The lieutenant pointed to Leaming. “Take him up to the top of the bluff. Be as gentle as you can-he's got a nasty wound.”
“Yes, suh. We do dat.” Again, the Negroes spoke together. One grabbed Mack Leaming's legs, the other the upper part of his body.
He groaned when they lifted him, not because they were harsh but because he couldn't help himself.
Up the steep slope he went. He groaned whenever a Negro's foot came down on the ground. He knew the blacks weren't trying to be cruel-on the contrary, in fact. But the slightest jolt made the long track the Mini? ball tore through his body cry out in torment. Tears ran down his cheeks. He bit the inside of his lower lip till he tasted blood.
“Here you is, suh. We lay you down on the ground now,” said the black who had him by the shoulders. Leaming yelped like a dog hit by a wagon wheel when they did. After lying still for a moment, he sighed. He still hurt, but with a steady ache, not the sudden, fiery jolts he'd known when they were moving him.
“Do you want some more water?” the Confederate lieutenant asked.
“Oh, please,” Leaming said.
“All right. I'm going to lift your head up a little so you can drink easier.” Leaming gasped when the Reb did that, but he couldn't deny it helped: not nearly so much water dribbled down the side of his face. And the smoothest whiskey in the world couldn't have done a better job of reviving him than that plain, ordinary water-so he thought, anyhow.
“God bless you,” he said, and held out his hand. He was not surprised when the C.S. lieutenant's grip matched his own. They smiled at each other.
A sergeant commandeered the two Negroes who'd carried him up to the top of the bluff. “Come on, damn you!” he yelled. “Don't stand there like lazy niggers, even if you damn well are. Plenty of bodies to dispose of.”
Both blacks looked toward the lieutenant. He just shrugged, as if to say he was done with them. Off they went. The sergeant wasn't wrong. Negro and white prisoners were carrying their comrades-in-arms' corpses to the earthwork and throwing them into the ditch in front of it-the ditch that so dismally failed to keep out the Confederates.
“There is a man who is not quite dead yet,” said someone: a white man, by his voice.
“Put him down.” By the authority in the answer, it had to come from a Confederate officer. “If he dies in the night, we can throw him in come morning. And if he's still breathing at sunup… Well, we'll worry about it then.”
Leaming started to say something to his fellow Freemason, only to discover the man no longer stood by his side. He looked around – where had the lieutenant gone? Leaming couldn't spot him. Was that his voice giving orders over by the sutlers' stalls? Leaming thought so, but couldn't be sure.
He also thought the other man might have done more for him: might, for instance, have hunted up a surgeon to see to his wound. But, although still weak, he no longer feared he would die right away. His wound finally seemed to have stopped bleeding and he felt much better for the water the Rebel lieutenant gave him. He'd been dry as the Utah desert inside.
Not far away, a Negro asked, “Reckon this here's deep enough, suh?”
“Make it deeper, if you please.” Mack Leaming blinked in astonishment. That was Major Bradford, sure as hell, and he would have expected Forrest's troopers to kill Bradford out of hand. But the commandant went on, “I want to make sure the scavengers can't get at poor Theo.”
“Whatever you say, suh.” The black man sounded resigned. Leaming heard first one spade, then another, bite into the ground. Dirt flew out and came down with wet smacking noises.
Bill Bradford still breathing! Leaming shook his head in amazement even though moving hurt. Bradford had done everything he could to make the Rebs in west Tennessee hate him, so why was he still alive after they went on their killing rampage? Try as he would, Leaming couldn't fathom it.
The sun slid below the horizon. Dusk deepened toward darkness.
XIII
MATT WARD LOOKED AT THE hole in the ground in which Major Bradford was burying his brother. By now, it was deeper than the colored grave diggers were tall. It looked blacker than they did, too; in the fading light, it might have gone all the way down to China. Sure as hell, Theodorick Bradford was getting the fanciest send-off of any Federal at Fort Pillow – fancier than the Confederate dead were getting, too.
When Ward glanced at Theo Bradford's body, that thought crossed his mind again. From somewhere, Bill Bradford had come up with a cloth to wrap his brother's corpse. Oh, the shroud was bloodstained here and there from the wounds the older man had taken. But for that, though, he might have died of natural causes.
"Why don't you have some carpenters build him a coffin, too?" Ward asked.
Sarcasm rolled off Bradford like water off a duck's back. "That won't be necessary," the U.S. officer answered. To the colored men roped in to help him, he added, "I reckon you've got it deep enough."
"I reckon we done got it deep enough a while ago now," one of the Negroes said. Both of them tossed their shovels out of the grave. One black climbed out at a corner, then reached into the hole to help his comrade out.
"Stick around," Bradford told them. "You'll need to fill it in when I'm done here." They looked at him. They looked at the shovels, and at their hands. They looked at the grave they'd just dug. Neither of them said a word. In their shoes (not that they were wearing shoes), Ward wouldn't have, either. Too easy to knock them over the head and toss them into the ditch outside the earthwork. Whatever happened to them, they wouldn't get a grave like this one. They wouldn't get much of a grave at all.
Major Bradford slid his brother's body into its final resting place as gently as he could. Then he pulled a small Testament from the left breast pocket of his tunic. Almost everyone who carried a little Bible carried it there, in the hope that it would stop an almost-spent Mini? ball. Once in a blue moon, it did. Ministers preached sermons about the pocket Testament that saved a life.
Like everything that had to do with Bill Bradford right now, the little book was soaked. He opened it anyway, and frowned. "Too dark to read," he said to Ward. "Would you get me a torch?"
"I ain't your nigger. You can go to the Devil, for all I care," Ward said indignantly. "You want a torch, you can damn well get your own."
"All right, then-I will," Bradford said. He wouldn't have to go far to find one. Plenty of them burned as the Confederates went on plundering Fort Pillow. He came back a few minutes later carrying not only a torch but also a jug. He set that down beside him and offered Ward the torch. "Would you be so kind as to hold it for me?"
Grudgingly, Ward nodded. "Reckon I can do that much." "Thank you kindly." Bradford went through the pocket Testament with care, muttering, "Hope the pages aren't too soggy and stuck together." Then he stopped and nodded. "Here we are." His voice grew solemn: "'Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whomsoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?' "
"I believe," Matt Ward murmured. The colored soldiers said something, too. The words were probably as familiar to them as they were to him and to Bill Bradford.
Ward thought Bradford would let it go there, but the Federal read some other verses from the Book of John: " 'I am the door: by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture… I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so I know the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep… Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.' "