Breakthroughs

“You are a man of parts, sir,” he said, bowing a little. “First the cigarettes, now this. Ask away. I’m putty in your hands.”

Landis’ snort had a skeptical ring. He put the question even so: “Suppose the war had gone on, and you did break through here. What would you have done next?”

“I’m not in command of First Army,” Morrell said, which was true but also disingenuous, considering the victories he’d helped design. He took another small sip of Landis’ brandy and added, “General Custer was talking about an advance to the Tennessee, though, if you must know.” He handed the flask back to the Confederate colonel.

Landis almost dropped it. “To the Tennessee?” His splutters had nothing to do with the second swig of cognac he took. “When were you planning on getting there, 1925? The Tennessee! The very idea! We were down, by God, but we weren’t out.”

“I think he-we-might have done it,” Morrell said. “Not a lot of natural barriers in the way, anyhow. And how many divisions of colored troops did you have in the line when the shooting stopped?”

“If you don’t know, Colonel, I’ll be damned if I’m going to tell you,” Harley Landis answered. “I will tell you this, though: they fought about as well as the new white units we were raising toward the end there.”

“Of course you’ll tell me that and not the other-it makes you look stronger,” Morrell said. Landis nodded, unembarrassed. On the whole, though, the U.S. officer thought his C.S. opposite number was right. From what he’d seen and from reports he’d read, Confederate black units had fought about as well as rookie Confederate white units. That surprised him, but a man who couldn’t see truth when it tried to shoot him wouldn’t live long, and didn’t deserve to. He asked, “Now that the war is over”-politer than saying, now that you’ve lost-“are you folks going to keep on raising Negro troops?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Colonel Landis answered. “We didn’t conscript niggers, the way we did with our own people. What we got were volunteers, and probably a better crop than we would have had if we’d scraped the bottom of the barrel.” He sent Morrell a hooded glance. “Other side of that coin is, there are so goddamn many of you Yankees.”

Morrell’s smile was bright and friendly-if you didn’t look too close. “Maybe you’ll think about that a little harder before you decide whether you’ll try picking a fight with us.”

“Picking a fight with you?” Landis shook his head. “No, sir. Teddy Roosevelt declared war on us, not the other way around.”

“After Wilson declared war on our allies,” Morrell said.

“We honored our commitments,” Landis said.

“So did we,” Morrell returned. They glared at each other. Then Morrell laughed, a sound more of bemusement than anything else. “And look what honoring our commitments got us. Better-no, worse-than a million dead on our side, likely not far from that for you, and even more wounded, and all the wreckage…They shouldn’t let civilians start wars, Colonel, because they don’t know what the hell they’re getting into and getting their countries into.”

“You may be a damnyankee, but I’m damned if I think you’re wrong,” Landis said.

“This must never happen again,” Irving Morrell said solemnly. “Never.”

“Never,” Colonel Landis said. “Never, by God.” He took the flask off his belt again. “To peace.” He drank and offered it to Morrell.

“Thank you, sir.” Morrell drank, too. “To peace.”

XX

Jake Featherston slouched down the dirt road toward Richmond at a pace that would have made him scream curses at any soldier using it. No one would scream curses at him, not now. He still wore his uniform, but he wasn’t a soldier any more. Along with most of the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia, he’d been mustered out and paid off and sent on his way with a pat on the head.

“Threw me out,” he snarled under his breath. “Threw us all out, so the War Department wouldn’t have to fret itself about feedin’ us or payin’ us any more. Payin’ us!” He snorted and slapped a pocket. Paper inside crinkled. They’d paid him off in banknotes, not real money. He wondered how far the notes would go when he tried spending them. Not far enough. He was already sure of that.

Dust rose from the pocket when he slapped it. A lot of paid-off soldiers-no, ex-soldiers-were on the road. Every time he took a step, dust kicked up from under his battered boots. Any time any of them took a step, dust kicked up. Thousands of men, millions of steps, a hell of a lot of dust.

“You’d think they’d want to keep a good artilleryman in the Army,” he muttered. He’d been plenty good enough to command a battery. But he hadn’t been good enough-no, the War Department hadn’t thought he was good enough-to get promoted past sergeant, or good enough to keep, either. “Well, to hell with Jeb Stuart, Jr. He can go down there and toast his toes with Jeb Stuart III.”

A Negro soldier trudging along the same road turned his head at the sound of Featherston’s voice. Jake stared unwinkingly back at him. In the days before things had gone to hell in the CSA, a couple of seconds of that look from a white man would have been plenty to make any black buck lower his eyes. Now the Negro, a big, burly fellow, tried to stare him down.

It didn’t work. Featherston might have been on the wiry side, but rage had kept him going during the war, and that rage hadn’t got any smaller now that the war was lost. It blazed out of him now, almost tangibly, and the colored soldier flinched away from it. Jake laughed. Instead of trying to start a fight, the Negro flinched again. “Do Jesus!” he said softly, and let Featherston pass.

That night, Featherston slept by the side of the road wrapped in a blanket, as he had slept by a lot of different roads in several blankets during the war. He had turned in his pistol when he was paid off. Again, no: he had turned in a pistol when he was paid off. He took his pistol out of his pack and set it where he could grab it in a hurry. The precaution proved needless; he slept undisturbed.

When morning woke him, he started walking again. He took the fifty-five miles from Fredericksburg to Richmond in three medium-easy days, not the two harsh ones he would have used if still in the Army. That meant he got into the Confederate capital this side of exhausted but empty as a cave: the men who’d moved faster had got what food there was on the road.

Richmond was full of dirty scarecrows in butternut. The gray-uniformed police seemed to have not a clue about what to do with so many men odds-on to be tougher and shorter-tempered than they were. The best answer they found was, as little as we possibly can. That struck Jake as showing better sense than he expected from police.

He went into a saloon to take advantage of its free-lunch spread. The meal-ham and deviled eggs and pickles and salted peanuts and other thirst-inducers-was indeed free, but the mug of beer he had to buy to avail himself of it set him back a dollar, not the prewar five cents. “Christ!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll take fifteen cents in silver, if you’ve got that,” the barkeep said. “Hell, I’ll take a dime. It’s just as well the banknotes are already brown, on account of that’s what people will be using them for.”

“Don’t have enough silver to want to spend it quick,” Featherston said. “If a beer is a bean, what do I have to pay for a bed?”

“Paper? Five easy, and the bugs’ll carry your mattress in for you, you get anything that cheap,” the fat man in the black apron answered. “Why didn’t you bastards win the war instead of laying down for the damnyankees? Then they’d have to pay-”

Featherston reached across the bar and grabbed a handful of the white shirt showing above the apron. “You don’t ever want to say anything like that again, you hear me?” When the bartender didn’t say anything, he shook him, lifting his feet off the floor with no particular effort. “You hear me?”

“I hear you,” the fat man wheezed. Jake set him down on the floor. He went on, “Drink your beer and get the hell out of here.”

“I will,” Featherston said. “You ain’t crowded here. And while I’m drinking it, you keep both hands where I can see ’em, hear? You try hauling out whatever kind of persuader you got under the bar there, I promise you won’t