Gods and Generals - Jeff Shaara [63]
Billings saluted, nodded. “That is most kind, Major. Thank you.” He backed toward the door, took a last glance at the bags hanging over Hancock’s arm, and left.
Hancock felt the weight of the bags, smelled the old leather, the gray dust rubbing off on the sleeve of his white shirt. “Well, Lewis, shall we have a look?”
Armistead had often come to dinner, had made it a habit years before, in Fort Myers, Florida, on the edge of the Everglades, when the Sixth Infantry had been sent to the worst place any of them had ever seen—suffocating heat, bugs and snakes, quiet diseases—to pursue and contain the Seminoles. Mira had been the only woman on the post, and the officers took turns for the wonderful opportunity to share the Hancocks’ dining table, but it was Armistead who always seemed to have his place set, and the friendship between the two men was understood. They had served together even before Florida, in Mexico, and Hancock had known Lewis Armistead as the jokester, the Virginia gentleman who could feign the embarrassed look of the proper aristocrat and then, with a sly grin, embarrass the unsuspecting victim with his own crude wit.
Armistead was older, had carried with him the shameful reputation of having been booted out of West Point, the jokes then having done more harm. The shame did not come from him, however, but from the others, the gentlemen. Those like Hancock, who knew him well, knew that West Point had wasted its heavy-handed discipline on a fine soldier.
After Mexico, the post around Leavenworth had been a happy time for all of them, but that was before the conflicts over slavery, and before the influenza. It was a word most of them had never heard, and it took away the joy, and many of the laughing faces, and one of them was Armistead’s wife. Hancock and his own family had been spared, and the bond between them had grown solid then, strengthened by the terrible loss of one and the knowledge that it could have been any of them.
Mira stood quietly behind Hancock as he opened one of the bags and pulled out a heavy brown envelope stuffed with papers, letters, the usual contents of the mail run. He set the contents down on a chair, opened the second bag, and saw a round bundle, newspapers wrapped with string and enclosed by a letter, with the seal of General Albert Sidney Johnston.
“What’s this?” he said, sliding the string off. A newspaper slipped out and fell on the floor, the front page with a headline bigger than any he had ever seen, one word, wide letters of black ink: WAR!
They stared at the paper, then Armistead bent down, picked it up and read.
“Oh, dear God . . . dear God . . .”
Mira came forward, put her hands around Hancock’s arm, and he unrolled the other paper, held the official letter aside, and saw another headline, not as large. FORT SUMTER FIRED UPON!
Mira said, “Fort Sumter?”
“South Carolina . . . Charleston harbor.” Hancock read further, scanning the words. The room began to fill with a thick silence, and after a long minute he put the paper down and said to Mira, “They’ve done it. The southern states have started a war. Major Anderson . . . held his ground, wouldn’t surrender the fort . . . so they shelled it.”
Armistead stopped reading. “It says no one was killed, no casualties.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. There could still be a way to settle it—much harder once there is blood.”
Hancock looked now at the official letter, straightened it out, read it aloud.
“To, Captain Winfield S. Hancock, Chief Quartermaster, District of Southern California. From, General Albert S. Johnston, Commanding, Department of California.
You are hereby advised that a condition of war now exists between the United States of America and a confederation of states that have elected to withdraw their allegiance to that union.