What did one do in the face of pure evil?
Andy the soldier stopped in the road to see the old man in his white suit. He walked there like nothing happened.
He was right there. The soldier knew that face. Around the campfire, comrades spoke of what they wished to do to him. He rode on his horse as thousands died around him. He was responsible for those who died in the prison camps. The soldier knew men who would give anything to put their hands around his neck, to run him through, to break him in pieces.
Here he walked on the road. The great brought low. He held the little one's hand as they walked. The soldier watched. The tyrant who'd sent his army to their doom. The tyrant who'd killed so many. The tyrant who'd fought in the war from start to end.
There he walked, as if so many prisoners hadn't died while he looked the other way. As if justice hadn't been served, and as if he could go back to everyday life like he hadn't killed so many of Andy's childhood friends.
The soldier had a duty. Andy had to do it. The soldier wished for a pistol, but a rock would do it. The old man wasn't what the soldier would call frail, and that spoke evermore to the man's cruelty. While his men starved, walked on frozen ground with bootless feet, blood oozing from their crimson footprints, he rode a horse with a well kept uniform and enough meat on his bones to fit it.
Andy's lip curled up in disgust. The old man was clad in a suit that was as soaked in blood as his uniform. It was his uniform all the same. He could never leave it, not that he would. He was too far gone for that. It was well kept and pristine. reached up with a sleeve to scratch his stubby white beard. The clean and crisp white uniform was unblemished, as clean as the beautiful clothes his grandchildren wore.
The soldier looked down. The uniform worn by the regiment was long gone, replaced with civilian garb. It was brand new, but a little ragged from the trip down here. Andy's lip curled further in disgust. Here was the butcher. Here was the murderer. Here was the one who enslaved so many.
He walked as if nothing happened. As if he were a kindly old man at the end of his days walking with his grandchildren.
Andy looked down. A hat kept the soldier's face hidden. Andy knew what happened. The infantryman still wore a uniform on the inside. Andy remembered what the butcher did. The monster. The fiend, the brute, the sadistic villain, the savage devil in the shape of a man.
"Damn him! Damn the butcher!" Old Frankie snarled as he held his stomach two years ago. The soldier could still remember the hills in the distance, the sound of the guns still bombarding the center position.
Andy could hear the shrieks of the enemy as they charged the guns, could remember raising a shaking rifle to fire at the targets moving through the forest. The soldier's eyes closed. The blood of a reb as terrified as anyone else in the forest splattered up a uniform sleeve. They were beaten out of the woods then. Andy found Thomas's body on the way out.
"They let him go? He should be hung!" James had said when the squad sat at a bar, reading the latest paper mere months ago.
They hadn't done it. He surrendered, his armies shattered, the cruel bastard at their mercy. And here he was.
The old man crept closer on the road. Andy spied a rock nearby. The road ran parallel to a small creek. The soldier paused under the shade of a tree, and crouched as if inspecting something in the water. Andy would wait until the butcher came close. Andy reached into the water, grimacing as the search for the right rock seemed fruitless.
The butcher walked as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't ordered his people to their deaths. This would be a blow for a million victims, a million families.
One of the little ones ran around the tree. "You can't catch me!"
"I can and I shall!" Shouted the other, and went off in pursuit.
Andy twisted to see the old man walking down the road. His mane of hair was visible in the fading light of the sun. For a moment, the soldier could see how gentlemanly he seemed. He oozed charisma, even after so much time. Perhaps it wasn't real. Perhaps it was merely a reputation. Andy found a rock, and studied it as if looking for a specimen.
The butcher walked closer. Andy could hear the cheers from across the field. They chanted the bastard's name over and over. The soldier wondered for a moment if this was wrong. This wasn't the first time Andy got a thrill from killing a man.
His fault. It was all the butcher's fault.
Kill him, kill him, kill him, Thomas and Frankie chanted, in the chorus of a million voices crying for revenge.
"That's a pretty rock!" A voice said, and Andy looked down.
One of the little ones looked up, eyes fixated on the rock in Andy's hand. Andy blinked. The soldier didn't know what to do.
What did one do in the face of evil's children?
"Oh…would you like it?" Andy held out the rock. On further inspection, it glittered in the light.
"Really? Thank you very much!" The little one took the rock and ran back to grandfather, calling his name.
Andy gritted teeth at the butcher's name, even as the cultivated soldier's resolve crumbled. "Thank you," the butcher said with a polite pleasantry as he passed by.
Andy watched him walk down the road. There he was. The butcher. She crouched and snatched up another rock.
The soldier couldn't do it. It wasn't right. Not now. Not like this. But would the soldier's failure to act doom a thousand generations?
Andy hesitated. The old uniform materialized in the soldier's mind. Justice hadn't been seen. Andy watched with Thomas and Frankie's ghosts as the children went home with their old grandfather.
They were his blood, but they were not him. He deserved punishment, but they didn't.
Andy felt tears brimming the edges of her eyes. She turned away, dropping the second rock. It rolled down the side of her dress and splashed gently into the water.
She'd been little more than a child herself when he came. No, she did not hesitate for him. She hesitated for them. There was enough death in the world today. Spare the young ones a little longer. Their elder must be punished, and let it not hurt them by being there. They were young, and the young did not deserve that pain. Andy, or Annie, adjusted her dress and kept walking into the sunset.
She was not a judge, jury and executioner, she was a witness. She hesitated to keep the young from the pain that he inflicted on her and thousands of her friends. She wanted to keep the pain he'd inflicted on the slaves away from anyone if she could help it. She couldn't tear apart families on a whim the way he had. She wouldn’t do to them what he did to her.
The infantryman walked into the sunset, allowing former Army Colonel, mass murderer, and former slave owner Robert E Lee to walk home with his grandchildren.
Former Private Annie prayed justice would be seen, in a house of law.
Perhaps it will be.
Perhaps the slaves would see justice. Someday.