The Storm Before Atlanta (11 page)

“Got contraband here,” he said importantly. “Need to take her to the captain.”

“We need to get her into some dry clothes first, is what we need to do,” said No-Joke. “She’ll catch her death.”

Jeremy felt a bit deflated as No-Joke took over his contraband, hustling her off to find dry clothes. When they came back a half hour later, the girl was dressed in a Union combat blouse, the cuffs rolled up around her wrists, and
a petticoat that looked like it was made from two pieces of sacking hastily stitched together.

“Hungry, contraband?” said Seth.

The girl looked at him in confusion.

“She’s called Dulcie,” said Jeremy, trying to regain his authority.

Seth reached into the fire and pulled out a piece of red-roasted meat tied to a stick with a piece of string. An appetizing smell of roast meat and wood smoke rose from it, and Jeremy would have liked a piece of it himself, but Seth held the stick out to Dulcie. “Put yourself around that, Dulcie.”

Dulcie curtsied. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’m hungry too,” said Jeremy.

“You can wait for dinner,” said Seth. “Where did you find this contraband, anyway?”

Jeremy felt this subject was best not discussed, since he’d been far away from where he was supposed to be. “Where did you get the pork?”

“From a Secesh pig,” said Seth. “It refused to take the oath of allegiance.”

Dulcie had never, in all her life, had to make choices before. The decision to run away was the first decision she had ever knowingly made. Now she was free, and the knowledge coursed through her veins and gave her strength she’d never had. She had told the boys to let go of
her, and they let. She said she wanted to go to the Union camp, and she went. She hadn’t called anybody Mas’r, just their names or sir, and nobody had even noticed.

The boy Jeremy and the soldier they called No-Joke took her to Captain John F. Knox. Dulcie studied the two out of the tail of her eye as they walked. The boy was small and black-haired, probably part Cherokee, Dulcie thought, or part some kind of Indian, anyway. So, for that matter, was the man. Dulcie spent more time studying him, because there was something funny about No-Joke. He burned, that was it. There was a fire inside him, and it had hollowed out his cheeks and left his face and his whole body spare and half-starved-looking, while his eyes were bright with divine fire. His expression reminded Dulcie of Aunt Ruth back home, just before she had died of consumption. But No-Joke didn’t cough, and as far as Dulcie could tell he wasn’t sick. He just burned.

“The captain’s headquarters is up here,” said Jeremy.

“There ain’t no tents,” said Dulcie, not quite daring, despite her freedom, to form it as a question.

“Nah, Crazy Willie wouldn’t let us bring no tents on this campaign.”

“
General Sherman
said we were to travel light and ready for battle,” said No-Joke severely.

Dulcie thought they would regret this when the rains came, but she kept it to herself.

Captain Knox was reading through some papers laid out on a trestle table in front of him. He had an aide beside
him. Behind him stood a young black man, a servant, Dulcie supposed. Or a slave? Surely not a slave. Jeremy and No-Joke stood to attention and saluted, and Dulcie, not sure if it was expected of her, saluted as well. The captain returned the salute.

“Contraband, sir,” said No-Joke. “She just came over from enemy lines.”

The captain looked interested. “What’s your name, young person?”

“Dulcie, sir.”

“Got a second name?”

“No, sir.”

“How about Knox? That’s my last name. Would you like Knox for a last name?”

“I’ll think about it, sir.”

“Who do you belong to?”

At this question Dulcie’s heart sank. Were they going to return her to Missus after all?

“Don’t rightly know, sir,” she hedged.

The black man behind the captain made a little gesture sideways with his head. Dulcie looked at him. What did he mean? Was he telling her that the captain could be trusted? Dulcie didn’t want to risk it.

“Is your master in rebellion against the United States of America?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, then, you’re mine now.” The captain smiled, but Dulcie felt like turning and running.

The black man made a little gesture with his lips, and Dulcie thought he was saying that it was all right.

“Where did you come from?”

“Down around the Etowah, sir,” said Dulcie cautiously.

“And did you pass through troop movements on the way up here?”

“Yes, sir. A whole big camp of Confederates. By the river down there.”

“How many Confederates?”

Dulcie didn’t know how to answer this. It seemed to her that there had been an awful lot. “They went on forever, sir.”

“Hmm. And where were they headed, do you know that? Did they say? Rome? Resaca?”

Dulcie thought.

“She doesn’t know anything, sir,” said the captain’s white aide.

Dulcie took some more time thinking. Of course she knew something. She remembered every single word that she’d heard as she passed through the Reb camp. It just took her a minute to sort through everything, the songs, the jokes, the complaints, the men teasing each other about their sweethearts.

“They said that their commander, General Johnston, thought that y’all were going to Rome, Georgia,” she said. “But now he thinks you are going to attack Resaca. Most of his army is headed to Resaca now, and they are fortifying the town. But some of them are going downriver, because
they know that y’all are trying to make a pontoon bridge across the river there and they aim to stop you.”

“Just what I said they’d do all along.”

The captain waved the aide aside. “What else did you see, Dulcie?”

“Didn’t really see much, sir. I had a bucket on my head. But anything I hear once, I remember it.”

“I told you they had the intellectual capacities of white people!” said the captain to his aide.

Dulcie had never heard of a white person with a memory like hers, but she held her tongue.

“Write her a pass,” said the captain. “Let her stay in the camp now if she chooses. She can look for a job if she wants.” He turned back to Dulcie and her companions. “Dismissed.”

No-Joke and Jeremy and Dulcie saluted again, and the captain returned their salutes.

Dulcie lingered. The words “if she chooses” and “if she wants” were said in an offhand manner, but they sounded huge and loud to her. She wanted to talk to the black man, to ask him what she could believe, who she could trust, and most of all, what she should do.

That it was simply her choice, that she was free now, she could almost get herself to believe—but what were the choices, and how did you make one? Where did you go?

No-Joke and Jeremy turned and started back to their camp. Dulcie slid away from them. The black man noticed
her lingering. He shot her a questioning look. She waited for him to come over to her.

“What do I do now?” she asked.

“Whatever you want,” said the man.

“What—” She almost said
What do I want?
but that sounded like such a dumb question. “What do
you
do?”

“I’m the captain’s servant. He hired me back in Tennessee. I was in one of the contraband camps for a while.” He shuddered. “Don’t go to a contraband camp.”

“Why not?”

“Too crowded, not enough food. They’re hirin’ the kids your age out to farmers as servants for their food. No money, just their food. And there’s camp fever. One in three died last winter.”

Dulcie tried to imagine that. One in three. It sounded like somewhere she didn’t want to be. Especially if they were going to turn around and give her to some farmer as a “servant.”

“When you say you’re the captain’s servant …,” she ventured.

“He pays me.”

“Oh. And—how do I get someone to pay me?”

“Just ask. All the officers hire servants. They’re lookin’ pretty often, because sometimes the servants leave.”

“Run away? Why?”

The man smiled. “They don’t run away. They leave.”

Dulcie thought about the difference. You could leave
when you wanted. Any day. There was no running away, no pursuit, no being dragged down by dogs and whipped two hundred times. You wanted to leave? You left. Imagine.

“You got a big smile on your face, girl,” said the man, smiling in return. “Why don’t you try the surgeon? His servant just left him. Reckon he could use another pair of hands.”

“All right.”

“Here’s your pass. Carry it with you all the time.”

Dulcie took the paper and held it in her hands. Some of it was printed with a printing press; there were blanks that were filled in with writing. Dulcie could not read. “Is this my free paper?”

“Not exactly. You don’t need a free paper, you just free. That’s a pass—everyone in the war zone has to have one. Even the soldiers, if they go outside the camp.”

“Thank you,” said Dulcie.

The man nodded and gave Dulcie a little wave—he was going back to his duties. Dulcie curtsied in return and, clutching the pass tightly in her hand, turned to follow Jeremy and No-Joke. Because she chose to.

Dulcie found Dr. Flood, the regimental surgeon for the 107th, under a chestnut tree, reading a book.

She saluted. “Excuse me, sir.”

He looked up from his book. He was old, Dulcie saw. Too old for a soldier, really.

He had silver hair, cut close to his head, and a stern, square-looking face. “Where have you sprung from?”

Dulcie didn’t know how to answer this, so she skipped past it. “They told me you’re looking for a servant.”

Dr. Flood looked Dulcie up and down. “A boy.”

Dulcie didn’t know what to say to this. She was brought up not to argue, and anyway she couldn’t be a boy. That was not possible. She looked down at the ground.

“An army on the march is no place for a girl,” Dr. Flood explained. “You ought to go back behind the lines.”

“Where behind the lines, sir?”

“I don’t know. One of the contraband camps.” Dr. Flood frowned. “But they’re no place for a girl either. No place for anybody.”

Dulcie stood in front of him, waiting.

“Can you cook?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you wash clothes?”

“Yes, sir.” Dulcie could do lots of things. It was just that being a boy was not one of them.

He sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ll give you a try. Five dollars a month, and your food, such as it is. How does that sound?”

Dulcie knew nothing at all about money, except that in the old days, before the war, the adult slaves used to get a
silver dollar at Christmas from Mas’r and Missus. The children got a dime or a quarter. After the war began there was no money, as far as Dulcie could tell. Mas’r and Missus talked about this a lot on the porch.

“It sounds good, sir.”

“It’s not,” said Dr. Flood with a sudden smile. “If you work out well, I’ll make it six.”

ELEVEN

J
EREMY HAD LEARNED MONTHS AGO TO WAKE BEFORE
dawn, so that he could join the other drummers in the regiment’s drum corps to beat the reveille at five a.m. Now that they were on the march, reveille came much earlier, usually at three or 3:30 a.m. The night of the twelfth of May, he couldn’t sleep. He knew that soon he would be beating the long roll—“Wake up, and be ready for action.” He had only practiced it before—first back in Syracuse, and then all winter in Shelbyville with the drum corps. He knew it perfectly, and it beat in his head all night, making him toss and turn under the open sky.

The 107th was going into battle. Even the few things they’d brought had been handed over to the quarter master for safe keeping. They’d been issued three days’ cooked rations and sixty paper cartridges, neat packages each containing a charge of powder and a leaden minié ball. Forty went into their cartridge boxes—their “forty dead men,” the soldiers called them—and twenty into their pockets.
Sixty bullets was a lot. The soldiers’ Springfield rifles had to be reloaded after each shot. A battle where a man could use up all sixty rounds would be an unusually rough one.

Jeremy got the cooked rations, which he stowed in his haversack to carry into battle with him, but he didn’t get any cartridges, of course. Because he wouldn’t be carrying a gun into battle—he would be carrying his drum.