The Guns of the South Read online

  Another batter came up. After taking a couple of pitches, he connected solidly. If the earlier pop had come from a mortar, this ball was blasted out of the brass muzzle of a twelve-pounder Napoleon. It also flew straight to the shortstop. He leaped high in the air and speared it. The watching soldiers went wild. The batter flipped his club away in disgust. The shortstop threw the ball to the pitcher, then rubbed his hands on the ragged seat of his trousers—that one had stung.

  “Is that Iverson Longmire from Company G?” Caudell asked the man next to him. “He’s something to watch.”

  “That’s him,” the private answered. “Yeah, he’s a demon baseballer, ain’t he?”

  After those two quick outs, four straight hits fell in, and two runs scored. Then another ball, this one on the ground, went to the intrepid Longmire. Caudell waited for him to gobble it up and throw it to first base. But at the last instant, it kicked up off a pebble and hit him right between the legs. He went down in a heap, clutching at himself. Two more runners crossed the plate—actually, a piece of wood from an AK-47 crate. The men who had cheered Longmire to the skies laughed until they had to hang on to each other to stay on their feet.

  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?”

  “As’ me no questions, I tells you no lies,” the black man said smugly. He strutted on back toward his own company, visibly proud of his talent as a forager.

  A horse came trotting off the road south from Orange Court House into the regimental encampment. Aboard it was Benny Lang. He pulled the animal up short in front of Caudell. His lean face was twisted with fury. He stabbed a forefinger in the direction of George Ballentine’s back. “You, First Sergeant! What the bleeding hell is that fucking kaffir doing with an AK-47? Answer me, damn you!”

  “He’s not in my company, so I can’t answer you exactly, Mr. Lang,” Caudell said, speaking as carefully as if the Rivington man were an officer.

  “Whose bloody company is he in, then?” Lang demanded.

  “Company H, sir,” Caudell said. He explained how Ballentine had come to be there, and how he had stayed with the company after Addison Holland abandoned it. “I’m sure it’s all right.”

  “In a pig’s arse it is. Teach a kaf—a nigger—to use a weapon, and next thing you know, he’ll be aiming at you. Company H, you say? Who’s captain there?”

  “That would be Captain Mitchell, sir. Captain Sidney Mitchell.”

  “I am going to have a small chat with Captain Sidney fucking Mitchell, then, First Sergeant. We’ll see if he lets a nigger touch a weapon after that, by God!” He jerked savagely on the reins to turn the horse, dug his heels into its sides. The animal let out an angry neigh and bounded off. Space showed between the saddle and Lang’s backside at every stride; he was anything but a polished rider. But he clung to his seat with grim determination.

  Rufus Daniel came out of the cabin. Along with Caudell, he watched Benny Lang’s furious ride. “I take back what I told you a while ago, Nate,” Daniel said. “Wouldn’t want him for overseer after all—he purely hates niggers. That’d bring a farm nothin’ but grief. Georgie Ballentine; I druther have him alongside me ‘n half the white men in this company.”

  “Me, too.” Caudell took off his hat so he could scratch his head. “Lang hates niggers as if they’d done something to him personally, not just—you know what I mean.”

  “Reckon I do,” Daniel said. Hardly a white man in the South failed to look down on blacks. But the two races lived and worked side by side. They saw each other, dealt with each other, every day. Caudell could think of nothing likelier to spark a slave revolt than all whites displaying the ferocity Benny Lang showed.

  “You know, I hope Captain Mitchell tells him where to get off,” Caudell said. He had no great love for Negroes himself, but George Ballentine was part of the fabric of the regiment in a way Benny Lang could never be.

  “Don’t think he’ll do it,” Daniel said morosely. “Them Rivington fullers, they’re where the repeaters ‘n’ cartridges come from. Ain’t smart to rile ‘em. Stacked against that, poor Georgie’s a small fish.”

  Caudell sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right, Rufus.”

  Laughter and shouts of fury, mixed with harsh coughs, came from behind him. He whirled around. When he saw a cabin with smoke billowing out its door and windows, his first thought was that it had caught on fire. Then he noticed the flat board placed over the top of the chimney. It wasn’t a fire, it was a prank. To confirm that, the evident prankster stood a few feet away from his handiwork, laughing so hard he could barely stand up. That was unwise. Three men had been in the cabin, and they set on him with intent to maim. His laughter abruptly turned to cries of pain.

  “Goddam fool,” Rufus Daniel said.

  “Yup. Well, we’d better get ‘em apart.” Caudell raised his voice to a shout: “You there, that’s enough! Break it up!” He and Daniel ran toward the combatants. “Break it up, I tell you!”

  The three turned loose the one. Now he could hardly stand because he’d been badly knocked around. Rufus Daniel put hands on hips, stared scornfully at the battered private. “Well, Gideon, looks to me like you got ‘bout what you deserve.”

  Gideon Bass felt cautiously under his right eye. It was already purpling; he’d have a fine shiner tomorrow. But a grin quickly crept back onto his face. He was only nineteen, an age when a man is often willing to suffer for his art. “Oh, but weren’t it a hell of a fine smudge, Sarge?” he said.

  Caudell turned on the three men who had been smoked out. One had just taken the offending board off the chimney, and was sidling around toward the back of the cabin. Caudell’s cough froze the would-be escapee in his tracks. “Nice try, John,” he said. “Now come on back.” As nonchalantly as he could, John Floyd rejoined David Leonard and Emelius Pullen. Caudell glared at all. three of them. “You don’t go beating on your mates.”

  “You seen what he done, First Sergeant,” Floyd protested. His voice had an upcountry twang to it; he and Leonard were from Davidson County, a long way west of Caudell’s home.

  “I saw it,” Caudell said. “You all should have just grabbed him and let Sergeant Daniel and me deal with him. We would have, I promise you that.” He turned to Daniel. “What shall we do with ‘em now?”

  “Up to you, Nate” but I don’t reckon tomfoolery’s worth takin’ to the captain,” Daniel said. “These three done breathed smoke awhile, and this ‘un’s got a set o’ lumps. You ask me, it’s even.”

  “Fair enough,” Caudell said after a pause intended to convey that he was going along with the suggestion only out of the goodness of his heart. When that pause had sunk in, he added, “This had better be the end of it. If there’s a next time, you’ll all be sorry. Understand?”

  “Yes, First Sergeant,” the miscreants intoned with unctuous sincerity.

  “Why don’t y’all go someplace else for a while, Gideon?” Rufus Daniel put in. “Someplace a good ways away, I mean, and stay there till suppertime.”

  Bass strode away. As he rounded a corner, Caudell heard him guffaw. He rolled his eyes. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Hope nobody wrings his fool neck till the fightin’ starts. That oughta settle him down some, maybe,” Daniel said. “Hope Dempsey don’t hear about this, too, otherwise we ‘uns is gonna get smudged one fine day.”

  “One fine day soon,” Caudell said; Dempsey Eure loved mischief. “Other thing is, Dempsey’s too smart to stand around waiting for us to come out and beat on him. He’d turn up an hour later looking all innocent, and we’d never be able to prove a thing.”

  Rufus Daniel grinned. “We’d git him anyways.” He sounded as if he were looking forward to it.

  When Sunday morning rolled around, Caudell joined most of the regiment at divine services. Chaplain William Lacy was a Presbyterian, while the majority of the men he served—Caudell among them—were Baptists, but he had proved himself a good and pious man, which counted for more than differences in creed.

  “Let us bend our heads in prayer,” he said. “May God remember our beloved Confederacy and keep it safe. May He lift up his hand and smite that of the oppressor, and may our true patriots in gray withstand their test with bravery.”

  “Amen,” Caudell said. He added a silent prayer of his own for General Lee.

  Lacy said, “I will take as my text today Romans 8:28: ‘We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.’ We see it illustrated in the events of the past few w
eeks. When our army came short of success at Gettysburg, many may have suffered a loss of faith that our cause would triumph. But now God has delivered into our hands these fine new repeaters with which to renew the fight, and through them He will deliver into our hands the Yankees who seek to subjugate us.”

  “You tell ‘em, preacher!” a soldier called.

  Lacy paced back and forth as he warmed to his sermon. He was a tall, lean man with a neat beard and clean-shaven upper lip. He wore a black coat of almost knee length, with green olive branches embroidered on each sleeve to show his calling.

  “In times of peace, the coming of a new rifle could hardly be taken as a sign of God’s love,” he said. “But here and now, when we battle for the freedom which is more precious than life itself, how can we view the arrival of these AK-47s as anything save providential?”

  “That’s right!” a man said. Another shouted, “These here repeaters is gonna let us give the Yankees hell!”

  The chaplain went on in that vein for a few more minutes, then called up soldiers who helped him pass out hymn books to the rest of the men. He didn’t have enough to go around, but almost all the soldiers knew the hymns by heart anyhow. “We’ll start today with ‘Rock of Ages’—page forty-seven, for those of you with hymnals,” he said. “I want to hear you put your hearts into it today—make a joyful noise unto the Lord!”

  Caudell’s voice rose with the rest. The men sang enthusiastically; there were enough of them that good voices and poor mostly blended together. As the last notes of the hymn died away, though, Caudell looked around in puzzlement. Something was missing, but he could not place what it was.

  Lacy noticed nothing wrong. “’Amazing Grace’ now—page, ah, fifty-one in the Army Hymn Book.”

  “Amazing Grace” was harder to sing than “Rock of Ages,” which required little more than vigor. Maybe that was why, halfway through the hymn, Caudell figured out what had bothered him before. His own singing faltered as he looked around again, this time for someone in particular. He did not see him.