March Toward the Thunder

by Joseph Bruchac

  The Rebels were so taken by surprise that almost no shots were fired. Sixth and Second Corps split the Rebel line like twin bolts of blue lightning. Men in gray grounded their weapons and raised their hands. In the time it took a man to have breakfast, they took not just the position, but captured three Confederate generals and 4,000 men. They even caught up to the artillery train and took possession of those twenty cannons being moved down the line.

  Louis stood with a smiling group of the men from E Company on a hill in the midst of a stand of pines. They could hardly believe the victory they seemed to have won. Even the rain had let up. The sun was about to break through the clouds.

  “Whooo-heee!” Possum Page yelled. “Them Rebs is running all the way back to Richmond. This is how war ought to be fought, Chief! We’ll be home by the Fourth of July!”

  He started to do a little jig, raising his rifle over his head. Then, for some reason, he threw his rifle away.

  As it spun past Louis’s head, he saw that the butt of the Springfield was broken and splintered. A red stain was spreading across the middle of Possum’s back. The young soldier who’d been able to sleep anywhere turned slowly, then crumpled like a doll made of rags into his final rest.

  Minié balls were whizzing past them now from both left and right, peeling the bark off the pines.

  Twenty feet ahead, Happy Smith and Scarecrow Dedham stood as if their feet were stuck in tar. Puffs of dust burst from their clothes as balls struck, holding them up for a terrible breathless moment before their legs gave way and they dropped to their knees.

  “Get down for the luv of Mary!” Devlin shouted in a voice that was half a sob. He yanked Louis’s belt. “Down!”

  Then they were on their knees and stomachs, crawling backward, firing their rifles, rolling over onto their backs to reload, firing again along with the hundreds of other retreating Union men around them caught in the counterattack. A whole division was coming at them.

  Midnight. No more sounds of gunshots or shouts of officers trying to rally their men. As close to quiet as it had been since the start of the dawn assault that had seemed destined to take them all the way to Richmond before the 10,000 men of General Gordon’s Rebel reserves struck back. The exhausted stillness of the night was broken now only by the moans of the wounded who lay in the field between the lines of the two opposing armies.

  Louis sagged against the back wall of the rifle trench and looked first to one side and then the other. No one from E Company to be seen. In the desperate confusion of the fight, Second Corps had been torn asunder. What remained was a mix of companies and regiments stitched together like patches in a quilt.

  At midday, in the mad back and forth of attack and counterattack, Louis had found himself in the midst of this squad of Corcoran lads from the 155th New York. The officer in charge was none other than that same Lieutenant Michael O’Connell who’d told them three days ago that they would be crossing the river. Three days? It felt as if three years had passed.

  “It’s the heart of the secession we’re facing,” Lieutenant O’Connell shouted as Louis joined the squad that was pushing back a larger force of Confederates.

  Second North Carolina. That was what the enemy flags read.

  O’Connell pulled off his hat and waved it over his head. “Pour it into them, boys! Break them and we’ve won the day. Drive those Tarheels back!”

  That was when the Rebel general came at them atop a great black stallion, galloping out of the smoke and the mud as sudden as a ghost. Louis, who’d been standing by the lieutenant’s side reloading, fell backward as the horse slammed into their line while the Gray officer on its back fired shot after shot from his .36 Colt Navy revolver into the mass of Union men around him.

  The horse reared over Louis as he lay on his back.

  Have I managed to finish the sequence of loading? No time to check. Pull the trigger!

  Fire belched out of its barrel as his gun kicked hard against his shoulder. The Confederate general’s arm jerked back as if struck by a club. The Navy Colt spun free to land in Louis’s lap.

  “Thuh gennul’s down,” a Rebel soldier screamed.

  “Rally to General Ramseur,” a bearded officer in gray shouted.

  The Rebel general stumbled to his feet, clasping his arm. Before any Union soldiers could take him captive or get off another shot, he was surrounded and pulled back by his men.

  Louis used his musket like a cane to rise to his feet. His left arm was bleeding. He remembered seeing a bayonet coming his way, slicing into his sleeve. He felt his forearm.

  Cut, but not too deep.

  It was worse on his other side. His right shoulder ached from the kick of his own rifle. He looked down at the handgun he’d grabbed as it landed in his lap.

  Not the kind of gun a private ought to be carrying.

  “Sir,” he said, turning toward the place where Lieutenant O’Connell had been standing. “You want this?”

  The lieutenant wasn’t there. Louis tried to wipe the grime from his eyes. He was half deaf from the sounds of so many muskets going off near his ringing ears.

  “Lieutenant?”

  Lieutenant O’Connell lay on the ground. His hand still clutched the hat he’d been waving to rally the men. His eyes were wide-open to the sky, but they saw nothing in this world anymore.

  Then Louis heard the singing.

  “We are a band of brothers . . .” rang from somewhere in the retreating mass of enemy soldiers. It was a voice as clear and true as Songbird Devlin’s, but its accent was that of the South and not Tipperary.

  For a heartbeat it seemed as if every other sound on the battlefield stopped. Blue and Gray alike harkened to the painfully sweet melody.

  “We are a band of brothers,

  and native to the soil,

  Fighting for the property

  we gained by honest toil;

  And when our rights were threatened,

  the cry rose near and far,

  Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag

  that bears a Single Star.”

  Then that voice was no longer alone. A hundred, a thousand, and two thousand more Rebel soldiers joined in the chorus.

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern Rights Hurrah!

  Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single Star.”

  As lovely as that melody was, it was deadly as shot and shell.

  It rallied the nearly beaten men out of retreat. Shouting that anthem of Southern patriotism, defiant against all invaders, the inspired Rebels began to advance. The Union soldiers fell back before the terrible beauty of a song.

  Louis rubbed at his left hand. Why is this bothering me? He turned his hand up to look. His palm was black and blistered.

  If M’mere were here, he thought, she’d make me a poultice for this. Or she’d just pluck some wide hairy leaf, like from a bandage plant—mullein. The one some call flannel leaf. Then she would have me walk around all day with it clasped in my hand. And by the time night came, the leaf would be almost gone and my hand would be well.

  No matter what it was, whether a fever or a cut or a sick stomach, his mother always knew the remedy. Not one from a box or a bottle, but from the medicine plants themselves. M’mere. He closed his eyes, trying to find her in his memory. And there she was. He saw M’mere as clearly as if she were there beside him. Her back to him, her medicine bag slung over her shoulder, she was kneeling to speak words of thanks to a large-leafed plant. It wasn’t one that Louis remembered seeing before, though it did look a bit like mullein. But the leaves were darker green and there was a fuzzy blue flower at the end of a leafy stalk. His mother pulled free a large leaf from the base and turned toward Louis, smiling as she held it out to him. He lifted his hurt hand. Then the throb of pain from his palm made him blink.

  And in that blink of an eye the vision of his mother vanished. Louis found himself back looking at his injured palm.

  When did I get this burn?

  As soon as he mouthed those words
he remembered. The Confederates had only been able to push them back to the other side of the entrenchments. There the advance had stalled, but the fighting had not. Divided by only a single rampart, Blue and Gray struggled back and forth. More Union troops tried to push into the gap. But they were packed too close. No one could get through. Men screamed as they fell and were trampled into the bloody red muck by the milling mass of soldiers trying to push forward. Among them, Louis remembered seeing the faces of their two drummers, Bing and Bang. Boys whose real names he’d never known, disappearing under the boots and bodies. He tried to reach out toward them, but it was no use. They were lost in the tangle of legs. Then, in the midst of that madness, Rebel gun barrels began to bristle through every loophole in the breastworks to explode at point-blank range.

  Louis nodded. That was when.

  A rifle had been thrust through at his face. To save himself, he’d grabbed the barrel, pushed it up and away. Near red-hot from firing again and again, the steel had burned his palm, but the ball had missed him—though the blast made his head ring as if he’d been swatted by a giant. As that empty rifle pulled back, he raised his own Springfield and fired it through the same notch in the headlog.

  “Keep it up,” an officer next to him shouted. “We’re bringing up more ammunition. Hold the line.”

  By the side of men whose names he would likely never learn, shooting at enemies whose faces could not be seen, Louis reloaded and fired.

  And held.

  At last, deep into the night, a bugle sounded from the other side of the embattled line. Those Gray soldiers who could still stand, walk, or crawl fell back, dragging wounded and dead, fading into the darkness.

  Days later, Louis read a newspaper account of the battle. They called it the Bloody Angle. The cost to both sides was 12,000 men.

  Louis’s mind and heart ached as he tried not to remember the song that had stirred those Gray soldiers to such fearful bravery. But it kept going through his head. Perhaps it would be there for the rest of his life, that bittersweet melody about a bonnie blue bloody flag.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MAIL

  Saturday, May 14, 1864

  “Dedham?”

  No answer.

  “Smith?”

  No answer.

  “Page?”

  Silence again, Louis thought.

  Sergeant Flynn, a bandage around his left arm that matched the one on Louis’s right, stood alone as he called out the names. Both of his corporals were among the missing. Along with their two noncoms, half of E Company failed to answer. Killed like Possum and Happy and Scarecrow or so gravely wounded they’d never fight again. Like Knapp and Kinney and Bishop—the three of them minus enough arms and legs between them to fill another man’s complement of limbs. Or missing like Corporal Hayes and Ryan, lost in the mud and the mist. Dead, dying, being held prisoner? No one knew for sure.

  Who’s left? Just me, Sergeant Flynn, Bull, Songbird, Joker, and . . .

  “Merry?

  “Here, sir!”

  His small friend with the face of a child had proven tougher than many soldiers twice his size.

  Sergeant Flynn paused at the end of the roll. He looked slowly at each and every face.

  “Me boys,” Flynn began. Then he let his hands fall to his sides. “I’ve no fine words for ye. Jes’ take some time t’ yourselves while ye can.”

  They looked at one another as Flynn walked slowly away. Then Merry wandered off, leaving just the four of them sitting there. Devlin, Belaney, Kirk, Nolette.

  Devlin cleared his throat. Was he going to raise a song?

  Instead, Songbird pulled a deck out of his pack. “Cards?”

  There was a long, tired silence. Then Joker sighed.

  “Poker. Sounds good to me about now. Especially when the joker’s wild. How about you, Bull?”

  “Arrh,” Belaney replied, “poker’s ta game me pa told me to fear like ta devil. But after ta last few days, the devil seems tame t’ me. Deal me in!”

  The three of them turned to look at Louis.

  “Come on, Louis,” Songbird said. “Naught to lose but the pay we’ve yet to see.”

  “More fun than a toothache,” Belaney added.

  “Yeah, Louis.” Kirk nodded. “Play a hand or two with yer mates.”

  My mates, Louis thought. He took in each of their faces. Mates, indeed. Brothers despite the fact that he was Indian and they were not.

  I’d give my life in a fight for any one of them. And I’m not about to let them see me cry. And just now not a one of them called me Chief.

  He raised up his hand. “Maybe later,” he said, standing and walking away before they saw the tears in his eyes. He wasn’t sure where he was headed. But then someone called from farther down the trench.

  “Louis, Louis!” It was Merry beckoning to him, pointing.

  A covered wagon was pulled up on the small dirt track behind their trench.

  “Come on,” Merry said, tugging at Louis’s sleeve. “There might be a letter for you from your mother!”

  His small friend was smiling as he hurried toward the horse-drawn covered wagon with the letters U.S. Mail 2nd Corps printed large on the canvas.

  The first smile I’ve seen in days.

  The day before Louis had come upon a man from the 28th Massachusetts sitting next to his best friend’s body in a ditch, cap in hand. Every now and then he would turn his head up toward the sky and laugh out loud. But there was no joy in that bitter laughter.

  Merry, though, was pleased to the point of being giddy.

  How can anyone smile now?

  Louis stopped to kick mud from the soles of his boots.

  But who am I to judge? I hardly know how I feel these days from one moment to the next, unless it’s just plain confused. And maybe there is mail for me from M’mere.

  The thought of mail or even a package from home could bring a smile to many a soldier’s face. Despite the dangers and difficulties of war, nothing seemed to stop the weekly arrival of the mail. Even the gumbo of the Virginia roads that bogged down most other freight had not been able to prevent the arrival of the lighter mail wagon pulled by two big draft horses. It was even more welcome than the paymaster—who had yet to show up during the month and a half Louis had been in the army.

  Six weeks. Is that all?

  Yet he felt at times as if he’d been a soldier forever, wearing itchy and ill-fitting clothing, scratching at fleas and lice, almost breaking his teeth on the so-called bread that was hard enough to put a dent in a man’s skull. One joke running through Second Corps was that by the evening of the fight at the Bloody Angle, Company C had run out of ammunition. So they’d started hurling hardtack and the enemy had panicked and run.

  Other times, though, other times I can’t believe I’m here.

  Just two nights before the battle he’d woken up in confusion. Where was he? Out in the little camp in the woods where he went to cut the trees to make their baskets?

  Toni, nigawes? Where are you, my mother?

  Gradually, it came to him. He was farther than the other side of the moon from the poor but peaceful life he had known.

  Writing or receiving letters were his only real connections to that distant life an innocent boy had once lived. That was why he wrote so regularly to his mother, even though stamps, which didn’t have any weight to them like a coin, cost a dime. He passed up sweets from the sutlers’ wagons to buy those little pieces of paper that would insure his words got carried safe to his dear mama.

  He’d received just one letter thus far from M’mere. The wording was clearly hers:

  But the writing in pen with florid curlicues was nothing like the laborious printing that marked his mother’s hand. She must have paid someone to take down the words as she spoke them.

  Simple as those words were, Louis read a whole world of meaning into them. He carried her letter in the pocket closest to his heart.

  Mail. Is that why Merry is so happy today? Does he thin
k he’s going to get mail? Louis shook his head. That can’t be it. Didn’t Merry tell me that he enlisted in secret? No one in his family, especially not his brother, knows where he is.

  Suddenly Louis knew. He grabbed his friend’s thin shoulder, spinning him around.

  “You saw your brother!”

  Merry danced away from Louis’s grasp. His face was now bright with excitement.

  “Yes,” Merry said. “Oh yes! In the afternoon, during the battle, I was no further from him than I am from you. And Louis, it was like my dream. I protected him. I shot my musket at an enemy soldier who was taking a bead on him. I don’t know if I hit him or not, but the man was gone after the smoke cleared, and Tom was safe. And Tom knew I’d done it. He turned right to me and thanked me for saving his life.”

  “Was he angry because you were there?”

  Merry blushed. “He didn’t recognize me. How could he? I mean . . . he’d never seen me before in a uniform. My face was black and dirty. I didn’t say anything for fear he’d know my voice. If he’d known who I was he would have tried to protect me and risk his own life. When the fight was done, I made my way back here to our company.”

  Merry’s voice choked. He grabbed Louis’s sleeve again and tugged hard at it. “Do you understand?”

  Louis wasn’t sure that he did. But he nodded his head anyway.

  The two of them had reached the mail wagon. As always, Louis went first to the horses. Others tried to shove into line to ask if there was anything for them or to be close enough to reach out right away if their name was read off of a letter or package. But not Louis.

  At least one man ought to let these horses what have worked so hard know they are appreciated.

  He ran his hand along the neck of the big white mare on the right.

  “You’re a fine faithful girl,” he said as the horse lowered its head toward him.

  Merry, who’d been at his side, suddenly choked back a sob. The little private walked swiftly away, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN