A Magical Christmas (2 page)

“That’s right,” Darcy agreed. “You just can’t decide you’re going to be one of the ones to die, Captain. You got a wife, a family.”

“We all have families, Darcy. Every one of us has someone, wife, mother, father, brother, sister, child. And God knows, this war has been no quick picnic like we all thought it would be when the Rebs
crushed the Yanks back at First Manassas. They’ve all been hurt enough.”

“I ain’t got no one,” Billy Larson said. He started to spit tobacco on the floor, then seemed to remember that it was their captain’s library—even if the Feds were keeping them prisoner here. He edged on over to the spittoon. “My wife died of the smallpox in fifty-three, my boy died the day he was born. They’ll take me, for one.”

“Hell, now, Billy, don’t you go being noble that way,” Pierce Roswell protested. Pierce was one of the older men in their company as well, a graybeard nearing sixty, but a man with the agility of a boy.

“Hell, we’re Mosby’s Men, we’re all noble!” Jake Clary, a grinning twenty-four, informed them. Laughter rose.

From everyone but Jimmy Haley.

Little Jimmy Haley. They hadn’t really wanted the boy with them. He was just thirteen—their mascot, and he’d wound up with them because his ma had died alone in the mountains and his pa was either dead or fighting somewhere and Jimmy didn’t know where. And he might have starved to death in winter, left up on that mountain, so he’d come with them as a drummer boy. He’d been in uniform with them, and he’d been taken with them. And now, it seemed that Jimmy knew, just like
everybody else, that he had a one out of five chance of dying, and he was damned green.

“Don’t be afraid, Jimmy,” the captain said.

“I ain’t afraid, Captain,” Jimmy said. He tried to smile. “Ain’t no Yankee gonna scare me, sir. And I ain’t afeered of dying, Cap. They can count me in, just like the rest of the men. I’m one of you, right?”

“Sure, Jimmy, you’re one of us.” The captain looked at Darcy across the room. They wouldn’t let Jimmy die; that was for certain.

“Hell, those of us who don’t die will be going to a prison camp,” Lem Smith said. “Like as not, it will be better going by a rope than a slow death in one of those wretched Yank camps.”

The captain held silent. They all knew that the Southern camps were more wretched. The Northern blockade was slowly strangling the South. The South couldn’t feed her own men, much less her Northern prisoners. In the North and the South, there were prisons that were really bad, and prisons that weren’t so bad. Like it or not, a lesson was being learned across the divide of the states. Good men were Yanks; bad men were Rebs. Bad sons of bitches were Yanks—and their counterparts could be found among the Rebs as well.

“It’s going to be a draw,” Darcy said. “It ain’t gonna matter none which of us wants to die. We’re going to draw lots.”

“Lots?”

Darcy shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s going to be the luck of the draw. That’s what Custer’s man said to the guard out there, anyhow.”

“Well, gentlemen, we’ll have to see what unfolds, and deal with what happens as it comes along,” the captain said.

Later that afternoon, after watery stew and moldy hardtack—the Yank stuff admittedly better than what they’d drawn as rations lately from their Confederate depots—the Rebs were taken outside for exercise. The snow was inches deep on the ground, but it had stopped falling. The day was crystal clear, the sky beautifully blue. The cold felt good.

The captain could close his eyes and see times gone past. This was his home; he could see Christmastides gone by. Smell roast goose cooking in the oven, see his wife’s face, beautiful, flushed from the work she insisted on doing herself in the kitchen. The house would be decked out in holly and evergreen branches. The warmth would envelop him, along with the aromatic scents of their holiday dinner… and her.

He could almost hear the laughter from days gone past. The delight of his children as they opened their presents. He could see the glow in her
eyes, when all alone, thinking no one was watching, she would open her gift from him.

Damn, but it was funny. They could just be so mad at one another! Maybe fear had had something to do with it lately, but sometimes, even before the war, they’d gotten caught up in the work of living. They’d forgotten just how much they’d loved one another once upon a time. And right now, with the threat of death all but imminent, she was all that he wanted.
He could see her face
. Oh, God, yes, in his mind’s eye, and all he wanted right now was one last chance to hold her, one last chance to say he loved her, a chance to say good-bye without the harsh words between them.

The prisoners were allowed to walk and stretch their legs in one of the paddocks right in front of the main house.

The captain liked to be out. He’d used this field for his horses. He’d bred damned good horses here.

All of them gone now. Gone to the Confederacy.

Gone to war.

Their guards weren’t actually cruel taskmasters; some of the Union boys set to watch over them seemed downright unhappy about the duty. Southern boys had given over lots of tobacco. The Yanks had shared their good coffee with the Rebs on an equal footing. Still, six guards were set around the fence of the paddock where the Rebs
walked, and the captain knew, through Darcy’s fine hearing, that the Yanks had been given orders to shoot to kill if the Rebs made any attempt to escape. He’d ordered them not to do so. They were outnumbered and well-guarded. Their best chance would be to wait for reinforcements. Surely, Mosby himself might manage to come for them. Or some brigade, perhaps from Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee was great at breaking up his troops and coming at the Yanks from different angles. They never knew what hit them half the time.

“Captain! Captain!” Some of the local folk had gathered along the road. They waved encouragement to him and his men, even as the Yanks moved forward to urge them onward. He saw tears in a young girl’s eyes. He lifted his plumed slouch hat to her with a flourish. A sprig of holly grew along the fence, and he plucked it and threw it to her. A cheer went up, and another local woman cried out even as the Yanks urged her down the road at rifle’s length. “The Lord bless you and your men, Captain! We’re praying for you.”

“God bless you all! Merry Christmas!” he cried in return.

The folks moved onward. Then the Yank unhappily in charge of him and his men entered the paddock.

Billy was suddenly at one side of him.
Darcy was at the other.

Lieutenant Jenkins, not long out of West Point, with barely a bit of stubble on his face, approached him, saluting. “Captain, I regret to inform you that upon direct orders from General Custer…”

Lieutenant Jenkins faltered. He wasn’t up to this task of execution, and he darned near looked as if he were going to cry.

“It’s fine now, Lieutenant, you go ahead. Say what you have to say,” the captain said.

Jenkins rallied. “Five of you got to be hanged, sir. We’re mighty sorry, the boys and I. But it’s got to be five. Would have been ten, but then it’s Christmas… Well, sir, you’ve got to draw straws. Every man of your company is to take a straw. The short straws… well, the short straws are the chosen ones.” Two Yanks, nearly as pathetically green as their Confederate counterparts, carried the straws.

“Perhaps we should choose among ourselves,” the captain suggested.

“It’s got to be straws,” Lieutenant Jenkins said firmly. He hated his duty. He apparently feared Custer’s wrath more.

“Gentlemen?” the captain said politely to his soldiers.

And the soldiers, to a man—including the boy, Jimmy—drew their straws.

The captain gripped his in his hand. If it was a
long straw, he just might survive the war. The prison camps were hell, but he might be traded, he might survive. He was a healthy man, uninjured. He could withstand a great deal of hardship. Because he wanted to live. He wanted another Christmas, oh, God, just one more Christmas.…

If his straw was short, he would die. Hanged on his own property.

Thank God she wasn’t here to see it
.

If he could just touch her one more time, say he was sorry, say he loved her
…

Say good-bye
.

God, it was hard not to want to live. Especially when the sky was so beautifully clear a blue, when the sun was making diamond patterns upon the snow.

He looked at his straw. It was long.

Relief flooded him.

He was ashamed.

“Well, God’s got some good sense,” Billy said, and not without a certain dry humor. “I’m the oldest man here; I’ve lived the longest, and God sure does know, I’m the one the most ready to go.”

Billy had a short straw. Pierce Roswell had another. “I’ve seen my fair share of things as well,” Pierce said, clapping his hand upon Billy’s shoulder. “Well, old-timer, old friend, think we can die well?”

“That we can,” Billy assured him.

The captain stared at the two with admiration, then looked to see who had drawn the other three short straws. Harry Sams, outside with them in the clean, fresh air but lying on a litter since he’d been gut-shot in the skirmish in which they’d been taken, lifted his straw. Short. Harry was twenty-two.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Harry—” the captain began.

“Hell, Captain! I’m dying anyway,” Harry told him with a wry smile. He sobered. “And that’s the truth of it, Captain. Those Yanks will save me some pain.”

“Me, too!” called out Martin McCorkindale. Like Harry, he was in his early twenties. He wasn’t shot up as bad as Harry, but his leg needed to be amputated. And fast. It was already putrefying. The poisons could well have spread throughout his body. The Yanks hadn’t meant to leave their prisoners half-dead; their surgeon had been killed in the fighting and they were awaiting help for their own number as well as for the Rebs.

Martin cocked his head to the captain with a shrug. They both knew that his survival was one hell of a gamble.

“It’s all right, Captain. In fact, it’s damned fitting. Harry and I can die well, too.”

Their logic was sound, if painful.

It seemed that God had been looking over them
for Christmas. Two men who might well be dying anyway had chosen the short straws, along with the two men who were the oldest in their company.

But there was still one more straw.

The Yanks were away from them, letting them make the discovery among themselves of who was to die.

“Where’s the fifth straw?” the captain asked.

He heard a choked-back sob. Then little Jimmy Haley came walking toward him. His head was high. His shoulders were squared. “It’s me, Captain, sir.” Jimmy, with his tousled brown hair and huge brown eyes, looked up at him with a fine show of bravado. But then his eyes filled with tears he blinked back furiously and his fine-squared shoulders began to tremble. “I—I ain’t afeered of dyin’, sir. I—I know damned certain that I can die well, too. I won’t holler or blubber or anything, Captain. I promise. I’ll make you proud.”

“Jimmy, you’ve always done us proud,” the captain said softly.

The Yanks were coming back.

Oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, God, the captain thought.

He’d wanted to live so much. He’d wanted to live so damned badly. See her face just one more time again. Hear her whisper, touch her, kiss her, stroke the past and the pain away…

God, yes, he wanted to live.
“You’re too young to die, son,” the captain said curtly, and he snatched the straw from brave little Jimmy Haley, dropping his own long one in the snow.

The Yank, Lieutenant Jenkins, was back, and the captain turned to meet him.

“Wh—who—” Jenkins stuttered.

“Lieutenant, First Privates Sams, Roswell, McCorkindale, Larson—and I myself—have drawn the short straws,” the captain said without blinking.

Tears filled Jimmy Haley’s eyes in truth now. “Wait—” he started to protest.

But Darcy, behind him, clapped a hand over his mouth. He knew the captain would have none of it, the men letting Jimmy try to step in now when he had taken the boy’s place.

“If you men will come with me…” the lieutenant said unhappily.

“I will gladly accompany you, Lieutenant, as will Privates Larson and Roswell. My other two friends, you will note, in truth all but cheat the hangman, and they will need your assistance.”

Lieutenant Jenkins nodded. His Adam’s apple jiggled.

“You’ve time with the chaplain, sir, if you’ll accept the services of a Yank.”

“Indeed, Lieutenant, my men and I will be glad of a man of God, since I’m quite certain in my heart God wears no uniform Himself. Both of our causes
have claimed that God is on our side, yet I suspect that He is heartily disgusted with us all at this point.”

The captain spun, gallantly saluted his men. Then, as ordered, he followed the lieutenant back to the house.

To prepare for his hanging.

At his own home, from his own tree.

If he closed his eyes and prayed hard enough, perhaps he could discover that he had slept.…

And he would awake.

And it would be Christmas.

Christmastime
South Florida
The Present

“I
t’s not just a tedious, monotonous, wretched drive through tons of steel and horrifically rude people—it’s an adventure!” Julie Radcliff muttered bitterly, stuck again in another traffic jam-up. Every day it got worse. She glanced at her watch again. She was going to be late. All she needed was ten minutes more each morning, but no matter how hard she tried, she never seemed able to get the household ready that simple little ten minutes earlier. Of course, it would help if once in a while—just once in a while—Jon’s work wasn’t more important than hers.

She realized that Ashley was staring at her. Ashley, just six, and in real school this year—first grade. Ashley seemed to have heard all the things that Julie had managed not to say—that she could be on time if only Daddy would handle his share of things. Julie tried to make her smile real as she
reached over and squeezed her daughter’s hand. “We rocketed down U.S. One, sped along Fifty-seventh, dodged that light at Eightieth… then plowed right into a wall of BMWs and Mercedes Benzes at your brother’s school, huh, sweetie?”