Departures (28 page)

Marjorie’s laugh displayed small, even white teeth. “All right, General, since you put it that way, let’s cut us a rug!”

Thorpe was one of the last veterans still dancing when the band played “Dixie.” The armory echoed with shouts and cheers and old men’s voices cracking as they tried to turn loose Rebel yells. Thorpe yelled with the best of them, pumping his fist in the air.

Marjorie stared, wide-eyed, not just at him but at all the old soldiers; maybe, just for a moment, she too saw them as they’d been so long ago. Emboldened by that thought, Thorpe leaned forward and pecked her on the cheek. She smiled and squeezed his hands between hers. “Thank you, General,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed this evening much more than I thought I would.”

“So have I, Miss Marjorie,” he said. “Oh, I’m tired, I’ll not deny, but I don’t grudge a minute of it.”

But when, a little past midnight, he got into a nightshirt and pulled back the covers on his steel cot, he felt a dull pain in the left side of his ribcage. He curled his lip in mild scorn at the weakness of his flesh. Though he hadn’t done so much in years, he was sure he’d be fine come morning. He lay down, prayed briefly, and fell asleep.

He awoke in darkness, amid old men’s snores. The pain was back, and suddenly seemed big as the world. He sat up, started to get out of bed …

Thorpe looked down at the cuff of his gray coat. It bore the double twist of braid that showed captain’s rank. He looked at the hand protruding from the cuff. The flesh was smooth and unspotted, the tendons no longer upraised like old tree roots pushing through thin soil.

He had no time for surprise. He and the rest of the men in gray and butternut and occasional looted Yankee blue hurried through the cover afforded by a stand of old pine woods. The trees thinned ahead. He could see the line of the Weldon Railroad, the burned ruins of what had been Reams Station south of Petersburg, the low parapet the Federals had thrown up twenty or thirty yards east of the train tracks.

“Keep your ranks, boys,” he called to the men of Company A. The troopers of the Chicora Guards just grinned and
nodded. They’d been through enough fights to know what to do without being told.

The Federals held their fire, no doubt waiting for their foes to reach a point from which they would be unable to get away cheaply. Suddenly, from not far behind Thorpe, Brigadier General William McRae shouted, “Don’t fire a gun now, but dash for the enemy.”

The soldiers in gray traded grim looks. If McRae’s ploy failed, they were the ones who would pay the butcher’s bill. No choice, though, but to obey. Drawing his Army Colt, Thorpe cried “Forward!” and ran to the attack at the head of his company.

The Rebels burst out of the pine woods yelling like fiends. The Northern soldiers yelled, too, in surprise and alarm. Muzzle flashes stabbed outward from the parapet; thick clouds of black-powder smoke rose above it.

A Minié ball cracked past Thorpe’s head. Confederate soldiers fell, screaming and writhing in pain. But the charge was across only a couple of hundred yards of ground. Since the Rebels did not pause to fire and reload their rifle muskets—always deadly dangerous out in the open—they drew near the parapet before too many of them fell.

Thorpe tripped on a cross-tie as he ran across the railroad track. He stumbled, almost fell, caught himself just in time. Then he was at the low Federal earthwork. A man in blue scrambled up to meet him, thrust with a bayoneted Springfield. Thorpe fired the Colt pistol at point-blank range. The Federal wailed and reeled backward, clutching his belly.

Other southern men were up on the Union works now, too, some fighting hand to hand, others shooting down into the trenches behind the parapet. Some bluecoats fired back, but more threw down their guns and threw up their hands in token of surrender.

The cheering Confederates swarmed forward. A ragged private seized a flag from a color bearer who seemed too stunned to stop him. A glum Federal who wore a major’s shoulder straps on the plain blue blouse of a private turned to Thorpe and said, “Captain, your men fight well; that was a magnificent charge.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thorpe said, nodding to his courteous captive.

The Rebels began hustling more prisoners off to the rear. They must have bagged a couple of thousand Yankees, Thorpe thought proudly. But the cost was not light. Men of the Chicora Guards who’d seemed to have charmed lives all through the
company’s hard fighting were down now, dead or wounded. No doubt the story was the same all through the Forty-seventh North Carolina. The surgeons would be busy tonight.

Thorpe peered east. The Federals not hit or captured were abandoning their works and retreating in that direction. They wouldn’t tear up any more of the Weldon Railroad here, not for a good while to come; Confederate cavalry—Wade Hampton’s boys—galloped up from the south to speed the Yankees on their way.

The rattle of gunfire slowed to a lethargic
pop-pop-pop
and finally petered out. Thorpe glanced back over his shoulder. The sun was almost down. Hard to believe the fighting had lasted most of the day. In the middle of the action from the moment it began, he’d had no time to think … about what he was doing here at Reams Station, about how he’d returned to August 1864, to his youth, again.

“That’s over,” he said to no one in particular. “All over.”

“So it is,” agreed the Union major, who he somehow hadn’t gone back with the rest of the prisoners. “So it is—in a way. Welcome, John. We’ve been waiting for you a long time; you’re one of the last to join the ranks.”

Under the orange light of the setting sun, dead and injured men of both sides, their wounds suddenly vanished, sprang to their feet and went around slapping one another on the back. “That was a good shot you nailed me with, Eb.” “Just luck, Willie, just luck. Fact is, I was aiming for Joseph there next to you.”

Proud, bullet-torn battle flags from North and South fluttered together in the evening breeze. Under them, the men of both sides gathered, all sound and well as they had been before the battle started. “I got me some good coffee here,” a Yankee announced. “Who’ll swap me some baccy for it?” A Rebel stepped forward, smiling, to make the trade.

Thorpe stared, not fully understanding, not yet. The northern major touched him on the forearm. “Did it not seem real, John?” he asked quietly. “Was it not as in the old days?”

Then Thorpe knew beyond any doubt. “Yes, by God, it was,” he said.

He woke next morning in a shelter tent he shared with Benjamin Bunn and George Westray. The lieutenants were already up, and bent over a chessboard. They set the game aside to go out with him and take morning roll for the company. He smiled
as he walked in front of the drawn-up men. So many faces he hadn’t seen in so many years!

After the roll was taken, the Chicora Guards lined up for mess call, and then for drill. Before they could begin their evolutions, though, the drummer began the monotonous patter that summoned soldiers gray and blue to battle. “Dismissed to get your war gear!” Thorpe called. Cheering, the men trotted back to their tents and bedrolls, snatched up rifles and cartridge boxes.

Thorpe followed a little more slowly. He wondered which fight it would be today.

“Poor old John,” Jed Ledbetter said as the hearse pulled away from the Soldiers’ Home. He took off his hat and held it over his heart. “Poor old John. He went and missed the grand parade.”

As I’ve said, I love baseball. If I were the athletic type, I would have tried to play. Since I’m not, I sometimes play beer league softball, which is not the same thing at all, at all. Those of you who have done likewise will recognize that a good deal of this story is drawn straight from life. I never met anyone like Michael, though. I wish I had.

YOU FIND ALL KINDS PLAYING BEER LEAGUE
softball. I ought to know. They let me play, for instance.

I’ve been a baseball nut since I was a kid. Unfortunately, I’m also a klutz. I can hit, a little; I can’t field at all. As soon as they saw me with the leather, the rest of the Gators—that’s my team, in case you hadn’t worked it out—took to calling me Dr. Strangeglove, after Dick Stuart, a notorious nonfielding first baseman with the Pirates and Red Sox back in the sixties. I have to say I earned the name.

So when we go out there, I’ll catch some of the time. That’s pretty safe for the team—there’s no stealing in slow-pitch. If we’re way ahead or way behind, I’ll get in an inning or two at first. Mostly I’m a designated hitter. The leagues we play in—a lot of beer leagues, come to that—all fifteen guys on the team get to hit, even if only ten can be on the field at any one time.

I’m also our official scorer, statistician, what have you—damn sight better at that side of the game than playing, worse luck. And at beer and pizza, I’m a champ. That’s as important as the game, just about.

Besides, my girl thinks I look good in the uniform.

Which is more than I can say for some of the Gators who are nine times the ballplayer I’ll ever be. Joe Humphreys, our real first baseman, looks like an avocado with a beard in his dark green softball togs. And Stuart Boileau at short is skinny enough to be a lizard. He has this habit of licking his lips all the time, too, which doesn’t hurt the image. Once at Shakey’s we ordered him a pepperoni-and-bugs pizza. If they would’ve served it, he would’ve eaten it.

All of which brings me around by easy stages to the oddest
looking ball player I ever saw. This was at the start of last year’s spring leagues, and my Gators were in deep Bandini. A couple of guys have been transferred out of state since last fall, and two or three more were working nights for a while. We were plain strapped for troops. A bare ten had shown up for our opener, and our archrivals, the Tomcats, trounced us, 14–5.

I didn’t exactly cover myself with glory in that game, either. I was a fat 0 for 3, though I got on my last time up when their pitcher embarrassed himself by throwing my comebacker eight feet over the first baseman’s head. I razzed him as I stood out there, and he gave it right back. “That’s the only way you’ll ever reach against me,” he said, which was near enough true that I shut up.

After me came our leadoff hitter. Stuart did us proud with a sharp single to center. Like an idiot, I tried to go to third on it, even though the other guys had a fellow with a rocket for an arm out there. Gave it all I had—headfirst dive into the bag. Well, actually shoulderfirst—something went
crunch-pop
when I hit. “Ouch!” isn’t what I yelled. I jammed it good. My right arm was in a sling for the next couple of weeks.

To add insult to injury, I was out.

Sling and all, I showed up at the park next Tuesday night. Even if I couldn’t play, I liked hanging around with the guys—and I can drink left-handed.

It didn’t look like there was going to be a game, though. Only nine of us were there, counting me, which you shouldn’t. You’re supposed to field ten in softball, but it’s legal to go out there with nine. Eight or fewer and you forfeit. “Where’s Roy?” I asked Wes Humphreys, Joe’s little brother (he’s only six-three) and our manager.

“Called me this afternoon—he’s got the flu. Sounded like hell.”

“Bad.” Without Roy we didn’t have a prayer of fielding a team. And with a forfeit, we’d be two games back of the Tomcats right off the bat. In a ten-game season, that’s death.

Wes knew all this better than I did. He hates losing, and won’t take it lying down. So now he called to this fellow sitting in the bleachers watching us loosen up: “Hey, man! You play this game?”

“Me?” The guy looked startled. “A little, maybe.” He had an accent that wasn’t Spanish. Not a good sign, if we were after a ballplayer.

Well, he had to be foreign, or else the melting pot had gone
and melted down. I’d noticed him watching us the week before, too. I couldn’t help it. He was a medium-dark, medium-heavy black guy, maybe thirty, but his hair—he cornrowed it, very neatly—was Irishman red, I mean flaming, and hung past his shoulders. He wore a mustache and goatee that were even brighter. I went to high school with a Japanese kid who spoke pure, hush-ma-mouf Arkansas—turned out his folks had been resettled there during the war, and stayed a while afterward. He jolted me every time he said something. Looking at this guy now was like that—his hair and his hide spectacularly didn’t match.

Wes would have taken him if he was a giant panda covered with chocolate feathers. “Come on down!” he said, waving. “We’ve got open roster slots. You can join us for the season if you want, or sign up and then duck out after tonight—we’ll have more people here next week. Whatever you want.”

Wes is a good talker. He has to be. He sells glassware for a living. You could see the guy thinking it over. Finally he shrugged and ambled on over to us. He didn’t have a uniform, of course, but his clothes were grubby enough to play in: faded Levi’s, a Coors T-shirt, and beat-up running shoes. About what we wear to practice.

He said his name was Michael, with a bit of a guttural on the “ch.” He shook hands with everybody (left-handed with me), then Wes dug our ancient spare glove out of the bottom of his duffel bag.

Michael hadn’t been stretching when he said he played “a little.” He lunged awkwardly for balls when he was playing catch, blocked grounders with his shins or his feet as often as he fielded them cleanly. He threw from the elbow, girl-style, not too straight. I could see Wes regretting things already, but Michael was a warm body, anyhow, and catching he wouldn’t be all that much worse than I was.

When it was Michael’s turn to hit in our warm-ups, Wes, who was pitching BP, waved him to the plate. He looked worse up there than he had in the field. He stood straight up and down, with his left foot so far in the bucket it wasn’t ever pointing at third base: more like at our dugout off third. He held his bat at a funny angle, with his hands a couple of inches apart. Yeah, I know Ty Cobb did the same thing, but Ty Cobb’s grandmother had to be a more stylish hitter than this Michael.

Wes gave him a nice, fat pitch to hit. He took a clumsy swing, missed. He muttered something under his breath and tossed the
ball back. Next pitch, he hit a little ground ball that dribbled between Stuart at short and Pete Sadowski, our third baseman: a hit, sure enough. Not impressive, but it’d look like a line drive in the box score, as the saying goes.