Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  O’Keefe paused, shuffled a few sheets of paper.

  “Ah, here it is. This is Colonel Randolph speaking.

  “Early hit us an hour before twilight, and it was horrible. Eric and I had been riding along the line, inspecting fortifications, as we expected an attack the next morning. We were not under cover, and had no chance to take cover. The Confederate cannoneers opened fire, and their cavalry began the onslaught against Cemetery Ridge. I don’t recall any of it. I remember falling from my horse, and looking up to see my boot still in the stirrup. My horse was falling towaird me, and beyond my horse I saw Lieutenant Gunnarson. He was no longer on his horse, and he was not on the ground, either. He seemed to be suspended in midair, spinning in a blaze of blood…”

  “Oh, my God!” Kristin cried, hugging her stomach.

  “Mr. O’Keefe,” said Isabel, very calmly, with a nervous glance at her friend, “perhaps we had better—”

  “No,” said Kristin, gathering herself, “I want to hear it all.”

  “That’s about it,” said O’Keefe, shrugging. “Colonel Randolph is recuperating in the hospital at Harrisburg, and learning to get around on one leg. As to Gunnarson, the official report is ‘missing and presumed dead.’”

  “Missing!” cried Kristin, hopefully.

  O’Keefe looked pained.

  “But they would have found his body!” Isabel interjected. “Wouldn’t they have?”

  O’Keefe shook his head. “Either of you women ever seen a battlefield after the action’s over?”

  Isabel and Kristin had not.

  “Well, there are plenty of bodies, and there are many, many pieces of bodies that never get matched up, and there are some bodies that vanish all together, just get blasted into atoms.”

  …spinning in a blaze of blood…

  O’Keefe waited, hoping he would not have to state the obvious. But the women were looking at him, waiting for his words, wanting him to confirm some horrible thing he himself didn’t even want to think about. Oh, life itself endures, one way or another. But the individual life was so fragile, like a tiny spark in the hurricane, and it might be expunged in an instant, with no one to see or to mourn.

  “The Rebs,” he said, “they were using chained balls at Gettysburg.”

  “Chained balls?”

  “Two heavy cannonballs, chained together, and fired at the same time. They come through the air whirling all around. Colonel Randolph is of the opinion that a pair of these hit Gunnarson. And that there’s nothing left of him. So ‘missing and presumed dead’ means—”

  “Dead,” said Kristin. “No, I don’t believe it.” She started to get up from her chair. “No, it can’t be.”

  “There, there,” said Isabel, going to her.

  “Perhaps I’d better leave now,” offered O’Keefe,

  “It can’t be. I won’t believe it!” Kristin said.

  “That’s right, that’s right,” Isabel responded soothingly. Kristin, Isabel knew, was protecting herself, protecting herself by denying what had happened. The grief would come soon. Denial gave a person one more moment, one more hour, one more day to get ready for the dead empty blackness of bereavement.

  Isabel took O’Keefe to the door. “Thank you,” she said. “We needed to know.”

  “At a time like this, I don’t like to talk about money, but…”

  “It’s all right. I understand. You’ve done well. We had to know. Just have the bill sent over.”

  O’Keefe departed, and Isabel sat down beside Kristin.

  “It is not true,” Kristin was saying, holding her stomach.

  Odd, thought Isabel, she does not look bereaved, she is not stricken in that way.

  “It is not true,” Kristin repeated, “it is not true!”

  “Come, dear. Let’s rest now.”

  “I don’t want to rest! Missing and presumed dead. Presumed is a big word.”

  “Big enough,” replied Isabel. “Big enough.”

  For hope.

  V

  The commanding officer’s tent sat, cool and serene, on a hill overlooking the training field. For two weeks now the Union army trainees had marched and run and crawled upon the dust of that field, cursing and sweating in the humid Maryland summer. Beginning as a ragtag assortment of disgruntled and sometimes angry individuals, they had begun to work as a team. Their marching was not yet precise, but marksmanship was improving daily, bayonet drills were effected with brutal efficiency, and teamwork in loading and firing the cannon was so creditable that even the sergeants withheld criticism. Criticism withheld meant praise.

  But, eating hard tack and beef jerky around their campfires at night, the recruits wondered.

  “Here we are, getting ready to die for our country,” complained Wayne Cleavis, a farm boy from Binghamton, “and we ain’t even seen our commanding officer. I want to have at least a look at the CO before I go out on the battlefield with ’im.”

  “Maybe we don’t even have no CO,” pondered Willis Krantz, a mean-looking renegade from the hills of Ohio, who bragged that he had been given a choice between the Army or the gallows. “All’s I see up there is a big tent with a couple of sentries in front of it. You know something? Maybe there ain’t a Colonel Scott Randolph at all.”

  “Sure, an’ maybe there ain’t any Abe Lincoln, either,” shot Tim Finnegan, a tough little Irishman straight from Cork County by way of Boston and New York, “an’ maybe there ain’t a war, an’ we’ve already died an’ gone to the Blessed Mither.”

  “Shut your mouth, you stupid grinning paddy. I’ll teach a furriner like you when to open your yap.”

  “Easy,” Eric Gunnarson cautioned. “We’re not here to fight among ourselves.”

  The men around the campfire quieted. By virtue of skill, discipline, and strength, Eric had been appointed their squad leader. “Sven,” Sergeant Rollins had said, “you look like you could whip any of this bunch, so you be the squad leader.”

  So far Eric had not had to prove the truth of Rollins’s estimate.

  “An’ what the hell business is it of yours?” grunted Krantz. “I’ll say what I goddam well—”

  “It’s a free country,” Eric retorted, “say what you please. I just don’t care to hear you, that’s all.”

  Krantz glared at him. “Well, I ain’t moving from this campfire.”

  “Then you’d better shut up.”

  Krantz thought it over. He had killed a man, and he knew he was tough. But the man he had killed was unarmed, and Eric had a bayonet, a knife, and a rifle. So did Krantz, but by his lights even Steven was bad odds.

  “You don’t know if there’s a CO either,” he whined. “Ain’t that so? All’s we see up there on the hill is a nice cool tent. Man goin’ into combat got a right to know the warp and woof of his CO. Now ain’t that right?”

  A subdued mutter of agreement rose from the squad members.

  Eric, in fact, had been wondering about Colonel Scott Randolph himself. Sam Lapin had said he was “hard but fair,” that he might teach Eric a thing or two. Was that so? Hard to tell, without having met the man and judged him face to face. In the mountains of Norway there was no other way to judge.

  Eric stood up.

  “Where you going?” asked Cleavis, the farm boy.

  “Up to the tent to see Randolph.”

  “Like hell you are,” Krantz guffawed. “You ain’t got the balls for that. Ain’t any of us got the balls for that. To see him at all, you got to go through the lieutenant, and then the captain, and then the major.”

  “I don’t see any of them around, do you?”

  And so, leaving his men gaping over their mess kits, Eric shouldered his rifle and started up the hill toward the commanding officer’s tent. The flag of the United States flew in front of it, along with the regimental colors. Seeing Eric approach, a sentry in front of the tent stiffened, lifting his weapon, bringing it across his body.

  “State your business, soldier.”

  “I wish to speak to
the commanding officer.”

  “By whose authorization?”

  “Personal request”

  “Request denied. Get out of here. He’s having dinner.”

  “It’s very important.”

  The sentry hesitated. It was highly unusual for a trainee to want to see the CO. Most—if not all—trainees wanted to avoid contact with the CO, as well as with other superiors. Superiors almost always meant trouble, or extra work. “Stay away from headquarters,” was a common watchword among the troops.

  “What is it then, if it’s so important?”

  “A personal matter.”

  “You’re a soldier now. You don’t have any personal matters.”

  “Let the colonel be the judge of that.”

  The sentry took another minute, thinking it over. So Eric put to use a morsel of intelligence he had acquired. Subordinates were generally fearful of doing the wrong thing, and they so often did not seem to know what was right and what might later be considered wrong.

  “You may be in big trouble if I cannot see the CO now,” he said. “But if that’s what you say…”

  He turned, as if to retreat back down the hill.

  “Wait! I’ll announce you. But if this goes bad, it’s on your head, not mine.”

  The sentry entered the tent, and came out. He was grinning. “Go on in. He’s in a bad mood. I want to see how long you last.”

  Eric pushed aside the tent flap, and went in. The command tent was large and square. A kerosene lantern burned brightly on a table, and seated at the table, knife and fork raised, gleaming white napkin tucked into his shirt collar, was a tall, lean man with closely cropped black hair, and a meticulously trimmed Vandyke. In spite of the fact that this tent was on a remote army training post, Eric noted the wine bottle in a silver bucket, the heavy china, and the blood-red rib of roast that the Colonel was eating.

  “What is it, soldier?”

  Eric saluted, held the salute. Colonel Randolph lifted a fork to his temple. Eric dropped the salute.

  “I just came to see if you were here, sir?”

  “What in heaven’s name…?”

  “My men were wondering if you were here. We haven’t seen you, and—”

  “Silence,” said Randolph, emphatically but not loudly. “Stand at attention. Who are you?”

  “Private Gunnarson, sir. Squad leader of the—”

  “Silence, Gunnarson. Stay at attention. I am going to teach you a lesson.”

  Eric tensed. He had done the wrong thing. The sentry had been right. So he stood there, waiting, his muscles straining at attention after a fatiguing day on the field. But the colonel paid him no attention. As if Eric were not there at all, he returned to his dinner, eating slowly, sipping the wine. From time to time a steward, whom Eric had not at first seen, advanced from the shadows of the tent, to fill the colonel’s glass, and then retreat once more to his position.

  “That will be all,” said the colonel, at length, and the steward removed the serving dishes, and cleared the table.

  “Well now,” said the colonel to Eric, after the steward had departed, “you may be at ease. What have you learned here?”

  Randolph was smiling. He expected little from a foot soldier, a raw recruit, save perhaps a request to be dismissed.

  “I learned a great deal about command.”

  “Oh? Is that so?”

  “And I learned why you remain aloof from the men.”

  “Interesting. You learned this by watching me gnaw on beefsteak?”

  “Yes, sir. However much the men grumble about him, they want a leader who is special. Few men are special. So the man who wishes to command must consciously set himself apart, by gesture, behavior, even affectation.”

  “And I have chosen to do this by remaining remote, in my tent?”

  “I think so. Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Randolph pursed his lips, and nodded, studying Eric. “How afraid are you to die, Private?”

  “I don’t want to die. Sir.”

  “But are you afraid to die?”

  “More at some times than at other times.”

  “Do you think you would ever turn tail and run in battle?”

  This was a question discussed and debated constantly by the men in the training detachment. Everyone denied they would actually do it, but some let on that they were afraid they might, in a moment of panic.

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never been in combat.”

  “Surely you must have had the usual number of fights, though, growing up, women, things like that?”

  Dangerous ground, thought Eric. Would the bloody corpse of Subsheriff Johanson never decompose, never disappear into the atoms of history?

  But Randolph did not seem to know about Johanson. He had something else on his mind. “You haven’t your citizenship papers, have you, Gunnarson?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I meant to apply for them, but many things happened, I was ill—”

  “I don’t tolerate excuses.”

  “Sir, I am not giving excuses,” replied Eric, stung.

  Randolph nodded.

  “What are you going to tell your squad members when you go back down to the campfire?”

  “I shall tell them that the colonel is an intelligent man, whom I would follow into battle.”

  Surprisingly Randolph laughed. It was a deep laugh, full of humor and enjoyment, so much at variance with his restrained, severe demeanor. “You have no choice but to follow me into battle, Private.”

  “Sir, some follow willingly, and others are merely made to march.”

  The smile disappeared. “Gunnarson,” the colonel asked intently, “do you think you could lead men?”

  “Yes,” said Eric, without pause.

  “All right Gunnarson, I am impressed by what you have done. Not one in a thousand troopers would come up here just to see what I looked like. But, also, in spite of my distance from day-to-day training, I have kept careful watch on the training reports. You have been evaluated in the upper categories. The very highest categories, as a matter of fact. Now, I cannot disclose general plans, but action in battle may not be far off. The conscription has brought manpower back up to standard, but our officer ranks were severely depleted at Chancellorsville. If you continue to do well for the rest of this month of training, and if I continue to need officers, would you accept a commission?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Eric, again without hesitation. He was well aware of the dangers. The person most likely to die first on the field of battle was a lieutenant, out there on the line, directing his troops. Even mere privates were but second on death’s list. Eric was aware of this, but he had not forgotten something the colonel had said, and that Sam Lapin had mentioned in New York: an officer received citizenship.

  “Yes, sir,” Eric repeated.

  “That is all, Gunnarson. I shall be keeping an eye on you. Dismissed.”

  “What’s he like?” asked Krantz and Cleavis and the others, when Eric came down the hill.

  “He said we might be in battle soon.”

  “But what is he like as a person?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know? Look, we saw yus go into the tent. You mean he’s not there? Well, is he or isn’t he?”

  “He’s there. I mean, he did not allow me to see what he is like as a person. But, judging him as an officer, I am very impressed.”

  The men muttered about this a bit, then gradually drifted off to ready their bedrolls for the night. Eric did likewise, thinking. To be an officer. It was dangerous, but an honor. It was a step upward. A step upward. Upward to exactly what, he did not yet know.

  In his tent Colonel Randolph summoned a staff officer.

  “Get me all the papers on Private Gunnarson,” he ordered. He wanted to know as much about Eric as he could. The young man was clearly out of his element in the enlisted ranks, like a nobleman fallen upon hard times.

  Gettysburg, Pennsylv
ania, was a quiet little farm village, where nothing much ever happened.

  “I have just returned from General Meade’s headquarters,” Colonel Randolph informed his staff. Meade was in command of the Army of the Potomac, of which Randolph’s New York regiment was a part. “It is the feeling of the General Staff that there will be no battle here. Lee has entrenched his army near Cashtown, as if awaiting attack, and Meade is not prepared to move. According to him Lincoln feels Lee is here in Pennsylvania not to fight but to symbolize Southern strength.”

  The senior officers present at this briefing glanced knowingly at one another. Politics. They were convinced to a man that, were the business of politics not allowed to define and decide where and when to give battle, this war would have ended in Union victory long ago.

  “Confederate Vice President Stephens,” Colonel Randolph went on, “is on his way to see Lincoln, under a flag of truce, to discuss negotiations for a peace settlement. There is no hope of such a settlement, as the South will not yield its demand for independence, nor will the North ever accede to such a demand. That is why we are fighting.”

  “Or not fighting,” grumbled Major Stonehead, of the Indiana Regulars, to a chorus of guffaws.

  “I repeat,” Randolph said, “Lee is entrenched. Meade believes he is not in Pennsylvania to fight, but to give a show of force while Stephens makes his plea for peace to Lincoln.”

  “Well, let’s surprise the old gent,” offered Major Stonehead, “and kick his head in.”

  This suggestion was greeted with considerable enthusiasm, and Colonel Randolph raised his hands for silence. “I was coming to that part,” he called. “I said it is Meade’s feeling that Lee does not want to fight, and that there will be no battle here unless we make it ourselves!”

  An outburst of cheering seemed to lift and billow the canvas of the command tent. Second Lieutenant Eric Gunnarson, his gold emblems of rank still bright and new, was surprised to feel a thrill of imminence, and he felt his blood rush faster through his veins. This would be his first battle. If there was a battle.