Jacob's Ladder (48 page)

Anderson was a thick young man with a flourishing beard. “Corporal Osbourne was certain he heard drums, but I heard nothing.”

The moon poked a hole in the clouds and illumined the sleeping breastworks as the officers climbed on top. Ahead, the spiky man-made thicket of the abatis and beyond a stretch of meadow and beyond that fog. Catesby was still yawning.

“Do you hear that?”

“It is . . . it's like the rush of a waterfall,” Catesby said.

“Or ten thousand men moving through wet grass.”

They stood for a time, hoping to hear something more definite.

“Captain Byrd, inform General Johnson. He is quartered at the McCoull House.”

Afraid to lose his way in the woods, Catesby trotted the inside face of the mule shoe until he struck the farm lane to old General Johnson's headquarters. Outside the double-story log house, lanterns were burning, and other officers waited on the porch. “Bad night, Captain.”

“It could be worse in the morning.”

“You hear the military bands?”

“Bands?”

“Yep. They're playing since midnight on our front. We're Ramsuer's brigade.”

Catesby shook the other captain's hand. “Forty-fourth Virginia. Since Higginbotham was killed, we're Witcham's brigade.”

“Once a man gets to be colonel, he's a goner. My wife entreats me to refuse all promotions.”

General Edward “Allegheny” Johnson stood by his fireplace. “So?” he demanded. “So?” He blinked.

Catesby made his report.

Johnson was a bearded, sharp-headed man in his forties. Wounded two years ago at McDowell, he'd just come back to the army. “So?” he said, and blinked furiously.

Catesby didn't know whether to acknowledge the general's tic, perhaps blink back. “We fear the Federals are readying an assault.”

Johnson pivoted. “Lieutenant Samuels, inform General Ewell that the enemy are massing outside my salient. He has removed my artillery for God knows what purposes. Tell him I must have it back.” His left eye blinked while his right eye glared. “Captain. Thank you for confirming information I have received from others. Alert your command. We must be prepared to receive them at first light.”

It was raining again, and the fog cocooned Catesby in soft dense white. He followed the rutted farm lane back by the feel of it under his feet.

Morning pickets from the 48th Virginia were passing silently through the breastworks. Within a few feet of the abatis they vanished in the fog, as if they had never been.

Catesby informed Major Anderson, shook his weary men awake, turned aside their hopeful rations inquiries, and told them to extract their cartridges and replace them with dry ones.

A lightening in the air promised dawn wasn't far away.

Sergeant Fisher said, “What was that?”

“I hope to Christ . . .”

Suddenly the pickets were back, clawing at the abatis, slipping through the gaps, some clambering right over the spikes. Inside the fog there was a rumble like a potato wagon rolling down a hill. A wall of blue appeared.

“We're for it now.” Fisher poked his Enfield through the firing slot.

“Fire,” Catesby shouted, and a ragged volley spattered. Catesby aimed his pistol through the logs and dropped a color bearer. The Federals tore at the abatis like wild men, indifferent to the bullets cutting them down. Poles and sharpened limbs were tossed aside, but Confederate fire strengthened, and Federal ranks withdrew into the fog, leaving blue flotsam behind them.

“Christ.” Fisher jerked his head around. “They're behind us. The bastards've flanked us.”

A blue flood poured toward them, flowing over the breastworks, as countless as the waves of the sea.

“Run!” Fisher screamed. “Or you'll rot in Point Lookout Prison!” Abandoning the breastworks, he bolted. Catesby followed him.

Federal soldiers surmounted every obstacle, and sometimes when men surrendered they were taken prisoners and sometimes they were clubbed to death.

The butternut soldiers were like breadcrusts on the tide. A swirl where General Johnson kept the Federals at bay with his walking stick. “Get away from me, you devils.” Outside his flailing circumference, soldiers angled for a straight shot. “Don't shoot him, William. We got us a Johnny general!”

“Keep away from me, you devils. Leave me alone.”

Sergeant Fisher was cursing—“You bastards ain't gonna take me again!”—and swung his Enfield like a felling ax.

Confederate cannons galloped up and artillerymen unfastened limbers and turned horses loose but Federal soldiers fell on them before they could load a single charge.

A loose artillery horse ran past Catesby, who grabbed at its harness and launched himself onto its back. Pressed into the neck of the terrified animal, Catesby Byrd clung to the check straps as rifle flashes lit up the world. Down the farm lane he rushed, and for a moment, charging from dawn into dark, he thought he might go on forever, that he might outrun death. His face lowered into the horse's mane, Catesby flew.

He emerged in a clearing where butternut reserves were forming. “What brigade are you?” Catesby cried.

“Georgians,” one soldier answered.

“And who are you, sir?” The man on the gray horse was General Robert E. Lee.

“Captain Byrd, 44th Virginia.” The calm in Lee's voice brought Catesby back to himself. “They have destroyed General Johnson's division. The general himself is taken prisoner or slain. I saw him surrounded.”

“The Stonewall Brigade? The Louisiana Tigers?”

“Overwhelmed utterly.”

Lee had sadness etched deep into his face. “How many of those people are there?”

“They were twenty ranks thick. Hancock's corps.”

“Accompany me to General Gordon,” Lee said.

Catesby and Lee rode through the Confederate troops pressing forward in the dim light and joined their officers.

“I am informed that General Johnson is lost, his division overwhelmed. General Gordon, I trust that your men will not disappoint me.”

Gordon was a fiery little man, stiff with the peculiar rigidity of a man who has been often wounded. “General,” he said. “I am attacking with Evans's and Hoffman's brigades.”

“Can you drive them, sir?”

“My Carolinians are already engaged.”

“A brigade against a Federal corps?”

“We are all we have.”

Tremendous thundering racketed the woods ahead.

“Yes,” Lee said. And nudged Traveler and gave him a “tsk.” He removed his hat and rode bareheaded to the front.

General Gordon came quickly beside him. “General, it is too dangerous. You must retire.”

Lee kept his eyes fixed to the front.

“General Lee, you shall not lead my men in a charge. Another is here for that purpose. These men are Virginians and Georgians and Carolinians. They will not fail you, will you, boys?”

“No sir!” one cried.

“Dear God, no,” another groaned.

Angry, anxious, Gordon stood in his stirrups and cried, “General Lee to the rear!” Troops surrounded Traveler and began to push the horse, as if he were a stone, an insensate thing they must remove by main force.

The brigade took up the shout. “General Lee to the rear!”

Catesby gripped Traveler's bridle, and Lee offered no further resistance as the younger man led him through the cheering, weeping Confederates.

“We'll not fail you, Marse Robert!”

“Yes, sir. We'll drive them, by God we will.”

“Hurrah for Marse Robert! Hurrah!”

Catesby and the general stopped where the ambulance wagons were preparing as Lee's men hurled themselves into the woods, screaming against the gunfire that drowned the yip-yip-yip of the rebel yell.

So softly Catesby could scarcely hear, Lee said, “It is sometimes easier to die for one's country than live for it. Death can become too precious to a soldier.” Then, recovering himself, he said “Those are your countrymen, sir.”

Catesby threw General Lee a salute, booted his artillery horse, and galloped toward the fighting.

Rain fell in torrents, the blaze of musketry and cannons outshone the sun, only a gleam through the fog. The woods were inhabited by dead and wounded Confederates, but when Catesby came into the open the Federal troops were withdrawing to the far side of the breastworks, driven by Gordon's continuous volleys. Catesby's horse lurched; Catesby loosed his hold and came off as the horse fell dead. Catesby took a revolver and ammunition pouch from a dead Federal. In another's knapsack he found hardtack and bacon and palmed them into his mouth as he trotted behind the advancing Confederates.

The Federals had been driven out of the mule shoe, but from the far side of the breastworks they poured galling fire into the Confederates. Federal artillerymen wheeled two small brass cannons into position and discharged a blast of canister that ripped the charging Confederate brigade. Holding his pistol in both hands, Catesby strode toward the guns, stopping, firing deliberately. A Federal officer was passing canister to his gunners and Catesby fired twice before the man dropped to his knees.

So much Confederate fire concentrated on those brass cannons that no man could stand near and live. Their artillery horses were killed a dozen times over.

More Confederate brigades poured into the field even as Federal reinforcements arrived on the far side of the breastworks.

Catesby fought in a three-sided fort, men firing to the front and over the south traverse. The trench was knee-deep in pink-tinted water, and men stood on their comrades' bodies to get a better shot. Men fired through the logs and over them and sometimes a Federal soldier would leap to the top of the breastwork, fire down into the upturned faces, and be shot away himself. As soon as the front rank fired, hands passed their rifles to the rear for reloading. Catesby bit open a cartridge, rammed it home, set a cap in place, and handed the rifle forward. Another gun came to him. Another.

For a moment the rain lifted and cold wind blew across the drenched bloody men. A Federal regiment rushed the breastworks and toppled onto the Confederate side. Their first volley felled fifty Confederates. In the act of handing Catesby a rifle a man was shot in the back and stumbled forward, clasping Catesby in a bloody, wearisome embrace.

Over the dying man's shoulder, Catesby watched helplessly as a Federal drew a bead, but that man was felled by a volley from South Carolina reserves coming at a run. The Carolinians swept through entangled, brawling troops and mounted the breastworks the Federals had latterly held. The Carolinians' colonel toppled, hit time and again. With his staff, the Carolinians' color bearer swept Federals into the teeming brawl at his feet until a minié ball knocked him into death.

On either side of the breastworks, Federals and Confederates fired as fast as they could reload, and bullets peeled the bark off trees.

When the Confederate dead grew too numerous, a line formed to pass bodies to a heap in the rear.

Noon came. Afternoon.

Hit by fire from two angles, the trunk of a good-sized oak tree was disintegrating. Wounded men plundered the dead for ammunition. On the breastworks, when a dead man's hand was convenient to hold cartridges, that's where cartridges were placed.

General Lee was building a new line behind them. They must hold here until the new line was done.

When men died in front of him, Catesby come forward until he was the one taking aim and squeezing the trigger and passing the empty rifle back and snatching a new one. A bayonet flicked between a gap in the logs and stuck the next man in the eye. The man grunted and blood shot forth and he fell back off the bayonet, which stabbed again and again, like a snake seeking prey. Catesby fired through the slot and the snake was stilled. The blinded man rolled back and forth across the logs, blood gushing from his socket. Someone grabbed his feet and dragged him into the trench.

It got dark. Some hours went by and more hours went by.

On the far side men stopped shooting, and an unarmed Federal officer leapt onto the breastworks.

A Confederate major cried, “What do you wish, sir?”

“Why, sir, I am awaiting your surrender. My men report you have raised a white flag.”

“We are Carolinians, sir. We do not surrender.”

“Why have you raised a white flag?”

“If any man has, it is without my permission.”

“Well then, a mistake has been made.” The officer considered the heap of dead and wounded, the group of Confederate survivors. “It is no better on your side than ours,” he said before he was shot dead.

Bold Federal soldiers climbed the breastworks and fired into the massed Confederates, and they were shot down. About eleven o'clock, the oak tree was cut through by bullets and toppled onto the traverse. A branch knocked Catesby to his knees.

While Georgians kept up a determined fire, Catesby and a dozen others dragged the tree back, beside the pile of dead men. Again, Catesby loaded rifles, passed them forward, loaded, passed them forward. When men died, Catesby moved forward. One young soldier who had been firing all day and night was struck in the head and fell wordless into the mud.

Their original trench was filled to ground level with bodies. A Federal muzzle poked over the top, and Catesby directed it harmlessly aside before it fired. He pushed his rifle over the top and fired. Another. Another. His face was crusty with black powder, his hair thick with dried blood. A sudden jerk dragged him half over the breastworks and a voice hissed in his ear, “You're my prisoner, Johnny,” and someone had his legs and someone else was pulling his arms until a shot blasted beside his ear and killed the Federal trying to take him prisoner and Catesby slid down his own side, over the slickness of living and dead Confederates into the ditch. When someone stepped on the small of his back, Catesby was pressed into the spongy mass of dead men. He bucked and twisted so he could breathe and another dead man fell on top of him and another, and Catesby crawled away from their embrace.