Breakthroughs

They had almost reached the far end of the network of trenches when Confederate reserves-black men with white officers and noncoms-brought them to a standstill. Some of the black soldiers in butternut fired wildly and ran. Some-more than would have been true of white troops-threw down their Tredegars and surrendered first chance they got. Counting on either, though, was risky-no, was deadly dangerous. Most of the black Confederates fought as hard as white Confederates.

With the Rebel reinforcements in place, Martin didn’t need long to figure out that he and his pals weren’t going to push much farther forward today. He got the men busy with their entrenching tools, and got busy with his own, too, turning shell holes and bits of north-facing trench into south-facing trench.

Sighing, he said, “We took a bite out of their line, but we didn’t slam on through it.”

“We need more barrels,” the Hamburger kid said. “They can really smash trenches. What else can?”

“Bodies,” Martin answered. “Lots and lots of bodies.” Anyone who’d fought on the Roanoke front, whether in green-gray or butternut, would have said the same thing.

“Barrels work better,” David Hamburger said, and Martin did not disagree with him. He’d seen too many piled-up bodies.

A

She hardly noticed she’d got the eggs rubbery and the coffee strong enough to spit in her eye. The Southern Guardian took most of her attention. Despite censors’ obfuscations and reporters’ resolute optimism, the war news was bad. It had been bad ever since the damnyankees opened their spring offensives in Te

“Damn them,” she whispered. Then she said it out loud: “ Damn them!” The paper wasn’t printing maps of the fighting in Maryland and Virginia any more. A

But A

Nashville, though, Nashville had been something different. The paper went on for a column and a half about the horrors the city was suffering under Yankee bombardment. A

But that line, which had held even under the heaviest pressure since the autumn before, went down as if made of cardboard when the Yankees hammered it with a horde of their barrels. That hammering worried A

“If they do, they’re liable to break through again, wherever it is,” A

Maybe they could see it. Maybe they simply didn’t know what to do about it. That possibility also left her unreassured.

She looked at her plate in some surprise, realizing she’d finished the eggs without noticing. She sighed. Another day. She’d never felt so useless in all her life as she did here in St. Matthews now. Were she back at Marshlands, she would be fretting about the year’s cotton crop. But there would be no cotton crop this year. She dared not go back to the plantation that had been in her family for more than a hundred years.

Her back stiffened. No, that wasn’t true. She dared to go back, even if she would not have cared to spend the night there. In fact, she would go back-with militiamen, and with a Tredegar slung over her shoulder. The plantation was ravaged. It was ruined. But it was hers, and she would not tamely yield it to anyone or anything.

No sooner decided than begun. She did not officially command the St. Matthews militia, but she had enough power in this part of the country-enough power through most of South Carolina, as a matter of fact-that within an hour she and half a dozen militiamen were rattling toward Marshlands in a couple of ramshackle motorcars.

Some of the militiamen wore old gray uniforms, some new butternut. Some of the men were old, too-too old to be called into the Army even during the present crisis at the front. One, a sergeant of her own age named Willie Metcalfe, was a handsome fellow when viewed from the right. The left side of his face was a slagged ruin of scars. He wore a patch over what had been his left eye. A

Half a dozen miles made a twenty-minute ride along the rutted dirt road between St. Matthews and Marshlands. It would have been twice that long if one of the motorcars had had a puncture, but they were lucky. When Willie Metcalfe-who, predictably, was driving in the lead automobile, to avoid displaying his wrecked profile for a while-started to pull into the driveway that led to the ruins of the Marshlands mansion, A

“Yes, ma’am.” Sergeant Metcalfe’s voice was mushy; the inside of his mouth was probably as ravaged as the rest of that side of his face. But he said the words as he would have said Yes, sir to a superior officer, and obeyed as promptly, too. The other motorcar followed his lead.

Because she hadn’t had to shout at him, as she’d had to shout at so many men in her life, she deigned to explain: “The only motorcars likely to come here will have white people in them-probably white soldiers in them. What better place to hide a bomb than in the driveway there?”

Metcalfe thought for a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

Linus Ashworth, who with his white beard looked a little like General Lee and was almost old enough to have fought under him, said, “We ain’t likely to be bringing niggers into the militia any time soon, not when we’re chasin’ ’em, and I don’t give a…hoot what the Army does.” He got out of the automobile and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the lush grass. A brown drop slid down that white beard. A yellow streak in it said that sort of thing happened to him all the time.

A

Linus Ashworth spat again. “It’s a shame, ma’am,” he said, “purely a shame. I seen this place when it was like what it’s supposed to be, and there wasn’t no finer plantation in the state of South Carolina, God strike me dead if I lie.”

“Yes,” A