since Anne Colleton’s machinations had forced him back into the shrunken Congaree Socialist Republic, he was on his own. Running for his life from the bombardment, he needed a while to figure out what that meant. He wasn’t thinking so clearly as he might have been had unfriendly strangers not been doing their best to kill him.
Only when he paused to lie panting under a pine did he realize the bombardment gave him an opportunity the likes of which he had not known since entering the swamp. If he was lucky enough, he might escape. If he wasn’t lucky and he tried it, he’d end up dead, of course. Sometimes he told himself he would sooner die than go on living in the swamps by the Congaree. Unfortunately, he knew what a liar he was.
Still, if he never tasted scrambled turtle eggs again, he wouldn’t shed a tear. Now that he was farther from the artillery bombardment, he noted that the small-arms fire was heavier and closer than it had been. The Confederate militiamen really were doing their best to hammer the Congaree Socialist Republic flat this time. Maybe they would.
If they saw him, he’d be just another Red nigger to them, just another rebel to shoot or bayonet so their vision of what the Confederate States should be could go forward. If they saw him…The problem, then, was to make sure they didn’t see him.
Had he been the woodsman Cassius was, it would have been easy. Even being the poor excuse for a woodsman he truly was, he’d got beyond most of the firing before a white man snapped, “Halt! Who goes there?”
Scipio peered through the brush that screened him. The militiaman pointing a Tredegar his way might have been handsome once, but some disaster had ruined the left side of his face. He was going to shoot if Scipio didn’t satisfy him right away. Scipio tried, using his best butler’s tones to say, “Carry on, Sergeant. The sooner we rid these nasty swamps of the Goddamned Red niggers who infest them, the better off our beloved country shall be.”
Had he laid it on too thick? Sometimes, when he used that voice, he sounded more like an Englishman than an educated white Confederate. But the militiaman with the slagged face was satisfied. “Yes, sir!” he said, and plunged deeper into the swamp. He couldn’t possibly have known who Scipio was, but assumed anyone who talked the way he did had to be an officer.
“Thank you, Miss Anne,” Scipio whispered as he made his way farther and farther from the Congaree. Teaching him how to talk like an educated white man hadn’t been for his benefit-having a butler who could talk like that had given Marshlands more swank. It had also made him a white crow, one who couldn’t fully fit in with the rest of the Negroes on the plantation. He’d hated it while it was going on. Now it just might have saved his life.
If he kept going straight away from the swamp, he’d emerge somewhere near the ruins of the Marshlands mansion. He didn’t want to do that. Too many people around there were liable to recognize him. He swung to the west, guiding himself by the sun as best he could.
He came out in a cotton field that was, like so many others in this part of the country, untended and overrun with weeds. He was filthy and exhausted. He didn’t care. He didn’t care even a little bit. He’d escaped Anne Colleton and Cassius, too. He was, for the time being, a free man again.
Chester Martin was not the only U.S. sergeant commanding a company in Virginia these days. They might eventually get around to promoting him or bringing in an officer to take over. On the other hand, they might not. They might just keep putting more young privates under him, sending them forward, and seeing what the hell happened next. Somewhere not far away, there was supposed to be a regiment led by a first lieutenant, the outfit’s senior officer who was alive and in one piece.
Even a year before, rank would have worried him more than it did today. Today, all he wanted to do was get on with the attack, however it went in. He had trouble believing he was actually eager to go forward. Nor was he the only one. Corporal Bob Reinholdt, who had been furious at not getting a section but was now commanding one, looked up from the Springfield he was cleaning and said, “One more good push and these bastards are going to roll over and play dead.”
“That’s about the size of it, I think,” Martin agreed. “Never thought I’d say it, but they don’t snap back the way they used to.”
Tilden Russell remained a private, too, but he was leading a squad in Martin’s shrunken company. He might lack rank, but he had experience. He said, “The Rebs are like an inner tube with a little tiny leak. They look fine till you press on ’em, but then they give.”
Martin whistled, a low, respectful note. “That’s not half bad, Tilden. You ought to think about writing for the newspapers when the war’s done.”
Now…now it was different. As he rolled himself a cigarette, he thought about how. Reinholdt and Russell had defined the difference as well as he heard it defined. “If we keep pressing on ’em, sooner or later they’ll go flat. I’m finally starting to think it’ll be sooner.”
It hadn’t happened yet. Confederate artillery south of Manassas started banging away at the U.S. lines threatening the town. Those lines weren’t so deeply entrenched nor so well furnished with dugouts as many of the ones in which Martin had previously served: they were too new to have acquired what he’d come to think of as the amenities of trench life. He threw himself down in the dirt and hoped he wouldn’t be like Moses, dying before he entered the promised land of peace. Of course, no one had promised that land to him.
After a while, the barrage eased. He braced for a Confederate counterattack to follow it, but none came. The Rebs still fought ferociously on defense, but they didn’t hit back so hard or so often as they once had-another sign, as Tilden Russell had said, that their inner tube had sprung a leak. Martin wished the Army could have pinned them against the Potomac from the west before they could pull out of Washington. That might have ended the war right there.
As things were, he was glad to get to his feet. He was glad to have feet to get to, and arms, and everything else he’d had before the shelling started. Here and there, wounded men and their pals were shouting for stretcher- bearers. He gauged the cries with practiced ears. The company hadn’t been hurt too badly, not as a group. The unlucky soldiers who were the exceptions wouldn’t have seen things the same way.
A couple of hours later, as afternoon drifted toward evening, a fellow who looked no older than Martin but who had gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps came down the trench. “I’m looking for the company commander,” he called.
“You’ve found him, sir,” Martin said, and jabbed a thumb at his own chest.
The major looked surprised, but only for a moment. “All right, Sergeant. Looks like you got your job the same way I got mine.”
“Yes, sir: I’m still breathing,” Martin answered.
“Fair enough,” the major said with a laugh. “I’m Gideon Adkins. Happens that I’m the senior officer still breathing in this regiment, so the 91st is mine till they send somebody to take my place-if they ever get around to that.”
“We’re in the same boat, all right, sir,” Martin said. “Let’s get down to business. What do you need from B Company?”
Adkins studied him. He knew what was in the major’s mind-the same thing that would be in a brigadier general’s mind when he studied Adkins: can this man do the job, or do we need to replace him? If they did replace Martin, he hoped he wouldn’t be as resentful as Bob Reinholdt had been when he first joined the company.
Well, Major Adkins couldn’t complain about the question he’d asked. Indeed, the young regimental commander said, “That’s the spirit, Sergeant…”
“Oh, sorry, sir. I’m Chester Martin.”
“Thanks, Sergeant Martin. Wish I didn’t have to ask, but I’m still learning the ropes, too, no doubt about it. All right, here’s what you need to know: in three days, we go over the top. First objective is Manassas. Second objective is Independent Hill.” Adkins drew a much-folded map from his breast pocket and pointed the hill out to Martin.
After he glanced at the scale of miles, Martin raised his eyebrows. “Sir, that looks to be eight or ten miles
