He sighed. “Well, it’s a long shot, but I’ll check the hens for an egg when I take feed up the creek to them tomorrow morning.”
“There is no chicken feed.”
“There was a whole sack full of cracked corn when I left. Ain’t no chickens down here to eat it.”
She turned those somber eyes on his. “They ate it. One handful per man. Washed down by a cup of water from the springhouse. The hay is gone, too. Cavalry took it. What was left of the black boar didn’t even make it down the lane. Don’t know about the brood sow. If she wasn’t well hid, she’s headed south in a couple dozen stomachs.”
Billy stared into his sister’s wooden eyes. “How did this happen to us?”
On the floor, one of the men gave off a rattling gasp, trembled, and went stiff. His back arched, face twitching, and then he relaxed, jaw opening slackly, his wide eyes empty and fixed on the ceiling.
“Thank you, God,” Sarah whispered as she closed her eyes. “I was supposed to write his mother. Some street in Pine Bluff. Can’t remember the rest.” She paused. “Shotgun blast nearly ripped off his cock and blew one of his nuts away.”
“Sarah!” Billy hissed his shock and anger.
Her eyes had that flat emptiness, no change in her expression. “The things I’ve seen…” She chuckled hollowly, as if mocking herself. “I’m not the same girl I was, brother. But I’d give anything to be her again someday.”
18
March 12, 1862
Doc made a face as he tried to organize his pharmacy on the flimsy wooden shelves. The shelves weren’t anything to write home about, being only four high in a sort of boxlike contraption. He had placed them on a battered oak kitchen table. A fine and sturdy piece of craftsmanship that he’d “confiscated” from one of the messes in Company A. They in turn had no doubt “appropriated” it from one of the local households in Corinth. Most likely right out of some citizen’s living room when the unwary occupant—trusting in human nature—had stepped out for a moment.
The original owners of the stout table were undoubtedly raising hell, trying to discover where their valued centerpiece had vanished to. Since they had most of General Beauregard’s army to regard as likely culprits, their task was no doubt proving to be a daunting one.
Built like a slab, the table was heavy enough that Doc figured he could trust his medicine shelf to it, and had placed it against the hospital tent’s back wall. Getting his varied-sized bottles organized, however, was another matter.
Taking an alphabetical approach, he was down to Q for quinine when a shout from beyond the tent’s confines caused him to pause.
“Yo! Doc? You ’round?” a voice called.
Doc crossed his hospital tent and stepped out into the late evening. Against the backdrop of the Fourth Tennessee’s tents, messes, and cook fires, a sergeant marched ahead of an obvious prisoner flanked by two privates.
Doc glanced up at the evening light where it filtered through clouds above the hilly country to the west. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“Colonel’s orders, Doc. He wants an evaluation of Private Shumaker, here. Wonders if he’s fit for duty.” The sergeant gave the cringing Shumaker a disgusted look.
As the small squad drew to a halt before the tent, Doc rolled up his sleeves and stepped close. The private stared back with a somewhat cowed but clear-eyed expression. Shumaker might have been eighteen, thin, medium height, with a narrow face and a razor-thin beak of a nose. Like so many, his unwashed black hair hung to his collar. He watched Doc with wary black eyes that reeked of worry.
Doc checked the man’s pulse, poked and prodded, finding the usual slightly malnourished Confederate volunteer in his ragged but serviceable homespun uniform.
“Any complaints, soldier?”
“No, suh.”
“Are your bowels fit? No runs, squirts, or pains?”
“No, suh.”
“What about his head?” the sergeant asked. “Anything wrong with his head?”
Doc shot a wary glance at the sergeant. The two guards had a strained expression—as if they were struggling to keep amusement firmly throttled in the presence of their irritated sergeant.
Doc turned his attention back to Shumaker. “What’s this about, Private?”
“It’s about the prisoner, suh.”
“What prisoner?”
“The Yankee, suh.”
“What Yankee?”
“The one the sergeant, here, caught just outside our lines day afore yestiddy.”
Doc glanced at the sergeant, seeing the man’s hot blue eyes narrow to an angry squint. His knuckles turned white where they gripped the stock on his Enfield musket, as if he wanted to wring the wood.
“Go on, Private,” Doc coaxed, seeing nothing about the man’s cognition or wits that seemed amiss.
“Well, Doc … er, suh, I’s given the guard duty. You know, to hold the prisoner till he could be sent back East on a train. Right pleasant feller this Yank was. Said he’s from Ioway. Some little town called—”
“Git ter the point, Willy!” the sergeant barked.
“Yes, suh.” Shumaker flinched. Then he glanced at Doc. “Well, suh, I’d been a-watchin’ him all day. Finally, he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘Hey, Reb. You know y’all is gonna be whipped.’”
“‘How’s that?’ I says.”
“‘Why, us Yankees, we’s better so’jers than you Rebs. Better dressed, better fed, better led, and we sure is a heap better at so’jering.’
“‘How’s that?’ I asks.” Shumaker fixed Doc with serious eyes. “I’s gittin’ a mite perturbed, ya see.”
Doc crossed his arms and arched an inquisitive eyebrow.
“So next, the Yank says, ‘Take that rifle yer a-holdin. Any Yank in the army knows the manual of arms better’n even the best Johnny y’all gots in yer army. Fer instance, y’all couldn’t come close to matching me, move fer move, at rifle drill.’”
Shumaker’s face puckered with a frown. “So I tells him, ‘Count her out, Yank.’ And he does. And I do the drill, calling, ‘Load
