Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

  Corporal Johnny Shawnessy was thoroughly confused. Somehow during the past half-hour, while he had been firing from a rocky nest at the head of a ravine, the brigade had melted away from around him. Flash Perkins was still with him, but something had happened. The firing had lessened down the line.

  —Hey, Flash.

  —Yeah.

  —Hadn’t we better fall back?

  —Where’s the Captain?

  —I don’t know. The brigade’s retiring. If we don’t go along, we’ll get cut off.

  The regiment had been fighting hard and holding its own all morning, cooperating in the repulse of several Confederate charges. Now, however, it seemed time to fall back. The Union lines were getting thin or non-existent in the woods here. Johnny and Flash started to the rear, hunting for a solid line. There were other men in squads and whole companies, moving slowly back through the woods. A sound of firing and yelling came from the right and the rear.

  Johnny didn’t know just how it happened.

  He had lost the feeling of alignment, of solidarity with the Army, of coherence. As far as he could see, he was aligned on Flash Perkins and Flash on him, and the rest of the Army was swirling around in confusion. As they went back through the woods, instead of finding the brigade they were pushed out of the way by fresh companies who came up eager for the fight. Then a vast yelling and firing broke out in their rear and on both flanks. Johnny got out on high ground near a road. He was not even sure which direction the Enemy was coming from. He and Flash stopped and looked around.

  They were surrounded by artillerymen, walking wounded, stretcher-bearers, dismounted cavalry, infantrymen who had not yet seen combat, officers looking for their commands, commands looking for their officers. The whole mass seemed vaguely worried, and although there were counter-currents, the tendency was to go back and find a point of reference farther to the rear.

  Just where withdrawal became a rout Johnny didn’t know. But there was a time when he ceased to believe that he and Flash Perkins were going to find a solid line of resistance. And there was a point where he stopped thinking of being a useful part of the Army and started to think of saving his skin. Somewhere along in there, he got separated from Flash Perkins. When that happened, he seemed to lose all ties with what had been the Battle and the Army. From then on he resumed his importance as an individual. He was persuaded that he had done his best. He seemed absolved from blame. When men around him began to run, he began to run. Somewhere along the way, he threw down his musket. He realized then that he had thrown away the last symbol of resistance. He had admitted defeat. He ran faster then.

  About four o’clock in the afternoon, he came out on a road which someone said led into Chattanooga. Along this road the whole right flank of the Union Army appeared to be trying to retreat all at once. Haggard bands of soldiers were herding down the road, cursing and reeling. Artillery caissons, ambulance carts, supply wagons, riderless horses, walking wounded jammed the road with a solid stream of agony and panic, constantly swollen by broken companies coming up from the battle area. Men said that whole divisions had been overrun, that there were thousands of yelling Rebels in pursuit, that they had seen whole companies bayoneted in a few seconds. Everywhere there was candid admission of defeat. Here and there, officers tried to curse order into the fleeing mass, but they were helpless.

  Some way the hinge of the Army had been broken, and the Battle had been lost. The loosely integrated mass called ‘the Army’ had ceased to touch in the important places. Now there was no Army at all, there were no regiments, there were no brigades, there were no divisions, there were no privates, there were no officers, there were only a lot of scared, desperate, wounded, sweating, cursing, unhappy men, absurdly dressed in blue uniforms, struggling along a road and trying to get to a place of safety.

  Johnny didn’t see why the Rebels didn’t attack and annihilate the whole frightened mass.

  As he went on, completely weary and exhausted, he had a dull feeling of despair as if he himself had been personally responsible for the defeat of the Army. Somewhere along the way, he had failed in courage or initiative. Somewhere along the way, he had agreed too easily to be defeated.

  He kept wondering if this was the end of the War. Surely the Union couldn’t stand a defeat like this. All the elaborate order and contrivance that had been a third of an Army had been destroyed.

  Battle appeared to be a process in which order sought to defeat order with the weapon of confusion. Defeat was simply utter bewilderment.

  Late at night Corporal Johnny Shawnessy was wandering through the groaning darkness of improvised camps in and around Chattanooga. No one knew where anything was. Everyone was looking for his command. About twelve o’clock he found a part of his regiment encamped in the corner of a field. There was a fire going, and Flash Perkins and Captain Bazzle and a few others were there.

  —Here’s Jack Shawnessy! Flash said, as Johnny came up and peered at their faces in the night. We outrun you, boy.

  Johnny threw himself down on the ground by the fire. He heard much talk of the Battle. It appeared that the Army had been saved by a heroic rearguard stand by General Thomas on the left wing.

  So then this was the way it had to be done. This was the way mankind settled its problems. These were the glamorous chapters of history.

  My God, what difference did it make if men called a hunk of earth one name instead of another! What difference did it make if a few million simple people were called slaves instead of free! Was it worth the extinction of a single life along the Chickamauga? My God, there were thousands of young men who were stiff and dead around that little creek and all for nothing.

  Not even the Rebels had won anything by the Battle. No one had anything that he hadn’t had before except wounds, sickness of spirit, gutache, exhaustion, death. What difference did it make! Might as well go back to Indiana, and to hell with the whole war. Might as well go back and let the goddam Rebels have their goddam land. What did a man get by fighting? Could a man get anything by it, anything tangible or important? The Rebels had the field, and the Federals had the town of Chattanooga. And he, John Wickliff Shawnessy, had a bellyache and wished he had never been damfool enough to enlist in the Army. It was a terrible thing, a pathetic, crying thing to think of all those boys lying around Chickamauga Creek, boys who had been alive and strong just two days ago. He might be down there himself and no one give a goddam, except some folks back home, who would find out about it in a roundabout way with typographical errors and never know the crazy, unheroic agony of his death.

  Here he lay then—the Hero of Raintree County, who had meant one day to be the poet of his people. Here he lay, who on the banks of a little river in Raintree County had dreamed of a fair republic. Here he lay, who had believed in justice, beauty, progress, love. He had just spent two days of complete selfishness, of abject fear. He had been thoroughly whipped. He had run like a craven from the field, buried in the blissful anonymity of panic and mass retreat.

  One thing was certain. War was the craziest damfool madness that ever was. It was everything vile, absurd, brutal, murderous, confused. Mainly it was just confusion—bloody, stinking, noisy confusion with death as a casual by-product. How anyone ever won a battle, he couldn’t imagine. This fight, which had no name and ought never to have a name, had been simply the result of two blind forces launched from vast confusion and colliding in vast confusion. What he had seen today was so incredibly evil and foolish that it baffled classification. No one man or idea was responsible for the evil. It was something in which men got trapped through a lack of foresight. All of them hated it while they were in it, and yet all had agreed to be in it.

  Later, Flash Perkins came around and handed him a stewkit full of hot soup. Flash’s face had a set, baffled look. He kept shaking his head.

  —Shucks, Jack! he said, it ain’t anything like I thought it’d be. Cuss it, we din’t hardly have a chance to git at ’em. Hell, that was jist pure murder.


  WE SURE BEEN IN ONE HOLY

  JUMPIN’HELL OF

  A

  GRAND PATRIOTIC PROGRAM

  July 4, 1892

  Waycross, Indiana

  2:30 P.M.

  The Star-Spangled Banner...............All

  Prayer...............Rev. Lloyd G. Jarvey

  Declaration of Independence (Reading)....General Jacob J. Jackson

  The Gettysburg Address (Recitation)...............Wesley Shawnessy

  The Battle Cry of Freedom...............All

  Address of the Day...............Hon. Garwood B. Jones

  Medley of Patriotic Airs...............Band

  Tenting on the Old Camp Ground

  Tramp, Tramp, Tramp

  Marching Through Georgia

  When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (Recitation)...............Mrs. Evelina Brown

  Medley of Popular and Patriotic Airs...............Band

  Old Folks at Home

  My Old Kentucky Home

  Dixie

  Battle Hymn of the Republic

  My Country ‘Tis of Thee...............All

  Benediction...............Rev. Lloyd G. Jarvey

  Program Chairman: Mrs. Evelina Brown

  Mr. Shawnessy consulted his copy of the program. Following the banquet, the space before the platform had been cleared of tables and filled up with benches and chairs. Promptly at two-thirty, with several hundred people in attendance, many of them standing out in the road, the Grand Patriotic Program had begun. Mr. Shawnessy, who, with Mrs. Brown, had been mainly responsible for arranging the program, sat in a back row with Professor Stiles. The Reverend Jarvey had at last appeared, looking a little tired, the opening anthem and the prayer had gone off well, and now General Jackson, who had shouted himself hoarse in his short banquet address, was thundering through the opening bars of the Declaration of Independence.

  —When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  —From these words, the Perfessor whispered, the origin of firecrackers.

  —We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

  From these words, the Republic. From these words, Raintree County, a rectangular dream.

  —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government. . . .

  From these words, cannons and cockades, constitutions and congresses. From these words, the Court House and the Court House Square, the clock in the steeple telling the time of day and the flag of many stripes. From these words, the granite lady with the scales over the court house door and the spittoons in the court room on the second floor.

  From these words, the enormous geometry of the railroads, trains that pass by day and night making banners of gray smoke on the land.

  From these words, the manswarm of New York, Chicago, San Francisco. From these words, the march of States across the Nation in musical procession, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California.

  From these words, Main Street, the post office on the corner, the general store, the barber shop, the schoolhouse, the church with a steeple holding a bell. From these words, the plain board houses in the tidy lawns, the old plantation home, the mansard roofs, the tenement houses hung with washing, the farmhouse, and the great red barn.

  From these words, an infinitude of sounds, vibrations of wire, whistles at crossings, rock and jostle of strings of cars crossing the lonely prairies where the buffaloes stand at gaze, roar of the churning and changeable machines, voice of great cities assaulting the summer night with prayers, oaths, death cries, songs.

  —We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States. . . .

  From these words, statues in the Square for the boys who fell at Lexington, Chapultepec, and Chickamauga.

  —And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

  From these words, the place called America and the people called the Americans. From these words, the brooding and gaunt form of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. From these words, tumult of many wars (old wars and half-forgotten), unceasing dedications and rededications. From these words——

  Mr. Shawnessy’s oldest child, Wesley, was standing before the crowd, a blue-eyed boy, blond head close-cropped, new suit somewhat too large. His solemn, tense voice began:

  —Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in

  November 22—1863

  WAR HAD COME TO THIS HOLLOW BETWEEN HILLS,

  this basin of plain beside the river, this rash of shacks and dingy buildings called Chattanooga, and it had brought with it barricades, trenches, riflepits, gun emplacements, pontoon bridges, tents, barracks, whores, booze, siege, famine, and Corporal Johnny Shawnessy.

  It was afternoon as Johnny walked away from the postal depot toward his camp on the fringes of the City, having had a special leave to see why the regimental mail was delayed. For two months now, the Army of the Cumberland had holed up in Chattanooga trying to recover from Chickamauga. The Rebels had followed and besieged the town, and even now, as Johnny looked south up the street, he could see thin smokes of Confederate fires on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. For weeks, the Union Army had been almost cut off from supply, but at last a lane had been cleared, and the Army had begun to eat again. Then General Grant, the Hero of Vicksburg, had taken command, the Army had been reinforced, and a campaign to break the Rebel siege was promised.

  Meanwhile, the mountains had been the abiding companions of Johnny Shawnessy’s days and nights in the autumn of 1863. Thin smokes of Confederate fires on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge had burned away this autumn of his life in bitter waiting. He knew that these mountains would remain part of the august scenery of his life, great breasts of earth, colossally feminine and passive. For the possession of this couched shape, immense, brooding, silent, he and his comrades must fight, retch, shriek, bleed, die. On earth’s indifferent ramparts, like blowing sand, the battle must swirl and pass with fine abrasion. Men would shout victory with advancing banners. But in the end the earth alone would remain unaltered and victorious. A hundred years hence, picnickers would strew gay wreckage on the slopes of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge,. and perhaps their feet would tread the crumbled heart of Corporal Johnny Shawnessy. These old hills would have their solemn immortality, fashioned from his bloody anonymity.

  These were his musings when a voice calling his name caused him to look back along the street.

  A tall, thin man was walking toward him. A long arm flapped violently. Sharpkneed legs strode briskly past knots of sauntering soldiers and civilians. The approaching figure was dressed in a wideflapping civilian coat, a checked vest, pants stuffed into jackboots. Beneath a wide hat, Johnny saw a long head, a sharp nose, a spade-shaped beard, glittering black eyes.

  —Well, well! said Professor Jerusa
lem Webster Stiles, that was a long train ride you sent me on, John.

  Johnny shook the Perfessor’s bony hand. The sharp face hacked up and down hatchetlike. The Perfessor was laughing.

  —Jesus, John, he said, I thought at first you weren’t going to recognize me. I just blew into town two hours ago. Well, I suppose you’re wondering what brought about our reunion on the field of Mars. It’s very simple. The paper sent me out here to get a slant on the way you boys are fighting it on this side. Not much difference. They seem to make the same kind of corpses on both fronts. Same old stink, same old waste, same old war. Well, how’s everything in Raintree County?

  Johnny didn’t know where to start, but before he had said ten words, the Perfessor cut in.

  —Let’s go where we can talk. Where’s the local ginmill?

  —I don’t know, Professor, I——

  —There must be one, the Perfessor said.

  —I’m not sure, Johnny said. I——

  —In fact there is one, the Perfessor said. I’ll show you where it is. Friend of yours tipped me off. I visited your camp. Chap named Perkins brought me back in and told me to look for you at the Post Office. Showed me the booze house on the way. Said he had a woman lined up there and would try to fix you and me up too. Obliging bastard. Suppose we drop in there for——

  —If it’s the place I’ve heard Flash talk about, the whiskey’s rotgut and the women are terrible.

  —I trust they have the standard equipment, said the Perfessor, albeit a bit battered, no doubt. It’s been a long war. As for the liquor, personally I always carry my own brand of the white destroyer.

  The Perfessor drew deftly from his boottop a bottleful of bubbling fluid. He led the way to the main business street of the town, turned off, went down a back alley, and fetched up at a door that opened in the side of a mournful frame building. Muffled laughter and bursts of singing came from inside.

  The Perfessor rapped on the door. The door opened two inches.