The Storm Before Atlanta (9 page)

Nahum looked at her sharply through his narrowed eyes, and Dulcie put her hand to her mouth. Strangers didn’t know about her memory and would think she was sassing them.

“Interesting talent you have there, girl. Now off. The Lord keep you.”

“Thank you, sir, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Dulcie. Good manners were the one gift that slaves could afford to give each other. She curtsied and walked away from him.

She didn’t bother to tell him that she couldn’t swim.

EIGHT

J
EREMY HAD BEEN CARRYING HIS COFFEE RATION TIED
up in an empty tobacco pouch looped to his top shirt button, waiting to run into Charlie again. He knew Charlie was an enemy, and he was vaguely aware that you could be shot for communicating with the enemy. But he hadn’t talked to anyone even close to his own age since they’d left Shelbyville—the other drummers in his regiment were really grown men, not boys at all—and he was getting awfully tired of being called Little Drummer Boy.

He tried not to show that it bothered him, because he knew that that would just make things worse. One of his teachers back in the Northwoods had once told him that if he ignored people who were picking on him, they would stop. He had found that his teacher was one hundred percent and entirely wrong about this.

Pa, on the other hand, had had a different suggestion for dealing with the problem. “Kick ’em in the teeth,” he’d said.

The trouble was, Lars was built like the front half of a Percheron horse. You couldn’t kick him in the teeth. You’d have a deuce of a time even jumping high enough to slap him in the teeth, and after that you’d probably be searching in the grass for your own.

“You skeered yet, Little Drummer Boy?” Lars asked him. They were in Snake Creek Gap, corduroying the road. Originally they had been supposed to cross the mountains at Buzzard’s Roost Gap, following the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which Sherman meant to use as their supply line back to Tennessee and, beyond that, the Union. But the Rebs had dammed a creek and flooded the road up to the gap, and they had artillery in the gap and on either side of it, perched on high crags above Buzzard’s Roost—and besides that there were hundreds of buzzards. Roosting, of course.

“Waitin’ for us,” said Seth. “The Rebs’ll strip us nekkid and the buzzards’ll eat us.”

So the whole army was to go through Snake Creek Gap, further south, instead, and pass through the town of Resaca. That meant the road through the gap had to be stabilized with tree trunks laid out crosswise, a corduroy road to keep the wagons and horses and men from sinking in the deep mud. The 107th was finishing up a stint of chopping trees and hauling them down to be laid in the muddy track through the high stone walls of the gap.

Beyond the gap lay a battle.

“Little Drummer Boy’s skeered,” said Lars, shouldering his ax as the men headed back to where they’d set up camp. “Don’t know if he can stand the gaff. What do you think, Jack?”

Jack sneered. “I think he’ll run cryin’ for Mama at the first smell of powder, that’s what I think.”

“Stop teasing him, both of you,” said No-Joke. “Everyone is scared at their first battle, and after that they get used to it.”

“Every bullet has its billet,” said Dave.

“That’s not so,” said Nicholas, to Dave’s visible dismay. “Most bullets fetch up in tree trunks or in the ground. Not one in a hundred hits a man.”

“Those could still be billets,” said Dave. “I didn’t say it had to be a person that was a billet’s ballot. I mean a …” He stopped, confused.

“A bullet’s billet,” No-Joke said kindly.

“Yeah.”

They began building a fire from pine knots and branches cut from the corduroying logs. Pine knots burned like oil and were the thing the soldiers liked best about Georgia so far. It wasn’t time to eat yet and it wasn’t time to drill, and there were no orders for Jeremy to beat out on his drum, and when there was nothing to do, Lars and Jack always decided to amuse themselves with Jeremy.

Jeremy was sick of it. He got up and wandered away.
He wanted to see if there were any signs yet of this battle that might soon take place.

He made his way along the squelchy track between the stone ramparts, trying to stick to the side where there was some grass growing that hadn’t been stirred up too badly yet. Men were still laying logs across and trying to embed them deeply in the mud so that they wouldn’t skid away. Someone had managed to get a cannon stuck up to its iron hubs in mud, the mules knee-deep in the mud in front of it, and soldiers were using more logs to try to pry the wheels loose while a contraband mule driver talked softly to the mules, trying to calm them down.

Jeremy walked on between the high cliff walls of the gap. Up above, a shadow against the sky, he saw a soldier signaling with flags. It was important for armies to hold mountaintops, Jeremy knew, for two reasons—because you could see the enemy’s movements from a mountaintop, and because they were good places for signal flags to be used, provided there was another mountaintop nearby where the signals could be received.

The problem with signal flags was that the enemy could read them too. General Sherman had a moving telegraph station in a railroad car. But because the Secesh held the railroad tracks at Buzzard’s Roost, that telegraph station was stuck behind the lines for now.

As he watched the signaler’s arms go up, out to the side, down, up, Jeremy noticed dark clouds gathering. There
was a distant roll of thunder. Jeremy hoped the rain would hold off.

That night it poured rain. The mud liquefied, and the corduroying might as well not have been done—every time you stepped on a log it either sank a foot deep into the mud or skidded out sideways, and down you went on your fundament.

For some reason it was decided that this was a good time for the 107th to move forward through the gap.

“In the night,” said Dave, marveling. “We set around all day, then they order us to march through this muck in the nigh—Thunderin’ Hannah!” He skidded along a log and fetched up facedown in the mud.

“Go ahead and laugh,” he said, picking himself up. “It’ll happen to the rest of youse in a minute.”

And it did. Thunder rolled overhead, and lightning flashed, and every time it did Jeremy had a weird instant’s lit-up view of the men of the 107th falling on their backsides, frontsides, and every other side in the mud of Snake Creek Gap.

“Let’s sing a song,” No-Joke suggested.

“Perdition take your songs!”

“Play something on your drum, Jeremy.”

Jeremy looked at No-Joke as if he was crazy, which was something he’d half suspected anyway. “It’s soaking wet. It won’t play.”

“Well, then let’s sing.” And to everyone’s amazement, No-Joke began to sing, in a loud, tuneless tenor that
carried over the pouring rain and was only drowned out by the loudest crashes of thunder:

The men laughed. They had all figured out long ago that No-Joke was crazy. No-Joke was, Jeremy realized, something of a joke in himself, and maybe he got picked on just as much as Jeremy did. But it never seemed to bother him. He appeared never to notice. Maybe he was just ignoring it. If so, it was further proof that ignoring it didn’t do any good. The more No-Joke ignored people laughing at him, the more they did it.

Except, Jeremy realized suddenly, maybe it did some good to No-Joke to ignore it.

Soon all the men were singing and laughing as they slipped, slithered, and fell, and now the scene was like nothing Jeremy expected he’d ever see again—the thunder crashing, Jeremy and everyone else soaked through,
their clothes clinging wetly, their whole bodies slick with mud, and lightning showing the crazy scene in sudden flashes like mad tintypes.

Jeremy laughed too. What else could you do? The whole thing was just crazy.

“We don’t have any tents anyways!” shouted a soldier. “We might as well march in this muck as sleep in it!”

And they laughed and laughed, and they wouldn’t be laughing, Jeremy realized, if it wasn’t for No-Joke.

The path down to the river was steep and slippery. It must have rained the night before. Dulcie’s bare feet gripped it tightly, feeling for tree roots to keep from sliding. She kept a sharp eye out for snakes and scorpions. At the river’s edge she stopped and clung to a dead tree branch, thinking. Green, muddy-smelling water slid past below her. The river was at least fifty yards across, smooth and swift and
probably too deep for wading, because no driftwood trees or branches stuck up from the bottom. Certainly not something you wanted to risk when you couldn’t swim. Dulcie looked down the river as far as she could, but saw nothing like a bridge or a boat or any way to get across.

Upriver something was happening on the opposite bank. There was a crowd of people and mules and some big things that looked like clumsily constructed boats. The people were doing something—trying to reach across the river with the boats. They were pontoons, Dulcie realized—she had heard of this from the newspapers Mas’r read to Missus. They were building a pontoon bridge to cross the river. Were those Mr. Lincoln’s soldiers? If they were, they might help Dulcie across if she went to them and asked. But if they were Confederate soldiers she by no means wanted them to notice her. How could she find out which they were? At this distance she couldn’t see their uniforms.

Maybe she’d get a better view from higher up. She turned and quickly climbed the tree she’d been holding on to. Climbing was something she was good at, and her bare feet and hands felt for holds and pulled her upward easily. She stood up on a branch that went over the water, the bark rough and solid under her bare feet. She held on to a higher branch to steady herself. She inched out over the water. The branch swayed under her feet.

Now she could see that the men were wearing blue uniforms. That should mean they were Union soldiers. The problem was, as Dulcie had seen in the Confederate
camp, a lot of Confederate soldiers wore blue uniforms too. They wore bits of Union uniforms mixed with bits of Confederate uniforms—Dulcie had heard one of the soldiers call them multiforms. Cautiously, Dulcie inched her way further out on the branch, looking for signs of gray in the uniforms. She could almost see well enough to tell—if she just went a little further out, and let go of the branch above her—

She heard the branch crack ominously under her feet. She grabbed at the branch over her head and missed it. She slipped and lost her footing on the branch beneath her. She threw out her arms and caught hold of it, and it broke off, and she plunged down, down, down into the deep, cold, green waters of the river.

NINE