Unforced Error by Michael Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

count nose hairs while communicating this astonishing information.
    â€œYou mean to tell me,” Rep demanded, “that I could hand you a few hundred dollars, without giving you my name or address, and walk out of here with a pistol capable of putting thirty-six caliber sized holes in people?”
    â€œAb-so-lute-ly. That is just what I mean. This is still a free country—leastwise last time I checked.”
    â€œI’ll give it some thought,” Rep said as he began backing away.
    â€œKeep me in mind, private,” Trevelyan said as he worked an ornately calligraphied business card into Rep’s shell jacket.
    There’s no doubt about that
, Rep thought, turning away so that Peter could help him get his new saber and sword-belt in place.
    â€œWe can make it to retreat with a few minutes to spare if we go straight there,” Peter said.
    â€œLead on.”
    The sun was just touching the western horizon ten minutes later when other re-enactors, in Union and Confederate uniforms alike, began joining Peter and Rep near the flagpole at the center of the encampment. They came individually and in twos and threes, then without orders formed into small units in a modest square around the flagpole.
    In the demeanors and bearing of the men—and, Rep noticed, a couple of women—there was an intangible something, a
gravitas
, that Rep hadn’t expected. They weren’t playacting. They weren’t just camping out or having a lark. They were honoring history. They were trying to understand, understand what it must have been like to drill and eat and rest at a camp like this the day before you’d charge up the daunting hill toward Maryse Heights or try your luck attacking the bloody angle at Chickamauga.
    A sergeant and a private marched stiffly from the ranks to the flagpole. No radio or television noises reached them. No cell-phones beeped. No air conditioners panted, and no traffic noise intruded.
    The sergeant barked a command that Rep couldn’t make out, and the private prepared to lower the flag. Rep didn’t have a military bone in his body, but he straightened his back and squared his shoulders in a semblance of coming to attention. Peter raised the bugle to his lips.
    The flag began to come down as the haunting notes of Taps blared from the bugle. Jedidiah Trevelyan suddenly seemed very far away. And, Rep realized with a bit of surprise, so did John Paul Lawrence.

Chapter 8
    The two stories of sprawling New England Revival architecture occupied by Jackrabbit Press lay only three-quarters of a mile from the encampment. The last quarter-mile, though, sloped steadily uphill, and Rep’s all wool uniform felt sodden by the time he and Peter finally pulled close enough to count the slats on the building’s dark green shutters. A few hundred yards from the house a silo that Rep recognized with satisfaction as a Harvestore® dominated weather-beaten outbuildings.
    A maid in an ankle-length black dress and starched white apron opened the front door for them. She directed them to an anteroom where racks and shelving awaited sabers, hats, and accoutrements. Peter wrote his name on the tag affixed to one of the rack-spaces, tied the tag with twine to his saber, and stowed the weapon. Rep imitated him.
    They moved then into a room as large as the entire first floor of the comfortable home Rep and Melissa occupied in Indianapolis. Lace doilies protected dark maple tabletops from cut-glass punch bowls and vases holding prairie flowers. Oil portraits and daguerreotypes decorated ivory-colored walls. Tomes by Shakespeare, Emerson, Melville, and Hawthorne competed with oversized Bibles for bookshelf space. At least twelve dozen elegantly tapering candles in chimney-glass hurricanes and sconces combined with four oil lamps to provide gently abundant light.
    Ample as it was, the room already seemed crowded. At least forty uniformed guests mingled with sutlers and women in period