The Deserter

by Jane Langton

  Your great-great-grandfather?” said the woman at the reference desk in the Archives department of the Pusey Library. “What was his name?”

  “Morgan, Seth Morgan.” Mary found it oddly uncomfortable to say the name aloud.

  The Pusey Library was a small jewel tucked away underground. Its highly visible neighbor in Harvard Yard was Widener, a monumental building with a vast stone staircase and towering granite columns, one of the great libraries of the Western world. Tourists understood its importance at once, and they clustered on the steps to be photographed before gathering around the bronze figure of John Harvard to be photographed again.

  No pictures were taken on the steps of Pusey. It was too self-effacing. The broad stone stairs descended from ground level to a glass wall of doors that led to a pair of specialized libraries, the Harvard Archives and the Theatre Collection.

  The Archives library was a cheerful well-lighted space. The librarian was cheerful too. “What class did he belong to?”

  “That’s the only thing I’m sure of,” said Mary. “He was in the class of 1860. And I’m pretty sure he served in the Civil War.”

  “We’ll find him in a jiffy.” The librarian whisked away, returned with a thick book, smacked it down on the counter, and flipped briskly through the pages. “The Quinquennial Catalogue. Everybody’s in here, absolutely everybody.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Everybody from the dawn of time, 1636 to 1930.” She ran a finger down a page. “Lots and lots of Morgans. Look, here he is, Morgan, Seth. You’re right, he was class of 1860.” She swirled the book around and tapped the name with her finger.

  “Oh, thank you.” Mary stared at the long column of people named Morgan, grateful that her ancestor’s name had not been crossed out. There he was, one of dozens of Morgans who had attended the university at one time or another—

  Morgan, Seth, 1860.

  She looked up at the librarian gratefully. “My name’s Mary Kelly. I teach around here, but I’ve never been in this library before. I’m so glad to see what it’s like.”

  “Oh, yes, Professor Kelly, and I’m glad to meet you in person. You and your husband are famous.” The librarian reached her hand across the counter. “Angelica Doyle.”

  Mary doted on librarians. She took Angelica Doyle’s hand and shook it heartily. “I’m delighted to meet you. I should explain that my maiden name was Morgan, but I confess I don’t know much about my great-great-grandfather. Do you have records about individual students, even that far back?”

  “I’ll see what I can find. Meanwhile you can see if his photograph is in our picture collection.” Angelica Doyle nodded at a set of file cabinets against the wall. “The drawers with the blue labels.”

  Mary was charmed by the old-fashioned wooden drawers, but when she pulled out the M–N drawer and flicked through the index cards, she found no Seth among the Morgans.

  “Well, there’s an album for the class of 1860,” said librarian Doyle. “Make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring it out.”

  Mary looked around the room, chose a table and sat down. Nearby an elderly man was crouched over a gray box of files—was he looking up an ancestor? In one corner a young woman tapped away softly at a computer keyboard.

  “Here we are,” said Angelica Doyle, approaching with a large box. She set it down with a thump and removed the cover. Inside lay a big book, its gold-stamped binding crumbling at the edges. Angelica dropped a pair of white cotton gloves on the table and went away.

  Mary took the hint and pulled on the gloves before lifting the cover of the album and turning the pages. They were of heavy stock with gold edges. Only a single photograph was mounted on each page.

  Young men’s faces, solemn and unsmiling. Mary guessed that the reason for their quiet dignity was not merely that the exposures were too long to capture a fleeting expression. Perhaps in those days people didn’t have to pretend eternal happiness.

  There were old Yankee names among the faces. Some of the men were in uniform. Occasionally their ranks in particular regiments in the Union army were listed beside their signatures.

  She worked her way through Edward Gardiner Abbott and Henry Livermore Abbott and Nathaniel Saltonstall Barstow and Henry Austin Clapp and Noah Gobright.

  When she came to the Ms, she looked intently at each one. The first was Charles James Mills.

  He was followed by an empty page.

  The next was Charles Redington Mudge. Mary stopped, with a small cry of recognition. The elderly man at the next table looked up in surprise. She smiled at him apologetically and looked back at Mudge. He was one of the men in Memorial Hall. His name was on the tablet, the one she had chosen to begin with. “Mudge,” whispered Mary to herself. “Charles Redington Mudge.” He had been killed, she remembered, in the Battle of Gettysburg.

  Mudge was a thoughtful-looking, slightly bewhiskered young man in uniform. He sat behind a cloth-covered table, his chin resting on his hand. Mary could imagine the voice of the photographer—Now, sir, stay quiet, if you please.

  Hungrily she stared at Mudge’s face. He seemed to be looking back at her, but of course he had really been staring into the dark glassy lens of the camera. She wanted to ask him if he had known her great-great-grandfather, but she had an even stronger urge to say something else, something crude and impulsive. Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, Charles Redington Mudge, but you have only a few more years to live. You’re going to be killed in battle. I’m terribly sorry.

  The next picture was of a classmate named Newcomb. Somehow she had missed Morgan.

  She flipped the page back to Mudge. No, it would be before Mudge. There was a page between Mudge and Mills, but it was the blank one.

  She stared at it, and her face grew hot. Her great-great-grandfather’s name was written at the bottom of the page—Seth Morgan, 2d Mass. Vol. Infantry.

  But there was no photograph, only a few streaks of dried paste.

  The shame had been too great. His classmates had rejected him. They had torn out his picture in disgust.

  When she could collect herself, Mary took the heavy book back to the librarian at the counter. “Is it possible to get photocopies?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Angelica Doyle. “Here, you just make out one of these yellow slips.”

  “Good. I’d like copies of two of the men in this book, Mills and Mudge. No, three. Would they photocopy this page too?”

  “That one? But it’s blank.”

  “Yes, but it once had my great-great-grandfather’s picture on it. You see? His name is there at the bottom.”

  “Well, of course it can be photocopied, but all you’ll get will be a few smudges.”

  “Yes,” said Mary unhappily, beginning to scribble her request, “I know.”

  PART IV

  OTIS SKEDADDLES

  The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know what they were about. It was all a trap.

  —STEPHEN CRANE, THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE

  SEEING THE

  ELEPHANT

  THOMAS RODMAN ROBESON

  Class of 1861

  Second Lieutenant 2d Mass. Vols. (Infantry), May 28,1861; First Lieutenant, November 30, 1861; Captain, August 10, 1862; died July 6, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pa.

  The Second became engaged on July 3d.… At about six o’clock the regiment was ordered to advance … when he was hit by a conical ball.… His wound was found to be so serious that his life could not be saved.…“Well, I suppose I must go. It is hard to die, with so many bright prospects before me. I feel the cause has been just, and I have tried to know and do my duty.”

  —HARVARD MEMORIAL BIOGRAPHIES

  Otis could barely see Tom Robeson far ahead, marching at the head of the company. It was the second day of slogging northward, although, thank God, they hadn’t yet been called upon to charge the enemy and have their guts ripped out or their heads blown off. Both days it had just been dragging one foot after the other, hay foot, straw foot, weighed down
by fifty-seven pounds of knapsack, rifle, ammunition, cartridge box, shelter tent, blanket, rations and canteen. The corporal in front of Otis had a skillet dangling from his rifle. Behind them a wagon train stretched for miles.

  Yesterday, Otis had still been suffering from the aftereffects of his carousing in Frederick. This morning, after the life-and-death confrontation with his dear old classmates, his headache was worse, throbbing with every step. But as the thirty-three regiments of the Twelfth Crops, all eight thousand marching men, dragged themselves wearily through Taneytown, they were serenaded by a cluster of pretty girls along the roadside, and Otis cheered up.

  He waved his cap and cried, “Fair damsels, we salute you,” and the girls laughed. One of them piped up with a song everybody knew, “When This Cruel War Is Over,” and the regimental band struck up with the same tune.

  But the cruel war was far from over. They could all see the smoke drifting high in the sky from somewhere up ahead, and there was an ominous thunder of guns. Something tremendous was happening not far away. The man with the skillet muttered again that the ball was about to open, and somebody else said they were going to see the elephant this time for sure.

  “I’ve seen enough of that goddamn elephant already,” said Otis, and there were grunts of assent. Grimly they dragged themselves forward under the hot sun until there was a sudden halt up ahead, and a wave of laughter came down the line.

  It was geese, a small flock of geese, scattering in all directions. A boy with a stick was running after them, and one of Otis’s mates was pretending to help, flapping the skirts of his coat and calling, “Here, goosey, goosey,” but all he got for his trouble was a savage nip on the arm.

  The booming of the guns was louder now, but the countryside was still green and fair, the corn tall in the fields, the farmhouses neat with white fences and flowering gardens. And then there was another halt. What was the matter now?

  Otis’s friend Rufus soon found out. “It’s them generals,” he said. “It’s them stuck-up generals.”

  Otis climbed a tree and stared toward the head of the line. Sure enough, a mounted courier was dashing up and shouting something at General Slocum, and whatever it was, the general didn’t like it. From his vantage point in the tree, Otis could see Slocum’s red and furious face. More couriers came and went. Orderlies and officers gathered urgently around.

  Otis climbed down and reported, “It’s some kind of puffed-up standoff.” Rufus said that the general must have a boil on his backside, and the men all grinned and filed off into a field and sat down. The crash of artillery was very loud now, and half the sky was filled with smoke. Something very bad was going on over there, just out of sight to the west.

  Whatever it was, they were in no hurry to find out. Some of Otis’s messmates stretched out and went to sleep. Others filled their canteens from the creek that ran through the field. Rufus took off one shoe and mended his sock. His brother Lem removed his shirt to look for critters.

  But before long Tom ordered everybody up, because the corps was finally on the march again. One way or another, the dispute had been settled. The men plodded on for a while, then turned off the pike onto a narrow country road, their sweltering coats and sweating faces covered with dust. Soon all three brigades of the First Division surged into a wooded grove and came to a halt. At last Tom Robeson told his company they could settle down.

  Otis watched as Tom spread a map on the ground and dropped to his knees. Seth Morgan and Charley Mudge were also kneeling. They were all staring intently at the map.

  Otis envied them their comradeship in important matters, their friendly decision making, their power to send underlings like himself into battle. As officers they were a breed apart.

  The years at school had been so different. Of course the others had never been in danger of expulsion—oh, no, not they, not Mudge and Robeson and Morgan, not Tom Fox. Poor old Otis had been perpetually in the bad graces of tutors, professors, the President and Fellows and all the other lords of the universe, but among his friends it had not mattered at all.

  Why should their army rank make such a difference? Otis himself had not changed. He was as ready as ever to amuse, to dash off a comic song, to rally the campfire with “Hardtack, Come Again No More,” to conduct a mock burial for an ancient piece of salt beef, to spread a little cheer. But now the pall of war had cast a grim shadow over the faces of Tom Robeson and Charley Mudge. Even with Seth the old camaraderie was not the same. It was painfully clear that on the field of glory, comic songs were not what was wanted.

  He watched Tom Robeson look up and point at a rise of ground, over there beyond the trees. He heard him say, “Culp’s Hill” before staring down at the map again with Charley Mudge.

  Otis felt an impulse to shout at them, “Mrs. Jarley’s Waxwork, remember, Tom? Hey, Charley, will you ever forget Aunt Charlotte’s Maid?”

  But it was no use. Privates did not jest and pass the time of day with lordly colonels and captains, no matter how chummy they had been in the past.

  Fortunately Otis had fostered a friendship with two younger men in his company. Rufus and Lemuel Scopes were a pair of nineteen-year-old twins from some one-horse town in western Massachusetts. Keeping Rufe and Lem in stitches was child’s play.

  But now, Christ, their respite was over. An orderly appeared, Tom and Charley stood up, and before anybody knew what was happening, the whole regiment was on its feet and obeying an order to march up a hill to attack a bunch of rebel cavalry. But it didn’t amount to much. By the time Otis and Lem and Rufe were halfway to the top, everybody turned around and marched down again.

  “Like Jack and Jill,” said Otis, grinning at Rufus and Lem, but they’d never heard of Jack and Jill. Thankfully, the men of Company E settled down again, bivouacking beside a little creek. Otis owned a piece of soap, so he stripped down, sudsed out his underwear in the creek, and put it on again wet, so it would cool him when he lay down.

  But in the morning the drawers were cold and clammy next to his skin. He had been awake half the night listening to the rumbling wheels of gun carriages on the Baltimore Pike and the clash of picks and shovels. The regiment’s band of Pioneers was hard at work the whole night, wielding axes to fell trees and spades to dig trenches. They shouted at each other as they dragged the branches into line to make breastworks. It sounded like hundreds of them yelling at once and rattling their picks against rocks and crashing heavy boulders down against the trees.

  Their noises were bad enough, but there was another noise that was worse, a tinny whine around his ears. Otis guessed there was a swale nearby because the mosquitoes were so thick. He pulled his blanket over his head and slept at last, but it was only a few minutes before he woke up to the sound of rebel caterwauling over there on the hill across the ravine, and a spattering of rifle fire. Sitting up, he was aware of a familiar knot of fear in his chest.

  Oh Lord, now they were all getting up again. Tom Robeson was urging them onto their feet. The whole damn regiment was shifting position, in fact it was everybody, the whole goddamn division. Otis did his part of the shifting with his eyes half-closed as the regiment climbed an entirely different hill and spread out in a thick new line.

  Unfortunately the new position was on the side facing the enemy. Otis chose his place with care, crouching down behind Corbett, the fattest man in the company. If any stray bullets found Corbett, they’d lose themselves in his spongy flesh and never come out the other side. Otis beckoned Lem and Rufe to huddle beside him. Corbett was so fat, there was plenty of room for three.

  But the day passed, and nothing much happened. They relaxed and rummaged in their haversacks for pieces of hardtack, and Rufe shared out his cold beans. Not until late afternoon did the artillery on both sides begin to make a racket. And not until dusk did the enemy start fighting in earnest, but luckily it was no concern of Company E.

  “Well, if that don’t beat the devil,” said Lem. “They’ve changed their minds again.”

 
Sure enough, Tom Robeson was making huge “Come on, boys” gestures and first sergeants were running around giving orders. The entire First Division was supposed to hightail it someplace else, and in a tearing hurry, that was clear.

  Where, for Christ’s sake?

  Otis caught sight of the commander of the division, Alpheus Williams. He knew the general from afar by his big black slouch hat and the long mustachios that drooped on either side of his pudgy face. The general was right there in plain sight, looking anxious.

  Otis fell in with Rufe and Lem. As the sun sank lower and lower, they headed south. At first the three of them were somewhere near the front of Company E, but before long they edged to the rear in a clever way they’d worked out in other battles in other places.

  You just let the boys behind you turn into the boys in front.

  SOMETHING

  MAGNIFICENT

  Things had been quiet enough where they came from, but all day they had heard the raging storm of battle to the south. Obviously, the men of the First Division were being called on to shore up something or other down that way, whether they felt like it or not. Otis was not particularly interested in shoring anything up, but there was no help for it. He trudged along with the others in the gathering dusk, and when everybody jogged to the right, he jogged that way too.

  Otis was captivated by the sight of a small stone building along this road. It was obviously a schoolhouse. A man stood in the doorway looking out at them. The schoolmaster, thought Otis. At once he was distracted by the memory of a class in the postulates of Euclid under Professor Eustis, and he wanted to fall out of line and offer his services to the schoolmaster. “Now, class, this morning we will study the axiom that halves of equals are equal.” How delightful, the cheery faces of the little boys and girls!

  But as they drew away from the schoolhouse Otis looked back and saw a couple of medical stewards with a litter. The school was now a hospital.