Tom went back to his horse, detached the saddlebags and bedroll from the saddle, and carried them while he walked after Julia. In 1914, a Negro would have dashed up to relieve him of them. If he missed that level of deference, he didn’t show it.
And, before he went into the cabin, he asked, “You’re not putting anyone out so I can stay in here, are you?”
“No, suh,” the serving woman answered. “Ain’t so many folks here as used to be.”
“I see that.” Tom glanced over at Anne. “It’s a wonder you’ve done as much as you have out here by yourself.”
“You do what you have to do,” she said, at which he nodded again. Before the war, that hard logic had meant nothing to him. The Roanoke front had given him more than rank and decorations; he understood and accepted the ways of the world these days. As soon as Julia went out of earshot, she continued, in a lower voice, “We made a bargain of sorts-they do the work that needs to be done, and I make sure nobody from St. Matthews or Columbia comes around prying into what they did during the rebellion.”
“You said something about that in one of your letters,” Tom answered, remembering. “Best you could do, I suppose, but there are some niggers I wouldn’t have made that bargain with. Cassius, for one.”
“Even if you’d want him for a soldier?” Anne asked, gently mocking.
“Especially because I’d want him for a soldier,” her brother said. “I know a dangerous man when I see one.”
“I have no bargain with Cassius,” Anne said quietly. “Every so often, livestock here-disappears. I don’t know where it goes, but I can guess. Not that much to eat in the swamps of the Congaree, even for niggers used to living off the land.”
“That’s so,” Tom agreed. “And he’ll have friends among the hands here. Sis, I really wish you weren’t out here by your lonesome.”
“If I’m not, this place goes to the devil,” Anne said. “I didn’t get a great crop from it, but I got a crop. That gave me some of the money I needed to pay the war taxes, and it meant I didn’t have to cut so far into my investments as I would have otherwise. I don’t intend to be a beggar when the war ends, and I don’t intend for you to be a beggar, either.”
“If the choice is between being being rich and being a beggar, that’s one thing, Sis,” he said. “If the choice is between being a beggar and being dead, that’s a different game.” His face, its expression already far more stern than it had been before the war, turned bleak as the oncoming winter. “That’s what the Confederate States are looking at right now, seems to me: a choice between being beggars and being dead.”
He walked up into the cottage. Anne followed him. He tossed the saddlebags and bedroll onto the floor next to the iron-framed cot on which he’d sleep. Looking around, he shook his head. “It’s not the way it was any more,” he said, half to himself. “Nothing is the way it was any more.”
“No,” Anne said. “It’s not. But-I talked with President Semmes not so long ago. He’s worried, yes, but not that worried.” She checked herself; if the president hadn’t been that worried, would he have introduced the bill calling for Negro troops? Trying to look on the bright side, she pointed to Tom’s tunic. “That was a victory, there in the valley.”
“And it makes one,” her brother answered bitterly. “I pray to God we can hold the ground we gained, too. We need every man in the CSA at the front, and we need every man in the CSA working behind the lines so the men at the front have something to shoot at the damnyankees. If everybody could be two places at once twenty-four hours a day, we’d be fine.”
“That’s why the president wants to give the blacks guns,” she said.
“I understand.” He sounded impatient with her, something he’d rarely done…before the war, that endlessly echoed phrase. “We’ve put them in the factories to make up for the white men who’ve gone. Maybe we can put enough women in to make up for the niggers. Maybe.”
She didn’t want to argue with him any more. “Supper soon,” she said. “Come over to my cottage and we’ll talk more then. Get yourself settled in for now.”
“For now,” he repeated. “I’ve got to catch the train day after tomorrow.” He sighed. “No rest for the weary.”
Supper was fried chicken, greens, and pumpkin pie, with apple brandy that had no tax stamp on it to wash down the food. “It’s not what I would have given you if things were different,” Anne said, watching with something like awe as the mountain of chicken bones on her brother’s plate grew and grew. “No fancy banquets these days, though.”
“It’s nigger food,” Tom said, and then held up a hand against the temper that sparked in her eyes. “Wait, Sis. Wait. It’s good. It’s a hundred times better than what I eat at the front. Don’t you worry about it for a minute.” He patted his belly, which should have bulged visibly from what he’d put away but somehow didn’t.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “If this is the best we can hope for once the war is over, is it worth going on?”
“Kentucky is a state in the United States again,” Tom said quietly. “The Yankees say it is, anyhow, and they have some traitors there who go along with them. The best may not be as good as we hoped when we set out to fight, but the worst is worse than we ever reckoned it could be.” He yawned, then got up, walked over to her, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m going to bed, Sis-can’t hold ’em open any more. You don’t have to worry about anything tonight-I’m here.” He walked out of the cottage into the darkness.
Julia took away the dishes. Anne got into a long cotton nightgown, blew out the lamps, and lay down. Off in the distance, an owl hooted. Off farther in the distance, a rifle cracked, then another, than a short volley. Silence returned. She shrugged. Ordinary noises of the night. As always, her pistol lay where she could reach it. She even carried the revolver when she needed to go to the outhouse instead of using the pot, though it was no good against moths and spiders.
Did she feel safer because her brother was here? Yes, she decided: now there were two guns on which she could rely absolutely. Did she feel he was taking on the job of protecting her, so she wouldn’t even have to think of such things as long as he was nearby? Laughing at the absurdity of the notion, she rolled over and went to sleep.
George Enos was swabbing the deck on the starboard side of the USS Ericsson when shouts of alarm rang out to port: “Torpedo!” He jumped as if someone had stabbed him with a pin. As klaxons began to hoot, he sprinted toward his battle station, a one-pounder antiaircraft gun not far from the depth-charge launcher at the stern of the destroyer. Someone, by some accident, had actually read his file and given him a job he knew how to do. The one-pounder wasn’t that different from an outsized machine gun.
“Torpedo!” The shouts grew louder. The Ericsson’s deck throbbed under Enos’ feet as the engines came up to full power from cruising speed. Thick, black smoke poured from the stacks. The smoke poured back toward him. He coughed and tried to breathe as little as he could.
The deck heeled sharply as the destroyer swung into a tight turn. The turn was to the right, not to the left as he’d expected. “We’re heading into the track,” he shouted.
At the launcher, Carl Sturtevant nodded. “If it misses us, we charge down the wake and pay the submarine a visit,” the petty officer said.
“Yeah,” George said. If it missed them, that was what would happen. But it was likelier to hit them when they were running toward it than if they’d chosen to run away. Enos did his best not to think about that. He was sure the whole crew of the Ericsson-including Captain Fleming, who’d ordered the turn-were doing their best not to think about that.
He peered ahead, though the destroyer’s superstructure blocked his view of the most critical area. His fate rested on decisions over which he had no control and which he could not judge till afterwards. He hated that. So did every other Navy man with whom he’d ever spoken, both on the Mississippi and out here in the Atlantic.