by Crowe (epub)
If there was any comfort to the Confederate troops, it was that the Union soldiers would have to cross that same scarred and sloppy ground after them if they were to reach Richmond.
It was on one of those cool, overcast May mornings, the kind that threatened to blow in even more showers before sundown, when Johnny woke up with the need to piss something fierce. He stepped over and Red and the others, making his way out of the tent and through the camp. It was still dark by the look of those clouds, Johnny didn’t think they’d see much of the sun today. He crossed his legs and bent his knees, hurrying past the sleeping army out toward the edge of camp, looking for a good spot to let loose.
Nearing the Captain’s tent, Johnny slowed down. His legs felt heavy, like he was walking with stones bound to his ankles. That familiar itching started in his left arm. Not now, Johnny thought. Can’t stop now. I’m fit to burst.
Johnny froze outside the Captain’s tent. Something on the ground had caught his eye. It was the Captain’s boots. His secretary had polished them and, not wanting to disturb the sleeping Captain, had left them here just outside the tent. Ain’t that nice, Johnny thought, scratching at the itching in his golden arm.
Then it all came together.
“No,” said Johnny out loud, squirming. “Not that.”
In response, Johnny’s left arm flared with pain, causing him to forget the pressure in his bladder. He might even have dribbled a little in his shorts, but Johnny was in too much pain to notice.
Johnny forced his feet to move, one after the other, until he was clear of the Captain’s tent. He didn’t stop until he had left the still sleeping camp far behind. Once he was sure he was alone and in a spot where he couldn’t get into trouble, Johnny undid his pants and relieved himself, tilting his head up to the overcast sky and exhaling in near ecstasy. His left arm ceased its searing and settled into a sullen throbbing.
While the Captain drove the men on, wearing in a dry and polished pair of boots, Johnny thought about the near incident that morning. Looking back, it seemed to him that the little tricks and pranks that the arm demanded from him had become more mean and reckless over the past week. Sure, Captain Reynolds made no disguise of the fact that he didn’t care much for Johnny, and it was true that Johnny didn’t particularly care much for the Captain, either, but pissing in the Captain’s boots? That was beyond Johnny. What if he had been caught? What if the Captain had heard someone rustling around outside his tent and poked his head out to find Johnny standing there fouling his boots? Johnny knew that the odds of the Captain awakening at just that time were slim, but in the past couple of days he had gotten the feeling that where his golden arm was concerned, that was just the sort of thing that would happen. It was almost as if the arm and whatever magic it possessed were looking to get him into trouble.
Johnny pictured Grandpa Crowe shaking his head in disappointment. “I raised you better’n that,” Johnny heard Grandpa say. “That sounds like somethin’ your ol’ dad would try to pull.” Johnny hadn’t ever known his father, but from the way Grandpa talked about him, Johnny knew that was just about the worst thing Grandpa could have said. His cheeks flushed with shame.
The thought of letting Grandpa down wore on Johnny throughout the day. When the first fat drops of rain began to fall, Johnny swore under his breath, “No more. I’m not going to do it anymore.”
His arm continued to throb.
That night, Johnny lay awake listening to the rain patter against the canvas tent. Despite his concerns about what might happen, he had kept his resolve and managed to go to bed without doing a single mean thing all day. His arm flared while he lay on his cot. Johnny had fixed it in his mind that he couldn’t feel anything from his left arm at all, despite his senses telling him otherwise. The night wore on and the pain increased. He had rolled up his sleeve once when he felt as though little bugs were climbing all over his arm, biting and stinging and burrowing under his skin, but there was nothing to be seen, just the golden sheen of the arm in the faint light. The hours dragged on. Johnny had just about decided that he couldn’t take it anymore, when the sound of someone laughing distracted him. A quick scan of the tent showed him that everyone else was fast asleep.
Around midnight the pain in Johnny’s arm surged one last time. Johnny clenched his teeth and felt hot tears streaming down his face, but remained silent. He was determined not to cry out, he wouldn’t let the arm win. All at once the pain subsided and the arm was still. Johnny lay motionless a while longer, expecting another attack to come as soon as he let his guard down, but it never came. The physical and mental exhaustion took its toll and soon Johnny fell into a fitful sleep.
That night he dreamed of little black imps with golden arms and long, black claws being danced around like marionettes on strings, clicking their tongues and cackling in that guttural language of theirs, their puppeteer hidden in the shadows.
The bugle echoed throughout the camp, Johnny had no way of knowing it would be the last he’d hear. Red and the other soldiers roused themselves and made their way out of the tent, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Outside, the rain had stopped and Johnny could hear other soldiers doing the same, awakening and sloshing across the muddy ground on their way to breakfast. Johnny started to get up, but changed his mind and laid on his cot, listening to the sounds of the camp.
Red poked his head back into the tent. “You comin’?” he asked.
Johnny sighed, then sat up on his cot and nodded.
“Better hurry,” said Red. “We got a wet march ahead of us today.” He studied Johnny, then asked, “You all right?”
“Yeah. Fine. Why?”
Red rubbed his hand against the stubble on the side of his face. “You was awful restless last night. Tossin’ and turnin’ and cryin’ out in your sleep.”
“Really? What did I say?”
Red thought for a moment. “Nothin’ much that I could make out, just a lot of whimperin’ around.”
“Yeah,” said Johnny. “Guess I was havin’ some bad dreams.”
“War will do that to a fella.”
“I’m all right,” Johnny said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Red shot Johnny a thin smile, then turned and left the tent. All alone, Johnny rolled up his sleeve and looked down at the shining golden arm. Once the pains had subsided, it hadn’t bothered him again the rest of the night. Johnny tried to raise his arm, but it hung lifeless at his side, the metal cool to the touch.
Red was right, it sure was a wet march. The rain had soaked the already saturated ground, turning the roads into a quagmire. The thick mud slurped and popped as the men marched, sucking at their boots and making it that much harder going. Nonetheless, the men marched on, passing wagons and caissons stuck in the road with soldiers pushing from behind while horses pulled from the front, attempting to wrest the wheels free.
Around mid-day, a courier rode from up the way to meet Captain Reynolds. The courier saluted while the Captain ordered his men to a stop.
“Captain Reynolds, sir,” said the courier. “A message from Sergeant Thames.”
Captain Reynolds took the letter and read it. Johnny felt a wave of foreboding, the Captain’s face reddening as his eyes scanned the page.
“It seems as though Sergeant Thames up ahead of us is in a bit of a spot,” the Captain sneered. “He says that one of his carts is stuck nearly up to the axle in the mud and ---” the Captain looked down at the letter again, “we hear that you have among your men a soldier with a golden arm and it is said that he possesses the strength of ten men in that arm of his. We would sure appreciate it if you could spare this man for a moment to help us out of the mud up here,” the Captain spat, passing the letter to Jensen and looked right at Johnny. “Well, boy, it seems that everyone in this army has heard about ya.”
Dread welled up inside of Johnny. He hadn’t told anyone about
his arm. Maybe a few of the soldiers had eyed the way it drooped at his side, but no one had said anything about it to him. Perhaps they were thinking about what it would mean if their good luck charm was gone.
The Captain pointed to Johnny. “Take this man with ya,” he said, shooting the courier a venomous look, “and give the Sergeant my regards.”
Johnny stepped forward and walked alongside the mounted courier in silence. It was his face’s turn to redden, not from anger but from embarrassment. Johnny hung his head while he plodded along in the mud and said nothing to the courier when he caught him stealing glances in his periphery. What would the men say when they found out that all the magic had gone out of Johnny’s arm?
Maybe I should’ve pissed in the Captain’s boots after all, thought Johnny.
They hadn’t traveled far before Johnny and the courier met Thames’s men scattered about the cart. The soldiers turned their heads at the sound of the two of them approaching. Johnny could tell from the looks on their faces that whatever they had expected, it wasn’t this scrawny boy from Devil’s Knob. Confused, the men parted to let them pass, and for the first time, Johnny got a good look at their predicament. The cart was a two-wheeled job and only the left wheel was stuck, the other was still on solid ground just off of the road. It was plain to see what had happened. On the far side of the road, the ground dropped off about twenty feet down a steep embankment. The driver had tried to steer the cart clear of a mudhole, but ran out of room on the shoulder of the road. With nowhere else to go, he had swerved back onto the road and got stuck anyhow. The wet furrows bore testament to the soldiers’ attempts to free the wheel on their own but to no avail. There simply wasn’t a good place to get a hold of the wagon and lift without slipping and sliding around.
Johnny looked around at the faces of the men, trying to think of some idea to help, but none came to him. He reached across his body and tried to rub some warmth back into his left arm, but it was no more than an anchor dragging him down. Seeing no way out of his predicament, Johnny stepped forward, planted his feet in the slop, and took hold of the wagon with his good hand.
“Wait a minute there, son.” Sergeant Thames placed a hand on Johnny’s shoulder.
Johnny let go of the wagon and faced the Sergeant.
“Is it true, then?”
“Is what true?” Johnny asked, irritated at having been put in this situation. Grandpa Crowe’s voice spoke in his head, reminding him that it was his own arrogance that had done this. The thought made him feel even worse. “Sir,” Johnny added.
“That you got a golden arm?” the Sergeant asked. Johnny felt the men around them draw closer.
“Yes, sir,” Johnny replied. He heard the troops closest to him gasp when he slid his gloves off and stuffed them into his pocket, first the right, then the left, exposing the golden hand. Johnny felt their greedy stares and knew they wanted to see more. He took off his coat - no small task with only one working arm - and unbuttoned his shirt. Johnny dipped his left shoulder and slipped it free.
No one spoke. The sunlight reflected off of the gold, illuminating the awestruck faces of the Sergeant and his men.
“All right then,” said the Sergeant, stepping back. He swept his arm toward the cart. “Have at it.”
The men backed away, giving Johnny a clear path to the cart. He pulled his shirt back over his shoulder but didn’t try to button it, knowing that the men would ask him why he didn’t use his left hand to help. Bleak though the situation was, something deep inside Johnny hoped for a miracle. For a brief time, Johnny had been somebody in the eyes of his fellow soldiers, he didn’t know whether his pride could take returning to Captain Reynolds and his men as a failure.
Johnny stepped up once again and took hold of the wagon with his good hand. He tried to lift, but knew it was futile even before he felt his boots sliding beneath him.
“Why not give it a try with your other arm?” Sergeant Thames asked.
Johnny released the cart. The men stirred. One of them whispered loud enough for Johnny to hear, “See, I told ya it weren’t true”.
Please, Johnny thought.
All at once, a faint tingling grew in Johnny’s fingertips and traveled up his golden arm. He looked down at his left hand, trying to flex it. His fingers curled into a fist, then relaxed. Johnny dug his heels into the mud, bent his knees, and grabbed the cart, one hand on either side of the stuck wheel. Johnny strained to stand up straight and lift the cart. His back creaked and the wagon groaned as its load shifted. Tendons stood out like cords on Johnny’s neck and the veins in his head throbbed. The movement was almost imperceptible, but the wheel was raised a little at a time until it hovered, free, over the mudhole.
All around him the men broke out in whoops and applause. Johnny smiled, that familiar feeling of pride coming back, when his arm began to tingle once more, this time receding away from his shoulder and draining out of his fingers.
“No,” Johnny said under his breath, but it was too late. The arm had a mind of its own.
Johnny feet slipped, then shot out from under him. He landed hard on his rump, forcing an “oof” from his lips. A moment later came a crunching sound, followed by intense pain. Johnny screamed. His legs were sticking out in front of him, the wagon wheel pinning him to the road where it landed just below his knees, his crushed legs keeping the wheel from sliding back into the mud.
“Good Lord,” cried the Sergeant, rushing forward. Others joined him and they grabbed Johnny by the shoulders and pulled, trying to free him from the cold mud that crawled up his pant legs and back and out from under the wheel. Every time they hefted on him, the pain in his legs flared and Johnny cried out time and again. It was no use, he was stuck.
“You.” The Sergeant pointed at the courier. “Go get Captain Reynolds.”
The courier looked down the road and replied, “He’s already here.”
Captain Reynolds halted his men once more, surveying the scene. The Captain dismounted, handed the reins to Jensen, and strode to where Johnny sat in the mud.
“Well, boy,” the Captain said, unable able to keep the smile from his face, “what did ya do?”
Johnny’s head swam. It felt as though he was looking through a tunnel. Blackness edged its way into his field of vision and tightened in on him. He found it hard to focus and was unable put his thoughts into words. His left arm, however, was thinking just fine on its own. It raised its golden hand in front of the Captain’s face, middle finger extended. No, the arm had no problem at all communicating what it thought of the Captain.
The Captain sprang back like he had been slapped, which if he stayed where he was is what the arm would have done next. Some of the men chuckled, then snapped into silence when the Captain rounded to face them.
“Move out, Sergeant,” the Captain said to Sergeant Thames.
“Beg your pardon, Captain?”
Captain Reynolds turned on the Sergeant. “Ya asked for my assistance in getting your wheel out of the mud. It looks to me as though my man has freed yer wheel. Please move yer wagon so that I may collect the soldier underneath.”
The Sergeant looked in horror past the Captain to where Johnny sat. “You don’t mean ---”
“I think ya know precisely what I mean, Sergeant. Move out.”
Sergeant Thames nodded to one of his men, who jumped up on the driver’s seat of the wagon, causing Johnny to cry out, more at the movement of the wagon than at the extra weight of the driver. The driver snapped the reins and the mare hitched to the front pulled. The wagon lurched forward, its wheel rolling over Johnny’s legs and onto the solid dirt beyond.
Sergeant Thames started toward Johnny, but Reynolds shot out a hand and cut him off. “This is my man,” growled Reynolds. “I’ll see to him.” The Sergeant stepped back from Reynolds as though the Captain was a dangerous animal. He ordered his men into fo
rmation, then ordered them up the road. The soldiers marched on in silence, no one daring to look back. Sergeant Thames stole one last look over his shoulder, shook his head, and continued on.
“Get these men moving,” Captain Reynolds called.
“What about Crowe, sir?” asked Jensen.
“What about him?” asked Reynolds.
Jensen snapped off a salute and ordered the men to move out, following Sergeant Thames’ line. Reynolds stayed where he was until the last of his soldiers crested a rise in the road and disappeared from view. When they were out of sight he turned to Johnny.
“Can’t leave ya like this, can we?” asked Reynolds, speaking more to himself than to Johnny, who was just about beyond hearing him anyways. Reynolds strutted to the shoulder of the road, a self-satisfied smile on his face, grabbed hold of Johnny’s feet and pulled. Johnny was thrown back, his head bounced off of the road then drug through the mud. The Captain pulled Johnny out of the rut and onto the solid ground that served as the shoulder of the road, then kicked the boy in the ribs. Johnny rolled down the embankment and landed with a crash in the undergrowth, thorns and branches scratching his face and tearing his flesh.
As he heard Captain Reynolds laughing above him, Johnny thought Who’d ever think to look for me down here? before he blacked out.
“I told you… that arm’s got a mind of its own.”
Johnny opened his eyes to find Mr. Scratch looking down on him, smiling.
“You found me,” Johnny said, his voice weak. He cleared his throat and spat into the dirt. That was a little better.
