This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  Colonel Govan now walked his gelding beside Butler’s sorrel, their pace set by the infantry and overloaded wagons thronging the pike. The column seemed to proceed like some huge antediluvian serpent as it flowed unbroken over hill and field. Here and there exhausted civilians waited off the side of the road, huddled under blankets, cold, shivering, their meager possessions piled around them. When they met Butler’s gaze, it was with hopeless and hollow eyes. They might have been wraiths instead of corporeal beings. Images whose reality faded the moment they were out of sight.

  Interspersed among them were more lines of slaves—driven south by mounted overseers who rode with shotguns over their saddle bows. Human wealth, suffering from the cold and lack of food. Many marched shackled and chained, a sight that sent a spear of pain through Butler’s soul.

  Is this what I’m fighting for?

  With each step, the horses splashed, hooves sucking as they pulled from the mud. The wet creak of leather, the snuffle of tired horses, and occasional shouts carried on the chill air. Butler was assailed by the curious scent of unwashed human mixed with wet wool, mud, manure, and horseflesh; it almost overwhelmed when the breeze changed quarter.

  Colonel Govan’s hat, like everything, was soaked from the drizzle, the brim dripping and partially obscuring his bearded face as he peered sidelong at Butler.

  “It defies imagination. Americans acting like Vandals?” Butler wondered as he lifted his right hand and made a fist. As he squeezed, water dribbled out of his saturated glove. Then he shifted his reins.

  “We saw it, Lieutenant. Sort of like some drunken nightmare.” Govan glanced up at the bruised sky. “Except I haven’t woke up from it yet.”

  Just past the stone walls lining the sunken road the country was gray and barren. Winter-bare trees lined the fallow tobacco and cornfields before surrendering to thick stands of forest that blocked the horizon. Occasional cabins and barns were set back from the road, all looking abandoned. Word was that the locals had removed themselves—and most of all their livestock—from any possible depredations by the passing army or the hoard of refugees.

  “Seems a damn shame.” Govan’s shoulders slumped beneath his slicker. He claimed he hadn’t been much of a horseman before enlisting, but Butler hadn’t seen any proof of it. The man seemed one with his animal.

  “‘Strategic withdrawal,’ that’s what General Johnston called it.” Govan tilted his head and squinted out from under the brim. “I’d rather we stuck it out and fought.”

  “Never found much in my reading that implied any dash or élan to ‘strategic withdrawal.’” Butler agreed. “Not even Caesar managed to turn the event into anything stirring. Homer, however, had it easier. Any reversal was always the fault of the gods. Their fated decree. Worked out nice. Leaders never had to take the blame for their mistakes.”

  “I don’t think we can fall back on that old saw.” Govan smiled thinly. “God’s supposedly on our side.”

  “It was Napoleon’s observation that ‘God is on the side with the most cannon.’”

  “Then we’re whipped before we start,” Govan said gloomily.

  They rode a while in silence, the patter of rain on Butler’s hat barely audible over the splashing and sucking of mud beneath the horse’s feet. His sorrel mare—called Red during a moment of inspired revelation—shook her head; the fine spray rode back on the breeze to mist Butler’s face.

  “You heard that a Union army is heading for Fayetteville? Invading Arkansas?” Govan asked.

  “Just that it was headed that way.” Butler shook his head. “My family is there. On the upper White. Benton County.”

  “They’ll be all right. My guess, if I know anything about war, which, I got to admit, Lieutenant, I’m starting to question, is that Earl Van Dorn will draw them south close to Fort Smith and crush them from strength.”

  Butler ground his teeth, catching himself as Red slipped on the poor footing. “Is that our strategy, Colonel? Like the Russians on the retreat to Moscow? Lead them deep into our territory, and then strike so that we send them reeling back in starvation?”

  Govan shrugged, refusing to answer, his head bowed just enough that the water streamed from his hat brim.

  Butler glanced off to the west, trying to see past the tree-clad hills, on beyond the Tennessee River, beyond the Mississippi, the lower White, and the far distant Ozarks.

  Are you all right, Maw? Is Sarah? And Billy? Surely, like here in Tennessee, the armies will just pass and leave you to your own devices.

  But now when he looked at the huddled refugees beside the road, at the forlorn farms they passed, the dark and empty windows seemed to mock him.

  14

  March 7, 1862

  On that frozen March morning Sarah had just filled two buckets at the springhouse. She stepped out, turned to latch the door, and heard it: the faint crackling and popping sound was barely audible on the cold, clear air. It might have been twigs snapping beneath a heavy boot. A lot of twigs. Under a lot of boots.

  She sniffed the air, watched her frosted breath rise, and started for the house. A curl of blue smoke trailed off to the southeast from the chimney top, hinting of the warmth inside the tight plank-sided house.

  The crackling was louder now.

  Sarah was sure of it: the sound came from the direction of Elkhorn Tavern, no more than eight miles away as the crow flew. For the last three days, she and Maw had known that the Federals were up on Pea Ridge. Not only had they seen small parties of armed horsemen cantering down the Huntsville Road, but Elias Hatt, their neighbor downriver, had dropped by with the news the evening before.

  She glanced up at the forested slope on the eastern side of the valley, hoping desperately that Billy had enough sense to stay away. It would be just like him to let curiosity get the best of him.

  Hollow booms—louder and deeper than the crackling—could now be heard. The sound didn’t reverberate the way thunder did with that low rolling; instead the booms seemed to bounce off the land.

  Sarah stopped on the porch, her heart leaping. Through some trick of the ear the crackle seemed louder now, only to fade.

  She rushed in, sloshing water, turning toward the kitchen. “Maw! There’s gunfire! I think the Yankees and Ben McCulloch are fighting!”

  Maw wiped the grease from her hands, her face pinching as she followed Sarah to the door and out onto the chill-cold porch.

  The distant crackling continued to rise and fall, sort of like devilish bacon frying.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “He took off just before dawn. I reckon … I pray that he’s headed up to the trapper’s cabin to look for deer.” She swallowed hard, throat suddenly dry. “If that’s a battle, surely he’d have more sense than to head over that way.”

  Maw narrowed her eyes; a series of louder bangs shivered the clear, cold morning. “God knows, girl, just this one time I hope he uses that head of his for something besides holding up his hat.”

  Maw cast a worried glance up the slope, only to stop and squint. “Wait. That’s him.” She extended her arm.

  Sarah followed her mother’s finger and detected movement among the trees. Something dark crossed the snow on the shadowed slope.

  Moments later, Billy burst from the woods, coming at a run. Halfway across the yard, he called, “You hear that?”

  “It’s a battle!” Sarah shouted back.

  Billy, chest heaving, bobbed his way across the frozen ruts in the yard, his old rifle cradled in wool mittens. His face beneath his black slouch hat was red and flushed, eyes glittering with excitement. Puffing for breath, he led the way to the edge of the porch where they all looked to the northwest. There was more of it now, like a loud tearing of some brittle cloth.

  For long minutes they stood, the three of them, heads cocked, listening.

  Sarah’s heart had begun to race. That was war up there. Men shooting and dying. She’d heard enough stories of Oak Hill, up on Wilson’s Creek, where so many of their frie
nds had been killed.

  “Will it come here?” she asked, a sense of dread rising.

  “Hope not,” Billy mumbled. “But I bet the Fords, Cox, Fosters, and all them folks up by the tavern are having a lively old morning wishing they was somewhere else.”

  Maw turned. “It’s still far off, but Sarah, you get the hens. Billy, take the horses, lead them way up the creek path. Reckon we can’t do anything with the pigs but turn them loose and hope we can catch them again when this is all over.”

  “Why, Maw?” Sarah asked, suddenly perplexed. “The battle’s up on Pea Ridge.”

  Maw fixed on Sarah, her blue eyes like cold marbles. “Maybe it will stay up there. Let’s hope so. But what happens afterward, girl? That’s what worries me.”

  She turned to Billy. “Son, you keep yourself and them horses out of sight. You so much as catch sight of soldiers, you take to the thickets.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Billy’s eyes narrowed. “What about you and sis?”

  “We’ll be all right. They won’t bother us. After that battle yonder is over, you wait a couple of days. You don’t come back until after dark.” Maw looked around. “There’s that bucket. If it’s a-sitting on the corner of the porch, you’ll find the back door unlatched. And you pay attention here, Billy. If that bucket isn’t sitting out, you stay away because it isn’t safe, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Billy sucked at his lips, gaze fixing on the house and yard.

  To Sarah it seemed as if he were trying to memorize it, to keep it all in his mind.

  “It’s all right, Billy. They can fight all they want up there. Nobody’s gonna bother us clear down here on the river.”

  As if to accent her words, something detonated in the distance. The sound echoed off down the valley like the clap of doomsday.

  15

  March 8, 1862

  Spring, at least for the day, had come to northern Mississippi. As Doc stepped out from the Corinth post office, his heart was joyous. He had come hoping for just one, but had three letters from Ann Marie clutched in his hands!

  He stepped out onto the street, hardly aware of Corinth, bathed as it was in bright sunlight. He could care less about the once-sleepy town’s bustle as soldiers, wagons, men on horses, and columns of laborers and slaves marched down Jackson Street toward Main. Fronted by brick buildings, with occasional frame structures, Corinth had blossomed as the crossroads of the north-south Mobile and Ohio Railroad and east-west Memphis and Charleston line.

  Here General Johnston was consolidating his widely dispersed Confederate forces, and not a single soldier didn’t fully understand that two massive Federal armies were gathering just north of the Tennessee line. One under the irrepressible “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, and the other led by the supposed “Conqueror of Nashville,” Don Carlos Buell.

  For the most part, the mood of the troops was glum. First Kentucky and then central Tennessee had been lost. At this rate the war would be over by Christmas, and the South reconquered.

  “I didn’t join the damn army to run like a whipped puppy,” one Shelby County volunteer had told Doc as he stitched up a cut in the man’s arm.

  The sentiment was common—and just about everyone laid the blame squarely on General Albert Sidney Johnston’s doorstep. Now the general was reportedly on his way, along with the Army of Central Kentucky—whatever that was—to personally take control of the gathering Confederate forces.

  Assuming the man somehow managed to remain in charge.

  Thousands of letters, not to mention several delegations of irate citizens, had arrived at President Jefferson Davis’s desk asking that the transplanted Texan be relieved and replaced for incompetence.

  As if any of that mattered.

  Doc stopped short on the boardwalk, taking the moment to read, once again, the careful womanly script that addressed each envelope to Dr. Philip Hancock, Surgeon, Fourth Tennessee, Corinth, Mississippi.

  Bursting with delight, he couldn’t wait to hurry back to his tent, pour a glass of brandy, and based upon the dates, open them one by one. He would take his time, savor each and every word that Ann Marie had written.

  He ducked around a party of jauntily dressed Texas cavalrymen, their high-heeled boots pounding on the boards and spurs jingling. He turned on Linden, hoping to catch a supply wagon back to his surgery and tent in the middle of the Fourth Tennessee encampment.

  From the open door of a saloon, the twang of a guitar matched the light notes of a mandolin as the habitués inside sang “Lorena.”

  Doc hesitated in the doorway, head cocked, oddly stirred that he held letters from the woman he loved, and how melancholy the song’s lyrics and tune made him for Memphis and Ann Marie’s company.

  He had taken no more than three steps before a voice called from behind. “Philip?”

  He turned, startled to see his father, bright sunlight almost glowing in the man’s high mane of white hair. James Hancock had aged since Doc had seen him last, the lines in his face deeper, the strong chin more chiseled. Those hard gray eyes, however, remained just as stony and unforgiving.

  “I thought that was you.” Paw lifted a pewter cup, as if in salute. “A regimental surgeon, I see. Which one?”

  “The Fourth Tennessee.” Doc’s throat had gone tight, his back stiffening. “I see that you’ve become a major.”

  “Blyth’s Mississippi. First Brigade. They’re digging ditches and rifle pits. My duties pertain to supply. Notably, through the applied arts of poker. The quartermaster, who is an atrocious gambler, is more than willing to cover his losses by granting my most deserving company the first choice of commissary and supply.”

  The feel of Ann Marie’s letters crumpling in his knotting fist caused him to breathe deeply. He forced a smile. “Nothing changes, does it?”

  His father walked up, tilting his head back to the brilliant March sun. He squinted, weathered cheeks taut. “Word is that General Van Dorn, commanding Ben McCulloch and Sterling Price, is fighting a Union army just south of the border in Arkansas. I thought I might hear more details. Especially given that one of the colonels in yonder”—he nodded toward the saloon—“has responsibility for the telegraph office.”

  Doc crossed his arms. “Last I heard Curtis and his Federal army were pursuing Price south toward Fort Smith.”

  “He was. The good general Curtis—if my sources can be trusted—was smart enough not to overrun his supply lines or to be caught by ambush. Word is that he doubled back from Fayetteville and dug in on the bluff overlooking Little Sugar Creek above Trott’s store.”

  Doc’s heart skipped. “What about Maw and the family?”

  Paw shrugged, the crowsfeet around his eyes tightening. “They’re still miles away. If Van Dorn wins, the Federals will flee to Springfield. If Curtis wins, he’ll chase Van Dorn back to Fort Smith. Either way, no one is going to stay around and fight over Benton County.”

  Doc chewed his lip, nodding, but he wasn’t sure. It was one thing to hear about battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. Another to think of battles in one’s own front yard.

  “Haven’t heard from you for a while, Philip. I trust, given your position as regimental surgeon, that you completed your studies.” He smiled thinly, took a drink, and added, “It would have been nice to have known. Perhaps shared in your achievement. Especially since it was my gold that bought you that education.”

  The twisting down inside added to Doc’s discomfort. “I wasn’t aware that you cared.”

  “I don’t. I only required that you be a man. Stand on your own two feet and make something of yourself. Your mother, however, would appreciate hearing from you.” He arched a suggestive eyebrow. “Since I’m no longer in residence, you needn’t be hesitant about reestablishing contact.”

  “I see.”

  James turned his attention to an artillery limber as it rolled by. “Butler is a lieutenant on General Hindman’s staff.” A pause. “He writes. Last I heard, you had nothing against your brother. He might
like to know your whereabouts. Word is that Hardee’s Third Corps is heading this way. You might look your brother up when he gets here.”

  “I will.”

  Philip had shifted, forgetting the letters. James using the sleight of scuffing his boot on the walk, looked down. Glanced sideways. “I see you have a female admirer. Three letters?”

  Flushing, Doc knotted his muscles, stuffing the letters behind his back as if he were a child caught stealing hard rock candy. “An acquaintance. Nothing more.”

  A flicker of annoyed smile played at his father’s lips and then died. “I can’t put the past back the way it was before. As you’ve no doubt discovered by now, she wasn’t worth your time.”

  “But she was worth yours? Married man that you were, and are?” Doc demanded hotly, the sour rage starting to burn in his gut.

  “She would have been a millstone around your neck, son. She’d have tied you down, killed your dreams, and left you a broken man when she ran off with whatever feller made her a better offer.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Sure I do. Reckon she wouldn’t have let me into her bed otherwise.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why Maw never slipped in with an ax in the middle of the night to put you out of our misery.”

  “She might have. It certainly wasn’t beyond her, Philip. But she had something I never did.” He shot Doc a knowing look. “Belief in family and kin.”

  Doc swallowed hard, struggling for words.

  “Good day, sir.” Paw touched his high forehead in a salute, turned, and walked back into the saloon where the celebratory strains of “The Bonnie Blue Flag” were belting forth in a harmony of tenors and a bass.

  16

  March 10, 1862

  Blood. So much blood. The worst cases, the horribly wounded and dying, had been carried inside the house. Others, most no less critical, had been laid on the porch or lay bleeding in the yard.

  The sights, smells, and sounds of torn, blood-soaked, and dying men overwhelmed Sarah’s senses. Raised on a farm as she was, she was more than capable of cutting a shoat’s throat, gutting and butchering it. She had long been accustomed to the feel of hot red blood on her skin, the sight of entrails as they spilled from an animal’s body behind her knife.