The Warriors (30 page)

“Come on this way, Cap’n.”

“Ain’t right that two who fought on the same side should go at each other.”

Worthing protested, screaming curses from his bloodied mouth. But Gideon noticed the Virginian didn’t make more than a token effort to escape those restraining him.

Panting, Gideon dropped his fists. His heartbeat slowed. He was quietly thankful the fight had been so brief, thankful Worthing had turned out to be largely bluster—at least against an adversary who could hold his own.

He walked over to the gray-haired brakeman, who was still seated on the ground, looking baffled. “What the hell did I do to that Reb?”

“He was mad at me, not you.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Gideon grasped the man’s arm and helped him to his feet. “He hurt you?”

“Not much.” The man worked his jaw back and forth. Smiled. “Thank you, soldier. Miller’s the name. Daphnis O. Miller.”

“Beg pardon? Your first name is—?”

“Daphnis.” The man pulled a face. “Don’t know what it means and never have. Sounds like it belongs to a woman. I think my mother made a mistake.”

Gideon smiled. “Oh, I doubt it.”

“You can, but I don’t. It’s been the curse of my life.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Miller?”

“Jersey City. Got temporarily promoted from switchman to brakeman by the grand and glorious United States army. What’s your name, young fellow?”

“Gideon Kent.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Miller extended his hand.

They shook. In the simple greeting, flesh against flesh, Gideon suddenly found a small hope. The issue of an independent and sovereign South had been settled. If a Union trainman and a former Confederate officer could impulsively clasp hands, maybe the country could make a start at burying the animosities of three generations and healing the wounds of four years of carnage and bitterness. He felt a little more certain of it when several of the hundred or so Confederates taking the air outside the long train paused to apologize to Miller for Worthing’s attack.

The paroled Confederates began to wander across the switch tracks and sprawl on a grassy bank. A balmy breeze warmed Gideon’s unwashed face.

“Jersey City, you said. You’re a fair distance from home, Mr. Miller.”

“That’s so.” The brakeman nodded. “But they need us to run these prisoner trains—beg your pardon. Guess you ain’t a prisoner anymore.”

“Take it you’re a railroad man?”

“That’s right. Where were you locked up?”

“Fort Delaware.”

Miller grimaced. “Heard that was a hellhole.”

“Compared to the fort, I expect hell would be a spa.”

“A what?”

“Resort. Vacation place.”

Gideon restrained a smile; the reading had helped. Dr. Lemon had somehow cajoled and threatened until Tillotson had returned the stolen books, which Gideon had devoured while he was recuperating in the prison infirmary. Now and again he tried a new, unfamiliar word, always with a bit of awkwardness, and always feeling he might be thought to be acting superior by the person to whom he uttered the word. But he didn’t mean to sound superior. He simply needed to practice.

“What branch of service you from?” Miller inquired.

“Cavalry. Jeb Stuart’s. I was captured at Yellow Tavern.”

“Mighty fine outfit, the papers said.”

Quietly: “That’s understating it.”

“Where’s your home, Kent?”

“Lexington, Virginia, originally. Presently Richmond.”

“Did you have a trade before the war?”

Gideon’s stomach quivered. “No, none. I was too thickheaded to learn one. I’ll pay for it now. I have a wife and baby to support. I’ll have to find work.”

In spite of the difficulties he faced in doing that, he’d made one firm decision in prison. Even if his father offered, he wouldn’t accept so much as one dollar of help. The California inheritance would be his someday. But until it was, he meant to make his way on his own, hardship or no. If he didn’t, he’d have no pride of accomplishment.

“Jobs are gonna be mighty scarce,” Daphnis Miller observed as they started strolling beside the train.

“And not too many available for a man who’s half blind, I suspect.”

It was said with a smile, and no trace of self-pity. Yet the truth of his situation haunted him. What
could
a man do who was less than whole?

“Well,” Miller chuckled, “you ever get desperate enough to work in a rail yard, come to Jersey City an’ look me up.”

“Railroading a rough business, is it?”

“Let’s put it this way. A fellow who couples cars for a living and has both hands, all his fingers, an’ two good legs is one of three things: Mighty quick, mighty lucky—or new on the job.”

Gideon laughed. A whistle sounded eastward, the source hidden by the boxcars. The chug of a second train approaching grew steadily louder. Miller answered a hail from another brakeman up near the engine.

“Keep your pants on, Feeny, I’ll be there. Kent, I truly ’preciated what you done. That Reb looked as if he wanted to tear me apart.”

“He wanted to tear somebody apart. I don’t think it mattered who it was.”

“Damn job’s gettin’ as bad as workin’ in the Erie yards. Well, so long. Thanks again.”

“Mr. Miller?”

The trainman turned.

“Do me one small favor in return.”

Miller’s white eyebrow lifted, inquiringly.

“Don’t say Reb anymore. We’re all Americans again.”

Miller smiled in a sheepish way. “Guess you’re right. Didn’t mean anything nasty by it. But it’s gonna take a while to get out of the habit.”

He waved and hurried off.

Gideon leaned against the boxcar, fighting to keep his hand down. The blind eye itched again. The brakeman was right. Men on both sides would be a long time breaking the habit of using certain words.

Reb.

Traitor.

Damn Yank.

Enemy.

Men would be a long time forgetting.

Presently, more boxcars were switched and coupled to the end of the first train. The whistle blew three times and the Confederates began to clamber back aboard the cars. Spirits had improved. There was a good deal of laughing and joking.

Gideon sank down in the place he’d occupied before. Miller appeared outside, spied him, and waved as he slid the door shut, leaving only the chopped hole to ventilate the boxcar as the train resumed its journey to Washington.

So much to do,
Gideon thought.
See if my little girl even recognizes me. Doubt if she will.

Find a way to support Margaret.

Try to discover what’s become of Matt and Jeremiah.

Visit my mother down in Lexington
—

For a moment the odds against successfully beginning a new life seemed overwhelming. Especially when he remembered Worthing and Tillotson. There were haters on both sides. They’d make Lincoln’s idea—“
Let ’em up easy”
— difficult to turn into a reality. And with the Illinois President gone and his policies already being disavowed by many Northerners, the auspices were poor.

Indeed, they hadn’t been too promising while Lincoln was still alive. Gideon had studied an account of the hysterical celebration in Washington two nights after Davis’ abandonment of Richmond. Lee had not yet surrendered and even then, on a platform in front of the Patent Office, Vice President Andrew Johnson had roared to a howling mob that he would hang Jefferson Davis “twenty times.” As for others who’d participated in the rebellion—Gideon could recall Johnson’s chilling words almost exactly: “
I would arrest them, I would try them, I would convict them, and I would hang them. Treason must be made odious! Traitors must be punished and impoverished!”

So cried the obscure Tennessee Democrat, under fixtures specially arranged to blaze the word
UNION
from the top of the pillars of the Patent Office on the night all Washington shone with candle and gas illuminations to celebrate the fall of the enemy capital. Now Johnson was serving in the office Lincoln had still held on that evening when Johnson had shouted,
“Hang, hang!”

Fortunately no one had expressed an interest in hanging Gideon. He was alive, and there was a wonderful, warm girl waiting for him in Richmond. He intended to devote himself to her and to their daughter, to giving them a comfortable, secure existence. He was done with war. Never again would he actively seek a fight, for whatever lofty principles. To that he’d made up his mind.

His thoughts kept returning to Margaret. They’d spent very little time together during the past three years, so each memory was just that much more vivid.

The sight of her. The feel of her lying close in the cool hours of the night. Her ardor as a wife—it sent a pleasurable thrill of anticipation chasing through him.

Somehow, no matter how formidable the obstacles, they’d overcome them together. Rebuild the life—the marriage—begun when he’d returned to Richmond after First Manassas. He felt more optimistic when he recalled the innate decency of Northerners such as Dr. Lemon and the trainman, Miller, with his words about looking him up in Jersey City. Miller obviously hadn’t meant what he said; he’d merely been trying to express his gratitude in familiar terms. But at least he’d said
something.
It was encouraging.

Down at the end of the car, the boy in gray was still crying. His back heaved, but Gideon could hear no sound above the rattle of the wheels.

He smoothed his beard again, clambered up, and stepped over outstretched legs. Maybe there was something he could do to alleviate the boy’s misery.

He knelt beside him. Laid an arm across the shuddering, butternut-clad shoulders.

“Son?”

Not even twenty-two years old himself, Gideon was calling this stripling son. But he saw nothing incongruous. He’d lived through enough struggle, enough perils, for three adult lifetimes.

“Son?” he repeated.

No answer.

“Any way I can help?”

Still silence. The boy didn’t raise his head.

Gently, Gideon patted his back. After a moment the violent spasms began to subside.

Gideon remained where he was, neither speaking nor being spoken to, just moving his hand up and down, up and down, softly, an almost fatherly touch. Somehow it helped the boy.

The whistle on the Baltimore and Ohio engine shrieked. The boxcars clattered faster, carrying those wounded in body and those wounded in spirit on toward home.

H
E FIRED. RELOADED. FIRED
again. Every round seemed to miss.

The gray-faced men were cleverly hiding in the tangled second-growth timber fifty yards out in front of the log and brush breastwork. With startling abruptness, one or two would dart from cover, shoot, and jump back out of sight. He fired at one such marksman and an instant later, blinked. Where there’d been a target, there was nothing but the smoke.

Beside him, a boy no more than seventeen took a ball in the side of his face. The boy’s shriek of pain turned to a whimper as he fell. The crackle of gunfire up and down the Union defense line quickly muffled the sound.

He squinted over the breastwork then, wondering whether the Irish Brigade of Hancock’s II Corps had been sent into the tangled woodland known as the Wilderness, or into the nether regions.

Smoke billowed everywhere. Artillery rumbled like a storm in a sky he couldn’t see. Not far overhead, tree branches formed a thick web that shut out most of the late afternoon light above, and intensified the light below: the spurting flash from rifle muzzles, the flickering light of large limbs and small twigs blazing and raining sparks.

Directly over him, a branch crumbled apart. A hot piece of charred wood dropped onto his neck. He yelped, jerked the trigger, saw a slab of bark fly from one of the gargoyle trees behind which the enemy lurked.

Even this deep in the forest, he could feel a fairly stiff breeze blowing. Somehow it failed to dispel the smoke, though it fanned the scattered fires. The Rebs kept sniping.

On his right, young replacements who’d joined the Brigade only weeks ago scrambled back as balls chunked into the crazily piled, hastily cut logs. One of the boys cried out, “Mother of Mary!
She’s catchin’!”

The brush atop the logs a yard to his right burst into flame. Snapping, roaring, the fire raced both ways along the improvised fortification. More men of the Brigade leaped away. Out in the shifting red smoke, the Rebs howled in pain or in defiance and kept volleying.

The fire swept past him, not a foot in front of his nose. The intense heat drove him back. In moments, the entire breastwork was burning.

He heard a bugle call. The blare was suddenly aborted by a scream. Someone shouted, “Fall back!
Fall back!”

Beyond the barrier of fire, the gray soldiers seemed to be on the move. He tried to find a target, then wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of a hand. He couldn’t believe what he was witnessing.

Among the stunted trees, boys in butternut were advancing. Some had no weapons. In silence, they pleaded for mercy with outstretched hands. Minié balls smashed into their soiled blouses, piercing the fabric. No blood ran from the wounds.

He fought back a desire to scream and flee from this impossible battle taking place below the Rapidan. He clutched his rifle with both hands, as if gripping it would help keep his duty uppermost in his mind, keep him from running away.

The wall of fire rose higher.

Four feet.

Six.

From the other side, a woman called his name:

“Michael?”

He rose on tiptoe, risking death from the Confederate balls that had begun to whiz past again. A gust of wind tore holes in the flames. He saw her wandering among the gray men, saw her small, well-proportioned body with exquisite clarity in spite of the smoke. Her glossy dark hair had a scarlet nimbus. Her bright blue eyes reflected the glare of burning trees. Repeatedly, the advancing soldiers jostled her. They seemed unaware of her presence.

“Michael?”

A few Union soldiers were returning the Confederate volleys. Any second she’d be hit.