The Widow of the South Read Online Free Page B

that, he strode up the stairs two at a time and tried to brush past Mariah, but she had already fallen back to the doorway.
    “Please, sir, Colonel McGavock say no visitors or disturbances.”
    Forrest pulled up and clenched his fists for a moment before rocking back on his heels and nodding again. He seemed to be trying to remember something he had once known, maybe something he had been taught when he was a boy but had long since forgotten. He nodded and took a deep breath.
    “Please tell your mistress I am right sorry she’s sick and that I hope she gets well. I will do my damnedest to stay quiet, but I’m coming in. Get out of the way.”
    Mariah had made her attempt, and now she knew it was time to step aside. She remembered where she’d heard Forrest’s name. Some of the town Negroes had been talking about him the last time she’d gone in to get supplies.
Forrest killed all them colored soldiers, throttled them right around the neck. He left not a one standing, and he put their heads on sticks all around the place. Fort Pillow it was. He the devil, no doubt. The Lord goin’ to make him pay, yes.
This memory made him seem smaller to her, less human, and therefore more contemptible. She would not give him respect. She stood with her back to the wall as he strode into the house and trod hard across the diagonal squares of the floorcloth toward the stairs. Mariah saw his steps raise little dust balls.
    “Is this the way up’n the top floor?”
    “Yes.”
    “You let me know when
Colonel
McGavock gets back, hear?”
    “Yes.”
    But Mariah followed him up the stairs. She would not let him out of her sight, not while Carrie was up there.

3
    S ERGEANT Z ACHARIAH C ASHWELL,
24 TH A RKANSAS
    W e were marching up that pike, and everywhere you looked there were things cast off by the Yankees littering the sides of the road, and it was everything our officers could do to keep the young ones from ducking out of formation and snatching up something bright and useful-looking, like crows looking to decorate their nests. The old ones, like me, we knew better than to pick up anything, because you’d have to carry it, and we knew that our burden was heavy enough. But, hell, the Yankees had thrown away more than we’d laid our eyes on in months, maybe years. There were pocket Bibles and little writing desks, poker chips and love letters, euchre decks and nightshirts, canteens and pots of jam, and all kinds of fancy knives. It looked like a colossus had picked up a train full of things, from New York or one of those kinds of places, and dumped it all out to see what was what. And I’m just mentioning the things that you might want to pick up and keep. There was a lot more, besides. There were wagons left burning on the side of the road, crates of rotten and infested meat, horses and mules shot in their traces. I reckon those animals weren’t moving fast enough, and you couldn’t blame the Yankees for lightening their loads if they could, but it was a sorry sight. Even so, all that gear gladdened my heart because it seemed so desperate. They were
running,
by God. They were running from us, the 24th Arkansas, and all the rest of the brigades ahead of us and behind us. The columns stretched far as I could see when I wiped the sweat from my eyes and got a good look around. But mostly I just kept my head down and put my feet down, one in front of the other, the way I’d learned to do.
    The officers rode up and down the column on their horses, saying all sorts of things to keep our spirits up. I’d learned that if you needed an officer to pick up your spirits, you were in sorry shape. But some of the younger boys listened, and they were heartened by it. The officers talked about the glory of the South and about how our women would be watching and how they would expect us to fight like Southern men—hard and without quitting. I wanted to say,
Until that bullet come for you,
but I didn’t. Those officers were getting a whole