South of Shiloh
Authors: Chuck Logan
South of Shiloh
A Thriller
Chuck Logan
For the reenactors,
especially Company A,
1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry
Contents
Prologue
Soon the man he plans to kill will tramp out…
1
“JENNY, ANY LUCK?” PAUL EDIN CALLED OUT AS he stooped…
2
THE WEST ALCORN THURSDAY-NIGHT ALCOHOLICS Anonymous group met at six…
3
WITH PAUL OUT OF TOWN, JENNY DECIDED TO TAKE her…
4
MITCH DISCOVERED HIS SMOOTH BARITONE WAS made for radio not…
5
EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING FAST. THAT WAS the point. When Hiram…
6
MOLLY WAS ASLEEP IN HER ROOM DOWN THE HALL and…
7
IT WAS MITCH’S HABIT TO STAY UP LATER THAN his…
8
JENNIFER EDIN WOKE UP FEELING CROSS AND foolish, showered, and…
9
MITCH DIDN’T NEED THE ALARM. HE WOKE UP covered in…
10
THE RAIN HAD PAUSED AND NOW THE LAND seemed to…
11
THEY’D TURNED HARD RIGHT AT MADISON AND entered a long,…
12
OKAY. IT WAS ON SCHEDULE. HE’D SEALED HIS PACT with…
13
PAUL’S EYES JOLTED OPEN WHEN A BUGLE STUTTERED a spitty,…
14
PAUL LURCHED, STRAINED HIS EYES UP AHEAD AT a sudden…
15
AFTER DELIVERING HIS CONVERSATION STOPPER, Beeman politely excused himself, reached…
16
CANNONS STILL FIRING UP ON THE HILL DROWNED out the…
17
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AT 1:55 P.M., JOHN RANE paced his living…
18
MOTIONLESS AS WAX FIGURINES, RANE AND JENNY watched a smiling…
19
C’MON RANE, DO THE TRICKS.
20
MITCH LOST TRACK.
21
ON SUNDAY PAUL EDIN’S DEATH RECEIVED TWO minutes on CNN.
22
RANE REACHED FOR THE NOTEPAD AND PEN IN front of…
23
RANE RACED WEST DOWN I-94 WITH THE WINDOWS open to…
24
RANE GRABBED A FAST OIL CHANGE AND TUNE-UP at Jiffy…
25
A THOUSAND MILES DUE SOUTH OF MAIL LAKE, Wisconsin, Mitch…
26
ON THE WAY BACK INTO ST. PAUL, PERRY MACNEIL called…
27
JENNY DID NEED A BREAK.
28
RANE SET THE PHONE ASIDE, THEN STOOPED AND started to…
29
DERANGE.
30
ON THE AFTERNOON THE POLICE ARRIVED AT THE big house…
31
THEIR SIDE BLINKED FIRST.
32
RANE TOOK THE LOCAL ADVICE, CHECKED INTO the Holiday Inn,…
33
RANE WAS WATCHING ANNE WALK AWAY, THINKING how most times…
34
BEEMAN SHOWED RANE THE WAY TO HIS BLACK Crown Vic…
35
BEEMAN CLEARED HIS THROAT AND CHANGED the subject. “Okay then.
36
THEY DROVE BACK TO TOWN NOT SAYING MUCH until Rane…
37
THEY WAITED FOR KENNY BEEMAN, PARKED OFF the side of…
38
PAUL’S BODY ARRIVED IN THE MORNING.
39
BEEMAN LIVED DOWN A GRAVEL ROAD NORTH OF town, in…
40
AS THEY APPROACHED THE MAIN HIGHWAY, Beeman stopped, unloaded the…
41
MITCH, UNSHACKLED, STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF the potting shed,…
42
“PUBIC BONE TO TAIL BONE, BELLY BUTTON TO spine, rib…
43
THEY WOUND UP AT MARTHA’S MENU, A DOWNTOWN restaurant where…
44
RANE NEVER DREAMED. THE INSISTENT HAND rousing him from sleep…
45
PATTI HALVORSEN PARKED HER ACCORD ACROSS from the historic Washington…
46
BREAKFAST WAS FAST, WITH LITTLE TALK; TOAST and ink-black coffee.
47
THE MORNING MIST BURNED OFF, THE AIR SWEATED gray, and…
48
WITH MORG SCOUTING THE CORRIDORS AHEAD, they spirited Billie down…
49
JENNY AGREED TO BRING IN AN EPISCOPALIAN minister to conduct…
50
THEY PICKED UP THEIR MUSTANG TAIL AND headed west on…
51
“EVERCLEAR GRAIN ALCOHOL?” RANE WONDERED. “That shit’s illegal in Minnesota.”
52
KEEP BUSY.
53
RANE WOKE UP FUZZY-MOUTHED, WITH A HEAD that throbbed every…
54
AS SHE WAITED FOR DEPUTY BEEMAN TO RELOCATE, Jenny stared…
55
MITCH WAS HAVING A BAD MOMENT. HE’D BOLTED awake the…
56
“BULLETS,” BEEMAN SAID, HOLDING OUT HIS hand.
57
BEEMAN TALKED WITH THE TENNESSEE COPS IN the back of…
58
RANE SAT WITH HIS BACK AGAINST A TREE IN THE…
59
RANE WAS DOZING ON PAUL’S PACK WHEN BEEMAN roused him.
60
Then he blinked and it was like he woke up…
61
A LITTLE STIFF FROM SLEEPING ON THE GROUND, Rane woke…
62
LASALLE PLUCKED THE CIGARETTE FROM MITCH’S lips, pressed him back…
63
THEY WERE THREADING THROUGH A GROVE OF black gum and…
64
RANE STOOD IN PLACE, LEANING ON THE RIFLE. With his…
65
LATE AUGUST IN THE QUETICO PROVINCIAL PARK lake country is…
Soon the man he plans to kill will tramp out from the woods with the other blue soldier boys.
For now he has fog and the smell of wet tree bark, rotting leaf fall, and his own sweat. These dews and damps are eerie enough without counting the minutes to a murder.
Mist cloaks the land, a memory of morning frost. This is how it looked for the real thing a hundred forty-odd years ago, when the two armies groped toward each other blind. After Shiloh, Halleck, the Union fuss budget, micromanaged his advance on Corinth. Beauregard, the cagey Rebel, played for time.
This is Banker Kirby’s property and he has continued the family tradition of preserving the battle site. For the last ten years he has opened his fields and forests to the clamor of mock battle as reenactors from the North and South gather to replay the clash along the banks of Kirby Creek. Middle-aged men with the eager eyes of boys are drawn here to relive history, to wear blue and gray and touch off blanks in reproduction Civil War rifles.
Playing guns.
All that is about to change.
The match Enfield muzzleloader cradled in his lap is an original. The barrel has been re-sleeved and rifled by one of the best gunsmiths in America. The bore is charged with a precisely cast .577-caliber lead minié ball backed by load-tested black powder.
The fact is Alcorn deputy Kenny Beeman is going to get way more authenticity than he bargained for this Saturday afternoon, once the Kirby Creek Civil War battle reenactment gets started.
He leans the rifle against the dead fall oak he’s chosen as his shooting perch, raises his Zeiss binoculars, and nudges the focus knob. Waste of time. Just fog. He sets the glasses down.
The distance has been stepped off. Strands of unobtrusive brown yarn have been strung in the brush, tied to loose tatters of leaves for ballast. The yarn bundles mark the range at a hundred fifty, two hundred, and two hundred fifty yards and will provide an accurate reading of wind conditions in the target area.
He removes a tiny, palm-sized notebook from his pocket. The notebook catalogues the rifle’s fall of rounds at twenty-yard intervals between one to three hundred yards in different weather conditions. He checks the notations for two hundred yards in high moisture. Under an inch low. He puts the notebook away, sits back, and stares at the wooden tampion plug inserted in the muzzle to keep the wet out.
Off to the left he hears the growl of motors. Chains rattle. The muffled shouts of men. They are unloading the cannons and caissons on the crest of the hill, manhandling them off the lowboys behind the trucks.
You have to make some allowances in the quest for authenticity. The cannons are expensive to maintain and cart around. The cost of a team of horses is prohibitive.
He leans back on the rubber poncho he’s spread on the damp leaves. Except for the binoculars and the cell phone in his pocket, he’s trucked very little modern gear through the woods this morning. On the remote chance of being challenged, he wants to look like a Confederate reenactor. So he wears gray wool trousers, matching sack coat, a pair of worn brogans, and a gray forage cap. A leather belt with a CSA brass buckle is cinched around his waist with a percussion cap box snugged next to the buckle. The larger leather cartridge box hangs on his right hip. He carries a holstered Colt Model 1851 Navy pistol primed with six live rounds. Just in case.
He withdraws a thermos from his haversack, unscrews the top, pours a cup of black coffee, then sniffs a hint of wood smoke. They’ve built a fire on the hill, so he figures he can get away with a cigarette. Cupping his hand, he lights a Pall Mall.
After another cup of coffee and two more cigarettes, a faint blade of sunlight stirs the mist. The first defined shape he sees is the head and shoulders of a brooding stone giant.
The dimensions of the granite figure slowly materialize atop the hill three hundred yards to his left. At the base of the monument the silhouettes of three cannon barrels and spoked wheels slowly darken in. Two shadowy figures stand among the cannons. One leans on a ramrod.
The statue commemorating the Confederate dead at Kirby Creek is so new it hasn’t even been christened by its first drip of pigeon shit. The granite soldier towers ten feet tall atop a twelve-foot pedestal and stands at the “in place rest” position with his stone hands gripping his slanting rifle. He wears a slouch hat, and a bedroll is draped across his chest. In keeping with a long tradition, his stern face looks south and his rear end points north.
A rectangle of red earth is edged by twelve-pound cannonballs directly below the crest of the slope and defines the one officially recognized burial trench on the field. This mass grave is reputed to hold the remains of over a hundred Confederates. There are at least two other burial pits somewhere on the property; unrecorded, their location lost to memory.
Warmer now. The mist burns away like clouds of incense. Bathed in sudden sunlight, the chiseled statue loses its spectral power and becomes an oversized lawn ornament in the front yard of the white, pillared Kirby House.
Finally the rolling forests where Mississippi and Tennessee merge northwest of Corinth swirl into focus, all browns and green peeks of early spring. Dormant gray kudzu clogs the tree lines and drapes in smothering shrouds. White blooming dogwood haunts the dark thickets of hickory, oak, sweet gum, and ash like crippled angels crashed to earth.
Eight thousand men fought here in 1862. Today they’ll be lucky to field eight hundred, three dozen horses, and six cannons. Most of the participants are Southerners, many of them putting on blue to balance out the Union side. Perhaps a hundred fifty Yankee reenactors have made the drive to Mississippi.
Kirby Creek is being billed as the premier “authentic” event of the season. What gives the battle special appeal is the fact that the land is virtually unchanged. The Kirby House, with its wraparound veranda, stands perfectly restored on the hill. Great care has been taken to preserve the pocked scars that, by actual count, four hundred and seventy-four Federal minié balls left impacted in the stucco walls and wooden columns. The snake rail fence where the rebels made their stand is reproduced in exact detail and stretches along the slope below the house.
And this year the Yankees are duplicating the famous swamp march that brought them in on the Confederate flank. His target, Beeman, is wearing blue, working security among the swamp marchers.
The outcome of the fight remains unclear. The North claimed a victory. The South would not admit a defeat.
Whatever.
A bugle call rouses him and then he hears the long roll of muffled drums. Twenty gray horsemen, two abreast, gallop onto the field, dismount, and form a thin line. Random muskets pop. Then the firing builds and white smoke blossoms over the thickets. Gray skirmishers trot from the far side of the hill.
His heart pounds as the cell phone vibrates in his pocket and he pulls it out and flips it open. “Can you hear me?” the spotter asks. The spotter wears a blue uniform and has spent the morning waiting in the woods.
“I can hear you.”
“Gotta make this quick. They see me with a phone they’ll run me off the field.” The spotter’s voice cracks, betraying his nervous reluctance with this day’s work.
“You locate him?”
“Hard to see in all the fog and smoke and shit. But they’re outta the swamp and sneaking in through the trees. Pretty soon they’ll come out of the woods right in front of you.”
Goddamn it. “Where in front of me? There’s gonna be almost two hundred of them all dressed alike.”
“Last I saw he’s got a turkey tail feather sticking in his black slouch hat.”
“I’m gonna need more than that.”
“Well, last I saw, the guy right next to him was wearing a red bandanna wrapped around his head like a fuckin’ do-rag. Best I can do.”
The call ends. Less than pleased, he puts the phone back in his pocket and looks out over the field, where the cavalry have remounted their horses ahead of the retreating gray skirmish line. The first blue figures emerge from the cover of the trees; firing, reloading, advancing in rushes. He gets his first powerful whiff of black powder smoke.
He raises the binoculars and scans the blue skirmishers. He can see the flush of sweat on their faces in the tack-sharp optics, the dark drench of dew and burrs on their trousers. Slowly he shifts his focus to the curve of wood line behind the skirmish line, where the blue companies will spill out of the trees.
He pans the binocs in tighter, fixes on one of the subtle yarn dangles, focuses, and sees the brown bundle shiver so slightly it’s hard to tell if it’s a puff of breeze or the transparent ripple of mirage rising off the warming ground.
Then, through pauses in the skirmish fire, he hears a muted tambourine jingle of tin cups and canteens on rifle stocks; the steady tread of hobnails beating down the brush. The main body emerges from the trees, wading through lingering fog, and forms, shoulder to shoulder, two deep, into one long battle line.
His binoculars explore the blue line but smoke drifts in and combines with the fog and the wavy ground mirage. All he sees is blurred bands of identical sky-blue trousers, dark blue jackets and caps. Waiting, he studies the U.S. flag that juts above the smoke. Sees it shiver in a gust of wind. Bites his lip. A strong breeze can play hell with the shot. Then the wind dissipates and the flag hangs limp.
He scopes the foliage and grass for signs of the lurking wind. He checks his yarn dangles. Finally the mass of blue clears the smoke and halts to dress the ranks.
Then he spots the red smudge on the extreme right, standing out in the front rank. Carefully he focuses, and there is Kenny Beeman with a feather in his hat, standing to the right of the man with the red headgear.
Okay.
He sets the binocs aside, reaches for the rifle, pulls the wooden plug from the muzzle, and rests the rifle in a notch on the tree trunk. Elevation two hundred yards. He aligns the notched rear sight and gently nudges the front blade from blue chest to leather-crossed blue chest. After the intense resolution of the Zeiss, Beeman swims blurry, tiny in his naked eye. But he’s always had good eyes; has always been able to read the bottom line on the eye chart. He blinks away sweat and the sight picture improves.
His index finger caresses the trigger.
Jesus!
He gasps and jerks his hand from the trigger when a man in the rear rank pitches forward. What the hell? The guy tumbles down, hits the ground, and lies still between the legs of the man capped with the red scarf.
Crazy moment. Did I shoot?
No. Hammer still at half-cock. Wait. Panting, squinting, he sees that other men are falling along the line. Okay. Calm down. They’re just acting; part of the scenario, playing wounded and dead. Goddamn, man. Had me going there. Yes you did.
Steadier, he looks down, checks that the percussion cap is fitted to the nipple cone. As he pulls the hammer to full-cock, he notices that his right hand is trembling slightly. Damn guy falling broke his concentration. He wills his skin into a rigid body stocking to contain the thundering of his heart, leans back to the sights, snugs the rifle stock into his shoulder, and sights down the heavy barrel.
The blue line emerges from the dissolving smoke, reloading and priming their rifles. That’s him, definitely him in a heave of white smoke, standing toy-soldier-stiff and serious.
Two hundred yards almost exactly.
Make a decision. Excitement, the roar of cannons and muskets and the clouds of smoke, is challenging the amateur discipline of these play soldiers.
Companies drift in the confusion. The blue line is now uneven, canted slightly away on the broken ground. Wait until they are more full-front? Or take him now?
He pauses, debating, as the black powder cloud melts away from the blue ranks and slowly leaks straight up, evaporating. No wind. The shot is clear. No more waiting. DO IT NOW. He nestles the front blade in the iron notch. Remembering the notation about humidity, he settles the aiming point toward the top of the dull brass twinkle on the intersecting leather straps. Exhale. Make it happen. Squeeze the trigger. In that fraction of a second he sees it all in exploding clarity…how it unfolded over the last three days…