Fever: Chapter 8 (Ed)

    Horses.  You hate ‘em.  You met a number of cavalrymen in the war, and you don’t know how they do it.  A mile up the road from town, and your body’s already racked with pain.  Not that any trivial thing like physical pain is going to stop you now.  There are lightning clouds flashing on the distant horizon.  You’re hoping you can get off this horse before the thunder gets too close and it gets spooked.  You have enough problems to worry about without your equestrianism.
    You must be near the plantation.  There are fields to the side surrounded by a nicely built fence.  Stately oaks line the road.  There – up ahead are a couple of large white-washed brick pillars marking the entrance.
    There’s a single armed man out front, apparently on sentry duty.  You’re coming up fast, and it seems to you he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing.  Maybe they told  him to expect a man on foot, not a man approaching on horseback at a hard gallop.  He walks out in front of the entrance waving his arms high in the air, like he wants to stop you and ask you who you are.  It’s the last mistake he’ll ever make.  It’s not easy firing from a galloping horse, especially for inexperienced riders like you, but you’re practically on top of him when you raise your rifle and fire.  A red spot erupts on his upper chest, and he topples over backwards.
    To his credit, in his death the man at least accomplished his duty.  No doubt the other men were alerted by the crack of gunshot.  They’ll be ready.  The element of surprise is lost.  No matter, you’re in no mood for sneaking around.  Maybe with a little luck they’re not expecting you to be coming in straight and hard.  At the very least, the horse, to its credit, wasn’t spooked by the gunshot.  You race straight over the fallen man, and go charging up the path towards the house.
    You can see it through the trees on your approach.  It’s huge.  A great white stone monstrosity, built brick by brick by the same hands that made the owners rich in the cotton market.  The trees begin to part, and you see the large, green lawn out front, flanked on each side by two huge old oak trees, heavy with Spanish moss.  There are no men in the yard, but there’s been plenty of activity.  There’s a hastily built gallows, with two nooses already hanging on it.  It looks like they’re especially proud of the nooses.  There’s also a little podium and lectern: somebody was preparing to make a speech to a crowd.  And for the crowd itself, picnic tables.  They were planning a party, big enough for all the white folk of Chevalsboro.
    You pull hard on the reins, and turn the horse off the drive, straight out onto that lawn, running parallel to the front of the house.  The moment you turn, a great flash of musket fire and smoke erupts from an open window in the house.  You’ve learned well how hard it is to hit just a single horse and rider, and you’re counting on it that this little militia will find it just as hard.  One shot, two, three – you rush past the big ostentatious portico of the mansion and past the west wing.  Four, five, six – the gout of fire and smoke from a musket is impossible to miss, but you never heard the familiar buzz of a musket ball flying past you.  You’re pretty sure they never even came close.
    You leave the mansion behind.  At least six different men took potshots at you from six different muskets.  That’s not counting the men whose fire you didn’t draw.  You’re still not sure how many men you’re dealing with.  You’re going to have to go through all of them to get to Zecora.
    You run your horse into the cover of some sparse trees, then dismount.  That’s what the cavalry was doing late in the war when men were finally figuring out how best to fight; ride the horse to the battle, then fight on foot.  You slap the horse on the haunch, and it takes off deeper into the trees.  The thunder starts booming closer now.
    You approach the mansion from the west side.  You can see three men running out of a side door, intent on pursuing you.  Maybe they weren’t expecting you to double back and fire.  You aim your rifle and blast off a couple of rounds in their direction.  They stop in their tracks and raise their own rifles.  There’s one last tree for you to take cover behind, and you race for it.  You almost didn’t make it.  There’s a musket ball that whizzes past your ear, buzzing and angry as any ball you heard in the war.  That was too close.
    You’re only behind the tree long enough to realize that all three men fired their muskets.  So you rush straight out the other side, stand straight up, and aim.  Two of the men are reloading their muskets.  The third is racing back towards the house for cover.  That man knows what he’s doing.
    You fire, and a man reloading drops dead.  It’s going to be a race between you and the man who ran for cover.  You set off at once in his direction.  Your path takes you straight past the second man still choosing to reload.  He’s still drawing the ramrod when he sees you rushing up to him, closing range, and he panics and drops it.  You can’t imagine what he’s thinking.  You put a bullet through his heart as you go sprinting by, from only a few feet away.
    You weren’t racing him though, but the man who ran for cover.  You might still have the drop on him.  You dash past the corner of the house where he disappeared and discover him.  Seeing you, with a flick of his right wrist, he sends the ramrod flying high into the air from out of his muzzle, and with his left hand he begins raising his rifle, primed and loaded.  Too late.  You’ve got him.  You fire three shots into him point blank, and he goes down with a groan.  You’ve never been more thankful that you bought the repeater.
    You take cover in the same spot the man had, and look up.  There are windows from which other men might see you.  You can hear them shouting now.  You need to find better cover than this.  You grab the dead man’s loaded rifle, and head down the back of the house for a better position.  You find someplace, and crouch down at the base of one of the large red brick chimneys.  It’s a blind spot, so unless they come out of the house, they can’t hit you.  You don’t think any more of them will be coming out of the house after the last three – not unless you make them come out.
    You rip off your shirt and tie it around the butt of the dead man’s rifle.  Between his powder and the little bottle of kerosene you stole from the general store, it’s quite easy to start a fire, even with big fat drops of rain starting to fall from the clouds.  You clutch a little fragment of brick off the ground, leap from your hiding spot, and chuck it through a window.  You hope they heard your little ruse.  Then you run around to the other side of the chimney, and pitch your gunstock torch through another window.  You toss in what’s left of the kerosene just because you can, then hide back in your spot again.  There’s a whole lot of shouting coming from inside now.  The fire is spreading.  It should keep them busy for a few moments.  Either they’ll try to put it out or they’ll try to escape.
    You leave your cover and creep along the back wall again.  You make it halfway down the east hall before a soft muffled explosion makes you turn around.  There are flames bursting out of a blown-out window.  You’re in luck.  This mansion, like so many mansions and warehouses and barns in the South, was stuffed full of valuable bales of cotton that couldn’t go to market due to the boycott.  You burned plenty of it in your time.  It’s the fuel that Charleston burned itself to the ground on.  They’re not going to be putting out this fire now.  This mansion is as good as ruined.  Zecora must be somewhere inside.  You don’t know what they’ve done to her.  They could have beaten her.  Raped her.  Cut off her hands or feet, a common fate of runaway slaves.  Raped her.  Killed her.  You don’t know, but you’re going to get her out of there.  You’re not going to let her burn.
    There’s a service entrance at the back of the east wing.  You step inside, creeping quietly and listening.  There’s a lot of confused shouting, muffled because it’s coming from the other side of the mansion.  You can’t even smell the smoke yet, but that won’t be for long.  The place is an awful mess of junk and clutter, it’s been piling up for months.  It reminds you of what an army camp looks like without any discipline.  These men must have been using the place as some kind of headquarters.  The slaves ran off and the men were left to fend for themselves.
    Moving through the place, you start smelling smoke now.  In the places with higher ceilings, you can see the smoke collecting in curling wisps.  You’ve managed to make out at least four distinct voices, each barking commands to the other, and nobody’s following them.  There – you  can see it now – a mad orange glow at the end of a long hallway!  You get down on one knee to steady yourself.  There are men moving in front of the fire, silhouetted black.  You raise your rifle and wait.  Five seconds pass by.  Ten.  One man stops right at the end of the hallway.  Maybe he’s trying to escape in your direction.  You fire; he drops.
    “He’s in the god damn house!” you hear a man shout.  Others add their angry voices in agreement.  You step through a side door and try to find another way in their direction.  The last thing you want to do is stay in one location after you’ve just given yourself away.
    You’re in a fairly large room, some kind of parlor.  There’s no light, but the fire is reflecting red on the lawn outside, and coming in through the big window.  There’s a large arched entrance into the next room.  You’re half confident that there are men down that way.  Stepping through that entrance could leave you an easy shot.  Then you hear a woman’s voice.  It’s her voice.  She screams your name.  Then it’s roughly silenced.
    You lunge through the entrance, then quickly rush back again and duck for cover, cursing your own stupidity.  The molding explodes into splinters as a .58 caliber minie ball rips through it.  There’s more shouting.
    “He’s inside,” somebody repeats pointlessly.  “I seen him.”
    “I need a cartridge!” another screams.
    “Use your bayonet,” the first one barks back, “he’s right through there.”
    Here’s your chance.  At least one of those men is a greenhorn and it’s hard for a man with a musket to figure out how to fight a man with a repeater. You step back across the entrance, almost casually, and fire before stepping behind the other side.  It wasn’t more than two seconds, but it was long enough to be seen.  Here comes the thud of boots on a floor at a run.  You crouch down, lean slightly into the entrance, and fire slightly upwards, into the gut of the surprised man that’s charging through with his bayonet fixed to his rifle.  He’s dropping, but his momentum carries him through and he goes tumbling across the whole length of the room as he dies.
    It’s time to move again.  You dash back across that entrance, fast this time, and draw another shot.  The dead man dropped his bayoneted rifle on the floor.  It’s got a strap and you sling it over your shoulder before dashing back into that long hallway and through another side door.  Maybe they know you’re moving again, maybe they don’t.  Either way you’re going to try to head towards the fire in an attempt to get around to their flank, or whatever on earth you want to call it in close confines like this.
    The fire’s raging.  They’re not even trying to put it out anymore.  The smoke’s growing thick.  It’s making your eyes water.  You try your best to stifle a cough; you don’t dare give yourself away.  You get as close to the fire as you can.  You can’t see the flames from your position, but it must be on the other side of the wall.  The heat is intense on your skin.  The wallpaper on this side of the wall is cooking and smoke is drifting out from between the failing seams.
    You carefully open another door, and look across that same long hall into the opposite room.  You see the foot of a man taking cover behind a door frame.  You think he might be the same man who last shot at you.  He doesn’t see you.  You level your gun and fire a round through his foot.  He rolls onto his back, screaming that he’s been shot.  You can see his face.  He’s an older man.  Should have known better.  When he raises his hands to cradle his wounded foot, you shoot him through the hand.
    “Help me!” he screams.
    Another man screams for his grandfather.  He must be referring to the old man with the big gray beard laying wounded.  Apparently he’s brought his grandson to this fight, and now the grandson’s coming to help him.
    “Stop!  Don’t!”  A third man screams.  Here’s another man who might just know how to fight.  The grandson doesn’t listen, instead he comes to the old man’s side, and bends over him, just like any green fool would do.  He’s just right there, an easy shot.  You put a bullet through the younger man’s head, and he collapses on top of the old man.
    A couple of men shout curses, then break cover.  They’re making a run for it rather than fight here.  You can just see running figures through the smoke.  Two men, one woman.  You hold your fire.  The man is pulling the woman by the hair.  They disappear.
    You run after them.  The wounded old man you left on the floor is no longer useful to you as bait.  There are two loaded guns near him, so he’s still a threat.  He wanted to fight a war, this is what war looks like.  You unsling the other man’s bayoneted rifle from your shoulder and run him through, twisting in hard before leaving it sticking up straight in the man’s body.  The bayonet did its job, and you’re running low on loaded ammo.  You’re not sure how many more rounds before you have to reload.  Maybe two, maybe three.
	You chase after the two remaining men, and the woman who could only be Zecora.  They’re making their way towards the east end, where the smoke is less intense.  They’re coughing as they go, so you can hear them, but they can hear you cough too, and know you’re still on their heels.  You don’t think it likely that they would head out the front entrance and try to run across the lawn.  That would leave them wide open to fire.  The back way has the same problem.  This east wing – it won’t burn for another twenty minutes or so.  They’ll try to make their stand here.  You come to a servant’s staircase.  You probably would have run straight up that thing if you were them.  Sure enough, you can hear their feet on the creaky boards of the second floor.  Zecora screams for you again, erasing any doubt.
    You follow them up and chase them.  They’re slamming doors behind themselves.  They’re knocking over furniture in makeshift barricades.  They’re not sure where they want to fight.  It’s easy enough to kick through doors.  It’s harder to push away the furniture while still keeping your gun ready for a shot.  You must be nearing the far east end of this wing.  Kicking open one last door, you come to a short hall with a staircase at the end, one flight leading up, the other flight leading down.  There’s also a hard looking man with a gun pointed in your direction.  You both fire at the same time and dive for cover at the same time.  Both bullets miss.  You get back up faster.  You aim for the downstairs flight, thinking they’ll head for that.  You see him move, and you fire your last two rounds.  They thud into the wall, inches from the man’s face.  He curses while turning around, and runs upstairs instead.
    You duck behind cover and reload another sixteen rounds.  You have to move fast.  They’re getting away.  It shouldn’t take long to reload, assuming you don’t start to panic and fumble with the bullets.  The mere act of thinking about it is enough to make your fingers start to slip.  This won’t work.  You close your eyes and take a deep breath.  You’re calm now.  Not more than two seconds have passed.  You open your eyes and then finish the job of reloading.  It’s almost over – all of it.
    You set off after them again, running up the stairs three at a time.  Where are they going?  What are they thinking?  They’re running out of room.  There are huge muffled booming noises.  It could be thunder.  It could be the mansion’s timbers splitting in the fire.  It doesn’t matter.
    The third floor is like an attic.  It’s one huge room, spanning nearly the length of the mansion, but it’s packed full with all kinds of things.  It’s something of a maze.  They could hide in here and you’d never find them until you all burned.  You’re not going to let it go on that long, so you rush around looking for them. You feel yourself getting sloppy, but at least you’re being quick about it.  Half the room is filled with smoke; it’s like a great gray wall.  It’s going somewhere.  There’s some kind of opening in the ceiling.  It’s hard to see through all the thick rafters.  Looks like a steep staircase.  They’re going up on the roof.  You can just make out somebody manhandling a woman.  There’s no good shot.
    By the time you get to the base of that ladder/staircase, the man and the woman are gone.  There’s another man still trying to climb up it.  He’s a second away from making it to the roof.  You aim and fire.  The bullet goes straight up through his ass and out the center of his spine.  He goes sliding down that staircase, thudding his lifeless chin the whole way.  He only skids to a halt at your feet.  It’s that hard-faced man from before.  He’s got the look of an experienced soldier.  It’s a bad way to die for a veteran, but if they asked you, you’d say he had it coming.
    Smoke is blowing up and out that staircase fast as if the whole house is one big set of bellows. A thick wall of rain is pouring right down through.  It’s that heavy southern summer deluge.  Might slow the fire down for a bit if it were to last more than ten minutes, which it won’t.
    The exit to the roof is a big gaping rectangle of absolute darkness, punctuated occasionally with the purple flickering of lightning.  There’s one man left up there.  It’s likely Morgan himself for all you know.  There’s nowhere left for him to hide.  You can go up there, but if he’s got a bead on you you’ll be dead before you make it all the way up.  If you don’t go up there, Zecora will die, and she’s the only thing you live for anyway.
    You don’t second guess yourself, you simply charge straight up, as fast as you can.  The rain is warm, but it feels cold compared to the heat of the burning mansion.  It gives you new energy as you ascend.  The instant your head clears the roof, you turn it to see what you’re facing.  You were right.  It’s Morgan, not thirty yards away.  He’s got Zecora locked in his grip.  He’s also got a big pistol in his other hand, and he’s got it leveled right at your head.  The muzzle looks like it’s as big as a canon.
    He’s waiting for you to come up.  He pulls the trigger the moment he sees you.  The thing is, Zecora is watching for you too.  She shoves him as hard as she can the moment she sees you, and Morgan’s aim is thrown off just enough to send the bullet whizzing past you.
    The last few steps seem to freeze in time.  You take in every iota of detail in your surroundings.  There are chimneys, large and small.  A widow’s walk that spans all the way over into the burning west wing.  Zecora looks terrified but relatively unharmed.  Morgan looks like a cornered, desperate, wet rat.  He's wearing some kind of foppish gentleman's attire, or maybe it's some kind of homemade officer's uniform.  His handgun isn’t even a revolver, just a single shot French navy pistol or some damn thing.  He lets it drop, as it's now useless to him.
    So it’s a standoff.  You’ve got a rifle.  He’s got the only thing in the world that you love.  No, he’s also got a cavalryman’s saber.  He draws it while you can do nothing but judge the shot.  The range is close enough.  The problem is that Morgan’s moving around too much.  Sometimes he’s got the tip of the saber poking into Zecora’s belly, just under her ribs.  Sometimes he’s got the blade pressed up under her breasts.  Sometimes he’s got it at her throat, where his forearm is choking her hard.  He can’t seem to make up his mind.  Zecora is turning blue.
    “Put the gun down!” Morgan screams.
    You don’t even blink.
    “Put the gun down, and we can all get out of here before we burn to death.  We can negotiate once we’re down.  Maybe we can act as if none of this has happened.”
    You still don’t move.  You’re in no mood to negotiate.  All you want to do is look for a clean shot.  Looks like he’s afraid of that, and he’s still jerking around.  “Why?” you shout back, hoping to gain a little more time.
    “Why?” Morgan spits, incredulously.  “Why?  You ask me why we’ve done this?  After all you people have done to us, and you still ask why?  You invaded our country!  You’ve trampled all over our god-given rights!  You’ve destroyed our livelihood!  You’ve stolen our slaves right out from under us!  You...you...,” he waves his saber back at the red flames of the west wing, before returning it to Zecora’s breasts.  “You’ve burned down our homes!  And you’ve got the nerve to ask?  And you, you miscegenist son of a bitch!  You saunter into our town like you own the place, asking about your trash nigger whore, shoving your perversions down our throats.  You dare pretend like you don’t understand?”
    Actually, you were only asking why in the hell he would ever expect you to drop your rifle.  You don’t tell him that though, you’ve got no interest in talking with this fool and madman.  He’s slowed down while he’s insulting you.  He’s pointing his saber at you, as if he expects you to respond.
    You respond by pulling the trigger.  It’s a clean shot, as clean as you can get.  Morgan doesn’t die.  Instead you both hear the tinny ring of a rimfire cartridge misfiring.  There’s a two second gap where none of you can believe it.  You can’t believe you’ve doomed Zecora.  He can’t believe you tried to kill him.
    Then everything seems to happen as fast as the lightning flashing around you.  You set off at once, as fast as your feet can run.  It’s too far away.  All Morgan has to do is let Zecora go with his left arm, and raise his right arm up for the killing blow with his saber.  You see it for that instant, reflecting the angry red fire and the shocking white lightning.  Then it comes down, down, down...striking at Zecora’s neck, cutting the flesh.  There’s a great splash of blood as Morgan pulls the saber back for another blow.  Zecora screams and it breaks your heart.  She falls to the roof below.
    You’re screaming now yourself.  It’s the deep, throaty bellow of charging Union infantry.  You’ve cleared half the distance when Morgan realizes he won’t have time to strike Zecora twice.  The barrel of your gun is in your hands, and you’re swinging it like a club.  Morgan can only feebly raise up his saber and jump back.  Your gun connects with his sword, and nearly knocks it from his hand, but you miss his head.  Morgan’s a little more prepared for your next swing.  He deflects it, then counters with a swinging horizontal arc that trims a shallow little groove along your stomach, just below the navel.
    You don’t let up, you don’t slow down.  Hand to hand combat is a horrible thing, and it won’t be over until one or both of you are dead.  You know that.  You’ve been here before.  Morgan’s as green as the dead men below, and he’s soon going to join them.  The next two swings hit neither man nor blade.  On the next you raise your gun up high and bring it down hard.  Morgan actually tries to parry by swinging upward.  You connect, and the blade buries itself half an inch deep in the stock, barely missing the knuckles of your clenched fist, and your weapons are briefly stuck together.
    Each of you try to force the other man away by pushing forward on your weapons.  For a split second, your struggling faces are inches apart from one another.  The man’s saber is beginning to bend under the pressure.  He sees it, and fears.
    Then you kick the son of a bitch.  You were aiming for his testicles, but you hit a little too high, and he goes stumbling back, the blade now dislodged.  He holds up his slightly bent sword, hoping to block your next blow.  This next blow you aim purposefully at the sword.  It strikes hard, and the sword is now bent feebly at a right angle.  He’s still holding it up in a futile effort to spare himself.  The next blow is aimed at the hand holding the saber.  There’s a loud crunch as you shatter the bones.  Morgan screams as the saber falls.  He doesn’t scream long.  You reverse the direction of your swing, backhanded now, and connect with his open jaw.  He goes over backwards, silenced.
    You’re not done.  You move to stand over him.  He tries to raise a foot in a gesture as if he can stop you, like he can kick you away.  You smash the bones of his foot.  He goes ahead and tries it with his other leg.  You break his kneecap.  He tries to scream as you stand over him, but his jaw is in far too many pieces, and at entirely the wrong angle for anything other than a pathetic groan to come out.
    You raise the butt of the rifle up high, and bring it down on the top of his skull.  The first blow leaves him immobile.  On the fourth blow, his whole body starts twitching and spasming.  On the fifth blow, the right side of his body stops.  On the sixth, his left.  By the ninth blow, his scalp is torn open, his skull split.  You can see his brain bleeding down onto the roof of his burning mansion.  You’ve seen strange things on the battlefield.  Just in case he’s not dead yet, you bring the gun down one last time and make a true mess of him.  Morgan wanted war.  This is what war looks like.
    The pouring heavens begin to put out your own private fire.  Your rage subsides. Your fever breaks.
    The fighting spirit finally pours out of you, and you spin around with a crying, broken sob.  You lurch back to where Zecora has fallen.  She’s still alive and trying to get up, though she’s crying in pain.  You feel a glimmer of hope as you crouch over her.  You sob again when you see all the blood.  It’s all over.  You pull away her wet hair, the fragments of her wet blouse.  The wound is high on her shoulder, directed more downward than across into her neck.  It’s a deep cut, as you examine it, you can see white bone beneath.  You let go a kind of hurt bellow, but of relief, not grief, as you tear at the hem of her skirt for cloth.
    “You’ll be alright,” you cry to her.
    “Are you sure?” she asks, still shaking and terrified.
    “I’ve seen this wound before,” you say.  “If we stop the bleeding you’ll be fine.”  That’s what you try to do now – press hard with the fragment of cloth.  It’s not easy with everything soaking wet, but you’re confident the wound will soon clot.  The rain has diluted the blood: that’s why it’s everywhere.  It looks worse than it is.
    You help Zecora up to her feet, and she almost falls again, but you catch her, and then lift her up into your arms.  She insists that she can walk, but you carry her anyway down the steep stairs to the smoky attic.  Now that the fighting is over, you start to worry about the fire.  You still have time to escape the flames, but the smoke is another issue.
    By the time you get down to the second floor, you have to reluctantly put Zecora back down on her feet.  You’re coughing too hard to carry her any more.  You make your way to the grand staircase of the main hall, and straight down it.  A floor in the west wing collapses.  The interior doors are all blown open by a blast of hot air.  It singes your hairs.  The last few paces you take while holding your breath.
    Then you’re out the front door into the cool lawn.  You cough and choke, but you’re clear of the fire.  Your wet clothes are steaming in the muggy night air.  So is the ground around you.  It’s mostly stopped raining.  Your lungs hack a few more times as you’re both bent over, hands on your knees, then slowly stand up, to take in what’s before you.
    There are more men.  A dozen or more.  They‘re surrounding the lawn in a wide semi-circle.  Each man is on horseback, their horses nervously digging their hooves at the ground as they watch the fire behind you burn.  Each man is well armed with a repeater and a proper revolver.  Each man carries a torch to light his way, or perhaps to burn what gets in his way.  These aren’t backwater militia, these are proper soldiers.
    The man in the middle, their commander by the look of him, walks his horse to where you and Zecora stand, panting for breath.  It’s impossible to run.  You were so close to escaping too.  The man dismounts, and walks the last few paces towards you.  He has a thick, impressive brown beard.  There’s a scarf around his neck.  You recognize the man, though you’ve never met.  You’ve seen his photograph a number of times.  The man before you is Major General James Longstreet.
    You could kill him.  You once met the cannoneer who blew Leonidas Polk to hell.  That man was a hero.  You could be a hero too.  There’s a misfired cartridge in your rifle.  You’d have to clear it and reload.  The men still on horseback would see it.  They’d gun both you and Zecora down where you stand, but not before you could blow out Longstreet’s brains.  It would be better for you and Zecora to die as heroes than to dangle with ropes about your necks.  Longstreet opens his mouth.  You don’t kill him.
    “Are there any more men left in that house, son?” he asks.  His voice that of a senior officer’s, stern but calm, and gentlemanly.  You answer him promptly and honestly.  It’s a reflex.
    “No, sir,” you say.  “None so far as I know.  At least none left alive.”
    “Dead then?  How many?”
    “Fraid I lost count,” you answer.  “About eight or so.  Nine if you count the sentry by the front gate, I'd suppose.  Not sure about him though, could be I just winged him.”
    “Uh, no,” Longstreet shakes his head.  “That man is dead.”  You shrug your shoulders.  “You did all this yourself?  Nine men vs. one?”
    “Well now I don’t think it was all that,” you say.  “I don’t think more than two of them had any experience.  The rest weren’t fair.”
    Longstreet nods and glances over at Zecora.  “Son?  Is this woman hurt?”
    “Yes, sir.  She’s been struck by a saber.”
    “God!  A man struck this woman with a saber?”
    “Morgan himself.  He wasn’t mounted though, so he had no momentum.  Blade caught on her collar bone.  She’ll need stitching, but she should be fine and keep the arm.”
    “God!” he repeats.
    “I’ve seen this wound before,” you add.
    The general spins around to his men.  “Boys!” he shouts at them.  “Bring up my ambulance!”  He extends his arm towards Zecora.  “This woman’s been hurt!”

    Longstreet’s ambulance is a small carriage that had been left behind at the gate by the first dead man, until brought up on his command.  There’s just enough room for you, Zecora, and Longsteet himself, as his surgeon stayed behind in Farmingham.
    You try to stitch Zecora’s wound shut yourself.  You’ve sewn a few stitches in your time, though you’re far from good at it.  There will likely be an ugly scar.  Longstreet, for his part, is kind enough to hold the lantern steady while you work.
    You finish, pull the torn sleeve of Zecora’s blouse back up over her shoulder for modesty, and breathe a sigh of relief.
    “Where’d you do your fighting, son?” Longstreet asks sternly.
    “Oh, here and there,” you say, as always when somebody asks.  “Mostly in the West.”
    “Ah, now see, I fought mostly in the East,” he replies.  He seems to want to start a friendly conversation.  It wasn’t what you were expecting.  Nor are you really in the mood for it, given your situation.
    You idly scratch your nose.  “I was...um, at Chickamauga.”
    “Oh?  Yes, I was there too.  Hell of a fight.”
    “That’s about how I remember it,” you say.  “I...uh...fought under Thomas, sir.”
    “Well I should have guessed by the fight you just put up.  Ah, Old Tom.  Good man.  I miss him from school.”
    “He was a classmate of yours, sir?”
    “No, U.S. Grant was a classmate of mine.  Old Tom was a few years ahead of us.”
    This wasn’t something you knew.  This isn’t one of those things you wanted to know.  It kind of feels like when you're a kid, and you learn what fucking is.  Then later you realize that's how your parents made you.  You shake your head, confused.  “What do you intend for us, sir?”
    “Well, we’ll make our way to Farmingham.  We were at the hotel when we got an invitation from your Col. Morgan to attend a lynching, so we came as soon as we could, I hope you understand.  My surgeon stayed behind.  I’d like for him to take a second look at those stitches of yours.  No offense intended.”
    “None taken.”
    “From there I can have you escorted back to Baton Rouge.  You should be able to go anywhere you want from there.”
    “Escorted, but free to go, sir?  We’re not under arrest?”
    Longstreet scratches his thick beard.  “The way I see it, son, you were only defending yourselves.  That’s pretty clear.  Any man who would strike a woman with a saber is a true villain.  As bad as any of the rumors I've been hearing.  Though I can’t promise a judge and jury would agree with me in this parish or another, so once you’re in Baton Rouge, I suggest you skedaddle.  I can get you a pardon if they cause trouble, but I’d just as soon prefer if you make yourselves scarce and I won’t have to deal with it.”
    “Where would we go?” Zecora asks, weakly.
    “I wouldn’t stay in Louisiana if I were you,” he says.  “Or anywhere in the South, that’s for sure.  You can try the North, but I have the feeling you won’t be welcome there either.  Maybe Canada.  It’s...a different place.  Or you could go to Mexico.  I doubt many would give a damn in Mexico.  Many of my own former countrymen have fled there.  If there’s any fight left in you son, the Mexicans would be glad to have you, or the French.  Take your pick.  That war's not going anywhere any time soon.  Myself, I’d just as soon see no more fighting.  I can’t say that I approve of how the two of you may feel about each other, but it’s a damn sight better than more violence.  Pardon my vulgarity,” he nods towards Zecora.
    “You’re not like Colonel Morgan, sir,” you say.
    “I should hope not,” he grumbles.  “I’d never strike a woman.  But if you mean his views on the South rising again and putting up another fight, you’re right on that account too.  I swore I’d fight for my country.  I gave it everything I had.  We still lost.  My country is no more.  I did what I thought was right.  Now I’ll do it again and be a soldier for the United States.  It’s honorable, it’s right, and as far as I can tell, it’s the only way to rebuild and get on with our lives.”
    “I fear for the South, son," he goes on, as if this is something he's dwelt on for many long months.  Or maybe years.  "We lost so many men.  Damn near every able bodied man from fifteen to fifty has either lost life or limb.  I think about that waste a lot.  How many of those men could have been great leaders, or writers, or men of science and industry?”
    “Same could be said for the men of the North,” you reply.
    “Certainly.  This all turned out to be one enormous, pointless waste.  It’s a shame that it ever happened.”
    Zecora takes a moment to speak up.  “I believe that many thousands of my people would disagree with you that it was all in vain.”  Her voice is weak and strong at the same time.
    Longstreet sputters and stammers.  He’s not used to being upbraided by a woman, let alone a negro woman.  He knows she’s right though.  “Well that’s not what I mean, madam,” he says.  “What I mean is...  I don’t know what I mean.  For a fraction of the cost the Union has paid for the war, they could have simply bought all of the slaves and manumitted them without having a war at all.  Maybe that's what I mean.”
    “I don’t think that could have happened that way,” you say.
    “No,” Longstreet says.  “No, I suppose it couldn’t have.  Not with men like Morgan.  I wonder if maybe I should thank you for solving a problem for me.  It’s going to be many years putting this country back together, and scoundrels like him only cause more problems.  The way I see it, his sort are the enemy of the peace now.  And I suppose it’s my job to stop them.  So you may have just done me a favor.  If you tell anybody I said any of this out loud, soldier, I’m going to deny it.”
    “They’re not going to love you for it,” you tell him.
    “No, I suppose they’re in for a big surprise.  They’ll likely burn me in effigy.  But I’m just a soldier, and I need to do my duty.  Let them hate me.”
    You don’t have anything to say in response to that.
    “You’ll need to go,” he tells the both of you.  “You need to run.  They already hate you, and I can’t ensure your safety.  When you get to Baton Rouge, take a steamer south, and don’t stay in New Orleans either.  Find another boat there and just keep going.  Run until you reach the ends of the earth if you have to.  All I know is that you won’t be welcome here, and it’s not worth staying anyways.”

    So running is exactly what you do.  You make it to Mexico, just like the gentleman and officer recommended.  You do feel a little more welcome there, if only because so many people have bigger problems that they don’t give a shit about a gringo traveling with a freed slave.  You’re not exactly comfortable though.  You’re in the middle of somebody else’s war, but you’re in no mood for more fighting.
    You take another boat up the West coast to San Francisco.  It turns out the West is no more welcoming to the two of you than anywhere else in the United States, and you don’t stay long.  You find Portland to be an ugly mess of mud and stumps.  You’d thought that out here on the frontier that other people would be less of a problem, but the few people here seem seedy and untrustworthy.  Indeed, if it wasn’t for Zecora’s quick thinking one evening in a saloon, you would have been struck senseless by a pack of goons, and wound up the next morning on a ship bound for Shanghai.
    A few days later, seeking to leave, you find yourself on a ship bound for Shanghai anyway.  You signed on with the crew.  Zecora is booked as a passenger.  It’s not long before Zecora makes her presence felt on deck.  She’s soon showing you, and plenty of the crew, the proper way to tie knots and make sail.
    The crew of this ship is a degenerate gang of criminals and louts.  They’re also a patchwork of races from every backwater in the world.  For the first time you feel welcome.  You’re the toast of the ship, the two of you, and they’re glad to have you on board.  They’re sad, too, when you part ways in Shanghai.  The ship’s master makes a decent sale with his cargo.  You get two modest payments, both for your work and Zecora’s.  It’s enough to get by.
    Shanghai is an amazing place.  Neither you nor Zecora have ever seen its like.  Neither, for that matter, have they ever seen anything like you.  Here’s the tall white American soldier, and his beautiful black sailor wife.  You’re not just welcome, you’re a novelty.
    You find passage on other ships to other places.  Sometimes you pay fares, sometimes you work, depending on your shifting fortunes.  You visit Siam.  You visit Manila.  You book passage on a Portuguese ship through the pirate haunted waters of the Straight of Malacca.
    In a city on the east coast of India, you visit your first spice market.  It’s just as Zecora described.  There are great pyramidal piles of spices, left out on blankets to dry in the sun.  Mounds of black pepper, nutmeg, saffron...there are more colors and flavors and aromas than you ever imagined.
    It’s in India where you befriend a British officer.  He invites you to stay in his home for awhile.  You’re something of kindred spirits.  His own wife is a beautiful dark-skinned woman, and he doesn’t expect to be sailing home to England with her anytime soon.  He hears the stories of your service and, impressed, offers to brevet you an officer in his command.
    You thank him, but very politely decline.  When the monsoon winds change, you sail off across the ocean again.
    Now you’re on a little island just off the east coast of Africa.  You had never really been sure that fabled Zanzibar was real or fantasy, not until Zecora had told you she had been there herself that night in the hospital.  Now here you are, waking up in a room in Zanzibar to the musical sound of a man calling for morning prayer.
    Soon you’ll be heading off to the mainland and trekking into the interior.  That’s going to be hard work.  For the moment, you’re content to rest and sleep in.  Zecora’s here in bed too.  She’s in your arms, right where she’s supposed to be.  Your hand is on her breast.  It’s large and round, just like her belly below.  You can’t decide where you prefer to keep your hand, on her swelling belly or her swelling breasts.  It’s the kind of problem you like to have.  You’re both stark naked, you pale white, her a dark ebony, laying on a bed of fine linen.  Last night was hot, the day promises to be hot too.  Right now the cool breeze is perfect as it caresses your lovers’ skin.
    There is one little thing that one of you is wearing between the both of you.  It’s around Zecora’s finger.  It’s just a little gold ring you picked up as a present for her many months ago, back in Louisiana.  It’s not a fancy thing.  It can’t replace the great large necklaces and bracelets and earrings she once wore.  It means more to her, and you, than those did though.  It’s only a symbol, but it’s a symbol of the wealth of love that you’ll both carry together, for as long as the two of you live.


Author's notes:
    Well, that’s it.  Once again, thanks for reading.
    The idea of doing one of these stories with Zecora came to me in a very pleasant dream.
    I’m not entirely sure why I chose to set it during the US Civil War.  I admit a personal interest in Civil War history.  Mostly, though, I think it was because I hadn’t done any period pieces before.  I’ve grown rather bored of the modern second person anon with modern second person problems.  So I wanted to do something new.
    I’ve already had a few questions about the real history behind this piece.  Obviously anon and characters taken from the show are fictional.  One notable exception being that there really was a General McIntosh, killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge.  Nurse Redheart’s husband and Farmingham are fictional.  Chevalsboro is simply a pseudo-Franco-American corruption of Ponyville.
    Pretty much most of the rest of it is real.  The battles were real.  The Grand Review of the Armies, the destruction of the Sultana, Sherman cutting loose the freed slaves following his army... that all happened.  There are a few small places here and there where I was a little slippery with the time line.  Longstreet was my most egregious lie.  He wasn’t given command of the Louisiana militias until a few years after the war, not a few months as depicted here.  I probably also made a number of honest mistakes, but if I were aware of them I’d have corrected them by now.
    Truth is stranger than fiction, this fiction being no exception.  There were many men, like Anon, who saw battle from the beginning to the end of the war, most of the major battles, many dozens of the small ones.  In that respect, he’s rather mundane.
    Zecora’s story is admittedly a little more improbable.  Still, it’s an amalgamation of many true stories.  There really were slaves in America who had been of noble, in some cases royal, birth back in Africa.  There were numerous revolts and insurrections on the Caribbean Islands and the mainland of North and South America.  There were slaves that escaped numerous times, going through improbable acts of adventure and misadventure.  There were a handful of African American women who were made nurses during the war.  Zecora’s most incredible adventure, her final escape through Charleston Harbor, actually happened, fictionalized only to include her presence.  You can read up on Robert Smalls for a real life example of a slave and soldier’s story more amazing than any fiction.
    As for reading, if you’d like to know more about the U.S. Civil War, and are looking for a huge thick book to sink your teeth into, I’d recommend Shelby Foote’s Civil War: A Narrative.  It’s in three volumes and will take you awhile.  Foote was trained as a novelist, not a historian, so it’s a fine read despite its imposing size.
    If that’s a bit too much to sink your teeth into, but you’re still interested in something a little lighter, I’d recommend Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War.  It’s a good introduction into the subject, and it’s a beautifully made example of how to make a documentary film, even without regarding the subject.  Last time I checked, you could watch it for free on Netflix, or you could probably find it in the library of any US public library.
    As for the villain Morgan, he was fictional.  Unfortunately he’s a bit of a pastiche of real villains worse than him.  I could go on at length about the damage that men like him, and his admiring descendants, would do to this country and its people for the next 150 years.  It’s a bit outside of the scope of these endnotes, though, and I’ve got the feeling that the act of writing it, and the act of reading it, would put both you and I in a sour mood.
    I will say that there have always been, since the beginning, white people who have been in love with black people, and vice versa.  They finally won the right to marry, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, in 1967.