Different Sin (32 page)

Christ! David thought. We’ll be trapped in this damn hole! What in hell had happened to Burnside’s plan to throw troops to the right and left of the crater, drive the enemy from their entrenchments? He focused his glasses on the flanking breastworks, let his breath out in a rush as he caught a glimpse of blue-clad infantrymen fanned out in the captured works, pressing painfully forward through a maze of Reb rifle pits and trenches.

A red-faced colonel mounted a block of clay a few yards from David and bellowed an order to the milling infantrymen to regroup and move against the Reb batteries on the crater’s lip. “Move out, dammit!” He mopped his brow with a bandanna, then waved it like a flag. “You gonna let Willcox and Potter’s men do your fighting for you?! Get over the side for chrissake!” His voice barely carried through the din.

A handful of men of varied brigades moved forward at his summons. David took a step toward the shouting officer, opened his pad. If he was stuck down here he could at least do his job as a newsman. Better than just standing, shaking in his boots.

A mortar shell shrilled. The colonel’s sweating face vanished, spattering the men around him with bits of bleeding flesh. For a second the body remained upright, arm still raised in appeal, blood spurting from the severed jugular, then pitched forward with a dull thud.

David threw himself under the shelter of an overturned gun carriage. Vomit rose violently in his throat, spewing from him as he struggled to worm his way further under its scanty protection. Men fell atop him, clawing and shoving, as they struggled for cover.

The suffocating press of men finally lifted. David groped his way from under the carriage, wiped his face numbly. His sketchpad lay where he’d dropped it, trampled, bloody, spattered with dirt and vomit. He let it lie. The colonel’s mutilated body sprawled on the crater floor, oozing blood that formed a vivid red pool on the hard clay.

David stared at it with sickened fascination. If that shell had fallen a few feet different, that could’ve been him lying there. When he thought how a few days earlier he’d toyed with the idea of inviting just such a death—to be cut down like that, never to put pencil to paper again or see his loved ones— He slumped to the ground, beseeching God to let him survive this battle.

Reb artillery tore into the Union troops in the flanking trenches now. The men fell back in panic, took cover under the remains of bombproofs or poured in chaotic flight into the adjoining crater. The Confederates pressed forward, reoccupying the works as Union infantrymen fled.

The soldiers pouring into the crater pressed together in suffocating closeness, all semblance of military order vanished. A few line officers still called commands, relaying orders to advance from the pit in listless tones that betrayed no expectation of obedience. “Damned if I will,” a soldier pinned next to David growled. “Goddamn generals issue orders to take the crest while they’re settin’ pretty behind the lines without no idea what we’re up against. Heard it from one of Ledlie’s men for a fact. Ledlie and Ferrero’s holed up in a bombproof together, expectin’ us to throw our lives away assaultin’ Reb guns.”

“Christ,” David breathed. He worked his watch out of his pocket, stared at it in dulled amazement. A quarter hour still lacked till seven o’clock. The air in the pit was stifling, the heat noontime fierce. Days seemed to have passed since he’d let himself be trapped in this hellhole, barely able to move, expecting to breathe his last at each shriek of a shell.

There was a sudden commotion from the men around him, a scattering of weak cheers. David raised his head in breathless hope. The colored troops had moved out from the Union lines, were advancing under heavy Reb fire along the rim of the crater. Several officers sprang to their feet with renewed vigor, urging their men to move out in support of the Negroes’ assault.

“C’mon, we got us a chance!” the man who’d sat next to David cried. He rose, waving his bayonet like an officer’s sword, his voice booming over the uneven lines of men slowly falling into formation. A babble of voices clashed angrily.

“Damn right! Let’s move out and show Johnny!”

“I’ll be damned if I follow after any pack of niggers!”

David got to his feet, straining to see what was happening. The leading colored brigades were struggling through the maze of trenches that connected with the right rim of the crater, their way slowed by the mass of Union troops still crowded into the section not retaken by the Rebs. A fierce barrage of rifle fire raked their right flank, from Confederates at close enough range to bayonet the nearest of the colored infantrymen. The left ranks of Negroes were forced from the rim into the crater, where they pressed doggedly through the throngs of milling white troops.

Canister poured into the pit. David shrank back against the steep earth slope, willing his body to stop trembling as he followed the passage of the colored soldiers. He gave a start of recognition as he spotted the company of men he’d visited over the past week among the intent, dark faces, raised his glasses to make certain. The colored men scrambled up the opposite side of the crater into a hail of artillery and sharpshooters’ bullets. A slender, brown-skinned fellow ducked back from the crest, crouched for cover under a few jagged sticks of timber. A muscled, bare ebony arm yanked him mercilessly from his hiding place, hoisted him over the rim of the pit. David focused, recognized the barrel-chested sergeant who’d lined out songs for the company, stripped to his waist now under the hot sun as he leaped fiercely over the edge.

The leading brigades had already fought their way through the works rimming the crater. David clawed his way up the slope till he was high enough to make out the Confederate-held ground on the opposite side of the pit.

A cheer went up among the men clinging to the crater wall around him as the first wave of colored troops swept over enemy-held entrenchments, attacking with bayonets and rifle butts, capturing a squad of Confederate prisoners in hand-to-hand fighting and retaking a captured Union standard.

Some twenty minutes passed in tense waiting, the Union troops half hidden from view by the zigzag walls of the trenches. A small party of officers and men leaped from the last of the Reb breastworks then to make a rush for the crest of Cemetery Hill. A storm of crossfire swept them, drove those still standing back to the trenches.

A Union officer jumped to the parapet, his figure commanding even at a distance, sword arm upraised and flag flying from his left hand. David gasped as he recognized the young lieutenant, Christopher Pennell, who’d shared his tent with him for the days just past. Pennell paused an instant to urge on his men, then sprang forward, greeted by fire so fierce his body seemed torn to fragments even before he fell.

David lowered the glasses, stunned and dispirited, not bothering to watch as the men around him shouted out news of a second rush from the breastworks, a second storm of Reb artillery fire from a ravine out of range of Union guns. A Reb countercharge poured from the ravine. The colored soldiers and those white troops who’d followed them broke in retreat, streaming wildly back into the crater.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

There was no longer any hope of Union success, had not been since the rout of the colored soldiers hours earlier. The likelihood of leaving the crater alive was the only question occupying the men still trapped in the bomb pit under a blazing sun that now sat directly overhead.

General Burnside had accepted the inevitable, issued orders for a Union retreat shortly after nine, but the Confederate artillery spewing canister on the field between the lines made withdrawal a death-defying gamble. The bodies of Union soldiers lay so thickly strewn on the field it was difficult to cross to the Union lines without setting foot on human flesh, a courier to the rear-based command reported back in horror.

The crater floor too was strewn with the jumbled bodies of dead and wounded, the litter of severed limbs. The few patches of bare ground were stained red with blood. The moans of wounded men begging for water rose to David’s ears during lulls in the firing. The stench of dead flesh and opened bowels clogged his nostrils even on the side of the slope where he still clung in desperation.

Like a vision out of hell, he thought with numb horror. Dante’s Inferno or— Christ, keep your wits about you! he told himself. Thinking had become a strain. His head swam from the noise and heat. His mouth was parched. What few drops of water he’d been husbanding had been snatched from him over an hour ago, by two soldiers who struggled fiercely over his canteen till the precious liquid spilled out on the ground.

He strained to make sense of the scene around him. The infantrymen were jammed into the pit chaotically, colored and white regiments mixed together. A handful of soldiers at the base of the slope dug their bayonets into the loose dirt, scraping out the beginnings of a shaft through which they hoped to cross the field protected from Confederate fire. David stared in wonder. It had taken weeks to hack out the tunnel for the mine! But still, the courier who’d made it to the general command reported Burnside was setting men to work cutting a similar shaft from the Union lines. There was always a chance, he supposed.

Hell, he’d lend them a hand. Better than crouching here helplessly. David made his way down the slope, looked about for something to dig with. More of the men were gathering around the newly begun shaft now. David gave a start as he spotted Amos, the young colored boy who’d reminded him so of Mike, in a cluster of approaching Negro soldiers. Amos stared back in surprise, as David headed toward him.

The simultaneous explosion of hundreds of muskets shattered the brief lull; Reb soldiers swarmed over the crest in a fierce hand-to-hand charge on the trapped Union troops. David threw himself to the ground, crawled under the wreckage of a caisson.

Frenzied cries and firing raged over his head while he lay shaking, possessed by raw terror. He raised his head at last as the noise of the battle died down. The Rebs had been driven back to the rim, though any fool must know they were merely reforming for a stronger assault. The Union troops couldn’t hold out much longer; already the bodies of dozens more dead and wounded had tumbled in grisly heaps into the pit. David searched with his eyes till he found Amos, fiercely glad to see the youngster still alive and uninjured.

Though how much longer could any of them count on living? God, what a fool he’d been to venture out beyond their lines! For that matter, Zach had been right from the first to warn him off. If only he’d listened to him!

My God, he thought, I’ll never see Zach again, never be able to tell him—

He sobbed, closed his eyes on burning tears. This must be God’s judgment for his sin. Zach’s face swam up in front of his closed eyes, his look filled with loving scorn. “I daresay there’s worse sins than loving, David.” But then Zach never did worry about the life beyond. What was it he’d said that last day they’d had together? Something by that poet. When he whom I love holds my hand, something like that. I am satisfied. That was it. “I cannot answer the question... of identity beyond the grave, but I walk or sit indifferent... He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.”

Oh God, Zach, Zach!

Shouts started, the din of renewed Reb assault. David snapped from his reverie, huddled further under the caisson. God, he had to get a grip on himself! It was hopeless to think of making a run for it to the Union lines. Just sit tight, keep under the cover of the caisson, then surrender first chance he got. Better to be in Libby prison than dead.

“Hell, only a fool would tangle with them Johnnies again! Ain’t no chance of fightin’ our way outta here!”

“Damn right! Only chance we got is to throw down our arms.”

David jumped at the echo of his thoughts. He peered cautiously out. Around him, other men were taking shelter, some dozen or so jammed up by the opening of the escape shaft, displaying no intention of trying to beat back the assault.

“Shit! We ain’t got a fuckin’ chance even so!” The voice of the third speaker shrilled in near hysteria. “I been listenin’ to a feller made it out of the trenches this mornin’ one step ahead of them Reb bayonets. Way he tells it, them Johnnies charge yellin’,” Death to the niggers! No quarter!’ Now what the hell you reckon them Rebs gonna do they come on us fightin’ cheek by jowl with them stinkin’ darkies?!”

“Hell, ain’t by no doin’ of ours.”

“You gonna stop and ‘splain that to Johnny?!”

“I’ll be damned if you ain’t talkin’ horse sense. What we oughta do—” The hoarse voice dropped too low for David to hear. More voices joined in an inaudible murmur.

“Hell yeah!” the shrill voice rose. “We kill them darkies ourselves, oughta prove to Johnny we ain’t no lousy nigger-lovers!”

David gasped in shock and horror, scrambled from under the caisson. A line of six or seven men, bayonets at the ready, were quietly closing the distance to where Amos and two other Negro boys stood huddled, their eyes riveted to the wave of Reb troops pouring down the opposite slope. David jerked to his feet, stumbled after the men, screaming hoarsely, “Amos! Amos, look out!”

His yells went unheard. He ran faster, his field glasses banging his chest. He yanked them off, clutched the leather strap in his fist. The soldier nearest to Amos prepared to plunge the bayonet into his back. David sprinted. “Amos! Amos! Leave him alone! Leave him alone, you goddamn bastard! Amos!!” he shrieked.

Amos leaped aside as his assailant lunged. David swung the field glasses on their strap. The heavy glasses smashed into the side of the white infantryman’s face. Blood streamed from his ear and nose. The soldier next to him spun in disbelief, started furiously toward David. He swung the glasses wildly at the man, heard the sickening snap of bone, pulled his arm back to strike again when a searing blow struck the back of his head, sent him reeling to the ground.

He rocked dizzily on his hands and knees, barely taking in the sounds of struggle raging above him or the more distant yells of the Reb troops streaming into the crater. He felt himself yanked to his feet then, dragged toward the slope by Amos and a second, unfamiliar black soldier, pulled roughly up the crater side, pelted by loose dirt and debris.