The Deserter

by W. E. Turner

“I tell ya, boys. I did not join the army to get spit on,” Jason Tanner told his companions. “An' I didn't join up ta have some God damned officer call me a thief or a coward or both. I'm leavin'. Leavin' tonight if any of y'all wanna come with me.”

In the small, dimly-lit cabin the four of them built as their winter quarters, the quiet was as thick as the fetid air; air surrounded by mud-chinked logs that held in both the heat and much of the smoke from the wood fire in the fireplace. The smell of the smoke mixed with the smell of their supper of fried beef and cornmeal dodgers. And overlying all smells was the soldier smell of wet wool and the odor of too many bodies confined in too small a space for too many days.

The other three men sitting by the fire or lying in their bunks just stared at Jason. They were not really dumbfounded at what he was proposing to do; each of them knew the homesickness and frustration that caused Jason to make his statement. Perhaps each wished he had been the one to whisper the sentiment. The Confederate Army of Tennessee had not moved from Murphreesborough since it arrived two months ago and the inactivity was beginning to fray the men's nerves.

Paul Redfern spoke in the same hushed, almost whispered, tones Jason had used; no need to allow others outside their cabin to overhear. “That's desertion,” he said.

Desertion. There. The word was out in the open for all to hear and think about.

“They'll shoot you for that!” Paul went on. “You know they will.”

“I don't care,” Jason said evenly. “That bastard Harpool's done had me bucked and gagged for the last time. Hell, I kin just barely stand up straight now, after four days since they done that.” The memory of the punishment made the young man flex his arms and legs, using the stiffness and the ache in his joints to remind him of how it felt to be trussed up for eight hours, arms wrapped abound his drawn-up legs with a stick run through the gap between the elbows and knees. Jason could almost still taste the putrid ball of leather with which he was gagged; a piece of rawhide covering his mouth and chin to hold the ball in his mouth. The lingering taste of the gag made him want to spit. But he knew the others would not like it if he spit there inside the cabin. They didn't have a cuspidor.

Johnny Ray Harris could not bear to look at Jason any more, so he turned away. After all, Johnny Ray was the one who stole Captain Harpool's canned ham from the officers' mess tent, then shared it with his pards. Jason was just the one caught with the empty tin, scraping out the last bit of gelatin in which the ham was packed. But, when confronted, Jason never implicated Johnny Ray.

The older boy told the captain he was sorry about the stolen ham but refused to name the thief. “On my honor, sir,” Jason had said, “I can not tell you.” Even when the captain ordered him directly to name the culprit, Jason refused. That brought a charge of insubornation to add to that of theft and led to the bucking and gagging, the usual punishment for an insubordinate soldier.

Johnny Ray felt his face flushing with embarrassment as he remembered the sight of Jason, trussed up like a pig going to market, sitting on a barrel in front of the Colonel's tent with a placard proclaiming him “Theif” hanging around his neck.

“So,” Jason asked, “Who's goin' with me?”

None of the other three soldiers soldiers could meet Jason's eyes now.

“How are you gonna get past the Provost Guard?” Micah Altman asked. “And the pickets? Then, I hear they's Yankee calvary all the way from Murphreesborough on up to Nashville.”

“An' our own calvary, too,” Redfern chimed in, mispronouncng the name of that branch of the army the way most soldiers did.

“They ain't no way in hell you can make it all the way back to Hardin County,” Micah said. “No way 't all.”

“Hell,” Paul said, “if that's where yer goin' why didn't you just join the calvary? You'd be up there in Kentucky right now, with ol' John Morgan.
Then you could desert and have less of a walk home.”

“Who says I'm goin' back to Kentucky, anyways?”

“Well, ain't ya?”

“No,” Jason said, smiling now. “I figured I'd take off fer California. 'Er else the gold fields in Nevada. Might even hop on a ship in San-Fran-cisco an' go all th' way out to them Hi-waiian Islands. Go fishin' fer pearls.”

Johnny Ray looked up when he heard Jason's plan. It sounded like what he had proposed to Jason just last week.

Life in the Confederate army was not nearly the romantic adventure the four of them imagined when they left home back in May of 1861. Now, after 19 months of defeat and retreat, with only two short offensives that ended up thwarted at Pittsburg Landing and Baton Rouge, the prospect of leaving the army to anywhere was appealing. Anything was more appealing than camp life. Though some officers tried to spice up the bleak existence of the men with drill competitions or theatricals, living in winter quarters was still boredom at its worst.

None of the boys had seen their families since they left home. Since Kentucky had not seceded from the Union, like many people expected her to back in '61, the men of their unit were even cut off from help from their home state, unlike soldiers from loyal Confederate states like Mississippi or Alabama. Now the Kentucky regiments were known as the “Orphan Brigade.” Even though some uniforms and most equipment and supplies were furnished by the Confederate government, those necessities were never sufficient, it seemed. Luxuries like canned ham were either purchased at a dear price or donated by charitable southerners who were now having trouble supporting troops from their own states. Periodically, volunteers with special passes and the help of southern sympathizers would go north to Kentucky to secure new clothing, extra food or other necessities for the soldiers from their families and smuggle the goods south to the army. When these so-called “blockade runners” returned, the Kentuckians lived better for a time, but without a steady influx of these luxury items, life was barely tolerable. The boys all remembered the bad days of nonexistent or barely-edible commissaries that featured rancid, green-coated beef and corn meal so poorly ground that eating pone made from it was like eating shards of glass.

“But don't you wanna see your folks?” Micah asked.

“Sure, I wanna see 'em,” Jason said. “But how could I face 'em if I was to desert? Well,... Answer is: I couldn't. My Pa didn't want me goin' off to the army in the first place, so I run off. Went an' got ol' Johnny Ray there, an' we ran off together. Met up with y'all and th' four of us all joined up with ol' Sidney Johnston at Bowlin' Green. Been with the army ever since then. But now, I'm tarred of it! Tarred o' just sittin' 'round doin' nothin'. 'Er else bein' marched off to someplace like Vicksburg like ol' Bragg had us Kentuckians do while he takes th' army an' goes on up to Perryville, not mor'n fifty mile from our homes!”

“Hell,” Paul said. “The army went right through Munfordville, where my uncle lives. That's only twenty miles from our farm.”

“Yeah.” Jason agreed. “But then he retreated. 'Stead o' whippin' them Union like he had a chainst to, he jist come on back here again. Said he couldn't get no re-cruits in Kentucky. Well, if he wanted more men for his army, he shoulda had us Kentuckians along with 'im. Lotsa other boys woulda come along, then. Lotsa our friends. But did he? No. Sent us off ta Miss'ippi 'cause he don't trust us.”

“Don't trust us,” Micah said, disgustedly. “Hell fire. Ol' Bragg don't trust nobody. Never has.”

“Well, I'm just tarred of it,” Jason said. A sad look came into his eyes, replacing the excited, eager, then angry expressions that had been on his face only moments before. He picked up a twig that was lying on the dirt floor and threw it forcefully into the corner of the cabin.

“Tarred o' eatin' rotten food we wouldn't even feed to pigs back home,” the boy went on. “Tarred o' always bein' too cold or too hot 'r too wet. Tarred o' all the dirt an' the stink an' the bugs what's always crawlin' all over me.” As if to emphasize this last point he reaches inside his muslin shirt, scratched around and caught a “bluebelly” louse near his armpit and flipped it into the fire. He enjoyed the satisfying “pop” the fire made about the time the bug's body hit the hot coals.

“Tarred o' always havin' the drizzlin' shits,” he continued. He gave a rueful grin that pulled up the skin of one cheek covered with peach fuzz that only recently turned into real whiskers. “Jist once,...” Jason said. “Jist once I'd like to go take a dump an' not have it come out in squirts.”

The cabin fell silent as each young man was lost in his own thoughts. The only sounds were the crackling and popping of the fire and the sound of the wind and the wind-driven rain pattering against the cabin walls.

“So,” Jason said after a long while, raising his cheek from his drawn-up knee where he rested it as he stared at the fire. “Who's goin' with me?”

Micah and Paul remained silent, as if they hadn't even heard Jason's question. Jason looked back and forth between the two of them. They want to go, he thought, but they're scared to.

“They'll shoot ya,” Redfern said again after a long pause. “They'll catch ya an' shoot ya, sure.”

“They gotta catch me, first,” Jason said.

“They will,” Redfern insisted. “They caught ol' Asa Lewis twice, after he run off. Give him a second chainst after the first time. Now, they're gonna shoot 'im.”

“No, they ain't,” Micah insisted. “Gen'ral Breckinridge is gonna get 'im outta that. You'll see.”

“He ain't gonna,” Jason said, hopelessly. “Who do you think it was that turned down Asa's request fer a furlough in the first place? Breckinridge.”

All the men of the Sixth Kentucky were familiar with the case of Asa Lewis. Lewis was a brave boy from Barren County who fought with distinction at Shiloh, Vicksburg and Batton Rouge. But when the news arrived that Lewis's widowed mother's house had been burned by Unionists back in Kentucky, he requested a furlough to return home and see to his mother's welfare. The request was denied on the grounds he could not be relied upon to return to the army after the furlough's term expired.

“Ol' Bragg'll shoot 'im,” Jason said with finality. “You done seen it too many time to think it's gonna be any other way.”

“And we're gonna have to watch it,” Paul said.

The men remembered all too well what it was like to witness an execution. Just last week, a man from one of the Tennessee regiments was shot for desertion. The whole division had been required to witness the execution; each brigade standing as one side of a huge open box on the parade ground beside the river. The prisoner was brought out in a wagon, then made to sit on his own coffin as the firing squad was aligned before him and the commands, “Ready. Aim. Fire,” were given. His was just the latest of the many executions ordered by General Braxton Bragg during this second winter of the war of the rebellion. Rumor had it that more than a dozen men had been executed for desertion or other crimes already that winter and it wasn't even Christmas yet.

“I'll go with ye, Jason,” Johnny Ray croaked out at last, barely able to get the words out through his phlegmy throat.

Jason turned his eyes toward the skinny boy in the bunk.

“I'm feelin' lots better,” Johnny Ray said. As if to prove it, he sat up and let his threadbare blanket fall off his shoulders. “Fever's almost gone,” he went on, eagerly. “I won't slow ya down, none. I kin keep up.”

“You sure?” Jason asked.

“Sure, I'm sure,” Johnny Ray said. “Wouldn't say it if I wasn't.” He reached underneath his bunk, found his brogans and began pulling on his right shoe. “We got any food we can take with us?” he asked.

Jason kept watching Johnny Ray. He knew Johnny Ray really wasn't well enugh to be out in the cold, wet night air, but didn't know how to tell his friend 'no.' Hell, Jason thought, Joining the army was all Johnny Ray's idea in the first place. So was going to Nevada. So was San Francisco. So was Hawaii. Why, I would have never even run off from Pa's farm in the first place if Johnny Ray hadn't put the idea in my head. How can I tell him 'no” now?

“I got one or two biscuits o' that hardtack stuff left,” Johnny Ray said. “They was too hard for me to chew, yesterday, so I saved 'em till I could soak 'em in some water or milk or somethin' an' fry 'em up. We can take that iffen the weevils in it ain't ate it all up yet. Then I still got one or two o' them apples lef' that ol' Mrs. Cranford give us. An' we oughtta be able to get more o' them on our way. Good year for apples.”

“You ain't goin' Johnny Ray,” Jason said. He stood up as tall as he could under the low split log roof of the cabin. Even though the floor of the cabin was sunk six inches below ground level, Jason had to lean forward slightly to stand up. If he hadn't had to bend over, he would have thrust out his chest, too, to show Johnny Ray how serious he was. “Ye're too sick,” Jason went on. “You wouldn't even make it as far as the picket line.”

Johnny Ray got to his feet. He looked around the cabin. Paul and Micah refused to look up and meet his eyes. “But I told ya I'm better,” the boy said in a pleading voice. “I kin make it.”

“No, Jason said, firmly. “You can't.”

“Yes, I can.” Johnny Ray said. It was a desparate sound, almost crying. “I can do it.” He looked around at his friends again. They all looked down at the sunken dirt floor. “Well, then,” he said, “if I ain't goin', you ain't goin' neither, Jason Tanner. I'll turn you in to the Provost. I'll call out the Sergeant of the Guard.” Even the minor effort of saying those few words seemed to sap Johnny Ray's strength. His body began to sag and he sat back down on the bunk. He buried his head in in hands. When he looked up again, tears were in his eyes. “Please, Jason,” he said. Let me go with ya.”

Jason looked down at the floor again and shook his head. “I can't,” he said. “I can't take ya with me.” Jason walked over and sat down on Paul's bunk, opposite that of Johnny Ray. Now he could talk softly and privately with his friend. “I cain't take the chance. It's like Paul said, Johnny Ray. If I get caught, they'll shoot me fer desertin' And it's cold and wet out there. I know ye're feelin' better , now...., but ye're still sick. If you 'uz ta go outside, now, you'd just get sicker.”

“So, wait a few days,” Johnny Ray said. “I'll be all better all better by then. That'd give us time ta gather up some more supplies an' stuff an' make some plans. It's gonna be Christmas in just another week. That'll mean they'll be lotsa food an' stuff around. We can stock up an' have enough ta last us a while. Mebbe even get us some new clothes an' stuff from the folks in town. We're gonna be needin' some more clothes. California's all the way on t'other side o' the Rocky Mountains. It gets cold up there in them mountains.”

Jason thought about what Johnny Ray was saying. Now he knew why he had asked the other men in the cabin if they wanted to go, too. He knew Johnny Ray, at least, would have some good ideas on how to go about deserting, just like he had good ideas about everything else.

“When were ya plannin' on leavin'?” Johnny Ray asked.

“Why, tonight, o' course,” Jason said. “But if you think we oughtta...”

“No, I mean what time? After retreat roll call'd be a pretty good time 'cause they wouldn't miss us 'til next mornin'. That'd give us about eight hours head start.”

“Yeah. That'd be good. We could get a long ways away in eight hours.”

“But we'd have to hurry to get outta camp before tattoo,” Johnny Ray pointed out. They both knew the Provost Guard would be suspicious of anyone abroad in the camp after the bugle call telling all personnel to go to quarters, ten minutes before taps.

Jason knitted his eyebrows as he thought about that. Then his face brightened. “We could take our muskets and accout'ments with us. That way, if somebody was to ask, we could tell 'em we was part of the picket relief.”

“Not without a sergeant or a corporal o' the guard along to be postin' us, we couldn't,” Johnny Ray said. “Wouldn't look right. That'd make them provost suspicious. Besides, we can't take our muskets.”

“Why not?” Jason protested. “We're gonna need 'em ta shoot some game on the way. Then there's Injuns an' stuff out there on the prairies. We'll need them rifle muskets for protection.”

“But if we have rifle muskets and military accout'ments the citizens'll know we're either deserters or else bushwackers. If they think we're deserters, they might turn us in for the bounty. If they think we're bushwackers, they might hang us.”

“Huh,” Jason snorted. “Get shot or get hung. What difference would it make?” The boy fell into a stubborn, sullen silence, stung by Johnny Ray's objections. Seems like now he don't want me to go, Jason thought. Now that I told him he can't go, he don't want me to go, neither.

“You know what we could do, though,” Johnny Ray said brightly, “is wait 'til we're both on picket. Or better still, just one of us on picket. Then t'other one can bring out the supplies and ever'thing. Then we could both of us leave from there. We wouldn't have to worry 'bout getting' past the pickets thataway.”

Jason was aghast at the suggestion He tried to force himself to keep his voice low. “Walk off picket?”

Still, the loudness of his question caused Paul and Micah to look up from the card game they had started in front of the fireplace.

“What the hell are you sayin'?” he asked more quietly. “We couldn't do that.”

“Why not?”

“Why?” Jason couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Why, we just couldn't. That's all. What if the Federals.... Well, it just wouldn't be.... Wouldn't be honor'ble.”

“Honorable?” Johnny Ray asked. “You figure you got any honor left after what Cap'n Harpool done ta you? Tied you up like a dog? Had men spit on ya? What kinda 'honor' is that?”

Jason stared at the wall above Johnny Ray's bunk for a moment before looking back at the other soldier. “Well, maybe 'honor' ain't the right word,” he said. “I don't know many fancy words like you do, Johnny Ray, or like Harpool does. But I know what I mean. 'Honor' was as close as I could come to sayin' it in a word. Harpool kept on talkin' 'bout it. Said I didn't have none. Said poor white trash like us don't know nothin' 'bout no honor. Said th' only honor we know 'bout is honor 'mong thieves. But I know I do got honor and Harpool ain't. I said I knew it wasn't right to steal that ham an' he could punish me for it. Punish me for all of us. But then I tol' 'im I warn't no trash an' the rest of us fellas here ain't trash, neither. Just 'cause we're 40-acre farmers an' ain't got us a bunch of land and slaves an' all like he does don't make us no trash, neither. We're volunteers, an' here because we wanna be. Ya don't measure trash by how much land ya got ner how much book learnin' ya got, ner anything like what a man's got. Ya measure trash by what a man is. An' trash is any man who'll betray a frien', like Harpool want me to do. Ordered me to, then tied me up like a dog when I wouldn't do it. Well, ta my mind that makes him trash, not me.” Jason's barely contained fury caused his jaw muscles to quiver.

“An' that's why I'm leavin', Jason went on. “I wanna keep as much o' that 'honor' or whatever you wanna call it as I can. I ain't got much o' nothin' that's mine, but I do know I got that 'honor' or whatever you wanna call it. Harpool ain't got none an' he cain't have none of mine. He cain't take it outta me by buckin' an' gaggin' me an' he cain't take it away by callin' me a coward an' a dog. All I know is, I'm a man, not a dog. There's some dogs'll stay an' take it if you whip 'em. Put their tails down twixt their legs an' take it. They'll whine an' holler, but they'll take it. Come back fer more. Others'll run off, first chainst they get. But there's more to a man than there is to a dog. An' jist because one man don't know no fancy words like 'tother does, don't make him any less a man. Don't make him have any less 'honor.' Some folks might think it ain't honorable ta desert, but ta my mind, it's the only way ta keep any o' the honor I got. Stayin' here an' lettin' Harpool think what he done was right.... Now that ain't honorable.”

As Jason talked, Johnny Ray lay back down on his bunk. He spread the blanket back over himself. He closed his eyes tiredly and looked like he was going back to sleep.

Jason still stared at the wall, almost unaware of Johnny Ray's actions. After a few minutes, he inhaled deeply, then let the breath out heavily; almost a sigh, but not quite. Finally, he looked at his friend.

“You ain't goin' back ta sleep are ye, Johnny Ray?” he asked. “Better not. We're gonna hafta go out ta roll call 'fore long. Almost time fer retreat.”

Johnny Ray didn't say anything, but did open his eyes. He looked up at the underneath side of Jason's bunk but his eyes did not seem to focus on it. He closed his eyes again and a shiver ran through his body.

“Are you all right, Johnny Ray?” Jason asked. “Little while ago you said you 'uz feelin' better.” Jason reached over and placed one hand on his friend's forehead. “Land,” he said. “Ye're burnin' up, Johnny Ray. Here you 'uz tell us how ye're fever 'uz almost gone. It ain't neither. An' ye're shiv'rin', too.” Jason reached up to his own bunk, pulled down his quilt and spread it over Johnny Ray. He reached up again and grabbed his shell jacket. “I'm gonna go get somebody, Johnny Ray. You stay right there.” Jason put on and buttoned his shell jacket, then put his poncho on over the shell. The poncho was only a blanket with a slit in the middle to allow it to slip over his head.

“Who's corp'ral in our section, now, Paul?” Jason asked as he buckled on his waist belt to hold the poncho down. It embarrassed Jason to have to ask Paul that. Until last week and the incident of the stolen ham, Jason had been a corporal.

Paul looked up from the card game. “Well, I guess ol' Elco Tinga is,” he said. “Either him or Howard Bilbrey. Whatcha wanna know for?”

“Johnny Ray's awful sick. He ain't got no call to be goin' out in this rain for no roll call. I 'uz gonna go tell 'em. See if they couldn't get the Surgeon over here ta have a look at 'im.”

Paul and Micah looked over at Johnny Ray. Paul shook his head slightly, then both went back to their cards.

“Jason,” Johnny Ray called out weakly from his bed. Jason leaned down over his friend. “Promise me you ain't gonna leave without me,” Johnny Ray said. His eyes were wet.

Jason smiled at the thin, young soldier in the bed, giving out a half laugh. “What d'ya wanna go with me for, Johnny Ray? Heck,” he said, looking around the cramped cabin, “Lookit what ya got here. Nice, warm, dry cabin,... Friends ta look out for ya. Ya get fed, purty reg'lar, most o the time, now. Kin even buy things from the folks in town. Why'd you take a chainst on goin' with me, anyway? Take a chainst at getting' shot?”

“'Cause I ain't done nothin' yet,” Johnny Ray said. “Ain't even been in one big battle. Just some little skirmishes when we was there at Vicksburg.”

Jason almost lost his smile, but not quite. “That's right,” he said, softly, sitting back down on Paul's bunk. “You was sick when we all went up there to Shiloh. Kept yerself safe an' warm an' dry back there in Corinth, you lucky devil.”

“An' I was sick again at Baton Rouge.”

“Hell, Johnny Ray. We was all sick at Baton Rouge. I had the dia-rears so bad I had ta fall out. Thought I 'uz gonna die.” He paused and remembered the feeling of weakness and fatigue he had felt before that battle, then turned his attention back to his friend.

“But I tell ya, Johnny Ray,” he said. “You don't wanna see no battle. That elephant ain't nothin' ta see. Just a lotta folks in pain. An' the mud an' the blood an' th' dead.... Horses an' men. Folks screamin' when they's wounded. Ya don't never fer sure where ye're going', ner why, ner wat ye're gonna do when ya git there. Don't seem like nobody never knows fer sure what's goin' on. An' it stinks.” Jason shook his head. “You don't really wanna see that elephant, Johnny Ray. You don't wanna see that, at all. It ain't nothin' good ta see.”

Johnny Ray turned his face back up toward Jason's bunk, blinking his eyes as if to bring it all into focus.

“Besides,” Jason said, “you did get ta see some stuff. Got ta see a whole lotta the worl' ya wouldn'ta been able ta see if you just stayed on the farm. Ya got ta see Tennessee an' Miss'ippi and Louisiana.... An ' ya got ta see the Mississippi River, an' Vicksburg and all them Union gunboats out there on the water. An' ya got ta see the ol' Ar-kin-saw come a-runnin' into the city. 'Member that? Ya got ta see 'er come just a-bustin' an' a-bangin' right on through them Union boats. An' they couldn't even touch 'er. The shells'd just go 'clang' offen her sides an' she'd go a blastin' away right back at 'em. You 'member how we all whooped and cheered when we seen that? An' then I jumped right up there up there on them breastworks an' throwed my hat up in the air. Then I hollered out, 'Three cheers fer th' Ar-Kin-Saw,' an then we all started hollerin'. An' 'member when them Union boats started in ta poppin' away at me whilst I 'uz up there? Put a piece o' shell right through m' canteen an' it commenced to leak all over me. Made it look like I done pissed my pants. 'At 'uz funny. An' y'all jist laughed an' laughed at me. But I gotta admit, it prob'ly was a purty commical sight.”

Jason looked back over at Johnny Ray. He was asleep, Jason tucked his quilt closer around Johnny Ray, then stood up. He lifted his haversack off the end of the bunk, placing the strap over his head so the pack rode on his left hip, picked up his slouch hat and headed out the cabin door.

The rain in the camp was not falling heavily, but it was a cold rain, just on the verge of sleet. The wind that whipped the icy spray down the company street allowed drops of rain to come up under Jason's slouch hat brim. His face had been warm in the heated cabin and the cold rain was a shock as it splashed onto his cheeks while he walked.

Jason found Elco Tinga playing 'Chuck-a-Luck with several other men in one of the mess tents at the head of the company street. Company First Sergeant John Kelly was there, too. Neither man seemed to be having much luck at the game and semed to welcome the diversion Jason's arrival brought. Kelly told Jason that the regimental surgeon would not be available until the next morning, the normal time for sick call.

“I'll go look at Harris, though,” Kelly said, standing up and donning his rubber-coated poncho.

“I recon I will, too,” Tinga said.

“I'll be along directly,” Jason told the two non-commissioned officers as they exited the mess tent and started off toward Jason's cabin. “I gotta go visit the sinks.”

As Jason turned and started toward the latrines, Kelly stopped. “Hey, Tanner,” he said. He turned back toward Tinga, “You go on and see how Harris is, Elco. I need ta talk to this man.”

Tinga nodded, then turned and started toward Jason's cabin.

When the corporal was out of hearing distance, Kelly asked Jason, “How you gettin' along, there, Tanner? Feelin' okay, now.”

Jason nodded, folding his arms in under the blanket poncho to keep them out of the cold rain.

The first sergeant seemed nervous and awkward, as if unsure of himself. “You know, Tanner,” he started, slowly, “you got plenty o' right ta be bitter. What Captain Harpool done to you wasn't right.” He paused. “All of us sergeants and Lieutenant Campbell and all... we know that.”

Jason nodded again and looked down at the ground. He watched as the rainwater collected in his hatbrim poured out in a strem to fall at his feet. “So how come you let 'im do it?” he asked.

“'Cause he's the captain,” Kelly said. “He's the one in command here,”

“Yeah,” Jason said, bitterly, looking back up at Kelly. “But ye're the first sergent. You run this comp'ny. You coulda stopped 'im. Coulda talked 'im inta givin' me extra duty or somethin' like that. I know it wasn't right to steal that ham. But still wasn't no call to have me bucked an' gagged. I wasn't insuborn't.”

"He felt like he had to do it. You didn't give him a choice. You wouldn't tell him who did take it.” Kelly paused for a moment. “It was Harris who stole it, wasn't it?”

Jason stared hard at the first sergeant. “If I wouldn't tell Harpool,” he said, “just what makes you think I'll tell you?”

Kelly looked down and shook his head, then looked back up at Jason. “You're a good man, Tanner,” the first sergeant said. “You was a good corporal.”

Jason continued looking at Kelly, wondering why the man was telling him this.

“Give it a few days, Tanner,” Kelly told him. “It'll all blow over. Then we'll see about getting' your stripes back.”

“What makes you think I want 'em back?”

Kelly shrugged, causing tiny rivers of rainwater to cascade off his poncho. “Just give it some time,” he said.

“Do you mind?” Jason asked, irritably. “I gotta go visit the sinks.”

“Well, don't be gone too long,” Kelly told him. “Almost time for retreat.” He turned and followed Tinga's path toward Jason's cabin.

Jason turned away and trudged up the slippery, muddy path toward the latrines. The latrines were dug into the far side of a low hill that overlooked the camps. The hill was west of the camp and offset from the camp's edge so the latrine's miasma, traveling on the wind, would not affect the soldiers. The latrine, actually one of many for the army camped in and around Murphreesborough, had already been relocated several times already, each location less accessible to the soldiers of Jason's regiment. The night was dark but a faint glow reflecting back from the misty clouds overhead made it somewhat less than pitch black and Jason was able to find his way, but traveling as much by memory as by sight.

Jason paused at the top of the hill, turned and looked back at the encampment. By viewing the glowing lines of fires built at the head of each company or regimental street, he could tell where his unit was billeted. By counting down the row of huts and tents, he could even pick put his own cabin; the where Johnny Ray lay dying. Jason knew Johnny Ray was going to die. He had seen it happen too many times.

Other lines of fires and rows of tents and cabins told Jason of the placement of other regiments. Beyond the infantry camp was the artillery, he knew, and farther on, beyond the woods, was the cavalry camp, then more infantry. A deeper line of gloom showed where the tree-lined banks of Stone's River wound northward, away from the town of Murphreesborough. In the distance, the houses of the town showed friendly, glowing windows to the boy, telling him of families inside gathered around dinner tables to enjoy a late supper or congregating in parlors; reading, talking, mending clothes, singing hymns together; perhaps even decorating a Christmas tree.

The hollowness and aching emptiness deep in his chest, just behind the place where his heart should be, reminded him that his own family, far away in Kentucky, might be doing the same thing right at that moment. He took off his slouch hat and looked up at the night sky. Letting the cold, misty rain fall full onto his face, letting it try to wash away the grime and dried-on sweat. He felt a trickle of rainwater run in through the slit of his poncho, then roll on down his chest.

Jason walked slowly down the far side of hill toward the long privy built over the slit trench that served as his regiment's latrine. A slight pull of the handle opened the privy door a crack, letting the noxious smell of human waste roll out of the blackness within, cascading over him, engulfing him, assailing his nostrils, warning him of the putrification inside.

Violated, Jason let the handle go, letting gravity shut the door again.

The young man turned away and walked on through the gloomy, misty rain, making a new trail down the far side of the hill, heading west.