by Ralph Peters
Arching his back, Gordon stretched before resuming the perfect posture he kept in the saddle. “Bill, you’re my reserve. But I want your Virginians positioned to move en echelon, too, should the need arise. You’ll be on Zeb’s left, toward the river. Just keep your eyes wide open and be ready.”
“Virginia’s always ready, sir.”
Gordon almost snapped, “Not on the twelfth of May, you weren’t,” but restrained himself. Holding his tongue was often a trial, but only a fool made an enemy of a man who might one day prove a useful friend.
“Indeed,” Gordon told him, “indeed. I count myself the child of unsullied fortune in the privilege of commanding these three brigades. I hold none more valiant in all the armies of the Confederacy.” He smiled slyly, though not meanly. The slyness was meant to be seen and appreciated. “Of course, we’ll see who shines brightest today. Questions, gentlemen?”
“Thought you were going to get rid of that old red shirt?” Zeb York asked. “You stick out like the Queen of Sheba herself, get yourself killed. Then where’d we be?”
Gordon smiled the perfect smile again. “Why, I expect some grateful brigadier would get a promotion.” He twisted the smile from easy to wry. “Need y’all to be able to find me, when you seek my counsel.”
“Yankees don’t seek you first.”
“That’s your job, Zeb. To keep those blue-bellies off me.” He put the smile back in the smile chest. “All right, gentlemen … you will form your brigades behind that hill. Bill, you won’t stretch that far up, so keep your men back of the barn a ways. Flags down. Until you advance.”
Terry nodded.
As he surveyed the faces before him—none jovial now, each earnest—he paused, for a hair-split, at his brother’s eyes. Gene was to be a major, if spared this day. Gordon wanted the younger man to live for that promotion and long thereafter. But Eugene would have to do his duty at Clem Evans’ side.
He had noted his brother’s worried look when York raised the matter of the flannel shirt. Fact was, Gordon didn’t care for the garment. Even washed thin, it was too hot for the day, and turning back the sleeves hardly made a difference. But the men loved to see him in it. And they certainly saw him.
It continued to amuse, if not amaze, him how much his fellow officers and even his own kin failed to understand: Even a fearful man would die for a general in a red shirt. A. P. Hill understood that, but few others did. Early certainly didn’t.
Damn Early, though. The army should have been a dozen miles down the road by now. They’d lost a day, thanks to that shabby money-raking in Frederick and Ramseur’s knack for tying himself in knots. And damn that fool McCausland, for waking the Federals up to their open flank. And damn the sorry Maryland dirt underfoot, the whole fastidious, interfering, Negro-worshipping Union.
It was going to be a bloody, bloody day.
Gordon had saved his warmest smile for the last, a smile that promised intimate friendship with every man it fell upon. He believed that his hero, that other Ulysses—so unlike the beast in Union blue—would have donned just such a smile to win over Achilles, Agamemnon, or Menelaus.
“Not a man here has ever let me down,” Gordon announced. “And I know you never will.” He tugged on the reins just enough to make his beloved black horse prance. “Let’s kill us some Yankees.”
3:15 p.m.
Intersection of the Georgetown Pike and Baker Valley Road
Ricketts turned to face Wallace, who had just dismounted beside him. He realized that his temporary commander had come down to the road, rather than summon him, to shorten the interruption of his work re-forming his lines. Wallace seemed a considerate sort, gentlemanly, stuffed with brains, a dreamer. They were different types, almost opposites, but Ricketts liked this man who was about to destroy his division.
Moving clumsily, obviously exhausted, Wallace stepped close. “Let us walk for a moment, General Ricketts. Apart from the men. I shan’t take much of your time.”
There wasn’t much “apart” to be had, between the dressing ranks and sergeants all but hurling ammunition. Litter bearers moved back and forth like a two-way column of ants, depositing their cargoes and fetching more. Inevitably, a wagon had overturned, narrowing the road. Clutching his shoulder, the driver cursed magnificently.
The two generals stepped along, gesturing to the men to remain at ease. The shade, what little there was, had magnetic force, but by unspoken agreement, Ricketts and his companion left it to the powder-smeared, sweat-gripped soldiers.
“Your troops have done splendidly,” Wallace told him.
“Except for those two blasted regiments. God knows where the devil they are right now.” He had sensed, with finality, that those precious regiments and strayed companies would not arrive in time to affect the outcome.
Of course, the outcome would not have been changed, anyway. Only the fight’s duration was in dispute.
“I’m sorry,” Wallace said. “The railroad seems to have let us down today.”
Ricketts shrugged. “Fortunes of war.” Mind back on business, he said, “I’ve stripped the riverfront. Your boys will have to hold it. I’ve pushed out a heavy skirmish line again. Changed its orientation, of course. I learned that lesson. Main line’s still by the house, best ground. Flank’s refused by one regiment, all I can spare from the firing line.” He gestured at the men filling the hollow that cradled the Pike. “Reserve’s down here, two regiments. The Rebs will have to pound their way through, and they’ll pay the devil’s wages.”
He knew what Wallace was thinking. It would be the very thought he harbored himself: If they come the way we think they’ll come.
“There was a mounted party on a scout,” Ricketts added. “All officers, judged by the gait of their horses. Postures, too, that high-and-mighty way most of them have. Rode the length of the hill ten minutes ago.”
“I saw them,” Wallace said. “Infantry commanders would be my guess. Weighing courses of action.”
“They’ll come that way, all right. No real choice.”
Wallace nodded. “It’ll be soon. They’re pressing harder across the river, like they mean it this time. Not sure how much longer our boys can hold, they’re in a bind.”
“Those Vermont boys are stubborn.”
“I made a mistake. The bridge, the fire.”
For the first time in hours, perhaps aeons, Ricketts smiled. “Generals don’t make mistakes, sir. Didn’t anyone let you in on the secret? First thing a fellow learns when he gets to West Point.” Voice almost jovial—he recognized the hilarity that sprang from desperation—he added, “Never made a single mistake myself.”
Wallace smiled, too. But Ricketts thought, for a flashing moment, of the wretched court-martial of Fitz John Porter, of his own shabby part in it. Mistakes? What was a man’s life but a trail of mistakes?
Letting his smile fall away, Wallace said, “We’ve cost them a day. That’s something.”
“Cost them a good bit more, before we’re done.”
“If … I ordered you to withdraw now … you could save your division. There’s still time for an orderly withdrawal. I doubt the Rebs would contest it. They just want us out of the way.”
It was a tempting thought. A wonderful thought.
“We haven’t been beaten yet,” Ricketts said.
“We will be,” Wallace said, almost whispered.
“Yes. But we haven’t been. Not yet.”
“You’ll lose half your division. At least.”
“You told me yourself that every hour counts.”
Wallace appeared taut with nerves, half-starved, dark eyes sunken, and shoulders caved like an old woman’s under a shawl. Not the way the illustrated papers portrayed heroes. But Ricketts understood, thoroughly and clearly, that Wallace meant to stay and fight it out. With or without the men Ricketts commanded. He was trying to be just, but war mocked justice. The man was far too decent to be a general.
“It does,” Wallace said. “Every hour counts.”
“Then it’s my duty to contest the field.”
“God bless you,” Wallace said, faintly, enunciating each word.
Ricketts was tempted to say far more than was his habit, to lash out and damn the idiocy in Washington, the stubbornness of every general officer not present where they stood, the pigheadedness of government and the creatures who fed off its carcass like monstrous insects. Above all, he wanted to say, “I just hope to Christ in Heaven all this is worth it, that somebody in Washington has decided by now to step away from the bar of Willard’s Hotel and do their duty.”
But Wallace doubtless harbored the same thoughts; there was no point in speaking aloud. The men might hear.
“Best see to my lines,” Ricketts said brusquely. “Rebs will be coming along.”
“General Ricketts? In case we … should become separated. I want to thank you.” Wallace held out his hand.
Ricketts accepted the paw, but the time for genteel communion had passed them by. He nodded toward his begrimed men in their shabby uniforms.
“Thank them.”
FIVE
3:30 p.m.
Worthington farm
“Keep your alignment, men,” Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg called as he rode between their lines. “Keep up your alignment.”
The sound of nigh on a thousand men advancing seemed to hush all else in the world. Even the thump of the guns on the far bank faded. Nichols believed he could hear his heart, fearful and no denying it.
The first field they crossed had been stripped bare of crops, leaving a man with his own feeling of nakedness. They were still out of range of the Yankee rifles, but exposed for all to see, and each step brought them closer to whatever the Lord had in mind. Horn-hard feet and rough shoes slapped baked earth, raising pale dust to bother throats consigned to the second rank. Sweating untowardly, like a fat man, Nichols felt shrunken.
In the next field, yet uncut, the shish-shish-shish of feet and calves pushed through ripe wheat with the sound of a thousand scythes.
The day was hot, bright blue, gold, green-rimmed, marred here and there by smoke. Despite his wash of sweat, Nichols felt light, with his blanket roll and haversack left behind in the trees, every man going forward with just his fighting tools. Still, he sensed a ghost where the blanket had gripped, the wet cloth cooling now, despite the sun. He’d learned so much he hoped he lived to tell it, how a man could be hot and chilled at once, sick with fear and ready to kill with fury.
“Keep your alignment, men.”
Up ahead, nothing good. Across a dreadful stretch of fields, flat enough for volleys to sweep them clean, the Yankees waited, hunkered down, no doubt licking their lips. In between, fences challenged the advance, with haystacks scattered about, as if the blue-bellies had set out a steeplechase course.
In dead air, flags hung limp. Along the lines the 61st Georgia’s officers called out encouragement. Excepting Colonel Lamar and Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg, every one of the officers walked, not because they’d dismounted to spare themselves, but because there were no horses to be had, at least not for the money printed in Richmond. It was a poor time, a hard time, for rich and poor alike among his people, with gentry afoot who had ridden all their lives. Determined they all were, though, every one of them. Nichols felt that sure as Revelation.
So far still to go, a small eternity. Fresh sweat popped. Insects rose, clouds of them. He had turned up the front brim of his hat, the way he always did, the better to look along the sights when the time came, and blackflies teased his eyes. He blinked and blinked again but kept both hands on his rifle. Wasn’t no right-shoulder-shift this day, just rifles held at port, the way General Gordon liked things.
Just seemed a mean, long way across those fields. He couldn’t figure why the Yankees hadn’t let loose with artillery. Unless their guns were already primed with canister, a terrible thing, wrathful.
He fixed his eyes on that first fence. Didn’t want to look beyond it.
The day was hot in the nose, hot in the mouth. Field dust, hay dust, peppered his nostrils, so different from the chalk-cake dust of roads. Breathing almost required an act of will. But his leg had stopped hurting, he barely felt it. He wondered why that was?
A man was a riddle, but the Lord God was a mystery.
Officers pointed the way with their swords and it almost seemed the blades tugged them along. Nichols was glad to bear a rifle, to feel its weight and solidity. Above all, he was glad to feel the smell-close press of his fellow soldiers around him, the presence of others that braved a man up and kept him from shaming himself; glad, too, to see familiar backs in the first line up ahead, to know men not just by their faces, but by their shoulders and signifying movements. Beside him, on his left, marched hard Ive Summerlin, who took every fight personal. To the right, Lem Davis panted, beard alone enough to fright the Yankees, the beard of a Methuselah, though Lem was not so old.
His friends, his kind, his war-kin.
Step forward, step again. Brittle soil crumbled underfoot. A butterfly, confused, fluttered about. His mother said that butterflies brought good luck.
He wanted to be brave inside and out. But he knew that he only could go forward like this, across these endless fields, with his brethren close. He felt himself quiver like a fevered child, the way he was ever inclined to in the moments before he could lose himself in doing.
Men killed hogs kinder than they killed each other.
That fence. A soldier learned to hate fences. Unless they were there for burning when things were quiet.
Them Yanks all tucked in. Waiting. Bits of blue speckled the distance, signs enough for a man to imagine their line, how it would explode.
At that fence. That’s where it would start. They’d wait till then.
A part of him wanted to run, a shameful part. His heart raged to burst right out of his chest, to escape his flesh and run off by its own self. Sweat sheathed him.
“Get over that fence!” Colonel Lamar roared. “Company C, open a gap!”
Men rushed from the forward line, ripping at the boards and clubbing the planks with their rifle butts. One fool fellow had cocked his rifle and it shot into the air, a stunning sound that tore right through the day.
As soon as the first rank mounted the fence, the Yankees opened fire. Men splayed their arms and fell—backward, forward—dropping their weapons, casting them off, hats flying, bodies crumpling, some caught halfway, folded over the top rail, rumps in the air, as if awaiting a spanking.
Other men climbed the slats or leapt over. Some paused to help their friends. More and more of the fence simply gave way.
“Come on, boys, come on! Re-form. Re-form and keep moving.”
It was hard doings. The first line had become a ragged thing, blundering amid haystacks. It still went forward, though.
“Hold your fire, don’t fire. Our time’s a-coming. Re-form, and hold your fire!”
Yanks weren’t holding theirs. Men dropped.
Nichols crowded through a gap in the broke-down fence, brushing past witch-finger splinters.
Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg rode through another gap and cantered along the line, calling, “Fill up the first ranks. Sergeants, do your duty!”
“I don’t need no sergeant pushing me,” Ive Summerlin declared. He trotted forward, toward a hole the Yankees had made in the gray line.
Nichols followed after. Hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t decided to. Just did. As if Ive pulled him along on a hidden rope.
Lem Davis came after. Big and breathing like a run-out steer.
The Yankees fired as fast as they reloaded.
A few men, very few, paused behind the haystacks, malingering, gripped by fear. Most just stepped along, though, like they couldn’t do anything else, and that was that. Both lines were jumbled now.
“Keep going, keep on going!”
Some of the junior officers and sergeants continued to holler about re-forming, but it was as if they did it just to feel better, to ke
ep themselves occupied.
Everyone moved quickly now. Not running, not quite. Forming back up in their accustomed, imperfect way, anxious to get out of the shocks and stacks, craving order as much as they craved safety, needing their comrades stink-close again and ranked up, so a man’s chances evened out.
Just as Nichols spotted him again, rounding a haystack, Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg fell sideward from his horse. As if shoved hard.
“Just keep moving, Georgie,” Lem said. “You just look straight ahead.”
Wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. Of all people.
Nichols felt himself tempted by awful words, Satan just a-begging him to utter them.
Men fell on every side.
That second fence. Men couldn’t wait, could not just march toward it. One dashed forward, then another. All of them. Amid the wild racket of Yankee volleys.
“Georgia! Georgia!”
Again, men tumbled as they topped the fence, splendid targets for the Yankees now. Nichols spotted Zib Collins, who was supposed to be on stretcher duty and safe, bearing a rifle and fumbling over the obstacle. Then Zib held stone still. For one queer instant. As if at the behest of a man with a camera.
Zib’s head just burst, brains splashing everywhere. As if his skull had been struck with a railroad hammer.
“Georgia! Forward!”
Yanks had easy shooting now. But as soon as the bulk of the men were past the fence, Colonel Lamar halted them, cursing those who failed to obey promptly, employing lusty profanity, although the colonel, once a noteworthy sinner, had found his way to Jesus the past winter.
“Form up! Form up, Lord God almighty! Hurry up, boys, hurry!” Nichols shut his ears to the other words blazing by.
They formed back up, right fast. But Lem was on his left now, Ive a few spaces distant on the right.
Eyes hunting the flanks, Lem said, “Seems like we’re aiming to take on the Yankees just us’n.”
