Fort Pillow Page 9

  Missing him hadn't been so bad, then. He was out of the fight here, anyway. Matt Ward tried to console himself as he reloaded again. You could talk yourself into believing almost anything if you tried hard enough.

  More and more men in blue uniforms ran back to the earthwork on the bluff. Unless the wind suddenly swung, it didn't look as if the second row of wooden buildings would catch. And if they stayed intact, Ward and the other Confederates who'd saved them would be able to go on peppering Fort Pillow from the cover they gave. That was the point of the clash.

  For a little while, the smoke and flames rising from the nearer row of barracks buildings let Lieutenant Mack Leaming believe both rows were on fire. But the bullets still coming from the wooden structures soon disabused him of that notion. The men he'd sent out to burn both rows of buildings at Major Bradford's orders had torched the first row, but not the second. They wouldn't have the chance to do it now. They were falling back toward Fort Pillow. Some of them were running, scrambling up the forward face of the bluff as far as they could go. Others moved more slowly-those were men who would pause to shoot at the Rebs when they got the chance. Still others helped wounded comrades toward what they hoped would be safety.

  A bullet whistled over Leaming's head. He didn't worry about bullets that whistled. They were too far away to be dangerous. Bullets that cracked by-those were the near misses, the scary rounds. People said you never heard the one that got you. Leaming didn't know if that was true, and didn't want to find out, either.

  “Lieutenant, why are those men retreating?” Major Bradford demanded.

  “Sir, there are probably too many Secesh troopers to hold off,” Leaming answered. “If they don't come back, they'll all get killed.”

  “But they didn't do what I sent them out there to do,” Bradford said.

  “No, sir,” Leaming said. Sometimes-often-the least answer you could give was the best one.

  “But they needed to burn those buildings,” Bradford said. “We are in danger as long as Forrest's men can fire from them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Leaming said. It wasn't as if Bradford were wrong. They were in danger from the Confederates in the barracks buildings. As if to prove as much, a minnie snapped past over the major's head. Bradford automatically ducked. So did Leaming.

  “What are we going to do? We can't let them establish themselves there,” the commandant said.

  We can't stop them from establishing themselves there, Leaming thought. We tried. It didn't work. Major Bradford had to know that as well as he did. Since Bradford had to know it, Leaming couldn't think of any answer for him. Then he had a happy thought. “Maybe the New Era can shell them out. “

  “Maybe.” Major Bradford brightened. He had great faith in the gunboat in the Mississippi-more faith than its performance so far justified, as far as Leaming was concerned. “Go tell my brother to direct the gunboat's fire against those buildings.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Leaming tried to sound cooperative, not resigned. He'd given the major the idea, after all. He trotted over to Captain Theodorick Bradford at the edge of the steep bluff leading down to the river. “Your brother's compliments, sir, and he says for you to tell the New Era to pound the stuffing out of the barracks halls and drive the Rebs out of ' em.”

  “Well, I'll try,” Theo Bradford said dubiously. He held up the pair of large wigwag flags and semaphored with great vigor. Leaming peered down, down, down to the New Era. From this distance, the gunboat seemed hardly bigger than a toy.

  An officer-or maybe a sailor-on her deck signaled back.

  “What's he say?” Leaming asked.

  “Says they'll try-I think.” Captain Bradford sounded harried. “I wish to God I had a spyglass so I could make out his flags better. I can't be sure what he's telling me half the time.”

  “Can he read you?” Leaming asked anxiously.

  “I sure hope so,” Theodorick Bradford said-not the most encouraging response he could have given.

  But the New Era had the request. The gunboat did its best to comply. Its guns swung in the direction of the twin rows of barracks halls. Leaming admired that-the sailors far below couldn't see what they were aiming at. One after another, the cannon went off. Fire and smoke belched from their muzzles. He watched the shells rise into the cloudy air, then descend toward their targets. Booms said they'd hit-somewhere.

  “Were those on the mark?” Leaming asked.

  Captain Bradford shrugged. “Damned if I know. I can see the gunboat, or else I can see what it's shooting at. I can't do both at once.” He waved the wigwag flags again. “The more shell the boat puts down, the better the chance that some of them will come down where we want them to.”

  “I see,” Leaming said. He didn't say what he saw, which was bound to be just as well. Since he couldn't change anything, complaining wouldn't do him any good. But Major William Bradford plainly thought the New Era was a vital part of Fort Pillow's defenses against Forrest's men. And so the gunboat might have been-if only it could hit its targets with something resembling accuracy. As things were… Mack Leaming grimaced. As things were, the New Era was doing the best it could, and he had to hope that would be enough.

  Not long after Nathan Bedford Forrest finished his reconnaissance of the ground in front of Fort Pillow, a soldier in a butternut tunic and blue trousers trotted up to him. He'd issued orders that shirts captured from the Yankees had to go into the dye pots right away so his men wouldn't shoot at one another by mistake. Trousers were supposed to be dyed, too, but that was less urgent.

  “What's up, Red?” he asked.

  About half a dozen men in his command answered to that nickname. This lanky Mississippian had hair the color of a newly minted copper penny and ears that stuck out a good four inches. He said, “Ammunition wagons just came up, General.”

  “Did they, by heaven?” Forrest said. “About time!”

  “Yes, sir,” Red said. He probably didn't worry about the struggle they'd had moving those wagons along the narrow, rutted, muddy roads that went through the Hatchie bottoms, especially the troubles they'd had moving them along in pitch darkness. He did have sense enough to ask, “Any special orders for 'em?”

  “Just make goddamn sure you get those cartridges up to the men who need 'em the most,” Forrest answered.

  Red sketched a salute and went back the way he'd come. Bedford Forrest slowly nodded to himself. Up till now, his men had had only the cartridges they carried with them. They were supposed to bring enough to fight with-a rifle musket and cartridges were all a soldier really needed. But some would have more ammunition, some less, and some none at all. Forrest knew only too well that plenty of soldiers were natural-born knuckleheads.

  With the wagons here at last, though, he didn't have to worry about that any more. He wished he would have been able to bring field guns forward, too, but that just wasn't in the cards. One of the Federals' cannon roared. The guns in the fort and the ones on the boat in the river were nuisances, but they weren't anything worse than nuisances. If he could have dropped shells into that cramped space inside the U.S. earthwork, though…

  He shrugged. Worrying about might-have-beens wasn't his style. Another cannon inside Fort Pillow fired at his men. Those really were niggers manning the guns in there. Easy enough to seem brave when they were shooting from inside an earthwork. They wouldn't act like such big men when they met his troopers face-to-face. His hands folded into fists. He was sure of that. Oh, yes.

  For now, though, the coons were having a high old time, skylarking and fooling around and mocking Forrest's men as if the Confederate soldiers would never have the chance to pay them back. They gave the troopers obscene gestures. One Negro even turned around and dropped his pants to show them his bare brown backside.

  Forrest hoped that Negro would take a bullet where it did him the most good. No doubt all the Confederates who saw him did their best to give him what he deserved. But he pulled his trousers up again, waggled his bottom at the
attackers one last time, and jumped down behind the rampart again.

  In spite of himself, Forrest laughed. Say what you would, that Negro had nerve-which only made him need killing more. Ordinary blacks were no great trouble. They did what they were told, the same way ordinary whites did.

  An uppity nigger, though… An uppity nigger was trouble. He might as well have smallpox or measles or some other deadly, contagious disease. He could infect others with what he carried. And if he did, he made them dangerous to white men, too.

  “We got here just in time, sir,” Captain Anderson said, coming up beside Forrest. Quiet fury filled the aide-de-camp's voice.

  “How's that?” Forrest asked.

  “Well, sir, the longer we let these niggers think they're soldiers, the longer they have the chance to believe it, the more trouble they'll be in the long run-not just facing us but spreading their nonsense to other coons,” Anderson said. “Better-much better-to nip all that in the bud.”

  “I was thinking pretty much the same thing,” Forrest said.

  “If we teach those sons of bitches a good lesson, every smoke who puts on a Federal uniform will remember it from here on out,” Anderson said.

  “Don't know much about lessons. Don't care much about lessons, neither.” Forrest grimaced, remembering his own brief, irregular schooling. “I just want to get in there, clean this place out, and then go give the damn yankees another boot in the behind somewheres else.”

  “A boot in the behind isn't what that one damnfool nigger deserved.” Captain Anderson still seethed. “A minnie up the cornholethat's more like it.”

  “He'll get his,” Forrest said. “We can find out who he is and damn well make sure he gets his.”

  “Yes, sir.” But Captain Anderson remained discontented. “He's not the only nigger acting that way-he's just the worst.”

  “I know, I know.” A shell from the gunboat in the Mississippi crashed down not far from the row of wooden huts the Confederates had captured. The cannon in the fort wouldn't bear on those barracks buildings, but the gunboat kept pestering them. Another shell burst over there. Somebody screamed-a sliver of iron must have struck home. Forrest pointed that way. “Here's something for you to do, Captain. “

  “What is it, sir?”

  “Find yourself some men who don't look like they're busy doing anything else.” Bedford Forrest's mouth quirked in a wry grin-you could always find plenty of men like that on a battlefield. He pointed west, toward the great river. “Take' em over there. If we have to storm the fort, we'll want to grab the riverbank just as quick as we can. We'll be able to shoot back at that damn gunboat then, and we'll make sure the damnyankees can't land any reinforcements, too.”

  “I'll do it,” Anderson said. “Reinforcements are about the only thing that can save that place, aren't they?”

  “Nothing's going to save Fort Pillow,” Nathan Bedford Forrest said. “You hear me? Nothing.”

  “Here they come again!” Captain Carron shouted. Sure enough, a couple of hours after their first headlong assault on Fort Pillow was beaten back, the Confederates made another push. Sergeant Ben Robinson and his crew served their twelve-pounder like steam-driven mechanical men. They sent one round of shrapnel after another at Bedford Forrest's troopers.

  But the Rebs were able to get under the range of the gun, the way Robinson had feared they would. Because of the thick earthwork, the crew couldn't depress the cannon enough to bear on them when they drew near. It was up to the soldiers with Springfields then: the colored artillerymen who didn't have a big gun to serve and the dismounted troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry.

  They had the same trouble the gunners did, though to a lesser degree. Because of the thick parapet protecting Fort Pillow, they couldn't easily fire down on the enemy soldiers coming up the steep ground toward them. If they tried, they exposed themselves to Secesh sharpshooters. The Rebs were good marksmen; they wounded several Federals who tried to pick off their friends.

  All the same, Forrest's men had to run a gauntlet to get too far forward for V.S. gunfire to bear on them. Enough of them got hit to make the rest lose heart. Most of them fell back out of easy range, with only a few hanging on down below where the men in the fort had trouble shooting at them.

  Seeing Forrest's fierce fighters move away from Fort Pillow made Charlie Key and Sandy Cole and the rest of the blacks in the gun crew jump in the air and click their heels together. “Look at 'em run!” Charlie shouted. “Just look at 'em run! They ain't so god damn tough! “

  Confederate minnies still cracked past the gunners. “They ain't quit yet, neither,” Robinson pointed out. If you forgot that-or maybe even if you didn't-you'd stop a bullet with your face.

  Charlie was too excited to care. So was Sandy Cole. “So what if they ain't, Ben-uh, Sergeant Ben?” he said. “So what? You ever reckon you'd live to see the day when we had guns an' the buckra was runnin' from us? Feel so good watchin' 'em go, I reckon I done gone to heaven.”

  “You keep carryin' on like a damn fool, a minnie send you straight to heaven,” Ben said gruffly. He knew what a sergeant was supposed to sound like. He'd had several fine white examples. And his own manner proved him an excellent scholar.

  All the same, he knew just what Sandy was driving at. One of the reasons slavery persisted in the South was that whites intimidated blacks. Blacks had always been sure that if they got out of line, if they tried to rise up, whites would fall on them like an avalanche. Whites would be bold, whites would be fierce, whites would be fearless.

  Negroes believed it, anyhow. How could they help but believe it when every sign of unrest was ruthlessly put down? Ben Robinson had believed it himself, back before the war started. Whites were so sure of their own superiority, they convinced Negroes of it, too. Didn't most colored men prefer light-skinned women to their duskier cousins? Weren't very black men, men with broad, flat noses and wide lips, reckoned uglier than those formed more in the image of their masters?

  But how could you go on thinking somebody was better than you by nature when he ran away for fear that you would blow him a new asshole with your Springfield? Wasn't he a man, just like you? Wasn't he a frightened man, just like you?

  It sure looked that way to Ben. Sandy Cole and Charlie Key weren't the only Negroes jeering at the Confederates as they fell back-far from it. The gun crews were fairly restrained; their officers seemed to have them well in hand. But the colored artillerymen serving as foot soldiers alongside the whites of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry were lapping up the sutlers' whiskey as if someone would outlaw it tomorrow. Robinson didn't know if that meant they weren't shooting straight. He didn't need to be Grant or Sherman to see that they weren't thinking straight.

  “'Scuse me, Cap'n, suh,” he said.

  “Yes, Sergeant Robinson? What is it?” Captain Carron gave his three stripes their due.

  “Suh, kin we git the sutlers to put up them whiskey barrels now?” Robinson asked. “Reckon the men done plenty 0' drinkin'. Reckon mebbe some of 'em done too much drinkin'.”

  “I don't think it's harming them any, Sergeant,” the white officer answered. “It keeps their spirits up, you might say.” He smiled at his own joke. Ben Robinson didn't. Carron's head swung this way and that as he looked along the line. “The Tennesseans are drinking, too, you know.”

  “Yes, suh.” Robinson's agreement was thick with disapproval. If anything, the troopers made rowdier drunks than the colored artillerymen. One of the white men yelled something at the Confederates that would have made Robinson want to kill him were it aimed his way. “They is actin' like fools their ownselves.”

  Captain Carron frowned. Ben knew why: he'd called white men fools. Even in the V.S. Army, even when it was an obvious truth, a Negro wasn't supposed to do that. Ben Robinson might not have been a slave any more, but he wasn't exactly a free man, either, not even in the eyes of the power that had put a uniform on his back.

  Two colored soldiers, both laughing like idiots, shou
ted things at the Confederates that made what the Tennessee trooper had said sound like an endearment. That was so funny, they had to hold each other up. Then they shouted something viler yet.

  But they might not have said anything at all if the drunken white man didn't give them the idea. Even through the din of cannon fire and musketry, those insults carried. Out there beyond rifle range, some of Bedford Forrest's hard-bitten troopers were shaking their fists at Fort Pillow.

  Ben didn't want to make Forrest's men any angrier at him than they already were. Why couldn't anybody else see the plain sense in that?

  VI

  Noon came and went. The firing from around Fort Pillow and from within the embattled fortress went on and on. Major William Bradford began to have its measure. Indeed, he began to think it mattered less than it did. When Bedford Forrest's men first attacked, Bradford had feared they would storm the earthwork.

  They'd tried-they'd tried hard from first light of day till now. They'd tried, and they hadn't had any luck. To Bradford's eye, that meant they couldn't have any luck.

  “Keep shooting, men!” he yelled. “Kill 'em all! They'll never break in! Never, you hear me?”

  The V.S. soldiers, white and black, cheered raucously. They'd taken fresh courage, too. The colored men, especially, began treating war more as a game than as a serious business. They danced and sang and yelled bits of filth at the Confederates. Men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry did the same thing.

  “Sir, do we really want to tick the Rebs off like this?” Lieutenant

  Leaming asked.

  “What difference does it make?” Bradford said grandly. He felt like dropping his trousers and waving his backside in Forrest's face, the way that one Negro had. He didn't do it, but he felt like it.

  But then a minnie snapped past just in front of his nose, so close that he could feel the wind of its passage-or at least so close that he thought he could. He'd seen a couple of men who got hit in the face. He wished he hadn't. Of itself, his hand came up to caress his handsome features. Yes, they were still intact.