South by Southwest

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Grinning at his companion, Ebenezer tested their bridge with his foot. It seemed sturdy and steady enough, so he walked over and got the haversack, and eased his way over that pine log, made it to the other side, and hopped onto the bank.

  “Your turn,” Ebenezer told Zeb.

  The soldier hesitated, looking at that black river.

  “Don’t look down,” Ebenezer warned. “You just walk, easy-like. Keep your hands out for balance. It’s easy. I did it. You can.”

  “You can swim,” Zeb said.

  “You don’t have to,” Ebenezer said, “if you don’t fall off that log.”

  Zeb smiled, but Ebenezer knew it was forced, knew the young Wisconsin boy was petrified. Still, Zeb stepped onto the log, moving a lot slower than Ebenezer had. Ebenezer wasn’t sure if Zeb had even sucked in a breath since he had stepped onto the log. He was about halfway across, when Ebenezer noticed the other end of the log begin to slip.

  “Hurry, Zeb!” Ebenezer cried.

  Zeb felt the log’s movement. A glob of mud splashed into the water, and the log began falling.

  “Zeb!” the slave screamed.

  Zeb practically flew across that log for three or four steps, leaped off, landing in the mud, Ebenezer’s hand reaching out, gripping his forearm like a vise. Behind them, the log splashed in the water, the end shot up, fell, spraying the boys with muddy water, then sped down the river like some ironclad ready to do battle.

  Ebenezer helped pull Zeb out of the mud, onto firmer ground. “Man,” Ebenezer said, “that was close.” He started to sink to the ground, felt he needed some time to recover, but Zeb Hogan was already walking away from the Edisto River, south by southwest, toward the Georgia state line.

  * * * * *

  They crossed the Savannah River—large, deep, rocky—on a railroad bridge, and were in Augusta, Georgia. The discovery of a railroad bridge intact had surprised Ebenezer. After all, most of the railroads he had seen since Columbia had been destroyed, but Zeb explained, “Sherman hasn’t been here.”

  Ebenezer raided a corncrib in town, finding barely enough food for Zeb and him. They sneaked through the city that night and kept right on walking till dawn. As the sun began to rise, they walked deep into the woods along the road, covered themselves with straw, and tried to sleep.

  Only Ebenezer wasn’t sleepy. Zeb hadn’t talked about Florence Stockade, or Ben DeVere, or anything much since that night on the Edisto River, but Ebenezer’s curiosity had been nagging him. He chanced spoiling Zeb’s mood with a question, but he just had to know.

  “How’d this Sergeant DeVere wind up in Vicksburg?” Ebenezer asked.

  “He deserted the South Carolina Reserves, too,” Zeb answered easily, as though he had been expecting the inquiry, or mayhap he’d just been thinking about the man he had sworn to kill. “Man’s a born traitor,” he went on. “Turned his back on the Union. Turned his back on the Rebs. Anyhow, while the 16th was stationed in Vicksburg, after the city surrendered in ’63, DeVere got hisself smitten with this Mississippi gal. Promised he’d marry her, and that was scandalous for her family. Yet for some reason, this gal was taken by DeVere. My brother James, he’d told me all about DeVere, his thirst for whiskey. James, he couldn’t figure what this pretty Mississippi gal saw in a piece of trash like Ben DeVere. Anyhow, Sergeant Major Engstrand always reasoned that DeVere would make his way back to Vicksburg. He talked about that gal all the time, and it ain’t like he had anywhere else to go. Couldn’t go back home to Wisconsin. Couldn’t rejoin the 16th. Somebody might escape the Stockade, or get out word about what he’d done. Only place left for him was Miss Elizabeth Gentry of Vicksburg. If DeVere ain’t there, she’ll know where he’s gotten off to.”

  “Elizabeth.” Ebenezer closed his eyes. “That’s my wife’s name. Call her Lizzie, though.”

  Zeb Hogan kept quiet. Maybe he was asleep. If that was the case, Ebenezer soon joined him.

  * * * * *

  Over the next few nights, they kept close to the road. Whenever they saw, heard, or thought they heard someone coming, they ducked into the woods and waited for the travelers to pass. The land had turned hillier, and after about six days, they arrived at a narrow river with steep banks, heavy with trees, heavier with yellow clay—no bridge or ferry to cross it—and the water roiling. Ebenezer didn’t see how Zeb could get across. Truth be told, Ebenezer wasn’t even sure he could get across this river.

  It was past dawn, and Ebenezer knew they should hide, but Zeb didn’t want to cross this river in the darkness. He hoped that maybe they could find a way across. They were only one or two days from Atlanta, and he was in a hurry to find Ben DeVere.

  “All right,” Ebenezer said. “You go downstream. I’ll head upstream. Whistle like a bobwhite quail if you find something. I’ll do the same.”

  “What’s a bobwhite quail sound like?” he asked.

  “You’re fooling me,” Ebenezer said. Zeb, however, straightened, stiffened, and Ebenezer knew he had angered his companion again. I keep forgetting he was born in the city, Ebenezer thought. Some Northern city, too. He whistled like a bobwhite, and smiled, remembering what Lizzie always said when she heard one of those quail.

  “Bob-bob-white. Are your peas all ripe?” Ebenezer murmured to himself.

  “Huh?”

  Zeb shattered Ebenezer’s vision of Lizzie. “Nothing.” Ebenezer let out a weary sigh. “You can whistle, can’t you?”

  Zeb responded with a dead-on imitation of a bobwhite.

  “That’s real good.”

  “I’d heard those before,” Zeb said. “Marching with Sherman across Tennessee and Georgia. First time I heard one, I thought it was some hermit in the woods. Never knowed it was a quail. We got quail in Wisconsin.”

  “They are plentiful in Carolina. Georgia, too.”

  “You should see the passenger pigeons we have in Wisconsin. Red breasts. Millions of them. Almost blacken out the sky when they take flight. You’d find maybe a hundred of them nesting in one tree.”

  “I’ve seen them,” Ebenezer said. “We have pigeons down here, too.”

  “Oh.”

  Ebenezer knew he had disappointed Zeb again. He couldn’t figure out that Union soldier, often acting like he was trying to prove something to Ebenezer, that he was smarter, maybe even better, than him. That’s something. A white boy trying to prove he’s better than a slave. Most folks around here take that for a fact.

  Zeb went off upstream, instead of down, but Ebenezer didn’t bother correcting him. Ebenezer headed downstream, above those treacherous, steep banks, until he finally found a tree that had fallen across the river. Providence is looking after us, he thought. He tested the old pine, felt sure that it could support his weight, and certainly Zeb’s, and let out with a whistle.

  A couple of minutes later, he heard someone running through the trees, and turned to chastise Zeb for making such a racket.

  Only it wasn’t Zeb. Ebenezer sharply inhaled, his eyes bulging at four black-bearded white men. Every mother’s son of them aimed a musket at him.

  Chapter Seven

  Hearing all the commotion, Zeb knew there was trouble, so he stopped running. Crouching, he sneaked along the side of the steep bank, finally stopping behind some brush to see what was happening. He ground his teeth when he saw them—four big, burly men with thick beards. Only one of them held a rifle. The others had leaned their weapons against a tree. Two held Ebenezer by his arms, tying him to a big pine. They’d taken off his vest and let it fall to the ground, along with his haversack, which one of them had gone through. The last of the men unfolded a knife, and cut down the back of Ebenezer’s shirt.

  The one with the rifle let out a chuckle, and sprayed a carpet of pine needles with tobacco juice. All four men wore shabby pants of patched gray wool. Zeb figured them all for Confederate deserters.

  Ebenezer didn’t say a word. He just stood facing that tree, letting them tie him up. What could he do? Against four of them? For that matter, Zeb thoug
ht, what can I do? Four grown-up men, who looked tougher than cobs. It would be folly to stick his neck out. Realizing his palms were sweaty, Zeb wiped them on his trousers. Then he quietly began backing away. After a few rods, he turned around and walked down the edge of that yellow riverbank.

  There’s four of them, he told himself. Nothing I can do. Besides, I never asked that slave to come with me. He got hisself in that fix. I’ll travel alone. Be a mite faster, maybe. They’ll just whip him, let him go. Maybe take him back to Florence for the reward his master has surely put up. It’s Ebenezer’s own fault, getting caught. He . . . He saved my life.

  That’s when Zeb heard the wicked slap of a belt against flesh, and Ebenezer let out a wail. The birds had stopped chirping. As Ebenezer’s cry trailed off from the bowels of the woods, Zeb heard mocking laughter. One of the Reb deserters said, “That’s a shame, Luke. There wasn’t a mark on that boy’s back.”

  Already Zeb had turned, started creeping back, listening.

  “Your master musta been treatin’ you right, eh, boy? Well, I’m gonna peel your hide down to the bone.”

  “You feel like tellin’ us where you run off from now, boy?”

  No answer. The belt slashed again, and Ebenezer cried out.

  “How ’bout now?”

  “NO!” Ebenezer shouted out in defiance.

  Zeb peered around a tree. One man brought a belt back over his shoulder. It was russet-colored, the brass buckle shaped like an oval with some letters stamped on it, the leather cap and cartridge pouches having bunched up against the buckle.

  Before the man could let that belt fly again, Zeb stepped into view, thumbing back the hammer on the revolver the woman had given him in Columbia.

  All four men turned, staring. One of them started inching his way to the rifle leaning against the elm tree, but Zeb said, “You best stay where you are.” And, to his surprise, the Reb stopped moving, even began lifting his hands skyward. The one with the belt—who had been holding the rifle while the others strung Ebenezer up to that tree—dropped the belt and eyed his rifle, lying on the ground at his feet, then faced Zeb. His teeth, the few that he had, were black.

  “This any of your affair, kid?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Zeb pointed the pistol at his big belly. “It is.” Zeb tilted his head at Ebenezer, and tried not to wince over how the slave’s back was bleeding, with two big welts across his shoulder blades. “That’s my manservant you boys been sporting on.”

  The four deserters looked at each other. The one closest to Ebenezer shuffled his feet. He’d been the one who had cut away Ebenezer’s shirt.

  The one with the belt, the biggest of the four, spit out more brown juice, and shifted the quid from one cheek to the other. “Manservant?” He chuckled without mirth. “You ain’t nothin’ but a pup. A runt at that.”

  “I’m a lieutenant,” Zeb said, recalling the outfit that had captured him outside of Atlanta. “With the 11th Tennessee. Who were you-all with?”

  When they didn’t answer, Zeb let out a disgusted snort. “Deserters, eh?”

  “What about you?” one of them off to the side said.

  “Scouting mission for General Hood,” he lied. “He’s planning on coming back from Tennessee to liberate Georgia.” Of course, from what Zeb had heard about John Bell Hood—he’d gotten his Army practically slaughtered at Franklin that winter—he’d be licking his wounds for the rest of eternity. What Zeb didn’t know, but later learned, was that General Hood had resigned his command of the Army of the Tennessee about a month or so earlier. Lucky for him, those four deserters hadn’t heard that news, either.

  Zeb wagged the revolver barrel at the one holding the knife. “Cut him loose,” he said.

  When the Reb didn’t move fast enough, Zeb drew a bead on the piece of trash’s forehead, and that prompted him to do as he was told. Zeb was tempted to pull the trigger, but wasn’t sure what would happen. He hadn’t checked the loads of the revolver, and it might have misfired, or not fired at all.

  The man quickly unfolded his knife, and cut the rawhide off from Ebenezer’s wrists.

  Face masked in pain, Ebenezer turned, facing Zeb, the remnants of his shirt hanging from his body.

  “Ebenezer,” Zeb said, “gather them weapons.”

  “Hey,” the leader said, “you ain’t about to arm no slave.”

  “Shut up,” Zeb told him, “or I might just tell him to take target practice on you.” Suddenly he felt greedy. “You boys owe me. How much you think I ought to charge you for whipping my manservant?”

  “We ain’t got no money,” the one who hadn’t spoken said in a rough whisper. He slipped his hands into his mule-ear pockets, and hung his head in shame.

  Zeb turned to the knife man. “Take off your shirt,” he told him.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. My servant lost his shirt. You’ll pay him in kind.” It was then Zeb spied the map stuck inside his waistband. “I’ll take our map back, too.”

  The man pulled the map out, let it fall at his feet, then tugged the once-white shirt over his head, wadded it up in a ball, and tossed it over toward Ebenezer, who had gathered up all four rifles, and was walking toward Zeb.

  “Now what?” the man who’d done the whipping said.

  “Now you all best get out of my sight. Start walking, and don’t stop. If I ever lay eyes on any one of you again, I’ll kill you.”

  The biggest started to bend over to pick up the belt. “I reckon that belt can stay where it is,” Zeb told him, and the man straightened.

  “What about our long guns?” the shirtless man said.

  “They’ve been confiscated by the Army of the Tennessee. You gents might as well take off your powder horns, too.”

  “That ain’t right,” the big one said.

  “What ain’t right,” Zeb said, “is four men beating a slave that ain’t their property. What ain’t right are four men quitting the fight when the Confederacy needs men most.”

  As soon as they’d removed the powder horns, Zeb waved the revolver barrel one more time. “You best start walking. Now!”

  Not speaking, the men turned, walking deeper into the woods. Zeb didn’t lower the revolver until he couldn’t hear them any longer. When Ebenezer dropped the four rifles and sank to his knees, Zeb shoved the revolver into his waistband, and knelt beside the slave.

  “I’m all right,” Ebenezer said tightly, but Zeb knew better. He pulled off the slave’s tattered shirt, wet it down with water from his canteen, and began to bathe the two welts on Ebenezer’s back. Although he stiffened and bit down hard, Ebenezer didn’t let out a sound as Zeb finished the job. Recalling how Ebenezer had doctored their cuts from the catfish, Zeb hurried to gather moss, which he packed down with mud, then bandaged the welts with the slave’s ripped-up shirt.

  Ebenezer’s head bobbed a bit, and Zeb could see he was crying silently. Not from pain, but shame. Bitterly Zeb wished he had killed those four men. They were trash. Nothing but trash. A new feeling pushed aside’s Zeb anger at those deserters. He felt shame, too, because he’d almost deserted this brave lad. He fetched the deserter’s shirt and the crazy-quilt vest, handed them to Ebenezer, and refilled the haversack with the map and other items.

  “You found a way across?”

  Zeb nodded at the log that crossed the river.

  “Yeah.” After pulling the shirt over his head and arms, Ebenezer slowly rose, stiffly pulling on the vest. Slinging the haversack over his shoulder, Zeb picked up two of the rifles, flung them into the river, and grabbed another and thrust it into Ebenezer’s hand. The slave acted like he didn’t want to take it.

  “We might need this,” Zeb said.

  Ebenezer shook his head. “I can’t take a rifle, Zeb. Slaves can’t have guns.”

  “You ain’t a slave no more,” Zeb said. “Remember?” Awkwardly Ebenezer’s left hand accepted the barrel. “That’s an Enfield,” Zeb told him. “Shoots a .58-caliber bullet. Enfields are right popular with bot
h armies in this war.” He picked up the remaining rifle, shorter and lighter than the Enfield. A carbine, but Zeb guessed that it was a .58-caliber, too. “Don’t rightly know what this one is,” he said to himself, then hurried over to the belt on the ground, slid the cartridge and cap pouches off, unfastened them, looked inside. Sure enough, there were some patches and balls inside the cartridge pouch, maybe a dozen or so percussion caps, and a powder measure. Not much, but more than they had, and Zeb felt a whole lot more comfortable with a rifle or carbine than a revolver. He put the two pouches in the haversack, gathered the four cow-horn flasks, and threw them all over his shoulder.

  “Best get moving,” he said. “Them big oafs might come back.”

  They crossed the makeshift bridge, which they pushed into the river. They ran about a mile through the woods before returning to the road. After drinking water, they walked the rest of the day and all the next night, finally stopping to get some shut-eye as dawn broke.

  * * * * *

  Around noon they woke, and Zeb worked on Ebenezer’s back, cleaning it as best as he could, putting more moss on the wounds, then packing down the moss with mud, hoping that poultice would suck any poison out. The last thing they needed was for those cuts to become infected.

  “Thanks,” Ebenezer said.

  “It ain’t nothing,” Zeb said.

  Ebenezer’s head shook. “Them four men . . . they would have killed me.” He shuddered. “I never got a whipping before.”

  Zeb grinned. “I have. Ma and Pa tanned my hide many a time. Mostly I deserved it.”

  “With a belt?” Ebenezer asked.

  Zeb nodded. “Belt, hands . . . and Pa, he had some hard-rock hands. Sometimes they’d make me or James cut down a switch, and they’d switch us. That was torture. Making a kid cut down a switch that they would use on us. And heaven help us if we tried to bring back some tiny little twig for them to whip us with.”

  “Mister Anderson, he was Master Hall’s overseer, he’d use a whip.”

  Frowning, Zeb looked down. “Well, my folks never taken no whip to me, or James.”

  “He never used a whip on me.”