Junior thinks of little else. They are not slated to leave with the first wave, no, but he is confident the call will come, Company L into the breach, and then—
A wound, grave enough to be carried from the field but that will slowly heal, leaving a scar visible but not disfiguring — acceptable. A bullet to the head, neither seen nor heard — if the highest price is to be payed, that would be the best. The veterans have their stories, skirmishes in Indian territory or on the border, men with parts of themselves shot away, maimed, suffering agonies before they die, the veterans tell it with little emotion and some of it must be true. Or worse, to go home untried, untested, never to face an angry shot, left on the beach as others sail to glory. The privations, the insult, are only bearable if they lead to a moment in arms, under the flag, caught in a desperate fight. If we risk that for them, Junior thinks, Junior believes with all his soul, how can they deny us the rest?
Our bugler is warning of the evening mess and I must close. Please send my love to Mother and Jessie. I shall write them separately as time permits. I ask that you share the general observations enclosed with Manly at the Record, whom I have promised a correspondence. There are other Wilmington men here besides myself and Royal Scott, but none of a literary bent. I will make you proud.
Your son,
Aaron
Junior considers his boots for a long moment, then grimaces and struggles to pull the first one on. Little Earl sits up, sand stuck on his face, looking bewildered.
“Chow?”
“That’s right.”
The private frowns, trying to dredge something from his memory. “When was it they give us biscuits and butter?”
“Chickamauga,” says Junior, starting on the other boot, “the first week.”
Little Earl shakes his head. “Shouldn’t ought to play with a man like that.”
Tampa is a fever dream. Tampa is for sale.
Coop and the boys wait at the trolley stop, resisting temptation. Gasoline torches light the area and vendors at the various wood-and-cardboard stands shout out their attractions. Oranges are sold at one, imported from California since this year’s killing frost, while others have soap and cocoanuts and local souvenirs and lemons and writing paper and sandwiches and there is a forty-foot-long ice-cream-and-soda-fountain counter at which prohibited items may also be purchased if the Provost Guard is either absent or willing to settle for a share. A crap game proceeds at one end of the counter.
“We leave that one alone,” says Coop, “unless we way behind by the time we get back here.”
“That be sometime tomorrow,” grins Willie Mills.
“Don’t you worry none. Ice cream might be run out, but them craps still be rollin day or night.”
There is a new building, a two-story barnlike structure slapped together with raw pine, that sits just across from the trolley tracks.
“Pompton Stiles from B Company won hisself a pile in there playing chuck-aluck,” says Willie.
“Yeah, and then he lost the whole thing on the roulette.” Coop lets his hand rest on his pistol grip, a dozen white volunteers arriving and standing in a group to wait. “I stick with them bones. Bones always treat me right.”
A barefoot little black boy comes by, selling polished conch shells. Nobody wants to buy but he lingers, staring at the men. Coop pulls the Colt out of its holster, offers it.
“You want to hold this here?”
The little boy stares, awestruck, at the heavy weapon. “Naw suh.” He shoots a glance toward the white soldiers, who are studiously looking in another direction. “They lets you ca’y that?”
“They insist on it,” says Too Tall, who claims to have been a preacher once in Alabama. “Soldier aint a soldier less he’s armed and ready for action. What if a boatload of them limejuicers land here in Tampa tonight, commence to attack the population? We might not have time to run back and get our rifles.”
The boy nods, wide-eyed.
“Someday, if these crackers don’t run you down first, maybe you be a soldier too,” says Coop.
“Yeah?”
“Hell,” says Willie Mills, “they take Coop here, they take about any old body.”
They are laughing when the electric trolley arrives. Only a few passengers get off, mostly more vendors arriving for the nightly festivities, but there is a crowd of soldiers squeezing onto the two cars. The conductor scowls and stares hard out at the carnival booths, and Coop finds himself pressed tight against a short, nervous corporal from the Ohio Vols.
“Anybody seen that Jim Crow on board?” Coop calls out, grinning, just before the bell and the first lurch of motion.
“Naw,” answers Too Tall from the other end of the car. “He aint been invited.”
Tampa is a fever dream. Tampa is a dream of Hell.
The song ends and Little Earl feels the Spirit move within him. Earlier it was the stew and one of the sweats he’s been having, the ones that come even when they’re not running you over the sand, but this is different, tingling out through his whole body and urging him to stand and shout no matter what the white folks think.
Moody, the famous Moody of Chicago, steps to the podium on the plank stage at the front. He is a stocky man, with a patriarch’s beard and a deep, booming voice that fills the great tent without strain — it impresses Little Earl that the evangelist is only talking with them, man to man, though there are women scattered in the rows. There are at least five hundred souls gathered under the canvas, with many uniformed soldiers among them, whites taking up some three-quarters of the space and the blacks crowded behind a rope to the left.
The subject is the Lost World.
“The Spirit of God tells us that we shall carry our memory with us into the Hereafter,” says Moody, lifting his iron gaze to the volunteers standing by the rear of the tent, still whispering among themselves. “Memory is God’s officer, and when He shall touch these secret springs and say, ‘Son, daughter, remember’—then tramp, tramp, tramp will come before us, in a long procession, all the sins we have ever committed.”
The whisperers fall silent, not sure whether to retreat or hold their ground. “Do you think Cain has forgotten the face of his murdered brother, whom he killed six thousand years ago? Do you think Judas has forgotten that kiss with which he betrayed his Master? Do you think when the judgment came upon Sodom that those wicked men were taken into the presence of God, or did they find themselves in the other, darker realm, in the Lost World of Hell itself?”
Mam made him swear upon the Bible — Earl can feel the dry leather in his hand — to walk the path of Righteousness no matter where the Army might take him. That she is back in Arkansas, breathing still, is a comfort, for if the dead can indeed look down upon the living, oh, Lord, the sins she be witness to!
“Many in that Lost World would give millions, if they had them,” Moody continues, “would beseech their sainted mothers to pray them out of that place — but all too late. They have been neglecting salvation until the time has come when God says, ‘Cut them down, the day of mercy has ended!’ ”
A note of laughter from the men standing by the entrance. Moody does not deign to look their way.
“You may make sport of ministers, but bear in mind there will be no preaching of the Gospel in that Lost World. There are some people who ridicule these revival meetings, but remember, there will be no revivals in Hell.”
Little Earl wonders is there a rope, a line of barbed wire perhaps, that separates black and white sinners in Satan’s realm? Or will their bodies be hurled unsorted, stewed together like offal in a cauldron, and that wicked proximity yet another torture they must bear? And in the place above, should he somehow rise to see it, will his people there be asked to sit to the left, crowded on unpainted benches?