Maryland, My Maryland

In Maryland, My Maryland (a selection from the short story collection Fire Ants and Other Stories by Gerald Duff), on the way to the Antietam, MD battleground in 1862, a common soldier in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is one of three from the same plantation in Mississippi -- the son and heir of the Sutcliffe holdings, Major Jeremy; one self-educated slave Catullus; and the speaker in the narrative, Willie Magee, son of the overseer of the plantation. Matters of race, intellect, war, and love are entangled beyond solving as the battle rages.