FORT PILLOW

“Oh, no, suh, not me! I ain't one o' them bad niggers!” The black man shook his head so hard, his cap flew off and fell to the ground beside him. He didn't seem to notice; all his fearful attention was on Jenkins. “I don’t want to fight no mo.

“I bet you don't, boy,” Jenkins said. “You a runaway?”

The Negro hesitated. If he said no, the way he talked would betray him-he sounded like someone from the deep South, from South Carolina or Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi. But if he said yes, he was liable to seal his own fate. Jenkins could watch the gears meshing and turning behind his eyes. In the end, all he said was, “Don't kill me, suh. I surrender.”

“You had your chance. All of you bastards had your chance. You should've took it when you could.” Jenkins squeezed the trigger.

Even he winced at what the Mini? ball did. It tore off the bottom half of the black man's face, leaving him gobbling and bleating because he could no longer make sounds resembling human speech. Blood poured down his front. But he would not fall. He would not die. He slumped to his knees and imploringly stretched out his hands to Jenkins. His eyes were enormous in his shattered face.

“Christ!” That was the Confederate lieutenant. He shot the colored soldier in the side of his head with his revolver. The Negro didn't try to stop him-the poor bastard's last gobble before he toppled over might have been meant Thank you. The lieutenant shook his head. “I wouldn't let a dog live with a wound like that, Corporal.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Jenkins answered; it was horrific enough to sober him, which said a great deal. “I was gonna finish the son of a bitch. I had to reload, that's all.” He was doing it as he spoke. He forgot-or maybe he chose not to remember-that he'd bayoneted the white Tennessean after his bullet didn't finish the man right away.

“Well…let it go,” the lieutenant said. “Stinking bluebellies didn't give up when they had the chance. Now they're going to pay for it.”

“Oh, hell, yes.” There Jack Jenkins agreed with the officer one hundred percent. He stowed his ramrod and went back to the fight.

The smoke from the New Era's stacks was only a receding stain against the northern skyline. Nathan Bedford Forrest smiled a slow smile, the smile of a big cat that has fed well. The Federals inside Fort Pillow had surely counted on the gunboat's firepower to save their bacon for them. There had to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among them now, for they'd leaned on a reed that broke and pierced their hand.

Gunboats were wonderful-where the Mississippi was wide, and where they could shell soldiers who couldn't answer back with rifle muskets. If a gunboat came close enough to fire canister, though, good shots could put enough minnies through the gunports to remind them that the fight had two sides. Sailors didn't like being forced to remember that.

Now the New Era was gone, and Fort Pillow was gone, and nothing remained but the aftermath Forrest foresaw as soon as the U.S. commander refused to lower his flag. War means fighting, and fighting means killing, he thought with somber satisfaction. Quite a few generals on both sides shied away from that simple, brutal truth. He didn't. He never had. You did what you needed to do.

And now his men were… doing what they needed to do. He was abstractly sorry they were, but knew better than to try to stop them. Nothing so corroded an officer's authority as giving orders no one heeded. If he tried to stop the soldiers from paying back the Federals, they wouldn't listen to him. And so he hung back from the fighting, where usually he led the charge.

Some of the Federals were able to surrender. Grinning troopers herded white soldiers along-and some blacks as well. When the prisoners didn't move fast enough to suit them, a prod with the bayonet worked as well as spurs on a horse.

One of the soldiers in blue, a Negro, waved to Forrest. “I knows you, General,” he called. “I knows you, sure as anything.”

“Wouldn't be surprised,” Forrest answered-the black man looked familiar to him, though he couldn't put a name on the fellow. “You come through my nigger lots down in Memphis?”

“Yes, sub, I done that,” the black answered. “I done that a couple times, matter of fact.”

Bedford Forrest believed it. A slave who was sold more than once was liable, even likely, to be an uppity nigger, and one who was likely to run off and make trouble. Putting on the U.S. uniform, this one had made as much trouble as he could. Eyes narrowing in concentration, Forrest said, “I still don't recollect your name, but the last time I sold you I got… let me see… twenty-one hundred dollars for your worthless nigger carcass.” He spoke without malice; he might have described a good horse as crowbait the same way.