The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  That brought him up short. “You’ve had more time to think about this than I have.” Not wanting to sound as if he was accusing her, he quickly added, “But you’re dead right. If this comes out of Rivington, it ought to shed some kind of light on all the other peculiar things the Rivington men have.” Not just AK-47s went through his mind, but also desiccated meals, Benny Lang’s helmet and bullet-stopping flapjack (he still wondered if he’d heard that straight), and the marvelous lights and artificial coolness about which Mollie had written. He’d never before thought of all those things together. Now that he had, he saw what a mountain of strangeness they made, a mountain beside which the Picture History of the Civil War was by itself but a foothill.

  He knew he was not a man cut out to handle mountains. He thought of bringing the book to George Lewis, shook his head the moment the idea occurred to him. Taken as a whole, the mystery of Rivington was far too big for Lewis, too. With that realization came an answer to Mollie’s question: “Robert E. Lee needs to see this book.”

  Mollie stared at him. “Robert E. Lee? Marse Robert?” Her voice rose to a squeak. “The President?”

  “He’s not the king,” Caudell said. “He’s not even President yet; and won’t be for more than a month. Remember how it was in Richmond? Jeff Davis had his house open every other week, just so he could meet people. Captain Lewis went there once, to shake his hand.”

  “I ain’t no captain.” Mollie vehemently shook her head. “I’m just a—hell and damnation, Nate, you know what I am.” She set a hand on the book in his lap. “You go; Nate. You can tell Marse Robert what it’s all about, better’n I ever could.”

  “Me?” Caudell was tempted—anyone who brought something this important to Richmond would become important himself, if only by association. But then, regretfully, he said, “No, it wouldn’t be right. For one thing, you got the book, so you should be the one who takes it. For another, you’ve lived at Rivington, so you can tell Marse Robert all about it. He’ll want to know that; the Rivington men were strong for Forrest in the election.”

  “Oh, were they ever,” Mollie said. “You never heard such cussin’ and fussin’ and carryin’ oil as when Tennessee went for Lee.”

  “There, you see? And besides, Mollie, you’re already traveling. Me, I have to teach school tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, or else throwaway a job I like and that I’m good at.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll do it if I have to, I guess, but you’re a better choice.”

  “But I’m nothin’ but a no-’count whore,” Mollie wailed. “Marse Robert, he won’t want nothin’ to do with the likes of me.”

  “I don’t know. He has an eye for pretty ladies, they say,”

  Caudell said. But that made matters worse, not better. He tugged at his beard, then suddenly grinned and asked, “Do you still have your old uniform?”

  “Yeah, I do,” she replied, sounding puzzled at the change of subject. “What about it?”

  “If you won’t go as Mollie, go as Melvin,” he said. “You know Marse Robert would do whatever needed doing for one of his old soldiers—and you soldiered as hard as anybody.”

  She had to nod. Slowly, she said, “Might could be that’d work.” Her laugh came shaky, but it was a laugh.” Always kept it in case I had to get out of somewhere quiet and sneakylike. Never reckoned I’d want to get into someplace that way.” A hand flew up to her hair. “Hate to chop this short again after it’s been growin’ since the war. But if it needs doin’, it needs doin’. I got me a little scissors right here.” She rummaged in one of the carpetbags, found what she was looking for, handed Caudell the scissors. “You cut it, Nate. You can see what you’re doin’.”

  Caudell hadn’t cut hair since the war ended. A Negro barber would have laughed scornfully at the job he did, but when he was through, Mollie looked more like a man, or at least a beardless youth, than a woman. But the dress she still wore, and the feel of her thick, curly hair running through his fingers as he worked, the occasional moments when his hands brushed against the smooth, warm skin of her cheek, her ear, her neck, reminded him she was no man, even if she could put on the outer seeming of one.

  Her hands checked what he had accomplished. She smiled. With her hair short, all at once it was the saucy smile of the Mollie beside whom he’d marched and fought—and lain. “That’s good, Nate. Thank you. You want to shut the door there, so as I can change?” He did as she asked; after a moment’s hesitation, he stood outside in the hallway. Through the thin wood panel, he heard her chuckle, and felt himself blush. She opened the door a couple of minutes later. “How do I look?”

  Shabby was the first word that came to mind. No one could look anything but shabby in trousers, tunic, and forage cap that had gone through the war, even if those clothes were cleaned and mended, as Mollie’s were. But seeing her in uniform somehow excited him in a way her hoop skirt and petticoats had not—this was the way she’d looked when he went to her cabin.

  She was used to reading men’s eyes. “You want to come back inside, Nate?” she asked softly. “Handy thing about this outfit is, it goes off a sight easier than the one I had on before.” Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded, stepped in, and closed the door again.

  They lay side by side afterwards on the narrow, clothes-strewn bed. The next to last candle Nate had got from Wren Tisdale still. burned. Had the saloonkeeper known, he could have leered with impunity. Mollie stroked Caudell’s cheek, just above the line where his beard started. She said, “I always remembered you were sweet about it. You treat me like I’m somebody, not just—a place to stick it in.”

  “Funny,” he said, sitting up. “I always thought the same about you—that you weren’t just going through the motions, I mean.”

  “Not with you. Other times—oh, the hell with other times. I wish—” Grimacing, she broke off without saying what she wished. Caudell thought he could make a fair guess. He rather wished she had no other times to come between them, too.

  Mollie got off the bed and started to dress. So did Caudell; the room was cold. As he pulled up his trousers, he said, “I have some money saved up that I can give you for train fare, if you need it.” He did not have much, but for this he was ready to use it.

  “Don’t fret yourself.” Mollie finished buttoning her private’s tunic, then slid over her head a small velvet bag on a thong. She tucked it under the tunic; it clinked slightly as it settled between her breasts. “I hear tell gold’s still right scarce most places, but not in Rivington. You seen that for yourself. I got plenty.”

  “All right,” Caudell said, not altogether unhappily. He thought of something else. “When you go to Richmond, don’t go back through Rivington, in case Benny Lang has noticed his book is missing after all. The Rivington men might be watching the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. Go south to Goldsboro from Rocky Mount, then over to Raleigh or Greensboro, so you can head north on the Raleigh and Gaston or the North Carolina Railroad up to the Richmond and Danville.”

  “That’s right smart, Nate. I’ll do it,” Mollie promised. “I’ll hire me a wagon first thing tomorrow to take me to the Rocky Mount train station.” She grinned a grin that took him back to their days round campfires together. “Won’t Mr. Wren Tisdale be confused when I go downstairs in the mornin’?”

  “Not unless you go barefoot,” he said, noticing a gap in her disguise. He kicked one of his shoes over to her. “Here—take these. I have another pair in my room. My feet won’t freeze on the way back. Reckon my shoes’ll fit you like socks on a chicken, but if you have to, you can get yourself some proper ones on your way north.”

  “Oh, Nate, not your shoes!” But she saw the need for what he’d said as clearly as he did. She stooped, started to put them on, then stopped and stuffed the toes with wadded-up clothes from a carpet bag. “Just like I’d’ve done in the war, taking big ones off a dead Yankee.” She got up and hugged him. “Thanks for not thinkin’ I’m crazy on account of all this. Thanks for—” She hugged him aga
in, hard. “For bein’ a friend, and more than a friend.”

  He hugged her, too, felt the womanly shape of her through the uniform that masked it from the eye. More than a friend indeed, he thought. “Come back here when you can, if you care to,” he said. It was not any sort of promise, but it was as close to one as he could make himself come. Had she pressed for more, he might well have fought shy of the little he’d said. But she only nodded; maybe she’d not expected even so much.

  Freezing mud squelched between his toes as he walked out of the Liberty Bell. His head, though, his head was in the clouds, and not just because he’d broken a long spell of abstinence. Not only had he held a willing woman in his arms, he’d somehow held a bit of the future in his hands.

  Lee walked out of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The shadow cast by George Washington’s equestrian statue, across Ninth Street in Capitol Square, shielded his eyes from the low, wan winter sun. Beside him, Jefferson Davis said,” A fine sermon, do you not agree?”

  “Yes, as usual,” Lee said. “Mr. President, let me tell you again how grateful I am that you have agreed to. serve as my Secretary of War. I hesitated to ask it of you, lest you should feel it beneath your dignity to assume a Cabinet position after having held the Presidency.”

  Davis snorted. “Nonsense, sir. I am ineligible under the constitution to continue as President; if I am to remain in public life, it must necessarily be at some lower level. The post you offered suits me well, and I am glad to have it.”

  Lee was about to reply when a light, hesitant voice said, “Beggin’ your pardon, General Lee, sir—”

  Frowning, he turned to deal with whoever had presumed to interrupt his conversation with President Davis. He saw a smooth-faced private in a worn uniform, clutching a parcel wrapped in coarse brown paper and twine to his chest. “Yes, Private—?” he asked, voice polite but frosty.

  The soldier, who at second glance looked not quite young enough to be so free of beard, came to attention but held on to the parcel. “M-Melvin Bean, sir, 47th North Carolina. I got here a book you ought to see, sir.”

  “Never mind that now, young man,” Jefferson Davis said impatiently. He walked on, looking back to see if Lee was following.

  Lee was about to, when the private said something that made him stop in his tracks: “It’s a book from Rivington, sir.”

  “Is it?” Lee said. Davis had gone too far to hear the half-dozen soft, nervous words, but, seeing that the ordinary soldier had somehow gained Lee’s attention, he shrugged and headed off toward the Presidential mansion.

  “Yes, sir, it surely is,” Melvin Bean said. The private gulped, licked his lips, and then went on in a ragged whisper, “Other thing you ought to know, sir, is that inside this here book, it says it was printed in nineteen hundred and sixty, sir.”

  “By God,” Lee said softly. Private Bean looked ready to bolt and run. Lee did not blame him in the least. He himself knew the secret of the Rivington men. But if this common soldier had somehow stumbled across it, not only would he have trouble believing it, he would have even more trouble believing anyone else would believe it. Quickly, Lee set out to ease his mind: “Private, you had better come back to the Powhatan House with me. This is most assuredly something I must see. Have you a horse?”

  “No, sir—came up by train.” Melvin Bean gaped at him, blurted, “You—you mean you believe me, sir? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Lee agreed gravely. “Wait here a moment, if you please.” He ducked back inside the church, spoke with a vestryman, then returned to Private Bean. “There—now Traveller will be seen to. Walk up Capitol Square and then to the hotel with me, if you would be so kind, and tell me how this book—”

  “It’s called the Picture History of the Civil War, sir,” Bean said.

  “The Picture History of the Civil War? From—1960, you said?” A shiver of wonder ran up Lee’s spine. How would the Second American Revolution look, from a distance of a hundred years? He and Melvin Bean turned right from Ninth onto Broad Street. “Tell me at once how it came into your possession.”

  The story was less than clear, and left him imperfectly edified. He gathered a woman friend of Bean’s had actually gotten the book away from the stronghold of America Will Break, but a couple of times the private said “I” when he meant “she.” Lee did not press him. For the sake of a volume from Rivington—and from 1960!—he was willing to overlook a discrepancy or three.

  Private Bean, by his accent, was a country boy. Lee expected him to gape at the red velvet and gold-leaf splendor of the Powhatan House’s lobby, but he took it in stride, merely muttering something Lee did not quite catch: to him, it sounded like “It’s not a not a hilton.” Lee led him to his own suite and closed the door after them. He turned on the gaslight, sat by it, and pulled up another chair for Melvin Bean. “Now, if I may, the Picture History of the Civil War.” In anticipation, he slipped on his spectacles.

  Bean handed him the parcel. He cut the twine with a pen knife, undid the paper wrapper, and stared at the book for a long moment before he opened it. The unusual quality of the printing struck him at once. His lips shaped a silent whistle when he saw the copyright and publication dates. He turned the page, came to the introduction. For a moment, he was confused and jolted when he read of the war’s ending with the South’s surrender. Then he understood, and said quietly, “So this is how it would have been, had the Rivington men not come back to us.”

  “Sir’?” Melvin Bean said. He was at the very edge of his seat, and still looked ready to flee at any moment. He also looked hungry: Lee had seen that expression too many times in the war ever to mistake it.

  He stood up. Melvin Bean bounced to his feet, too. Lee took some bills out of a trouser pocket, handed twenty dollars to the private soldier. “Why don’t you buy yourself some dinner, young man? The cooks here are quite fine. Ask for my usual table in the dining room, and tell them to send a boy back here to me if they doubt your right to sit there. Later, perhaps, I shall have questions for you, but first I want to read awhile.”

  Bean stared at the money without reaching for it. “I couldn’t take that from you, General Lee, sir.”

  Lee pressed it into the private’s hand. “You can, and you shall.”

  “I got money o’ my own,” Melvin Bean said, drawing himself up with prickly pride.

  “As may be. Use this anyhow, please, if for no other reason than as a token of my thanks for having brought this volume to my notice,.” He took Bean by the elbow, steered the private to the door, and pointed in the direction of the dining room. “Go ahead, please, as a favor to me.” Still shaking his head, Melvin Bean walked slowly down the hall.

  Lee went back to his chair, picked up the Picture History of the Civil War, and plunged in. He was not normally an enthusiastic reader; when he’d come back to Richmond from Augusta, Georgia, he’d had half a dozen chapters to go in Quentin Durward, and those six chapters remained unread to this day. But he held in his hands a volume he had never imagined he would be able to examine. He eagerly seized the chance.

  This Bruce Catton’s style was less Latinate, less ornate, more down-to-earth than Lee would have expected from a serious work of history. He soon ceased to notice; he was after information, and the smooth, flowing text and astonishing pictures made it easy to acquire. He had to remind himself that Cat ton was writing long after the war ended and that, to the historian, it had not gone as he himself remembered.

  But the odd tone ran deeper than that. Cat ton plainly saw chattel slavery as an outmoded institution which deserved to perish; to him, the Emancipation Proclamation gave the United States the moral high ground for the rest of the war. Lee had trouble squaring that with what Andries Rhoodie had said about the hatred between black and white which was to come.

  The sun sank; the only light left in Lee’s room was the yellow pool beneath the gas lamp. He never noticed—he had reached 1864, and all at once the world he knew turned sideways. He studied Grant’s cam
paign against him, and Sherman’s against Joseph Johnston, and nodded most soberly. That relentless hammering used Northern resources simply to club the Confederacy into submission. It was the sort of attack he had feared most, and one which only the Rivington men’s AK-47s could have disrupted.

  He winced when he read of John Bell Hood taking Johnston’s command in front of Atlanta. Hood had the fierce visage of a lion and boldness to match. At the head of a division, he was a nonpareil. But for boldness, though, he lacked all qualification for army command. He would attack whether attack was called for or not…Over the next few pages, Lee read what had come—what would have come, he made himself remember—of that.

  He also took far more careful note of the political maneuvering in this other version of the war than he would have before his own not-altogether-voluntary entry into politics. He was unsurprised to discover Lincoln reelected; Andries Rhoodie had told him of that. But Rhoodie had also spoken of Lincoln treating the Confederate States as conquered provinces after their defeat, and that proved nothing but a lie: even with the war all but won, Lincoln had tried to get the Federal Congress to compensate Southern slaveholders for the animate property they were losing. Past reunion and emancipation, Lincoln had intended to impose no harsh terms upon the states which had lost their war for independence.

  Absurdly, rage filled Lee at Rhoodie’s untruth. A man who knew the future might at least have the courtesy to report it correctly, he thought. That Rhoodie had lied argued he and America Will Break had their own political agenda, one which they aimed to impose on the Confederacy. Given their support for Nathan Bedford Forrest and all their efforts against the Negro, the nature of that agenda was easy enough to deduce: the permanent dominance of the white man. But by the tone of the Picture History of the Civil War, white supremacy was an outmoded idea in their own day, just as the course of history would have led Lee to believe. Did that make them maverick heroes, or simply mavericks?