The Killer Angels (22 page)

He was most anxious to move on with Longstreet, but he saw Lawley and Ross pull off into an open field and sit down, and so he bade Longstreet goodbye and rode off to join his fellow Europeans. He let his horse roam with the others in a fenced field and found himself a
grassy place under a charming tree and lay flat on his back, gazing up serenely into the blue, watching those curious flecks that you can see if you stare upward against the vacant blue, the defects of your own eye.

They chatted, telling stories of other wars. They discussed the strategy of Napoleon, the theories of Jomini, the women of Richmond. Fremantle was not that impressed by Napoleon. But he was impressed by the women of Richmond. He lay dreamily remembering certain ladies, a ball, a rose garden …

This land was huge. England had a sense of compactness, like a garden, a lovely garden, but this country was without borders. There was this refreshing sense of
space
, of blowing winds, too hot, too cold, too huge, raw in a way raw meat is raw—and yet there were the neat farms, the green country, so much like Home. The people so much like Home. Southern Home. Couldn’t grow flowers, these people. No gardens. Great weakness. And yet. They are
Englishmen
. Should I tell Longstreet? Would it annoy him?

He thinks, after all, that he is an American.

Um. The great experiment. In democracy. The equality of rabble. In not much more than a generation they have come back to
class
. As the French have done. What a tragic thing, that Revolution. Bloody George was a bloody fool. But no matter. The experiment doesn’t work. Give them fifty years, and all that equality rot is gone. Here they have that same love of the land and of tradition, of the right form, of breeding, in their horses, their women. Of course slavery is a bit embarrassing, but that, of course, will go. But the point is they do it all exactly as we do in Europe. And the North does not.
That’s
what the war is really about. The North has those huge bloody cities and a thousand religions, and the only aristocracy is the aristocracy of wealth. The Northerner doesn’t give a damn for tradition, or breeding, or the Old Country. He hates the Old Country. Odd. You very rarely hear a Southerner refer to “the Old Country.” In that pained way a German does. Or an Italian. Well, of course, the South
is
the Old Country. They haven’t left Europe. They’ve merely transplanted it. And
that’s
what the war is about.

Fremantle opened an eye. It occurred to him that he might have come across something rather profound, something to take back to England. The more he thought about it, the more clear it seemed. In the South there was one religion, as in England, one way of life. They even allowed the occasional Jew—like Longstreet’s Major Moses, or Judah Benjamin, back in Richmond—but by and large they were all the same nationality, same religion, same customs. A little rougher, perhaps, but … my word.

Fremantle sat up. Major Clarke was resting, back against a tree. Fremantle said, “I say, Major, Longstreet is an English name, I should imagine.”

Clarke blinked.

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think it is.” He pondered. “Dutch, I think. Yes, come to think of it. Dutch all right. Comes from New Jersey, the old Dutch settlements up there.”

“Oh.” Fremantle’s theory had taken a jolt. Well. But Longstreet was an exception. He was not a Virginian.

Fremantle again relaxed. He even began to feel hungry.

The morning moved toward noon.

The regiment sat in an open field studded with boulders like half-sunken balls. Small fires burned under a steam-gray sky. Chamberlain wandered, watching, listening. He did not talk; he moved silently among them, hands clasped behind his back, wandering, nodding, soaking in the sounds of voices, tabulating the light in men’s eyes, moving like a forester through a treasured grove, noting the condition of the trees. All his life he had been a detached man, but he was not detached anymore. He had grown up in the cold New England woods, the iron dark, grown in contained silence like a lone house on a mountain, and now he was no longer alone; he had joined not only the army but the race, not only the country but mankind. His mother had wanted him to join the church. Now he had his call. He wandered, sensing. Tired men. But ready. Please, God, do not withdraw them now. He saw illness in one face, told the man to report to sick call. One man complained. “Colonel, it keeps raining, these damn Enfields gonna clog on us. Whyn’t we trade ’em for Springfields first chance we get?” Chamberlain agreed. He saw Bucklin, together with a cold-eyed group from the old Second Maine, nodded good morning, did not stop to talk. A young private asked him, “Sir, is it true that General McClellan is in command again?” Chamberlain had to say no. The private
swore. Chamberlain finished the walk, went back alone to sit under a tree.

He had dreamed of her in the night, dreamed of his wife in a scarlet robe, turning witchlike to love him. Now when he closed his eyes she was suddenly there, hot candy presence. Away from her, you loved her more. The only need was her; she the only vacancy in the steamy morning. He remembered her letter, the misspelled words: “I lie here dreamyly.” Even the misspelling is lovely.

A mass of men was coming down the road, unarmed, unspiked, no rifles visible: prisoners. They stopped near a long rock ledge which walled the road. Some of his own troops began drifting over that way, to stare, to chat. They were usually polite to prisoners. The accents fascinated them. Although some of the regiment were sailing men, most of them had never been out of Maine. Chamberlain thought vaguely of the South.
She
had loved it.
She
had been at home. Heat and Spanish moss. Strange hot land of courtly manners and sudden violence, elegance and anger. A curious mixture: the white-columned houses high on the green hills, the shacks down in the dark valleys. Land of black and white, no grays. The South was a well-bred, well-mannered, highly educated man challenging you to a duel.
She
loved it. Dreamily. She had liked being a professor’s wife. She had been outraged when he went off to war.

Square-headed Kilrain: “Is the Colonel awake?”

Chamberlain nodded, looking up.

“I have found me a John Henry, sir.”

“John who?”

“A John Henry, sir. A black man. A darky. He’s over thataway.”

Kilrain gestured. Chamberlain started to rise.

“I heard him a-groanin’,” Kilrain said, “just before dawn. Would the Colonel care to see him?”

“Lead on.”

Kilrain walked down a grassy slope away from the road, across the soft field, marshy with heavy rain, up a rise of granite to a gathering of boulders along the edge of a grove of dark trees. Chamberlain saw two men standing on a rock ledge, men of the regiment. Kilrain
sprang lightly up the rock. The two men—one was the newcomer, Bucklin—touched their caps and wished him “morning” and grinned and pointed.

The black man lay in the shadow between two round rocks. He was very big and very black. His head was shaved and round and resting on mossy granite. He was breathing slowly and deeply, audibly; his eyes were blinking. He wore a faded red shirt, ragged, dusty, and dark pants ragged around his legs. There were no sleeves in the shirt, and his arms had muscles like black cannonballs. His right arm was cupped across his belly. Chamberlain saw a dark stain, a tear, realized that the man had been bleeding. Bucklin was bending over him with a tin cup of coffee in his hand. The black man took a drink. He opened his eyes and the whites of his eyes were red-stained and ugly.

Chamberlain pointed to the wound.

“How bad is that?”

“Oh, not bad,” Kilrain said. “I think he’s bled a lot, but you know, you can’t really tell.”

Bucklin chuckled. “That’s a fact.”

“Bullet wound,” Kilrain said. “Just under the ribs.”

Chamberlain knelt. The black man’s face was empty, inscrutable. The red eyes looked up out of a vast darkness. Then the man blinked and Chamberlain realized that there was nothing inscrutable here; the man was exhausted. Chamberlain had rarely seen black men; he was fascinated.

“We’ll get him something to eat, then we’ll get him to a surgeon. Is the bullet still in?”

“Don’t know. Don’t think so. Haven’t really looked.” Kilrain paused. “He sure is black, and that’s a fact.”

“Did you get his name?”

“He said something I couldn’t understand. Hell, Colonel, I can’t even understand them Johnnies, and I’ve been a long time in this army.” The black man drank more of the coffee, put out both hands and took the cup, drank, nodded, said something incomprehensible.

“Guess he was a servant on the march, took a chance to run away. Guess they shot at him.”

Chamberlain looked at the bald head, the ragged dress. Impossible to tell the age. A young man, at least. No lines around the eyes. Thick-lipped, huge jaw. Look of animal strength. Chamberlain shook his head.

“He wouldn’t be a house servant. Look at his hands. Field hands.” Chamberlain tried to communicate. The man said something weakly, softly. Chamberlain, who could speak seven languages, recognized nothing. The man said a word that sounded like
Baatu, Baatu
, and closed his eyes.

“God,” Kilrain said. “He can’t even speak English.”

Bucklin grunted. “Maybe he’s just bad wounded.”

Chamberlain shook his head. “No. I think you’re right. I don’t think he knows the language.”

The man opened his eyes again, looked directly at Chamberlain, nodded his head, grimaced, said again,
Baatu, Baatu
. Chamberlain said, “Do you suppose that could be ‘thank you’?”

The black man nodded strongly. “Tang oo, tang oo, baas.”

“That’s it.” Chamberlain reached out, patted the man happily on the arm. “Don’t worry, fella, you’ll be all right.” He gestured to Kilrain. “Here, let’s get him up.”

They carried the man down out of the rocks, lay him on open grass. A knot of soldiers gathered. The man pulled himself desperately up on one elbow, looked round in fear. Kilrain brought some hardtack and bacon and he ate with obvious hunger, but his teeth were bad; he had trouble chewing the hardtack. The soldiers squatted around him curiously. You saw very few black men in New England. Chamberlain knew one to speak to: a silent roundheaded man with a white wife, a farmer, living far out of town, without friends. You saw black men in the cities but they kept to themselves. Chamberlain’s curiosity was natural and friendly, but there was a reserve in it, an unexpected caution. The man was really very black. Chamberlain felt an oddness, a crawly hesitation, not wanting to touch him. He shook his head, amazed at himself. He saw: palm of the hand almost white; blood dries normally, skin seems dusty. But he could not tell whether it was truly dust or only a natural sheen of light on hair above black skin. But he
felt it again: a flutter of unmistakable revulsion. Fat lips, brute jaw, red-veined eyeballs. Chamberlain stood up. He had not expected this feeling. He had not even known this feeling was there. He remembered suddenly a conversation with a Southerner a long time ago, before the war, a Baptist minister. White complacent face, sense of bland enormous superiority:
my dear man, you have to live among them, you simply don’t understand
.

Kilrain said, “And this is what it’s all about.”

A soldier said softly, “Poor bastard.”

“Hey, Sarge. How much you figure he’s worth, this one, on the hoof?”

“Funny. Very funny. But they’d give a thousand dollars for him, I bet. Nine hundred for sure.”

“Really? Hell.” It was Bucklin, grinning. “Whyn’t we sell him back and buy outen this army.”

Chamberlain said to Kilrain, “He can’t have been long in this country.”

“No. A recent import, you might say.”

“I wonder how much he knows of what’s happening.”

Kilrain shrugged. A crowd was gathering. Chamberlain said, “Get a surgeon to look at that wound.”

He backed off. He stared at the palm of his own hand. A matter of thin skin. A matter of color. The reaction is instinctive. Any alien thing. And yet Chamberlain was ashamed; he had not known it was there. He thought: If I feel this way, even I, an educated man … what was in God’s mind?

He remembered the minister: and what if it is
you
who are wrong, after all?

Tom came bubbling up with a message from Vincent: the corps would move soon, on further orders. Tom was chuckling.

“Lawrence, you want to hear a funny thing? We were talking to these three Reb prisoners, trying to be sociable, you know? But mainly trying to figure ’em out. They were farm-type fellers. We asked them why they were fighting this war, thinkin’ on slavery and all, and one fella said they was fightin’ for their ‘rats.’ Hee. That’s
what he said.” Tom giggled, grinned. “We all thought they was crazy, but we hadn’t heard a-right. They kept on insistin’ they wasn’t fightin’ for no slaves, they were fightin’ for their ‘rats.’ It finally dawned on me that what the feller meant was their ‘rights,’ only, the way they talk, it came out ‘rats.’ Hee. Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin’, and he said, well, he didn’t know, but he must have some rights he didn’t know nothin’ about. Now, aint that something?”

“Button your shirt,” Chamberlain said.

“Yassuh, boss. Hey, what we got here?” He moved to see the surrounded black. The surgeon had bent over the man and the red eyes had gone wild with new fear, rolling horselike, terrified. Chamberlain went away, went back to the coffeepot. He felt a slow deep flow of sympathy. To be alien and alone, among white lords and glittering machines, uprooted by brute force and threat of death from the familiar earth of what he did not even know was Africa, to be shipped in black stinking darkness across an ocean he had not dreamed existed, forced then to work on alien soil, strange beyond belief, by men with guns whose words he could not even comprehend. What could the black man know of what was happening? Chamberlain tried to imagine it. He had seen ignorance, but this was more than that. What could this man know of borders and states’ rights and the Constitution and Dred Scott? What did he know of the war? And yet he was truly what it was all about. It simplified to that. Seen in the flesh, the cause of the war was brutally clear.