carried a letter from Jefferson Davis, the president of
the Confederate States.

  The officer grunted. “We ain’t runnin’ a Sunday revival here,” he said. “You can go on, but keep your preaching confined to those who want it, and when the orders to march come in — and they will come in, I tell you — you best get out of the way double-time or we’ll run you over, no matter whose letters you carry.”

  “Understood,” Preacher William said, and goaded his mule. The officer handed the letters back as we rode by, and Preacher William tucked them into his cloak. He gave me a wink. “A man of conscience may still have powerful friends … or, at least, letters that present such appearances.”

  “You mean —?” I startled. “Them letters was fake!”

  Preacher William smirked. “In the business of saving souls, a little stagecraft is often required. My harmless fraud might just help you find your brother, after all.”

  “Hmpf,” I grunted, and crossed my arms. The preacher was a sneaky one. I figured I’d better be rid of him soon, before I got painted with the same brush. I was here to find my brother, not play tricks on the army with a pacifist and his boy.

  Just as soon as we reached the Regiment, I saw the big white officers’ tents set up and rows upon rows of filthy lean-tos where the enlisted men made camp. I hopped down from the wagon while it was still rolling. Dash gave a bark and jumped down behind me.

  “Thanks, Preacher William!” I called back. “Good luck saving souls and pacificizing and all that!” I waved as Dash and I ran off toward the big tents of the regimental headquarters, and if William called after me, what he said got lost on the breeze, ’cause I didn’t hear it.

  I tried to seek out someone to help me, but the soldiers ran to and fro, just about as busy as a hive of bees, and I couldn’t get no one to pay me any mind. I saw officers strutting, shouting orders, and men in all manner of dress grumbling about those orders. Not everyone had on the proud gray uniform. Some wore yellow coats and others had on tattered blue ones that they must’ve taken off Yankee soldiers. Some men wore broad straw hats to block the sun, and others had on no shoes and went about dirty-footed with raggedy trousers dragging in the mud. This was not the look of any army I expected, but times was rough and soldiers made do.

  I worried that Julius was out there somewhere, lost or hurt, without shoes on his feet. I hoped, wherever he’d gone, that he had the good sense to keep his shoes.

  As I walked the camp, Dash sniffed around the area. He went right on over to a big artillery mounted on wheels, where men stood about smoking pipes and studying maps in the glaring sun, and he lifted up his leg and marked the wheel of that big gun like it belonged rightly to him.

  “No, Dash, no!” I scolded, and ran over to him, but the men who saw him do it burst out laughing.

  “Who’s that dog think he is?” one of them said over the laughter. “General Johnston?”

  “No one below the rank of colonel can pee on this here gun,” another called out.

  “I guess we better salute him!” said a third, and they all carried on cackling.

  I apologized and slipped the cord around Dash’s neck and pulled him away from the big gun. He followed along, panting happily, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  I crossed a big open space where the ground was all torn up by footprints. It must have been an area for running drills, but no one was using it now and I marched Dash around it a few times to make sure he didn’t have to take care of no more of his bodily necessities. I found a corner tucked away behind one of the big officers’ tents where I could take care of my own too.

  As Dash and I stepped back into the open, I saw a tent across the way with its flaps wide open to the breeze and a gauzy light coming through the canvas all around. In the center of the tent was a wooden desk, where a clerk in a gray uniform worked busily on stacks of papers.

  A dark-skinned fellow in a pressed cotton shirt and fine striped trousers came into the tent with even more papers and set them down on another table and left again without a word. After him, a young lieutenant came in and set more papers down.

  “Casualty reports, sir,” he said, and the clerk nodded and the lieutenant bustled out again. I watched for a while as soldier and slave alike came in and out, giving over papers to the clerk. Some of them announced what they was bringing, supply lists or receipts of goods or official letters from the generals or more reports of casualties from battle, and the clerk would direct the men where to set the papers down, but even as he did, his scribblin’ never ceased, and he barely looked up to acknowledge the men or the papers they brought for him.

  I never thought it before, but not all the business of war was done by soldiers fighting in the field. Some of it was done by clerks at desks in gauzy light, squinting over blotted ink and shuffling papers to and fro. I ain’t never heard of a grand, old poem about the heroism of clerks, though, but I guess wars can’t get fought without ’em.

  I figured that if anyone would have some knowledge about what happened to my brother Julius, it’d be the clerk with all the papers, so I strolled right over and stepped inside the tent, with Dash’s cord held tight to keep him from getting into trouble. He sat down at my feet like a soldier at attention, and I was real proud of how that dog carried himself. Taking his example, I stood up extra straight too, feeling a bit like a young soldier myself.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, loud enough for the clerk to hear. He looked up fast and sized me up, then bent his head back over his papers. I felt like I was always in this position, stepping into rooms, trying to get adults to notice me. Even standing up real straight and proud, I couldn’t get their attention. I was just about to shout for the clerk, when Dash took care of it for me.

  “Aooo!” he bellowed, and cracked the quiet air of the tent like an ax through rotten wood. That brought the clerk’s head up real fast.

  “I’m trying to find somebody,” I said to answer the expression of surprise and confusion that the clerk threw at me and at Dash, who’d taken to wagging his tail in a most unsoldierly way. “Can you help me, please?”

  “I don’t have time for this.” The clerk waved me away and went back to his papers. I thought about setting Dash on him and making the man help me, but that was just ’cause I was tired of having to convince adults to pay notice.

  “It’s my brother, sir,” I said, trying to keep my patience. “He’s gone missing … and Pa’s sick …” I didn’t want to lie to the clerk, not for something so important. Pa really wasn’t all that sick. But I wondered how much I could stretch out the truth so this man would help me. Was it okay to lie if it was for a good reason? I guess that’s why the preacher used them fake papers. He and I weren’t so different after all. But I thought I’d put a little more truth into things instead. “The Yankees came and burned our house, see —”

  “You from Meridian?” the man asked, and he had real sympathy in his voice now.

  “Just outside it, sir,” I told him.

  “I heard about General Sherman’s raid,” the man said. “Terrible. He’ll pay for his cruelty one day, I’ll tell you that. We’ll avenge your loss and that of every good Southern family!”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, glad he’d warmed up to me. At last, someone who believed in the cause without all that hemming and hawing. “I’d really like to know, if you keep records for this kind of thing, about my brother. We’d heard he’d gone missing and, well, I come looking for him with our dog, here. I guess, before I got to searching, I wanted to be sure he wasn’t …”

  “Dead?” the clerk said.

  I nodded.

  The clerk tapped his fingers on the desk. “Name?” he asked.

  “I’m Andrew,” I said.

  “Not your name,” he clucked. “Your brother’s name. Full name, if you would be so kind.”

  “My brother’s name is Julius Burford,” I said. “From Lauderdale County. He was with the Fifth Mississippi Infantry, I think.”

  “Tarnation, son, what makes you think he’d be all the way down here? Th
ey fought up in Tennessee!”

  “I know that, sir,” I said. “It’s just that, like I said, he’s gone missing and I thought … maybe he turned up closer to home?”

  The clerk stood, grumbling, and crossed the room to a table piled high with more papers. He rummaged through them until he found some kind of list and held it up to the light that streamed in through the canvas of the tent.

  I stood, waiting, my heart thumping in my chest. I didn’t know what sort of list he was studying, but I feared it might be a list of the dead. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and listened to the sounds of the military camp outside — songs and curses, laughter and oaths of all kinds, and a heap of thunderous snoring and whinnying of horses. It seemed to me a military camp was a mighty loud place to be. All the sounds had Dash turning his head this way and that, his big jowls flapping with every snap of his neck.

  “I see,” the clerk muttered to himself, and then looked up at me, nodding, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “Is my brother on that list, sir?” I asked. My voice cracked again.

  “He is,” the man said gravely.

  “Is that … causalities, sir?” I imagined telling Ma the news, telling Pa. What words could I use to tell ’em that all hope was lost? Julius would never come home again.

  “This?” The clerk looked at the list like he was surprised to be holding it. “No, son, this is not casualties.” He sat down again and leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked beneath him. I felt a wave of relief come over me. Julius was on a list and he weren’t dead. “Andrew, was it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Andrew, I don’t know how to say this nicely, so I’ll say it plain.” He set the list down on top of his other papers and pointed at it. “This here’s a list I get every month of men to be on the lookout for, in case they turn up.”