Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

  “Not quite,” Leaming answered. “I'm only a wounded prisoner.”

  He wanted to remind the Reb that Bedford Forrest had taken prisoners; just because he wasn't dead now, that didn't mean the trooper couldn't kill him in a hurry.

  “Gave me quite a turn,” the enemy soldier said.

  “Do you have a canteen? Could I have some water, please?” Leaming asked. Perhaps because of the blood he'd lost, he'd stayed thirsty even after the Confederate Freemason's kindness.

  “Sorry. I drank it dry myself during the fight.” Unlike a lot of his comrades, this Rebel didn't sound actively hostile.

  That encouraged Leaming to say, “Could you get me some water, please? Would you be so good?”

  He watched Forrest's trooper think it over. “No, I don't believe I would,” the Reb said at last. “You're a homemade Yankee, a Tennessee Tory, a damned renegade. If you was standing here and I was laying there, would you get me water?”

  “I hope I would,” Leaming said. But he might as well have kept quiet, for the other man went on, “I don't think so. I expect you'd give me a sermon instead, and tell me how wonderful it was to lick Abe Lincoln's boots and kiss a nigger's ass. I don't care to murder a helpless man, but you get no help from me, neither.” He walked off.

  If I die because I get no water, won't you have murdered me? Leaming thought. But he did doubt he would die now. He was alive and suffering, and likely to go on suffering for quite a while. The white-hot agony he'd known after he first got shot was duller now, but taking a Mini? ball still hurt much worse than anything else that had ever happened to him-and he'd had a toothache that kept him sleepless for two days and nights before a dentist finally did his bloody work.

  A couple of white Federals-prisoners, of course-paused to look at him. “Isn't that Lieutenant Leaming?” one of them asked.

  “Sure looks like him, poor devil,” the other said. “So he got it, too, eh?”

  Leaming opened and closed his right hand. “I'm not dead,” he said.

  Both men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) started as violently as the Confederate trooper did a few minutes before. “Jesus Christ!” one exploded. His laugh was shaky. “You gave us a hell of a jolt there, Lieutenant.”

  “That's a fact,” the other agreed.

  “You're Bill Ryder,” Leaming said to him. The Federal nodded.

  Leaming had to think about the other man's name: “And Elmer Haynes.” He got it at last. “What have the Rebs done to you?”

  “We been totin' bodies,” Haynes answered.

  “Hell of a lot of 'em,” Ryder added. “They took all the money I had, too. Only good thing about that is, I didn't have much.”

  “I'm sorry. They robbed me, too.” Leaming wished he hadn't had much money. It was gone now, into that thieving Reb's pocket, and his gold watch, too. He asked, “Is there any place where they're taking care of wounded Federals?”

  The two troopers looked at each other. Slowly, Haynes said, “They've got some of 'em down in the barracks we tried to burn this morning. “

  “They've got 'em there, yeah.” Bill Ryder seemed content to comment on what Haynes said. “They've got' em, but I don't know what they're doing for 'em. Don't know that they're doing anything for, em, tell you the truth.”

  “Could you men carry me there?” Leaming asked. “Lying on a floor, lying under a roof, has to be better than this.”

  Ryder and Haynes looked at each other again. They both sighed. They both shrugged. “Reckon we could,” Haynes said resignedly. “One more toting job-what the hell?”

  “You want the head end or the feet end, Elmer?” Ryder said.

  “I had the head last time,” Haynes said. “Your turn for that.”

  “Be careful when you lift me,” Mack Leaming said as Ryder stooped by him. “Be-Aii!” He bit down hard, but couldn't stifle the yip of anguish as the captured trooper picked him up.

  “Where are you men going with that body?” a Confederate officer demanded. “Just throw it in the damn ditch.”

  “Not a body, sir-he's alive.” Haynes spoke as respectfully to the Reb as he would have to one of his own superiors. Leaming didn't like that, but he was in no position to criticize. Haynes went on, “We were taking him down to the barracks, to put him with the other wounded down there.”

  He's not so dumb, Leaming thought. By reminding the Confederate that other injured Federals were in the barracks building, Haynes made this transfer seem routine.

  Sure enough, the officer nodded. “All right, go ahead. But don't dawdle around. Still plenty of dead ones to get rid of.”

  “We won't, sir.” Bill Ryder sounded respectful, too. Under that respect, though, Leaming heard an old soldier talking. Ryder didn't intend to move one lick faster than he had to.

  The Confederate officer turned away. Ryder and Haynes carried Lieutenant Leaming across a plank bridge over the ditch, and then down the front of the bluff. Leaming shook his head in wonder, though the motion made him hurt even more than he already did on account of the jolting journey. Was it only this afternoon that he walked down the same slope to parley with Nathan Bedford Forrest? It was, even if it seemed a million years away.

  Just this afternoon, I was spry as a bighorn, he thought. That didn't seem possible, either. He couldn't stand now if his life depended on it. He wondered if he would ever be hale again. He hoped so, but had no notion of how bad his wound was. He couldn't see it. All he could do was suffer, and he was doing plenty of that.

  “I do believe I'd sell my soul for a few drops of laudanum,” he said. “We ain't got any, Lieutenant,” Elmer Haynes said. Ryder nodded. Haynes added, “Maybe one of the Rebs' surgeons can fix you up.”

  “Maybe.” Leaming didn't believe it. For one thing, the Confederates were always desperately short of everything except guns and ammunition and powder. They never ran low on those, damn them. For another, Forrest's men — with the exception of that one Freemason — seemed unwilling to help Federals in any way. Surgeons were supposed to treat men from both sides, but Leaming wondered whether a physician who served this set of Rebs would meet the obligation.

  It turned out not to matter. When the two prisoners set him down on the floor in one of the barracks halls, there was no sign of any surgeon, Union or Confederate. The building was full of wounded men, some badly hurt, others less so.

  “Good luck, Lieutenant.” For once, Bill Ryder spoke first. He and Haynes vanished into the dusk.

  A couple of candles illuminated what looked like an engraving of one of the lower circles of Hell in The Divine Comedy. Soldiers writhed and thrashed and groaned. One man had lost an arm; two others were missing legs. They needed laudanum much worse than Mack Leaming did, and they had none. Nobody had anything: no water, no food, no medicine, no surgeons, no attendants. All they had were one another and their shared torment.

  Leaming wondered if he would have been better off where he was. It was quieter up on top of the bluff, even if it was colder and wetter. He might have had a better chance of falling asleep.

  “Mother!” sobbed one of the men who'd lost a leg. “Mother! Help me, Mother!” No doubt she would have if she could, but she was somewhere far away. And all she could have done might not have been enough for her maimed son.

  “Water!” someone else called. No one heeded that prayer, either. If the wounded Federals won longer lives for themselves, they would have to do it each man on his own.

  As Ben Robinson lay by the Mississippi, he wondered how big a fool he'd been to come back down to the river. Confederates prowled the riverbank looking for Federals who were still alive. Any live men they found quickly died. Robinson heard only a couple of shots. Those drew irate yells from Secesh officers, who were trying to bring their troops back under control. Most of the prowlers used knife or bayonet or rifle butt, which made less noise.

  A couple of Rebs walked past Ben. One of them said, “Will you look at that dead nigger, Eb? Son of a bitch was a sergeant-a nigger sergeant
! You ever imagine there was such a thing in all the history of the world before?”

  “Reckon not,” Eb said solemnly. “Like any nigger can tell somebody else what to do. Well, this bastard got what he deserved.”

  “You'd best believe it,” the other trooper said. “We taught the whole world a lesson here today, we did. “

  “Bet your ass,” Eb said. “The damnyankees reckoned niggers and a bunch of goddamn Tennessee renegades could whip real white men. Honest Abe damn well better do himself some more reckoning, by God. Honest Abe!” He spat in vast contempt.

  “They won't never lick us, not if we have to fight 'em the next hundred years,” his friend said. “Ain't nobody never gonna tell me no niggers as good as I am. Just on account of Abe Lincoln looks like an ape himself, that's how come he loves them black gorillas so much.”

  “Expect you're right.” Eb spat again. They walked on.

  Ben Robinson didn't breathe more than tiny little sips of air till he could hear their footfalls no more. He already knew how Southern whites felt about Negroes. If they didn't feel that way, would they have bought and sold him? And the more whites in the C.S.A. swore at Abraham Lincoln, the more they convinced blacks he was the answer to their prayers. Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in most Southern states, but if Robinson could have voted…

  Me? Vote? The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. If he was a free man, shouldn't he be able to do everything free men did? He didn't have his letters, but so what? Plenty of white men didn't have their letters, either, but that didn't stop them from voting. And maybe he could learn. Free men could go to school, after all. Teaching them to read and write wasn't a crime, the way it was with slaves in South Carolina.

  Then another cloud passed in front of the moon. Darkness poured down on the riverside. New fears filled Ben Robinson-new and at the same time ancient, far more ancient than the simple fear of having Bedford Forrest's troopers smash in his head. Darkness was the time of witches and ghosts and hants, and he lay here helpless, unable to get away.

  White men talked about believing in hants and all the other terrible things that prowled the darkness. White men talked about it, but they didn't really do it, not down deep, not where it really mattered. Ben did. He believed in his belly, in his balls. Something just out of sight always lay in wait in the dark, ready to reach out and grab, to terrify, to possess, to frighten to death. How many people died all of a sudden, without a mark on them, without a sign of sickness? Too many, far too many. If a conjure woman didn't spell them into the grave, if a hant didn't drag them down into it, why weren't they still alive? Who could answer a question like that? Nobody.

  Something buzzed past Ben's ear. Maybe it was only a mosquito. Yes, maybe. But did a mosquito really sound just like that? Robinson didn't think so. It might be a hant, waiting for him to fall asleep or just to let his attention lapse.

  “Go 'way. Go 'way, bad thing.” Those quietly desperate words didn't spring from Ben's throat, but from that of some other Negro not far away. He wasn't the only black man with night terrors, then. Oddly, the other man's fear helped ease his. He realized he wasn't alone. If a hant did try to grab him, somebody might come to his rescue. And, a lower part of his mind added, if he wasn't alone out here, the hant or the ghost or the witch might decide to torment somebody else.

  The moon came out from behind a cloud. Pale, cool light spilled across the land. The moon's reflection, shattered and rippled a thousand thousand times by the current, danced on the river. Moonlight was better than darkness… wasn't it? Or did it give the things still lurking in black shadow the chance they needed to find a victim?

  He didn't know. He was only a man, a frightened, wounded, painfilled man. Daybreak just past seemed much further away than the moon. The things he'd done since then! The things he'd seen! The things he'd lived through!.. And the things so many of his comrades hadn't lived through.

  Would he live to see the sun rise tomorrow? That seemed even more distant than the dawn that was shattered by Confederate gunfire. If he reached it, he promised he would praise the Lord.

  A lot of people must have made a lot of promises while the fighting in Fort Pillow raged. A lot of the people who made those promises were dead now, more than a few of them shot trying to surrender. What did that mean? Were the men who'd made those fancy promises and then died hypocrites and sinners?

  Or did God listen to the Confederates instead? No doubt they'd been praying and promising, too. Most of them were alive and well and enjoying the spoils of victory. Did that mean God was on their side? But they were losing the war. If they weren't, the Federals wouldn't hold Memphis. The United States wouldn't have held Fort Pillow.

  What did it all mean? The more you looked at it, the less sense it made. Robinson thought of himself as a good Christian man. How could God favor people who wanted to keep him in bondage? But he'd seen enough to know that Forrest's troopers honestly couldn't imagine God favoring someone with black skin at their expense.

  As a good Christian man, he shouldn't have feared hants and ghosts and witches. If he followed the Lord, how could they hurt him? He didn't suppose they could have if his soul were stainless. But he knew all the bad things he'd done, and knew how many of them there were. Maybe God would let a hant grab him to pay him back for all his sins. How could you know?

  You couldn't. And so he lay shivering, knowing how long this night would be.

  Major Bill Bradford looked down at Matt Ward, who lay snoring and curled up like a dog beside his brother's grave. Ward had one protective arm flung over his rifle musket, but Bradford didn't think the cavalry trooper would notice if someone lifted it. He didn't think Ward would notice if a cannon went off beside his head. The Reb had finally drunk himself blind.

  “Took you long enough, you son of a bitch,” Bradford muttered. He wanted to kick Ward in the face, but didn't have the nerve. The man might wake up in spite of all the rotgut he'd guzzled, or someone might see, or… Bradford had no trouble finding reasons not to dare.

  The most important one was, he wanted escape even more than vengeance. No one was paying any attention to him now. If he couldn't seize this moment and disappear, he feared he would never get another chance.

  He feared… That said it all. The sport the Confederates had with him after Fort Pillow fell, the bullets lashing into the Mississippi all around him… He didn't trust any offer of safety from Nathan Bedford Forrest and his officers. It was as simple as that. His parole? Better to get away now and renew the fight another time than to stay a prisoner and suffer an unfortunate accident. He was sure that was how Bedford Forrest would mention it in his reports-if Forrest bothered to mention it at all.

  Quick, furtive glances to the right and left convinced Bradford nobody was watching him. Even so, he couldn't just walk away, not in the soaking-wet uniform of a major of the V.S. Cavalry. As casually as he could, as casually as if he had every right in the world to do so, Bradford strolled toward the sutlers' stalls. The Rebs were still ransacking some of them. Others, though, were dark and quiet, which probably meant they'd been picked clean.

  Or they'd been picked clean of what the Confederates thought of as plunder, anyhow. Bradford smiled thinly. Right this minute, he was easier to please than Bedford Forrest's troopers.

  Looking around again to make sure he went unnoticed, he ducked into one of the dark, deserted stalls. He went behind the counter and felt around there. Nothing. He swore under his breath. Why couldn't this be easy? Why couldn't anything be easy?

  Farther back in the stall was the nasty little room where the sutler slept. Bradford wrinkled his nose against the stench when he went in there-didn't the man ever wash? He found what he needed, though: civilian-style trousers and shirt. They too reeked powerfully of their former owner, which might have been why no Confederate lifted them.

  Bradford couldn't afford to be fussy. He took off his own soggy pants and the nine-buttoned tunic that made him so proud, then put on the sutler's cl
othes. They were big and baggy on him; the sutler must have been a larger man. But better too big than too small. If he cinched the belt up tight, the trousers wouldn't fall down, which was all that really mattered.

  He started to go, but then abruptly stopped himself. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “I almost forgot about my hat!” It was still wet, too, but that wouldn't show. He pulled off the feather, the gold cord with the acorn finials that marked an officer, and the crossed-swords cavalry badge. That done, he set it back on his head. Now it would pass for an ordinary civilian slouch hat. If he hadn't fixed it, though, it would have betrayed him as soon as the first Reb got a good look at it.

  Out of the stall he went, as fast as he could. Fort Pillow always smelled as if several hundred men had been living in it for weeks — and they had. But the air outside seemed sweet as nectar beside what he had been breathing.

  A Confederate sergeant walked past him. His heart leaped into his throat. But the Reb strode by without a second glance. Bill Bradford smiled. The Confederates didn't necessarily recognize him, then

  they recognized a U.S. major. If a frowzy civilian tried to leave Fort Pillow, why should they care? No reason in the world.

  Logic might tell him that was so, but how far could he trust logic? If anything went wrong, he was dead.

  Yes, and if you hang around here you're dead, too, he reminded himself. Not all Confederates recognized him, but some assuredly did. And he was violating the parole he'd given Colonel McCulloch and General Forrest. If he was going to do that, he couldn't very well do it halfway.

  Out of here, then. He hadn't gone more than a dozen paces toward the rampart that had proved so useless before somebody called, “Hey, you! Yes, you in the dirty shirt! Where in blazes you reckon you're going?”

  Ice in his belly, Bradford stopped and turned. A young, officious-looking C.S. lieutenant bustled up to him, waiting importantly for his answer. “You people already went and cleaned me out,” he said in surly tones, staring down at his shoes so the Reb wouldn't get a good look at his face. “Ain't much point to sticking around, not when I got nothin' left to sell.”