Jacob's Ladder (55 page)

When the Federals climbed out of the pit, they formed ranks two deep. At their back, in the crater, thousands more flourished like botflies in a dirty wound. Toward the pit more Federal regiments were advancing in columns, and the ridge behind was black smoke and thundering guns.

The color bearer stepped before the Federal formation and unfurled the Stars and Stripes. When the Federal army took a resolute step forward, the thin line of Confederate survivors broke and fled.

“Tell Weisinger to forward!” Mahone screeched. Screaming the rebel yell, his battle lines surged over the crest.

Federal artillery turned its grim attention to new targets, and Confederates flew apart or were scythed like grass. “Close it up! Watch your dress!” officers cried, and men who wished to rush were restrained and men who might have fled went forward obediently. Hot metal clipped them and they leaned forward and lowered their heads like men walking into a storm but kept on coming, screaming their dire yell.

As one, the Confederates halted, raised their rifles, and fired; a second volley from the second rank. Without delay, at the double-quick, bayonets extended, Mahone's furious brigades charged. “No quarter!” the Federals had shouted. Well, they'd give them no quarter.

The Federal front line tried to get behind the second line, but the second line was already breaking for the rear as the ice-cold bayonets of the Confederates dropped to the level of a man's soft parts and slid forward smooth as closing a drawer. The meeting of steel and flesh was a thud, a grunt, the yammer of curses.

Duncan took aim at a Federal captain, startled him with the first bullet, missed with the second, fired deliberately and the man dropped the flag he'd been carrying and Duncan's fourth bullet smacked him and a Confederate sideswiped Duncan's target with a rifle butt so he went down and two other Confederates invaded the man's body with triangular steel, one charging so hard he overran and when he turned to extract his bayonet he was brained by a colored sergeant swinging his rifle like a ball bat. Bone flew with brains. Duncan fired twice, point-blank, and grabbed the sergeant around the waist and they wrestled on the flag the Federal captain had defended with his life. The sergeant bucked like a wild horse and someone jerked the flag, rolling them so the sergeant was on top, and his hands grabbed Duncan's throat and he squeezed and Duncan banged at the man's back with his empty revolver—and a BLAST and powder flecks burned Duncan's cheek and the sergeant's eyes popped out of his head like soft pebbles on cords and his fingers went slack and the dead man was so suddenly weighty Duncan couldn't heave him but wiggled out from beneath. Duncan gasped thanks to the young Confederate who'd put his Enfield to the sergeant's ear, and the boy giggled and bit a fresh cartridge.

They were fighting in the shallow communications trench, jammed together so there was no room to move, no room to take a full swing or stab, and men wrestled and sometimes the bayonet that penetrated one man impaled another. Men fought with fingers and steel, knives and gun butts, and heads butted and teeth sank into the salty gristle of an Adam's apple. They tramped blood from the wounded and dead until blood rose above their shoetops. Dead men roll when you stand on them, wounded men buck. Confederates killed men who fought bravely, brained them when they turned to flee, shot them at a distance.

A colored soldier raised his hands to Duncan and said, in the softest voice, “Don't kill me, Master,” and smiled a fine smile which collapsed when a Confederate officer's sword cut through his neck and lodged in the spinal cord. The officer kicked the man's head to free his sword.

Duncan tucked his pistol under his stump to reload. His left arm ached from absent hand to absent elbow. His face was stiff and sticky with blood. He'd lost his hat and the sun was drying the blood in his hair.

A Federal was using a regimental banner for a crutch and Duncan fired and the man vanished in his powder blast. A gunpowder-blackened Confederate ripped the flag from its staff, wrapped it around his chest, and high-stepped down the line crowing like a rooster.

The Federals fled from traverse to traverse, flooding into the raw smoking earth of the crater. They dove for its safety like men diving into a pond and slid and rolled down the walls in avalanches of dirt and stones.

Hammered by Federal artillery, the Confederates stalled, found cover, brought prisoners out of the trenches and started them toward the plank road. It was midmorning and desperately hot. Duncan took a canteen from a dead Federal and drank warm water that smelled of canvas and metal.

One man on each handle, Confederates lugged eighty-pound coehorn mortars into the recaptured trenches. Mortarmen measured their lightest charges to drop mortar bombs into the pit fifty feet away. Some lost Federal troops appeared and gaped at the mortar crews before they were killed.

Iron mortar bombs toppled into the pit like blackbirds and men shrieked when they exploded.

Federal guns killed the Confederates when they approached the crater rim, and Confederate bullets slathered the slope behind the crater when Federals tried to escape from it.

The sun beat down. Men pressed against the cool earth, mouths open, gasping. Mahone hurled a fresh regiment against the Federal left, and when a thousand Federal rifles spat defiance Mahone's regiment crumpled.

Kicking steps for themselves, the boldest Federals climbed the crater wall, lined its rim, and fired point-blank. Corpses were passed up to be used as sandbags. Other corpses filled a gap a Confederate gun was hitting.

In the Confederate trenches, officers sought their regiments, soldiers their friends, wounded helped wounded to the rear. The sun beat down.

Before General Mahone committed his last reserves, the six hundred rifles of Saunders's brigade, he asked Duncan, “How is it, Major? Are the bastards still coming?”

“No, sir. But if they decide to, we're not enough to stop them.”

When Saunders's brigade was in line of battle, Mahone cried in his squeaky voice, “Men, the Confederacy rests on your shoulders. They burrowed under our lines and our friends were buried alive in their sleep. They collected our runaway servants, armed them, and turned them on us. They fault us for Fort Pillow and cry, ‘No quarter!' ” Mahone pointed forward. “God damn it to hell! I won't tell you what to do!”

“Then with your permission, General, I will,” Colonel Saunders said. “Alabamians! Forward!”

The brigade rose up out of the swale like gray ghosts in gray smoke, and for a few seconds the Federals didn't notice. When the Federal guns hit, the brigade's yell of anguish and rage sent chills down Duncan's spine. That yell broke the Federals' nerve; their rifle fire became a harmless rattle and their bravest men dropped from the rim to the floor of the crater. Confederates grabbed abandoned rifles and launched them into the pit, bayonet downward. The coehorns' bombs generated screams and explosions.

“On my command, boys!” Mahone cried. Twenty seconds they waited for the order, and a man could have lived a lifetime in those seconds, might have explored all the byways of love and fear and hope.

“Forward!” Firing and yelling, graycoats toppled onto bluecoats, and Duncan strolled the crater parapet like an immortal, taking aim as if he shot straw targets. When his pistol clicked empty he dove into the melee where men wrestled and punched, bit and stabbed, and Duncan smacked a black corporal so hard with his empty pistol bone shards flew from the man's broken head. “My Jesus,” the corporal murmured as he sank to his knees.

“Surrender!” a Confederate colonel demanded.

Other tongues raised the cry. “Surrender, God damn you!”

Confederates were still bayoneting and shooting blacks, and those Federals who'd surrendered recovered the weapons they'd dropped and fought again.

General Mahone yelled, “Why the hell won't you fellows surrender?”

A Federal officer turned aside a bayonet to shout, “Why the hell won't you let us?” And he stabbed his white handkerchief with his sword and jiggled it over his head and firing died and General Mahone hopped atop a broken limber and shouted, “I guarantee your safety. I give my word of honor. I will have the God Almighty ass of any son of a bitch who touches a goddamned prisoner. These men are brave bastards. They are my prisoners!”

The man beside Duncan was gasping. “Kill the damn niggers,” he said.

“No! God damn it! No!.”

A bareheaded Confederate snatched the hat from a Federal officer, and other Confederates followed his lead. Duncan captured an exhausted captain's black hat. The hat was too big for him and settled over his ears. Some Federal officers clamped hands over their hats, but in a flurry most Federal officers were soon bareheaded.

“No harm must come to them,” Mahone cried. “I have given my word. Clear away that barricade. Let's get these prisoners out of here.”

While the prisoners were gathering, Confederates raced to the back of the crater, dug firing steps, and began peppering the retreating Federals.

When Duncan reported to General Mahone, the general said, “Major, you look like hell.”

“It's not my blood, sir.”

“You'll draw flies. Wash and find a fresh shirt. Go tell General Bushrod Johnson we've reestablished his line—should he wish, he can quite safely inspect it.”

When Duncan passed Mahone's message to Johnson, Johnson didn't turn a hair. He said, “You are welcome to wash in the springhouse.” He added, “Your hat doesn't fit.”

Although Federal guns had holed Johnson's headquarters, they hadn't hit the springhouse, and Duncan dragged the thick door open and came into dim coolness and the music of trickling water. The spring box was long, narrow, eight inches deep, and when Duncan dipped his hand, the water was numbingly cold and blood swirled through the clear water. When he opened and closed his fist, streamers floated away, and Duncan rubbed crusted matter from between his fingers. He knelt on the cool stone beside the spring box, removed his new hat, and plunged head and neck beneath the water. How the water plucked at him! How cold it was! If a man stayed under long enough, he might pass through to a new world, the mirror image of this, where men did not punch tempered steel into each other's bodies, where this day was only summertime.

Duncan took a breath and immersed his head again, rubbing and plucking his hair to loosen the clots of another's lifeblood. When he opened his eyes, the spring water was pink. He drank. He let water wash over his teeth. He'd been clamping his jaw, and it ached. He peeled off his shirt and dropped it into the water, and it drifted to the end of the box where an iron pipe discharged the flow.

The springhouse doorway looked out at summer, and the guns had quit. Insects buzzed but didn't come inside. Duncan set his revolver on the stone floor. The loading gate was broken and the hammer sprung. A clot of hair and something white, bone perhaps, were caught between cylinder and frame. Duncan put the pistol under water and fingered until he had the matter out. When he shook the revolver it rattled.

After he sluiced his shirt back and forth he slapped it against the wall.

His new black slouch hat had a braided leather hatband, and its silk lining was emblazoned with an eagle grasping arrows and its maker's name: “Kravitz, Fine Hats, 15 Waverly Place, New York City.” The sweatband was stamped in gold: “M. M. Cannon, Capt. 40th N.Y.” Duncan wondered if he'd ever visit New York. He wished Captain Cannon's head were smaller.

He drew on his damp shirt, holstered his broken revolver, and went after his horse.

At three that afternoon, Duncan met Spaulding at Lee's headquarters.

“Splendid, Wheelhorse! What a splendid hat! How I envy you.”

Wordlessly, Duncan proffered it.

“Oh no! I couldn't! Wheelhorse—if you wear that hat to the next ball the ladies will flock to you. Tell me, was it a glorious fight?”

Duncan said, “I've come for my blanket and groundsheet. I never got a chance to roll them this morning.”

“They tell me two divisions hit our line—and just three of our gallant brigades repulsed them into confusion. How I wish I had been there!”

“I wish I hadn't.”

One of Lee's young aides told Duncan the general was inspecting the lines and hadn't signed the note for Planter Pickering.

Lee's aide said, “Sir, I admire your hat.”

Duncan asked Spaulding if he had anything to eat, and Spaulding said he knew a Petersburg family with a garden. “They are only distant connections on my mother's side, but I am always welcome. We'll graze in their garden on our way to Poplar Grove.”

“What's at Poplar Grove?”

“Money, Wheelhorse. Enough money to finance my furlough.” Spaulding would say no more.

Of Petersburg's twenty-one churches only those on the Appomattox River side of town had undamaged steeples. The broad Augustan face of the mercantile exchange was pocked with holes. Bricks were piled neatly in the streets.

A young colored woman answered Spaulding's knock. “No sir,” she said, “Master and Missus ain't home, and no sir, I can't let you into our garden on account of they say you eat like a hog. Like a hog, Master!” She slammed the door.

Spaulding shrugged. “As I said, Wheelhorse, they are distant connections. Never mind, I'll bring you a ham back from my furlough.”

Before the war, Poplar Grove had been a park where bands concerted on pleasant summer evenings. Now, fifteen hundred Federal prisoners were guarded by militiamen and boys. The prisoners sat with lowered heads or lay on parched ground. Most were black and most had been robbed. The only attention they received was provided by flies.

A crude sign nailed to a tree advised:
PERSONS WISHING TO RECLAIM SLAVE PROPERTY, SEE THE SERGEANT.

“Then it's true, Wheelhorse!” Spaulding rubbed his hands. “Niggers that aren't claimed will be sent to Andersonville. That is,” he added, “if they aren't dispatched along the way.”