“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.
“They won't never lick us, not if we have to fight 'em the next hundred years,” his friend said. “Ain't nobody never gonna tell me no niggers as good as I am. Just on account of Abe Lincoln looks like an ape himself, that's how come he loves them black gorillas so much.”
“Expect you're right.” Eb spat again. They walked on.
Ben Robinson didn't breathe more than tiny little sips of air till he could hear their footfalls no more. He already knew how Southern whites felt about Negroes. If they didn't feel that way, would they have bought and sold him? And the more whites in the C.S.A. swore at Abraham Lincoln, the more they convinced blacks he was the answer to their prayers. Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in most Southern states, but if Robinson could have voted…
Me? Vote? The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. If he was a free man, shouldn't he be able to do everything free men did? He didn't have his letters, but so what? Plenty of white men didn't have their letters, either, but that didn't stop them from voting. And maybe he could learn. Free men could go to school, after all. Teaching them to read and write wasn't a crime, the way it was with slaves in South Carolina.
Then another cloud passed in front of the moon. Darkness poured down on the riverside. New fears filled Ben Robinson-new and at the same time ancient, far more ancient than the simple fear of having Bedford Forrest's troopers smash in his head. Darkness was the time of witches and ghosts and hants, and he lay here helpless, unable to get away.
White men talked about believing in hants and all the other terrible things that prowled the darkness. White men talked about it, but they didn't really do it, not down deep, not where it really mattered. Ben did. He believed in his belly, in his balls. Something just out of sight always lay in wait in the dark, ready to reach out and grab, to terrify, to possess, to frighten to death. How many people died all of a sudden, without a mark on them, without a sign of sickness? Too many, far too many. If a conjure woman didn't spell them into the grave, if a hant didn't drag them down into it, why weren't they still alive? Who could answer a question like that? Nobody.
Something buzzed past Ben's ear. Maybe it was only a mosquito. Yes, maybe. But did a mosquito really sound just like that? Robinson didn't think so. It might be a hant, waiting for him to fall asleep or just to let his attention lapse.
“Go 'way. Go 'way, bad thing.” Those quietly desperate words didn't spring from Ben's throat, but from that of some other Negro not far away. He wasn't the only black man with night terrors, then. Oddly, the other man's fear helped ease his. He realized he wasn't alone. If a hant did try to grab him, somebody might come to his rescue. And, a lower part of his mind added, if he wasn't alone out here, the hant or the ghost or the witch might decide to torment somebody else.
The moon came out from behind a cloud. Pale, cool light spilled across the land. The moon's reflection, shattered and rippled a thousand thousand times by the current, danced on the river. Moonlight was better than darkness… wasn't it? Or did it give the things still lurking in black shadow the chance they needed to find a victim?
He didn't know. He was only a man, a frightened, wounded, painfilled man. Daybreak just past seemed much further away than the moon. The things he'd done since then! The things he'd seen! The things he'd lived through!.. And the things so many of his comrades hadn't lived through.
Would he live to see the sun rise tomorrow? That seemed even more distant than the dawn that was shattered by Confederate gunfire. If he reached it, he promised he would praise the Lord.
A lot of people must have made a lot of promises while the fighting in Fort Pillow raged. A lot of the people who made those promises were dead now, more than a few of them shot trying to surrender. What did that mean? Were the men who'd made those fancy promises and then died hypocrites and sinners?
Or did God listen to the Confederates instead? No doubt they'd been praying and promising, too. Most of them were alive and well and enjoying the spoils of victory. Did that mean God was on their side? But they were losing the war. If they weren't, the Federals wouldn't hold Memphis. The United States wouldn't have held Fort Pillow.
What did it all mean? The more you looked at it, the less sense it made. Robinson thought of himself as a good Christian man. How could God favor people who wanted to keep him in bondage? But he'd seen enough to know that Forrest's troopers honestly couldn't imagine God favoring someone with black skin at their expense.
As a good Christian man, he shouldn't have feared hants and ghosts and witches. If he followed the Lord, how could they hurt him? He didn't suppose they could have if his soul were stainless. But he knew all the bad things he'd done, and knew how many of them there were. Maybe God would let a hant grab him to pay him back for all his sins. How could you know?