Notes

"I came-" Forrest had to start twice before he could get it out: "I came to
congratulate you for winning the election, General Lee." Now he did hold
out his hand, and Lee took it. Page 280
"Thank you, General Forrest-thank you," Lee said with no small relief of
his own.
"I'll do anything I can to make things easy for you as you take over," Forrest
said.
"Will you?" Lee said, all at once suspicious as well as relieved. "After theunpleasantness
which marked the campaign, that is good to hear, but-" He
let his voice trail away. Forrest was notoriously touchy; if he was in earnest,
no point to stirring him.
But he would not be stirred, not today. He waved his hand. "All that was
just business, just trying to put a scare"-he pronounced it skeer-"on you and
on the people out there who did the voting, same as I would have on a
Yankee general, to get him runnin'." He waved again, this time
encompassing the whole of the Confederacy. "I came close."
"That you did, sir," Lee said. "And having come so close, you are most
generous to come here now with your support." "When it comes to niggers,
General Lee, I don't agree with you still, and I don't reckon I ever shall,"
Forrest said. "But I lost. The whys of it don't matter. That I got beat is a
self-evident fact, sir. If I carried on now, it would be nothin' but folly and
rashness. I wanted to meet you like a man and say that to you straight out."
Lee saw he meant it. This time, he held out his hand to Forrest, who
squeezed hard. Lee said, "The nation owes you a debt of gratitude for
taking that view. I hope you will forgive me for saying that I wish more of
those who followed you would do likewise. The talk of new secession out
of the southwest is deeply troubling to me, and Senator Wigfall has
produced more than his share of it."
"He does go on, don't he?" Forrest grinned, then sobered. "I tell you what,
General Lee. If those damn fools try and leave the Confederacy, I'll put my
uniform back on and whip 'em into line inside of six weeks. I mean it, sir.
Tell it to the papers, or if you'd rather, I'll tell it to 'em my own self."
"If you would do that, General Forrest, I think it would have a very happy
effect on all concerned." "Then I will," Forrest said.
"Would you care to come inside and take some coffee with me?" Lee asked.
In Richmond, he had ordered Forrest out of his house; now he tacitly
apologized.
But Forrest shook his head; he remembered the quarrel, too. "No, sir. I do
this for the country's sake, not yours. I will abide by the vote of the people,
but they-and you-have not the power to make me like it. I aim to keep on
working against you in every way I lawfully can."
"That is your right, as it is the right of every citizen. Congress will have to
ratify my proposals in order for them to take effect, of course; I anticipate
considerable disputation before that comes to pass." Lee and Albert Gallatin
Brown had been going over the list of congressmen and senators returned to
office, trying to work out the odds of their favoring the commencement of
even gradual, compensated emancipation. He thought his program had a
chance of passage; he knew it was far from assured. Forrest bowed to Lee.
"We have been rivals; I reckon we'll stay rivals. But we've both fought for
this country. We can work together to keep it whole. That's what I came to
say, General Lee, and now I've said it. A good morning to you, sir." He
bowed again, swung up onto King Philip, and rode away. Lee plucked at his
beard as he watched Forrest go. He felt as if a weight had come off his
shoulders. Nathan Bedford Forrest was still a political foe, but seemed not
to want to remain a personal enemy after all. That suited Lee; political foes,
he was learning, could be dealt with. The casual thought brought him Page
281
up short-was he in fact turning into a politician in his old age? He stopped
to consider the idea carefully. At last he shook his head. His inevitable slide
into decay hadn't yet progressed so far. Dressed in his Sunday best-which,
save for being the newest of his four shirts and three pairs of trousers, was
no different from what he wore the other six days of the week-Nate Caudell
hurried into the Nashville Baptist church. Once inside, he took off his hat
and slid into a place on one of the hard wooden pews. Several peopleincluding
the preacher, Ben Drake-sent disapproving looks his way; the
service was about to begin. He avoided Drake's eye as he sat.
Yancey Glover strode importantly to the front of the hall, nodded to the
preacher, and waited a few seconds to let everyone notice him standing
there. Then the precentor launched into "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
The congregation joined in. They had no hymnals; Glover's big bass voice
pulled them through the song. That voice was one of the reasons the church
elder had the precentor's job.
"Rock of Ages" came next, with several more hymns right behind. The
congregation warmed up, both physically-a chilly, nasty rain was falling
outside-and spiritually. Yancey Glover marched back to his seat. Ben Drake
pounded a fist down on the pulpit, once, twice, three times. The preacher
was an impressive-looking man of about forty-five, with a full head of
gravy gray hair; he'd served a few months as a lieutenant in the Castalia
Invincibles, till chronic dysentery forced him to resign his commission.
'"I know thy works,"' says the Book of Revelation," Drake began, " 'that
thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because
thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my
mouth.' That's what God says, my friends-you cannot, you dare not, be
lukewarm. Again, in the Book of Deuteronomy, 'Thou shall love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might.'
"Not 'with some of thy might,' friends, not 'with a little of thy might, when
thou hast the time."With all thy might,' as hard as you can, all the time,
while you're eating or working or bathing or reading. You can't be
lukewarm, or the Lord will spew you out of His mouth, and you don't want
that, no indeed you don't, for if the Lord spews you out of His mouth, who's
going to suck you right on in? You know who, my friends-Satan, that's who.
Paul says in his epistle to the Philippians, 'Whose end is destruction, whose
God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly
things.' So what do you want to do? Do you want to fret yourselves about
the things of this world, or about God, Who endures forever?"
"God!" the congregation shouted with a single voice. Nate was as loud as
anyone. He'd been sorry when Drake had to leave the regiment; people
listened to him. He might have become captain instead of George Lewis
when John Harrison resigned in October 1862. If he'd led on the battlefield
half as well as he did from the pulpit, the Castalia Invincibles would have
been in good hands. He went on glorifying God and casting scorn on Satan
and the things of this world for the next couple of hours. By the time he was
done, he had his congregation up on their feet, urging him on. He made
Caudell ashamed of the way he drank and swore and even of the way he
smoked. As he had more than once before, he vowed to abandon his wicked
habits. He'd never managed to keep any of those vows. That shamed him,
too.
Another round of hymns closed the service. Some people went up to the
pulpit to talk with the preacher about his sermon. Others hung around in
small groups inside the church. Some of them talked about the sermon, too;
for others, tobacco or horses were of more pressing interest, even on
Sunday. Young men took the chance to eye young ladies, and even, if they
were bold enough, to say hello. Church was a town social center, a place
where everyone gathered.
Page 282
Caudell, more social caterpillar than butterfly, was about to head out into
the rain when a woman called,
"Don't go, Nate." He turned around. The woman smiled at him. She was
fairly tall, with gray eyes, black curls that fell past her shoulders, and a
mouth that was too wide for perfect beauty-her smile emphasized that. He'd
noticed her earlier, partly for her own sake but mostly because he hadn't
seen her in church before. She smiled again and repeated, "Don't go."
She still didn't look familiar, but that voice-"Mollie!" he exclaimed. "What
are you doing here?" No wonder he hadn't recognized her-he'd never seen
her dressed as a woman till this instant. Raeford Liles, who was standing
nearby, cackled like a laying hen. "So this here's your sweetheart, eh, Nate?
Let me meet her, why don't you?"
Caudell introduced them. He didn't bother contradicting the storekeeper, not
anymore. Liles fussed over Mollie Bean as if he were a planter and she a
fine lady, not least to embarrass Nate. He was embarrassed, but not on
account of that. Several other Castalia Invincibles, men who knew Mollie
was no lady, were among those who stood around chatting in the church.
Most of them, though, were with their wives; whatever they thought, they
had to be discreet.
He said, "What brings you to Nashville, Mollie?"
Her smile blew out. "I got a problem, Nate." Caudell gulped. Raeford Liles
started to cackle again. Mollie fixed him with a gaze that would not have
looked out of place over the sights of an AK-47. "I ain't in a family way,
mister, so you can just drag your mind out of the ditch," she said quietly.
Liles blushed all the way up to the top of his head, started coughing and
couldn't stop, and retired in disorder.
"What's the matter?" Caudell asked. He was relieved for a couple of
reasons: first that she wasn't pregnant-even if he'd had nothing to do with itand
second that she hadn't noticed him worrying that she was.
"It ain't somethin' I can explain in just words," she said. "You got to see it,
an' even then it don't make sense-or I ain't been able to make it make sense,
anyways. You know a whole lot more'n me; it's on account of you I'm able
to read and write at all. So I reckoned if anybody I knew could cipher this
out, it was you, an' I brang it to you. I had to get out of Rivington anyhow."
Those few sentences raised enough questions in Caudell's mind for any six
school quizzes, but he contented himself with one that might lead to
answers for the rest: "Where are you staying?"
"In one of the rooms up above the Liberty Bell." Mollie's lip curled. "This
town don't have a proper hotel, let alone anything like the Notahilton. Come
on over with me; I got the book you need to see there."
"Let's go," Caudell said. Wren Tisdale, who ran the saloon, had fought in
the Chicora Guards, not the Castalia Invincibles. Even if Mollie had given
him her whole proper name, it probably meant nothing to him. Caudell put
his hat back on. Mollie opened the small, long-handled umbrella she was
carrying. They splashed over to the Liberty Bell; Mollie used her free hand
to hold her skirts out of the mud. Wren Tisdale nodded to them as they
came in; he was a dark, dour man whose looks belied his name. This being
Sunday, the bar was quiet and deserted. The saloonkeeper's eyebrows rose
slightly when they climbed the stairs together, but he kept his mouth shut.
Caudell's ears heated just the same. Mollie's room was small and none too
clean. It held only a bed, a stool, a pitcher, and a chamber pot. On the bed
lay a couple of carpet bags. Mollie dug in one. Caudell averted his eyes as
lacy feminine Page 283
undergarments flew this way and that; being easy with her came harder now
that she was so unequivocally a woman. Finally she said, "Here, Nate, this
here's what you got to see." As she'd said, it was a book. The paper cover,
somewhat crinkled from rough treatment, showed a U.S. flag crossed with a
Confederate battle flag. "The American Heritage Picture History of the
Civil War, " Caudell read aloud.
"Open it up anywheres," Mollie said. "Here, come on, sit down beside me."
He sat, though at a greater distance than he'd used to back in the days when
she wore uniform tunic and trousers. Then, as she'd suggested, he opened
the big, heavy book at random. He found himself looking at a discussion of
the Vicksburg campaign, at a woodcut from Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
and at photographs of Generals Grant and Van Dorn. "IVe never seen
photographs just put into a book like that before, instead of being made into
engravings first," he breathed. "And look at that painting above the picture
of Grant there."
"Once upon a time, you wrote me for a joke, asking if the Rivington men
had books with colored pictures all through 'em," Mollie said. "Now you
can see 'em for yourself." Caudell only half heard her; he had just read the
caption under that colored picture. "It says this here is a photograph, too.
But there's no such thing as colored photographs. Everybody knows that."
Without his willing it, his voice rose in protest. He flipped through several
pages, found color on about every other one: on maps, on reproductions of
paintings, and on what, by their clarity, seemed to be more photographs.
Scratching his head in befuddlement, he turned to Mollie. " Where did you
get this?"
"Rivington-I stole it from Benny Lang," she answered matter-of-factly.
"Sometimes, after we was done-well, hell, you know done with what-he'd
go off an' do other things, his own business, I mean, until he was ready for
his second round. One of them times, I pulled this here book out of a case
he kept by-by the bed. With that fine light he had in there, readin' was easy.
But this here book, it purely perplexed me. What year is it, Nate?"
"What year!" He stared at her. "It's 1868, of course-January 18, if you want
to get picky." She gestured impatiently. "I know that, I really do. But look in
the front of the book." He did. The date of printing did not appear on the
title page, as it did in most books he knew. He turned the page. Sure
enough, there was the information he needed, next to the table of contents.
"Copyright-1960?" he said slowly. "And this edition was printed in-19%?"
His voice trailed away, then firmed again. "That's impossible."
"Is it? Look here." She pointed to a section he hadn't yet noticed, something
called "Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data." The author,
someone named Bruce Catton, was listed as having been born in 1899.
Richard M. Ketchum, who was called editor at the top of the page, seemed
to have been born in 1922. And the book itself fell under "United States-
History-Civil War, 1861-1865."
"But the war ended in 1864," Caudell said, as much to the book as to
Mollie. If he'd been bewildered before, now he was completely at sea.
Mollie went to the next page. "That ain't what it says here, is it?" Caudell's
eyes grew wide as he read the first two sentences of the introduction, which
talked about the Page 284
South surrendering. Of themselves, his eyes kept reading. By the time he
got through that two-page introduction, he was ready to question his own
sanity. Every calm, rational word spoke of a long-ago war the United States
had won. If this Richard Ketchum was either a maniac or a prankster, he
didn't let on once.
Caudell started reading in earnest. Before long, he realized going through
the whole book in detail would take too long. He skimmed over the
astonishing pictures and maps, read their captions. After a while, he asked,
"Does Benny Lang know this book is gone?"
"Don't reckon so," Mollie answered. "I moved a skinny book from the shelf
on top so as to fill up part of the space this one took, and fiddled with both
shelves so the holes didn't show. Then I hid this one with the, ah, dainties I
used to fetch over to Benny's place sometimes, and got it back to my room
without him bein' the wiser. Read it there some more, times I was by
myself, an' the more I read, the more I got confused, till I figured I had to
come to you."
Till today, Caudell had seen Mollie only in ragged gray and butternut.
Picturing her in "dainties" distracted him from the book for a little while.
But soon the story of the war engrossed him again. The farther he got, the
less he understood, and the more he came to wonder whether this Bruce
Catton really was writing in some distant future time. He kept referring to
what he called the Civil War as having happened well in the past.
And he kept assuming the United States had won and the Confederate
States lost. That was clear very early on, when he talked about the
overwhelming material advantages the North enjoyed, and about the trouble
the South had in creating a navy out of nothing, and about the
Confederacy's two-pronged offensive into Kentucky and Maryland in 1862
as a chance to win the war which failed. Catton also talked about slavery as
something dead and long departed; the feeling underlying his words seemed
to be revulsion that it had ever existed. Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation, which the results of the war had rendered meaningless and
which all the South heartily loathed in any case, was to Catton a harbinger
of great things ahead. Not even the staunch-est Yankee should have been
able to consider it as having any great effect.
Gettysburg... Caudell studied the paintings of the third day's fight, then
turned to a calm photograph of the battlefield after the fight was done. The
weathered granite and bronze monument there looked as if it had stood for
decades if not centuries, yet the fight was only four and a half years in the
past. He looked up at Mollie. "Does your scar still pain you?"
"The one from Gettysburg, you mean? It twinges right smart sometimes."
She looked at the colored photograph, too; she understood what he was
driving at. "Don't reckon it'd trouble me a-tall if I waited till that was took."
He raised an eyebrow. Somewhere down deep, she believed those
impossible dates of 1960 and 19%. He shivered, and not just because the
room was chilly; he was starting to believe them himself. When he looked
down to the Picture History of the Civil War once more, he discovered it
was almost too dark to see. Evening had snuck up on him like a dismounted
Yankee cavalryman in the Wilderness. He went downstairs, asked Wren
Tisdale for some candles. Leering, the saloonkeeper supplied them.
"You can go straight to hell, you and your filthy mind," Caudell growled.
"We're up there reading a book, and if you don't believe me, you come on
up and watch us." He lit one of the candles at the fireplace, hurried back to
Mollie's room.
Page 285
A few minutes later, he heard someone coming partway upstairs and then
hastily going back down. He laughed, said to Mollie, "Tisdale, checking up
on us." She giggled, too. His awareness of the world around him diminished
once more as he bent close to read by candlelight. After a while, he raised
his head in complete mystification. "Everything from the Wilderness on is
wrong," he said. "Grant didn't go south-we went north. And Johnston
stopped Sherman." A picture of one of the fierce, jaunty "bummers" who,
the book claimed, had looted their way across Georgia, stared mutely up at
him.
"It don't talk none about our repeaters, neither," Mollie said.
"By God, you're right. It doesn't." Caudell flipped to the back of the book;
he already discovered it had an excellent index. Nothing was listed about
repeaters, nothing about AK-47s. "But they won the war for us. Without
them-"
"We'd maybe have lost," Mollie put in. She pointed to the Picture History of
the Civil War. "Like in there."
Caudell kept going through the book. He found a picture of the Tredegar
Iron Works, said to have been taken after Richmond fell. He found the story
of Lincoln's reelection over George McClellan, who, he knew, had actually
run fourth in the election of 1864, and no mention whatever of U.S.
President Seymour's participation in the race. He found photographs of
Richmond in ruins, and a painting of Lincoln going through the city in a
carriage.
His eyes filled with foolish tears (foolish, for why should he be moved at
what had never happened?) as he found word of the surrender of the Army
of Northern Virginia to overwhelming Federal forces and a final photograph
of a grim-faced Robert E. Lee, said to have been made just after that
surrender. At the very end of the book, he found a painting from 1890-a
year that, to him, still felt far in the future-of Union veterans parading in
Boston. Seeing the white beards of the officers marching in the first rank
made gooseflesh prickle up on his arms.
He found himself altogether confused. Either Bruce Catton had never heard
of the world in which he lived, or the man was the most inspired hoaxer of
all time-even 1960. After some hard thought, Caudell found he could not
believe the Picture History of the Civil War a hoax. For one thing, it was
too perfect, too detailed. For another, even if an obsessed man somehow
spent a lifetime assembling everything that went into this book-a lifetime
when? Caudell wondered; no printer in 1868 could have produced anything
like it-why would anyone else have cared to view the product of his
obsession?