That was enough baseball for Caudell. He went past Captain Lewis’s tent and the company banner. A few soldiers leaned against their huts. More than one was stripping an AK-47 and putting it back together again. The fascination with the new repeaters had not worn off in the month since they’d been issued.
“Hello, Melvin,” Caudell said, seeing Mollie Bean outside her cabin. She was feeding rounds into a banana clip.
“Hello, First Sergeant,” she answered. “Reckon we’re gonna get ourselves some Yankees ‘fore too long?”
Caudell took a step. He squelched in mud. Thanks to the work he’d just had done, it didn’t soak his toes. All the same, he said, “My guess is, we won’t move for a while yet unless the Yanks try something sneaky. Marching on muddy roads wears a man down too much for good fighting afterwards.” Or even a woman, he thought, remembering to whom he was talking.
She said, “You’re likely right. Comin’ back from Gettysburg in the rain, wasn’t nothin‘ but slog, slog, slog till a body wanted to fall down dead at the end of a day.”
“Makes me tired just remembering,” Caudell agreed. The 47th North Carolina had been part of the rear guard at Falling Rivers, Maryland, as the Army of Northern Virginia drew back into its home state, and had lost many men captured because they could not keep up.
All at once, Mollie Bean became intensely interested in the AK-47 magazine in her lap, bending her head down over it. “I need to see you, First Sergeant,” someone said from behind Caudell.
He turned, lifted his hat. “Yes, sir. What is it, Captain Lewis?”
“Walk with me,” Lewis said. Caudell obeyed, matching his pace to the captain’s slow and halting strides. Lewis went by Mollie Bean without the least notice of her. With her head down, the brim of her cap hid her face from him. Caudell smiled to himself; she was expert at such small concealments. After a few steps, Lewis went on, “We have to get the most we can out of these new repeaters.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I think that means thinning our firing lines,” Lewis said. “With these rifles, we don’t need to stand shoulder to shoulder to put out a large volume of fire. The more widely we space ourselves out, the more front we can cover and the smaller the target each individual man presents to the enemy.”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” Caudell said at once. “We were packed together so tight in the charge at Gettysburg, I still think it’s a wonder all of us didn’t get shot. The more space between us for the bullets to go by, the better.”
“Space for the bullets to go by,” Lewis echoed musingly. “I like that. You have a way with words, First Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir,” Caudell said, thinking that if he did, it was because he wrote so many of them for other people. As with anything else, practice made them come easier.
Lewis said, “You hit on something important there. If a skirmish line will let us hold our position or advance as we might have before with a full firing line, that frees up the rest to move round the enemy’s flank or probe his line for weaknesses. When we next go into the field, we’ll have to maneuver accordingly. Some drill with more widely spaced lines would seem to be in order.”
“I’ll see to it, sir,” Caudell said. George Lewis hadn’t been a teacher before the war—he’d dabbled in politics—but two years as an officer had taught him full respect for drill and practice.
“Good,” he said now. “Pass the word on to the sergeants and corporals. In battle, we’ll often be maneuvering by squads, so they’re the ones who will have to be able to put the men through the proper paces.”
“I’ll see to it,” Caudell said again.
“I’m sure you will. Carry on, First Sergeant.” Lewis limped away, a determined man who’d settled one piece of business but had many more to see to.
Nate Caudell lacked the captain’s abrupt decisiveness. He stood scratching his chin for several seconds, wondering whether he should head straight back to his cabin and tell whichever of his messmates happened to be there what the captain had said. At last, he decided not to. He’d see them all together at supper, and tell them then. Tomorrow morning would be time for Corporals Lewis—who was no relation to the captain—and Massey.
Having made up his mind thus, he ran into Otis Massey not five minutes later. “Makes sense to me, First Sergeant,” Massey said when Caudell was through relaying Captain Lewis’s words. “ ‘Course, rememberin’ it when them damnyankees is shootin’ at us might could take a bit o’ doin’.”
“That’s why we practice it beforehand,” Caudell said patiently.
Massey shifted his chaw from one cheek to the other, which made him look for a moment like a sheep chewing its cud. “Yeah, reckon so.” He’d always been a good soldier; that was how he’d got himself promoted. He was slower to grasp that, as corporal, he was responsible for his whole squad, not just himself.
Caudell walked down to his hut. He was about to go in when he saw a black man in Confederate grey going by with an AK-47 slung on his back. “How you doin’, Georgie?” he called.
George Ballentine looked to see who was talking to him. “I’s right well, First Sergeant, suh,” he answered. “How you be?”
“I’m all right,” Caudell answered. “So the boys in Company H let you have one of the new repeaters, did they?”
“Yassuh, they did. I’s a regular No’th Carolina Tiger, I is,” Ballentine said. “If’n I goes to the fightin’ with food or some such, I gets to shoot back if the Yankees shoots at me.”
“You’ve got a better rifle there than your master ever dreamed of. He’d have one too, if he hadn’t run away on us,” Caudell said. Ballentine had come to the regiment as bodyguard to Addison Holland of Company H. Holland was a deserter, six months gone now. Ballentine had stayed with the North Carolina Tigers as company cook, tailor, and general handyman. Caudell wondered about that. “Why didn’t you take off too, Georgie? We haven’t caught your master yet. Odds are we never would have got you.”
Something changed in the black man’s face; all at once it became a fortress to guard the thoughts behind it. Though he owned no slaves himself, Caudell had seen that guarded look on other men’s Negroes many times. “Don’ wanna be no runaway,” Ballentine said. Caudell thought that would end the conversation; the black man had said what a black man had to say to get by in a white man’s world. But Ballentine chose to elaborate: “I’s just about like a free man now. The men, they treats me like one o’ them. I don’ belong to nobody in particular—jus’ about as good as not belongin’ t’nobody at all. Like you say, I even gots this here nice gun. How’s I gonna do better’n that, runnin’ away?”
Go north was the unspoken thought in Caudell’s mind. It had to be in George Ballentine’s, too. But risks went with it. If a Confederate picket spotted him trying to cross the Rapidan, he was dead. The other thing that struck Caudell was how much Ballentine’s answer reminded him of Mollie Bean’s. Neither had any prospects to speak of in the outside world; both had found in the army niches that suited them and people who cared about them.
“Company H is lucky to have you, Georgie,” Caudell said. “They don’t have to eat their own bad cooking.”
Ballentine’s dark face split in a grin. “Ki! That’s a natural fact, First Sergeant, suh. Some o’ them fellas, they burns water if they tries to cook it. I gots to go now—got me some chickens to stew up.”
“Chickens?” Where Caudell had been mildly envious of the North Carolina Tigers before, now green-eyed jealousy woke to full clamor. “Where’d you come up with chickens, Georgie?”