by John Jakes
“I have. Yes, I have. Forgive me.”
The crying continued, and Madeline patted the younger woman to comfort her. At first she felt awkward, then less so. She held her kinswoman close for some length of time, knowing Brett needed absolution, even if she didn’t know exactly why.
116
SHELLING HAD PARTIALLY DESTROYED the redoubt, forcing the Eleventh Massachusetts Battery to abandon it. For the second moonless night in a row, Billy led a repair and revetting party to the site, working at frantic speed so the redoubt could again be occupied.
It was October, hot for so late in the year. Billy worked without a shirt, his braces hanging down over the hips of sweat-soaked trousers. The wound in his calf had healed cleanly and no longer impaired movement. The bullet’s point of entry sometimes ached late in the night, but that was the worst of it.
Billy’s laborers were the men of a colored infantry platoon, the same kind of work force he had supervised frequently in the past weeks. The platoon lieutenant and a corporal stationed themselves on a restored section of the parapet to keep watch, a customary procedure.
Not that much was visible. Billy could barely discern the abatis line in front of the redoubt and could see nothing at all of the rebel works, which here ran parallel to those of the Union, with only a couple of hundred yards separating them. Occasionally a match flared on the other side, or someone spoke. The Yankee and rebel pickets talked to one another a lot. They had lately worked out a protocol that helped each side. Neither would open fire unless an advance was about to start. Advances were infrequent, so for much of the time the pickets—and crews like Billy’s—were spared anxiety about stray bullets. Unless, of course, they were fired by some hothead, always a possibility—as was a sudden rain of larger projectiles. Soldiers on the front were seldom warned of an artillery bombardment.
The Negro in direct charge of Billy’s men was a heavy, placid-looking sergeant. Named Sebastian, he had skin as light as coffee with milk in it, a huge hooked nose, and slightly slanted eyes that didn’t fit with the rest of his features. He drove himself hard and expected similar effort from the rest of the platoon. As he and Billy sweated to raise heavy half-timbers into place, Billy grew curious about him.
After another was set in position, both stepped back. Bits of dirt stuck to Billy’s wet skin. He judged the time to be two or three in the morning. He was so tired he wanted to fall down on the spot. He took several deep breaths, then asked, “Where are you from, Sergeant Sebastian?”
“Now or a long time ago?”
“Whichever you want.”
“I live in Albany, New York, but way back, my granddaddy ran away from a South Carolina farm where he was the only slave. Granddaddy was what they call a brass ankle. Little bit of white, little bit of black, little bit of Yamasee red all mixed together.”
“You mean red as in Indian?” It helped explain the contrasting features.
“Uh-huh. Granddaddy’s name was the same as mine. He—”
A scarlet burst in the sky over Petersburg curtailed the conversation. Out by the abatis line, the pickets cursed the sound of the shell whining in. Billy shouted a superfluous command for the men to fall to the ground. Most were already down when he landed on his chest, seconds before the shell made a direct hit on the half-restored parapet.
Billy covered the back of his head with both arms. In the downpour of dirt and splintered wood, he heard someone yell, “Sergeant Sebastian? Lieutenant Buck’s hurt or kilt.”
Buck was the platoon officer on lookout. Sebastian wasted no time, scrambling up as other guns opened fire in the distant batteries. “I’m going out to get him.”
“But it isn’t safe while the bombardment—”
“Hell with what’s safe. You heard Larkin. Buck’s hurt or killed.”
Crouched over, Sebastian began to run along the face of the redoubt, shouting over his shoulder, “Rest of you men back to the rifle pit.”
Billy had voiced his objection out of prudence, not cowardice, but he knew Sebastian thought otherwise. He leaped up and raced after the sergeant.
As he ran, some Union picket, spooked by the shelling, fired a round. “Hey, damn you, Billy Yank, what you doin’?” an unseen reb called angrily. The last three words were barely audible as Confederate sharpshooters showed what they thought about the truce violation.
Balls buzzed and thunked into the redoubt inches above Billy; he was on all fours, crawling. Another shell landed six feet behind him, hurling wood and clods of dirt in all directions. Some pelted Billy. Ahead of him, Sebastian caught some, too; Billy heard him groan. Where there had been only heat and silence, now there were pulses of light, reverberating explosions, outcries from wounded pickets, and smoke so thick Billy choked.
“Pass him down, Larkin.” Sebastian was on his feet, straining to reach to the crumbling parapet where the black officer lay. Crouching and moving forward again, Billy couldn’t quite tell what was happening, but there was some difficulty. He heard Sebastian grunting.
Billy called, “Can you reach him, Sergeant?”
“No.”
“I can’t hear you. Have you got him?”
“I said no,” Sebastian yelled, causing some marksman on the other side to aim for the sound and shoot. Sebastian jerked and exclaimed softly, clawing the dirt of the redoubt’s unrepaired face. A shell landed fifty yards to the east. Men in the rifle pits took the burst, started screaming. In the glare, Billy saw Sebastian on his knees, blood running from his shoulder.
Sebastian hooked his fingers into the dirt in front of him. Pain contorting his face, he pulled himself back to a standing position. A bullet nicked a timber on the ground; the splinter hit Billy’s neck like a flying nail.
Dry-mouthed with fear, he stepped up beside the sergeant. “Corporal Larkin?”
“Here, sir.”
“Where’s the lieutenant hit?”
“Chest.”
“Let’s try again. Lower him feet first. I know you’re wounded, Sebastian. You go back right now.”
“You can’t carry him alone. I’m fine.” He didn’t sound like it.
“All right. I’ll grab his boots. You’re taller—you reach over my head and take him under the arms. We mustn’t drop him.”
“Larkin?” Sebastian gasped. “You hear that?”
“I hear,” the scared soldier answered. “Here he comes.”
Slowly, they maneuvered the wounded lieutenant down and into a horizontal position, then started to carry him toward the rifle pits. Billy took the lead, facing forward, holding one of Buck’s boot heels in each hand. The enemy fire grew heavier. He hunched slightly, which struck him as hilariously futile in view of the number of shells and bullets landing all around. Sweat dripped off his chin. His heart beat hard; the fear persisted. He was ashamed when he thought of the sergeant carrying the wounded man along with a reb ball in his shoulder. Sebastian uttered a short, guttural sound each time he took a step.
“Here we are,” Billy whispered at the timbered rim of the rifle pit. “You men down there, take the lieutenant. Gently—gently! That’s it—Oh, goddamn it—” He felt Buck’s upper body drop as Sebastian let go, fainting on his feet.
Other black soldiers were taking hold of the lieutenant’s legs, so Billy pivoted and tried to check Sebastian’s fall. But the sergeant slipped sideways, just out of reach, then tumbled into the rifle pit.
Two of Sebastian’s men tried to catch him and failed. He landed hard. Billy heard the thump seconds before three more shells exploded. He jumped into the rifle pit, the impact scraping his teeth together. Tears flowed down his cheeks because of the smoke. The bombardment had become steady and thunderous.
He picked one of the black soldiers. “Climb out to the rear and find two litter bearers. Quick, dammit!”
Half the effort was wasted. Surgeons successfully extracted a Minié ball from Lieutenant Buck’s chest and patched him up, but Sebastian died at daybreak while the smoke from the final rounds of the bomb
ardment drifted away above the fortifications. Corporal Larkin had stayed flattened on the ledge during the shelling and returned without a scratch.
In his journal that afternoon, Billy put down some thoughts prompted by the sergeant’s death.
The colored troops faced peril as bravely as any white men I have led. During the bombardment—so senseless in a way, and so typical of what this war has become—Sebastian exhibited immaculate courage. How wrong I have been to judge soldiers of his race my inferiors. It does no good to explain that my opinions and behavior have been the same as those of most in this army. It is possible, I suppose, for great numbers of people to be wrong about something—for error to be epidemic. The death of the “brass ankle” has plunged me into a fury of doubt about all I previously believed.
The supply train chugged Southwestward. George rode in the open on a flatcar, huddled in his overcoat. It was a gray Saturday; Monday would be the first of November. There was a smell of snow in the air, a sinister look to the barren trees, a sense that the siege would settle back into lulling quiet after last Thursday’s failed advance. A thrust on the left, its objective the interdiction of the Southside Railroad, had been repulsed by Heth, Mahone, and some of Wade Hampton’s horse. Hampton had been promoted to full command of the rebel cavalry in August. Was Charles still scouting for him? Was Orry still in Richmond?
Memories of the fire, of the burned bodies that night in April of ’61 came back again; they were with him often. Another house had risen to replace the one destroyed, but the new one bore little resemblance to the old. The war had been long and devastating. When it was over, could past relationships be restored? Did they even exist any more? He was not confident.
Among the change rattling in his pocket were some of the new two-cent pieces authorized by Chase before his resignation and minted for the first time this year. Each bronze piece bore the words In God We Trust, a motto which had never before appeared on American coinage. George wondered whether that affirmation was also an unvoiced cry against the dark times; a declaration of lack of faith in human ability to find a way through the war’s maze of misery and cupidity and blind chance. In God We Trust—but not in generals, contractors, even Presidents.
Nevertheless, it did appear that Lincoln would win a second term. The Republican radicals had decided a splinter candidate couldn’t win and had patched together a sullen truce with the President. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta and Phil Sheridan’s trouncing of Jubal Early at Cedar Creek had completely reversed the political tide. October elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana resulted in strong National Union party majorities. George had voted in camp and, according to the note that had at last arranged a reunion between the brothers, so had Billy. Both cast their ballots for Lincoln and Johnson.
With other states yet to vote, governmental departments, particularly Stanley’s, were doing everything possible to influence the outcome. George noticed that officers known to support McClellan were slow to receive promotions to which they were entitled. Each day steamers left City Point packed with men conveniently furloughed home to districts where a Republican victory might be in doubt. George hoped for that victory and believed in the need for it, but he disliked the less than pristine methods being used to achieve it. He had visions of Stanley gleefully inking Dem. on promotion authorization and flinging each so labeled into a crackling fireplace.
A few white flakes flurried around George as an artillery colonel clambered aboard to share the edge of the car. They struck up a conversation and were soon discussing a notorious farmer from Dinwiddie County who called himself the Deacon and led a band of mounted partisans—the kind of band the rebel Congress publicly disavowed and secretly praised. The preceding week, Deacon Follywell’s men had captured three Union pickets near the left of the siege line and hanged them.
“When we catch them, they should get the same treatment,” the colonel declared. His tone left no room for dissent.
The train rounded a curve; shell-blasted trees fell behind, replaced by a vista of a crowded campsite. On frozen ground, among white tents, black infantry drilled, marching to the rear, then to the oblique, while George and his sullen companion rode by.
“Look at that spectacle,” the colonel said. “Five years ago, no decent Christian would have believed it possible.”
George turned and raised his eyebrows to indicate not merely surprise but disapproval. The colonel mistook it for interest and began proselytizing.
“Any intelligent man knows why it’s happened—why the stability and moral fiber of this army and this nation are being undermined.” The colonel leaned forward. “It’s a conspiracy led by the worst elements of society.”
“Oh?” George said above the whistling wind. “Which elements are those?”
“Use your head, man. It’s obvious.” He ticked them off on gauntleted fingers. “The crackpot editors. The free-love philosophers and perverts from New England. The greenhorn immigrants flooding our shores, and the Jewish usurers who are already here. The radical politicians. The New York banking interests. They’re all in it.”
“You mean the New York bankers consider Southern field hands to be potential customers? Fancy that.”
The colonel was too intense to catch the straight-faced mockery. “They’ve plotted together to render the white man subservient to the nigger. Well, I tell you what the result will be. Blood in the streets. More blood than has ever been shed in this war, because white people will not permit themselves to be enslaved.”
“Is that right?” George said, observing the crossing at the Jerusalem Plank Road coming up ahead. “I thought slavery was ending, not beginning. I do appreciate the enlightenment, sir.”
“By God, you’re laughing at me. What’s your name, Major?”
“Harriet Beecher Stowe,” George said, and dropped off the car.
The snow was thickening. He tramped toward the camp of the Battalion of Engineers in low spirits.
The camp rang with the noise of axes. The sudden cold weather had speeded the start of hutting. Three parallel streets had been staked out, and about a dozen timber cottages, no two alike, were already partly finished.
A headquarters orderly said Billy could be found in a work shed at the edge of camp. Welcome heat bathed George as he stepped into the gloomy building where a group of men crouched around a fire burning in a shallow pit in the dirt floor. With a stick or tongs, each man held a tin can near the flames.
Billy saw his brother, grinned and waved, then passed his tongs to the man beside him. As Billy hurried toward him, George thought, Lord, how thin and wan he is. Do I look that terrible? I suppose I do.
The brothers embraced, a hug and several slaps of the back. Billy’s grin was huge. “How are you? I couldn’t sleep last night thinking you’d be here today.”
“Should have paid a visit weeks ago, but the rail line takes a lot of damage, so it always needs repair. Tell me, what in God’s name is going on at that fire?”
“We’re melting out the solder in the cans before we flatten them into sheets. From the sheets we build stoves. One of the boys in the battalion dreamed up the idea. Got to keep warm somehow. Looks like we’ll be in Petersburg all winter. But come along to the mess. We’ll find some coffee, and you can give me all the news.”
The flurries had stopped, the clouds were breaking. Shafts of sun formed light pools on the bleak landscape. Seated at a grimy trestle table in a cold building made of unpainted lumber, George expressed shock at the sight of Billy’s scarred left hand.
“A permanent souvenir of Libby,” Billy said with a curious smile. “I have several.”
After he described some of his prison experiences, the escape, and his wounding, they fell to discussing other topics: the South’s virtually certain defeat, Sherman’s brilliant triumphs, the whereabouts of all the members of the family except Virgilia. Then came a chance mention of the barrels of chicken and turkey meat promised for the last Thursday in the month; last year, a president
ial proclamation had declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.
“I suppose we have a lot to be thankful for,” Billy said. “I could have died in prison. Probably would have except for Charles.”
“Any idea where he is?”
Billy shook his head. “Wade Hampton’s been in some hot engagements around here, though.”
“I gather the cattle raid is still a cause of some embarrassment.”
“Some? Try monumental.” In September, Texas Tom Rosser and four thousand riders had undertaken an adventure worthy of Stuart. Completely encircling the Union rear, they had rustled twenty-five hundred head of beef cattle from an abatis corral at Coggins Point, on the James, then driven the herd back to the hungry defenders of Petersburg—taking three hundred prisoners along at the same time.
“Some found the whole business pretty funny,” Billy said. “Old Jeb’s ghost tweaking Grant’s nose—that kind of thing. It didn’t amuse me much. I can’t find humor in this war any more. Nor much enthusiasm for soldiering, either. If I ever get home, I’m not sure I want to come back to the army.”
“The last time I saw Herman Haupt, he talked about the West. He predicts a boom in rail construction out there after the war. The idea of a transcontinental line will undoubtedly be revived. He said there would be great opportunities for capable engineers.”
“Something to think about.” Billy nodded. “Provided we ever get Bob Lee to surrender.”
“The siege surely does drag on,” George agreed. “It’s grim. They say the rebs are starving. Eating a handful of corn once a day, if that. I know they fired the first shot. I know they have to be whipped till they quit. But you’re right: knowing you’re part of something like that sours you after a while. I wanted duty on the lines. Helping run the military railroads is good, satisfying work. My black crews are fine. But I have days when I’m as low as I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
Billy stared into his empty tin cup, held between hands that looked raw and red; the left one was the ugliest. “So do I. When that happens, I think about a conversation you and I had on the hill behind Belvedere. You talked about some things Mother once said to you. How she believed our family was like the laurel—”
