High Hearts (25 page)

“I don’t believe you!” Jennifer crashed through the hall and out of the hotel.

“I think we’d better go after her,” Hazel said. They hurried out the door after her.

Jennifer was beating on Big Muler’s chest. “Open it, open it! Open it right this minute.”

Muler kept backing away from her.

Wild, she picked up the crowbar and tore off the lid. She snatched the lantern from Timothy and ran the light up and down the pieces. She seemed confused. Then she put down the lantern beside the coffin, reached in, and picked up Greer’s head.

Everyone stood still.

“It’s all right, Greer, honey. It’s all right. You’re home now.” Jennifer cradled his head in her arms.

Lutie edged up alongside of her. “Jennifer, I think you might want to sit down and have a glass of water.”

Jennifer whirled around, turning her back on Lutie. “You can’t have him! He’s my baby!”

Hazel and Lillian carefully moved toward Jennifer. She was incoherent now. If anyone tried to get close to her, she backed off, tightly clutching her son’s head.

Big Muler pounced. Jennifer screamed bloody hell. She wouldn’t give up the head. He held her immobile, but she wouldn’t release her grasp. When Hazel attempted to get the head from her, Jennifer snarled and then tried to bite her son’s head. She was actually trying to eat him.

Horrified, Lillian picked up a piece of wood next to the stationmaster’s cubbyhole and cracked Jennifer over the head with it.

As Jennifer fell, she moaned, but she did not release her prize so easily. Lutie pried her fingers from his skull, then picked up the head and put it in the coffin. She didn’t know how she did it, but she did. She had done things on this day she never thought anyone could do.

As Big Muler nailed up the coffin, Hazel observed, “It’s not all Greer’s body.”

“I know,” Lutie said. “But the parts belong to some mother’s son.”

They put the coffin in Jennifer’s wagon. Hazel instructed Jennifer’s servant to bury the body as quickly as possible. Another servant placed Jennifer in the back of the wagon and drove her home.

Lutie and the women dragged themselves back to the
hotel. Grits apologetically put them in a servant’s room that he’d saved for them on the top floor. He hauled in some old corn cob mattresses.

After what they’d been through, they wanted to sleep. They didn’t care where.

Lutie wondered if this day would come back to haunt her. She feared worse days lay ahead. She fell asleep without calling for Emil.

Soldiers, bloody cards in a scattered deck, filled hospitals and private homes from Manassas to Richmond in one direction, Manassas to Lexington in the other.

As the trains brought boys into Howard’s Grove Hospital and Chimborazo Hospital, Henley’s fury escalated. He should have been there. Any uniformed lad with a bandage on his arm was the darling of the city. Not that the young men didn’t deserve praise, but Henley wanted to shrivel in his uniform. Men as inexperienced as Philip St. George Cocke, an unstable character if ever there was one, formed the Nineteenth Infantry from Albemarle and fought with them.

He received a telegram from Lutie, informing him of her labors. He was shocked to realize the war had reached his wife.

Further compounding his discomfort was the continual stream of newspaper reports and special editions naming the commanding heroes of Manassas. P.G.T. Beauregard was hailed as the Confederate Napoleon. Joseph E. Johnston, the overall commander, received praise, though not nearly as lavish as for that Creole, Beauregard, the lion of Sumter. What was even more peculiar, from Henley’s point of view, was that the report of victory was signed by Jefferson Davis. He knew
that Davis left on a train to see the battle. Since they both lived in the Spotswood Hotel, Henley was apprised of his president’s comings and goings whether he wanted to be or not. As of the last two days, he preferred not. Every inebriated nitwit plastered himself to the Spotswood like a spitbug on June grass. The partying, the noise, and the puking were not even diminished by the arrival of the first wounded. If the flotsam of the Confederacy didn’t shut up tonight, Henley was going to pass among them with a shotgun. Enough was enough.

But the report from Davis nibbled at Henley’s curiosity. He would be up for reelection soon. Clearly the president wished the glory of Manassas to rub off on himself. Davis had military experience, and everyone knew (because Davis made certain they knew) that he’d rather be in charge of the army than be in charge of the government. But he kept his creed, “Duty. Honor. Country.” And his creed demanded he be their president. For a man who wanted to fight, he was suspiciously eager to be reelected. Rumor had it that Davis actually feared Beauregard since the latter had won acclaim at Fort Sumter. Henley decided he’d keep an eye on that backstage drama, and perhaps he’d be able to peep behind the wings this Thursday on Kate Vickers’s receiving day. As her salon was Richmond’s most brilliant, surely one or all of the actors would appear on her stage.

Kate Vickers! Yet another reason to be cast into the jaws of wretchedness. Her husband’s name was mentioned prominently in dispatches. “Mars Vickers, aptly named” began one. Another recounted that because he had performed the Herculean labors of a colonel, he was promoted to one. Henley, passionately curious about the man he perceived to be his rival, gleaned bits of information like a mouse hoarding pellets of bran stolen from the feed manger. “Rebellious,” “plainspoken,” “brave, but no political sense”—these sentiments heated Henley’s imagination.

Mars Vickers twinkled, a smaller star in the celestial firmament of Beauregard, Johnston, Bartow, Bee, and the apparently magical Colonel Jackson. Henley Chatfield might as well be a clod of mud. He consoled himself with the fact that Robert E. Lee didn’t get to the fight either. No doubt Lee was as condemned to drudgery as Henley was.

Walking across Exchange Alley, Henley was jolted out of his reverie by a tap on the shoulder from Maud Windsor.

“Colonel Chatfield, I’m so happy to see you. I’m still overwhelmed by God’s bounty to our infant nation!” Maud’s face glowed.

“Yes, yes,” Henley said, as enthusiastically as he could.

“I received word this morning that my husband is in Charlottesville tending to the wounded. Your wife has been of inestimable value to him. Jeffrey’s exact words were ‘She thinks naught for herself but only of the men. Whatever I accomplish here, it is greatly due to this good woman’s efforts.’ ”

“What they all must have endured.” Henley worried about the strain of nursing on Lutie. He regarded her as fragile ever since Jimmy’s death and the appearance of Emil.

“Well, it’s over now, isn’t it?”

“We’ve won a battle, Mrs. Windsor, not the war.”

“How could they possibly risk another humiliation like that? And where will they find more men willing to die like slaughtered animals? They must beg for peace.”

“I truly wish I could say that will happen, madam, for it would bring me much happiness.”

She cocked her head and looked up at him. “Why, what do you think will happen?”

“They will appoint a new general. They will raise and train more troops. They have their pride. They must fight again, if for no other reason than to avenge their honor. Unfortunately, they also believe they have a just cause. It’s my belief that they are now aroused as one nation.”

She considered this. “But do you really think, sir, that they would hazard another drubbing before the world?”

“If the situation were reversed, which thanks be to God it’s not, would we fold our hands and quit?”

“Certainly not.”

He smiled. “Remember, Mrs. Windsor, that until a few months ago they were our brothers. As we would act, so will they.”

The Warrenton Turnpike cut straight across the rolling meadows, which got flatter the further northeast one traveled. Mars led a patrol out of the camp. The continued celebrating created its own casualties. A few men shot each other in revelry. One fool blasted his foot off while dancing and firing his sidearm into the ground.

New men arrived every day. More mouths to feed. Provisions couldn’t accommodate the ever increasing horde. Mars fumed that even with a railroad running from the valley into Manassas, where in blue hell were the grain supplies, fresh ammunition, even simple medicines?

The Confederate army was sinking into its own filth. No one had considered the effects of over twenty thousand men shitting, vomiting, and pissing wherever they pleased. One would be better off sitting in the paddocks than with his fellow man.

As Mars’s small patrol picked its way along the road, rutted from the heavy rain and constant abuse from guns and wagons, Geneva could still see unburied corpses. No matter how people worked, they couldn’t get the bodies in the ground fast enough. The Yankees ran, leaving no burial detail behind and requesting no permission for a patrol to return to bury and honor their dead.

Confederate soldiers, assisted by townspeople, started burying Northern dead. Aside from the sweet, overpowering smell, the task was made more macabre by the continuous flock of sightseers who arrived daily. The battlefield often degenerated into theater with more than one polite gentleman or lady observer fainting from the sight and the stench. So much for glory.

Geneva passed a row of hastily dug graves. Bare feet stuck out of the ground. The gravediggers, in compensation for the repugnance of their chore, had stripped the bodies clean. Better that boots be on the feet of the living than the dead. The Confederacy needed every supply it could get.

The big prize, twenty-seven captured cannons, was lovingly attended to by the artillery. Nash commented that the officers seemed less like soldiers than little boys gloating over hard-won marbles.

Mars trotted to the rear of the little column. “Gimme a light.”

Banjo plucked the cigar from his mouth and handed it to Mars. Amused that Mars was having a hard time lighting his pipe, Banjo advised, “You’d be better off to smoke a cigar.”

“Hate the smell.” Mars sucked in mightily. “There!” As Mars handed the cigar back to Banjo, his pipe went out again. “Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”

Banjo and Geneva laughed. Nash, who wasn’t paying much attention, spotted a wounded man lying on his back, moving his arms. Nash turned out of the column.

“Nash!” Geneva called out. “Where are you going?”

“I think that fellow needs help.”

“Get back here.” Geneva kept her voice soft.

“Get back here, soldier. Double quick!” Mars snapped. “When your sergeant gives you an order, you’d better damn well listen to him. That body is moving because it’s full of maggots. There’s nothing left alive here.”

Displeased, Nash rejoined the patrol. He glared at the stripe on Geneva’s sleeve, sewn on crookedly since Geneva did it herself. He said nothing.

“Piggy, what’s your problem?” Mars asked.

Fed up, Nash snarled back. “I don’t much like taking orders from—someone half my age!”

“He may be half your age, but he’s twice the man you are.”

Outraged, Nash hissed through clenched teeth, “If you weren’t my commanding officer, I’d lay you to whaleshit!”

Mars, alongside him now, said, “I’d like to knock those funny ideas out of your head.”

Outraged, Nash shoved the major hard. He nearly fell off his horse. Mars dismounted, handing his reins to Banjo.
“Piggy, now’s your chance.” Nash flew off the back of his horse. Mars said to his men, “You aren’t seeing anything.”

“Nash, don’t.” Geneva barely controlled her voice.

“Shut up, or I’ll knock the shit out of you.” Nash glowered.

Both men raised their fists and circled around one another. Nash lashed out his foot and caught Mars by the ankle. The bigger man crashed to the ground. Nash hurtled himself on Mars. As they rolled over on the trampled ground, the arm of the dead body moved again, as though waving them on.

Nash grabbed Mars’s neck and choked him. Face red, Mars jammed his thumbs with a sharp upward thrust into Nash’s armpits. Nash released his grip, and Mars lowered his head, charging into Nash’s midsection.

Geneva bit her lip until it bled.

Nash was on the ground this time with Mars on top of him. He struggled to get up, but Mars pinned him. Furious, Nash twisted his head and sank his teeth into Mars’s forearm.

“You son of a bitch.” Mars yanked his arm upward.

Nash threw him off and faced him again. Mars punched him hard in the side. Nash retaliated with a blow to the shoulder, but he dropped his guard, and Mars pulverized him with a clean, powerful right to the jaw. Nash sank to his knees, blood trickling out of his mouth. He started to rise, and Mars delivered a withering uppercut. Nash was out cold.

Geneva started to dismount.

“Stay mounted,” Mars gasped. He walked painfully to his horse, withdrew his canteen, and poured water on Nash’s face. Nash opened his eyes. “That was our get-acquainted fight, Piggy.” Mars’s side hurt him.

Nash shook his head to clear it. He wobbled to his feet and put up his fists to renew the struggle.

“No more,” Mars said. “Do you want to transfer out?”

“Not until I can whip your ass good.”

“Have it your way.” Mars climbed back in the saddle.

Geneva rode in silence for the rest of the patrol.

Nash had not failed in his duty. He overcame his fear and performed as a soldier during the battle, but he derived no satisfaction from his courage. Nash was slipping away from Geneva. She no longer knew what he thought nor could she divine what he felt.

*    *    *

Late in the afternoon, Mars sent his detachment back to camp except for Sam Wells. Mars and Sam detoured on the Old Alexandria and Warrenton roads, and finding nothing of much interest, rode across fields to the new Warrenton Road. The stone bridge crossing Bull Run was directly ahead. Three lovely arches spanned the stream, still swollen from the heavy rain. A lone Confederate officer walked up the embankment to the bridge.

Mars stopped. “Hello, sir.”

“Hello. A beautiful little bridge, isn’t it? Thank God for the Romans, or we’d never know how to construct an arch.” The man was handsome in that way women found men attractive: a sunny, open face.