Hell or Richmond (30 page)

ELEVEN

May 6, three p.m.
The Wilderness, northeast of Tapp Field

Oates thought: Well, we do have us an abundance of high-flown officers name of Perry.

He said: “General Perry, sir … Colonel Perry … I’ve been out there myself. There’s more Yankees in those woods than maggots on a dog been two days dead.”

“Indeed, Colonel Oates, indeed,” General Perry responded. “Those are Wadsworth’s men. Their general is dead, they’ve been sorely tried. I doubt they’ll trouble us.” He offered Oates a smile that felt well practiced. “Trepidation must not be our downfall.”

Oates thought: A man can either talk fine, or he can talk sense.

He said: “My men go forward the way you say, we’re going to pass a lump of high ground on our left. When we do, we’re going to catch it. And—all respect, sir—your Florida boys are going to get it, too. Those Yankees aren’t beat.”

“An advance has been ordered,” General Perry said. “And we shall advance.” He let his bearded jaw play back and forth, swishing his next words around before he spoke them. “We must not let General Longstreet’s misfortune deny us victory.”

Oates knew that the Massachusetts-born Floridian was a brave man. And he knew that Edward Perry was an educated man. He even knew that this particular Perry had read the law in Alabama, as Oates had himself, before becoming a Florida man by choice. But he wasn’t convinced the transplanted Yankee was a wise man. Oates just couldn’t take to the fine-looking fellow’s nasal twang, a sorry concoction of up-north flint and studied-up, high-flown drawl. It was as if some coon-hugging New England preacher tried playing a Southern gentleman on the stage.

As for Longstreet, Oates didn’t revel in the man’s wounding, much as he disliked him. He even hoped the man might live to enjoy a long convalescence away from the army. Fair was fair, and a man who went down in a fight deserved good wishes.

The worst part had been the leaderless muddle that came in Longstreet’s wake, a do-nothing waste of hour after hour while the rest of the generals stuck their hands down each other’s pants to see whose stick was bigger. High chances were squandered, openings bought with good men’s blood that morning.

Now this: an attack in the wrong damned direction. With Yankees piling up just to their north, the two understrength brigades under General Perry were set to attack due east. Might as well poke your bare ass at a rattlesnake.

Oates read the look that Colonel Perry shot him:
Quiet down and let me handle this.

Simmering, Oates backed off half a step and pawed sweat from his beard. Truth be told, Colonel Perry had done fine so far. The man was no Evander Law, but he’d fought to win. Oates kept his mouth shut. For the moment.

“General Perry,” Colonel Perry began, “the Alabama Brigade and I take pride in serving under your command, sir. Florida and Alabama, united, must be formidable.…”

Bill Perry, too, had studied for the bar—sometimes it seemed to Oates that he served in an army of lawyers—but the elder Perry had then pursued a career in education, rising high.

“So if I may hazard a thought … let my brigade advance at an oblique from right to left, with Colonel Oates prepared to defend our flank. I’ve given him the Forty-eighth Alabama, in addition to his Fifteenth, and propose that—”

“That will be fine,” the general said, impatient to start his attack. “Your brigade may advance in echelon of battalions, at forty-pace intervals. Will that do?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Oates. Their eyes met without fellowship. “I’m sure Colonel Oates won’t allow the foe to embarrass us.”

Oates let an eyebrow climb and said: “Heaps of them out there, sir.” He just couldn’t help himself, had to give this peacock a last warning.

“Indeed,” the general told him. “Heaps of their dead. We shall add to them, Colonel Oates, I expect we shall add to them.”

*   *   *

General Perry began the attack before Oates got back to his men. He had to run like a damned fool, shot hip feeling like it might crack in two. Wounds to the body, wounds to his vanity, he’d had a surfeit of both.

“Form your men!” he shouted as he passed the 48th. “Commanders to me!” Reaching the 15th, he repeated the order and planted himself where the regiments brushed one another. “Captain Shaaf, get up here.
Now!
”

There wasn’t much get-ready needed: Calloused inside and out by years of fighting, the men arranged themselves for battle under the eyes of their sergeants. As Shaaf trotted up, Oates told him, “Don’t even stop. Turn around and take your company out as skirmishers. Wheel right and advance.”

But Shaaf did stop, bewildered at the order. The rest of the gathering officers were startled, too.

“Shaaf, just do what you’re told, goddamn it. You know what’s out there, and I know what’s out there. Just go.”

The captain was so taken aback that he forgot to salute. But he turned to his task.

Oates looked over the other officers, some of them bloodied up in the morning ruckus but unwilling to leave their men while they could stand. Young Billy Strickland had a rag tied around his head.

“All right,” Oates said, “there’s no time for pissing on each other’s legs, just do how I tell you. Forty-eighth, right wheel and advance by battalion at the left oblique, forty paces off the Forty-fourth. Fifteenth follows on the left, advancing the same way.”

“That’s mad-dog crazy,” a captain said.

“Well, bite yourself some Yankees,” Oates told him.

When the officers had returned to their positions, Oates allowed himself one deep breath, then ordered the 48th forward. He counted the regiment’s paces like a schoolboy doing his sums with corn kernels. Sharply at their thirty-second step, he barked, “Fifteenth Alabama … forward …
march
.”

As the 48th Alabama’s front rank landed its fortieth step, the 15th stepped off. Oates figured it for the last orderly action of the afternoon.

No sooner had they pressed into the undergrowth than shots splashed to their front. Shaaf and his boys were in it already.

“Jesus Christ,” Oates muttered. “Jesus damn Christ.”

His front rank passed the mound from which he’d spied swarms of Federals half an hour earlier. Doubtless, the Yankees had skirmishers up there now, men too savvy to open fire too soon. They’d wait until his men reached the low ground where Shaaf was fussing around and the blue-bellies could bring massed fires to bear.

The only hope was to surprise the Yankees in turn, to wheel left and attack straight into their snouts, to shock them with crazy daring and gain some time.

Oates pushed ahead of his men. He had to see things for himself.

Just as he passed through his first rank, hundreds of rifles roared on the left.

Men fell around him.

The Yankees were so thick that the brush couldn’t hide the half of them. Seemed to be twice as many, at least, as he’d seen on his earlier prowl. Momentarily stunned by the mass of Federals, Oates expected a charge that would swamp his regiment.

But the Yankees didn’t charge, contenting themselves with a turkey shoot. Shouting orders to change front, he looked about for anything that resembled defensible ground. There wasn’t much.

His vision of a charge of his own evaporated. The numbers out there were just too overwhelming.

Shaaf’s skirmishers stood their ground, buying time with lives. Oates sent a runner to the 48th to halt and change front, too, tying in with the right of the 15th. All they could do now was hold as long as possible.

Under fire, Oates organized his line, anchoring it on bumps of earth that hardly counted as “high ground.” It was worthless dirt by any sane account, but all he had.

His men scrambled to throw together barricades of fallen trees and branches, hacking off scraps of shrubbery that gave a man no protection but let him feel better kneeling down behind them. Tough as bear hide, Shaaf and his boys refused to quit their scuffle out in the killing ground. The captain knew what was at stake: He understood fighting the way a good hound took to hunting.

To the right and back a throw, an uproar of volleys and shouts worsened their prospects. Peering through the brush, Oates sensed as much as saw a dark blur as Union troops surged forward on his flank. They were going after the rest of the Alabama Brigade and General Perry’s Floridians. The Yankees had been handed a gift that was sweeter than a kiss from a rich man’s wife.

His men dug madly with bayonets and spoons, with rifle butts and bare hands, waiting for the
hurrah
that would signal a Yankee attack against them, too.

“Folger,” Oates said to one of his runners, “go on over and see how Colonel Perry’s fixed. You tell him I can’t advance, but I have a mind to hold, if that suits him. Tell him I just don’t want to be cut off, hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The corporal took off at a run, doing the best he could to bust through the undergrowth.

Oates heard the fateful, expected shout, heralding the onset of a deluge.

Shaaf’s men dashed back. One after another, they leapt over the low barricades their comrades continued to strengthen even now. The captain came in last of all his company.

Oates grabbed him. “Get your hellions gathered back up and wait in that dip yonder. You’re my reserve.”

Out of breath, the captain nodded. He forgot to salute again, but Oates could forgive a great many breaches of military decorum from a man who fought like he meant it.

“My God,” a man said in a voice of wonder. “Oh, my God and Savior…”

Years before, Oates had seen the Gulf shore during a storm. It was like that now. A huge wave rolled toward them, with another right behind it. And other blue waves followed that.

“Stay down,” Oates bellowed as he paced his line. The men were brave, but that went only so far, unless you were crazy. The body did its own sums, overtopping the calculations of the mind, and legs made their own decisions to up and run. Oates had to challenge the men’s pride to whip down their fears. And that meant parading around like a fool until he could let them take solace in pulling triggers. “Stay down now. Nobody fires until I damned well say so.”

If the Yankees behaved as usual, pausing to exchange volleys, he had a chance. If they showed unusual enterprise and came on, he lacked the numbers to do much more than sting them.

Corporal Folger reappeared. Crouching like that Hunchback of Notre Dame, expecting Yankee bullets to ring his bells.

“Sir,” the soldier panted, “the colonel begs you to hold … while he re-forms.”

“Florida Brigade?”

“Just broke to pieces, broke all to pieces. Yankees hit ’em every which way. General Perry’s wounded.”

Oates thought: That didn’t take long.

“All right,” he said. “You stay by me now.”

The Yankees were a hundred paces off. They overlapped his command on either flank. He hoped they weren’t aware of that advantage yet.

Oates turned, quickly, to his runner. “You see where Captain Shaaf’s tucked in?”

The corporal nodded. “Run right by him.”

“Good.”

Oates thought: Lord God of hosts, my mama’s your devoted servant, even if I’ve gone my way apart. For her sake, stop those sonsofbitches short.

His mother, with her gift of the sight: She had foreseen his brother’s death. Had she dreamed of this day and kept her silence?

The Yankees halted. Fifty paces out.

As the Federals shouldered up to unleash a volley, Oates screamed,
“Fire!”

*   *   *

The Yankees just stood there in what passed for open ground, exchanging volleys as if they were in no hurry. Despite their numbers, the Federals were not finding matters to their advantage.

There was a cost, though. Calvin Whatley, who had been with Oates’ old company from the first, took a bullet in the eye, and John Stone, another of the old bunch, was laid out flat, pumping blood and no way to stop it. Plenty of others went down, too.

No longer standing upright, Oates worked his way past a stretch of smoldering brambles to Sergeant Ball, who maintained a delicate trigger finger, despite his brawler’s paws and gutter habits.

“See that Yankee officer there?” Oates asked, half shouting.

“Which’n?”

“Watch now. Kind of weaves in and out. Dozen men left of those flags.”

The Yankees let go another volley. Bullets bit the air.

“Can’t see him. Damned smoke.”

“Keep watching. Left of the flags. Knows everybody’s aiming at the colors, so he set himself off to the side.
There.
Waving his butter knife.”

Ball’s grip tightened on his rifle. “I saw him. Ain’t there now, though.”

“Just wait. Wait until that sucker pops out again. And you kill the bastard.”

Ball looked up at Oates with a happy smirk. “Know what I like about you, Colonel?”

“Not sure I give a purple damn.”

“You’re not a gentleman.”

“No,” Oates said.

A moment later, Ball dropped the Yankee.

Oates thought: Now or never.

He stood up and shouted, “Bayonets! Fifteenth Alabama! Forty-eighth!
Charge!
”

*   *   *

Drifting smoke nagged at Brown’s lungs as he and the men of the 50th Pennsylvania double-quicked forward, following a trail beaten down by thousands before them. They were headed into the depths of the fighting this time, with their cartridge pouches refilled and hearts grown hard. After the shock of the morning’s losses, meanness had taken hold of them, rearing up like that black snake in front of First Sergeant Hill, an appetite for cruelty worthy of Bible stories.

From a distance—just as they started south through the woodlands—they had heard encouraging Northern hurrahs amid the volleys. Closer now, they caught a Rebel yell.

“We’ll have them hollering something else,” Doudle shouted. Others called out their agreement. It never ceased to be a wonder to Brown how war worked on men: Those who had run from the enemy hours before now ran toward that same enemy with their hearts on fire. And Doudle … John was a curious man. He would stand for as long as needed in the front rank, loading and firing, seemingly fearless. But he would not go one step in front of the rest of the regiment: His fear of capture was famed within the company. Doudle seemed resigned to possible death or mutilation, but rumors about Andersonville unnerved him.