The Guns of the South

* XII *

The summer sun beat down on Nashville’s main square. The maples that grew along Washington and Alston streets gave some shade, but could do nothing to cut the heat or the oppressive humidity. When a buggy rattled west down Washington, it kicked up so much dust that it reminded Nate Caudell of his marching days in the army. But despite the beastly weather, a good-sized crowd had assembled in front of the Nash County courthouse.

“What’s going on?” Caudell asked a man who looked about to melt in frock coat, vest, cravat, and stovepipe.

“The nigger auction starts at noon,” the fellow answered.

“Is that today?” Caudell, who could no more afford a slave than he could a private railroad coach and a locomotive to haul it, skirted the edges of the gathering and started into Raeford Liles’s general store. The front door was locked. Caudell scratched his head—but for Sunday, Liles never closed the place. Then he saw the storekeeper among the men waiting for the auction to start. Liles was serious about wanting a servant, then.

Caudell recognized several other potential buyers, among them George Lewis; his former captain had been elected to the state legislature, and lately spent more time down in Raleigh than in Nash County. Lewis saw Caudell, too, and waved to him. Caudell waved back. He had to check himself from coming to attention and saluting.

But the crowd held a good many strangers; too. Caudell heard the soft accents of Alabama and Mississippi, while a couple of men spoke with a Texas twang he remembered from the army. His ears also caught another accent, one that made his head whip around. Sure enough, there stood three Rivington men, talking among themselves. Despite the coming of peace, they still preferred the splotched, muddy-looking clothes they’d worn in camp and into battle. They looked more comfortable in them than most of the Southern gentlemen did in their more formal attire.

The courthouse clock struck twelve. Men with watches took them out to check them against the clock. A minute or so later, the bells of the Baptist church announced the coming of noon. After another brief delay, the bells of the Methodist church, which was farther down Alston Street, also declared the hour. Caudell wondered which clock was right, and whether anyone of them was. It didn’t really matter, not to him; who but a railroad man like Henry Pleasants needed to know the time exact to the minute?

Despite its announced starting time, the slave auction showed no sign of getting under way, By the way they chatted and smoked and dipped snuff, few of the would-be buyers had expected that it would. But the Rivington men began to fidget. One of them pointedly looked at his wrist—Caudell saw he wore a tiny watch there, held on with a leather strap. A few minutes later, the Rivington man looked at his wristwatch again. When nothing happened after a third such irritated glance, the man shouted, “What the bleeding hell are we waiting for?”

His impatience set off the crowd like a percussion cap igniting the charge of a Springfield cartridge. In an instant, a dozen men were yelling for things to get moving. If he’d kept quiet, they likely would have stood around another hour without complaining.

A man in a suit of exaggeratedly dandyish cut hurried out of the courthouse and sprang up onto the platform that had been hastily built in front of it. Pausing only to spit tobacco juice into the dust, he said, “We’ll commence shortly, gentlemen, I promise. And when you see the fine niggers Josiah A. Beard has to sell”—he preened slightly, to show one and all he was the Josiah A. Beard in question—”you’ll be glad you waited, I promise you will.” His broad, beaming face radiated candor. Caudell distrusted him on sight.

He kept up a bright stream of talk for another few minutes. The Rivington men quickly started looking impatient again. Before they started a new round of shouts, though, a black man came out of the courthouse and up to stand beside Josiah Beard. The auctioneer said, “Here we are, gentlemen, the first on the list, a fine field hand and laborer, a Negro named Columbus, aged thirty-two years.”

“Let’s see him,” one of the Texas men called.

Beard turned to Columbus. “Strip off,” he said curtly. The black man pulled his coarse cotton shirt over his head, stepped out of his trousers. “Turn around,” the auctioneer told him. Columbus obeyed. Beard raised his voice, spoke to the audience: “Now you see him. Not a mark on his back, as you’ll note for yourselves. He’s tractable as well as willing. He’s a genuine cotton nigger, by God! Look at his toes, at his fingers. Look at those legs! If you have got the right soil, buy him and put your trust in Providence, my friends. He’s as good for ten bales as I am for a julep at eleven o’clock. So what am I bid for this fine buck nigger?”

The bidding started at five hundred dollars and rose rapidly. The Texas man who’d asked to see all of Columbus ended up buying him for $1,450. Even with prices still high, that was a goodly sum, but he seemed unperturbed. “I could sell him in Houston tomorrow and make four hundred back,” he declared to anyone who cared to listen. “Niggers is still mighty dear anywheres in the trans-Mississippi.”

Another black mounted to the stand. “Second on the list,” Beard said.” An excellent field hand and laborer, gentlemen, named Dock, a Negro aged twenty-six years.” Without waiting for a customer’s request, he added,” Strip off, Dock.”

“Yassuh.” Dock’s Negro patois was thick as molasses. He shed his shirt and trousers, turned before he was told to do so. His back, like Columbus’s, had never known the lash, but an ugly scar seamed the inside of his left thigh, about six inches below his genitals.

Josiah Beard once more started to extol the slave’s docility. Before he was well begun, George Lewis called, “Hold on, there! You, boy! Where did you get that bullet wound?”

Dock’s head lifted. He looked straight at Lewis. “Got this heah outside o’ Water Proof, Louziana, las’ yeah, f’um dat Bedford Forrest. He done cotched me, but my three frens, they gits away.”

The auctioneer did his best to pretend Dock had never been a soldier in arms against the Confederacy. Bidding was slow all the same, and petered out just past eight hundred dollars. One of the Rivington men bought the slave. He paid gold, which did a little to restore Josiah Beard’s spirits.

As Dock came down from the platform toward him, the Rivington man told him, “You do your work and we’ll get on fine, boy. Just don’t put on airs because you used to carry a rifle. I can lick you any way you name: bare hands, axes, whips, guns, any way at all. Any time you want to try, you tell me, but you have your grave picked out beforehand. Do you understand me?”

“You don’t need to lick me none, masser—you gots de law wid you,” Dock said. But before he answered, he measured his new owner with his eyes, saw that the Rivington man meant exactly what he said and could back it up without the law. He nodded, more man to man than slave to master, but respectfully nonetheless.

Caudell thought the Negro sensible to submit—if he was submitting and not shamming. If he was shamming, he’d likely regret it. Caudell had seen that the Rivington men were uncommon fighters.

More slaves went up on the block. Some did have scarred backs. A couple of them showed the marks of bullets. One black, when questioned, said he’d belonged to the 30th Connecticut and had taken his wound at Bealeton. That made Caudell frown, for Lee had ordered captured Negroes treated like any other prisoners. Someone had seen a profit in disobeying.

The Rivington men bought most of the slaves with bullet wounds, and got them cheap. The ones they didn’t buy, the Texans did. Caudell suspected they would try to unload their purchases on fellow westerners who were desperate for labor and who might not recognize a bullet scar when they saw one.

“Seventeenth on the list,” Josiah Beard said presently.” A fine tanner and bricklayer, named Westly, a griffe aged twenty-four years.” Westly, who stood beside him, was slightly lighter of skin than most who had preceded him; griffes carried one part white blood to three black.

The bidding was brisk. Raeford Liles raised his hand again and again. Caudell understood why: a slave with two such desirable skills as tanning and bricklaying would quickly be able to learn what he needed to help out at a general store, and would make Liles extra money when he rented him out around town.

But when the griffe’s price edged toward two thousand dollars, Liles dropped out with a frustrated snarl of disgust. A Rivington man and a fellow from Alabama or Mississippi bid against each other like a couple of men holding flushes in a poker game. Finally the man from the deep South gave up. “Sold for $1,950,” Josiah Beard shouted.

“Masser, you lets me keep some o’ my pay when you rents me, I works extra hard for you,” Westly said as his new owner came up to take him off the block.

The Rivington man laughed at him. “Who said anything about renting you, kaffir? You are going to work for me and for nobody else.” The griffe’s face fell, but he had no choice save going with the man who had bought him.

More field hands were sold, and then a prime bricklayer and mason, a black man named Anderson. The auctioneer beamed like the rising sun as the Negro’s price soared up and up. Again Raeford Liles bid, again he had to drop out. The fellow from the deep South who had bid on Westly ended up buying Anderson for $2,700 when the Rivington man who had been bidding against him abruptly quit. He did not look altogether happy as he went up to pay Josiah Beard. Caudell did not blame him. As someone in the crowd remarked, “Hellfire, you can buy yourself a Congressman for cheaper’n $2,700.”

After Beard disposed of an the male slaves on his list, he sold several women, some field hands like the men, others Cooks and seamstresses. “Here’s a Negro named Louisa,” he caned as yet another wench climbed up beside him. “She’s twenty-one years old, a number-one cook, and a prime breeder. Tell the gentlemen how many little niggers you’ve already had, Louisa.”

“I’s had fo’, suh,” she answered.

“She’s good for many more, too,” the auctioneer declared, “and every one pure profit to her owner. And she’s a good-tempered wench, too.” He turned her around, pulled down the top of her dress to display her clear back. She fetched Josiah Beard almost as much as Anderson had, and looked smug when the Texan who had bought her led her away. Some Negroes, Caudell knew, took pride in the high prices they brought. It made more than a little sense: an owner with a large investment in his animate property was likely to treat it better.

The slave trader looked out at his audience. A smile stole across his face. “Now, gentlemen, as the piece de resistance, I have to display for you a mulatto wench named Josephine, nineteen years old, and a fine hand with a needle.”

Caudell caught his breath as Josephine climbed up onto the platform beside Beard. He let it out again in a sudden, sharp cough. So did most of the men who saw her. She was worth every bit of that vocal admiration, and more. She might have had a trace of Indian blood as well as white and Negro; her cheekbones, her slightly slanted eyes, and the piquant arch of her nose argued for it. Her skin, perfectly smooth, was the precise color of coffee with cream.

“I’d like a piece o’ that, resistance or no resistance,” a man close by Caudell said hoarsely. The schoolteacher found himself nodding. The slave girl was simply stunning.

Instead of simply showing Josephine’s back, as he had with the other wenches, the auctioneer unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the boards. She was bare under it. The coughs from the crowd doubled and doubled again. Her breasts, Caudell thought, would just fill a man’s hand; their small nipples made him think of sweet chocolate. Josiah Beard turned her around. She was as perfect from behind as from the front.

“Put your dress back on,” the auctioneer told her. As she stooped to obey, he called out, “Now, gentlemen, what am I bid?”

To Caudell’s surprise, the auction started slowly. After a moment, he understood: everyone knew how expensive she would be, and everyone was hesitant about risking his money. But Josephine’s price climbed steadily, past $1,500, past $2,000, past $2,500, past the $2,700 that had bought the skilled bricklayer and mason, past $3,000. Bidders dropped out one by one, with groans of regret.

“Three thousand one hundred and fifty,” Josiah Beard said at length. “Do I hear $3,200?” He looked to the Alabama man who had stayed in the auction all the way. The man from the deep South stared hungrily at Josephine, but in the end he shook his head. The slave trader puffed out his lips in a small sigh. “Anyone else for $3,200?” No one spoke. “Thirty-one fifty once.” A pause. “Thirty-one fifty twice.” Beard clapped his hands together. “Sold for $3,150. Come forward, sir, come forward.”

“Oh, I’m coming, never fear,” said the Rivington man who had just bought Josephine. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to show respect for someone who would pay so much for a chattel. The Rivington man reached into his knapsack, pulled out a paper-wrapped roll of gold coins, then another and another. “There’s a hundred and fifty ounces of gold,” he said, then opened yet another roll and counted out thirteen more. He passed the money to Beard, roll by roll and then coin by coin. When at last he was done, the slave trader had more than thirteen pounds of gold and a slightly sandbagged expression. Still matter-of-fact, the Rivington man said,” Along with the wench, you owe me eleven dollars.”

“Yes, sir,” Josiah Beard said, not even questioning the calculation. He peeled the money from the fat roll of bills he had collected over the course of the afternoon. “Let me have your name, sir, if you please, for the bill of sale.”

“I’m Piet Hardie. P-i-e-t H-a-r-d-i-e. Spell it right.”

“Let me have it again, sir, to make sure I do.” Beard wrote, then straightened and turned to Josephine. “Go on, girl, go to him. He bought you—you’re his.”

Moving with a grace that matched her beauty, Josephine descended from the auction block. Piet Hardie slipped an arm around her waist. She stood very straight, neither pulling away nor pressing herself against him. A collective sigh of envy went up from the crowd. The fellow from Alabama who had been the next-to-last bidder said, “Tell me, sir, what are you going to do with her now that you got her?”

Hardie threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “What the bleeding hell do you think I’m going to do with her, sir? The same thing you’d have done if you’d bought her.”

The Alabama man laughed, too, ruefully. Caudell happened to be watching Josephine’s face. It congealed like cooling fat. She must have hoped the Rivington man would differ from others in more ways than his dress. Finding out so harshly that he did not could only be a cruel disappointment.

“For a very reasonable price, gentlemen, I can supply shackles, to ensure that your animate property doesn’t become more animated than you’d care for.” Josiah Beard chortled at his own wit. Several men came up to purchase restraints.

Caudell drifted away from the town square. For him, the slave auction had been nothing more than a way to pass part of a long Saturday afternoon. He could not even dream of owning a slave, especially in summer with his school closed. Tutoring, writing letters for illiterate townsfolk, and neatly transcribing county records gave him income sufficient to keep from starving, but not much more.

George Lewis fell into step beside him. “How are you today, Nate?”

“Well enough, thank you, sir.” Though captain no longer, Lewis was a big enough man in Nash County for Caudell to keep on giving him the title of respect. “I see you didn’t buy any niggers today.”

“Didn’t plan to; I have enough for the tobacco acreage I grow—maybe even too many. More than anything else, I came to see what prices were like, in case I decide to sell a couple.”

“Oh.” Caudell had known for a good many years now that he would never be a wealthy man. The knowledge no longer bothered him. Sometimes, as now, he derived a certain amusement from listening to the things wealthy men had to worry about. Do I have too many slaves for my land? Should I sell a few? No, that was a problem which would never trouble him.

Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face. George Lewis clapped him on the back and said, “If you’re having trouble, Nate, you just let me know. I don’t aim to let anybody who served in my company do without so long as I can help it.”

With stubborn pride, Caudell answered: “That’s right kind of you, but I’m doing well enough, sir.” Lewis raised a politely dubious eyebrow. “There’s plenty worse off than I am,” Caudell insisted.

“Most of ‘em have farms, though, to keep food on their tables”‘ Lewis said. On the edge of anger now, Caudell shook his head. Lewis shrugged. “All right, Nate, if that’s how you want it, that’s how it’ll be. You ever change your mind, all you ever need do is let me know about it.”

“I will,” Caudell said, knowing he wouldn’t. Lewis’s concern touched him all the same, The captain’s children did not attend his school; Lewis could afford better. But he looked out for rich and poor in the country. Caudell had voted for him without hesitation last fall and was ready to do it again if he stood for reelection.

Lewis made his good-byes and went off. Caudell was about to head back to his room when Raeford Liles called after him, “Got a letter for you, Nate. Let me open up again.” Caudell trotted back to the general store. Liles worked the key, threw the front door wide. He went behind the counter. “Here y’are: from that gal o’ yours Up Rivington way.”

“She’s not my gal,” Caudell said, as he still did whenever he got a letter from Mollie Bean or sent her one.

“Too bad for her if she’s not, on account of I wish everything and everybody in Rivington’d get blown to hell and gone, and if she was your gal I’d leave her out of that there wishin’.”

“I wish you would do that, Mr. Liles,” Caudell said.

“Only since it’s you as asks me, Nate.” Liles proceeded to curse the town of Rivington and its inhabitants with vigor and inventive wit whose like Caudell had not heard since an army mule driver tried to flay the hides off his beasts with his tongue one afternoon when they bogged down in a road a week of rain had converted into a true bog. “An’ the worst of it is, they all got money fallin’ out their backsides like it was turds. Three thousand one hundred fifty mortal dollars for that there mulatto wench? The devil fry me for bacon in the mornin’, Nate, what the hell’s he gonna get from her he couldn’t go down to the whorehouse an’ have for a few beans? It don’t feel no better on account of it’s expensive, now does it?”

“I don’t suppose so,” Caudell said, after a small hesitation brought on by thinking of Mollie and of the trade she plied in Rivington.

The storekeeper never noticed that his answer came a beat late. Liles was in full spate, like the Mississippi in flood season. He was also getting to what really bothered him: “Or that griffe Westly or that nigger Anderson, almost two thousand for the one and twenty-seven hundred for the other, by Jesus! I been to other auctions, too, and had the same thing happen to me. How’s a man supposed to get the help he needs when he can’t noways afford to buy it? Niggers is gettin’ so dear, it’s damn near cheaper to do without ‘em. An’ them Rivington men is a big part o’ runnin’ the prices up, ‘cause they just don’t give a damn how much they spend. What’s an honest man supposed to do?”

“Go on as best you can the way you are—what else can you do?” Caudell said. Liles was not a wealthy man like George Lewis, but he was a long way from poor. Caudell had trouble sympathizing with his complaints, not when his own chief worry was figuring out how to stretch his summer money so he could pay the widow Bissett for his room and eat anything better than corn bread and beans.

But Liles glared at him over the tops of his half-glasses. “Younger folks these days hasn’t got no respect for their elders.”

Caudell glared back. At thirty-four, he hardly felt himself still wet behind the ears. And Raeford Liles, with his store full of good things and getting fuller every day now that the war and the blockade no longer pinched him, might have spoken a little more kindly to someone who’d fought to keep him in the storekeeping business. Allison High had been right—with the war over, memories of what it meant were short. He wondered how Allison was getting along, down in Wilson County, and realized guiltily that he hadn’t thought about him in weeks. Memories were short, all right.

He said, “Never mind, Mr. Liles—we all have to go on as best we can the way we are, I expect.” Without waiting for an answer, he went back out into the baking sunshine of the town square. The bell over the front door jingled when he shut it.

He walked slowly back to the widow Bissett’s house; moving any way but slowly would have invited heatstroke. He took off his black felt hat and fanned himself with it. The moving air briefly cooled the sweat that ran down his face and trickled through his beard, but the sun smote the top of his head with savage heat. He hastily replaced the hat.

He’d baked outdoors, but found himself poaching instead when he went into his upstairs room. He did not stay long enough even to open Mollie’s letter. Grabbing a length of line and a couple of hooks, he headed for Stony Creek, north of town. Sitting on the bank under a tree—maybe taking off his shoes and letting his feet trail in the water—was the best way he could think of to fight the heat of a summer day. He might even catch his own supper, too, which would save him some money.

He used his clasp knife to dig worms out of the soft soil, baited the hooks, and tossed them into the water. Then he lit a cigar, blew a ragged smoke ring, and, as near content as he could be in such weather, pulled the letter from his pocket once more and used the knife again, this time to do a neat job of slitting the envelope.

Mollie went on for most of two pages. After nearly a year of correspondence with him, her handwriting was better than that of some of the twelve-year-olds he taught. Her spelling remained wildly erratic, but most of those twelve-year-olds had that problem too, Old Blue Back notwithstanding.

Much of the letter was chatter about her day-to-day life: a dress she’d made, a cake one of her friends had baked, a complaint about the high price of shoes. Smiling, he thought she and Raeford Liles could have commiserated together. As usual, she said little about the way she spent her nights. She knew he knew what she did, and doubtless did not care to remind him of it unnecessarily.

Living as she did in Rivington, though, even her day-to-day life was out of the ordinary. One passage leaped from the page at Caudell: “Last weak I come down with dyareaer worsen I ever get it in the army. Benny Lang he comes to see me and wen he sees how sick I am he gos off and wen he comes back he gives me sum pils to take and I takem and next day I am rite as rain. I wish we wood of nowed a bout it wen we was to gether on a count of a lot of good men who dyareared them selvs to deth could of been saved.”

Caudell nodded, just as if Mollie were there to see him. Diarrhea had killed as many men, North and South, as bullets. With soldiers packed tightly together, eating food and water that were often bad—and the water frequently made worse by their own sinks nearby, or by men ignoring the sinks and doing their business straight into a stream—how could it be otherwise? Doctors could sometimes slow the illness, but they boasted no magical pills to cure it overnight—not outside of Rivington, they didn’t. Even the mention of Benny Lang, whose name showed up fairly often in Mollie’s letters, failed to annoy Caudell as it usually did: wonder overcame what he still refused to admit to himself was jealousy.

And wonder and jealousy both surged in him when, toward the end of her letter, Mollie wrote, “One thing I may not have tole you a bout is that wen I went to a Rivington mans hous I mean one of the ones out in the woods last week I went in side and it was as cool as spring in ther you may be leev me or not just as you like. And it was not cool atall out side likely it weren’t in Nashvil too. That if you ast me is as big a thing as the lites that burn elextristy or what ever the Rivington men cal it. The thing the cool air comes out of is a box on the wall with a nob on it like the ones that makes the elextristy lites burn. I wish for it al the time on a count of hear in my room it aint cool atall. Dont you wish you was in Rivington to? Yor true frend al ways, M. Bean, 47NC.”

Caudell wished with all his heart and sweaty soul he were in Rivington, or at least in that house. If any of Mollie’s letters had given him the slightest hint the town held enough children to support a school, he would have moved without a second thought. Rivington had to be the boomingest town in the state, the place where everything happened first, even ahead of Wilmington and Raleigh.

The railroad, the telegraph, and the camera had all come to North Carolina since his own boyhood. Now Rivington boasted these wonderful electricity-burning lights and cool air in summer. Both those things sounded as interesting as the camera any, day. He wondered when they would appear outside of Rivington and why he hadn’t heard about them in the newspapers. The railroad had been ballyhooed for years before it finally arrived.

Just then, he got a bite. He tossed aside Mollie’s letter and his speculations, and pulled a bullhead out of the creek. The fish flopped on the bank; he had to grab it to keep it from wriggling back into the muddy water. It had swallowed the worm. He dug up another one, impaled it on the hook, and tossed in the line again to see what else he could catch.

He waited with an angler’s patience for a fish or fat turtle to go for the bait. By the sun, he had an hour or so of daylight left. Maybe, he thought, he would make a little fire right here, cook his supper, and sleep out on the grass. The mosquitoes would eat him alive, but that might be better than tossing and turning in his hot bed. He plucked at his beard as he tried to make up his mind. If he didn’t hook anything more than one little bullhead, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. That wasn’t much of a supper.

Something stirred in the clump of jasmine on the far side of the creek. He looked up, got a glimpse of brown hide through the leaves. Deer, he thought, and then, with a tinge of alarm, or maybe cougar. He sat very still. The big cats rarely attacked man unless provoked. With his sole weapon a clasp knife, he had no intention of doing anything provoking.

The leaves parted. His breath went out in a startled grunt, as if he’d been kicked in the belly. Peering out at him, her lovely face frightened as any hunted wild thing’s, was the mulatto wench Josephine.

Before either of them could say anything, before the girl could turn and bolt into the woods, hounds belled back in the direction of town. Josephine’s eyes, already wide and staring, showed white all around the iris. Her lips skinned back from her teeth. “Hide me!” she hissed at Caudell. “I do anything you wants, massuh, anything, long as I don’t gots to go back to that feller bought me. He a devil, he is. Hide me!”

Caudell had seen her up on the auction block, naked as the day she was born and ever so much more tempting. The thought of her doing anything he wanted raised a dark excitement in him. But hiding a runaway slave was against every law in the Confederacy—and where could he hide her, anyway? More daunting than mere lawbreaking, too, was imagining the revenge Piet Hardie would take on him if he tried and failed.

The hounds cried again, louder and closer. Josephine moaned. She plunged away through the bushes, leaving Caudell just as well pleased he had not had to tell her yes or no. He quickly got up, pulled in his line, picked up the bullhead he’d caught, and started back to town. That way he would not have to tell the Rivington man yes or no, either. He wondered what the fellow had done to Josephine to make her run so, then shook his head. Better not to know.

When the hounds chorused again, they were only a few hundred yards away, and plainly on the scent. Caudell heard Piet Hardie shout, too, at the men who ran with the dogs: “Keep them on the leash. If they mark her, by God, I’ll pay you in paper instead of gold!”

Barbara Bissett fried the bullhead crisp and golden brown on the outside and firm and flaky and white in the center. It was as fine a fish as Caudell could have wanted and, with hot corn bread, turned into a pretty fair supper after all. Even so, he hardly tasted it.

The Georgia Railroad engine wheezed to a halt. The conductor came into the car in which Lee was riding. “Augusta!” he bawled. He hurried along, left the car, went into the next one. Faintly, through two doors, Lee heard him announce the stop again.

He got to his feet. “Major, you may send me to a lunatic asylum if, having once returned to Richmond, I voluntarily board a train again at any time within the next ten years,” he said to Charles Marshall. “I am heartily sick of traveling from hither to yon inside a box”—he waved to show he meant the passenger coach—”as if I were a parcel to be delivered by the postman.”

“For the good of the country, sir, I may find myself constrained to act as if I have not heard you,” his aide answered. “I beg you, however, not to take this as implying I fail to sympathize with your point of view.”

Lee looked around as he got off the train. “The city is larger than I had thought it to be.”

“About fifteen thousand inhabitants, I am given to understand,” Marshall said. He looked about, too. “Seems a pleasant enough place.”

Among the gaggle of people greeting new arrivals and wishing Godspeed to departing loved ones was a rather corpulent middle-aged man who wore Confederate gray and a colonel’s three stars on his collar. He pushed his way through the crowd Lee always seemed to draw, as if he were a lodestone attracting iron filings. With a salute, the fellow said, “George W. Rains, sir, at your service.”

Lee returned the courtesy, then extended his hand. “Delighted to see you, Colonel. Allow me to present to you my aide, Major Marshall.”

When the formalities were complete, Rains said, “I have my carriage here. May I drive you to the hotel? I’ve arranged rooms for you and Major Marshall at the Planters’, which is by far the finest establishment in the city. Even English travelers, men with wide experience of the world, think well of the Planters’—with the exception, I fear, of the tea, which, one of them complained, was so weak he did not see how it got out of the spout.”

“I should find that no great hardship, Colonel, preferring coffee as I do,” Lee said. “I am confident you will have done everything necessary for our comfort. Your exemplary management of the powder mills here throughout the course of the war makes me certain of your ability to tend to such trifles.”

A bare-chested slave attached to the train station carried the newcomers’ bags to the carriage. Lee gave him a dime; having come from Kentucky, he still had on his person a fair sum of U.S. specie. The slave grinned, displaying uneven yellow teeth. Colonel Rains raised a quizzical eyebrow but said nothing. He flicked the reins to set the carriage in motion.

“Your shops are busy here,” Charles Marshall observed.

“They were even busier during the war,” Rains answered. “A large portion of the goods that came into Charleston and Wilmington through the blockade were sold here at auction, for dispersal all over the interior of Georgia and South Carolina.”

“Is that a bookstore there?” Lee asked, pointing. “Perhaps I shall buy a novel, to commemorate my stay here. It’s been a good many years since I’ve had the leisure to enjoy a novel, but I just may indulge myself.”

“They’re first-rate on a train,” Rains said.

“As I was telling Major Marshall, Colonel, I feel at the moment a certain—sufficiency—in respect to trains,” Lee said. “On the off chance, however, that I may be forced to ride them more than I would wish, I shall have to investigate that shop. Merely an off chance, of course, as I say.” Lee admired Rains for keeping his face so straight. He wondered how many more thousands of miles he would put in rattling along over the iron rails before his career was done.

They pulled up in front of the Planters’ Hotel. Slaves strolled out to take charge of Lee’s luggage. He and Marshall got down from the carriage. “I will leave you gentlemen here, to recover from the rigors of your journey,” Rains said. “If it pleases you, I shall return for breakfast tomorrow, then drive you over to the powder mill.”

“You are very kind, Colonel,” Lee said. “That sounds most satisfactory. I’ll see you, then, at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, if that be not too early.”

“Eight o’clock will be fine.” Rains saluted again. “Good day to you, sir, Major.” The carriage rolled away. Lee and Marshall went into the hotel. Spurred on by shouts from the white manager and clerks, the serving staff did everything but carry them to their rooms. Yet the shouts were good-natured, and Lee got the impression an ordinary guest would have received treatment no different from his own. He thought better of the Planters’ for that impression.

Supper did nothing to disappoint him, and over chicory-laced coffee the next morning he told Rains, “Your establishment here compares quite favorably to the Galt House in Louisville, Colonel. Smaller, certainly, but very fine.”

“I’ve heard of the Galt House, though I never stayed in it. I think, sir, if you were to say that to Mr. Jenkins behind the front desk, you would have to stand back quickly to keep from getting hit by the buttons that flew off his waistcoat as he swelled up with pride.”

Lee smiled. “I’d sooner risk buttons than a good many other things that have flown through the air in my direction.” He drained his cup, got to his feet. “Perhaps this evening, when we return, I shall brave Mr. Jenkins’s waistcoat. Meanwhile, though—”

The powder mill lay by the Augusta Canal, a couple of furlongs west of the Savannah River. The road ran past underground powder magazines, each separated from its neighbors by thick brick traverses. “Is that tin sheathing on the roofs of the magazines?” Lee asked.

“Zinc,” Rains answered. “It happened to be more readily available at the time. Sooner than wait for tin to appear, I went ahead with what i had. That was what I had to do all through the war, if I wanted to accomplish anything. Pharaoh made the Israelites make bricks without straw. Looking back on all my contrivances here, I sometimes think I could have made bricks without clay.”

Young Georgia soldiers had stood sentry around the magazines. More guarded the big wooden shed that housed the powder mill. They stared and pointed and lost almost any semblance of military discipline when they saw Robert E. Lee. Colonel Rains coughed drily. “They all wish they’d been bold in battle like you, General. The life of a soldier far from the cannon’s roar has little glamour to it.”

Lee thought Rains was speaking for himself as well as for his men. Raising his voice so the Georgia lads could hear along with their commander, he said, “Without your labor, Colonel, and that of your garrison, the cannon never could have roared. How much gunpowder did you produce for the Confederacy here at Augusta?”

“Just over two million pounds,” Rains answered. “Of that total, about three fourths was sent north to Richmond for use by the Army of Northern Virginia. The balance went to the big guns in the fortifications around Charleston, Wilmington, and Mobile. Still more would have gone north to you had the infantry and cavalry not suddenly reequipped themselves with these newfangled AK-47s.”

“Indeed,” Lee said. “That reequipment and its consequences are the reason I have come to Augusta.”

“So you intimated in your telegram from Louisville.” A horse with a uniformed rider came trotting up to the powder mill.” Ah, good,” Rains said. “Here is Captain Bob Finney, who is superintendent of the arsenal a couple of miles outside of town and thus responsible for the production of small-arms ammunition, percussion caps, and other such military materiel. Between the two of us, we should display a truly staggering amount of ignorance for you.”

Finney arrived in time to hear that last remark. He was a cheerful-looking, round-faced man in his middle twenties who wore a close-trimmed reddish beard like that of the Federal general Sherman. “Yes, indeed, General Lee, if it’s ignorance you want, you’ve come to the proper place,” he said gaily as he dismounted. “We turn out more of it than munitions these days, as a matter of fact. “

Rains smiled, plainly used to the captain’s forward tongue. “If you gentlemen will step into my office”—a small hut next to the powder mill—”we shall see how much ignorance we can produce today.”

One of the chairs in the ramshackle office did not match the other three, which made Lee suspect Rains had borrowed it for the occasion. Charles Marshall said, “Colonel, does not the thought of working so close beside a place where so much gunpowder is produced ever weigh on your mind?”

“Not a bit, Major,” Rains answered at once. “In a fifteen-hour day, we can manufacture close to ten thousand pounds. If by unhappy accident such an amount went up, I should be translated to my heavenly reward before I had the chance to notice the explosion. Under those circumstances, what point to worrying?”

“Put that way, none, I suppose,” Marshall admitted. Even so, he could not help sneaking a glance out the window toward the powder mill.

“To business, then,” Rains said. “General, I gather from your telegram and from the correspondence I have had with Colonel Gorgas in Richmond that you are aware the powder which propels the bullet from the cartridge of an AK-47 is not, properly speaking, gunpowder at all.”

“Yes, I am aware of that,” Lee said, remembering the tiny cylindrical grains of powder Gorgas had shown him at the Confederate Armory more than a year before. “I decided to come here before returning to the capital for two reasons: first, to learn what progress if any you have made toward duplicating that powder, and, second, if your progress has been small, to find out whether these cartridges may be reloaded with powder and bullets of our own manufacture.”

“Captain Finney and I have pursued these investigations on parallel tracks,” Rains said. “If I may, I would prefer that he speak to your second question first, as his results have been less problematical than mine.”

“However would prove most convenient for you, of course.” Lee turned to Finney. “Captain?”

“I’ve never been handed a more interesting problem, sir,” the arsenal superintendent said. He sounded enthusiastic at facing such a challenge, which made Lee nod in approval. Enthusiastic still, Finney continued, “I can’t tell you how much I admire the Rivington men, either. They must have forgotten more about gunsmithing than any twelve gunsmiths know.”

That might be nothing but literal truth, Lee thought. Aloud, he said, “I also admire their ability with firearms, Captain.” What he thought of them in other respects was irrelevant to the issue at hand. “Please carry on.”

“Yes, sir. I gather you know these AK-47 cartridges have their percussion primers on the inside, not in separate caps the way, say, Minié balls do.” Finney waited for Lee to nod again. “You may not know that all the primers have the same shape, to ignite the powder in just the same way every time—really marvelously clever.”

“I did not know that,” Lee admitted.

“I’ve not been able to duplicate the effect, either,” Finney said. “By replacing the expended primer with a dab of the mixture of fulminate of mercury and the other substances used in percussion caps, then inserting rather less gunpowder into the case than the powder previously found there, I have achieved by trial and error a load that will fire from the AK-47.”

“Excellent, Captain,” Lee breathed.

Colonel Rains said, “He makes light of the danger he underwent in what he so casually calls ‘trial and error,’ General. He would allow no one but himself to test the loads; only the sturdiness of the AK-47 more than once prevented serious injury when a load proved too heavy. Two of the repeaters did in fact burst in the early days of his experiments, both, fortunately, while being fired from a rest by means of a cord.”

Finney dismissed Rains’s praise with a shrug. “It’s not as if I were fighting, or anything of the sort. In any event, my loads are still makeshifts compared to the originals. Our gunpowder fouls the barrel much worse than that which is proper for the repeaters, which is an especially significant difficulty because some of the gas provides the force used to draw each successive round into the chamber. One rifle fired repeatedly with my loads became so foul it would no longer do so; the charging handle had to be employed to clear the chamber after each shot.”

“That would make the weapons, at worst, the equivalent, say, of a Henry repeater,” Lee said musingly. “Still highly useful, in other words. You have done well, Captain. I presume you are also producing your own bullets?”

“Yes, sir, and they’re not as good as the originals, either—Colonel Rains tells me Colonel Gorgas explained to you about the fouling problem from good old plain lead without any fancy copper nightshirt.”

“So he did, though not in quite those terms.” Lee let amusement show in his voice. “Your loads will shoot, though. That is the important concern.”

Charles Marshall said, “You can load spent cartridges, Captain, and you can reproduce the bullets that go into them. Can you also manufacture new cartridge cases?” Lee leaned forward in his seat to hear Finney’s reply. If the Confederacy could produce its own ammunition, that would be a long step forward on the road to independence from the Rivington men.

“I’ve not been able to do it yet,” Finney said, and Lee knew his face fell. But the captain went on, “I’ve not given up, either. Before we got to know the AK-47, we Southerners didn’t have much to do with repeaters or with turning out any kind of brass cartridges. Now that we’re at peace with the U.S.A. again, I expect we’ll be able to license a setup from the people who make ammunition for the Henry or one of the other Northern repeaters. Once I have the tools, maybe I’ll be able to jigger ‘em to turn out these cartridge cases instead. I aim to try, anyway.”

“Thank you, Captain, for your courage and your energy,” Lee said sincerely. “If you’ve not made all the progress for which you might have hoped, you have made a good deal. Only in novels is the hero commonly fortunate enough to discover everything he requires to save the day at the precise instant he requires it.”

“That’s the truth, by God!” George Rains said. “I hope, General, that you’ll grant me the same forbearance you’ve given Captain Finney, not least because I stand more in need of it.”

“Tell me what you have learned,” Lee said. “Let me judge, though I am already confident you have done your utmost.”

“I sometimes wonder,” Rains said. “I was proud of my knowledge of chemistry until I began investigating the powder the AK-47 uses as propellant. Now my feelings are closely similar to those expressed by Captain Finney: I have been shown how much I do not know. The realization is galling.”

“This is a remark I have heard repeatedly in connection with the Rivington men and their products,” Lee said, adding to himself, and I know why, too. “Suppose you tell me now what you have found out, and leave the enigmas for another time.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rains said gratefully. “Almost twenty years ago, a German named Schonbein produced an explosive by steeping cotton fibers in strong nitric acid.”

Lee raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say. There is a use for cotton I had not imagined. Some in our country have called it king, but none dreamed it could be a munition of war. Were you exploring that possibility here before you began receiving AK-47 cartridges?”

“No, sir,” Rains answered at once, and in emphatic tones. “The stuff has always been too temperamental for any sane man to want to use—till now. One of the constituents of AK-47 powder is a nitrocellulose. I have confirmed this both by chemical means and by examination of the powder under a glass; the appearance of the cotton remains almost unaltered despite exposure to the acid. But somehow, perhaps in the purification process, its explosive properties have been rendered far more reliably consistent than those of the product with which l—and the world—was previously familiar.”

“This appears to be considerable progress, Colonel,” Lee said. “My congratulations.”

“I don’t feel I merit them, sir.” Rains made a sour face. “I have some idea of what the powder does and of its ingredients, but none at present as to how I might duplicate the effect for myself. Nor is this treated cotton its sole constituent part: more than half of it is another nitrogenous compound, one which I believe to have a chemical affinity to glycerine.”

“A—nitroglycerine, you might say?” Of itself, Lee’s hand went to the waistcoat pocket which held the vial of small white pills from the Rivington men.

Rains beamed at him. “Exactly, General! I had not thought you so chemically astute, if you will forgive my saying so.”

“Of course,” Lee said abstractedly. He wondered if his pills were liable to blow a hole in his jacket when he least expected it, and wondered also whether the men from America Will Break hoped they would. It seemed a clumsy way to try to get rid of a man. Besides, the little pills really did relieve the pains in his chest. He decided that, since they had resided in his pocket for more than a year without detonating of their own accord, they could probably be relied upon to remain intact. Gathering his wits, he said, “Have you sought to manufacture any of this, ah, nitroglycerine for yourself?”

“Yes, most cautiously,” Rains said. “I have nitric acid, and glycerine proved available from a soap works in town. I mixed minute quantities of them; the resulting compound is so explosive that it promptly proceeded to shatter the flask in which it was produced when that flask was accidentally bumped against the edge of a table. Fortunately, the fragments of glass did me no serious damage.”

“Very fortunately,” Lee echoed. Not so long before, in Louisville, he’d also been lucky with glass fragments.

Rains said, “There are other ingredients in the AK-47 powder which I am having more difficulty analyzing. I have to hope they are the secret to controlling the force of that powder: soldiers would, I suspect, suffer a loss of morale if, for instance, their cartridges exploded upon being carelessly dropped.”

“You are likely to be right,” Lee said. Being a man inclined to understatement himself, he knew a good one when he heard it.

Captain Finney’s temperament ran the other way: “If that happened, you wouldn’t find a regimental ordnance sergeant who would dare poke his head out of his tent, for fear of meeting up with a bunch of privates carrying a noose.”

That was probably also true, but a commanding general’s dignity did not permit acknowledging it. Lee said, “By all means continue your investigations, Colonel Rains. The Confederacy is fortunate to have you. If any man now living can uncover the secrets of this powder, I am confident you are he.”

“Thank you; sir.” Rains paused thoughtfully. “’Any man now living’? An interesting phrase.” Lee sat in silence, not elaborating one bit; he realized he had carelessly said too much already. At last, seeing he would get no more out of him, Rains shrugged and said, “I shall go on with my researches, and promptly communicate to you in Richmond any new results. With peace here, I am able to devote more time to this project than was heretofore possible.”

“That’s the truth,” Bob Finney agreed. “Before, with the powder mill and the cannon foundry and these new cartridges and everything else, I don’t think you ever slept—you just went turn and turn about and relieved yourself.” He grinned mischievously. “Sometimes, I expect, you were even too busy to do that.”

“I should have told you to stay back at the arsenal,” Rains growled in mock anger. He gave an exaggerated shudder and turned back to Lee. “Is there anything more, sir?”

“I think not, Colonel; thank you,” Lee answered. “May I trouble you for a ride back to the hotel, however? I should like to start arranging my return to Richmond; having been away so long, I begrudge every further unnecessary minute.”

“I quite understand that sentiment,” Rains said. “Take my carriage back, if you care to; I can ride in and pick it up at any time, and our conversation has made me eager to go back to investigating this remarkable powder.” By the way he stirred in his chair, he seemed eager to be at it that very moment.

“Are you certain?” Lee asked. Rains nodded vigorously—sure enough, he did not care to waste time as a driver. Lee inclined his head. “Most generous of you, sir; I am in your debt.”

Rains waved that away, too. When Charles Marshall took the reins of the carriage, the colonel hardly waited for the horses to start moving before he hurried back to get to work again. “He reminds me of a hound on a scent,” Marshall said.

“An apt comparison,” Lee agreed, though he wondered how many Northern hounds were following that same trail.

The carriage rolled along, raising a small cloud of dust behind it. Men in the street waved to Lee; more than one woman dropped him a curtsy. He gravely raised his hat to return each salutation. When Marshall drove past the bookshop he had seen before, he said, “Let me out, Major, if you would. I think I shall buy a novel. The Planters’ is only a few blocks off; I’ll walk it from here.”

“Yes, sir.” His aide pulled back on the reins. The team slowed, stopped. As Lee got down, Marshall said, “While you browse, sir, I’ll go over to the train station and arrange our return passage to Richmond.”

“That would be excellent.” Lee walked into the shop. The carriage rattled away. The bookseller looked up. When he saw who his new customer was, his eyes widened. He started to speak, then thought better of it as Lee headed straight for a shelf, making it plain he did not care to be interrupted right then. After some frowning thought, he pulled out Ivanhoe and carried it over to the man who ran the shop. Its heft promised it would keep him amused through a long, slow train ride.

The bookseller looked unhappy, an expression that fit his long, thin face well. “I’m afraid I can’t let you have that, sir.”

Lee stared at him. “What? Why ever not, Mr.”—what had the name on the sign outside been?—”Mr. Arnold?”

“It’s my last copy,” Arnold said, as if that explained everything. To him it must have, for he went on, “If I sell it to you, sir, I won’t have another, and heaven only knows when I’ll see more again.”

“But—” Lee gave up when he saw how determined the bookseller looked. Trying not to laugh, he turned and replaced lvanhoe on its shelf, picked up a copy of Quentin Durward instead. “You have several of these, Mr. Arnold,” he said, deadpan.

“Yes, sir,” Arnold said, now seeming as happy as his doleful physiognomy permitted. “That will be three dollars paper or seventy-five cents cash money.” He bobbed his head up and down when Lee gravely handed him three U.S. quarters.

Back at the hotel, Lee told Marshall about “Arnold’s book.” His aide snorted and said, “It’s soldiers who are supposed to husband their ammunition, not booksellers.”

“Well put,” Lee said.” Are our arrangements completed for returning to Richmond?”

“Yes, sir. We depart tomorrow on the nine o’clock train and go by way of Columbia, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Danville.”

“I see,” Lee said.

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“Not—wrong, precisely, Major. I was wondering if we would pass through Rivington, that’s all. It might have been interesting to see.”

“I’m sorry, General; by your remarks to Colonel Rains, I assumed you would wish to travel by the most direct route. Going over to Wilmington and then up through eastern North Carolina would be like traversing the two legs of a right triangle rather than its hypotenuse. If you like, however, I’ll go back to the train station and have our tickets revised.”

Lee thought about it. “No, never mind, Major. As you say, fastest is best. And perhaps I would do better to stay as far away from Rivington as I can.” Marshall gave him a curious look, but he declined to elaborate.

Summer gave way to fall. School started again. As usual, the children, especially the younger ones, had forgotten much of what Caudell had taught them the spring before. He was resigned to that and spent the first couple of weeks of classes getting them back to where they’d been. That also let him start his handful of new five- and six-year-olds on their ABCs and numbers. Some of them stared at slates and chalk as if they’d never seen such things before. Likely they hadn’t.

Establishing discipline was also dicey as usual. The first time he switched a five-year-old for kicking one of his little classmates, the boy just looked at him scornfully and said, “My pa, he licks me a lot harder’n that.”

“Do you want me to try again?” Caudell asked, raising the switch. He would have sworn the boy thought it over before finally shaking his head.

Whenever he let them go at the close of a day, the children would scatter in all directions, shouting as joyfully as if they’d just been released from a Yankee prison camp—or, for that matter, a Southern one; he remembered the skeletons in rags going back to the United States from Andersonville. He wished he could work up that much excitement over school’s getting out. Most days, he just felt tired.

One afternoon when the black gum and maple trees were beginning to change color, he got back to the widow Bissett’s house to find Henry Pleasants sitting on the front porch waiting for him. Grinning, he charged up the steps to shake his friend’s hand. “How did you manage to get the time off to come up and see me?” he asked.

“I have all the time I need,” Pleasants answered. When Caudell looked puzzled, he amplified: “The railroad let me go.”

“They did what?” Caudell said indignantly. “Why would they go and do a damnfool thing like that? Where are they going to find anyone half as good as you?”

“That I don’t know. They don’t either, I’m sure. They let me go anyhow,” Pleasants said.” As for why…shall we go for a walk?” His eyes slid to the house. Caudell heard Barbara Bissett moving around in the parlor. He caught Pleasants’s drift, nodded, and started down the street. Pleasants came with him. A backwards glance showed Caudell the widow disappointedly standing by a front window.

“Tell me,” Caudell said after they’d got out of earshot. He kept his voice low.

So did Pleasants. “It was the way I treated the Negroes, they said.”

“What?” Caudell gaped. Memories of Josephine’s terrified face—and of her sweet, ripe body—surged through him. “You were too rough on them?” He could not imagine Pleasants, whose disposition lived up to his name, producing that kind of fear in anyone.

“Too rough?” His friend stared, too, then started to laugh, rather bitterly. “No, no, no. The railroad let me go because I treated them too much like men.”

“Is that what happened?” Caudell said. He’d heard of other Northerners dismissed from positions for just the same reason.

“That’s what happened, by God.” Pleasants searched for a way to explain himself: “Nate, you’re a teacher. You must know the difference between people who are stupid and people who are only ignorant.”

“Of course I do.” Before he went on, Caudell looked around. They’d walked south from the widow Bissett’s house. A couple of minutes were plenty to get them to the edge of town. No one was around to overhear. “Too many of the people in this county are ignorant. Plenty in my company couldn’t write their names, or read them if they were written out. But I don’t reckon there are more stupid people here than anywhere else. I taught more than one man his letters while we were in the army,” And Mollie Bean, too, he added to himself. “They learned fine, when I gave them the chance they hadn’t had before.”

“I’ve had the same experience, with the Cornishmen and Irish and Germans who work the Pennsylvania mines. They don’t know much, but they’re not idiots or children—show them what they need to do, explain why, and they’ll go on from there. You don’t need to stand over them with a whip. The ones who won’t work, you turn loose.”

“You can’t turn niggers loose,” Caudell pointed out.

“That’s true, but I didn’t want to stand over them with a whip, either. I was afraid I’d have to: you people have kept them pig-ignorant, much worse than the white men who used to work for me up North. But I decided I’d do the same as I did there—I broke the gangs in half, setting ‘em against each other, and I gave half a dollar to each man on the crew that put down the most ties or hauled the most gravel for the roadbed each day. I gave them work quotas they had to meet, or else neither half got paid. I wanted ‘em to have a reason to work besides my say-so, if you see what I mean. And after I gave’ em that reason, I just stood back and let’ em go to it.”

“How did all that work? I know some white men who’d swing a hammer for half a dollar a day.” In summer, Caudell thought, he might have been one of those men himself.

“Don’t forget they only got the money if they did the most work. That went the same as it would in the mines—they got the idea real quick. And inside of a week, somebody in one half-gang figured out a faster way to get the gravel from the freight car to the roadway. The day after that, both half-gangs were doing it the new way. Be damned if I know whether niggers are as smart as white folks, Nate, but they aren’t as stupid as people down here think, and that’s a fact.”

“If you got the work out of them, how could the railroad people complain?” Caudell asked.

“I guess the trouble is, if you treat a Negro like a man, he’s going to act like a man. My gangs started bragging and strutting in front of other laborers, and getting in fights with them, and even talking back to whites who showed they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

“Uh-oh,” Caudell said.

“Uh-oh is right,” Pleasants agreed. “You ask me, that’s a stupid thing for a Negro to try in this country, no matter how right he is—maybe especially if he’s right. But somebody who feels like a man doesn’t take kindly to orders from a fool. The whole thing was partly my fault, too. My crews were used to telling me when they thought they had good ideas, or if they thought I had a bad one. I’d listen. Why not? Sometimes they were right. Down here, though, if you’re black, you’re wrong.”

“You talk like an abolitionist,” Caudell said.

Pleasants shrugged. “If niggers really are a lot less than whites—if they’re stupid by nature, I mean—I might see some justice in slavery. If they’re backwards just because they’re ignorant, why not enslave ignorant white men, too?”

Caudell pondered that. In his mind, he saw Georgie Ballentine again; and black men in blue uniforms standing up under the fire of AK-47s; and Josephine, lovely flesh to be sold and abused because it came in a dark wrapping. Was that justice? Before the war, he’d taken it for granted. He’d taken a lot of things for granted before the war. He wondered what would have happened had the North won and forced the South to free its slaves. How would they live? Where would they work? “You couldn’t just go and turn them loose all at once,” he said.

“Mmm—maybe not,” Pleasants said, though he didn’t sound convinced. Then he laughed. “I suppose you’d lynch anybody who tried, after you’re just through fighting a war to keep them slaves.”

“The war wasn’t about slaves,” Caudell said. “At least, it wasn’t about slaves till Lincoln made it that way. He lost the war, and he’s not U.S. President anymore, either. And the niggers the Yankees freed while they were holding our land are just going to complicate our lives for the next twenty years.”

“Not if Nathan Bedford Forrest has his way,” Pleasants said. When Caudell looked a question at him, he went on, “By the papers, Forrest would just as soon kill the Negroes he catches as make slaves out of them again.”

“He’s a hard man, by all accounts,” Caudell admitted. “Some folks like to take that line.” As vividly as if it had happened the day before, he heard the bark of an AK-47, saw a grinning Billie Beddingfield standing over the corpses of two Negro soldiers who had tried to surrender at Bealeton.

Pleasants watched the line between his eyes deepen, the corners of his mouth turn down. “You don’t have the stomach for massacre yourself, do you?”

“I guess not.” Caudell felt that in some obscure way he betrayed the Confederacy by admitting his doubts to this man from the North, who happened to be his friend. To keep from having to do it again, he changed the subject: “What will you do now? Head back to Pennsylvania?”

“That’s the first thing I thought of, I tell you frankly. Then I had a better idea.” Pleasants smiled foxily. “You know the old saying, ‘Living well is the best revenge’? The railroad paid me good money, and I never did get around to buying that house down in Wilmington, so I have a tidy sum in a bank there. I was thinking of moving up here to Nash County, buying myself a farm, and working it with free labor, white and black both. How does that strike you?”

“Your new neighbors may not like it—”

“Along with the farm, I’ll buy a rifle,” Pleasants said, looking very much like a man who had commanded a Union regiment.

“—but if anybody can make a go of it, I expect you’re the fellow,” Caudell finished. He meant it. If ever he’d met an all-around competent man, Henry Pleasants was the one. “Come to think about it, folks hereabouts will likely give you more leeway than they would somebody who was born in North Carolina. They’ll reckon you’re a damnfool crazy Yankee who doesn’t know any better.”

“I love you too, Nate.” Pleasants snorted in suppressed mirth. “Maybe I am a damnfool crazy Yankee. If I had any sense, I would go back to the United States, you know? But letting a bunch of rich peckerheads in embroidered waistcoats run me out of here just sticks in my craw. So I figure I’ll stay around and show ‘em.”

“You’re stubborn enough to make a Southern man, that’s certain.” Caudell cocked his head to one side.” You aim to buy a farm up here, you say? Why not down around Wilmington? The land is better there. You could raise rice or indigo, make more than you would here at tobacco and corn.”

“The delta land is richer, but it costs more, too. And besides—” Pleasants paused to clap Caudell on the back. “I thought I’d sooner live close by a friend.”

“Thank you, Henry.” They walked along in companionable silence for several steps. Caudell tried to remember if he’d ever had a finer compliment. He couldn’t think of one. A few stars poked through the clouds that drifted by overhead. The evening, he realized, was getting chilly. It had a habit of doing that in fall, even if one tended to forget about such things during the seemingly endless days of summer. Which reminded him—”Do you have a place to stay in town?”

“Yes, I’ve hired a room over the Liberty Bell tavern, thanks—the same as we did in Rocky Mount, that first day we met.”

“Ah.” The neutral noise covered a certain amount of relief. Caudell would gladly have shared his room with his friend, but he was far from sure Barbara Bissett would have been glad about having an unexpected guest. And while Pleasants would have to endure her gimlet gaze for only one day, he himself might never hear the end of her complaints.

Pleasants said, “Do you remember what else we did in Rocky Mount that day?”

“Pieces of it, anyhow,” Caudell said, smiling reminiscently.

“Shall we go and do it again?”

“Don’t know if I want to get that drunk. I have to teach tomorrow, and I’d sort of like to be able to know who I am and what I’m doing. But I wouldn’t say no to a drink or three.” Caudell and Pleasants both turned around in the road. The not-so-bright lights of the not-so-big city lay ahead. They hurried toward them.

Raeford Liles was putting boxes of cloves and peppercorns on a shelf in a back corner of his general store when Nate Caudell came in. Behind the counter, a gray-haired Negro made change for a woman buying a thimble. She put money and thimble into her handbag, nodded to Caudell as she headed for the door.

“Morning, Mrs. Moye,” he told her. She nodded again. The bell jingled to signal her departure. Caudell said, “I didn’t know you’d finally bought yourself a nigger, Mr. Liles.”

“Who, Israel there?” Liles turned around, shook his head. “Didn’t buy him, Nate—ain’t you seen niggers too high for the likes of me? He’s a free nigger, new in town just a couple days and lookin’ for work, so I done hired him. He’s right sharp, Israel is. Israel, this here’s Nate Caudell, the schoolteacher. “

“I’s pleased to make your ‘quaintance, suh,” Israel said.

“Where’d you come from, Israel?” Caudell asked.

“Las’ few years, suh, I been livin’ ovah in New Berne, an’ in the Hayti—the colored folks’ town—across the Trent from it.”

“Have you?” Caudell eyed the black man with new curiosity. New Berne had been in Federal hands from early 1862 to the end of the war, and served as a mecca for escaped slaves from all over North Carolina. Colored regiments recruited there had raided the northeastern part of the state, and more blacks in the area labored to support the Union war effort. Some of them had left with the withdrawing Yankees, but not all. Caudell wondered if Israel’s freedom papers were genuine—and if Raeford Liles had bothered asking to see them.

The Negro reached under the counter. “If you Nate Caudell, suh, you gots a letter here.”

He gave Caudell an envelope which, sure enough, was addressed to him. He recognized Mollie Bean’s handwriting. For a moment, that was all he noticed. Then he blurted, “You can read!”

“Yes, suh, so I can,” Israel admitted. He sounded anxious; teaching blacks their letters was against the law in North Carolina. Defensively, he went on, “The Yankees, they had schools there, an’ they learned lots of us to read. Now they showed me, don’ reckon I can jus’ go an’ forget it again.”

“I hired him on account of he reads,” Raeford Liles said. “You’re one who’s always been talkin’ about changin’ times, Nate, an’ I reckon maybe you’re right, at least partways—like Israel said, he ain’t gonna forget what he learned. The damnyankees messed with niggers for years at New Berne, an’ at Beaufort an’ Carolina City an’ Washington an’ Plymouth, too. There’s probably thousands and thousands o’ niggers in the state with their letters now, goddamn it. Shootin’ ‘em’d be purely a waste; might as well get the most use we can out of ‘em.”

Israel waited to hear how Caudell would answer. More than a few North Carolinians, Caudell thought, would cheerfully have shot thousands of black men. But as Henry Pleasants had said, he couldn’t stomach a massacre. “I think you’ve done well, Mr. Liles,” he said. “No matter how much we wish they could, things aren’t going back to just like they were before the war. Wars tear things up; that’s what they’re all about. One way or another, though, I expect we’ll get along.”

“You got pretty good sense, Nate,” Liles said.

“Yes, suh,” Israel agreed softly. “Tha’s all I try to do, is git along.”

Caudell shrugged. “If I’m so all-fired smart, why aren’t I rich?” He took the letter and walked out into the street. Once out there, he used his free hand to jam his hat as far down over his ears as he could. The trees that lined Washington and Alston were bare-branched now; snow had fallen once or twice. This Saturday afternoon was clear enough, but Caudell’s breath puffed out in a smoky cloud.

He opened the envelope as he walked back to the widow Bissett’s house. “Dear Nate,” he read, “the big thing hear in Rivington to day is skandul. A nigger went name of Josefeen wich belonged to one of the Rivington men called Peet Hardy has gon and hung her self. I seen her oncet or twice in town and its a shaym on a count of she was a bout the purttiest gal black or wite I ever seen. But I reckon I aynt serprized on a count of I went to Peet Hardys hous oncet and I aynt never going back a gain not for all the gold in the woreld he is that crool. The Rivington men is hard on there niggers weve noed that sins we was in the army to gether but even the rest of them has bad things to say a bout Feet Hardy. Non of the girls wil go to him no more Im not the onely one. I no you dont like me to tawk a bout wat I am and wat I do but Nate to day I cant help it I feel so bad for that Josefeen. If you are my true frend I no you will understand. Yor true trend al ways, M. Bean, 47NC.”

Caudell stared down Alston Street without really seeing it. Instead, with frightening vividness, he saw Josephine’s dress fall from her shoulders, saw her dark charms exposed for buyers to admire, saw the frustrated lust on the Alabama man’s face when Piet Hardie—a schoolmaster even in his own thoughts, he spelled the Rivington man’s name correctly in his mind—outbid him. He also saw her face peering through the jasmine by Stony Creek, heard the terror in her voice, heard the nigger hounds baying on her trail. He wondered what Hardie had done to her, to make her first try to flee and then take her own life. Mollie would know, he thought, and then shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Some knowledge, he decided, he could live without.

He read the letter again, then slowly and deliberately tore it into tiny pieces. He hurled them down to the dirt of the street. The chilly wind whirled them away, as if it were snowing again after all.