The hymn ended. In the distance, another regiment—probably the 26th North Carolina, whose camp was closest to that of the 47th—was singing “The Old Rugged Cross.” Caudell turned to the private next to him. “Where’s Georgie Ballentine?”
“Huh? The nigger? Ain’t he here?” the fellow said.
“No, he—” Caudell had to stop, for the regiment launched into “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” He looked around once more while he sang. No, Ballentine wasn’t here. His ears had already told him that—the black man’s molasses—smooth baritone anchored the regiment’s singing week in and week out, for be never missed a service.
Caudell spotted a corporal from the North Carolina Tigers close by. When the hymn was done, he caught his eye. “Where’s Georgie, Henry? Is he sick?”
Henry Johnson shook his head, made a sour face. “Nope, he ain’t sick. He done run off, day before yesterday.”
“Run off? Georgie?” Caudell stared at him. “I don’t believe it.” He stopped and thought. “No, wait a minute; maybe I do. Did they take his rifle away from him?”
“You heard tell about that, did you?” Johnson said. “Cap’n Mitchell, he didn’t want to, but that Benny Lang feller, he pitched a fit like you wouldn’t believe. Said he’d go to Colonel Faribault, an’ then to General Kirkland, and then to General Heth, an’ all the way up to Jeff Davis till he got his way—maybe on up to the Holy Ghost, if ol’ Jeff wouldn’t give him what he wanted. Georgie, he took it right hard, but there weren’t nothin’ he could do. Weren’t nothin’ nobody could do. Afterwards, though, he seemed to settle on down some. But he wasn’t there at roll call yesterday mornin’, so he must’ve been shammin’. You know how niggers can do.”
Just then, Chaplain Lacy called, “Page fifty-six, men—‘Nearer My God to Thee.’” Caudell sang mechanically while he thought about what Johnson had said. Of course blacks grew adept at hiding their thoughts from whites. They had to, if they wanted to stay out of trouble. But George Ballentine had been so at home in Company H—Caudell shook his head. The joy had gone out of the service.
When “Nearer My God to Thee” was done, Henry Johnson said, “You know, I hope ol’ Georgie makes it over the Rapidan to the Yankees, an’ I don’t give a damn who hears me say so. Even a nigger, he’s got his pride.”
“Yup,” Caudell said. Instead of waiting for the next hymn, he drifted away from the open-air assembly. Johnson had hit the nail on the head. Not giving George Ballentine a repeater in the first place would have been one thing. But to give him one and then take it away—that was wrong. He hoped Ballentine made it over the Rapidan to freedom, too.
But the slave’s luck as a runaway was no better than his luck with the AK-47 had been. Three days later, a wagon came squelching down the muddy highway from Orange Court House in the late afternoon. It wasn’t a scheduled stop. “You have a load of those desiccated dinners for us?” Caudell called hopefully as the driver pulled off the main road.
“No, just a dead nigger—picket shot him up by the Rapidan Station. He was headin’ for the river. Hear tell he likely belongs to this regiment.” The driver jumped down and lowered the rear gate. “Want to see if it’s him?”
Caudell hurried over, peered in. George Ballentine lay limp and dead on the planks, without even a cloth over his staring eyes. The lower part of his gray tunic was soaked with blood; he’d been shot in the belly, a hard, hard way to die. Caudell clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Yeah, that’s Georgie.”
“You gonna take charge of him?”
“Take him over to Company H, why don’t you? He belonged to them.” Caudell pointed the way. “I expect they’ll want to give him a proper burial.”
“What the hell for? He was a goddam runaway.”
“Just do it,” Caudell snapped. As if by accident, he brushed a hand against his sleeve to call attention to his chevrons. The driver spat in the roadway, but he obeyed.
Caudell’s guess had been shrewd. The North Carolina Tigers even went so far as to ask Chaplain Lacy to officiate at the funeral, and he agreed. That told Caudell what the chaplain thought of the Negro’s reasons for running away. Driven by guilt, Caudell went to the funeral too—had he not told Lang who Ballentine was and where he belonged, the black man would still be alive.
Lacy chose a verse from Psalm 19: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Caudell wondered about that. He saw no evidence of divine wrath in Ballentine’s death, only the wrath of Benny Lang. It did not seem an adequate substitute. He thought about talking things over with the chaplain, but ended up talking with Mollie Bean instead. However fine a man William Lacy was, he was also an official part of the 47th North Carolina. Caudell didn’t feel comfortable discussing Georgie Ballentine’s fate with anyone official. Mollie’s place in the regiment was even less official than the Negro’s had been.
“Ain’t nothin’ to be done about it now,” she said, a self evident truth.
“I know that. It gravels me all the same,” he said. “It wasn’t fair.”
“Life ain’t fair, Nate,” she answered. “You was a woman, you’d know that. You ever work in a bawdyhouse, you’d sure as shit know that.” Her face clouded, as if at memories she’d have sooner forgotten. Then that wry smile of hers tugged one comer of her mouth upwards. “Hell, First Sergeant Caudell, sir, you was a private, you’d know that.”
“Maybe I would,” he said, startled into brief laughter. But just as Mollie could not stay gloomy, he had trouble remaining cheerful. “I expect I’d know it if I were a nigger, too. Georgie sure found out.”
“Niggers ain’t the same as white folks, they say—they just go on from day to day, don’t worry none about stuff like that.”
“Sure, people say that. I’ve said it myself, plenty of rimes. But if it’s true, why did Georgie run off when they took his repeater away?” Corporal Johnson’s words came back to Caudell: even a nigger, he’s got his pride.
“I know what you mean, Nate, but Georgie, he didn’t seem like your regular nigger,” Mollie said. “He just seemed like people—you know what I mean?”
“Yup,” Caudell said. “I felt the same way about him. That’s why he bothers me so much now.” Ballentine had seemed like a person to Caudell, not just some Digger, because he’d got to know him. In the same way, Mollie seemed like a person to him, not just some whore—because he’d got to know her. He kept that part of his thought to himself, but went on in musing tones, “Maybe a lot of niggers seem like people to somebody who knows them.”
“Maybe.” But Mollie sounded dubious. “Some, though, you got to sell South, and that’s the truth. They ain’t nothin’ but trouble to their own selves an’ everybody around ‘em.”
“That’s true enough. But you know what else?” Caudell waited for her to shake her head, then said, “If Billy Beddingfield was black, I’d sell him South in a minute, too.”
She giggled. “And that Benny Lang, he knocked Billy sideways. So there’s one up for him, to go with the one down for Georgie.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. It’s not as big an up as Georgie is a down, not even close, but it’s there. Reckon it goes to show nobody’s all good or all bad.”
“You got that right. He brung us the repeaters, too, to whup the Yankees with.”
“So he did. That has to count for something, I suppose.” Right then, Caudell did not care to give Benny Lang any points, but he was too just to find a way around it.
Mollie looked at him out of the comer of her eye. “Did you just fall by to chat, Nate, or did you have somethin’ else on your mind?”
“I hadn’t thought about anything else, but as long as I’m here—”
Robert E. Lee took off his reading glasses, slid them into his breast pocket. “So Lieutenant General Grant will go through the Wilderness, will he? I had rather expected him to try to duplicate McClellan’s campaign up the James toward Richmond. It is the shortest route to the capital, given the Federals’ regrettable c
ontrol of the sea.”
“He will send the Army of the Potomac through the Wilderness, General, at the beginning of May, as I’ve written there,” Andries Rhoodie said positively. “His aim is not so much Richmond as your army. If Richmond falls while the Army of Northern Virginia lives, the Confederacy can stay alive. But if your army is beaten, Richmond will fall afterwards.”
Lee thought about that, nodded in concession. “It is sound strategy, and accords with the way Grant fought in the west. Very well then, I shall deploy my forces so as to be waiting for him when he arrives.”
“No, you mustn’t, General Lee.” Rhoodie sounded so alarmed, Lee stared at him in sharp surprise. “If he knows you’ve moved and are lying in wait for him, he can choose to attack by way of Fredericksburg instead, or up the James, or any other way he pleases. What I know only stays true if what leads up to it stays the same.”
“I—see,” Lee said slowly. After a few seconds, he laughed at himself. “Here I’d always imagined no general could have a greater advantage than knowing exactly what his opponent would do next. Now I know, and find myself unable to take full advantage of the knowledge for fear of his doing something else because I have prepared for this one thing. Thinking of what is to be as mutable comes hard to me.”
“It comes hard to almost everyone,” Rhoodie assured him.
Lee tapped with his forefinger the papers Rhoodie had given him. “By these, I am to have General Longstreet’s corps returned to me from Tennessee before the campaign commences. I am glad to see that would have happened, for otherwise I should have been leery of requesting it, lest in so doing I disrupt the chain of events ahead. Yet were I without it, the Army of the Potomac would have overwhelming weight of numbers.”
“May I suggest, General, that when it does come next month, you station it around Jackson’s Shop or Orange Springs, rather than farther west at Gordonsville?” Rhoodie said. “As the fight developed, Longstreet’s men nearly came too late because they had so far to travel.”
“Will this change not make Grant change his plans in response?” Lee asked.
“The risk, I think, is small. Right now, Grant doesn’t look at the Wilderness as a place to fight, only a place to get through as fast as possible so he can battle your army on open ground. He’ll be wondering if you will choose to fight anywhere this side of Richmond.”
“Is that a fact?” Lee meant the phrase as nothing but a polite conversational placeholder, but Rhoodie nodded all the same. Smiling a huntsman’s smile, Lee said; “I expect we shan’t keep him long in suspense as to that point, sir.”
“The AK-47 s should also be an unpleasant surprise for him,” Rhoodie said.
“I should have attacked without them,” Lee said. “Where better than the Wilderness? In the forest and undergrowth, the Federals’ superiority in artillery is nullified—there are few places for it to deploy, and few good targets at which to aim. And my soldiers, farmers most of them, are better woodsmen than the Yankees. Yes, Mr. Rhoodie, if General Grant wishes to allow a fight there, I shall be happy to oblige him.”
“I know that,” Rhoodie said.
“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” Lee looked down at those irresistibly fascinating papers. “Will you excuse me now, sir? I confess I feel the need to study these further.”
“Certainly.” Rhoodie stood to go. Then he said, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and reached into a pants pocket. He handed Lee a bottle of small white tablets…If your heart pains you, let one or two of these dissolve under your tongue. They should help. They may bring a spot of headache with them, but it shouldn’t last long.”
“Thank you, sir; you’re most kind to have thought of it.” Lee put his glasses back on so he could read the bottle’s label…’Nitroglycerine.’ Hmm. It sounds most forbiddingly medical; I can tell you that.”
“Er—yes.” Rhoodie’s inscrutable expression made his face unreadable as he said, “It is, among other things, useful in stimulating the heart. And now, General, if you will excuse me—” He ducked out under the tent flap.
Lee stuck the jar in a coat pocket. He forgot it in moments, as he resumed his study of the information Andries Rhoodie had given him. Here, a month and more in advance, he read the ford by which each Federal division would cross the Rapidan and the road south it would take. Altogether without such intelligence, he had smashed the Yankees the year before at Chancellorsville, on the eastern fringes of the Wilderness. With it—
“If I cannot whip General Grant with what is in these papers,” he said to no one in particular, “I am willing to go home.”
A few minutes later, Perry brought in Lee’s dinner, set it on the table in front of him, and hurried away. He did not notice the black man enter or leave; the food sat a long time untouched. Lee’s eyes went back and forth from Rhoodie’s documents to the map spread out on the cot beside him, but his mind did not see the names of units or the symbols that represented roads and hamlets. His mind saw marching men and flashing guns and patterns of collision…
Lee slid off Traveller. The horse’s grassy, earthy smell mingled with the perfume of dogwoods at last in blossom. Spring had taken a long time coming, but was finally here in full force.
Sergeant B. L. Wynn came out of the hut that housed the Confederate signal station on Clark’s Mountain. “Good morning to you, Sergeant,” Lee said pleasantly.
“Morning, sir,” Wynn answered, his voice casual—Lee was a frequent visitor to the station, to see for himself what the Federals across the Rapidan were up to. Then the young sergeant’s eyes went wide. “Uh, sirs,” he amended quickly.
Lee smiled. “Yes, Sergeant, I’ve brought rather more company than usual with me today…, He paused to enjoy his own understatement. Not only were his young staff officers along, but also all three of the Army of Northern Virginia’s corps commanders and a double handful of division heads. “I want them to get a view of the terrain from the mountaintop here.”
“By western standards, this isn’t much of a mountain,” James Longstreet said. “How high are we, anyhow?”
“I don’t quite know,” Lee admitted. “Sergeant Wynn?”
“About eleven hundred feet, sir,” Wynn said.
Longstreet’s fleshy cheeks rippled in a snort. “Eleven hundred feet? In Tennessee or North Carolina”—his home state—”this wouldn’t be a mountain. They might call it a knob. In the Rockies, they wouldn’t notice it was there.”
“It suffices for our purposes nonetheless,” Lee said.” Standing here, we can see twenty counties spread out below us, as if on the map. Sergeant Wynn, may I trouble you for your spyglass?”
Wynn handed him the long brass tube. He raised it to his right eye, peered northward over the Rapidan. The winter encampment of Federal General Warren’s V Corps, centered on Culpeper Court House, leaped toward him. Smoke floated up from chimneys; bright divisional flags bloomed like orderly rows of spring flowers. Grant had his headquarters by Culpeper Court House. A couple of miles further east, by Stevensburg, lay Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps; the encampment of Sedgwick’s VI Corps was beyond it, past Brandy Station—Lee thought for a moment of Rooney, returned at last to Confederate service. Farther north and east, past Rappahannock Station and Bealeton, were the cabins and tents of Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps, with the Army of the Potomac but not formally part of it. Colored troops made up a good part of that corps, Lee had heard.
He lowered the telescope. “All seems quiet still in the Federal camps. Soon enough, though, those people will move.” He pointed east, toward the rank green growth of the Wilderness. “They will come by way of the fords there, Germanna and Ely’s just east of it.”
“You sound very sure,” Longstreet said. Of all Lee’s generals, he was most given to setting his own judgments against his commander’s.
“I think I should have suspected it in any case, but I also have intelligence I regard as trustworthy on the matter from the Rivington men.” Lee left it at that. Had he explained that Andries Rhood
ie and his colleagues came from the future and thus could view Grant’s plans through hindsight rather than guesswork, he was sure most of the assembled officers would have thought him mad. Maybe he was. But any other explanation seemed even more improbable than the one Rhoodie had given him.
“Ah, the Rivington men,” Longstreet said. “If their ear for news is as good as their repeaters, then it must be very good indeed. One day before long, General Lee, at your convenience, I’d like to sit down with you and chat about the Rivington men. Had the I Corps not spent the winter in Tennessee, I’d have done it long since.”
“Certainly, General,” Lee said.
“I want to be part of that chat,” A. P. Hill said. His thin, fierce face had an indrawn look to it; the past year or so, he’d had a bad way of taking sick when battle neared. Lee worried about him. Now he continued, “I’d like to speak to them over the way they treat our Negroes, sir. They show more care to the animals they ride. It is not right.” The commander of III Corps was a Southern man through and through, but had even less use for slavery than did Lee.
“I have heard of this before, General Hill, and have hesitated to take them to task over what one might call a relatively small fault when the aid they have rendered us is so great,” Lee said carefully. “Perhaps I am in error. Time permitting, we shall discuss the matter.”
“May I borrow the telescope, sir?” Henry Heth said. Lee passed it to him. He turned the glass toward the Wilderness. With it still at his eye, he remarked, “The place is a bushwhacker’s dream.”
“Just so, Henry,” Lee said, pleased the divisional commander saw the same thing he did. “The enemy are at their weakest in that kind of fight, and we are at our strongest.”
Something hot and eager came into Heth’s usually chilly gray-blue eyes. He fingered the tuft of light brown hair that grew just beneath his lower lip. “If we hurt them badly enough there, they may skedaddle back over the Rapidan and leave us alone for a while.”
The Guns of the South Page 13
