Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  He goes on up the street, checking each house for the Foster boys or anybody from their company. He sees a familiar figure stretched on a counter in McKinty’s Dry Goods, steps close. Abner Crosthwait stares up at him, eyes as dead as a salted fish. Well, isn’t that a wonderment, Bob thinks, pretty Abner Crosthwait stretched out dead. Some girls be a-cryin’ now.

  Most of the wounded in McKinty’s Dry Goods appear to be among those who will live, though probably crippled. Bob approaches a lanky Reb who is staring morosely at the bloody dressing binding his right foot. “Beg pardon, sir. Have you see’d any of the boys from Company A, Eighteenth Tennessee, Colonel Joseph Palmer’s brigade?”

  The Reb lifts bloodshot eyes. “No, we’re South Carolina here. Were some Tennessee boys, but they left. All ’cept that lieutenant over there.” He points to Crosthwait. “They forgot to take his boots. Go bring ’em here, nigger.”

  “Oh, no, boss. I dasn’t.” Bob rolls his eyes, showing the whites. “His spook it’d get me. And then Massa Foster, I’s his slave, he’d beat me sure if’n I got messin’ with dead white folks and their spooks ’stead of hurryin’ on his errand. So I dasn’t mess with no boots, boss. I dasn’t.” Bob delivers all this while backing away until he can duck out the door.

  Behind him, the Sand Lapper shouts, “Hey, you, nigger! Get back here!” Bob keeps going.

  For another hour he pokes about. He hears whispers about a Murfreesboro woman who has lost all four sons in the battle. We could do her a son better, Bob reflects. On the edge of town, he finds the brigade’s wounded in a three-room frame house. Thanks to Colonel Palmer’s refusal to dash his brigade to pieces against the Round Forest, the hospital contains only twenty casualties. Bob sees two or three familiar faces, none of them Fosters. He asks an orderly if there are more wounded.

  “Not so far as I know. We lugged ’em all in.”

  “Dead, boss? Many dead?”

  “Only three. Those two over there in the corner and Lieutenant Crosthwait. We left him up at the dry goods store.”

  Bob approaches the two corpses lying wrapped in thin blankets. Suddenly his hands are trembling. He lifts a corner of one of the blankets, does not know the man. He exhales, reaching for the blanket of the other.

  “What you up to, boy?”

  He turns to the speaker, a young man with a wounded arm. “Lookin’ for any of the Foster boys, boss. I was sent by their daddy.”

  “Well, that man’s name was Richards. Last I saw of them Fosters, they was all fine.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The man studies Bob, not unkindly. “That’s all right. You’re probably pretty close to those boys, huh?”

  Bob stares down at his hands, cannot understand their trembling. “Yes, sir. I guess I am.”

  “Well, tell their daddy he raised a good bunch of boys, and that they’ve been lucky so far. But there’s a piece of fightin’ to do yet, and he oughta keep prayin’. Now you get going, or someone’ll set you to work and you’ll be a week gettin’ home.”

  Bob slips out of the house. He must ponder on his trembling, on his accountable hatred, his unaccountable love.

  Preston’s brigade of Breckinridge’s corps has shifted to the south to cover the ground fought over by Cheatham and Sheridan. First Sergeant William J. MacMurray, 20th Tennessee, goes out as officer of the guard in charge of forty pickets. The detail follows a staff officer along the edge of the woods, dropping off men every fifty feet. Half the men have been disposed when the officer pulls MacMurray down beside him. “This is your closest point. The Yankee picket line is about a hundred yards in front of you.”

  MacMurray peers into the darkness. “How can you tell?”

  “I can tell. See that line of trees over there?”

  MacMurray peers, thinks he can detect slightly darker shapes. “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s where they are.”

  “What’s in between?”

  “Nothing. Few rocks and bushes. My guess is it’ll be quiet, but keep the boys alert.”

  MacMurray posts his men and then takes his own position fifty yards to the rear of the center. He sits shivering in the dark, counting minutes. He does not look forward to inspecting his line. Give a man a gun and enough time to let his imagination work, and he’s very likely to shoot at anything, including his sergeant.

  Even with the artillery quiet, the battlefield is hardly still. Picket shots ring out every minute or two, sometimes single, sometimes in small clusters. About one in the morning, there is general firing half a mile up the line. MacMurray tenses, expecting the deep-throated hurrah of Federal troops and the high-pitched yelping of the Rebels. But the firing dwindles off, ceases altogether. MacMurray sighs, starts forward to inspect his men.

  The overcast has broken since midnight, clouds scudding east beneath a waxing moon. The wind has freshened and the grass crackles beneath his brogans. Crossing a glade, he glances behind him, feels a jolt of fear at the sight of his own footsteps tracking him across the moonlit frost.

  “Johnny?”

  The voice is close at hand. MacMurray crouches, thumb on the hammer of his Enfield. “I hear you, Yank. What d’ya want?”

  “I’m cold and hurt bad, Johnny. If you’ve got a canteen, I’d be obliged.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Down a little hollow to your left.”

  “Can you see me?”

  “No, just hear you.”

  “How do I know you ain’t gonna slit my throat if come over there?”

  The voice has a sudden catch in it, almost a sob. “On my mother’s life, Johnny, I couldn’t hurt you if I tried.”

  MacMurray compresses his lips, wishes he had the sense of his pa or grandpa. “All right, Yank. But I can’t give you much ’cept a drink of water.”

  He finds the man in the bottom of narrow, rocky ravine, chest shot and nearly frozen. The Yank reaches out, grasps him by the forearm, holds tight, sobbing. “Hey, son,” MacMurray says. “Ain’t as bad as all that. Morning ’ll come, and we’ll get you out of here. Hell, you’ll get to go home. Now let me prop you up and give you that drink.”

  He manages to make the man a bit more comfortable, gives him a drink from his canteen. The man is beset by a paroxysm of shivering. “Build me a fire, Johnny. I’m begging you.”

  “Ain’t supposed to have no fires out here, Yank. One of your own guns might take an aim on it.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll die of the cold if I don’t have a fire.”

  MacMurray considers. The ravine is deep, six or eight feet, and the man will probably die if he can’t move or have a fire. “All right. But you got to promise to keep it small.”

  “I will.”

  MacMurray quickly gathers a small pile of sticks from the brush close at hand. He strikes a lucifer, gets the tinder going, and adds a few twigs. “What’s your unit, Yank?”

  “Eighteenth Regulars.”

  MacMurray takes a closer look at him in the light of the small fire, expecting to see a weathered face, a hint of gray in the hair. But the man is young and slight, barely out of his teens and hardly one of the fearsome regulars of legend. “How’d you get suckered into the damned regulars, son?”

  The boy smiles wistfully. “My brother went and got hisself shot at Shiloh. I was told regulars killed more of you Rebs than volunteers, so I went and joined up with the Eighteenth. Now I wish’t I’d stayed to home and not made the same mistake he did.”

  “Getting shot ain’t no fun.”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “I gotta go see to some boys I got on picket. I’ll come back and visit you around first light. We’ll get you out of here.”

  “Thanks, Johnny, but I don’t expect I’ll make it to morning. I’m bleeding way down inside. I can feel it.”

  “Don’t talk that way. It’s bad luck. Just hold on and keep that fire small.”

  MacMurray climbs out of the ravine, moves carefully from tree to tree until he is behind the midpoint of his line. He
crouches, hisses, “Novak.”

  “Come ahead, Will.”

  He creeps up beside Corporal Ben Novak, who is his friend and longtime messmate. He is about to tell him to report, only to lose all thought of military propriety at the view of the narrow field to their front. At first he tries to tell himself that the dark forms on its surface are only the rocks and bushes mentioned by the staff officer. But many of them creep, wave arms, moan, weep, mutter insanities of delirium. “Jesus Christ,” he hears himself say. “How many are there?”

  “I dunno. Gotta be two, three hundred. You look up this way or down that way, and there are more of ’em as far as you can see. Must’ve been some hellacious charges across this field. The crawlers don’t get nowheres. Just go in circles.”

  “Can you tell if they’re mostly our boys or theirs?”

  “Can’t tell. Sometimes I think one way, sometimes t’other. What we gonna do, Will?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Nobody told us to do nothing ’cept stand here and watch for the damned bluebellies.”

  “Was you talkin’ to one of ’em back there?”

  “Yeah. You could hear that?”

  Novak snorts. “Whenever the wind dies down, you could hear a squirrel fart out here. What we gonna do about those men, Will?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. We gotta check on the rest of the line before we do anything. You go up to the right, I’ll go down to the left. Next hour, we’ll switch.”

  “Oh, so I got to risk my neck, too, do I? You was the one who got elected first sergeant.”

  “Yeah, and you nominated me. Lucky I don’t make you inspect the whole damned line.”

  Twenty minutes later, they meet again at the center of the line. “Everything’s fine,” Novak says, “except all the boys want to know what we’re gonna do about those wounded. Gives ’em the spooks seein’ ’em creepin’ around like that.”

  MacMurray sighs. “All right. Stay low.” He takes a breath and shouts, “Hey, over yonder! Let me talk to your sergeant.”

  Novak has thrown himself on the ground. “Jesus Christ, Will! Give a man some warning, huh?”

  “I told you to stay low.”

  They wait, expecting a sudden volley from the Yankee line. When nothing happens, MacMurray shouts again: “Hey, Yank!”

  A voice comes back out of the gloom. “Pipe down. We heard you. We’re gettin’ an officer.”

  MacMurray swears under his breath. He doesn’t want to talk to any goddamn officer. Another voice comes out of the darkness. “This is Captain Beltrain. What do you want?”

  “We want to go out and get our wounded, Captain. You’re welcome to come out and get yours.”

  There is a muffled conversation and then the sound of voices raised. Finally, the first voice calls again. “Captain’s gone back to camp. Says we can do anything we goddamn want.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “MacCaffrey, first sergeant.”

  “I’m MacMurray, also first sergeant.”

  “You a Scot or a Mick?”

  “Scot.”

  “Me, too. All right, we got a couple of things to work with. Now let’s go easy. Don’t want to get the damned gunners riled, seein’ they don’t give a shit who they’re shooting at.”

  “Agreed. I’ll bring out ten men, you bring out ten. I’ll meet you in the middle.”

  “All right. No weapons.”

  “Right, no weapons.”

  MacMurray passes the word for volunteers, gets the ten easily. They crawl out into the field, wary of accident or treachery. The two sergeants meet at a boulder in the center. McCaffrey reaches a hand over and they shake. “Christ, what a night,” the Yank says. “Got a plug?”

  “Sure.” MacMurray works his plug out of a pocket, hands it over.

  He sees a flash of moonlight on a blade. The Yank cuts a chunk from the plug, snaps the knife shut, chews with satisfaction. “Good tobacco. Thanks, brother. Here.” He hands MacMurray a flask.

  MacMurray opens it, smells raw whiskey, drinks, coughs. “Jesus, I wish I could say the same about the whiskey.”

  “It’s mule piss, ain’t it? Least it’ll warm you some.”

  MacMurray takes a second swallow, hands it back. “Thanks. Think we can bring out another ten men now?”

  “Suits me.” They send word doubling the size of the detail, then sit, propped against opposite sides of the boulder, companionable. “Who would you say won today?” the Yank asks.

  MacMurray answers cautiously. “I’d say we did. Drove you boys quite a ways.”

  “Yeah. Didn’t do it easy, but you’re probably right.”

  “What do you think’ll happen tomorrow?”

  “Likes be we’ll try killing each other again.”

  “Don’t think your general’s gonna hightail it then?”

  “If he ain’t so far, he ain’t gonna. Not unless he’s fixin’ to go alone and that ain’t like Rosy.”

  “You like him?”

  “For a general? Yeah. He’s on the boys’ side. All over the officers sometimes, but no harm in that as far as I can see. How do you like your General Bragg?”

  In daylight, MacMurray might have said otherwise, but it is the dead watch of the night and no time to lie. “He’s a son of a bitch.”

  “Heard tell as much. Sure ain’t bashful about chargin’, that’s for sure. God, you boys took a pounding when you was trying to take that little grove of trees this afternoon.”

  “That we did.”

  “You know, men are just goddamn brave. Not all of them but more’n I would have thought before this war. Just goddamn brave. Funny thing, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” MacMurray says. “A damned funny thing.”

  The youngest is ten, the oldest sixteen. They call themselves the Seed Corn Contingent, swagger about with captured rifle-muskets, pistols, and sabers. In the course of the evening, they’ve rounded up thirty Yankee stragglers, forcing them into a ragged circle around a smoky fire. The boys assigned guard duty insist on no talking, threaten severe punishment for breaking the rule. The Yanks are too tired and too disheartened to protest.

  Earlier, the contingent’s first leader, a rough but imaginative fifteen-year-old named Riggins, had been determined to make the Yanks reveal secrets. It is Riggins’s belief that several of the prisoners must be couriers carrying vital messages. Doesn’t everyone know that Rosy Rosecrans is the most devious, the most diabolically clever of all the Yankee generals? This night he will be sending orders to hidden formations of infantry, to long columns of blue cavalry, all waiting to fall on Bragg’s flank and rear. The contingent must intercept and decode these messages; the outcome of the battle, perhaps of the entire Confederate cause, may depend on it.

  Coercion is, of course, a complicated and delicate topic. The boys are too imbued with Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper to sacrifice virtue and heroic ambition by resorting to actual torture. (They are, after all, white men.) They could issue challenges to single combat, but this seems impractical considering the weapons at hand and the physical size of their captives. After much debate, they decide to make the prisoners run in a circle, flapping their arms like crows, until exhaustion forces the couriers into confessing. The prisoners, however, cannot be induced to follow this program, only gaze glassy-eyed at the boys and then fall asleep again. After a few frustrating minutes, the entire experiment is declared a failure and Riggins voted out of office.

  The tenure of the second leader, an intellectual fourteen-year-old named Titsworth, is even shorter. Titsworth decides to introduce himself to the prisoners with a few short sentences regarding the rules of captivity before demanding they render up couriers and dispatches. All the boys have long since exhausted the possibilities of making plays on Titsworth’s unfortunate name. Not so the Yankee prisoners, who despite their fatigue and pessimism find it extraordinarily amusing. The redoubtable Titsworth makes it no further than “I’m Captain Benjamin Titsworth, and I command the Seed Corn Contingent of the irregular
forces of—” before he is discomposed by a swell of snickers, guffaws, and (yes) titters.

  The contingent’s third leader of the night is Timothy Schuyler, a sixteen-year-old Murfreesboro boy. Schuyler would be off with the Army of Tennessee if not for his dwarfed left arm, which is not only unsightly but too short and weak to support a musket. This is decidedly his country’s loss, since Schuyler possesses both a grasp of tactics and considerable leadership ability. He has relieved a Yankee cavalryman of an immense Savage revolver, the most fearsome and unusual weapon the boys have ever seen. Fourteen inches long, the Savage weighs three pounds, seven ounces, almost more that Schuyler can steady with his good hand. The oversized trigger guard houses a conventional trigger and a ringed lever operated by the middle finger. Pulling back on the lever rotates the cylinder and draws the hammer, an innovation that supposedly guarantees a better grip and a higher rate of fire than the usual single-action design.

  In reality, the Savage is a poorly balanced and troublesome weapon, but young Schuyler recognizes that its striking appearance will serve admirably to symbolize authority. “Look here, boys,” he says. “Let’s make the Savage our Excalibur. If I die, the man next in line takes it. And so on down. Even if we all die, let’s pledge that the Yankees will never take the Savage. The last man must throw it in a lake first.”

  Riggins frowns. “Ain’t no lake around here.”

  “Come on, Rigs. You know what I mean.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Titsworth says, ignoring a glare from Riggins. The other boys voice like approval, and the Savage is duly sanctified.

  Schuyler points to the prisoners. “Now, these bluebellies are just a bunch of stragglers who run at the first shot. I don’t think they got any secret messages and I don’t think they know anything we want to know. We’ve got to go scouting.”

  Riggins scowls. “I ain’t doin’ no damned skulkin’ around unless we’re gonna kill some Yankees.”

  Titsworth nimbly shifts to supporting his rival. “Yeah, we got the guns now for a good ambush. What do you say, Schuyler?”