Cain at Gettysburg (51 page)

“I can't eat,” Meade said. “The men haven't eaten. Those Philadelphia Irish … haven't had a cracker in two days. My fault…”

Gibbon's face went taut. “George … listen to me. You look like a dead man. When's the last time you've had a meal yourself?”

Meade couldn't remember.

“You
must
keep up your strength,” Gibbon insisted. “What good are you to the army, if you drop?”

Suddenly, Meade realized he was famished.

His horse followed Gibbon's footsteps. As if the animal had taken Gibbon's side.

A brilliant aroma taunted Meade's empty stomach. Up ahead, Hancock's big haunches spilled over a keg. Win's face hovered protectively close to his plate. Pleasanton, who should have been at Meade's headquarters, wiped up the remains of his stew with a crust. The favored diners sat in the shade of an apple orchard. Nearby, soldiers waited in the sun.

Meade watched General Newton approach from the other side of the trees. His black horse gleamed with sweat.

To make it go round, the stew was served in portions too stingy for Hancock's mighty appetite—Win eyed other men's plates with doglike interest—but there was cheese, hardtack, and a pile of boiled potatoes on a mess chest to serve as belly-fillers. And coffee for all. An orderly brought up a cracker box so Meade could have a seat.

“Well, gentlemen, this is fine,” Meade said.

Gibbon took a plate from an attentive cook and delivered it to his guest. Meade had to restrain himself from downing it like an animal. He could not remember ever being so hungry.

He remembered something, something important, something he had forgotten. He looked around at the assembled generals. “Order the regiments and companies on provost guard to come up. We may need every man.”

Hancock gave him a sideward glance. “You gave us that order this morning, sir.”

Embarrassed, Meade blustered, “I … just wanted to be certain. If Lee comes on, we may need every man.”

“I don't know,” Hancock said. “I think he might not. Lot of dawdling over there. As if they just want to hold on to our attention. Old Marse Robert might be halfway back to Chambersburg, we wouldn't know the difference. Either that, or he's up to some damned trick. He's taking too much time, it isn't like him.”

“He attacked late yesterday, too,” Newton put in.

Hancock ignored his fellow corps commander. “That gun line out there could mean any number of things. Not necessarily some kind of madcap attack.”

Win had spoken Meade's own doubts, yet, hearing them from another changed his mind again.

“No. He'll come at the center. At you. Hunt's convinced.”

“I think so, too,” Newton said. Subordinate to Hancock, Gibbon stayed out of it.

Meade returned to his stew, each spoonful a joy in the mouth.

“Hunt's always convinced of something,” Hancock said. “If not of this, then of that. I've never met a man who's so cocksure.”

“Hunt knows what he's about,” Newton said. “The man was splendid yesterday. From everything I've heard.”

“Nonsense,” Hancock snapped. He was not a man who liked to be contradicted. Infinitely brave, “Hancock the Superb” was also Hancock the bullheaded. “Nonsense,” he repeated. “Hunt would've lost at least a half-dozen batteries if it hadn't been for us rescuing his guns. I had to send men out to take them back. His cannon jockeys just left them, walked away.”

That was untrue. Hunt and his men had done wonders. And they'd paid a high price in blood. Meade wished to defend Hunt, but was too weary. Chewing a shred of antediluvian rooster, he turned to his cavalry chief to change the subject:

“Sharpe tells me Stuart's back with Lee.”

Pleasanton growled his response: “Fool should've been with Lee's army from the start. Off on a romp. Jolly old Jeb Stuart, the sashaying cavalier. What did he accomplish, tell me that? Captured some wagons. Horse's ass, if you want my opinion.”

His cavalry's performance at Brandy Station notwithstanding, Pleasanton still felt a sting at the mention of Stuart's name.

Meade set his empty plate on the trampled grass.

“Cheese ain't bad,” Hancock told him. “Have some. It's on John's mess bill.”

But Meade could eat no more. He put himself all too vividly in the place of the hundreds of nearby men waiting with empty bellies for the battle. He nearly spoke of the matter again, but decided it helped no one to spoil the mood. Which was testy enough.

Gibbon handed round cigars. Meade accepted one. That was all right. He would not have minded a brandy, either. He had reached the point at which strong drink would not have put him out, but would have jolted him back to life.

I just have to get through this day, he told himself again.

“Lively morning over on the right,” Newton said.

Meade nodded. There had been some bad moments early on, out past the heights the locals called Culp's Hill. But the Confederate gains had been redeemed and now that flank was quiet.

“Win,” Meade said abruptly, “I don't believe you'll be needed on the left today. Forget commanding the wing. Just see to your corps, the center needs all your attention. If Lee does come on—don't argue wth me now—John will have his hands full with his division.”

Hancock stiffened, but swiftly came around. He was a model soldier, for all his swagger, and knew what made sense and what didn't on a battlefield. He puffed his cigar and nodded his acceptance.

The conversation swooned. They were all exhausted men. If they had eaten better, they'd slept far less than their soldiers.

Flies swirled around the remnants of the meal.

The recognition of how well he understood these men—men so like himself, for all their differences—penetrated the haze afflicting Meade. Everyone was fighting to stay awake until the fight began. But they'd come back to life with the first shots, their minds saber sharp and bodies pulsing with energy. It was just the way it worked.

Expressing what each of them felt, Hancock declared, “Bobby Lee needs to shit, or get off the pot.”

With a champion effort, Meade got to his feet. It was time to ride the lines again, to stop by his headquarters, to see that everything remained in order, that there'd been no acts of folly in his absence.

What was Lee doing?

“General Gibbon,” Meade announced in his most majestic voice, “the finest cooks of Society Hill could not compete with your mess. My compliments, sir.”

Gibbon rose and bowed. For a moment, they stood at a Philadelphia ball. “The honor's entirely ours, General Meade! I'll tell Cook we shan't hang him.”

Win got over his grump and snorted a laugh. “My goddamned compliments, too, John. Next time, though, chill the champagne.…”

Meade's orderly brought up his horse. The animal lurched toward the scraps of crackers on the mess chest. Meade grabbed the bridle and yanked the animal back. Bad enough for the men to see their generals eating like hogs while they went hungry, but let them see a horse get at the vittles and there'd be a mutiny … as well as a defining story of the battle in every newspaper.

“Well, now that General Meade's demoted me again,” Win announced, “I think I'll have another look at my guns, make sure Hunt hasn't got them aiming at each other.” He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat.

“I'll ride the line, then I'll be at my headquarters,” Meade said. As if suspected of truancy, he felt a childish need to declare his whereabouts. He still was not fully comfortable lording it over these men who had been his peers mere days before.

He saw now that he could do it, though. He
could
command this army. He had not failed the test.

The plate of stew had helped him more than a fresh corps would have done.

He saw Gibbon watching him, judging him.

Meade spurred his horse into the gap between two waiting regiments.

The day had grown eerily quiet while they were eating. The stillness of noon, much multiplied. How could thousands of soldiers be so quiet? Even the flies on his horse were deathly still. The sun itself seemed to have stopped. As it had for Joshua.

On whose side would the Lord God be this day?

The men had not been given their daily bread. But he had eaten his. He hoped it would not bring bad luck. Soldiers had to eat. And their hunger was, at least in part, his fault. He had brought up every reserve, every gun, all his ammunition, at the cost of crowding all else from the roads, certain the battle would end and the men could be fed. But what if it didn't end? Or ended badly?

His horse neared a redheaded boy with a supplicant face. Was he going to beg for food? The lad saluted, expression confused, perhaps crazed by the heat.

What was Lee up to?

As Meade reached the crest of the ridge, with the spectacle of his army stretched out before him, a cannon boomed over on the Confederate lines.

His heart and mind quickened:
This is it. It's starting.

The army tensed around him.

But the ponderous silence returned. To a world smothered by the heat. One shot, then no more. One shell, on an obscure trajectory. Then nothing.

The wait was horrid.

The sun had not stood still, of course. The first afternoon shadows were creeping east, slight but certain.

Another gun sounded from the opposing lines, followed quickly by a second round. The shells flew over Meade's lines and burst in the rear.

And then came pandemonium.

TWENTY

July 3, Early Afternoon

Hancock's fury swelled more swiftly than his horse could gallop. He had already torn into Hazard, his corps artillery chief, but decided he had to see to things himself.

Corps flag following closely behind his stirrup, he led a staff contingent forward, racing between explosions that splashed gore, careless of the dismembering solid shot. Most of the shells screamed overhead to play Hell in the rear, but enough struck home to make it hot for his regiments: The howls and shrieks of men, horses, and ordnance quickened the air. Soldiers clawed the earth in search of safety.

The men of the 69th Pennsylvania lay sardined behind their wall, driven to pack together by animal instinct. Poorly disciplined off the line, the Irish 69th was fierce in battle, a regiment that gave its officers headaches, then redeemed itself with maddened valor. Hancock knew the men would show their pluck, once they caught the stink of Rebel assholes. Other units were hardly blooded, though, or had new brigade commanders yet unproven.

Beyond the pack of Philadelphia micks and an idle gun section, a shell tossed bodies and bits into the air.

“Goddamned sonsofbitches,” Hancock barked.

A few feet short of riding down young Cushing, Hancock yanked back on his reins. Oblivious, the lieutenant stood beside his guns, watching the enemy batteries through his spyglass.

Alerted by his first sergeant, the boy looked up at the general in the saddle. Cushing was beardless and pink-faced. West Point was turning out infants, officers who'd barely learned to wipe their own asses. Hancock doubted that the lieutenant had ever had a woman, or knew which part of himself went between her legs.

“Cushing, why the Hell aren't your guns firing?” he shouted to be heard about the din. “D'you think they're decorations for Mother's garden?”

The lieutenant wore a guileless look of a sort Hancock disliked. Boys. Damned boys.

“General Hunt said to hold our fire, sir. To conserve ammunition.”

“To Hell with that horse's ass. You take commands from
me,
not some fucking gun monkey.”

His language startled Cushing. Evidently more than the bombardment.

Good. The boy needed startling. Hancock had polished his skills at speaking to solders of every rank over many a year.

“Yes, sir.…”

“Well, jump to it! Get your guns into action. The men need to know we won't let those buggers shit on us.
Move!
”

The baby-cheeked lieutenant stood his ground a moment longer: “Sir, I have to conserve ammunition for their charge.”

“Shut your goddamned mouth and see to your guns, boy. Or you'll face a court-martial the minute this turd-fight's over.”

Expression fiercer and stronger than Hancock expected, the lieutenant collapsed his telescope, saluted, and turned to his battery, shouting by-the-book gunnery commands.

Tugging his horse about, Hancock called to an aide: “Tell Hays to get his batteries into action. I'll see to the left myself.”

Behind him, he heard Cushing's number one gun fire, followed quickly by the number two.

Hunt was a puffed-up mechanic, a creature of the staff, with no proper sense of soldiers and their needs. You couldn't expect men to lie there and take such a pounding without their own guns speaking on their behalf. Hunt needed a cannon rammed up his ass.

A shell struck beside a caisson, detonating the contents and hurling fragments of metal, wood, and horseflesh in every direction. The team horses that had not been killed outright leapt and kicked, showering blood about them and neighing in agony, struggling against their harness.

He did not have to stop at every battery. Most had commenced firing at the report of Cushing's guns. But Hunt had his loyalists among the artillery officers.

Shells struck in quick succession, stitching through the waiting ranks of soldiers. The battering threatened to crush morale among the weaker regiments. Hancock felt he had no time to lose.

Calling up another courier, he waved a hand toward the nearest troops—who watched him in both admiration and terror. “Find their colonel. Tell him to move his men just over the ridgeline, but keep them ready. The same goes for the other second-line regiments. Just behind the crest, not another inch.”

The courier snapped a salute and spurred his horse.