Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  “I’m not asking you to, Captain. Just pass word to your pickets that I’m going to scout down the railroad and then across to the Cowan farm.” The man looks uncertain. “Look, I need to hurry,” Bierce says. “Can I speak to your colonel?”

  “No, no. I’d prefer not to bother him. I guess it’s all right. But, remember, I haven’t taken any responsibility for your safety.”

  “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I’m shot, Captain.”

  Bierce works his way along the railroad embankment, taking advantage of the small cover. Half a dozen times bullets slap into the clay on the opposite side or strike rock and whir away overhead, but there is no way to know if he is the actual target. Abreast of the Cowan house, he scuttles across the turnpike to the edge of an unpicked cottonfield. He lies panting in a shallow ditch for several minutes before starting to crawl through the cotton toward the farm. Across the river there are hundreds of cold, wet infantrymen on the slopes of Wayne’s Hill, every one looking for an excuse to take revenge on a Yankee. There may even be an artillery sergeant sufficiently resentful that he will risk his lieutenant’s ire for wasting a round of shell or case on a lone Yankee slithering through the cotton.

  If Bierce could change one law of physics, he would treble the speed of sound, for he fears not so much dying as dying unawares, that he will not hear the bullet or shell that kills him, will have at most only a vague sense of a disturbance of the air in the instant before death. He remembers watching a snake coiling through the wet grass of the yard back home in Ohio, himself on the porch with a broken leg, immobile for all the demands of his sixteen-year-old body to move, to hunt, to crave, as the snake must have craved in its ophidic alertness to scent, heat, and vibration in the moment before Bierce’s father took three long strides, his hoe already descending to sever the serpent’s head, though it was only a bullsnake and harmless except to moles and field mice.

  Bierce is halfway across the two hundred yards to the farm when he feels through his belly—as the snake might have felt—the vibration of footfalls. He pauses, listening to the rap of drummed cadence, and then peeks over the top of the cotton to see the long blue ranks of Hazen’s brigade advancing toward the farm. Cruft’s brigade emerges from the cedars to the left, falling in alongside. Both brigades have skirmishers deployed a hundred yards to the front and it is these nervous men who frighten Bierce. He crawls forward as fast as he can, reaches the cover of the outbuildings with his palms and knees raw and his lungs gasping. He stands shakily, rests his back against warped, sun-bleached boards. He will wait here for the line, take no chance on being shot by accident.

  At first, the singing is almost too low to hear, the words coming three or four at a time, as if the old hymn wandered in an eddy of disheartened fragments about the desolate farm. But it is the whining accompaniment that raises the hair on Bierce’s nape, for though the singing is explicable enough—the easily imagined crooning of a wounded man trying to comfort himself—the accompaniment hints at nothing human in its anguished discordance. Bierce has vowed to understand horror in all its manifestations, but he is in this moment terrified almost to the point of flight. He huddles shivering against the wall until the panic recedes, then unfastens the holster of his Colt and slides the weapon free. Rising, he takes a step toward the corner of the shed. For a moment the voice seems to hesitate and then continues its song, the whining accompaniment uninterrupted. Bierce recognizes ’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus in the instant he steps around the corner and points the Colt at the two men leaning against each other in the dank, fetid passage between the sheds.

  Both men are grievously wounded, though Bierce cannot at first make out the exact nature of their injuries in the dim light. The taller of the two— the one who is humming the whining accompaniment—nudges the other with an elbow. The singer raises a face black with powder burns, the blisters oozing blood. One eye is swollen shut, the other shot away, leaving a pulpy mass where it should be. Or that is the impression Bierce has until the soldier lifts a hand to push a dangling flap of skin back onto his forehead, the revealed eye shockingly blue in the burned face. The mouth opens, its red equally disturbing, smiles. “Well, howdy, Lieutenant. Gloomy day, ain’t it. Private John Polinex, Union Second Kentucky, at your service.”

  “From Cruft’s brigade.”

  “Right you are, Lieutenant.” The other figure makes a sound like gurgled laughter. Polinex glances at him. “And this here is Willie or Billy or Arty or something. God knows what his last name is. He’s a Reb but not a bad fellow.”

  Bierce peers at the Rebel and makes out in the shadows what he has missed before and what explains the man’s inability to make more than gurgles and whines. “Christ!” he hears himself say.

  “Nope, pretty sure it ain’t him,” Polinex says, “though I suspect getting crucified might be a damned sight more comfortable than what ails him.” He moves obligingly out of the way, talking on while Bierce squats to examine the Reb’s wound. “But though he ain’t no Jesus, I think you might fairly call me Polyphemus after that Cyclops in the story about Ulysses and his wanderings. My pa read it to me when I was a kid and I recall liking ’specially the part where Ulysses and his boys drove that heated stake straight into ol’ Polyphemus’s eye. But now I think I’d side with the Cyclops, advise him to eat up those Greek sailors afore they got to thinkin’ too much.”

  At another time, Bierce might have found Polinex’s blather amusing, but he ignores it now. The Reb opens his mouth wide for Bierce to see. The ramrod has entered the man’s mouth at a slightly downward angle, skewering the tongue, passing through the pharynx, and exiting through the posterior musculature of the spine, leaving some nine inches of exposed rod outside the mouth, the remaining two and a half feet protruding from the back of the neck.

  “I seen them ramrods shot before,” Polinex says. “Specially by raw regiments, almost like a shower of arrows ol’ Ulysses might’ve seen in his time. At first, he was asking me to pull it out, but I was afraid it’d kill him. So we’ve been singing songs and waiting for a little help. Figure it had to come sooner or later from one side or t’other.”

  “How’d you men come to be here?”

  “We was out here last night with skirmish parties, poking around the old place, when we ran into each other. Far as I know, we was the only two got hurt ’cept for a couple boys that got killed over by the corncrib. I was carrying a howitzer charge wrapped up in my slicker. It was the captain’s idea that we’d mine one of the sheds to give the Rebs a surprise. When the firing started, I set it down by my feet to do a little work with my Springfield. I don’t know what happened next. Maybe I set it off with my own gun. Maybe the damned charge got hit by a bullet somebody shot at me. Anyway, it went off with me standing almost on top of it.”

  “A wonder it didn’t kill you.”

  “Well, it didn’t exactly explode, Lieutenant, more flashed up, if you get my meaning. I was just about to fire my rifle, and the hammer cut my forehead. Did a pretty good job from what I can tell. I went and rolled in a puddle till my pants stopped burning and, when the fightin’ was over, I went over to the corncrib and took the trousers off one of those dead boys. It was there I found Arty or whatever his name is.”

  Bierce, who distrusts sympathy almost as much as he distrusts heroism, places a hand on Arty’s shoulder. The man makes his gurgling laugh, tries to smile. Bierce looks away, embarrassed, rises and goes to the corner of the passage to check on the progress of the brigade. The battle line has halted, the skirmishers kneeling while a pair of Union batteries duel with the Rebel guns on Wayne’s hill. Behind the line, Bierce can make out General John Palmer cantering toward Hazen. He turns to the men. “I’ve got to make a few notes for my colonel. Then I’ll see if I can help you back to our lines.”

  Polinex has apparently run out of talk, sits with head hanging, the flap of skin fallen over his good eye. The Reb has leaned his cheek to the wall, attempting to rest despite the protruding ramrod. He look
s oddly peaceful. “Sure, Lieutenant,” Polinex says. “Take your time.”

  Despite the roar of heavy fighting on the right, Brigadier General John Palmer has received no order canceling Rosecrans’s original plan. Shortly after 8:00 A.M., he orders Hazen’s and Cruft’s brigades forward, Grose’s brigade following in support, with the intention of crossing Stones River below McFadden’s Ford to support Van Cleve’s attack on Bragg’s right flank. But when Negley’s brigades do not appear on his right, Palmer calls a halt to wait for further instructions. He rides to Hazen’s position, finds him studying the Cowan farm through his field glasses.

  “What are you looking for, Bill?”

  Hazen lowers the glasses. “I sent my topographical officer to have a look at the farmstead. He’s a rather irritating youngster, but I’d prefer not to have him shot by my own skirmishers. Have you heard anything from General Crittenden?”

  “No, but Negley’s holding back and Sheridan’s catching hell. I’m going to hold the line here until my adjutant gets back with a clarification.”

  Hazen nods. He is a professional, dislikes halting a maneuver in midsequence; but Palmer is a good man, has made the cautious decision.

  Ten minutes later, Palmer’s adjutant gallops up. “General, we’re to fall back to our original position, extending our left across the pike and the railroad. General Rosecrans is pulling Van Cleve back and sending him along with Harker’s and Hascall’s brigades to shore up McCook.”

  Palmer is incredulous. “The general is sending five brigades to the right?”

  “Four, General. He’s leaving Price at the ford.”

  “Who’d you get this from?”

  “General Wood.”

  Palmer compresses his lips. “McCook’s gotten into shit up to his neck again. All right, Bill,” he says to Hazen, “deploy on the far side of the pike. It’ll be you and Wagner between there and the river, apparently. Entirely too little for too much ground, but do your best. I’ll go see to Cruft.”

  As Palmer rides off, there is a roar to the south in front of Sheridan’s position, a fresh Rebel attack going in.

  Bierce, Polinex, and Arty—if that is truly his name—hear the sudden surge of firing to the south. Bierce makes rapid sketches of the layout of sheds and fences about the ruins of the Cowan house, then steps back into the cover of the passage. He flips through his sketches, decides he has enough, and then glances toward the brigade. The skirmishers are falling back on the main line, which itself seems poised to withdraw, though it is impossible to say exactly what it is in the posture of the ranks that indicates a retrograde movement. Involuntarily, Bierce feels himself tense, afraid to be left behind.

  “Don’t even think about it, Lieutenant.” Bierce turns to Polinex, sees the pistol dangling from the wounded man’s hand. It is an unusual weapon to see in these days when soldiers have discarded all but the bare necessities from their kits: a pocket pistol of the sort often called a bulldog, a lethal weapon for alleys, sailors’ dens, and the sleeves of gamblers but an absurd weapon on the battlefield. Yet its menace is perhaps all the greater for the incongruity of its appearance in Polinex’s hand. Polinex makes an almost apologetic gesture with the pistol. “We ain’t gonna be left behind, Lieutenant. You’re gonna get us across that field somehow. Elsewise, we’re gonna die here and we ain’t partial to that outcome.”

  Arty gives his gurgling laugh around the ramrod, a long string of bloody saliva sliding from his mouth to the dirt between his splayed legs.

  “I wasn’t going to leave you,” Bierce says.

  “Well, that’s good, Lieutenant, though it’d be natural enough, what with the things you’re suppose ta be doin’ out here for your colonel. So you can’t blame us for being suspicious, us not knowing you real well and all.”

  Bierce weighs a half dozen ironic responses, rejects them all. “We have to go. My brigade is falling back.”

  Polinex nods, struggles to his feet, and reaches down to help Arty up.

  “You can put away the pistol,” Bierce says. “I’m not going to run.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re not, Lieutenant, but I’ll keep it handy all the same.”

  Bierce ties his handkerchief to a stick, and together the three step from the cover of the passage. “Wave that flag a little,” Polinex instructs. “Let them see our flowing white banner of submission.”

  Arty laughs, gurgles.

  “Of course,” Polinex says, “could be a flowing banner of truce, even of cease-fire. That’d be better. You see, Arty and me kinda worked things out last night. We figure if all the boys North and South were just to go home, leaving you officers to settle things among yourselves, this war might actually accomplish something. You’d have a fine time killing each other, and we’d have a fine time never taking orders from the likes of you again, in or out of uniform. Which’d be a good thing. No offense meant.”

  “None taken.”

  “See, as officers go, you don’t seem a bad fellow. Just all us boys are kinda sick of this war. It weren’t so bad at first, but it’s gotten damned uncomfortable of late. So we figure it’s time to leave it to them that gives a damn how it turns out. Which pretty much means officers, from all we can tell. So Arty and me are fixin’ on going home, figuring most of the other boys will follow us pretty soon.”

  Polinex ceases his wheezing monologue. Bierce glances back, sees him walking head down, the flap of skin and flesh dangling over his good eye. Arty, his mouth wide, the ramrod protruding like a half-swallowed arrow, has taken his arm, guides him across the furrows. Arty seems almost cheerful, as if his wound is familiar: painful but expected. He might, Bierce supposes, have been a medieval foot soldier in some former life, skewered by a crossbow bolt while storming castle walls. Perhaps he fought at Châlus-Chabrol where Richard Coeur de Lion was struck down by an arrow through the eye; Richard the sodomite, insane with drink, venereal pox, and lost reputation. In his desperation, Richard would have been ten times dangerous, for it is wild romantics gone mad who get the likes of Arty and Polinex killed in any age.

  Above them, there is the howl of a plunging shell, and though Hazen has told him never to duck, Bierce cringes.

  “What the devil?”

  Hazen turns at the exclamation from his adjutant, looks out past the retreating picket line. Three figures move haltingly across the unharvested field, the geyser of an exploding shell raining them with mud and white bolls of cotton. He lifts his field glasses, sees Bierce holding aloft a white rag on a stick, behind him two wounded men, one in blue, one in butternut, moving like a single beast, so joined are they at hip and shoulder. A second shell explodes near them. Bierce is frantically waving the pitiful banner, first in the direction of Wayne’s Hill and the Rebel batteries and then toward the Federal batteries under the cedars behind Palmer’s division.

  “For God’s sake, run, man!” the adjutant growls.

  Hazen says nothing, continues to watch. The two wounded men are dancing now, or at least that is the impression they give as they wheel over the furrows, the cotton hiding them from thigh down, so that they seem to wobble legless across a froth of white. Hazen can see Bierce screaming at them, then another shell falls and another and another and the dancers—for that is how Hazen will remember them always—are lost in the successive explosions. The smoke eddies away, and Hazen can make out Bierce on his knees in the cotton, gazing at the vacancy of blasted mud, his mouth wide though it is impossible at this distance to tell if he is laughing or crying.

  “I’ll go get him,” the adjutant says quietly.

  Hazen lowers his field glasses. “Send an orderly; you’ve got more important work.” He turns away to start redeploying his line north of the Nashville Pike in the Round Forest.

  While Cheatham and Cleburne bash away at Sheridan, Major General Jones Withers, commanding the Confederate division to the right of Cheatham, sits his horse on a low rise southeast of the Cowan farm. With him is Brigadier General James Chalmers, a fractious thirty-one-year-old
Mississippi prosecutor with a natural bent for war. He makes Withers, who is nearly fifty, feel old.

  They watch Hazen and Cruft’s line advance toward the Cowan farm and then draw up, as if offering battle in the open. Chalmers fidgets. “Shall we attack, General?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “General, my men have been lying in muddy rifle pits for the better part of two days without fires or hot food. I would like to give them some action.”

  “Shortly, James. Shortly. Let the Yanks come a little closer.”

  “But they may fall back. Then it will be us who have to cross the open.”

  Withers does not reply. All these young men so eager to fight, so eager to risk death. Was he like that, an eternity ago in Mexico? He supposes he must have been, though it was but a brief affliction of the spirit.

  To the south, the sound of fighting swells: Manigault and Maney going in hard against Sheridan. Chalmers can hardly contain himself. “General, please, if I can’t attack, may I at least—”

  “Watch for a moment, James. I think you may have been right about the Yankees withdrawing.”

  In the field to their front, Hazen’s skirmishers have begun falling back. Chalmers rises up in his saddle, as if he might shout at the Yankees to hold their position until he has had time to convince this stubborn old man to let him attack. He settles back. “Yellowbellies. Can’t stand to fight in the open.”

  Withers does not comment, spends a long moment studying his watch. Overhead, shells howl back and forth between Wayne’s Hill and the cedars cloaking the Federal batteries. At last, he sighs. “I’d hoped Cheatham would make better headway by now, but we can’t wait any longer. Prepare to attack. Perhaps we can relieve the pressure long enough for Cheatham to break through.”

  “Yes, sir! By your leave, then.”

  Withers nods, watches as Chalmers canters down the rise to his brigade. Where the hell is Bragg? Or Polk? Someone else to make the decision sending so many young men to their deaths. Well, by echelon then. Chalmers first, then Donelson as soon as the line in front of Chalmers begins to give.