The Proud and the Free (33 page)

Stand to ranks! Stand to ranks!

The drummer boys took his hint and beat to parade as manfully as they could, until the roll of their drums echoed like morning thunder – while we ran on the double and fell in. In less time than it takes to tell it, our regimental lines were formed, and we were each of us standing to arms and looking straight ahead. Gresham had picked himself up and the other officers were grouped around him, talking excitedly in low tones. And still it was before sunrise, and only now was it light enough to see anything clearly. Now the drummers stopped their playing, and the officers came toward us in a group. Jack Maloney stood alongside of me, and I squeezed his arm and whispered to him:

Easy, lad, and easy does it. You're an old soldier.

God damn them, Jamie!

God damn them, I agreed. God damn them to hell and back again, but they are the officers and we are the men of the Line, and that's that. So easy does it.

Now the officers were standing in front of the ranks and about a dozen yards away, the eleven of them in a close group and still whispering to each other. The two regiments were side by side and four ranks deep, and making a right angle at the end of our parade were the drummers and fifers, with Chester Rosenbank standing in front of them, his face white and sick – for there was something terrible and brooding upon this wet field on this cold May morning, and there was something that all of us knew and yet none of us knew. And I said to myself, We are not the Line and the Line is dead and dissolved, and we are naked here. And I was afraid the way I had not been afraid in a long, long time. Then the first burst of morning sunlight – not the sun yet but just the light – cut into the gloom, and the night mists fell until we stood knee-deep in a sea white that slowly broke up and rolled away; and then all around us was the gracious Pennsylvania countryside, bathed in the pure morning light and cleansed with the pure morning air. The crows rose from the meadows and sadly bid the night farewell and a rooster somewhere sang the morning in. The mists fell away from the tents, and from the other end of the encampment we heard the drums beating to parade, beating up the militia and the recruits. All this we could see on that green and golden morning: the distant figures of the new recruits, the horses grazing in the pasture we had made, the morning birds in the air – the intolerable sweetness of a new day still unmarred.

The officers came toward us. Captain Purdy stepped forward from the group and called:

Stand to arms!

We stiffened and presented.

MacGrath!

Angus MacGrath stepped forward and waited.

Advance six paces, soldier MacGrath! snapped Purdy, and in answer to his command Angus counted off the six paces and stood waiting. Watching him, I wondered again as I had wondered so often in the past what force commanded us and moved us; for here was this miserable little man, Purdy, hurling his orders at the great Scottish dignity of Angus MacGrath, Angus MacGrath who was like a mountain of endurance and courage and forbearance, tireless and simple and wise in a manner Purdy would never know and could never know. Yet because we were steeled in the years of discipline, we responded and obeyed.

Then why, I had to ask myself, had we revolted once? What had happened then, and what was lost now?

Kneel down! said Captain Purdy.

Like a man made of stone, Angus stood there, motionless.

Kneel down! cried Purdy.

Still Angus stood like stone, and like stone stood the ranks of the regiments.

Drawing his pistol, Purdy cocked it and presented at Angus, but I saw that his hand trembled and the big pistol wavered back and forth in front of the motionless man.

I gave you a command, he said, pitching up his voice. Either obey it or take the consequences!

And then Billy Bowzar spoke up, relaxing the awful tension of myself and of others. Billy Bowzar spoke up in that dry and even way of his, his voice cutting the situation into all of its separate parts, and …

May I speak a word, Captain Purdy, sir? he said.

I think Purdy welcomed the interruption and welcomed the opportunity of a way out. He had gotten himself into a bad position, and I do not think he would have had the courage to shoot Angus. It is a bitter thing to kill a man in cold blood, as well I know, even if you hate the man, as Purdy hated Angus.

So he said, This is no part of your affair, Bowzar.

Yes, sir, agreed Billy Bowzar quietly. But may I say a word, sir?

Well, speak up then, snapped Purdy, still covering MacGrath.

I only want to say, sir, that it cannot possibly help either yourselves or us to go on with this matter. We stand in our ranks, and we stand under discipline now. We are good soldiers, sir – and we are ready to march off to a campaign. We are going to fight and die, together, sir, and that is what is important. I saw the incident between Maloney and Captain Gresham. It was a mutual misunderstanding, sir, and it would be better if no blame was to be attached.

I'll thank you, Bowzar, not to instruct me in matters of discipline, said Purdy. You are being damned insolent!

I am trying not to be insolent, Captain Purdy, and I have no desire to instruct you in matters of discipline. That was not my intention at all, sir. I only felt that things will go hard if we continue in this. MacGrath lost his temper, but that is understandable.

You will not instruct me in what is understandable, said Purdy. That is God-damned insolent! MacGrath was ordered to kneel down and accept punishment. When he does, this matter will be over.

I will not kneel! said Angus suddenly. I will dee and damn you!

I could see Purdy working his courage, building his courage, jacking up his courage, and then Jack Maloney stepped forward and took his place beside Angus, presenting his musket, so that if Purdy fired, he would be in a position to fire back.

Then I'll go down with him! cried Jack Maloney. Damn the lot of you, you have no hearts and no souls, and a man is a dog to the lot of you! Now who will stand with me? he threw at us over his shoulder. Who will stand with me? Is there a man left in the brigades?

The officers closed in, but the Jew Levy and Danny Connell and Lawrence Scottsboro and Stanislaus Prukish and the black man Kabanka took their places alongside the two, some quickly, some with the damned resignation of men who realize that they have come to the end of something. An officer broke away – Lieutenant Collins, it was – and ran like the very devil was after him across the fields toward the camp of the recruits. Purdy fell back, the rest of them with him, so that now a group of seven faced a group of ten, and still the regiments stood in ranks unmoving. It was not enough; whenever I recall that morning moment, I realize how precariously the scales were balanced, and it would have needed only Bowzar and myself to tip them over – so that if we had moved forward, the ranks would have moved behind us. All of it was in my mind and through my mind, and already I could see where the lieutenant who ran off was approaching the militia; and faintly, I could hear his shouting, and now I knew why Wayne had kept the artillery so carefully apart. And all of it lived and acted in my mind, and in my mind I saw the ranks surge forward behind Billy Bowzar and myself, and in my mind I saw the ten officers go down before our bayonets and our clubbed muskets; and in my mind I saw our foreigns, better than whom were no soldiers in all the world, greeting the militia with spaced volleys until the green grass was like a slaughter pen; and in my mind I saw the artillery coming, the outriders whipping the horses, the guns bouncing over hill and hummock, and in my mind I saw us retreating into the woods with the stain of blood and death all over us – we who had slain our brothers and ignited the spark that made this war a fratricide – all of this I saw in my own mind's eye in those few minutes when the two groups stood at bay. And seeing it, I knew the hopelessness of it, the uselessness of it, the deep and woeful and pathetic uselessness of it; for it was only another road into nowhere, into a hope and a dream that had no existence, and we had traveled that road once and we knew it well. And if men died now – as I knew already they must die – they would be forgotten, and the foreigns would lick their wounds and we would march off to the Southern campaign, and we would finish what we had started together with the officer gentry. And it must be finished – this I knew.

So when Jack Maloney – Jack Maloney who was like a brother to me – called out, And are there no others? And will you not come, Jamie Stuart?

I answered him, No, I will not, Jack Maloney – I will not because there is no hope here, and once I did it!

Then be a man and do it twice! cried Danny Connell.

No – I cannot and I will not!

And then the time was past, for two men on horseback were spurring down on us, whipping their mounts, Wayne in the lead and Butler close behind him; and after them, at a headlong run, came the regiments of the militia and the new recruits. The officers reined up their horses, and the militia, panting and sobbing for breath, made a ragged line at right angles to our regimental parade, covering with their muskets Jack Maloney and Angus MacGrath and the five others. Purdy and Gresham were speaking to Wayne at the same time, and as he listened to them, his face became murderous with anger. And through all this, the sun rose and bathed the morning in its golden light.

Stand back! cried Wayne, and he reined his horse back, followed by Butler and the officers, until there was a clear space between the militia and the seven of our men. Then Wayne swung out of the saddle, strode over to the militia, and cried, Take aim at those men!

There was a sigh, like a woman in pain, out of the ranks as the muskets converged on the little group of soldiers. They drew closer; they pressed against one another – and frozen, paralyzed, I and the others in the ranks remained without thought or movement, only looking at these seven men who were our comrades, Jack Maloney, and big Angus MacGrath, and the Nayger Kabanka and the Polish man, Prukish and the Jew Levy, so small that he and old Lawrence Scottsboro looked like children, if you did not see their faces, and Danny Connell who had once sang sweet songs in another land – and they pressed shoulder to shoulder as Wayne cried:

Fire!

Forty muskets roared out, and a terrible groan went up from the ranks, a groan of awful and unforgettable anguish. Six of the seven men sank down in a horrible mass of broken flesh; one, Jack Maloney, his left arm shattered and almost torn from his body, remained standing – and facing him, the militia stood behind their smoking muskets and wept, even as we in the ranks wept.

But Wayne did not weep. I do not blame Wayne; I do not condemn him; he is dead and gone these many years, and I have no hatred for him. What he had to do, he did, and someday what we have to do, we will do.

But he did not weep; cold as ice, he was; and hard as stone, and with no more than a glance at the awful carnage of those six dead and the one living and standing, the one who was Jack Maloney who was like a brother to me —with no more than a glance there, he approached us and walked across our ranks, looking from face to face until at last his eyes fixed on me, and he said so softly and bitterly that almost only I heard:

Stuart.

Weeping, I stood there, and the smoke drifted away across the morning meadows and little moans of pain came from Jack Maloney, and we who had known every conceivable kind of horror were unable to look at this particular horror any longer.

Stuart, he said, fix bayonet!

Like a man in a dream, I obeyed and fixed my bayonet; and this dream went on, for he said:

I have a long, long memory, Stuart. Advance!

I moved forward toward that pile of horror and toward Jack Maloney, and Wayne moved with me. He drew his pistol and cocked it and held it a few inches from my head, and the hundreds of men around us stared in silent disbelief, and Jack Maloney was watching me now.

He is dying from that wound, Wayne said softly, and in bitter pain. Drive your bayonet through his chest.

For a time I stood as motionless as Jack Maloney, as Wayne, as the men in the ranks.…

You have one minute, and then I will blow your damned brains out, Wayne said.

Then kill me now! I suddenly shouted. Do it now, and God's curse on you!

One minute, said Wayne.

And then Jack Maloney said, Do it, Jamie, do it, Jamie! Do it for my sake! Do it and put an end to my terrible pain, Jamie Stuart. Do it because you were right and I was wrong – for the love of God, do it, Jamie! Do it!

His voice rose to a wild, vibrant note of command, and I lunged and drove the bayonet through his chest. And then I was down beside him, his head in my arms, weeping and weeping, and trying to tell Jack Maloney what I knew but what there were no words for. And then there were Billy Bowzar and Andrew MacPherson, and they lifted me up and took me away and talked to me.…

We broke camp the next day and set out on our march southward to Yorktown, where we fought the last great battle; and with my musket slung from my shoulder and my knapsack on my back, with bullets in my belt and a pound of powder and a pound of corn meal to keep me, I marched alongside of Billy Bowzar. Thus we marched, and in the course of it, he would say:

How is it, Jamie Stuart?

I'll never sleep again, and waking, I'll never forget.

You'll forget enough, he said, and too much you don't want to forget, Jamie Stuart. Because there will be a time for remembering.

And when will that time come?

Not too soon, God willing, Jamie Stuart. Not before the time is ripe, and then, God willing, we will know the road we take. We are like a seed that ripened too soon, too quick, for we were planted within the gentry's own revolt, and we grew a crop they fear mightily and neither they nor we knew how to harvest it. That will take knowing, Jamie Stuart, that will take learning. Be patient. The voices are quiet this moment, but they will rise again. Be patient.

PART TWELVE

Wherein a little is told of the last days of the Pennsylvania Line, and of those whose acquaintance you have made.