by Alan Gratz
That day Louis heard it said that a more delightful afternoon of baseball was never had in Virginia nor, it was argued, at any time in Manhattan or Long Island. He had to agree. Corporal Bruner pitched as well as James Creighton of the Brooklyn Excelsiors, and Stuart drew applause for a fine diving catch made on a fly to the outfield.
On Louis’s third time at bat there were Red-Legged Devils standing on first and second with the score tied at six aces apiece. Louis was eager to have another go at Bruner’s dastardly “dew drops,” the balls that seemed to float across the plate as leaves descend to the forest floor, and his mates cheered him on from the sidelines. Bruner lofted the ball and Louis waited, waited, waited—and then swung, striking the ball high in the air toward Stuart in center field. Louis watched him track back on it as he ran, then, surprisingly, Stuart broke off his pursuit of the ball and turned to stare at the edge of the woods.
“Wait, I think there’s somebody—” he started to call out, but he never finished. The pop of a rifle and the telltale puff of blue-gray smoke came out of the woods, and Stuart’s leg exploded. In a moment the air was full of bumblebees, whizzing lead balls that cracked into the trees and the dirt. Louis’s run toward third became a sprint for his life. The shots brought men in their long johns scurrying from the Union camp with rifles in hand, and while those playing the game looked for holes to crawl into, the rest of the Red-Legged Devils came charging into the clearing to meet the Confederates in the forest.
What started as a skirmish turned into a full-scale battle, giving Louis and the other ballplayers time enough to go back for their rifles and rejoin the fight. The Brooklyn Fourteenth drove the rebels into the forest again, and then the Confederates, receiving reinforcements, pushed the Union soldiers back to their camp. When dusk fell there was no clear winner, as was so often the case in engagements like this, and Lieutenant Tinker received orders to break camp and retreat.
Louis marched with his company two miles inland under cover of night, and they set up their tents by a small stream. The camp canard had the rest of the regiment moving on to North Anna, some two days away, while Louis and the rest who had received their release would be transported to the nearest railway station when it was safe and then ferried northward and homeward.
But Louis couldn’t go back to Brooklyn. Not yet. He had, alas, lost two things on the field of battle he could not leave behind: his friend Palmer Stuart, and the best and only baseball in Spotsylvania, Virginia.
2
“You can’t go back.”
Louis took the powder and shot out of his haversack and weighed them, then handed them to Corporal Bruner.
“Without a rifle too? Are you crazy, Schneider?”
“Too heavy,” whispered Louis. “Need to travel light.”
The camp was sleeping but for the pickets who kept watch. Louis looked around, trying not to think of it as the last time he would see his friends. Those who were headed home tomorrow were probably dreaming of family and hot baths and tables full of food. He didn’t have to guess what nightmares the others who were staying dreamed of.
“It’s not worth it, Schneider. You go home tomorrow,” Bruner told him.
“Stuart’s still back there,” Louis said. “He was my friend. I can’t just—”
“Stuart’s dead and you know it.”
Louis considered that.
“He only took a ball to the leg. I saw it.”
“I saw it too. He’s dead.”
The cool night air was sharp, and Louis could see his breath hanging in front of him like some still image caught on tintype. In it, he felt the truth of the situation laid bare.
“If he’s dead, I’ll find my ball and be back before light.”
Louis could feel Bruner’s eyes on him in the dark. “Is that what this is about? That baseball?”
“I can’t go back without it,” Louis told him. “It’s my lucky baseball. Besides, my pa would kill me.”
“You go back there and Johnny Reb’ll do the killing for him. If you’re lucky. Or be taken to some Confederate prison camp if you’re not.”
They’d all heard the tales of the Southern prison camps. Compared to that, death did seem the better alternative. Louis hefted his haversack to his shoulder just the same.
“Your family’s gonna be right sore you went and got yourself killed the night before you was heading home. Especially over a baseball.”
How could Louis make him understand? It was more than a baseball. Louis’s pa had given it to him when he left, with the order to bring it back in one piece. But they both knew he hadn’t been talking about the baseball. His pa couldn’t allow that Louis might get blown to bits like Stuart, or Kurlanski, or Jones, or any of the hundreds of other boys Louis had seen get mustered out the hard way on the field of battle. In time Louis had begun to think of the ball as himself, or the ball as a part of him maybe—he hadn’t really tried to make sense of it. All he knew was that one way or another, both of them would end up back in Brooklyn one day, having a game with the boys at Pigtown.
“I’ll be back before light,” Louis said again. He and Bruner shook hands, and Louis tromped off through the forest the way they had come earlier that day.
The picket post was more on guard tonight, but when they saw Louis they smiled.
“Ain’t you got enough souvenirs already?” one of the boys on duty whispered. The regulars were used to Louis slipping away to collect money from the dead graybacks, and he usually jawed with them on the way out. Tonight Louis gave them a wave but passed by without a word.
The moon was a sliver in the dark sky, which was good and bad. Good that it would be hard for anyone to spot him; bad that it was hard for Louis to see anything himself. He found the road to Spotsylvania Court House and worked his way alongside it through the woods. Occasionally he’d come to a cleared field and have to crouch along the roadside, trying to stay low and unseen. He reached instinctively to touch the baseball in his haversack, then remembered it wasn’t there. Louis got scared on the battlefield—no man he knew could say he didn’t—but now he began to feel as Stuart must have, that there was always someone lurking around the next corner, behind the nearest bush, the closest tree, someone waiting to send a lead ball buzzing his way with his name on it. Poor Stuart had been right once, and once was all it took.
A dark figure appeared in the road ahead, and Louis flattened himself in a ditch, feeling the cold wet grass against his face. He wished for all his life he had his father’s baseball back. Or his rifle. He cursed himself for leaving it behind.
The shape grew closer, and with his ears attuned to every little sound, Louis heard a man’s boots scraping along the hard dirt path. Thunk, scrape. Thunk, scrape. Something was off about the way he was walking, and Louis dared to raise his head to take a look.
The scraping stopped.
“Who’s there?” came a voice.
Louis buried his head again in the ditch and cursed silently.
“Be you grayback or bush hog, show yourself, varmint!”
Louis slowly lifted himself and stood. Better to die on his feet than facedown in a ditch—and in the dark, there was always a chance he might be able to run.
Louis squinted and tried to see the other man in the dark. He was only a shadow, but from his silhouette Louis could see he was leaning on a pole or a stick. Or a rifle.
“Friend or foe?” the man asked.
“That depends on what color uniform you’re wearing,” Louis said.
“Union blue,” the man told him. “Army of the Potomac, First New Jersey Brigade.”
“I hail from just across the river, friend. Brooklyn Fourteenth.”
Louis stepped close enough so they could see each other in the dim light.
“Private First Class Louis Schneider,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.
“Corporal Giuseppe Silvestri.”
“You coming from Spotsylvania?” Louis asked.
He nodded. “You coming from the c
amp? Am I close?”
“About another mile,” Louis told him. He saw now the man had a leg wound, and he grimaced. It wasn’t as bad as Stuart’s, but the shirt he’d tied around it was already soaked with blood.
“You taking French leave, son?” He meant was Louis running away.
“No, I’m headed back to Spotsylvania to check on a friend I left behind. Is it much farther?”
“’Bout another hour or so, best I can reckon. Not much to go back for that didn’t hobble away or get carried away though.”
“You run into any Rebs from here to there?” Louis asked.
“No. You’re the first ghost I’ve seen.”
“Same here,” Louis said. “Just keep down this road, then take the right junction at the forge. You’ll come along the advance pickets, and they can get you into camp.”
“Much obliged, Private.”
Louis gave the man a quick salute, and they parted ways. He stayed on guard the rest of his walk, but if the corporal hadn’t seen any Confederates, ambling along at his cripple’s pace, Louis figured he wasn’t likely to meet the Army of Northern Virginia on the way.
In an hour or so the terrain began to look familiar and Louis picked his way off the main road into the woods where he thought they had been encamped. He caught a whiff of gun smoke on the air and he knew he was close. Soon he was upon the smoldering campfires of the day before, the roasted chicken and the baseball game distant memories now. It was late at night—or early the next day—and Louis shook his head and blinked his eyes to keep himself alert.
He started stepping over bodies before he ever reached the field. The soldiers, both Union and Confederate, lay faceup, which meant the surgeons had been here. After a battle the surgeons would roll in with their ambulances and stretchers and take some of the injured, but not all. Those that were only slightly wounded, like the corporal Louis had met on the road, were left to make their own way back to camp or to a field hospital; those with mortal wounds were left to die. In Louis’s late-night skulks back to battlefields he had always made a point of waiting until well after the surgeons had finished their business.
It was brighter out in the open of the field, though still dark, and men laid out all over the field looked like they were sleeping. Louis knew better. He made his way quickly to where Stuart had been playing center field. He hoped not to find him, for that would mean the surgeons had gotten him and thought his wounds operable—but there he was, lying faceup and staring at the moon with dead eyes.
Louis closed Stuart’s eyes and said a short prayer over him, then cast around for his baseball. He found it lying a few yards away in the tall grass and returned with it to Stuart’s side.
“I’ll find your folks,” Louis whispered. “I’ll tell them how brave you were.” Louis looked at all the dark shapes around him. “Somebody’ll come and bury you. Somebody’ll come and bury you all.”
“No, wait!” came a voice, making Louis jump. A hand clutched his ankle.
“Gah! What the devil!?”
At first he thought it was Stuart, come back from the dead to ask if Louis heard something rustling in the woods, but then Louis turned and saw another dark shape lying on the ground nearby, its dark arm snaking out to him, holding him so he couldn’t get away.
“Don’t bury me!” the thing squawked. “I ain’t dead yet!”
Louis tried to pull away, but the thing held on like a viper.
“Get off! Get off!”
“Are you the Angel of Death?”
“What!? No, I’m—”
Louis’s eyes adjusted and he could just make out the boy’s gray uniform. He was a Confederate. He immediately thought of his gun, sitting against a tree miles away at the Union camp. His eyes searched the darkness for a bayonet, a rifle, anything he could use to defend himself.
“Please,” the Rebel said. “I don’t know what’s happened. Why is it so dark and quiet?”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Louis said. “That’s what happens at night. It gets dark.”
“Are you a medic? Can you take me back to my regiment?”
“What? Take you back to your regiment?” Couldn’t the fool see Louis was a Yankee? “I’m not a—”
The Rebel’s head turned this way and that, like he couldn’t see a thing. It was dark, but not that dark. Louis bent low and waved a hand in front of the soldier’s face. He was blind as a bat, his face and eyes charred like the inside of a furnace.
“You’re not a what?” the Confederate asked. “Are you still there?”
“Of course I’m here,” Louis told him. “You’ve got hold of my leg.”
The Rebel let go and Louis stepped back out of his reach, trying to think what to do.
“Sorry. It’s just—it’s so dark. And my head hurts. Can you take me back to my regiment? Are they far gone?”
Louis studied the Rebel. He could see now he was around his own age, maybe even younger, and his gray Confederate uniform looked three sizes too big. His blind eyes searched the darkness eagerly, hoping for some shape or shadow that might give him his bearings.
Louis considered his options. He could leave the boy, which didn’t seem right, or kill him, which might have been a mercy but was out of the question. During the heat of battle, killing another man was one thing. It was kill or be killed, and both sides accepted that. Killing this boy here and now would be akin to murder—even if he might have been the one to take Stuart down in cold blood.
An idea struck Louis. Why not take him back to the Union camp as a prisoner of war, maybe see if he could get a promotion out of it? Even on the eve of going home, a promotion would mean a better pension, which his family could sorely use. But without a weapon, how to convince the Reb to come with him?
“All right. On your feet,” Louis said. “We’re . . . we’re going to find your regiment.”
The boy was so profuse in his thanks Louis began to feel sorry for the lie, but there was no other choice.
“Try to find my pack,” the boy said. “It’s just inside the wood line. It’s the one with the baseball bat in it.”
Louis paused.
“The what?”
“The baseball bat. It’s a white haversack with the handle sticking out. I left it near an oak tree.”
Louis slipped away and found a white oak a few paces into the woods. Behind it was a haversack, just as the boy had said, a bat handle sticking up out of the top. Louis slid it out to have a look. It was the finest bat he had ever seen. Not a broom handle or a whittled-down tree limb, but a real, honest-to-God lathe-turned hickory bat, such as Louis had only seen in the hands of the finest players on the Excelsiors. The barrel was heavy and perfectly smooth, and the long handle had a knob at the end to keep it in the batter’s hands as he swung. Louis took a practice swing with it right there in the forest, enjoying the whhht it made and the power it held.
He brought the bat and the sack back to the boy, who was sitting up now. He had his hands in front of his eyes, but turned at the sound of Louis’s approach.
“I’m blind, ain’t I?”
“I think so,” Louis told him.
The boy sobbed once. “My rifle. It exploded. I remember now. I never even got a shot off. My rifle blew up in my face. The next thing I knew, I woke up here, in the dark, and I heard your voice. Are you—are you a surgeon?”
“No. They’ve come and gone. I just came back to find a friend of mine.”
Louis’s hand found the ball in his pocket.
“Where’d you get this bat?” he asked.
The boy was crying now. Not hard tears. Soft ones, like he’d just lost a friend. “My pa. He’s—he’s a carpenter. He makes them for some of the boys who play.”
“I’ve never seen its equal,” Louis told him. He sat down on the grass next to the Reb.
“I was going to be mustered out tomorrow,” the boy said through his tears. “Go back to Louisville.”
“Me too!” Louis said. “Mustered out, I mean.”
>
“Where are you from?”
“Um—farther north,” said Louis.
“What, like . . . Nashville?”
Louis didn’t have the faintest idea where Nashville was. “Close to,” he said.
The boy dried his eyes and Louis clapped him on the shoulder.
“All right then. On your feet. We’ve got a train to catch.”
3
The boy’s name was Jeremiah Walker, and he played second base.
“I swear, I’ve seen him do it!” Louis told him.
“Look, I may be blind,” Jeremiah said, “but you can’t tell me nobody ever made a baseball curve.”
“I’m telling you—his name is Candy Cummings. He’s one of the boys comes round to play ball with us. Lives out near Red Hook. He got to throwing clam shells on a curve one day and reckoned he could do the same thing with a ball.”
They passed the spot on the road where Louis had met the corporal, and he knew they had a mile yet to go. He was enjoying the baseball talk so much he almost hated to get there.
“Clam shells?” Jeremiah said.
“I swear. I saw him skunk some of the best hitters in . . . my hometown.” Louis had come dangerously close to saying Brooklyn, and he worried now that Jeremiah might have heard of Red Hook. He’d have to be more careful.
“You only count catches on the fly, right?” he asked.
“’Course. Though there’s some that still play off the bounce. They ain’t finding too many takers, though.”
“Back home,” Louis said, careful not to give anything away, “there were only three clubs that played that way when I left. I expect they’ve given it up by now.”
“How many unhittable balls do you allow before you grant the batter first base?”
“Three,” Louis told him.
