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"That pretty well sums it up," Willie said.
"Them ancient Greeks didn't have real high standards when it come to smarts, did they?" Tige replied.
Willie was sitting on a log, his legs spread, grinning at Tige, when he heard the jingle of bridle chains, the creak of saddle leather, the thud of shoed hooves on damp earth. He looked at Tige's face and saw the alarm in it as Tige focused on a presence behind Willie's head.
Willie stood up from the log, drawing the bowie from its scabbard, letting it hang by his thigh. He looked up at a bareheaded specter of a man in a brass-buttoned gray coat that was pushed back over the scrolled hilt of a cavalry saber.
"Light it up, Sergeant," the mounted man in the gray coat said.
The sargent who walked beside him scratched a lucifer match on a candle lamp and touched the flame to three wicks inside it and lifted the bail above his head. The shadows leapt back into the trees and Willie saw the gold stars of a colonel sewn on the horseman's collar, the hair deeply receded at the temples, the severity of a hawk in his face.
Other mounted officers appeared out of the undergrowth and overhang, and farther back in the trees lean, dismounted men in slouch hats and kepis were leading their horses by the bridles, pulling them up the slope of a coulee that snaked along the edge of a cornfield.
Willie stared, intrigued, at the man with the hawklike face. On his last leave in New Orleans he had seen his picture in the window of a photographer's studio on Canal Street. There was no mistaking who he was, nor misinterpreting the inflexible posture, the martial light in the eyes, the adversarial expression that seemed untempered by problems of conscience.
"You don't seem aware of military protocol," the colonel said.
"Private Willie Burke at your orders, sir," Willie said, removing his kepi, bowing in a thespian fashion. "That young gentleman yonder is my pal Tige McGuffy, of the 6th Mississippi."
"I'm very happy to make your acquaintance," the colonel said. There was a lump of chewing tobacco in his jaw, and his mouth looked like a ragged hole inside his triangular, untrimmed beard. He leaned in the saddle and spat a long brown stream into the leaves. "You look to be wounded."
"Not me, sir. They killed my pal Jim Stubbefield, though. You didn't happen to know him, did you?" Willie replied.
The colonel wiped his lips with his wrist. "No, I didn't. Where's your regiment?" he asked.
"I haven't seen them in a while. But I'm glad you raised the subject. Perhaps you could tell me the names of the thumb-sucking incompetent sods who got Colonel Mouton shot in the face and the 18 th Louisiana destroyed," Willie said.
The sergeant turned with the candle lamp, staring incredulously at Willie, waiting for the colonel's command. But the colonel waved a finger in disapproval. "You been out yonder?" he asked Willie, nodding toward the north, his horse resting one hoof.
"That I have. They've been reinforced up to their eyes and I suspect at daybreak they may kick a telegraph pole up your ass," Willie replied.
"I see," the colonel said, dismounting, the tiny rowel on his spur tinkling when his boot touched the ground. He opened a saddl
ebag and removed a folded map, then studied Willie's face, which in the candlelight and rain looked like yellow and red tallow that had started to melt. "Can you point out where these Yankees are staging up?"
"I think I'm either bent for the firing squad or being on my way with Tige here, Colonel."
"Matters not to me. But it will to the men we may lose tomorrow," the colonel said.
Willie thought about it. He yawned to clear the popping sound from his ears. He felt as though he were sliding to the bottom of a black well, the invective he had delivered a senior officer echoing in his head like words spoken in a dream. When he closed his eyes the ground seemed to move under his feet. He took the map from the colonel's hand, then returned it to him without opening it.
"Colonel Forrest, is it?" Willie said, blowing out his breath.
"That's correct."
"This light is mighty poor. Will one of your fellows take care of Tige, perhaps carry him to the Corinth Road?" he said.
"It will be our pleasure," the colonel said.
"They're going to rip us apart, sir. I saw them offload maybe a hundred mortars," Willie said, then realized he had just used the word "us."
The colonel bit off a chew of plug tobacco and handed the plug to Willie.
"I don't doubt you're a brave man and killed the enemy behind his own lines today. Wars get won by such as yourself. But don't ever address me profanely or disrespectfully again. I won't have you shot. I'll do it myself," he said.
Then the colonel directed an aide to build a fire under a canvas tarp and to bring up dry clothes and bread and a preserve jar of strawberry jam for Willie and Tige, and bandages and salve for Tige's feet, and that quickly Willie found himself back in the mainstream of the Confederate army, about to begin the second day of the battle of Shiloh.
Chapter Eight
