The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (33 page)

There was laughter from the others, one man calling out, “Hey, Herschel, when you gonna learn not to make no wager with a rebel? They probably got a pile of fish stuck in those bushes, and just wait for you to catch something, then drag one out bigger just to make you look stupid.”

The man they called Herschel slumped, a low curse.

“Gotta drag the raft out. I’ll wait till dark, slip across. Don’t need the lieutenant watching that. Unless I get a monster in the next half hour. The contest’s over at four. Same every dang day. Well, unless my luck changes, I gotta go steal me some coffee from the mess wagon.”

Another man looked back at Bauer, said, “You wanna learn how it’s done, don’t pay any attention to Herschel. Rebels got these fish trained just so. Those Tennessee boys been mighty accommodating
at letting us catch just enough fish that we start thinking we know what we’re doing. Rest of us figured out not to waste a bet with ’em. Herschel’s not too smart.”

Bauer felt the good spirits in the men, looked over at the jubilation of the rebels.

“What do
they
wager?”

“Their fish. Herschel ain’t figured that out yet. They done caught all they can eat. They’ll toss us one even when this rock brain loses the wager. Guess they figure this river is big enough for all of us.”

Bauer pointed to the man’s fishing pole. “Can you tell me where we can get … those things?”

The man looked at him again, laughed. “Back there in the brush, there’s some willows or something close. Cut you one twice as tall as you.”

“We got no string, or hooks. Can you spare any?”

“Nope. But if’n you ain’t got the tools, you gotta make do. Keep close to the bank and wade out down thataways. Past that dead tree, it’s too shallow to fish. But there’s plenty of mussels and snails. Just dig in the mud. Bayonet makes it easier.”

“What’s a mussel?”

“Some kinda slimy thing lives in a shell. Just one more of God’s creatures. But they boil up real good.”

The men with Bauer began to move that way, and Bauer followed, still eyeing the rebels. He watched the others now, slipping barefoot into the murky water. Bauer scanned the river, memories of the swamps along the Mississippi, nervous lookouts watching for alligators. But the muddy river flowed past with only the ripples from smaller creatures, what Bauer assumed were fish, swirling tails and flopping fins far out in deeper water. He heard a shout now, “Hey! Got some! Look here!”

Bauer saw a clump of black shells in Hoover’s hands, mud dripping away, another man moving out with a cloth sack. The digging continued, the sack filling, and Bauer slipped off his brogans, eased out into the soft mud, the water colder than he expected. He looked into the sack, what seemed to be small, black, oblong rocks. Hoover knelt in the shallow water again, pulled up a thick handful of mud, and Bauer saw a different shell, round and tan, Hoover rinsing it, obvious excitement.

“Look here! Some kinda snail. What you think they taste like?”

Bauer had no appetite for anything covered in mud, said, “Crack it open. Find out.”

Hoover sniffed his find, crushed the shell in his hands, picked through the gooey remains of the animal, then slipped it into his mouth, his eyes widening. He ejected it with a loud wet spit.

“Aagh. Ptew. Nasty. Tastes like mud and snot.”

Along the riverbank, the men from Missouri were laughing, and one man called out, “You can’t eat ’em raw, you brick heads. Fill that sack and haul ’em back to camp. You gotta cook ’em.”

Bauer backed away from the men with the sack, said quietly, “Thanks. I’ll stick with hardtack.”

He was beginning to wonder if the rebels were going to fight at all. The routine was established among the others, and Bauer was now a part, going out on picket duty for a four-hour stretch. He had asked the others, the rest of Willis’s men as curious as he was, just what was supposed to happen next. In the camps, the men seemed obsessed with Chickamauga, as though Bauer needed to know what these men had been called upon to do. They had left thirty men on that field, a hundred more wounded or just gone, presumed captured. No one offered a hint to Bauer that any of the men had simply run away, vanishing for reasons Bauer knew well. But now the curse of that fight was past, and the men prepared to do it all again, as they had done since the first year of the war. When they were finally ordered out east of the town to skirmish duty, the expectations ran high that, finally, there would be trouble. But for more than a week now, that duty had been as mundane as sitting idly in the camps, or marching, drilling in their various formations yet again.

He had centered himself in a cluster of brush, just beyond a burned-out barn, sat upright, his back against a soft rotten log, tall grass surrounding him. He was perched just high
enough to see out across the flat field in front of him, far enough that anyone standing up would be clearly visible, if the rebels made any effort to push a line of troops his way. To his front rose the heights of Missionary Ridge, what Willis had told him was nearly six miles long, several hundred feet up a steep rocky hillside. Behind him, to his right, stood the eminence of Lookout Mountain, fifteen hundred feet high. High on both hills, the signal flags were clearly visible, the rebels waving their coded messages from one point along the tall ridge to another. Several hundred yards to his front, he could make out the rocks and brush on the slope itself, could see rifle pits and a trench line, cut like a deep scratch halfway up the long ridge. From his vantage point he could see movement on the ridge itself, down the face of the slope, flickers of color, horsemen, traveling along what seemed to be trails and gullies on the face of the slope. At the base of the hill were more rebel works, too low for a clear view, but what Bauer had to believe were stout fortifications. The memories of Vicksburg were fresh in his mind, the great mounds of earth, wide ditches, and wooden stakes, all the impediments to the army’s advance. Then it had been a lengthy siege, the Federal commanders making that decision after two disastrous thrusts right into the teeth of the rebels’ defenses. Bauer had been surprised to hear that a siege was happening here, but this time the rebels had hemmed in an entire army of blue. He understood now why the few citizens left in Chattanooga were so destitute. The army had been desperate, forced to starvation rations, stripping away everything from the town they could use, every scrap they needed for survival. But that was October. Within the past week, the supplies rolled across the pontoon bridges in massive wagon trains, bringing in every kind of matériel, horses and mules, ammunition, blankets, tents, and, of course, rations. Bauer had heard plenty of talk from the regulars that the rebels had made a ridiculous mistake, that by letting Hooker’s divisions shove through the valley west of Lookout Mountain, they had made it easy for the Federal forces to strengthen, to regain their energy, and with that, their confidence. No one Bauer spoke to had compliments for William Rosecrans. At first he had been popular with the men, but the collapse at Chickamauga had soured Willis’s men in particular,
that they were cursed to follow yet another general whose inept maneuvering only produced disasters, and cost these men serious casualties. From all Bauer could tell, the men respected George Thomas, and word of General Grant’s arrival had added that final spark, the impatient urgency to end this thing. The rebels were straight in front of them, and for weeks now, nothing about that had changed. Bauer had no idea what the volunteer regiments thought of that, whether or not they were anxious for another hard scrap. But the regulars had no patience for waiting. They had lost good men in good fights, and every one of them expected to do that again. But if losing men meant a quicker end to the war, that was a trade these men seemed willing to make. As they stood watch over the rebel positions on the distant heights, the question now was: when?

He felt the warmth of the sun, settling low behind him, dark in another hour, fought against sleepiness. No, don’t do that. You fall asleep and Sammie’ll have you by the tenders. He shifted position, worked the stiffness out of his back, turned, looked over his right shoulder toward Lookout Mountain. The signal flags were active there as well, and Bauer watched them for a long moment, wondered about their messages. What could they be telling each other? Hey, you over there! There’s a heap of blue troops down there in the town! He laughed to himself. Every day, it’s probably the same message. Or maybe somebody’s found out there’s better squirrel hunting up on that big rock than over there on the ridge, stupid rebels bragging how many tree rats they shot. He laughed at his own joke, the giddiness of his boredom. Maybe they’re waving flags just to convince their officers they got something important to do. Beats marching, beats getting shot at.
Signal corps
. Never really thought about that job. He could see a fleck of color high on the ridge out in front of him, a man standing tall in a leafless tree, the red and white flag shifting position. He guessed the range … six hundred yards. No, more. Betcha one of those boys get knocked out of his tree every now and then. Might be fun trying. He glanced down at the musket. Nope. Don’t think about that. Sammie’ll have you by the tenders for that, too, drawing attention to yourself. And it’s uphill a bunch. I’d have to aim twenty feet above the reb’s head. He thought of the officer he had dropped at
Bridgeport. That signalman would go down the same way … never know what hit him, that’s for sure. If I hit him at all. No, leave that alone. No need to show off around here. Not yet anyway.

He rolled over to one side, looked again at Lookout Mountain. The highest part of the mountain was imposing, a sheer cliff that extended up across the top third of the heights. It was another of the rare clear days, no fog or mist hiding anything across the entire landscape. The sky overhead was a soft blue, and he rolled to his back again, stared up, the strange clear shapes in his eyes dancing across his vision. It would sure as hell be easy to sleep out here. Maybe that’s what we need to do, bring the whole regiment out here. Maybe the whole army. He looked out to the left, a bulging wooded hill, what Willis said was Orchard Knob. Probably rebs there, he thought, watching us. Only high ground across this whole place. Maybe artillery, too. Don’t need to get any attention from those boys. And you sure better not let some reb slip up on you. But it’s pretty flat ground. No place to hide. He thought of the platoon sergeant, another grim man named Griswold, younger than the corporal, Owens, but just as tough, and like most of the sergeants Bauer had known, a man with the uncanny ability for creative swearing. Yep, you keep to Griswold’s good side. Don’t need to make enemies in this outfit unless there’s a good reason. And I can’t think of a single one.

Bauer was quickly learning the men in Willis’s company, could see immediately that they had no tolerance for laziness, for shirkers. There were stories about the drumheads, men with shaved heads, forced to march through the entire regiment, and so marched right out of the army, never to return. To the regulars, that kind of shame was the ultimate disgrace. Bauer had heard plenty of talk in the past, knew that the volunteer regiments regarded the regulars with some kind of awe, as though these men carried an aura about them, tougher, rowdier, prone to violence against one another as much as the enemy. Bauer could already see the mythology in that. These men are just soldiers, he thought. Nothing special, except they don’t expect to go home anytime soon. They’ve seen plenty of fights, taken plenty of casualties. Nothing
different
about that. But if the rest of the army thinks they’re just a little churned up in the head … I guess that’s not so bad. We. Not
them. We
.

The 17th Wisconsin had been mostly Irish, and so there was a common bond among those men, habits and family ties. But the men around Bauer now were a mix of every kind of man, vast differences in age, every ethnicity. Corporal Owens seemed to be from someplace near the center of hell, the tent Bauer shared now smelling of burnt cinders and rawhide. But Bauer knew enough of fighting to sense a nasty brand of menace in the man, that when the rebels were close, Owens wouldn’t flinch. Another man to stay close to, he thought. Just wish I didn’t have to sleep beside him. He has a bad dream, he might strangle me.

He gazed again along the wide ridgeline. The duty was simple. Make sure the rebels on the crest and in their rifle pits stayed there. No surprises. He had done plenty of this before, picket duty. But the flat, grassy plain in front of him was empty, as much as he could tell. To both sides, other men were hidden in the clusters of brush, and he could hear them, low chatter, the occasional laugh. The closest man to him was Brubaker, a short plug of a man, who rarely had anything to say. Bauer looked that way, the top of the man’s hat barely visible in a clump of tall grass. No one seemed to care that he had come from the volunteers, or that he was as much a veteran as many of them. But Bauer didn’t expect to be ignored, which had turned out to be a relief. There hadn’t been any of the ridiculous challenges, no insistence that he prove his masculinity, all the foolishness of men who betrayed their own fears and uncertainty by attacking anyone new. I guess they took Sammie’s word for it, he thought. Or they just don’t care. We get in a fight … then they’ll care.

He felt a rumble in his stomach, thought of the hardtack in his pack, had no appetite for a mouthful of dry dust. He looked to his left, called out, “Hey, Brubaker.”

He waited, saw the hat move slightly, the voice coming back to him, low, soft.
Careful
.

“Quiet down. What you want?”

“You bring any bacon with you?”

“Nope.”

Bauer waited for more, Brubaker now silent. But the boredom was overwhelming him. Where are the rebels? They just gonna stay on that big stupid hill?

He called out again, less volume this time. “Hey, Brubaker, where you from?”

“New Jersey. Shut up.”

Out in front of Brubaker, a voice rolled out through the grass. “Now, that ain’t so dang awful polite, there. Boy’s just wantin’ some bacon. I’d care for a slab myself, if’n you was willing to swap. Maybe some coffee?”