Hell or Richmond (65 page)

“That’s what everybody says,” Brown told him.

Three thirty p.m.
Confederate lines

“Give it to them! Pour it on!” Oates shouted.

And his men surely did. Yankees came on across a bare-ass field, cocksure, maybe even brave enough, overrunning his advanced rifle pits and those to left or right. The blue-bellies were out to do business, but seemed surprised when the 15th Alabama and the regiments to its flanks popped up from their entrenchments, the ditches a tad too much like stretched-long graves for Oates’ predilection but good for keeping a dead-tired man alive when somebody lacking a ditch of his own had a mind to kill him.

Sun was Alabama hot, and they’d been allotted a stretch that lacked a well. Mouths so dry it felt like a man’s whiskers were growing in, not outward.

The Yankees yelled and hollered, angry as chained dogs taunted by boys, cursing proud enough to be heard all the way to Montgomery, but they paused out there, thinking hard on what they’d come up against, firing steadily enough, even as their ranks broke into little groups, some of the men smart enough to kneel to fire, steadying those long, heavy barrels while making themselves as small as they could get.

“You’re shooting like damned girls,” Oates berated his soldiers, angry again for not much of a reason, if any reason at all. He was angry near all the time now. “Load faster, shoot truer. Damn it, Carter, you need me to load that shooting stick for you?”

His men were just worn out. But somehow they had reared up for the fight again. Never ceased to be a source of wonder how a man too tired to eat could rouse himself like a horned devil when the chance for killing came.

Yankees weren’t quitting, but they surely were not getting the best of it, either. Dropping here and there. But they were veterans, those bluecoat sonsofbitches, see that much in how they handled themselves. Kept off at a fair range, not ready to be slaughtered outright, if they could help it. Waiting for some general to decide something or other.

Numbers were a good sight less than even, much in the Southron favor, it seemed to Oates. Yankee officers seemed uncertain, strutting around to confer behind their men, as if they had stumbled on something unexpected and were struggling to figure out whether it was a yellow dog or a rhinoceros. Fool could see that any one of the generals Oates and his fellow colonels answered to, any one of them with gumption, could order a counterattack to sweep from one flank right to the other. Scoop those suckers right up, killed, crippled, or captured, made no never mind.

“Passive.” That was the word. For all the spilled-out bellies and brains, it seemed to Oates that things above the stand-up-and-shoot level had gone passive. As if the gold-braid generals had decided to have them a few rounds of poker and let things hang.

This here was a golden opportunity. And opportunities didn’t last forever.

Oates noted that Major Lowther, who finally had seen fit to return to the regiment, kept himself low, clutching his hat to his head as if he could squeeze himself shorter. Man was worthless as a tramped-on turd, and harder to get rid of than the itch.

Billy Strickland came up on him, speaking a shared thought.

“Sir, why don’t we just go on out there and get them? Bag ’em all, and call it a good day’s hunting?”

“No damned orders,” Oates said.

Five p.m.
Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia

“We must strike them a blow!” Lee cried out. Or believed he did. “Never let them pass us again. Strike them a blow!”

The tent was hot and fetid, the air funereal. The stink was worse than the slave quarters on an ill-managed plantation. What time was it? There was still time. There had to be. He had to rise. Couldn’t. Try again.

He could not even raise his shoulders from the soiled cot.

“Strike them a blow!” he commanded.

Had Marshall come in? Where was Marshall? Taylor? Venable … Venable had made him sick with his attentions … terrible …

When he opened his eyes, they would not focus. When he closed them, the universe swirled, threatening to spin him into oblivion.

His body felt raw, as if scalded. He had begun to vomit, adding to his afflictions.

Doctors. No help. Not one of them.

Had to strike them a blow …

There was still time, he was certain.

If Longstreet …

In a lucid moment, he remembered someone begging him to give the order to attack, telling him those people were in disarray, vulnerable, unsuspecting. But even in his sickness, he had known that he dared not trust his army to Ewell, who was ill himself, or to Anderson, who lacked sufficient experience, or to Hill … who had let those people cross the river.

Only he could lead the army now. No one else. His army …

A face, two faces split from one, hovered over him. He closed his eyes to make them go away. So terrible they were, dreadful, a man split in two.

He knew that face. Did he not? Those faces …

“Did you call out, sir? General Lee, will you order the attack? We’re running out of time, sir.”

Lee tried to understand the words. He had heard them, heard each one distinctly, but they did not fit together.

“We must strike them a blow,” he said. But he could not hear his voice.

Six p.m.
North of Hanover Junction

Barlow scribbled in the saddle:

Major General Hancock,

The enemy is
not
withdrawing. He has entrenched. Resistance is sturdy. Prisoners report that Ewell’s entire corps waits in our path. I do not think it wise to press the attack, unless to relieve pressure on Gibbon, and prefer to entrench at our forward-most positions.

Your obedient servant,

F. C. Barlow

Brigadier General

“Black, take this to Hancock yourself. Wait for an answer. And I don’t need a written order, if he’s pressed.”

The aide saluted, turned his mount, and applied the spurs.

Ahead, the firing ebbed and flowed, stalemated for the present. What on earth had possessed Meade or Grant or any man to imagine the path to Richmond lay wide open? Had they learned nothing over the past weeks? Of course Lee was going to fight.

Bitten by the heat, he nudged his horse toward the coolness of a stand of poplars. His retinue followed. After the hard light of the slanting sun, the interior of the grove seemed almost black. The heat was bad, but worse was Hancock’s insistence on forever using him as the corps reserve, only to strip away his brigades, one after the other. First it had been Miles. Then Brooke. And now he had a Confederate corps to his front, Ewell’s men. The latest batch of prisoners flushed from the skirmish line—deserters, he suspected—were only too glad to blabber about reinforcements Lee had received. One verminous creature had spoken of the arrival of Pickett from the south and Breckinridge from the Valley of Virginia. Even if only a quarter of what those scarecrows said was true, it meant Lee intended anything but retreat.

In fact, Barlow considered, it rather looked like they’d marched into a trap.

His feet itched terribly.

*   *   *

“General Hancock says entrench, and do it fast,” Black reported to Barlow. The aide had ridden madly and his horse was blown. “He believes Lee may attack at any time.”

“I’ve already given the order,” Barlow told him.

Seven p.m.
The Telegraph Road

Hancock stood on a low ridge, just steps from the road, peering through the dust-addled light with his field glasses. Nothing worth seeing. But enough to hear to keep him alert and short-tempered. Sporadic fighting, most of it out of view, annoyed the evening, and oncoming clouds threatened rain, which meant more mud and misery for the troops. Instead of easy progress, his corps had run into resistance across its front. Resistance and, he worried, serious peril.

Litter bearers lugged their burdens northward. Sweat-drenched and somber, the now silent bandsmen and medical orderlies stepped aside to clear the road as troops or guns rushed up, then resumed their journeys through the dust. Morgan had needed to send the ambulances rearward as shelling increased. The Chesterfield Bridge was under constant fire now, another surprising development. The only consolation was that Burnside had at last tied in to his flank, so Lee wasn’t going to come strolling in between them.

Another cluster of wounded men plodded rearward. A blinded fellow held to a corporal’s shoulder, while the corporal cradled an arm that jutted bone. The sightless fellow swung his head wildly at noises, new to the state that would define his lifetime. The corporal stared ahead with a grim expression. A laborer by the looks of him, his days, too, would be forever altered. But it wasn’t the casualties—their number still minor by the measure of the campaign—that alarmed Hancock. It was the reports arriving every few minutes now, warning of Rebs where Rebs weren’t supposed to be.

On impulse, Hancock handed off his field glasses and walked over to offer a few bluff words to wounded men trailing their comrades. One young man, still scrawny of beard, trembled fiercely on his litter, thumping his head back onto the canvas and grunting from his depths. His features had already set in a grotesque rictus. Reaching to pat the lad’s upper arm, Hancock was startled when the boy convulsed, jackknifing upward to spew a gut full of blood on the general’s sleeve.

The boy tumbled from the litter. His eyes remained open after he slapped the dust, but the only light in them came from the dropping sun.

Blood seeped through layers of cloth to Hancock’s skin. He caught himself before a curse burst out.

He had blundered into a snakepit. He could only be thankful he had not behaved too recklessly as he’d edged his men forward that day. At first, it had indeed appeared that he faced only a rear guard, if one with spirit. Miles had advanced handsomely, and Smyth had quite distinguished himself in driving in the Confederates he encountered. But the next scrawled reports told of stiffening resistance, of enemy numbers larger than headquarters claims had led any man to expect. Now even Barlow thought it foolhardy to continue attacking.

Lines had to be corrected, though. A few brigades, including one of Barlow’s, would have to press ahead to better ground. But where the advanced positions were defensible, the men already had orders to dig hard and deep.

All too aware of the corps’ present disarray, Hancock feared that the enemy—at least a full corps and quite possibly a second—would strike before his divisions could prepare to receive an attack. Division flanks remained loose, and the reinforcing artillery was not up. If Lee’s devils came on now …

He decided to go farther forward and inspect matters himself. It was a risk, of course—Sedgwick’s death was still fresh in everymind—but he needed the reassurance that could only come from seeing entrenchments deepen. He waved to the orderly holding his horse.

It bewildered him that Lee had not swooped down on him. The emerging picture he had of the Reb positions suggested they’d had him flanked all afternoon. Had Lee hit him earlier, hit him hard, it might have been a debacle as bad as that first grim day at Gettysburg, with Reynolds dead and Howard hanging on by one of his Bible verses. For hours, they had even had the chance to cut off the bulk of his troops from their river crossings.

It prickled his flesh to think of what might have been. And what might still be.

Why on earth had they waited? Why were they waiting now?

Heaving his stiff leg across the saddle, he knew full well he was putting off another burdensome task.

He needed to write to Meade. To fill in more of the situation that lay before the army. But that would be a trick, alerting Meade and the rest of them to the apparent scale of the Confederate presence, without appearing to be afraid of his shadow. Meade would understand him, but Grant was another matter, and Grant read every dispatch. With Grant, a man had to put up a front of immaculate and unimpeachable confidence. Anything less marked a man as undependable, as surely as the “D” branded into a deserter’s cheek marked him as dishonorable.

Yet, confidence was one thing, folly another.

His thoughts had grown teeth: Why didn’t the Johnnies come on with their yells and howls? Were they beaten down, after all? Had Robert E. Lee grown timid? That was a prospect Hancock found hard to credit.

The long day’s shadows stretched eastward, trailing from the groves like the trains of widows. New widows aplenty there would be, if Lee made use of the last few hours of light.

Hancock caught himself and suddenly felt ashamed. Where was his old spirit? He straightened in the saddle, feeling only a wince of pain from his thigh. To Hell with them all! Grant could kiss his ass if he didn’t like the way he handled his corps. And if Lee was such a blundering ass that he failed to attack by dark, he’d get a fine surprise if he tried in the morning. Just let him wait and try it then. That high-flown sonofabitch would be in for a fight.

Seven p.m.
Confederate reserve position on the Virginia Central line

Gordon was out of coffee, out of speeches, and out of temper. What was Lee waiting for? There were rumors that Lee was ill, but surely he was well enough to give a simple order to attack? Gordon had watched, first with chagrin, then with building rage, as the Yankees snuffled forward like witless hogs, begging to be trussed and slaughtered squealing. But the order hadn’t come. His division had waited in reserve, along with Breckinridge’s men and a stack of additional brigades, as the Yankees blundered into skirmishers, then rifle pits, then the Confederate line itself, baffled as dunces called up to the chalkboard. And still the order to attack hadn’t come. The Yankees sent more regiments forward, followed by full brigades, all spread out in delectable disarray, as the afternoon advanced into evening, but the order to strike them did not come then, either. Now, belatedly, infuriatingly, the Federals had begun to grasp that they weren’t on a frolic, after all, and had begun to dig their own entrenchments, clawing at the soil with a haste that would have been comical had so great an opportunity not been slipping away. And still the word to attack did not come down.