1862 (19 page)

“Praise the Lord, a miracle,” said Billy while Melcher watched in angry disbelief, “He’s healed, sir, Our beloved Sergeant Grimes is healed, God bless him, sir, he’s saved,”

The rest of the company had stopped and stood in a rough circle around them, “Come here,” said Melcher to Grimes,

“I need my crutch,” mumbled Grimes and someone threw it to him, He lurched awkwardly to the captain and stood with his head down.

“Unwrap the bandage,” Melcher ordered,

“I’ll bleed to death,” said Grimes and there was snickering from the men.

“Do it,” snarled Melcher.

Slowly, grudgingly, Grimes unwrapped the bandage. It covered a knee that was clean and unhurt.

“Glory hallelujah,” yelled Billy. “Another fucking miracle. My beloved sergeant has been cured. Now we can go and win the war.”

Melcher glared at Grimes. “Sergeant, you are a disgusting piece of shit. You have two choices. You can be court-martialed and shot for desertion in the face of the enemy, or you can be broken to the rank of private and never again command men. What’s your choice? Now!”

Grimes looked around him. There wasn’t a single sympathetic face there. “Private,” he muttered.

Melcher walked over and ripped the stripes off Grimes’s shirt. “Now you’re Private Grimes, you rotten son of a bitch.”

Melcher looked at his depleted company. A third of them had fallen in the day’s fighting. “Harwell!”

“Yessir.”

“Private Harwell, you’re a big-mouth smartass and probably worthless to boot. But you’re Corporal Harwell from now on and you’ve got the squad, You treat Private Grimes well now,”

Nathan had become separated from Lieutenant Winton, which was a relief to him and probably to Winton, He wasn’t concerned about getting lost, The army was a vast migration, All he had to do was follow its lead. The army was an enormous herd of human cattle, all heading north.

Like the rest of the army, Nathan had been headed in that direction for a couple of days. The front lines and the Confederate army were well to his south and rear. Now: however, the scent of smoke filled the air and soon eye-stinging clouds of the stuff played hell with his vision, Curious, Nathan urged his horse in the direction from which it came,

After a few minutes he rode into a large clearing along a railroad siding. The ground around the tracks was piled high with small mountains of crates and bags, many of which were burning. Where they could, soldiers were strewing the contents about like trash, Scores of other Union soldiers ran about, setting fires and smashing into crates, while still others loaded goods onto flatcars.

Nathan found an officer and asked the obvious: What was going on?

The officer, a short, stout lieutenant with glasses, spat angrily on the ground, “Our orders are to leave nothing to the damned rebs, What we can’t take back, we destroy,”

With that, the lieutenant turned and stalked away. He had better things to do than talk with nosy civilians.

Nathan tethered his horse and walked around the activity for a few minutes. The wastage of material was incredible. Clothing was being burned and food containers, particularly bags of flour and coffee, were being ripped open, their contents strewn about or mixed with dirt, Some imaginative soldiers had even made a point of urinating and defecating where they could to spoil some of the rest. It was organized vandalism by a group of angry adult delinquents.

Nathan had just decided he had better things to do when there was the sound of shots, followed by hollers and shrieks. He turned to see a small group of horsemen charging towards him. Some of Jeb Stuart’s rebel cavalry didn’t want the supplies burned.

Nathan’s immediate response was to flee, but he had wandered too far from his horse. Several cavalrymen were bearing down on where he stood, but, with his bad leg, he didn’t think he had a ghost of a chance of escaping on foot. Most of the Union soldiers had laid down their rifles to better destroy the supplies, and were running about in confusion looking for them. Nathan found a rifle laying alongside a crate and grabbed it.

Quickly: he checked that it was loaded and cocked it. A rider was almost on him: howling and waving a sabre.

Nathan raised it to his shoulder and fired. The recoil knocked him back a step: but when the smoke cleared both horse and rider were on the ground. He had shot the horse through the skull.

The rebel cavalryman was dazed but conscious, and was trying to get a pistol out of his belt. Nathan ran up and smashed the rifle butt against his skull and then hit him a second time to make sure he was dead. He picked up the fallen man’s revolver, cursing the fact that he wasn’t carrying his own. It was in his saddlebag.

Again, he checked his weapon and saw that it was loaded. He heard another howl and a second horseman bore down on him. Nathan gripped the pistol with both hands, and fired at close range. There was a scream of animal pain and anger and, as before, both horse and man fell to the ground. They were so close that Nathan had to jump aside to avoid getting crushed.

This time, however, it was the man who didn’t get up. One of his legs was smashed, and there was a gaping hole in his chest. His eyes were open and he glared at Nathan. Then they glazed over and rolled back in his head.

Rifle fire erupted around him as the fat little lieutenant got his men organized. More horses and men tumbled to the ground. It was too much for the remaining rebel cavalry. With a few parting pistol shots that hit nothing, they rode off.

“That was damn fine shooting for a civilian,” the lieutenant said. “You sure you ain’t in our army?”

“Maybe I just enlisted,” Nathan said. His hands were trembling and he had difficulty walking over to his own horse and mounting it. He noted thankfully that a soldier had put the wounded horse out of its misery.

He rode a few yards away and stopped. He had spent years in the army and had served on the frontier fighting the Indians, but this was the first time he’d ever known that he’d actually killed anyone. Shooting at movement in the night or at a tree that didn’t seem quite right was one thing. Blowing a man’s chest out or beating him over the skull was another. Nathan leaned over and vomited into the grass. He hoped no one was looking. Then he decided he didn’t much care.

   The Union retreat from the Culpeper-Fredericksburg area had been long and slow. The army withdrew in good order, first caring for the wounded, and then tending to the mountains of supplies. That which could be moved was sent back to Washington by train and wagon: while the excess was destroyed. As the army sullenly moved back north: the sky was darkened by the smoke of scores of fires devouring the many tons of supplies that had just been brought southward at great effort and expense.

The rebels would get some rewards, but not that much. Some foodstuffs, for instance, did not lend themselves to burning. The rebels would eat their fill, but only for a while. Southern papers had published accounts that the Union soldiers had poisoned some of the food. It wasn’t quite true. As Nathan had seen, Union soldiers had urinated and defecated on piles of food or ripped open sacks so vermin could get at them. Then they had left signs saying the food was spoiled and why. They hadn’t counted on so many of the rebels being illiterate. A number had eaten the bad stuff and gotten sick. Nathan felt no sympathy for them. It beat getting shot.

The gloom of the defeat and retreat had been somewhat mitigated by the news of a bloody federal victory by General Ulysses Grant at a place called Shiloh.

The only good thing to come from the travesty was Rebecca’s response to his safe return. She had greeted him with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek that had lingered a second longer than he’d hoped for.

He had found her at the Washington office of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She had grabbed a shawl and taken him outside. While they walked down the street, she grasped his arm tightly and he could feel the warmth of her breast against it.

“Everything,” she said, “you must tell me everything.”

With some surprise, he found himself unburdening himself totally. He told her of watching the battle and of nearly getting killed by rebel cavalrymen. Then he told her how sick he had been after killing the two enemy soldiers.

In the course of talking, Rebecca picked up the hint that something terrible had happened to him in earlier years. Skillfully, she pried out the story of the Apaches and the terrible destruction of his small command. He even wound up telling her about his recurring nightmares and felt relieved that he had shared them with someone. He felt lighter and better for having done so. Had Amy been alive, she would have been the one he confided in. Now it was the dark-haired and equally troubled Rebecca Devon.

“Do you still think it was your fault?”

“No,” he said, still conscious of the delicious feel of her body through God only knew how many layers of clothing. “I had pretty well gotten over it before the battle, but what I saw confirmed it. Too many unexpected things happen in war. Those rebels had no right being there at the supply depot, but they were. The Apaches shouldn’t have been in my patrol’s way, but they were. I had plenty of time to think of it during the retreat from Culpeper, and now I know I didn’t cause either event to happen and I couldn’t have stopped them if I’d wanted to. Terrible things take place in life and war and there’s nothing anybody can do.”

“Except not have a war in the first place.”

“True,” he said. “Now tell me, what are you doing with the Anti-Slavery Society and not in the hospitals?”

She shrugged and smiled grimly. “As much as I try, I’m not really much good with the wounded. Waiting for Thomas to die was the extent of my skills. Later perhaps, when the soldiers are truly convalescing, I will go and read to them and write letters for them. Right now, there really isn’t much for amateurs to do, so I’m concentrating on getting people to pressure Mr. Lincoln to free the slaves.”

Talking about her own activities made her exuberant. “We’ve been talking to congressmen and cabinet members. Why, I’ve even spoken to Mr. Seward as part of a delegation that went to influence him. He supports emancipation and he said he would urge the president to act as soon as possible.”

“Do you think he will?”

As they walked, Nathan found his cares and worries disappearing in the presence of this attractive and intelligent woman. He hadn’t felt this way at all since losing Amy. He found he enjoyed it and felt no guilt over Amy’s memory. He wondered why his first impressions of Rebecca Devon were so unenthusiastic. How could he not have liked her from the start?

“I think we’re getting closer to the Negro’s emancipation,” she said. “McClellan’s defeat was a setback, but Grant’s victory at Shiloh somewhat offset it. Mr. Lincoln will free the slaves this year and then we’ll see marvelous things happening.”

Nathan wasn’t so sure that it would be marvelous, but it would certainly be interesting. Rebecca’s exhilaration was infectious and he felt wonderful. He would not spoil the moment by debating the point with her.

“You haven’t had that dream about the Apaches recently, have you?” Rebecca asked. Nathan realized he hadn’t. “No, not at all. What made you ask?”

“Because I just realized you’re not limping anymore either.”

Shiloh was a creek in Tennessee near a small town called Pittsburg Landing. It amused Nathan that the North and South couldn’t even agree on the naming of their shared battles. The South named them after the nearest town, while the North after the nearest creek, river, or other geographic feature. As a result, Bull Run was also the Battle of Manassas, and Shiloh bore that name and Pittsburg Landing. The Confederates called the recently concluded debacle the Battle of the Culpeper, while the Union called it the Battle of the Rappahannock. Nathan fervently hoped historians would be confounded forever. He did concede the Confederates one point. Culpeper was easier to spell than Rappahannock.

He was in his study and pondering this when former sergeant Fromm brusquely announced visitors for General Scott, and that they were directly behind him. The unexpected visitors were Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of War Stanton, and they virtually walked in with Fromm. John Hay trailed behind them and managed a quick grin towards Nathan. All of this said that the visit indicated a high degree of interest by Lincoln and his war cabinet in what General Scott was thinking. Lincoln’s absence from the group also indicated that he wasn’t ready to commit to precipitating a change in the command structure.

Fromm showed them in and Nathan made them comfortable until General Scott entered, which was only a moment later. Both Nathan and Hay stayed in the room but behind their respective principals.

“You know why we have come,” Seward said with characteristic bluntness.

“To discuss the conduct of the war, I presume,” General Scott answered.

“Indeed,” Seward said and Stanton nodded. Both men were solemn to the point of anger.

“We have wasted an army,” Stanton virtually snarled. “McClellan’s behavior was disgraceful and irresponsible.”

It had been former secretary Cameron who had pushed for McClellan’s appointment. Stanton did not like the general he’d inherited, and the feeling was reciprocated. Both Stanton and McClellan had strong and dominant personalities, but only one could be in charge.

“In your professional opinion, General, what on earth happened at Culpeper?” asked Stanton. “We sent an army of seventy thousand to fight Lee, ninety thousand if you count those in the Shenandoah, and they all came running home with nothing accomplished except the wastage of a large number of men and of hard-bought material.”

Nathan thought the retreat was more of a slow walk back than a run, but held his counsel.

“To put it in the vernacular,” Scott said, “he was bamboozled and finagled by General Lee. McClellan departed Washington fearing defeat more than anything and convinced he was outnumbered. Thus, when he began seeing shadows, he permitted them to take on substance.”

“Shadows?” asked Seward.