Long, Last, Happy

by Barry Hannah

  The best thing is that on retreat our boys run the rats and shocked wrens and baby rabbits back to me. Out of my tent shoots my arm. Yummy. The creatures had figured me for a goner. The smoke from the enemy’s prime ribs, T-bones and basted turkeys floats over here at night sometimes, cruelly, damn the wind. In my long glass I can hardly find a human figure over there among the thick and bristling cannon, and when I do find a face, the smirk on it is killing. That is enough. I whisk back to the rear, wheel rapidly under my dress. Wind blows my tent up and I must resemble some fop’s umbrella, rolling in the wheelbarrow. Some of us in that last long entrenchment, I noted, are so narrow against the wind they suffer the advantage of disappearing as targets. One man cuts and eats his own bunions. Corporal Nigg was still in his place, frozen upright, long dead but continuing as the sentry. Who can fire him? Who has time for clerical work? Nigg is present, accounted for, damn you, a soldier’s soldier. So Private Ruth brings my journey in the wheelbarrow to its conclusion back at the tent, puffing. Calamity has provided me with perquisites. Some resent me, as they go off to lose an eye or ear and return to chat, lucky this time.

  The charge, our old bread and butter, has withered into the final horror of the field, democracy. It is a good thing we are still grassroot-mean, or there would be no impetus left. Referendums for and against the next charge take a long time, collecting ballots down the line, out in the swamp. Every sniper has an opinion, every mule-lackey, every musician. The vote is always in favor, for we are the Bats Out of Hell Division, even if we are down to less than regiment size. These boys can still stir you. When I know something big’s afoot, I shriek for Ruth, who rolls me up to jump-off with the shock troops. Nobody is disheartened by my appearance. There are men far, far worse off than I, men unblessed with the ability to write and read; men whose salivation has been taken from them by breathing in one ball of fire too many. Oh Jesus, I’d go rolling out there with them if I could. It’s Ruth that holds me back. Otherwise I’d be in the fore, quill high, greeting their cannon—hub to hub they are—a row almost endless of snobs’ nostrils, soon to come alive with smoke and flame: grape, canister, ball, bomb, balls and chain. They greet us even with flying glass. I’ll never forget the lovely day they took nearly my all. In a way I want to revisit it; a sentimental journey, however, this war has no time for. Ruth won’t budge. He has his orders. I, the scribe, have become as important as our general, who is, of no debate, criminally insane just like the rest of them.

  Shot to pieces in that rehearsal excursion down to Mexico, the man was buried, but returned out of the very earth once he heard another cracking good one was on. At last, at last! The World War of his dreams. “Thought I’d never live to see it! There is a God, and God is love!” I have license to exaggerate, as I have just done, but many would be horrified to know how little. He is said to have commented on hearing the first news, “Brother against brother! In my lifetime! Can Providence be truly this good?”

  He is dead set on having these battles writ down permanently in ink and will most certainly push me on afterward, whatever befalls, into working up his own biography. There is about enough left of him to drape a horse. Once he’s tied on, his voice never stops, and you can hear the wind whistling through him even in the rare interludes of quiet when he has simply blasted away his throat organs. Up and down the line, his raw nagging moans away, overcoming shot and shell; a song eternal, this bawling, in the ears of the ruined but driven. The two colonels and four captains flap around in imitation, one stout captain with a shepherd’s crook in hand. He is likely to pull a malingerer out of the trench by the neck with it, and has often pulled up the dead and scolded them and their families. Audace, avanti, allons mes frères! Captain Haught is from everywhere. He is the one who told me our colors were inspired by the Russians in Crimea and that there is no more suave concord or color pleasing to our Lord than gray trimmed in yellow. No coward or lay-back, he walks straight up at the front of his unit into the very jaws of their hydra and returns at leisure, starched, unspotted, perfectly whole, armed only with the shepherd’s staff. His only flaw is his appetite. It is rumored he has stolen biscuits from corpses right in the middle of an enfilade, and can’t be hurried.

  There is a man, way forward, who claims to have been shot through the very heart. He has found a hidden place out there, however, some hole in the field, so that he never retreats full and properly, but stops to burrow in like something feral. His boasts are relayed to us in the rear. Soldiers have seen him during battle and do report there is a great dark stain on the left chest of his tunic. Then they see him in the next assault in media res. This is what he has said to them: he doesn’t want to miss a minute of it because there will never ever be anything like it again. It will set the tone for a century and will be in all the books. Great-grandchildren will still be shaking their heads, overpowered. There can never be any repeat of this thing. He saw the first long shadows of it at the one around that church in southern Tennessee and he has been in three worse since. So. They imagine he lives on roots and their liquid in whatever small cellar he has found or dug. Already he is practicing his posture around a stove fueled only by corncobs in an impoverished, riven home. He speaks his tales to gathered neighbors, family and children. They say he has a mirror down there, long as a tailor’s, at which he practices. But he can hear our general bawling and their hub-to-hub cannon, and is never tardy for the charge. He is always already into it when his fellow soldiers catch up with him. His name is Beverly Crouch. Crouch has the distinction—whether he’s truly been shot through the heart or not—of having been a white slave back home, right alongside the Africans with hoe and sack sometimes, but bonding out for other jobs too, wherever the weather and agriculture were better.

  Our pathetic cannoneers, the remains of a proud battery of near-geniuses who could shoot the head off a chicken at a mile, speak with great accuracy still but no force, so little shot and shell are left, the main charge yet to come. The conservation they endure in the very heat of battle is almost hysterical. The salvo, that precious Italian concept, seems like some remote advantage in a historical tome. They can hope only to demoralize the other side a little, with an occasional round hitting one of their colonels amid-shoulders. I was never impressed that much by an officer’s head blown off beside me, but the general declares this is a huge mournful event “over there,” where they are different. The artillerymen are aided in their precision by our forward observer Jones Pierce-Hatton, who has never dressed in anything but civilian clothes, in the beau monde way—gray suit with wide Panama, and binoculars of the Swiss avant-garde. There is a lone enormous tree on a little hump of hill, into the top boughs of which he has fastened a crow’s nest. Here is where he looks and rains fire on the enemy. It must be rather godly up there, calling the wrath and precision down on individuals of the indigo persuasion. They really hate him over there. His ladder’s been all shot away for a long time. They brought out a line of sharpshooters forward from the ramparts; all of them blazed away upward at him. Now here was a salvo, remarkable, before they were convinced to retire by our own Kentucky experts. Some of these men were hardly anything but eyes, shoulders and trigger fingers. They slipped back gaunt and wispy into their nooks and bowers. The entire top of the tree and especially his crow’s nest, all was shredded, much bark and lumber falling down. Somebody yelled up to him, seeing his wide hat come up out of the nest again, asking whether he was hit. There was a long pause.

  “Why shit yes! What would you imagine!” But he did not come down and through the days, nobody asked any more questions. Spots of blood, dried, lay around the roots of the trunk where they rigged his food and coffee basket. All he insists on is the coffee, the only real stuff left anywhere over here. He has the canteen that would have gone to the general. Mr. Jones Pierce-Hatton seeks no other reward.

  Our only triumph was knocking down their one competing balloon, an airship with basket for the observer underneath, and for this we can thank Granny Nature. The
same ill wind that brought us those belly-churning odors of roasting prime meat increased and blew the thing off its anchor, so it wobbled over here right up alongside Jones Pierce-Hatton in his nest. You could hear the cries of dismay from the disheartened passenger as he came alongside the lone enormous tree at bright high noon. Pierce-Hatton shot into the thing with his French double quailing piece, and such a blast of burning air covered the top of this single stick of the forest we reckoned on a momentary view of hell itself (and saw, truly, it was barely a degree worse than what we had).

  Somebody called up to Pierce-Hatton to ask whether he was injured. A head wearing nothing but the scorched crown of a hat arose from the hutch.

  “Why shit yes! Haven’t you got eyes, man?” came the reply.

  Something big is afoot. The cannoneers are bringing up the last of the magazine and stacking it. We haven’t seen this in weeks, seems years. The thing, our last, comes on at dawn tomorrow. New flags, last in supply, are unrolled. The band has swelled. The deserters, not that many, have returned, but most are in the band. We’ve never had this enormous a musical outfit before, nor so well instrumented. Fifes, drums long and short, snares, French horns, an Ophicleide, banjos with new woodchuck skin, trumpets and cornets, trombone, four marching violins, and a brand-new man with huge cymbals. They rehearse very softly, but I am told it’s a thing from Tchaikovsky they have in mind, a military arrangement of the Concerto for Violin in D, Opus 35. The lines are shaken out, just two fifty-yard-long vanguards. Even three of the camp dogs are with them. We have no rear. The band is right behind them. When I know thoroughly what is up, I double my shrieking at Ruth. We are going, definitely. You bastard, you think I would miss this? I know you’ve been having it easy. I remind him profanely of his family and tell him I will search them out and write about them badly. So, by God, we are in there too, just ahead of the band. I put my quill away and exchange it for an assault saber. They are lying about everywhere and easy to find.

  Is there a better music than the eruption of a true salvo from our beleaguered cannoneers, hub to hub, those ten of them, at the first sparks of dawn in the gray mist? You die for this music. But it lasted only thirty minutes and then we move off in our ghostly ranks, Ruth cursing and whining as he lifts the barrow behind me. Their cannons have not opened yet. They are waiting, waiting, perhaps till the last cynical second, every drop of blood squeezed from their dramatic absence, wrecking us in the mind—they hope. But there is no hesitation and when you see the pitted and shell-raked field, the last quartermile, suddenly the band up and high in the best enthusiasm, tearing and swelling the heart, we know we have seen heaven. Then their cannon erases their fortifications in serial billows, and the rare banshee music of passing shot that few are privileged to hear seems so thick we have another firmament to breathe, an ozone of the delirious. I am so happy, so happy!

  Hardly anybody falls. I tell you we are gaunt! We are almost not there, and we are starting that dear, deep-down precious trot toward them. Their musketry is popping and pecking. Their men are so thick on the line the flame is solid, and it is all we see out of the cannon smoke. Now at last we run; run dear boys, run! I had a chance to look about and the flags, my godly stars and bars, my regimental white cross on blue field, were clustered, gathered to the center. Oh boys, boys! I am shrieking. Up, get it up, my brothers! To them, into them! The general ahead, squalling atop his beast, rides straight into the furnace and our lines go in, and I go in. What a hell of a band we’ve got just behind. You can tell they are committed. They are going ahead too! Oh, happy bayonets high, oh happy, happy, happy! Then we are running in sudden silence. There is mystery and miracle left in this hard century! They are not firing anymore. We are running through stone silence, the grand old yell in our throats, our gray and butternut and naked corpses hurling forward, barely finding their rail fence, their earthen works, their growling ramparts. Bayonets down! Earn heaven, lads! Murder!

  But the smoke has cleared off their line and we run up to stare at silent men with their guns down. Somewhere just behind them their general is bawling, even over the volume of ours.

  There is great confusion, but I am glad I was near the center where General Kosciusky, a Polish-Russian, was screaming at the men in blue.

  “Stop it! Stop it! I can’t take it anymore. The lost cause! Look at you! My holy God, gray brothers, behold yourself! Cease fire! Cease it all!”

  So, you see, we were just staring at their deep and thick line, every soldier in a new blue boat, their general screaming behind them.

  “By God, we surrender!” he shouted. “This can’t go on. The music. The Tchaikovsky! You wretched specters coming on! It’s too much. Too much.”

  Our general, stunned, went over to take his sword. We, all energy gone in the last run, sagged about. Nothing in history led us to believe we had not simply crossed over to paradise itself and were dead just minutes ago.

  In their tent there was a conference. Then their men began stacking arms and bringing forward food to us. You wouldn’t believe the victuals. I gorged on honey and oysters fresh from the shell. You could hear a long constant moan of gnawing men as we sat around with plates on our laps, sucking in venison, turkey, porterhouses, piles of fat white beans.

  When their general, a splendid tall man, the very replica of the bearded Greek commander, returned to the line and chanced to look down at me in my barrow, he began weeping again, and I am sorry I had nothing but a greasy face and the eyes of a dog to greet him.

  Such arms, cannon, even repeating rifles; such almost infinite caissons, so many thrilling flags and handsome plump mules; and thousands of cutlasses and musical instruments—these were all ours. We, the few of the two lines and the band, could not encircle them. We did not know how to guard this host, and just gave up and fell back on more food, whiskey and coffee.

  I was, as the scribe, invited into the last conference on dispensation. Our general, held by two orderlies like a towel between them, was still too stunned to gloat. His impossible silence spoke the whole moment. But we must argue a bit on the matter of a name for this battle. There were no landmarks or creeks or churches about; only a family of Germans named Hastenburg who had lived in a house northwest of the field, long obliterated, suggested any proper noun.

  It was decided then that this was the Battle of Hastenburg.

  Evening of the Yarp: A Report by Roonswent Dover

  DARN IT WERE BORING, WISHT I WERE A HAWK OR CRAB. WHEN I SEEN him first I leapt out of my face for glad cause nothing moving lately but only rabbit nibble and run headfirst into the bottom of the purple cane. Deacon Charles at the VT school say go a head and write like this dont change. He wants to see it quick cause I seen the Yarp. Or somebody like him. Xcuse me please for not correct but I am hard attempting to spell at least sweller it being so important. Of a mountain man/boy nineteen first that day at two-forty-one o’clock afternoon on the watch I found at the road going up to Missus Skatt’s house.

  The sin of the old people I wondert what it was cause I dint feel it. The evil things of Roonswent Dover which is me werent felt by me like the others cause I had no feltedness of their kind of sin. I found out the Yarp did too.

  He was a man hitchhiking where dont nobody come, ever, up a red ditch juncted to a road so dirty and spit out red on the paving. He was a true-looking lean man near hungery looking in a high collar white city shirt but no necktie up on it. I passed him then slapped my thigh, why not, I’m so miserable bored. Maybe this man knewn something markable or a good thing to seek, him wanting a ride up that ditch where nobody but old woman Skatt lives. Rained down to gullies, that road, but we figure she be hungery, she walk out of there, down the mountain with her crooked feet, buffalo toenails and ruint smell. I backed up and he looked in the window. I say can’t you see no truck nor even tractor could get up that gullied red road? He said he would go on with me and rest and see Missus Skatt later. He sat down, no suitcase, bag, nor cane nor hat, just coming out of winter and going to ne
ar freeze this night. Thanks for the lift. You know where you are? I asked him. Yes I been here plenty time and I know your Missus Skatt very very well. It doesn’t matter much when I get there sooner or later but I will go with you to the store.

  I asted him how he knewn I was going to the store (and I was). He said life is simple around here and I had the look of a store visit on me. Nobody much confused him and now he was hungery, feeling low and getting chill. He gave me a cigar for my trouble and said it was the kind governors and dictators smoked from Latin America. We lit up and I was feeling chumly. He asted me would there be music at the store. This struck me goofy, of course there were a radio at ever store and a televisioner too. And would there be food? I turned over to him saying what else would there be in a store to be a store at all, certain it has food, gas, oil, shells, bait, sardines, herrings, rat cheese, and two old geezer at a wood stove playing Risk, and Macky Vellens. He said what, I repeated, he pronounced it better, MacKeyavellea of course, the writer of the Prince they used as a handbook to Risk, taking on personalities, book falling depart apieces through the generations. Mr Simpson and Gene James owned it with theyr smart pet goat that makes change I swear not, only the truth alone.

  Then that man, the Yarp, he said shut up. Riding aside me afortunate my charity, he said Shut Up ragely. It were glum, I werent happy, but couldnt get mad cause he seem a danger now. I dont want to hear none of your tales, boy, he kept on it, too many tales come out of these mountains and everwhere. There shouldnt be any tales.