The March

by E. L. Doctorow

  Pearl let herself down to the road and stood there pressing her hands in the small of her back to stretch out the stiffness. She untied the ribbon holding her hair and gathered it up again and retied it, and with her hands behind her head only now saw that two of the officers had stopped their conversation to look at her. She turned away to finish her grooming and thought, Now, Stephen Walsh, you’d best come back to me for you are not the only one and I am grown beautiful.

  WITH CARLIN’S FORCE sent running, Morgan’s flank was turned and his troops found themselves attacked from the rear while they stood off a charge from the front. Men were firing one way, wheeling around and firing the other. General Davis, of the Fourteenth Corps, ordered a reserve brigade into the breach, sending the troops on the double, and Hugh Pryce chose this moment to leave the general officers. Ignoring the shouts at his back, he made his way toward the action, hopping first on a rolling caisson, then slipping off and running forward, leaping over rocks, breasting tangled brush—at this moment almost insanely exhilarated, with his long scarf trailing from his throat as if it were his personal pennant. None of the competition would be able to report what he would see with his own eyes.

  The ground became swampy. He was in a thick stand of trees. He heard gunfire now, and found a large tree and pulled himself up to the crotch of the lowest branch and swung his legs over and sat astride there peering through the smoke, hearing battle at its intimate heart: men screaming, grunting, bullets pinging off logs and rocks. And he could actually feel waves of heat coming off the mass of fired weapons. War changed the weather, it whitened the day—a pungent smoke flew past him like the souls of the dead hurrying to Heaven. It was only with a sudden rift in the thickened atmosphere that he realized he had misjudged his position and was not in relation to the action that he had supposed. The war had come to him. Lines of men were grappling hand to hand beneath him, wrestling one another to the ground, wielding knives, bayonets, swinging rifles about their heads, their desperation bringing concerted sounds from the depths of them like the chords of a church organ. He had never been closer to war than at this moment and all his reportorial powers of observation were resolved to one terrifying vision of antediluvian breakout. This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle. It was as if God had decreed this characterless entanglement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption. And then all thought was impossible, for Pryce heard the hideous whistle of a cannonball, and as he clasped his hands to his ears he became aware just a moment too late of the shattering treetop that came crashing down upon him.

  THE REBEL ADVANCE at one point actually flowed into the hospital area. A swarm of Union troops ran past, stopping only to fire a shot at their pursuit before running on. A minute after the bluecoats had come through, there came the grays. A Confederate officer galloped up, several of their infantry behind him. Who is in command here? he shouted.

  Sartorius came out of the tent, hatless, his hands covered in blood, his apron smeared with it. What do you want? he said. On the ground about the tent lay a dozen wounded men and two who had died. Consider yourself a prisoner, the officer said. Very well, Sartorius said, and went back in the tent.

  The officer frowned, clearly not knowing what else the situation called for. Some of the wounded were groaning, crying out. He turned his horse away, stationed two of his men as guards, and rode off, his men trotting off behind him.

  Stephen looked out from the tent at the guards, who seemed embarrassed to be there. One of them bent down, about to give water from his canteen to one of the wounded, and Stephen had to tell him not to. When it was time to bring another man into the surgery Stephen said, Give me a hand here, and the guards seemed almost grateful to be asked.

  A few minutes later the Rebel elements that had come this far were in retreat, running back through the hospital field hell-bent for their own lines. A Union company came whooping after them and the two guards who had been helping Stephen were shot down. One, with a stomach wound, could not be saved. The other was hit in the leg, which shattered badly. He lay with the Union wounded, and when it was his turn Stephen and the nurse brought him into the tent and Sartorius did a double-flap amputation just above the knee.

  LIEUTENANT OAKEY HAD ridden into General Slocum’s field headquarters with a message from Kilpatrick. The cavalry, camped some miles to the southwest, was ready to assist.

  Slocum, at that moment deploying the Twentieth Corps to seal the breaches in the Union lines, said, For God’s sake, that’s the last thing I need. Pending further orders, General Kilpatrick is to stay put.

  As he attempted to leave, young Oakey, who had been a grade-school teacher before the war and hoped to study for the ministry when the war was over, found himself penned in by the troop movements. He became confused in the swamps, and unwittingly rode into the thick of the battle, where General Morgan’s embattled units were holding off a major Reb assault. Oakey quickly dismounted and joined the fray. The troops were arrayed in two lines behind the breastworks, the front line kneeling, the back line standing, and to the shouts of the commanders they were volley-firing into the advancing Rebel line. After repeated losses from the withering fire, the Rebs drew back, whereupon the men found themselves assailed from the rear, another brigade of General Carlin’s and a supporting reserve brigade under Colonel Fearing having given way. Now the Morgan men jumped over their parapet and took positions on the other side to respond to the flanking attack. But they saw bluecoats among the attackers. For fatal moments they hesitated. Should they be firing on their own men? Oakey recognized the ploy—the same thing had happened with Kilpatrick at Monroe’s Corners, Rebs wearing Union blue to create chaos and get them with their guard down. Rebs, they’re damn Rebs! he shouted, waving his pistol, and in another minute the works were breached and he was knocked down and leapt upon by one of the attackers in blue.

  Oakey was a slightly built fellow who wore glasses. These flew off his face as his head was repeatedly banged into the ground with two heavy wet hands clopping his ears. The Reb was huge. Oakey’s right hand, which held his pistol, was pressed flat by the weight. But intending one final skull-crushing blow, the Reb raised himself high enough so that Oakey had the opportunity to put the pistol in play: he twisted the barrel upward and fired directly into the man’s stomach. He fired again and again until the weight slumped upon him no longer moved. With effort he pushed the body away and groped around for his glasses, giving them a cursory swipe on his sleeve and hooking them back where they belonged. He still couldn’t see clearly through the mud smears on the glasses but he made no further attempt to clean them. Not seeing much of anything, he felt calmer.

  With the battle raging around him, Oakey sat there in the rifle pit catching his breath. His head hurt. His tunic was soaked in blood. He looked at the lifeless hulk lying there and prayed for God’s forgiveness. Struggling under the weight of this behemoth, he had felt the fury of a nonhuman intention. It was as if a bear had fallen upon him and was simply acting according to the demands of its animal nature.

  How many minutes later he didn’t know, a brigade of the Twentieth Corps had moved in to stem the attack and Oakey said to no one in particular, I had a horse here somewhere.

  VI

  AS THEY’D FOLLOWED AFTER THE ARMY, CALVIN HARper had come to think of his traveling companion as an interesting crazy man. He allowed himself this reflection because the balance of their interests—each needing the other—made for reasonably stable progress on the road. He’d been taking pictures as he wanted, and he’d felt he could continue to take his pictures until the opportunity arose to disentangle himself. Until then, it was a matter of maintaining his dignity and exercising his will without endangering himself. He seemed so far to have done this successfully. It was not always comfortable from day to day, but nothing so far had made him feel that he was in imminent danger.

  What was inte
resting was how the man wore disguises. He put on something and pretended to be that person. He was like an actor in the theater where the costume you wear is the person you are. He had appeared back in Barnwell as a Union soldier though he was a Southern white-trash Reb. Both of them were, the dead friend, too, who had to be dressed as the Reb he really was before Mr. Culp could take the picture. And then after the picture was developed, and Mr. Josiah Culp was dead, he decided to be him, Mr. Culp, in his own suit and coat and hat. Calvin had gone along with all of this with a degree of fascination despite himself. At times, in public, he’d seen this pretend Mr. Culp who knew nothing about photography as more the photographer than the real Mr. Culp. And that was because the man really seemed to believe he was Mr. Culp. All of that was clearly interesting and also clearly mad. For only a madman would have conversations with a picture in his pocket, as that was what had become of his dead friend in his mind, not a body in a grave but a picture in his pocket. And he talked to it almost as much as he talked to Calvin. And so nothing was what it seemed, and all of it was crazy. And that gave Calvin some confidence in his ability to control things. There was some errant spirit in the man that made him maybe not so single-minded a menace as he first appeared.

  Now, as they came along on the road to Goldsboro, they stopped for the night at an abandoned farmhouse. Though the sun had set, they could still hear the sounds of battle in the dusk: cannonading carried by the east wind over the fields and rivers.

  You see, Calvin, why I said this road? We’d be up to our necks in hellfire, we gone after the other column. That is some damn battle they’re having, like they have finally run into an army equal to theirselves.

  Some moldy fodder for Bert in the barn, Calvin said. But nothing for us in this pantry. Whoever these people, they been gone awhile. Place is picked clean.

  I know my Gen’ral Sherman, Arly said. That is his feint to Raleigh we’re hearing. I ’spect it’s more’n he bargained for. But anyways he’s not there. He’s up ahead enjoying hisself thinking of Goldsboro where he means to alight like the eagle on the flagpole.

  We’re down to the last bag of cornmeal and ’bout a spoonful of lard if I can get this stove to fire up, Calvin said. How you know where he is?

  Gen’ral Sherman and me have the same quality of mind, Arly said. I need only think of myself as him and I know what he will do.

  And you of such a low rank, Calvin said. Don’t seem fair, somehow.

  Arly took another swig from Mr. Culp’s last jar of sour-mash whiskey. Calvin, he said, were I not pleased with our progress I might take offense at your freeman’s talk, but you’d best not try me.

  What are you going to do with your photograph of the General? What then?

  Why, it will be a recognition on my part of him, and on his part of me. It will be a meeting of the minds. It will not be just an ordinary photo like you have been gathering. This will mark an occasion to make history. This will be a photograph the likes of which the other Mr. Josiah Culp couldn’t have dreamed of. I am an inspired soul, which means it will be not just me taking that photo but God as he instructs me.

  You and God know the lens to use? The exposure time? How to coat the plates and where to set the camera?

  We leave you to attend to those small matters, son. That is the kind of menial work your race is fitted to.

  THIS NIGHT ARLY decided to make his bed on the floor in the empty upstairs. The laths showed where pieces of the wall had crumpled away, and he had to find a spot to lay the blankets down where the floorboards weren’t broken. There was a rot smell of old wood, and it was colder than downstairs by the stove where Calvin was, but it behoved a man to keep to the natural order of things.

  He lay down with his arm around Calvin’s box of lenses. This was an extra measure of caution, because Calvin knew that without Arly riding with him as his Mr. Culp he would not live five minutes as an independent nigger businessman in God’s own country. Guerrillas still rode and took care of what had to be taken care of. Calvin could hitch up Bert and run away, but without being able to take another photo how could he fancy himself Mr. Culp’s chosen boy? It may be the slavery of the future, tying down a free black by his white airs. And I have devised it.

  Arly was not aware, in the midst of his thoughts, of having fallen asleep. But when he found himself awake some time had clearly passed. It was not just that the light was different, the moon casting a milky sheen everywhere in the room including on him. No, but the sound. A peculiar whispering chuffing sound, and a clinking, but mostly the sound of human presence you can sense even though no sound was made. He went to the window and looked out on a sight he could hardly believe: it was a whole army on the road passing by at a quick pace, a ghost army it looked like, though real enough in its blocks of companies and the guidons and the occasional officer cantering by. Every mother’s son of them leaning forward under their packs and looking at the road. And no one was talking for the effort of making a night march, and if there was a gap the following companies came along at a trot. What is this, Arly thought, these Yankees are going the wrong way! He pulled on his boots and ran downstairs. From a back window he saw they were coming across the fields too, streaming around the house front and back like a river overflowed of its banks. He lamented what he saw—Yankees tromping over these lowlands in the arrogance of their numbers. But then it dawned on him: of course, this is General Sherman returning to the fray back there where our boys have put the scare of God into his other column—damn! Yes, that’s what this is about. Well, Gen’ral, ’pears you have made a mistake to have to go backwards like this, who was already practically wining and dining yourself in Goldsboro. Will, Will, I am truly sorry you can’t see this, we got an army still raising hell yonder in Bentonville, we are putting the great Sherman to the test, and there’s to be many a dead Union boy before it’s over.

  Then Arly thought he saw the General himself in a cavalry contingent riding past in the field—maybe fifty men on horses, and someone at their head flinging the reins to his left and right who he thought was Sherman, all right, like a mad rider under the moon making for the battle. Arly had seen only that photo of General Sherman, he had never seen him in the flesh, but he was convinced, as the horsemen disappeared over a rise, that it had been Sherman without a doubt. Don’t you worry none, Will, he said, smiling there in the dark, it’s all right, it’s all right. You and me will just go on to Goldsboro while he cleans up his mess back here, and we’ll be waiting for him to take his portrait picture, assuming a course no one has kilt him in the meantime.

  CALVIN, WRAPPED IN a blanket behind the stove, had heard the entire conversation. Arly went back upstairs, and soon enough he was snoring away. And then after another twenty or thirty minutes the last of the marchers had passed and everything was quiet again, but Calvin could not go back to sleep.

  If I was a Rebel soldier given to disguises what would my purpose be? It would be to get out from behind Union lines, to get back to my own to fight again or to get out of the war altogether and go home. But that’s not his thinking. He couldn’t have planned to costume himself as Mr. Culp. As we came along he did it as the opportunity arose—it was an idea that had popped into his crazy head. So what was the idea? From all of his constant chatter day after day, it is nothing but to catch up to General Sherman on his march and take a photograph of him. Why? To make his mark in the photography business? That don’t seem likely given how little he cares for the art of it. He started out knowing nothing and he knows no more now than he did then.

  In this war every man is on one side or another. Even a crazy man. If I am crazy, I am still for the Union. If he is crazy, he is still a white-trash Johnny Reb.

  Calvin felt a chill remembering that back in Georgia, at the camp in the pine trees, where General Sherman had his headquarters, Mr. Culp did not need but a minute to persuade the General to pose for his picture who even called his entire staff to pose with him. Mr. Culp had said to Calvin, As a photographer you get to know
human nature, and one thing about human nature is that it is the most famous people who think they are not getting enough of the world’s attention. So they want their picture taken and put on display, or their portrait painted or books written about them, and no matter how much of this is done it is never enough for some of these people, except maybe for President Abraham Lincoln, who is an exception in this as in just about everything. Because Mr. Culp had taken his picture, too, before leaving Washington, and it had been an effort to get the President to sit down for it, and he wouldn’t have, had Mrs. Lincoln not insisted.

  By now Calvin was pacing back and forth with the blanket wrapped around him. His train of thought left him terribly unsettled. He had been too forbearing. This madman had sent Mr. Culp to his grave. He had taken that pistol and pointed it at them and stolen Mr. Culp’s clothes and his name. And now he is become a madman in a contest in his mind with the General of the Union armies, William T. Sherman, whose picture is to be taken.

  But his opportunity, if it comes, will be mine, too. I will tell them of that carte de visite in his pocket that proves him as a Reb before he can do whatever it is he intends, or what he intends by way of carrying out God’s intentions. Whatever it is, it must not be allowed. Even if it is just what he says it is. Even if he wants to take a picture of General Sherman because it is just his simple craziness, he must not be allowed to take it. I am the photographer, not him. Making photographs is sacred work. It is fixing time in its moments and making memory for the future, as Mr. Culp has told me. Nobody in history before now has ever been able to do that. There is no higher calling than to make pictures that show you the true world.

  Mr. Culp had put him in his will, and now when he got back to Baltimore the studio would say on the window: Culp and Harper, Photographers. It angered Calvin that his camera now could be used for the purposes of someone who didn’t know any better, someone like this crazy smart-talking white-trash Reb. Calvin said to himself, If Mr. Josiah Culp and me had come through Barnwell a day earlier, or a day later, we would not have met up with this madman. And Mr. Culp would be alive and we would still be going about our work just as always. Oh Lord, and now this is where I am and there is no way out of it.