FORT PILLOW

“Be careful when you lift me,” Mack Leaming said as Ryder stooped by him. “Be-Aii!” He bit down hard, but couldn't stifle the yip of anguish as the captured trooper picked him up.

“Where are you men going with that body?” a Confederate officer demanded. “Just throw it in the damn ditch.”

“Not a body, sir-he's alive.” Haynes spoke as respectfully to the Reb as he would have to one of his own superiors. Leaming didn't like that, but he was in no position to criticize. Haynes went on, “We were taking him down to the barracks, to put him with the other wounded down there.”

He's not so dumb, Leaming thought. By reminding the Confederate that other injured Federals were in the barracks building, Haynes made this transfer seem routine.

Sure enough, the officer nodded. “All right, go ahead. But don't dawdle around. Still plenty of dead ones to get rid of.”

“We won't, sir.” Bill Ryder sounded respectful, too. Under that respect, though, Leaming heard an old soldier talking. Ryder didn't intend to move one lick faster than he had to.

The Confederate officer turned away. Ryder and Haynes carried Lieutenant Leaming across a plank bridge over the ditch, and then down the front of the bluff. Leaming shook his head in wonder, though the motion made him hurt even more than he already did on account of the jolting journey. Was it only this afternoon that he walked down the same slope to parley with Nathan Bedford Forrest? It was, even if it seemed a million years away.

Just this afternoon, I was spry as a bighorn, he thought. That didn't seem possible, either. He couldn't stand now if his life depended on it. He wondered if he would ever be hale again. He hoped so, but had no notion of how bad his wound was. He couldn't see it. All he could do was suffer, and he was doing plenty of that.

“I do believe I'd sell my soul for a few drops of laudanum,” he said. “We ain't got any, Lieutenant,” Elmer Haynes said. Ryder nodded. Haynes added, “Maybe one of the Rebs' surgeons can fix you up.”

“Maybe.” Leaming didn't believe it. For one thing, the Confederates were always desperately short of everything except guns and ammunition and powder. They never ran low on those, damn them. For another, Forrest's men – with the exception of that one Freemason – seemed unwilling to help Federals in any way. Surgeons were supposed to treat men from both sides, but Leaming wondered whether a physician who served this set of Rebs would meet the obligation.

It turned out not to matter. When the two prisoners set him down on the floor in one of the barracks halls, there was no sign of any surgeon, Union or Confederate. The building was full of wounded men, some badly hurt, others less so.

“Good luck, Lieutenant.” For once, Bill Ryder spoke first. He and Haynes vanished into the dusk.

A couple of candles illuminated what looked like an engraving of one of the lower circles of Hell in The Divine Comedy. Soldiers writhed and thrashed and groaned. One man had lost an arm; two others were missing legs. They needed laudanum much worse than Mack Leaming did, and they had none. Nobody had anything: no water, no food, no medicine, no surgeons, no attendants. All they had were one another and their shared torment.

Leaming wondered if he would have been better off where he was. It was quieter up on top of the bluff, even if it was colder and wetter. He might have had a better chance of falling asleep.

“Mother!” sobbed one of the men who'd lost a leg. “Mother! Help me, Mother!” No doubt she would have if she could, but she was somewhere far away. And all she could have done might not have been enough for her maimed son.

“Water!” someone else called. No one heeded that prayer, either. If the wounded Federals won longer lives for themselves, they would have to do it each man on his own.

As Ben Robinson lay by the Mississippi, he wondered how big a fool he'd been to come back down to the river. Confederates prowled the riverbank looking for Federals who were still alive. Any live men they found quickly died. Robinson heard only a couple of shots. Those drew irate yells from Secesh officers, who were trying to bring their troops back under control. Most of the prowlers used knife or bayonet or rifle butt, which made less noise.

A couple of Rebs walked past Ben. One of them said, “Will you look at that dead nigger, Eb? Son of a bitch was a sergeant-a nigger sergeant! You ever imagine there was such a thing in all the history of the world before?”

“Reckon not,” Eb said solemnly. “Like any nigger can tell somebody else what to do. Well, this bastard got what he deserved.”

“You'd best believe it,” the other trooper said. “We taught the whole world a lesson here today, we did. “

“Bet your ass,” Eb said. “The damnyankees reckoned niggers and a bunch of goddamn Tennessee renegades could whip real white men. Honest Abe damn well better do himself some more reckoning, by God. Honest Abe!” He spat in vast contempt.