"Right! No point in sitting on our asses. Let's start doing the rounds."
Hicks looked uncomfortable. "I was kind of hoping to call it a day. It's my little girl's birthday party this afternoon." "Oh yeah? How old is she?"
"Three."
"That's okay, then. She'll never remember that you didn't show."
They parked outside the Rebel Yell on West Cary Street and climbed out of the car. An old-fashioned red-painted frontage was hung with Confederate battle flags. The windows were crowded with sepia photographs of whiskery Confederate officers and tarnished military buttons and replica Colt revolvers and cavalry swords.
A bell jangled as they opened the door. Inside, there was a scrubbed oak floor and rows of glass display cabinets containing rifles and musketoons and cutlasses and all the paraphernalia of war, from dented cooking pots to inkstands to cartridge-rolling papers. The store smelled of wood, and musty old clothes, and wax.
Billy Joe Bennett was standing behind the counter—a huge, big-bellied man, with a gingery gray beard and circular glasses, dressed in a gray artillery coat with epaulets and original eagle buttons on it. He was talking to a round-shouldered middle-aged customer in one of those floppy Woody Allen hats that looks like a wilted cabbage. Billy Joe suddenly picked up a heavy saber and slashed it crisscross in the air, so that it whistled, and the customer said, "Wow," and backed away.
"Know what they used to call this?" Billy Joe said, in a voice as rich as fruitcake. "The wrist breaker. But it could whop a fellow's head off with one blow."
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"Real neat sword," the customer said. "How much do you want for it?"
"Couldn't take less than 3,500."
"Mind if I have a try?"
"Okay . . . but be careful. Wouldn't want you to do yourself a mischief."
The customer took the saber and jabbed it in the air a few times. Then he lifted it high over his head and whirled it about like a helicopter rotor. He let out a whoop and a "yee-haaa!" and promptly dropped it with a clatter onto the floor.
"Jee-zus! What are you trying to do, cut your damn feet off?" Billy Joe came bustling around the counter and picked up the saber as tenderly as if it were an infant.
The customer rubbed his wrist and said, goofily, "Guess I misjudged how heavy it is."
"Let me tell you something, this saber was carried at First Manassas by Captain Tom Hartley of the First Virginia Cavalry, one of the bravest Southern officers as was. He had his left arm blown off below the elbow by a minié ball but he never dropped it, not once."
"Really? That really gives it some provenance, doesn't it? It's going to look terrific hanging over my fireplace back in Madison. Do you take MasterCard?"
Billy Joe carefully laid the saber back down on the counter, polishing its blade with a soft yellow duster. He thought for a while, and then he said, "MasterCard? Uh-huh."
"How about American Express?"
"I can't exactly tell you that we take that either. Besides, this saber ain't for sale no more."
The customer blinked. "What do you mean it's not for sale anymore?"
"Exactly that."
"Well, how about that sword over there?"
"That's not for sale, neither."
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"It doesn't have a 'sold' ticket on it."
"I know. But nothing is for sale. In fact, I've suddenly remembered that we're closed. Good-bye."
The customer hesitated for a moment, but when Billy Joe resolutely turned his back on him and noisily started counting out boxes full of military buttons, he looked around at Decker and Hicks and said, "Craziest store I ever heard of, won't sell you anything."
He hesitated a little longer and then he left. Billy Joe carried on counting buttons, but after a while, with his back still turned, he said, "What can I do for you today, Lieutenant?"
"I don't know. You're closed, aren't you?"
Billy Joe turned to face them, and picked up the saber again. "This isn't just a saber, Lieutenant. This is the glory of the South. And I'm damned if I'm going to sell it to some pigeon-chested nitwit who can't handle it with due respect."
"Pretty selective way to do business."
"Well, maybe it was just that particular guy. I hated his hat."
Decker peered into one of the display cabinets. "What I'm interested in is bayonets and bowie knives."
"Bayonets? I don't have too many of those. I have a good Kentucky bowie knife, though, with an ivory handle, dated 1863."
"I don't want to buy anything. I want to know if you've sold any bayonets and bowie knives recently, and to whom."
Billy Joe scratched his bearded chin. "Last bayonet I sold was a socket bayonet made by Cook and Brother, New Orleans, 1861 or 1862. Very good condition, double-edged, twenty-one inches long. Last bowie knife . . . I couldn't tell you."
Hicks took out a photograph of Jerry Maitland. "Ever see this guy before? Ever sold him a bayonet?"
R3
Billy Joe lifted his glasses so that he could focus. "No . sorry."
Hicks handed him a copy of Sandra's drawing of the So-Scary Man. "How about this character? Ever see him?"
Billy Joe studied the drawing carefully, and then he said, "When was this drawing made?"
"What difference does that make?"
"You don't very often see pictures of these fellows, if at all."
"These fellows? What do you mean by that?"
Billy Joe pointed to the man's hat. "See them feathers, in his hatband? They're crow feathers."
"I didn't really take too much notice of them, to tell you the truth."
"Well, you shoulda, because they tell you a story. And the story is that this fellow is a member of what they called the Devil's Brigade."
"The Devil's Brigade? Who were they?"
"It's one of those Civil War legends, you know. Half truth and half legend. There was supposed to be thirteen men in all, twelve white and one colored, and they was specially recruited by Lieutenant General James Longstreet in April, 1864, just before the Battle of the Wilderness."
"Can't say I've ever heard of them."
Billy Joe handed the drawing back. "You never heard of them because they was like special forces, you know, the Civil War equivalent of Delta Force, and the whole operation was a close secret. Nobody knows who the individual men was, or what exactly they was assigned to do, but the story goes that they was charged with creating all kinds of hell regardless of the usual rules and conduct of war."
He carefully sheathed the saber and hung it up in one of the display cabinets.
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Hicks said, "One of them was colored? That was pretty unusual, wasn't it, for the Confederate army? I didn't think they had any colored troops."
"Nor did they. The only coloreds who got involved in the war were personal servants that some of the officers took to the front line. I don't know why they made an exception in this particular case."
"Do you have any idea what this Devil's Brigade actually did?" Decker asked.
"Only stories and rumors. The situation was that the Confederates was being very hard-pressed by the Federals up by the Rapidan River. The Federals had more men and much more equipment. Grant was on the verge of breaking through the Confederate lines, and I guess Longstreet decided that he needed something to tip the balance back in his favor. I don't know if he recruited the Devil's Brigade with Lee's approval or not, but even if the stories and rumors are only half correct, those thirteen fellows wreaked some terrible havoc up there in the Wilderness. There were tales of men being turned inside out, and men catching fire spontaneous, and men being chopped into so many pieces that nobody could tell which piece belonged to who.
"On the night of May seven to eight, the horrors was supposed to have gotten so dreadful that there was wholesale panic in the Federal forces, and Grant had to order their immediate withdrawal, before it became a rout. Both armies left the Wilderness and eventually wound up at the battle of Spotsylvania."