XXXIX

Drake Shoney treated all his friends with airish disdain, even ones he was indebted to. So it was that one of his creditors was Linus Poteat, to whom he owed a gambling debt on account of a busted flush. These two kept low when the Yankees occupied Athens, for they had both been sponsors to the would-be ironclad, The Gar. They frequented Kingpin Cotter's turf where they played cards and gazed askance at Blanche Cotter's cleavage. This distraction had cost Drake Shoney a good sum, to which he pledged a note of $500 to Linus Poteat.

Goddamit why you gotta bother me about that money again, Linus? I said I'm good for it. I just gotta rake in this corn. Interest? Did you read the note? It says interest free. You signed it. I read it to you, you indolent cretin. Learn to read.

Linus looked sad, except he wasn't sober, and was somnambulate. He put the promissory note he couldn't read back into his pocket.

And so the Yankee occupation lifted in late '62, and Drake sold his late corn on a contract of $1,500 in Confederate bonds to General Bragg's agents in order to feed the Army of Tennessee, which was soon to occupy the Nickajack around Shelbyville. No sooner had he received this perceived windfall when he was also handed his conscription notice. He accepted it with confusion, his mouth open. Drafted? Me? But, but...

He went home and after a spell of drinking began to scheme a way out. He had not the specie to buy a substitute. He had $1,500 in Confederate bonds, which was merely an annuity. He couldn't afford to sell a slave. Elzey, his creole overseer, wouldn't have it. He'd never hear the end of it from her. She was already upset he had sold the early corn.

And so at another bender at Kingpin Cotter's flatboat, Drake Shoney threw his arms around his friend Linus Poteat, who was catfishing next to a demijohn.

Linus, before you get drafted, what do you say I pay you $1,000 to go as a substitute for me? That's a lot of money! The going rate for a substitute is half that. I'm telling you, this is the way to go. If you're going to have to fight, you might as well get paid a bounty for it. Am I right? Look here. Drake held out a slip of paper. He didn't even have the bonds in hand, just a scrip signed by General Bragg's agent transferring ownership of the bonds. For something worthless to begin with, this looked altogether suspect. But it would relieve $500 in gambling debt and buy Drake out of the war.

Linus Poteat, who was a doleful drunkard and a dullard, was convinced at length to take the deal. And before Linus could sober up, Drake rode into town in his chaise with his arm around his friend, sharing a flask and waving cigars singing Buffalo Gals. They rode straight to the Limestone County Board of Enrollment where, up until Linus Poteat affixed his signature of an "X” on his army papers, Drake never removed his arm from around Linus. This done, Drake signed over the scrip to Linus Poteat, who was now richer than he ever had been in his life. Or so he thought.

Its an annuity, Linus! They pay you every month, so you don't spend it all at once, you fool! Lord knows you'd lose it all at the table anyway!

In fact, it paid nothing. At length, General Bragg had been turned out of the Nickajack by the brilliant machinations of General Rosencrans and was falling back into Georgia. The Yankees reoccupied the Nickajack. In theory the payments and interest for Linus Poteat's bonds were accruing on a ledger book in Richmond, Virginia, but that was about the extent of it. Meanwhile, his soldiering potential was judged so abysmal that he was sent with an allotment of dunces to the Trans-Mississippi, which was to say Louisiana. His skills as a boiler mechanic, however, were at least passable, and he was thus assigned to the CSS Queen of the West, which had just been captured from the Yankees on the Red River. It was the third year of the war.