Page 30 of Head Room

“Jennifer called.Told me exactly what you need done and to absolutely not use the copier.”

Jennifer worked fast.It didn’t hurt that Dale had a crush on Jennifer that showed no signs of abating with her absence.If she’d told him to chisel a copy on stone, he’d do his best.

“Great.It does need to be finished for Mike to take back to Chicago tomorrow — not sure of the time yet.”

“I’ll stay as long as it takes tonight.I need to finish something for Audrey first,” he apologized, even though that was his primary job.

“No worries.I want to take another look anyway.”

Good thing no one else was in the bullpen, because the smoke scent spread again when I pulled out the manuscript.

I carefully lined up my phone’s camera to get all of the first page in the frame and clicked a photo.

Then I started reading the manuscript.

****

PROLOGUE

Dec.1864

Camp Douglas,

Chicago, Illinois

Death had a thousand sounds.

The roars and screams and prayers of battle.The moans and wails and raving of delirium.

But it had only one smell.

A sick, almost sweet stench that seemed to rise from the ground.Maybe it did.God knew the ground had absorbed enough of the dead already — along with the foul byproducts of the illnesses that wasted them before the finality of death.

Joseph Kent raised his handkerchief to his face, covering his mouth and nose.One or two of the Confederate prisoners sniggered at him, but most simply continued to stare.Some at him, some at nothing.They sat on the filthy ground where the guards had herded them to listen to their visitor, their eyes already dead as they waited for the rest of their bodies to follow.

He’d killed his share in battle on behalf of the Union, had watched the bodies fall, and known that his gun caused it.Had seen the light go from the face at the end of his saber.Enemies like these men.Perhaps he’d tried to kill that balding fellow with the scar across his jaw at Chickamauga.Or exchanged shots earlier at Stones River with that tall fellow at the edge of the group dressed in the tattered remnants of an officer’s uniform.

He’d have killed them then, no regrets.As he’d killed the man who slashed his leg so deep it left a limp that pushed him into this duty.

Yeah, he’d have killed any one of them, every one of them, if he could have.But this...

God Almighty, he didn’t see how a single one could turn aside what he was about to say.

He cleared his throat and spoke, offering these captured rebel soldiers the clemency of the United States of America.

Galvanized Yankees was what some called the former Confederate soldiers who’d taken up this offer elsewhere.Whatever you called them, it was a way out of this hellhole.

“And all we have to do is turn traitor on our country!”jeered a voice from the back when he’d finished.

“Yourcountryis willing to forgive your treason and your rebellion.If you will sign the pledge and agree to fight in the United States Army.”Mutters rumbled across the gathering.Kent limped a step forward, favoring the right leg he’d been lucky to keep.He raised his voice, addressing what he’d learned right off would stop them all.“You won’t be sent to fight in your homelands.You won’t bear arms against your former comrades.You would go West, to the Indian territories.”

“And get scalped courtesy of the Yankees!”

“Ain’t that just like a Yankee bargain — shoot us in our homes, starve us in their prisons, then send us west for the Injuns to carve up.”

Before he considered, he snapped, “Heard about Andersonville?”

Their silence said they had.