Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run (11 page)

He pauses and the field is silent, as if the Yankees also wait for his words.

“What will it be?” General Jackson at last declares.

“Freedom!” the soldiers yell. Their red, grimy faces are twisted in pain or pleasure, I can't tell which as I study them. Everyone, that is, except Senator Dupree. I spy his blackhatted self down the line, stroking his goatee and nodding at the manic men on either side of him.

Now General Jackson nods too. “Then let us defend it.”

As if the Yankees have heard all they want, a voice erupts from across the field.

“Charge!”

A drum beats, a bugle blows, and the Union line begins its advance. Behind them, their artillery continues blasting shells over their heads and into our line.

At once, orders from General Jackson's officers ripple down the army. The men around us begin to pepper the Yankees with cannon and musket shot. This checks their momentum, but they don't retreat. They don't duck for cover or hide behind trees either, while they shoot. They simply stand in line and open fire on our line, which is also standing, unprotected, and firing at them.

I've seen reenactors do this before—stand in formation as they aim their muskets at the reenacted enemy, fire, reload, aim, and fire again.

But this . . . good God! How do they just stand there, taking turns being the hunter and hunted? These men may be untrained, but the bullets whizzing by their heads might as well be flies. I try to shield myself behind this beast of a dude, his shoulders as wide as a refrigerator. Cyrus is to his right. He's reloading and looks over his shoulder at me. I act like I'm reloading too, even though I haven't even fired a shot yet. He just shakes his head at me, takes aim, and fires again.

I know who the winner will be, but it doesn't seem obvious from where I'm standing. Peeking around the refrigerator's side, I see the Union line growing longer on either end. I look to my left, to the end of our line. The Yankees have more men there. It's only a matter of time before they surround us.

Suddenly I see the familiar dark goatee and big hat of General Bee. On his horse, he motions with his sword for his brigade to get in a battle line. He scans the men on both sides of him and raises his sword. The odds are long, but he is going to attack the Yankees before they get the chance to encircle us.

I can't hear his voice over the chaos of the battle, but as his sword drops the troops charge.

“Rally, men!” someone close to me shouts. It's a Confederate officer, a tall, thin guy with a pale face and circles around his eyes. I recognize him as one of the officers who Dupree was talking to. Sure enough, in a flash Dupree is at his side, his eyes darting from the soldiers who are gathering around the officer to a piece of paper in his hand. I work my way next to Dupree and see him look from the paper to a hill about a hundred yards away to our left. I crane my neck to snatch a peek at the paper. Just as quick, Dupree turns back and catches me looking. I glance away, but still feel his eyes burning a hole in the top of my head as I hear him fold up the paper and tuck it away.

But I saw all I needed to see. The paper was a map. A map of the battlefield . . . with officers' names and dates . . . created by the National Park Service in the twenty-first century and handed out for free in the Manassas visitors' center.

So that's how he convinced the officers he wasn't just a lunatic. He's been using that map to make predictions all day, and now the officers are starting to believe him.

By now about a hundred men have swarmed to us. I'm glad to see that Big Jim and Elmer are among them and okay. I wonder how their brother is doing.

Cyrus cries out, “See General Bee! We can still join his men.” His shout seems to be answered by one from Bee's group. He and his men are about halfway between us and the Yankee line. Wounded and dead Confederates litter the ground behind Bee's charging men, but they've blown big holes in the Union line up ahead of them. They just might do it. Just a little farther . . . a well-placed assault to crush the Union flank and . . .

There's an eerie calm as we wait to hear him yell “Charge!” Suddenly General Bee falls from his horse to the ground. Almost immediately another officer leaps from his horse and is at General Bee's side.

We see General Bee push himself up to his hands and knees, and a cheer erupts from the men around me. I give a shout too, but the cry isn't completely out of my mouth when I see General Bee collapse back to the ground and lie still. The Confederate charge wavers. Men fall all around him.

“We've got to go help them!” cries Cyrus.

“No!” orders the pale-faced officer. “Bee is lost. We have another mission.”

He points farther to our left, just north of the Yankee line. It's the hill where Dupree was just looking.

“I have just received intelligence that in a few minutes Union cannons will be wheeled to that spot,” the officer says. He glances at Dupree as if for reassurance. Dupree nods. “If they take that hill, they will be able to flank us and bombard our entire line and we will be destroyed. We must take the cannons first.”

This plan sounds familiar to me. It seems like I remember reading in one of Dad's history books something about Confederate troops capturing, or trying to capture, some Union artillery. Practically a suicide mission, like General Bee's just now. But I can't recall what they did with the guns once they seized them. One thing I'm sure of—the books never said anything about which of those soldiers ever made it back alive.

Now I'm one of those soldiers. Only my mission is to make their mission fail.

The officer gives the order—“Keep close to the flag!”—and we take off. It's more of a sprint than a march. At the head of our group, a guy is huffing with this Rebel flag in his hands. No gun, just a flag.

The weight of my gun practically topples me over. I'm gasping as we hit the hill. Someone starts shooting at us, but no one gets hit. We hurdle a split-rail fence and disappear into a cornfield.

“Stay together! Stay together!” Cyrus shouts, staying low and cutting through the rows of chest-high corn so fast it's nearly impossible for any of us to stay together. Especially me. This is like having twenty gym classes in a row. And I suck at gym. I'm the last to make it to the far side of the cornfield.

We fall to the ground and peer out through the corn. We're halfway up the short hill where the cannons are supposed to be set up.

“I don't see a durn thing,” Cyrus mutters. “Some intelligence.”

As if on cue, a team of horses appears over the crest of the hill. The horses haul a cannon behind them. Cyrus gives a low whistle. The officer says, “That's one of them Parrott guns . . . ten pounder . . . big and rifled and real accurate if you know how to use it.”

Oh man, a Parrott gun! This thing is like the Tiger Woods of cannons. A lot of Civil War cannons aren't rifled. They're just smooth-bore barrels that fire round balls that don't really spin or rotate or fly real straight. But the Parrott guns have grooved barrels that spin the bullet-shaped ammo, making it fly straighter. These things shoot real far and are real accurate.

And that's what's on the hill ahead of us. Another team of horses crests the hill. Another and another. In all, six teams of horses pulling cannons appear over the top of a low rise. A full battery. Once they're set up, General Jackson's men won't be safe. They'll be easy targets.

Our officer motions us into a line of battle.

“Huh, I guess that intelligence was intelligent after all,” Cyrus whispers as he crawls into position. “How did he know?”

I know how he knew. I look around for the officer's “intelligence,” but nowhere is the black hat visible. I crane my neck so I can see all the way down the line. Still no Dupree. He's not with us. He didn't come. He's sending us to do his dirty work, whatever it is. I've got a bad feeling that he's come up with a pretty good plan here.

On top of the hill, Yankee soldiers busily untie their horses from the cannons and begin arranging the big guns.

“Everybody loaded?” whispers our officer. “We'll all fire at once and we'll have them before they turn around. Ready, men? On three . . . one . . . two . . . THREE!”

We step out from the corn and open fire. The first ten Yankees to die all get shot in the back.

But not by me. I can't bring myself to do it. I aim my musket just over their heads, just like a reenactor, and pull the trigger. My shoulder practically breaks from the gun's recoil.

Our flag guy leads our charge, but only makes it a few steps when he's hit. I see some Yankees at the top of the hill taking potshots from behind their cannons.

Cyrus grabs the flag from the ground in one hand and with his musket in the other lets out this god-awful scream and charges up the hill. The others beside me follow.

Watching Cyrus run, I don't see how he'll ever get shot in the butt. His backside is never to the enemy. Maybe somehow I've kept it from happening. I don't know if that's good or bad.

All right. Another charge. I'm getting pretty good at this. I take a deep breath and start to take off.

“Yaaagh!” I yell as all of a sudden I'm yanked back into the corn and flat on my back.

“What the . . .” I gasp, trying to catch my breath. The sun's right in my face and all I can see is this looming shadow over me. My gut seizes up. All I can think is
Dupree!
I'm about to really cuss when the shadow drops beside me. My gut takes a different flip. It's Ashby, her freckled face real close to mine.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but I had to tell you something. I caught a little of what he's up to.”

My brain feels a little woozy. “Huh?” I say.

“Stonewall!” Ash says. “Please pay attention.” She gives me a thump on the head.

“Ow!”

“I'm sorry,” she says. “But my father . . . what you guys are doing is part of some sort of stunt he's got up his sleeve.”

“Yeah,” I say, rubbing my head. “I figured that part out already.”

Ash looks through the cornstalks up the hill. I follow and can just see Cyrus, Big Jim, and Elmer wheeling one of the cannons around to aim away from us.

“I was carrying buckets of water to some of the wounded behind the line and that's where I saw him talking . . .”

“Figures he'd be
behind
the line,” I sneer.

“Well, it has made it easier for me to keep track of him.”

“He didn't see you?” I ask.

She looks down at her dress, sad. “I tried to keep out of his sight . . . but I don't think he's even looking for me. I think he's forgotten about me.”

I want to comfort her somehow, but all I can think of is patting her shoulder. Which feels real dorky after I do it, but she does give me a little smile.

“Anyway, I was trying to get as close as I could to my father without him noticing me. He was talking to this one guy who looked like he was in charge of this artillery unit—all these guys around him were cleaning out and loading these big cannons. And my dad was showing him a map!”

“What'd he say?”

“I'm sorry. I couldn't get close enough to hear everything. But I kept hearing them saying the same thing over and over. But it doesn't make any sense.”

“What?”

She looks at me like she's not sure of herself. “They kept saying, ‘Sure, man.'”

“What?!” I say. “ ‘Sure, man'? These guys don't talk like that. They aren't a bunch of surfer dudes.”

Ash shrugs. “I know. But they kept saying it a lot and were real serious and now the officer is marching his men up here right . . .”

She stops.

“What?” I say, but she clamps her hand over my mouth. Not the worse thing in the world.

Now I hear it. Footsteps. From the other end of the cornfield.

Ashby whispers in my ear, “I don't know what he's doing, but you've got to stop it. Please, Stonewall. Hurry!”

Ash crouches low and scurries away down a corn row.

I jump to my feet and run fast up the hill toward Cyrus. He's planted the Confederate flag almost at the top of the hill by an ammunition cart and is now heaving against an artillery piece. I fall in beside him.

“Glad you could make it,” he says.

I don't answer, just push. Or at least pretend to.

“Wheel them around!” I hear our officer shout, his white face finally showing some color.

About a hundred yards below us on the other side of the hill is the right flank of the Union line. Now we can do to them what they were planning to do to us. As we turn the cannon around, the history of this moment flashes into my brain. The Confederates did capture the Union artillery, but they didn't have any artillery men as part of the charge. The Confederates never knew how to load and aim the guns, so once they fired the guns already loaded they had to retreat back to their line.

Now I see I'm right. Once we get the cannons turned around, Cyrus and the others are puzzled at what to do next. I've seen it done at the reenactments a gazillion times, but I've always been too busy complaining about the noise to find out how it all works.

One soldier tries yanking one of the horse harness chains still strapped to a cannon. Another dimwit actually sticks his arm down a gun's barrel to feel if it's loaded with a shell. He'd make a good reenactor.

From the ammunition cart behind the cannons, Cyrus picks up a ten-pound iron shell and heaves it through the Parrott's muzzle. But he has no clue where to load the powder and detonate the gun.

“Cease fire!” our officer suddenly commands even though not one of the guns has been shot. “Cease fire!” he shouts again. “That's what they're for.” And he points back to the cornfield.