South of Shiloh Read Free

the recycling pile.
    The Metro section of yesterday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press was folded to an inside page, where a news brief announced: “ Pioneer Press Photographer Suspended.” She glanced out into the empty kitchen, faintly heard the boops and chimes of Molly logging on to Club Penguin in the den; the scuffs of Paul sorting his gear. She read the short paragraph that she and her husband had discussed last night.
Pioneer Press photographer John Rane was suspended for two weeks yesterday, following a complaint from St. Paul Police Chief, Oscar Talbot. Chief Talbot charged that Rane violated a SWAT team cordon and endangered officers and civilians during a tense standoff last week in West St. Paul…
    But people were still talking about it. “Did’ya see the picture that guy took…?”
    “Hey Jenny,” Paul yelled, “we gotta go.”
    “Coming,” Jenny said, dropping the paper back on the pile. Paul was in the den, saying good-bye to Molly. After giving her dad two kisses and a hug, Molly sighed dramatically: “Have fun in the war , Dad.”
    “We all set?” Jenny asked, following him to the foyer, where he’d repacked his gear.
    “Yep.”
    “You sure?”
    Paul nodded and rattled off the checklist: “Forage cap, sack coat, flannel shirt, wool trousers with straps, brogans, wool socks, muslin underwear, gloves, gum blanket, wool blanket, greatcoat, field pack and canteen.” He paused to take a breath. “Combo knife fork and spoon, mucket cup.” He held up a square black bag with a strap and stuffed it in the duffel. “Haversack.”
    “What about food?”
    “Davey’s in charge of the hardtack and slab bacon. Coffee, veggies, stuff like that.”
    Jenny made a face. “Rifle?”
    Paul hefted the 1861 Springfield rifled musket in a canvas case. Then he shoved in a tangle of black leather: belt and straps to which his cartridge box, cap box, and bayonet and scabbard were fastened.
    “Cartridges?” Jenny asked, remembering the time her dad went deer hunting without his bullets.
    “Eighty,” Paul grinned. He’d spent three days in the basement, rolling paper cylinders off a pattern with a half-inch wooden dowel, tying them off with kite string, insisting on explaining the process to her. The way he put in a wad of Kleenex as a substitute for a .58-caliber lead minié bullet. Then he filled the paper tubes with fifty-eight grains of carefully measured black powder and methodically creased and folded the open end with a distinctive flourish, like nineteenth-century origami. Jenny didn’t approve of keeping the can of black powder in the house after she’d heard that the stuff could ignite around plastic. Something about friction. She made him keep it in an olive-drab surplus steel box in the utility shed in the backyard.
    “Glasses,” he finished up, tapping the glasses case stuck in his jeans front pocket. The optometrist had refitted lenses from an old prescription into the cramped period-accurate frames.
    “I’ll put this stuff in the car,” he said, dragging the large duffel and the rifle out the front door. As he walked back in, first his, then her cell rang. They attended to the calls; Paul talking to Davey Manning, who was already waiting in the parking lot of historic Fort Snelling in St. Paul. She took a call from her mother, Lois, who was running late on her way to look after Molly.
    “Okay,” Jenny said, ducking into the den. “Gram’s coming in ten minutes. Don’t answer the door till she gets here. After I drop Dad off I’m going to do some shopping and stop at the club…”
    “Rachel—” Molly began.
    “No Rachel tonight. And I want you to get in half an hour on the piano. And go over your spelling sorts before any television. Clear?”
    “Claro.” Molly nodded and never moved her eyes off the video screen.
    “I mean it,” Jenny said.
    “Jenny, honey…” Paul said.
    Jenny backed the Subaru Forester out of the drive and got underway. Paul was on his cell again, talking