Walk in Hell

“I should hope so,” Anne said, as if the president were standing there before her. She was sure she knew what would be coming next: some sort of higher taxes, which she would be asked to support in the name of continued Confederate strength and independence.

She looked around Marshlands. She didn’t know how she could pay higher taxes. She didn’t know how she could pay the taxes already due. One way or another, she would have to manage. She understood that. If the choice was between paying more and having the damnyankees win, she would-somehow-pay more. With the Yankees’ having gassed Jacob, and with Tom still at the Roanoke front, how could she do anything less?

Her eyes returned to the letter: For that reason, I have introduced into the Congress of the Confederate States of America… She nodded and stopped reading for a moment. Yes, Gabriel Semmes was perfectly predictable…. a bill authorizing the recruitment, training, and employment against the United States of America of bodies of Negro troops, these to serve under white officers and noncommissioned officers, the reward for their satisfactory completion of service, or for their inability to do so because of wounds, to be the franchise and all other rights and privileges pertaining to full citizenship in the Confederate States of America, intermarriage being the sole exception thereto.

“Good God,” Anne said. Taxes, she’d expected. This, no. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the belly. The Negroes rose up in bloody revolt, and Semmes proposed to reward them for it? He did indeed go forth and do things, and she wished to high heaven he’d been content to hold still.

He continued, I am soliciting your support for this measure because I know that you judge the continued independence of the country we both love to be of primary importance, with all else subordinated to it. Now we are come to a crisis the likes of which we have never known, one that calls for a supreme effort from every man, woman, and child in the Confederate States, white and black alike. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty from all of us. I hope and trust you will use your not inconsiderable influence both within your circle of acquaintances and with your Congressional delegation to let us turn back the ravening hordes of American Huns. Your ob’t servant-and a florid signature.

“Good God,” Anne said again. “I should have backed Doroteo Arango.”

“Miss Anne?” Julia knew nothing of politics, unless perhaps Red politics, and cared less.

“Never mind.” Anne carried the rest of the mail into the cottage. Julia followed her. She sorted through it, separating out bills; requests for money and time for charitable organizations that, these days, would have to go unanswered; advertising circulars that would make good kindling for the fireplace but were otherwise worthless; and, at the bottom of the stack, a letter from Tom.

She opened that one eagerly. She wondered what Tom would think of having nigger troops put on Confederate butternut. No, she didn’t wonder. She was perfectly sure. She’d never credited her brother with a whole lot of sense, but how much sense did you need to see folly?

Dear Sis, Tom wrote, Just a note to let you know I’m alive and well. Not a scratch on me-they do say that if you’re born to hang, nothing else can hurt you. Anne snorted again. Her brother was about the least likely man to go to the gallows she could imagine. She read on: It has been lively, I will say. The damnyankees have come as far as-a censor had cut out the name of the place-which we never expected them to do.

The trouble is, they’re using these armor-plated traveling forts prisoners call- another censor’s slice denied her the knowledge of what they were called, though she could not for the life of her see why-and they’ve gained a lot of ground because of it. Artillery will take them out. So will brave soldiers, but it’s hard being brave with one of those things bearing down on you. This time, the censor, damn him, had cut out a whole sentence. When she was allowed to resume reading what her brother wrote, he said, If they keep throwing more and more machines at us, I don’t know where we’ll come up with the men to hold them back.

I hope to get leave before too long, and will come home to have a look at Marshlands. I am sure you are whipping the old place back into shape. Tom was always sure of that. Till now, his confidence had always been justified. Now-Anne didn’t want to think about now. Her eyes went to the last couple of sentences: Who would have dreamt the damned niggers could raise so much Cain? If I’d thought they could do half so much, I’d have sooner had them shooting at the damnyankees so we could get some use out of them. But even though everything else is turned upside down from before the war, I still love you, and I’ll see you soon-Tom.

“Miss Anne?” Julia said when Anne stood there motionless, reading the letter over several times.

“Hush,” Anne Colleton replied absently. After a bit, she put the letter down and picked up the one from the president of the Confederacy. She read through that letter twice, too. Her breath whistled out in a long sigh.

“You all right, Miss Anne?” Julia asked, sounding for once very much like the concerned body servant she’d been till not long before.

“No,” Anne said. “Not even close.” She’d misjudged her brother-and if she couldn’t tell what Tom was thinking these days, how could she trust her judgment on anything else? The short answer was, she couldn’t. She sighed again, even louder this time. “Maybe Gabriel Semmes isn’t a complete utter damn fool after all. Maybe.” She tried to make herself sound as if she believed it. It wasn’t easy.

George Armstrong Custer stood at the edge of the road, by a sign that had an arrow saying KENTUCKY pointing north and another saying TENNESSEE pointing south. A photographer snapped several pictures. “These’ll make bully halftones, General,” he said.

“Splendid, my good man, splendid,” Custer replied grandly. Major Abner Dowling felt ready to retch. That road sign was as resurrected as Lazarus-everything hereabouts, like everything everywhere the rake of war passed, had been stomped flat. When it came to getting his name-and, better yet, his photograph-in the papers, Custer was not a man to let mere rude facts stand in his way. Dowling would have thought he’d had the sign made up special for the occasion, but that order would have gone through him, so Custer must have come up with a real one instead.

The photographer put down the camera and pulled out a notebook and pencil; he doubled as a reporter. “To what do you attribute your success in this spring’s campaign, General?” he asked.

Before Custer could reply, a barrel came rumbling down the road, heading south into Tennessee. Another followed, then another. Everybody except the drivers rode on top of the machines, not inside them. Men had died from heat prostration inside barrels, trying to fight in this hideous summer weather. Kentucky had been bad. Tennessee promised to be worse.

Custer pointed to the machines. “There is your answer, sir. The barrels have filled Rebel hearts not only with fear but also with a good, healthy respect for the prowess of the American soldier and for the genius lying behind what I call with pardonable pride old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity. I have always insisted that machines as well as men will make the difference-are you all right, Major Dowling?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Dowling said. “Must have been the dust the barrels kicked up, or maybe those stinking exhaust fumes. I couldn’t breathe for a second or two there.”

“I hope you’re better now,” Custer said doubtfully. “You sounded like a man choking to death. Where was I? Oh yes, barrels. I-”

Custer barreled on. Dowling took out a pocket handkerchief and daubed at his sweaty forehead and streaming eyes. Custer disapproved of the aeroplane. He disapproved of the machine gun, though he’d risen to prominence in the Second Mexican War because he’d had a few attached to his command. He disapproved of the telephone and the telegraph. He undoubtedly would have disapproved of the telescope had it not been invented before he was born.

But barrels-he approved of barrels. Barrels, to him, remained cavalry reborn, cavalry proof against everything machine guns could do. Since he’d grown up in the cavalry, he’d transferred his affection to these gasoline-burning successors. And Custer, being Custer, never did anything by halves. When he fell in love, he fell hard.

To prosaic Dowling, barrels were bully infantry support weapons. Past that…he failed to share Custer’s enthusiasm. Custer had any number of enthusiasms he did not share, that for Custer being perhaps the largest.

But even Dowling was prepared to admit the barrels had done some good. The first few times the Rebs saw them, they’d panicked. They were good soldiers; as one of their sincerest foes, Dowling admitted as much. Even the best soldiers, though, would run if the alternative was dying without having the chance to hit back at their enemies.