When Johnny Came Marching Home

by William Heffernan

  My father jerked Suggs around so hard his feet almost left the ground. "Ya lemme hear any more of that cripple talk, there ain't gonna be enough left of ya ta have at it with nobody. Ya understan' me, son?"

  "All right, all right. I jus' had enough a yer boy durin' the war. I ain't needin' any more of it now." The whine was back in Suggs's voice.

  "Ya jus' answer our questions," my father growled. "Ya kin start with tellin' us what the hell brought ya up ta Vermont."

  "I was lookin' fer work," Suggs stammered.

  "You live in goddamn Pennsylvania, Suggs," I countered. "It's a long way to come to look for a job choppin' down trees."

  "There ain't no work in Pennsylvania." Some of the color left Suggs's cheeks, as though he'd suddenly realized he was heading for more trouble than he'd thought. "Look, all us boys come home from the war all at once, an' there jus' wasn't enough work fer ever'body. Then I remembered Johnny tellin' me what a great place he was from. How nobody was rich, but ever'body lived good in this here valley he grew up in. But all I could remember was that it was up near the Canadian border an' had some kinda name from the Bible. So I headed up this way, an' when I axed about a town with a Bible name they sent me ta this place called Jericho, but that weren't it. Then some folks tol' me about a place in the mountains called Jerusalem's Landing, so I come here. An' sure enough, this was the place Johnny'd been talkin' 'bout."

  "Abel Johnson's father saw you talking to Johnny outside his store. Said you seemed to be mad about something and that Johnny just laughed at you. What was that about?"

  A sly look came to Suggs's eyes, as though he'd found something he could use to deflect our attention. "We was talkin' about a man named Rusty LeRoche," he said. "I was up there lookin' fer work on his woodlot, an' he was ready ta take me on. Then he axed me what brought me up ta the mountains, and I mentioned I was a frien' of the minister's son from back in the war and I'd come up ta visit him. Hell, I thought that'd stand me in good stead, minister's son an' all that good shit. Well, it sure don't. LeRoche hears that an' he tells me Johnny's nothin' but a no-account sumbitch, minister's son or not, and iffen I'm his friend I must be a no-account too, an' he throws me offen his land without so much as a mind you be, sir."

  My father had let go of Suggs, who was now just standing there, shuffling his feet.

  Billy Lucie walked over and joined us. "Everythin' all right cheer?" he asked.

  My father nodded. "Yer man here is tellin' us what brought him up to these mountains. Ain't found no reason not ta believe him . . . yet." He let the last word hang and turned back to Suggs. "But I'm tellin' ya this, son. Afore ya leave this here town, ya better come in an' let us know. Ya try ta slip away," he raised his chin toward Lucie, "an' Billy here will come and let us know. Ain't that right, Billy?"

  "Right as can be," Billy said.

  My father placed a heavy hand on Bobby Suggs's shoulder. "I hear that ya left without stoppin' by, I promise ya every lawman in Vermont will be lookin' fer ya. An' Jubal here an' me is gonna be ridin' up yer tail till we find ya."

  Suggs glanced at Billy and me, and then back at my father. "I ain't goin' no place," he said. "Leastways, not till the loggin' season's finished."

  * * *

  My father and I thanked Billy and headed back down the mountain single file.

  "Ya think he's lyin'?" my father asked when we reached the road below.

  "Bobby Suggs couldn't tell the truth even if it would help him," I said.

  "What was all that about ya kickin' him?" he asked.

  I told him about the incident in camp, about young Jemma and Bobby trying to rape her.

  "Ya did good ta stop him. Iffen ya shot him he woulda deserved it, goin' after a helpless child like that. Sounds like Rusty LeRoche was a smart'n ta throw him offen his land."

  I had told my father about Johnny's trouble with Rusty, so Bobby's tale about Rusty had not surprised him.

  "Looks ta me like Rusty's still our strongest suspect," he added.

  "There's something about why Bobby Suggs is here that he's not telling us," I said. "Until I know what that is, I'm not ready to put him aside."

  My father nodded. "Ya always had good instincts, Jubal. Ya follow up on whatcha feel in yer gut. Rusty'll still be here iffen this Suggs fella proves not ta be our man."

  * * *

  Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1861

  The fife-and-drum corps headed down the town's main street, stopping in front of the Johnsons' store where an officer and several of his men had set up a recruiting table.

  "Hot damn!" Johnny shouted, following his words with a whoop. "I never expected nothin' like this."

  Abel was grinning at him. "Me neither. Way they's stirrin' ever'body up, them Rebs oughta be shakin' in their boots."

  I glanced around us. The army had put up posters the week before, announcing that a recruitment officer would be here today, and the whole town appeared to have gathered, even some folks from outlying farms. I'd heard the sawmill had even shut down so its men could hear what the army had to say.

  Rebecca came up beside me and slipped her hand in mine. She leaned up to my ear. "Come take me for a walk," she said. "I don't want you listening to these men who want all you boys to go off to war."

  I smiled down at her. "I have to hear what they say, Rebecca. It's about our country."

  Before I could say more a tall, handsome army captain, flanked by a sergeant and a corporal, held up his arms for silence.

  "Folks, my name is Captain John Lawrence, and if you'll just give me a minute of your time I'll tell you about the dangers that are facing our beloved nation."

  Lawrence was dressed in a blue uniform dappled with a gold braid and a broad-brimmed blue hat. He was wearing a saber and a sidearm, and his insignia showed him to be a cavalry officer. He held up his arms again, cocking his head to one side, his neatly barbered beard giving him an air of great authority.

  "The nation has been attacked!" he shouted. "A cowardly and unprovoked attack at Fort Sumter that sent good, wholesome American boys to their graves. Now the Confederate Army is massing in Virginia within striking distance of our nation's capital. And they have left us no choice but to let loose the dogs of war.

  "So why am I here in the peaceful village of Jerusalem's Landing? you ask." He paused to gaze out over the crowd, stopping to stare at each young man he saw. When his eyes lighted on me, Rebecca squeezed my hand tightly, holding onto me as though his stare might pull me from her.

  "I am here because the nation needs its young men to step forward and take the fight to the Rebs." He raised a warning finger. "And don't you doubt for a moment that if we don't take it to them, they will bring it to us."

  The crowd began to buzz and he held up both hands again to silence them. "Oh, I know. You say that Vermont is so far from South Carolina. It is so far from Washington where our new president, Mr. Lincoln, struggles to hold our nation together. But I tell you this: If the Confederate Army overruns the nation's capital, they will not stop there. They will move on to Maryland and Pennsylvania, claiming they need to protect their flanks. Then they will move into New Jersey and New York for the same reason. And what sits across Lake Champlain from New York? Vermont sits there, my friends. Yes, once the Rebs overrun New York, they will head to Vermont, because they know our history. They know how Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys attacked the British when they occupied New York, how they drove them out of Fort Ticonderoga, and those Rebs will know that they, too, will always be in danger as long as Vermont is free."

  He began to pace. Then he stopped, removed his hat, and placed it over his heart. His voice became softer. "Oh, some say it will surely take time. And they are right. The Rebs may not be here for a year or more." Now his voice began to rise again. "But unless we defeat them now, and defeat them in Virginia and South Carolina and Georgia, we will surely have to defeat them here. And it will be a bitter fight. Farms and villages will be ravaged and burned, you can be certain of that. And
to this I say no, never, not here, not in Vermont! I say let the burning take place in the South. Let those who started this war be the ones who pay that bitter price." Lawrence paced back and forth before his audience, his eyes again stopping on each young man.

  "And how shall we do that? How shall we guarantee that the war is not brought to our doorstep? You know the answers to those questions—Ethan Allen answered them for you in 1775, almost one hundred years ago. We shall do as he did by taking the battle to the enemy." Lawrence drew a long, deep breath, as if he, himself, were girding for battle. "Right now our brave generals are bravely holding off the Rebel troops. And we must send our boys to help them. And if we do this we shall never have Vermonters awaking to find Rebel troops marching down our streets. No, never. Instead it will be those in the South, the ones who started this conflict, who will awaken to find Union troops standing in their dooryards. And that day will begin when you young men step up to this table behind me and pledge your honor to the Union cause, when you step forward to join those of us who already serve, when you join hands with President Lincoln to preserve our nation by joining his Army of the Republic."

  Wild applause and shouting followed the captain's speech, and the fife-and-drum corps immediately began to play. Several of the older men in town stepped forward to shake his hand and to clap the backs of the young men who moved up to the table.

  Rebecca clasped my hand so tightly it began to go numb. "Don't you sign your name, Jubal Foster." She glanced about her. "Where is Abel?" she asked no one in particular. "Where is my brother?"

  Abel came pushing through the crowd, trailing Johnny in his wake. "We're gonna do it," he announced. "Me and Johnny both. We're gonna sign up ta defend the Union, just like the captain said. Are ya gonna come with us, Jubal? You gotta, ya know. We gotta do it all together, just like we always done."

  Slowly I nodded my head. I believed what Captain Lawrence had said. Not all of it, not the part about Rebel troops marching down Vermont streets. But I believed we had to stop this secession if we hoped to preserve our nation, and to do that we had little choice but to invade the South and stamp out this new Confederate government.

  Rebecca was staring at me. "Jubal, I don't want you to go, I don't want any of you boys to go." Her eyes filled with tears as she looked from me to her brother to Johnny. "I don't want you all going off to get killed for something I don't even understand, for something you don't understand."

  "We know what we're doin', Rebecca," Abel said. He was grinning at her; then he seemed to notice she was crying and he reached out and stroked her arm.

  She pulled away from him. "You're just boys," she snapped.

  "We're twenty-one, or we will be soon," Johnny said. "That sure makes us men as far as I'm concerned."

  The tears began to flow down Rebecca's cheeks. "Go ahead. Go sign your damned paper and go off and get yourselves killed. Just do it. Do it."

  She spun on her heel and pushed her way through the crowd. I watched her go and I wanted to follow after her, but I remained rooted to the ground.

  "Let's sign up," Johnny said.

  "Yeah, come on, Jubal, let's do it." Much of the enthusiasm had left Abel's voice and I noticed that he too was following his sister's retreat. Then he brought his eyes back to me and slapped my shoulder. "Let's do it," he said again, more strongly this time.

  * * *

  Manassas, Virginia, 1862

  Our artillery commenced shelling the Rebel encampment shortly after dawn, and since they had no ammunition left to respond to our volleys they began to beat a speedy withdrawal. We were lying along a rise watching the Rebs retreat, Abel, Johnny, and I. Johnny had missed our little adventure the previous night, having been assigned to a different detail, and Abel took great relish filling him in on our intrusion behind enemy lines. He made it sound like we had fought the Third Battle of Bull Run and that this time we'd won.

  Sergeant Jim Lacey came up and slid down beside me. "How does it feel to see a Rebel retreat that you boys caused single-handedly?"

  I smiled at him. "It wasn't quite that grand. There was a lot of blind-ass luck involved, including those Rebs being dumb enough to leave their ammunition wagons unguarded."

  "That's what most of war is, a lotta blind-ass luck," Lacey said. "And if you're real, real lucky you even get to walk away alive."

  "Are we gonna follow 'em?" Johnny asked.

  "We're gonna shadow them with one column just to make sure they don't pick up a new supply of ammunition and turn back on us."

  "Are we part of the column?" I asked.

  "No, we are bonafide heroes, according to the generals, so we get to rest up for our next bit of daring do."

  Abel and I started to laugh and then Johnny joined in. Abel jabbed a finger in Johnny's direction. "Why's he here restin' with the heroes? He was on litter duty at the field hospital, tryin' to get under the skirts a one of them nurses."

  "Just mighta got there too, fer all you know," Johnny said. He grinned knowingly and fluttered his eyebrows. "Those poor nurses git tired an' like ta git them a poke or two when all the work's done."

  "The only thing you been pokin' is yer hand," Abel replied.

  Lacey slapped each of us on the back. "Come on, boys, let's go get us some chow. We got us an easy night for a change. You won't even be pullin' sentry duty."

  "Holy shit," Abel said. "Those generals must really like us."

  "Enjoy it while you can," Lacey said. "One thing's for certain: it won't last."

  * * *

  A large group of slaves had fled nearby plantations and had formed an encampment of their own adjacent to ours. They followed us whether we won or lost a battle, and I supposed they knew they had no other choice. Running farther north alone risked capture by Rebel forces who had been known to shoot the runaway slaves they encountered. Conversely, returning to their plantations assured they would at the least be whipped mercilessly before being returned to slavery.

  The most disturbing thing to me had been hearing our own officers talking about driving the escaped slaves off, claiming they were a burden on our supplies and that they slowed our troops. How they slowed us I could not fathom. We never brought them with us; they simply followed at a distance, rejoining us when we stopped each night. And we did not feed them. They fed themselves from what they gathered and stole along the march, and their cook fires always smelled far better than ours. Some of their men even fought beside us in skirmishes using weapons they had plucked from the field.

  Now, sitting under the shade of an ancient oak, my mind and body were soothed by the strains of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" that drifted up from the Negro encampment. Like all their music it was sweet and mournful at the same time. It spoke of suffering and yet was joyful. Above all, it told of a people who were enslaved but undefeated.

  Josiah came and joined Abel and Johnny and me, his work at the hospital finished for the evening. He had been coming by almost every night and I suspected that the young slave girl Jemma was the reason.

  "Do you ever get to talk to many of the runaway slaves?" I asked, as he slid down next to me.

  "Time ta time," he said. "But ta be honest I have trouble understandin' mos' of 'em. They don'ts talk like Northern Negroes. It's like they swallows the words they say right as they sayin' 'em."

  "You think they're a burden on us?" I asked.

  "Don' see that they is. Why you axe me that?"

  "I heard some officers bitching about them. It just surprised me."

  "You mean big-time officers?"

  "One was a general." I laughed. "You can bet the other officers agreed with him."

  Josiah offered up his own laugh. "They damn well better agree wit him. They know what's good fer 'em. You gotta 'member, Jubal, they's white men we talkin' 'bout. You ain't never gonna hear mos' white men sayin' nothin' good 'bout black folk. We all jus' lazy, thievin' no-accounts."

  "That's whatcha are," Johnny chimed in. "We all know that. It's 'bout time ya fessed up ta it."
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  "Johnny Harris, I don' know how ya got ta be a preacher's son. Ya musta been adopted." Josiah threw back his head and laughed again.

  "You watch out," Abel joined in. "You'll give him ideas, an' afore long he'll be tellin' us how his momma found him floatin' down a river in a reed basket, an' how it's gonna be his job now ta lead us ta the promised land."

  "I'm jus' gonna do the will of my Father in heaven," Johnny intoned.

  * * *

  The sound of the first shot sent us all scrambling for our weapons. Sergeant Lacey came running across the compound. "The Rebs are after our ammunition!" he shouted. "They wanna do the same thing we did last night. Grab your rifles and head back to the wagons."

  We raced between rows of tents, staying low to make ourselves harder targets. When we reached the wagons three Rebs lay dead on the ground, along with two of our men who had been on guard duty. Lacey ran forward and began pulling fuses from the dynamite that had been stuffed in each wagon. As he reached the last wagon a shot rang out, spinning him around and throwing him to the ground. Johnny dashed past him and yanked the last fuse free and then threw himself down behind the wagon wheel.

  Abel and I saw the Reb who had shot Lacey at the same moment and we opened up together, firing our sidearms until we saw his body pitch forward.

  "Make sure he's dead," I ordered. "And watch out for others. I'm gonna see how bad Lacey was hit."

  I crouched down beside the sergeant. He was on his back and his eyes were wide and unseeing, his face filled with surprise as he stared up at an empty black sky. The minie ball had caught him on the left side of his chest, and I'd seen enough men on the battlefield to know that the exit wound in his back would be as large as my fist.

  A lieutenant came up beside me. "Is he dead, corporal?"

  "Yes sir."