Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  Before Shiloh, before he became the eater of souls, Polk would have been shocked to find his drawers sticky with drying semen in the midst of a battle. He was an honorable man before Shiloh, a servant of his church, his state, and his race; a husband, the father of half a dozen children, and the possessor of a sexual history numbering one decent woman (his wife), three whores, four or five more or less willing colored women, and one other experience that he preferred not to count, although sometimes he dreamed of it, waking with his member painfully swollen and requiring immediate relief.

  In August 1831, only sixteen months ordained and yet without an assignment, Polk had found himself suffering from a “general disability.” Advised that he should seek foreign climes, he left his wife of fifteen months and his child of five months to sail for Europe. He found the South of France agreeable, and in a few months felt strong enough to preach to the sailors of Nice on a blustery night that tasted of Africa. For the rest of his life, he will remember the ill-lit seaman’s refuge, the harsh smell of the French tobacco, the odor of the sailors themselves. Every port—at least every port in Christendom—has such a hall serving sermons and soup. He preached on an obvious text from the Psalms: They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the Deep.

  He had labored on his own translation, hoping to preserve the charm of the King James Bible while rendering the verses understandable to these illiterate seafarers. His French was halting at first, but he seemed to have their attention, gained in confidence and fluidity as the Spirit came into him. When he finished, there were gruff murmurs of approval, a smattering of applause, although he was unsure if these expressions praised his sermon or the uncovering of the soup cauldrons.

  During supper, he circulated among them. At one table, he was invited to sit, got on famously, and, when the meal was over, went with these rough men to a tavern on the waterfront. The risks would have been apparent to a more worldly man, but Polk was yet very young and very innocent. He was not a drinker, suspected nothing in the odd bitterness of the wine, made no connection when the faces of the sailors became blurry, their laughter oddly muted around him.

  They buggered him for hours in a tiny room above the tavern, pressed in laughing around him, each waiting his turn at the pale buttocks and the bleeding rectum of this arrogant landlubber who would dare preach to them of God’s wonders manifest upon the Deep.

  Major General Jones Withers is appalled by the damage to his division. Patton Anderson and Alex Stewart have suffered frightful casualties in breaking Sheridan’s salient and driving Shepherd’s regulars from the cedars below the Nashville Pike. Worse are the losses in Chalmers’s brigade, and worse yet those in Donelson’s from their assaults on Cruft’s line and the Round Forest. My God, what can justify this? We must give over this battle, fall back, beg our men to forgive us. He stands aside, shaken, nearly in tears.

  Bishop Leonidas Polk has no doubts, knows that the shedding of blood must beget more of the same. The dybbuk wolf must be fed, lest it turn, devour the souls of the living, become even more monstrous in its ravening. He doesn’t wait for Breckinridge to get his four brigades across the river, orders Adams’s Louisiana brigade forward into the fields against the Round Forest.

  Adams’s brigade advances in line of battle about 2:15 P.M. Once again the outbuildings of the Cowan farm play hob with the Rebel line. Adams feeds his regiments through one at a time, eventually bringing the line back together on either side of the pike. All this is done under terrible fire from the batteries on Hazen’s line and the line of guns assembled by Thomas to the rear of the forest. At three hundred yards, Hazen’s sharpshooters open fire. At two hundred yards the infantry commences firing by volleys, the entire front rippling with muzzle flashes.

  On Hazen’s left flank, Colonel George Wagner grabs his chance to join the battle. His guns have done good execution against the earlier Rebel attacks, and he has sent two regiments to Hazen to shore up the Round Forest line. He, however, has had little personally to do. Only when he sees the right flank of the 13th–20th Louisiana exposed to his front does he have the satisfaction of leading an attack.

  Wagner’s Hoosiers hit the Louisiana flank at charge bayonet. For once the tactic works, and seventy-eight Tigers surrender in the face of cold steel. The Hoosiers push ahead, become caught in a desperate exchange at fifty paces as Adams rallies his line. The Reverend John Whitehead of the 15th Indiana carries Captain Roger Templeton to the rear, lays him down, copies his final words, mutters a short prayer, returns to the regiment. He’s not back five minutes when he sees a single minié ball kill two privates and mortally wound Captain J. N. Foster. He catches the falling Foster, eases him down, holds him while he dies. Nearby, Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Suman of the 9th Indiana is shot from his horse, lies hemorrhaging from a severed artery in his arm. Whitehead goes to him and binds the wound. “There’s a goddamn ball between my ribs,” Suman grates. “I can feel it, but I can’t get my fingers on it.” Whitehead rolls the colonel on his side, hesitantly probes the wound with a finger, feels the base of the conical minié ball an inch below the skin. “Get it out, man!” Suman snaps. Whitehead forces his thumb and forefinger into the wound, manages to pinch the ball. On the third attempt he draws it out. Suman rips a pocket out of his coat, crams the fabric into the wound. “Help me up.”

  “Colonel, you should go to the rear,” Whitehead pleads.

  “I’ve got boys fighting. I’m not going to any goddamn rear. Help me up!”

  Whitehead manages to get Suman on his feet, and then boosts him into the saddle with both hands under the colonel’s buttocks. Suman kicks the horse, dashes back into the fight.

  A stray Federal cannonball bounces through the 15th Indiana, shattering the leg of Private John Long. Long contemplates the wound for a moment, and then deliberately takes out his barlow knife, strops the blade on a brogan, and cuts off the dangling appendage. He loops his belt around the stump to staunch the bleeding and, using his Springfield as a crutch, manages to hobble a dozen yards. When he falters, Whitehead sweeps him up, carries him to the rear. He sets him down behind a tree. “I’ll be all right, preacher,” Long says. “Go help the boys that needs you.” Whitehead leaves him studying the stump of his missing leg.

  The Rebel brigade tries to push ahead on the axis of the pike while holding off the Hoosiers on its right. Finally it breaks, the soldiers streaming back across the fields. Whitehead looks about him, aghast at the carnage. “Reverend,” a small voice speaks from near at hand.

  Whitehead searches, spots Private Calvin Zenner. “Calvin! Are you badly hurt, son?”

  The boy manages to smile. “Looks like. Can you carry me back? I’d like to die with some of the boys around me.”

  Whitehead carries him. His own eyes overflow, for the boy is warm against him, peaceful. He sets him down near Long and a half dozen other wounded. Zenner opens his eyes. “Reverend, can we have a song? I’d like to hear O, Sing me to Heaven a last time.” Without waiting for an answer, he starts singing. Whitehead and the others join in. When the hymn is over, Zenner smiles. “Good-bye, boys, I’m going home. I’m mustered out.” Within a minute, he is dead.

  Whitehead closes his eyes. They are preposterous, these brave boys in their deaths. Too much courage, too little doubt of heaven. He takes a deep breath and goes to comfort the maimed and the dying.

  Fleeing under the rain of the Federal artillery, Adams’s men upset the careful order of Brigadier General John King Jackson’s brigade advancing in column up the pike toward the Round Forest. More than physical collision is involved, for among these retreating are men without hands, without arms, men trailing ropes of intestines, men hobbling on the stumps of legs. Blood seems to fly from them, splattering everything in their way. It is obscene, this flight of the maimed, for most will die anyway, needn’t confound the chances of others to carry out an attack and perhaps survive.

  The Federal cannons blaze
, the Yankee gunners ramming shot, shell, and case, stepping to the side, snapping the lanyards, the guns bucking back. The gunners, many of them stripped to the waist even in the cold, grasp the wheels, throw the guns back into position, swab, load, ram, fire.

  Jackson’s men struggle through the wave of their own countrymen, emerge, straighten their ranks, go forward at the double-quick, poised for the order to charge bayonet.

  Galloping down the pike from the right flank, Rosecrans and his staff arrive at Thomas’s gun line in time to see the repulse of Adams’s brigade. Rosecrans reins up beside Thomas. “Well, George, we seem to have held on the right. Will we hold here?”

  Thomas nods. “I have no doubt of it, General.” Thomas gives a rapid explanation of the fight before the Round Forest.

  “I suppose it must be the very reverend Bishop Polk across from us,” Rosecrans says.

  “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “Did you ever know him?”

  “No, never.”

  “I met him once. He didn’t impress me as a theologian of any depth.”

  Thomas lets this pass, watches the fall of shot among the fleeing survivors of Adams’s brigade.

  McCook and his staff have drawn up a few dozen yards behind Thomas. McCook edges forward, like a whipped dog unsure if he yet dares to share the company of his harsh but adored master. Rosecrans and Thomas ignore him. For all his other flaws, McCook is neither a physical coward nor entirely without judgment. We are too closely grouped, he thinks, and in plain view of the Rebel guns on that hill on the far side of the river. My God, a single shot could kill the two senior officers in this army, leave me in command. He clears his throat. “Gentlemen, this is a nice mark for shells. Can’t we thin out? Perhaps one of you should move to the other side of the pike.”

  Thomas and Rosecrans exchange glances. “It’s about as safe one side as the other,” Thomas growls.

  Rosecrans smiles. “He’s right, George. The army can’t stand to lose both of us to one lucky shot. The men would be unnerved.”

  Thomas, always loath to give way, nevertheless nods. “I’ll go to the other side of the pike.” He rides off. McCook hesitates, watching Rosecrans, and then follows Thomas.

  Garesché moves up beside Rosecrans, waits for orders. But for the first time all morning, Rosecrans seems relaxed, content to watch the battle without exercising his personal intervention.

  To the left of the fight between Wagner and Adams, a lone oak stands by the road, its crown and branches shot away so that it stands a rampike against the background of river and rolling land. Though the fighting is ferocious, Garesché’s attention keeps wandering to the shattered tree, as if in search of some hidden yet ineluctable truth. I wonder if it will sprout new branches come spring, he thinks, and where we will be by then.

  Adams’s brigade shudders, breaks, goes streaming down the pike. The staff cheers. Corporal Willie Porter approaches Garesché and Rosecrans. “General, Colonel, I’ve got your lunch with me. Major Goddard told me to bring it to you.”

  Rosecrans seems not to hear. “In a moment, Corporal,” Garesché says. “That’s very thoughtful of both you and Major Goddard.”

  “Look at that, Julius!” Rosecrans exclaims. “Some damned fool has sent another brigade forward in column right behind the first. My God, why didn’t they send them both in at once? Concentration is everything in this business. That must be Polk over there; that’s an amateur’s mistake if I ever saw it.”

  “Let us remember that Bishop Polk is a graduate of the same institution that educated us, General.”

  “Yes, but he was never a soldier. Jack Magruder once told me that Polk spent his entire monthly allowance fornicating with a nigger kitchen maid down the road and the rest of his free time in the chapel praying for forgiveness.”

  Garesché laughs. “Yes, I’d heard something of the same.”

  Rosecrans warms to the subject. “According to Magruder, the saying was that Polk had the phallus of a donkey and the encephalon of a mule. He told me that one night he and some of the other fellows tied Polk to his bed and made a plaster cast of his extraordinary member. Supposedly, it’s still somewhere in the natural sciences department.”

  “Little Willie” Porter has no idea what the two officers are talking about, readjusts the haversack holding the lunch sent by Major Goddard, and stares at the tumult on the pike.

  Adams’s retreating brigade has become entangled with Jackson’s brigade trying to move in column up the pike. The Federal guns blaze away with any round that comes to hand, saving only the canister for close work. Jackson’s ranks wrestle free, come up the pike at the double quick. Rosecrans rises in his stirrups, studies the approach. “Come on, Julius, we’d better go down and brace up the men. That Reb brigade is coming hard.”

  “General, you shouldn’t expose—” Garesché begins, but Rosecrans is off, ignoring the protest which has become almost pro forma anyway. Garesché plunges after him, heart elated.

  The sense that they are winning has begun to spread through the Federal ranks. Men cheer, wave hats at the sight of Rosecrans aboard his big, gray horse. Passing through Colonel William Grose’s brigade, drawn up to go forward in support of Hazen, Rosecrans pauses. “Men, do you know how to be safe? Shoot low! Give them a blizzard at their shins! But to be safest of all, give them a blizzard and then charge with cold steel! Forward now!”

  He charges on, the staff galloping behind. They are suddenly within the barrage of the Rebel guns on Wayne’s Hill. An exploding shell kills Sergeant David Richmond and unhorses two orderlies. A fragment rips through Willie Porter’s haversack, scattering the lunch he’s carrying for his general and his colonel. He wails, “Now the dinner’s ruined!” The staff laughs, Garesché with them. A shell explodes in a harmless flash against a limestone outcropping and for an instant Garesché stares at the image of a young woman—a girl really—smiling gently, perhaps a little sadly. There is a black mote in the corner of his vision—a tiny fragment of burned powder, he supposes— floating on the eye, waiting for a single tear to wash it away.

  The cannonball explodes the head of Lieutenant Colonel Julius Garesché in an instant too small to calculate. Nearest him, Little Willie Porter is drenched by a plume of blood and brains. Garesché’s body rides on, keeping pace for another twenty yards. Rosecrans turns in his saddle to say something, winces at the sight. On the general’s uniform blouse, a splash of Garesché’s blood seems unnaturally red and a strand of brain tissue hangs thick and translucent from Rosecrans’s beard. Rosecrans clamps his jaw, flicks away the strand of brains, and gallops on, as Garesché’s hands loosen on the reins and his body rolls slowly forward, leading with its left shoulder so that the right foot disengages smoothly from the stirrup, and Julius Garesché makes a last graceful dismount.

  Jackson’s regiments come forward against Hazen’s line at charge bayonet. The Rebel gunners on Wayne’s Hill fire as fast as they can load, trying to clear a path for the infantry. Down the line from Hazen and Bierce’s position behind the 9th Indiana, an artillery caisson explodes with a whump. Bierce stares at the rising pillar of smoke, sees it crowned by the caisson’s slowly revolving spare wheel. And though Lieutenant Ambrose Bierce is a skeptic, a believer in reason and science, he has the absurd recollection of a verse from Ezekiel: And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.

  Rosecrans is among them, blouse streaked with blood though he seems uninjured. “Shoot low, men! Shoot low! Give them a blizzard at the shins!”

  The musketry becomes an uninterrupted roar, drowning out even the artillery. The Rebel column tries to deploy in line of battle, folds back on itself, explodes in a thousand fleeing human fragments. A cheer wavers above the Federal line.

  Breckinridge arrives with Palmer’s and Preston’s brigades in time to see the shattering of Jackson’s brigade. He goes storming to Polk. “Bishop! What is the meaning of this? All f
our of my brigades should have gone forward together under my command!”

  Polk gazes down at John C. Breckinridge, wonders why he ever took such dwarfs seriously. “I had my orders, sir. Now let me give you yours.” He points to the Round Forest. “Take that grove of trees.”

  Breckinridge would press his complaint, but Polk turns away, stands staring at the litter of dead strewn across the fields either side of the pike, as if in deep spiritual contemplation on the folly of man. Breckinridge stalks off.

  Milo Hascall is again shifting regiments between Hazen’s line and the reserve. Rosecrans, having ridden the line and braced the men, goes off to check Colonel Price’s hold on McFadden’s Ford. Thomas resumes his previous position behind his gun line, lights one of the cigars Grant prefers.

  Shortly before 4:00 P.M., a long line of butternut infantry emerges from the trees beyond the Cowan house. At the same moment, the sun bursts through the clouds for the first time in days, illuminating the fields and woods in warm, long-shadowed light. Watching the Rebel battle line, Hazen is moved by the “dreadful splendor” of three thousand bayonets glittering so that briefly they seem to form a single undulating cord of silver above the Rebel ranks.

  On the rise to the rear of the Round Forest, Thomas takes the cigar from his mouth, studies the worried end, then turns to his chief of artillery. “You may commence firing, Major.”