Cain at Gettysburg

by Ralph Peters

  Tam McMinn paused in midstream, methodically raising his weapon, seeking a target above him, scanning the trees. He took his time, as if tracking lazy squirrels. Perhaps the feel of the water had pleased him too much, the caressing womanness of it, the chill a seduction, and he just did not mean to go on.

  The man’s unearthly stillness announced madness.

  “Tam!” Blake shrieked. Too late. The tall man convulsed and fell to his knees, dropping his rifle, bewildered.

  The stricken man mouthed words. Astonished that his life had come to this. Then he puked blood and dropped facedown in the water.

  “Go! Go, damn it! Get on up there! Climb up,” Blake hollered. His men did what he ordered, clambering up the slick bank. Seconds along the streambed had slowed to hours.

  Demonically agile, Cobb used his rifle’s butt to vault himself up. Gaining firm ground first, he howled like a wolf.

  Blake scrambled up wet clay and into more briars. But the band of underbrush was narrower on this side. The trees, with their hope of cover, loomed ahead.

  He could not see the colors or Colonel Burgwyn now. Smoke pestered his attempts to peer into the grove. Men in gray ghosted before him. At times, he believed he saw figures in blue a short pitch up the slope. But the powder clouds had grown thick enough to turn men into phantoms.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lane materialized from the man-made mist, cursing at everyone to get on up the hill and into ranks. Blake could not see a line, but trusted that it was there. Beside him, Cobb yipped with glee as he dashed forward.

  The dead, the wounded. They lay so thick it seemed impossible that anything much was left over from the regiment. Yet, all around Blake, gray-clad soldiers hurried forward. Some of them screamed in naked anger as they struggled through the last briars and into the trees, but others were silent, already resigned to the grave.

  The Bunyans were with him. And Cobb, grinning and howling, a fugitive from an asylum. Hugh Gordon. Jack Ireton. Somehow they held together. Then they found themselves on a ragged firing line that melded the survivors of the first rank and second together. The wasp-zip of bullets passed impossibly close.

  Men had countless ways of reacting to a bullet’s strike, all of it part of a crazy dance, black witchery.

  Blake could see the Yankee line now. Up the slope, between the trees. The Black Hats were shooting down at them, potting vermin. Some of the men in blue taunted and cursed their antagonists. Blake aimed and fired without conscious thought, seeking targets more quickly than the mind’s knowing could follow. He believed he had brought a man down, but anyone on the line could have made the shot. Beside him, big James Bunyan snapped his ramrod in two and stood staring at it, as if no stranger event had occurred since Creation. Blake paused in reloading long enough to reach out and shake the boy hard.

  “Get one from a dead man, damn you.”

  But James just stood there dumbly as his brother fired uphill by his side.

  “Curse you, James Bunyan, you—”

  A round entered the side of the boy’s face and burst out the opposite cheek, expelling teeth, bone, pulp. James just stood there, dumbfounded, unsure of what had come over him, an ox whacked with a plank.

  His brother saw that James had been hit and broke off his own reloading. Staring helplessly.

  “You just keep on killing,” Blake screamed at him. “I’ll fix this.”

  But it couldn’t be fixed. How could it be fixed? He wanted to slap the boy’s ruined face, to force him to keep fighting, to reverse time, to make things be as he wanted them to be. There were too many men down now, James was needed.

  Clubs thumping a sack, two more bullets entered James Bunyan. But he still did not go down. The wrecked jaw sought to move. Bovine eyes filled with tears, whether of pain or rage. He reached out his hands, expecting to cradle an infant. When he realized that he could not speak, he bleated like a baritone sheep and struck the air with his fists. All that in seconds.

  “Nothing to be done.” That was Cobb. Beside Blake. “Git back to killing yourself, Quaker.”

  A stream of blood had found its way through James Bunyan’s ruined throat. It pulsed lazily. The boy reached for Blake and fell.

  The line was moving. Forward. Up the hill. John Bunyan bellowed, but did his duty and left his brother behind. It surprised Blake, who had expected John to quit the fight right there and cling to his brother.

  A volley crashed through the trees. Wood splinters flew.

  Regaining the firing line, Blake, Cobb, Bunyan, and Ireton mingled with men from another company, little more than a grab away from the colors. Hugh Gordon was missing and Blake had no idea what had become of him. What was left of the regiment unleashed another, wilder Rebel yell.

  The blue line receded, stepping backward through the smoke. Leaving plenty of Yankee bodies on the ground, Black Hats scattered around them. Then the 26th’s line stood at last among Federal corpses and the beseeching wounded of the other army.

  The colors drooped, but did not fall, as a wounded man passed them on. Blake’s ramrod was so slick with sweat he could hardly grip it to ram home a cartridge and ball. Cobb, too, struggled with his rifle. His hat was gone and his black madman’s hair framed a face ghastly with pleasure.

  “Volleys, give ’em volleys,” a voice demanded. Blake thought it was Lieutenant Colonel Lane giving the command, but could not be sure. The noise engulfing the firing line was deafening. “Close up, and give ’em volleys. Rally on the colors.”

  Blake slipped on blood-greased bark and tumbled forward, landing on a dead Yankee. He got the full scent of the man—tobacco, sweat, and death—as his face scraped on bloody blue wool. A hand yanked him backward, upward. It belonged to Cobb.

  “Don’t you go quittin’ on me now, Quaker.” Grinning black-mouthed. Behind him, Jack Ireton wore a terrified look, as if Blake falling were the worst thing that could happen.

  “Just slipped,” Blake shouted above the rifle-spatter. “Get back in the line.”

  Other men had filled in the gaps between them and the regiment’s flag.

  Unbloodied, unstained, Colonel Burgwyn appeared beside them, an apparition from a better, cleaner world.

  “Advance, men!” he cried. “Advance!” Then he was gone again.

  The Yankees had re-formed farther up the hill. An organized volley stopped the 26th cold. For an eternity, two rough ranks faced off, with barely ten yards between them. Each side fired as swiftly as its soldiers could reload. It seemed a miracle that any man, on either side, remained standing.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lane replaced Burgwyn’s presence among them.

  “We’re pushing them,” he called out, “we’re pushing them back! Git on up that sonofabitching hill!”

  They edged forward. A few feet at a time. Over the Yankee dead. Adding their own casualties to the wastage.

  Entering a cloud of smoke, Blake and his men found themselves enshrouded in a storybook spell. Separated from the world they knew. Blinded. Impossibly lost.

  “Any man seen Colonel Burgwyn?” Lane’s voice called through the miasma.

  “I don’t see shit.”

  “That you, Clarence?”

  “Oh, Jesus! Mother! I’m hit!”

  “He’s over yonder, on the left somewheres.”

  “Keep on moving, damn you!”

  “Advance! Forward, men!”

  “Water, for the love of God!”

  “I’m shot.”

  “Keep moving! Lookee! They’re breaking!”

  Emerging from the drift of smoke, Blake saw the Yankees all too close and with horrible clarity. The Federals weren’t breaking. But they were pulling back, keeping the best order they could as they fired on the move, blue-clad men pitching forward on the slope, as if leaping at their enemies as they died.

  Primitive. The word struck Blake, a mental bullet. We’re nothing but fancied-up animals, that’s all we are.

  In a window of quiet, a matter of hardly a second, Blake heard men panting and cr
ying. He imagined he could hear blood pumping from arteries, lungs bubbling, guts slithering down the hillside.

  He and his men were near the colors again. An officer ran by, just behind the firing line—what remained of it—and ordered everyone to close on the banner.

  The officer didn’t belong to the regiment. He was a captain from the brigade staff, Blake believed. He had no place here, but the fool was running right out ahead of their line of rifles, yelping like a boy devil. Near him, the colors fell again. The officer swooped down and lifted the shot-through flag above his head, delighted by life and everything in it. He waved the battle flag so madly Blake heard cloth snap. The idiot was daring the Yankees to shoot him.

  They did. The captain bent over, clutching his abdomen. The flag slid from his hand and fell, then the officer dropped on the flag.

  Another officer rushed forward. Despite the man’s black-stained face and the pillows of smoke between them, Blake recognized Lieutenant Wilcox from Company H. He rolled the fallen staff officer from atop the flag and lifted the banner high. It was bloodied with dark patches now.

  “Come on, men!” Wilcox yelled, so piercingly that the whole field must have heard him. He thrust the standard forward, climbing the hill. All those who remained alive and capable followed him.

  Then Wilcox fell, too. Sliding to his knees, he released the flag to use his hands to search his wounded body.

  Soldiers surged past the lieutenant. No one wanted to touch the flag now. Raising it was a death warrant, executed immediately. As for Blake, he was more interested in killing Yankees than in pretty gestures.

  He fired into the blue line up the hillside, wonderfully satisfied to feel his rifle’s kick against his shoulder. But as he paused to reload, he saw Colonel Burgwyn, sword held at waist level, running toward Wilcox and the discarded flag. As Blake fitted a fresh cap to his rifle, Burgwyn took up the flag in his left hand, lofting it. The staff had been shattered halfway down, so the colonel stretched to his full height to let the banner be seen. A sublime boy, he ran forward.

  Blake heard Burgwyn cry, “Dress on the colors, men, dress on the colors! Tar Heels to me! Come on, boys!”

  Blake thought the Yankees surely would bring him down. But Burgwyn paused abreast of Lieutenant Cureton, mouthing an unheard command. The lieutenant waved a private forward to take the flag from the regiment’s commander.

  Then Lieutenant Colonel Lane appeared, too. And things seemed all right. Lane and Burgwyn paused to exchange words. Blake lifted his rifle, aimed into the blue mass, and fired. A man dropped at his shot.

  But as he reached for another cartridge, he saw the new flag bearer stumble and fall. Blake looked toward Burgwyn, fearing the colonel would be mad enough to take up the banner again. But in that instant, Burgwyn jerked and wheeled about, drunk at a country dance.

  He fell. Lane knelt beside him.

  And Blake heard Cobb’s laughter.

  “Move fast, Quaker, if you want them boots.”

  Turning to knock Cobb down, Blake saw Jack Ireton seated on the ground, playing with the red, white, and gray spewings of his belly the way a child plays with a wonderful new toy.

  Perhaps it was the sight of the colonel falling. Or maybe it was his recognition of the hard death awaiting Jack Ireton. But Blake felt a new fury. And Cobb wasn’t target enough for it. Bloody-faced and merry as a farm boy at the fair, Cobb was fighting the war by his own rules. Blake decided to let the devil be.

  “Come on,” Blake called to the two men who remained by him. And they went forward again, Blake, black Cobb, and empty-faced John Bunyan.

  The old verse, queerly applicable, leapt to his mind, a substitute for thought: “Surely, I come quickly…”

  That’s right, Billy Yank. I’m coming for you. Quickly.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lane stormed by, his anger borrowed from Kings or perhaps Joshua, nothing New Testament about it. “We’re going to give them sonsofbitches the bayonet,” he shouted. “Shoot ’em in their bastard guts and give ’em the damned bayonet.”

  The tattered clans of the regiment’s companies began to howl. The shredded line straightened remarkably, the men wild as pent-up hounds about to be loosed on their quarry.

  Sharp to the left, two lieutenants, Cureton and Blair, were practically wrestling over who would bear the flag next. In charge of the regiment now, Lieutenant Colonel Lane descended upon them.

  He tore the flag from Blair’s grip, speaking words no one but the two lieutenants could hear. And Lane dashed forward himself, flaunting the short-staved banner.

  For an unearthly moment, Blake saw Lane rimmed by sunlight, as if he had been chosen for a miracle. The smoke had concealed how near they had come to the far edge of the wood, to the top of the ridge, to what must pass for victory. They were almost there.

  Waving the broken flagstaff, Lane bellowed:

  “Twenty-sixth! Follow me!”

  Fewer than a hundred men remained to drive home the attack. But hundreds more, ghosts now, filled out their ranks. A last, triumphant Rebel yell soared above torn treetops.

  The Yankees were pulling back again, abandoning the grove. This time, their order was broken. They stumbled rearward in huddled groups, pausing to fire, outraged at being bested. But others in blue just ran now—not many, but enough to distract their remaining officers from the fight. Sergeants shouted, mouths wide, but their voices could not compete with the tumult of war.

  Blake rushed forward, bayonet ready for man-flesh. Cobb kept up to his left, John Bunyan to his right. The three of them, and dozens more, surged toward the crest of the ridge, howling like demons.

  Surely, I come quickly … The words became a chant inside Blake’s head, inextinguishable, resounding. Quickly … I come quickly … new heavens, and a new earth … quickly … I come … quickly …

  They have no place in me, Blake told himself, attempting to resist. These words are not my own. Mine own. Thou, thee. Quaker talk.

  Surely, I come quickly …

  You are your father’s son. Reciting scripture blasphemously in your drunkenness. But you are drunk on blood …

  Led by Lieutenant Colonel Lane, they burst from the trees into the dirty sunlight of the battlefield. Even now, not all of the Yankees were ready to quit, but anyone could see that their defense was finished. Now it was just about stubbornness and spite.

  Lane turned to his ruined regiment, shouting, “Come on, boys! Come on!”

  A Yankee bullet caught him in the mouth.

  Blake’s heart plummeted, even as hatred quickened him body and soul, lawless, delicious.

  “Sumbitch,” Cobb cried, “those sumbitches.” It was as much emotion as he had ever shown.

  Captain Brewer of Company E, one of the last officers still on his feet, took up the bloodied banner.

  He did not have to shout to rally the men. They rushed after him screaming and howling. They were attacking the Yankee army with fewer men than the regiment’s smallest company had counted an hour before.

  Still beside him, John Bunyan seemed unaware that a bullet or sliver of shrapnel had scraped his scalp, painting the left side of his head and neck crimson.

  Flesh wound, Blake decided. Or the boy wouldn’t be standing. Head wounds are always bloody. Means nothing, most like.

  Blake needed someone other than Cobb to survive with him.

  He fired his rifle into the chest of a Yankee who had appeared not five feet in front of him. Too late, Blake realized that the man wanted to surrender.

  Didn’t matter, anyway. Didn’t matter.

  Surely, I come quickly …

  But then, as at a command, all quickness left him. A collective will pulled up the attack’s survivors atop the ridge, stopping them among clots of contorted bodies garbed in blue. The men still alive from the 26th North Carolina were spent and done, there was nothing left in them. If the Yankees had pushed back now, they might have redeemed themselves.

  But the Black Hats continued to fall back, small cluster
s of them, moving down through a swale and carrying off those of their wounded who could limp along or cling to a tent-mate’s back. They were drawing off toward a Yankee battery and more troops formed up on a ridge at the edge of the town.

  We can’t, Blake thought. We just can’t go over there. Too many of them. We just can’t.

  A mighty, magnificent cry broke just to his rear. The Rebel yell. For an instant, Blake went chill with the thought that it really was the ghosts of the regiment’s fallen.

  Instead, it was the men of Pender’s division, fresh as daisies, coming up behind them to finish the charge.

  Blake sat down on the ground. Only by propping himself up with his rifle could he stop himself from pitching out flat. He did not remember deciding to sit down. He had just done it. Men in gray and various browns swarmed past him.

  “God awmighty,” a fellow sergeant told him as he passed by, “you boys done something. God awmighty, you sure done something.…”

  Then the first line of Pender’s men went down into the swale. Soon, the second line passed. The men cheered the milling survivors of the 26th and their ruined flag.

  Somewhere up ahead, cannon opened again. But it no longer mattered.

  Blake sat. Smeared with blood and pus, Cobb had taken a place beside him. Befuddled and gory, John Bunyan got as far as his knees and stayed that way, kneeling the way an ox would. They were surrounded by dead and terrified wounded men. All in blue uniforms. One man seemed to be trying to speak to Blake, to ask something of him, but Blake could not understand. The fellow might as well have been a Chinaman.

  … and a new earth … a new earth …

  The last firing moved off toward the town, leaving the moans of gut-torn men, of men bleeding to death from limb stumps, of men whose lungs had been gashed, or whose spines had been cracked without enough force to kill them then and there.

  The field stank.

  Slowly, Blake looked around for an officer. He saw none.