“All right.” The loader eased off. The whole battery also knew not to get Featherston started, or he was liable to go on for hours. Scott looked around. “What worries me is that it doesn’t look like we’re building up to match ’em. Sure, the defense has an advantage, but still-”
“Yeah.” Featherston’s voice was rough. “We kill two damnyankees for every one of us they get, that’s bully, but if they send three or four at us for every one we’ve got holdin’ ’em back, sooner or later they run us out of our position.”
“That’s the truth,” Scott said. “They got more o’ those damn barrels than we do, too, and they scare the infantry fit to shit themselves.”
“Wish I could see some barrels over yonder,” Jake said. “If I could see ’em, we could try hittin’ ’em, or, if we couldn’t reach, we could send word back to division HQ and let the big guns have a go at ’em.” He spat again, then asked, “Your gas helmet in good shape?”
“Sure as hell is.” Scott slapped the ugly hood of gas-proofed canvas he wore on his left hip. “Yankees fight dirty as the devil, you ask me, throwing gas shells at us when they start a barrage and making us fight while we’re wearing these goddamn things.”
“I ain’t gonna argue with you, on account of I reckon you’re right,” Jake said. “ ’Course, now that they went and thought of it for us, we do the same to them every chance we get. If we had any brains back there in Richmond, we’d’ve figured it out for our own selves, but you look at the way this here war’s been run and you’ll see what a sorry hope that is.”
He would have gone on-the idiocy of the War Department roused him to repeated furious tirades-but the sound of marching men heading north up the dirt road from Round Hill toward the front made him break off and look back over his shoulder. Michael Scott looked up toward the crest of the hill, too, relief on his face. “They are giving the line some reinforcements,” the loader said. “I thank you, Jesus; I’ll sing hallelujah come Sunday.”
Over the hill and down toward the guns of the battery came the head of the column. Jake started to look away; he’d seen any number of infantry columns moving up toward the battle line. Here, though, his head snapped back toward the oncoming soldiers. He stared and stared.
That the troops were new and raw, that their uniforms were a fresh butternut as yet clean, as yet unfaded and unwrinkled from too many washings in harsh soap and too many delousings that didn’t work-that didn’t matter. He’d seen raw troops before, and knew the edges would rub off in a hurry. But these men, all save their officers and noncoms, had skins darker than their uniforms: some coffee with cream, some coffee without, some almost the black of midnight or a black cat.
On they tramped, tin hats on their heads, Tredegars on their shoulders, packs on their backs, gas helmets bouncing against their hipbones. They were big, rugged men, and marched well. A couple of them turned their heads for a better look at Featherston’s field gun. Noncoms screamed abuse at them, the same sort of abuse they would have screamed at raw white troops foolish enough to turn their heads without permission.
Only when the whole regiment had marched past could Jake bring himself to speak. Even then, he mustered nothing more than a whisper hoarse with anger and disbelief: “Jesus God, we’re going to have nigger infantry in front of us? What in blazes are they gonna do the first time a barrel comes at ’em? Shit on a plate, barrels scare white troops. Niggers’ll run so fast, they’ll leave their shadows behind, and then there won’t be nothin’ between the barrels and us.”
“I don’t know, Sarge,” Scott said. “I don’t reckon they would’ve put ’em in the line if they didn’t reckon they’d get some fighting out of ’em.”
“ I don’t reckon they would’ve put ’em in the line if they had any white men they could use instead,” Jake retorted, to which his loader gave a rueful nod. He went on, “Oh, some of ’em’ll fight-I expect you’re right about that. Some of ’em, not so long ago, they was fightin’ under red flags. So yeah, they’ll fight. Only question is, whose side will they fight on?”
“Do you reckon the Yankees want those black sons of bitches any more’n we do?” Scott asked.
That gave Featherston pause, but not for long. “Anything that’ll take us down a peg’ll be fine by the Yanks, I expect,” he answered. “If we’d known it’d come down to this, we never would’ve gotten into the war in the first place, I reckon. After it’s done, those niggers’ll have the right to vote, I tell you. Did you ever imagine, in all your born days, that niggers in the Confederate States of America would have the right to vote?”
“No, Sarge, never once,” Scott said. “War’s torn everything to hell.”
“The war,” Featherston agreed. “The war, and the boneheads down in Richmond running the war. Oh, and the niggers, too-talk about tearing things to hell, when they rose up, they almost tore the CSA to hell. And now the boneheads in Richmond are putting rifles in their hands and saying, ‘Yeah, you’re as good as white men. Why the hell not?’ Well, there’ll be a reckoning for that, too.” He sounded eerily certain. “You mark my words-there’ll be a reckoning for that, too.”
Shivering in a trench outside Jonesboro, Arkansas, a U.S. soldier grumbled, “Where in the goddamn hell did I leave my gloves?”
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain, Groome,” Sergeant Gordon McSweeney said sharply.
“Uh, right, Sergeant,” Groome answered. “Sorry, Sergeant.” He was eighteen, a big, tough, beef-fed kid from the plains of Nebraska. Rank, though, had very little to do with why he backed down from McSweeney.
“You need to make your peace with God, not with me,” McSweeney answered, his voice still stern. Groome nodded hastily, placatingly. Had he been a dog, he would have rolled over on his back to expose his throat and belly.
With a grunt, McSweeney went back to making his flamethrower’s trigger mechanism more sensitive. That he took a flamethrower into combat was not the reason he got instant, unthinking obedience from the soldiers in his section. That he was the sort of man who carried a flamethrower into battle with not a thought in his mind but the harm he could wreak on his enemies had more to do with it.
He scowled as he worked. His face was made for scowling, being almost entirely vertical lines: a narrow rectangle with a hard chin, a long nose, and a vertical crease between pale eyes that didn’t seem to blink as often as they should. His hands, large and knobby-knuckled, manipulated a small screwdriver with surprising delicacy.
A shadow fell on the disassembled trigger mechanism. He looked up with a deeper scowl-who presumed to stand in his light? When he saw Captain Schneider, he relaxed. The company commander could do as he pleased, at least when it came to Gordon McSweeney. “Sir?” McSweeney asked, and started to get to his feet.
“As you were,” Schneider said.
McSweeney obediently checked himself. As far as he was concerned, Captain Schneider was too lenient with all the men in his company, McSweeney himself included. But the captain had ordered him not to come to attention, and so he did not.
“Division headquarters wants some captured Rebs tonight for interrogation,” Schneider said.
“Yes, sir, I’ll go,” McSweeney said at once.
Captain Schneider frowned. “I didn’t mean you in particular, Sergeant,” he said. “I meant for you to tell off a party to go into no-man’s-land and come back with prisoners.”
“Sir, I’ll go,” McSweeney repeated. “The men Gideon took with him to fight the Midianites chose themselves. I shall do the same. The Lord will protect me-or, if it be His will that I fall here, I shall go on to my glory, for I know in my heart that I am numbered among the elect.” He was every bit as uncompromisingly Presbyterian as his features suggested.
Schneider’s frown did not go away. “I don’t want to lose you, Sergeant,” he said. “You’re too valuable a fighting man. And your courage is not in question. It hardly could be, with that on your chest.”