An officious-looking young Confederate second lieutenant rushed over to Bradford. “Where do you think you're going?” he demanded.
Then, recognizing the man to whom he spoke, he did a classic double take. “You!”
“He said the same thing.” Bradford jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the trooper behind him. “I think I'm going to tend to my brother's body, that's what, and see that he gets Christian burial. You are a Christian, I hope?” By the way he said it, he had his doubts.
“I ought to blow your head off right here,” the lieutenant said, scowling. If he was a Christian, he didn't believe in turning the other cheek.
“I have surrendered. This gentleman accepted my surrender.” Bradford pointed to the trooper again. “If you care to make yourself infamous before God and man, pull the trigger. I shall not run.” Soaked and weary though he was, he struck a pose. He'd pleaded for lives before, but never for his own. All the courtroom tricks he'd used for others came back to help him now.
He succeeded in confusing the lieutenant, anyhow. “Don't you go nowhere,” the youngster squeaked.
“I am going to find my brother's body,” Bradford insisted. “I am going to see him properly buried.” And what I do after that is nobody's business but my own. When the Confederate lieutenant didn't tell him no, his hopes began to rise.
Mack Leaming lay where he'd fallen. He'd stuffed a pocket handkerchief into the hole below his shoulder blade. The linen square was soggy with blood now, but he did think he was losing less than he had before.
Secesh soldiers and their Federal captives scampered down the side of the bluff and trudged up it. Confederates plundered the dead and robbed the living. They weren't murdering so many as they had in the mad moments after the fort fell, but they hadn't stopped, either. A Negro dashed down to the Mississippi and tried to take refuge in the river. One of Forrest's troopers shot him just as he splashed into the water. His blood mingled with the greater flow of the stream.
Two more Confederates ran over and pulled him out of the water. “Come on, you stinking shitheel!” one of them shouted. “Get up and walk!”
Whatever the Negro said, Leaming couldn't make it out-it was too feeble. “You'd better get up, or you'll never have another chance,” the second Reb warned. The Negro managed to reach his hands and knees. Both Confederates laughed. “He crawls like a dog,” the second one said.
“He can die like a damned dog.” The first Reb put a revolver to the Negro's head and fired once. The colored soldier flopped down, dead. Bedford Forrest's men walked off, laughing still.
A soldier in ragged gray crouched down by Lieutenant Leaming.
“Got any greenbacks, Yank?” he asked hoarsely.
Groaning with the effort, Leaming reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, biting his lip against the pain. “Take it. Can I have some water, please?”
He might as well have saved his breath. The Reb was too busy counting his loot to pay any attention to the man the loot came from. “… Sixty… eighty… ninety… ninety-five… a hundred… a hundred an' one… two… three,” the trooper said in an awed voice. “A hundred an' three dollars! Goddamn! I'm rich!” He let out a whoop of joy. Then, like a fox that wanted more than one chicken from the coop, he stared hungrily at Leaming again. “All that money! What else you got?”
“Water?” Leaming said again. His throat felt rough as shagreen.
Forrest's trooper didn't care. He frisked the Union officer with ungentle hands, and whooped again when he found Leaming's gold watch. It disappeared into his pocket, along with its heavy golden chain. “Godalmightydamn!” he said, as reverent a blasphemy as Leaming had ever heard. “Wish I had me more days like this here one since I joined up. I am a made man, I am. If you wasn't so ugly, I'd kiss you. “
“Give me water,” Leaming told him. “I don't need a kiss.” Maybe because he was still bleeding, he felt drier every minute. He wondered how long he could last. It seemed to matter only in an abstract way, which probably wasn't a good sign.
He might have been a bank to the Confederate soldier, but he wasn't a human being. The Reb got to his feet. “I find me another Federal even half as loaded as you are, reckon I'm set for life.” Away he went, whistling the “Battle Cry of Freedom.” Both sides used that tune in this war, though they set different words to it. The U.S. chorus went,
The Union forever; Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!
Down with the traitor; up with the star.
While we rally 'round the flag, boys,
Rally once again.
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
By contrast, the Rebs sang,
Our Dixie forever; she's never at a loss
Down with the eagle, up with the cross.
We'll rally' round the bonnie flags,
We'll rally once again,
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom.
To the Confederates in Fort Pillow, freedom seemed to mean freedom to loot. Another Secesh soldier called on Leaming a few minutes after the first one left. “Give me your money, you lousy Tennessee Tory, or you'll be sorry,” he said.
“Then I'll have to be sorry,” Leaming answered. “Another one of your fellows already took everything I had. “
“Now tell me one I'll believe,” the Reb said, and searched him with practiced ease that suggested he was either a sheriff or a bandit by trade. Leaming knew which way he would have bet. The Confederate swore when he found Leaming was telling the truth. “Well, I'll get something for myself, anyways,” he said, and stripped off Leaming's shoes. They proved too small, which made him swear again.
Then he cheered up a little. “Maybe I can swap 'em with somebody else who's got a bigger pair.”
“If you are a Christian man, please let me have some water,” Leaming said.
“I am a Christian man, and I hope to go to heaven,” the C.S. trooper replied. “But if we met in hell and you were on fire, I'd give you kerosene instead of water. That's what you deserve, you cowardly Yankee piece of shit, for putting guns in niggers' hands and making, em think they can rise up against their masters. God and Bedford Forrest will punish you for that.”
He didn't say whether he trusted more in the Deity or his commanding officer. He did go away, Leaming's shoes in his hand.
The right side of his torso one vast stabbing ache, Leaming lay where he had fallen. He looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking toward the western horizon, but hadn't got there yet. He wondered if he would die before it did. So much had happened so fast. Only a few hours earlier, he was parleying with Nathan Bedford Forrest himself. He'd never imagined it would come to this, to Fort Pillow lost, to finding out what having a bullet hole in him was like.
He grimaced. Some kinds of knowledge were too dearly bought. He'd always been a bright and curious man, but this once he wouldn't have minded ignorance.
A shadow fell across his face. It wasn't a vulture circling close to see if he was dead yet, although the way he felt he wouldn't have been surprised if it were. Not a vulture with feathers, anyhow: another Reb, seeing if he had anything worth stealing.
The Confederate soldier gave him a rueful grin. “Looks like I'm just about too late,” he said. “My pals done took all the good stuff off'n you.”
“Water?” The more Leaming asked for it, the more he was refused, the more he craved it.
He asked in vain again. The Reb might as well not have heard him. “Reckon I can get more use out of them trousers'n you ever will,” he said. “Hike your bottom up so's I can get' em off you.”
“I'm wounded,” Leaming got out through clenched teeth.
“I can see that-it's why I don't want your damned tunic,” Forrest's trooper said. “Ain't nothin' wrong with your pants, though — hardly any blood on them. So hike up and let me have 'em.”
Leaming's wound mattered to him only in so far as it made thievery inconvenient. The Federal officer didn't — couldn't — hike up. His tormentor stole his trousers anyway. Leaming begged for water one more time. He might as
