The Root Cellar (22 page)

“I know,” said Susan, “I know. You want to tell what happened, Will?”

Quietly Rose went over and curled up under a tall yew tree that stood at a little distance from the bench where Will and Susan sat.

Will began again in that same low, tired voice, almost as though he were reciting a story he had learned by heart and did not want to tell but felt he had to. “We joined up in Oswego and we was plenty scared, but we was pretty bucked up about it, too. ‘We’ll get to Richmond and show them Johnny Rebs who can leave this country and who can’t!’ That’s what Steve said. I remember him saying it as we marched down the street toward the recruiting office on West Bridge Street. They wasn’t too particular about how old we was as they was getting pretty desperate for men by that time. The sergeant at the desk was a big-shouldered feller, with bristly black hair and beard, the kind that looks like a logger no matter what he does, and he said we was fine fellers and how glad Uncle Sam was going to be to have us fighting for him. We was so proud and excited we was likely to bust. I said I knew the fife as I figured it couldn’t be so different from the flute, and Steve said he knew the drum. Steve, he always figured he could do anything he set his mind to—and most always he could, too. The sergeant said we was to join the 81st Infantry, and he give us money and train tickets and uniforms.

“I remember the day was grand. You mind it was early May and the trees was in bud. The sky was blue as a bluebird’s wing that day and there weren’t no clouds at all. It was warm—awful
warm for them uniforms—but we didn’t care. We put ’em on straight away and marched us down to the train station with the sweat pouring down inside, and Robert E. Lee himself couldn’t have made us take off them coats. You know, Steve was almost a foot shorter than me, but them quartermasters couldn’t really see no difference. The uniforms was the same size, a mite small for me and a good bit big for Steve. We didn’t even mind that, and when we got down to camp in Virginny we made trades with fellers that had our size.

“We took the train from Oswego to Washington and then we went by boat to West Point in Virginny. It was pretty swell. People was always cheering us on and giving us grub and smiling and waving. We felt pretty near on top of the world. At West Point we was to get our training. They didn’t need no fifers, nor no drummers neither, so we was made just ordinary soldiers and, what’s more, we wasn’t there much more than a week before we was needed so bad in the regiment we was declared trained. Steve was wild to get started. As soon as we got to Virginny we found out that the 81st had been fighting at Proctor’s Creek and Drewry’s Bluff and that them places was only a few miles from Richmond.

“ ‘They’ll get there before we ever even get going,’ he kept saying. Ever since he’d read that
story about putting the first American flag up over Bennington Hill in the revolution in 1776, he’d dreamed of being a soldier and raising the flag for the country. And all the way down on the train he’d say, ‘We’re going to put that flag up over Richmond, Will. I know it! I know it! We’re going to put that Old Glory up over that city, and I’m going to be the boy that does it!’ And he was scared, really scared the army’d get there before he got to be in it. But they didn’t. They didn’t.”

Will fell silent. His words hung in the still afternoon air like drops of water in a spider’s web, fragile. His voice was so quiet, they barely heard him when he began again.

“It wasn’t more than three days before we was in battle at Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor was something I never even had nightmares about beforehand to give me any kind of an idea of what it could be like. Even the old veterans said it was the worst battle they’d ever seen—worse than Manassas, worse than Chancellorsville, some said. It was hot as a bake oven and the dust stuck to your sweat like plaster, and it was so thick you couldn’t see who was friend and who was foe.

“And the Rebs was waiting for us on the field, all dug in their trenches nice and cozy, and they shot us down as we moved in like we’d been a flock of pigeons. On the first day our
regimental colors was taken. Captain Ballard and Captain Martin was killed and I think it was five other captains wounded from our regiment. Some said more than half the men and boys who started out that morning was left dead or dying on the field that night—not just from our regiment but from the whole Eighteenth Corps. There was a fifer not more than nine years old lying dead near us.

“And it went on for twelve days. Twelve days! And in the nights, when we was frantically digging us trenches with anything we could get to hand, them mortars was flying over with their fuses like angry little red shooting stars through the blackness, and us never knowing where they was going to land. And the sound of battle never once let up—like some devil’s music, the screaming bits of shell, the bullets and bars, the bugles blaring, the drums pounding, the horses and the men screaming.

“And the men dying. When they die, you know how they die? They jump. They shout. They cry. And they fall. You go into a rage and you want to get them devils who’s shooting at you. That’s all you think about. Then the battle’s over for the day. The smoke and the dust starts to settle. The vultures—them big ugly turkey vultures—starts to wheel and circle around in the sky, looking for their dinners, and the smell of the dead is something awful. You
look around and the rage is gone out of you and you don’t hardly know yourself or your comrades neither.

“There’s dead and wounded men lying all over the field, moaning and groaning, and those of us who wasn’t hurt was trying to get them back to safety, and sometimes we could and sometimes them Secesh devils kept shooting and never once letting us near.

“Twelve days it was like that in them swamps and fields and briar patches. It was on towards the end Steve got shot. He was some fighter. I don’t think he figured he could die. While the rest of us spent as much time crouching down in the trench like a bunch of scared groundhogs, Steve’d just put his head and his arms up and let fly with rounds of shot. We stayed together all the time so I was right beside him when it come, and he was so mad he was set to run right up out of the trench and get that black-hearted rebel who done it. I never stopped to think it through. I just hauled off and socked him in the jaw and put him out cold. I expect he would have got killed right there if I hadn’t, and many’s the time since I wished I’d have let him. But I guess what was at the back of my mind was that I wasn’t going to go through the whole thing without him.

“He got shot in the arm right up close to the shoulder. Nobody thought too much about it,
excepting to dress it, on account of there was so many so much worse off. Captain Raulston said he was a fine lad, and at the end of them twelve days in hell we was marched off to Petersburg, just south of Richmond. There was so few of us left after Cold Harbor—not a third of the regiment—there was only enough to make four companies. We hadn’t the time to mourn, we was needed so bad, and three days later we was at Petersburg where the Secesh had their supplies defended.

“That General Grant he figured if we could cross the Chickahominy River and get to Petersburg We could knock down those defenses and starve out the Rebs. Then we’d be in Richmond in no time. He just kept us going and going and going. We had a battle. We lost it. So Grant settled us all down in the trenches to see if we could starve them out. But we couldn’t, and after a few weeks of that we was back in the Bermuda Hundred where the regiment had started from. I figure it was about that time Steve took the fever, but he never let on—not even to me.”

Will stopped again. Susan said nothing but, even from where she sat under the yew tree, Rose could feel the comfort of Susan, patient and loving.

And there was comfort in the quiet afternoon, in the dappled shade of tall oak trees and
the thicker shade of yew and cedar. Up beyond the gate, beyond the graveyard, was a white pillared mansion. It looked old and settled, almost as though it might have stood there forever. Down below the hill, the Potomac River flowed gently toward the sea, and beyond it was the golden dome of the Capitol building. It would be night before Will had finished his story.

“And after a while”—Will picked up his tale—“it was as though there hadn’t never been nothing but dust and filth, and bad sowbelly and beans and mush—and dying men. Steve took to it right off. He figured it was a good life, even after he had the wound. I could never see how come he did, but I guess Steve was like that. Even when we was little he was always wanting to walk on the edge of cliffs or climb to the top of trees, or run into fields just to scare the bulls. Not me. I used to admire him an awful lot for being brave, but I thought some of them things was foolish. All the same, when Steve was around doing those crazy things, everything seemed exciting, and when he talked about going to war, I felt the excitement, too. I was so full of glory and hallelujah I had to go. But I never took to it like he did. All I could think was, we had to win. I figured we had to save the country, but many’s the long night I lay awake and just prayed for it to be over. And I never took sick and I never once got wounded—just tired of marching.

“Of course it wasn’t all horrible. In the evenings we’d play crib and euchre. Somebody’d made a fiddle out of a cigar box and another feller had a mouth organ and we’d sing. Sometimes we’d go on foraging parties and swipe chickens—things we’d never dream of doing at home—only of course there wasn’t much left to swipe in Virginny, mostly just berries to pick along the way where they wasn’t burned out.

“We never got out of our dirty clothes from one month to the next, and after a time we was crawling with lice.

“It felt like we’d been marching back and forth from one hot, dusty, burned-out spot in Virginny to another forever before I found out about Steve’s sickness. We was sitting by the roadside finishing off a ration of hardtack and camp coffee, and it was hotter than the flames of hell and the only breeze for miles around came from Tim Arepy whistling ‘Rock of Ages’ through his teeth. I remember Billy Nasset sitting down the way a piece, polishing off his coffee, getting up, stretching and belching, and saying in his big loud voice, ‘Well, so much for the steak and potatoes. Where’s the cake and ice cream?’ and I looked over to Steve to say something and there he was, the color of putty and shaking like a balm of Gilead tree in a high wind. And I realized, all of a sudden, that he’d
been sick for quite a while. You know how it is sometimes when you find something out and you know you’ve really known about it for a long time? I stared, and before I could say anything he turned his head and saw me looking at him, and he knew I knew he was sick.

“ ‘You ain’t to tell, Will,’ he said. ‘I ain’t going to no hospital. I’m going to Richmond and put up that flag.’ And he looked at me in that kind of way he had that had always got to me and always made me do things for him or with him I hadn’t thought right or proper, or hadn’t much wanted to do. So, being the kind of coward I am, I promised. And we went on. Sometimes Steve was bad and sometimes he seemed okay, but as the summer went on he leaned on me more and more while we marched and many’s the time we argued about taking him to hospital, but he always won. ‘You promised, Will,’ he’d say, and I’d just have to give in. I’d have to go along, though now I don’t know why. He wanted it so fierce. And when we was sent up to New York in November, to help keep the peace in case there was riots during the election, he was scared out of his mind that he wouldn’t make it back in time to get to Richmond when she fell. And all that winter he got sicker and sicker—much sicker than I knew because he kept himself going, God knows how. He’d just made up his mind he wasn’t going to
be too sick to fight, and somehow he stayed on his feet—most of the time anyways. But all the same he was changing. The fire in him was gone. He didn’t talk much or make jokes anymore, and in some ways he was like a little child. He’d say, ‘Don’t go on without me, Will,’ or ‘You won’t leave me, Will? Don’t go—stay here—wait for me—where are you going?’ It was like he was using my energy to keep him going, and he was afraid to let me out of his sight. And I began to wish to God I could be shut of him for five minutes—just five minutes.

“Then one day I couldn’t stand it. We’d come through the winter. It was March. Spring comes to Virginny in March like it comes in May up home, only the birds and the plants ain’t all exactly the same. This morning it was fine, as fine a morning as I’d ever seen in my life. The cardinals was scolding in the holly bushes and them big magnolia flowers was in bloom, in a tree over by an abandoned farmhouse. I’d stood up, just to get myself a stretch and sniff the air, and Steve cried out straight away, ‘Where are you going, Will?’ and I just found myself shouting at him, ‘Home. That’s where I’m going, home,’ and I run off. I had no idea where I was going, I just went.

“I ran and I ran until I come to a bit of a woods and a pasture beyond where there was a fence. Most of the fence had been taken away,
but back by this bit of woods there was just a piece of it left, all grown over with a wild ivy vine like them vines that grows around Bothers’ fence up by the swamp. And there wasn’t nobody there but me, and I was come over sudden with such homesickness that I threw up.

“When I was done I got up and I stood holding on to an old oak tree with my arms tight around it and I bawled until I couldn’t bawl no more.

“When I’d settled myself a little I thought about how awful it was, how mean of me to have run off like that and say I was going home. I wasn’t going home. I let go the tree and headed back towards camp. Then I heard a rustling in the underbrush and in two seconds I was face to face with a desperate-looking feller and he had a knife.

“I wasn’t never much of a boy to fight, you mind, even in games back home, though by this time I’d done plenty of it. I didn’t want to fight, but this boy had a knife. He was shorter than me by quite a good deal but wider and he looked strong. He had straight black hair, blacker than Steve’s, and it was hanging around his dead-white face. His eyes was like black coals and they looked as though they’d kill me if they could.