Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (35 page)

But he just was not ready to stop. Nor were his men. Each yard gained had been earned with the blood of friends and comrades, of brothers.

His ragged line pressed on until the smoke thinned.

As they came within range of a fine-looking house, a volley flamed out, halting Hayes’ men with its devastating power. This was it, the Rebs’ next line of defense. Officers ordered their men to ground or drew them toward cover. They had gone as far as they could until support came up; each veteran sensed it.

Startling himself with his lust for blood, Hayes longed to go on, to shoot men down, to skewer them.

But he’d learned from the errors of others how alluring folly could be. Charging that position with the handful of men he had would have been an unforgivable sin, a collapse into passion worse than any carnal deed. The remnants of his brigade could not have been more disordered had they been stirred around in a witch’s cauldron. His men had played their part well; now he had to play his own part wisely.

As he panted for breath and weighed the situation, stray Ohioans and mud-caked West Virginians gathered around, taking up positions behind a wall to trade shots with the Rebs. Listening to the ragged exchange, Hayes sensed something new:
The Rebs were only trying to hold on.
There was no hint of a counterattack, none of that feeling you got from the Johnnies when they were ready to pounce.

Off to the left—still too far to the left—the fighting had become a gale, a storm. Sheridan’s entire army was on the attack.

No reinforcements here, though. Where was Johnson? Where was Thoburn?

Hayes sat down, struggling for clarity. Given that he didn’t have the numbers to rush that house, what else might be done? Anything? Beyond waiting for reinforcement? Once ignited by action, he always found it hard to snuff the flame. He even feared that the day might come when he gave an insane order, maddened by the … the ecstasy.

For all the press of bodies, their stink and the raucous voices, he felt alone. And he
was
alone, in a very practical sense. Russ Hastings had gone down early—Hayes hoped the wound wasn’t grave—and his last courier had disappeared. He had left his staff behind with orders to follow, but he saw none of them.

The men kept up their fire over the wall, pleased enough with what they’d done and telling the Johnnies—who couldn’t hear one word—what a licking they were going to get, just wait. Hayes grew newly aware of his own breathing, of the sodden grip of his uniform, of the foul taste in his mouth, a gagging mix of blown powder and bad water.

It had been only moments since they halted.

It was time to sort out his regimental officers and to send a detail to bring up ammunition, in case the chain of supply had broken down. He needed runners. And skirmishers had to probe the flanks, to uncover who was out there. He had to identify the best point to strike when reinforcements came up and the advance resumed.…

When he tried to reload his pistol, his hand shook. He could barely open his soaked ammunition pouch.

With the suddenness of revelation, Will McKinley appeared. The young man looked sufficiently fresh to have found a wiser place to cross the creek. McKinley, bless him, had that sort of luck.

Kneeling beside Hayes, his former adjutant said, “Colonel Duval’s been wounded, sir. Pretty bad. General Crook says you’re to command the division.”

4:00 p.m.

Gordon’s front

Wasn’t right, none of it. They’d whipped the Yankees fair and square, twice over. Then they’d caught the blue-belly fools trying to sneak around on them, just come right up on the flank, and by rights they should have whipped them a third time, catching them down in that swampy bottom, a true Slough of Despond, like in
Pilgrim’s Progress
. But the Yankees seemed to have lost their senses this God-given day and they just kept on coming, plastered up and down with mud, a-saying, “Kill me, please, and thank you kindly,” and even doing that—killing them—wasn’t enough. One of their officers had near shot down Dan Frawley with a pistol, though Dan got away, and Nichols, unused to the new rifle he had taken up, had missed when he took a shot at the Yankee, who looked like a man from the town bank, the kind who prized ledgers and laws over the Lord. Then he had found himself going backward in anger and in shame, unwilling to be captured again by heathens, men apt and fitted to fornicate with niggers in broad daylight, men who would not be tolerated on the soil of Georgia, nor should have been anywheres else.

Tom Boyet was bleeding, but not quitting. None of them was anywheres close onto quitting. But it was like the Lord himself whispered to every man at the same time, saying not “Go down, Moses,” but “Y’all git out of here now, too many Yankees.”

How could the Lord allow this? To cause them to flee before Lucifer? When they were the Righteous, the Poor who would inherit?

He loaded and fired, loaded and fired, wishing he had his own fine rifle back, but glad of the yard wall by this rich man’s house, a succor unto the people. The fellows had been as pleased to see him as pork chops when he came back, marveling at his tale of bold escape, maybe not believing every word of it—which was an injustice—but clapping him on the back and laughing and sharing their rations with him, even bottomless Dan Frawley, whose favorite miracle, surely, had to do with those loaves and fishes.

Elder Woodfin had called him “the Prodigal Son returned,” which did not seem right, for Nichols did not believe he ever had behaved badly toward his father, not as the Prodigal Son had done, and he had never been a squandering, gambling, drinking fellow, displeasing to the Lord and rightly afflicted, but the chaplain was not a man to bear reply. Elder Woodfin was, after all, a Virginian and could not be reasoned with like the Georgia-born.

Firing at the blue hants in the smoke, Ive Summerlin said:

“I don’t like this at all. I don’t like this feeling.”

None of them did, that was the gospel truth. With the Yankees whipped and whupped and whipped, and too ignorant to accept it, rumors of great wickedness had spread, luring men into the temptation of fear.

“More cartridges, boys,” Sergeant Alderman called. “Come back one at a time and help yourselves.”

A soldier clutched his face and collapsed backward.

General Gordon reappeared. A time back, things had been so ugly that even General Gordon, a man who feared naught but the wrath of the Lord, had dismounted and gone afoot. He was back up on his latest stallion, peerless.

There was shooting to do, but Nichols stole time to glimpse the true-Christian face, that Christian-soldier visage, of General Gordon passing. With that broken-cross scar on his cheek.

Nichols found no consolation there.

4:20 p.m.

Union Sixth Corps

“Remarkable,” Ricketts allowed. “Simply remarkable.”

Rigid on his blood-streaked horse, George Getty snorted. “Can’t say how the little runt brings it off.” He spat.

“Sometimes, I don’t think I know soldiers at all,” Ricketts said.

“Volunteers. Different breed. The men we led would’ve laughed.”

“I’m not sure,” Ricketts said. “Remember how the Regulars cheered Zach Taylor?”

Around the two generals, litter bearers gathered up the wounded, deciding who would have a chance to live.

“Well, he got them going,” Getty allowed.

To the astonishment of everyone on the field, Sheridan had revitalized the attack by galloping the entire line of the Sixth Corps, ten yards out in front of the men, grinning and waving his hat, hallooing the Rebs with spectacular obscenities. He had continued on to the Nineteenth Corps, prolonging the stunt, all the while in full view of the Confederates. The howls from the men had smothered the noise of the guns.

“And here we are blathering,” Getty said. Stalwart and taciturn, George Getty was even more of an Old-Army man than Ricketts. Sheridan’s performance had excited him to what passed for ebullience. “Got them untangled, time to get on.”

Ricketts nodded. When the charge resumed, it had moved so fast that their flank units had collided. It had required the division commanders themselves to sort things out.

To their front, another cheer resounded.

“Glad to get the worst of the ground behind me,” Getty said, lingering anyway. He turned up one side of his mouth. “You got the easy dirt today.”

“Not sure every one of my men would agree.”

“Any more about Upton?”

“Just that he’s wounded.”

“Let his holy angels comfort him. Shame about Russell.”

Their staffs, held at a distance, had grown restive. It was time to rejoin the attack. Even generals had to be nudged along, in the view of majors.

But generals were human, something that would not have occurred to Ricketts in the old days. They, too, needed their respites.

Getty tugged his riding gloves tighter. “All this ends, I look forward to some quiet post in the Territories. Where all I have to fuss about is corporals with the clap.”

“They’ll bust you down first. Both of us. Reversion to Regular Army ranks.”

Getty permitted himself what passed for a smile. “Hell, they can make me a first lieutenant. Just give me an orderly life, wake-ups at five a.m., and a good pair of boots.”

Having been a lieutenant longer than Getty, Ricketts saw less appeal in such a demotion. He quite liked being a general, and Frances liked it, too. The orderly side of peace had its appeal, though: days refined by bugle calls and smoothed by regulations. There was something about the Army, the Army he had known, that was wonderfully pure.

“I don’t think we’ll revert to a grade below major,” he said seriously.

That rekindled Getty’s tiny smile. “See you in Winchester, Jim.”

4:20 p.m.

Gordon’s Division, Confederate left

As his soldiers carried Patton from the battlefield, the fury on the colonel’s face struck Gordon. The wreckage of Patton’s leg had to be painful, but it wasn’t suffering that ruled poor George’s features. It was rage, Homeric, unmatched in Gordon’s experience.

“Bless you, George,” Gordon said, riding beside the litter, rationing moments. “Splendid work, you held them.”

Patton could not speak. He shook his head. Faintly. Glowering.

“Get you back in the fight before you know it,” Gordon tried.

Patton closed his eyes. Bloody lips trembled.

He’ll lose that leg, Gordon figured. If not his life. Patton’s war was done.

Gordon’s was not. But Patton’s Brigade, Virginians from Breckinridge’s Division, had arrived just in time to block another Yankee assault, granting Gordon a gift of time—precious minutes—to rally his shrinking division again, behind another web of stone walls, with the left refused and the line backed up against the Valley Pike, a hop from Winchester.

Leaving the wounded colonel, Gordon rode along his line again, encouraging his officers and men, cajoling them and promising a miracle. Hope remained, however slight, that they might hold the Yankees until dusk. On his right, Battle and Ramseur had rallied their men yet again, with Early crisscrossing the field, overflowing with threats and imprecations. But Gordon felt the noose closing.

His men
had
to hold on. He could not let them break, not before the men of the other divisions did. As the chances of the Confederacy winning the war declined from day to day, it was crucial not to be seen as one of those who invited defeat. Back in Georgia, men had to say, “We lost that war
despite
all Gordon did.”

Gordon did not intend to be a failure, not in war, and not in peace. He had seen failure enough along his bloodline. His father had begun with a farm whose arcade of elms let it claim to be a plantation, bestowing upon the males the status of gentlemen, however threadbare. The elder Gordon then became a preacher, but pulpits and poverty ran too close a race. “Pap” had moved on through various enterprises, getting up a mineral springs retreat for the well-to-do and rhapsodizing over the prospect of imminent wealth, then moving—in veiled ignominy—to the mountains on the Alabama border, almost backing into Tennessee, where wheedled resources went into mining and timbering among hill folk who sold their land cheap, then worked it cheaper.

Along the way, Gordon acquired the manners of an aristocrat, but without the ducal purse. The curtain dropped in his senior year at the University of Georgia, where he had excelled in debates, the classics, and general
bonhomie
. Instead of standing up as valedictorian, he had outraced court orders and sheriffs’ writs back to the mountains, where he worked a mine and falsified ledgers to save the family enterprise. Thereafter, he chose to read the law, already aware it was made of India rubber, and met his Fanny, whose family was as staid as his was irregular. Each of them longed to escape to the other’s side.

But it had been in the mountains and mines where he first learned to lead men—indeed, to fool them, which was far from the least part of leadership. He had mastered that art amid desperation, shouldering creaking timbers underground, then tugging at numbers into the night by the glow of an oil lamp. Cornered by his father’s truant ethics and plain lies, John Brown Gordon had vowed to armor himself in respectability, or its appearance.

Now he was here, on this awful field, determined not to be blamed for the army’s collapse. And that collapse was coming, all but certain. His men looked gaunt as ghouls, exhausted, approaching the point where resolve gave way to terror.

He dared not dispatch even one man to set Fanny on the road southward to safety. Every rifle counted, every visible body, each man the brick that, if removed, might cause the wall to crumble.

The Yankees had brought the weight of their guns to bear. A few hundred yards to the front, where Patton’s Brigade still clung to its ground without its colonel, the pounding was incessant. Nor would the Federal infantry let up. Patton’s boys held on, though. Running through their ammunition, but still brim-full of spite.