Out of Their Minds (19 page)

A different form of life, my old friend had speculated. A better form of life, perhaps. A development that was one of the points of significance in the continuing evolutionary process. The force of thought, perhaps. The substance of abstract thought here snared and shaped and made to live and die (or pretend to be dead) and then, in turn, to become a simple force again and again to be shaped and formed and made to live again, either in its present form or in another form.

It made no sense, I told myself. But, then, nothing ever had made any sense. Fire had made no sense until a now unknown man had tamed it. A wheel had made no sense until someone dreamed it up. Atoms had made no sense until inquiring minds envisioned them and proved them (without actually understanding them) and atomic energy had made no sense until a strange fire had been lit at the University of Chicago and, later, a towering, fierce mushroom had blossomed in the desert.

If evolution were, as it seemed, a continuing process to bring about a life force which could live with, or cope with, its environment, then here, in such a flexible, malleable life form evolution must surely be close to a final achievement and a final glory. For here would be a life form which, because it was not essentially matter, but could become, theoretically at least, any form of matter, was able to adapt itself automatically to any environment, fit itself into any ecology.

But what was the sense of it, I asked myself, lying there upon the field of Gettysburg, with the dead men (dead
men
?) at my feet. Although, come to think of it, it might be far too early to be seeking for a purpose. The naked carnivorous ape that roamed Africa in hunting packs two million years, or more, ago, if he could have been observed by some intelligence, would have seemed to have far less purpose than the strange beings of this world.

I pushed myself to my feet again and went on up the slope, past the clump of trees, past the shattered cannon—and now I saw that there were many shattered cannons—until I reached the ridgetop and could look down the reverse slope.

The stage still was set, I saw. Campfires sparkled down the slope and south and east and from far off came the janglings of harness and the creaking sound of wagons on the move, or perhaps artillery. Down toward the Round Tops a mule began to bray.

Over all hung the brilliance of the summer stars, and this, I recalled, was a misreading of the script, for after that final charge up the fated slope there had been heavy rain and some of the wounded, helpless to move themselves, had been caught by a rising creek and drowned. It had been “cannon weather.” So often had great storms followed on the heels of bitter battle that men in the ranks believed the rains were caused by heavy cannonading.

The near hillside was dotted by the dark, humped shapes of dead men and occasionally a dead horse, but there seemed to be no wounded, nor was there the sound of wounded, that pitiful moaning and crying that went on after every battle, sometimes punctuated by the unnerving shrieks of those few men who screamed. Surely, I told myself, all the wounded could not have been found and carried off by this time, and I wondered if there ever had been any wounded—if, perhaps, the script of fact and history might not have been edited and cleaned up a bit by the elimination of the wounded.

Looking at those dim figures humped upon the ground, I sensed the quiet and peace of them, the majesty of death. None lay distorted, all were decently composed, as if they might simply have lain down and gone to sleep. There was in them no agony and no pain. Even the horses were horses that had gone to sleep. None lay with bodies bloated by the gas of death, with legs outthrust grotesquely. The entire battlefield was polite and neat and orderly and, perhaps, a touch romantic. There was editing here, I knew, but not so much the editing of this world as the editing of mine. This had been the way the people who had lived at the time of Gettysburg had thought about this war, the way later generations also had thought of it after the years had stripped it of its harshness and brutality and horror, and had draped across it a chivalrous mantle, making of it a saga rather than a war.

I knew that it was wrong. I knew that this was not the way that it had been. But, standing there, I half forgot that it was nothing but a play and could only feel the gold-spangled glory and the glory-haunted melancholy.

The mule had quit his braying and somewhere a group about a campfire had begun to sing. Behind me the leaves were whispering in the clump of trees.

Gettysburg, I thought. I had been here in another time, on another world (or in another world, or of another world, whatever it might be, or however it worked out) and had stood, on this very spot, and tried to imagine what it had been like, and now I saw—or, at least, I saw a part of it.

I started down the hill when a voice spoke my name.

“Horton Smith.”

I swung toward the sound and for a moment I failed to see the one who had spoken, and then I did, perched upon the broken wheel of the shell-smashed cannon. I could see just the outline of him, the thatched and pointed head, the juglike ears, and, for once, he was not bouncing in consuming rage; he was simply roosting there.

“So it's you again,” I said.

“You had the Devil's help,” said the Referee. “You did not do it fair. The encounter with Quixote should not count at all and you must have needed the Devil's help to live through the cannonade.”

“All right. So I had the Devil's help. What do you do about it?”

“You admit it?” he asked, eagerly. “You admit that you had help?”

“Not at all,” I said. “You said it and I don't really know. The Devil said nothing to me about giving any help.”

He slumped, dejected. “Ah, then there is nothing one can do. Three times is a charm. It is the law and I cannot question it, although,” he said, sharply, “I would like to very much. I do not like you, Mr. Smith. I like you not at all.”

“It's a feeling,” I told him, “that I reciprocate.”

“Six times!” he mourned. “It is immoral! It is impossible! There has never been anyone before who even did it three times.”

I walked close to the cannon where he perched and took a good hard look at him. “If you can find any comfort in it,” I finally told him, “I made no deal with the Devil. I asked him to speak a kind word for me, but he indicated that he couldn't do it. He said a rule was a rule and there was nothing he could do.”

“Comfort!” he shrilled, puffing up in rage. “Why should you wish to give me comfort? It's another trick, I tell you. Another dirty human trick!”

I turned abruptly on my heel. “Go chase yourself,” I told him. What was the use of trying to be civil with a jerk like that?

“Mr. Smith,” he called after me. “Mr. Smith. Please, Mr. Smith.”

I paid him no attention and went on, tramping down the hill.

To my left I saw the faint outlines of a white farmhouse, enclosed by a picket fence which was white as well. Some of the fence, I saw, had been torn down. Light shone through the windows and tied horses stamped in the yard outside the house. That would be General Meade's headquarters and the general might be there. If I wanted to walk over, I might get a glimpse of him. But I didn't walk over. I kept on down the hill. For the thing that was Meade would not be really Meade, no more than the house was really a house or the broken cannon a cannon. It was all cruel make-believe, but in a very solid form—a form so solid that for a moment, back there on the hilltop, I'd caught the sense of a substantial and historic battlefield.

Now there were hidden voices all about me and occasionally the sound of footsteps and at times I caught the sight of dim human figures hurrying across the hill, on official business, perhaps, but more than likely on business of their own.

The ground beneath my feet plunged sharply and I saw that it led down into a gulch, with a thicket of small trees at the upper end of it. Beneath the trees was the flare of a campfire light. I tried to veer away, for I had no wish to meet anyone, but I had gone too far to avoid detection. Small stones loosened by my feet went rolling and bouncing down into the gulch and a voice cried out sharply at me.

I stopped and stood stock-still.

“Who's there?” the voice cried again.

“Friend,” I said, and it was a silly thing to say, but all that I could think of.

The firelight glinted on a lifted musket barrel.

“There ain't no need, Jed, to be so upset,” said a drawling voice. “There ain't no Rebs around and even if there were, they'd be inclined to be plumb peaceful.”

“I just wanted to make sure, is all,” said Jed. “After today, I ain't taking any chances.”

“Take it easy,” I said, walking toward the fire. “I'm not any Reb.”

I stopped when I was in sight of them and let them look me over. There were three of them, two sitting by the fire, the other on his feet with the musket lifted.

“You ain't one of us, neither,” said the standing one, who apparently was Jed. “Just who are you, mister?”

“My name is Horton Smith,” I said. “A newspaperman.”

“Well, what do you know,” said the one who drawled. “Come on in and sit by the fire with us for a spell if you have got the time.”

“I have some time,” I said.

“We can tell you all about it,” said the one who had not spoken before. “We was right up there in the thick of it. Right by the clump of trees.”

“Wait a minute,” said the drawly one. “We don't need to tell him. I seen this gentleman before. He was up there with us for a while. Maybe all the time. I seen him, then things got hot and I lost track of everything.”

I walked toward the blaze. Jed leaned his musket against a small plum tree and resumed his seat beside the fire.

“We was frying up some sow belly,” he said, motioning toward the pan set on a bed of coals raked out from the fire. “If you are hungry, we got plenty of it.”

“But you got to be hungry,” said one of the others, “or you can't nohow stomach it.”

“I thing I'm hungry enough,” I said. I came into the circle of the firelight and squatted down. Beside the pan of frying pork sat a steaming coffee pot. I sniffed at its aroma. “It seems that I missed lunch,” I said, “and breakfast, too.”

“Then maybe you can manage it,” said Jed. “We got a couple of extra hardtack and I'll make you up a sandwich.”

“Be sure,” said the drawling one, “to knock them against something to dislodge the crawlers. Someone that ain't use to it might not like fresh meat.”

“Say, mister,” said the third one, “looks to me as if you picked up a crease.”

I put my hand to my head and the fingers came away sticky.

“Knocked out for a while,” I said. “Just came to a while ago. Shell fragment, I suppose.”

“Mike,” Jed said to the drawly one, “why don't you and Asa wash him up a bit and see how bad it is. I'll pour him a cup of coffee. Probably he could use it.”

“It's all right,” I said. “It is just a scratch.”

“Better have a look,” said Mike, “then, when you leave, head down to Taneytown Road. Just south on the road a piece you'll find a sawbones. He can slop some junk on it, keep it from mortifying.”

Jed handed me a cup of coffee and it was strong and hot. I took a sip of it and burned my tongue. Mike worked on my head, as tenderly as if he'd been a woman, daubing away with a handkerchief soaked in water from his canteen.

“It's just a crease,” he said. “Took off some hide, is all. But if I was you, I'd see me a sawbones.”

“All right, I will,” I said.

And the funny thing about it, I realized, was that these three men around their fire really believed that they were Union soldiers. There was no playacting here. They were what they were supposed to be. Perhaps they could be anything at all, or the force (if it was a force) that could be shaped into form and matter, could be anything at all. But once that form had been taken, they were, to all intents and purposes, the thing that had been formed. In a little time, perhaps, their solid shapes would be transformed back to its elemental form, available then for another form and being, but until that came about they were Union soldiers who had just fought a battle on this shell-scarred hillside.

“It's all that I can do,” said Mike, going back and sitting down. “I haven't even got a clean rag I can wrap around your head. But you find the doc and he'll fix you up.”

“Here's a sandwich,” said Jed, handing it to me. “I tried to knock the skippers out. I think I got the most of them.”

It was an unappetizing-looking mess and the hardtack was as hard as I had read it was, but I was hungry and it was food and I put it down. Jed fixed sandwiches for the others and we all sat munching, not talking because it took a man's full concentration to eat that kind of food. The coffee had cooled enough so that I could drink it and it helped to wash the hardtack down.

Finally we were finished and Jed poured each of us another cup of coffee; Mike got out an old pipe and hunted around in a pocket until he found some crumbled shreds of tobacco with which to load the pipe. He lit it with a brand pulled gingerly from the fire.

“A newspaperman,” he said. “From New York, most likely.”

I shook my head. New York was too close. One of them might just happen to know a newsman from New York. “London,” I said. “The
Times
.”

“You don't sound like no Britisher to me,” said Asa. “They got a funny way of talking.”

“I haven't been in England for years,” I said. “I've knocked around a lot.”

It didn't explain, of course, how a man could lose his British accent, but it held them for the moment.

“There's a Britisher with Lee's army,” Jed said. “Free-mantle or some such name as that. I suppose you know him.”

“I've heard of him,” I said. “I've never met the man.”