Fates and Traitors Read Free

“Go on.”
    John took a shuddering breath through the thick fluid collecting in his throat. “Tell my mother . . . I die for my country.”
    Nearby, a man cursed. Another spat in the dirt. “Tell your mother you die for your country,” the slim figure repeated slowly. “Do I have that right?”
    John swallowed and tried to nod. The man nodded once and moved away.
    He drifted, jolted from time to time into wakeful horror by unexpected surges of pain running the length of limbs that felt nothing else. He could not move. He struggled even to breathe. He closed his eyes to the falling ashes but could not shut his ears against the soldiers’ words. One man repeatedly insisted that John had shot himself. John wanted to set the record straight, but he found it too difficult to gather the correct words and put them down again in the proper order.
    â€œI tell you again, that can’t be,” said Baker. “I was looking right at him when I heard the shot. His carbine wasn’t turned upon himself.”
    The discussion wore on, and John felt himself succumbing to wave after wave of exhaustion. Then two other men approached and settled the matter with a revelation: a Sergeant Corbett had shot the president’s assassin. He had the spent cap and an empty chamber in his revolver to prove it.
    Corbett, John thought. He knew no one by that name, could not imagine how he might have offended the man aside from killing his president and freeing him from tyranny. Perhaps this Corbett had a pretty little wife who had once waited outside a stage door to greet Johnwith sweet blushes and flowers. He smiled and tried to offer the sergeant a gallant apology, but his lips moved without sound.
    â€œI went to the barn.” The new voice rang with zeal. “I looked through a crack, saw Booth coming toward the door, sighted at his body, and fired.”
    â€œAgainst orders,” said Baker, without rancor.
    â€œWe had no orders either to fire or not to fire,” the sergeant protested. “I was afraid he’d either shoot someone or get away.”
    The lieutenant did not rebuke him.
    John drifted in and out of consciousness, succumbing to exhaustion only to be choked awake when blood and fluid pooled in his throat. As the heat from the conflagration rose to a blistering intensity, the soldiers carried him from the lawn to the front porch of the farmhouse, where Mrs. Garrett had placed a mattress for him. Her cool, soft hand on his forehead revived him, and when he struggled to ask for water, she understood his hoarse request, quickly filled a dipper, and brought it to his lips. But it was no use. He could wet his tongue but he could not swallow.
    He asked to be turned over, expecting a rebuff, but the soldiers complied, lifting him and placing him on his stomach. Still he could not clear his throat. Hating his helplessness, he asked to be rolled onto his side, and then the other, but that was no better. Panic and despair swept through him at the thought that he would drown in his own sick. Coughing, wrenching his head, he managed to catch the attention of the slim man who had taken his message for his mother. “Kill me,” he whispered when the man knelt beside him. “Kill me.”
    â€œWe don’t want to kill you,” said the man. “We want you to get well.”
    So they could stretch his neck, no doubt. But he was already a dead man. And what, he thought wildly, had become of Herold?
    The hours passed. His throat swelled, his lips grew numb. He felt himself sinking, only to revive, time and again. He wished the slim officer would sit beside him, to hear and commit to memory his last loving words for his mother. As for last words for his country, as well as for the North, the manifesto he had placed with his sister for safekeeping would have to suffice. Dear Asia, childhood playmate and lifelong confidante, who disagreed with him vehemently on almost