South of Shiloh (13 page)

15

AFTER DELIVERING HIS CONVERSATION STOPPER,
Beeman politely excused himself, reached for his police radio, and padded off barefoot into the woods to make a radio check. Paul chewed his lip, doubting things were all that hunky-dory in Mississippi. But no missing the message: whatever Beeman might be, he was saying, he wasn’t a hypocrite.

Which left Paul wondering how far under the genial etiquette the bare knuckles were cocked and ready to go. But before he could phrase a reply, the sergeants were on their feet, going up and down the line, giving the fifteen-minute warning. All around, men were putting out the fires and getting ready to resume the march. Paul busied himself with getting into dry socks, half-dry trousers, and still-wet brogans. Seeing the Ohioans wipe down their muskets, he followed suit, trying to retard the stain of pumpkin-colored rust that spread over the Springfield’s exposed metal.

Beeman returned and saw to his clothing. Sergeants were bawling now, shaking the men out of their lethargy after the long break. Slowly, the three companies fell in on an overgrown path. Beeman turned to him and said, “Don’t get me wrong. We’ll talk later…”

That was as far as he got, because Red Beard called the roll. Then he ordered them to attention, had them assume the ready position, prime their unloaded muskets with percussion caps, and cock the hammers. Then he ordered them to aim their muskets in the air and fire the caps. After the volley of muted pops, Beeman, his old self again, explained, “To dry out the chamber, also as a safety precaution. Make sure nobody brought a loaded piece by accident.”

Then they were ordered right-flank. At the route step, four abreast, they started down the path.

The sound of rushing water was louder now, and up ahead Paul heard men bitch about putting on dry socks and now they were wading in a goddamn creek.

They came to the stream and it was not as bad as it sounded. Paul sized up the ford of slick rocks and skipped across without getting his feet too wet. Ten minutes after crossing the creek, the men cheered when a beam of sunlight poked for the first time through the churning mist. But soon everything that was wet turned to clammy steam. The mist lost the last cool spoor of rain and became a compost stew seeping up from the ground. Paul simmered in his itchy wool. Up ahead, the lead company appeared and disappeared in the peekaboo fog.

Trudging through the woods, hearing the weary clink of equipment and the tired voices, Paul now thought the long break was a mistake. With the challenge of the swamp behind him, he’d lost his earlier edge and now floated, drowsy with the heat. There were moments of dappled sunshine, and, briefly, Paul could see the U.S. flag and the blue standard of the Ohio regiment hanging exhausted in the center of Company B. Then the mist closed in again and it felt like they were marching through a moldy basement with dark tree trunks jutting up like posts holding up a fog ceiling.

A weary shudder passed down the line when a spooked deer jumped from cover and sprinted down the side of the trail and crashed through the brush. Paul tried to blink himself alert. It didn’t work. Then…

“Halt.” Not Red Beard. A stocky man appeared, with a pistol and saber and eagles on his shoulder straps.

The column lurched to a sluggish stop.

“Front.”

A lackadaisical blue shuffle as they undoubled back into two ranks.

Abruptly, the colonel bawled the order:

“Load.”

Holy shit!

That did it. Paul’s eyes darted into the foggy wall of brush and trees that suddenly jerked into pin-tight focus. Were
they
out there? Already? He placed the rifle butt on the ground between his feet, turned so the trigger guard faced him.

With shaking fingers, he tore at the flap of his cartridge box, removed a brown-paper cartridge, held it to his mouth and tore the folded end away with his teeth, spit away the paper, and poured the black powder down the muzzle.

He tasted a chemical grit of sulfur and charcoal and nitrate on his lips, crunched it in his clamped teeth.

“Ram paper, go ahead, use the rammers, boys,” Colonel Burns ordered. Mutters sounded up and down the ranks. “Rammers?”

Beeman, who had not loaded his rifle, said, “Usually you don’t use rammers: safety issue.”

Paul stuffed the paper into the muzzle and drew his ramrod. A metal hiss slithered along the ranks as a hundred fifty rammers were pulled from the “pipes.” The rammers twirled like slim batons and jammed down the muzzles, were withdrawn, then another choreographed twirl and they returned to the slots along the barrel. Paul remembered to hook the little finger of the right hand atop the tulip bulge of the rod, shoving down—to keep his hand clear of the muzzle.

They brought their rifles up to the ready position.

“Prime,” Colonel Burns called out. Trembling with excitement, Paul raised the heavy rifle to his waist. The muzzle tilted up to eye level. The muzzles of rifles in the rear rank projected to either side. He balanced the rifle in his left hand and reached down with his right and unsnapped the cap pouch, plucked out a shiny copper percussion cap and was placing it on the touch hole cone when an officer jogged up, making a waving motion with his hand. After conferring briefly with the officer, Colonel Burns ordered, “Remove caps.”

Huh? Paul plucked off the cap, let it fall.

“Fix bayonets,” Burns ordered.

Paul lowered the rifle butt back to the ground between his shoes and steadied it with his right hand. There was another dull swirl of metal as the bayonets were drawn from scabbards with the left hand and turned in the air. A steel jangle rattled down the line as the bayonets were fitted over and locked down on the muzzle rings.

“Stack arms.”

On surer ground here from much practice, Paul took Beeman’s musket, crossed the bayonets, and leaned the rifles out, steadying them with his left hand on his, then reached behind and took a rifle being passed forward from the rear rank, slid the bayonet into the angle of crossed hilts, positioned the rifle butt to form a stable triangle. The fourth musket, the “leaner,” was passed through and placed against the other three.

“Break ranks, march. Rest.”

Men stepped away from the stacked rifles, drank from their canteens, stuffed pipes, lit them. Some went to the edge of the trail and peed.

“What’s going on?” Paul asked Beeman.

Beeman pointed to the officers, who stood in a huddle, heads close, talking. “Officers,” he said simply. Then he stared down the row of precisely stacked rifles. “Not real smart, stacking loaded muskets.”

“Look,” Paul said, “back there it got a little touchy when we were talking…”

Beeman smiled. “I said don’t get me wrong. It’s just, the way trouble starts in these things is when one side steamrolls the other for openers…”

Bang. Bang-bang. BANGBANGBANG!

One-two-three-many distinct explosions punched ahead in the mist.

Paul’s and Beeman’s eyes widened, mirroring each other. Those were…

Shots!

The reports played tricks in the shrouded forest, rippling, echoing. A long, delicious shiver corkscrewed up Paul’s back. The confab of officers scattered, running to their companies.

“FALL IN!”
a lieutenant bellowed.

Paul joined the blue scramble; pumping arms and legs, crisscrossed black leather, swinging canteens and pouches. Down the road, the companies formed on the rifle pyramids and jockeyed to get in proper order.

“TAKE ARMS.”

A clatter of untangling steel and wood counterpointed the rising crackle ahead.

“UNFIX BAYONETS.”

With a rattle and a clink, Paul unfastened his bayonet, rotated the slender silver knife in his left hand, and returned it to his scabbard in a hiss of leather.

“SHOULDER ARMS.”

Then—

“PRIME.”

Really trembling now, Paul lowered the Springfield to his hip and dug another cap from his pouch. All butterfingers; it slipped away. With urgent care, he plucked another, placed it on the cone, and started to yank back the hammer. “Not yet,” Beeman cautioned. His slow voice had speeded up, animated with the contagious excitement. “Make sure you get the wings on that cap bent down so it don’t fall off.”

As Paul squeezed down on the thin cap flanges with his thumb, Red Beard’s shout echoed the orders rippling down the line: “SHOULDER ARMS. RIGHT FACE. ROUTE STEP—FORWARD—MARCH.”

Men moving machine-like, Paul thought. Me too.

A shimmer of wood and steel as the double lines of blue shouldered the rifles, reshuffled into four abreast, and lurched forward, down the road.

Dizzy and out of breath, Paul felt a flush surge from his throat and flood his cheeks. This tingle started between his sweat-drenched shoulder blades and stitched up the back of his neck and pecked at his scalp.

A palpable current now harnessed the close-packed bodies, and Paul half-expected it to arc where he rubbed elbows with Beeman and the man on his right.

Up ahead, in a fold in the mist, Paul saw the flag swirl in a flourish of red barber-pole stripes, and it was like he was seeing it for the first time.

Maybe the way it’s supposed to be seen…

Gaps were opening and closing overhead in the mist, and sprays of sunlight poked down through the trees like the turning spokes of a giant yellow wheel. Just as suddenly, the sunlight was gone and the gloom closed in again on the urgent muffled tramp of hobnailed shoes. Bird-calls made tiny shrieks amid the increasingly loud bang of gunfire.

Paul and Beeman exchanged sidelong glances.

“You think this is how it was for them?” Paul asked, dry-mouthed.

“Gotta be close, don’tcha think?” Beeman said, raising his eyebrows.

Paul watched Beeman’s lean face.
He’s excited, too.
Then he adjusted his rifle on his shoulder and glanced over to make sure the hammer was at half-cock, that the frail copper cap was still nestled on the cone.

The firing louder now, massed volleys off to the right. Men were going turtle, tugging their heads instinctively down between their hunched shoulders. Beeman elbowed Paul’s arm, inclined his head toward a man in the next file, who’d switched his rifle to his left hand and was making the sign of the cross on his chest with his right hand. Shouts now and the ripping sound of crashing brush. Paul made out a scramble of activity up ahead. Men in blue held their rifles high in both hands and sprinted out to either side of the road.

“They’ve put out flankers,” Beeman said, face alight. “Oh, lookit that.”

Paul swallowed to clear his hearing, thought to take his canteen, decided not to. He had this red jackhammer going in his chest. The faces were bleached gray around him; streamlined, eyes bulged forward.

Like a tattered curtain pierced by gunfire, the mist was coming apart, fluttering down and pooling in low places. Men in blue fanned out up there, dashing off the road in open interval. They floated, bobbed, then sunk in the mist; their heads and shoulders and chests gliding in a chalky wave, their black rifles slanting forward.

The mist dissipated, the trees opened to a blur of a field. Paul squinted through a sheet of sweat. To the right, he saw rising ground.

“COMPANY. COMPANY INTO LINE.”

The marching thicket of rifles and blue caps immediately surged to the left as men stampeded off the trail.

“QUICKLY MEN. DO IT. GO!”

Paul’s eyes and mouth were stuck wide open as he automatically plunged, his legs stretching out. A jagged wicker wall loomed up; gray, rust, bits of green, brambles, dead branches, and knee-deep brush.

Stinging barbs lashed his cheeks, his hands, caught his rifle and snared his feet. Some kind of nettles. A sergeant bawled, “Extend to the left, goddamn it.
Line of battle.
” Paul tried to sprint, clumsy with swinging equipment, slipping off-balance in a struggle to keep up with Beeman.
Gotta fill my slot. Gotta keep Beeman on my right.
Shoulders, rifles, packs, canteens, and bayonets askew, Company C collided in a frantic, shoving tussle to form two lines.

His life had been reduced to one simple task.
Gotta claim my place in line!

The stocky colonel—Burns, was it?—Burns was in front now, waving a sword, barking orders. Unintelligible. Too fast for Paul to comprehend.

“FORWARD INTO LINE. BY COMPANY, LEFT HALF-WHEEL,
MARCH
!”

“What?” Paul blurted. “WHAT?”

Beeman’s hand firmly grasped his elbow, propelling him.

“FORWARD MARCH. GUIDE RIGHT!”

“C’mon,” Beeman said, “it’s a left wheel, follow along with me.”

Paul stuck to Beeman as each company in the battalion swung to the left. At the command “Forward march,” they plowed straight ahead through the brush, hurrying to join the line formed by Companies A and B.

“THIRD COMPANY, RIGHT TURN, MARCH!” an officer near the ranks yelled. Beeman maintained steady pressure on Paul’s elbow, yanking him forward and to the right at a run. The clattering confusion of bodies and equipment slowed to a walk, Beeman released his hold on Paul’s elbow, and Paul found himself in his proper place. The headlong rush of men off the forest path into the dense underbrush was now three companies advancing in a line of battle.

Looking ahead, Paul saw a strobe-like snapshot. The skirmishers aimed and fired their rifles. Puffs of white smoke. Paul inhaled the exploding scent of fire on sulfur. Felt the sting in the eyes and tasted the grit of nitrates on the tongue. Loud booms of musket fire slammed his eardrums, rang in the trees. The volume of rifle fire squeezed his vision, and the air itself seemed to go powdery and visibly shake.

The ground dipped and then rose up, crowding the formation. Paul stumbled on a pile of slippery deadfall strewn over a limestone outcrop. His left foot and leg plunged through the branches into a rocky crevasse and he went down, his right leg spraddled akimbo. Flailing for balance, he couldn’t extract his wedged ankle. He was stuck.

“Keep it moving, extend to the left, goddamn you…make room for Company B…”

Paul felt Beeman’s strong grip under his right arm, bodily lifting him from the crevasse, and he was careening forward again. A sergeant’s angry face ahead, rifle held horizontal across his chest, roughly herding men to the left. From the corner of his eye, Paul saw the color-bearers stumbling through dense undergrowth off to the right, flags swaying, clumps of men struggling in the thickets. Company B. Company A funneling in after them.