Fort Pillow Read online

  Jack Jenkins was not feeling sweet. The horse in front of his kept kicking up mud. He'd got splattered a couple of times, once right in the face. But he had to stay close behind; in this dripping darkness, he could easily lose the road. And if he did, how many men would follow him to nowhere?

  Up in a tree, an owl hooted unhappily. It couldn't like the weather any better than he did. With raindrops pattering down, it couldn't hear scurrying mice. And it couldn't see them, either. Nobody could see anything here.

  “Come on!” Colonel Barteau called. “Keep moving! Got to keep moving! Y'all want to learn the homemade Yankees a lesson, right?”

  “You bet, Colonel!” Was that a trooper who really did feel like punishing the Federal soldiers in Fort Pillow, or was it some lieutenant pretending to be a cheery soldier? Jenkins couldn't tell, which made him suspect the worst.

  He was hardened to the saddle, but a ride like this took its toll. When he finally dismounted, he knew he would walk like a spavined chimpanzee for a while. One more reason to take it out on the coons and the galvanized Yankees in Fort Pillow, he thought, and rode on.

  Maybe Ulysses S. Grant was prouder of the three stars on his shoulder straps than Benjamin Robinson was of the three stripes on his left sleeve, but maybe he wasn't, too. No doubt Grant had risen from humble beginnings. He was a tanner's son. He'd failed at everything he tried till the war began. Only the fighting gave him a chance to rise.

  And the same was also true of Sergeant Ben Robinson. Next to him, though, U. S. Grant had started out a nobleman. Ben Robinson was born a slave on an indigo plantation not far outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He'd heard the big guns boom when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter.

  Not long after that, his master ran short of cash and sold him and several other hands to a dealer who resold them at a tidy profit to a cotton planter with a farm outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Not without pride, Ben knew he'd brought the dealer more money than any of the other hands. He was somewhere around thirty, six feet one, and close to two hundred pounds. And he worked hard — or as hard as any slave was likely to work, seeing that he wasn't working for himself.

  Once, drunk, his new owner told him, “If all niggers was like you,

  Ben, we'd have a hell of a time keeping slaves.”

  The white man didn't remember it the next morning. Ben Robinson never forgot it. He probably would have run off anyway when Federal troops got down to Corinth, Mississippi. He'd long been sure he could run his own life better than any white man could run it for him. But finding out that his master more or less agreed with him sure didn't hurt.

  He'd been a stevedore, a roustabout, a strong back for the Yankees, too — till they started signing up colored soldiers. He was one of the first men to volunteer. Even the very limited, very partial freedom he had as a laborer struck him as worth fighting for.

  His size and strength got him accepted at once. And, along with the good head on his shoulders, they got him promoted not once but twice. Officers in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery were all white. Most of the sergeants were white, too. For a colored man to get his third stripe was no mean feat.

  Ben Robinson had heard that there actually were a handful of Negro officers in the U.S. Army. There was even a major, a man named Martin Delany. But he'd been born in the U.S.A. and educated like a white man. For somebody who'd started out a field hand and who still couldn't write his name, sergeant was a long, long climb.

  A soldier in Robinson's company tossed a well — gnawed hambone on the ground. “Is you a pig, Nate?” the sergeant called. “Way you leaves your rubbish all over, I reckon mebbe you is. Take it back to the kitchen an' throw it out there.”

  Nathan Hunter scowled at him. “Is you happy you gits to play the white man over me?”

  A lot of Negro soldiers preferred to take orders from whites, not from their own kind. It was as if they'd been taking orders from white men for so many generations, that seemed natural to them. But if another black man told them what to do, they saw him as a cheap imitation of the real thing.

  “Don't want to be no white man.” Robinson meant that from the bottom of his soul. All the same, he tapped his chevrons with his right hand. “Don't got to be no white man, neither. All I gots to be is a sergeant, an' I am. This here place bad enough if we do try an' keep it halfway clean. If'n we don't, we might as well be pigs fo' true.”

  Still scowling, Hunter picked up the bone and carried it away. Ben Robinson nodded to himself. Military punishments weren't so harsh as the lashes a master or an overseer could deal out — quite a few of the men in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery joined the Army with stripes on their backs. But marching back and forth with a heavy plank on your shoulder or sitting out in the open gagged and with your hands tied behind you and your knees drawn up to your chest, while they weren't painful, were humiliating. For men whose sense of self often was still fragile, stripes could be easier to bear than embarrassment.

  Although Robinson had the authority to mete out such punishments himself, he wouldn't have done it. Had he tried, a soldier would have gone over his head to an officer — probably straight to Major Booth. Better to let the men with shoulder straps — and with white skins — take care of anything really serious.

  He walked over to the twelve — pounder for which his company was responsible. The smoothbore gun threw an iron ball as big as his fist a mile, or hurled a round of shrapnel just as far. At close range, canister turned the piece into an enormous shotgun that could mow down everything in front of it.

  Ben set a proud, affectionate hand on the smooth curve of the barrel, almost as if it were the smoothly curved flank of a woman he loved. He hadn't seen combat yet, but he'd practiced with the gun. He knew what it could do. He frowned. He knew what it could do if it got the chance.

  Sergeant Joe Hennissey belonged to Company A. He had no more rank than Robinson, but he had white — very white — skin, red hair, and a beard the exact color of a new penny. He had a better chance of getting something done than Robinson did. The Negro waved to him. “Reckon we got us some trouble here, Sergeant,” he said.

  “And why might that be?” The Old Sod still filled Hennissey's voice. To most whites, an Irishman was only a small step up from a Negro. To Ben Robinson, looking up at the whole staircase, the distinction between the Irish and other whites was invisible.

  “When they made this here fort, they made the goddamn parapet too thick.” Robinson kicked at it: eight or ten feet of earthwork.

  “Got to be thick enough to be after keeping out the Secesh cannonballs, now,” Hennissey said.

  “Oh, yes, suh.” Ben knew he wasn't supposed to call the other sergeant sir, but he did it half the time without even thinking. Calling a white man sir was always safe. The redheaded sergeant certainly didn't seem to mind. “But look here, suh. Suppose them Rebels is comin' at us, an' suppose they gets down in the low ground under the bluff. We can't git the guns down low enough — “

  “Depress 'em, you mean.”

  “Depress 'em. Thank you kindly.” Robinson was always glad to

  pick up a technical term. “We can't depress 'em enough to shoot at the Rebs when they is gettin' close to we. Almost like not havin' no guns at all, you know what I's sayin', suh?”

  Hennissey scratched his beard. Once he started scratching, he seemed to have trouble stopping — he wasn't scratching for thought any more, but because he itched. Seeing him scratch made Ben want to scratch, too. He was lousy. Most of the men at the fort were.

  “We can't be doin' much about where the guns are at,” the Irishman said at last. “But I wouldn't worry my head about it too much, Ben me boy. For one thing, we can hit the Secesh bastards while they're still a ways away, so they'll have the Devil's own time coming close at all, at all. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “Reckon you's right, suh,” Robinson said.

  “Reckon I am, too,” Hennissey said smugly. “And even if them sons of bitches do come close, have we got the New Era do
wn there

  on the river, or have we not? Be after tellin' me, if you'd be so kind.”

  “The gunboat, she there, suh,” Ben Robinson agreed. Hennissey clapped him on the back. “All right, then. You'll fret yourself no more about it, will you now?”

  “Reckon I won't,” Robinson said.

  “Good. That's good, then.” Hennissey walked away.

  Was it good, then? Still not convinced, Robinson walked over to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the Mississippi. Sure enough, the gunboat floated there. Seen from more than four hundred feet above the river, the New Era seemed as small — and as flimsy — as a toy boat floating in a barrel of water. Could its presence make up for the problems with the field guns? Well, he could hope so, anyhow.

  Major William Bradford was a lawyer before the war turned western Tennessee upside down and inside out. Since then, he'd stayed busy doing the same thing as a lot of other Tennesseans on both sides: paying back anybody with whom he had a score to settle.

  He'd done a good job — better than most. Because of that, he and the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) he led were marked men whenever they rode out of Fort Pillow. He didn't mind. If anything, it made him proud. They were marked men because they'd left their mark on their enemies. And when those enemies also happened to be enemies of the United States, well, so much the better.

  He made himself nod to Lionel Booth when their paths crossed. “Good morning, Major,” he said, his voice as smooth as if he were in a courtroom.

  “Morning, Major,” Booth replied. He spoke with a Missouri twang. He'd been a sergeant major in a Missouri regiment before winning officer's rank. He was shorter and squatter than Bradford — homelier, too, thought the Tennessean, who was vain of his looks. But Booth was also senior to him even if younger, and so commanded inside Fort Pillow. Bradford didn't like that, but couldn't do anything overt about it. “Can your niggers really fight?” he asked Booth.

  “I expect they can,” the other man said. “And I expect they won't have to. All's quiet around these parts. It'll likely stay that way.”

  “General Hurlbut doesn't think so, or he wouldn't have sent you up here,” Bradford said. Was that bitterness? He knew damn well it was. Fort Pillow had been his ever since the Thirteenth Tennessee came down from Paducah in January. Now it wasn't any more. The loss stung. Better not to show it, though. He couldn't get rid of Booth, however much he wished he could.

  The senior officer shrugged. “When you build yourself a house, you're smart to dig a storm cellar down underneath. Maybe you won't need it. Chances are you won't, matter of fact. But if you ever do, you'll need it bad. So that's what we are — we're your storm cellar.”

  Bradford's eyes flicked to the Negroes who'd come north a couple of weeks before. They were going about their business, much as any other soldiers would have. They paraded smartly enough. They probably marched better than the men from his own command, for whom spit and polish was a distinct afterthought. But marching in step didn't make their skins any less dusky or their hair any less frizzy. Bradford had just asked if they could fight. He didn't want to do it again, not in so many words. He tried a different question that amounted to the same thing: “If Bedford Forrest did show up here some kind of way, could we hold him off?”

  To a Union man from west Tennessee, that was always the question. A preacher face — to — face with the Devil would have had the same worry. How could he help wondering, Am I strong enough? Fielding Hurst hadn't been, and Bradford was uneasily aware that the Sixth Tennessee was a bigger, tougher outfit than the one he led.

  On the other hand, Forrest's men had caught Fielding Hurst out in the open. The garrison here had Fort Pillow to protect it. And Lionel Booth, maybe because he came from Missouri, didn't hold Forrest in the same fearful regard as local men did. “Major, if he showed up here, we would whip him back to wherever he came from,” Booth said, not the tiniest trace of doubt in his voice. “We can hold this fort against anybody in the world — in the world, mind you — for two days.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Bradford said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.

  “No reason you shouldn't. The truth always has a good sound to it.” Major Booth tipped his hat and went on his way. He sounded like a preacher who was ready to wrestle with the Devil, all right.

  Despite his reassurances, Bradford hoped the Devil stayed far, far away. He was no coward, but he didn't care to borrow trouble, either. And Nathan Bedford Forrest was trouble with a capital T.

  Bradford climbed up onto the earthworks enclosing the Federal garrison and peered east. His nerves sent him up there, not his common sense. He knew that. The drizzle — sometimes it was real rain — coming down drastically shortened his range of vision. He could barely make out the two rows of wooden barracks still left from the fort's earlier, larger incarnation, let alone the rifle pits beyond them. He knew those pits were there, and also knew soldiers in blue manned them. But they might have been a mile beyond the moon for all his eyes told him.

  What else was out there that his eyes couldn't see? From everything Major Booth said, he didn't think any Rebel soldiers were within forty miles of Fort Pillow. Bradford hoped the younger man was right, and had no particular reason to think him wrong. He found himself worrying even so.

  Nerves, he thought again, and made himself walk along the parapet for a while before coming down again. A few soldiers, both white and colored, sent him curious looks. He ignored them — he seemed to ignore them, anyhow. Lionel Booth, now… He thought Booth really was nerveless. Bradford envied him for that as well as for his seniority. Maybe such calm really did come with combat experience. Bradford hoped so. He'd raised the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry only the autumn before. None of the men in it had much.

  None of them had much experience in a U.S. uniform, anyhow. More than a few had fought for the Confederacy before switching sides. They'd ridden whichever horse looked like a winner at the moment. Bill Bradford didn't worry about that. They weren't likely to change sides again. Nobody on the other side would trust them now. Whenever they came out of the fort, in fact, they needed to worry about bushwhackers who resented their changing sides once.

  A colored sergeant bawled out a private for going around with filthy boots. But for his dialect, he sounded like every other sergeant Bradford had ever heard. The major wondered how often either Negro had worn shoes before joining the U.S. Army. Not very, not unless he missed his guess. They had them now, though.

  And they acted like soldiers now. Would they act like soldiers when bullets flew and cannonballs screamed through the air? Bradford shook his head. He had a hard time believing it.

  He shrugged. Before long, Forrest was bound to go back down to Mississippi. Then these coons would go away, too, and whether they could fight or not wouldn't matter a bit.

  II

  “Come on, ride hard!” Colonel Robert McCulloch called as the Second Missouri Cavalry (C.S.) squelched west toward Brownsville, Tennessee. “You don't want those bastards from Mississippi to get ahead of you, do you?”

  Matt Ward laughed when he heard that. “How many times has Black Bob talked about those Mississippi fellows?” he asked the man riding behind him. “He think maybe we forgot about 'em since ten minutes ago?”

  “Beats me,” Zachary Bartlett answered. He was doing his best to keep a pipe going in the rain, and not having much luck. Ward had given up trying to smoke till he got somewhere dry. A splat and a hiss declared that the pipe had just taken another hit. “Goddamn thing,” Bartlett said without rancor.

  “Goddamn rain,” Ward said, and his friend nodded. He went on,

  “How long till we get to this Brownsville place, anyway?”

  “Shouldn't be much longer,” Bartlett said. He'd said the same thing the last time Ward asked, about an hour earlier. Ward decided that meant he didn't know where the hell Brownsville was, either.

  Somewhere between Jackson and Fort Pill
ow, Ward thought. That took in — what? About seventy miles of ground, anyway. The Second Missouri had been riding west since before daybreak. Ward had done a lot of hard riding in his time. This grinding slog through mud and through streams without bridges was as rough as anything he'd ever tried.

  Somebody'd said Bedford Forrest was coming, too, coming after all. He'd started out after the Second Missouri headed for Fort Pillow. Could he catch up? How soon? Was he really coming at all? Or was it just another rumor, one of the nine million that soldiers invented and passed around to give themselves something to do and something to talk about? Ward didn't know. He didn't waste a lot of time worrying about it, either. If Forrest decided to ride west from Jackson, he did, that was all. If he didn't, they could whip the turncoats and coons in Fort Pillow just fine without him. General Chalmers knew what he was doing. And besides…

  “You own niggers, Zach?” he asked.

  “Me?” Bartlett laughed mirthlessly. “Likely tell! My wife's brother bought himself a couple — three, and he's so goddamn proud of it, it's like his shit don't stink. How about you?”

  “Nope.” Ward shook his head, which made water drip from the brim of his slouch hat. “I got a cousin who does, but he's down in Arkansas somewhere. But I reckon you've been to a slave auction or two, same as I have. “

  “Well, hell, who ain't been?” Bartlett said. “Good way to kill an afternoon, even if the likes of us ain't got the money to buy. Some of the gals are damn fine lookin', too.” His frown looked meaner than it was, for it pulled tight a knife scar at the corner of his mouth. “What you aimin' at, anyways?”

  “You've seen all them niggers standing up there on the block,” Ward said. “I'm not talking about the wenches, now — I mean the bucks. You reckon somebody you can buy and sell like a sack of flour… You reckon somebody like that can fight?”

  “Not so it matters,” his friend answered without hesitation.“ I tell you this, though — any nigger who tries pointing a gun at me, that's one dead nigger right there.”