didn't die at the altar. He just wished he could.
The men defending Fort Pillow, on the other hand… Captain James Marshall, the commanding officer aboard the New Era, must have decided his gunboat couldn't stand the fire from the riverbank and the cannonballs from the artillery captured up on the bluff. He saw to the safety of his own men. He saw to their safety, yes-but he left the garrison to its fate.
A panicked trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry clutched at Bradford's sleeve and shouted, “What the hell do we do now, sir?” An equally panicked colored artilleryman all but screamed the same question at him.
“Boys, save your lives,” Bradford said numbly. “I don't know what else to tell you.” He didn't know how to tell them to save their lives. He didn't know how to save his own life, either. The terror that filled the soldiers took root in his own heart, too. What to do? What to do?
From the south came the exultant whoops and jeers of the Confederate cavalrymen who'd forced the New Era to flee. “Yellowbellies!” they yelled, and “Cowards!” and “You stinking, gutless sons of bitches!” Hearing the enemy shout exactly what he was thinking was as humiliating an experience as Major Bradford had ever known.
Save your lives. It was easy to say. With Bedford Forrest's troopers already shooting down at the Federals from the top of the bluff, with those Secesh soldiers whooping and jeering by the river, it wouldn't be easy to do. He wondered if the Rebs would accept surrenders now. Part of him wished he'd taken Forrest's offer while he had the chance. Forrest was known for ploys and tricks, but he wasn't fooling this time. Bradford wished he had been.
Yellowbellied coward, Bradford thought furiously. Stinking son of a bitch. He stared across the muddy waters of the Mississippi at the receding New Era. If he ever met Captain Marshall again, he didn't think God Himself could keep him from punching the gunboat's skipper in the nose. And if Marshall felt inclined to resent that, Bradford was ready to go as much further as the Navy man cared to.
Bradford laughed a bitter laugh. He knew he wasn't a particularly brave man. He did his best to hide that, from others and perhaps most of all from himself, but he knew it. All the same, the prospect of a fight, or even a duel, with James Marshall worried him not a bit. He knew why, too. It was what he would have called a hypothetical question in the courtroom. A lot of things would have to happen for him to face Marshall again. Chief among them was his living through the combat here. And the chances of that didn't look good.
Some of the men still had fight in them. They grabbed cartridges from the crates Bradford had ordered brought here and fired at the closest Confederates. Major Bradford would have expected his white cavalry troopers to show more spirit than the colored artillerymen. The colored soldiers were only niggers in uniform, after all. He would have expected that, but he would have been wrong. Some blacks were terrified and despairing, yes, but so were some whites. The proportions seemed about the same in men of both races.
What that meant… was as hypothetical as punching James Marshall in the nose. If Bradford got out of this, he could worry about it later. If he didn't get out of this, he wouldn't worry about anything later.
“Ain't gonna give up to no Secesh sojers,” said a colored sergeant ramming a Mini? ball down the muzzle of his Springfield. “Even if them fuckers don't shoot me fo' the fun of it, reckon they sell me later. Ain't gonna be no slave again.”
Not many of the troopers from Bradford's own regiment showed anything close to that kind of spirit. The white major stared at the black underofficer. Bradford's own opinion of Negroes wasn't that far from Nathan Bedford Forrest's or any other Confederate's. He thought they made good slaves, bad freemen, and worse soldiers. He favored the U.S.A. because he didn't want to see the country broken in two-and because several prominent men in west Tennessee with whom he didn't get along well went all-out for secession. He'd paid them back ten times over. But he was worse than indifferent toward Negro rights; he was downright hostile, and didn't care who knew it.
Or he hadn't cared who knew it. He didn't think he would be smart to go on about niggers and coons where that grimly determined sergeant could hear him. The way the blacks in Fort Pillow fought had surprised him. The way the colored sergeant was ready to go on fighting no matter how bad things looked astonished him.
If we were wrong all along about what Negroes can do, then it doesn't matter if the Confederates win this fight, he thought. It doesn't even matter if they win this war. Sooner or later, their cause is doomed, and it will fall to pieces. It has to, because it rests on lies.
On a cosmic level, that might well be so. Back here in the mud by the edge of the Mississippi, who won and who lost mattered very much, because it told who lived and who died. Some of the Federals started south along the riverbank, perhaps hoping to get past the Confederate troopers who'd helped drive off the New Era.
A couple of them looked back at him, as if wondering if he would try to stop them. He didn't. For one thing, he wasn't sure they would obey him. Why should they, when his orders had led them to their present sorry state? For another, he wasn't sure they were wrong. What were they supposed to do, wait here for Bedford Forrest's troopers to shoot them to pieces? Certain disaster lay down that road. Maybe, if they pushed hard…
And maybe not, too. Every choice Bill Bradford made that day, even keeping his mouth shut, proved wrong. The men in blue fired a few shots-hardly enough to dignify with the name of volley-at the Confederates. The roar of musketry that answered sent them reeling back in dismay. Some bled. Some limped. Some didn't even reel, but lay dead or badly wounded by the river.
“They're coming!” a white Federal screamed. “They're on our tails! “
“Dey gwine kill all 0' we!” shrieked a Negro beside him. The black's terror and his thick accent made the words almost incomprehensible. But no one could misunderstand the fear that made him push through the crowd of soldiers, that made him throwaway his Springfield to run the faster.
And the panic from the men who'd taken that blast of musket fire-and the whoops and Rebel yells from the Confederates who were indeed on their tails-stampeded the rest of the Union troops into motion. What point waiting here for the massacre they all saw ahead? The New Era wouldn't rescue them now-they all saw that, too. And so, more a mob, a herd, than anything resembling soldiery, they pelted north, toward where Coal Creek ran into the Mississippi.
One more spooked steer, Bill Bradford ran along with the rest.
A few of the men in Colonel Barteau's regiment along Coal Creek fired at the Federal gunboat as it steamed away from the fight. “No, goddammit! Don't waste your ammunition!” Corporal Jack Jenkins roared, along with other underofficers and officers. “Jesus Christ!” he went on. “You can't hit the son of a bitch at this range, and even if you could, so what? She's iron-plated, for cryin' out loud.”
“Have a heart, Corporal,” a trooper said. “Damn boat's been shootin' at us all day long. Least we can do is pay her back a little.”
“Blow 'em a kiss. Wave bye-bye.” Jenkins suited action to word. “Bastard's gone. That's all we've got to worry about. Now reload your damn piece, and don't go shooting at anything till you got somethin' to shoot at. “
The private scowled. He muttered. But not only did Jenkins have two stripes on his sleeve, he was also taller and wider through the shoulders and, without a doubt, meaner. If the soldier tried to give trouble, he'd end up getting it instead. He might be a grumbler, but he wasn't a fool. He could see that for himself. And he did need to reload, regardless of whether he needed somebody to tell him to do it. He went right on muttering, but he followed Jenkins's order.
And Jenkins was happy enough to leave it right there. Getting troopers to do what you told them was a never-ending pain in the neck. They always thought they had a better idea, and they were bound and determined to go ahead with it no matter what.
He wondered if he was such a pest before he got promoted. A reminiscent smile stole over his face. He was. Not a chance anyone ever set over him would say anything different. He wondered how sergeants and officers ever put up with him. But the answer to that wasn't hard to find. No matter how big a nuisance he'd been, without even trying he could think of a dozen men who were worse.
“What do we do now?” somebody asked.
“There's damnyankees round the bend of the bluff, down by the
Mississippi. You can hear the bastards,” somebody else said. “Let's go kill 'em. Them bastards what went up into the fort, they've had all the fun.”
Jenkins felt the same way. But a nearby lieutenant shook his head. “We'll just sit tight for a little while, is what we'll do. Aren't a whole hell of a lot of us. We might bite off a bigger chaw than we can get in our
