by Ralph Peters
Still, good ground mattered, of that Meade had no doubt. He only wished he knew more about the terrain at Gettysburg. He still had not a single map that satisfied him. The decision to give battle or not depended on John Reynolds’ judgment now.
Meade had sent additional messengers to each of the corps, altering their movements, alerting them that their plans could change again, hurrying Sedgwick, redirecting Slocum, getting Hancock in pocket, always seeking to cover the possibilities of the day. Sickles was moving in the proper direction to support Reynolds’ fight, if need be. And Howard would be up right behind John, his lead elements probably on the field by now. So Reynolds would have two corps on hand, with two more corps available by evening.
But was Gettysburg a worthy place for a defensive battle? Meade’s stomach complained of acid. He had turned down an offered midday meal, unable to eat a bite. And he was tired. He yearned for a night of sleep. Standing with his coat draped open, as was his practice in hot weather, he felt bent, despite his good posture.
If only a portion of Lee’s army presented itself, Meade was ready to pitch into it and let the defense be damned—as he had written his wife in a fit of bravado. Otherwise, he wanted Lee to be the attacker. But he did not want Lee deciding where the attack would come.
Had Lee chosen Gettysburg?
Meade ached for another message from Reynolds, with more details. Surely, John would have matters in charge by now?
At least the pressure was off of Harrisburg, and it no longer seemed Lee might dash for Philadelphia. Now it was all about choosing a battleground and forcing the other man to slip into error.
Pacing before his headquarters tent, Meade fought the impulse to mount his horse and ride forward, to see the situation at Gettysburg himself. But that would be folly. He was no longer a mere division or even a corps commander. He had to remain where his orders could reach each of his subordinates promptly, and where their reports could find him without delay. He burned to be at the front, but had to keep to his place at the army’s center.
It was all a damned bit harder than it looked.
Turning back to the tent, he thrust in his head and snapped at Butterfield, “Has my report to Halleck gone off, or not?”
Butterfield had taken his blows already and declined to be further annoyed. “It’s gone,” he said.
“The order to Sedgwick to close on the army?”
“Hours ago. We spoke of it, General Meade.”
“Hancock?”
Butterfield looked suitably put-upon at last. “You spoke to him yourself. Not an hour ago. Was there something else?”
“Has his corps closed in its entirety?”
Butterfield drew out his watch. “Perhaps not fully.”
“Find out,” Meade snapped.
Hancock’s visit had buoyed him for a time, although the doubts of the day soon set back in. Win Hancock would have liked to be forward in Reynolds’ place, Meade knew. The man loved a fight. Meade would not have trusted Hancock to plan a grand campaign, but there was no one better on a battlefield.
Well, Hancock would get his chance, whether at Pipe Creek or at Gettysburg. Or somewhere in between. Meanwhile, Hancock had placed his headquarters a few minutes’ ride away, on the other side of Taneytown. With a short rest, his Second Corps could be on the march again, if needed. Meade applauded himself for the manner in which he had drawn the army together. Only Sedgwick remained worrisomely far from the likely battlegrounds.
Despite himself, Meade smiled. Thinking of Win Hancock. The way the man left every button of his tunic undone but the top one, since, fighter or not, his belly had pushed aggressively to his own personal front. He looked a grand man in the saddle, though. Inspiring. Meade knew that, in a matter of hours, Hancock would come to him with some excuse to ride forward, to get into the scrap at Gettysburg, with or without his corps. And Meade, like a parent, would have to tell him no. He could picture the scene as almost a comical one, as if Hancock truly were no more than a child. “You must stay with your corps, Winfield!” “But … but I don’t want to.…”
“No more messages from Reynolds?” Meade asked Butterfield. It was a foolish question and both men knew it.
Butterfield shrugged, no longer concealing his exasperation. “You would’ve seen the man before I did. I haven’t left this tent.”
Frustrated that he had no further excuse for anger, Meade stepped back into the sunlight. It was beastly hot with the rain blown off. “Damn it,” he said to no one in particular, “where’s young George gotten to?” Then he raised his voice: “Where’s Captain Meade?”
No one replied. All in the vicinity did their best to evade the general’s eyes and scurry along. Yes, they knew damned well he was in a mood. But what had Frederick the Great said? That soldiers should be more afraid of their officers than of the enemy? The staff of the Army of the Bloody Blue Potomac needed a touch more of that. Hooker’s damnable legacy of slovenliness. No engineer would have tolerated it.
Old Frederick knew a damned sight more about war than that bugger Jomini, so adored by Little Mac.
Even as he thought these things, Meade knew he was being unfair. The staff was doing all it could. It was too small. As if they were still fighting in Mexico, puny army against puny army. So much needed to be changed. If he survived in command, he would build the army a proper staff at last. If …
Why didn’t Reynolds send more details of the fighting, damn him? Meade needed facts. He had an army to move, and the move had to be in the proper damned direction. He could not afford to confuse his corps commanders with an endless succession of countermanded orders, making a worse muddle than that idiot Burnside.
With a start, Meade wondered if, before long, another general would be damning him for an idiot.
With Gettysburg fourteen miles off, he could not even hear the battle’s noise. For all he knew, there had only been a skirmish, over now. Or there might be a significant encounter still under way. Buford had made it sound as though there were plenty of Rebels to chew on.
The point was not to be the one who was chewed.
He needed to know, needed to know. It was John’s duty to send regular reports, damn it all, and not just have a grand lark chasing laurels.
Meade had expected better of Reynolds. He really had.
He spotted his son returning from the grove that masked the latrine. His temper was such that he was prepared to tear into the boy anyway. How could he expect to know what the army was doing, if he didn’t even know where his son was? Instead, Meade stuck his head back in the tent.
“Send a message to Pleasanton. Urgently. He needs to keep this headquarters informed, blast him. I need to know if Ewell is headed for Hanover, or if he’s descending farther to the west. You saw Buford’s report. Tell Pleasanton if he can’t do the work, I’ll find—”
Meade heard the hoofbeats of a hard-driven horse. He rushed back into the open. It was all he could do not to run to meet the courier. Coming from the direction of Gettysburg.
Surely he would learn now what Reynolds thought of the ground and the force before him. Enough to enable Meade to make the fateful decisions that must rest upon his shoulders. He took the old maxim to heart: It was almost impossible to recover from flawed dispositions at a battle’s outset. Whose dispositions would prove flawed, his or Robert E. Lee’s?
The horse was spent and the rider looked no better. Meade recognized Major Riddle, one of Reynolds’ men.
Foot catching in a stirrup, Riddle almost toppled backward. Meade was about to upbraid the man for his clumsiness. Unbecoming to an officer, even a worn one.
Then Meade saw the man’s face.
It can be difficult to tell the difference between tears and sweat on a drained man’s features.
Riddle failed to salute. He looked distraught, shocked. Ill. His mouth opened. With difficulty. As if the jaw had been clenched too hard and too long, until the human mortar hardened.
Gathering himself, the major said, “Gener
al Reynolds is dead, sir.”
SIX
July 1, Early Afternoon
“Why don’t we attack?” James Bunyan asked. Lying amid the ranks that stretched down the field like ready-made corpses, the twin fidgeted, a child afflicted with worms. “How long they going to keep us a-laying here?”
“Long as they want,” Cobb said as he rolled to one side. He had picked open the sore on his nose again. “Got to give the Yankees a fair chance to get themselves fixed up and ready.”
“It just don’t make no sense,” the boy said.
“The generals know what they’re doing,” Blake told Bunyan, Cobb, and all the men sprawled around him. Although he was not certain of that himself.
“I didn’t see that many Yankees when we was up top there,” Peachum put in. “Seems like we ought to get things done with. While there’s not so many of them.”
Cobb delivered his customary cackle. “Plenty of them for Archer’s boys, seems like.” Flies adored him.
Blake wondered if he should ask the captain for the let to send a detail to fill canteens. Even lying still, a man felt the sun’s punch. And there’d been some whiskey early in the morning, although Tam, Hugh, and the others had tried to hide it. What helped at dawn took its revenge at noon. They’d all be raw with thirst.
As the sun peaked overhead, the fight faded into a dull exchange of artillery, the way two weary but well-matched brawlers kept slopping occasional punches toward one another. Blake understood the men’s impatience, felt it himself. They were willing to fight, they were ready. But waiting gnawed at a man. Didn’t make a fellow afraid, but left him a bit less steady. And it gave the wrong sort of man too much time to think.
He couldn’t figure the delay himself. He even agreed with Cobb. There were Yankees aplenty on that other ridge, but not so many that a big brigade like Pettigrew’s couldn’t whip them. Surely the generals had a greater plan, a scheme invisible from his crushed-grass bed. Perhaps they were waiting for still more brigades and divisions to come up, to deliver a mighty blow. But it did seem to give the Yankees the same opportunity.
“These damn ants,” Jack Ireton said.
Cobb hooted. “Be worms at you soon enough.”
Sometimes Blake wondered why the men lying beside him fought at all. Not one man in the company held slaves, not even the officers. Nor did they have much else. Other than their pride. Of course, that was part of it, the war did give them something, making something of them for a time, spiriting them away from their poor-white work, hard debts, and bent-bone children. He’d heard many a time that this was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight, but Blake suspected that was the way of every war. True, some young bucks from high families went off to display themselves. But men of fortune who’d already had their waistcoats let out a time or two found good reasons aplenty to stay at home. Like Lenore’s banker.
Lenore. When he thought of her now, he was brutal. Given the chance, he would not be a gentleman. He would hurt her. Damage her. With all the anger he had taken to that swamp girl whose pap was willing to see himself off for an hour or two if money was in prospect. She had borne his assault in silence, as if used to it, then told him, “You come around again, Mr. Soldier. You come on anytime.”
But he had not gone back. He had gone to her on a rumor of availability, fleeing the regiment’s low-country camp in the twilight, bursting with rage at the news of Lenore’s marriage, her betrayal. Delilah had done less, he told himself, cursing his beloved as a cold whore. And the girl had been waiting by candlelight for custom, in a cabin rancid with body smells and spoilage. Afterward, sick-souled, he had feared terrible consequences from entering her stinking body, but none afflicted him. Thereafter, he remained chaste of women, giving himself to the war and the war alone. But he dreamed of hurting Lenore, of degrading her, of winning her.
I am no longer to be trusted among decent folk, Blake told himself.
Cobb fetched up a garter snake and bit it in two, letting the severed ends dangle, twitch, and spurt. Black-toothed and grinning, he chewed as if he had taken in a mouthful. James Bunyan sat up, crawled back a few feet, and retched.
“That there snake a close relation, or distant?” Peachum asked Cobb.
“Yankee branch of the family,” Pike put in.
“Well, better a goddamn family of snakes than rabbits,” Cobb answered, spitting. He was done playing with the halves of the serpent and discarded them. “Plenty of rabbit in some of these here Bunyans. Snake was headed for James there, ready to swallow him whole.”
John Bunyan leapt up, fists ready. Quick of body, Blake pulled him back down. The steadier of the twins landed with a thump.
“Take it out on the Yankees, boy,” Blake told him. “Cobb isn’t worth it.”
“That’s right now, that’s exactly right,” Cobb added. “Any man with Quakers up his tree can see it plain. Man ain’t worth a turd if he ain’t got a name, if he ain’t somebody. You tell them how it is now, Sergeant Blake.”
In the distance, drums pounded. But whose?
Blake knew where his hardened heart had gone, but not where the thoughts of the other men had strayed. He even suspected, for the first time, that Cobb might have set about something with good reason. James Bunyan was failing, although the boy had never malingered before. Better for him to burn into a fury, no matter its cause, than to lie there thinking too much about what lay ahead. And if it angered his brother, too, that harmed nothing.
It still bewildered Blake how men could downright hate each other, yet fight to save not themselves but men of whom they’d had the blackest opinion but minutes before. James Bunyan might think of shooting Cobb, rather than a Yankee, but he would not do it. Instead, he would kill the Yankee who lunged for Cobb. Even the Bible didn’t explain such things. Lenore was in it, in many forms. But Billie Cobb was absent.
When the order came to rise, all else would be forgotten and the men would go forward as one. James Bunyan would go, and Cobb. Peachum and Ireton, Tam McMinn and Hugh Gordon, Oliver Wright and Pike Gray. Eight hundred of them would rise, straighten their ranks, and step out forward. Some few might falter on a given day, but they would be as nothing. The men who lay beside him now, dusting off ants and trying to coax last sips from dry canteens, would do their duty, even if unsure to whom or what or why that duty was owed. He knew they would fight and believed they would fight well. Because, in the end, fighting was one thing a hurt man could believe in. For all the filth and horror, it was pure.
Blake looked forward to it. Not because he hated Yankees. His hate was less discriminating than that. When he’d taken that girl on her cob-filled mattress, he had almost closed his hands around her neck and tightened them. Instead, he had plowed her mercilessly, intent on inflicting pain that oldest of ways, summoning death with the deepest of all desires, determined to hear her scream. But she had said nothing, barely moaned, and let him do what men did. Perhaps, he thought, he should have killed her father. Did that toothless whoremaster also count as a son of the Glorious South? Blake figured people were people, wherever birth placed them. Today, men who knew nothing meaningful about one another would slaughter each other over accidents of geography. Say what they might in the grandest of words, there was no virtue in it. But killing Yankees was deemed a good thing, and he was good at killing. Nothing made him feel better than fighting. He had not made that girl-child scream, and the creature had even bidden him return, sickening him. But he could make Yankees scream.
The problem wasn’t getting men to kill. It was getting them to stop.
Now and then it confused him that he felt so little fear. It seemed almost a madness as he watched himself pass through the days. He even tried to talk himself into a dread of what might happen to him in battle. But he couldn’t make it stick. He’d seen enough to know the horrible wounds a man could suffer. Yet, he was more impatient than poor James Bunyan, or Peachum, or even little Cobb, to stand and go forward.
There’s something wrong with me,
he told himself. I’m as ugly inside as Cobb is outside. How could I believe in a God, if he made me like this?
Blake never had high thoughts. “Dixie” was as foreign to him as China. He felt a bothered closeness to the back hills of North Carolina, and the northern poke of Virginia still held him in a dark thrall. But neither piece of dirt was worth the dying. Where was the glory in fighting for fields that could not feed their owners? Blake took no interest in gallant, glorious gestures.
But he was interested in killing. It made him feel clean.
* * *
“It’s a dirty business,” Major General Winfield Scott Hancock told Meade, “when you lose a man like Reynolds.”
But Meade, who had ridden Hell-for-leather to Hancock’s headquarters—leaving his escort to gather and catch up—understood what filled the Second Corps commander’s mind. Hancock cared about Reynolds’ fate and had counted the man a friend. But Win would have gone through a gauntlet of corpses to get into the fight.
And Hancock understood why he had come, although Meade’s purpose had not yet been spoken. Meade was tempted to tease Hancock a bit. But there was no time for nonsense.
Reynolds dead. The news had shocked Meade. His first thoughts had veered near panic. Reynolds had been his crutch. Next, a wave of sorrow had crashed over him for the man who was no more. But the queer feeling that arose thereafter filled Meade with new vigor: He must depend upon himself now, and he suddenly felt capable of doing so. It was almost as if Reynolds’ death had freed him.
Meade had seen at once the order in which things must be done. And he meant to do them.
