Cain at Gettysburg (15 page)

As the sun peaked overhead, the fight faded into a dull exchange of artillery, the way two weary but well-matched brawlers kept slopping occasional punches toward one another. Blake understood the men's impatience, felt it himself. They were willing to fight, they were ready. But waiting gnawed at a man. Didn't make a fellow afraid, but left him a bit less steady. And it gave the wrong sort of man too much time to think.

He couldn't figure the delay himself. He even agreed with Cobb. There were Yankees aplenty on that other ridge, but not so many that a big brigade like Pettigrew's couldn't whip them. Surely the generals had a greater plan, a scheme invisible from his crushed-grass bed. Perhaps they were waiting for still more brigades and divisions to come up, to deliver a mighty blow. But it did seem to give the Yankees the same opportunity.

“These damn ants,” Jack Ireton said.

Cobb hooted. “Be worms at you soon enough.”

Sometimes Blake wondered why the men lying beside him fought at all. Not one man in the company held slaves, not even the officers. Nor did they have much else. Other than their pride. Of course, that was part of it, the war did give them something, making something of them for a time, spiriting them away from their poor-white work, hard debts, and bent-bone children. He'd heard many a time that this was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, but Blake suspected that was the way of every war. True, some young bucks from high families went off to display themselves. But men of fortune who'd already had their waistcoats let out a time or two found good reasons aplenty to stay at home. Like Lenore's banker.

Lenore. When he thought of her now, he was brutal. Given the chance, he would not be a gentleman. He would hurt her. Damage her. With all the anger he had taken to that swamp girl whose pap was willing to see himself off for an hour or two if money was in prospect. She had borne his assault in silence, as if used to it, then told him, “You come around again, Mr. Soldier. You come on anytime.”

But he had not gone back. He had gone to her on a rumor of availability, fleeing the regiment's low-country camp in the twilight, bursting with rage at the news of Lenore's marriage, her betrayal. Delilah had done less, he told himself, cursing his beloved as a cold whore. And the girl had been waiting by candlelight for custom, in a cabin rancid with body smells and spoilage. Afterward, sick-souled, he had feared terrible consequences from entering her stinking body, but none afflicted him. Thereafter, he remained chaste of women, giving himself to the war and the war alone. But he dreamed of hurting Lenore, of degrading her, of winning her.

I am no longer to be trusted among decent folk, Blake told himself.

Cobb fetched up a garter snake and bit it in two, letting the severed ends dangle, twitch, and spurt. Black-toothed and grinning, he chewed as if he had taken in a mouthful. James Bunyan sat up, crawled back a few feet, and retched.

“That there snake a close relation, or distant?” Peachum asked Cobb.

“Yankee branch of the family,” Pike put in.

“Well, better a goddamn family of snakes than rabbits,” Cobb answered, spitting. He was done playing with the halves of the serpent and discarded them. “Plenty of rabbit in some of these here Bunyans. Snake was headed for James there, ready to swallow him whole.”

John Bunyan leapt up, fists ready. Quick of body, Blake pulled him back down. The steadier of the twins landed with a thump.

“Take it out on the Yankees, boy,” Blake told him. “Cobb isn't worth it.”

“That's right now, that's exactly right,” Cobb added. “Any man with Quakers up his tree can see it plain. Man ain't worth a turd if he ain't got a name, if he ain't somebody. You tell them how it is now, Sergeant Blake.”

In the distance, drums pounded. But whose?

Blake knew where his hardened heart had gone, but not where the thoughts of the other men had strayed. He even suspected, for the first time, that Cobb might have set about something with good reason. James Bunyan was failing, although the boy had never malingered before. Better for him to burn into a fury, no matter its cause, than to lie there thinking too much about what lay ahead. And if it angered his brother, too, that harmed nothing.

It still bewildered Blake how men could downright hate each other, yet fight to save not themselves but men of whom they'd had the blackest opinion but minutes before. James Bunyan might think of shooting Cobb, rather than a Yankee, but he would not do it. Instead, he would kill the Yankee who lunged for Cobb. Even the Bible didn't explain such things. Lenore was in it, in many forms. But Billie Cobb was absent.

When the order came to rise, all else would be forgotten and the men would go forward as one. James Bunyan would go, and Cobb. Peachum and Ireton, Tam McMinn and Hugh Gordon, Oliver Wright and Pike Gray. Eight hundred of them would rise, straighten their ranks, and step out forward. Some few might falter on a given day, but they would be as nothing. The men who lay beside him now, dusting off ants and trying to coax last sips from dry canteens, would do their duty, even if unsure to whom or what or why that duty was owed. He knew they would fight and believed they would fight well. Because, in the end, fighting was one thing a hurt man could believe in. For all the filth and horror, it was pure.

Blake looked forward to it. Not because he hated Yankees. His hate was less discriminating than that. When he'd taken that girl on her cob-filled mattress, he had almost closed his hands around her neck and tightened them. Instead, he had plowed her mercilessly, intent on inflicting pain that oldest of ways, summoning death with the deepest of all desires, determined to hear her scream. But she had said nothing, barely moaned, and let him do what men did. Perhaps, he thought, he should have killed her father. Did that toothless whoremaster also count as a son of the Glorious South? Blake figured people were people, wherever birth placed them. Today, men who knew nothing meaningful about one another would slaughter each other over accidents of geography. Say what they might in the grandest of words, there was no virtue in it. But killing Yankees was deemed a good thing, and he was good at killing. Nothing made him feel better than fighting. He had not made that girl-child scream, and the creature had even bidden him return, sickening him. But he could make Yankees scream.

The problem wasn't getting men to kill. It was getting them to stop.

Now and then it confused him that he felt so little fear. It seemed almost a madness as he watched himself pass through the days. He even tried to talk himself into a dread of what might happen to him in battle. But he couldn't make it stick. He'd seen enough to know the horrible wounds a man could suffer. Yet, he was more impatient than poor James Bunyan, or Peachum, or even little Cobb, to stand and go forward.

There's something wrong with me, he told himself. I'm as ugly inside as Cobb is outside. How could I believe in a God, if he made me like this?

Blake never had high thoughts. “Dixie” was as foreign to him as China. He felt a bothered closeness to the back hills of North Carolina, and the northern poke of Virginia still held him in a dark thrall. But neither piece of dirt was worth the dying. Where was the glory in fighting for fields that could not feed their owners? Blake took no interest in gallant, glorious gestures.

But he was interested in killing. It made him feel clean.

*   *   *

“It's a dirty business,” Major General Winfield Scott Hancock told Meade, “when you lose a man like Reynolds.”

But Meade, who had ridden Hell-for-leather to Hancock's headquarters—leaving his escort to gather and catch up—understood what filled the Second Corps commander's mind. Hancock cared about Reynolds' fate and had counted the man a friend. But Win would have gone through a gauntlet of corpses to get into the fight.

And Hancock understood why he had come, although Meade's purpose had not yet been spoken. Meade was tempted to tease Hancock a bit. But there was no time for nonsense.

Reynolds dead.
The news had shocked Meade. His first thoughts had veered near panic. Reynolds had been his crutch. Next, a wave of sorrow had crashed over him for the man who was no more. But the queer feeling that arose thereafter filled Meade with new vigor: He must depend upon himself now, and he suddenly felt capable of doing so. It was almost as if Reynolds' death had freed him.

Meade had seen at once the order in which things must be done. And he meant to do them.

He had shouted in to his chief of staff that Reynolds was dead and Hancock would go forward. After ordering young George to follow with his map, Meade had galloped off with only one alert aide beside him, leaving his escort of wellborn Philadelphians scrambling for the glade where their horses were tethered.

“Win,” Meade said, “you'll take command at Gettysburg. As soon as you can get there. Your authority on the field will be absolute. Absolute, mind you. You will command in my name any troops that reach you. Only Slocum will rank you, once he arrives.” Meade paused. “I have to keep my headquarters here through the day, I see no alternative. By night, we'll know whether I should join you, or if it's wiser to pull back to better ground.”

It was more than Hancock had expected. Instead of a chance to land in the fight, the fight had landed on him. At first, he was flummoxed. Then he said, “Howard's senior to me. So is Sickles, if he gets there first. They may buck.”

“And I'm damned well senior to both of them,” Meade snapped. “I've been empowered to make any changes I see fit.”

Hancock looked both eager for the task and skeptical of the army commander's authority.

Meade reached for his coat's inside pocket and produced the letter he kept close on his person. Halleck as general-in-chief and Stanton, the secretary of war, had given him the authority he now claimed. The president would sustain his decisions on officer appointments.

“Well, those two sonsofbitches won't be tickled,” Hancock said. The man had a soldier's heart, but a sailor's mouth.
Not
a true Philadelphian. “Especially Dan.”

“Sickles will do as he's told, or he can take himself back to the lobby.” Meade considered the generals with whom he was cursed. “Howard will be glad to hand you the responsibility. And if you do well, he'll be glad to claim credit afterward. Damn it, Win … I need you to get there as fast as you can go. If you think the ground and our position is better than Pipe Creek would be, if Gettysburg is the place to fight, advise me and I'll order up the entire army.”

Hancock thought about that. “So … I'm to choose?”

“You're to advise me. The decision will be mine. If it's the wrong decision, it will rest on my head, not yours.”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

“It doesn't matter how you meant it. There's no allowance for personal feelings now, including mine. We're in a pinch, with John Reynolds gone. God knows what Howard's gotten up to in the meantime. Nor will Doubleday do for First Corps. We can only hope the division commanders act well on their own.” Meade's thoughts turned brutal. “The wrong men get killed, Win.”

Big, stout, and as impressive as man-flesh could be, Hancock nodded his head, then took off his slouch hat and wiped his forehead.

“I'll have to put Caldwell in command of my corps,” he said.

“No,” Meade told him. “I want Gibbon.”

“Caldwell's senior.”

“And Gibbon's the better man. For God's sake, Win … Caldwell's pride doesn't matter now. Blame me, when you tell him. I don't give a damn who likes me and who doesn't.”

“Gibbon, then.”

“And get this corps ready to march again. Even if Gettysburg isn't the place for a battle, I don't want Lee gobbling us piecemeal. If we must withdraw, I intend to execute a careful retrograde, not a bloody damned rout.” He turned toward his son, who waited past a cluster of just erected headquarters tents, chatting with the captain of Meade's bodyguard. “George,” Meade called with a wave, “bring over the map.”

His son dashed forward, bearing a roll wrapped in oiled cloth.

“Win, I haven't got a decent map to give you. This is the best I have. It's the only one of any use, and it isn't much.”

Hancock calculated for a moment, then said, “I'll take an ambulance forward. I can study the map and write orders for Gibbon and the corps while I'm under way. The horses can trail. I'll mount and ride the rest of the way, once I've got things gripped.”

Meade considered the soldierly figure before him, broad of girth but well able to carry it off. Hancock was almost as handsome as John Reynolds, and even more eager to join the fray.

That last thought brought Meade up short.

“If you want to go up in an ambulance, I don't care,” he told Hancock. “Just don't come back in one.”

*   *   *

Colonel Krzyzanowski longed for a mug of cool beer. As he sat astride his horse, flanked by the war-shrunken regiments of his brigade, he watched the empty fields before him and slipped into a reverie. The war was long over and he was a prosperous man. His soldiers gathered to honor him at a grand reunion, where they celebrated the exploits of their youth. It was a daydream to which he often fled, and the party was always held in a German
Bierkeller,
the songs ever those his Germans sang in camp, melodies less antic and yet less mournful than the songs of his Polish childhood. A mug of beer would have been welcome in the cloudless afternoon.

Confederate guns had appeared on a hill to the left, enfilading the Eleventh Corps' drawn-up divisions until answering batteries rolled up and responded. Then there had been an ill-managed attack below the same hill, an odd sort of stumbling forward by men in gray that had met with a sharp repulse. Some of von Amsberg's men had been drawn into the fight and seemed to have won through. Firing lingered on well to the left, but did not sound especially threatening … although Krzyzanowski understood that what a man could not see for himself was not to be trusted.