if you didn’t get shot.”
That drew loud agreement from the Yankees on the other beds in the room. “They made the old fools who ordered this war go out and fight it, it never would’ve lasted five minutes,” Bob said. “Tell me the truth, boys-is that so or isn’t it?”
Again, most of the wounded men in the ward agreed. But Pete said, “I don’t know about that. Roosevelt fought in the Second Mexican War when he was our age.”
“Well, that’s a fact-he did,” Bob allowed. “He fought one medium-sized battle against the limeys, licked ’em, and they went home. That was plenty to make him a hero back then. We fight the Rebs or the Canucks, do they go home with their tails between their legs on account of we lick ’em once? We all know better’n that, don’t we?”
“None of us’d be here if the bastards on the other side ran away quick,” Pete said. He grinned. “Well, Reggie would, I reckon, but he don’t count anyway.”
“You damnyankees don’t run, either, the way you did the last couple of times we fought you,” Bartlett said, returning verbal fire. “Wish to Jesus you did. I wouldn’t have these damn holes in me, and I’ll tell you, I liked life a lot better before I got ventilated.”
Out in the hallway, a faint squeak of wheels and rattle of crockery announced the coming of the lunch cart. As the wounded soldiers from both sides were united in their struggle against pain, so they were also united in their loathing of what the hospital fed them.
Reggie gagged down yet another meal of medium-boiled egg, beef broth, stewed prunes, and a pudding that tasted as if it were made from four parts library paste and one part sugar. When the nurse took away his dishes, she clicked her tongue between her teeth in reproof. “How do you expect to get better if you don’t eat more?”
“Ma’am, if you give me beefsteak, I will eat a slab the size of this mattress and ask you kindly for seconds. If you give me fried chicken, I will build you a new wing to this hospital from the bones. If you give me pork chops, I will gobble them down till I grow a little curly tail. But ma’am, if you feed me slops you wouldn’t give the pigs you got the pork chops from, I will waste away and perish.”
“That’s telling her, Reb!” one of the wounded U.S. soldiers said. Several others clapped their hands.
The nurse looked furious. “You are getting a nourishing meal suited to your digestion, and you ought to be grateful the United States are giving it to you instead of letting you starve the way you deserve.”
“We have Yankee prisoners, too, ma’am,” Bartlett said. “They get doctors. They get food, same as I do here. If they don’t get better food than I do here, why, I’m sorry for ’em, and that’s a fact.”
He hadn’t made a friend. The nurse set hands on hips. “You are getting exactly the same meal as wounded American soldiers,” she said coldly.
“I’m an American,” Bartlett said. “What do you think I am, a Chinaman?”
“A troublemaker,” the nurse answered. By her expression, that was worse than a Chinaman, and by a good distance, too. She rolled the cart away from Reggie’s bed. Her back still radiated outrage.
“Don’t nobody hook the Reb’s pudding tomorrow,” Pete said when she was gone, “not unless you want to eat the glass ground up in it, too.”
“Only thing ground-up glass would do for that pudding is make it better,” Reggie said, and nobody seemed inclined to tell him he was wrong.
The next morning, Bob got promoted to a different ward, one a step closer to eventual release. In his place, an attendant wheeled in another Confederate prisoner-a Negro with a bandaged stump where his left foot should have been. He grunted with pain as he got into Bob’s bed.
Nobody knew what to do or what to say. The wounded U.S. soldiers looked in Reggie Bartlett’s direction. The U.S. Army still did not allow Negroes to serve, though they’d been able to join the U.S. Navy for years. In the CSA, the very idea of black men in uniform remained strange, though the pressure of fighting a larger, more populous foe had forced it on the ruling whites.
Reggie found one question he could safely ask: “Where did you get hit?” He had trouble figuring out what sort of tone to use. A lifetime’s experience had taught him he was superior to any black man ever born. But this Negro was a fellow soldier, and they were both prisoners of the Yankees: hardly an exalted status.
“Outside o’ Jonesboro, Arkansas,” the newly arrived black answered. He also spoke cautiously. “How about you?”
“Over in Sequoyah, in the Red River bottomlands.” Bartlett hesitated, then gave his name and said, “Who’re you?”
“Rehoboam, my ma and pa called me, out o’the Good Book,” the Negro said. He was very, very black, with a low, flat nose and small ears. Before he was wounded, he’d probably been strong and muscular; now his skin sagged, as it did on men who’d lost a lot of flesh in a hurry. After another moment’s thought, he added, “Had me a stripe on my sleeve ’fore I got shot.”
He said it in a way that made Bartlett believe him. It also made Reggie smile. “Can’t pull rank on me, Rehoboam,” he said. “I had one, too.”
“We got the same rank now,” Rehoboam said. “We’s prisoners.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Reggie said, nodding. When he’d been in prison camp before, over in West Virginia, the Yankees had used captured Negro laborers to lord it over their white prisoners of war, and to spy on them, too. The blacks there had taken savage pleasure in doing just that, enjoying being on top instead of on the bottom.
Rehoboam didn’t seem inclined to act like that. But he didn’t act submissive, either, the way he surely would have back in the CSA. Bartlett didn’t know what to make of him. The idea of simple equality with a Negro had never crossed his mind.
“Outside of Jonesboro, eh?” Pete said. “Craighead Forest?”
“Sure as the devil,” Rehoboam answered. He looked over toward the U.S. soldier. “You?” After Pete nodded, the Negro went, “This great big old damnyankee officer was screamin’ about God and Jesus an’ I don’t know what all else, an’ he went an’ shot me. He was runnin’ way the hell out in front of his men-balls like an elephant, I reckon, but he was crazy, you ask me.”
“I even think I know about the guy you mean,” Pete said. “McSwenson, something like that. From what I’ve heard about him, you’re right-he’s nuts. Leastways you know who got you. That’s something. Me, shell went off and the next thing I knew I was shy a pin.” He patted his short stump.
One of the other wounded U.S. soldiers asked Rehoboam, “Were you a Red before you put on a Confederate uniform?”
“Maybe I was,” Rehoboam answered, “but maybe I wasn’t, too.” He gave Reggie a sidelong look. “Nobody asked me nothin’ about that when I went into the Army, so I don’t reckon I got to talk about it now.”
“Let’s say you were,” the Yank persisted. “How could you try and shoot the Rebs one day and then fight for ’em the next?”
“If I was-and I ain’t sayin’ I was, mind you-I would have been tryin’ to make the CSA a better place for me an’ black folks to live in either which way,” Rehoboam said. “Maybe that’s why nobody asked me nothin’ about none o’ that when I walked into the recruitin’ office.”
Pete turned to Bartlett. “How about it, Reggie? How do you like havin’ a smoke like Rehoboam fightin’ on your side once you Rebs ran out of white men you could throw at us?”
“Hey, I’ll tell you this much,” Reggie said. “I’d sure as hell sooner have him shooting at you damnyankees than at me.”
Now Rehoboam gave him a measuring stare. “That’s fair,” the Negro said. “I ain’t got no trouble with that.”
He spoke as if his opinion had as much weight as Reggie’s. In terms of law in the Confederate States, Reggie realized, Rehoboam’s opinion did have as much weight as his, or would. The black man would surely get an honorable discharge when repatriated, and that would make him a citizen of the CSA, not just a resident.
“How you feelin’?” Rehoboam asked Reggie.
“Leg’s getting better,” he answered. “They say the shoulder is, too, but damned if I can see it. How about you?”
“My damn toes itch,” Rehoboam said, pointing to where they would be if still attached to the rest of him. “They ain’t there, but they itch anyways.”
“Oh, Lord, I know what you mean,” Pete said. “I reach down to scratch sometimes, and I’m scratching air.”
