Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [94]
“I mean to give Bragg a piece of my mind,” he said. “He’s shouldered me out the road every chance he got—and I don’t even know if he does it for meanness or just because he’s a goddamn fool. Might near ever time I get up a command he makes me turn it over to somebody else. Men I raised myself, and armed and fed and mounted. By God I’d even swaller that if he made good use of’m but he damn well don’t.”
Forrest stopped and stared out the front window. In the faint reflection from the watery glass she could see him bite into his lip and release it. “Since we got ourselves run out of Vicksburg, I could do us some good on the Mississippi River,” he said. “Can I get an order from Bragg to go there? No I cannot.”
He raised his head slightly and peered through the glass before him. There seemed to be some kind of interest building in the street below. People were gathering outside the Bellevue gate, though they were not looking up at the mansion. Others were coming out from behind the house, drifting down the lawn to join them. Forrest clucked his tongue and resumed the oval of his pacing. A loose rowel on his left spur clattered as he walked.
“Everbody bet too much on General Lee in the first place,” he said. “Like they wasn’t any state in the Confederacy but Virginia. Well now Lee has got himself whupped in Pennsylvania and right now hit’s the most he can do to keep the Yankees out of Richmond. And d’ye know what that means?”
He had wheeled on her. Mary Ann raised her chin, but he didn’t leave her time to answer and she wasn’t sure what she’d say anyway.
“What means is that the Army of Tennessee is goen to count and it’s a-goen to count for life or death. It’s nigh bout the only thing standing in the way of the Yankees eaten our entrails clean across to the ocean. And what has Bragg done with that army? Well he let it get flanked out of Middle Tennessee without so much as offeren to fight. He had the Yankees in the palm of his hand at Chickamauga and he damn well let’m walk away.”
Forrest closed his own hand and banged his thigh with the fist. “Ain’t no such thing as a drawn battle,” he said. “Not no more. It’s win or lose and by God we look like losen if we don’t straighten out and do it damn quick. I know I can beat any pack of Yankees I meet afore air a one of them West Point sonsabitches can get his damn slide rule limbered up. I don’t only know it, I’ve proved it too—”
“I know you have,” Mary Ann said, rising from the piano stool. “I’m proud of you for it. We all are. But—”
His eyes shot through her and she paused.
“I don’t believe the Yankees can whup us,” Forrest said. “I won’t believe that. But we look mighty like whuppen our own selves.”
“Do you think putting yourself on the wrong side of General Bragg will help that?” Mary Ann said. “You’ve made me understand he’s not fit for his place. But what does it help to pursue a quarrel among ourselves?”
“It’ll help me do what I said I would,” Forrest said shortly. “I told the man I was comen to see him. Have you known me not to stand behind my word?”
“No,” said Mary Ann, exhaling, “and I don’t suppose I ever will.” Or that I’d have it any other way, she thought.
Forrest’s head snapped toward the window. “What’s all that hooraw?”
At the bottom of the lawn the street was now fairly lined with people who all shuffled their feet and looked expectantly to the west. A couple of ten-year-old boys were pulling a length of red yarn taut across the thoroughfare, right in front of the Bellevue gate.
“By God it’s a horse race.” He turned to her, his features flickering with an odd mix of irritation and pleasure, and caught her by the hand. “Come on—let’s go see.”
They were halfway down the lawn when the rhythm of hoofbeats quieted the rustle and hum of talk among the crowd. Willie, flogging King Philip for all he was worth, appeared neck and neck with young Witherspoon, who was probably riding a superior horse. Mary Ann’s breath caught; it was like watching her own heart flying away outside of her body. At the last instant King