The Carroll Farm Fight

by Greg Hunt

  And what kind of wife would Rochelle make? Daddy had cautioned him more than once that some women who were sweet as molasses pie during the courtship could turn about on a thimble once the knot was tied. If you wanted to know the future of a woman, Daddy cautioned, look at her mother.

  Rochelle’s mother was drab as dirt, a relentless nag even with Ezekiel himself, seeming to judge the whole world around her with sour, outspoken disapproval.

  Would Rochelle end up being that way over time? Would she make him give up the jug, pester him over every little clod tracked inside, throw up to him what other people had, or hound him to meeting every Sunday? Surely not, Mel decided. Could the girl who had given him what she had given him that night at Bright’s Crossing change so much? If he and Rochelle married for love, things would be different for them, wouldn’t they? Daddy had warned him once that a man alone had too much time to worry and gnaw over whatever was top of his mind. “It’s like spitting in the milk, son,” he’d said. “It don’t ruin the milk, but it makes it harder to swallow.”

  With food in his belly and his thirst quenched, other bodily needs began to have their turn. He found a patch of open ground and lay down on the bare dirt, then drifted off to sleep wondering if anything this bad had happened over yonder at the Adderly place. After all he’d seen here, he couldn’t convince himself that the distant rumbles off to the west a few nights ago were really a thunderstorm blowing through.

  When he woke there was a man sitting on the ground beside him, his knees pulled up, idly watching the scattered throng of prisoners. The sun had dipped down into the fringes of the tree line to the west, bringing some relief from the blistering sun. The spring rains were past and the summer heat was coming early this year. Planting time would probably be too far past to put even a late corn crop in the ground after this lot had gone.

  The man beside Mel was as filthy and ragged as all the rest. Much of his head was wrapped in loose dirty bandages, leaving only one eye, his nose, mouth, and jaw exposed. His lips and chin were red as raw meat, and it was obvious that he’d been burned. Mel watched him for a moment, wondering why he was there.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the man said. His voice was a harsh whisper, and his mouth twisted into what might have been a smile.

  “I guess not,” Mel said.

  “I’m Elliott,” the man said. “Major Elliott.”

  “Yeah, sure, I know you now. Glad you made it this far,” Mel said.

  “I’ve been wondering what happened to you after we sent you down into the woods yesterday morning.”

  “That didn’t end well,” Mel said. He didn’t add that the only good part of the whole escapade was having the chance to settle his sights between that lieutenant’s shoulder blades. “I looked around for you later, but things were already going to hell by then.”

  “When it was nearly too late already, the colonel sent me down here to the cornfield to help rally the line. But after they flanked us I could see that there wasn’t any use. Finally I ran away like almost everybody else did.”

  “So how’d you get hurt? It looks like burns.”

  “My rifle barrel was plugged with dirt and I tried to fire it. The charge blew back in my face. It hurts like the devil, but it’s not as bad as it looks. I was blinded for a while, and that’s how they captured me,” Elliott said. Then he added, “That’s a nasty whack you got on the side of your head too.”

  “Yep, a fellow proved to me that my skull’s not as hard as a rifle stock,” Mel said.

  “And now they think you’re one of us,” Elliott said solemnly.

  “Seems so.”

  Mel found out from Elliott about the plans for this group of prisoners. “They told our officers they plan to move us to their rear so there’s less chance for us to get back into the fight,” the major explained. “But they can’t spare the men right now. They’re preparing for a counterattack from General Willard’s main force, and they just might get one.”

  “What happens to this bunch if that happens?” Mel asked.

  “God only knows. They sure won’t feel easy about having this many men at their backs while they’re facing an attack in front.”

  “So maybe they’ll shoot the lot of you and be done with it. Or shoot us, I s’pose.”

  “I can’t see Paul Calverton ordering anything as dishonorable as that. He’s one of the best generals they have in this theater, and I’d gamble he has something a little less drastic worked out.”

  “You talk like you know the man,” Mel said.

  “We were in the same graduating class at Ole Miss. I’ve visited his home in Saint Louis any number of times when I was there on business. He’s a fine man, and I count him a friend.”

  “But here the two of you are slinging bullets at each other. Until yesterday, at least.”

  Elliott shook his head, and the half smile briefly twisted his mouth again. “War’s a strange business.”

  Mel learned that Elliott would soon lead one of the burial details, and he asked to go along. Anything beat sitting on the bare ground out here in the cornfield, and who knew what opportunity might offer itself.

  Soon, with guards in tow, the detail of prisoners began loading the bodies of their less lucky comrades into the bed of a wagon, then drove down to the current spot being used as a burying ground. A long shallow trench had been dug in Mel’s south pasture, and over half of it was already filled with bodies and covered over.

  The men worked listlessly in the fading evening light, but the guards didn’t seem to mind. As the daylight failed, one guard lit a lamp and hung it on a pole attached to the back of the wagon so the work could continue.

  Mel and Elliott tugged a body to the rear of the wagon, then lifted it off and carried it to the trench. Both men stepped down into the shallow trench to situate the corpse into the position it would remain in for eternity. The man they were laying to rest looked to be in his thirties, a simple laborer judging by his calloused hands and worn work boots. His body was violated in so many places that Mel couldn’t even guess how he might have died. This much damage must have been caused by one of those exploding cannonballs, which was an infernal invention if ever mankind created one. But there was also a hole in his throat below his neck that looked like a bullet hole, and could have been what took him.

  But it didn’t really matter in the end. Dead was dead whether chunks of you were scattered around somebody’s cornfield, or you breathed your last breath in a soft feather bed. And your soul still moved on to where it belonged, which could be a pure blessing from the Lord, or terrible beyond a man’s imagining.

  “It’s worse when you know them,” Elliott said.

  “You knew this man?” Mel asked.

  “Kyle Jones from Elaine. His wife was dead, but he had children, I believe. Hard drinker when he could lay his hands on something. But likeable.”

  “Why do you do this, Major? You’re hurt yourself and in charge. You could order somebody else to bury these men.”

  “I need to see the bodies so I can remember as many as possible. If I make it through myself, I’d like to let some of the families know where and how it happened. In my version they’ll all be heroes, stopping an enemy charge, saving the colors, and suchlike.”

  “Instead of throwing their rifles down and running like jackrabbits?”

  “My reports won’t have any stories like that,” Elliott said quietly.

  When Kyle Jones was situated on his back close beside a comrade Elliott identified as Felix Hamm, arms folded, eyes closed, wounds now unimportant, the major sat down on the edge of the trench. Mel sat beside him, figuring it must be okay because nobody ordered them to get back to work.

  “I’ve given this some thought, Mr. Carroll,” the major said, “and I think it’s time to bury you too.”

  The comment puzzled Mel. “I’m beat up and bloodied,” he said, “but I don’t think I’m ready for that quite yet.”

  “Maybe I can convince you otherwise.
”

  “Then have a run at it,” Mel offered.

  “Tomorrow, or at least sometime soon,” Elliott said, “they’ll march us out of here. As soon as they can get us to a railhead, they’ll herd us into cattle cars and take us north to a camp, who knows where, to sit out the war. From what I’ve heard, it probably won’t be a very pleasant place to spend the next few months . . . or years.”

  “I couldn’t tolerate that,” Mel said. “I’d die fighting here on my own place before I let them do that to me.”

  “That’s why you’re better off buried.”

  Mel began to understand the logic of it. “How long you figure I could breathe down there before I ran out of air?” he asked.

  “I don’t know that,” Elliott admitted. “But I have heard of men buried alive and making it out okay. You could keep a little space open around your face, and the dirt’s dry and loose. We wouldn’t tamp it down around your head.”

  Mel looked down at the freshly laid out Kyle Jones and estimated that when the job was finished, he’d have no more than sixteen or eighteen inches of dirt on top of him.

  “There’s one more thing, though,” Elliott said. “The guards will probably come along after and shove their bayonets into the dirt. We’ll have to put you under another body so you won’t get stuck.”

  “Well, hell,” Mel said. He looked down at Jones again and imagined himself buried not beside him, but under him. He didn’t allow his mind to dwell on what that might feel like, two feet underground with a dead man on top of him, fighting for every breath. It seemed like a man might lose all his sense in a mess like that. But maybe not.

  Over in the back of the wagon the guards had become more interested in a wine bottle and a pair of dice than they were in the men they were charged with guarding.

  “There’s no better time than now,” Elliott said, pointing down into the trench. As he stood up and started back to the wagon for another body, Mel dropped down onto his knees beside Jones. He scooped extra dirt away from the spot where he would be buried, and dug out an even deeper hole below where his head would be. He laid facedown in the trench and pulled his shirt up over his head, then held it in place with one arm hooked over the top of his head. He kept his other arm bent and tight at his side, palm down, ready to push up with all the strength he could muster once the time came.

  “Lay him in gently, Hasty,” Elliott whispered urgently to the man who helped bring the next body over. Mel felt the weight placed carefully, head to foot, on top of him. Then Elliott knelt to arrange the dead man’s body, as he had with Jones. He tilted his head forward and said quietly, “I pray God lays himself down here beside you, Mr. Carroll.”

  Mel lay still while the final few bodies were brought over and placed in the grisly row of corpses. Then the dirt began to fall. Mel controlled an almost overwhelming urge to wrestle himself free as the first shovelful of dirt landed on the back of his head, but he clenched his jaw and let it happen.

  In the next few minutes he was submerged into a new existence where light, sound and movement were all denied him. The air in the hole beneath his face slowly became stale and unsatisfying. The weight of the body and dirt on top of him was oppressive. An itch in the middle of his back quickly became maddening.

  Long minutes passed, and Mel concentrated on taking slow, shallow breaths, which seemed to suffice. He began to relax, almost as if he was going to sleep, and he wondered if there was any danger in that. He imagined himself drifting into a stupor for want of breathable air, dying unresisting.

  Then unexpected panic gripped him without warning. Cold, slimy sweat oozed from his skin, and every muscle in his body seemed to tingle and ache. He sucked in panting draughts of useless air. He fought the urge to shove his body upward out of this living grave and into the cool, clean night air above. It was too soon. Too soon. Somehow he coaxed himself into believing that he could at least bear another minute of this hell, and then another minute, and another . . .

  His breathing started to slow again, and the panic began to bleed out of him.

  Fresh clean air waited for him up there, but so did men with rifles and bayonets, and that first sweet breath might also be his last. He breathed even shallower, willing his body to relax, his heart to slow, his nerves to calm.

  He could bear this just a minute longer.

  Mel felt an added pressure on top of his legs and knew someone had stepped on his grave. The body on top of him pressed down harder for an instant, then wiggled eerily. That would be the bayonet going in, twisting for the release, then withdrawing. Elliott was right. The guards were no fools, but they hadn’t thought of everything. Nor had they counted heads, apparently.

  A moment later the body to his side, Felix Hamm, jarred, shook, then stilled.

  Mel thought about his breathing—slower, shallower—and willed his body and mind to hold on. Some traces of air must be reaching him somehow or he would be dead already. But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Time passed, seconds or minutes, who knew, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, absolute stillness. He could feel his own heart trying harder and harder to keep him alive. Pinpricks of light flashed behind his eyelids. His brain filled with cobwebs, and he couldn’t put any clear thoughts together.

  When he felt the slight trembling he thought it was his own body, giving up perhaps. Then he knew it wasn’t him, but the ground under him. The wagon was leaving, rumbling and bumping over the uneven pasture. He might not be able to see or hear anything, but feeling this, and knowing what it was, was like a gift from the Almighty. He imagined the wagon’s progress. Thirty feet away, now forty, now fifty, the cemetery already out of sight in the darkness.

  Mel tried to push up with his numb right arm, but it, like the rest of him, was immobilized by the weight of the body and the dirt on top of him. He tried again, pushing desperately, and nearly blacked out as his air-starved muscles struggled to follow his commands. The only real movement he could manage was a little side-to-side wiggle of his head and shoulders, so he kept doing that, knowing that any movement was better than none. The body on top of him began to shift, and he encouraged it with more side-to-side wiggles.

  Eventually the body began to slide off of him, and finally they lay side by side, head to foot, in the grave. Someone had stolen the man’s boots, and his dirty rotting feet smelled unimaginable.

  Once free of the dead weight of the corpse, Mel quickly scratched and clawed his way to the surface, sucking in great gulps of clean, cool air. He was dizzy with the great joy and relief of it. At that moment the starlit sky seemed to be the most beautiful vision of his life. Even the sights and sounds of the occupying army were welcome to his senses after the horrifying void of silence and darkness underground.

  This army was bigger than the one that had first taken over his farm. Their tents and camps and wagons had spilled over into the open pasture beyond where the graveyard was located. But none were close. The smell from the shallow graves would soon thicken the air with the rancid odor of decaying flesh, and what man could rest easy if he slept too near so many departed souls?

  The smell of their food and the blaze of their fires was inviting, but he knew he couldn’t walk up and ask for a bowl of stew like he had before. Different army, different dangers.

  The foot of the man Mel was buried under was sticking up out of the grave. Mel shoved it back down into the loose dirt, then tried to smooth the top of the grave as best he could. He felt an odd sort of bond with the man now. They had shared a grave, after all, and the fellow had taken a bayonet stab that could easily have made Mel a permanent resident.

  Clearly he had to make his way beyond the army’s perimeter and far away before sunrise. Rose Creek seemed his best chance for that. The little creek wound and ambled west to east across the farm, forming a natural division between cropland and pasture and providing a convenient source of water for his cattle. Its banks were steep and brushy in most places, except for the cuts Mel and his father had made to allow the cat
tle access to the water. One of those cuts also served as a crossing for their farm road.

  Mel considered crawling the fifty-yard stretch to the creek for caution’s sake, but he wasn’t sure his starved, battered body was up to it. Instead, he stood up and walked the distance in the clear moonlight, like a man should be able to do on his own land, he thought. He made it without challenge. All eyes in the camp were looking outward tonight, it seemed, or staring into dying fires and wondering what tomorrow had in store.

  When he reached the creek he stripped naked and washed both himself and his clothes. He washed his head wound, then examined it carefully with his fingers. It was swollen, painful to the touch, and slightly feverish. But he was beginning to see better out of the eye on that side, which he took to be a positive sign.

  Redressing, he started cautiously downstream, using stealth and alertness honed fine by a lifetime of tracking and hunting. At one point he discovered a bloated corpse facedown in the creek that had been missed by the burial details. Judging by the smell, mother earth’s process of drawing the man to her bosom was well under way. There were no weapons anywhere about, but Mel’s reluctant search of the dead man did yield a sheath knife with a heavy ten-inch blade, and a flint and steel for fire starting. Both would be useful in the wilderness where he planned to go.

  Near the edge of the property where the pickets were stationed, he went down on his belly and crawled along the gravel bed of the creek, keeping only his head above the water’s rippling surface. The pickets atop the steep bank, no more than twenty feet from him, continued their quiet grumblings about army life and lousy chow, unaware of his passing.

  It was a fine uplifting feeling to be clear of the camp, but the irony of the situation was not lost on him. Who knew it would take such a difficult, desperate effort to escape from his own land and from the captivity of an army mustered from his own state? It was harder day by day to figure out who to hate and who to be grateful to.