FORT PILLOW

Somebody with a torch applied it to the corner of the hut. Mack Leaming watched and listened with fearful fascination. He could hear flames crackle, and then he could see them. Terror sent ice along his spine. But ice was not what he would feel. Getting shot was bad enough. Getting roasted in the flames had to be ten, a hundred, a thousand times worse.

Men who could limp or crawl made for the doorway as fast as they could go-which mostly wasn't very fast. The more badly wounded men cried out: “Take me with you!” “Don't leave me here to cook!” Leaming added his voice to the chorus. He shouted as loud as he could, and wished he were louder.

“Here you go, sir. I'll give you a hand,” a wounded Federal said. He had one hand to give, for his wound was in the left arm. He grabbed Leaming by the collar of his tunic and yanked hard. Leaming groaned-any motion tore at the track the bullet had drilled through him. “Sorry,” the other soldier said.

“It's all right,” Leaming got out through clenched teeth. It wasn't all right, or anything close to all right. But it was infinitely better than lying there while those vicious orange flames crept closer and closer. Anything, anything at all, was better than that.

The other wounded man dragged him about ten feet out of the barracks hut, then let go of him. “Here you are, sir,” he panted.

“God bless you,” Leaming said. The right side of his back was in torment, but it would ease. The fire would have given him no relief, no mercy. The man with the injured arm went back into the hut and brought out another wounded soldier who could not move on his own. The hut was burning hard by then, but Leaming didn't think anyone got left behind in it.

Several Confederate soldiers and one officer stood around watching the Federals, but none of them did anything to help. The sun beat down on Leaming's head; it would be a warmer day than the one before. Some of the Confederates had canteens on their belts or slung over their shoulders. He didn't bother asking them for water, though-he knew how poor his chances of getting any were.

A wounded Negro lay not far away. He must have spent the night in the open; as far as Leaming knew, all the men in the hut had been white. One of Forrest's troopers walked over to him and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Suh, I wants to get on the gunboat if she stop,” the colored man answered. “Reckon they got a surgeon on bo'd kin cut this minnie out o' me.” He pointed to his crudely bandaged calf.

“You want to fight us again, do you?” the Secesh soldier said. “Damn you, I'll teach you!” He brought up his rifle musket and shot the Negro in the chest from a range of no more than a couple of feet. The black man groaned and died inside of a minute or two.

Another black man-he didn't seem badly hurt-stood not far away. Were Mack Leaming in his shoes (not that he was wearing any), he would have got out of there as fast as he could. The Confederates were still shooting wounded Negroes-and the occasional wounded white, too. Maybe this colored artilleryman didn't think they would do anything like that while the gunboat-it was number twenty-eight, the Silver Cloud-drew near.

If he didn't, he made a dreadful mistake. The Reb who'd shot the Negro on the ground by Leaming reloaded his rifle musket with a veteran's practiced haste. He hardly even needed to watch what he was doing; his hands knew with no help from his eyes.

Only after the man set a percussion cap on the nipple did the colored soldier seem to awaken to his danger. By then, it was too late for the black to run off. Forrest's trooper would have had no trouble hitting him before he got out of range. Instead of running, he begged for his life: “Please don't shoot me, suh! I ain't done nothin' to you. Honest to God I ain't!”

“You were up in the damn fort, weren't you?” the Confederate replied, taking deliberate aim at the black man's head. “You were shooting one of them goddamn cannon, weren't you?”

“No, suh, not me! Do Jesus, not me!” the Negro said, voice high and shrill, his eyes showing white all around the iris. “I never had nothin' to do with no cannon! Never!”

“You lying sack of shit,” the Reb said. “Hell, even if you didn't, you still had a gun in your hands. For all I know, one of my pals is dead on account of you. So you can go to hell along with this other coon here.”

He pulled the trigger. The hammer fell-with a loud click and nothing more. The colored artilleryman, who'd seemed on the point of fainting from terror, let out a joyous cry. “You see? You see? God don't mean fo' you to take my life. God don't want you to take my life!”

“Fuck you, boy,” Forrest's trooper said. He thumbed up the hammer and reseated the cap on the nipple. “Didn't have it quite square there.” He raised the rifle musket again. “Now I reckon we'll find out what God wants and what He don't.”