Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run (9 page)

I'd like to tell her that I prefer not to be bayoneted, shot, or crapped on by any more famous horses.

But she's got her hand on my arm and I think she could lead me anywhere. Oh yeah, plus it's a noble cause too. But mostly I think it's her hand on my arm.

WE STOP at the edge of the woods and look out over the battlefield. There's a lull in the battle, but of course we know that won't last long. From here we mostly see the rear of the Confederate lines as soldiers move about, reloading, regrouping, and trying to dodge the occasional artillery shell.

I can see Cyrus. I think I can see Big Jim and Elmer there too. It's hard to tell from this far away and with so many people in the way.

I point out Cyrus to Ash and tell her a little about what he and I have been through.

“Great,” she says, “maybe he'll be able to help us.”

“Well, except for the fact that he's crazy and a Confederate too,” I say.

“Perfect,” she says. “He may actually be the best thing we've got going for us.”

We keep looking and finally Ash spots her father. It looks like he's giving another one of his speeches, not that far from where Cyrus is.

“He seems to be staying clear of the front line,” I say. “He doesn't want to get shot either, obviously. It doesn't look like he's actually done much yet.”

“Maybe we can just find out what he's up to and screw it up,” says Ash.

Finally! Something I'm good at. Screwing stuff up. Maybe there is hope after all.

“But,” she adds, “we can't do much from back here.”

So we make a plan. It's the dumbest plan I've ever heard of in my life. The part that's most dumb is the part where I go back to find Cyrus, so he and I can try to get involved in whatever Dupree is doing and mess it up. Meanwhile, Ash is going to hang around in the rear near her father to try to find out what he's up to by pretending to do nurse-type stuff.

Yeah, I know, I told you it was dumb. But what else were we going to do?

I linger for a minute hoping there's going to be a big kiss when we separate, but she only gives me a big hug, which is nice too.

“Don't do anything crazy,” she says.

But I'm already doing something crazy. I'm actually going back to the battlefield to get shot at some more. It was a lot easier to talk about saving the world when we weren't actually looking at the battle. There are just so many people and they seem to fall over dead almost at random.

I promise myself that I'm going to be careful, keep my head down, and not let Cyrus get me killed.

I step carefully out of the woods, back into the shriek of artillery shells and gunfire. Thankfully, it's still off and on, nothing as bad as earlier. I take a quick look down the line but I can't see Cyrus's red head anymore. I keep low and fall down alongside the other soldiers behind the rise.

The artillery suddenly stops completely. There doesn't even seem to be any gunfire either. We're not shooting at them and they aren't shooting at us. That will change soon, but for now it's actually quiet.

I push myself up to my knees to look around. Still no Cyrus. This whole thing about stopping Dupree seems impossible. But if I have to try, I need to have Cyrus with me. I sure can't do this myself, and I'm starting to get the feeling that Cyrus can do anything. Except stop talking or show concern for his personal safety. Or mine.

I don't want to, but if I'm going to find him, I'm going to have to get up and start going forward again. I get to my feet and take three steps before I realize I've left my musket. I can't show up next to Cyrus with only my bugle. I go back and grab it and start walking down the line. I stay low to the ground just in case some Yankee sharpshooter wants to get lucky.

Stretched out all along the ground are the other soldiers—or I guess I should say the
real
soldiers, since I haven't even fired a shot yet. They're older than me, but not by much. Some like Big Jim and Elmer, who I assume are with Cyrus, are barefoot and wear overalls. Only the officers wear uniforms, and most of theirs, like General Jackson's, are the blue ones they have from their time in the U.S. Army before the South seceded. No one has the gray Confederate uniforms yet. No one thinks the war is going to last long enough for the South to have time to make uniforms.

You'll have plenty of time, guys. Too much time.

I also notice that each soldier also has a different kind of gun. That's probably because each man has to arm himself to fight. The North has all the factories that make the guns, and they certainly aren't going to sell to the South. So some men have old muskets while a few have the new Enfield rifles that fire lead minié balls, which look like modern bullets.

When you read about this stuff in the history books, it just seems like a long boring list of guns. But now I can see that it makes a heck of a lot of difference whether you've got the fancy new rifle or if you're stuck with your granddaddy's flintlock. It probably means the difference between shooting a Yankee and getting shot by a Yankee.

As I make my way down the line trying to spot Cyrus, I realize that most all the men share one thing—they all seem anxious. Not scared, just concerned. Their faces aren't as happy as they were when I first appeared on the field. They've seen too much suffering already today. They are volunteers. Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it?

More and more wounded Confederates crawl into our line from the direction of Mrs. Henry's house, which now has Union artillery planted on either side and a sea of Yankees swirling all around. A few Confederates trickle in from the woods behind us, but the numbers on our side don't seem nearly as great as those preparing to come at us.

“Don't worry!” I want to tell the guys on the ground as I pass. “I know it looks bad right now, but you're going to win!”

But some may not. Some are going to die or lose a leg or an eye, and they probably won't feel like they've won anything. And Cyrus still has to get his wound. God, I hope that hasn't already happened! I need him now in one piece, not laid up with his butt in a sling.

But he's fine. I spot him crouching on the ground among some other guys. The Union artillery has picked back up and most of the soldiers bury their faces in their arms. But not Cyrus. And not Big Jim and Elmer, whose faces are black from gunpowder but I still recognize them lying on either side of him.

Cyrus has just finished loading his musket and is pulling back the hammer.

“Cyrus,” I call out.

He doesn't seem to hear me, but sights his musket at something close to the Henry House. I plop down beside him just as he pulls the trigger.

“Durn!” he snaps at me. “You made me miss!”

I doubt this, considering the house is like five football fields away. He turns to look at me. “Oh,” he says, his eyes narrowing at me. “It's you. I thought you had snuck off.”

He turns his back to me to reload his gun. I don't need to ask him why he's mad at me. I know. I ran. While he and Big Jim and Elmer and all the other Confederates stood in line, firing their guns and getting fired on, I ran. In his eyes, I'm a coward. I deserve the same sarcasm I've always dished out at reenactments. As I watch Cyrus ram another ball into his musket, shame hits me doubly hard—at my wrongful treament of him in the past, and his rightful treatment of me today.

I just want a chance to explain myself.

“Cyrus, I'm sorry,” I say to his back. “I'm sorry I ran, but I don't belong here. I'm not supposed to be here.”

He rolls onto his stomach and takes aim with his gun. For the first time today, he has nothing to say to me. But Big Jim does.

“Don't nobody belong here,” he says. “But here's where we're at.”

He fires. For a moment, we're shrouded in gunpowder smoke. The smell burns my nostrils and tears come to my eyes for the hundredth time today.

“I need you to listen to me.”

Cyrus has pulled out his flask again and takes a drink. He doesn't offer the bottle to me this time.

“Shoot,” he says.

I take a deep breath and prepare to let it all come out at once.

“It's not a coincidence we have the same last name. I am your—”

A massive eruption cuts me off. Dirt and rock and blood pepper our bodies, our faces. We look up and as the cloud of smoke lifts, we can see in front of us to our right a few men sprawled in a pit where an artillery shell has just burst. They are, or were, Confederates falling back from Henry House to our line. They had almost made it when the shell hit.

They all look dead, a pile of twisted arms and legs. Suddenly a hand twitches. The hand seizes a leg and tosses the limb aside. Now we can see the man attached to the hand. He lurches upright, blood matted in his blond beard, and starts hobbling toward us. One of his legs looks like it's been run over. He makes it a few feet and collapses, a sitting duck in the no-man's-land between us and the Yankees.

A bullet whizzes over my head and I duck down. When I open my eyes again, Cyrus is gone. I glance behind me. Of course he's nowhere in sight there.

“Cyrus!” I hear Big Jim scream. I look at the big man. His eyes, wide in his blackened face, stare toward the Yankee line.

I follow his gaze.

“Oh, God.”

Cyrus has gone back over the rise shielding us from Yankees. He's kneeling by the wounded man in clear sight of enemy fire.

Big Jim makes a move to help, but just as quick Elmer grabs him by the legs.

“Get off me!” Big Jim hollers. He struggles against his brother, even smacks Elmer across the face with the back of his hand. But Elmer squeezes tighter. His face is white, clenched.

“I ain't losing you too,” Elmer groans. “Not for something that pointless.”

It's the first thing I've heard him say today, but it does the trick. Big Jim stops fighting and lies still.

I turn back to Cyrus, who grabs the wounded man's wrist and pulls his arm around over his neck. Getting his feet beneath him, Cyrus heaves the man to his back and stands. Cyrus's face turns scarlet as he staggers under the man's weight.

He starts running toward our line. Suddenly, I hear the
splat
of a bullet hitting flesh. Cyrus tumbles forward.

“No!”

But just as quickly Cyrus is back on his feet. The bullet apparently hit the other man in the back. Another few feet and the two of them collapse beside me.

“Are you crazy?!” I yell at him.

Cyrus lies on the ground for a moment gasping for air. It takes just a glance at the wounded man he's carried back to tell that he's dead.

“Are you crazy?!” I yell again.

Cyrus looks blankly at me. “What are you talking about?”

“He's dead!” I scream.

“I didn't know that,” he replies, reaching for his gun.

“You could have been killed!”

Cyrus wrinkles his forehead. “Well . . . yeah.”

And suddenly, like some thick fog has lifted from the earth, all is clear and peaceful. The sun shines warmly across the fields, the sky blazes blue. It might actually be a nice afternoon, if you could ignore the thousands of Yankees taking their time to reorganize not half a mile from where we lie in a line of battle. I know from the history books that the Union commander, General McDowell, has simply broken off the fight for an hour or so to get his men in a solid line to charge us again. Big mistake, McDowell!

I turn back to Cyrus, who is clutching his gun to his chest and trying to reload it.

“Why do you do that?” I ask.

“What?”

“Why do you have to be so . . . so . . .” I want to find just the right word that won't offend him but still show my concern. I rule out
stupid, idiotic, nuts, gonzo,
and
freaky
.

“Why do you have to be so gallant?”

Cyrus stops loading and looks at me. “Gallant . . . gallant . . . I like that. More poetic than
brave
or something like that. Reminds me of Galahad . . . Sir Galahad searching for the Holy Grail and a way to redeem the Round Table. That'd make a good story too. Set today of course . . . with a guy searching for the meaning of life who goes off to battle and . . .”

He goes on, the stress on his face fading away. Big Jim and Elmer, who were hovering over him, shake their heads and roll back to their place in line.

Even though I want to stay angry, I can't stop myself from smiling.

He finally pauses the story in his mind and I jump in.

“I'm glad you like gallant, but I don't understand why you're willing to get yourself killed.”

He rams the ball into his gun, lays his head back, and stares into the sky.

“It's just in my nature,” he says.

I look at the dead soldier lying a few feet from us. That could have been Cyrus. And I remember: That will be Cyrus.

He's
supposed
to get shot. Today. At Bull Run. And he's
supposed
to die. That's my family's heritage.

Of course, I've learned that my heritage isn't as crappy as I thought. He's obviously going to get wounded from some act of heroism—and not cowardice as I've thought for all my life. That should make me pleased, if nothing else.

Instead it makes me sad. And angry.