The Judas Field

by Bahr, Howard;

  “What?” said the boy, cocking one eye open.

  “You hear those drums?” said Cass. “That is the call to arms. It means we are goin’ into this broke-dick fight.”

  “I won’t wait up,” said the boy, and closed his eye again.

  “By God,” said Cass. He knelt and pried the boy’s eye open with a thumb. “Listen here, spawn,” he said. “You keep watch over that fire yonder till we get back. Don’t let anybody steal those greens. Understand?”

  The boy brushed Cass’s hand away. “Do I get some if I do?”

  “You may,” said Cass. “I may also kick your ass if you don’t. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Clear as horse piss, squire,” said the boy.

  Cass started for the color line again, and along the way met First Sergeant William ap William Williams.

  “Here, Wakefield, damn you!” said the first sergeant, and pointed at the sleeping boy. “What is that, pray?”

  “Oh, that’s my substitute,” said Cass. “Can I go home now?”

  “Could I be shut of you so easy,” said Williams, “I would pay the man myself. Now, that yonder is but a whelp. Where did it come from?”

  “Well, damned if I know, Bill,” said Cass. “It just showed up.”

  “All right, all right,” said the first sergeant, and gave Cass a shove. “Go on, now. See to your lads.”

  The company was already in line, the stacks of muskets disassembled. Roger handed Cass his musket and accoutrements—a trifle smirkish, thought Cass, as he took his place behind the line.

  Captain Sullivan strode out in front. “Load and come to shoulder arms,” he said.

  The men went through the drill, complaining. They had grown lazy over the space of the day, content to let their comrades in other brigades knock their heads against the yankees. Now Adams’s Brigade was forming up at last, scattered across backyards and streets and alleys. The customary rumors made their rounds: they were going to attack the works, they were going for the pontoon bridge, an Angel of the Lord had appeared on high, and so on. Even the men who spread the rumors did not believe them. No one was taking this fight seriously.

  Cass refused to believe they were really going into battle. He declined to consider an attack on the Federal fortress. General Hood, in the last few weeks, had made it clear that, in his view, attacking entrenched positions was the only true test of a soldier, but here was an array of works even the cavalier must find daunting. Cass had read newspaper accounts of fortresses that “frowned,” and he had always thought the phrase an exaggeration, but this one frowned. It glowered at them like a living thing. It was dark and muddy and sinister, bristling with armed men, and there was no end to it. You could see it down every street. From the ramparts, a big National flag waved defiantly, as if posing for a correspondent or a sketch artist. Somewhere behind the works, a Federal band was playing, and the Adams’s Brigade band began to play in reply.

  The brigade moved out in columns of regiments, crowding into the narrow street. Citizens watched from the windows of their houses or from the porches. They did not cheer or offer encouragement; they did not wave any contraband Confederate flags or sing “Dixie”; no old codgers emerged with flintlock or pike to join the fray. The citizens merely watched, benumbed and resentful.

  The soldiers paid them no mind, for the citizens were irrelevant now, inhabiting a world removed across an unbridgeable chasm. All the homely elements of that world—the houses, the furniture inside, quilts, buckets, fences, a child’s wooden toy left in a yard—were known to the soldiers once, but now they seemed to lose all dimension, like a photographer’s painted backdrop. The men quit their talk and laughter. The mud pulled them down at once, so that their passage became a slow struggling. Drummers gave up trying to beat a cadence. Companies got mixed up with other companies; the press of bodies lifted some men off their feet, pushed others into fences and ditches. Men who did not swear by custom swore now. Some fell and had to be helped from the mire, and valuable shoes were sucked away and lost.

  Still Cass did not believe. He gritted his teeth and pushed and shoved his men forward. Like the rest, he was only dimly aware of the scene through which they passed, but it nagged him nevertheless. Here in the street was chaos, a mad current running down to death, bearing the men along—and just over there curtains fluttered, a pitcher sat in a windowsill, sheets lay over a line to dry. Both sides of the chasm could not be real, he thought. They could not possibly exist at the same time. No, the one over there had to be real. That’s where Janie was, he thought: safe among the quiet streets. Keep her safe, he prayed silently. Let the angels watch.

  The street ended abruptly, and the brigade emerged into a vast, brick-colored field. Great clouds of blackbirds rose from the earth and swirled into the sky, chattering and complaining. The field was already churned to morass, but the soldiers were driven into it anyhow, their shouldered rifles wobbling every which way. Cass dragged himself along. Surely they would be called back any minute; surely they would not be sent against that loom of earth.

  Now the colors were uncased, opening out in the breeze, and the brigade went into line of battle facing the river. Cass could glimpse the pale shine of the stream, but it worked in him no yearning for rivers. He was beginning to believe what was happening, and he was already detaching the part of him that would participate from the part which would remember. Between the brigade and the river was a railroad fill, and on this slight elevation, insolent Federal officers peered at them with spyglasses. Presently, the space behind the railroad became crowded with shining bayonets and the dark masses of the enemy. It was a sortie in force; the yankees were coming out to meet them.

  Another fact became immediately apparent when a gun fired from the ramparts. The brigade was exposed, spread out in the field like geese. Here, at last, was a thing to be taken seriously. They heard the report, saw the white smoke snatched away on the breeze, heard the whistling of the shell. The round splatted in the ground to their front, exploded, showered them with gobbets of mud. Soon other guns were firing, and in a moment men were tossed into the air, legs flailing, rifles spinning away.

  Colonel Sansing rode along the front of the line on his big gray charger, one of the few times Cass had seen him mounted in a fight: The colonel waved his hat, his white hair streaming. “Get ready, boys!” he shouted. “Remember ol’ Mississippi!”

  “Ol’Mississippi!” the men shouted in return.

  “Close it up, now, boys,” said the officers. “Make ready.”

  They fixed bayonets. They were going to stand and volley, like in the old days. General Hood would not have them dig, not for the world. Across the railroad, they could see the enemy lowering for a volley. They could see the rifles come down, and every man ached to run, but the wire coiled around them and held them fast. “Stand by, lads,” said the officers. “Steady, now.” Meanwhile, the Death Angel rubbed his hands. The volley came, a rolling boil of white smoke lit by flashes, then the fizz and hum of fat minié balls, and men were tossed backward, or spun about, or dropped in place like stovepipes kicked over. Now, time to return fire. The orders were given: Fire by volley! Ready! Aim! Behind the line, Cass watched the rifle muzzles lower. Fire! The regiment let go in a single crash—Cleburne’s old boys took pride in their volleys—and the white smoke whipped back over them, obscuring the field. Load! The ramrods were hardly out when the countermand was given: Cease loading! Charge bayonets! Forward at the common time. …

  Another volley boiled out from the railroad. Colonel Sansing’s horse went down, all legs and flapping stirrups. The colonel rose, mud-covered; he cursed and stomped forward with his sword out. They pushed ahead through the mud, into the white veil that hung before them like a cloud. They always argued the point afterward: was it better if you could see, or better if you couldn’t? In any event, they were all believers now, and the rage was leaking from them like steam. Cass kept his rifle at the shoulder, pushing the men with his free hand against their backs, pu
lling them up from the mud when they stumbled, dragging them from the line when they fell. “Close up. Close up,” he said, over and over, thinking, It’s all right. This is not real. It’s not real. Janie is real. He was intent on his work, fixing his mind on the instant he was walking in, so he did not notice at first the pulling at his jacket skirt or the voice behind him.

  “Hey. Hey, mister!”

  Reluctantly, angrily, Cass was jerked back into the stream of time. It was the boy Lucifer. Cass looked at him in astonishment. “What! What are you doing here!”

  The line was moving. A man broke ranks to run away, and Cass pushed him back with his rifle. “What!” he said to the boy. “What, what, what!”

  “I come to tell you—” the boy began, but his voice was swallowed in the bam-bam of an exploding shell, this one to the rear of the line, so close it knocked Cass and the boy off their feet. Cass scrambled up, hauled the boy erect by the coat collar, and shook him. “What!” he cried. Blood was trickling from his ears and from the boy’s nose.

  “That ole woman!” shouted the boy, wiping at his nose. “You all wasn’t gone five minutes, she come out and—”

  Another shell exploded, and they were showered with mud and old cotton stalks. Cass pulled the boy along, trying to keep up with the line. They were running now, closing in, the terrible cry rising from their throats.

  “She come and took all them greens, pot and all!” shouted the boy, running beside Cass. “The man hit me with a ax handle!”

  They stumbled over a deep furrow. Cass stopped, shoved the boy down, and knelt beside him. “I don’t care about that!” he shouted in the boy’s ear. “Don’t tell me that! You stay right here, you understand me!”

  But it was too late. The yankees swarmed over the railroad bed, the two lines clashed, and in an instant Cass and the boy were in the midst of a wild melee of shouting, cursing men, of officers firing their pistols and the clack-clack of bayonets, all swirling in the smoke. Cass did not even have time to be afraid. He straddled the boy and set his feet, and here they came. Cass parried a man’s blow, struck him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle. Another man thrust and missed, stumbled off balance; Lucifer grabbed his leg, and he went down in a clatter of accoutrements, and Cass drove his bayonet in where the straps crossed on his back. The boy pushed the dead man off, pointed, shouted. Cass turned in time to fire his musket into a little man with hairy knuckles. Now Cass was in a rage, his blood hot and poisoned. It always happened: one minute he was begging in his mind for it to stop; in the next, he wanted it to last forever, wanted them to keep on coming so he could kill them. He parried and thrust, nearly blind with the smoke. He was only dimly aware of the men around him yet fully aware of himself. He could feel his clothes move across his skin, feel his shoes slipping in the red mud, hear his own breath rasping. Someone let off a rifle next to his ear, and powder grains burned his cheek. His hands were so slippery now that he could hardly hold his rifle; his mouth was full of grit, eyes stinging with sweat, nerves quivering. Keep on. Keep on. You couldn’t quit. You had to believe you could beat them, no matter how big, no matter how fiercely they yelled. You had to believe that.

  Then, all at once, the fight was over. The Federal drums were beating retreat from the works, their soldiers scrambling back over the railroad fill. The boys made to pursue but were held in check by the officers, which only made the soldiers madder. They were hot for blood now—anybody’s, no matter.

  The men howled and complained; the officers cursed. Lanky Paul Caudell threw his rifle in the mud and stomped on it. “Every God damned time!” he cried. He looked at Cass. “Every time they run, we quit! Quit!”

  In a moment, the brigade was passing in column over its dead, hurrying back to town. Cass pulled the boy out of the mud and got him to moving. He tried not to look at the dead men as he passed—men lying singly or locked or piled together, friend and enemy all the same now, dead. His nerves still jumped and fluttered, and he looked on the rooftops of the town with disgust. He wanted to be clawing at the works, driving the sons of bitches into the river. He was invincible, immortal, an Angel of Death.

  “Man, oh, man!” said the boy. He was digging in his nose with a bloody finger. “Lord God Almighty!”

  Cass pulled the boy’s hand away. “Don’t be doing that,” he said.

  “Lord, that was a circus!” said Lucifer.

  The boy’s hair was wet with blood, and the sight of it made Cass’s anger swell renewed and vigorous. “You say that fellow hit you?” he asked.

  The boy rubbed his scalp. “Feel of my head. They’s a knot right there where he laid into me, the son bitch.”

  “Don’t be cussin’,” said Cass. He touched the boy’s head, felt the knot. “He hit you with a ax handle?”

  “Well, it might have been a hoe,” said the boy.

  “Goddammit,” said Cass. He set out at a trot up the flank of the regiment, the boy running beside. When he passed Roger and Ike Gatlin, he pulled them out of line. “Come on,” he said, and the two followed without question.

  “Where the nation you goin’?” demanded Captain Sullivan as they passed, but Cass trotted on without answer. In a moment, Roger said, “Where are we going, anyhow?” Cass outlined the circumstance.

  “Good,” said Roger. His face was speckled with blood. “Good. Let’s go.”

  “Good,” said Ike.

  It was as if they had not stopped from the moment they set their feet against the charging enemy. They went into the streets, scattering citizens before them, their bayoneted rifles at port arms. They entered the yard, passed the dying cookfire, and came around the front of the house. Cass clattered up the steps, across the porch, and drove his rifle butt into the door, splintering the latch. The door swung open a little; Cass kicked it so that it slammed hard inward, the sound echoing through the house. Cass and Roger and Ike Gatlin and the boy Lucifer burst all together into the front hall. It was empty of furniture, but firewood was stacked by the stairs. Halfway up the staircase stood the man and woman, the man in front with a single-barrel bird gun in his hands.

  The woman screeched, “You’uns goddamn rebels get outen my house!”

  Cass never stopped; he was on the stairs in an instant. The man was about to speak, was raising the shotgun when Cass grabbed the muzzle and pulled hard and sent the man tumbling past him. The woman screeched like a hawk, was on Cass in a moment. He retreated, the woman clawing at him, shrilling, until Ike Gatlin grabbed her from behind.

  “Hold her, Ike,” said Cass. “Get her outside!”

  “Goddamn these yellerhammers!” said Ike. “They are full of meanness!” He dragged the woman out the door with her kicking all the while at his shins, and biting, and flailing with her fists.

  The man was pulling himself off the floor. He was fifty, maybe, but stout, with big hands and purple veins in his face. He was fumbling for the shotgun when Cass pulled him up by his hair and slapped him hard across the face, and again, and again, driving the man back across the stack of wood. “Strike a boy, would you?” snarled Cass.

  “Hit him again!” cried Lucifer.

  The man made to rise again, but Cass swung and laid him out. He kicked the shotgun away. “Roger,” he said, “there a fire on the hearth?”

  “A good big one in the parlor,” said Roger. He was already gathering up chunks of firewood, piling them in the crook of his arm.

  “Stoke her up,” said Cass. “Throw in some furniture!”

  In a moment, the fire was blazing, bulging from the hearth, spitting fat coals over the puncheon floor. Lucifer found some chairs and threw them in. He tried a horsehair couch, but it was too big, so he broke up a spindly table. The dry wood caught up like tinder.

  When they came out the door, Cass was dragging the man by his coat collar, and smoke was already boiling out the downstairs windows. Cass bumped the man down the front steps and let him drop. The woman was silent now; Ike had her backed up against an oak tree in the yard.

  Sol
diers were running past in the street. “It’s a big skedaddle!” one shouted. “We leavin’ town!” said another. Some stopped to look at the house. “Say, that house is afire,” one pointed out.

  “Too late, can’t save it now!” said Cass. “All we could do to get these folks out!”

  Roger shook his finger at the woman. “Ought not to leave lighter wood so close to the hearth,” he said.

  The soldiers went on, satisfied. It wasn’t their house. Cass knelt by the woman. “Anybody else in there? You better tell me now.”

  The woman gritted her teeth. “Did you kill Homer?” she snarled.

  “No,” said Cass. “Now, is anybody still—”

  The woman spat in his face.

  “I already ast her that,” said Ike. His cheek was bloodied where she’d scratched him. “I reckon if she had chillun, they wouldn’t burn anyhow.”

  All over town, drums were beating assembly. Companies, regiments, brigades were forming up in the crowded streets again. Horsemen spattered past. The house was spouting flame now, popping and crackling, the smoke rising in a dirty gray column. They could feel the heat of it.

  They stood a moment longer and contemplated what they had done. The woman pulled herself erect and leaned against the trunk of the oak. In the twilight, the flames were harsh on her face. “I lived in that house all my life,” she said.

  “Well, you sold it cheap,” said Cass. “A mess of goddamned turnips.” He shook his head. “Come on, boys,” he said. They gathered up their traps, and in a moment they were in the road, running to find the regiment.

  8

  THE DAY AFTER THE FUTILE BATTLE OF DECATUR, THE army was near Muscle Shoals, halted for a while. Cass and the boy were walking through the camp. Cass said, “Lucifer, how did you come to be here, anyhow? Why ain’t you off rolling hoops somewhere, or turning over privies like a natural boy?”