The Last Crossing (40 page)

I was finished. Nobody moved nor spoke. Then someone shouted, “Traitor!” Three more times I heard the word called out, but each time it was a little fainter than the last, until it was nothing but a bird chirp.

A soldier commenced to march up and down on the spot, stamping his boots. His neighbour followed suit. Then another and another. Down below me, hundreds of men fell into step, into cadence, beating a long, muffled drum roll in the night. A vote for what I’d said by show of feet, not hands. Shoulders heaving and rolling in time to the boots thudding against the frozen earth; gaunt, bearded faces drinking in the light of the torches, adding to it their own inward fire until their countenances blazed.

It was months after that wintry night, on a July day hot as a furnace, that I laid a hand on Mr. Burns’s shoulder in the same fashion that those men had laid a hand on mine when I climbed down off that ammunition box pulpit.

Bengough says when I was in the grip of the fever, I raved day and night about the war. I pretend not to remember, but I do. My mind was full of the Wilderness. I reckon what awoke it was the barber who came to shave my head, stropping his razor. Snick, snick, snick. The sound of men sharpening bayonets, an uneasy whisper, the click of stone on steel the night of our last bivouac before crossing the Rapidan River into Virginia.

We had reason to worry going into the godforsaken Wilderness, Satan’s roost. Woods and scrub, brambles and briars, heartbreak farms long-abandoned, reclaimed by second growth. Grant ought to have known it was an army’s graveyard. Hooker marched his men
into it in 1863, and the unburied corpses he left behind when he retreated were waiting for us in the woods, vines twisted around their bones, insects nesting in their skulls. Nothing but a couple of plank roads to move thousands of troops down, one step off them everything became confusion, a meddlesome cat’s cradle, no passage for baggage wagons, artillery.

The generals did as generals will. They found themselves a spot for a battle. Saunders Field, four hundred yards wide and eight hundred yards long, a space hemmed tight by forest, a gully slashed across the middle. We Iron Brigaders formed on the left under Cutler.

Sharp at one o’clock came the brisk tattoo of drummer boys calling us to advance. The hottest part of a hot day, everybody awash in sweat, everybody peeling off knapsacks and coats, letting them drop where they may. The field quivering with splinters of silver, the bayonets we had sharpened for this day. The boys on our right catching it bad, Johnny Rebs pouring flanking fire into them from the cover of the thickets, muskets rattling volleys like an idiot boy running a stick back and forth on a picketfence. Tat, tat, tat, tat. Gunsmoke rolling out of the trees, billowing, flooding Saunders Field. The lucky ones of us wading on in the swirling grey sea while the rest sank. Beside me, Hoagy Pinson singing a psalm in his scared tenor voice.

The New Yorkers wheeled to charge the woods on the right and met a fusillade that cut them down like a scythe cuts grass, down they fell, swathes of bodies. Our cannon booming, playing bloody murder with us as much as the Secession men. My foot landed on a pulpy blue chest and I almost slipped and dropped. Where the rest of him was – legs, arms, head – only the good Lord knew. Maybe the angels were carrying that Billy Yank up to Heaven, piece by piece.

We struck Jones’s Brigade of Confederates, slugged it out at close range, volley after volley tearing holes in both our ranks. Those of us who didn’t taste lead got splashed with the blood of our brothers. We were less than forty yards from Jones’s Brigade when the Confederate ranks shivered in a moment of indecision. Then one Butternut turned tail and ran and the rest followed, humping it for the safety of the timber. We whooped a cheer. Officers waved us forward with their
swords, licks of glitter beckoning us to pelt into the thickets after Johnny Reb.

Sudden twilight dropping on us under the shady trees, fallen logs, heavy brush blocking our way. The gloom filling with the sound of snapping twigs, crackling undergrowth, men tripping, falling, cursing. At every step snagged and clutched; muskets snared in branches, thorns catching sleeves and trousers. The leaves so thick it was impossible to see farther than two or three yards ahead. Our lines beginning to fray, soldiers losing touch with their platoons, wandering in jungly undergrowth. I yelled to Hoagy Pinson. There was a sabre laying at my feet discarded by some fleeing Confederate officer. I picked it up and started to hack us a path.

We went on for two or three hundred yards before the racket I was raising marked us for enemy fire. A sudden blast, a fringe of flame spurting between the trunks, balls whistling, chipping splinters, snipping buds. Twigs, leaves, a shower of green pattering down on my back as I dropped to my face. Hollering to Hoagy, Was he all right? He whispering back, Yes, but keep my blamed voice down. I lifted my head and saw Greyback spooks slipping between the pines, dissolving in the murk.

Hoagy and I creeping on. Another five hundred yards covered and another salvo sent us diving, more grey spectres dodging among the trees, a mockery to the eyes and nerves, Johnny Reb here, there, gone. A sprinkle of sniper fire kept us flinching as we slunk along, small as we could make ourselves. Every twenty yards a deadfall blocked you, turned you to seek another passage. The smallest sound startling us, playing spoons on our hearts. Hoagy and I floundering forward, slithering on our bellies through the green dusk, murmuring directions to one another. Our dead lying thick on the ground, the wounded mumbling and groaning and begging for water as we crawled by them.

There was no sign of the rest of the Brigade, we had lost them. Up ahead, we could hear a fight building, furious yells, the sporadic pop of muskets growing to a steady thump. Where the pines thinned atop a ridge, we saw a carpet of blue coats pushing up a slope. We
scrambled after them, came panting up the rise just as the trees shook with musket fire, spun our boys round, spilled them down on us, a foam of white faces, wild eyes, gaping mouths. They tore past, flinging away cartridge cases, canteens, muskets, anything they could to lighten flight, bounding over fallen logs and fallen comrades.

The sudden rout froze me and Hoagy. I couldn’t believe my eyes, the Iron Brigade pulling a cowardly skedaddle. Then I heard the Confederates coming, yodelling like fiends, spotted them streaming down the hill, whirling through the pines. Before I knew it I had caught the terror too, and turned down the hill, chasing the rest of the boys like the fleetest bounty man, legs threatening to run away on me, springy branches lashing my face, thorns ripping my skin. I tossed my rifle aside, jostled and shouldered the slew-foots and the wounded aside, ran for my life in a lily-livered panic.

I busted out of the woods and out on the edge of Saunders Field. More and more soldiers came stumbling out of the woods. By the score they thrust by me, while I stood bent over, hands on my knees, sucking wind.

A terrible stink rose in my nostrils as I panted.

I looked up. Saunders Field was ablaze, parched grass and tinder-dry brush roaring. Black smoke coiling, heavy and greasy, the sickening smell of burned pork.

The dead and wounded roasting, silly firecracker sounds of ammunition exploding in the heat. Someone bellowing the name of Jesus. Hump-backed Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks desperately pulling themselves along on their bellies, turtles trying to outcrawl the fire. A man, his coat fluttering flame, taking a few steps before falling back down to burn to death.

The sight of it started me for the rear. Plenty were doing the same. Some limped, some hugged shattered arms to their chests, some numbly walked, blood coursing into their eyes.

We came on the Unionist Marylanders of Denison’s Brigade readying to go into action. A murmur went up from them when they identified our brigade. “The Black Hats, the Black Hats are retreating.”
Consternation spread among the reserves, it made them sore afraid to see the iron of the Army of the Potomac shattered. Officers imploring us to face the enemy, coaxing us, finally threatening, but it did no good. We were finished.

I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Hoagy Pinson since I peeled out of the thicket; I buttonholed anyone who knew him about his possible whereabouts. They all shook their heads until I ran into Jimmy Johnson. “Pinson? Pinson?” Jimmy said. “He took a wound in the woods.”

“Did he make it out?” I yelled.

“Not likely,” he said, “not likely at all.”

I stood in the road like a rock jutting up in a current, reinforcements, artillery, supply wagons swerving around me, swiftly flowing by as I peered up the road I’d come down, praying to catch a glimpse of Hoagy Pinson hobbling towards me.

I made my return to Saunders Field. Everything was confusion and turmoil. Reserve units milled about, trying to assemble for the last assault before nightfall. Sergeants screeched orders, shoved men into formation, officers beat the unwilling into line with the flats of their swords. The fighting on the right of Saunders Field was still under way. Flags tossed, drums rolled, cannons thundered, riderless horses circled the field in a mad gallop.

Saunders Field was black emptiness, the grass scorched away, nothing but smoking earth, the charred remains of corpses.

The thicket I’d scampered out of seemed to be pretty quiet now. But a haze simmered above the treetops. Sparks blown from Saunders Field had ignited a wildfire in the woods. I thought of Hoagy lying wounded in that grim, dim place, burning to a crisp.

I made for the timber. A few yards into the trees I found the body of a young lieutenant with a pistol clamped in his hand. I pried it out of his fingers and continued on. The wood was deathly still, close as a closet. The smoke a light mist stinging my eyes, and putting the bite of burning resin in the back of my throat. I eased along, boots stealthy in the leaves. No sound but the commotion of birds complaining about the fire. Excited trilling, nervous swoops, and sudden drops back into the treetops, wild hopping from bough to bough.

Here and there cadavers lay about, none of them Hoagy. The corpses grew more numerous and the smoke thicker the farther I went. The fire was a shushing noise now, a greedy smacking of lips every time a bush kindled.

My eyes ran and my throat was raw. I tore off my shirt-tail and made a mask. I heard voices. A mix of Yankee twang and Southern drawl. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their talk drew me to the edge of a clearing. Two Union men were sitting on the ground, taking off their boots. One of them was Hoagy, head bandaged in a shirt spotted with blood. He looked glum and defeated, his face spongy-grey as bread dough rolled out on a dirty board.

Two emaciated, barefoot Greybacks guarded them. They grinned and spat, joyful at the prospect of requisitioning Yankee footwear.

I reconnoitred. Saw nor heard any sign of more Confederates. Rage and shame slowly rising in me. How could the likes of these pitiful, half-starved scarecrows, their bones poking out of rags, put the run on the Iron Brigade? The lightest breeze would blow over these corn-pone-fed wrecks.

I yanked off my mask and sopped up blood from a dead body, daubed my face with it, slipped the pistol inside my tunic and kept my hand to it, so it would look like I was clutching some hurt to my side.

Groaning, I lurched into the clearing. Hoagy’s face shot up, fingers knotted in his bootlaces. The other prisoner’s jaw dropped. Muskets swung up at me. “Paws in the air!” one of the Confederates hollered. I ignored him, stumbled on, weaving from side to side.

“Custis!” Hoagy called to me. The Greybacks’ heads jerked towards his cry. I pulled my pistol and shot the one nearest. His jawbone scattered and sprayed. A musket went off, my leg kicked out from under me, sent me face first into a windrow of dry leaves. Snuffling dust, mould in my mouth. My right leg broken, flopping like a fish when I tried to stand. Hoagy was yelling, one hand clamped to the musket barrel he had snatched to save my life. The other prisoner was barrelling off, untied boots flopping.

The Confederate wrenched his musket free from Hoagy’s grip. I snapped a shot at him but missed. Hoagy Pinson was already spitted
on a bayonet, twisting and screaming. I cocked and fired, the hammer playing a flat, dead, desperate tune on empty chambers. The lieutenant had died with two rounds left. I’d used them both.

The Butternut was finished with Hoagy and was coming at me, bayonet greased with my friend’s blood.

“Yankee son of a bitch,” he said, lips flying spit. “Here’s for your dirty trick on Clarence.”

He lunged, drove the bayonet into my sound leg. Stabbed two more times, grinding the tip of the blade into my thigh bone as I howled and yelped. For a moment, he stood over me, slack-mouthed, slobbery. He swiped his hand across his mouth and found words. “Enjoy the evening breeze,” he said pointing up to the treetops waggling in the wind. A weird light pulsed above them, swarming with sparks. Then he turned, loped away.

I dragged my useless legs over to Hoagy. Purple and yellow guts lay heaped in his lap. He was alive, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, speak to me. I sat beside him, touching his face, waiting for it to come, watching it move down the slope, the slow smoulder, the blisters of flame swelling in the brush. Smoky vines twining themselves around tree trunks. A pine on a knoll waving a blazing flag. Fire licking its lips at me through the palings of black trees. The rustling of flame in dead leaves, the scurry of bright-eyed mice. A bush fifty feet off spreading its branches in a candelabra. Hot drafts, a swirl of ash stroking my face. I hid from the heat in the shoulder of my tunic.

Then I heard someone calling out the name Danny and I shouted back.

I saw him, a silhouette shuffling out of a furnace, the lumbering, awkward shadow of a stoker. He stooped over me. A face, big and white as a dinner plate, streaked with soot, eyelashes singed away, crown of his Bummer cap smoking.

“You ain’t Danny,” he said, disappointed. A boy with puffy, red, godawful, empty eyes. An ember was burning on the epaulette of his jacket. He did not seem to feel it. He looked around him. “Danny,” he murmured vaguely, “where you at?” He took one determined, jerky step and I flung my arms tight to his leg to keep him from leaving. But
he didn’t seem to realize I held him, just swung me along with him, a convict dragging a ball and chain.