Love and War: The North and South Trilogy (Book Two)

by John Jakes

  An entry in his journal, made sometime between sunset that evening and dawn on April 30, read:

  I hate what I am becoming because of this war.

  “It’s the Dutchmen,” Spinnington snarled. “The fuckin Dutchmen caved in.”

  “Shut up,” Billy said, naked to the waist, swinging the ax two-handed and bracing for the shock when it bit into the five-inch trunk of the elm.

  It was just daylight. An hour ago, while the Wilderness burned, set afire by shells, Billy’s detachment had been rushed from Slocum’s Twelfth Corps to the relatively clear ground at the Chancellorsville crossing. To judge from the heavy presence of headquarters guards and all the couriers riding up and galloping away again, General Hooker was holed up inside the white manor house. No one professed to know what he was doing, but on thing appeared certain: Fighting Joe’s great scheme had come to nothing.

  Hooker had gained his planned position in the Wilderness, been poised to smash Lee from the rear—and had thrown away the advantage. Why? Billy thought, timing the ax blows to reinforce the raging repetition of the question. Why?

  Yesterday Fighting Joe had started his men forward to a more advantageous offensive position—higher and more open ground beyond the edge of the Wilderness. When his men encountered enemy fire, he called off the advance. Corps commanders had not concealed their fury. Billy had heard what General Meade said; it had spread everywhere, like the fire in the woods: “If he can’t hold the top of a hill, how can he expect to hold the bottom?”

  But now they were preparing for precisely that. Swing; why? Swing back; why?

  “Stand back,” Billy yelled, pushing men as the elm swayed and tilted. The men scattered, the tree crashed, the volunteers leaped forward, stirring the raw, smarting smoke that came partly from the unseen cannon, partly from the fiery forest.

  Yesterday, while Hooker shilly-shallied and lost his chance at a superior position, Bob Lee and Old Jack had been busy outfoxing lim. Jackson had led his men on one of their famous lightning marches, this one a damnably risky flanking movement. But he had pulled it off without discovery and by nightfall stood ready to savage the Union right. Howard’s Dutchmen were at ease there, enjoying their supper. Old Jack’s whooping, screaming farm boys took them totally by surprise.

  That was the start of the end of Hooker’s great plan. Now the rebs were on the offensive throughout the second-growth forest. God knew where they would appear next—which was the reason Union soldiers were frantically preparing rifle pits to defend the open ground at the crossroads, while axmen, including Billy and his detachment, felled trees in front of the lines.

  They slashed off branches, bound others together with ropes and vines, sharpened still others and fixed them to point toward the smoke where the rebs might be lurking. The abatis was a defensive fortification, not one employed by troops who meant to march ahead and win. Perhaps Fighting Joe had lost the advantage at the same mysterious spot where he had misplaced his nerve. Even rumors that a stray reb ball had wounded or killed Old Jack last night didn’t lift the army’s gloom, any more than daylight had lifted the choking smoke.

  Chop and chop. Spinnington worked on Billy’s left, Lije just beyond. On his right, bent over so as to minimize exposure in case of a sniper attack, was a volunteer whose name he didn’t know. The man’s posture didn’t permit much work. Billy had an impulse to split the coward’s head with his ax, but he supposed Lije would object.

  White beard gleaming with sweat drops, Lije lifted his heavy ax with his right hand, as if it weighed no more than a straw. He pointed the ax at a tree larger than most, an oak about a foot in diameter.

  “That one next, lads. She will fall to the right if we cut her properly. We may then turn her ninety degrees and fix points on some of those topmost branches to torment the enemy.” Billy managed an exhausted laugh. What a rock Lije was. Every remark to his men was round and complete as a sermon sentence. Lije also spoke loudly, which was necessary because of the continual noise: drumming and bugling, men shouting, small arms crackling, strays from the beef herd mooing as they ran down the narrow turnpike or got snared in the forest vines and bled from thorn pricks. Catching a nap at three in the morning, Billy had had his stomach stepped on by a wandering cow.

  Now, renewed artillery fire increased the din. The firing came from south of Chancellorsville. Inexplicably, Sickles had been withdrawn from another piece of high ground, a place called Hazel Grove. Had the rebs moved fieldpieces into that favorable position?

  Billy and Lije attacked the oak from opposite sides. Lije met his eye, smiled in a weary, fatherly way. Chop and chop. Billy wished he had the older man’s faith. If God stood with the Union, why did Old Jack surprise and whip them every time?

  They had notched a white vee into the trunk when, above the noise of men, horses, wheels, guns, Billy picked up a more ominous one: the scream of a shell. “Put your heads down,” he shouted to those nearby. “That one’s coming in mighty—”

  The earth blew up around him, hurling him off his feet in a cloud of dirt and grass. He landed on his back, dazed. He breathed the heavy smoke, then coughed. Something lay on his bare chest: a large yellow-white wedge of heartwood blown from the trunk of the oak.

  Blinking, he focused on the tree as it started to topple, stirring the smoke. Men as dazed as he struggled to their feet. Lije stood well beyond the tree, and he, too, saw it coming down, directly on Spinnington. Knuckling his eyes, the corporal failed to hear the creak; the bombardment was too loud.

  “Spinnington, get out of there,” Billy yelled. Spinnington turned, dull-faced, still not comprehending. The rest happened very fast. Lije bowled forward and hit the corporal with his shoulder, intending to push him to safety and fall on top of him. Lije’s left boot tangled in a vine. He slammed on his chest, raised his head, clutched handfuls of weedy earth, and said, “Oh,” an instant before the oak fell on the small of his back.

  “Oh, Lord,” Spinnington whispered, standing unhurt a yard beyond Lije’s open mouth, closed eyes, fists clenching grass. Billy ran forward, shouting Lije’s name. Men hit the ground again; another shell struck twenty yards away. The concussion threw Billy on his rump and hurled bits of earth and stone into his face. Something grazed his left eyeball. Something else cut his cheek.

  Up again, he staggered to the fallen oak. Slowly, Lije’s eyes opened. Another shell hit to the left and well behind them. Pieces of a man rose up and fell back to the unfinished rifle pits. Cries and moans added to the other noise. Billy knew the pain Lije must be feeling, but only a slight moisture in the older man’s eyes betrayed it.

  “I’ll get you out, Lije.” He leaped for the tree, slipped his hands under, pulled. Pain shot through his back. The oak trunk didn’t move.

  He twisted around. “You men help me!”

  “Fruitless,” Lije murmured. He closed his eyes, licked his lips, repeated the word, then said, “Withdraw, Lieutenant. The enemy fire is growing too heavy. Withdraw—that is my direct—order.”

  Though badly frightened, several of the volunteers ran up and attempted to lift the oak. The trunk rose about two inches. Then the hands of one man slipped, and the oak fell again. Billy heard Lije’s teeth clench and scrape.

  “Withdraw,” he whispered.

  “No,” Billy said, his control breaking down.

  “William Hazard, I order—”

  “No, no.” He was crying. “I can’t leave you to die.”

  “‘What man is he that liveth—and shall not see death?’”

  “Don’t spout Scripture at me,” Billy yelled. “I won’t see you left here.”

  “I will not be.” Though Lije’s voice was faint, he articulated each syllable. “I trust the Master’s promise. ‘He that heareth—my word’”—in the shell-struck rifle pit, men shrieked like children, without cease—“‘—and believeth in Him that sent me—shall not come into condemnation but—is passed from death unto life.’ I was—meant to fall here. You are—meant to live and—take the
se men—”

  Another shell hit in the forest, shredding vines, blasting earth into the smoke, blurring Lije’s faint voice with its roar.

  “—to safety. I order you.”

  “Jesus,” Billy wept. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Do not—blaspheme. I order you. Live and—fight on. I—loved you like a son. This was—ordained.”

  It was not, Billy cried in secret places. It isn’t God’s will but chance and your stupid Christian sacrifice—

  “Come on, sir.” Hands tugged. “He’s dead, sir.”

  Billy looked down from the smoke to which his gaze had drifted. Lije’s eyes were closed, his face smooth. A silver line of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth nearest the ground. A grasshopper hopped onto his beard and sat there, as if curious about the dead giant.

  “Come on, sir,” Spinnington repeated. With surprising gentleness, he and another beardless volunteer took hold of Billy’s arms. He was dazed, muttering to himself. “We’ll come back for his body, don’t you worry,” said a faraway voice he didn’t recognize. He ground a dirty fist into his wet eyes and let them lead him.

  Near the headquarters encampment, a surgeon offered a bottle of whiskey. Two swallows jolted Billy awake, made him able to function again. He knew something he hadn’t known earlier. God did not rule a war such as this—if indeed He ruled anywhere.

  It was dismal to face that truth. Against it, Lije had worn the armor of his faith. It was good armor; it had protected him. Billy felt himself flawed—mean and weak—because he could not don the same armor. But he couldn’t. Not after his sojourn in the Wilderness, where the treetops burned through the night, pyres for the dead and dying. Where Billy had watched Lije die. Where Fighting Joe had turned advantage to stalemate, stalemate to defeat.

  The retreat to the river began in midmorning, soldiers, cannon, ambulances all pulling out in a mad melee as the reb infantry advanced while the reb artillery kept pounding. Billy, Spinnington, and two others stole forward into the shell-blasted area to retrieve Lije’s body. But the guns at Hazel Grove had poured in so much heavy fire and so many trees had ignited and the flames had spread so fast that Lije’s body resembled nothing human. None of them, not even Billy, could stand to touch it or look at it for more than a few seconds. They left the charred thing and withdrew.

  A realization struck Billy in the midst of the retreat. Well, at least he went to his rest on Sunday.

  77

  THROUGHOUT MONDAY NIGHT, THE military telegraph remained quiet for long periods. Tired men came and went at the War Department, some keeping vigil for an hour, others intending to stay until some news arrived. Stanley was among the latter, part of a small group whose status permitted waiting in Stanton’s office. The President was there for a while, stretched on his favorite couch but turning restlessly every few minutes.

  “Where is Hooker now? Where is General Stoneman? Why in thunder don’t they send word?”

  Stanley held his temples and worked two fingers down to rub his itching eyes. He was sick of the Chief Executive’s impatient rhetorical questions. So was Stanton, evidently; his voice rasped as he replied, “They will break silence at the opportune moment, Mr. President. I imagine the generals are busy consolidating our victory.”

  It was Tuesday, nearly sunrise. For the past twelve hours, as they received only the sketchiest reports and casualty figures on the wire, an unsupported consensus had spread like a bad cold. Hooker had won a victory, though at a high price.

  Not everyone had caught the cold. Welles, the bearded curmudgeon who held the Navy portfolio and had once been a newspaperman in Connecticut, had not. “Perhaps they’re silent because there is nothing but bad news. If we’d had success, the reports would be coming in volumes, not paragraphs.”

  The secretary gave him a long look. Lincoln, too, though his, sorrowing, contrasted sharply with the spleen of Stanton’s. “I am beginning to believe you’re right, Gideon.” Lincoln rose, wrinkled and unkempt, and put his plaid shawl around his shoulders. “Send a messenger the instant we have definitive news.” The military guards in the antechamber snapped to attention as he shuffled through the door.

  Falling asleep even though he had deliberately chosen a hard chair, Stanley hung on till half past eight, by which time the department’s daily routine was well started. With permission from the secretary, Stanley entered Stanton’s private dressing closet, splashed his face with tepid water from a basin, then some of Stanton’s cologne. He stumbled out into the spring morning in search of breakfast.

  He hoped to God that Hooker had won a victory. The party needed not one but several. The presidential election was little more than a year away, and if Lincoln went down, he would carry many others with him. Stanley cringed at the possibility. He had acquired a taste for his job and the power it carried. If Isabel had to retire to Lehigh Station for the rest of her life, she would blame him and make his life even more miserable than usual. A pity he didn’t have an antidote for Isabel—some younger and less shrewish female who would understand and sympathize with his problems.

  Even at this early hour, hawkers were out. One cried the virtues of bars of soap piled on his curbside stand. Another shoved a cheap telescope in George Hazard’s face. Military wagons, private carriages, hacks, and horseback riders crowded the avenue, along with pedestrians and the mule-drawn cars of the street railway. Bell clanging, one car blocked George’s passage across Pennsylvania. Short-tempered—last night he and William had argued over the boy’s poor marks, and George had slept badly—he scowled at the passengers. Most were men, but a few—

  A face, glimpsed and then gone, stunned him. A teamster swore at him. Wheel hubs brushed the skirts of his uniform coat. Then two horsemen blocked his view, and when they passed, it was too late for him to do anything unless he wanted to stage a one-man foot race to pursue the car. He shook himself and weaved on across the street like a drunken man.

  When Stanley entered Willard’s dining room, he saw his brother breakfasting alone at a table half in sunshine, half in shadow. Stanley’s first impulse was to leave. He hadn’t seen George since Wade’s defeat in the Senate, and undoubtedly George would crow about that. Had the situation been reversed, he would have.

  But the long vigil had left Stanley in a state not typical for him: he craved the companionship of someone from outside the War Department building. So he ignored the waiter motioning him to another table and proceeded to the one where George sat staring at his fried potatoes with a look Stanley thought odd indeed. George didn’t raise his head till his brother cleared his throat.

  “Hello, Stanley. Where did you come from?”

  “The telegraph room. I’ve been there all night awaiting news from Virginia.”

  “Is there any?”

  “Very little. May I join you?”

  George waved at a chair. Stanley put his tall hat on another, then sat, tugging his waistcoat down over the steadily growing bulge of his paunch. “Is something wrong, George? Trouble with Constance or the children?”

  Bastard, George thought. It was Stanley’s style to ask such questions with a hopeful tone. “Yes, there is. Ten minutes ago I saw a ghost.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Sir?” said the waiter, who had been hovering to take Stanley’s order.

  “Come back later,” Stanley snapped. “Tell me what you mean, George.”

  “I saw Virgilia. Riding one of the avenue cars.”

  Astonished, Stanley didn’t speak immediately. “I presumed Virgilia had gone far away from this part of the country. I’ve not heard from her or about her for two or three years.”

  “I’m certain it was she—well, virtually certain. You know she never cared for clothes, and this woman was smartly dressed. Her hair was stylish. Even with those differences—”

  “Obviously you aren’t certain at all,” Stanley broke in. “But suppose it was Virgilia. Why are you concerned? What difference would it make? None to me or Isabel, I assure you. I have
nothing in common with my sister except a last name and a loathing for the South.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder if she’s all right?”

  “Never. She’s a thief and a slut—and those are the kindest descriptions I can apply. I don’t care to discuss Virgilia or any other unpleasant topic. I have been up all night, and I want to eat a peaceful breakfast. I can do so at another table if you wish.”

  “Calm down, Stanley. Order something and I’ll keep quiet.”

  But he didn’t. He picked at his potatoes, took a bite of cold beef-steak bathed in greasy gravy, and said, “I do wonder sometimes. Where Virgilia is, I mean.”

  “That’s your prerogative,” Stanley said, taking the same tone he would have used with a man thinking of stepping in front of a fifteen-inch columbiad about to be fired. Conversation lagged after that. Stanley ordered and ate a huge breakfast, topped off with the last of seven muffins lathered in plum preserves. George, meantime, saw distorted, sharply angled images of the woman’s face sliding away in the street-railway car. In a strange way, the brothers were glad of each other’s company.

  As they left the dining room, Stanley paused to say hello to a pale, stooped individual just entering with some other men. George recognized Representative Stout, one of the Wade-Stevens gang. He and Stanley whispered like old cronies. George continued to believe that his brother had entrenched himself with the radicals out of expediency rather than conviction.

  Stout rejoined his friends, and the brothers went outside. “Going to work now?” Stanley asked. George said no, he planned to walk down three blocks to see whether the Evening Star had posted any recent bulletins.

  “I’ve taken to relying on the correspondents for accurate news. You boys in Stanton’s office seem to publish what’s favorable and quash the rest.”

  The insult galled Stanley, but he could think of no retort; unfortunately, his brother was right. He fell in step and accompanied him to the Star offices, a corner building on the wrong side of the avenue at Eleventh Street. They found a crowd of almost a hundred people reading the long handwritten strips hanging outside.