Breakthroughs (43 page)

By his tone, he thought Custer deserved blame anyhow. But he could have plausibly denied that, and she had no documents to make him out a liar there. “Anything else, Miss Hamburger?” Congressman Taft asked. Flora shook her head. The fat Democrat got in a dig of his own: “Nothing actually pertaining to trains?”

“Mr. Chairman, if the choice is between asking questions that have to do with how crowded trains are and how safe my brother is, I know which questions I want to ask,” Flora said.

“I hope your brother stays safe, Miss Hamburger,” General Wood said. “Despite our gains, the fighting in Virginia has been very hard.”

“Thank you,” she said. For a moment, she was surprised he knew where David had been sent, but only for a moment. Soldiers who happened to be related to members of Congress no doubt had special files high-ranking officers could check at need.

“Any further questions from anyone?” Taft asked. No one spoke. The chairman of the Transportation Committee asked another question: “Do I hear a motion to adjourn?” He did, and gaveled the session to a close.

Later, in her office, Flora was answering letters from constituents when her secretary came in and said, “General Wood would like to see you for a few minutes, ma’am.”

“Send him right in, Bertha,” Flora said. “I wonder what he wants.” She wondered if she’d struck a nerve with her questions about barrels. If he complained about those, she’d send him away with a flea in his ear.

Into the inner office he strode, erect, soldierly. The first words out of his mouth surprised her: “You did a good job of raking me over the coals there earlier this afternoon. One of these days, we’ll sift all the Socialist sneaks out of the War Department, but it isn’t likely to be any time soon.”

She didn’t want to thank him, but he’d succeeded in disarming some of the hostility she felt. “You didn’t come here just to tell me that,” she said.

“No, I didn’t,” he answered. “I came here to tell you again that I wish all the best for your brother. The 91st is a good unit, and they’ve compiled a record that will stand up against anyone’s.”

“I wish they’d never had to compile that kind of record—or any other kind of record, for that matter,” Flora said.

“I understand,” General Wood answered. Flora must have raised an eyebrow, for he went on, “I do. Soldiers fight wars; they know what goes into them. Glory is what happens afterwards, what civilians make up.”

“Not much glory will come out of this war, even afterwards,” Flora said. “Hard to squeeze glory out of mud and lice and bullets and shells flying every which way.”

Wood surprised her again by nodding. “Maybe that means we won’t fight another one for a long time. I hope to heaven it does.” He paused, rubbed at his mustache, and finally went on, “Your brother—David, isn’t it?—yes, David, has already made more than an honorable contribution to our cause and to our ultimate victory. If he were to request a transfer to, say, a clerical position or one of the supply services, I think that request would be likely to receive favorable attention.”

“More favorable than if a seamstress’ daughter put in the same request?” Flora asked. The chief of the General Staff did not answer, which was an answer in itself. Almost despairingly, Flora said, “You put me in an impossible position, you know. If I keep him safe, I take unfair advantage of who I am. If I don’t, and anything happens to him…I think you had better go.”

General Wood got to his feet. “I am sorry, Miss Hamburger,” he said. “I hoped to ease your mind, not to upset you. Good day.”

Out he strode, shoulders back, spine straight. Flora stared after him. She didn’t believe him. He was too intelligent not to have understood every bit of what he was doing. He’d done it anyhow. Why? Just to upset her? Or to gain whatever advantage he could if she asked him to help David? “Damn you, General Wood,” she muttered. “Damn you.”

Anne Colleton crouched in the brush that had advanced from the woods toward the ruins of the Marshlands mansion. With her crouched not only a squad of local militiamen but also a machine-gun team from somewhere down by Charleston. She’d almost had to go down on her knees in front of the governor to get them, but they were here. If he’d asked her to go down on her knees in front of him when they were all alone, she’d have thought about doing that, too. That was how much she wanted to make sure her trap slammed shut hard.

In a back pocket of her mannish trousers, she had a torn, dirty scrap of paper with a few words written in a crisp, elegant hand that did not match its stationery. If what Scipio told her was true…

If it wasn’t true, she was either wasting her time here or walking into a trap rather than setting one. Just for a moment, her hand fell to the barrel of the scope-sighted Tredegar beside her. Any trap that tried closing on her would take some damage first.

Off on the left of the little line, Sergeant Willie Metcalfe stiffened and let out a low hiss. As if afraid that wouldn’t be enough, he turned his head so that he presented the ruined left half of his face to his comrades. “Here they come,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Don’t open up too soon,” Anne ordered the militiamen. She’d said it before. She would say it again: “Let them get close. Let them get busy. And then…” Her voice, still soft, turned savage. “Let them have it.”

She stared avidly through the brush, north toward the Congaree. The ground—the ground that should have been covered with cotton instead of overrun by weeds—steamed as the sun rose higher and burned down on it. Through that thin, shimmering mist, she too made out the Negroes heading for the mansion.

They were a ragged lot, ragged and filthy, but they carried themselves like fighting men. Their strides were quick and wary. Their heads never stopped moving. She froze whenever they looked toward her, and hoped her companions had the sense to do the same. The militiamen, she feared, weren’t in the same class as the men of the Congaree Socialist Republic. If they kept the advantage of surprise, they wouldn’t need to be.

Some of the Negroes carried spades, some rifles, most both. One in particular stalked along like a beast of prey in spite of the Tredegar on his shoulder.
His
shoulder? Anne took a longer look at that Red rebel.

“Cherry,” she whispered. Her lips drew back from her teeth in a smile so ferocious that Linus Ashforth, who crouched beside her, involuntarily flinched away, as from a wild beast. Anne never noticed the white-bearded militiaman. Her attention remained altogether focused on the Negro woman who had been first her brother’s lover and then, as the Red revolt began, the instrument of Jacob Colleton’s death.

She didn’t need long to realize that, as she led the militiamen, Cherry bossed the Negroes. She bossed them imperiously, bullying them into doing exactly as she required.
Bitch. Hateful bitch,
Anne thought, never noticing how much Cherry’s style resembled her own.

“We done tried over yonder, dat side o’the mansion.” Cherry’s voice floated across a hundred yards of open ground. “Now we tries on dis side.” She led the Reds over toward the side where Anne and the militiamen waited. “Dig, you damn lazy niggers. Dig!” She set down the rifle and grabbed a spade herself.

They dug with her. Few would have been bold enough to argue. Cassius would have, but Cassius wasn’t here. Anne let out a silent sigh. Had Scipio handed her Cherry and Cassius both, she might even have thought about forgiving him. But Cherry by herself was no small prize.

“At my signal,” Anne whispered to Linus Ashforth and to the man to her left. “Pass it along the line.” They did. She picked up her rifle. She didn’t aim at Cherry, not yet. The militiamen stirred, picking their own targets.

Cherry was as alert as a beast of prey, too. She caught some tiny motion in the brush and let out a cry of alarm.

At the same instant, Anne shouted, “Now!” She fired at one of the men who’d just thrown down a shovel and was turning to grab for his rifle. The turn only half completed, he slumped bonelessly to the ground, blood pouring from a wound in his flank.

All along the line of militiamen, rifles barked. The machine gun hammered away like a mad thing. A couple of the Reds managed to fall flat, get hold of their rifles, and fire back. Their fire did not last long. Methodical as factory workers, the machine gunners traversed the muzzle of their weapon back and forth. Nothing on the ground in front of them could stay unhit for long.

Seeing how things were, Cherry turned and ran. Anne had run once, too, when revolution broke out around her in Charleston. She’d escaped. Cherry was not so lucky. Anne peered through the telescopic sight, which made her target seem even closer than it was—and Cherry would have been an easy shot for someone less handy with a rifle than she was. She exhaled. She pulled the trigger. The Tredegar kicked against her shoulder. Cherry toppled with a shriek.

Anne started to break cover, then hesitated. One or more of the Negroes the militiamen had shot down were liable to be shamming. Beside her, Linus Ashforth did stand up. Sure as hell, a bullet cracked past his head. It could as easily have shattered his skull like a dropped flowerpot. He dove for cover. The machine gun hosed down the Reds. When Willie Metcalfe got to his feet, no one fired at him.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Anne said coldbloodedly. Now she rose.

“That one ain’t finished yet, ma’am.” Sergeant Metcalfe pointed in the direction of Cherry, who was still trying to crawl away with a shattered lower leg. He started to raise his own rifle.

“No!” Anne’s voice was sharp. “I want her alive. You men!” She waved to the rest of the squad, then pointed in the direction of the Reds who had been digging. “See to them. If any of them are still breathing, finish them off.”

She loped toward Cherry. Behind her, a couple of short, flat cracks rang out. Nodding in satisfaction, she trotted on. She had a round in the chamber of her Tredegar, and was ready and more than ready to fire if the colored woman had a pistol tucked in the pocket or waistband of her tattered dungarees.

Cherry snarled hatred at her, but made no move to reach for a weapon. “White debbil bitch,” she said. “They was right all along, damn them. You never was nothin’but a goddamn liar.”

“You know all about lies, don’t you?” Anne said evenly. “You told enough of them, back before the rebellion.”

“I ain’t never told lies like you ’pressors tell de niggers and de poor stupid buckra and your ownselves,” Cherry retorted. She gathered herself, though blood was puddling around her right calf.

“Don’t try it,” Anne advised her. “I’m too far away for you to reach me, and I won’t shoot you in the head. I’ll try for somewhere that hurts more and takes longer. Kidney, maybe, or one in each shoulder.”

To her surprise, Cherry nodded. “Ain’t a patch on what I do to you, I had you down shot on de ground.”

The longing in the black woman’s voice made Anne shiver, though she was the one with the rifle. She said, “After what you did to Marshlands, after what you did to my brother, you’ve had your turn already.”

“Ain’t.” Cherry shook her head. “Ain’t come close. Cain’t pay back three hundred years o’ ’pression in a day. Done whipped we and ’sploited we and sold we like we was horses and fucked we till we gots so many yaller niggers it’s a cryin’ shame. No, we ain’t come close.”

Anne heard the words. She heard the accusations. They didn’t register, not in any way that mattered. She shook her head. “You rose up against us,” she said. “You stabbed us in the back while we were fighting the damnyankees. And you—you—” When she tried to say what Cherry in particular had done, words failed her for one of the rare times in her life.

Despite the pain from her ruined lower leg, Cherry smiled. “I knows what I done, Miss Anne. I was fuckin’ and suckin’ your brother, and I was puttin’ on airs on account of it. And you knows what else?” The smile got wider. “All the time that goddamn skinny little white dick was in me, Miss Anne, I never feel one thing. Never oncet.”

Without conscious thought, ahead of conscious thought, Anne’s finger squeezed the trigger. The Tredegar roared. The back of Cherry’s head exploded, splashing blood and brains and pulverized bone over her and the ground around her. She twitched and shuddered and lay still. But, below the neat hole in her forehead, her face still held that mocking smile.

“To hell with you,” Anne whispered, and two tears ran down her face, half sorry for Jacob, half fury at the black woman and the way she’d duped him and used him. And Cherry had got the last word, too, and goaded Anne into giving her a quick end at the same time. Anne kicked at the dirt. Automatically, she worked the bolt and chambered a fresh round.

Linus Ashforth came up to her. The elderly militiaman spat a stream of tobacco juice into Cherry’s puddled blood. “This here was right good, ma’am,” he said. “Them murderin’ devils done took the bait you left ’em, and there ain’t a one of ’em going back to the swamps. Yes, ma’am, this here was pretty blame fine.”

“It wasn’t good enough,” Anne said, as much to herself as to the old man. “It wasn’t enough.”

“What more could you want?” Ashforth asked reasonably. “Every single nigger stuck his nose out of the swamp is dead now. Can’t do much better’n a clean sweep, now can you?”

“But there are still Reds
in
the swamps,” Anne answered. “When they’re all hunted down and killed, that will be—” She started to say
enough
, but shook her head before the word passed her lips. That wouldn’t be enough. Nothing could be enough to repair the damage the Negroes had done to the Confederate cause, the damage they had done to the Confederate States. She ended the sentence in a different way: “That will be a start, anyhow.”

Linus Ashforth’s whistle was soft and low and wondering. “Ma’am, don’t sound to me like you’ll ever be satisfied.”

“I would have been,” Anne said. “I could have been. God, I
was
. But it will be a long time before I’m satisfied again; you’re right about that. It will be a long time before this is a country anyone can be satisfied with.”

“Jesus God, Miss Anne, I’m sure as the dickens glad you ain’t mad with
me
.” The militiaman spat again, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.