Jacob's Ladder (31 page)

“My sister Clara—she's to be married next month,” . . . the boy said and sagged. He became dead weight.

They laid the boy beside the road and the mountaineer pressed his thumbs over his eyes and took the bloodstained letter. “He'll fight no more,” the mountaineer said. “I never wanted to be in the artillery. Every time you get in a scrap the artillery horses get killed. Me, I never could abide that. Poor beasts never ask for war. Nary one horse ever signed up to go to war. How they scream when they're hit. Many nights after a battle I stayed awake on account of their screamin'. Where you from, soldier?”

Alexander had to think. “SunRise,” he finally said. “Over in the mountains.”

“Powerful lot of mountains in the Confederacy.”

“Western Virginia. To the west of Staunton.”

“Wasn't General Jackson born in that country?”

“I wouldn't know. Sorry.” Alexander stretched. Relieved of the weight of the dying boy, his body was light and free. His side was covered in gore, the boy's blood had matted his hair and plugged his ear, and his skin tautened as it dried.

“I'm Maxwell. Pine Bluff, Tennessee. After they did for Gregg's Carolinians they snuck behind our position and poured it to us. We never had no chance at all. Oh, we'll take a ribbing for that tomorrow.”

“But we're going to the rear.”

“Sure we are. Sure we are. Don't go thinking we'll be staying. Provost's men will send us back. We're whipped now, but we won't be whipped tomorrow.”

“I'm whipped for good.”

“If you ain't killed, you can fight again, and maybe this time it'll be you doing the whipping. How you called?”

“Alexander Kirkpatrick.”

“I knew an Alexander once. Smallpox killed him. Only Alexander I ever knew personal. 'Course there's Alexanders aplenty, but he's the only one I knew.”

“My mother hoped I would conquer all.” Alexander chuckled at the notion.

“Way you talk you're educated. Me, I never got educated. All my life I worked in the fields. Oh, I'd kill a deer or a bear to keep us through the cold months, but mostly I lived by the sweat of my brow, like the Bible says. When this war started, I thought I'd see the world, and by God I have. I been to Vicksburg until we was shot out of there, and I been to Maryland, and before it's over, I expect I'll get to Richmond. We passed through Richmond on the railroad, but it was night and I couldn't see a blessed thing. How'd you come to be a soldier?”

“It was no choice of mine.”

“Conscript, eh? We 'uns separated from the Union 'cause we wouldn't be told what to do, and now our Confederate government goes to conscriptin' soldiers who never asked for any part in the fight. Conscripted man ain't any better off than artillery horses, and I said so many a time.”

“Full indeed is earth of woes, and full the sea . . .”

“That from the Bible?”

“Hesiod. One of the ancients.”

“I never did know anything about those fellows. I can write my name, but schoolmaster quit and there never was another come to my part of the country. Always believed I'd be luckier had I got my education. Folks got respect for a man with education.”

“I am expected to know what I do not know. How I wish—I wish I could be just like everyone else!”

The rough Tennessean shook his head. “Damned if that ain't somethin'. Get shot at all morning and in the afternoon meet a man who says I'm better off ignorant.”

The column limped through a road cut and the sound of battle was swallowed by the shuffle of feet, the moan of wounded men, a man quietly begging to be killed.

“You got a wife?” the mountaineer asked.

“No. I thought I had one, but I did not.”

“She take up with somebody else? Die on you?”

“When my Sallie wanted me, she didn't hesitate a moment, and when she was finished with me, she discarded me without regret.”

“Hark that poor feller there on the roadside. Some woman'll be weepin' for him, I'll wager.”

“Sallie, she never ever showed any pity for me.”

“I s'pose I'm blessed. My woman's so homely nobody else'd lie with her. I ain't much maybe, but I'm what she's got.”

“My Sallie was beautiful.”

“Them beautiful women got the upper hand over us ordinary fellows. They can do better'n us and they know it. A homely woman like my Alice is grateful for what she's got. Never see no homely woman runnin' off.”

“Do you care for her?”

The man shot him a strange look. “'Course I do. 'Course I do. It's just my manner of talkin'. I didn't know what to say when you told how your wife had left you, so I said the first thing came into my head. That's where education comes in. Educated man never says the first thing comes into his head.”

“Often he doesn't know what to say.”

“That's when you can say what some other educated feller said already! You got it memorized what that other feller said and can use it for your own.”

“When I quote Cicero or Homer it's never appropriate and everyone stares at me and I keep smiling as if they were in the wrong.”

“Well, you fought today, didn't you? Live through this scrap and you'll have something to talk about. You at Sharpsburg?”

“No.”

“Father Death had his work cut out for him at Sharpsburg.”

“I can't imagine worse than today.”

“This wasn't so bad. Weren't for them Yankees getting around behind us today, we'd have whipped 'em.” He offered a dark plug of lint-covered tobacco to Alexander.

Alexander refused the plug, and the Tennessean bit off a chew and shut his eyes in pleasure.

A vedette of cavalrymen waited where the road crossed a broader turnpike. As the defeated men arrived they were winnowed into two groups.

“Them's the provost men. They'll sort us into shot fellows and them which ain't and bring us back to the line. Way them yankees was coming at us, this scrap could go on for days. Was you at the Seven Days?”

Alexander shook his head no.

“Scrap every day of the week. See that bunch on the left? They's fellers from the 1st Tennessee. Seventh Tennessee'll be nearby. See, there's a quartermaster's wagon. I guess they'll feed us. I lost my canteen, blanket, tin cup, everything.”

“I dropped my haversack. . . .”

“When you skedaddle, you got to skedaddle. Which regiment you with? You see any your people up there?”

Alexander said quietly, “I won't return. I'll not go back.”

The Tennessean's jaw dropped. “But you got to go back. Just because you run don't mean you've done quit. All them boys there've run. I run myself. But you don't go back, the provost, he's gonna shoot you. Old Stonewall's provosts right keen to shoot fellows don't want to fight no more.”

The line slowed to a shuffle. Officers distinguished the quick from the shot.

“It's not my fight,” Alexander said.

“Why of course it is. Ain't these your people?” The Tennessean's wave encompassed unwounded and wounded men alike.

“I wish I were like other men.”

“I'll be damned. Might be you have more education than a man can naturally stand. I'd be right pleased to read the newspapers and write my own letters home. But if losin' your people is the price of education, by God, I wouldn't pay it.”

“I won't go back. I'll run again.”

A hundred yards ahead the column divided. The Tennessean looked Alexander over as if he were one of the world's natural wonders. “Say, you ain't a coward, are you?”

“I don't know what I am. Call me coward if you must.”

The Tennessean screwed up his face. “Where I come from, a man calls another man a coward, he goin' to face that man over a pistol come sunrise. Can't call a man a coward where I come from. He won't stand for it.”

“Well, I don't care,” Alexander said with a spark of defiance. “I just don't care! Coward, abolitionist, rebel, atheist: all the same to me. Words. Words to frighten and . . . Christ, I'm hungry. I've never been so hungry in my life.”

“You . . . you ain't right. I don't mean to hurt your feelin's and such, Alexander, but you ain't right.”

Alexander's shoes scuffled through the dust.

“I ain't one to tell another man what to do,” the Tennessean said. “But might be this war could make you right. No offense, but there's some fellers wasn't much before this war and now they're havin' a big time. You bein' an educated man, ain't nothin' to keep you from bein' an officer. War's a mighty force for changin' a man.”

“But it's crazy.”

“Well of course it's crazy! Everybody knows that! But that don't mean you don't do it. If we was sensible all the time, where would we be? I don't own no niggers nor care to, but I'm fightin'. Bluebelly don't own no niggers either and don't care to, but he's fightin' too. Now you make sense of that!”

The provost's men were directing healthy stragglers to the left. “Lean against me, close your eyes, keep 'em closed,” the Tennessean hissed. He fumbled at Alexander's breast pocket. “This here's that poor dead boy's letter. You post it from the hospital. Be a terrible letter for his folks, but they'd rather have it than not. Do what I say now and you'll be all right.”

It wasn't hard for Alexander to sag against the other man, not hard to close his eyes. “Me, I'm fit as a fiddle,” the Tennessean cried out. “And you got half my regiment here already. This here soldier's been shot in the head and I don't expect he'll live. You let me take him to the ambulances, I'll be right back. I'm Jim Maxwell, 7th Tennessee.”

The provost captain said, “Sergeant, keep watch on this man. If he starts to board an ambulance himself, bring him straight to me.”

“You know, sir,” the Tennessean sang out as he walked Alexander toward the ambulances, “with all your ridin' back and forth behind the lines, you get to see more'n I do, since I'm only a lowly infantryman up on the line fightin' Federals. I've always wanted to know. You ever see a dead cavalryman?”

“Maxwell, 7th Tennessee. I'll remember you.”

“Thank you kindly, sir. Thank you.” He helped Alexander into an ambulance. Two narrow benches quickly filled with walking wounded. Three men were laid on the floor. “You get back to Richmond, you take its measure for me.” And Alexander's benefactor was gone.

The ambulance jounced south and east for the better part of a day. Men groaned, two died. At the field hospital at Guiney Station, amputations were performed. The less wounded helped the worse wounded aboard a waiting train, and Alexander sat on a wicker bench between two stunned amputees. The train chuffed along irregular track until near midnight, when it stopped behind another, even slower, train. Alexander Kirkpatrick stepped between the cars and swung down to the ground and lay in the ditch until the train was out of sight.

He followed the first road he came to. How Alexander wished he could be like the Tennessean—bluff, hearty, willing to throw life away for a lark. The man had said he had a homely wife. How Alexander yearned for a homely wife.

Alexander walked west, always picking the less traveled road, until sometime before dawn he abandoned the lane for a farmer's hayrick, and slept among faintly sour dead grasses and the bright tang of spearmint.

Earlier that afternoon, when Walker's brigade hurried toward the fighting, they bumped into Colonel Paxton's Stonewall Brigade as it was forming to charge. Officers yelled, “Go around, damn it! Go around!” But Walker's men passed right through their ranks.

“Don't be in such a hurry,” one private called. “There's yanks enough for all of us.”

Released from long waiting, Duncan felt the tiredness slip from his muscles, and the bile dissolved in the back of his throat. His young body took in great gulps of air, and he yelled to his men, “Let 'em know we're coming,” and the men took up the terrible yip-yip-yip which was partly the cry of wolves, partly the cry of men worse than wolves. Duncan's lips lifted off his sharp young teeth in a hungry grin. The color sergeant trotting at Duncan's side wore the same grin exactly. “Dress your lines,” Duncan hollered. “Dress on the man next to you!”

And the van slowed enough so that the regiment could trot through the woods as a machine, a willing machine that could concentrate its fire, could wheel, could turn. Rawhide shoes were discarded and the yelling brigade left bloody footprints on the leaf litter. Their arms grasped their Enfields, their thumbs clamped on the thick iron hammers, their elbows banged against their sides, their knees churned. Their minds were busied with soldiers' calculations: how to keep their feet on rough ground while staying precisely abreast, neither ahead of nor behind the man on their left, the man on their right. “Dress the line! Dress the line!”

The men in the second rank need only attend to the man's back in front of them, that sweat-stained butternut-dyed patch of cloth that puckered and stretched, darkened with new sweat.

The brigade's colors were somewhere in the core—the soldier's guide and identity. To the colors, the officers came, the couriers came, and there the enemy fire focused.

Their battle flag was deep gray with the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia embroidered in the center. Around the edge were names:
MCDOWELL, CROSS KEYS, PORT REPUBLIC, GAINES'S MILL, MALVERN HILL, CEDAR MOUNTAIN, SHARPSBURG, SECOND MANASSAS,
and everywhere neat patches, each large enough to cover a .58-caliber bullet hole.

The brigade had had nine color bearers, but one might yet recover from his wounds. The present color bearer, Corporal McBride, counted 137 patches in the flag. McBride took up the colors in the west woods at Sharpsburg after his predecessor was killed. Since McBride was no hand with needle and thread, he'd had
SHARPSBURG
and
SECOND MANASSAS
stitched on by a tailor from the 13th Virginia.