Гарри Гаррисон - Rebel in Time

'I gather that there is no chance of your putting it under your arm and returning with it yourself?'

'None. This is a one-way trip. I knew that when I came. I have no regrets. I accomplished what I set out to do. I think it was worth it.'

'I couldn't agree more. Though I'm not sure that I would have been able to make the decision that you did. But that part is finished. Do you know what you will do next?'

'I certainly do. I'm going to leave the South and head north, to New York City. That's my home town and I have an immense curiosity to see what it is like now.'

'Sodom and Gomorrah,' Shaw said distastefully. 'A world unto itself and a pretty nasty one at that. The most corrupt and wicked city in the world. There is either a riot or a plague there every year.'

'Sounds like home,' Troy said. 'Let's go look at it. Will you come with me?'

'Of a certainty. I plan nothing strenuous until my wounds are fully healed. If I must recover it should be in the lap of luxury provided by Mammon on Hudson. But no more horses. We'll take the train.'

It was a slow and filthy trip, with greasy cinders leaking in around the windows and settling on everything. In New York they were more than ready to take a cab to the hotel and a hot bath. After three days of nothing more strenuous than eating large meals and sleeping late, Shaw ventured the opinion that he was fit enough to climb into a saddle again. They rented horses from a livery stable on Twenty-third Street in Manhattan, then rode down to Houston Street to board the ferry across the East River. Except for the lack of bridges, Troy was amazed at how familiar the city was. No skyscrapers of course, and horses instead of cars, but the streets and the buildings on the East Side here were very much the same as the ones he remembered. Brooklyn was a warren of small homes, and it wasn't until they crossed into Queens that there were any marked changes. The houses gave way to farms and twisting country roads. They rode easily, stopping for lunch in a Corona inn, then carrying on.

An hour later Troy halted at the top of a hill that looked down upon the crossroads village of Jamaica. There were farms all around, and beyond them the swamps and rushes of Jamaica Bay. He shook his head.

'I was born right down there,' he said. 'Grew up here. It was all small houses, the Van Wyck Expressway there, and the el along Jamaica Avenue.'

'El?'

'Yes, the el train, the elevated railroad, you know.'

'No, I don't, but it sounds like an interesting idea.'

'Noisy. Cold as hell in winter when the doors open at the stations. Snow blows in. What am I doing here, Robbie? I don't belong here.' Suddenly depressed, he pulled the horse about and dug his heels into its sides. 'Let's get back to that inn. I need some strong drink.'

Shaw galloped to catch up with him, then they slowed and rode along side by side. He looked at Troy, at his fixed gaze, and knew that he was not seeing the road and the trees ahead but was looking at a world forever lost, one he could never possibly see again. Shaw leaned over and placed his hand over Troy's where it rested on the pommel of the saddle. Troy turned to look at him then, and the depths of despair in his eyes were profound beyond belief. Then a trace of a smile touched his lips and some of the darkness slipped away.

'You're a good man, Robbie Shaw, and it has been my pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now let us get back to Manhattan and enjoy ourselves. We need a bang-up dinner with bottles and bottles of good wine. After that we are going to the theatre. We are going to celebrate and have a good time while we can. Because all of this is going to end soon. There is war over the horizon. A most deadly war of brother against brother that is going to tear this country apart. So now we are going to enjoy ourselves — and then we are going to part. I hope to meet up with you again, but I don't know where or when.'

'You make it sound so final. What do you intend to do?'

'What I do best. I'm going to try to enlist in the Army. That war is coming and nothing will stop it. You and the other abolitionists fought your peacetime war against slavery, but that period is coming to an end. In the not too distant future the shooting war will begin.

'It is going to be a long, long time before it ends.'

JULY 1, 1863

The water had been freshly boiled and was still warm when Troy poured it over his arm. It burned painfully and it washed the open shrapnel wound and started the freshly-clotted blood flowing again. The jagged cut wasn't deep, but it was painful, and Troy gritted his teeth as he swabbed it clean. His antibiotics were gone, used up on the wounded during the years of fighting, so the boiled water would have to do. The length of bandage had been boiled too, and he wrapped it around his arm until the wound was covered. This last effort on top of the fatigue of battle had brought him to the edge of exhaustion; he leaned back against the bole of the tree, eyes closed, arms draped limply across his knees, more asleep than awake as confused memories tumbled through his tired brain.

How quickly the years had gone by, yet how slowly as well. So much had happened since that day when he had said good-bye to Robbie Shaw in New York. He had quickly discovered that his idea of enlisting in the army had not been as easy as he had planned. Black men were not wanted — except as servants or ditch-diggers. He would not settle for that. It had taken a year of hard work, and all of McCulloch's money, to organize the first Negro battalion in Boston, The First Regiment of Massachusetts Coloured Volunteers. The amount spent lobbying and bribing the city fathers had been almost as large as that spent on equipment. But he had done it, that was what counted. When the war began they had been ready. And they had fought — oh how they had fought! — and died as well. Yet there had been no shortage of volunteers. In a little over two years of battle they had replaced over fifty per cent of their number. Half their strength, gone. Dead men, faces now dimly remembered, names already forgotten. Troy nodded, half-asleep, his thoughts stumbling in endless circles through his brain.

'Sergeant, I brung you some vittles. Beans mostly, but if you look real close maybe you see some bits of the rabbit.'

The voice startled Troy awake. He looked up, blinking at the big man with the lopsided grin; half his teeth were missing. He smiled back and dug the spoon from his pocket, reaching up for the tin plate.

'Thanks, Luther, I can use that.' His fatigue was so great that Troy had not even realized that he was hungry as well as exhausted. He dug his spoon into the beans and chewed a great mouthful. Wonderful! When was the last time he had eaten? It was hard to remember, his brain still numbed by the day's fighting. Yes, it had been that morning, biscuits and acorn coffee. Nothing since. Except bullets and canister shot. But you didn't want to eat too much of that.

The evening was warm and dark. Up here on the hillside he could see the campfires of the Union army spread out to both sides along the flanks of Cemetery Ridge; twinkling beacons in the night. The exhausted survivors of the day's battle huddled around them, cooking their dinners and trying not to think about what the morning would bring. They kept their backs turned to the night, not wanting to peer through the surrounding darkness to the distant lines of fires that marked the Confederate lines. There were an awful lot of them, stretching out on both sides of the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The rebel fox, General Robert E. Lee, was still alive after two years of fighting, and still attacking. And now the fox was in among the chickens. Driving north with his 80,000 men, he had taken the battle into enemy territory, past Washington and on into Pennsylvania. That is where they had stopped him today. He had not been beaten, but for the moment he was stopped, here at Gettysburg. The Union troops had fought all day under the concentrated fire of the Confederate guns, suffering the shock of attack after attack by those screaming grey files of soldiers. But they had held. Held all along the line, Troy had heard. That was the report, but it was like the report of some distant battle. His war had been here, among the wooded hills and valleys, the stone walls and winding creeks. The men of his regiment, The First Regiment of Massachusetts Coloured Volunteers, had stood and fought — and won. No, not won, no more than any of the other Union regiments had won this day. But standing and fighting and withdrawing with their lines intact, that was a victory. A continuing victory since everyone, the officers included, had been sure that the black troops would run.