March Toward the Thunder

by Joseph Bruchac

  Flynn carefully extricated the newspaper from Hayes’s grasp, folded it again, and stowed it in his pack. Then the sergeant stared off into the distance, one broad hand on his chest, his fingers tapping against the buttons of his coat. The Virginia sun was beating down from a cloudless sky and Flynn reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow. It was so quiet in this lull between the fighting that had lasted for over a day now, you could hear the trickling voice of the North Ana River as it rippled over the stones down into a little pool a hundred yards from them.

  As the sun reflected off its surface, that pool caught Louis’s eye. Almost the same as the one Artis led me and Kirk and Belaney and Devlin to before the battle.

  All five of them frolicking like little boys in the water. He smiled at the thought that all five of them were still among those who could breathe and walk on their own feet. Not among the lost. True, he’d lost Merry—Mary O’Shea. He was going to miss Merry dreadfully. But the thought of the happiness she’d found made him feel warm inside. He thought of his mother’s words: “We never know what each day will bring us. Be thankful for every small blessing from Bon Dieu.”

  The boy he’d been only weeks ago hadn’t understood those words at all. Now, though, they were easier to understand.

  He’d seen Artis just last evening. Both of them on picket duty—Artis to the left of his company’s line and Louis to E Company’s right. They’d been able to exchange a few quick words.

  But none about the fight they’d survived.

  “You bark-eating Abernakis ever play marbles?” Artis asked.

  “A sight better than most Mohawks,” Louis answered. “But I don’t have a marble with me.”

  Artis jiggled the leather sack that hung at his side. “Plenty here to loan you some till I win ’em back. You know us Mohawks always win when we come up against you Abernakis.”

  “In a pig’s eye,” Louis replied, keeping his face straight for another moment before breaking into a grin as wide as the one Artis wore. They’d made plans to get together after mess the next day if things stayed quiet.

  It would be good to do something so far removed from the grim business of war. He was looking forward also to surprising Artis with the news that one of the soldiers he’d introduced his new friend to had actually been a woman in disguise. Although Artis might already have heard. The tale of Mary O’Shea, the warrior lass, was making its way from one regiment to the next.

  “Hmm,” Sergeant Flynn said loudly to himself, his fingers drumming again on his buttons.

  It drew Louis out of his reverie. The other men of E Company pricked up their ears as well. Something was on their sergeant’s mind when he made a sound like that. Clasping his chin in one hand and grasping his elbow with the other, the big Irishman lapsed back into momentary silence.

  The men of E Company held their breath. Flynn getting quiet like that meant for sure that something was being planned.

  Whomp! The sergeant’s broad palms slapped together like a thunder clap.

  “Aye!” Flynn exclaimed, raising up the index fingers of both meaty hands. “That’s the ticket! Ye need to rid yerselves of the stink and stench of battle. And who among ye but our good Corporal Hayes has had himself a proper bath? Form up, lads. It’s down to the river with ye all.”

  When they reached the riverbank, Flynn looked them over. “Now, who among ye can swim?”

  Half of the men raised their hands.

  “Fine,” Flynn said. “Then ye who know the ways of the otter and the finny fish may keep an eye on the others t’ be sure they don’t drown. Because each and every one of ye is going into that water. Wait! Every stitch of yer clothing is coming off before ye go in.”

  Halfway through pulling off his underwear, the first time he’d fully undressed since putting on his uniform, Louis had a thought.

  I’ve never seen any of the other men of E Company naked before—nor has our sergeant.

  Louis shook his head in amusement. His own skin was an even earthen brown. But the other naked privates were a patchwork of colors—sunburned red on their necks, tanned on their faces and hands, and pale as plucked chickens where clothing had kept away the sun. Some were covering their parts with hands or caps.

  “Attention!” Sergeant Flynn barked.

  The men snapped straight, hands at their sides. Sergeant Flynn walked past them eyeing each closely. “Fine,” he said at last. “At ease, men, and into the river with ye.”

  The water of the pool was cool and clean and a blessed relief, indeed. As Louis floated on his back, looking up at the blue sky, the other men laughed and splashed at one another as if they knew nothing of being soldiers hardened by combat. Up on the bank their clothes lay in piles.

  Take off our uniforms and what do we become? Boys again.

  Louis chuckled. But not girls. Not a wee lass among us.

  Sergeant Flynn’s bathing party had made sure of that.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SKILLYGALLEE AND SONG

  Monday, May 30, 1864

  Almost as soon as the men had dried themselves and put their uniforms back on the order came down that they were to break camp. Grant had ordered Meade to lead the Army of the Potomac across the Mattapony River, so Louis’s plan for marbles with Artis was not to be for now. A bigger game was about to be played in which men, and not balls of clay, were the pieces to be shot at.

  They forded the Mattapony after another night march. Then it was across the North Ana River, where they engaged Lee’s grayback boys. All in a heat so great that Louis felt as if the buttons on his sack coat were about to melt.

  Then it was fall back to find the enemy’s right flank and get around it.

  Though it seems as if we’re wandering like the Hebrew tribes in the wilderness.

  Cross the North Ana a second time. Turn toward Hanover-town and over the Pamunkey River to find the enemy at Tolopotomy Creek.

  Shoot and shovel. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just do what you’re told.

  “Move out, men!”

  This time to Hanover Court House, where more soldiers in gray waited, dug in north of the Chickahominy River.

  So many rivers that my head is swimming. But they say we’re now only ten miles from Richmond, the Southern capital. Take Richmond and we’ll have won the war.

  And then, finally, after more than a week of marching and digging trenches, skirmishing, falling back, moving forward to dig in yet again, they came to a halt.

  Corporal Hayes stroked his mustache as he looked over the top of their trench toward the heavily fortified Confederate lines a mile away. He turned to nod down at Louis and his mess mates laboring below him. “Dig in lads, build up them walls.”

  “Lads?” Joker said in a low voice as he nudged Louis with his elbow. “Moles is more like it.”

  Louis nodded as he levered up yet another spadeful of red earth. Moles.

  “Corporal, sir, do you know the name of this place?” Joker asked, leaning for a moment on his shovel.

  “Cold Harbor, I’m told,” Hayes replied in a monotone. “Remember that name, so you can say you were at the place where the battle was fought that broke the back of the rebellion?”

  Strange. He’s not saying those words as if he believes them. More like a question. In fact, it seems as if everything Hayes says since he escaped from the Rebs has been a question. As if he’s doubting everything around him now.

  Hayes gestured vaguely in the direction of the Rebel entrenchment that stretched for miles in each direction.

  “The South’s worn out, so Grant says. All Lee has the heart to do is dig in.”

  Dug in like an old wounded wolf. What was it mon père said? No animal more dangerous than a hurt one in his lair. The thought brought a tight feeling to his gut. Lee and his boys are just waiting for us fools to try to go in after them.

  “Wore out?” Belaney growled.

  “So the general says,” Corporal Hayes replied. Then he wandered off down the trench, still stroking his
mustache.

  Not even trying to keep his head down, even though there might be a sharpshooter over there who could hit a man from that range. Is it that our corporal is no longer afraid of dying? Or is it that this all no longer seems real to him?

  “Cold Harbor,” Belaney said, twisting his face as if the words hurt his mouth.

  “Hot Harbor, more like,” Kirk said, tapping his spade against the floor of the trench. “Fill this hole with water, the sun’d heat it up enough to boil potatoes.”

  “Potatoes,” Devlin said, looking up from the skillet where he was taking his turn fixing their dinner. Since Merry’s departure, Songbird had drawn the short straw to be the man lugging the iron pan.

  “Potatoes,” he repeated, his voice wistful. “Now there’s a word that none of our commissary men seem to have in their vocabulary these days. It’s naught but sowbelly, worm castles, and water for us poor boys in the Irish Brigade.”

  “Water?” Joker said. “So that’s what you call the liquid we’ve been drinking that’s dark enough to paint a barn?”

  “Ah, but it makes for a fine cup of coffee,” Devlin said. “Soldier’s coffee, indeed.”

  “And what is soldier’s coffee, might I inquire?” Belaney asked.

  “Coffee,” Devlin said, “strong enough that when you stick a spoon in it, the spoon stands up.”

  “Not as strong as lumberman’s coffee,” Louis said, surprising himself and the others by joining in.

  “And how strong would that be, Chief?” Kirk asked, playing along.

  “Lumberman’s coffee,” Louis said, keeping his face straight, “you stick a spoon in it and the spoon melts.”

  The others laughed as if the old joke was as fine and new as a shiny silver dollar. Everyone seemed quick to laugh now, even at the smallest and weakest of jokes. A hard, nervous sort of laughter that died as quickly as it was born.

  Like the other morning as they had been trudging along yet another dusty red track. Someone in the line of march had seen a three-legged dog by the side of the road and shouted out, “Wull, there’s Jeff Davis.”

  Within moments that comment about the sorry three-legged stray being the president of the Confederacy had gone all the way back down the line. About every man in the regiment was guffawing at it whether he’d seen that dog or not. Some had laughed so hard they almost choked. A few had even fallen down on the ground and had to be helped back to their feet.

  Devlin poked at the fire under the dented iron skillet.

  “How’s our dinner doing?” Belaney asked, coming over to look. “You’ve got the last of me salt pork in the pot.”

  “Now, Bull,” Devlin said, “don’t be complaining. You know that if you’d kept it in your pack, that sowbelly would just be oozing grease and rotting in the weather instead of part of a fine skillygallee.”

  Skillygallee. Nothing more than hardtack and water and salt pork boiled into mushy slop.

  Louis thought, and not for the first time, about the meals his mother made for them as they traveled from place to place. Rabbit, that makes a good stew. Muskrat too. Deer, beaver. Shucks, me, I would be glad for as much as a squirrel.

  But with all these men in blue and gray scouring the land, every animal that could be eaten had already been consumed or fled for its life. He’d heard the Johnnies were even eating the rattlesnakes. Any critter big as a field mouse was taking its life in its paws if it ventured near the Rebel lines.

  Songbird tapped the bayonet he was using as a stirring spoon against the side of the skillet. “Done as it’ll ever be,” he sighed. “But don’t expect much of it. There’s no man can mix up a batch of skillygallee like our dear Housewife could.”

  “There’s a fact,” Kirk agreed. He dropped his shovel, took a spoon from his coat pocket, and scooped some of the gray mixture onto the tin plate he’d pulled from his pack. “And now our fine lad who made an even finer lass’ll be cooking for her husband. Chicken and gravy with dumplings, most likely.”

  As the others helped themselves to the sorry stew, Louis filled their tin cups with coffee from the pot placed on a flat stone next to the fire.

  “Boys,” Kirk said, rising to his feet and lifting his coffee cup high where the light from the fire glittered off it, “here’s to the finest man who never was.”

  Before the others could stand to voice their agreement, there came a sudden sound like the whining of a gnat.

  Whang!

  Coffee sprayed around the small circle of men as the cup went flying from Kirk’s hand.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Joker said, dropping down onto his back and grabbing his numbed fingers with his other hand. “Them Rebel snipers are going too far. It’s one thing to knock a man’s head off, but spilling his coffee is a low, uncivilized act.”

  “Did you notice,” Devlin said, crawling over to pick up the dented cup and refill it for his comrade, “the pitch of that particular ball before it struck? Being a musician meself, I believe it swelled from E flat to an F and then dropped near to a D as it lost its velocity.”

  A distant rumble came from the heavens. For a moment, Louis thought it was guns before he recognized it as thunder. Just a month ago it would have been the opposite and he would not have confused the ancient voice of the Bedagiak with the brutal sound of cannons. All four of them were silent for a moment, looking up at the dark sky as they lay on their backs in the trench.

  Finally, Songbird sighed. “And there was the bass drum of the Lord, sounding the counterpoint to the melody.”

  “So give us a song,” Belaney said as he sat up.

  And three weeks ago who would have imagined music was something that a man like that Bull Belaney would love.

  The one-time claim jumper had shown himself to be a man of more depth and sentiment than anyone had expected. No fewer than four times in the last few weeks, Belaney had spent his spare cash not on sweets from the sutlers but sheet music, eager for the newest songs being penned. Not that he was alone. There were countless thousands of men eager to hear a song that might lift their hearts. Bull couldn’t read the notes, but with Devlin’s help he could puzzle out the words printed below them. And once Songbird had sung him the tune, Bull would always remember the melody.

  “Bull’s right,” Kirk agreed. “After a fine batch of skillygallee we need a song to round off the festivities.”

  “What shall it be?” Songbird wiped off the skillet with a rag and tied it onto his pack. “’Rally Round the Flag, Boys’? ‘After the Battle, Mother’?”

  Belaney rummaged in his pack. “This one,” he said.

  Devlin scanned the name and illustration on the front of the folded sheet. “Good title.” He opened it to study the tune, took a breath, and began to sing.

  “We are tenting tonight on the old camp ground.

  Give us a song to cheer

  our weary hearts with thoughts of home

  and friends we love so dear.

  Many are hearts that are weary tonight

  wishing for the war to cease.

  Many are the hearts that are looking to the right

  to see the dawn of Peace.

  Tenting tonight, tenting tonight,

  tenting on the old camp ground.”

  The second time around, Bull, then Kirk, then Louis, then even more of the other men who had been working in the darkness to each side of them joined in. Louis was never sure just how many voices finally raised together. A hundred? A thousand? But when they stopped, he heard what seemed to be an echo. Then he recognized it for what it was. Other voices from farther off had taken up the tune—Rebel soldiers whose minds and hearts and bodies were just as weary of war.

  And as they sang, voices uniting the darkness, rain began to fall.

  Not rain. Tears. Tears from our Great Creator’s eyes. He knows what we are all soon to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AFTER COLD HARBOR

  Saturday, June 4, 1864

  Louis gritted his teeth as he tried to lever the
log into place. An arrow of pain stabbed into the bruised small of his back. He wiped the moisture from his eyes with his other sleeve. His arm rustled against a sheet of paper stuck to his chest. He looked down at it in momentary confusion, read the words upside down.

  Who put that there?

  He did. He’d printed those letters, pinned that paper in place a full day ago.

  He pictured the scene again. Hundreds of other blue-coated soldiers carefully lettering their identities onto white sheets with a calmness that belied their fears. From the greenest private to the oldest veteran, they’d all known what would happen when the bugles blew the advance.

  Cold Harbor. Not a port where ships might come in, although the sluggish Pamunkey River ran behind them. Cold Harbor had been the name of a white-framed tavern in a nearby grove. Now, though, it was the name of the nearby field of battle. Cold Harbor. A place that gave cold comfort, for sure.

  Louis closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it, but the images came to him just the same.

  Rain before dawn. After a night so hot that the downpour was a blessed relief to some. But Louis had another thought as heavy drops fell from thick clouds, obscuring all signs of sunrise.

  Great Creator knows what is going to happen. He’s closed the eyes of the sky so He doesn’t have to watch.

  “All-out assault?” Hayes said, gesturing at the steep hill ahead.

  Too steep. Too much open ground to cross.

  “Break through that line?” the corporal continued in the questioning monotone that had become his voice.

  A short month ago Sergeant Flynn’s right-hand man had been one of those neat, precise men who did as he was told and never felt the need to think deeply. Well-groomed as Flynn was rumpled, Hayes always had his hair combed, his red mustache exactly trimmed. But though he’d leap to Flynn’s every command, he’d never seemed weak.