The Convict and Other Stories

The pine stump felt hard under Wesley, and he began to perspire inside his shirt.

“I didn’t pay no mind to the others, sir. I was worried about them setting up on us in the woods again.”

“No one else was.”

“That’s them, Lieutenant. It ain’t me. I been hit before.” Then he felt foolish at the mention of the red-brown scar under his eye.

“Why did you join the army?”

“They killed my brother at Cold Harbor.”

“I see.” The lieutenant drew his thumbnail back and forth on the letter in front of him and left a deep indention on the edge. The heat thunder rumbled dully again beyond the woods, and the rain streaked in dark spots down the sides of the tent.

“Do you believe we have a chance of winning this war?”

“Maybe we ain’t going to win, but Lee ain’t ever going to give up, either. We whupped them every time with Hood till Johnston made us cut and run. Maybe if Hood was still general we’d—”

He had seen the attention begin to fade in the lieutenant’s eyes. He pressed his palms damply against his thighs and looked at the shadows from the candle moving on the canvas.

“Did you know the sergeant well?”

“We was together through Carolina till we joined up with you at Kennesaw.”

“Do you think you could do his job if you were promoted to corporal?”

“Sir?”

“By noon tomorrow we should be at a field hospital in Alabama where we can leave our wounded. Then we’re supposed to re-form on the Tallapoosa River with several thousand troops who are as lost as we are. Between here and there we’ll probably encounter advance cavalry and skirmishers, and if Sherman’s flank has moved south, we’ll have the choice of fighting that gentleman’s entire army or surrendering to them.” The lieutenant rubbed the corner of his eye with two fingers, and Wesley saw the redness along the rim.

“Sir, I wouldn’t be no good at ordering people around. There’s others out there that’s been in the army a lot longer than me.”

“Yes, and most of them would run the first time they were put on the point.”

“I tell you, Lieutenant, I just wouldn’t be no good at it.”

“There’s a bayou about four miles ahead of us, and there should be a railroad bridge across it if the Federals haven’t burned it. I want you to take one man with you on point before dawn and wait for us there. If you see any Federals, don’t fire on them. Just get back to us.”

Already Wesley’s mind was back on the clay road in the early morning with the white church house framed in the mist. For an instant he thought he could smell the fear again in his body.

“How far out you want us?”

“Within sound of any firing.”

“Yes sir.” He brushed the back of his fingers across his mouth. He felt inside that in some way he had been tricked, but he didn’t know how.

“You’d better go back to your lean-to now.”

Wesley rose from the pine stump and started to untie the canvas flap from the tent pole.

“How long we got to keep them two convicts with us, Lieutenant?”

“Until I can turn them over to a provost. Good night.”

Wesley walked through the rain toward his shelter. The fire had burned down to a red glow under the blackened logs, and the crumbled white ash was dented with raindrops. Inside the lean-to, he lay back on the pine needles with his cap under his head and pulled his slicker over him. He started to think about tomorrow, then stopped and tried to hold an empty, clear space in the center of his mind. He had learned that from the sergeant: never think about what you had to do tomorrow and never think about it afterward. Later, after he began to sink into the first level of sleep, with the rain falling on the cut saplings overhead, he thought he heard the cook cry out like a man’s murderous face appearing suddenly in a church-house window.

The air was wet and gray in the trees when he awoke just before dawn. The other men were still sleeping, their muddy boots sticking out the ends of their lean-tos. He shook the water off his slicker, rolled it tightly and tied it with two leather thongs, then unlocked the breech of his Springfield and knocked out the damp cartridge and replaced it with another. He walked to the closest lean-to and pulled hard on the man’s ankle.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” The soldier’s unshaved face was thick with sleep in the gloom of his shelter. His damp blanket was twisted around his neck.