from a U.S. soldier or a Rebel, Martin never knew-caught him in the shoulder. The spade spun from his hands. 'Ahh, shit,' he said loudly. 'You got me now, Yank.'
Martin dashed past him. If he'd stayed there an instant longer, he would have shot the wounded Rebel in the head. Accepting the surrender of a man who'd been doing his best to kill you till he got hurt himself felt fiercely unnatural. A lot of such attempted surrenders never got made. Machine gunners, in particular, had a way of dying heroically at their posts.
Yells from the rear told of fresh U.S. troops coming up. The Confederates still battling in among their foes weren't getting reinforcements; their barrage hadn't made the U.S. defenders say uncle. 'Give up!' Martin shouted to the Rebs. 'We got you outnumbered, and you ain't gonna make it back to your own lines. You want to keep breathin', throw down what you got.'
For a few seconds, he thought that call would do no good. The Rebs were stubborn bastards; he'd seen them die in place before. But then a sergeant in butternut said, 'Hell with it,' and threw up his hands. His example was enough for his comrades, who dropped their rifles and whatever other lethal hardware they were holding.
The U.S. soldiers stripped their prisoners of ammunition, grenades, and knives, and of their pocket watches and cash, too. None of the Confederates said a word about that. Several of them had U.S. coins and bills in their pockets, which argued they'd stripped a prisoner or two themselves.
'Hammerschmitt, Peterson, take the Rebs back to where they can deal with 'em,' Martin said. The rest of the U.S. soldiers looked enviously at the two men their sergeant had chosen: they'd get away from the front and the righting, if only for a little while.
'Hear tell the food in Yankee prisoner camps ain't too bad,' the Confederate sergeant who'd been first to throw down his Tredegar said hopefully.
As Specs Peterson and Joe Hammerschmitt gestured with their bayoneted rifles to get the prisoners of war moving, Chester Martin answered, 'Listen, Rebs, I'll give you one warning: whatever you do, don't let 'em ship you to White Sulphur Springs.'
The sergeant nodded, grateful for the advice, then looked puzzled when the U.S. soldiers started laughing. 'Come on, you lugs,' Peterson said, sounding as fierce as any man with glasses could. Hands still high, the Confederates shuffled off into captivity.
'You're a regular devil, Sarge, you are,' Paul Andersen said as the U.S. soldiers shared out the weapons and other loot they'd got from the Rebels. Four men all wanted a knife with a brass handle made as a knuckle-duster; they had to go down on their knees and roll dice to decide who got to keep it.
'Who, me?' Martin said. 'Listen, how much difference is there really between a prisoner camp and where they sent us? You can't do what you want either place, now can you?'
'Hadn't looked at it like that,' the corporal admitted after a little thought.
'And I'll tell you another thing,' Martin said, warming to his theme: 'we can joke however goddamn much we want, but they're both better than being at the front.' This time, Paul Andersen nodded at once.
XIII
Usually, Scipio or one of the lesser servants looked out from the front windows to see who was coming. This time, Anne Colleton did the job herself. It would not give the Negroes any wrong ideas about her place and theirs in the Marshlands scheme of things, not when the motorcar she was waiting for had her brother in it.
She wondered whether she ought to give Tom a sisterly hug and a kiss or box his foolish ears for him. The first clue she'd had that he was anywhere but up in Virginia was a telephone call from Columbia less than an hour before. He'd just got off the train, he'd said, and was on his way.
Scipio came up to her, tall, imposing, perfectly formal. 'Have you any special suggestions on how we may make your brother's stay as comfortable and pleasant as possible?' he asked in his pipe-organ voice.
Anne waved him away. 'I leave it in your hands, Scipio. I can't think now. Maybe I'll have some ideas later. If I do, I'll tell you.' The butler bowed and withdrew. Since the start of the war, he'd pulled back even further than usual into the shell of service he wore around himself like armour. He'd always been a private person, even before his training for high service, but now it was as if he didn't want anyone having the slightest inkling of what he was thinking or feeling.
Stinking war — it oppresses everyone, she thought. Sometimes I wish I were a simple field nigger, so I wouldn't have to think about it. But even the plantation hands were thinking about the war, thinking how they could make money from it by going to work in the factories instead of staying here where they belonged and raising cotton. Anne sighed. Even for a field nigger, life wasn't simple any more.
She drew herself straighten All right. Life wasn't simple. Up till now, she'd always revelled in complication, and profited from it, too. Nostalgia belonged to the last century. If you didn't look ahead, you were in trouble.
Then all such worries vanished from her head. Here came the motorcar, kicking up a cloud of dust from the red-dirt path that led up to the mansion. The Negro driver stopped the automobile, leaped out of it, and got out Tom Colleton's bags. Then he opened the door to the rear seat and let out Tom, who handed him a silver coin that sparkled in the sun. Tom picked up his own bags and carried them to Marshlands' front door.
He wouldn't have done that before the war started, Anne thought, and then, an instant later, with concern more maternal than sisterly, He's gotten so thin.
She hurried to the door. Scipio somehow got there ahead of her; he shared with cats the ability to leave later than you did but to arrive sooner anyhow, and without seeming to have crossed the intervening space. He opened the door, letting in the warm May air, and said, 'Welcome home, Captain Colle-' He stopped, for a moment looking quite humanly surprised. Tom Colleton wore a single star on each collar tab. Scipio corrected himself: 'Welcome home, Major Colleton.'
Anne threw herself into her brother's arms. He dropped his bags and squeezed her tight. After the joyous hellos and I-love-yous and good-to-see-yous, Anne said indignantly, 'You didn't tell me you've been promoted again.'
Tom shrugged. 'We've seen a lot of casualties. Somebody has to step up and do the work.' When he'd joined the Army, bare days after war broke out, he'd put a fancy plume in his hat and gone off gaily, like a knight heading out on a Crusade. Now he sounded both tired and altogether matter-of-fact about his business, more like a cabinetmaker than a cavalier.
He looked tired, too. His forehead had lines that hadn't been there the year before-he was eighteen months younger than Anne-and he carried dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks were hollow; a long, pink scar seamed one of them. Hesitantly, Anne reached up to touch it. 'You didn't tell me about this, either.'
Her brother shrugged again. 'Got kissed by a shell fragment. Battalion doctor's assistant sewed it up. I didn't lose any duty time, so I didn't think it was worth talking about.'
'You've changed,' Anne said, perhaps more wonderingly than she should have. The young man who'd gone off to war had been the little brother she'd always known: witty, easygoing, not too effectual-certainly not effectual enough to want to put in any work at operating Marshlands when his sister seemed happy enough doing it all. And that had suited Anne fine; she rejoiced in the power it gave her. But when she looked into the eyes of the lean near-stranger who was her own flesh and blood, she didn't know what she saw. It flustered her. Tom had always been so easy to read, so predictable.
Scipio scooped up the bags. 'I shall put these in your room, sir,' he said.
'My room,' Tom echoed, as if the phrase were in a foreign language. Slowly, he nodded. 'Yes, go ahead and do that, Scipio.' The butler carried the bags into the mansion. Tom took one step to follow him, then stopped, still outside. 'Very strange,' he murmured. 'Unbelievable.'
'What is?' Anne asked. She wasn't used to being unable to follow his train of thought.
'That all this'-Tom waved at the Marshlands mansion-'and all this'-the next wave encompassed the many square miles of the Marshlands estate-'is mine-part mine; excuse me, dear sister. And excuse me for sounding not quite like my old self. For most of the past nine months, my horizons have been limited to a hole in the ground and whether there'd be enough beans in the pot for my men and me. Coming back to this is like falling asleep and dreaming you've gone to heaven.'
'It should be like waking from a nightmare,' Anne said. 'This is where you live. This is where you belong.' At
