The Storm Before Atlanta (12 page)

Into the cool night darkness the lead drummer played the first drumroll, to awaken the drummer boys. Jeremy wasn’t asleep. He leapt to his feet, hurriedly pulling on his shoes. He put his head through the strap of his drum and grabbed his drumsticks, the drum banging against his legs as he climbed up the slope to join the line of drummers who were stumbling into place, ready to wake the camp. He held his head high and looked out over the black outlines of the wooded valley below. The sky was full of stars; not one had faded out yet. The first bird had not yet chirped. Dawn was a long way away.

This was what he had dreamed of all these years.

The drum major gave the signal, and the drummers began to beat the long roll. It echoed up through Snake Creek Gap and down the valley below, filling Jeremy’s ears. The drummers were calling the 107th New York Volunteers to war.

Around them on the mountainside and up in the gap, other drum corps wakened other regiments in the night. The drum rolls went on and on all around, how far Jeremy couldn’t tell.

Below them men stumbled, grumbling and swearing, to their feet. Fires flickered into existence. Jeremy went down to join his messmates, who were making coffee.

“So, off to the wars at last, eh, Little Drummer Boy?”

“He doesn’t like it when you call him Little Drummer Boy, Lars,” said No-Joke, not helping.

“Everybody got a identifier?” said Dave.

“I don’t,” said Jeremy, suddenly realizing it. Of course, if he fell like the noble Drummer Boy of Shiloh, he wouldn’t need his name and address on a piece of paper in his pocket. The mourning comrades kneeling around him would know who he was.

“It’s no good to put your name in your pocket anymore,” said Nicholas. “The Rebs aren’t leaving a stitch of clothes on the bodies, except sometimes the drawers.”

“It’s safe if you tie it on a string round your neck, though,” said Dave.

“Do we have to talk about this?” said Jack.

“You’re not marching with us, are you, Seth?” said No-Joke, worried.

“Nope. I’d throw the line off. You fellas do ninety steps a minute, and I’m down to forty-five. But once I catch up I’ll muster out any Rebs youse leave for me.”

“Fall in!” called the captain.

There was a rush to assemble kits and throw bedrolls together.

And then they were marching, pouring down through Sugar Valley, the 107th Regiment, the Twentieth Corps,
the Armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio, tens of thousands of men, all in files, all following their regimental banners, all marching to the throbbing beat of hundreds of drums, and Jeremy was caught up in the rhythm, his drumstick hitting when the other drumsticks hit, at the precise moment that the men’s feet hit the ground, thousands at once, and the whole valley throbbed with the war beat.

A shot rang out. Then another. Jeremy almost dropped his drumstick. The sound of the shot echoed in his heart and all the way down to his feet, which wanted him to stop marching and run away. Jeremy had heard thousands of gunshots before, but these ones were different. Suddenly he knew he was part of an invading army and that someone was objecting to the invasion.

The syncopated clap of gunshots interrupted the beat for a moment, and Jeremy lost the rhythm, but the drumming continued. Jeremy quickly joined back in. The guns went on, a pause to reload here and there. Jeremy didn’t know where they were or even whose guns they were—the Rebs’ or the Federals’. Both, he reasoned. If they’re firing on us, we’re firing back. But where? Up ahead? Right beside him? Jeremy’s company kept marching, uninterrupted.

“Center on the colors!” the captain called, and Jeremy and the others looked up at the regimental flag, which bore the names of the great battles the 107th had fought in—Chancellorsville,
Antietam, Gettysburg, and the rest. Thousands of gunshots, thousands of bullets.

Out of the corner of his eye Jeremy was aware of two stretcher bearers slogging past, up the hill, carrying a stretcher between them with a man in a blue Union uniform on it. With a jolt Jeremy realized that this was real. Real Rebs were shooting real bullets and real men were being hit. This was seeing the elephant.

“Close up that file!” called a sergeant to Jeremy’s right.

The gunshots had stopped. The regiment marched on.

The sun climbed high overhead, and it began to get hot. Jeremy could feel sweat trickling down his back inside his fatigue blouse, and he would have dearly loved to stop and take a drink from his canteen.

Finally the captain called “Company halt! Fall out!”

Jeremy was surprised to see it was already noon. The men stopped with sighs of relief. Jeremy threw his drum down on the roadside and sat on it, as drummer boys did. He pulled out his canteen and took a long swig. Then he ate some of his cooked beef. He didn’t look for his messmates. Around him men were talking. Some were singing. But Jeremy found he didn’t want to talk to anybody. The moment seemed too big for anything but his own thoughts.

The order came to fall in again. The yellow sun beat down on them. The drumming began again, and then the marching. They moved on.

Then the deep, hollow boom of cannon fire slammed against his ears. For a moment Jeremy could hear nothing, and thought he had gone deaf. Then gunshots answered, and the cannons roared again. The company stopped, then started, then stopped. They didn’t know why they were stopping; they didn’t know what was going on up ahead of them, except that it involved cannons. They moved when they were told to, kept on marching forward. Sometimes they passed fields, more often they passed through dense woods, and Jeremy knew that rifle fire could erupt from among the trees at any moment. The red dust stirred up by the march got in the men’s faces and made them cough. Twice Jeremy made hasty hops to avoid marching in horse droppings. Still the cannons and the guns sounded up ahead.

Then, to Jeremy’s confusion, they left the road and began marching across the broken ground, among pine trees and hillocks. It was hard going, and he had to stop drumming. It was enough work just to keep moving, stepping high over fallen tree trunks, pushing through the undergrowth and the branches that kept trying to dislodge his drum. After a while they wheeled right. Jeremy had no idea what they were aiming for. All he could see around him was trees. Still the cannons sounded up ahead, but the order came to halt, and Jeremy stopped to beat it out on his drum. They were ordered to fortify their position.

“But we haven’t got to the battle yet!” said Jeremy.

“There ain’t no battle yet, I don’t think,” said Dave.

“What’s all that up ahead, then?”

“Just skirmishing, I think,” said Dave.

“When does the battle start?”

“It don’t run on a timetable. It starts when it starts. Don’t be impatient. We’ll get our turn. If not now, later on.”

But Jeremy wanted his turn now. The air vibrated with the crash of cannons and guns up ahead, just out of sight; the smell of gunpowder drifted through the trees toward him. He was too worked up to do anything but see the elephant, and when he joined the men in cutting and dragging trees to front their trenches with, he felt it was a distraction from the real work that lay up ahead.

No more orders came, so they kept fortifying. They dug their trenches deeper, using their bayonets and bowie knives to dig with. Still no orders came.

“Might as well cook, even if we are dug in for battle,” Nicholas decided.

The mess was gathered in the rifle pit they’d dug, behind a wall of logs and red clay.

“When do we get to go in?” said Jeremy.

“Never, I hope. We’re being held in reserve. Enjoy it,” said Nicholas.

“Little Drummer Boy wants to get into the battle and be a hero,” said Lars. He started humming “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.”

“Leave him alone!” said No-Joke. “Who’s brought a mess kettle?”

“Nobody. You don’t bring a mess kettle into battle,” said Dave. “We got cooked rations.”

“Little Drummer Boy’s got a canteen. Hand it over and we’ll blow it up,” said Lars.

“I told you to stop calling him that!” No-Joke said.

“I told you to stop calling him that!” Lars mimicked, copying No-Joke’s hoarse, raspy voice, which always sounded as if his throat was doing the talking and his mouth was just trying to keep up.

Hurriedly Jeremy pulled his canteen strap up over his head. He didn’t want to see his messmates fight, least of all over Lars teasing him, which was an embarrassing thing to have discussed. He watched with interest as Nicholas swigged down the last of the water and then stuffed a charge of gunpowder into the opening.

“Jeremy!”

Jeremy turned to see Dulcie. “What are you doing here? It ain’t safe!”

“Dr. Flood wants you to sharpen these.” She was carrying a wooden instrument case and a whetstone. “He says I don’t have enough elbow grease.”

“Sharpen them?” Jeremy repeated.

Dulcie sat down on the edge of the trench and flipped the instrument case open. It was lined with red velvet, and an assortment of saws and long, wicked-looking knives lay
within, pressed into neat compartments made for them. They reminded him of the tools used in the Northwoods at hog-killing and deer-hunting time.

“He says he needs ’em ready for the battle, so if you could do it double-quick he would be much obliged.”

“All right,” said Jeremy, still staring at the instruments. The steel blades were stained black in spots.

“He says that the sharper they are, the easier it will be for the soldiers, if you know what he means.”

BLAM! A sudden explosion made Jeremy jump, and when his ears cleared again he heard his messmates exclaiming over the remains of his canteen, and Dulcie was saying “… to sharpen a saw blade?”

“What?” said Jeremy.

“He said to ask you do you know how to sharpen a saw blade?”

“Oh. Of course.”

Dulcie left. Jeremy coughed as the smoke from his exploded canteen drifted into his mouth. He turned around. His canteen was in two blackened halves, and his messmates were building a fire on the edge of the trench and digging out ingredients—hardtack, raw bacon, cooked beef, more hardtack.

“Was you gonna eat that bacon raw? Why’d you bring raw bacon?”

“Thought we might have time to cook up. Nothin’ wrong with eatin’ bacon raw if you got the stomach for it.”

“Is too. It’ll kill you.”

“Is not. I read it in the surgeon’s book. Said it’s good for you.”

“Don’t you remember Eary? He died in Virginia of raw bacon.”

“I thought it was a putrid fever.”

“Nope, raw bacon. What you wanna make, skillygally? Slumgullion?”

“Anybody got any of them desecrated vegetables?”

“
Desiccated
vegetables, Dave.” That was No-Joke, of course.

“We don’t need all that hardtack. Use mine, it’s got more worms in.”

“Mine got so many worms there ain’t no hardtack, just pressed worms.”

“Desecrated worms.”

“I need something to break up this hardtack with—gimme some more gunpowder.”

Jack reached across Jeremy and grabbed one of the surgeon’s stained knives out of the case and started hacking away at the hardtack with it. Jeremy sat back and watched the construction of the meal. First the bacon was cooked in the canteen halves, and when there was a good lot of hot grease there, the hardtack bits and beef were thrown in and fried, pressed together into a thick cake, and then divided up among the messmates.

The result was … edible. Largely. At least there was plenty of grease to make it stick to the ribs. Jeremy ate his
slowly, because he’d learned that was the best way to stave off a raging stomachache. He tried not to think about things like soft bread and hot beef stew. This was soldier food, and he was a soldier, and proud to be eating like one. The song about the Drummer Boy of Shiloh had never mentioned the courage that was needed to face camp food. Jeremy wondered what Charlie had to eat, over on the other side. Probably nothing near as good as this. Thinking of Charlie, Jeremy tried hard to take a sip of the coffee that was offered him, letting it slide back between his molars in hopes of getting it to his throat without having to pass the bitter taste over his tongue. It was no good. He just didn’t like the stuff. It was his biggest failing as a soldier, he felt.

After dinner he sharpened the surgeon’s instruments. This was good because it drove Lars away.

“I can’t listen to another second of that,” said Lars. “Aren’t they sharp enough yet?”

“Nope,” said Jeremy, pleased to have found a way to really annoy Lars. “They gotta be really sharp. Surgeon’s gotta be able to slice in quick-like. And the saws …”

But Lars gave a grunt and was out of the trench and away.

“Aren’t you supposed to be to the rear?” No-Joke said suddenly. This was the thing about No-Joke. He was perfectly capable of defending Jeremy to Lars and then lighting into Jeremy on his own account.

“Nope. S’posed to be up here, ready to drum out the officers’ orders during the battle,” said Jeremy.

“I thought drummer boys were supposed to be stretcher bearers.”

“Not anymore. Ambulance corps are stretcher bearers now.” Jeremy was sure that No-Joke knew this, and was just being annoying.

No-Joke grunted and took his Bible out of his shirt pocket and began reading it.

From a rifle pit farther down came the sound of other men in the regiment singing:

“I hate that song,” said Jack. “What idiot made up that song?”

Dr. Flood came himself to get his weapons—his instruments, Jeremy corrected himself.

“You sharpen a good saw, Jeremy,” said the surgeon. “I haven’t had such an edge on my blades since my assistant mustered out two months ago.”

The next morning began with the sound of guns, not birds, and then cannons. The woods shook with cannon
fire, and the 107th New York stayed in the trenches. The firing went on and on, and no orders came. Jeremy wavered between being very excited and very bored. Would they never get into the battle? It was all around them, to their left and right, ahead of them … miles of battle. Behind them on the hilltops the artillery boomed again and again, firing over the heads of the infantry into the enemy ranks beyond.