The March (19 page)

YOU’LL COME WITH US!
These were the words that resounded within Morrison as an order given over and over again.
You’ll come with us!
Who had said that? He was aware of riding close quarters in a phalanx of horsemen, his feet in the stirrups pressed momentarily into the flanks of other mounts. He couldn’t see clearly—the morning sun was directly in his eyes. Yet he had unsheathed his officer’s sword and held it low along his leg, and with the reins wound twice in his left hand. He was not a natural horseman and rode bent low over the pommel. The road was sodden, and gobs of mud flew onto his face and affixed themselves like leeches. But then, unaccountably, the terrain went dry and the dust from the riders ahead rose as a cloud and he felt his mouth coated with dust, he was breathing through his mouth, spitting and wheezing and tasting the grit of the land. Yet the effect was to darken the sunlight, and he could see up ahead the roofs of a town.

And then they were riding down a street and all at once the purposive charge was in disarray, with horses rearing and men shouting and horses and riders going down around him. Morrison could not ride forward or turn. The hideous Rebel shriek was in his ears. In this roiling entanglement of blue and gray, men were pulling one another from their mounts. His eyes closed, Morrison raised his saber and swung it at what or who he didn’t know. He felt it cleave flesh and bone. Why didn’t these people understand he was not well? Someone had an arm around his neck. Morrison held tightly to the reins and felt himself going down backward. As he tried, fitfully, to wield his saber in a chopping motion over his shoulder, it flew out of his hands. His eyes opened and he was transfixed by the hoofs of his horse flailing the air. Then its head filled his vision, terror in its rolling eyes, a scream issuing from its open jaws. He caught a glimpse of the sun in the moment before he hit the ground. He felt his leg crack, and was gasping in pain at the moment his spine snapped under the weight of his screaming horse and the breath was pounded out of him.

VII

W
HEN THEY CAME OVER THE BRIDGE AND INTO THE
village, Arly got down from the wagon and pulled Will out by the arms and ducked under him and stood up slowly till he had the boy slung over one shoulder.

The smoke from the burned houses and barns hung ghostly low over the road. Hell, Willie, Arly said, you wouldn’t want to breathe this air, it ain’t nothing but smoke and cinder. Like to burn your throat away.

Arly stepped to the side of the road and let the wagon go on.

Whatever was left of the town was dimmed in a blue haze on this cold dry morning. Women, some with babies in arms, watched in silence as the wagons passed. A dreariness of creaking wheels and the stolidness of a rolling army following its fighting troops was all there was to see. The train was like the back end of a parade, the band long passed. The lowing of the cattle as the army drovers led them across the bridge and through the town was the music now.

Arly turned in a circle until he saw it well enough through the haze. It was at the east end of the town, past some razed houses to where the land rose. It was a low hump of land with the stones poking up any ways but plumb. There’s nothing to burn in a graveyard, is there, Will? he said. You can knock down a few stones is about the worst you can do.

He set off with his burden, oblivious to the stares of the people he passed. He wore the hated uniform, but they were too stunned to do much of anything besides stare. Some didn’t even do that, just glancing up as he passed and going back to their thoughts as they kicked through their rubble.

Will was thin enough in his life, but a set of dead bones was another matter when folded over your back. And he was beginning to put out a smell. Arly didn’t know what he would do about a burial. He had no spade, he was tired and hungrier than he could remember, and he shouldn’t let the army get too far ahead of him. But if he didn’t bury Will, who would?

Arly’s mind was secured with a feeling of sorrowful righteousness. I won’t deny I took you outen that hospital right there in Savannah where a doctor might have kept you from bleeding to death, he said to the dead boy slung over his shoulder. But how likely was it we wouldn’t shortly be back in two cells awaiting only for the coffins to arrive before they shot us for spies or some other damn thing?

A house gutted but for the sagging porch attracted his eye for the divan out in the front yard. Arly kicked open the wrought-iron gate, stumbled forward, and dropped the body on the divan. He propped it into a sitting position and sat down beside it, taking some moments to recover his breath. He found the stub of a cigar in his breast pocket and put a match to it.

I made a calculated wartime decision, Will, he said. But who can know for sure that God wasn’t behind it? We are his instruments, alive or dead, and I expect your risen spirit is listening to me now up by his side there and knows better than I what will be.

As if in answer, the body toppled sideways against Arly and the head settled in his neck. Sighing, Arly put his arm around it. And the two of them sat that way in the quiet of the burned air under the blackened trees, neither the dead man nor the living inclined to move. Arly didn’t doze, exactly, but his eyes did glaze over, and the cigar dropped out of his fingers onto the grass. It was in this somnambulist state that he observed a wagon drawn by one mule pull up and a man in a brown coat and derby, and a nigger to help him, establish themselves right there outside the gate in the business of photography. Out from their wagon they pulled a big wooden tripod and set that up. Then they dragged a camera box out and affixed that to the tripod. And then, while the man in the derby busied himself picking out a lens and screwing it onto the front of the box and aiming the camera and looking at the sky and aiming the camera again and looking at the sky again, the nigger was running back and forth to the wagon and bringing out boxes with stacks of metal plates. Oh yes, they were getting ready to make a photograph, they were. Arly had come awake, but he didn’t move or open his eyes wider than he needed to see what was going on. The wagon had a black tent mounted on the bed and steps leading up the back, and the sideboard had printed on it Josiah Culp, U.S. Photographer. In smaller letters it said Carte de Visites. Stereographs.

Arly waited till this Josiah Culp put his head into the black hood behind the camera, and then he waved.

Don’t move! came the muffled shout, so Arly got to his feet and allowed Will’s trunk to drop sideways to the divan.

Josiah Culp came out of his black shroud, his arms raised in despair. I had it, I had it! Why did you move? Sit back down there, if you please, it is perfect, it’s the image I’ve been looking for.

How do you know what you been looking for if you only just seen it? Arly said.

You know it when you see it. It leaps out at you. It speaks to you. Please, he said, pointing to the divan.

He was a portly man in a regular suit and vest and topcoat thrown open over his belly. He was so fussed about his missed photograph that he only now noticed Will’s odd folded position on the divan, with his feet still on the ground. What is the matter with your comrade?

Nothing he frets over, being dead.

He’s dead? You hear that, Calvin? The other one is dead. Yes, I see the stains on his tunic. Of course. That’s even better. Sit back down there with your dead comrade, sir, and put your arm around him as before and look at the camera. The light this morning is not as good as I’d like it, but if you will hold still for a few moments I am going to make you famous.

I don’t suppose you can keep a black man, mule, and equipage like this without you sell your wares, Arly said, walking out to the street.

Here, what are you doing? Josiah Culp said. Arly was peering into the back of the wagon. It looked something like an army-hospital wagon in there, with its cabinets and boxes of supplies. Cooking utensils were hanging from a length of twine strung widthwise. And did he smell provisions? He climbed inside and lifted a tarpaulin and found a peck of sweet potatoes and bags of sugar and coffee and a dead chicken plucked of its feathers.

Get down from there, sir!

All sorts of things. He found a folded tent and a pick and shovel and a pile of uniform tunics, both blue and gray. He found rolled-up shades with backgrounds painted on them. He unrolled one: it showed a painted pond with ducks and painted trees such as had never been seen on the face of the earth.

But what came to Arly as a revelation was a photo—the top one in a stack of glass photos in a crate. It was mounted on black cloth and framed in silver. It showed Union army officers posing in front of their headquarters tent. He took it to the light. The caption read: General Sherman and His Staff, Georgia 1864. Sherman had to be the one who was seated. He was staring straight ahead at the camera.

Yes, Lord, Arly whispered. It has come to me now.

He replaced the picture, rummaged around another minute, stuffed each of his pockets with a sweet potato, and jumped to the ground. He was encouraged to see Calvin, the young black man, smiling appreciatively.

You a freed slave, Calvin? You sure got yourself a nice suit and hat.

Yessuh. I am learning the photography trade from Mr. Culp.

I suppose he profits handsome from the generals wanting photos of theirselves.

Not just the officers, Culp said. I photograph enlisted men as well. Every man wants his picture taken. It ameliorates the pain of separation for the families, for the loved ones, when they have a portrait of their soldier.

Well, you got a good thing going, all right, Arly said. ’Meliorating.

A carte de visite is most reasonable. But profit is only the means to an end. I am a photographer licensed by the United States Army, Culp said. Why do you suppose that is? Because the government recognizes that for the first time in history war will be recorded for posterity. I am making a pictorial record of this terrible conflict, sir. That is why I am here. That is my contribution. I portray the great march of General Sherman for future generations.

If the money don’t mean that much to you, why not pay me if a photo of me is what you want?

Culp laughed, showing a mouth of chipped teeth. Now I’ve heard everything!

Leastwise you won’t have to pay him, Arly said, gesturing to the divan.

You are fortunate that I’m willing to make your picture without remuneration. I agree to give you a copy. I will agree to that, but the rights in the photo will be mine. Now, please, while the light holds sit yourself down as before, with your arm around the dead man.

Arly withdrew from inside his tunic the loaded pistol he had found in the photographer’s wagon. He held it out at arm’s length, as if to feel its heft, and looked down the barrel at Josiah Culp. I am in mind of a different picture, he said.

VIII

S
HERMAN SAT ON A LOG, WAITING FOR MEN FROM
Howard’s Fifteenth Corps to lay a pontoon bridge across the Broad River. It was a clear cold bright morning, somewhat breezy. Not a mile to the north lay his prize, Columbia, the capital of the secessionist treason spread out on the plains like a plum cake ready to be eaten, a woman ready to be taken. Oh Lord, he did remember Columbia, where, as a young officer, he’d known several families. Some lovely ladies lived there. And one in particular, years younger, not much more than a child, a lithe little beanpole but with a glance that made his knees tremble. Would she be here still? Ellen, that was her name—the same as my dear Mrs. Sherman. Ellen Taylor. A married woman by now, a widow perhaps, no longer lithe and with a bevy of children pulling at her skirts.

He could see the grand statehouse the city fathers had been intending, a handsome half-finished classical structure in granite. Very appropriate to a community that thought so well of itself. With what a sense of security they must have kept abreast of the war up North. To be the author of it and yet safe from it. He could see the ruins of the railroad depot from which the smoke still rose. The streets were abustle with a population only too aware of the blue army gathering in its immensity to the south. The streets were crawling.

Taking up his his binoculars, he saw Confederate riders on the roads going north out of town. Negroes were clustered at the depot, plundering the cars of sacks of grain and God knows what else he could use. Calling over his adjutant, he ordered a section of Howard’s twenty-pounders to lob a few shells to disperse the looters. And a few over there for good measure, he said, looking again at the statehouse, which flew the Confederate flag.

An hour later he was marching with his staff at the head of the corps on the road to the city. The wind had picked up and some of the mounts were skittish with it, losing their gait, lifting their nostrils to the air. And then, all at once, it seemed he was in the city’s market square, the elderly mayor coming out of the crowd on foot to greet him and assure him that there would be no acts of resistance from the citizens of Columbia. Sherman, seeing the quiet crowd of onlookers, raised his voice in answer. And for our part, Mr. Mayor, he said, looking out at them all, let me assure you that we intend no injury to your citizens or their property. We will linger here only to relieve you of those matériels and facilities of which you no longer have need.

At that moment Sherman smelled smoke and, standing in his stirrups and looking out over the heads of the people, saw down a side street of commercial buildings that a stacked row of cotton bales was on fire. One of his generals quickly gave orders and a company of troops was dispatched to put out the flames. In an unexpected and touching amity, they were soon working side by side with members of the city’s fire brigade.

Later, as Sherman had found a house to his liking several squares from the statehouse and set himself a headquarters there, he dictated orders for the destruction of the arsenal and all other military, railroad, and manufacturing facilities, as well as those public buildings not of municipal but Confederate government. He then readied himself graciously to receive the inevitable petitioners. But the first applicant at his door, a nun in a flowing black habit, aroused in him an uncharacteristic defensiveness. She was Sister Ann Marie, the abbess of a convent school for girls, and she wanted his authorization for a guard. You needn’t worry, he said. You’ll be quite all right. If that is so, the abbess said, then you can have no objection to putting it in writing. The Army of the United States does not war on convents, Sherman replied, and made to escort the Sister to the door. She did not move. In exasperation, Sherman dashed off a note of authorization and thrust it into her hands. With her departure he found himself once again in the state of unease that he had come to feel in cities. But he felt a misgiving now that was quite specific. What was it? Something in the room was whistling, and he realized it was the wind blowing in through the old, ill-fitting windows. It sounded to him something like the keenings of women. He stared at the sheer curtains curling upon themselves in their fluting, and twisting to and fro like a dance of dervishes.