When Ward glanced at Theo Bradford's body, that thought crossed his mind again. From somewhere, Bill Bradford had come up with a cloth to wrap his brother's corpse. Oh, the shroud was bloodstained here and there from the wounds the older man had taken. But for that, though, he might have died of natural causes.
"Why don't you have some carpenters build him a coffin, too?" Ward asked.
Sarcasm rolled off Bradford like water off a duck's back. "That won't be necessary," the U.S. officer answered. To the colored men roped in to help him, he added, "I reckon you've got it deep enough."
"I reckon we done got it deep enough a while ago now," one of the Negroes said. Both of them tossed their shovels out of the grave. One black climbed out at a corner, then reached into the hole to help his comrade out.
"Stick around," Bradford told them. "You'll need to fill it in when I'm done here." They looked at him. They looked at the shovels, and at their hands. They looked at the grave they'd just dug. Neither of them said a word. In their shoes (not that they were wearing shoes), Ward wouldn't have, either. Too easy to knock them over the head and toss them into the ditch outside the earthwork. Whatever happened to them, they wouldn't get a grave like this one. They wouldn't get much of a grave at all.
Major Bradford slid his brother's body into its final resting place as gently as he could. Then he pulled a small Testament from the left breast pocket of his tunic. Almost everyone who carried a little Bible carried it there, in the hope that it would stop an almost-spent Mini? ball. Once in a blue moon, it did. Ministers preached sermons about the pocket Testament that saved a life.
Like everything that had to do with Bill Bradford right now, the little book was soaked. He opened it anyway, and frowned. "Too dark to read," he said to Ward. "Would you get me a torch?"
"I ain't your nigger. You can go to the Devil, for all I care," Ward said indignantly. "You want a torch, you can damn well get your own."
"All right, then-I will," Bradford said. He wouldn't have to go far to find one. Plenty of them burned as the Confederates went on plundering Fort Pillow. He came back a few minutes later carrying not only a torch but also a jug. He set that down beside him and offered Ward the torch. "Would you be so kind as to hold it for me?"
Grudgingly, Ward nodded. "Reckon I can do that much." "Thank you kindly." Bradford went through the pocket Testament with care, muttering, "Hope the pages aren't too soggy and stuck together." Then he stopped and nodded. "Here we are." His voice grew solemn: "'Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whomsoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?' "
"I believe," Matt Ward murmured. The colored soldiers said something, too. The words were probably as familiar to them as they were to him and to Bill Bradford.
Ward thought Bradford would let it go there, but the Federal read some other verses from the Book of John: " 'I am the door: by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture… I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so I know the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep… Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.' "
Major Bradford closed the pocket Testament. He looked at Ward. Feeling something was called for, the Confederate trooper muttered, "Amen." One of the colored soldiers echoed him.
The other one said, "You shoulda been a preacherman, Major. The words, they jus' come right on out."
"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."