South of Shiloh (12 page)

After a moment, one of the more rugged-looking Ohio guys executed an exaggerated pantomime of urban gang signs with his fingers. Grinning, he finished his show by thumping his chest with two fingers of one hand, then tapping his forehead with the index finger of the other.

“Double tap to the chest, one in the head,” the guy said with a broad smile and a wink. “Tell you what, Dixie—in my other life I’m a copper in Cleveland. That’s how we signal back the homeboys when they lay their gang shit on us.”

The gesture broke the tension. Beeman rolled his eyes and they all laughed and then splashed back into file.

Paul and Beeman slogged side by side for several moments, then Paul lowered his voice and asked, “What you said back there, you serious?”

Beeman treated Paul to an inscrutable smile and said, “’Bout half.”

14

PAUL LURCHED, STRAINED HIS EYES UP AHEAD AT
a sudden bedlam of thrashing water and alarmed voices. Sergeants shouted. The double file splashed to a halt. Beeman slogged forward and disappeared in the cottony air. He returned a few minutes later and Paul and the Ohio men gathered around him. “A guy up front stepped into water over his head. Was touch-and-go for a minute there,” Beeman explained. “The crew that scouted this line of march didn’t have to deal with this fog. Way it is we could lose somebody in this soup.”

“Are we lost?” an Ohioan asked.

Beeman grinned. “No mor’n your Yankee ancestors were. Okay, here’s the deal. We’re gonna leave the channel and bushwhack through the woods. Be slower but less chance of drowning.”

“What about…snakes?” someone asked.

“We come here to live the history, huh?” Beeman said.

The bedraggled Ohioans grumbled their assent. “Fuckin’ A,” one of them said.

Red Beard appeared bearlike in the mist, recapped what Beeman had said, took out his sergeant’s journal, and called the roll. Assured that he had everybody, he guided the company into the marshy shallows. Soon they were on more solid footing, tripping single-file now along the boggy shore. They tossed away their walking sticks and traded the suction of mud for a tangle of matted vegetation. Thick clumps of tall reeds concealed foot traps of mossy deadfall. The constant webs of kudzu fouled their path.

And now they had bugs flitting in their faces.

“Watch it there,” Beeman muttered, pointing to a squirm of activity on the ground. “Don’t be disturbing the fire ants.”

Fighting through the brush and clouds of pesky gnats, Paul sensed a new seriousness driving the men. He felt it himself. Despite the bone-jarring terrain, his equipment seemed to ride easier, his step was becoming surer.

So this was Espirit. Generated in men’s chests and moving down the line. Not young men either. The more he studied the flushed faces of the Ohioans, the more he saw the set jaws of men in their forties and fifties. All of them determined to gut it through the march.

Now Paul stumbled on his second revelation: the rigors of the swamp were merely a
prelude
.

In mid-thought, like an object lesson in pride going before the fall, Paul felt his hobnailed sole slip on a green, moss-greased branch, and he pitched forward. Beeman turned to put out a quick hand to catch him. Too late. Paul thrust out his musket with both hands to break his awkward plunge. His rifle came up fast and the steel lock slammed his forehead; his glasses skewed and the sharp hammer spur gashed into flesh and bone above his left eyebrow.

“Ow shit.”

Stunned, tangled in brush and broken branches, Paul was pulled to a sitting position. Amazed, he felt the hot drip down the side of his face and into the corner of his mouth. His own blood. A coppery, hot meat taste, salted with sweat and dirt. He reached up and gingerly removed his sprung glasses, and saw the lenses and his fingers smeared muddy red.

“We got a man down,” Beeman yelled. Voices rippled up ahead in the mist and the column halted. Red Beard came at a clumsy trot.

Beeman doused canteen water on a bandanna and cleaned the gash. “Ain’t bad, Paul. Head cuts bleed a lot, all the capillaries.” While a knot of men gathered, Beeman applied pressure to stop the bleeding. He took his first-aid kit from his bag, dabbed on antiseptic cream, and closed the cut with a butterfly bandage.

Paul was standing now, blinking at the numb throb of pain, testing the side of his face with his fingertips. Beeman grinned and took out a clean red bandanna. He folded it over Paul’s head and knotted it in the back. “This’ll work better than your cap. Looks cool too.” Beeman shook four liver-colored pills from a plastic vial, dropped them in Paul’s grubby hand, held up his canteen. “Ibu. Go on. Take ’em.”

Paul swallowed the pills with a gulp of Beeman’s water, then splashed a little on his glasses to rinse them off. He stowed his cap in his haver and carefully put the glasses back on. Then, cautiously, he tested the bulge of swelling bandage with his fingertips. His skull had elongated, like a nubbin horn jutting out, overlapping his eye. But it wasn’t that painful. Not really. One of the Ohioans handed him his rifle. Several of the men grinned, admiring.

“Cool.”

“Way k-ewl,” one of them enunciated, stressing the k-sound.

A wound.

Red Beard asked Paul if he felt good enough to continue. Then he looked around and laughed absurdly at his own remark, as if there was a choice out here. Paul nodded, adjusted his gear, shouldered his rifle, and the column moved forward in single file.

Now Paul experienced an almost embarrassing surge of joy. In addition to being drenched in sweat, mud, and slime, he was bleeding and bandaged. A grime of blood was etched into the dirty whorls of his palms. Dots of it shone dully on the rifle hammer: terra cotta bumps drying around red rosette centers.

He framed a foreign thought that was suddenly appropriate. It was sloppy…unmilitary…going messy like this.

Quickly he removed his own kerchief from his pocket, wiped his dirty hands, and rubbed the drying blood from his rifle.

Soon it was evident that the painful swelling on his head was an ironic source of strength that magnified his energy. He’d stopped sightseeing. The exotic, mist-shrouded landscape was now merely an obstacle course to be negotiated to get to the fight waiting ahead.

He accepted the soggy mash of his socks in his mud-filled shoes and the wet drag of his trouser legs. The strict leather straps that spliced his chest now rose and fell with his breathing like a new web of muscles. He sipped from his canteen, rationing his water. He keyed on Beeman’s swaying pack and shoulders and watched the placement of his own feet. His breath dug deeper; he was getting used to it.
Shit, man, I can do this all day.

The sun rose, a pale blur in the fog, and they fought tangled brush and pools of swamp for more than three hours.

Then, up ahead, Paul heard a patter of conversation start again. After barging through a last muddy thicket, the ground firmed. They left the margin of the swamp and entered open forest. “Double file,” called out Red Beard.

The single file sorted back into a double line and Beeman was back, walking beside him on a silent mattress of wet leaves. The suffocating mist was thinning.

“Hear that?” Beeman asked.

Paul strained his ears above the muted clatter of marching men and detected a fresh sound of rushing water up ahead.

“Kirby Creek,” Beeman said, cuffing Paul on the shoulder. “We made it around the lake, through the swamp.”

A few moments later the column halted at a water point. Canteens were collected and water details were sent to the large plastic jugs. Paul and Beeman cast off their packs and sprawled on the spongy leaf cover. They removed their sodden shoes, yanked off their wet, filthy socks and wrung them out. Up and down the line men were peeling off their wet shoes and pulling dry stockings from their packs.

An Ohio soldier passed a metal container of talc among his buddies. They shook the white powder into dry socks, unbuttoned their trousers and dusted it into their shorts. “The sacred order of the white palm,” someone quipped. Another soldier produced an antique watch and muttered in an awed voice, “We spent five hours in that goddamn swamp.”

The water detail returned and the canteens were distributed. Sergeants walked the line. “We’ll be here for an hour and a half. Get some fires going and try’n dry out your footwear. Careful, though; don’t get them too close to the flame.”

Soon wood smoke mingled with the fog. Paul and Beeman brewed coffee in their tin cups, peeled open their shoes and placed them on upright sticks by the fire. One of the Ohioans came over and asked Beeman, “You know where we are?”

Beeman scraped off a layer of leaves and sketched a long kidney shape in the damp earth with a stick. “We just skirted Cross State Lake off to our left.” He marked an X on the left, below the kidney. “I figure we’re about here, where the creek runs out of the swamp.”

“Have you been in here before?” Paul asked.

Beeman shook his head. “Old Man Kirby don’t let anybody on the land. Not even to hunt.” He looked up at the Ohio soldiers, who now formed a semicircle around him. “The fight started on the opposite side of the lake.” Beeman drew lines of force around the bottom right side of his diagram. “The Rebs figured they’d lure the Yanks through the thick stuff onto an entrenched position, here. Have ’em hemmed in, lake on their right, the creek to their left.” He marked another X south of the lake. “They dug in on the hill below the Kirby House with the swamp behind them to protect their rear.”

Paul sipped his coffee, studying the circle of men intent on Beeman’s scratching. The word “bonded” came to mind. Except “bonded” was Minnesota therapy-speak and it didn’t fit. This was more than a bunch of adhering particles. The shared ordeal of the swamp had beaten them into a unit.

Beeman was saying, “See, they never figured on the Yankees sneaking a regiment through the swamp. That’s us. We break out of these woods and hit their works end-on. Had ’em trapped, except starting that night and through the next morning it rained like hell. The Rebs were able to slip out under cover of the storm and withdraw toward Corinth.”

The group disbanded back to their campfires. Beeman and Paul took off their trousers and attempted to dry them along with their shoes. Barefoot in flannel drawers, they munched hardtack and jerky next to their small fire.

“How’s your noggin?” Beeman asked.

Paul lightly touched the red bandanna where dried blood had formed a stiff patch over the swelling. “I’ll survive,” Paul said.

Beeman smiled. “You know, with that do-rag on your head—you was a little shorter you’d look like Audie Murphy in the old
Red Badge of Courage.
”

Paul almost blushed. He’d been toying with the exact self-dramatic connection. “You know the battle pretty good,” he said, changing the subject.

“Wasn’t a battle. What you call an engagement. But yeah. I heard about it all my life.” Beeman propped up on an elbow, tossed a few sticks on the fire. “See, my great-great-granddaddy, Matthew Beeman, was from Brandon, Mississippi, down in Rankin County. They had this militia company, the Rankin Guards. When the war come along, they were reorganized into the Rankin Greys as part of the Sixth Mississippi…”

His voice trailed off for a moment. “The Sixth fought at Shiloh in Cleburne’s Corps, pushing against Sherman’s division the first day and he come through it unscathed.” Beeman jerked his head toward the sound of the rushing creek water. “Way it worked out he wound up on that hill up ahead, probably shitting his pants when the Ohio boys busted out of the swamp.”

“Turf,” Paul said, picking up a damp handful of leaves and dirt and letting it trickle from his fingers. “My dad’s people came over from England before the First World War. Mom’s came from Sweden around 1900.”

“An’ you discovered the Civil War on TV when Ken Burns made his documentary, huh?” Beeman observed.

Paul chewed his lip, flashed briefly on the Civil War statue in front of the old courthouse in Stillwater. Then he reached over and gathered a pinch of Beeman’s blue sleeve between his thumb and forefinger. Let it go. “So why’re you out here playing a Yankee who was shooting at your ancestor?”

Beeman shrugged. “You gotta understand, I work in a small department, we ain’t got but ten deputies for the whole county. And I been on stakeouts where it was hard getting four guys coordinated. So I wanted to be part of a hundred fifty men trying to come through the swamp in some kind of order. And they did it. Didn’t lose anybody. Not even my last whale. He huffed and puffed his way all the way through.”

Paul sat up and swirled the last of his coffee in the bottom of the cup. “I think I know what you mean. Now, myself, I was never in the army. But it seems to me marching now is different from then.”

Beeman nodded. “You got that right. It was all about drill, how you move these jam-packed hedgehogs of men around on a battlefield and get ’em in range of one another. I mean, the mechanics of doin’ that with thousands and thousands…”

Paul cocked his head. “I think I get it; the attention to detail, uniforms and equipment and drill. Respecting what they went through. And I know it’s a hobby. But I just can’t help thinking it was about something…”

“Uh-oh.” Beeman scrubbed his fingers in his sweat-frazzled hair. His spare features nimbly worked the tension between the prescient light in his eyes and the unrepentant set of his jaw.

“Well, it was,” Paul said flatly.

“Ah Jesus.” Beeman sighed. “Here comes the Public Radio sermon.” He sat up, placed his tin cup carefully on the ground, and said, “Was about something, huh?”

“Damn straight…” Paul felt his own jaw tense.

Beeman held up a hand diplomatically and looked directly into Paul’s eyes. “Paul,” he said frankly, “you got black folks for neighbors up there in Minnesota, live right next door or down the block; your kids walk to school together?”

Paul furrowed his brow. “Well, no…”

“Thing is, Paul, down here—win, lose, or draw with all the ugly and we still got plenty ugly to go around—we’re still neighbors. Not like up there where you look down your noses on the South and talk
diversity
…and then get in your cars and drive like hell to get to the suburbs.”