Sky Parlor: A NOVEL

by Stephen Perkins

  While the ursine general leaned on the edge of the table with his balled fists serving as ballast, a smoking cigar’s pillar of aromatic smoke hovered over his subordinate’s heads and the taint of ash began to choke in their throats. Stepping back from the table, Grant stood ramrod straight, and his raised rock-textured fist struck the table with the resonance of thunder’s fury.

  “And I tell you frankly officers and gentlemen,” he thundered, “If there is any mercy in heaven, I shall reward a satchel of gold to the first man among our brave ranks who removes Lee’s head with his drawn cutlass and brings it fresh to me, bleeding on a plate.”

  Grant’s carnivorous jaws clamped down on his flaming cigar. Great gusts of gray mist flung from his flared dragon’s nostrils like flames from Hell’s seething maw. His Delphic eyes transformed to nebulous cracks. Agog, Captain Robert began to ponder: is this a madman to which I’ve pledged my allegiance, even unto death?

  Grant rammed a hairy paw within the folds of his half-opened officer’s jacket, and it reemerged grasping a silver flask of whiskey labeled in black with skull and bones. Robert’s furtive gaze saw Major General Meade tense in his chair as Grant ripped the cork away and greedily quenched his thirst, draining the contents of the flask in nearly one gulp. Robert secretly began to also wonder if Aunt Sarah hadn’t been correct in her sharp estimation of his commanding officer.

  Then, much to the relief of the newly commissioned captain, a disarming smile brightened Grant’s contorted countenance.

  “Don’t worry boys, and take heart,” he burped, grunting forth a guttural chuckle, “For there is consolation in that, if any of you should die on this momentous day, you should know that Heaven is reserved for only heroes, and all those honorable souls dressed in the blue of the Union will be greeted at the golden gates by a fanfare of angels. As for the rebels,” and Grant once again tipped the flask to his hungering lips, “There shall be nothing but Hell’s fire and brimstone, and the hot iron of the devil’s trident.”

  The morning dwindled into an overcast afternoon as Grant’s ranks – each having been given and understood their stern orders – took their assigned places upon the battlefield. While the scores of weary-eyed and grey coated Confederates huddled in their mosquito infested bunkers, white knuckling their muskets, were able to peer out over the hill’s entrenched ramparts and onto the wide meadow filled with seemingly endless lines of blue shirted union troops scowling back at them. Well behind the lines of their own assembled infantry and cavalry, Grant and his staff, ensconced on horseback, gazed over the immense gathering.

  “I swear this is the quintessence of beauty,” Grant declared under his breath. “Are the assembled cannon in the correct position, Major General Meade?” Grant’s voice boomed, enquiring of his immediate subordinate.

  “They are, as ordered General,” Major General Meade’s reply snapped.

  “Very well, my good man,” Grant said, shoving a fresh cigar between his churning jaws. “Let’s give these rebels their first taste of fire and brimstone, shall we?” Then, after that bastard Lee’s cowardly minions are well softened up, whatever remains we’ll mow down like grass with a gallant charge. Let the boys gorge their bayonets into the bowels of the enemy. What fun they shall have, eh?”

  “Company B ready,” Meade hollered to the men manning the cannon.

  “Company B ready, sir,” rasped the bloodcurdling reply from the sergeant cannoneer.

  Captain Robert Lincoln watched as Grant’s eyes became glowing demonic slits.

  “Alright, my fellow officers and gentlemen,” Grant said. “Witness closely, for this is how history is made,” the general’s pronouncement bellowed. “FIRE.”

  An ear rupturing volley streaked over the heads of the assembled Union lines. Mayhem ensued upon that portion of the hill where the Confederate emplacements were entrenched. Robert heard the distant screams of terror, saw the mutilated and headless corpses scorched with fire tumbling down the length of the hill. Howls of glee tore into the humid air from the ranks of Grant’s Union lines.

  “Let them have more, Meade – FIRE.” Grant bellowed again from out of that corner of his mouth clenched around the cigar.

  “Company B – FIRE.” Meade signaled to the men manning the rows of cannon.

  The black mouthed beasts spat forth their deadly missiles. A biblical crash of doom and then streams of a sinister reptilian’s hiss snaked through the stifling air. From hundreds of yards away, Robert saw the severed limbs and broken armaments heaved towards the heavens upon hideous clouds of coal black smoke and blood-soaked dirt.

  “Ready the infantry and then send a horse. Full cavalry charge, my good man, Meade,” Grant signaled, his arm chopping the air like a tomahawk’s sharpened blade.

  Captain Robert Lincoln’s senses felt harassed with a violent recoil. He could feel the girth of his caramel colored horse shudder beneath him. The blood in his shaking limbs boiled with vile terror. Grant tore the smoking cigar from his drooling mouth and Robert sensed the bloodthirsty glare of his commanding officer fall upon him.

  “Get ready Captain,” Grant said, unleashing an unruly cackle. “This shall be your first taste of war, and God willing, your first taste of glorious victory.”

  Upon receiving the order to charge the hill, the front lines of Grant’s troops fixed their bayonets and while unleashing a monstrous howl, surged like swarms of fang bearing jackals towards the battered and corpse littered Confederate emplacements. Robert directed his shaking fingers around the sheath of his battle sword, but somehow, he could not command them to draw it out. Though his lips moved to give the order for his cavalry horseman to charge after the infantry, he found them immovable, and he winced, having found his voice rendered mute.

  “Proceed around their flank so the Confederate stragglers cannot escape, Captain,” Robert heard Grant bellow above the battle’s earsplitting cacophony.

  “We shall be taking no prisoners today – take care to cut them down and wipe them out. Leave the carcasses of the bleeding rebel animals to bake and stink in the sun,” General Grant said, bearing his tobacco stained teeth. “Do you hear me, Captain? All of them, I say.”

  Robert again fumbled with the hilt of his sword, but this time, as if possessed by an otherworldly spirit’s ill-intent, he heard the dreadful clang of the sharp blade draw from its sheath. Hoisting it in the air and clearing his parched throat, he began to instruct the mounted cavalrymen under his command.

  “On my order, around the Confederate flank,” he yelled from his shredded throat. “There are to be no Confederate prisoners. No – not one taken,” he said, while his eyes – fixed into a determined glare – shielded his secret reluctance.

  “CHARGE!”

  The long column of speedy hooves shook the very ground. Robert looked and saw the first wave of Grant’s troops – with their drawn bayonet’s gilded into shimmering gold from the scalding rays of the mid-summer’s sun – emerge from lingering clouds of white gunpowder and ascend the hill with the second surging close behind. He looked again and noticed some of the remaining but well outnumbered Confederate batteries had dropped their muskets and were already in feeble retreat, while some – a brave but perhaps unwise few – stood their ground and dared fight. The captain felt his arm holding the sword aloft tremble and go limp at the hellish sound of the shrieks of the fallen as one by one, they were disemboweled by the thrusting bayonets of Grant’s charging infantry.

  “Let’s have another round of fireworks, eh Meade?” Grant ordered.

  The Major General’s bearded face pinched with dismay, and though attempting to quell his misgivings, his brows, flecked with graying streaks, began to arch high upon his wrinkled forehead.

  “Forgive me sir,” Meade began to stammer in meek protest, “But though that shall likely vanquish what fighting rebels remain, shall we not also harm some of our own?”

  Shaking his white gloved fist, the general seized upon the merciful suggestion of his subordinate with disdai
nful rebuke.

  “Damn you, Major General,” Grant growled. “This is war. Not a game of lawn tennis at some Georgetown country estate’s cocktail social – I say, FIRE.”

  Meade twitched in his saddle, then merely nodded with his pointed chin.

  “Of course, sir, forgive me General,” he acknowledged. “COMPANY B READY?” Meade signaled the cannoneers.

  Now having led his swift cavalry unit around the Confederate flank to cut off the retreating lines, from more than one quarter mile’s distance, Robert heard the cannon’s guttural roar. His horse brayed, and in mid gallop the animal’s frontal hooves reared up. The captain jerked the reins to steady himself. Grant must be truly mad, he thought. Vicious volleys bombarded the tormented hill, tearing into the cratered ground and the combating Union and Confederate troops like a merciless scythe. For a moment, Robert was certain his commanding officer had not only taken leave of his senses, but that the perilous world had begun to whirl from its axis. As he continued to lead the cavalrymen around the circumference of the gutted hill upon a thin and beaten pathway through some thick woodlands, his horse once again startled at the crack of muskets shredding the stifling air.

  Had the Confederates cleverly anticipated Grant’s battle maneuvers, Robert considered?

  Before having time to ponder further, three of his men were unhorsed by the onslaught of musket volleys. Straight ahead, a small company of Confederates had assembled and opened fire at his advancing cavalry. Steadying his skittish steed, and while the blood beneath his nettled skin stung with hectic poison, the captain directed his men to return fire.

  “STEADY MEN, READY YOUR PISTOLS AND FIRE AT WILL,” he ordered.

  Slews of bullets ripped through the barks of trees, severed branches and tore at scores of leaves, some finding their mark upon the target of the enemy. Some of the Confederates, perhaps no more than twenty-one in number, tumbled to the ground in bloodied heaps while reloading their muskets. Robert tugged the reins of his horse and charged forward with his cutlass raised high, ready to strike down the enemy before he and his men were again fired upon. The horse’s swift hooves thundered upon the humid ground, churning up mounds of dirt and grass. As his charging steed grew ever closer, the features of an enemy’s youthful face emerged from clouds of wafting gunpowder, and though in the heat of battle, time seemed to retard into a surreal suspension and the captain began to study upon it - the scalding white of the eyes, the pupils pinned into minute black dots, the twisted mouth frothed with squeals of hysteria.

  From behind him, another round of bullet’s deathly report sliced the air’s humid shroud to ribbons. Though fear began to ricochet throughout every sinew and muscle, the captain felt courage at last surge within like a charge of kinetic voltage when he saw three of the young Confederate’s remaining comrades in arms were felled. With a grimace of gritted teeth, the captain brandished his cutlass to strike. Before Robert’s reckless rampage, the Confederate bodies gasped then seemed to twist like manic dervishes in a dance of death while balanced on the perilous edge of the earth, before they plunged headlong into their graves of bloodstained dirt and puddled mud. The captain’s cutlass swung like an agile and well-timed pendulum, tearing at the flesh and sheering away the head from the severed neck of the remaining young enemy. With the vice grip of his free hand, Robert pulled the reins of his charging horse tight, and with a strangulated whinny the animal halted to a complete stop. Now surrounded by the steeds of his victorious cavalrymen, the captain surveyed the carnage.

  “I do believe victory is ours, Captain,” one of Robert’s subordinates, a sergeant cavalryman declared.

  As his gaze fell upon the fallen Confederates, Robert’s conscience drowned in regret’s tidal tsunami, and ghastly images of a young and lifeless Willie Lincoln flooded the sorrowful caverns of his haunted mind. Robert began to sense his own damaged soul, sucked into the black mirrored vortex of his fallen enemy’s yawning eyes, and while he dared to peer closer at the mangled youth decapitated by his blood-stained cutlass, rather than his own reflection, the captain began to imagine the hideous leer of a gruesome golem.

  “No gentlemen,” he replied in a soft lament, “For the taste of sweet victory on this day is rather like that of bitter ashes.”

  Robert jostled the reins of his braying horse, disturbed by a soaring rocket’s faint but high-pitched whistle. The sound grew ever more intense and though his vision was obscured by the surrounding canopy of forested trees, Robert bellowed out a warning.

  “TAKE COVER MEN, WE’RE BEING FIRED UPON…”

  Mushrooms of dark smoke, dirt and mud plumed towards the sky. As the twisted legs of his steed buckled, the ground beneath Robert fragmented like the panes of a mirror, opening a portal ringed with searing fire to swallow the entire earth.

  In the aftermath, while he lay immobile amid the strewn carnage, racked with pain as if he had been pulled apart and his mind numbed with an unnamable terror, with the last sliver of consciousness left, Robert strained to reach his bone-shattered leg and yet it felt as if he had dipped his fingers beneath the surface of a fast-flowing brook filled with jagged rocks. Surveying his blood-soaked hand, a terrified groan bellowed from his gaping mouth before a blanket of unforgiving darkness draped over him.

  That evening isolated upon an examination table in the officer’s infirmary tent, Robert awoke to find an army medic bandaging his flesh torn leg.

  “What of my men?” the captain demanded of the medic. “Tell me, some of them survived?”

  The young medic’s face became a mask of solemnity, and he downcast his eyes.

  “I’m sorry Captain, but there were none but you,” the medic replied. “I’d say you’re rather lucky,” the medic sighed.

  Now unburdened by catharsis from having told Robert the awful truth, he added, “But God, it seems, has seen fit to spare you for some grand purpose.”

  Groaning as the medic sealed up the reams of bandages over his mangled extremity, Robert nonetheless summoned the requisite strength to lift his head, and with an unshaking hand, accentuated a demand.

  “Now that you’ve well seen to me, go to the others of the rank and file who’ve survived but may be wounded far worse, and may God see fit in forgiving us for this day’s outrageous folly.”

  The medic finished securing the bandages and dressings, and pursing his lips, turned to depart.

  “Yes sir; that I shall do, at once.”

  “But before you go, please fetch me a pen and paper, and that leather-bound Bible upon the table there,” the captain requested.

  While the distant cries of the Union encampment’s celebratory revelry erupted outside the folds of the tent, Robert began to write to his father back in Washington, and though with great effort as he sat up on the bed – with the Bible as makeshift desk held sturdy in his lap – his pen flowed over the sheet of paper to the throbbing meter of his burdened heart.

  My Dearest Father and Commander in Chief,

  On this day, though it is true the Confederate rebels were defeated on the battlefield of Gettysburg, it was not without great cost to both sides. For I feel, in the end, this war shall amount to a long and bloody attrition; two beastly lions locked in a cage to neither’s benefit. Though like the others among my ranks, I began the day hoping to defend the Union and emerge in heroic victory, alas, when it ended, I felt the bitter defeat of a foolish and murderous scoundrel.

  But I must also tell you of General Grant, who’s prosecution of this battle did nothing to dispel the disquieting notions of Aunt Sarah, recalled from that fateful day of almost two years ago on February 20 in your bedchambers at the White House.

  Therefore, it is my eternal hope that you may, father, Mister President, with your great wisdom and moral fortitude, rescue some nobility and perhaps even grand redemption from the utter savagery in which I have willingly partaken.

  Your most loyal, loving, and eldest son,

  Captain Robert Todd

  A vicious stab of pain throbbed
from his torn leg and up the length of his spine as he set aside the Bible, pen and paper upon the nearby table and laid back down on the bed. Odors of the musty tent’s canvas mingled with the sharp tang of medicinal alcohol. Shutting his eyes, the captain began to reminisce of an earlier, happier era; of distant places from another time far removed from the bloody battlefield of war. While his mind flooded with recollections that bloomed like full colored photographic images, Robert felt the delicate touch of an empathic hand upon his bandaged wounds, and opening his eyes, he felt his pain melt away like layers of icy snow from a fulsome sun’s renewing warmth.

  “Excuse me, madame,” an astonished Robert wondered, noticing his entire leg sheathed in a luminous gold light. “Are you part of the medical staff? I notice you’re not wearing a uniform. I…”

  Sprays of light shot from the strange young woman’s magical hands. Geysers of ecstatic sensations began to caress every muscle, sinew and bone.

  “Just a minute more if you don’t mind, Captain, and your leg shall be made whole again,” he heard her say.

  Her velvet voice flowed like a cascading waterfall.

  Feeling as if he had been embalmed with a haloed angel’s ethereal embrace, again he closed his eyes.

  “I suppose,” the captain began to chuckle as any remainder of his painful suffering was swept up and soared away like flocks of winter geese, “all one needs sometimes is the touch of a woman…”

  As a pleasured moan leaked from his widened mouth, the captain’s eyes slid open. The comely young woman withdrew her hands from his wounds. Shifting his weight, the captain sat up on the bed and while moving gingerly at first, he stepped down with full weight. Robert felt the entire length of his body swoon with an electric current’s euphoric pulse. Feeling lightheaded while bliss surged in the racing blood like a rapid’s mighty surge, he unleashed a wild guffaw. In earnest, he reached out with both arms to grasp the strange young woman’s lithe shoulders.