Bring the Jubilee (26 page)

A great battle in its first stages is as tentative, uncertain, and indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the beginning the ground was there for either side to take without protest; the other felt no surge of possessive jealousy. I walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road; on my left I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between the lines would mean instant death, but now the declaration had not been made, the vows had not been finally exchanged. It was still possible for either party to withdraw; no furious heat bound the two indissolubly together. I heard the periodic shell and the whine of a mini ball; mere flirtatious gestures so far.

Despite the hot sun the grass was cool and lush. The shade in the orchard was velvety. From a low branch I picked a near-ripe peach and sucked the wry juice. I sprawled on the earth and waited. For miles around, men from Maine and Wisconsin, from Georgia and North Carolina, assumed the same attitude. But I knew for what I was waiting; they could only guess.

Some acoustical freak dimmed the noises in the air to little more than amplification of the normal summer sounds. Did the ground really tremble faintly, or was I translating my mental picture of the marching armies, the great wagon trains, the heavy cannon, the iron-shod horses into an imagined physical effect? I don't think I dozed, but certainly my attention withdrew from the rows of trees with their scarred and runneled bark, curving branches and graceful leaves, so that I was taken unaware by the unmistakable clump and creak of mounted men.

The blue-uniformed cavalry rode slowly through the peach orchard. They seemed like a group of aimless hunters returning from the futile pursuit of a fox; they chatted, shouted at each other, walked their horses abstractedly. One or two had their sabres out; they rose in their saddles and cut at the branches overhead in pure pointless mischief.

Behind them came the infantrymen, sweating and swearing, more serious. Some few had wounds, others were without their muskets. Their dark blue tunics were carelessly unbuttoned, their lighter pants were stained with mud and dust and grass. They trampled and thrashed around like men long weary. Quarrels rose among them swiftly and swiftly petered out. No one could mistake them for anything but troops in retreat.

After they had passed, the orchard was still again, but the stillness had a different quality from what had gone before. The leaves did not rustle, no birds chirped, there were no faint betrayals of the presence of chipmunks or squirrels. Only if one listened very closely was the dry noise of insects perceptible. But I heard the guns now. Clearly and louder. And more continuously—much more continuously. It was not yet the full roar of battle, but death was authentic in its low rumble.

Then the Confederates came. Cautiously, but not so cautiously that one could fail to recognize they represented a victorious, invading army. Shabby they certainly were, as they pushed into the orchard, but alert and confident. Only a minority had uniforms which resembled those prescribed by regulation, and these were torn, grimy, and scuffed. Many of the others wore the semiofficial butternut—crudely dyed homespun, streaked and muddy brown. Some had ordinary clothes with military hats and buttons; a few were dressed in Federal blue trousers with gray or butternut jackets.

Nor were their weapons uniform. There were long rifles, short carbines, muskets of varying age, and I noticed one bearded soldier with a ponderous shotgun. But whatever their dress or arms, their bearing was the bearing of conquerors. If I alone on the field that day knew for sure the outcome of the battle, these Confederate soldiers were close behind in sensing the future.

The straggling Northerners had passed me by with the clouded perception of the retreating. These Southrons, however, were steadfastly attentive to every sight and sound. Too late I realized the difficulty of remaining unnoticed by such sharp, experienced eyes. Even as I berated myself for my stupidity, a great, whiskery fellow in what must once have been a stylish bottle-green coat pointed his gun at me.

"Yank here boys!" Then to me, "What you doing here, fella?"

Three or four came up and surrounded me curiously. "Funniest lookin' damyank I ever did see. Looks like he just fell out of a bathtub."

Since I had walked all night on dusty roads I could only think their standards of cleanliness were not high. And indeed this was confirmed by the smell coming from them: the stink of sweat, of clothes long slept in, of unwashed feet and stale tobacco.

"I'm a noncombatant," I said foolishly.

"Whazzat?" asked the beard. "Some kind of Baptist?"

"Naw," corrected one of the others. "It's a law-word. Means not all right in the head."

"Looks all right in the foot though. Let's see your boots, Yank. Mine's sure wore out."

What terrified me now was not the thought of my boots being stolen, or of being treated as a prisoner, or even the remote chance of being shot as a spy. A greater; more indefinite catastrophe was threatened by my exposure. These men were the advance company of a regiment due to sweep through the orchard and the wheat field, explore that bit of wild ground known as the Devil's Den, and climb up Little Round Top closely followed by an entire Confederate brigade. This was the brigade which held the Round Top for several hours until artillery was brought up, artillery which dominated the entire field and gave the South victory at Gettysburg.

There was no allowance for a pause, no matter how trifling, in the peach orchard, in any of the accounts I'd read or heard of. The hazard Barbara had warned so insistently against had happened. I had been discovered, and the mere discovery had altered the course of history.

I tried to shrug it off. Delay of a few minutes could hardly make a significant difference. All historians agreed that the capture of the Round Tops was an inevitability; the Confederates would have been foolish to overlook them—in fact it was hardly possible they could, prominent as they were both on maps and in physical reality—and they had occupied them hours before the Federals made a belated attempt to take them. I had been unbelievably stupid to expose myself, but I had created no repercussions likely to spread beyond the next few minutes.

"Said let's see them boots. Ain't got all day to wait."

A tall officer with a pointed imperial and a sandy, faintly reddish mustache whose curling ends shone waxily came up, revolver in hand. "What's going on here?"

"Just a Yank, Cap'n. Making a little change of footgear." The tone was surly, almost insolent.

The galloons on the officer's sleeve told me the title was not honorary. "I'm a civilian, Captain," I protested. "I realize I have no business here."

The captain looked at me coldly, with an expression of disdainful contempt. "Local man?" he asked.

"Not exactly. I'm from York."

"Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks up ahead. Jenks, leave the civilian gentleman in full possession of his boots."

There was rage behind that sneer, a hateful anger apparently directed at me for being a civilian, at his men for their obvious lack of respect, at the battle, the world. I suddenly realized his face was intimately familiar. Irritatingly, because I could connect it with no name, place, or circumstance.

"How long have you been in this orchard, Mister Civilian-from-York?"

The effort to identify him nagged me, working in the depths of my mind, obtruding even into that top layer which was concerned with what was going on.

What was going on?
Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks up ahead. How long have you been in this orchard?

Yanks up ahead? There weren't any. There wouldn't be, for hours.

"I said, 'How long you been in this orchard?' Probably an officer later promoted to rank prominent enough to have his picture in one of the minor narratives. Yet I was certain his face was no likeness I'd seen once in a steel engraving and dismissed. These were features often encountered.

"Sure like to have them boots. If we ain't fightin' for Yankee boots, what the hell we fightin' for?"

What could I say? That I'd been in the orchard for half an hour? The next question was bound to be, Had I seen Federal troops? Whichever way I answered I would be betraying my role of spectator.

"Hey Cap'n—this fella knows something. Lookit the silly grin!"

Was I smiling? In what? Terror? Perplexity? In the mere effort of keeping silent, so as to be involved no further?

"Tell yah—he's laughin' cuz he knows somethin'!"

Let them hang me, let them strip me of my boots; from here on I was dumb as dear Catty had been once.

"Out with it, man—you're in a tight spot. Are there Yanks up ahead?"

The confusion in my mind approached chaos. If I knew the captain's eventual rank I could place him. Colonel Soand-so. Brigadier-General Blank. What had happened? Why had I let myself be discovered? Why had I spoken at all and made silence so hard now?

"Yanks up ahead—they's Yanks up ahead!"

"Quiet you! I asked him—he didn't say there were Yanks ahead."

"Hay! Damyanks up above. Goin' to mow us down!"

"Fella says the bluebellies are layin' fur us!"

Had the lie been in my mind, to be telepathically plucked by the excited soldiers? Was even silence no refuge from participation?

"Man here spotted the whole Fed artillery up above, trained on us!"

"Pull back, boys! Pull back!"

I'd read often enough of the epidemic quality of a perfectly unreasonable notion. A misunderstood word, a baseless rumor, an impossible report, was often enough to set a troop of armed men—squad or army—into senseless mob action. Sometimes the infection made for feats of heroism, sometimes for panic. This was certainly less than panic, but my nervous, meaningless smile conveyed a message I had never sent.

"It's a trap. Pull back boys—let's get away from these trees and out where we can see the Yanks!"

The captain whirled on his men. "Here, damn you," he shouted furiously, "you all gone crazy? The man said nothing. There's no trap!"

The men moved slowly, sullenly away. "I heard him," one of them muttered, looking accusingly toward me.

The captain's shout became a yell. "Come back here! Back here, I say!"

His raging stride overtook the still irresolute men. He grabbed the one called Jenks by the shoulder and whirled him about. Jenks tried to jerk free. There was fear on his face, and hate. "Leave me go, damn you," he screamed. "Leave me go!"

The captain yelled at his men again. Jenks snatched at the pistol with his left hand; the officer pulled the gun away. Jenks brought his musket upright against the captain's body, the muzzle just under his chin, and pushed— as though the firearm somehow gave him leverage. They wrestled briefly, then the musket went off.

The captain's hat flew upward, and for an instant he stood, bareheaded, in the private's embrace. Then he fell. Jenks wrenched his musket free and disappeared.

When I came out of my shock I walked over to the body. The face had been blown off. Shreds of human meat dribbled bloodily on the gray collar and soiled the fashionably long hair. I had killed a man. Through my interference with the past I had killed a man who had been destined to longer life and even some measure of fame. I was the guilty sorcerer's apprentice.

I stooped down to put my hands inside his coat for papers which would tell me who he was and satisfy the curiosity which still basely persisted. It was not shame which stopped me. Just nausea, and remorse.

I saw the Battle of Gettysburg. I saw it with all the unique advantages of a professional historian thoroughly conversant with the patterns, the movements, the details, who knows where to look for the coming dramatic moment, the recorded decisive stroke. I fulfilled the chroniclers' dream.

It was a nightmare.

To begin with, I slept. I slept not far from the captain's body in the peach orchard. This was not callousness, but physical and emotional exhaustion. When I went to sleep the guns were thundering; when I woke they were thundering louder. It was late afternoon. I thought immediately, this is the time for the futile Union charge against the Round Tops.

But the guns were not sounding from there. All the roar was northward, from the town. I knew how the battle went; I had studied it for years. Only now it wasn't happening the way it was written down in the books.

True, the first day was a Confederate victory. But it was not the victory we knew. It was just a little different, just a little short of the triumph recorded. And on the second day, instead of the Confederates getting astride the Taneytown Road and into the position from which they tore Meade's army to bits from three sides, I witnessed a terrible encounter in the peach orchard and the wheat field—places known to be safely behind the Southron lines.

All my life I'd heard of Pickett's charge on the third day. Of how the disorganized Federals were given the final killing blow in their vitals. Well, I saw Pickett's charge on the third day, and it was not the same charge in the historic place. It was a futile attempt to storm superior positions (positions, by established fact, in Lee's hands since July 1) ending in slaughter and defeat.

Defeat for the South, not the North. Meade's army was not broken; the Confederates could not scatter and pursue them now. The capitulation, if it ever took place, would come under different circumstances. The independence of the Confederate States might not be acknowledged for years. If at all.