The Storm Before Atlanta (10 page)

E
VERYONE IN THE
107TH
N
EW
Y
ORK COULD FEEL THE
waiting. The air was heavy with the uneasy knowledge of a coming battle. Most of General Sherman’s army was massed now in Snake Creek Gap and in Sugar Valley below it. The 107th had been moved through the gap. Most of the men were writing letters. Jeremy had no one to write a letter to—he and Pa had never gotten into the habit of writing, somehow. Pa didn’t know where Jeremy was, as a matter of fact, and it occurred to Jeremy for the first time that when he died like the Drummer Boy of Shiloh, Pa would not know where to come to visit his grave. At least, not unless somebody wrote a song about it.

On the other hand, if he wrote to Pa in Auburn Prison, then Old Silas might find out where Jeremy was. Prisoners’ letters were probably opened and read. If they were even allowed to get letters. Jeremy didn’t know if they were. A runaway bound-boy was a fugitive, and Old Silas might have contacted the warden at the prison in Auburn,
telling him to watch for a letter from Jeremy. It was too risky.

Jeremy had other unfinished business to attend to. He had been carrying coffee around in an empty tobacco pouch to give to Charlie. When the battle started Charlie would be on the other side, but in the meantime Jeremy had promised him coffee, and he didn’t like to break a promise. Especially on what might be his last day on earth.

Jeremy wandered away from camp, toward where he thought the rebel lines might be. Charlie had said they’d meet near water. Well, water was downhill; anyone born in the Northwoods knew that. He headed down into the forest.

A soldier was not supposed to leave camp without permission. He was supposed to get a written pass from his superior officer. Jeremy felt about that exactly the way all the other soldiers in his company felt about it. He was a free American citizen, and he didn’t need
nobody’s
permission to go
nowhere
.

Anyway, he wasn’t really leaving the camp, he reasoned, if he didn’t go past the pickets. He had to get past the guard, but that was easy enough, especially if, like Jeremy, you had years of experience walking through forests and had practiced since you were a child to do it silently. The guards were mainly focused to the east, toward Resaca, and Jeremy slipped behind them easily.

Jeremy found a stream where he expected to find one, downhill. The water ran swift and smooth. He looked
across it. No Charlie. Well, what did he expect, really? They’d been moving over miles and miles, there was forest and mountains all around them, and there were thousands of Union soldiers—hundreds of regiments besides the 107th New York. How would Charlie ever find him again?

Nonetheless, he followed the stream down, clinging to trees for balance as he walked along the banks, scanning the woods on the other side.

He came out of the woods onto a plain beside a wide river. He looked around him. Upstream he could see a mass of soldiers, working at something—building a pontoon bridge, it looked like. They were Union soldiers. So he was still inside Union lines, and thus not really straying too far out of camp after all. He hoped he would get to march across the pontoon bridge when it was finished, playing his drum.

He squinted, scanning the other side of the river. He saw someone over there—a boy wearing blue Union trousers with a flash of red at the knee and a gray Confederate homespun shirt. Could it possibly be Charlie?

Jeremy waved.

The boy waved back. He cupped his hands and called, “Meet me in the middle!”

Jeremy looked at the river. He could swim well, of course, but it was only May. That water would be cold.

He kicked off his shoes and took off his trousers and fatigue blouse. His drawers he left on. They would get wet
and be uncomfortable later, but he had a feeling you didn’t take your drawers off when you were parleying with the enemy.

He waded out. The water was warmer than he’d expected, and had that muddy-water smell that rivers back home had. Mud squished up between his toes. He fell forward and started swimming.

He swam toward the middle, letting the current carry him downstream as he went. In the middle he met Charlie.

“ ’Ere i’ is.” He trod water, the bag held between his teeth.

“Capital!” Charlie reached out and took the bag. “Won’t it be wet?”

“It won’t hurt the beans,” said Jeremy. “You have to roast ’em over the fire, then grind ’em. Pound ’em up with a rifle butt, that’s what we do.”

“I meant to bring you some tobacco, but I haven’t got it yet.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jeremy. He would’ve said he didn’t use tobacco, but he didn’t want Charlie to think he was a child.

“No, I don’t want to be beholden. Let me bring you some next time we meet.”

Jeremy was proud and flattered that the older boy considered him a friend and wanted to keep on meeting him, even though they were enemies. “All right. We can meet at the next river.”

“Next one either way, depending on whether we push y’all back the way you came.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” said Jeremy. “Whush, what’s that?”

Treading water, they both looked at something floating toward them from upstream.

“It’s a dog, I think. Is it alive?”

“Nah, it ain’t a dog, it’s a log,” said Jeremy.

“It ain’t neither! It’s a slave!”

At this Jeremy started swimming hard toward the figure clinging to the log.

Slaves were Union business! But it wasn’t easy swimming against the current, and Charlie was bigger and stronger than him. The result was that Charlie reached the slave first and grabbed his arm.

“Whoa, there. Who’s your master, girl?” Charlie said, grabbing the girl’s arm—because it was a girl, Jeremy saw.

The girl coughed and sputtered and said nothing. Jeremy scissor-kicked to stay upright and let the pair and the log drift toward him. He reached out and grabbed her other arm. The log floated away.

“Contraband!” he said. “I claim contraband of war!”

“You can’t! This is somebody’s property, and in Georgia’s own sovereign land.”

Jeremy did not know about the legalities of this. All he knew was that it was part of the Union war effort to get the slaves away from their masters.

“She’s running away to us. She knows she don’t ought to have no owner.”

The girl was still coughing. Holding tight to her arm, Jeremy started scissor-kicking toward the shore where he had left his clothes. Charlie kept hold of her other arm and swam in the other direction. Charlie was stronger, and Jeremy struggled with all his might, kicking hard and dragging at the girl’s arm.

The girl flailed out suddenly with both fists. “Let go of me!”

Startled, they both did. The girl sank straight down and vanished in the water.

“She’s mine when she comes up,” Jeremy said.

“Tell that to the marines.”

“What do you want her for? She’s not your slave, is she?”

“Course not. But I defend a Confederate citizen’s right to his own valuable property. On Confederate soil.”

“You can’t own a person—a person can’t be property,” said Jeremy, who had never put this into words before but now saw that he believed it. “A person is a person. She belongs to herself, we’ll have to ask her what she wants to do.” No one had asked
him
what he wanted, when he was indentured to Old Silas.

“Well, I can tell you what she wants to do, she wants to escape. But I ain’t lettin’ her.”

“Why does she want to escape?” said Jeremy. “You slaveholders are always saying that slaves are well off.”

“Well, they are! Better off than the wage slaves in your Northern factories.”

“Then why do they want to escape, huh?” Jeremy repeated. He felt he had hit upon a pretty strong point here.

“Because they’re cussed-headed!”

Something else occurred to Jeremy. “She ain’t comin’ back up.”

Jeremy dove. He went deep, letting the current carry him as it would have carried the girl. He swam past the warm surface into the cold depths, with his arms spread out before him, his fingers splayed, groping in the green darkness to try to find the girl. At last his hand met flesh, and he seized on it and pulled it upward. The girl fought upward too, and they broke the surface of the river together, gasping.

Only it wasn’t a girl Jeremy had ahold of, it was Charlie. The girl was still down there somewhere.

They both dove again. Jeremy dove down even deeper than before, feeling his way through the cold in every direction, but he encountered nothing. At last, his lungs burning, he kicked to the surface.

And he saw that Charlie had the girl and was swimming toward the nearest shore. Jeremy had to kick hard to catch up, and he couldn’t get a hand on her, so that in the end it was Charlie who rescued the girl and pulled her up onto the red mud bank.

“What do we do now?” said Jeremy.

“Roll her over a barrel,” said Charlie.

“There ain’t no barrels here.”

“Then I dunno. Turn her upside down and shake the water out of her.”

The girl sat up and coughed up a great quantity of river.

She was about eleven years old, Jeremy thought, with hair cut very short. She wore a blue dress that was sopping wet and torn nearly to shreds. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and scowled up at both of them with eyes sharp as bayonet points.

“You one of Mr. Lincoln’s soldiers?” she asked Jeremy.

“Yes, sir,” said Jeremy, because that was the kind of voice she said it in. “I mean, yeah.”

“I am a slave who has left her master!”

“Yes, good,” said Jeremy. “Er …”

“Who’s your master?” said Charlie.

She turned her bayonet eyes on him. “Are
you
one of Mr. Lincoln’s soldiers?”

“He ain’t. He’s Secesh,” said Jeremy quickly.

“Then what are you doing with him?”

“He’s my friend,” Jeremy explained. Somehow this girl had taken command of the situation. He felt that this was wrong. “Come on, I’ll take you to my regiment. You’re free now.”

“No, you ain’t,” Charlie quickly countered.

“Yes, she is,” said Jeremy. “Because happen you brought her out on
our
side of the river.”

The girl got to her feet. “Yes, I am free,” she said with
great determination. She turned to Jeremy. “Take me to your regiment, then.”

“But I’m the one who rescued her,” said Charlie.

“You let me sink in the first place,” said the girl. “What are you fightin’ for slavery for? You don’t own any slaves.”

“How do you know he doesn’t?” said Jeremy.

She spared him a glance. “He ain’t the sort.” She turned back to Charlie. “My mas’r didn’t have to fight in this war, because he owned twenty slaves. How you feel fightin’ for his property rights while he sits home?”

Charlie had the same half-amused expression as always, but Jeremy could tell the girl had scored a hit. It was just a flicker in Charlie’s eyes, that said Charlie didn’t like fightin’ for another man’s property rights
at all
.

“Beats me why you’re fightin’ for slavery,” said the girl. “You know your own business best, but if I was you I’d head on home to wherever you come from.”

“We’re fightin’ for Southern rights,” said Charlie. “But I ain’t got time to argue with no runaway slave turned lawyer.” He smiled. “Reckon you better take her, Yank.”

Whush—the girl had argued Charlie into a corner and Charlie was backing down. And she’d done it when she was half drowned, too. Jeremy wanted to ask Charlie how he really felt about fighting for slavery, but there was the girl to take care of—he had to get her back to camp.

“See you later, Yank,” said Charlie. “Remember—at the next river.” And he turned and walked back into the river and started swimming to the opposite shore.

“My name’s Dulcie,” said the girl. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh. Right. I’m Jeremy.” Jeremy couldn’t say that kind of polite stuff that Southern people said; he’d feel like a fool. “Come on. I’ll take you back to camp.”

TEN

J
EREMY KNEW HE DIDN
’
T USUALLY MAKE MUCH OF AN
impression on his messmates, let alone on the company as a whole. He was slightly more important than the dogs that hung around the camp, because unlike them he had two names. But people sure sat up and took notice when he walked into camp leading a soggy runaway slave. The girl seemed a little less full of herself now that they were in Jeremy’s territory, and so he took her hand paternally and led her forward.