Before the war, Southerners sneered at Yankees as nothing more than merchants and factory hands. The charge was true enough. But the South hadn't realized it brought strengths as well as weaknesses. Men fought wars, but they fought them with things. No matter how brave you were, you'd lose if you didn't have food in your belly, if you didn't have bullets in your rifle musket, if you didn't have gunboats to control the rivers. The Federals didn't have to worry about anything like that. The Confederates did, more and more as the fight dragged on.
But not right here, not right now. Forrest's motto was Get there first with the most men. He had the most men here, right where he needed them, and the Federals were melting away like snow in the hot sun.
A Negro running in front of Jenkins gave a despairing screech, threw his hands in the air, and wailed, “Do Jesus, don't kill me! I ain't done nothin' to nobody!”
“You one of those niggers yellin' you wouldn't give us quarter?” Jenkins growled.
“Oh, no, suh, not me! I ain't one o' them bad niggers!” The black man shook his head so hard, his cap flew off and fell to the ground beside him. He didn't seem to notice; all his fearful attention was on Jenkins. “I don’t want to fight no mo.
“I bet you don't, boy,” Jenkins said. “You a runaway?”
The Negro hesitated. If he said no, the way he talked would betray him-he sounded like someone from the deep South, from South Carolina or Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi. But if he said yes, he was liable to seal his own fate. Jenkins could watch the gears meshing and turning behind his eyes. In the end, all he said was, “Don't kill me, suh. I surrender.”
“You had your chance. All of you bastards had your chance. You should've took it when you could.” Jenkins squeezed the trigger.
Even he winced at what the Mini? ball did. It tore off the bottom half of the black man's face, leaving him gobbling and bleating because he could no longer make sounds resembling human speech. Blood poured down his front. But he would not fall. He would not die. He slumped to his knees and imploringly stretched out his hands to Jenkins. His eyes were enormous in his shattered face.
“Christ!” That was the Confederate lieutenant. He shot the colored soldier in the side of his head with his revolver. The Negro didn't try to stop him-the poor bastard's last gobble before he toppled over might have been meant Thank you. The lieutenant shook his head. “I wouldn't let a dog live with a wound like that, Corporal.”
“I'm sorry, sir,” Jenkins answered; it was horrific enough to sober him, which said a great deal. “I was gonna finish the son of a bitch. I had to reload, that's all.” He was doing it as he spoke. He forgot-or maybe he chose not to remember-that he'd bayoneted the white Tennessean after his bullet didn't finish the man right away.
“Well…let it go,” the lieutenant said. “Stinking bluebellies didn't give up when they had the chance. Now they're going to pay for it.”
“Oh, hell, yes.” There Jack Jenkins agreed with the officer one hundred percent. He stowed his ramrod and went back to the fight.
The smoke from the New Era's stacks was only a receding stain against the northern skyline. Nathan Bedford Forrest smiled a slow smile, the smile of a big cat that has fed well. The Federals inside Fort Pillow had surely counted on the gunboat's firepower to save their bacon for them. There had to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among them now, for they'd leaned on a reed that broke and pierced their hand.
Gunboats were wonderful-where the Mississippi was wide, and where they could shell soldiers who couldn't answer back with rifle muskets. If a gunboat came close enough to fire canister, though, good shots could put enough minnies through the gunports to remind them that the fight had two sides. Sailors didn't like being forced to remember that.
Now the New Era was gone, and Fort Pillow was gone, and nothing remained but the aftermath Forrest foresaw as soon as the U.S. commander refused to lower his flag. War means fighting, and fighting means killing, he thought with somber satisfaction. Quite a few generals on both sides shied away from that simple, brutal truth. He didn't. He never had. You did what you needed to do.
And now his men were… doing what they needed to do. He was abstractly sorry they were, but knew better than to try to stop them. Nothing so corroded an officer's authority as giving orders no one heeded. If he tried to stop the soldiers from paying back the Federals, they wouldn't listen to him. And so he hung back from the fighting, where usually he led the charge.
Some of the Federals were able to surrender. Grinning troopers herded white soldiers along-and some blacks as well. When the prisoners didn't move fast enough to suit them, a prod with the bayonet worked as well as spurs on a horse.
One of the soldiers in blue, a Negro, waved to Forrest. “I knows you, General,” he called. “I knows you, sure as anything.”
“Wouldn't be surprised,” Forrest answered-the black man looked familiar to him, though he couldn't put a name on the fellow. “You come through my nigger lots down in Memphis?”
“Yes, sub, I done that,” the black answered. “I done that a couple times, matter of fact.”
Bedford Forrest believed it. A slave who was sold more than once was liable, even likely, to be an uppity nigger, and one who was likely to run off and make trouble. Putting on the U.S. uniform, this one had made as much trouble as he could. Eyes narrowing in concentration, Forrest said, “I still don't recollect your name, but the last time I sold you I got… let me see… twenty-one hundred dollars for your worthless nigger carcass.” He spoke without malice; he might have described a good horse as crowbait the same way.
“That's my price, all right. “ The Negro's voice held a certain pride, too-it was a good price, a damn good price. Then the man did a double take and stared at Bedford Forrest. “How you remember? How many niggers you done sold since I go through there six, seven years ago?”
“Selling niggers is my business,” Forrest said. “I better remember — I'm in trouble if I don't. I wouldn't have got such a good price for you if you didn't have good teeth-I remember that, too. They still sound?”
“Sure enough are, suh.” The colored soldier's eyes got wider yet. “Do Jesus! You mus' be some kind o' hoodoo man, you call to mind a thing like that.”
“Not me.” Bedford Forrest's smile was half reminiscent and, again, half predatory. “Like I say, I've got to remember those things. When I came to Memphis, I didn't have fifty cents in my pockets. When the war started, though, I don't know if I was the richest man there, but hell with me if I can name four who were richer. And I got that way buying and selling niggers. What do you do when you're not trying to murder your masters?”
“I's a carpenter, sub,” the black man said. By the way he said it, he was a good carpenter, too, someone who took pains with his work.
That suited Forrest fine. “All right, then,” he said. “You'll know when to use oak and when to use pine, when to use nails and when to cut mortises and tenons, what kind of shellac to use, how to match grains-all those kinds of things. That's your business, so sure you know. Well, niggers are my business.”
In spite of himself, a certain sour edge touched his voice. No matter how rich he'd grown in Memphis, some people looked down their noses at him because he was a slave trader. That didn't keep them from buying and selling with him. Oh, no. He was useful. But he wasn't welcome in some homes no matter how much money he made. Hell with' em, he thought. He'd grown up on a hardscrabble farm, and lost his father while he was still young. He'd had to be the man in his large family himself then, and he'd damn well done it. If the men who owned slaves didn't care for the men who sold them, what did that prove? Only that they were fools. It was like despising the butcher while you ate his beefsteaks.