Hayes took the Confederate’s weapon and began to scurry back to the line, when, from behind, he heard the screech of a banshee. He turned and saw the old man charging, blood pouring from his face; he leaped for Hayes, arms outflung, hands like claws, but midleap the old man was felled by a bullet to the chest.
Now Hayes knelt beside the wounded Irishman, who’d taken a ball in the knee and lay bleeding and ashy. The man braced himself against Hayes, twisted round, and yelled at the old rebel’s corpse, “That’s for taking me drumstick, damn you!”
Hayes tore off the Irishman’s trouser leg below the wound and made a tourniquet of the cloth. “Oh, Christ Jesus,” said the man, rocking back, “how I wish night would come, how I wish night would come.”
Hayes reached into his coat pocket and took out the flask of bourbon. “Here,” he said, passing it to the Irishman, “drink some of this.”
“Good heavens, lad,” said the man, staring at Hayes in awe. He tipped the flask to his lips and took a long drink. His eyes brimming with tears now, he said, “That’ll lift me, sure.”
Hayes was thinking about the old rebel who lay dead a few feet away in last year’s fallen leaves. All afternoon the murderous force that had wreaked such havoc against the Union lines had remained entirely invisible, behind a tangle of forest and a wall of smoke. It was as if Hayes had earned his bruises and blisters firing his weapon at the idea of an enemy (though unquestionably an intractable one). Now, at last and for the first time, he’d come face-to-face with the foe, and the fearsome warrior—not even identifiably military, but elderly and indigent—weighed in at about ninety pounds. There had been a fraction of a second, just before he’d bashed the man’s face, in which he’d thought to offer him a hand up from the ground. After all, but for the tattered CSA garb, he might have been the withered Methuselah who sat in the front-most pew Sundays at Trinity Church and snored and wheezed throughout the homily.
THE END OF THE FIGHTING, like nightfall, came abruptly. Hancock’s troops were ordered to remain at the front, while General Getty’s were allowed to retreat to the breastworks at the Brock Road. In the dark, the muddled army untangled and rearranged itself, and Hayes found his way to the edge (if not to the heart) of his regiment. Soon he lay on the ground among his comrades, so close to the enemy line he could hear the murmur of the rebels’ conversations. From the nearby Orange Plank Road—where only an hour ago rolled the deafening thunder of artillery—he heard the rumble of wagons and the neighing and snorting of mules and horses. Underlying these sounds, the echo of the long afternoon’s battle rang in his ears. The darkness, marked only by a smattering of small brushfires kindled by evening breezes, was nearly absolute. An enduring smell of smoke pervaded the air and made him recall winter nights on the Brooklyn skating ponds. Across the heaving marshy terrain, countless soldiers lay clutching their arms. Now and again Hayes heard the muffled cries of the wounded, but for the most part these poor fellows went untended, for search lanterns drew rebel fire and renewed skirmishes. Not far away, a chaplain softly led some men in prayer. All around, there was the whisper of movement—a kind of lost and aimless shuffling that made Hayes think of the Second Corps as a great organism languishing battle-stunned on the forest floor, trying to sort itself out and catch its breath, restive and exhaling smoke. When, out of the night, he heard someone softly calling his name, he first imagined he’d fallen asleep and was dreaming.
Billy Swift, with Rosamel in tow, had sought him out, and the three greeted one another with astonished delight. Hayes remarked on the faces of the two others, how they were blackened with gunpowder, and Swift laughed and said that Hayes obviously hadn’t had a chance to look in a mirror, for Hayes’s face was as black as coal and all the blacker in the darkness. Swift and Rosamel got on the ground on either side of Hayes, pressing close against him, and Billy was soon resting his head on Hayes’s shoulder. For some time the three lay without speaking, and it did seem to Hayes that there was not much that needed saying: they had each survived; nothing beyond that had been achieved; dawn would come, and it would all begin again.
At last—as if he were reporting an event from the afternoon in the Wilderness—Swift said, “Rosamel’s wife ran off with another man.”
“Yes, he told me,” said Hayes, and they fell silent for another long interval.
Then Rosamel said, bleakly, “Oui … ma Madeleine.”
Swift raised himself onto an elbow and spoke to Rosamel across Hayes’s chest. “Why’d you let her go, Rosamel? That’s what I don’t understand. You should’ve locked her up.”
“You say this because you have never had a woman,” said Rosamel, keeping his head on the ground and speaking into the overhanging branches.
“Me, I would’ve shot the stinker,” said Swift.
“She was not a stinker,” said Rosamel.
“Rosamel,” said Swift, “I meant the man she ran off with.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rosamel, “but you say that because you have never been to jail.”
“You’ve been in jail?” asked Swift.
“Oui, in stupid Carcassonne.”
“What for?”
“For three months.”
“I mean, what did you do?”
“I don’t wish to speak about it.”
“Well, why did you bring it up then?”
Apparently, Rosamel had no ready answer for this last question, and Billy Swift lowered his head again onto Hayes’s shoulder.
Then, after another long silence, Rosamel said, “What I did, I would do it again … but I would do it differently, to avoid the jail.”
“We’re keeping company with a common criminal, Hayes,” said Swift. “What do you reckon Rosamel did to get into trouble with the law? I don’t take him for the drunk-and-disorderly kind.”
“Three months,” said Hayes, “my guess is he stole something.”
Now Rosamel propped himself onto an elbow, and Hayes saw that the man’s cheek bore a gash.
“What happened to your face?” he asked him.
“It is of no matter,” Rosamel answered. “Please continue.”
“I imagine you stole something you thought was rightfully yours.”
Rosamel only raised an eyebrow.
“Not worth much,” said Hayes. “But it was important to you.”
Rosamel now lay back down. After a moment, he said, “You are very wise, Hayes. It was a small clock, and I will say nothing more about it.”
“How’d you do that, Hayes?” asked Swift. “How’d you know?”
Hayes shrugged. “It’s just about the only crime I could think Rosamel capable of,” he said.
Once more they fell into a long silence.
After a while, Billy Swift said, “Did you get something to eat, Hayes?”
“Couldn’t muster any appetite,” said Hayes. “But I drank a gallon of water.”
“I sure wish I had something stronger,” said Billy.
“I had a flask with some bourbon,” said Hayes, “but I gave it to an Irishman I met from Pennsylvania.”
“Now, what in the world did you do that for?” said Billy. “You might’ve saved it for me, Hayes. My grandpa was half Irish.”
“He was wounded, Billy,” said Hayes, solemnly, for—as it was the first reference to the day’s combat—he felt perhaps he’d taken a liberty.
Swift said, “I overheard some fellows talking about somebody with your same name being killed, and I feared the worst, Hayes … that they were talking about you. Turned out they meant the commander of the other brigade.”
“Hays with no e,” said Hayes.
“No e and now no life,” said Swift.
After yet another silence, Swift said softly, “I reckon old Leggett didn’t make it either then.”
Hayes shook his head.
“Was you with him?” asked Billy.
Hayes nodded and said, “Shot in the mouth.”
“In the mouth?” said Swift, raising his own head for a moment and th
en lowering it down again.
Hayes nodded. “Came out the back of his neck,” he said.
“Leggett … shot in the mouth,” whispered Swift, and after another moment, Hayes realized that Swift was silently shaking with laughter.
“Yep,” said Hayes, “right square in the mouth,” and started to laugh, too.
“Leggett of all people,” said Swift, beating his fists against Hayes’s ribs, “the old gasbag.”
Hayes shoved Swift away and doubled over on the ground. “I just took him to the dentist last night,” he said, gulping for air. “With a toothache.”
From the darkness, somebody hushed them, but this only threw Billy into new paroxysms.
Rosamel said, “What is wrong with you two boys? Are you crazy?”
This quieted them for a moment, but when Rosamel asked, “What is this … ‘gasbag’?” they were in fits yet again.
At last Hayes composed himself and explained to Rosamel that Leggett—as Rosamel might have noticed—liked to tell stories, often long stories, and that sometimes it had been hard to get him to stop talking. When Hayes finished his explanation, Rosamel said, “But he was your friend.”
“Yes,” said Hayes. “He was my good friend.”
Now they resumed their former positions, side by side on the ground, and soon they heard a faraway crackle of musketry, which quickly built to a climax and then subsided, very much like popping-corn in a pot.
“I was thinking,” said Swift. “Instead of all this killing and dying, we could just have ourselves a match of base ball. Us against the rebs, and whoever wins wins the war.”
“That would hardly be any kind of a contest,” said Hayes. “I don’t think Richmond would ever agree to it.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Swift. “But you have to admit it’d be a whole lot easier on the nerves.”
Nobody said anything for a long time. Close by, a soldier was heard singing, “ ‘Wild are the breezes tonight / But ’neath the roof, the hours as they fly / Are happy and calm and bright.’ ”
“I’m sure gonna miss him,” said Swift, after a while.
“Me too,” said Hayes.
“Me too,” said Rosamel.
A while later, Swift said, “I’m aching all over.”
“Me too,” said Hayes.
“Me too,” said Rosamel. “All over.”
A while after that, Swift said, “Lord in heaven, Hayes, you stink.”
“So do you,” said Hayes.
After a pause, Swift whispered, “Rosamel stinks, too.”
“I know,” whispered Hayes.
After another pause, Swift added softly, “He stinks the worst of all of us.”
HAYES DOZED OFF.
When he awakened minutes later, his right arm ached and tingled, the way it sometimes did after he’d pitched a long match. Rosamel and Swift slept on either side of him. Perhaps he’d dreamed of his sister, for now he felt sharp pangs of conscience over having disappointed her. These last years, since their parents had died, she had been for him a guide—if he behaved so as not to disappoint her, he would lead an exemplary life—and he’d done well. He could recall not a single instance in which he’d disappointed her but for this one enormous occasion of having left home to join the army.
Carefully he slid from between his two friends on the ground and stood up. He took a deep breath and gathered his gear, not making a sound. Then he turned and very slowly began to pick his way through the woods to find Leggett.
The ringing in his ears, the day’s echo, had hardened into a low yellow hiss.
He suffered a hot throbbing sensation in the back of his left thigh and likewise high on his spine between the shoulders.
About thirty yards into the thicket, he saw a patch of fire on the ground, and as he moved toward it, flames leaped up a plait of dangling vines and ignited the dead tree above. A momentary beacon illuminated the dark Wilderness. Hayes stumbled into a newly dug trench and dropped to his knees a stone’s throw from a heaped jumble of bodies. One pair of still-open eyes, glittered-up by the fire, found him, and he was a little boy again, back in his father’s dance studio in Brooklyn, where the raucous behavior of black-suited men, falling upon one another like dominoes, had frightened him more meaningfully than he could ever explain.
Now a rabbit darted into the trench and froze, shaking violently as if from cold, stared at Hayes with black eyes aglow, and then scampered on out into the night. Hayes looked again at the mound of bodies and saw that at the very top two men’s arms stuck straight up into the air, as if they were reaching for something in the overhanging trees. He looked down at his own hands, which had begun to tremble, and then he rose to his feet as the firelight died away.
Soon he climbed over a dead horse, cold cold the dew-dampened coat, and down into a shallow ravine.
He would find Leggett.
He passed through an undergrowth of bristling shrubs and a welter of strewn blankets, knapsacks, and the bodies of men, strangely leveled by the jungle and gloom, the dead, the wounded, the sleeping; passed through black shadows and listened to the sound of his own muffled steps; imagined himself marching along an unknown road, led by some instinct, as, in a different way, he’d felt led all day; thought of himself as a child of eight or nine, confident and in command, clucking his tongue and driving down Hicks Street a tandem of boys, good friends, reined and yoked with string.
A SHELL LANDED at the southern edge of the Plank Road and rolled into a hollow directly back of where Hayes lay against a rebel breastwork. For a fraction of a second, he took it for a rabbit scampering into the woods from the road. He watched the shell bump down the incline and knock against the trunk of a hazel bush. A dozen or more men buried their faces into the ground and covered their heads with their hands. Hayes, who did not bury his face or cover his head, thought it odd the way the canceling wail of musketry made certain single events seem to occur in silence. He’d noticed this strange effect earlier, as comrades dropped to the ground killed or wounded on either side of him—no separate audible sound marked their falling—and stranger still, he could draw no link between their falling and the continuous blare of the combat. The battle had begun, at dawn, in organized-enough fashion, but within minutes, the forest had sifted and strained the army just as it had done the day before: regiments broke apart and intermixed; here men clumped together, there a gap opened in the line. The early dreamy mists were quickly replaced by thick smoke, which no rays of sunlight could penetrate. For a long time, Hayes had seen no sign of any general or staff officer, though—without orders, often jubilant, and always chaotic—the troops had advanced and advanced again. Across log entrenchments built the night before by the rebels, they pushed deeper and deeper into the woods just below the road. Now they’d settled for a minute against the front side of a Confederate breastwork, and the return fire from the invisible rebels was clearly diminishing.
The shell, resting silently against the hazel bush, did not explode. One by one the men raised their heads and gazed about stunned and relieved. Happy still to be alive, a soldier stood and leaped over the entrenchment, and then they were advancing yet again, headlong into the thicket and yelping like coyotes. This was their ragged line of attack—one exuberant warrior acting on impulse, the rest following suit. (In like manner, a wounded soldier, dropping to the earth, had the power to ground all those around him.) A few yards farther in, Hayes understood that he and this hodgepodge of comrades had penetrated the Pennsylvania regiment and the marksmen who’d gone before them, and they were now at the very front: through the screen of smoke, he could see rebels for the first time, overcome and running away through the saplings like deer. Now the terrain grew swampy and the muck pulled off one of Hayes’s shoes. When he dropped to retrieve it, the men around him hit the ground and rolled onto their bellies. To Hayes’s surprise, Billy Swift suddenly fell hard against him, crying out that he was wounded and grabbing his leg and pressing his face into Hayes’s ribs.
Hayes saw coffee gurgling out of a hole in Swift’s canteen and streaming down his trouser leg. He laughed and shouted, “It’s your canteen that’s hit, Billy.”
The other soldier lifted his head, brought his coffee-drenched fingers to his nose, sniffed them, and also laughed. “I’m not Billy,” he shouted back, “I’m Albert.” Loosing the canteen from his belt, he added, “Damned if I didn’t take it for blood.”
The men on either side of them were firing from where they lay. Hayes looked up beyond the smoke-enshrouded limbs of the scrub pines and spotted, low in the eastern sky to the rear, an eerie red disk that he identified, with some uncertainty, as the sun. He felt oddly undone by having taken the young soldier for Swift. He pulled his muddy shoe back on, but his hands had started to shake so badly that he struggled with the laces.
“Here, let me do it,” said the other soldier.
As Hayes watched him tie the laces, he saw that tears streaked the soldier’s cheeks.
When he finished, the soldier smiled sadly and leaned in and put his lips to Hayes’s ear. “I’d thank you not to talk of this,” he said.
Hayes thought at first he referred to the tears or the shoelacing or perhaps to Hayes’s having called him Billy or to the fact that Hayes, who’d fallen in love with his own sister and fled an otherwise promising life, now found himself in a swampy jungle far from home and among men so keen to fire their weapons they sometimes failed to finish loading and then had to go pull a ramrod from the trunk of a tree.
But of course the soldier meant only the error that would make him the butt of a hundred campfire jokes, his having mistaken spilled coffee for blood.
THEY MIGHT HAVE ANTICIPATED support from the rear, but instead, and quite unexpectedly, a swell of Union troops slammed against them from north of the road on their right side, pushing them deeper into the woods to the left, creating a great crush, and altogether adding to the chaos. Soon Hayes lay in a trench pressed up against his new best friend of fifteen minutes’ duration, a ruddy handsome Wisconsinite named Flowers, from one of General Wadsworth’s brigades. Flowers had arrived next to Hayes ready to share his cache of cartridges (scavenged from the dead and wounded) and two extra muskets (likewise acquired); he explained to Hayes that by rotating the weapons they could avoid overheating them. Side by side, Hayes and Flowers fired against a new and clearly reinforced counterattack from the rebels. (Hayes would later learn that General Longstreet, Lee’s “Old War Horse,” had come to save the day for the Confederates.) No more was there any advancing but only a fierce stalemate in which the torrent of bullets surpassed both yesterday’s fighting and that of the early morning. Union artillery had rolled into the road and was lofting shot and shell overhead, raining down leaves, sprays of pine, and even whole branches as they whistled through the treetops. Each time Flowers reloaded, he called out to Hayes his litany of complaints: How could a soldier be expected to find his way in this godforsaken labyrinth? Most of the time you couldn’t even see the rednecks you were shooting at for all the damned smoke. Why, you were lucky enough if you could find a breath of air that didn’t make you choke!
Nostalgia Page 17
