Hell or Richmond (70 page)

He thought, as he often did, of the Negroes he had known at Oberlin College, before he had been selected for West Point. If their skin had been dark, their faith had been bright as silver. The thought of such men enslaved and bodily chastised, abandoned to conditions worse than the Babylonian captivity, made Emory Upton wish he could call down fire upon every Southron head, and on the beasts of their fields, on their orchards and vineyards.

The South was not the mere Babylon of old. It was a Babylon of leprous souls.

The cannon stopped.

The silence swelled.

A crow cawed.

Colonel Kellogg looked to Upton, who nodded.

The colonel dismounted and strode to the front of his troops. Raising his sword, he called, “Forward! Guide center! March!”

Upton rode forward with them.

*   *   *

Well, it had been a good life. If it ended here, it did. Nothing to be done about it. No choice. He had to set the example for his men, who were going to fight at last.

As he strode forward at the head of his regiment, Elisha S. Kellogg felt sweat trickle down his back. He knew it was not only from the heat.

This barren place. Well, he had known others as bad. Young, he had sailed the seas on British merchantmen. He had chased the gleam of gold in the fevered beauty of California. And when the gold refused to leap into his hands, he had built a solid life up in Connecticut.

He had regrets. And faults. He knew he blustered at times, but such was his nature. A man learned to live with his foibles, even to be amused at his own helplessness. And if he had, at times, been hard on his troops, determined to keep them soldierly in their long, dreary months in garrison at Washington, manning guns they had never fired in anger, well, he believed they had forgiven him, even that they respected him.

Almost a nervous tic, he glanced rearward. And there they were. Marching handsomely enough to please that fox-faced babe of a brigadier general with Bible verses on his lips and murder in his eyes. The veteran regimental commanders had warned Kellogg never to swear or take the Lord’s name in vain in Upton’s presence. It was a hard sentence for a man who had strayed along the docks in San Francisco. Keeping off the Lord wasn’t hard, but cleansing his speech of the virile joy of obscenity—sailor’s delight—required vigilance.

As his men tramped forward, three thousand feet marching over a fallow field, Kellogg did not call on the Lord to spare him or his soldiers. He had lived as he had lived, and he would die, if need be, as he died. And that was that.

Wouldn’t mind living, though.

He’d heard the dreadful tales of these frontal attacks. Arriving at Spotsylvania just in time to march southward under Upton’s unforgiving eye, his soldiers had been shocked by the look of those they joined—not only by their ragged filth, but by the dead eyes they brought to bear on a man.

He stepped between abandoned rifle pits. The veteran skirmishers filtered back through his ranks. They did not pause to tease his soldiers now.

He lifted his sword and felt the suck of rich sweat in his armpit. His regiment’s colors trailed him, limp in the still air.

His men looked fine, though.

He had been told that other brigades would advance on either flank, but he saw no one, not even a flag. He realized what that absence meant and shuddered, but kept his shoulders squared.

Trees ahead, a pine thicket. Good for nothing but breaking their marching order.

He turned his head sharply, to one side and then the other. Hunting the swarm of insects they had roused. Only when a soldier fell did he understand: The air was full of bullets.
That
was how they sounded.

He turned to face his men. Marching with his back to the enemy, he saw one fellow break from the ranks to run rearward.

“Steady, men! Follow your colonel!”

He wheeled to face the enemy again. Before he tripped and made a fool of himself. Dignity mattered in a man’s life. He had never understood those for whom it was of no consequence. Every man did foolish things, but a good man lived his life upright.

Ah, not all of the foolish things were things he wished undone.…

He brushed past a pine tree. And saw a living Rebel. Aiming and firing, then trotting rearward. The trees hardly made up a forest or even a grove, but they hid whatever waited behind their greenery.

That henna-haired darling in green velvet on the Barbary Coast …

Won’t find one like that a second time.

He stiffened his arm, pointing his sword like the needle of a compass. For the last course a man sailed.

Why was he being so morbid?

He knew why.

The fox-faced brigadier would have no complaints about his men this day. Again, he looked rearward. His men struggled to keep their ranks amid the starved-looking pines. Upton, on horseback, followed behind the first battalion, staying ahead of the second. Even at forty yards, the man looked savage.

Their course sloped downward, easily, into a dry swale. More firing now, from men who could not be seen. Soldiers fell, some with a small cry, others as silently as if in an opium trance. The colors dipped, but an eager sergeant caught them.

Good, good.

One of his men had surprised him by bringing him a cap half-filled with mulberries. They had tasted all the better for the kindness. He had not always been a gentle commander. But he was a man whose heart was touched by the oddest things, sentimental in ways he could never share.

When he told her good-bye that last time, the night before he sailed from San Francisco, she had refused his money. Of small gestures were the sweetest memories made.

Why think of her now, and not of his orderly later life, his upstanding years?

He knew why. Oh, he knew.

He was a large, strong man, but the damned sword seemed as heavy as China-trade ballast. Still, he held it extended.

A compass needle, pointing God knew where.

They climbed the far side of the swale. Confederate cannon, still unseen, opened fire, but overshot. All those long months of manning big guns, and now the cannonballs were coming toward them.

He could be an awfully clumsy fellow in dealing with other men, awkward, but quick he was at seeing the humor in life, the jokes fate played.

He glimpsed open space beyond a last row of pines.

Was that where they were? Waiting?

“Come on, men, come on! That’s it, boys! Onward, Connecticut!”

His throat was so dry his words seemed to cut its flesh.

It wasn’t a field that awaited them. Pushing through the last pines, he saw a midget’s forest of stumps, their tops pale and glinting with sap.

Across the new-made clearing, the harvested trees had been woven into an obstacle. Behind rose a rampart of raw dirt and fence rails, topped with freshly cut logs. The Rebels were not even visible. He saw only their rifle barrels, thrust through narrow gaps. To the left, the muzzles of cannon peeked from hastily made emplacements. A red flag hung slack in the trees.

The earth exploded. Rifles flared. Artillery flashed blindingly, then gauzed itself with smoke. All around, his men recoiled, struck, shocked, wavering.

He lifted his sword so its point aimed at the heavens.

“Come on, boys, come on,
come on!
Forward the Heavies! Come on!”

He dared not look about him. Then he looked anyway. Yes, some men had lost heart. But most stayed with him.

The enemy rifles had disappeared, drawing back like serpents’ tongues. Now they thrust through the openings again.

“Down!” he shouted on instinct. “Get down!”

The men who heard him dropped. Others followed their example, just as another dragon’s breath of flame shot from the line.

“Re-form! Re-form! On your feet, re-form!”

The cries of the wounded, of his shattered men, cut through the gale of noise.

But men rose. Still plenty of them. They dutifully sought to form ranks.

As he looked about, he saw—to his astonishment—that Upton remained mounted, showing himself above a stand of dwarf pines, a pistol shot away.

Waving his sword like a signal flag, Kellogg began to run forward, toward the mesh of felled trees, toward the fortress the Johnnies had forged from the wretchedness of Virginia.

“Come on, boys!
Charge!
”

They ran forward. Shouting. Their force felt irresistible.

He dashed between the stumps, waving his sword. Bursting with passion, he pulled off his hat to wave it, too. He felt as if he could tug the whole army behind him.

God love the bad women, for the awful truth was that they’d been the joy of his life.

He did not think once of the innocent face he had left behind in Connecticut.

“Come on!”

There were years in every second.…

The Rebs fired freely now, as swiftly as they could load. His men dropped like bottles in a barroom brawl.

A man could be an awfully fragile thing.…

He slashed at the tangled branches keeping him and his soldiers from the hateful entrenchments. Furious. Determined to accomplish something worthy.

“Come on!”

To his right, a pair of his men made it all the way to the entrenchments, smashing their rifle butts at the protruding muzzles.

“That’s the way!” Kellogg shouted.

But when he looked rearward, wanting to lead a mass of soldiers over those piled logs, he saw little more than men falling, arms flying outward, while others crumpled in on themselves to drop headfirst and lie still. The hewn grove showed as many bodies as stumps.

Yet, amazingly, wonderfully, living men in dark blue coats surged forward, toward the ramparts.

He knew, though. They were no longer enough. His second line seemed to have gone to ground. He did not have enough men, of these good men, to break the Rebel line. They would have to regroup and charge again.

Lowering his sword, he waved his hat.

“Fall back! Regroup! Fall—”

Someone punched him terribly in the jaw. He had never been hit so hard, not even in his wild sailing days.

Just as he realized, an instant later, that it had not been a fist that staggered him, another bullet struck him, and another.

*   *   *

Upton spurred his horse forward, shouting, “Lie down, lie down! Don’t return fire. Lie down!”

He was angry enough to feel the lure of profanity. Eustis’s brigade had not even attempted to come forward until too late. And Truex, from Ricketts’ division on the right, had gotten off to a tardy start, then disappeared into a ravine, as if the earth had swallowed him. His single brigade opposed a Rebel division, well dug in.

Didn’t anyone in the army have
any
sense? Couldn’t anyone
think
?

The Heavies were brave enough, though. He had seen Kellogg fall just short of the Rebel entrenchments. The other field officers from the new regiment had dropped at the head of their troops. It was now a captain’s fight.

“Lie
down
!” He almost added, “Damn it.”

He heard double
thwaps
in the instant before his horse buckled. Flinging himself from the animal’s back before it could trap his leg, he landed hard and felt his lungs empty of air. Gasping, he rose and ran from the shuddering, kicking animal to continue trying to save what men he could. The last of his aides had disappeared, sent back to demand assistance, support, anything that might save the attack from failure.

Black specks flashed by. The Rebs were sporting with him. In a rage, he threw himself to the ground among the soldiers. Unable even to command his brigade.

He knew that if he fell, the attack would collapse completely. And he wanted, at the very least, to hold on to the ground their blood had already earned. Surely General Russell, or Wright himself, would act like a leader, not an ignoramus?

Even as he lay there, amid wounded, frightened, and slaughtered men, he could not stop thinking through the problems of modern war. There
had
to be a way to pierce entrenchments. At Spotsylvania, surprise and compact mass had done the trick. But there had to be a more reliable answer. And he believed he would be the man to find it.

He did not pray. He would not insult the Lord by begging in time of danger. He
trusted
in the Lord.

Minutes passed. And more minutes. The light began to soften. Now and then, a soldier called out in the short, surprised cry of a man struck by a bullet.

Upton refused to give up. At the very least, these men would hold this ground. It would
not
be another Spotsylvania, where his success had been wasted. And it galled him to think that the first experience these new soldiers had of combat might be failure. He needed them to be confident, if they were to replace his butchered veterans.

They had not performed badly. On the contrary. The march from Spotsylvania had been a torment for the pampered artillerymen, their feet unused to distances greater than the parade ground to a parapet. And they had been teased and chastised for their struggle to keep up. He had been merciless, because that had been the requirement. But now they had fought bravely, done their best, and he hated the thought of their lives and efforts wasted.

“Stay down!” he said. “Don’t fire back!” If there was a chance, any chance, to push forward one more time, he wanted their rifles loaded when they reached the entrenchments. And firing now, into earthen walls and ramparts of logs, gained them nothing, merely drawing the attention of sharpshooters.

Sensing that he was still obeyed, he rose and rushed back to the pines, pursued by bullets. Russell had to do something, drive Eustis to try again, anything. He did not want to order his men—these men—to retreat into failure.

The third rank had taken shelter in the swale amid the pine grove. His veterans waited behind them, the last rank, perhaps a last hope. But he hated to order
those
men to carry the works.

He found one of his aides, lightly wounded but unwilling to quit the field.

“What word?” Upton demanded.

“You’re bleeding, sir. Are you—”