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it’s cold.”
    Charley said nothing but he remembered a night on guard duty. Down along the river he was put on picket duty, making sure there would be a warning if the Rebs on the other side of the river decided to attack. That night he was hunkered down behind an oak to get out of the wind—it was so cold he was reminded of Minnesota—and he heard a voice come from across the river, low and in a soft drawl.
    â€œHey, Union, can you hear me?”
    Charley didn’t answer.
    â€œBlue belly, are you deaf?”
    Oh well, Charley thought, why not talk to them? “What do you want?”
    â€œJust to talk, maybe do a little trading.”
    â€œTrade bullets,” Charley said. “That’s all you want.”
    â€œNaw—it’s too cold to fight. I’ve got me some good cut tobacco over here. You got any coffee? We’re down to burned oats for coffee of a mornin’.”
    As it happened Charley had an extra half pound of coffee beans he’d been issued that afternoon. For months they hadn’t had coffee at all and had been using burned oats themselves for a hot morning drink, but when ration came, as usual the army would get it wrong and issue triple rations. Now there was a glut of coffee.
    Charley didn’t use tobacco but he knew men who did, and Southern tobacco was much better than the foreign tobacco available to the Union army now that the South had seceded. He could trade the tobacco for bread, pies and leather to fix his shoes.
    â€œHow we going to trade?” Charley called back.
    â€œI got me a plank. I’ll throw a line over to your side on a rock and you pull the plank across with the tobacco and I’ll pull it back with the coffee. Don’t you shoot me when I stand up.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    There was a half-moon and Charley peeked around the oak and watched as a slight figure stood up across the river. He was dressed poorly, his feet wrapped in what looked like sacks and his coat tattered and worn. Even in the moonlight he could see that the boy’s face was dirty. He thought, I probably look the same. But the Reb looked even younger than Charley.
    â€œMind the stone,” the boy called, and threw a rock with a string tied to it. The river was forty feet wide and the string snarled on the first toss and he had to retrieve it and toss it twice more before the rock made it. Charley moved from behind the oak and picked up the string. He kept low—couldn’t help it—but in afew minutes he had pulled the board across the river and found the tobacco wrapped in a cloth. He wrapped his coffee beans and put the package on the plank.
    â€œAll right—pull it back,” he called, and the piece of wood made its way back across the water. Charley watched it until it reached the other bank and then he moved behind the oak, squatted down out of sight and tucked the tobacco inside his coat.
    â€œHey, blue belly—you still there?”
    â€œI’m here.”
    â€œThis coffee looks good. Can you get more?”
    â€œSome.”
    â€œLet’s trade again tomorrow night. I can get all the tobacco you need.”
    â€œAll right.”
    There was another silence, then: “Where you from, Union?”
    â€œMinnesota.”
    â€œWhere’s that?”
    How could he not know where Minnesota was? “Up north—north of Iowa.”
    â€œOh. I’m from Alabama. You a farmer?”
    â€œI worked on farms.”
    â€œMe too. What do you grow?”
    â€œPotatoes, corn, squash, wheat and oats and barley.”
    â€œSame as us except we have greens and ’baccy and some rice in the bottoms. This is right stupid, ain’t it?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHere we be, both farmers, talking and trading goods and tomorrow or the next day we got to shoot at each other.”
    I hope, Charley thought, you don’t hit me.
    â€œAin’t it stupid?” the boy