The March (33 page)

Pryce stood by silently scribbling his notes, secure at least that in such moments of crisis, despite his height, he had become almost invisible to the officers. Slocum, whose mustache and closely trimmed brown hair framed a face recessively chinned and clerklike, gave orders to bring up the full complement of the two corps that made up his wing. Then he beckoned to one of his staff officers and walked away with him a bit, speaking quietly with his hand on the young officer’s shoulder. Pryce watched as the officer, a lieutenant, nodded, saluted, and leapt on his horse. In a moment the fellow was gone off on a great detour, back and around the Rebel line. Pryce watched until he could no longer see him, but the direction was clear: he was riding east, presumably to Cox’s Bridge and Goldsboro, where General Sherman had gone to meet with the other wing of his army.

BY EARLY AFTERNOON
the word had come miles back down the road to where the wagon train stood mired in the mud, and Sartorius, choosing only his assistant surgeon, a male nurse, and Stephen Walsh to go with him, rode forward to establish a surgery tent on the field of battle. Several of the regimental surgeons were so ordered. Sartorius and the others rode horses. Stephen drove the four-wheeled medicine-supply wagon. The going was difficult because much of the distance had to be traveled off-road. He could hear the medicine bottles clinking in their racks. The mule strained, the wheels jamming, then rolling over rocks, or tilting dangerously in mud pits, and Stephen was bumped airborne from his perch, as he raced forward. Now the sounds of a skirmish were sharp and precise. He heard shouting, the crack of rifles, and, following the Colonel into the declivitous patch in sight of the plantation house, he was, once again, introduced to combat.

They set up the field surgery at the base of a black oak perhaps two hundred yards behind an earthwork of logs and brush that the troops were still constructing. Once the battle began and the wounded arrived for treatment, so, theoretically, would brigade ambulances come up to carry them off afterward. The nurse and the assistant surgeon set the operating slab on sawhorses, and Stephen climbed to the lowest branch of the oak to tie the tent corners in lieu of poles. With that done, he took a moment to climb a bit higher for the view it afforded. Another Union line was off to the right, arrayed behind an improvised breastworks that came across the road. The positions looked shaky to him, shallow and unconnected. No artillery was in place. He wondered where the Rebels were, why they were not moving on a clearly unprepared Union force.

The gunfire tailed off and in the silence, after a moment or so, he heard birdsong.

MIDAFTERNOON THE OFFICERS
at the fortifications saw their skirmishers dropping back, and then turning and running outright and clambering over the entrenchment, shouting and falling all over themselves. Here they come, boys, a sergeant said. Bobby Brasil steadied his rifle on his sighting log. He peered through the opening. Indeed they were coming and, given their intention, it was strangely beautiful to see, but their lines were straight with their mounted officers waving their sabers and their color-bearers carrying the battle flags flying, and they singing their pagan Rebel shrieksong, which was enough to make Brasil’s neck hair rise. Where did they get them all, it’s a whole damn army, Brasil muttered. Fire! the Sergeant shouted and so he did, and so did everyone, so that his ears went dead with the concussion. In the smoke and fire he could see men going down, but the charge did not waver, they were keeping on, and now from the corner of his eye they were coming from the flank, too, it was like one long, flowing banner of sparkling fire, the bullets cracking against the log, scutting up bark, as suddenly a Rebel officer was risen into view, his horse rearing, and he turning it and waving his men on, his broad back square in Brasil’s sights, like a gift. And how sad to destroy such a great, stolid human gallant with just the slightest squeeze of the finger. But they had breached the barricade, they were coming over, and Brasil, catching one on his bayonet, couldn’t shake it out of the boy, so left it and the rifle stuck there and turned and ran, finding himself not alone, the onslaught unstoppable, the shouting and scrambling screaming not from his own throat alone. And he ran and ran through the woods till he found the reserve lines, where he fell down to catch his breath, panting and gasping behind the sheer bulk of blue uniforms pressing forward to take their turn. And good luck to them, Brasil thought, for I have not known such terror since I was held back in the third grade under Sister Agnes Angelica.

TWO MILES AWAY
on the road, Pearl could hear the battle, they all could, the teamsters standing by and talking among themselves, the officers pacing up and down, the horses nickering and lifting their heads with each thump of the cannon. A mile behind her, the cattle drove lowing and, in the wagon in his traveling box, Albion Simms going boom boom boom like as if it wasn’t enough to hear the real thing. Pearl was thinking of Stephen Walsh. He was so good at everything he did that the Colonel-doctor relied on him now as almost he didn’t on anyone else. For sure not on me. But it wasn’t as if she worried about Stephen, just that she was frightened to be without him in her sight. Here she was sitting in this wagon up in North Carolina, with the cold spring breezes and the march held up by a battle so as to give her the clear feeling of being unattached to anywheres or anything, not even a miserable life in the quarters. Just a girl who is free, she thought. And there was such a big blank empty space of life ahead of her with nothing to fix on, nothing to take comfort in. She could see only as far as that Number 12 and the Washington Square in New York. And when she said goodbye to those sad people in that house and came out the door, where would her life be, in what direction would she turn, and down which street, and with whom?

In her anxiety she hadn’t heard David awaken. He came out and sat himself down in her lap, still yawning and rubbing his eyes. Well, boy, she said, you sure know how to sleep, don’t you? You hear that? That’s a war going on.

Yes’m, I hears it.

It don’t worry you none?

Naw. I hungry, he said.

She got some hardtack out of the rations box and handed it to him, and soon he was chewing away, studying the hardtack in his hand and taking a bite out of it, and studying it again as it slowly got smaller and smaller.

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

A
S THEY’D FOLLOWED AFTER THE ARMY, CALVIN HAR
per 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.