Cain at Gettysburg (44 page)

Longstreet would have to command the attack again, there was no choice. Mulish though he could be, he was the last of Lee's subordinates up to the task. A diminished man in more ways than the physical, Ewell had been sluggish and ill-tempered for two days, while Hill had spent this day clinging to Lee's headquarters, failing even to urge his own men forward. Hill's indisposition had disabled not only him, but a third of the army.

Hill's indisposition …

Lee found the thought distasteful, a matter that could only be ignored. Anyway, he had no one ready to take over Hill's corps. Perhaps Hood would have done in time, but even he lay wounded—severely, according to his staff. And, Lee told himself, he had to remember that Hill came of his own kind and must not be shamed publicly.

He found the mounting losses among his generals lamentable as to their persons, but tragic when it came to their precious skills. So many of them were gone now, replaced by men of good heart, but inadequate talents. It was only the soldiers themselves, his sturdy soldiers, who could deliver victory to the Confederacy.

But those men needed Jackson's iron hand and will.

Pacing about the chamber, Lee smiled mournfully. Thomas Jonathan Jackson had been the least likable man he had ever loved. It was hard not to view his death as a desertion.

Perhaps Jackson had been wise to take his leave amidst the war? With his reputation at its apogee? Cross over the river, he'd said. And rest in the shade of the trees.

Jackson, with his lemons, faith, and alacrity.

Lee's bowels throbbed and he stepped toward the next room to use the chamberpot. But the quaking subsided and he composed himself. He knew that Taylor had papers for him to sign. But he was not ready. He needed more time alone.

He had received bad news, but shared it with no one. The rumors that Grant had abandoned his Vicksburg works had been incorrect. The siege continued, with ever less hope of relief. How long could Pemberton resist? Why was Johnston inactive? Could Vicksburg hold until the summer's end?

The news had made it still more vital to win a great victory here, to bring a final relief to the Confederacy. And to Virginia.

It was ever harder to maintain Christian decorum, to prevent a just cause from descending into hatred. Given the barbaric ravages in which those people indulged on his home earth, it took all his strength of will to forbid retribution. Even his Arlington home had been used unkindly.

Truly, they had become separate nations, irreconcilably so. His conduct and that of his men had to be exemplary, and he strove to embody gentlemanly honor. This war was not about slaves, but about civility, about the challenge to a civilization of beauty and refinement posed by a brute, mechanical culture.
They encompassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.
He longed to sit again in his family pew, in a world well rid of war and rumors of war. But first this terrible issue must be resolved. Yesterday's brethren could no longer live together. Not without destroying the world Lee loved.

So Pickett and the others would go forward. One mighty effort remained to be made on the morrow, a last, decisive victory to be claimed.

Nor could Lee bear the thought, the unthinkable thought, that George Meade might defeat him. It was impossible. He could not lose to Meade. And his men could not lose to those people. They only needed to be led with vigor.

Lee closed his eyes and saw his legions swarm through the Union lines.

*   *   *

Corny Wright gave up and walked off to sleep, leaving Blake and Cobb by the fire's embers. With midnight behind them, Blake leaned into the feeble smoke, aching to purge the smell of death from his nostrils. They had spent the day handling corpses and covering them over, but the dead just seemed to multiply, an infernal version of the loaves and fishes. The world stank of decay and shit until dried sweat seemed to Blake a sweet perfume. Beyond the fire, the living snored or called out, issuing nightmare warnings of Yankee volleys, or pleading with loved ones conjured in a dream. On a skirmish line, rifles snapped.

Eyes fire-brightened, Cobb cackled: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it
is
for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Blake considered him through the twists of smoke. “Psalm 133.”

Cobb's black maw widened into a grin. “That's right good, Quaker. Them Virginny folk brought you up right.”

Blake had spent much of the day amid unaccustomed thoughts, wondering not about the phenomenon that was Cobb, but about its creation. After so many months of living and fighting together, it was the first time he had pondered the possible misfortunes of the other man, the tangled path that had led him to this place. And he had realized that, beyond the common mistrust of Cobb's kin back in the hills, he really knew nothing about the man beside him.

Blake felt for his tobacco and realized he had none. He let it go.

“Billie?”

Cobb looked up, eyes narrowed at Blake's use of his first name. As if he knew it was prelude to a challenge.

“Hear that boy sawing wood?” Cobb asked, shaking his head. “That Bunyan boy puts a battery to shame.”

“I'm glad he's sleeping,” Blake said. “I suppose losing a twin brother's even harder than losing a regular one.”

“Lot harder,” Cobb told him, “than losing some little gal you set your eye on for a time, but who never bound herself to you.”

Blake understood the reference. It wasn't deep.

“Billie, tell me one thing. Without giving it a hard mouth.” Blake breathed in the bitter smoke. “Why have you hated me so much? What have I ever done to you?”

A horse whinnied back in a grove. Other horses took up the noise, as dogs will, then quieted again. Cobb pondered the questions.

At last, the little man said, “Now, what makes you think I ever hated you, Sergeant Blake?”

Blake snorted. “I'm not joking, Billie. Nor mocking. I'd just like to know. Why you never miss a chance to dog me. To get downright mean, if you want me to put it plain. Why me? What did I ever do to you?”

With a sigh almost parental, Cobb met Blake's eyes dead on. The gaze was so fierce Blake found it hard to keep steady.

“Why do I hate you, Tom Blake? That assumes you're big enough for a man to hate. And I don't mean the tallness of you and the broad shoulders, that's not what I'm talking about.”

“If I'm not big enough to hate, then
why
? Why all the devilment?”

Cobb poked the embers with a blackened stick. A flare of light sharpened his features. “Ain't what you done to me. You never did a thing to me. Not the way you mean. It's what you do to yourself. It just makes me angry.”

“Would you two shut up?” a man called from his blanket.

Cobb shifted closer to Blake. His voice hissed. “Look at me,” he commanded. “You look at me, Thomas Blake. You don't have to tell me what you see. I know it well enough, oh yes I do. But take a good look, boy. Then you go on and look at yourself. Come first light, you borrow yourself a mirror, and you look.” Cobb shook his head. “And what'll be looking back at you? A face as comely as the beloved of the Rose of Sharon.
And
the lily of the valleys.”

“And you hate me for that?”

“Damn me to Hell, you don't
listen
. Can't you listen just once, boy? You ask me a question like that, then you don't listen none?” Cobb's voice remained a whisper, but he seethed. Mad enough at Blake to come on with his fists.

“I'm listening.”

“Then you listen good, for I won't tell you but once. You look at yourself now. You know the look of yourself. Big, strong. Handsome. Even if some jumped-up little dolly in a poor-built brick house run off on you. That's you right there, right now, strong and handsome. Born so, a gift from God. Smart, too. Maybe not wise, but smart. The way it takes to get on in life, when there ain't no war to skew things. And are you grateful? No, sir. Some worthless no-good on a horse his daddy bought him hollers that your daddy was a drunk. And you sulk and sorrow like Job himself, as if the whole world ended. And all the while, you're a buck-handsome fellow with a half-interest in a store back home, and, from what I hear, some land bought up, and you ain't but twenty-six nor -seven, give or take. Then you look down at me and want to know why I hate you.” Cobb spit. “You're not man enough to hate, 'least not yet. You're just a grown-tall boy who won't stop picking at scabs a true man would forget. Look at you, Thomas Blake. You got everything. And you cry unto the hills that you got nothing.”

The little man's grimace spoke of anger, but not hate. “Sure enough, I'm jealous. But I've been jealous worse. That ain't the point. It's the resentment that the Lord done give you all these gifts, and you refuse to be grateful. You're a blessed man in search of a curse he can hide behind.” Cobb sat back. “All I ever wanted from you was one sign that you knew how lucky you were. Just one sign. You're the fortunate son, beloved of the daughters of Zion, blessed with groves and vineyards unto a surfeit. And what do I see? The luckiest man I know pitying himself like a girl no one asked for a dance.” Cobb looked into the glowing ashes, ruined face carved with despair. “They should've named you ‘Cain,' you know that? Heaped with gifts, and killing's all you take to.”

“I've never seen a man who likes to kill as much as you do.”

Cobb snorted again. “If I do, I've got reasons.
If
I do.”

“So why are
you
the way you are? You know so much about me. Or you believe so. What about you, Billie? All anybody knows is that you grew up on the Cobb side of the McCaslins, made no great impression, then disappeared. Folks figured you either went west, or got knifed up some hollow. Then you turn up ten years later, mean as the cholera.”

“Ugly,” Cobb said, “and mean.” He snickered emptily. “A leper, without the Savior's healing hand. I suppose I ought to wear bells.”

“That's putting it hard.”

“Look at me, Thomas Blake. How would
you
put it?”

Blake reached for words of comfort, but he found none. Instead, he asked, “What happened, Billie? Where were you all those years? Yesterday … graveside … you were different. And tonight. Bible verses all over you. What happened?”

“Maybe I done beheld a pale horse?” Cobb looked away. “Or maybe I finally come far enough away from the Whore of Babylon.”

“I'm no good at riddles.”

“You know your Good Book, though. But you wouldn't say a word over James Bunyan yesterday. Left me to do it. Which wasn't right.”

“Why wasn't it right?”

“Because those words don't belong in my mouth no more. They come out sour.”

“If you don't want to tell me, fine. But I'm asking you. What happened to you? What made you so damned hard?”

Cobb smiled. “You know something, Quaker? This is the first time anybody in the company … in the whole damned regiment … asked me anything about myself. Beyond my name and age, when I enlisted.”

“Well, I'm asking now.”

The little man scraped the earth so fiercely with his stick that it snapped in two. But he spoke with ghostly calm. “I wasn't much of a McCaslin, tell you the truth. Nor a Cobb. Just never took to the ways of my own folk.” He tilted his head, considering the broken twig. “Some say there's a tinker strain in us. Others say just bad blood, just plain, old wickedness. And I saw some wickedness, yes I did. Couldn't miss it. Doings up in them hills that even a beardless boy knew had to be wrong. Pleasurable, in the ways of Sodom and Babylon. Or Cherkey Hollow, anyway. But wrong. And I just didn't fit the muster. Oh, I got along, I wasn't trouble. My brothers and folks just thought I was queer in the head. But I worked a good day, and that was all they needed. Then, thunder and lightning above, I felt the Call. Didn't want it, didn't ask for it. But damn, if it didn't come over me.”

His eyes saw other landscapes. “I had my letters. Taught them to myself, with some talk-help from my gram, the one came over herself. She'd gone blind, but knew the verses, and I spelled them out. Can't say it did me no good, neither the letters, nor the Good Book.” He cackled, almost the old Cobb. “Barely man-ready to deal with the world, and I fall to my knees by a corncrib, blinded by the light. Caught on the road to Damascus. On my way to feed the hogs, anyway. And I knew I had been chosen by the Lord, that he had favored me.”

Cobb tossed the broken stick into the embers. Weak sparks rose. “I come preaching to the dinner table that night and my brothers laughed like men troubling a hoor. Beat me bloody, to bring me to my senses. The way brothers do.” He frumped his chin, remembering. “Come morning, I was gone. With nothing but cold biscuits and that old Bible.”

Staring into nothingness, Cobb took up his tale again. “You wouldn't of knowed me. I was a good preacher, a downright wonder, a natural hollering man. Not for the quality folks, nor in a church of my own, but down in the corners and hollows, in the shade groves and barns. I laid my hand upon many a good man's head and blessed many a woman. They believed me, Quaker, because I believed myself. I was called, and never had a doubt.” He grinned. “Folks took to calling me ‘Little Elijah,' though I never got around to smiting heathen priests in significant numbers. But folks give each other names for their own reasons. Anyway, I traveled west of the mountains, far as the Mississippi, even across that great Nile into Arkansas, and rarely wanted for a meal. Folks were hungry for salvation and starved for the Word, and I had a beautiful shout and a veil of rapture. Of course, I fell into the sin of Pride.” He cackled again, at himself now. “I got to thinking my powers truly could redeem the Sinner, male or female, child or elder.”

Cobb laughed a soft, surprising laugh and scratched beneath his shirt. “Don't go thinking I was one of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers. No, sir. I put more stock in Jesus than Jeremiah. And I never tried to tell a man Jesus really turned that wine into water, not the other way around. Just tried to persuade him that getting hog-drunk and killing his own brother wasn't Christian. Same with fornication. Oh, my Lord. I'd seen enough before I was twelve years old to know men nor women weren't going to give
that
up. Just wanted them to stop doing it with their own sisters.” He wiped a dirty hand across his mouth. “Tell you the truth, there were times when I think I just loved the roll of the words in the Bible verses, loved to hear my voice ring out across the beauteous vale of this old world. I truly felt the Call, from head to toe, though some days it lay stronger on me than others.” He nodded over a congregation of memories.