Nostalgia (25 page)

The general quaked like a wet dog and slung water from his hair. He took a long drink from the flask and passed it to the aide; then he climbed the low bank back to his uniform. The aide, joining him, produced a towel from a knapsack, and then, accomplished in silence, came the Homeric enterprise of dressing the general, the last turn of which—after the boots, the belt, the sash, the sword, the buttons, the hat, and another swig from the flask—was the lighting of a fresh cigar. The pale-blue smoke, a menagerie of snakes and dragons, warped up into the tree limbs.

Swift and Hayes waited silently and patiently for it to end, and fortunately, when it did, the general and his aide left the spring on a path that led away from their hiding spot in the thicket.

Hayes said, “Maybe we should get back, Billy.”

For an answer, Swift took off running. Hayes quickly turned and looked in the direction from which they’d come and then followed. He stood his musket alongside Swift’s, against a tree, and then put his back to the pool, shed his clothes, and piled them next to Swift’s on the ground. When he was naked and turned toward the water, he saw Swift standing waist-deep in the pool and smiling at him.

“It’s mossy at the edge there,” said Swift, reaching toward him, “you better give me your hand.”

Hayes offered his hand, only to be yanked sideways into the pool and pushed under. He spun free, surfaced, caught his breath, and went after Swift, who was scrambling toward the rock wall. Swift got only his hands on the boulder before Hayes grabbed him around the waist and tugged him back down. He locked Swift’s head in one arm
and splashed water into his face with his free hand. Swift dropped, slipping from Hayes’s grip, found his footing, and butted Hayes in the stomach, knocking him backward. Hayes knelt on the bottom of the pool (a mix of clay and gravel), with only his head protruding, and said, “You’re off your chump, Swift.”

Swift grinned. “You think so?” he said. “Is that your honest opinion?”

Hayes noticed that Swift’s eyes now appeared to be fully open, normal, not at half-mast as before. “Yes,” said Hayes, “it is.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you. ’Cause you know what crazy thing I’m thinking right now? Right now, this minute, I’m thinking we could be in paradise instead of hell.”

He looked away into the woods, took a deep breath, and sighed. He appeared to shudder and then said, “Where’s the sun gone?”

“It’s moved onto that rock,” said Hayes.

Swift turned and looked at the boulder behind him. “That’s inviting enough,” he said.

As they moved toward the boulder, Hayes felt revived by the water—he was hungry and sleepy and full of affection for Billy—but he wasn’t sure the change made him happy; he thought it might be dangerous to his survival. There was no pleasure to the pared mechanism of the warrior, but there was something about it that felt easier, safer. They lay next to each other on the warm rock, on their backs, in the sun. Hayes closed his eyes and had the odd sensation that he and Swift had boarded a conveyance of some sort, a magical boulder-carriage that might roll them out of the Wilderness.

After a minute, Swift said, “I reckon when you play for a genuine ball club there’s no shortage of women after you.”

This remark, combined with the giddy impression of motion, made Hayes laugh. “I reckon so,” he said.

“If you don’t mind a personal question, Hayes, I wonder if you ever … you know … what I’m trying to ask is … was there somebody special you left behind?”

Now the boulder tipped slightly to one side, and Hayes felt a mild wave of nausea. Sarah, having climbed on, knelt at his side with her minty scent and a cool wet cloth for his brow. The pool had revived
him, he thought, and so revived, too, that particular thorny rose, the compelling ache. He noted with dreamy amusement an urge to cover himself.

Swift said, “Never mind, Hayes. I didn’t mean to be curious.”

“I left my sister behind,” said Hayes. “But that’s not the sort of ‘someone special’ you meant.”

“I left my ma behind,” said Swift. “And my little brother Valentine.”

“Valentine?” said Hayes.

“Valentine Swift. Ain’t that a good name? Eleven years old come this July. If there’s anybody in the family gonna play serious ball, it’s him. Quick as a fox, and he can already throw harder than me. Mark my word, Hayes—that’s a name you’ll be reading in the papers someday.”

A strong breeze swept through the woods with a sound like a threshing machine, scattering Sarah and the thread of the conversation, and suddenly Hayes couldn’t recall what Swift had last said. He opened his eyes just in time and long enough to see a whirl of gold-white papery leaves pass a few feet in the air above them.

After what seemed a long silence, Swift said, “Tell me, Hayes, what’s your feelings about the afterlife?”

“Frankly, I haven’t given it much thought,” answered Hayes.

“My ma says we needn’t fear the great change … that’s what she calls dying, the great change. She says on the Day of Judgment we get resurrected. Our bodies get restored, but I’ll be straight with you … after some of what I’ve seen these last two days, I’m not so certain.”

It occurred to Hayes that Swift wanted some kind of reassurance and that the Christian thing to do would be to reassure him. But he suspected that any such attempt on his part would ring hollow. Hayes had always liked the idea of heaven, a place where God’s will was pure and always done, not interfered with by human mischief, but the specifics of the thing—the dying and coming back to life, the rotting and the restoration, the sorting out of the sheep from the goats and so forth—it struck him as unlikely, or at least incomprehensible.

“I don’t know, Billy,” he said, “but I think we should get back now.”

“Come on, five more minutes,” said Swift. “I’m not even good and dry yet.”

They were silent again for a few seconds. Hayes wanted to recall something from the recent past, having to do with goats—Sarah and goats … she’d taken his hand and held it as they looked together out a window—but he couldn’t make the memory come to the surface.

Soon Swift said, sleepily, “I don’t have nobody special either. I’ve never even been in love with a woman, not since I was a kid and got crushes on girls at school.”

Hayes saw Sarah standing before the library windows at Hicks Street. Having just turned to face him, her eyes linger on him for a moment, blankly, and then she tilts her head to one side and gives him a chilling look that seems to say,
Who are you?

Now he saw her at the bend in the stairs in the hallway, looking down at him. His hand rests on the newel post.
If, some months from now
, she says,
your name appears in a certain list in the newspaper … and I don’t feel that I did all I possibly could to dissuade you …
then
I’ll be ashamed
. She gathers the skirt of her dress in one hand, lifts it, and quickly moves out of sight. He listens for her footsteps on the landing overhead and for the opening and closing of her door. It’s cold in the hallway, and he’s alone with the sound of his own breathing.

“You know, Billy,” said Hayes, after some time had passed, “I thought I saw you in the woods this morning … at the front. At the height of the fighting a fellow dropped in next to me, crying that he was shot. Turned out it was his canteen that had got hit. He felt the warm coffee running down his trousers and thought it was blood. I took him for you and called him by your name. He said, ‘I’m not Billy, I’m Albert.’ It was like when your heart skips a beat, only it was something that happened in my mind.”

Swift said nothing.

“I’ve been seeing some things that aren’t really there,” Hayes continued. “Dead soldiers getting up and crawling and the like. I don’t know what all. An old man in a stovepipe hat.”

Swift remained silent, so at last Hayes said, “Do you think it’s just … I don’t know … the sort of thing that happens? Or do you think I should talk to the doctor?”

Swift still said nothing, and when Hayes raised his head to look at him, he saw that the boy had fallen sound asleep.

He decided to leave him be for a few minutes more, even though he was getting antsy about going back. He was glad Swift hadn’t heard his mumbo jumbo about seeing things, for it felt like a lapse in judgment to have spoken about it, a moment of weakness. He looked down and saw a tiny circle of water resting in the palm of Swift’s upturned hand, gleaming in the sun and throwing a star into Hayes’s eyes. A white butterfly, perhaps attracted by the same spur of light, came along and lit on the ball of Swift’s thumb. It lingered there for a few seconds and fluttered away. As if to answer the attention, the fingers on that hand twitched a little. Soon another breeze, gentler than before, quieter, stirred the warm air, and then Hayes heard a faraway clatter of musketry through the woods.

He sat up and shook Swift’s shoulder. “Wake up, Billy. We need to get back.”

Swift opened his eyes but otherwise didn’t move.

“Can you hear that?” said Hayes.

Swift rubbed his eyes and listened for half a minute. “That’s not us,” he said. “It’s too far away.”

“Still,” said Hayes, “it’s time we got back.”

Now Swift sat up but turned his face away. Softly, he said, “I’m not going back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going home.”

“You can’t do that, Billy.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll be taken for a deserter and shot, that’s why. You fell asleep here. You’re still dreaming.”

Swift faced him now. “If you were a gambler,” he said, “what would you reckon to be the better bet … me getting captured and shot as a deserter or me getting killed in there on that so-called battlefield … which ain’t no battlefield at all? Now I’ve seen it, Hayes, I know it’s not for me. I want to go home. I want to go back home and play base ball. I want to get earnest about it, like you. In a little while I want to come down to Brooklyn and watch you in a real match. Wouldn’t that be—”

“But Billy,” said Hayes, “if you desert you can’t ever go home again.”

Swift paused for a moment to absorb this. Then he said, “I’ve made up my mind. And I’d like to have your blessing.”

“I can’t do that, Billy.”

“If you give me your blessing, I’ll have the courage I need.”

Hayes got up and went to where their clothes were piled on the ground. He retrieved Swift’s trousers and threw them at him. As he stepped into his own, he said, “That’s not a fair position to put me in.”

Swift only stared at the blue trousers, which had landed at his feet. After another moment, he said, “No, you’re right, it’s not. Forget I asked you.”

The two of them got dressed now without another word passing between them. Swift sat on the ground to lace his shoes. “When I signed up, I lied to them about my age,” he said at last. “I’m only sixteen.”

Hayes strapped on his belt. “Well, Billy, that wouldn’t make any difference now,” he said.

Swift rested his forearms on his knees for a moment. “We could go together,” he said. “You could wait for me here, and I’ll go get our knapsacks and all the food I can scare up.”

Hayes moved to the nearby tree and retrieved both their weapons. He knelt beside Swift and said, “Look at me, Billy. You need to stop this talk. Now here, take your gun.”

Swift took the gun from him. He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s got into me, Hayes,” he said. “I thought a good bath in cold water was supposed to clear a person’s head, not muddle it. I just got to feeling … well, never mind.”

They stood. Hayes bent for the two forage hats on the ground, put one on his own head and then put the other on Swift’s.

Swift came to attention and saluted him.

Before they left, they stooped together at the edge of the spring and filled their canteens. The sound of the fighting grew louder but stayed far away; perhaps, thought Hayes, it was General Burnside, “going in on the right,” as rumored.

Not more than a yard or two into the thicket, Swift stumbled on a root and tumbled into the brush. He rolled onto his back, looked up at Hayes, and said, “I’d fallen asleep in the sun, that’s all. I was still dreaming.”

Hayes gave him a hand. The boy was light as a feather. No wonder he could hurl himself at grounders the way he did, without injury.

B
ACK AT THE
F
EDERAL LINE
, Hayes fell asleep and dreamed of the lock chamber in Dublin where his parents met their death: In complete silence, the omnibus crashes into the canal with a great burst of silver bubbles, breaks apart from its team of horses, and slowly sinks away, a toy jewel box vanishing into black-green darkness; the half-dozen auburn horses plunge rapidly and then begin slowly to ascend, legs splayed and wafting, manes and tails like seaweed; a beautiful silent spectacle, the thing itself a poem on the subject of troubled sleep. Hayes, dressed in the uniform of the Union army, dives toward the sunken car, lodged aslant at the bottom of the chamber. He sees his sister’s face behind one of its dark windows. She frowns and shakes her head. She places one hand flat against the glass and smiles, farewell. He means to break through with the stock of his musket, but he has lost his weapon and has run out of air besides. He rockets upward, and when he emerges, gasping, there is only the churning smoke of the Wilderness, and the surface of the water in flames.

From out of the smoke, he hears the colonel, softly crooning, “Steady, boys, steady, steady, steady now,” and at first he thinks he’s speaking to the frightened horses in the water, but it turns out the commander’s trying to embolden a band of fleeing soldiers, Hayes’s comrades, who are leaping over a wooden railing, retreating up the steep cobblestone incline, abandoning him.

He tries to call to them but can make no sound.

G
ENERAL
G
RANT DID ORDER
a new attack for six o’clock, but the Confederates wouldn’t wait that long. Shortly after four, with bugle blasts and a shrill chorus of the rebel yell, they charged into the
slashing before the Federal works. Behind the refortified entrenchment, the Second Corps infantry opened fire. From the intersection of the Brock and Orange Plank Roads, Union artillery batteries launched shell and case toward the woods and into the clearing.