Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  “I ain’t lettin’ you go,” he said, pulling at me, and I raised my fist up to punch my brother off me. Dash whined. All his instincts told him to protect his master, but he didn’t rightly know which one.

  “We make a scuffle, Billy Yank’ll come runnin’ over, and we’re both cooked,” I said.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Julius said, his eyes all red-rimmed. “War ain’t glory. It’s just some young fools soaked in blood an’ anger, trying to kill some other young fools drinkin’ up more of the same, all at some rich folks’ say-so. It ain’t like Pa taught us. There’s no heroes, or them that are ain’t heroes for some cause of Freedom. They just guys lookin’ out for one another, and a cannonball don’t care nothin’. Heroes die just as easy as anyone else.”

  “So you was afraid then and you afraid now,” I said.

  Julius swallowed hard. He nodded. “I was afraid for myself then. Now, I’m afraid for my brother.”

  It were one thing just thinkin’ Julius was afraid, but to hear him say it out loud, well, it was too much for me. How was I supposed to believe in heroes if even Julius couldn’t be one?

  “I can’t let you go fighting,” he told me.

  “But I got to,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear me —”

  “I heard you fine,” I said. “But me and Dash are going, and you’ll have to fight us both to stop us.”

  “You are stubborn as a mule,” Julius said, letting my wrist go. I pulled it to my chest and rubbed it.

  “And you mean as a snake for grabbin’ on me like that,” I said.

  “Well you ain’t goin’ alone,” Julius said, although it came out like a groan.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I said, you ain’t goin’ alone,” Julius repeated. “Lord forgive me, but I’m comin’ with you. Maybe I can talk some sense into the officers if I can’t talk none into you.”

  “But what about —?”

  “Don’t ask me no questions,” said Julius. “If I get to thinkin’ too much, I’m sure I’ll change my mind, and we ain’t got time to argue. Now let’s get movin’…. We got a long way to go to get around this field and get you cleaned off. No regiment in the whole Confederacy will take on a boy as filthy as you.”

  I smiled real big as we crept off through a stand of myrtle trees and took the long way round the field, because now I had my dog on one side of me and my big brother on the other and we was on our way to war together. I was giddy with excitement, and I didn’t care about none of the naysayers I’d heard: I was gonna prove myself in the heat of battle, and I was gonna show just how heroes still got made in this war.

  Too bad I only had half of that right.

  “Don’t say a word until we pass this Yankee camp,” Julius whispered to me. “They got lookouts and sentries, and I even heard of guard dogs that can smell as good as Dash can.”

  That made me nervous because I was sure we three smelled so powerful bad, even a dog with half Dash’s nose could smell us comin’.

  We crawled on our bellies past a lookout crouched in a trench on the far side of the fence. Dash growled a low-belly rumble, and we had to hush him up, but even so, the lookout heard it.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, and we was close enough to see his musket barrel swaying wildly in the moonlight.

  Dash growled again, and I had to clamp my own hand round his snout to get him to hush up. He looked at me with his big brown eyes all full of puzzlement once again. He thought he was supposed to growl at strangers, and he couldn’t understand how this time was different from other times we’d snuck about in the woods. But he was a good dog, so he hushed up when I told him so.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” the lookout muttered to himself and came scramblin’ from his hidey-hole, running back toward the main camp of Union soldiers. “They got wolves out there in the forest!” we heard him calling. “I heard a wolf growling at me close enough for spittin’!”

  Julius laughed at that, and I rubbed Dash’s head.

  “That dog’s smarter’n us both,” said Julius, and we crawled on until my brother figured we’d gone far enough past the camp to stand up and move double-time through the woods.

  I let Dash run ahead.

  “We can tell any other Union boys we meet that we’s just young citizens of Mississippi out huntin’ coons,” I explained.

  “But we got no guns, Andrew,” Julius said. “Even a Yank soldier green as springtime’ll know we ain’t huntin’ nothing.”

  “Well, I guess we better not run into any more Yank soldiers, then,” I said. It felt good to trade talk with Julius again, just like we was back home, running through the woods like old times.

  We crossed a small creek and Dash jumped and snatched at the water with his snout, sneezing and shaking off so that droplets splattered every which way. We all took a drink from that nice, cool water and kept on in the dark.

  “How long you reckon until we find a regiment from our side?” I asked Julius when I saw the first traces of pink from the rising sun in the east. We was climbing a big hill, and my legs ached and my chest burned, and I sure wanted to lie down an’ sleep for a bit before the morning came on.

  Julius stopped and sniffed the air, just like Dash would do on the hunt. He cocked his head and listened. “I’d say we’re just about there.”

  “Now, how could you —?” I started, but then I got to the top of the rise of that hill and saw starlight stretched out across the valley below, all twinklin’ and smoky on the ground. It weren’t starlight, but the blazing of a hundred campfires and torches, and with it the murmurings of thousands of men. The white of their tents shone, and the shadows of their big guns stretched as the sun came up on them. In the dimness, we made out the red and blue of the Confederate battle flag flappin’ in the breeze.

  “You never forget the sound of a military camp readyin’ for battle,” said Julius. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

  “You think they’re readyin’ for battle?” I swallowed hard.

  “They ain’t half a day’s march from the Union boys we passed,” he said. “You can be sure there’s gonna be a battle today.”

  “Well, then we best get down there,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt at that moment. Julius didn’t feel no need to pretend.

  “We can just keep on going,” he said. “Sneak around like we done before and head on back to Ma and Pa. They’ll be worried for both of us.”

  I had half a mind to say yes to that, to show up at Cousin Thomas’s with Julius and Dash, and that’d make me enough of a hero in their eyes, but how could I ever face myself with pride again if I snuck through the night just like a thieving raccoon with stolen scraps? If I was gonna be a hero, I had to go into battle, and I couldn’t let Julius talk me out of it, even though I sorely wanted to be talked out of it. I felt like Dash with his two masters, though both of them was me arguin’ with myself.

  “We got a duty to do before we go home,” I said, and I started picking my way down the hill with Dash at my side. Julius groaned and followed me, and we didn’t make it far before a sentry of the army of Tennessee stopped us and demanded our business.

  “Private Julius Burford with the Fifth Mississippi Infantry,” Julius said. “I got lost a while back and just found my way again.”

  The sentry looked at him real doubtful.

  “This here’s my brother, Andrew,” he added. “And he come to join up. Now I know he’s too young for it, so we best send him on his way.”

  The sentry laughed at that. “We gettin’ ready to face down an army of Yankees, and you want to send a strong boy away? You really did get lost, Private Burford!” He shook his head. “You best go see Sergeant Davis. I’ll take you in.”

  The sentry escorted us down the rest of the way into the camp, and no one took much notice of us walking in, two dirty boys and a dirty dog. The noise of the camp had picked up louder as the fires was snuffed out and soldiers was getting ready to m
arch.

  “You there!” a voice called, and we all turned to see an officer on horseback. I recognized him right away as the cavalryman who’d complimented Dash a few days back.

  The sentry saluted him, and the officer pointed at me.

  “You’ve come back after all, boy,” he said. “I’d know that dog anywhere. I see you picked up another companion and a whole lot of dirt.” He laughed at us.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “This here’s my brother, Julius…. The dirt, well …”

  “The army don’t mind dirt, boy!” the cavalry officer said. “You come to join us?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and I heard a low whine that at first I thought was Dash, but then I knew it was Julius.

  He stepped up and spoke. “Sir,” he said. “My brother here’s but twelve years old. I think he’s too young to be fightin’. I’m ready to take up arms to fill a place, if he might go on his way home to our Ma an’ Pa. They lost their home in Meridian, see?”

  “I am too old enough to fight!” I yelled. “Uh, sir,” I added, and then saluted. Then I blushed because I didn’t know what was the proper thing to do. That made the cavalryman laugh again.

  “We need drummers. And a dog like that ’un marching out front is sure to strike fear into them Yankee hearts!” The officer whooped. “And you!” He pointed at Julius, who stood rigid. “You look old enough to fight. You got any military experience?”

  “I — uh,” Julius hesitated. “I fought with the Fifth Mississippi at Chickamauga,” he said.

  “Why ain’t you with them now?”

  “My service was done,” he said, and though it were a lie, I guess it were small one since he was back to fight now.

  “Well, welcome back, son! You do your people proud to reenlist!” the officer said. Julius didn’t look so proud to get the praise that didn’t rightly belong to him, nor to reenlist, but that officer on the horse didn’t give him much choice. “Listen here, Corporal,” the officer addressed the sentry who was escortin’ us. “You take these boys to Sergeant Davis and tell ’em Colonel Jessup says to get ’em outfitted quick. They’ll march with us today, and by nightfall they’ll be men!”

  He whooped and rode off, and the corporal looked at both of us and shrugged. “Come on, men.”

  He motioned us to follow, and before the sun was full risen in the sky, I was standin’ there in a gray tattered uniform of the Confederate Army that’d once belonged to another boy. I didn’t asked what’d happened to him. I was used to secondhand clothes. Dash sat at my heel and Julius stood before me in a uniform of his own, just about as tattered and worn from someone else’s fightin’ as mine was. He had a musket and a bayonet and a powder bag, and his eyes was ringed with worry.

  “You got what you wanted, Andrew,” he said, real sad. “But you gotta make me a promise. When the shootin’ starts up, you take Dash and you run. Don’t be brave. Just run. No one’ll be aiming to hurt you, ’cause even Union folks know what a young’un looks like, but hot lead’ll be flyin’ everywhere, and it don’t care how old you are. So you run and I’ll find you after, got it?”

  “I ain’t runnin’ no place,” I said. “I come to see the elephant, and that’s what I’m gonna do. You want to run again, you go right ahead. I won’t chase you down this time. But you want to come home with your head high, you’ll fight too.”

  “You got no idea what you’re sayin’, little brother.” He shook his head, and some ruddy-cheeked sergeant shouted down at him to form ranks. He stepped up to give me a hug, but I didn’t want no hug right then, so we just shook hands.

  Then I took my place at the front of the line, and even though I couldn’t see ’em, I felt the hot breath and ready excitement of a thousand men lined up behind me. The colonel on horseback gave me the signal, and I beat my drum with a rat-tat-tat to start the march, but I dropped a drumstick and nearly got trampled by the men behind as I bent to pick it up. Dash barked, and that kept a space around me.

  I did my best to keep the beat as we marched along the road, so that the soldiers would know the pace, but drumming was harder than it looked. My thoughts raced, trying to remember all the different ways of hittin’ the drums that the officers had told me, and what they meant and when to do ’em, but it was a jumble in my thoughts. Dash stayed right by my side, and I was glad to have him there. We was on the way to the fight of our lives, and by the end of the day, nothing was going to be the same.

  I’d heard the saying “dog tired” before, but never before that morning did I truly understand it. My feet hurt, my legs was sore from marching, and my hand stung from drummin’. Dash stole what sleep he could whenever we stopped, but I was too excited to sleep. I found Julius a ways back in the marching. He was chewing on some hard tack, which I never ate before, and he offered me some.

  It was dry and crumbly in my mouth, like the worst biscuit I ever had, and I gave it back to him.

  “You remember your promise,” he said to me, and I didn’t say nothing back because I never made a promise to run away. He just wanted me to.

  We marched on into the afternoon. Dappled sunlight lay upon the earth, and the air smelled clean and cool. The colonel told me to stop my drumming, and we marched in silence through the trees, stepping over shrubs and logs and tangled branches.

  It was a peaceful day. I listened to birds singing, and I felt almost like I could take a nice nap out there in the woods.

  Suddenly, an order came for the march to stop, and I whacked my drum as best I could to tell ’em. The line spread out behind me like a fan opening up as lieutenants and sergeants shouted orders. Men crouched beside trees, their muskets raised into the forest. The birds stopped singing like they knew something was afoot.

  Other men, strangers, popped up out of the woods and gave reports of Union forces, then vanished again just as soon as they’d appeared. Scouts and guerillas were like ghosts.

  After an age, we heard the first pops of fire from skirmishers somewhere in front of us. The smell of smoke, tangy and tasting of metal, drifted through the woods our way.

  “Here we go … here we go … here we go …” a man at my rear mumbled over and over. Men dug little trenches with their feet or picked up stones from the ground and studied them like a stone could tell ’em if it were lucky just by looking at it. I patted Dash just to calm my own nerves. No worry is too great that pettin’ a dog’s head can’t calm it.

  We heard a terrible noise coming our way. The colonel shouted the order to forward march, and I banged my drum and we marched straight through the forest onto a smoky field. I couldn’t see nothing at first. The field was covered in a thick morning mist, ’cept it weren’t morning no more, and the mist was the smoke of cannon fire.

  Through the haze, I made out a line of blue across the field, blue hats and blue coats, and then a whistle of artillery fire overhead. It landed in the woods way back, and there was a thundersome noise as it exploded.

  “When I give the order to charge,” the colonel told me, “you beat that drum just as loud and long as you can, hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And once the charge has started, you hang back to help carry the wounded. That’s your job, son. Understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, wondering if I’d get the chance to fight. Standing across the battlefield with an army at my back, I didn’t feel afraid like I thought I would. The fear melted away like river ice in spring. It was replaced by a rush of energy.

  I wanted to mix it up with the Yankees that’d brought such misery to my family, turning Julius into a coward and burning our house to cinders and getting my head all confused about right and wrong and good and bad. I wanted revenge. I was, truth be told, excited for it.

  Men grunted and coughed. Bayonets clattered into place on the barrels of muskets. Dash panted beside me. At the colonel’s signal, I let loose a rolling rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat on the drums, and behind me I heard the officers shout as one: Charge!

  The great swell
behind me almost knocked me down. Men yelled and ran, a rush of men with the colonel on horseback in the lead, galloping across the field. The earth around his horse kicked up with explosions of dirt. He just whooped it up loud, waving his hat in the air to rally the men.

  The men rushed behind him, screaming as the cannonballs came crashing in. A line of Union soldiers popped up from the ground where they’d been lying in wait. They opened fire with a roar and a puff of smoke. The whole first line of our attack fell. I was glad Julius was farther back in the charge.

  I didn’t see him through the smoke, but I knew he was out there. All I saw was tongues of fire, like dragons licking the smoke, and soon, gray or blue was impossible to tell. My eyes burned. My mouth was dry, and I sweated rivers. The whole earth shook with the blast of guns and the cries of men gettin’ hit. Men fallin’ and screamin’ out all sound the same, whether they come from North or South, whether they was slave owners or abolitionists, slaves themselves or free men. A cry of pain don’t have no politics.

  I stood by the trees, where the cannons wheeled up and sent mighty blasts toward the Union lines, and my ears rang. Poor Dash cowered from the noise, and I had to comfort him.

  I felt a mighty fool standing back with nothing to do, but just then the colonel emerged from the smoke, riding back toward me. His ear was bleeding where a musket ball had torn the top of it off, but he looked like he was having a good old time.

  “The line is breaking!” he shouted back at some of the other officers who hadn’t rushed into the fight like he had. He pointed at me. “You feelin’ brave today, son?”

  “Yes, sir!” I shouted over the din.

  “Well, we need you to charge out there and drum the troops. They can’t hear my orders, but they’ll hear your drummin’. And if they don’t, we’ll have your dog round ’em up like sheep.”

  “He ain’t a sheepherdin’ dog!” I said, but the colonel didn’t hear me, just rode back into the smoke so I had to run to keep up.

  I can’t rightly say what I was thinking then, or tell all the sights I seen. I ran in and drummed the lines to order, and all the time my eyes burned and my face ran with sweat. I looked out for Julius, but I couldn’t see him. I saw other boys just the same age as he was. I saw ’em crouched down and loading muskets with burning fingers as they fired and cussed. I saw others praying and lying on their bellies, covering their heads and hopin’ it’d be over soon. And I saw some dead.