River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4)

by Phillip Bryant

  As the water finally started to bubble in his cup, Philip opened the tin of Essence and beheld the dark, gooey innards. He wondered what he was about to partake of.

  “It’ll surprise you, Chaplain,” said Lieutenant Simms. “Just a tip full ’less you want one really strong shock.”

  Philip shook the tin a little. It looked like tar and had the same consistency. Philip dug the tip of his spoon into the mass. Molasses when it was old and used up had this same consistency, though it didn’t look like death. The other officers watched Philip as if he were the next item on the entertainment agenda; all save Neibling, who just stared into the fire and waited for his batman to finish fussing over the breakfast skillet.

  Haltingly, Philip dipped the spoon into the water of his cup and stirred. The water turned black, and the substance eroded off the spoon and of a sudden smelled vaguely like coffee. As he lifted the cup, several pairs of eyes followed its progress. Philip sniffed the contents. Essence smelled like it should have looked. It didn’t have the exact same aroma as fresh ground beans, but it certainly looked like the familiar brew.

  The lieutenants grinned as Philip took a tentative sip. It was weak, but it was coffee flavored. It needed more before it was going to be a complete cup, and Philip took another dab of the stuff and stirred it in. Another sip and he was satisfied. “I’ll be; a new way to have coffee.”

  “As strong or as weak as you like, but just needs hot water and you can have coffee in just a few moments without having to roast beans,” one of the lieutenants enthused.

  “Don’t seem normal,” the Young added. “Roasting the beans part of the life, just like cooking the rations before a march. But it takes up a lot less room in the baggage.”

  And more room for your whiskey, Philip thought and smiled inwardly. He handed the tin back to Lieutenant Simms.

  “I seen wagonfuls of these back in Nashville. They’s doling them out one to a mess with the regular ration issue. They’s several days’ worth of coffee in here, about several pounds worth of coffee beans roasted.” Simms shook his head, marveling. “I seen some things in this war, things what been invented to make a soldier’s life easier, and I can’t say that any I’ve seen compares to this little tin of coffee ready to drink.”

  The pocket testament would have been my first pick, Philip thought. He hadn’t brought along a supply of the testaments, but he knew many of the men had kept theirs when the Christian Commission visited Nashville.

  “I’d put them desecrated vegetables as one o’ them things that hasn’t made life or the stomach any easier,” Lieutenant Parker added. Flattened into a sheet with the juices squeezed out and then distributed in a brick to the soldiers, desiccated vegetables were supposed to get nutrients to the army without the hassle of having most of them spoil. They were supposed to be added to water to help create a stew. They tasted awful, looked worse, and were universally reviled by the men as tasteless and mean looking.

  “One such innovation that isn’t worth the mule hide that drags them along in the wagons,” Surgeon Young agreed. “Supposed to stave off scurvy and other deficiency diseases, but if you can’t get the men to eat them . . .”

  Young was still fussing over the list of things he was going to request of Director Gross when he suddenly looked up and decided it was time to beat a hasty retreat from the fire. The others looked up and grinned. The animation to his step toward the sinks was enough to tell everyone what ailed him.

  “Surgeon needs to take better care of himself instead of grousing about what supply of whiskey or vegetables we have,” Neibling noted. “If he’s too sick to care for our sick, that isn’t going to be any good.”

  The sinks were a patch of cedars off and away from where the 21st Ohio had halted the evening before, five hundred yards behind Stewart’s Creek and La Vergne. No proper sink had been dug, the thought of staying longer than an evening not taken into account.

  The fog was beginning to burn off now, and the brigades were looming out of the mist, gathered up in line of battle and stretching across the fields to either side of the Jefferson pike, stacked two deep. The picket posts of both sides stood a further distance in the still-murky east. The baggage trains were miles down the road, kept away for safety. Only those wagons needed to transport ammunition and other crucial supplies were allowed with the brigades. Food was even more miles away, the soldiers having to keep on their persons what they needed for the march.

  To Philip’s wonderment, the coffee was actually drinkable. It lacked the oily flavor that crushed grounds conveyed in the water but had the desired effect of waking the senses.

  “This little tin will will make getting coffee whenever and wherever feasible on the march,” Philip declared and drained his cup.

  “The quartermaster was ecstatic,” Neibling added, much to everyone’s surprise. “The room he used to have to make in the wagons for sixty pounds of coffee beans is now replaced by a crate or two of these tins, and the time needed for the men to cook three days’ rations is not taken up in roasting beans.”

  The acting colonel wasn’t much for small talk, nor anything else with familiarity. But as it was his role to see that the regiment made it from point to point in an efficient manner, the space that rations took up was a logistical concern for him. Having the wagons freed up for rounds without sacrificing the necessities was a boon all of the regiment could understand.

  “Ready,” the corporal of the mess announced, and the mean breakfast fare was distributed without ceremony, the corporal sliding portions off a plate onto each officer’s own. They ate it in silence. Field rations were never quite good after a month or more in stationary camp, where there was time to procure and consume a proper mess. The enemy had already stripped the countryside clean of wild game and farm animals, and those still occupying the farmhouses on the way had only what they needed to sustain themselves through a lean winter. These were secessionist farmsteads, and their menfolk were serving in the very battalions arrayed against the Union forces. The womenfolk were not too kindly disposed toward sharing foodstuffs with the invaders.

  Young hadn’t made it back by the time Philip finished his breakfast and excused himself from the mess. It was time to make the rounds of the companies and find out if the men required anything a chaplain might be disposed to offer.

  Even if someone did come up with some need, a rarity as it seemed to him, there was only one response that he could think of to answer it: prayer. There was some chance that some lonely soldier might one day ask for a good word from the Good Book, but as much as he wished they would, Philip also secretly hoped they would not. It might mean having to get to know a man.

  Some were writing letters as Philip wandered by; it was the soldier’s pastime to write and read when unable to gamble and consume alcohol. Philip paused but found little to do. Gossip and grousing was what the men wanted to partake of. He had little gossip to pass on, and grousing around the chaplain was apt to get one into trouble, as the subject of grousing was always the officers.

  Nods of recognition and a simple “morning” were his greeting. The faces around the fires were puffy with cold, and handkerchiefs were out dabbing runny noses. Coughing was the only conversation around most of the company fires. Huddled close to the coals, dirty and mud-spattered uniforms and overcoats drawn in close, the men vacantly watched the flames or quietly sipped something warm.

  “Chaplain, see you have made it through your first days in the field,” Wofford greeted Philip with an even tone. Wofford was not that excitable, and though his company fire was lively this morning, this was as warm as he got.

  “Indeed, the weather and the marching have not told on me brutally yet. The regiment hasn’t been on the edge of the push up the road yet, so I suspect we will be shortly.”

  “You findin’ you bored at all?” Lieutenant Chapel asked. One of the few officers who had the gall to openly think the regiment had little use for a chaplain at any time, Chapel shared a special bond with Wofford
and Philip—a tie created in the firestorm of Corinth.

  “Bored, no. We had some wounds from stray shots off and on. They took my attention helping Surgeon Young.” Philip had never been sure if Chapel liked or disliked him or if the man just lacked the tact necessary to keep his opinions to himself.

  “I seen you brought your nigger along, give him to ride your mount even,” Chapel went on. “Can’t say I agree to bringing these contrabands along, but the men appreciate their chaplain hoofing it with them.”

  Philip nodded. What was there to say? Yes, he’d brought Lucius along, and no, he didn’t want to be the high-and-mighty chaplain who was too soft to suffer hardships.

  “Can’t ride all day. Feet is made for walking.”

  “Word about Corinth has spread through the regiment, Chaplain, and what you did there,” Wofford said. “You in the regiment’s esteem now. Seems we can’t shake a Reb without hitting some fighting Methodist preacher. We got you and Colonel Moody hereabouts. Seems the brigade might be blessed.”

  “Only did what made sense,” Philip replied.

  “You, Canfield, and a few other officers brung their niggers along despite Neibling’s orders,” Chapel added, nonplussed by Philip’s ignoring his needling.

  “Why not? If we fighting this war to reunite the country and put an end to slavery, they should witness what it is that is happening for them. If an officer can retain his enlisted batman while on the march, an officer can retain his contraband body servant too.”

  “Still, they eating food and using space up in camp and will be a nuisance once the minié balls fly.”

  “They men. They know the risks and accept them just like you and I,” Philip replied. “It is a better life with us than in those camps, and they are employed doing something. I think that be the only reason they suffer the indignity of continued service—they haven’t been formally invited to contribute toward the war in any other way.”

  “Indignity?” Chapel blanched. “They can’t have it any better; that’s why they gather around any of our armies—for handouts and protection.”

  Lucius and several of the other Negroes were gathered around their own cook fire making breakfast for themselves. Theirs seemed to be one of the few fires in the regiment that had any animation at all, despite the chill and aching bones. Philip hadn’t asked Lucius to do anything for him this morning, but the man had already packed his kit and rolled his blankets and personal items away, and they were sitting neatly near his fire.

  The group with Lucius all wore light blue overcoats and light blue trousers, and with their battered slouch hats, they looked for all the world like soldiers themselves.

  “I suspect we get in close to the enemy, these niggers will wish they’d stayed behind in Nashville. They have it good at the moment, but if they fall into the hands of the enemy, they will wish they was back in that camp.”

  “You think they do not know that? Lucius could have balked at any time and gone back on his own volition. He chose to come along instead. They not cowards,” Philip replied with neither bitterness nor jocularity. Chapel was one of the few people to whom he could return frankness without offending.

  The others around the fire looked at Chapel and waited for the reply.

  Chapel nodded matter-of-factly and returned to his brooding over the coals of the fire. “There’s nothing that is going to bring these people into society. That is why it isn’t a war aim, least one I’ve become aware of. This proclamation by Lincoln is just for moral superiority. It makes nothing of the blood and toil that we spill against the Rebels. ‘Save the Union,’ that’s what filled the ranks—not nigger saving, or freeing for that matter.”

  “That proclamation go into effect in a few days,” Wofford broke in. “It got no teeth. If anything, it cost us a lot in desertions and resignations when Lincoln tried to make the war about something else entirely. But it is done, and now we’re here pushing the enemy out of Middle Tennessee.”

  “And encouraging more slaves to come and hang about the army and look for rations and protection, things we can barely supply.” Chapel looked pointedly at Philip. “Your contraband camp in Nashville? You telling me they better off in there than if they’d stayed on their plantations and farms?”

  “I can’t argue that,” Philip conceded. “But I didn’t call them to come. They came. They took the risk to escape and come and now they are here. Some of them wear a uniform of cast-off and worn-out clothing and look and act like soldiers themselves. Some even want to be soldiers proper. Union don’t mean a thing to them; you have to be free before it can.”

  “There are some what say it’s impossible to free them. They aren’t free now—the ones about our camps. They still have needs, and they can’t be set loose upon a public that neither cares for them nor wishes to take care of them,” Chapel replied. “That’s why I supported sending them to Liberia. They can go and have someone else take care of them.”

  “But those efforts weren’t serious, not in the way of any official policy toward freedmen.” Philip replied. “And besides, the Liberia answer was only for those who had already been freed. It didn’t address those still enslaved.” He was quiet a moment and added, “They are part of our fabric now. Anything that is going to come is going to have to encompass them, just as in England and France, who already outlawed slavery in their colonies some time ago. It is just something that must be done.”

  “Well, half of the regiment will fight for law and for Union, and the other half for this flight of fancy that the Negro can be worth living and dying for. Let them earn freedom, I say, and not on charity alone or menial service, but earn it, as every man has to once he steps out the door.”

  Chapel shoved a coal with his stick, causing a flurry of sparks to dance.

  “I know of several who would join up, today even, if they would be accepted to fight. Those who are here with us now are by choice taking that risk,” Philip replied.

  “So let them. Let them prove they are worth the sacrifice if freedom is what they want, but in they own regiments. Restore the Union first, then we’ll see about freedom.”

  “You think that they are going to stay in the South?” Wofford asked. “No, they are going to come north if they freed. Come north and congregate as they already do in the cities, and there you’ll have problems. Even if they have skills useful to industry, they will compete with the Irish and the Germans and the menial laborers for the pennies they will willingly work for. Then you’ll have problems. You free these people all at once if it is a war aim, as it appears to now be, and they will not be welcome in a beaten South; they will come north. Why you think we had so many leg cases after Antietam? A war to send these people north was not what the men volunteered for.”

  With another shove of his stick, Chapel added, “We should be sending the louts from Boston and Washington, those obnoxious abolitionists, into uniform and onto the line. Let them fight for what they preach and then see how long they continue to preach it.”

  Wofford snickered. “You know that would never do, Chapel. Them dandies in the Army of the Potomac is who run at Bull Run. They done had they fill and went back home after ninety days’ papers expired. They found the enemy didn’t run and is more committed to treason than they is to abolition.”

  Philip, his legs falling asleep, had tarried long enough. Though the conversation was always interesting around Wofford’s company fire, there was little more to be said. Lucius and the man at Corinth who called himself Seth were two men who had wished to change their circumstances, and they had elected to do it with their feet. Neither had claimed special right or charity just for being, but both were more than eager to do what they could to earn what they were given.

  Philip stood and silently bid the men adieu with a tip of his hand to his hat. He walked away on unsteady and tingly legs. There were other fires that needed visiting.

  * * *

  Two miles away along the lonely stretch of the Jefferson pike, Will Hunter was restless and
cold, two things one always fought to combat. The cold would not leave despite proximity to a fire, and restlessness agitated the mind. It was annoying to be waiting on something and have no control over it happening—something like, say, the enemy finally getting out of their blankets and pushing down the road. He was there to watch for them, but they were not doing their job of doing something to watch for.

  The artillerists of Bryant’s section of guns were gathered around their fires enjoying the time off. Will’s troopers held lonely vigil out in the advance, and those who were not being spelled out on the line were gathered around the fires warming up from four hours of mind- and finger-numbing nothingness.

  Very little was happening, and it was almost noon. No cloud of dust on the horizon to herald an approach by the enemy—if the dew and the drizzle would allow such a cloud to be raised—no sound of hooves or marching feet through fields or along the road to sound the alert. They had maintained their position from the night before expecting to have to resist slightly and then fall back, making some noise while doing so and keeping the mind active. Instead, they could be lolling in a camp somewhere and at least comfortable for all the action that had greeted them at first light.