THE SUNNY SOUTH
by Chris Muessig
Art by Ron Chironna

Jake was losing touch with his feet, so he began to tromp his boots hard against the frozen ground. Each impact brought out a word or two of prayer for deliverance from his misery. He kept his voice low so as not to wake the men in the tents or tip ambushers like the louse who had knocked off his hat with a snowball earlier in the evening.

In spite of his supplication, the wind picked up, sent snow hissing along the ground, and then up into his face like a shovelful of sand. He turned his back to wait out the onslaught, thankful his mother had sent along earmuffs.

The wind roaring in the pine boughs beyond the encampment made a desolate sound under the moonless sky. Wood smoke commingled with essence of latrine rushed by, although the bitter darkness had discouraged anyone from adding to the aroma of the privies. He was the only fool out and about.

The regiment's move from Vermont to North Carolina in search of milder conditions had been a pipe dream, considering that the region was now enduring its coldest, wettest, snowiest winter since the Ice Age. Sure, the Army had no way of foretelling such freakish events, but it certainly could have arranged to have wooden barracks instead of overcrowded tents awaiting the men, not to mention artillery pieces to fire, and horses to draw them. Weren't these reasonable expectations?

Don't be glum, chum! Lily McCreary's voice chided softly inside his earmuffs. It won't do.

How that girl's ways haunted him still.

The breeze fell off. He about-faced and continued on, searching the chalky blur of tents for scarlet salamanders of escaped fire.

He came to the end of the street. From this angle, the glow of an electric lamp pole was visible where the regimental cross street fed down into the row of mess halls. The distant light silhouetted the stacks of the tent stoves and the smoke whisking away from them.

He stopped, puzzled, and took backward steps until the pipe poking up from the last tent on his left, the senior sergeants' quarters, stood black and stark against the white aureole of the lamp. Nothing vented from that one—no wisp of smoke, eddy of heat, or swirl of sparks. Could it be that no one was at home in the "zebra den" this weekend?

He lowered his eyes to the tent walls. The wind gusted again, and he heard an answering flap from that vicinity, like the flutter of a loose sail. Strangely, there'd been no instructions passed for waking any of the superior noncoms or tending to their stove, but even if the tent was empty, it should have been secured.

He stepped along the narrow path shoveled from street to tent into a deeper darkness cast by the rearing, pyramidal shape. His gloved hand wrapped around the flashlight in his overcoat pocket. He had not used it all this evening, reluctant as he was to ruin his night vision or betray his presence to snowball snipers, but now he needed to pierce the obscurity.

Still he hesitated, for here was the lair of the Battery First Sergeant, him and his damned whistle and malignant nature. Jake might be stepping into some elaborate trap in keeping with the man's crazed persecution of privates. Even so, he had no antidote for his sense of duty.

A touch to the flash button showed that the door was indeed unfastened and free to snap in the stronger gusts. When he held it aside, the darkness beyond was profound. He thrust the shaft of light into the interior, moving it across a cold stove and three empty cots.

On the fourth cot, the illumination glinted off hobnails splayed at a forty-five degree angle. The man wearing the boots lay on top of his blanket in trousers and blouse, the latter half undone. A tunic and overcoat lay on the floor between the cot and the tent wall.

Jake watched from the doorway for a few more seconds and then stepped forward, come what may. Alongside the cot, his numbed toes contacted something lying just beyond the man's left hand, which dangled to the flooring. From the hollow, spinning sound, he guessed it to be an empty bottle.

First Sergeant Cowan was as still as a manikin, and his eyes gazed without malice at the canvas ceiling. That was how Jake could tell he was dead, from the absence of malice.

Pivoting on the gritty boards, he went to the doorway, drew an operatic breath, and yelled, "Corporal of the Guard, post number three!"

The doctor on call at the base hospital came jouncing up the regimental street toward Jake's waving flashlight in an ambulance driven by a private. The vehicle slid to a halt on a frozen patch, and an attendant exited from the rear, bearing a folded stretcher. All three men followed Jake into the tent where the Sergeant of the Guard and the Officer of the Day awaited them. An oil lantern set upon Cowan's footlocker underlit the pale faces and frozen breaths of the new arrivals, all of whom belonged to the regiment's own medical detachment.

The few bystanders who had braved the cold had already returned to the warmth of their tents. Jake lingered just inside the doorway, hoping he would not be sent back immediately into the streets. He avoided looking directly at Lieutenants Norman and Godwin as the two conferred at the foot of Cowan's cot.

Norman, the O.D., was a Yankee like most in the regiment; but Godwin, the surgeon, a straw-colored man whose nose aimed always at an elevated angle, spoke with the same theatrical accent as folk in nearby Charlotte. They were studying the empty fifth of gin that Jake had booted.

Godwin handed back the bottle and stepped to the body just as Jake felt a puff of outer cold behind him. He turned to see the chaplain holding aside the canvas door. Father Kiernan looked past Jake and said, "What's the ruckus, Miller?"

Kiernan's ears were bare below his peaked cap, and he had come out without an overcoat; nevertheless, he looked burnished rather than frostbitten, and wide-eyed with a seeming immunity from the need for sleep.

"Looks like Top Cowan passed out from drink and froze himself," Jake said.

The others had turned at the sound of Kiernan's distinctive voice (the classiest preacher of the bunch, according to those who kept score). Lieutenant Norman seemed pleased to see him, but the surgeon's face was inexpressive.

"Is that right, Dr. Godwin?" Kiernan asked.

"I'm about to explore that possibility, Captain," the man said in his slow drawl. "But there's no doubt that death has occurred, and that your ministrations would be wasted here—especially for such an unregenerate soul as First Sergeant Cowan's."

"Perhaps so, Doctor, but Sergeant Cowan felt strongly enough about his faith to describe himself for the rolls as a Roman Catholic. Surely, you'll allow me a few moments to administer extreme unction before you examine him. Just as people debate the moment of quickening, there have been some interesting studies about what constitutes the actual moment of death, and I would hate to neglect a needy soul that might still be lingering on in search of absolution."

Godwin looked affronted. "Captain, the man is in rigor, probably livor, too, considering his pallor, and has been for likely a full day."

With that, he bent to his examination, which was thorough to the point of having his two disconcerted-looking helpers roll the body. Jake had never witnessed the dead being manipulated so. Except for a drowned soldier inVermont, the only corpses he'd ever seen had been in formal dress and laid out for burial.

Cowan was indeed stiff, and when they lifted his blouse and undershirt, Jake saw that the skin of his back was purple, like a monstrous bruise.

"No sign of any wounds or external bleeding anywhere. This casting off and undoing of the clothing is known to take place when someone has become deranged from hypothermia. The chapping of the skin around the mouth and nasal membrane here is an effect of severe cold—not a surprise considering it's as glacial as an icehouse in here. Moreover, we have clear evidence that the man had taken in an inordinate amount of alcohol—often a culprit in deaths from exposure."
He signaled the stretcher-bearers.

"Please, Doctor," Kiernan said. "Two minutes for a man's soul."

Kiernan's appeal was civil enough, but as he spoke, he strode forward amongst the medical men like a football referee, a role he often assumed to prevent the camp's gridiron games from becoming complete bloodbaths. He had some inches and pounds on them, and rank, so the trio made way, Lieutenant Godwin looking especially indignant. Perhaps he resented Kiernan because they were of an age but not of an equal grade. Jake also supposed Godwin was a Baptist, which could not be helpful.
Cowan's body was back in its original position, eyelids and hanging arm stubbornly resistant to adjustment. Jake didn't know which studies Kiernan had been referring to, but surely the absence of life could not be in doubt. No wonder the Army doctor had taken offense.

The tension increased when Kiernan's estimate of two minutes for administering the sacrament proved highly inaccurate.Normaneventually dismissed the Sergeant of the Guard to answer another cry in the night, and the stretcher-bearers went out to have a smoke. Godwin stood by with his hands clenched behind his back. Seeing this strain, the better-natured O.D. tried in vain to occupy the doctor with tidbits from the rumor mills at Brigade and Division.

Jake, who had held the flap open for the Sergeant of the Guard with the posture of one about to follow, had hung back and actually gotten away with it. He hearkened now toNorman's gossip about the imminent arrival of horses and three-inch guns rather than to the chaplain's Latin prayers. But he could not help casting a dubious eye on Kiernan as the priest stubbornly proffered a small crucifix to the rigid lips and brought his eyes and ears close to Cowan's countenance in search of a breath of repentance.

At last, the vial of holy oil came forth from the chaplain's sick-call kit. As he was about to commence anointing the avenues of sin, he turned to Jake and said, "Miller, fill that mess can with snow, please, and put a candle under it so that I can wash my fingers afterwards."

Outside, Jake went a few steps down the path and stooped in search of clean snow. Godwin's two men were a few paces away, finishing their cigarettes. One of them, the driver, a gaunt Regular by the name of Plunkett, said rather loudly, "Sidney, I'll bet you don't know how much the ladies' man the Lieutenant is, do you? The ladies are lined up inCharlottefor his attentions."

Jake was unsure whether the man's outburst was intentionally impudent or an impulsive remark stirred by the death scene. Regardless, he was not surprised, as he rose up with his cup of snow, to see the door covering
partly opened to allow someone a look at the loudmouth.

The officer did not come forth to remonstrate. Instead, the flap fell back quietly into place before Jake could reach it. Perhaps the watcher deemed Plunkett's cheekiness trivial in contrast to the lesson in mortality lying within.