Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves by Sidney Thompson

Author:Sidney Thompson [Thompson, Sidney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC049040 Fiction / African American / Historical
Publisher: Bison Books

17

What a N— Wants

Bass had just begun to set up chairs for the officers’ meeting when Major General Price walked into the tent and did not sit. His baby face was red. And he turned around as if to speak to others, but he kept turning in a circle, tamping his feet, seeming impatient for something. Maybe for a chair, so Bass hurried to pull one to him.

“Take that away this instant,” Price demanded. “We don’t need to be sitting.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Price turned his red face to the officers filing into the tent. “Stop looking for a place to sit. We shouldn’t be here at all except to agree to get going.”

Bass folded the chair to carry it back out of the tent. But a black preacher-like suit sleeve came into view, and Bass felt a tap on his arm.

Bass snapped his feet together and bowed. “Yes, sir?” he said, and Brigadier General McCulloch pointed at the plot of grass beside Price, who hung clenched fists straight down at his sides.

“Place that right next to Price,” McCulloch said.

“Yes, sir,” Bass nodded. He popped the chair open again and set it down so close to Price that he feared the major general would beat him for it, but Price only huffed, asking McCulloch, “Why? Why?” as McCulloch sat down with a cigar in his mouth instead of words.

Bass set up the rest of the chairs, then eased out of the way and found Master Reeves standing in the back of the tent, attempting to suppress a smile that was hardly only a smile.

For a half hour Price and McCulloch, though more Price than McCulloch, argued about what the army’s next step should be. Price wanted to remain aggressive and continue pursuing Lyon’s routed forces until they were all captured or killed, expunging Missouri of all other Federals. McCulloch was more pragmatic, arguing that since the enlistment time had expired for those serving in the Missouri State Guard, the men needed rest, since many demanded it, and that without them, he believed it best to fall back to Arkansas and finish the fight another time. The generals spoke as if no other officers existed in the tent, though it was clear to Bass by how Master Reeves tossed his head or slapped his gloves or hat against a leg that the master agreed with Price and not his fellow Texan. But McCulloch was commander, and given recent dispatches from the Confederate Citizens Court in Gainesville, Texas, about a Unionist uprising afoot in the state’s northern counties, presumably exacerbated by the absence of military authority, he instead ordered the Eleventh Texas Cavalry to return home to defend it.

Price stormed from the tent, his thin tuft of silver hair lifting up in a wave from the top of his head like corn silk, while McCulloch stroked his beard, tapped his ash, and proceeded in a low, church-like tone to discuss the Peace Party. It was, he said, a secret society in Gainesville that was sympathetic to the Union and that comprised at least forty members.

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