Love and War

Fessenden was the only member of the trio to recognize him. 'This is no damn affair of yours, Hazard.'

'He has a right to present himself for enlistment if he wants.'

'A right?' The knife carrier guffawed. 'Since when's a coon got any —?'

Billy overlapped him, louder. 'So let him pass.'

'Tell him to go fuck, Lute,' the third man said.

Fessenden scratched his stubbly chin, mumbling, 'Shit, I dunno, boys. He's a wounded veteran like me.'

'I've been told you were wounded in the tail,' Billy said. 'While you were running.'

'You son of a bitch,' Fessenden yelled, but it was the pimply one with the knife who took action, loping at Billy. Hastily, Billy backed against the building, broke the string on the strop, unrolled the leather, and laid it full force across the attacker's face.

'Oh, my God.' Shrieking, he dropped the knife. A purpling welt striped him from brow to chin. The leather had drawn blood as well.

Under the heavy bandages, Billy's wound throbbed. Dizziness assailed him suddenly. Bending and watching Billy at the same time, the pimply young man groped for his knife. Billy kicked it off the wooden walk into the dust. Fessenden gave him an outraged look, heaved an aggrieved sigh.

'Shit,' he said again. 'Next thing, you'll be tellin' us this nigger oughta vote — just like white men.'

'If he's allowed to die for the government, I guess he should be allowed to vote for it, wouldn't you say, Lute?'

Snickers of disbelief. 'Jesus,' Fessenden said, shaking his head. 'What'd they do to you in the army? You've turned into one of them goddamn radicals.'

It was nearly as surprising to Billy as to them. He had spoken out of conviction, one that had been growing without full awareness on his part until this contretemps demanded the translation of conviction to deed. He rippled the strop against his leg.

'Have I? Well — so be it.'

He looked at the pimply lout and, summoning his best West Point upperclassman's voice, bellowed, 'Get the hell away from me, you garbage.' He raised the strop. 'That's an order.'

The pimply young man ran like a deer, nearly knocking Pinckney Herbert from his observation place in front of his store.

Billy glanced at the Negro boy. 'You can go on inside.'

The boy walked toward Lute Fessenden. He didn't hurry, but neither did he waste time while he was within Fessenden's reach. But Fessenden just watched him, turning as he passed, repeatedly shaking his head.

Before the boy entered the office, he gave Billy a smile. He said, 'Thank you, sir,' and was gone.

Billy raised the strop, intending to roll it up again. The sudden motion made Fessenden's other companion flinch visibly. Though Billy felt a mite guilty about it, he milked the moment, drawing the strop ever so slowly and provocatively across his open left palm. Fessenden's companion drew back.

'Good day, gentlemen,' Billy barked. The frightened man jumped, grabbing Fessenden's arm.

'Let go of me, for Chrissake.' Fessenden shook him off, and the two shamed whites quickly disappeared around the corner.

Shameless, Billy said to himself. Absolutely shameless, that last part. It relieved his guilt to recall that the two were deserving.

Pinckney Herbert ran down the sidewalk to shake his hand. Billy had all but forgotten about the painful wound. He felt fine: wickedly amused, unexpectedly proud, gloriously alive.

130

Rain fell on the low country that same afternoon. Charles sat at the foot of a great water oak, reasonably well protected from the drizzle as he read an old Baltimore paper that had somehow found its way to Summerville, the village where he and Andy had gone in search of food.

Charles had stayed at Mont Royal much longer than he should have, and much longer than he had planned. But every hand was needed to put up a new house — little more than an oversized cabin — on the site once occupied by the plantation summerhouse, which had been smashed and leveled but not burned. All the lumber in the new place was either broken, scorched, or both. The result was a crazy-quilt structure, but at least it sheltered the survivors, black and white, in separately curtained areas.

The food situation was desperate. Their neighbor Markham Bull had shared some hoarded flour and yeast. Thus they had bread and their own rice, but little else. Occasional visitors who appeared on the river road said the whole state was starving.

The visit to Summerville confirmed it. Even if they had been carrying bags of gold, it would have done no good. There was nothing to buy. Just the paper left behind by some refugee in flight.

Wishing for a cigar — he hadn't enjoyed one since the day he came home — Charles finished reading the lengthy account of Abe Lincoln's second inaugural. The war might last a while longer, but Charles assumed Lincoln would soon take charge of a conquered South. Therefore he ought to know what the man was thinking.

Mr. Lincoln sounded forgiving — on the surface. There was much in his address about malice toward none and charity for all. He wanted to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. He wanted to achieve a just and lasting peace.

All very fine and humane, Charles thought. But certain other passages suggested that while Mr. Lincoln might forgive Southerners as individuals, he could not forgive the sin of slavery. And so long as the institution survived, he would prosecute the war.

... if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword ... it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

The judgments of the Lord. Charles kept returning to the phrase, staring at the five words on the yellowing newsprint. They summed up and reinforced what had been with him ever since the fire. A positive, guilt-tainted conviction that the war was ending in the only fitting and proper way.

Still, resting the back of his head against the tree and closing his eyes — speculation — he did recognize that it might have come out differently had not chance betrayed the South on so many occasions.

If the copy of Lee's order had not been found wrapped around the cigars before Sharpsburg.

If Jackson had not been wounded by a North Carolina rifleman.

If Stuart hadn't disappeared off the map, riding to repair his reputation, before Gettysburg.

If the Commissary Department had been run by a competent man instead of a bungler.

If Davis had cared more for common folk and the land and less for the preservation of philosophic principles.

If, if, if — what the hell was the use? They would lose. They had lost.

Up in Virginia, however, the war went on. And he had a remount. The war had done things to his head. Burned him out, used him up, like a piece of fatwood kindling. But he still had to go back. West Point taught duty above all.

He crumpled the newspaper and threw it away. He sat staring into the rain where he imagined he saw Gus standing, smiling at him.

He put his hand over his eyes, held it there half a minute, lowered it.

She was gone.

He climbed to his feet feeling as if he weighed seven hundred pounds. Still limping slightly from the healing leg wound, he went off to search for his mule. He collected his old army Colt, for which he had no ammunition, the cross-shaped sword fragment, which might in an emergency serve as a dagger, and his gypsy cloak of scraps and rags. He said good-bye to everyone and rode away north before dark.