Free Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 by MacPherson's Lament Page A

appearance. Still, she was a luckier town than most of her sisters to the east.
    â€œThis is how I started out in this war,” Gabriel Hawks replied. “Stuck in a mudhole with a rifle, waiting to get shot at. Things sure do stay mostly the same, don’t they? You reckon they aim to pay us one of these days?”
    Tom Bridgeford brushed the raindrops out of his face, making little rivulets in the streaks of dirt. “Hawks,” he said, with an exasperated sigh, “what in Tophet does it matter? What salary do you draw now that you’re an army private?”
    â€œEighteen dollars a month.”
    Bridgeford nodded. “Eighteen dollars a month Confederate scrip. That is correct. And how much is a barrel of flour going for in Danville these days?”
    â€œIf one could be had? A thousand dollars, maybe.”
    â€œAnd a turkey?”
    Gabriel shrugged. “A hundred dollars easy. If they’d take your money.”
    â€œThey’d a dern sight rather have gold. And it’s more than fifty of our scrip dollars to buy a dollar in gold. So tell me, Hawks, what do you want your pay for? You tired of wiping your butt with corncobs, is that it?”
    â€œI thought I might try to send some money home.”
    â€œHawks, your kinfolk in the hills may be better off than we are, as long as there are deer in the woods and fish in the creek. But it does you credit to worry over them. I no longer have that burden.”
    Gabriel looked away. He knew that Bridge-ford’s parents and sister had passed away in Wilmington’s yellow-fever epidemic in the fall of ’62. Most likely that accounted for his bitterness about the state of the world. “I wish we could do something besides sit here,” he said.
    Bridgeford gave him a weary smile. “You could go home. Johnson has. Willets left last night. Every day a few more men sneak away when the officers’ backs are turned. I don’t believeCaptain Dunnington has cottoned on to how easy it is to jump ship when you’re in a ditch a hundred miles inland. How far is your farm from here? Fifty miles? Seventy? Why, you could—”
    â€œHold it! I saw something moving on the road!” Gabriel Hawks pointed to a shape just visible through the pines near the bend in the road. He shouldered his rifle. “Something’s coming at us.”
    Bridgeford squinted into the distance. “It’s wagons, looks like. And saddle horses alongside.” He pushed Hawks’s rifle barrel away from its aim. “Put that down. They’re our people. I see a gray greatcoat in that first wagon. Don’t suppose it serves a man well in this rain, though. Better than nothing, maybe.”
    Hawks shook his head. “I reckon they’re another swarm of fugitives separated from their lines. Poor Danville! They might rather be invaded by the Federals than these starving Rebs—at least they’d bring their own provisions.”
    The somber procession tottered closer to the trenches. It was a sorry remnant of an army: walking skeletons shrunken inside their rags, wounded men barely able to stand and others on scarecrows of horses that looked as if they were walking their last mile. One soldier in oilskins clambered out of his trench and waveddown the battered wagon. “Where ye from?” he hollered at them. “What news?”
    The rain pelted down, making creeks of the wagon tracks in the muddy road. From the wagon the gaunt faces stared back at them, showing no emotion but weariness. Finally the driver of the wagon, a chalk-faced soldier in the tatters of a uniform, looked down at the questioner with an expression that could have been grief—or disgust. “Guess y’all ain’t heard,” he said. “We abandoned the lines near a week ago. Lee surrendered his troops today at Appomattox Courthouse. Somebody said the rest was here, so we come on.”
    As the word spread from man to man,