The Convict and Other Stories

“The lieutenant wants me and you on point today.”

“Shit on that, Buford. He didn’t tell me nothing about it last night.”

“You can go argue with him about it. He’s up in his tent right now.”

“Well, shit.”

“Get some biscuits off the wagon. We ain’t going to stop till we hit a bayou about four miles up from here.”

The man stripped the blanket back from his body, pulled his cap on his head, and crawled out of the lean-to with his rifle held up before him.

“All I can say is somebody around here has got his goddamn ass on upside down,” he said, and walked to the wagon, where he began stuffing handfuls of biscuits into his haversack.

Wesley watched him, then glanced at the lieutenant’s darkened tent and wondered at how easy it had been to be a corporal after all.

They moved off into the trees and the mist that floated in pools around the trunks. The woods glistened dimly from the rain, and the wet undergrowth streaked his trousers. There were sharply etched tracks of deer in the soft earth, fresh droppings that still steamed in the pine needles, and the faint and delicate imprint of grouse that had been feeding by a slough. Farther on, after the tip of the early sun had broken the horizon and slanted its light through the treetops, he began to see other signs on the forest floor: the heavy boot marks of stragglers, cartridge papers scattered behind a rotten oak stump, a dead campfire with a half-burned dressing in it, and finally a distinct trail of broken branches where a column must have passed.

“You reckon they’re ours?” the other soldier said. The bill of his cap was on sideways, and his black hair hung over his ears.

“Somebody was pinned behind that oak, and he wasn’t shooting at his own people,” Wesley said.

“Well, I ain’t going to get shot walking into a Yankee camp. Let’s set till them others catch up. We don’t even know where we’re at.”

“It opens up down yonder. If we see anything there we can pull out. Set here and they might just come right up your ass.”

There was no breeze in the woods, and as the sun climbed higher they felt the heat gather in the trees with the wet smell of the pine needles. The haversack strap around Wesley’s shoulder left a wide stain across his shirt, and he had to wipe the sweat out of his eyes to see clearly through the dappled light. Then the woods began to thin, the forest floor became more even and easy for walking, and he saw a flash of sunlit green meadow in the distance. There were outcroppings of limestone, covered with lichen, between the trees, and as they approached the meadow the wind came up and bent the branches over their heads.

They rested against the lee side of a large boulder and ate the biscuits and dried corn from the other soldier’s haversack. Wesley looked out across the meadow at the red-clay bayou and the miniature railway bridge that crossed it and the burnished span of track that arched out of sight into another woods. There was a squat water tower before the bridge, and several cords of pitch wood stacked under it, but there was no picket.

“Just look at the shit in that field,” the other soldier said.

The meadow, which had been cultivated in the spring for hay, was rutted with deep wheel tracks and strewn with the equipment of a retreating army: molded boots, wet barrels of salt that had burst at the staves, the splintered spokes of cannon wheels, rotted clothing and blankets, sacks of parched corn that crawled with slugs, halters, crushed canteens, buckets of twisted horseshoes and nails, and the dressings raked out the back of a surgeon’s wagon.

They

crossed through the meadow and made the railway bridge before noon. The pilings were thick with brush in the slow, red current, and the dorsal fins of garfish turned in lazy circles in the shadow of the bridge. The track was banked high with yellow dirt and cinders, and as he leaned back in the shade against the first stanchion of the bridge, he felt the tremble of the train far down the track. He climbed up the embankment, pushing the stock of his Springfield into the shaling dirt, and then he saw it curving out of the woods with the long stream of smoke blowing back flatly over the tops of the cars.

Wesley heard the other soldier breathing hard beside him. “That’s our goddamn luck, ain’t it? A hospital train,” he said.

The engine’s wheels locked to a stop under the water tower, and a Negro fireman climbed up on the roof to pull down the tin spout. The windows in the hospital cars were open, and Wesley could see the wounded lying in the tiers of wooden bunks. Their unshaved faces were ashen in the heat, and within minutes green flies had started to drone around the windows.

“Can you smell it?” the other soldier said.

“Be quiet.” Wesley’s eyes focused on the captain who was walking toward them from the last car. He wore a surgeon’s insignia on his coat, and his rolled sleeves were spotted with blood.

“What’s ahead of us, soldier?” he said, looking past Wesley as he spoke.

“We ain’t been no further than the bridge, sir. We got some wounded behind us that’s real bad, if you got room for them.”

“Where’s your commanding officer?” His eyes were still fixed on a distant spot across the bayou.

“With the column. They ought to be coming through them trees any minute.”

“I’ll give him until we finish loading wood. There’s Yankees tearing up track all the way down the line behind us. If your officer isn’t here when we leave, you can ride with us up on the spine or sit here and wait for the Federals.” The captain turned and started to walk back toward the last car.

“Sir, a couple of our wounded ain’t going to make that field hospital if they got to go much further,” Wesley said.

“What field hospital?”