Chapter Text
Nadia Calthoon was to meet with a woman on the corner of 4th and Main at two o'clock in the afternoon. Everybody knew somebody in this war. It acted more like the third horseman of the apocalypse, pestilence, as it swept over the country. Men were left frothing at the mouth - rabid for hot blood to flood over their hands. Nadia was planned to met the wife of one such gentleman, a good woman who saw the corruption of the war in the whites of her husband's eyes.
The woman was bringing forth the uniform of her husband; who’s mouth and fists had both gotten him equally barred from fighting for the good cause of the Confederacy. Though there was no lack of need of bodies to go die on fields, there were plenty of younger men than him to take his place. After all, those of age would be needed to rule what was left of the land when the war eventually - hopefully - came to a close.
As Nadia stood there, the humidity soaking into her dark skin, she cast her eyes downwards letting the ghostly faces pass her by. If they paid any attention to her, which she thought was very unlikely, as they had better use of their thoughts than to waste them on the ragged black woman standing in the middle of the Southern heat. Therefore Nadia played her part well and submitted unto society herself for their consideration.
It was due to her submissive facade that she did not notice the woman approaching her. Her dress and looks were the same as any other gentry whos eyes slide from one building to the next, passing over Nadia in a rush to escape the blistering sun, but this woman’s eyes were darting around frantically looking back and forth like a broken grandfather clock.
The woman, who knew what she had to do as her husband had attended the meeting in the barn late at night in her place, moved forward with sudden determination towards the darkened part of the street. She held her arms tighter across her chest, gripping her fingers together as if the item she was holding would slip between the cracks of her knuckles. She closed in on Nadia, who stood still and unwavering. Twenty feet. Ten Feet. Five feet.
The woman collided with Nadia and then Nadia collided with the dust and dung plane of the well trodden Main street. The woman, who up until that time had not really thought of any words to say in the moment but knowing that their small commotion must be covered up with the typical crass and brutality, merely pulled her lips back into a sneer and dropped a violitle hiss at Nadia who did her best to continue to cower.
The woman then walked away. Nadia stood and noticed with some dismay that her elbow was bleeding. But it was worth it. Because when Nadia rose from the gutter she had clutched tightly against the folds of her dress, the uniform of a confederate soldier. She dusted herself off the best she possibly could, not for any real need of wanting to clean her dress, for the reused garment from her days as a slave was to be burned as soon as she returned back to the church, but more for the implementation to those around her that this was totally the only clothing she owned and she was absolutely nothing more than a slave running errands for a vacant master.
With the primping and preening done, Nadia clutched to her chest their resistance’s most prized possession, for without with grey suit in her arms their entire plan was shot, and pivoted to walk back the way she had come towards the steeple of St. Paul’s Methodist Church looming in the vacant far out distance.
And it was due to her hyperaware urge to get the transaction over with neither Nadia nor the woman notice the man in the white shirt with the red tie watching them from the coffee house across the street.
--
This was the plan.
Reverend Andrew Goodard, born Anshel Ginzberg, was to stand on the porch of St. Paul’s Methodist Church squinting out onto Jefferson Street and wait for the black dot to appear among the blinding white faces.
Reverend Goodard couldn’t tell if the sweat that seemed to be creating the Dead Sea on his back was due to the temperature that seemed to rival the pits of hell, or if it was him imagining the pits of hell due to the deception and sinning they were about to pull off in a matter of hours.
The small part of his brain where he hid all of his best secrets, told him that it was the latter. But why worry about one more deception when so many had been committed to get him here. The real Reverend who was supposed to take up the pulpit position while the regular minister took upon a sabbatical had unfortunately never received his letter of call when it fell into the hands of the young boy inside.
A young boy in the Reverend’s eyes, who was soon approaching the age of forty eight and therefore to him, nineteen was an infant. Nineteen was the age when his fellow classmates left to go fight once more against the imperial powers, the northerners, and the natives all at once. They had lost that war, and the Reverend was determined not to lose this one.
Then out on the horizon appeared the dark dot he had been looking for and had no more time to lament the past or his actions and could only run over the following steps for the interaction that was to come. The street was mostly cleared, it being a Wednesday afternoon and all, but the pious noticed everything and in the middle of a civil war every action was a suspicious action.
Therefore when Nadia approached the Reverend and asked what time Easter mass was. He replied with a smile and the answer of,
“Changes every year.”
She smiled back at him, thanked him for his time, wished God would bless him, and then walked away.
Left in her spot was the buckled bundle of grey fabric. The Reverend took the now less carefully folded fabric from the wooden stoop and entered into his church closing the door behind him and locking it for safe measures. If anyone wished to pray at this hour they would just have to be Presbyterian for a day and go next door.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of energy entering into his pupils and as they expanded the Reverend walked carefully down the flight of spiral stairs in the anteroom of the chapel that brought him down to the concrete basement level where resided a wall of blessed wine to represent his holiness’ blood, a door leading into a bedroom which housed his own personal belongings and a table, which sat next to it was a person who was currently wearing khakis, the color of another uniform for war, with a white shirt and dark suspenders. Too soon the boy would be dressed in the scratchy grey wool and sent off to the great machine that takes all boys and turns them into men. For the only difference between a boy and a man is with blood.
The man stood up from the table and took the bundle from the Reverend who just smiled a tight lipped smile and guided the other man to his own room to allow some privacy while he changed. The Reverend wished it could be him that went and laid out among the dead souls in the thick of the blood and mirth, letting the screams and gunshots fly over his head. Such things were those that should be saved for old men like him who would soon be with the heavenly father of the universe and not for those with an entire life left to relive the nightmares in the depth of the night. But alas, such deception of injury as they were planning might result in the actual injury of the Reverend, and while thoughts and prayers were bountiful, they did little to stop bullets. Secondly, though no one would mention it, the Reverend, while being able to vote, still had about him his Jewish features.
The door creaked open and out stepped into the room a full fledged confederate soldier. Well, all except for the shoes His own dark leather boots would have to do, even though they only reached mid calf instead of his knee. They figured if this all went off, proper boots would be the least of their worries.
Both being men of few words the Reverend merely clapped his compatriot on the shoulder and decided that no words could assist the situation and instead guided him upwards and out of the church to where the sun had seemed to fallen in the sky. There, waiting for them, was the next step in the seemingly unending plan to bring about critical change.
But because the small cart was waiting there with the horse sniffing around at the ground and the woman in the front seemed to want to get this over with soon than later, the Reverend simplified helped the soldier into the cart and squeezed his hand, letting all of his good thoughts and karma go with him.
And then there was the crack of the reigns. And then they were gone.
--
This was the plan.
Sophia Alcott was to take the man who came out of the church and drive him through the night to the town of Glasgow, Missouri. Said town would be the newest venue for yet another war in Trans-Mississippi theater of this corrupted war as well as having the added benefit of being a battle fought for General Sterling Price’s never ending expansion to control the entire state of Missouri for the Confederate States of America.
Can she get an Amen?
Since the only person in the rambling cart was a man a suffering from a severe case of abolitionism and herself a pivotal part in the underground railroad, it remained silent. For their own good as well, as the silence was their main protector against those who lived in the night and would stumble upon their caravan of one and might suspect something is afoot. More likely, anyone traveling a night would scare away anyone looking due to the air of mischief, but the roles were so reversed that the travelers hearts were beating so fast, Sophia would have swore hers wasn’t beating at all.
The night came to pass as they traveled the dirty road to the open field where their other patriots in the North had given them the information that this would be the place when Price would be making one of the assaults. The assault was one designed to bring in artillery to the Southern Army, that under the blockade, had been slowly declining due to the lack of funds. The money of the Confederacy would do better to last as wallpaper then as actual currency. Yet, despite the setbacks and the losses, the army of the South waged on; for as long as there were those who wished to be free from centralized government there would be those to fight for that right of liberty.
However, Sophia remembered the right to life was also inscribed in the Declaration of Independence.
The night was wearing thin and now the sun was able to peek through the holes of the fabric of the night sky. It’s yellowish tint cast the light of the new day upon them. They day in which all the hopes of rebellion and liberation of Missouri from the grasp of General Price lay out upon the two spies. The encampment of General Curtis, located many miles to the North of the town of Glasgow, was waiting for the single letter of critical information that would allow the Army of the Border to wrangle together and win a decisive victory.
They had the numbers. They had the weapons. They had the battle plan.
All that was to be done now is figure out, where?
That is precisely what the man wearing the facade of a uniform next to Sophia was to figure out in a few days time and report back. It was far from the most dangerous mission, for there were some who were so far up the chain of command death or victory were the only options, nor was it the lengthiest for all he had to do was find out where they would be marching to in the morning, then do what he did best - sneak away. Yet, this mission held in it the importance of securing a state for the Union - and that was no small thing.
Therefore, as the first shots rang out and the Battle of Glasgow had officially begun, Sophia felt no nervousness for her own life but nervousness for the burden of importance that had been vested upon her shoulders. They were on the edge of the town now and could see the smoke billowing out from the center where she assumed the Confederacy had made their breech and were attempting to capture all items of military use, they would hardly notice another soldier carrying back a contained of gunpowder.
There was no time for pleasantries as the fighting could stop as quickly as it started. The man jumped down from the cart, gave her a small nod, then took off running in the direction of the screaming and echoing booms. She assumed this would be the last she saw of him until forty eight hours had passed but since she was a woman, and no one expected them to have any agenda let alone a sinister one she decided to venture forward, just to assure the plan had at least begun successfully.
She made her way slowly through the mass of people fleeing to their homes, hoping to escape the stray bullets that might enter their backs. She kept to the outskirts of the fighting, trying to discern the difference of the men among the unification that came with a uniform. The screaming had all but vanished and the echoes from bullets exiting guns had died down until they were few and far between. Sophia saw no harm in getting a little bit closer, to try and see if there was any infighting which might allude to the abortion of this mission.
A crack resounded then that almost took Sophia’s soul to heaven with how fast her heart started to race in her chest. The sound shaved through her head like a nail file cutting her sanity to shreds. Still she managed to keep her focus forward, towards the cause of such a dastardly noise. It was hard to tell but she swore she saw someone fall to the ground.
Someone she recognized.
And she knew in that instance something had gone terribly wrong.
--
This was the plan.
Huck Finn, a nineteen year old native of Missouri, had been entrusted with getting information that could quite possibly save his state from falling further into the control of an army that basically stood for everything Huck thought could fall to the ground.
No pressure.
The stolen uniform rubbed his neck raw as he ran through the tree side landscape of Glasgow, Missouri heading towards the sounds that, to any other person, would have them run away from. But Huck was currently following step 17C of a 62F step process, of which no steps included running away from the danger. In fact, most of it included looking God in the eyes and walking backwards into hell. Huck Finn knew this, in all its details, before he found himself running through a ransacked Missourian town, as the resistance up North had not shrouded any of their plans in innuendos or euphemisms and had told him, exactly how dangerous this plan was going to be.
But wars are dangerous, and this one especially so. Huck Finn had spent little time in the clutches of those who saw people as animals, or worse yet, people as things. He was well acquainted with the feeling of being less than . Though there was no situation in his past that could mirror the injustice faced to those he stood by, there were plenty that were a lesser imitation, and those in themselves could make a grown man’s stomach curtle.
He was familiar with the objectification of those who were somehow seen as less than human due to things that were entirely out of their control. Who decided to lay together for a night and curse the child that they make because of who they are and where they have been. Or better yet, the destination on Earth where the cursed child falls into the world. Man made lines cutting up this Earth is the cause of separation for those in affluence and those who die in the streets. But God had a plan, God knew what he was doing, God looks out for us all.
Most forget God’s people were slaves once.
See Huck had never heard about The Union, he never saw The Union, he didn’t give a fuck about The Union. Huck hated being told what to do, especially from those who had never felt real hunger, but he hated hypocrisy more. His decision to stick his hands into the guts of the civil war came when he realized that the same people crying out about how it was a human right to be free from those in power where the ones who went home early to check on their slaves.
And that , was hypocrisy on the highest level.
Therefore, once the resistance had in its memberships a young man of caucasian featured (no matter how tall and miseducated, for they could do something about the ignorance of the world but reconstructing bone features would take a miracle of God -- and they had run out of God given miracles) it came upon them the possibility of actually aiding in the slaughter between brothers.
Thus, a plan was made. A plan that people who lived after the year 1942 would call a plan held together by duct tape and dreams. A plan that had a calculated chance of 61.3% chance of failure. A plan that required Huck Finn to pretend to be a confederate soldier, sneak into General Price’s camp, steal information, and make it out all before A) anyone realized that he shouldn’t be there or B) they decided to move camp.
Easy enough, right?
At least that is what Huck thought at the forefront of his mind as he fell in line with the other grey coats marching back with guns and bullets and cannons and anything else that goes boom and kills people. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind lived the rational thought of all the things that could happen, such as him opening his mouth and calling the man with a very pronounced mustache that he’s a raging bigot. So Huck wires his mouth shut and continues to help push the destruction weapon of the week along the raging flow of the current down to wherever it was based camp was set.
Or at least that’s what Huck Finn’s plan was. Follow the line of soldiers, keep in line, don’t get caught.
That’s the plan.
That’s the only plan.
And that would have been the plan, and everything would have gone off without a hitch and Huck Finn would have indeed made it back at the right time and place, if it wasn’t for Samuel Hunt who at that moment decided to drop his already loaded gun in favour of picking up a rather interesting trinket on the side of the road. Said gun fired off and processed to enter and exit a full barrel of gunpowder in less than two milliseconds. For all those who have not studied the law of thermodynamics and understand heat conductivity, what then occured was the transfer of energy from the bullet to approximately 20 kilograms of premade explosion. Huck didn’t even have the chance to register the deafening explosion before something very sharp and definitely not supposed to be there was entering into his leg and shoulder.
As Huck Finn felt his consciousness leave his body he couldn’t help but think that what was currently happening was very far from the plan.