by Robert Hicks
We passed loaded rifles to the shooters at the battlements, and they passed their hot, smoking, and empty weapons to the back for reloading. The dead Confederates that filled our ditch were those who had made it to the top of our works, only to be instantly cut down. We had our own dead in that ditch, too, most all of them shot in the head after trying to take a peek at the onslaught. Most of our boys just raised their rifles over their heads, pointed out over the logs of the trench, and fired in the general direction of that god-awful screaming. There were so many dead in the trench we were forced to walk upon them, and I was afraid that soon they would fill our fighting position and force us out and that after that, they would fill every space around us and we would all suffocate like that grubby, breathless rebel boy.
If I had known what it meant to be defending a salient, I wouldn’t have joked about the colonel’s fancy language. We were surrounded on three sides, jutting out from the main line, and if the regiments on either side of us got a little too exuberant and shot at anything that moved in their front, they would start shooting into our position and we’d have to send someone over there to tell them to cut it the hell out. I lost two messengers that way.
We had robbed the cotton gin of much of its wood and steel—planks, joists, screw-press levers—in order to build our works, and in doing so we exposed the cotton bales in storage to the rebel volleys. Soon we were all covered in white puffs from the disintegrating bales, and much of the rest of it went floating out over the battlefield in front of us. In those rare moments when I risked a look over the top of our position, I watched how the cotton settled over the dead like a new snow. This is one of those things I can’t forget about that day, one of those things that made me think I was living in another world. It was horrible and lovely and unexpected.
Why did they keep coming? By the second hour of fighting the killing had become so distasteful that when a rebel appeared on top of our entrenchment waving a flag or a rifle around, we’d yank him down and make him a prisoner rather than shoot him. That is, unless he seemed particularly dangerous. The dangerous men ended up in the trench.
The prisoners seemed relieved more than anything. At first they wouldn’t be sure of what was happening, and then there’d be a brief moment of shame followed by the sunny, overwhelming realization that they were going to live. I saw one man begin to cry and another start slapping the backs of anyone within reach.
“Y’all fight like dogs, damn. Give them poor boys a break, ya hear? You got food? That’s one pretty rifle. Can I have it? Only kidding, friend, only kidding. I ain’t never seen a thing like that field out there. You can’t see it from here, too much smoke. You tearing us up, though, sure enough. I’m just saying. You won’t believe it when you see it. Which way to the rear? I don’t mean to be pushy, but I’ve had enough of this.”
And still they kept coming. They kept breaking against us, over and over and over again, each time ebbing away and leaving behind twisted and crumpled figures in the grass, rifles abandoned and glinting in the fading light, flags limp in the hands of fallen color-bearers. Some of our boys began to pick out their trophies, the things they would collect up later.
“That boy right there, see him? I’m going to take his pack. No, right there, see? The one that had his jaw shot clear off? How can you miss him, he’s got his tongue lolling out right there on the ground. Looks like he might have lost an eye, too. Can’t quite tell. There, now you see it? He’s got a good-looking knife, too. I’ll be taking that also.”
I put a stop to that talk, but I understood the urge. I wanted to take something away from that place, too. I looked up above my head and watched the cotton gin disintegrate bullet by bullet. I wanted to leave the whole war behind me, and yet I was seeing something on that battlefield that demanded commemoration. It was unholy ground, but I wanted to thank God for showing it to me. I would never again look at a man without wondering what crimes he was capable of committing. That seemed important to know.
It was in the midst of that reverie when I realized that the cracking sound I’d been hearing was not the sound of balls hitting the gin house. I looked up once after being sprayed by splinters, and realized the balls made a thump-thump sound against the wood slats. The cracking sound came from the opposite direction, out on the field. The dead and dying were packed so tightly that men were charging right over them, shattering legs, arms, and ribs. It was the sound of bones snapping.
I tried to keep them from shooting the color-bearer, but it was beyond my power. If anything, the sight of those colors made the men more vicious, each for their own private reasons, I assumed. And so the husky young man bellowing God knows what all, he fell just in front of our works as he waved the flag to rally the troops. He didn’t see it coming and pitched forward toward his men with his arms out wide like he meant to embrace them. We had watched this unit struggle its way through the abatis while we shot them dead. We had watched the survivors be rallied to the charge by a fiery-eyed young officer, and we shot him dead, too. And his horse. We shot a lot of men dead, and still the others kept stumbling up the field. The big color-bearer took the colors from a fallen comrade halfway up, and then he came on like a huffing train engine, occasionally bellowing something that seemed to make the other men hesitate for a moment before going on. He wasn’t a natural-born leader; that was obvious. Then he was dead.
I had lost my squeamishness. Killing was no longer distasteful. I was killing as many of them as I could by then, having seen enough of our boys get killed, almost all of them in the eye or the forehead as they peered through the slats in our position. Our trench was filled with dead from both sides, and I had to assign a couple men the task of hauling out as many corpses as they could, just to give us room to stand. No, I didn’t have any problem killing Confederates by then. The initial shock of battle had passed. I was numb.
But there was something about shooting an unarmed man, even if he was carrying their blasted colors, that still seemed beyond the pale. The zealousness, the absolute faith in the cause, that prompted a man to take up a largely symbolic task at the risk of certain death: I had to respect it, as foolhardy as it seemed. Someone given over to such blind courage had made contact with a primeval thing, perhaps best forgotten but nonetheless extraordinary.
But I was too late to save that first color-bearer, and he went down. It was then that I noticed the other man.
From just twenty yards away I could see that he was going to pick up those colors. He was tall, and he had sad brown eyes, and he seemed to sigh when the colors wavered and fell. The most memorable thing about him, though, was that he quit running. He walked up to the colors, flung down his pistols, took the pole in his hands, and then turned and walked toward us like he was at the head of a parade. He was silent, just holding the colors high above his head. He was smiling, too, and I think it was that one fact about him that caused our boys to hesitate, and gave me the chance to intercede.
“Don’t shoot the color-bearer!”
Weiss picked up his rifle as if he hadn’t heard me, and I leaped at him and knocked the rifle out of the way. It was like I had woken Weiss from a bad dream, because he looked around and began to shake his head as if to clear something out of it. I shouted again.
“Shoot past him! Shoot past him! Let the color-bearer come.”
For the most part the men did what I said, but a few shot at the colors, and it was a miracle that not a single shot hit that man, even an errant one. He strolled—and I can think of no better word to describe his gait—up to our line, climbed up on top, and planted that flag right in front of my face. He was still smiling, and he stuck his big nose in the air and laughed like hell. If there weren’t other things to worry about, other men to shoot at, the men of my company would have goggled at him longer. But finally it was just him and me. He was looking around like he’d conquered a mountain, and he held his arms out from his sides the way a supplicant might. He was waiting for something.
I reached up and g
rabbed him by the belt and dragged him down into the ditch, where he looked up at me, his eyes buried in the leathery tan of his face. He then pulled his collar down and exposed his neck. He pointed to it, as if to say, Get me right here, and be quick about it. I kept my foot on his chest, staring at him, until the expression on his face changed. He became angry and struggled against my foot. He called me a coward. He spit at me, and I almost became angry enough to slit his throat, but there was something about him that stayed my hand. A man like that shouldn’t die. He looked older, too old to throw his life away unthinkingly. Even as he struggled against me, his face relaxed and the furrows between his eyes smoothed out. He looked at me as if he knew me, and he smirked. I almost killed him then, too. But then he quit struggling and lay quietly.
“You are my prisoner,” I said.
“I reckon so.”
“Why do you want to die?”
“I don’t want to die, Yank. I want you to do your duty.”
“My duty?”
“If it’s not your duty to kill me, then what the hell are we doing here?”
“It’s not honorable now.”
He laughed then, a wheezing laugh that reminded me I was probably squeezing the air out of him. I stepped off his chest, and he didn’t move. He looked at me.
“When did they make that rule?” he said, still in the fever of battle. His mind wasn’t quite right, talking gibberish. I’d saved his life, that’s all I knew. I’d done something good for once, and he wasn’t going to talk me out of it. I picked him up by his collar and dragged him back to the rear, where I handed him off to a guard.
“This man is a prisoner.”
He looked back at me as he was led away, and laughed.
“Don’t I know it.”
13
CARRIE MCGAVOCK
I stood looking down from the landing on the stairs. I watched Mariah striding about, carrying tables over here, the chairs over there. When Hattie and Winder tried to help, she slapped at their hands. I whip you myself you drop that vase, youngun. Don’t look at me like that, now. Get going, we got to clear it out. I had not seen Mariah so happy in a long time. Or perhaps I hadn’t noticed.
Hattie and Winder had finally retreated to the corner by the front door, where they took turns brushing each other’s hair with Martha’s brush. Hattie was wearing an old dress of Martha’s, blue taffeta with white organdy collar. It was still too big for her, and it billowed out like a tent from where she kneeled behind Winder, his curls in her fingers. Chaos swelled and crested around them, but they took no notice.
“We getting ready, Missus Carrie. We clearing out some space and getting the nice things out the way. They be mens with muddy boots in here before long, and I figured you wouldn’t want all them filthy things on the carpets. Let ’em stomp around on bare wood, I figure.”
During those months and years I spent sitting in my Grecian rocker in my little room above the foyer, rocking and rocking, I had passing thoughts of the house’s substructure, the walls behind the walls, the floors under the floors. I had wondered what it looked like. I had wondered if it had decomposed over the years and whether it could hold the weight of my household much longer. There were things that smelled like rot in the house, and walls that bowed out slightly. (This last fact I knew from time spent lying on the cool floor with my head against the wall, looking up.) I imagined that things lived beneath me and around me and that I would never see them. But I assumed that someday the house would come crashing down, and then perhaps I’d catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had been feeding off me for so long. It was thoughts like these that had reminded me that I oughtn’t go to town and see people. I was no longer presentable.
Now the windows had been thrown open, and it felt as if the house itself was breathing deep while I stood on the landing taking quick, shallow gasps. The outside had blown in, sure enough, along with a few dead leaves and a mouse that one of the house cats was tossing about in the corner of the dining room. The house had peeled itself back and given way to the onslaught of folly and time. I felt euphoric, as I imagined I might feel if I were drowning and had finally abandoned myself, letting the water fill my lungs and cover my head. It was all out of my hands now.
“That’s right, Mariah. Very good. But I’ll take care of the children’s things.”
“Yes’m.”
I descended the steps and glided across the hall to the front door, where I stood over my other two children.
“That’s a pretty dress, Hattie darling.”
Hattie was dark like me. She never seemed quite as aware as she should have been, even for a nine-year-old. She was ever stumbling over tree roots and laughing at stories a half-beat too late. I thought her merely a dreamy girl who would come to no great harm in her life, but on this day I could see peril looming for my little one—men crashing around knocking into things, screaming and crying, bleeding—and I vowed to keep my girl close.
“Yes, Mama. Mama? All of Martha’s dresses are there in her room. Thrown up on the bed in a big pile, with everything all mixed up and going every which way. I told Mariah to be careful and not to wrinkle them, I did, Mama, but she weren’t listening to me, which is quite rude, I do believe, but they aren’t too wrinkled laying out right there, just as plain as you please, and this one is so pretty and I always liked it and . . .”
She paused to take a breath.
“. . . can I have it, Mama?”
I stroked Hattie’s dark hair and resisted the passing urge to cut it off and stick it in my pocket, which reminded me of something I would have to do later. Later. For now I have this one, warm and delicate and awkward. I never knew her hair was so smooth.
“You can have whatever you want now, little girl. But we must get to work.”
Winder whirled around to look at me and yelped when Hattie forgot to let go of his hair.
“What work, Mama?”
Winder was seven and fancied himself a big boy, a man even, and cried each time his father refused to let him plow or shoot the crows that stole their seed. I looked down on my two children and wondered how I had missed noticing that they were getting bigger. It seemed ridiculous, but I was momentarily surprised by the idea that children grow. I had become too accustomed to looking at the portrait of my other children hanging on the wall opposite the foot of my bed, with their beatific smiles frozen for all time.
“There will be men coming, little one, and they will be hurt, but we’re going to take care of them.”
“Are they soldiers, Mama?”
Winder was also unclear why he couldn’t be a soldier, a “caffryman.” John had given up trying to explain and had given him a little cavalryman’s hat at supper one day, which he promptly lost out in the yard, where it was torn to pieces by two stray dogs and devoured by our boar, Prince Edward.
“Yes, they will be soldiers. Now stand up—you, too, Hattie—and brush yourselves off. You’re to help me pack.”
I could see Mariah watching the scene out of the corner of her eye, but I’m sure she hadn’t been able to hear what was said, even if she strained her ears mightily over the din of furniture scraping.
We had known each other since we were children, back in Louisiana, on my father’s plantation. She had called me Miss Carrie, and Miss Carrie had briefly scandalized the household by calling her Miss Mariah. We had explored the lowlands together back home, when we could sneak away, braving the snakes and the leeches in search of ferns and tiny sleek tadpoles. But time had snuck between us, and now it was impossible to reconcile our previous history with life at Carnton, especially since I had begun to lose my children.
I’m certain Mariah was surprised to see the children stand up quietly and follow me into Martha’s room. She would have expected the two of them to stay underfoot and cause trouble, which was their usual manner. But I had them marching behind me like two wee attendants, and I hoped Mariah was impressed. She wasn’t the only one who could make people jump.
We hid away
most everything in the main house. Casualties of war. Much later, when the house was finally empty of men, I imagined that the house—as I had known it—still existed somewhere, only disembodied, its pieces hauled off here and there, buried beneath a tree or hidden in a hayloft: the rolls of Brussels carpets, the books, the canopied beds. The only familiar thing was the wallpaper in the dining room, once gaudy with scenes of Egyptian ruins and Mayan palaces that had gone gray with mildew and dust. Nothing disappears entirely, I thought.
The house was transformed into something harder, barer, tougher. I presided over the boxing of my children’s clothing and toys and stole some of Mariah’s younger workers, the few remaining servants not yet sent off by John, to lug them up into the attic. Hattie and Winder were no help to anyone but me, and they amused me.
Trains and hoops and wooden horses went into the attic, balanced on the heads of young Negro men who had never played with such things except when they were broken and cast off, and who stole a few brief moments pushing the train around the attic when they thought no one was looking. Most of the furniture disappeared. We took the portraits off the walls, then the candlesticks from the tables, and then all my Parian figurines I had once so cherished.
We put these things away in places even I didn’t know existed—cramped crawl spaces under loose floorboards, sideboards with hidden compartments, dark places behind corner cupboards. Mariah took the silver and the china, boxed them up, and had them buried near one of the cedars in the garden. The floors were swept and scrubbed, and old sheets were torn into long strips for bandages. Mariah searched the house and the old wing for buckets and basins for water, and she scrounged every bit of lye soap she could find, even the crumbs some of the slaves kept squirreled away under loose boards in the cabins, hidden for special occasions.