When This Cruel War Is Over by Thomas Fleming

role. Did they teach such transformations at West Point? Or was it an inherited trait?
    â€œThat would be a rather cruel thing to do,” Gentry said. “Frankie’s mother lives just down the road from the sawmill. She might be there.”
    â€œThe bullets this fellow and his friends put into my men were rather cruel, too,” Major Stapleton said.
    They faced each other there in the hot barn, the amateur and the professional soldier. “Do I have your permission to conduct a search, Colonel?”
    â€œI think not,” Gentry said. “Rogers Jameson is too smart to leave any evidence around—if he’s linked in any way with this ambush. I’ll send one of my field hands to tell him to pick up the body.”
    The clop of horses’ hooves interrupted them. Coming through the gate of Gentry’s property was a massive blond-haired man on a buckboard drawn by two fine white horses. As usual, Rogers Jameson was hatless in the summer sun. His face was tanned a mulatto brown. Beside him was a younger man who could have been a double for the dead Frankie.
    â€œHere he is now,” Gentry said. “That’s Frankie’s twin brother, Pete Worth, with him.”
    â€œIsn’t this a good argument to conduct a search? He’s obviously trying to head one off,” Major Stapleton said.
    Gentry hurried across the lawn toward the buckboard as Rogers Jameson climbed down from the seat. The sheer size of the man was still intimidating. Jameson was about Gentry’s height—six feet—but twice as wide, with shoulders the size of a bull’s haunches and a huge head. Years of poling flatboats on the Ohio and Mississippi had given him arms the size of an ordinary man’s thigh. Age and good eating had added a layer of fat to his hulking torso, but he still moved with the agility of an athlete. Only one man had ever thrown Rogers Jameson in a wrestling match: Abe Lincoln.

    â€œDoes this visit have something to do with Frankie Worth?” Gentry asked.
    â€œWhere is he?” Jameson said.
    â€œHis body is in the barn.”
    â€œKilled by your niggers. How can you face yourself in the mirror each morning, Henry?”
    â€œHe was killed by my troopers, sir,” Major Stapleton said. He had followed Gentry down to the dusty oval in front of the main house. “Killed after he and his friends fired on them without provocation.”
    â€œThat’s not what Pete here tells me,” Jameson said. “They were at the Fitzsimmons farm for a Fourth of July party. Pete here’s courtin’ Sarah Fitzsimmons. The niggers and their captain, John Brown Jr., just rode up, said they was deserters, and tried to arrest them. Frankie told them to go to hell and they shot him dead.”
    â€œThat is a complete and total fabrication, sir,” Major Stapleton said.
    â€œI have no interest in listenin’ to lies told by Abe Lincoln’s hired scum,” Jameson said. He had his hand on a pistol in a holster on his belt. Major Stapleton had his hand on his pistol. They were seconds away from drawing and firing.
    â€œFor God’s sake, Rogers, control yourself,” Gentry said, stepping between the two men. “There are young women watching us.”
    Janet Todd and Dorothy Schreiber, both in festive white, were peering out the parlor windows at the confrontation.
    â€œHenry, you’ve always been an asshole. You were born a two-armed asshole; you’ll die a one-armed asshole. Events will soon prove you and your asshole friend Abe are a matched pair.”
    The insult did not surprise Gentry. Rogers Jameson had been telling people in Hunter County that Henry Todd Gentry was a fool for a long time. The idea had
taken root with the pertinacity of ragweed. Hardly surprising, really. It gave a lot of people intense pleasure to think that Henry Gentry, inheritor of 6,000 prime acres on the Ohio, a threshing mill, a thriving general store and