The Union Quilters (33 page)

Another night in the trenches was followed by another day much like the one before, only hotter. Before noon, the Union heavy artillery took out the chimney so that it could not become the perch for another Rebel sharpshooter.

“Those Vermonters are going for ice again,” Abel heard someone remark farther down the line, and he climbed up on the clay transom to take a look.

A dilapidated icehouse, battered by shelling, stood near the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad on a small hill about fifty yards beyond the Union breastworks. The door facing their side stood open, offering a tempting welcome, but to reach it, a man would be obliged to sprint across an open field in full view of the Rebel line. Once inside the icehouse, the man would be more or less protected while he gathered all the ice he could carry, but he would face the same hazards as he ran back to the trenches with his frozen burden. Sometimes the daring soldier would make it back with his rubber blanket wrapped like a sack around the ice, but other times he was cut down and fell sprawling to the dusty ground, dead or writhing in agony until he died.

The men of the 6th were too far away to hazard the journey themselves, but from time to time, thirsty men on the side of the line closer to the icehouse took their chances. Abel wished he had a few slivers of ice to refresh his canteen. He could imagine the cool, fresh water quenching his thirst, holding back the heavy, sultry air for just a moment. But it would be suicide for him to make the run, so he could only watch whenever the Vermonters made a go of it, shaking his head in pity when they were cut down, and watching enviously when they made it back to the trenches and divided the ice among their fellows.

“Someone’s heading out,” said Marcus, watching through a narrow space between the sandbags on the parapet.

Abel climbed up on the transom and slowly, cautiously peered through a crevice just as a volley of cover fire erupted from the Vermonters’ trench. Slight and swift, a soldier leapt from the hole and flew toward the icehouse, his rubber blanket folded in a tight bundle under his arm. Immediately the Rebels returned fire, some aiming for the trench, others for the runner, who darted this way and that as plumes of dirt rose and fell while bullets struck the ground all around him. Abel urgently muttered, “Go, go, go,” under his breath and joined in the cheers as the soldier reached the shelter of the icehouse.

“He ain’t made it back yet, Yank,” one of the Confederate pickets shouted across the field.

“If I’s him I’d wait till dark to come back,” said a soldier standing on the transom, taking turns with Marcus peering through the narrow space between sandbags. Abel agreed; in the Vermonterʹs place he would enjoy the coolness of the icehouse until nightfall, and then return to the trenches under the greater if imperfect cover of darkness. But not twenty minutes later, the slight man appeared in the doorway, concealed from the Rebel lines though perfectly visible to his comrades, his rubber blanket slung heavily over his left shoulder. He signaled to his company, and as they set down cover fire he lit out, bent over from his burden and moving more slowly than before.

“He got to move faster than that,” a soldier muttered on Abel’s right just as the Vermonter’s hat was struck off. Chunks of ice slipped from the blanket as he picked up speed. Then a ball struck his left leg and he pulled up lame. Someone on the line swore, and more balls struck the Vermonter in the chest and shoulder as he hobbled toward the trench. His company shouted for him to run, run, but another ball hit home and he fell flat on the ground, the blanket sack bursting upon impact and sending forth a shower of glistening wet crystals. The Vermonter never moved again.

“God bless him,” said Marcus, resigned, drawing back from the parapet.

“All that ice,” lamented the other soldier. “Look at it. Just look at it, there in the sun, melting away!”

“You can go fetch yourself some,” said Owen, the oldest man in their company, a runaway from Georgia fifteen years free. A few men chuckled grimly, but the unhappy soldier shook his head and climbed down from the transom, seating himself in the relative cool of the traverse. An hour later, all that remained of the ice was a dark wet stain on the earth beside the cooling body of the unfortunate Vermonter. By suppertime, only the body remained.

At twilight, the pickets on both sides shouted insults back and forth for a few minutes before agreeing to a momentary truce to allow the Vermonters to remove their comrade’s body from the field. The pickets on both sides took advantage of the ceasefire to meet in front of the 5th Corps line to exchange newspapers and trade coffee and sugar for tobacco. None of the colored troops ventured out, truce or no truce. The Confederates seemed to bear a particular hatred for colored men in Union blue.

“All right, you Yanks” came a shout from the Confederate fortifications after the body was removed from the field. “Hunt your holes right smart quick!”

Like that, the truce was over. The field cleared as men in blue and gray alike scrambled for their trenches, carrying the goods they had acquired in trade. Moments later the firing resumed. Such fraternization was officially discouraged by commanders on both sides, but some officers on the front lines were willing to look the other way from time to time. Abel wondered why no one had thought to visit the icehouse during the lull in the battle. It’s what he would have done.

 

The next day, Joshua told Abel that he was determined to have a decent meal for them all before the day was out. He said the same thing upon rising the next morning, and while frying up hardtack the following afternoon at supper. Finally he persuaded the lieutenant to allow him to make his way to the rear and buy supplies from the sutlers’ wagons. It would be a three-mile journey there and three miles back, with plenty of opportunities to get himself shot coming and going.

“Don’t risk it,” Abel urged his brother. “It won’t be much longer till we’re sent to the rear, and you can buy all you want and eat your fill then.”

But Joshua had fixed his mind upon serving up flapjacks with sugar for the entire company at their next breakfast, with fried chicken and biscuits to follow for supper, and pudding for dessert. The men pooled their money, and with misgivings, Abel contributed his share too. Joshua grinned and promised he would keep his head down, and then he was off, making his way through the traverses and down the alleys from trench to trench.

Abel tried to tell himself his younger brother was moving away from danger, at least for the first part of the trip, but the hours passed with agonizing slowness as he imagined every danger Joshua could encounter on the way. He was almost as angry as he was relieved when Joshua reappeared at mid-afternoon loaded down with a sack stuffed full of cans of condensed milk, white sugar, yellow cheese, flour, two chickens, cornmeal, carrots, potatoes, and other delicacies, as well as a shiny tin cook pot that reflected the setting sun and had likely drawn the attention of every Rebel sharpshooter on that side of Petersburg when the sun was high.

“Next time, wear this target over your fool head, why don’t you,” growled Abel, thumping the cook pot with the flat of his hand. Sheepishly, Joshua shrugged, but he was too delighted by thoughts of the coming feast to mind his brotherʹs admonitions.

The chicken would spoil if he waited until the next day to cook it, so Joshua set himself to work in the cook hole while the ravenous men waited. As he heated oil in the cook pot, he mixed cornmeal and flour and a shaving of the cheese into a breading and dipped the chicken pieces into it. As the smell of sizzling oil and frying meat wafted from the cook hole, Joshua frequently had to order the men not to crowd him, and to appease them he passed around a loaf of soft white bread, the first they had tasted in weeks. Each man tore off a chunk and passed it on, saving the largest piece for the lieutenant, without whom the feast would not have been permitted. The bread all but melted in Abel’s mouth, and his stomach growled in anticipation. Fried chicken. He had not enjoyed fried chicken since he could not recall when.

“Five minutes,” Joshua called out. “Ready your plates, gentlemen.”

The men were so eager that the lieutenant had to remind them that the war had not paused for their feast, and their positions must be covered. Abel was fairly confident his brother would think to set aside a portion for him, so he offered to man the parapet while Marcus and Owen made their way to the cook hole. “Look at that pudding,” he heard a man exclaim. “Looks almost as good as my mama’s.”

“Hands off,” Joshua warned. “That’s for dessert and it’s still cooling.”

Any reply the hungry soldier might have made was lost in the sudden whoosh of a shell hurtling through the air and warning shouts from the other trenches. Instinctively, Abel flung himself to the floor of the trench and covered his head just as a deafening explosion shook the earthworks. Sand and pulverized clay rained down all around him. Over the ringing in his ears, Abel heard shouted orders and the rapid popping of return fire. Gingerly he pushed himself to his feet, brushing dirt from his hair and clothes, shaking his head to clear it. Suddenly he heard a cry of despair, and his heart leapt into his throat as he recognized his brotherʹs voice. “Joshua,” he yelled, threading his way through the alleys connecting the trench to the cook hole. “Joshua, where are you?”

“Over here,” his brother called, anguished.

Abel rounded the corner and spotted his brother. “Are you wounded?”

“Wounded? No, no, much worse than wounded,” Joshua nearly sobbed. “Look!”

He gestured to the floor of the cook hole, where dirt and debris from the explosion had smothered the fire—and every savory morsel of their feast. “What a dirty trick,” Joshua lamented, tears in his eyes. “That was a dirty Rebel trick!”

His cries drew Marcus, who easily ascertained what had happened and went away muttering in disappointment. Word quickly spread, and although a few of the company came to see for themselves, and to poke at the pile of dirt and cinders to see if any part of the meal had been spared, everyone went away disappointed. Not even the faint aroma of cooking remained.

“Good thing we didn’t save the bread for supper,” remarked Owen.

Joshua snorted, kicking at the pile with the toe of his boot. A thin wisp of smoke rose and faded. Angry, he kicked again, harder, and his boot struck something metal. Joshua quickly uncovered the cook pot, which was no longer shiny and sported a long dent down one side, but he found a rag and began wiping it clean.

“How about the rest of the supplies?” asked Abel.

Joshua looked up from the debris, suddenly remembering that he had left the sack in one of the alleys. Together the brothers found it beneath a thin layer of earth. The bag was soiled, but the remaining supplies inside it were undamaged.

“Tomorrow we are having flapjacks for breakfast,” Joshua declared later as he fried himself a piece of hardtack for supper. “I aim to stuff myself with flapjacks if it kills me.”

 

A week later, the 6th was relieved and sent back to the rear for fatigue duty, none too soon, for in the trenches they had lost men to shells and bullets every day. They were ordered to set up camp in a strip of piney woods next to an open field, and almost immediately afterward they were put to work constructing breastworks. The command puzzled Abel, who wondered why the defense fortifications were necessary so far behind the trenches separating their new position from Petersburg. But for the first time in weeks, the sound of rifle fire did not constantly harass them, and although a stray shell sometimes sent them diving for cover, they were glad to be out of the trenches for a while. Abel suspected they would soon return.

The labor was hard, but except for the occasional low boom of artillery fire, the setting was almost serene. Pine boughs offered a soft, fragrant padding for their bedrolls. Blackberries grew in abundance, and a few days after setting up camp, Marcus and Joshua rounded up a few stray milch cows, one of which was assigned to their mess. They received their first mail in weeks, and could purchase food and necessities from the sutlers’ wagons whenever they were off duty, and they swapped reading material with the men of the 30th USCT and other regiments.

One morning shortly after roll call, Owen, who had gone forty years without reading a word but had taken to Abel’s lessons like a bright schoolboy, brought Abel a battered copy of
Harper’s Weekly
. “Ain’t you from Water’s Ford, Pennsylvania?” he asked, holding out the magazine, dog-eared and torn from hard use and many readings, his calloused forefinger marking a particular page.

“That’s right.” Curious, Abel took the magazine and what did he behold but an engraving of the ladies’ sampler quilt hanging proudly from the portico of Union Hall. He had to laugh. “Why, look here, boys,” he called to his friends. “Come see what I used to build before I discovered breastworks as my true calling.”

The men alternately praised and teased him, and all agreed that he had been holding back, because nothing they had seen him build in the past year had been half as fine as Union Hall. “After the war, I want you to build me a big house just like that one,” said Owen.

“After the war?” said Marcus with mock astonishment. “I ain’t waiting that long and neither should you. Enough of these tents. This here Union Hall’s what our next winter camp should look like.”

Everyone laughed, and for the remainder of their fatigue duty, the men of the company would ask Abel’s opinion about where they should place the portico or the Greek columns for their breastworks. A former shop clerk from Philadelphia took to calling him the Renowned Architect, but the name was too cumbersome to stick.

No one in the 6th, not even the lieutenant, knew where they would be assigned next. “Picket duty or the trenches again, I reckon,” said Owen when he and Abel discussed it. Abel wasn’t so sure. While their regiment labored, another colored battalion drilled on the open field—long, hard, tedious drills for hours on end. The separate regiments deployed into lines of battle from double column at half distance, first in quick time, and later, as the men grew accustomed to the maneuver, on the double quick, and then on the run, each time ending with a vigorous bayonet charge at an imaginary foe. After several days, the brigades united and ran through the same drills as before, only as a larger force.