Cain at Gettysburg (53 page)

“Just lie steady, dearies, and take in the pretty show they've all got up for yiz.” He laughed like the devil over a priest gone bad. “Ye may never see another such day, if ye live to see any at all.”

“Jaysus, Sergeant Gallagher,” Walsh complained, “an't it noisy enough without your catterwawling?”

“Walsh, me dearie, ye're needin' to put them ladylike nerves back under their darling skin.” He laughed, then called, “Can't anyone give us a song? For I'm weary o' the tune the Rebs are playing.”

“He's crazy as English George,” Lonergan declared. “Nothing to eat for two damn days, the world's coming to an end on every side of us, and the man wants a minstrel show. He's crazy, he's mad…”

“That's why the great, high powers made me a sergeant,” Gallagher said. “Because only the devil himself could master the likes o' ye. Reilly, give us a song, then, for the day's gone drab and dreary, for all the racket.”

A simple lad with a succulent voice, Reilly dutifully tried to lift a tune. Naught but a croak emerged. Canteens were as empty as their bellies, and every man's throat was scorched with the taste of powder.

Gallagher gave them a bit of the quiet then, if quiet there could be amid the goings-on. He marveled over the foolishness of the colonel and the major, prancing about on their hind legs to show they weren't fearful, behaving like idiot Englishmen. Gallagher saw no point in risking death without a fair chance of killing the other man first. But officers had their own queer notions about what inspired the lads, all high thoughts and nobility, when Gallagher knew damned well and enough that nothing roused the boys like drawing blood. Give them some lovely killing to do, and a fair enough chance to do it, and every lad among them would stand proper.

Raising himself to see what he could see, he found precious little on view to the regiment's front, naught but smoke fit for smuggling contraband and flashes bright and gone again, quick as a sleeve-slithered ace in shebeen poker. He turned then to see what was on beyond his own lot, and spied the boy-lieutenant still by his guns, blood-smeared and clasping a rag against his shoulder. The lad's face was foul as a navvy's with burnt-up powder, but pretty enough even now to come to grief, if ever he took himself for a dockside stroll. The lad called out adjustments to elevation in a voice that struggled to sound like a grown man.

Gallagher knew the type, he did, for he had slain such a lad all those years ago, a sweet young man who was not meant for this world. So unsuspecting they were, all doomed by virtue.

Gallagher only hoped the lieutenant would last until his guns were truly needed, for he did like to watch the application of canister.

*   *   *

Hunt wished Meade were present in the cemetery. Hancock had made a mess of things, bullying his batteries to open early and blast away. The Rebels were firing at a breathless rate, excited Union gunners responded in kind, and the duel had already lasted a good half hour. Lee's ammunition stocks would be running down, but so were his own. And Hunt knew his guns were vital to the defense. It was all so … so damned amateurish.

“This is idiocy,” Hunt declared. “I'd fail any gunnery student who made such a shambles.”

Just below the vantage point where he stood beside Ollie Howard, guns fired by section, spitting flame and recoiling between the headstones. The noise was numbing, even to an artilleryman.

Empty sleeve dangling, General Howard shook his head and asked, “What do
you
make of it, Osborn?”

The Eleventh Corps artillery chief peered through the man-made fog, reading the twinkle of Confederate muzzle blasts. “I agree with General Hunt, sir. Either they think their fires are doing a lot more damage than they are … or they're keeping it up just to drain off our ammunition.”

“Of course, they want to exhaust our ammunition,” Hunt said. “It's common practice before a charge. I taught the fools that much, at least.”

“Not proud of your former students today, Henry?” General Howard asked.

Hunt didn't respond, but stared into the smoke.

“I wonder,” Major Osborn said, “if we mightn't put one over on them?”

Hunt turned.

“Suppose we just stopped firing?” Osborn continued. “By the time word passed down our lines to cease fire, they'd assume we were running out of ammunition. Or that they'd silenced our guns.”

Hunt lifted an eyebrow as he looked at Howard. He often wondered what old Ollie would do if he lost the other arm. Grim thought.

“Could work, you know,” Howard offered.

Yes, it could. Trailing off your fires was an age-old trick. Hunt was miffed that it hadn't occurred to him first. He'd just been so damned furious at Hancock.

“How much ammunition do you have left, Tom?” Hunt asked. “Right here. In those battery caissons.”

Osborn took Hunt's point and said, “Plenty left to tear a charge to bits. If we stop firing soon.”

“And your men won't quit their posts?” Hunt asked cautiously. “If Lee's fire keeps up after ours has stopped?”

Howard's expression showed that he felt the slight on his corps' reputation. The tee-totaling abolitionist let it pass.

Osborn shook his head. Decisively. “I'll let them rest by their guns. They won't run. I guarantee it.”

“Then stop,” Hunt said. “Immediately. Have your batteries cease firing.” He looked at the Eleventh Corps commander. “If General Howard approves, of course.”

“We could all do with less noise,” Howard said.

Osborn took off at a run, nearly knocking over Howard's Polish colonel, who limped along like a cripple and looked ghastly.

Howard confided, “I've told Kriz he looks like a beggar sent out from the Court of Miracles. He didn't understand the reference, I fear.”

Hunt made no sense of it, either. But it made sense to stop firing, then see what Lee's boys made of it. He'd have to ride down along the line and give the order himself to make it stick, though.

He believed Meade would approve. If he didn't, Hunt was willing to take full responsibility and bear the consequences. Winning the battle was all that mattered now.

*   *   *

First Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, commanding Battery A, Fourth U.S. Artillery, felt blood slime under his uniform. The fragment had torn through his shoulder. The pain made him want to cry out, but bearing it was the manly thing to do. Many a man around him endured a worse wound.

And then there were the dead sprawled by his guns.

He raised his telescope again, one-handed, peering into a thick gray sea in the hope of following the trail of his next shot.

“Number two gun! Fire!” he shouted from a parched throat.

As its muzzle flared, the cannon bucked, then settled. Devoured by the smoke, the round's impact escaped him.

“Lieutenant … you have to go to the rear,” First Sergeant Fueger told him.

“I'm fine. Just see that the volunteers are swabbing properly.”

Ever obedient, Fueger turned back to his gun crews, their depleted ranks filled out with men culled from nearby regiments—many of them Irish, moon-faced, short, and brawny. Most had served around cannon long enough to grasp the drills. And they were brave, willing to stand in the fury while others cowered.

Cushing had done as Hancock ordered, opening counter-battery fire on the Rebels. But he did not fire madly. Instead, he tried to see that each round had a target, at least an approximate one. But as things worsened, with one gun out of action and ever more gunners maimed or lying dead, it was a struggle to keep men from yanking the lanyards before their guns were ready.

Blood coursed down his chest. Earlier, he had envied the enlisted men their freedom to strip off tunics and undergarments. Now he was glad he could not see his wound.

A Rebel shell fell short, exploding in the field beyond the wall. Fine specks of dirt reached Cushing, despite the distance.

Don't think about the wound,
he told himself.
Concentrate on what you have to do.

He feared the surviving corporals and gunners were cutting their fuses too long. But he couldn't tell for certain. And he had to limit his movements just to stay upright.

Suddenly, unaccountably, the smoke put him in mind of a fog at West Point, a very specific fog, when he had marched off some forgotten infraction and missed the New York City ball at which he had hoped to kiss a girl whose name he had now lost. He had never wanted anything more in his life than to kiss her lips, just once. It had seemed the summit of all human ambitions. But the opportunity slipped away as he paced back and forth in the fog, and now she was just a ghost amid the slaughter.

He snapped back to his duties, sharply aware of the soldiers cowering behind the wall and stretch of fence—scant protection against explosive shells. His guns had to be ready, when the test came. For their sake.

How much longer could the duel go on? The roar seemed to have lasted hours. He had husbanded all the ammunition he could and called up extra canister, but his long-range rounds were swiftly running out. How could the Rebels keep up such a fire?

He tried to raise his glass to his eye, but found himself too weak.

Turning to call a command to First Sergeant Fueger, he flew, spun, twisted, encompassed by fiery heat and colossal noise.

His thoughts collapsed. He flailed.

The pain … was huge … unimaginable …

He wasn't dead, wasn't dead. He curled upon himself, clutching his belly and private parts with a frantic hand. A wet mess had escaped the cloth of his uniform.

His sight came back, his hearing. Screams. All around him, screams.

The pain was vast and thick. He didn't want to cry, wouldn't cry, didn't know if he was crying.

He twisted on the ground, which only worsened the pain. He stilled himself, but that was awful, too. He pawed his exploded belly.

Fueger knelt over him, looking down. The first sergeant's face was dark against the smoke, but his shadowed features still betrayed his horror.

“I'm … all right,” Cushing muttered.

The first sergeant only stared.

“… to my feet … get me on my feet…”

“You can't, sir, you daren't. Don't get up. You can't.”

“Help me.”
He struggled to lift himself, but his body moved oddly. Things went in improper directions. Meat slithered.

“Your … your innards…,” Fueger said.

Cushing tried to nod, didn't know if he succeeded, didn't even know what he meant. He felt his guts spilling out. It was an impossible, unimaginable thing.

“Get me up.”

A big man, Fueger heaved him to his feet. Cushing held his abdomen together as best he could. He did not dare look down.

“Hold me up!”

“Sir … you're…”

“Hold me up. That's an order.” He told himself the pain was easier to bear now that he was standing. It was a lie.

Was the fire slackening?

Surely, on his own gun line … were the other batteries out of ammunition? Had they been so wasteful? What would they do when the Rebels came? What was happening?

“… stopped … firing…”

“Yes, sir. We've been ordered to stop.” He renewed his grip on Cushing. The first sergeant was weeping. “We've got to get you to the rear, sir.”

“No.” He almost added, “There's no point.”

A horse. General Gibbon. Staring down.

“Cushing! Go to the rear. Good God, man. Sergeant, take him to the rear!”

“No,”
the boy cried. “I won't leave my guns. Not now.”

Gibbon appeared surprised that the man before him could summon such vehemence. Cushing felt his stare. Inspecting. What did the general see? A dead man? A fool? A boy? All Cushing knew was that he could not leave his guns.

Gibbon turned his head and rode away.

The fire began to slacken on the other side of the fields.

“They'll be coming now,” Cushing said.

“Yes, sir. That they will.”

Cushing remembered what he had to do: “Advance the guns!” he shouted. “Guns to the wall!”

Nothing happened. No man responded. They stared at him. At his belly, his crotch. Cushing still refused to look at himself.

He had learned to measure many things. But who could measure pain? It could only be expressed in astronomical degrees.

On the battery's flanks, soldiers scrambled to their feet, crowding up to wall and fence, preparing to take their revenge for what they'd endured.

“Advance the guns!” Cushing called out again.

“They can't hear you, sir,” Fueger explained. “Your voice…”

“Then repeat my orders,” Cushing said. “Stay with me, don't let me fall. Repeat my orders.”

“Forward the guns!”
Fueger bellowed, his big-man's voice a roar. “Guns to the wall, let's go! The lieutenant's still in charge here.”

In the vastness of his pain, Cushing found a clear space. He learned that his legs still worked. It amazed him, pleased him, a wonderful gift. Pressing his hand against his leaking guts, he started forward, supported by the first sergeant, almost framed by the larger man. They went slowly. Cushing stood as erectly as he could manage.

He'd lost his hat. He regretted that.

“Just keep me on my feet,” he told his first sergeant. “Whatever happens.”

After the crews had manhandled his guns right up to the wall, settling them where they had splendid fields of fire, Cushing said:

“Load spherical case.”

Blood and bowels overwhelmed his hand, oozing through his fingers, as desperate to escape as captive animals. His purpose in life had contracted now, from dreamed-of kisses and plans for a long, fine life to a fierce determination to do his duty.

TWENTY-ONE

July 3, Afternoon