by Ed Gorman
She looked up at him with her newly old eyes.
“In my mind,” she said, “but never in my heart.”
Logan never hated the war more than at that moment.
* * *
When the Tennessee Ninth rode from the plantation fields, Logan raised a hand to signal a halt when they reached the main road. He had three of the men brush the dry earth and move branches back over the mouth of the path to the house. It wasn’t unlikely that Yankees might favor Amanda with a visit. Hampton could hardly protect her now, buried as he was among the elms.
They’d ridden ten miles down the road, toward Aimesville, when Logan saw a shack next to a small creek. He told Matoon to have the men rest by the creek but not to drink from it or refresh the horses until they could judge whether the water was safe. The Yanks had a habit of killing livestock and staking the rotting corpses in creeks or small rivers upstream from where the water might be drunk.
An old man with a white beard came out of the shack and stood with his fists on his hips. He was wearing overalls and a straw hat with the wide brim bent up in front.
Logan motioned for Matoon to come with him, then tugged on the reins and veered his mount toward the man.
When he got closer, he saw that beneath the hat and gray beard the man looked about sixty. He was bent but he looked fit, and most of the fingers were missing from his left hand. His eyes were the brightest blue Logan had ever seen.
“That creek water safe to drink?” Logan asked, reining in his horse a few feet from the old-timer.
“Yanks ain’t poisoned it,” the man said in a raspy voice. “Use it for cookin’ an’ bathin’, an’ I’m still here.”
Logan wasn’t so sure about the bathing part. But he smiled and told Matoon, beside him, to ride to the creek and make sure they could agree with the old man.
Matoon clucked at his horse and flicked it with the end of the rein.
“You met up with any Yanks of late?” the man asked, as he and Logan watched Matoon ride toward the knot of men and horses at the creek.
“North of here, on the rail line. They were waiting for us.”
“They’re still thick here an’ about, even though Sherman’s moved on. Burned everythin’ that’d take a spark in these parts.”
Logan’s leg pained him then, and he asked, “Know folks named LeGrande around here?”
“Sure. ’Bout ten mites back from the way you came. Fine people. Been wonderin’ how they fared.”
“Mr. LeGrande was killed at Gettysburg. Amanda LeGrande is still there.”
“Damned shame about Gerald LeGrande. Fine man, that. But it’s good to hear the wife’s all right. That big buck Hampton lookin’ after her?”
“Not anymore,” Logan said. “We had to hang him.”
The old man’s eyes widened and seemed to take in all the blue of the sky. “Hampton? Why’d you have to do that?”
“Turned out he was spying for the Yanks,” Logan said.
“You real sure of that?”
“I’d be sure before I ordered a man hanged,” Logan said. “Slave or no slave.”
“Poor Amanda was fond of that slave,” the old man said. “I don’t like to think of those pretty blue eyes filled with tears, what with all the rest she’s been through these past few years.”
“She’s strong as well as beauti—” Logan bit off his words and stared at the old man. “Blue eyes? The Amanda LeGrande I met had brown eyes. Dark hair to her waist. Tall woman. Of fine breeding and bearing.”
The old man shook his head. “That weren’t Amanda LeGrande. Woman you described’d be Hampton’s wife Lizzy. Lucinda. I could see how you’d take her for a gentlewoman, though, light-skinned as she is. And she speaks well ’cause she helped out at the school in Aimesville for a while, even taught herself to read and write some. Only slave in these parts can do that. But that was before the LeGrandes bought her from the Hobsons so she could be permanent with Hampton.”
Logan remembered Matoon’s words: Hampton handed the Yanks a folded sheet of paper … He knew he should have thought of that, how unlikely it would be that Hampton could write. Logan knew who had questioned and listened to a drunken, half-conscious Confederate officer with a wound in his leg, then put whatever useful information she’d gleaned in writing for the Yanks. Hampton had merely been the messenger. And back there in the elm grove … the way they had looked at each other …
Logan’s heart went cold.
“You feelin’ poorly?” the old man was asking. “You’re lookin’ white as bone.”
Logan drew a deep breath. “I feel as well as can be expected. We thank you for your hospitality.” And he wheeled his horse sharply and galloped toward the creek.
“You see them Yanks, you give ’em hell fer me!” the old man called after him.
For a brief instant Logan thought of turning his troops to the north, going back the way they had come.
But he knew he couldn’t make himself do that.
Regrouped on the road to Aimesville, the thirst of men and horses quenched, Logan took his position in the lead, raised his right hand, and signaled for the ride south.
After a hundred yards, he didn’t know why, but he spurred his horse on, stood high in the stirrups and let out the shrill Rebel yell that froze Yank blood. The rest of the men caught his spirit. As he rode he could hear the hurried, eager beat of the horses’ hoofs pounding dry earth. He could feel the grit of dust as he clenched his teeth.
It was his last Rebel yell of the war.
Gary Phillips is a hands-on political man and a wise observer of the sociopolitical scene on the west coast. He’s written several crime and mystery novels, including The Jook, all of them original and explosive. Over the years he has also watched every movie Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Richard Brooks, and Budd Boetticher made—some of them more than once. Recent releases include a novella about the unsavory “sport” of pit bull fighting out with its own rap CD soundtrack, and Shooter’s Point, the second Martha Chainey crime novel. Robert Smalls, the main character of his story, was a real soldier and boatman during the Civil War, did not actually perform the heroics attributed to him in the following story. However, he did serve the Union in several distinguished government posts after the war.
THE MEASURE
Gary Phillips
That was a lot of money. More money than he’d ever see in his lifetime—he knew that for sure as his muscular stevedore arms cut into the frigid waters of the Stono River. Fortunately the half-dime of a moon was tallow-colored and barely cast light upon the ink Robert Smalls swam through. His body was cold, but his senses were alert to everything around him. He gained steadily on his destination, tins escaped slave most wanted by the Confederacy.
One of the five slave catchers who’d tried to kidnap him in Beaufort had said he was the nigra he was going to become fat on. Another said happily, as Smalls ducked the flat of the man’s short ax, that they would whore and drink away the $4,000 offered for his capture. Four thousand dollars, that was plenty for any man’s head. And it signified the depths of hatred Brigadier General Roswell Ripley must have for him. And they wanted him back alive, thus a tortured end awaited him should the general get a hold of the bold coon.
After all, here he was a slave, sent to work the docks of Charleston by his master John McKee. He’d been a lamplighter, then waiter then apprenticed to John Simmons’s boatyard. From there he became a docker and worked his way up to foreman. There were plenty of men, black and white, bigger than his five feet five. But that only meant he had to work harder and longer to show his measure. Yes, he had to send his wages back to his master, but as even the soldiers around the docks joked, he had it pretty good for a slave.
When Simmons didn’t have work for him, Smalls signed on to the various boats ferrying supplies and men up and down the waterways of South Carolina. Robert Smalls had only been given the name Robert to balance the last, which he had added as a tip of his cap to his size, “For a r
unt he sure hauls like a full grown man,” they’d rib. And he was quite familiar with the coastline’s geography when the war broke out. And the longing that had been in him since he didn’t know when got to fill him more and more on those nights he’d be resting on a pier, looking out across the black carpet of sea.
Smalls felt the ghostly brush of a jellyfish against one of his legs and this brought him back to his mission. Cole’s Island was looming larger, and he kept stroking toward her. The island lay not too many miles off Charleston, and had once been a cannon and arms compound.
As the Union erected blockades at several intervals out from the coastline, the island had been abandoned by the Confederates. Or so the Northern forces had been led to believe. But as Smalls was piloting the Planter three days ago on a, what was the word Captain DuPont used, re-con-e-sant run, he’d sported something the other troops hadn’t given much mind.
“Yes, sir, Captain, sir, I’m’a sure of it,” Smalls had insisted when they’d returned to headquarters at Port Royal. “I seen, I mean I saw, it through the spyglass I borrowed from Sergeant Matthews.” His wife had been helping him with his book learnin’.
“You see this, Matthews?” DuPont bit off the end of his cigar and spat the chunk into the spittoon next to his desk.
“Well, sir,” Matthews began, “I did see a schooner flying Confederate colors, yes sir.” Matthews, Smalls knew from association, had laid out a career for himself in the Army. He wasn’t about to side too much with a darky.
“Was this ship departing from the island?” DuPont struck a match with his thumbnail and lit his cigar. He kept his stone gray eyes on both men as they sweated in the humidity outside his tent. As was customary, he was seated behind his field table.
“I couldn’t say that sir. But she was heading in a direction away from Cole’s Island sure enough. But,” he quickly added, “that don’t mean she was at the island, sir.”
DuPont rubbed blunt fingers in his beard’s brown whiskers.
“But you say Smalls you recognized this particular schooner.”
“That’s right sir. I been on the Jena more than once sir. She’s got a hold made to carry heavy guns and rifle racks along her insides. She wouldn’t be out lessin’ they’s usin’ her for that reason, naw sir.” He didn’t like to sound so, so accommodating, his wife Hannah would say. His life as a slave had been different than working sunup to sundown in the fields, an overseer always quick with the lash. But white men were white men, and you best step lightly ’round their feelings.
DuPont smoked and pondered then stated, “We have to make sure. As you men know, we’re preparing to take our ships and men through the back door Ripley has left unguarded by removing the light garrison that had been on Cole’s. Information we confirmed from our balloonists and you, Smalls.” He quickly waved with the lit end of his cigar at the smallish black man with the wide torso.
“Yet,” DuPont continued, “Ripley knows you are with us and he knows you know the rivers and back washes like he does.” DuPont laughed and it made Smalls nervous. “Of course he being a fine Southern gentlemen and planter, he cain’t take too much stock that you, a slave, actually have put that knowledge to useful purposes with us.”
Smalls noted that DuPont hadn’t said “former” slave, bur what could he do about this man, or Matthews, or any of the other blue-bellies and how they saw him? He was determined to maintain his freedom, and that of his wife and two children.
Matthews couldn’t hide his sly grin. “So we go forward as ordered, sir?”
The captain blew gray fumes across his kerosene lamp. “We send you, Smalls, and an oarsman to find out for sure. There is too much at stake for any kind of setback, Sergeant. Too much. We, like them, are strained to capacity and cain’t afford unnecessary losses.”
“You mean me and him—” Matthews began, a protest forming on his lips.
“Are to sneak out in a rowboat from one of our light ships anchored away from Cole’s Island,” DuPont finished. “You will conduct a reconnaissance of the island and thereafter report your findings. This will commence,” he consulted his pocket watch which was open on the table, “at approximately 2100 hours this evening, Sergeant.” He stood and puffed. “You have your orders.”
Both men saluted though Smalls as of yet had not been given any official rank. Truth was, his position with the Union wasn’t formal at all. Though he did know that when he’d first piloted the Planter, the ship he’d commandeered, into Union waters, and told of what he knew. DuPont had sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells. The letter, it was rumored, had praised his observation skills and his daring. And fair enough, he’d been paid as a pilot for the joint Army and Navel command, so that was something. But it had only occurred to him now, standing next to these men in their uniforms, dirty and fraying though they may be, that he still wasn’t truly part of their fight. And hadn’t the Union soldiers helped him fight off the slave catchers? Obviously he was of some worth to them.
Smalls swirled fresh water in his mouth, the liquid bracing him as he drew close to the leeward side of the island. It was merely a slag of land, though there was a small hill upon which he remembered seeing kegs of gunpowder and cannonballs stocked once. He entered shallow water and his toes slid into mud. He’d tied his boots around his neck, as he didn’t want to be squeaking around in wet shoes. Smalls did his best to minimize splashing and hunched over as he got onto land.
Quickly he shoved his feet into his boots and got his bearings. If the Rebels were encamped again on the island, they’d be by the hill. It blocked a view, and the cannons had been stored in the one cave in the hillside. The officer’s tents and bedrolls had been spread around this. He’d had to bring hardtack and salt pork, by himself, up from the shore that time. All the while the Rebs were calling him names and threatening to shoot him should he drop any of the sacks or crates. But his back was broad for a man his size and nary a provision fell to the earth, even though several of the soldiers tried to trip him.
Smalls stuffed those slights away. Anything less than getting his foot chopped off by a slaver or getting lynched for sport by a mob, he considered rice and red-eyed gravy. The first thing he noticed as he crouched in a thicket was a dark mound set back from the beach. He waited and heard nothing except the rustling of lizards in the brush and croaks of frogs.
Cautiously, feeling fully exposed in the open space, he dashed to the mound.
The compact man was shivering but he had a job to do. Heading toward Cole’s Island, Smalls knew something was up when Matthews had been the only one to come with him in the rowboat from the Planter. And the sergeant had made him row. They got within rifle range and Matthews ordered him to swim the rest of the way. When he questioned this, his position was made clear.
“Look, boy, you may have impressed DuPont, bur that don’t mean chicken dinner to me. Jus’ ’cause you memorized what you’d seen and heard good as a white man jus’ means you bein’ on the docks all that time somethin’ was bound to sink in that thick skull of yours.”
Smalls was stuck. He knew Matthews had seen him reading a months-old newspaper he’d found. The sergeant had snatched the paper out of his hands and said he’d never wanted to see him pretending like that again. The sergeant, he was sure, couldn’t read. It wasn’t unusual that he couldn’t, but it stuck out more so when it was a black that could.
“Now git your black ass in that river and over ta that island.”
“Alright,” he’d muttered, barely keeping his temper down.
“All right?”
“I mean yes, sir, Sergeant Matthews.”
“That’s better … Smalls.”
Now, digging into the thin layer of sand he felt the scratchy surface of burlap. He tugged on the cloth and revealed part of the cold cast iron of a cannon barrel. In the weak light and by feel, Smalls assessed the armament was what the soldiers had called a ten-pounder, referring to the size of the cannon-ball the weapon shot.
Cree
ping about, he found several other areas where cannons, Napoleons, and even a few Union Parrott’s were hidden. So that was it. The Confederates had correctly concluded that the Union knew about their previous withdrawal from the island and other defenses along the Sonto River. And also knowing that the Union was looking for a way to seize Charleston, Ripley had snuck back and assembled an ambush force. When the Union ships came steaming along the river, thinking they’d sneak in the rear, then the back door would be shut on them. And blue blood would flow into the waters.
Smalls did his best to count the secreted cannons, since this was the kind of information the captain would want. Though he had a feeling that Matthews would take the credit, as if he had dared get on the island, with Smalls sitting sniffling and praying to de Lawd in the rowboat.
“Is that you, Remmy?”
Hell, he swore to himself. He’d been easing up the rise, as it would be a good spot for heavy cannons—like the thirty-pounders he’d heard about. That’s when he also smelled the dying smoke and chicory. “Yes, uh yeah,” he said, trying to sound like a white man who was a fellow soldier.
“What the hell you doin’?” the voice challenged, feet crunching closer.
“Nothin’,” Smalls said, standing up fully.
“Remmy?” The soldier asked again, his rifle held guard duty fashion.
Smalls leaped and the two tumbled down the bill. The Confederate was taller than him but his limbs were skinnier. They wound up along the side, the spy on top.
“A nigra,” his opponent gasped, “You’re a—”
Smalls silenced him with a punch to the mouth and another one to the side of the man’s head. He lay still and Smalls scrambled up, running for the shore. That bastard Matthews should be there, should have rowed in to see what was happening. But no, he’d be nice and dry 300 or 400 hundred yards out. He was probably worrying about the girl he left behind, humming a rune.
Anger got his legs lifting higher and his heart racing faster. The crack of a rifle shot made that same pounding heart stop as if ice had suddenly formed around it.