Thieves Of Mercy

“Reckon she’s on the bottom,” someone said, and that was met with a chorus of grunts.

Bowater looked upriver. The gunboats were coming down, and the rams had already chased downriver whatever ships of the River Defense Fleet were still floating. He wanted to make for the Arkansas side, try and get away overland, but one of the Yankee boats would catch them before they were halfway there. Besides, the overloaded launch would never make it.

“Oarsmen, pull together,” he said, and as the boat gathered way, he brought her head around to aim for the city wharf, the closest landing spot to them.

It was a ten-minute pull, long enough for Bowater to stare at the strange figure at the end of the wharf and deduce that it was a woman and she was waving to them. Wife of one of these river rats, he imagined. Sweetheart… hooker that one of them owes money to…

They got closer, and the only sound from the boatload of hopeless and despairing men was the creak of the oars and the occasional groan of the wounded, and Bowater could not help but think that the woman looked a damned lot like Wendy Atkins.

Absurd… And the resemblance only made his loneliness and depression more acute.

They pulled alongside the wharf, which was a few feet above the gunnel of the boat, and Bowater had to admit that the woman looked very much like Wendy, but he had not seen Wendy in half a year, and so clearly his memory was fading.

And then the woman said, “Samuel! Oh, Samuel!” and Bowater realized that it was Wendy Atkins, and then he did not know what to think. He stared at her. He said nothing. He feared for his sanity.

“Samuel, listen, I have a wagon, and I think it’s big enough to get all your men in, if we really crowd them in. I need help unloading it! Oh, Samuel, do hurry, we haven’t much time at all!”

Her tone carried so much authority that it snapped Bowater from his stupor. “Come on, you men. Up, up! Get that wagon emptied, we can still get out of here before the Yankees overrun us. Move! Do you want to rot in prison?” They could escape, they could do it with honor. They had not hauled down their flag.

The men moved. Exhausted, shocked, wounded, they pulled themselves from the boat, staggered over to the wagon, and began to unceremoniously dump Wilbur Rankin’s goods on the ground, all save for the small, heavy iron boxes, which they guessed were worth hanging on to.

Bowater supervised the operation, seeing the wounded men loaded in first, made comfortable on beds of silk cloth, and then the others, crammed in like hands of tobacco prized into a cask.

When the last man was on board, Bowater looked around. He could not see Wendy and he was suddenly terrified that she had not been there at all. But there she was, on the driver’s seat, reins in her hand. She smiled at him, that amazing smile.

He stepped quickly to the front of the wagon and climbed in beside her. She gave the reins a flick. “Giddyup!” she shouted and the horses strained and the wagon gathered way.

Bowater looked at her and she glanced at him quickly, smiled, and looked back at the road.

How… how… He did not know where to begin, so he didn’t. Too many questions. She handled the horses with a confidence he did not recall her possessing. Not the feigned confidence of her brash earlier self, but something real and solid.

Or perhaps he was just forgetting. It had been so long, and he was so tired. He closed his eyes.

THIRTY-FOUR

In reply I have only to say that the civil authorities have no resources of defense, and by the force of circumstances the city is in your power.

JOHN P ARK, MAYOR OF MEMPHIS, TO FLAG OFFICER CHARLES H. DA VIS

Bowater slept fitfully and not long, lurching along on the heavy wagon. When he came awake with a gasp and looked around, they were rolling through open fields dotted with scrubby brush, little farms off in the distance. He could see birds and cows. It was as if the wagon had transported him to another country.

He swiveled around. The church spires of Memphis were still visible in the distance, peeking over the hills, the pall of battle smoke still hanging over the town.

For a long moment Bowater just stared. That cloud of smoke-the guns of the General Page had added to that cloud, he and his men had done their part in that orgy of riparian butchery. He pictured the wreckage of the General Page resting in the mud. He pictured the body of Mississippi Mike Sullivan floating around the engine room. In his mind he saw the currents animating Mike’s limbs so that even in death he was waving his arms in that frantic way of his.

“Hey, Captain…” The voice came from behind. Hieronymus Taylor. Bowater turned the other way.

“Chief. How are you doing?”

“Been better. Been a hell of a lot better. Fact, I can’t recall when I felt worse.” Taylor paused, looked around the countryside. “No, that ain’t true. Day after our brawl in the theater I felt worse. So I reckon things are lookin up.”

“Have you taken to brawling now?” Wendy Atkins asked.

Taylor ignored the question, looked at Bowater. “Now, Captain, if I ain’t very much mistaken, this young lady drivin the wagon is none other than Miss Wendy Atkins of Portsmouth, Virginia. Is that a fact?”

Bowater looked at Wendy, suddenly unsure of himself. Wendy swiveled around. “That is a fact, Chief Taylor,” she said.

Taylor nodded. “My guess is that there is one hell of a story attached to your bein here.”

“You guessed right, Chief,” Wendy said.

“Awright. Let’s hear her.”

“Where are we going, Captain Bowater?” Wendy asked.

Samuel had not really considered that, though it seemed an obvious question. He pictured the map in his mind, arrayed the Yankees where he knew them to be. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“Well, it should take us some time to get there,” Wendy said. “I guess there’s time for my story. It started with the letter you sent, Captain, from Yazoo City…”

The tale spun out as the wagon rolled south, always south, deep into Confederate territory. There were more than a few times that Bowater and Taylor exchanged glances of strained credulity, more than a few times that Wendy said, “You two must think I am a wicked liar, but in faith this is really what happened…”

Forty-five minutes later the story ended with a gun thrust in the face of the poor unfortunate who owned the wagon on which they were riding. They rattled on for a mile or so in silence. The men did not know what to say.

“I was going to tell you what we’ve been up to,” Samuel said at last. “Two river battles, ship sunk under us, Sullivan killed. But frankly it seems pretty tame now.”

“So the mighty CSS Virginia’s gone, huh?” Taylor asked.

“Yup. Blown to the heavens. Molly and I were nearly killed when she fell back to earth.”

“She lived for four months and she changed the nature of sea-fighting forever,” Taylor said. “We won’t see the like of her again.” Bowater had never heard Taylor wax so sentimental, certainly not over any person.

They rolled on south, stopped in the town of White Haven because they were desperately hungry and thirsty. There was a store and an inn there, but between all the men crowded on the wagon they could come up with no more than a few Confederate dollars. That was when Ruffin Tanner suggested they open the little strongboxes, and they made the happy discovery of hoards of gleaming gold.

The innkeeper, who had regarded them with suspicion and fear, saw them in a quite different light when presented with actual specie, gold, the value of which only went up with the misfortunes of the Confederacy. The former General Pages ate well and were on the road again, because they all had the sense, unspoken, that they should get as much distance as they could between themselves and the Yankees.

They came at last to Commerce, Mississippi, though there seemed to be precious little commerce taking place. The sun was two hours set by the time they climbed wearily out of the wagon and stretched and groaned in front of the inn on the one main street. The inn was all but deserted, but still it was barely large enough to house all the