The March (26 page)

Two minutes later, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

THE BREATH HAD
been knocked out of General Kilpatrick. He lay at the foot of the tree, unable to control the pressed wheeze issuing from his deflated chest. His men were scattered some distance away. In the aftermath of the cloudburst, they were dismounted and wringing out their hats. Either they had not noticed him or were pretending not to have seen his fall. The horses stood by quietly, as if amnesiac. His own bay stallion came clopping back to his side, calm and self-absolved of all responsibility.

Gasping for breath, Kilpatrick lay there until suddenly, with a great wrenching roar, the air rushed back into his lungs. It was at this moment he realized that in the lightning’s illumination of the forest he had seen a dead soldier tied to a tree.

THEY COUNTED ELEVEN
dead besides the one strapped to the tree with the piece of paper folded in his breast pocket. The bodies were strewn about in the woods, each lying in a puddle of blood and rain. Most of them had their hands tied behind them and their throats cut. They were cavalrymen. The note said: THESE WERE THE RAPISTS.

Kilpatrick sent a rider back to the camp. A half hour later a contingent of men rode up, dismounted, and began digging by the light of torches made of cut pine saplings. Kilpatrick now went on with his escort, and when they came out of the woods they found nine more bodies at the edge of the road. These men, too, had been executed, and lay about amid other signs of the carnage—split-open sacks of flour and cornmeal, pieces of silverware, shattered whiskey bottles, a dead mule. Ordering the bodies to be carried back to the forest, Kilpatrick rode on some miles to the intersection with the Monroe Road, on which he thought Hampton’s cavalry would be most likely to travel, and checking a brigade’s deployment with the commanding colonel, and satisfying himself of the soundness of the position, he rode back to the forest in time to say a few words over the departed. Their pockets had been searched and emptied, letters and photographs collected, and now the twenty graves hollowed out of the soft forest floor were about to receive them. Kilpatrick checked his pocket watch, frowning at how late it was. He cleared his throat. The men removed their hats. His face glowing in the light of the pine torches, Kilpatrick said, Our foragers were murdered after they surrendered. I will inform General Wheeler and demand an investigation. And if he does not oblige I will execute one Rebel prisoner for every man lying here. So help me God. Amen.

WHEN HE REACHED
the house commandeered for his use at Solomon’s Grove, Kilpatrick, limping slightly and bruised and battered from his fall, was cheered by the aroma of good French cooking. He was for a moment disheartened to learn that Mrs. Treaster, whom he had regarded as a kind of first course, had departed with staff officers of one of General Slocum’s infantry brigade commanders, General Ridley. Ridley had sought out the ladies to invite them for dinner at his camp. There’s no trusting these infantry, Kilpatrick muttered. He wondered what reprimand he should give Melrose Mortimer, but when he realized that though Mrs. Treaster had gone off Marie herself had not, his heartbeat quickened, for it meant she preferred his company to all others’. And the mother, too, why could she not have chosen to leave as a way of—what—designating me? Entirely possible. A subtle vesting, as you’d expect from a wise and thoughtful mother.

Kilpatrick stood with his back to the hearth in the parlor of the small house and drank off a glass of port. Marie was upstairs preparing for the evening. Jean-Pierre had laid out Kilpatrick’s favorite china, appropriated back in Savannah, and the little low-ceilinged dining room was aglow with candles on the table and candles in their sconces. Can there be a sweeter seduction, he thought, than the one pulled off in war? He noticed the mud dried on his tunic and trousers. His boots were caked with mud. Perhaps I should clean up. He smiled. Christ no, this is just what thrills them. Not some Southern popinjay with a handkerchief in his sleeve. They want our hero’s life. That we kill and stand to be killed is what thrills them.

He felt his crotch and contemplated the night ahead. There would be a struggle, entreaties, but finally she would not be able to resist, she would be aroused to a state of ardent curiosity even if she would not admit it to herself. He knew women. They could not admit to themselves what they wanted, but there was always a moment when their emotions took them over the threshold, as it were. Miss Boozer would at last learn the consequence of her girlish flirtations. He would answer to them on behalf of all the Southern studs who had been dying to get at her.

Kilpatrick grew impatient, looking at the ceiling, listening for a footstep. He smoothed his wiry red hair. He poured himself another glass of port. He must remember to write his wife.

UPSTAIRS, MARIE WAS
arranging her décolletage. She dabbed the little glass rod between her breasts, behind her ears. The things in her cosmetic case were a comfort to her, the padded case itself, with its brass snaps and the compartments lined in pink silk. So that this awful little house in this godforsaken woods was not totally disheartening. She still had her things. It was amazing how that large, expansive life of theirs was packed away now in trunks and crates and carrying cases such as this. But at least they had it with them.

She heard the General pacing. The whole wretched house shook under his boots. The man is an idiot, Mother had said. An idiot and a barbarian. But he is of the rank to ease our way north. There are no more railroads. So he is our railroad. Think of him as the track we ride on, Mother had said, and they had laughed.

The two women got along so well, they were more like sisters than mother and daughter. And they had plans. We are going to Europe, my dear. The life we knew, and what we have a right to expect, is no longer available on this continent. When the war is over it will not be over. I know these men—their war will never be over.

Mother was so wise. A year ago she had taken measures. She transferred funds to a bank in New York. She sold their farmlands and invested in Federal bonds—secretly, of course, with the help of that old lawyer Silas Fenton, who had tufts of hair growing out of his nose and who once felt her breast when Mother wasn’t looking. Oh, how can you bear him, Mother, she had said. Marie, her mother said, if you keep your own counsel, if you never forget why you are doing what you’re doing, nothing that they think has happened has happened. Remember that. I have had four husbands, each for a different reason. Your father was the only one I ever loved. And so the only husband who ever possessed me. This last one, Mr. Treaster, is off somewhere playing Confederate soldier. He had rather suffer a divorce than not to be thought a fervent secessionist.

There, all was ready. She would descend the narrow stairs as if it were her debutante ball at the Governor’s Mansion.

He was looking up at her, this ugly man, with what could only be described as a leer. How interesting. He has no idea of the expression writ on his face. How proud he is of that laughable red scraggle on his cheeks.

And what is that smell? Good God, it is our dinner, our army dinner.

JEAN-PIERRE AROSE
the next morning before dawn to attend to the kitchen. The bugle had not yet been blown, and though here and there in the surrounding camp a cooking fire had been started, the men were mostly still in their tents, and he had to pick his way carefully so as not to trip over something in the darkness.

He was shocked, on entering the little house, to see that the dinner he had spent hours preparing had hardly been touched. The candle ends were still sputtering. A layer of coagulated fat lay like a cover on the tureen. He was terribly offended. But the wine in its carafe—that, too, had hardly been touched. He sat himself down and in a self-righteous pique drank a glass and had some of the fat as well, which he scooped up with his index finger. Not for the first time was he angry with the crazy general who had kidnapped him. Not for the first time did he think about running away.

His presence aroused Brevet Colonel Melrose Mortimer, who had fallen asleep in the parlor with his head on a writing desk. Mortimer had spent the evening not listening to the sounds coming from upstairs and writing to his maiden sisters. The Mortimers were a quiet family, not terribly disposed to live life to its fullest, and since the generation of his late father and mother, no Mortimer—none of the five brothers or six sisters—had seen fit to marry. Colonel Mortimer, a stolid, unimaginative soldier, was considered the family adventurer by virtue of his long service in the military, when in fact he knew the army as an obedient child knows a parent.

It was when Jean-Pierre had begun to clear the table, and Mortimer had gone outside to relieve himself, that Rebel cavalry appeared as ghosts in the mists of first light and rode, shrieking, into the camp.

THE PICKETS WERE
easily overrun, and in the first minutes the troops were helpless, their fly tents sworded into the air, horses rearing over them. Men, flinging off their blankets, ran for their rifles and were shot down, others raised their hands in surrender. But in the confusion and the white fog of the morning some resistance was organized, junior officers shouting through the gunfire. Troops ran for cover behind trees, others on one knee fired their Spencers at horses dashing by them. Cooking fires sprayed into the air as the raiders stampeded the cavalry’s horses.

A bugler blowing the call to arms roused Judson Kilpatrick from the deepest, most exhausted sleep of his life. The General ran downstairs in his underwear and out to the porch, where he stumbled over the foot of the dying Melrose Mortimer, who lay upside down on the porch steps, a huge hole in his tunic gushing blood.

His cavalry’s camp become a battlefield, Kilpatrick’s first thought was that now he’d lost any chance for promotion. Three Rebel officers cantered out of the mist and reined in their horses. Where’s General Kilpatrick? they shouted. Kilpatrick pointed the way they had come. Back there, he said, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed in what he imagined was a frightened subaltern’s deference. The minute the riders were gone, the General, still in his undershirt and drawers, ran behind the house to the stable, untethered his horse, rode bareback through the melee and into the woods, and didn’t stop till the sound of gunfire was a distant thing.

What was he to do? He sat astride his horse and listened to his own breathing. Goddamn, I need my clothes, it’s freezing. He felt the horse’s prickly hide between his knees. He felt the horse’s heartbeat. They must not capture the General, he thought. I will lose some men and some horses but they won’t have the General, and that’s the important thing. Jesus, what a charge. I’ll wait here a minute and go back quietly and retake command. In the meantime, surely we will have mounted a counterattack. Ah, I hear my battery guns, so there it’s begun. We will push them into the swamp.

Almost as if he had been listening, Kilpatrick’s bay stallion slowly began walking back to the camp. This is a humiliation, but that’s all. The infantry will be here shortly to save my rear end, just as they did at Waynesboro. That’s all right, it’s my job to attract the Rebs, bring ’em out, uncover ’em. That’s what I’ve done here.

The infantry don’t like me, neither Howard nor Slocum nor their corps commanders—none of them like me, though none can tell me their columns were ever attacked while Kilpatrick rode on their flank. But Billy Sherman likes me, and he’s the one that counts. I will think of something, don’t worry, he said aloud to his horse, and rubbed its crest.

And as for Marie Boozer, whom he now remembered he had left in that house. . . . If the Rebs were too stupid to realize the man on the porch in his underwear had the best available quarters and therefore must be of the highest rank . . . why anyone in the house would be safe enough if they didn’t show their heads. Buster would, and serve him right if he did. But she wouldn’t.

Nevertheless he had run off without her. He would have some explaining to do. Damn that girl, the way she fooled me. Enough of this—will you see me to my room, General? she had said, and hardly having touched the best ragout Jean-Pierre had ever prepared, Marie Boozer had led the way upstairs, holding his hand behind her so that he could feel the sway of her skirts with every step.

In the bedroom she had slammed the door, dropped her outer garments with a swish, then the petticoats, and then the hoop, which collapsed jingling to a circle on the floor. His trembling spatulate fingers were enlisted to untie the stays of her corset. Then, pink and prominent in her undershift and stockings, Miss Boozer had pressed against him, mashing his mouth, opening his fly, and grabbing his dingus for a quick assessment. She had practically flung him onto the bed, and in the moonlight, as she dove down on him, he saw her white neck curl, like a swan’s.

All but insatiable, he thought. Hips pounding like a locomotive. And yet, as she lay beside him afterward, sleeping beautifully, her face on the pillow under the mass of damp curls was the face of a virgin. Nothing can be relied on, General Kilpatrick thought. There is no morality left in this world. And damn the little whore for doing this to me, I am in love.

III

T
HE RESISTANCE HAVING BEEN LIGHT AT THE CAPE
Fear River, the Rebels firing and falling back almost immediately to turn tail and make their escape out of town, the combined corps of the Army of the West were soon across, and the city of Fayetteville was of a dark blue aspect, as if the abstract color had found an organic vestiture for itself. The streets were aswarm. Yet to someone watching the processions of men and wagons and gun carriages, broughams, buggies, and two-horse shays, it became apparent that not merely an army was on the move but an uprooted civilization, as if all humanity had taken to the road, black women and children trudging along beside their go-carts, or pulling, oxenlike, their two-wheeled tumbrels, and white citizens of the South in their fine carriages overloaded and creaking with bundles and odd pieces of furniture. The Southern population behind Sherman was refugee, having joined his march because it was the only thing left. And everyone, soldier and civilian, was damp and soggy from the recent rains. Hair lay flat upon heads, and clothes limp upon backs. The eyes of the marchers being directed at the ground, here were the generations in their trod, steam rising from them as the sun baked away one ordeal to replace it with another.