Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  The horses rounded a bend in the road, and when I saw the men with them, it sent a shiver up my spine. They were all Union soldiers, dressed in blue. There were two horses leading a column of men on foot, and the marching men numbered in the hundreds, with still more officers on horses riding among them and again at the rear.

  “Hello there!” the preacher called out to them, raising his hand in a friendly greeting and stepping straight out into the middle of the road. The officers stopped their horses, and orders went down the line for the whole column of men to stop. A river of blue came to a halt before the preacher’s raised hand, and I felt a moment of admiration for the man.

  I saw the runaways peeking out from the woods as the preacher reached into his jacket and removed a letter. I inched closer with Dash tight at my heel to hear what was being said. It made my blood sizzle to be so close to Yankee soldiers. For all I knew, they was the same ones that burned my house to the ground and sent the whole town packing, but I wanted to know what trick Preacher William was up to now, so I moved in.

  The officer on the horse in front studied the letter that Preacher William had handed him, and then he looked the man up and down. “This so?” he asked.

  “It is,” said William. “We’ve just come from the rebel camp not three days back and they were on the move, heading west with a full force. Upward of a thousand men, and a regiment of cavalry as well.”

  At that I almost screamed, but I bit my tongue. Preacher William was a spy.

  He’d gone into the Confederate camp under a lie and spied on all the movements and now he was telling these Union officers what the Confederate Army was up to. I thought of the private from Texas and his fear of another battle. Thanks to this so-called pacifist preacher, he’d walk right into one!

  The officer nodded. “We’ll send a rider to let the general know what you’ve seen. Good work.”

  The preacher smiled, pleased with himself and his treachery, and then he pointed to me and I froze. Dash sensed my fear, and his body went rigid as a statue too.

  “I wonder if you could offer us a kindness in return,” the preacher said. “This boy here needs to find his way to Jackson…. I do wonder if we might find safe passage in that direction?”

  The officer burst out laughing and Preacher William looked confused. I did too. I didn’t know what the man found so funny and I didn’t like the tone of his laughter.

  “Jackson’s just a half a day’s ride down this road,” the officer chuckled. “And I daresay you’ll find safe passage. That’s about all you’ll find. We’ve burned most everything else and sent the rebels packing, along with anyone who’d aid them.”

  The preacher paled. Even though he was a traitor, I guess he didn’t take to men laughing at violence they’d done, like war was a joke. I suppose on that score, the preacher and I agreed. Maybe I was more like him than I’d thought. I’d let a contraband get away. I was sneaking over enemy lines. What made me better than him?

  We stood still and watched the Union soldiers march past us, and I shuddered to see ’em up close.

  They looked just like the Confederate soldiers, except for their uniforms. They wore the same style mustaches and beards. Some of them wore no hair on their faces at all. They looked about as old as Julius, and some looked even younger, about as old as me. A few nodded politely, others ignored us altogether, lost somewhere in their own thoughts. If it weren’t for the color of the uniforms, I couldn’t have told you the difference between a Confederate solider and Union soldier.

  I can’t say that was a comfort to me. They was just regular boys, and even so, they had burned up towns and left decent folks to live in ruins. I wanted them to look like monsters, and they didn’t.

  After the column of Yanks passed us by, I rode on with the preacher and the runaway slaves into Jackson. The four runaways sat in the back with me and Dash. Dash kept his eyes fixed on ’em, and they kept theirs on Dash. I couldn’t get my dog to look away. He just couldn’t relax around runaways.

  I didn’t say a thing to any of ’em either. Too many words had confused my thinking. I didn’t want to think no more. I just wanted to find Mary Ward’s house and fetch my brother and take him back to where he belonged.

  Everyone, I figured, should just go back where they belonged, and maybe then all this mess would get better. The bigger the world got and the more people I met in it, well, the more confused I got about things I thought I knew for sure.

  “War makes boys into men before their time,” Pa had said. I hadn’t even seen the war yet, not really, and I already felt about a hundred years old.

  The road was scorched along the sides, and all the fields was burned. All the houses too. Along the road, I saw three dead bodies, lying facedown in a ditch, with bloody holes in their jackets where they’d been shot. I didn’t dare look closer when we rolled by because I could hear the flies buzzing on ’em, and that’s a sight no one should ever see.

  If anyone else was left behind, they must’ve hid themselves at the sound of the mule clomping along, because we didn’t see another soul until we reached Jackson.

  The city wasn’t in such bad shape. On the outskirts we saw the fortifications and the trenches all wrecked from when the Union overran the place. Soldiers in blue now held the works where once the brave boys in gray had stood guard over the city. They must have heard we was coming because the preacher didn’t even have to stop the cart to show his letters. We just rode right in.

  A few buildings had been ruined, burned down to charred timbers, but most still stood, and folks scurried about on the streets. Not in big numbers, but enough that I didn’t feel afraid we’d wandered into a graveyard.

  As we rode in, people turned to look up at me, the boy with the dog and all the runaways. I felt like they were judging me, thinking I was some kind of Yankee myself, so I told the preacher to let me off, and I’d find the rest of the way myself. He stopped the wagon and I climbed down with Dash.

  “I wish you success, Andrew,” Preacher William said. “I see a good soul in you, even if you don’t yet know it’s there. When the time comes, I know you’ll do right.”

  “I’m doin’ right,” I said, and I whistled for Dash as we walked away again from the preacher and his contraband cargo. I realized I’d have to ask someone where the Wards lived, but all the people looked pretty distrustful of me. The folks I saw looked away as I approached, and even if I called out for ’em, they didn’t respond. Having soldiers coming and going and ransacking your city makes a person close up to strangers, I guess.

  I had to walk a ways to where the houses got farther apart. The sun was sinking lower to the horizon and I didn’t want to get caught out in the streets when it grew dark. I saw signs posted about a curfew, which said that any folks on the street after dark would be shot as Confederate spies. I guess I was kind of a Confederate spy now, since I intended to take my brother back to fight for our side. Maybe, I figured, my spying would cancel out the preacher’s spying, and things would balance out, like on a scale. Or maybe all my plans would just make things worse.

  Dash and I trudged down a dirt lane where the houses were set back a ways and each one had big white columns and shady porches, and even the smallest one was grander than any house I’d ever seen in Meridian. If Mary Ward and her folks was still around, this would be the place for ’em. They was rich as King Midas. As I walked, I saw that most of the houses were dark. A few had broken windows, and one I saw had its front door torn right off its hinges. The lane was quiet as a tomb. All the rich folks must have fled when the Yankees came to town.

  I took to feeling mighty hopeless then, and things only got worse. Dash stopped in the middle of the lane, and I had to turn around to call him forward. He wouldn’t budge. He’d lowered his head and pointed his tail and the hair on his back bristled up. He let out a rumbling growl, and I wheeled about to see where he was lookin’.

  Four dogs, mangy mutts that looked more wolf than hound, came stalking from the other direct
ion. Their hair was bristling, and they was growling too. A big black one in the front of the pack had only one good eye. Where the other eye should be, there was just a closed-up spot where he’d lost it, either to sickness or violence. I didn’t care to know which.

  I stood between Dash and the pack of strays. I couldn’t move my feet to run.

  But old Dash weren’t about to let a mangy pack of mutts make him afraid. My brave dog let out one earthshaking bark and, like the ancient hero Achilles rushing into battle, he charged at the pack, streaking past me and straight at the big black dog, knocking the brute into the dirt. The other dogs leaped on him in a flash, and the pack kicked up a storm of dust and fur. The sound of snarls and barks could’ve curdled a demon’s blood, it were so fearsome. Through the dust, I made out flashes of tooth and claw. A yellow dog flung himself from the melee, bloodied from the hip to the toe, and he circled once before diving back in.

  Dash’s snout reared up to the air, and the big black dog lunged at his neck. I thought for sure my dog were a goner, but he had a trick in him yet, and he rolled away, sending the black dog snapping at the air while Dash twisted back around and bit him on the leg.

  The black dog yelped and danced away, and then, meeting my eyes, saw easier prey in me. He darted from the fracas toward where I stood. Dash gave a howl of protest, but three other dogs were on him, and he could no more come to my rescue than I could come to his. I squared my feet and prepared to get hit with the full force of the big black dog smashing into me and biting the life from my own neck.

  I clenched my fists. If I was going down, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I saw the bright pink of the dog’s gums, the yellowy-white of his teeth, and the cruel fury of his one eye as he cut the distance between us. Foamy slobber splattered from him as he ran. Dash barked and I yelled in answer, and the black dog bounded at me, and then the crack of a rifle tore the air.

  The black dog stopped short, startled. The other dogs stopped the fight and looked behind me. Another crack, and they all turned, running away just as fast as they’d come.

  I turned to see a white-haired man in a fine gentleman’s waistcoat holding a Winchester rifle in the air and striding toward me. Dash hobbled over to me from the other side with a few scrapes on his belly and a bloody cut on his neck, but no injury that looked too serious. He panted as he stood by my side, and as the man approached, his fur bristled once more, ready to defend me if the need arose.

  “Good boy,” I told him, rubbing the top of his head. “I think this one’s a friend.” I looked up at the man and addressed him kindly, as it don’t do to be short with a man who holds a rifle. “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I was in some trouble there.

  “It won’t do to be out on these streets after sunset,” the man told me. “You’ll have worse to fear than wild dogs.”

  “I was fixin’ to find the Ward home,” I said. “You don’t know if they up and left Jackson, do you?”

  The man squinted at me. “What business could a boy like you have with them?”

  “I come all the way from Lauderdale County looking for a friend of my brother, Julius,” I told him.

  The man lowered his rifle and smiled. “Julius Burford?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and finally, through all my tribulations, it seemed fortune smiled on me at last.

  The man opened his arms wide. “You must be Andrew,” he said. “I’m James Ward, Mary’s father. I heard what happened in Meridian. Is your family all right?”

  “Nobody’s hurt, I suppose,” I said. “But the house is gone and we’re in a spot of trouble.”

  James Ward frowned, and then he pointed up to a big house with white columns ringing a great portico with a stained-glass rosette set at its peak. “Why don’t you come inside and we’ll get you something to eat. There’s no trouble that a little food and a good night’s rest can’t improve.”

  I followed him gratefully. Mr. Ward was kind and hospitable as any good Southerner, and I couldn’t rightly square how someone so kind could be for the Union side, when all I’d ever heard about them was their arrogance and tyranny. He didn’t seem like a tyrant at all. In fact, he even let Dash come straight inside and eat a fine piece of meat from the finest china dish I ever saw.

  The dining parlor in the big house was all shiny with polish and dark wood, and we ate off these fancy plates all painted with flowers and birds and such. Dash gave me a look with that floppy-jowled face of his, his eyebrows up, and it was like he knew he wasn’t fancy enough to be eating in such a room.

  The Wards gave me roast beef and potatoes and cabbage and biscuits so hot and fresh that steam burst out when I split one in half. It felt good to eat hot food and plenty of it, and I drank a tall glass of milk too. I felt full and sleepy before Miss Mary Ward even showed herself.

  Mary Ward’s father sat at the head of the table, quietly watching me eat, and her mother sat opposite, with me in the middle with the whole dark wood dining table laid out before me bigger than the bed I slept in at home. A colored servant tended to me, and I weren’t used to being served so. I knew Mary’s father was an abolitionist, which meant he was working to end slavery forever, so the servant must’ve been a free man, getting paid wages and such. I wasn’t sure how to treat him, but Pa always said rudeness were a sign of weakness, and I didn’t want to be weak, so I said “please” and “thank you” to the servant, even though I didn’t know if it were proper or not.

  “You’re Julius’s brother?” Mary asked as she came into the room on the other side of the table from me.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I don’t know what I expected, because I’d never seen her before, but I guess I thought she’d be prettier, the way Julius went on about her. She looked like any other girl I’d seen, with long, dark hair and skin pale as bone. She must’ve spent a lot of time indoors to be so pale. I could see a few lines of her blue veins through her skin, and her thin lips turned down at the edges with her worry.

  “You look just like him.” She smiled, and that made me feel pretty good. Girls always said Julius was handsome, and I guess that meant I was handsome too. I gave her another look, and I guess, up close, she was prettier than I first thought, sort of like when you look at a moth, how they look all one dull brown color far away, but up close their wings shine and sparkle and run with patterns.

  “He wrote me about you,” I said. “He wondered why you never wrote him a letter.”

  Mary glanced at her father, a nervous look that she didn’t think I’d notice, but I notice all the looks grown-ups give and think kids won’t see. I didn’t let on nothing about why I’d come to their house. I had to be careful now. They might have been hospitable to me, but they was still siding with the enemy, and I didn’t know if I could trust ’em or not.

  “I wanted to.” Mary sighed. “But sending letters to a Confederate soldier … Oh, how I wish I had!”

  Just like that, she broke down crying, burying her head in her hands.

  “Now, Mary —” her father scolded, and she ran from the room. This I didn’t understand, and my confusion must have showed.

  “She is rather emotional,” her father explained. “After the siege of Jackson, we have all been quite tense.”

  “But, sir? What do y’all have to be tense about?” I asked. “I mean, er … I thought you sided with the Union. It’s the Union that controls the town now.”

  “Yes, Andrew, but war is a messy business and even victory comes at a great and terrible cost.”

  “It’s just one city. It don’t mean the Union’s won.” He looked at me real hard, and I looked down at my plate. “Sir,” I added.

  Mr. Ward nodded and frowned, giving consideration to what I said. He didn’t yell at me or scold me. He listened to me, and I liked that. It made me want to talk more.

  “I mean, Mr. Ward,” I sat up straighter and he leaned toward me to listen. “The Confederate States are the ones that got invaded by the North, right? So we’re fighting for our homeland
, while the Yankees … I mean, er, the Northerners, they’re fighting just for their government. It’s one side fighting for their homes and their way of life and the other just fighting because some generals and the president say they got to. So even if the Union takes all the cities and towns in the South, we won’t ever let them win, because then we’d be destroyed altogether. We’ll fight to the last man, at least, here in Mississippi.”

  “To the last man?” Mr. Ward said.

  I nodded.

  “I see,” he rubbed his chin. “And you would fight?”

  “I would,” I said. “If I got the chance to.”

  “Because it is your home?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. He understood me.

  “And yet, Mississippi is my home too,” Mr. Ward said. “And I do not, nor have I ever, supported the cause of secession from the Union or the institution of slavery.”

  “But you don’t have to support slavery to support the Confederacy,” I told him, just like Pa always said. “We don’t have no slaves —”

  “Any slaves,” Mr. Ward corrected me.

  “We don’t have any slaves,” I said. “But we don’t want no outsiders coming in and telling us by law that we can’t have ’em. We’re a free country, after all.”

  “But are not the black men and women of Mississippi also part of this country? Why should your freedom come at the cost of theirs?”

  “Well … because …” I didn’t have no good answer to that. I supposed I couldn’t say it was because they liked being slaves, not after I’d seen them running off the first chance they had, not after I’d helped one run. Why would folks put themselves through such dangers, breaking the law and fleeing through hard countryside in the middle of a war, if they was happier being slaves?

  I suppose I wanted to say because slavery was just the way it’d always been, but that didn’t make no sense neither. Nothing ever stayed the way it’d always been. Things changed. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have no inventions or ideas. If they didn’t change, then we’d all be like little kids forever, a whole country of little kids, but I weren’t a little kid no more, and if I could grow up, maybe so could my country.