March Toward the Thunder

by Joseph Bruchac

  While upon the field we’re watching,

  with the enemy in view.

  Comrades brave are round me lying,

  filled with thoughts of home and God;

  For well they know that on the morrow,

  some will sleep beneath the sod.”

  Mother.

  He patted the breast pocket that held the letter from M’mere. The letter in his hand was his most recent letter to her. As in all the others he’d written, there was little about fighting and much about his friends, the food they ate, the land they marched through, the interesting people he met—like Artis Cook, who was walking along with him to send out a letter of his own

  “Am I in that?” Artis pointed with his chin at the sealed letter in Louis’s hand as they strolled toward the mail wagon. “You tell her about my trying to turn you into a civilized Indian like us Iroquois.”

  “As I recall, I told my mother that she was right about Mohawks being the ugliest Indians on the continent.”

  “Second-ugliest.”

  The two walked on a ways in silence.

  “Bet you told her about us meeting the general,” Artis said, his voice serious for a change.

  Louis nodded. “He really is something special!”

  “Wasn’t it grand when he called the two of us over to him?” Artis said. His face was glowing now.

  The two of them had been playing marbles again—Louis down by a dozen—when word reached them that none other than the Big Indian himself was inspecting their fortifications.

  The Big Indian. That was what everyone called Brevet General Ely S. Parker, the broad-shouldered Seneca soldier who was the highest-ranking Indian in the whole Union army. He was a field engineer and reputed to be one of the best-educated men in the army. He was also Grant’s close friend and personal secretary. And in addition to that, he was one Indian who truly could be called a chief. He’d been chosen by his Seneca people to be their Grand Sachem.

  The marbles game was abandoned. The two of them headed to the easternmost fortifications where the general was rumored to be.

  “From what I hear,” Artis said as they made their way around a redoubt, “General Parker saved Grant and his staff from falling into an ambush back in the Wilderness. Grant was trying to check on the front but got lost in that tangle of roads and fallen trees. Parker was the only one who realized where they were. He turned their party around just as a Rebel company was about to close in and cut them off.”

  Artis was so busy telling his story that they almost stumbled down the embankment into the backs of a party of officers gathered on the lower side of the redoubt. None of them paid any notice to the two boys. They were listening too intently to the broad-shouldered officer with jet-black hair, neatly trimmed goatee and mustache who sat high on horseback before them.

  “Another eighteen inches of soil should be added to those traverses,” the brown-skinned man was saying, “if your intent is to defilade the interior space of your field works.”

  The Big Indian, for sure. No other high-ranking officer has a face like that. He surely does look like a chief too.

  Finally, the engineers began to drift away now from the big man, their conference finished. General Parker sat there, as if lost in his thoughts.

  “Think he feels as far away from home as we do?” Louis whispered to Artis.

  General Parker turned his head slightly in their direction.

  Eyes like a hawk’s.

  The shadow of a smile came to the Indian general’s face. “Soldiers,” he said, lifting one hand from the reins, “come on over here.”

  They were down the embankment in a flash.

  “Yes, sir!” they said as one, snapping a salute to the mounted man.

  And won’t this be something to write home to M’mere about? An Indian general on a fine black horse passing the time of day with me?

  The general looked down at them, the subtle smile still on his face. Then he cleared his throat and focused his hawk eyes on Artis.

  “Skanoh,” General Parker said.

  “Sehkon,” Artis answered.

  The general laughed out loud. “Hah! So you’re a Mohawk, eh?”

  “Yessir, been that way all my life.” Artis grinned.

  It wasn’t the kind of remark Louis imagined most soldiers making to a superior officer, fellow Iroquois or not, but it seemed to tickle General Parker, as his smile broadened.

  He turned slightly in his saddle to look down at Louis. The general’s horse took a step closer to Louis and began nuzzling his shoulder the way most horses did whenever Louis was near. Louis stroked its nose.

  The general chuckled and leaned forward to pat his horse’s neck. “Found a new friend, have you, Midnight?” he said softly.

  Then his voice deepened again. “Good with horses, are you?”

  Louis wondered if he’d overstepped by being so familiar with the general’s horse. He felt his ears redden.

  “I . . . I suppose so, sir,” he stammered, looking down.

  “At ease, son.” Out of the corner of his eye Louis saw the imposing man above him was studying his face. “Not Haudenosaunee, though. Not one of our longhouse people?”

  “No sir, Abenaki.”

  “Ah, a people of great determination.”

  Those words, spoken with such warmth and certainty, removed any embarrassment Louis had been feeling. They needed no reply and so he didn’t make one. He stood there, Artis by his left side, the general looking off in the distance, the three of them enjoying a companionable silence.

  General Parker cleared his throat again.

  “How old are you two boys?”

  Artis answered first.

  “Just gone eighteen,” he said.

  It never occurred to Louis to do anything but tell the plain truth. Plus that piece of paper in his shoe had worn out long ago.

  “Fifteen, sir.”

  The look on General Parker’s face changed a little then. It had been friendly before, but now there was something like tenderness in the way the dark-mustached man looked down and nodded.

  “I thought as much. And I’ll bet there’s not a white man in this army who thought you less than seventeen.”

  “Suppose not,” Louis said, looking up with a grin. General Parker lifted his right hand to tap the place where the brown skin of his own left wrist was exposed above the riding glove.

  “It takes another Indian to know, doesn’t it?”

  “Yessir,” Louis said, turning his eyes politely back down toward the ground.

  Neither of them uttered a word beyond that, but to Louis that long moment of silence they shared was when they said the most to each other. It was not like with some white men who get nervous when you don’t chatter like a jaybird.

  General Parker took off his glove. He touched his right hand to his heart, then held that hand out to Louis, who took it in an Indian handshake. Their strong right hands together in a loose, relaxed way as strong as the flow of water. The general leaned farther over to shake with Artis.

  “Niaweh,” Artis said.

  The Indian general shook his head. “No, my boy. It is I who should thank you and your friend for your service. Niaweh hah! ”

  General Parker straightened, nodded one final time, and rode away.

  A good thing to write to his mother about. In fact, it took up most of the two pages of paper that Louis had been able to scrounge. Paper was sometimes scarce as hen’s teeth. Everyone who could manage to scribble a few words was writing home whenever they had a spare moment.

  Must be ten tons of letters traveling between Virginia and the North every week.

  And some back in the other direction too.

  “Nolette, Louis,” the man on the wagon called out. It surprised Louis so much that he couldn’t answer.

  “Here!” Artis shouted for him, before the mail clerk could put the letter away.

  If it hadn’t been for Artis, he might not even have gotten that letter. So Louis started readi
ng the letter aloud to him as soon as he opened it. Once he’d started, though, it was too late to stop when it got embarrassing.

  The handwriting was the same as before but this letter was more than twice as long. It began as it had before:

  Then more of her everyday voice crept in.

  Louis sighed at the thought of those candles being lit, M’mere speaking the names of Artis and Sergeant Hayes and Corporal Flynn and each of his mess mates. Her strong prayers opening wings above their heads like protective angels.

  The next lines made his heart rise up in his chest.

  That was the first page. Louis almost did not turn to the second. But Artis, who was looking over his shoulder, nudged him hard in the back.

  “Keep on. I want to know more about all them kids you are going to have.”

  Louis turned the page, took a breath and pressed on.

  His ears were burning, but Artis nudged him again.

  “That’s not the end of it,” Artis said. “It’s getting good.” Louis read on.

  Louis folded the pages back up and slipped them into the envelope. He unbuttoned his breast pocket, tucked the envelope in next to his mother’s first letter, buttoned the pocket again.

  “Who’s Azonis?” Artis asked.

  “A girl,” Louis said in a grudging voice.

  “Well, I hoped to God she wasn’t a chicken,” Artis chuckled. “Seeing as how your ma has you already married off to her and is counting on twelve grandchildren.”

  Louis spun toward Artis, his hands balled up into fists. “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!”

  Artis stepped back, both hands raised with open palms. “Whoa up, Louis. I won’t breathe a word about it to a soul. You really like this girl, eh?”

  The picture of Azonis Panadis’s sweet young face looking over at him as they sat side by side in the Church of St. Ann filled Louis’s memory. Her long black hair had fallen over one of her eyes, dark eyes that twinkled with mischief and intelligence. Their families had known each other forever. Sometimes they had traveled together and the father of Azonis had been one of his own father’s closest friends.

  Azonis.

  They had played together when they were little children. Her ideas had always gotten him into trouble—like the time she decided they should dress their dogs up like people and one of M’mere’s best blouses had ended up getting torn. He had always followed her, done whatever she told him to do. She was a year older than him, had been taller than him. Until this last year when he had grown to be as big as a man and he had noticed that when she looked at him she had to lift up her chin. And she had stopped telling him what to do. Instead she had begun looking at him as if she expected him to say something.

  He had thought of her. And now he knew that she had been thinking of him.

  She holds me in her memory.

  Louis felt as if his feet were about to leave the ground.

  “Yes,” he said. “I really do like her.”

  By the time Louis got back, it was time to eat. He did so in a happy silence, but despite the fact that Louis’s thoughts were on his memories of the face of Azonis Panadis, he still heard the feet quietly approaching him from behind.

  Louis turned toward Sergeant Flynn before his name was spoken.

  “Sir.”

  The burly sergeant shook his head. “There’s no sneaking up on you, is there, me boy?”

  “No, sir.”

  Flynn laughed.

  “Good tidings, me boy. There’s t’ be no more attacking. We’ll be falling back from the line.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ACROSS THE WIDE RIVER

  Monday, June 13, 1864

  No rest for the weary. We must of covered thirty miles since yesterday’s sunset.

  They might be falling back, but they were not retreating. Although they’d been through some of the worst fighting in the war and were all worn and tired to the bone, they’d been walking through the night. The Irish Brigade was to be part of yet another attempt to get around the defenses between them and Richmond.

  The sun in the middle of the sky again, they finally stopped, allowed a few minutes to rest while some obstacle was cleared from the road ahead.

  “Lads,” Sergeant Flynn said, “gather here. It’s some explanation ye deserve of what we’re up t’. Even though we’ve seen the elephant, there’s more ahead for us and it’s toe the mark. Petersburg is where me betters say we’re bound.”

  Flynn picked up a stick and made two lines in the soft ground.

  “Now here’s us, the Army of the Potomac. And here’s dear old General Lee and his boys hunkering down, ’n’ expecting another frontal attack.”

  Flynn chuckled, though there was not much humor in it, as he drew a long arrow leading back and around.

  “But here’s us now. One hundred thousand men tippy-toeing away and not a Rebel aware they’re facin’ empty trenches. Sure and it’ll be another day before they discover we’ve moved to come at Richmond from below and behind.”

  Flynn scraped a curving line and jabbed in the point of the stick. “Crossing here.”

  “The James River?” Corporal Hayes asked.

  From the tone of his voice, he doesn’t sound much interested.

  “Aye. They’re putting in a great pontoon bridge t’ bring across the horses and mules and the heavy artillery and the wagons. But the river is wide. It’ll take at least a day or two to get that bridge built. And since there’s not a Moses among us to part the waters, the Second Corps, all twenty-two thousand strong, including us fine fighters of the Sixty-ninth, will be floatin’ over first by ferry boats.”

  Is that a river or an ocean?

  The broad expanse of water that shone below them looked to be a mile wide. The light of a sun soon to set beyond the far side danced on the top of big waves.

  How can anyone throw a bridge across that?

  There was feverish activity on the near bank. Engineers were assembling pontoons and stacking great loads of planks on flatboats.

  “Two miles down from here,” Flynn said, coming up on Louis’s right, “that’s where the river narrows to a mere half mile. Ye might find it hard to envision, but for certain sure they’re going to span the James.”

  Wish I could see that bridge when it’s done. It’ll be a wonder, for sure.

  Gunports and transport barges were being pulled up to the landing below them. The engineers and navy boys on board all stared at the men of the 69th as they marched by.

  “What are them popinjays in their pretty blue uniforms googling their eyes at?” Belaney muttered.

  “They’re just admiring our fine duds,” Kirk said, “and wondering where they might find clothes so well decorated with sweat and mud and dust and blood as ours.”

  Louis glanced down at the tattered sleeves of his coat, the holes in the knees of his pants, his boots stained red from Southern mud and dust.

  We’re a regiment of scarecrows compared to them with their pressed pants and coats and their clean faces. But would they look as good if they’d just been fighting and marching and sleeping in the dirt like us for the last six weeks?

  Soon they were on the bobbing deck of the first of the transport ships.

  “Been on the water before?” Songbird asked.

  “Some,” Louis answered. “But never in a boat the size of a house.”

  “Twice as big as any house I ever lived in,” Kirk said, leaning over the rail.

  How can something as large as this float? Listen to how them planks thump under our feet. Almost like a drum. Won’t this be something to write M’mere and Azonis about?

  By dawn of the next day, they were all across and assembled at Windmill Point. But the expected order to move out hadn’t come. The sun now stood two hands high above the horizon. Sergeant Flynn, who had gone off to find out what the delay was, was just returning.

  “Sergeant, sir,” Kirk said, “have the officers finished having their breakfast yet? Or will we be waiting till the
y’ve had dinner?”

  Flynn shook his head in disgust. “Our orders now are for the whole of Second Corps t’ sit and wait for the arrival of sixty thousand rations from General Butler that we’re to carry with us to Petersburg.”

  “Hurry up and wait,” Louis said, surprising himself by speaking his thoughts aloud.

  The other men chuckled at his words, but Flynn’s face stayed grim.

  “I’ll wager you boys a dollar against a donut,” Sergeant Flynn growled, “that them rations never do get here. But there’s no point t’ complaining. For it’s the joy of me life that when things go wrong in this army, with the fine generals we have leading us, they kin always go worse.”

  Flynn’s words were a prophecy. By midmorning, when no rations had arrived, a disgusted General Hancock decided they’d waited long enough. They set out on what was supposed to be a sixteen-mile march to Petersburg to join the 16,000 men of General Smith’s Corps who had crossed the Appomattox River to the west and would reach Petersburg first.

  The sun lifted to the middle of the sky, moved a hand’s width across and then another hand’s width down.

  Mid-afternoon. We’ve gone more than just sixteen miles, what with changing directions on these roads that wind in and out like a nest of snakes.

  March and countermarch. Toward the sunset, then away from it.

  Thunder? No. Batteries of artillery letting loose somewhere miles ahead of us.

  Through some trick of the land or the atmosphere, though, the far-off thud and crackle of cannons and muskets came and went. First from one direction and then another—even when they stood still while the leaders of the march studied their maps and cussed. It left Louis wondering if the battle sounds were real or only imagined by his mind, which was about as worn out as his body.

  Finally, when the hand of darkness spread over the land, a halt was called. Exhausted men who’d now walked for the better part of two days slumped to the ground. Louis lifted his head—which took some effort—to look around the ranks of dusty soldiers and pick out his friends. Torches flickered here and there, but were hardly necessary. The moon was so bright, it cast faint shadows on the ground.