by Ed Gorman
Cabot said nothing, continued staring out the open tent flap.
* * *
The sound coming down the road was that of a wagon, the clopping of the horse’s hooves, the rattling of the wheels, the creaking sound of the leather. Harmon picked up his rifle and called out, “Halt, halt there, I tell you!”
There were suddenly other sounds as well, as the other men came down from the hill, some carrying torches, and by the time they arrived and joined Harmon, someone said, “Oh hell, it’s just Garner, that’s all.”
Harmon swallowed, saw that he was right. It was Jonathan Garner, a local sutler, and he smiled down from his wagon perch as the men with torches and rifles surrounded him. He doffed his cap and shifted his heavy bulk. “Good evening, gentlemen. It truly is an honor to see our troops in such fine order on this cold night.”
It was a two-horse wooden wagon, enclosed by canvas. Faded paint on the side announced, GARNER SUTLERS—Dry Goods, Food Supplies—Honest and True. Lieutenant Morgan called out, “And where are you heading tonight?” Garner leaned over. “I’ve just made a delivery of blankets and camp stools to your regiment’s quartermaster, and now I’m returning home.”
“Do you have a pass?” the lieutenant asked.
“I do,” the fat man replied. “From your own regiment’s colonel. And here it is.”
From his clothing he produced a scrap of paper, which the lieutenant read by the light of a torch. Harmon stood by the wagon, rifle in hands, mouth watering. If only he had delivered some food, perhaps they could have scrounged something from the man. But blankets and camp stools … Nothing worth taking.
Lieutenant Morgan returned the pass, and made a bowing motion with his head. “I must beg your indulgence, sir, but I have my orders. No one is to pass through the lines without a thorough search. If you will be so kind…”
Harmon was expecting the sutler to mutter and curse and complain about being delayed, but the fat man surprised them all. He came down from his perch and opened up the rear of the wagon, and even lit a lantern of his own, to assist in the search. Harmon and a private called Tyler looked in the rear of the wagon, which took only a few minutes. While they were searching Harmon said, “You up there by the campfire seem to be enjoying yourselves. When in hell am I going to be relieved?”
Tyler smiled back. “Take it up with the lieutenant, Harmon. He’s the big man with the watch.”
Soon the search was over and Harmon stood outside with the other men, where there was some low talking. The lieutenant had just searched the sutler’s large leather purse, and after pursuing through the receipts and business papers, he had also run a thumb across a thick stack of Confederate dollars. Harmon could feel his eyes bulge out at seeing all that money. Even with the inflation, there was enough money there to buy the two nearest farms to his daddy’s place, back home in Centralia.
But the lieutenant was courteous and Garner returned the favor, and within a few minutes the sutler was on his way. A sergeant called Pinkham said loudly, “Did you see how much money was with that fat boy? Did you? Here we are, sweating and eating ground acorns and getting shot at, and he’s making a fortune. Damn it, it ain’t right.”
Lieutenant Morgan said, “It’s wartime, Pinkham. Hardly anything’s right. Come along, let’s get out of the road.”
And the group was back up by the campfire before Harmon realized he should have asked to be relieved.
He stamped his feet. Damn, it was cold!
* * *
His adjutant had gone out to evening mess, but Colonel Cabot stayed behind in his tent. If Sergeant Calhoun were to show up with the spy, he didn’t want to be absent. Oh, it wouldn’t take long for Sergeant Calhoun to find him among the officers of the regiment, but Cabot didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Too many skirmishes and battles over the past years had been lost due to missed connections, missed messages, the vagaries of chance.
Cabot rubbed at his jaw, lit a small oil lamp in his tent, noted the flickering light against the old canvas. Plus, he didn’t want to be at the mess and to face the questions of the general and his staff. He had promised them the information about the Reb lines and their troops. And he had promised it for tonight. Some of the staff members had had sharp looks, and even sharper comments, about amateur soldiers and even more amateur officers, and he didn’t want to expose himself to their gibes tonight.
Damn, he thought, looking at the emptiness of the parade ground, it surely did look to be a long night.
* * *
It didn’t seem much time had passed when Harmon heard the noise of another wagon approaching down the road. He rubbed his hands again and called out, “Halt, halt there!”
Again the men came down from the campfire, and he noted some loud laughs. Someone had probably produced a little flask of something to ward off the chill. And had anyone thought of him, down here alone, with no fire or whiskey to keep him warm? And sure enough, when the other men had crowded about him, he could smell the whiskey on their breath.
Lieutenant Morgan brought along a torch and said laughingly, “Oh, look at this now, will you. Are you sure you can’t handle this alone, Harmon?”
The men laughed with the lieutenant and Harmon felt his face flush. He knew why they were laughing at him, but damn it, he had followed his orders. Before them was a simple farm wagon, pulled by a gaunt plowhorse with its ribs showing. Aboard the wagon was an old black man, wearing baggy pants and blouse and a dirty straw hat. Behind him were some young voices, and he turned to hush them. A couple of pickaninnies, huddled back there. The lieutenant went up to the wagon, thrust his torch up to the old slave’s face.
“You there, boy!” he called up. “What are you doing out here tonight? Trying to make a break through the lines? Go work for old Father Abraham? Become a piece of contraband?”
The men laughed and the old man slowly nodded. His beard was quite white and he said slowly, “I’m jus’ making a delivery to the Monroe plantation, suh. That’s all. This ironwork back here. That’s all I’m doin’.”
“Got a pass, boy? Permission to be out at night?”
“Right here, suh,” the old man said, and he passed over a much-folded piece of paper to the lieutenant. A couple of the men muttered and started wandering back up to the hill, and the lieutenant shook his head as he examined the paper. “Harmon, a quick check, if you please.”
Harmon went to the rear of the wagon, raised up his lantern. There were farm tools back there, a plow and some rakes and other pieces of worked iron. Huddled in the rear were two black children, a filthy quilt covering their bodies. He was going to leave them both alone but remembered the lieutenant’s orders. Everything to be searched. He climbed up on the rear of the wagon and moved forward. The old black man looked back at him and then looked back to the lieutenant. The lieutenant said, “Who do you belong to, boy?”
“The Coulton family, suh. From Sutherland. Master Coulton, he wanted these tools delivered to Master Monroe. He’s his cousin, suh.”
“And those two pups back there?”
“My grandchildren, suh. That’s all.”
Harmon listened to the conversation as he went up to the children. He said nothing as he lifted up the quilt, saw some of the patterns and wavy lines on the dirty cloth. The young colored children’s eyes were quite wide as they sat there in the straw, dressed practically in rags, and they said nothing. He tossed the quilt back at them and then looked at all the iron tools. No papers, no letters, nothing. He got off the wagon, tired. The other men had gone back up to the hill. Lieutenant Morgan was talking to the old colored man and Harmon rested for a moment, feeling a bit uncomfortable near the young slaves. Growing up, Harmon had hardly ever seen slaves in his county, for most of the farms were small and barely made enough food and money for the families themselves to live on. It was only on the few trips to Richmond that he had seen slaves, working by the warehouses and large stores, and his daddy had whispered to him, “Don’t mind what the preacher tells y
ou on Sunday, Harmon. This bondage is wrong. Wrong for lots of reasons. Mainly ’cause having the colored here makes our lives that much harder.”
“I don’t understand, Daddy.”
“This free labor,” he had whispered, “makes it harder for honest white folk to make a livin’.”
So Harmon didn’t care one way or another about slaves. For all he cared, they could go back to Africa or move up north or go to Canada. All he knew was that despite what a couple of the boys had read from captured Northern newspapers, he and the other troops weren’t fighting for the rich men to keep slaves. Nope, they were fighting for their own states, and if their own states wanted to leave the Union and form their own association, then that was just fine. And if the Northern states wanted to pick a fight over leaving the Union, then it was his duty and those of his friends to fight back.
He was jostled some as Lieutenant Morgan said something aloud, and the old colored man pulled the wagon away. Harmon stood there, watching as the wagon went down the road, seeing those two little pickaninnies looking back at him, until they moved out of the reach of the lantern’s glow.
Then he realized he was now alone on the road. Lieutenant Morgan was back up at the campfire.
Once again he had not been relieved.
Damn this night, and all officers!
* * *
Colonel Cabot ate some of the beef that his adjutant had brought back to him from the mess tent, and he pulled his camp chair close to the flap and stretched out his legs, a thin wool blanket covering him. There was some singing and fiddle playing, and movement out there on the parade ground, but no one was approaching his tent. No Sergeant Calhoun, and definitely no spy carrying the needed information to turn the tide for tomorrow’s desperate battle. He folded his arms, knowing that he should be back there in the tent, at his dispatch desk, writing a letter to his fiancée, Miss Molly Hancock, who was a proud descendant of Mr. John Hancock, he of the large signature on the Declaration of Independence.
He wondered what poor Hancock and the others of that time, Franklin and Adams and Washington and Jefferson, what they would have thought if they had lived long enough to see all of the turmoil, all of the bloodshed, all of the hate. A new, young, struggling country, a little beacon of freedom and hope to the rest of the world, a world ruled by emperors and kings and potentates. Those men of the Revolution must have thought themselves blessed and proud, to bring such a country forth, a place of freedom where the rulers were chosen by the people.
And now? Not even eighty years later, after the Constitution was approved, and the nation was tearing itself apart. The little beacon of hope was flickering, was in danger of being extinguished, and he remembered some of the officers’ talk around the mess some months ago. One of the officers—Godin, a Frenchman from Maine—had said, “Look what will happen if the Union loses. Then we’ll have two countries here where there used to be one. One free, one slave. What will happen when we move farther out west? Won’t we continue fighting, over and over again? And what will happen if the Spanish or the British decided to help the South? I’ll tell you what will happen, my friends: We will have decades of hate and war and revenge, much more bloodshed, for centuries to come.”
One nation free, one slave. One nation based upon freedom, the other upon bondage. It must not be allowed to happen, and he remembered that bright day when he had first enlisted, back in Boston, so true of himself, so true to the cause. He had been an abolitionist for many years, had given what spare funds he could to Mr. Garrison and his newspaper, and had even heard a remarkable freeman speak in Boston, a man named Douglass. When the news came back in 1861 about South Carolina firing upon Fort Sumter, he had joined up, knowing in his heart that the war would be over within a month, and that he could return to his teaching and to his fiancée soon enough.
He crossed his legs and trembled slightly in the cold. Such thoughts, such stupid thoughts. The war had dragged on for long, bloody months, much longer and bloodier than anyone had predicted. And yet he was determined to see it through, to see this war to its end, to see the colored people freed and the Union restored. And if that meant using spies, so be it. A few months ago, his sergeant, Calhoun, had come to him, shyly staring at his feet, haltingly saying that he had contacts on the other side of the lines, a spy who could help. If the colonel would allow it, Sergeant Calhoun had said. Well, at first the colonel had not wanted to allow it, suspecting a trap. He was not sure of Sergeant Calhoun’s convictions and had sent him away, but after a bloody week of skirmishing where he and his regiment had lost ground and so many lives, he had sent for Sergeant Calhoun, glad that he had lived through the week. Within a few days the spy had come into camp, had provided information on the Reb lines, and the information had been true, allowing a glorious victory. A small victory nonetheless, but still, one that improved the morale of his boys.
But where was Sergeant Calhoun and that damnable spy tonight, after he had promised the general he would have news about the Rebs before the start of tomorrow’s battle?
Colonel Cabot pulled his blanket higher up to his chin, and then sat up. There! A light was approaching, coming to his tent. He stood up from his camp stool and stepped out onto the parade ground. There was a figure there, about the light, and he called out, “Sergeant Calhoun? Is that you?”
“No, Colonel, it is not,” said the voice. The lantern came closer, and Colonel Cabot shook his head in dismay. It was Colonel Thompson, adjutant to the general, a tall man with a closely cropped black beard and impeccable uniform. He stepped closer and said, “You know why I am here, don’t you, Thomas?”
He felt colder, standing out there in the open, no blanket, no information, filled with disappointment. “That I do, Colonel. That I do.”
The adjutant nodded. “Shortly the general will be writing up his orders for tomorrow, orders for the battle. These orders will be issued, no matter what you report. So if there is something to report, something from this spy of yours, then we need it. Quickly.”
Colonel Cabot nodded. “I know, sir.”
“Is the spy here, then?”
“No, sir. He is not.”
“And do you know when he is to arrive?”
“Sometime this evening, that is all.”
Colonel Thompson shook his head. “Then the general cannot wait any longer. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded, filled with misery. “That I do.”
The adjutant began to leave. “Then it will be a long night for all of us, and a longer day tomorrow for the boys going into battle.”
Colonel Cabot said nothing, watching as the adjutant returned to the general’s quarters. He stared for what seemed to be a long time at the departing figure, until the tiny light of his lantern could no longer be seen.
* * *
Harmon thought back again to the warning about spies as he shivered now in the cold night air. He hated the thought of spies, despised their very existence. The thought of fighting out in the open, out upon the hills, deep in the trees, grappling with the Federals, was bad enough. But at least there was a fairness about it all. Oh, the Federals may have better uniforms and better rifles, but the Virginia boys and the other boys from the other Confederate states had the will, had the spirit. But to think that the Federals had the benefits of spies working for them, men—and maybe even women!—among them here in the defenses, spies who would go and whisper their secrets to the Federals, made him furious. He knew the penalty for spying was death, and he had no doubt he would find it easy to kill a spy, if they found one tonight.
But it was proving to be a long night. Now the men up around the camp-fire were singing, sometimes quite loudly, and, Harmon thought, if a spy came down this road now, he would have so much warning that all he would have to do would be to slip around him, through the woods, and from there up to the Federal lines. And whose fault would that be? Not his, not Corporal Harmon Brewster. No sir. Blame it on the drunks up there, and especially blame it on Lieutenant Morgan,
who had not once sent someone down here to relieve him.
He leaned his rifle against a tree trunk and placed both his hands underneath his armpits, trying to warm up his bare fingers. He thought about how warm it would be at home tonight, with Mother and Father and his two sisters. Going to war at first had seemed so romantic—volunteer for a few months, teach the Federals a bloody lesson or two, and be back in time for summer work on the farm. Hah. He knew he was still a young man, that he had a lot to learn about this world, but he also knew he had grown up a lot since going into town to volunteer, wearing his only pair of shoes and his best clothes. He had seen it all: long marches in the rain and the mud, making do for food by scavenging in the woods, and, worst of all, the battles. The sharp sound of the rifles discharging. The clouds of smoke from the cannon fire. The yells and the shrieks and the blood, always the blood. A few times he had cried after a battle, bawled like a baby, and was embarrassed at acting so like a child until he had seen the tears on the faces of the older men, the ones who had seen and done more than he ever had.
He shivered again, and then grabbed his rifle.
A horseman was approaching.
* * *
Captain Jacob Shaw had come into his tent a few minutes earlier, bearing a tin cup of coffee, which Colonel Cabot eagerly drank. The night had grown colder yet he had not moved from his vantage point at the front of his tent. His adjutant had drawn up a stool and sat next to him, not saying anything, until Cabot sighed and said, “Go ahead.”
“Sir?”
“Go ahead and speak your piece. I can tell that you wish to say something to me.”
His adjutant coughed. “Well, sir, I must beg to report that Sergeant Calhoun is not to be found in camp. During the officers’ mess some talk was going about, concerning you and Sergeant Calhoun. I thought it best to find him and to see if he had learned any more about the spy coming here tonight. But he is gone. Sir.”
Cabot nodded, feeling the trembles start along his arms and legs. He knew he should go inside. Knew he should lie out on his cot and try to sleep, with an extra blanket to keep him warm. But he also knew he couldn’t sleep. Knowing that the general was now writing up his orders for tomorrow’s battle. Knowing that the spy had not yet arrived. Knowing that the lives of so many of the boys were resting with him, all because of that impetuous moment when he had guaranteed the general, guaranteed—how could he have been so foolish!—that he would have the spy’s report in hand before the evening was out.