The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  “He is a good teacher, ma’am,” said one of the prisoners to her. “A powerful good teacher. He’d be welcome back home once this spat is over.”

  Lyndel was applying a new bandage to the wound on his shoulder. “Really? And what does God think of our ‘spat,’ as you call it, Corporal Erwin?”

  “Not being privy to the Lord’s thoughts, I can’t say. There are good Christian folk praying for victory on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line. A lot of them are going to be disappointed. But no one is disappointed with a good message from God’s Book. No one loses there, North or South.”

  Another Reb prisoner asked, “I hear the man with the Bible is your brother—is that so?”

  Lyndel was bathing a bullet hole in his foot. “That’s true, Sergeant Thornton.”

  “Is he a chaplain?”

  “No. Infantry. Like you.”

  “I would say he has a calling to preach the gospel. I know because I’ve had such a call myself.”

  “You’re in a strange place for a Baptist church.”

  He grinned. “How’d you guess I was Baptist?”

  “Your hair grows a certain way.” She smiled up at him. “Just a shot in the dark, Sergeant.”

  “If the Lord spares me, I’ll have my church and my pulpit and my flock one day. It will be a glorious undertaking. The one thing that transcends all this folly and carnage is the Spirit of the Lord. That’s why I can see that what’s in my heart is in your brother’s heart also.”

  “If it’s folly, why are you fighting?”

  “I expect because the South is my home—and y’all have invaded it. But I reckon you’re doing what you think is right too. The Lord’ll sort it all out. I hope your brother makes it through and honors the call God has blessed him with.”

  She dried his foot with a clean towel. “Thank you, Sergeant Thornton.”

  Lyndel’s knees began to ache. She tried to pray but the Bible verse kept coming into her head about cleaning the debris from her own eye before she could see clearly enough to clear the debris from her brother’s. When she tried to ignore it another verse popped into her head: Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

  Yet Lyndel felt a stubbornness rise up in her chest. She ought to go to Levi now, walk down the staircase he had helped repair, make her way to the bonfire, find him, and apologize. But she couldn’t do it. Neither could she pray. So she sat on the edge of her bed, looked at the firelight on the window glass, and felt miserable.

  She had lain down and drifted off, when Morganne shook her shoulder. “Get up! The army is ordered forward and the men are breaking camp!”

  Lyndel sat up, confused. “What? What time is it?”

  “Just after midnight.”

  “But Nathaniel isn’t here.”

  “The tents are already being folded up. Hurry. I need your help with the medical supplies.”

  They worked through the night and finally got some rest about four in the morning. But they were awakened again at six when the order was countermanded and all the tents put back up again. The two nurses wearily removed the medical supplies from the wagons and placed them in the hospital tent the ambulance crews had staked in place once more. It took most of the day before the camp was back to its normal routine.

  On the 6th of June the brigade was sent to Franklin’s Crossing in full gear to support a Federal action on the other side of the Rappahannock. Lyndel and Morganne remained at the Fitzhugh camp. In two days the brigade returned. “The only thing that happened,” snarled an officer Lyndel treated for severe sunburn on the back of his neck, “was we roasted in line of battle for two days in the hot sun.”

  Time and time again she saw the troops fall in and be left sitting on the grass for hours before being told there would be no marching and that they were dismissed. Something was giving the army commanders the jitters and Lyndel knew it could only be Lee and his army. But no one at Union headquarters seemed to have the slightest notion where Lee was or what he was up to.

  Then Nathaniel rode into camp late on June 10th with a cavalry escort, which brought soldiers running from all directions. There had been rumors of a battle about thirty miles away the day before. He was two days late and Lyndel thanked God he was safe. She dropped the cotton she was cutting into bandages and left the hospital tent to greet him. Once she saw the growth of beard on his face, the darkness in his eyes, and the saber cut across the left arm of his uniform she knew he had been in the fight.

  The cavalry dismounted and began to talk to the Iron Brigade soldiers who crowded around them. Lyndel caught the names Culpepper Court House and Jeb Stuart before Nathaniel spotted her and, drawing Libby after him by the reins, led his wife away to where Little Falls Run emptied into the Rappahannock. Once he saw they were alone he embraced her with a ferocity that lifted both of her feet out of the dirt, and kissed her with a strength that left her struggling to get her breath.

  “Did you pray for me?” he demanded.

  Still trying to get air as his arms pinned her to him she said, “Yes… of course…I always pray for you—”

  “Because that’s the closest I have come yet. The Reb was taking a swipe at my neck and I threw up my left arm to ward off the blow. With my other hand I put the sword to him. I didn’t even think twice. It was me or him. I’m sorry. But what a battle. There must have been twenty thousand of us. It was Jeb Stuart. We caught him by surprise. Brandy Station. It was at Brandy Station just by Culpepper Court House. All cavalry but for a small mob of infantry we had with us.”

  “I need to look at that wound.”

  “It hurts like the blazes but I didn’t have time to get it looked at. As soon as Libby and I had rested up I needed to get back here. The escort was assigned to make sure I arrived safely. Why isn’t the hospital tent packed up? Why isn’t the camp on the move?”

  Lyndel had plucked a pair of scissors from her pocket and was snipping away the lower left sleeve of his uniform. “Stand still, Lieutenant. I’m glad you missed me so much but I need to get at this.”

  His bare arm was a furious red and pus lined both sides of the long cut. She bit her lip. “We need to get you to the field hospital and get this lanced.”

  “But Lee is far ahead, Lyndel. I sent word days ago. Why hasn’t Hooker given you the order to march?”

  “No one has given us an order to do anything except to stand up and sit down and march to the river and march back again.”

  “Has Hooker lost his mind? They could be at Washington in days. I need to see Colonel Williams or Long Sol—”

  “You need to get this wound properly cleaned, Lieutenant King, before you ride madly off north, south, east, or west.”

  “You’re not taking me seriously.”

  A rider came pounding into camp on horseback. Lyndel glanced up from Nathaniel’s arm, realized it was Hiram—a scrawnier, bonier version, but Hiram Wright nevertheless—and thought, It’s as if we’re in a stage play and Hiram is arriving right on cue with a dramatic announcement to back up Nathaniel’s concern.

  After all her talk of feeling distant from Hiram and unsure of how she felt about him anymore, Morganne, who was filling two buckets with water just upstream from them, saw who the rider was as he swung down off his horse, screeched in a way she never screeched, and ran to him, the buckets going one way and the water the other.

  “My beauty!” Hiram held her and kissed her on the face and neck. “The most astonishing woman! The most intelligent woman! The most adorable woman!”

  “Stop talking!” Morganne almost shouted and, heedless of the hundreds of soldiers watching and cheering, gripped both sides of his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth.

  In a moment, one arm around Morganne, Hiram spotted Nathaniel and came toward him, his face flushed with the ride and Morganne’s kisses. “Nathanie
l. I haven’t even congratulated you and Miss Keim on your marriage. Well done, old friend, very well done.”

  “Thank you, Hiram,” Nathaniel replied. “I only just got into camp myself.”

  Hiram saw his wound. “That’s not from a bayonet.”

  “No.”

  “Were you at Brandy Station?”

  “I was.”

  “That was a cavalry encounter. What were you doing there?”

  “I’ve been riding with cavalry officers, Hiram. We’re keeping an eye on Lee’s army.”

  “Then you know he’s gone; that he’s making his way north with a bone in his teeth.”

  “I do know it.”

  “Then why is this camp still in its undershirts with clotheslines hanging from every oak tree?”

  “Hooker’s been told. I’ve sent back report after report. They can see for themselves by taking a long glance over the river with a good scope.”

  “I’m just back from Mississippi by rail because my paper said something big was up. I was loath to leave. I wanted to be there when Grant takes Vicksburg. Oh yes—he will take it, the siege will break the defenders’ resistance, and Vicksburg’s capture will be a crippling blow to the Confederacy, absolutely crippling. A big story. But my paper was right—what’s happening here is even bigger. What’s today? Wednesday? At least one corps of Lee’s army will have crossed the Potomac by Sunday or Monday. Richard Ewell is far out and ahead and will be well on his way to Pennsylvania before we’ve even reached Washington. We’re losing and it’s not even begun.”

  As if the generals had been listening in on the conversation by Little Falls Run, the very next day the Iron Brigade was told to get ready and on Friday it marched. The clotheslines were gone and the tents and the pine boughs and the wagons, this time for good. The Fitzhugh House was left to its ghosts once again and the beds and tables and chairs stood empty within its walls. The pace set for the march was so rapid that men began to collapse in the fierce June heat. Lyndel and Morganne jumped from their wagon to give them water and get them in the shade.

  “There is no need to push the soldiers like this,” Lyndel complained.

  Hiram looked down at her from the driver’s seat of the wagon. “This is the best chance Robert E. Lee has ever had. If he plays his cards right over the next couple of weeks he will win the war.”

  24

  “They’re not actually going to do it?” Lyndel wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  “Apparently they are.” Hiram’s face was pale white stone.

  Morganne held Hiram’s hand so tightly the blood left his fingers. “Couldn’t there be a reprieve? Something from the First Corps commander, General Reynolds? Something from the president?”

  Before she had finished her last sentence an order was given and the muskets fired. The young man sitting on the pine coffin with the blindfold over his eyes toppled backward into the dirt. To Lyndel’s horror his arms and legs began to move and she could hear his voice.

  “They fired too low,” Hiram muttered. “Most of the bullets missed and just kicked up dust.”

  Several soldiers were ordered forward to reload and shoot a second time. They were only three feet from the wounded man when they fired. His arms and legs sank to the ground.

  Hiram placed a hand on the wagon brake. “He ran last summer at Rappahannock Station. He ran at Fredericksburg in December. He ran last month when the brigade crossed the Rappahannock by the Fitzhugh House. That’s why they shot him.” He glanced about him. “We’ll be marching again presently.”

  Lyndel watched them put the body in the coffin. “I thought we had truly stopped for lunch. Now I see the only reason we paused in our mad race north was to kill this young man.”

  “Well. They waited until everyone had eaten before they carried out the execution.”

  Lyndel didn’t see Nathaniel, but he saw her seated on the driver’s seat with Hiram and Morganne. He was sorry she had witnessed the shooting. For a moment he thought about making his way over to her but then the command came to fall in and he was ordering Levi and Ham to get the men on their feet. He walked over to Nip as the platoon tugged their packs over their shoulders.

  “How is it with you, Nip?” he asked, picking his black hat off the grass and handing it to him.

  Nip avoided his gaze. “Okay, I guess. I didn’t have to shoot this one.”

  “No. Canteen full?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve been over this track more times than I can count over the past month. Water will be scarce for a while.”

  “Yes, sir.” Then he smiled in his small way. “Think someone can rustle up some Rebel chicken on this march? I’m awful tired of potatoes and crackers.”

  Nathaniel laughed. “I guess we might ask Levi. Truth is, no one is as good at foraging as Corinth was. But we’ve been fighting over this ground since ’61. Even my brother might be hard pressed to find a bird worth eating in north Virginia this summer.”

  The columns began to move. Nathaniel stayed beside Nip, holding Libby by the reins as he walked. Nip glanced at the horse.

  “Why don’t you ride, Lieutenant?”

  “I like to stretch my legs.”

  “But you never ride while we’re marching.”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “Sure. When you have to see Sam Williams or Long Sol or General Reynolds. The rest of the time you hoof it like an enlisted man.”

  “Captain Hanson and First Lieutenant Nicolson are always mounted. That’s enough. Besides—” Nathaniel grinned at Nip. “If I was going to ride I’d rather be perched up on that wagon with my little red-haired wife.”

  Talk lessened as the heat cut into their bodies and the dust rose up to their knees or higher. Canteens were emptied and refilled at mud holes where rainwater had collected. Levi took a swig of his warm mud water and spat it out.

  “That’s good water, Sergeant,” Nicolson teased as he dismounted to walk his horse. “When you get really parched you’ll wish you could get it back.”

  “I’m already parched and I hope I find good stream water before I have to swish half the farmland of Virginia around my mouth again.”

  “Let it settle,” Nathaniel advised. “Shake the canteen as little as possible while you march and let the muck sink to the bottom. Then sip it. Better than nothing, Sergeant. There won’t be anything in the way of good water on this route for a couple of days.”

  “No? I guess I’ll have to try to liberate some Rebel wells along with the chicken coops tonight.”

  Nathaniel wiped dust off his face. “Good luck and God bless, Sergeant. There’s not a farm for miles in this neck of the woods. The ruts and mud holes are your only friends.”

  Levi snorted. “My mouth gets dry debating you, Brother King. We’ll see what midnight brings.”

  But midnight brought Levi and the platoon only darkness and exhaustion. He grabbed Nip and made a half-hearted foray into the woods and meadows but they returned without anything to show for their efforts except canteens full of water from a hayfield.

  “It tastes better than the mud,” he whispered to Nathaniel.

  “Only in your imagination,” Nathaniel replied.

  “Did you see Lyndel tonight?”

  “She’s too far back. I have no idea where her wagon is. Posting her a letter would find her more quickly than my stomping around in the dark.”

  “Bet you tried for a while anyway, didn’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “A while, Sergeant. But after almost getting shot by the third picket I decided to lie down on this Virginia ground and get a farm boy’s rest.”

  The next day the heat whipped their backs as mud holes and wheel ruts continued to offer the only opportunities to wet their mouths. The food was crackers and potatoes and hardtack. When they got meat dished up it was salt pork that made their thirst worse.

  Levi swore he would find Rebel chicken and well water that night but Bealeton Station on the Orange and Alexandria railway tracks stymied h
im.

  Sunday morning they were up before daylight and marched in coolness for a few hours before the sun hammered the road and dust filled the air. At nine that night they stopped to build fires and make coffee, Captain Hanson’s brew having never been blacker or rougher, then marched another five miles on the coffee until sunrise brought them to a breakfast stop, where everyone was too exhausted to eat and just collapsed. Three hours later Nathaniel and Nicolson and Hanson were shaking shoulders and the First Corps was on the move once again to Manassas Junction, a mile away.

  “What happened here?” asked Groom.

  “We covered the army’s retreat as usual,” said Ham.

  “Is that all?”

  “No. That’s not all. This is the same place, right by the rail line here, that we camped the morning after Brawner’s Farm. And yonder—” Ham pointed. “Yonder is Brawner’s Farm. We fought Stonewall’s best there and never gave an inch until our good old General Pope made us withdraw and give them a mile. I’d walk you over there but we don’t have the time and I’m too tired. Besides, that’s where Corinth King died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Groom responded.

  Another five miles and General Reynolds stopped the corps so they could brew more pots of coffee. This time they used Bull Run Creek water. It had the look of Confederate uniforms, thought Nathaniel, and no wonder, since the South had won so many victories here. The coffee bought them another three hours on the road until they reached Centreville and cold water that the men gulped down, their mouths thick with dust and silt. They set up camp for the rest of the day, Monday the 15th, and before the sun had set Nathaniel was on Libby and looking for his wife.

  It took almost half an hour but he spotted her red hair and white kapp in a cluster of ambulances and horses and galloped to her, jumping out of his saddle and swinging her in a circle.