The Apostasy Read online

  The Apostasy

  Ted Minkinow

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  Incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living

  or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Ted H Minkinow

  All rights reserved

  For Nikki.

  PROLOGUE

  Thursday, February 11, 1864, 7:18 pm

  1

  Jackson dealt death as a gentleman should: judiciously, efficiently, and with compassion. Absent from this evening’s plans, death appeared at its own whim. To his credit, Jackson killed with increasing regret though conscience never slowed duty.

  He scanned through the blackness with a hunter’s acuity. Moonlight peeked through jagged cloud cover, throwing haphazard patterns across the path. No need to warn the men to avoid the shards of light, war culled the careless. But lately, war also claimed the talented. Casualties inflicted by his unit furnished scant consolation for loss of so many fine comrades.

  This small squad assigned to Colonel Jackson Brewton’s 90th Alabama Cavalry, Confederate States Army, steeled through dense Northern Alabama forest where dampness from three day's February rain clung to their boots, clothes, and skins. Freezing humidity soaked poorly shod feet and attacked the toes like Lucifer’s seamstress at work with demonic needles pulling tendrils of fire through flesh.

  But foul weather pleased the men. Otherwise dry carpets of fallen leaves and brittle branches would crack underfoot with sound enough to reach even a Yankee’s brain. Winter thinned the woods, leaving voids usually filled by lush underbrush to the degree an underfed jackrabbit could not hide. Though wet brought a shivering chill to the bone, everyone preferred alive and cold to dead and comfortable.

  Empty stomachs drove the men along the ancient hunting trail and to a Methodist parson who offered proper meals on a regular basis to groups of the 90th. All halted as Jackson raised his right arm to signal alert. They melded into trees, weapons cocked, ready to fight or run. Vocal communication ceased.

  Sounds filtered through naked pines and hardwood branches—noise that resolved into a blurred form and a lantern whose beam scribed a fiery grin into the darkness with each step of a headlong rush…heedless and stirring sounds capable of traveling hundreds of yards through the still, frigid air. The form sharpened into a woman.

  The forward two of Jackson’s band let her pass. When she reached the squad’s midpoint, Sergeant Mark Lawton sprang from the trees and collared the woman.

  Lawton’s hand over her mouth muffled the scream and his lips brushed her hair as he whispered.

  "Confederate States Army, Miss. Please quiet down 'fore you rouse the entire Yankee army."

  Her breathing slowed and he removed his hand. She whirled and the young Sergeant smiled in recognition.

  "Mark Lawton, you release me this instant or I shall thrash you as I have a hundred times before.”

  Frenzied hair belied her brave tone.

  “And if I were you,” she added, “I'd hunt up some soap."

  The others chuckled as they emerged.

  "Kathy, what in the name of Creation has set you ablaze?" Jackson asked.

  "Jack, it's Billy,” she said, and then without pause for breath, “Rufus McCarran and twelve lackeys came sniffing for him. They said Billy knows where Mr. Johansson and Uncle Louis are hiding some cattle. Rufus promised hell to pay for anybody involved with contraband.”

  Jackson felt his heart freeze. Kathy continued.

  “Billy hit McCarran with a riding whip and lit out to warn Uncle Louis and Mr. Johansson. Rufus laughed and told the soldiers to follow. I swear the whole occurrence was his design."

  Anger coagulated in the lower reaches of Jackson's throat. Rufus McCarran, son of the county’s most brutal overseer, grew up white trash in the area known as Copper Gulch. White trash, that was, until the gods of fortune smiled opportunity by way of the Northern occupation and a Yankee general who welcomed local turncoats in his holy war against anything Southern.

  The swine is after Billy, thought Jackson. Anyone unfortunate enough to strike the fancy of Rufus McCarran ended up beaten and bleeding…or dead. Jackson collected his composure and swallowed the anger...anger led to foolhardiness and to mission failure.

  "You say twelve Yankees plus McCarran?"

  Kathy nodded.

  Jackson stared into the darkness and considered the situation. It would take the best part of an hour to cover the mile, less if they employed only minimal stealth. He weighed the risks to his men against the probability of success.

  Two and a half of them for each of us, he thought. They commonly faced worse odds and on occasion shied from more favorable numbers. Surprise would provide advantage, especially with so few Yankees involved. Each of his men would disable an enemy in the first volley. In the confusion sure to ensue, a well-executed second shot could eliminate another third of the opposing force. Then numbers and momentum would favor his group. In Jackson’s recent experience, the young, often green Yankee occupation troops panicked at first sight of casualties.

  Jackson returned his thoughts to Rufus McCarran and his atrocities. So what’s on your mind? Why slither from your lair with so small a force? Jackson mulled this question to a singular end. McCarran meant to loot or rape...and the fewer witnesses, the better.

  "Kathy, I think you best let us go have a look at what trouble little brother has found."

  She threw her arms around his neck and when she spoke after a few moments she said loud enough for all to hear, "Be careful Jack, McCarran is a ward of the Devil."

  Jackson smiled and bowed. Without further discussion the five soldiers of his 90th Alabama made for Copper Gulch, a mosquito-infested land sat an inhospitable twelve feet below the Tennessee River's floodplain, a level often breached.

  Winter saw the gulch mired and soggy; summer brought knee-deep water and colossal insects. These natural deterrents repelled men from the bounds of Copper Gulch. Other things also troubled the occasional visitor.

  People of the Indian Nations knew, but war removed their voices and silenced their warning. General Andy Jackson drove out the Red Stick Creek fifty years earlier—after the defeat of Menawa and his warriors at the Horseshoe Bend along the Tallapoosa River. Native legends claimed the Old Grandfathers crossed the great ice fields and trekked south to settle the area and discovered ancient spirits whose anger spoiled the air, soured the water, and left hunting grounds fallow of all game but scavengers unfit for cooking fires.

  Indescribable but undeniable, unseen but physical, acknowledged, at least in rumor and legend by generations, Copper Gulch emanated malevolence. Decent people kept away.

  2

  Billy indeed led McCarran and his Union bodyguards to a secret place.

  "Uncle Louis! Uncle Louis!"

  Louis froze and looked back over the underfed cow he tended and toward Billy.

  "McCarran knows about the cows...says he's gonna hang any reb caught hiding contraband."

  As if naming the demon summoned him, McCarran and his soldiers emerged at the small clearing. Raw fear threatened to empty Louis Wilson’s bladder.

  Rufus swaggered toward three frightened men.

  "Evenin', gents,” he said as if a footman at a Savannah inn. “Much obliged, Billy.”

  Rufus paused to spit a chaw of tobacco. “If y’all are thinkin' about anything brave, forget it. You see, we have orders from the General to shoot anyone trying to avoid questioning."

  The Yankee soldiers leveled their rifles.

  McCarran resumed his strut.

  "What you leading here, Mister Wilson? Don't
look like no school boy to me. Favors animals my pa used to raise...called 'em cows. I know that can't be so. You see, the General ordered all cows turned in to the quartermaster by last fall."

  He paused and scratched his chin. McCarran swished the terror in his mouth as if sampling a fine wine. Tonight he intended a full serving.

  3

  Jackson and his men made their way toward the Gulch.

  4

  "See gents, if y’all was to planning to bring these animals to old Rufus tonight, that'd be law bidin’ of you."

  Johansson took the hint and spoke in a quavering version of what passed for English on a fjord.

  “Yes sir. We heard about them cows here and we come down to see today. We going to take them to the federals."

  "A right proper choice you made there, Mr. Johansson, right proper indeed. I'll take custody from here." Rufus snatched the rope from Wilson, and paraded back toward the trail as if leading the blue ribbon bull at the county fair.

  Louis exhaled and allowed himself a glimmer of faith that McCarran might leave them unharmed. Speaking to McCarran felt like rubbing a bare hand over the snout of a rattlesnake. If the snake felt ornery, disaster; if not, no provocation could cause the critter to bite. No apparent pattern or reasoning to the process.

  This evening, it appeared as if the snake would tether its fangs. Louis offered a silent prayer of thanks. Twenty more yards and McCarran would disappear back into the trees. He and the cursed scrawny animals with mud halfway up their legs could go to the devil.

  But Rufus stopped. He emoted the look of a man in deep thought and said, "But if y’all was willful-like with contraband, I'd not have earned my wages if I didn't investigate."

  "Mr. McCarran, you possess the cows, we will not utter a word to a living soul,” Louis said in a voice that squeaked a couple octaves higher than normal. His mind saw the deadly path this conversation might take…knew the rattlesnake sensed his terror…the icy-damp night held it in the atmosphere like fog after a gully-washing rain.

  "No Mister Louis, I don't reckon y’all will ever talk to nobody 'bout this here tonight," McCarran replied through jagged black teeth, his deep-set snake eyes penetrating Wilson’s gaze. “You boys,” he glanced at the Union soldiers standing silently aside, “tie these rebs to that big pine yonder so I can question them."

  Three soldiers carried out the order while the rest watched, nervous about McCarran's plans for these helpless civilians. Through the frozen wet of the night, a warm, burning sensation prickled at the tip of a Yankee soldier’s skin. Another young trooper would later swear that many other eyes, spread among the rot of woodland comprising Copper Gulch, hovered somewhere beyond firelight and monitored the sorry events.

  5

  Biting air nipped their shoulders as Jackson's men approached a grisly scene. The older two men, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Johansson, both stood tied to pine trees. Johansson slumped on legs set at odd angles, his torso lashed to the tree's trunk, clearly lifeless. Blood smeared in bright red stains across his shirt, just beneath the neck. To the right, McCarran stood over Louis Wilson.

  The balding man whimpered as Rufus repeatedly thrust a long bayonet into his torso. Billy Wilson waited next in line.

  Two Union soldiers stood near McCarran, the rest mingled twenty yards to the south, closer to the rivulet…loathe to McCarran’s murder yet unwilling to intervene. Jackson gaped in disbelief. Billy Wilson stood seconds from death.

  Colonel Jackson Brewton made his decision in a microsecond.

  On signal, the Confederates raised their weapons, long since loaded and readied for action. Icy rain splattered through the mist to offer a cold suggestion to reconsider as the men prepared the attack. An overwhelming odor of pine hung all around, reminding Jackson of boyhood days spent playing in the straw and burning sap off the top of old stumps. Louis now stood quiet, dead. McCarran focused on Billy.

  In the instant before the attack Jackson marveled at the multitude and intricacy of life around him. Each tree, each bush, thousands or more in number, represented life’s timeless nature. He wondered if plants experienced anything a human could understand and envied the serenity of their lives, oblivious to the horrible events unfolding and unworried about those yet to come.

  McCarran approached Billy. The time for action arrived.

  "You are surrounded! Surrender immediately or be fired upon!" Jackson’s voice echoed from the darkness. He prayed the separated and disorganized enemy would flee at the warning. But like so many times before, they would not.

  The skirmish would play out in less than two minutes, a duration that seemed like hours to the participants.

  McCarran wheeled and ran for the Yankee main force. A couple of Union soldiers, perhaps the only combat veterans in the group, mastered the initial shock and reacted. The first Confederate volley killed the Yankee sergeant and one other man. It wounded two more. They fell to the mud screaming, one of them gut-shot and crying for his mother.

  Drawing handguns, the Southerners charged, dispensing four more Northern soldiers. The Yankees countered with their first volley and found Sergeant Lawton…bullet penetrated skull through the right eye socket. Other shots missed.

  McCarran fled to the riverbank...joined by the remaining four Union soldiers. Jackson and his squad gave chase.

  Far more accustomed to scrambling through brush than the garrison soldiers, the Southerners closed the distance. Both sides fired shots as reloading permitted, with clear advantage to the hunters. Two more Union soldiers fell. Of the remaining pair, one stopped and raised his hands; the other splashed into the darkness.

  Jackson charged after Rufus McCarran. Vines and underbrush grasped at Rufus's knees...thorns sharp as a bobcat’s teeth flayed his flesh. McCarran's terror drove him headlong into thick briars that grasped his legs with the strength of Gulliver’s ropes. He collapsed to the icy marsh and managed a single pistol shot.

  Jackson ducked and dodged to his left and the bullet splintered a pine sapling. He fired, and his more practiced aim sent a .45 caliber round into McCarran’s left kneecap. The thug screamed, scrambled to his good leg, and retched supper.

  Rage burned a steady fire across his shoulders as Jackson slowed his pace. Murdering a prisoner stood east of chivalry’s frontier. That alone he might overlook. But if word of a summary execution reached the occupation commander’s ears, retaliation on combatants and civilians would ensue. And these Yankees governed their families. By measured will, taut muscles in his clenched fists relaxed as he neared the helpless, stumbling McCarran.

  6

  McCarran crumbled to the rotting bog at the rivulet’s bank and lay like a spent mouse waiting for the hawk. Resigned to his fate, he looked the approaching officer in his face. What Rufus saw kindled hope.

  Instead of a man bent on murder, he saw intelligence, perhaps a glimmer of misplaced, tired kindness. A man in control of his wits posed no immediate threat to McCarran.

  "Rufus McCarran, you are in the custody of the 90th Alabama Cavalry."

  "What you planning on doing to me? You gonna murder me where I sit?"

  "We are not cowards. Continue to spout such filth, and you parlay yourself into the grave."

  McCarran dared not believe his good fortune. He would shoot the Colonel dead were the situation reversed.

  "To your feet, McCarran."

  "I'm hurt. I need help if I'm to stand."

  With that, Rufus lowered his eyes in submission and held out a grimy paw.

  7

  Droplets of half frozen rain fell on Jackson Brewton like myriads of crystal clappers grown impatient of waiting for someone to ring their fragile warning bells and deciding to sound the alarm in person. It all felt wrong to Jackson but then duty demanded difficult choices. The thought of touching the coward’s puffy, stained flesh reviled Jackson. I would rather kiss the cloven hoof of Satan. For just a moment Jackson considered doing the unthinkable, putting a bullet in the ear of the murderer and returning to his men to orga
nize the retreat. Honor demanded otherwise.

  8

  McCarran attempted to regain his feet but stumbled in pain and splashed back into the muck.

  "Colonel! You all right sir?"

  Having secured the three prisoners on higher, drier ground, Private Joseph Saunders found Colonel Jackson standing over Rufus McCarran. Saunders's eyes couldn't bear the insult of gazing on the human pig for more than a moment. Despite the cold, his commander's hair glistened with perspiration. Saunders noticed McCarran gripping a bloody knee. The cornered man sat covered in mud and wallowing like a hog.

  "I'll return with my prisoner shortly, Joe, you help the wounded. How'd we do?"

  "Three Yankee prisoners, two of them wounded, several dead...Mr. Wilson and Mr. Johansson are dead, sir…throats hacked. Billy's alive...he's cut deep, though." He paused, lowered his eyes to the ground, and spoke the next sentence in a low voice, as if to keep the news between Colonel Brewton and himself and thus deny Rufus McCarran a victory in their grief.

  "Mark's dead sir."

  9

  Jackson Brewton remained reticent. Like Kathy, he grew up with the joking, gangly Mark Lawton. Now the young man would never reach a happy old age with his own loving family. He grieved for the sergeant, but only for a moment because he grieved even more the loss of Louis Wilson and Mr. Johansson; citizens—not soldiers. His unit failed to check atrocities. But then, the invader did not commit this particular wrong. The private disappeared back up into the clearing to carry out his orders.