Hell or Richmond (78 page)

Seven a.m.
Ninth Corps, Union right

Brown had begun to hope that the 50th would not have to go forward, that the attack on their wing might be canceled. The sky threatened rain again—some looked to be falling already, just to the south—but the only thunder was that of the artillery on the distant flank, and that was much diminished. For an hour or so early on, the sounds of battle had been so intense that it seemed the war’s final struggle must be under way. But their brigade had not even been summoned to form up until the worst of the death-storm had passed.

Rain teased, but did no more. He stood in front of the remnants of Company C, twenty-three men, holding his rifle instead of the sword customary to those commanding companies. He wasn’t an officer yet, and might never be one, and anyway, a rifle was a great deal more useful in a fight than a fancied-up kitchen knife.

He felt sweat run down his back.

How had they come to this? With him standing where a captain should be, in front of a fraction of the men who had marched beside him when they crossed the Rapidan? He veered between confidence and doubt, between the belief that he could do this work as well as any man, and a sense that he was a corporal pretending to be more, and would be found out and shamed.

“First Sergeant?” a soldier called. He had told the men to continue calling him that, because he didn’t know what else they might call him and not be mistaken.

He turned his head, his shoulders.

“What is it, Guertler?”

“I got to take me a leak.”

“Do it where you’re standing. And hurry up.”

“He don’t want nobody to see his tiny thing,” George Heebner announced.

“Shut up, Heebner,” Isaac Eckert ordered. Isaac had been promoted to corporal. Just hadn’t been much horseflesh left to choose from.

And they stood, the minutes impossibly long. Surely, some enterprising Reb pickets had spotted the formed-up brigade by now. Whoever waited over there, tucked into that far tree line, would be ready. And, Brown figured, the “whoever” would be the Johnnies they had trounced the night before, in a short, desperate encounter. Their turn now.

“If I had me a big Dutch apple cake, I’d split it with every last one of you, I swear,” a soldier said.

No one replied. But Brown saw that apple cake, almost tasted it, and knew every man in his short lines saw it, too.

Frances could make a fine Dutch apple cake. White cake, too, or pink with sugar frosting.

Captain Schwenk walked the regimental line. It didn’t take long. He nodded at Brown. Brown nodded back. All of them were just waiting.

To the south, the noise had definitely faded. Both sides were hardly annoying each other. Maybe, just maybe, they’d be spared for one more day.

Brown didn’t know whether or not he was afraid. It was surprisingly hard to tell anymore. But he knew he was unhappy. Things that had once made at least a nick of sense just didn’t now. What was the word? “Futile.” An officer’s word. But the right one, as he understood it.

Tired though he had been, though he remained, he wished now that he had written Frances a last letter the night before.

“I swear, they must’ve forgot us,” Heebner said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Shut up, George,” Corporal Eckert told him.

A courier galloped up to the cluster of horsemen in front of the brigade. That was rarely a good sign, Brown knew. But maybe this time it would be a message calling off the attack.

The rider cantered away again. The officers huddled. Then some rode to the rear. Those who remained behind dismounted and passed their horses off to orderlies.

“Guess they didn’t forget us, after all,” Heebner said.

This time, nobody told him to shut up.

Swords rose skyward. Clouds spit back. Drums began to beat. The line advanced. Behind them, out of sight, a band struck up.

Sure, that’s grand, Brown thought. Just tell them we’re coming as loud as you can. But stepping through the high, wet grass, he nodded, slightly and briefly, in time with the music. One of the high-up officers liked that song, which an outraged Irishman had told Brown was “The British Grenadiers.”

Frances had laughed at his poor ear for music. She played the piano.

At their backs, artillery opened, firing in high arcs, the booming reports interrupting the music, then overwhelming it. Only the drums still carried.

Flag-bearers had no breeze to help them. Now and then, they waved their banners, heavy with the night’s rain.

Couldn’t see the Rebs, not even their piled-up dirt. They’d placed themselves a few steps back in the trees.

Or what if they weren’t there? What if they were gone?

They’d be there.

Brown stepped over a lone body, a grayback. Flies burst into the air.

He looked about. His men were still with him. It seemed they’d follow him, too. Maybe men just followed along by their nature.

Serious fighting erupted off to the left, down toward the end of the corps line, or maybe past it. He couldn’t see a thing and couldn’t tell.

What mattered was here, right here.

Rebs were playing coldhearted poker. Clutching their cards tight.

Captain Schwenk pointed the way for the regiment with his sword. Brown wanted him to get on back behind the advancing ranks. He was supposed to be doing a colonel’s job now, not a fool captain’s.

He wanted Schwenk to survive this, didn’t know what would become of them all without him.

There were too many ghosts already, marching beside him, touching him. Brown was neither a superstitious man nor much moved by churchgoing. He sang hymns dutifully, and listened fitfully, and was ever a little relieved when a service ended. He never had the visions others talked of. But the ghosts were there now, always.

It unsettled him, because he loved practical things. He liked ropes tied in good knots, brass polished every day, and the deck of a barge swept clean. A good woman worth the holding. A well-oiled rifle. He had been pleased that morning when he inspected the company’s arms, still doing a first sergeant’s work, as well as a captain’s. The new men had learned. A month’s campaigning had left their uniforms in tatters and their shoes as thin as muslin, and they were filthy. But every man’s rifle was ready.

What would become of Frances, if he fell? Who might she marry? If he became a ghost?

He could smell her. She smelled like a warm kitchen on a cold day. She played hymns on her piano, but other things, too. She was a sensible woman, churched but not iced over, one who didn’t push too hard about anything that made a man uncomfortable, but who had her way of letting you know it was time to stop or keep going.

Had it not been so cold that day in the orchard, when last he had seen her at home …

The drums. The guns. Legs brushing through the grass. The brigade had reached the middle of the field.

Brown saw them, the first points of light, and heard the reports. Anxious men over there, too. Unable to hold their fire.

“Steady, boys!” Schwenk called. “Company commanders, maintain your lines.”

He was a company commander now, Brown told himself. Responsible for these men. How had it happened?

He turned his head and called, “Noncommissioned officers! Maintain the lines.”

Noncommissioned officers? He had two.

“They’re straight as a mule’s stiff pecker,” Corporal Eckert assured him.

Brown could feel the grass, the earth, moist earth, through the new hole in his shoe.

The bearer waved the regimental colors. As if signaling to the Rebs,
Here we are, Johnny. What the dickens are you waiting for?

The Rebs weren’t waiting anymore.

Everything hit them at once, the fire from concealed guns, a staggering rifle volley, a burst of rain.

Men fell. Dozens, it seemed.

Someone called, “Charge!” Then Captain Schwenk was running ahead of them, hollering, “Charge!” himself, and the men followed after, first at the double-quick, then just plain running.

Another Reb volley ripped into them. Schwenk spun about, squirting blood from his side, and fell hard.

No time, no time. Don’t think about it.

“Come on!” Brown yelled. “Charge!”

The men stayed with him, even came abreast of him. The Johnnies were firing on their own now, as fast as they could reload. Maybe even faster, as if they had loaded rifles waiting, or other men reloading for them.

Off to the right, the colors went down. Someone raised them, struggling with an awkward grip. Then Company C was in advance of the colors, with Brown hollering and not even aware of it, just
doing,
another beast trained to his task.

Canister tore a hole in the regiment’s center, just to the flank of Company C. The colors had disappeared, left behind, God only knew where.

More shots. Volleys again, from the flank. The guns. Men staggering. Red sprays of blood. Cries of shock, despair. The wounded calling. No officers.

The entire brigade came to a standstill short of the Rebel lines. As if there were an invisible wall they could not push their way through. Men milled like unnerved cattle, directionless, bleeding. More and more of them dropped to the earth, wounded or not. Some ran.

His men were still with him, most of them. Brown raised his rifle in one hand, to rally them, to lead them forward.

More guns opened, from the other flank this time, knocking men over the way a storm wind toppled weakened trees.

And Brown saw it, the madness, the impossibility, the complete, shameless, hopeless swindle.

Men disappeared in clouds of blood. A sergeant from Company B threw his arms wide, embracing an invisible sweetheart, and fell forward. Men trying to withdraw were shot without mercy.

“Down!” Brown shouted. “Company C! Down. Everybody down! Now!”

They obeyed him, the boys who were left. Boys from his hometown, whose father he had become in the midst of war. A twenty-three-year-old father, these perhaps the only children he’d know. These men.

He hugged the ground as rifle balls probed the grass, hunting untouched flesh. Canister snapped overhead, and, at some distance, Brown heard the shriek of Whitworth guns. Farther away, on the other side of the world, men cheered, though he could not say who, or for what.

The earth, wet earth.

Slowly, he inched back toward his men, staying as low as his muscular shoulders allowed, colliding with the shreds of a man from Company D, little more than a head, a few bones, and rags of flesh. The dead man had shared coffee with Brown back on the North Anna. He had told of a wife and children.

He found Isaac Eckert. Or Isaac found him. Their shoulders touched.

“Christ,” Isaac said, “where’d they get you?”

“It’s not my blood. Get your head down.”

“What the bejeezus are we going to do?” Isaac asked him.

“Wait until night,” Brown told him. “Then crawl back.”

Twelve thirty p.m.
Cold Harbor

Ulysses S. Grant suspended his attack. He had finally seen the battlefield.

EPILOGUE

June 5, four thirty p.m.
Cold Harbor, Hancock’s tent

“Damn it, Lyman,” Hancock said, “can’t Meade and Grant even provide their own white flag?” He turned to his body servant, an affected, lowbred Englishman Lyman rather disliked. “Give them something or other they can use.
Not
one of my shirts.”

“Of course, sir,” the Englishman answered. “
Not
one of your shirts, sir.” The man left the tent with all the airs he could muster.

Hancock wheeled back to Lyman, who had learned not to take the general’s outbursts personally: Temper was merely a privilege of generalship, if the specimens he had studied were indicative. “Damned disgrace, every bit of it,” Hancock roared. “Letting wounded men lie out there for two shit-shaking days.” A bull of a man, he snorted. “How many do you think have died already, Professor? While Grant and Meade have been fiddling with their pricks?”

“It’s been General Grant, not Meade, sir,” Lyman told him. He would
not
hear Meade, a gentleman, unfairly denigrated.

Flies buzzed. Barlow sat on a camp chair, glowering. Lyman knew that Barlow had kicked up the fuss that had, at last, driven Grant to send Lee a note requesting a cease-fire to gather in the wounded. He had been rather surprised at Barlow for showing such concern. Not like Frank at all. But there it was.

Rigorous of eye, Hancock inspected his visitor, tip to toe. Lyman had donned his dress uniform, the finest Boston’s tailors could provide, and he held white gloves. Carrying a parley flag had a whiff of medieval pageant in his mind. But Hancock, though he took pains about clothing himself, regarded the elegant outfit with disdain. His stare settled on Lyman’s sash.

“Grant, Meade, whoever … it’s a damned outrage,” Hancock growled. “Leaving those men out there. Have you listened to them, Lyman? At night? Have you?”

“Yes, sir. I have.” Lyman’s voice remained calm: All of this was a fascinating study in humankind. And he had indeed listened to the plaints of the wounded stranded between the lines. Meade had listened as well. Everyone had. Except Grant, who kept to his tent, sulking like Achilles. Meade had pleaded with him to arrange a truce to bring in the wounded, but only Hancock’s last telegraphic message, putting things on the record, had finally moved Grant to offer a carefully worded letter to Lee that avoided any hint of a Union defeat.

That was the thing of it, Lyman recognized: Grant did not want to admit that, on that one day, at least, the army he oversaw had been defeated. Meade felt it had to do with the political convention coming in two days and the worry that the Confederate papers would announce Lee’s victory in bold type, complicating Lincoln’s renomination. For his part, Lyman suspected Grant’s rawboned vanity. Despite his homespun manner, Grant had the pride of an emperor. Lyman found it odd that so few saw it.

Another head poked in, that of a colonel Lyman had seen about but couldn’t name.

“Ah,” Hancock said, bending to stroke his thigh. “Hapgood. You know Lyman here.”

In a voice hewn from New England’s stone, the colonel said, “Missed the pleasure.” He, too, looked over Lyman’s uniform. But he held out his hand. Which Lyman took, careful to grip it firmly.