FORT PILLOW

"I'm putting my brother in the ground," Bill Bradford said. "I don't think I could talk like that for anybody else."

"You want we should cover him over now?" the Negro asked.

"In a minute," Bradford answered. "There's another way to say good-bye to him, too." He picked up the jug. It sloshed. "I managed to get my hands on this before anybody else did. Theo would have liked it this way." He pulled out the cork, raised the jug to his lips, and took a pull. "Ahh!" He handed the jug to Matt Ward. "Here you go."

"I thank you kindly." Ward remembered longing for whiskey early that morning. Had only a day gone by since then? It seemed more like five years. He swigged from the jug. Volcano juice ran down his throat. "Whew!" he said when he could speak again. "That's strong stuff." He started to give the jug back to Bradford.

"Let the niggers have a knock, too," the Federal officer suggested. Ward started to bristle at the idea, but Bradford quickly added, "There's plenty to go round, and they're doing the hard work."

"Well, hell. Why not?" What Ward had just drunk made him magnanimous-or maybe too tipsy to argue. He thrust the jug at the closer Negro. "Here, Go on."

"Much obliged, suh." The black man took the whiskey jug, tilted it back, and then passed it to his comrade. "Mighty nice." The potent stuff didn't faze him at all. Ward wondered if he had a cast-iron gullet.

When Major Bradford got the jug back from the second Negro, he wiped the mouth on his tunic before drinking from it again. Ward would have done the same thing; he didn't want his mouth going where a black's had gone before it. Weren't Federals all hot for nigger equality? He wondered why Bill Bradford, who acted like a Southerner, chose the other side.

Before he could ask, Bradford passed him the jug. Ward didn't mind drinking right after another white man. More tangleleg exploded in his stomach. He looked at the Negroes. "Get to work now."

"Yes, suh," they said together. They weren't rash enough to ask for another pull at the whiskey jug for themselves. They had to know they were lucky to get one. They set to work with the shovels, throwing the dirt they'd dug out back into the grave. It thumped down on Theodorick Bradford's shrouded corpse.

"He was a good man," Bill Bradford said. "He was one of the best." He nodded to Matt Ward. "You have a brother?"

"Not that lived." Ward's head spun when he shook it-that popskull was mean as the Devil. "Had one who died when we were both little. I got me a couple of sisters and a big old raft of cousins." He took another pull at the jug, then offered it back to Bradford.

"Thanks." The Federal officer raised it to his lips. "Cousins are all right, but they're not the same, you know what I mean?" He didn't seem like such a bad fellow once you talked with him for a while – and once you'd had enough whiskey to lubricate your brains a little.

"Like I told you, I can't rightly say." Ward eyed Bradford, as well as he could by the torchlight flickering here and there. Now he asked his question: "What made you choose the wrong side, anyways?"

"I don't reckon I did," the Tennessee Tory replied, stubborn even after disastrous defeat. "I believe in building things up, not tearing them down. The Union's lasted eighty-seven years now. There's hardly a man alive who wasn't born under the Stars and Stripes. Why go and tear that to pieces?"

"On account of that damn Lincoln wants to take our niggers away and tyr-tyr-tyrannize over us." Matt Ward had to try three times before he could get the word out.

"He didn't fire the first shot-you Rebs did that, at Fort Sumter. And we could have made some kind of arrangement about the niggers. We've had compromises before. We could have found another one. But Jeff Davis wanted to show what a big man he was, and we've been shooting at each other ever since."

He trotted the arguments out smooth as you please. Ward remembered hearing he was a lawyer. But he couldn't talk around one thing: "This here is a Confederate state. If you aren't for the Confederacy, you're nothing but a dirty old traitor."

"My loyalty is the old one. I'll stick to it." Major Bradford looked down at his brother's grave. "If you ask me to love the cause that killed poor Theo, I'm afraid you ask too much."

"Quibble all you care to." Ward hefted his Enfield. "You damn well lost. "

"And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" Bradford managed a mournful laugh. He had no weapon, but hefted the whiskey jug instead. "A sorrow I shall try to drown." He drank.

"You already look drowned," Ward told him. "Let me have some more of that."

"How can I say no? To the victor go the spoils." The Federal officer surrendered the whiskey. Ward raised the jug and took a long pull. Then he took another one.

Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground. He didn't know how he'd got there. The whiskey jug sat beside him, though. That was funny. Laughing, he got up and drank some more.

Bill Bradford laughed, too. Ward remembered that.