South of Shiloh

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South of Shiloh Page 14

by Chuck Logan


  “What if you’re wounded?”

  “Act wounded, groan and roll around,” Red Beard answered. “Support will collect you. The fallen and the wounded will not return to the unit until the event is finished.”

  “Makes it more real, I guess,” someone said.

  After the momentary lull, firing had started again on the right, beyond the screen of trees. Officers and sergeants now worked up and down the line like border collies, snapping orders. As the gunfire swelled on the right, the skirmishers rose and stalked toward the next line of trees. The three companies lurched forward in line, stamping through the knee-high brush.

  Then more shouts and another halt to dress the ranks. Paul used a kerchief to wipe moisture from his spectacles. He toed his shoes in the thick grass, trying to ungunk the red gumbo clotted to the soles. His wool trousers were soaked to the knees from the wet brush and knotted with burrs. Grasshoppers darted in the weeds.

  “Jesus.” Sound of a hand slapping a neck. “Can you believe this shit? A mosquito.”

  The slap echoed away in a startling moment of quiet. Paul heard the tick of insects, the drip of condensed mist draining from the leaves overhead, and the distant cry of birds. Then he jerked alert as a ragged pop of muskets and the deeper boom of more cannons sounded beyond the woods to the right. Like a tangible echo of the gunfire, a cloud of white smoke combined with the fog and flowed through the trees. Plump with humidity, the white tide drifted no higher than a man’s waist.

  “Check them out. On the right, two o’clock, about two hundred yards,” Beeman said.

  Paul squinted into the smoke. A blur of movement congealed into three Confederates, who waded hip-deep in the pooling mist. Rifles at port arms, they scrambled through the trees to a swell of higher ground, so their bodies came into full view. They wore a mélange of hobo color, mismatched gray, brown, and green, with blanket rolls across their chests and beehive slouch hats on their heads. A shudder of anticipation snaked down the line. Men instinctively raised their muskets.

  Paul’s heart pounded as he saw the Rebels clearly for the first time. He squeezed his rifle, raised it to his shoulder, and was astounded at how easily he had come to see other men as targets.

  “Reb scouts, that’s their picket line,” Beeman said.

  At about a hundred fifty yards, the three Rebs knelt behind a log and fired their muskets at the advancing blue skirmishers. Paul, getting into the mood of the thing, aimed his musket at the three soldiers. An odd sensation tickled up his spine when he tried to steady the notch in his rear sight on a man in a gray jacket and brown slouch hat.

  “Bang,” Paul said. When he lowered the heavy rifle, his breath came in excited gasps and a flush of sweat damped his hands. He turned to Beeman. “Do you think I could have hit that guy?”

  Beeman shrugged. “The leaf sights on the ’61 Springfield range out to five hundred yards, suppose to be lethal out to a thousand.”

  “I think I could have hit that guy,” Paul said under his breath, turning away from Beeman’s quiet gaze.

  The Rebs retreated as the skirmish line plunged into the trees. “At the route step, MARCH,” an officer yelled, swinging his sword. The three companies trudged forward, crossed the clearing, stamped through the last stand of trees, and stopped at the edge of the woods. A cheer broke out to the left, where figures in blue shook their rifles triumphantly around a cannon and Reb prisoners on a gravel road.

  Through gaps in the foliage, Paul could see it all in one dizzy sweep. Just like Beeman described it: a long slope with three cannons on the crest, toy-size in the distance. Rebel flags waved in the smoke next to a low white house with slim pillars. Below the house, a rail fence curved across the slope, with men massed thick behind it. Then clusters of other men were running around the end of the fence, forming into line up the slope from where Paul now stood hidden. Atop the hill, in front of the house, Paul saw a monumental figure in white granite catch a flash of sunlight.

  “See, over on the right,” Beeman said, pointing to several dozen gray-clad men running back toward the slope. Some of them dashed for groups of horses being held by mounted men and hoisted themselves into the saddles. “Their skirmishers and cavalry are falling back from the creek. Luring the main Yankee body forward. ’Cept now we’re gonna pop out of the woods to the rear of their flank.”

  Cheers, a clatter of equipment, and a persistent roll of drums mingled with the gunfire as the main Union force emerged from the thickets across the field.

  “Lookit those fellas, taking their blue suits pretty serious,” Beeman observed as the ranks of “galvanized” Southerners in blue uniforms marched out from the thick brush in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder. At the edge of the trees a group of men maneuvered an artillery caisson into place, wheeled a cannon. Then several horsemen in blue cantered into the pasture. One of them rode a prancing black horse and held a fluttering American flag. Never, until this moment, had Paul really felt the sorcerer’s tug of that bit of cloth.

  He touched the red bandanna wrapping his head, the pain totally forgotten as he felt his thoughts quicken. He tried to summon Stephen Crane’s words he knew by heart, describing the youthful protagonist in his story reacting to men assembled for battle. Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage had been wide-eyed—he was going to look at war, the red animal—war—the blood-swollen god…

  Paul shook his head. It didn’t work like that. No room here for flowery talk. All you could think about now was not screwing up, keeping your place in line, getting the gun up, and pulling the trigger when the time came.

  Doing your job.

  He glanced left and right. Probably how it had actually looked. The officers conferred; the sergeants paced, hounding the ranks, tightening the companies.

  “It’s really something,” he said to Beeman, raising his voice because the Yanks across the field had stopped to fire a long, crashing volley to send the Reb skirmishers on their way. The blue lines vanished in a cloud of white smoke. “I mean, no plastic. No cell phones. No fucking traffic jams.”

  He looked up into a sultry gray sky uncut by wires. Mercifully empty of aircraft. Only a few starlings wheeled above the treetops. The air was a dank brew of sweat and filthy wool, wet leather, black powder smoke, and a barn odor of horses and wet grass. He gripped the heavy rifle tighter and took a deep breath.

  “The air must have been different back then,” he said. “Imagine breathing air with no radio or television signals in it. No electronics. No PCBs. No millions of internal combustion engines dumping exhaust. No nuclear bomb had ever exploded…”

  Beeman cuffed him on the shoulder with his forearm. “Slow down, boy, you’re gonna OD on the period rush.”

  Paul said happily, “Christ, think of it. Thousands of men who never thumbed a remote to escape a TV commercial.”

  It occurred to him that the men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in this pasture, presenting a wall of living flesh to shot and steel…had never considered purchasing life insurance.

  A bugle sounded like a cheerful summons to mass suicide.

  “They’re formin’ up there, boys,” an officer shouted. “I do believe they’re coming this way. We’re gonna surprise their Reb asses.”

  How many, Paul couldn’t be sure. A double line of yellowish gray…

  So that’s…butternut, he thought.

  The advancing ranks were partially obscured by the foliage at the edge of the woods. A hundred men, maybe more, tramping down the hill, skirting a copse of trees to the left. A red flag waved in the center of the line.

  “SHOULDER ARMS. DRESS THE LINE,” Red Beard bellowed.

  The blue lines coiled tighter, connected at the shoulders.

  “FORWARD…MARCH.”

  No route step now. They set off at a measured tread. Metronome men, crisscrossed with black leather straps, joined at the shoulders in a trundling, steel-quilled blue porcupine. Paul flinched when the cannon shattered the heavy air. He did better when the second cannon
fired, and he didn’t even blink when the third one let go.

  They cleared the last of obscuring trees, coming out at an angle a little to the left of the approaching Reb formation.

  “AT THE RIGHT OBLIQUE, MARCH,” the colonel shouted.

  In unison, the blue line shifted direction forty-five degrees.

  “Cool,” someone said in the rear rank. “We’re gonna catch them on the end before they can adjust.”

  “STEADY BOYS,” an officer shouted.

  Paul marched forward, trying to maintain elbow contact with Beeman on the right, the Ohioan on the left. Somewhere in back a drummer banged a rolling cadence.

  Paul thought, in real life they would have fixed bayonets. Men would be falling now, hit by musket fire. The haze hovering around the base of the slope bristled with rifle barrels of the advancing Confederates. Now, off in the smoke, the damn band started up, playing “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” On the hill, a shudder of flame and smoke erupted along the fence.

  The Reb formation was starting to turn toward them. Not more than a hundred yards away. Paul could make out their faces.

  “HALT. RIGHT DRESS.”

  The moving rows of upright musket barrels stopped. Tense, controlled sidestepping, drawing up elbow-tight.

  “FIRE BY BATTALION,” Colonel Burns bellowed.

  Paul’s right foot moved back, instep snugged to left heel, and formed a right angle. Up and down the line, hammers clicked back to full-cock. On either side, rifle barrels appeared tilted up at eye level as the rear rank took the ready position. Paul checked the percussion cap. Still there.

  Looking over his barrel, he saw the gray line scrambling to face them, raising their own rifles.

  “AIM.”

  Paul smoothly raised the heavy rifle and stuffed the butt into his shoulder. Now the barrels to either side of his head extended into full firing position. The man in back of Paul rested his left forearm on Paul’s right shoulder. Paul put his sights on the red-blue flutter of the rebel flag, then lowered the sight picture to the chest of the color-bearer. Christ, aiming a rifle at a man and I never shot a rifle for real in my life, he thought. This is going to be loud.

  “FIRE!”

  Paul yanked the trigger and flinched as the gray line of men disappeared in a blast of flame-laced white smoke.

  I did it. He grinned, ears ringing. I didn’t screw up. I shot my gun. Suddenly, he had the sensation of almost being alone. The battlefield had constricted down to a tiny tunnel of smoke containing the men on either side. Then…hey! He pitched forward, jolted from the rear as the man in back of him took a hit, dropped his rifle, and tumbled, bouncing roughly off Paul’s side and collapsing heavily to the matted vegetation at Paul’s feet.

  “LOAD.”

  With the fallen man crowding his feet, Paul moved reflexively to reload. As he drew his rammer, plunged it down the muzzle, and returned it, he saw several other soldiers tumble forward and sprawl facedown on the ground. Through an opening in the smoke he saw that four or five Rebs had also flopped down.

  He turned to Beeman, who was not loading, just going through the motions. “You’re not shooting?”

  Beeman smiled amiably. “Outta respect to my great-great-grandpa Matthew, I’ll pass. You go on, don’t mind me.”

  As he lifted the rifle to the ready position, Paul nodded at the casualty at their feet and widened his eyes.

  Then he reached for another percussion cap. Fingers surer this time, he seated it and crimped down the wings with his thumb. Just then the “dead man” shifted position, and his bayonet scabbard jabbed into Paul’s ankle and got caught in the uppers of his brogan.

  Paul grimaced and turned, lowering his rifle with his right hand, starting to bend forward to reach down with his left, to free the bayonet. He paused and stared at his flushed left hand, the veins plumped up thick in a grime of sweat, streaks of dirt. He saw the yellow wedding band circling his finger in startling detail and reflected: I guess I did bring one thing on the field that’s not period-accurate…

  “FIRE.”

  The roar of musket fire boomeranged into onrushing black that slammed into the left side of Paul Edin’s neck and tore through the carotid artery and wrenched the image of his wedding ring from his eyes. He didn’t feel his body smash sideways into Beeman. His eyes took a few last pictures going down.

  Tilt of gray sky and blur of green grass; porous blue wool, black muddy leather. Red dirt.

  “I thought you didn’t get hit…” Beeman started to say. Then he recoiled, his eyes going wide as the spray of bright arterial blood splashed across his chest, hands, face.

  “JESUSFUCKINCHRIST!”

  For a moment nothing happened. Smoke obscured the blue line, the Rebs had fired another volley, and more men whose fate cards had come up were dropping.

  “MAN DOWN. WE GOT A MAN DOWN. MEDIC UP,” Beeman screamed.

  “What? WHAT?” Red Beard lurched frantic through the numb formation, flinging men and rifle barrels aside.

  Beeman dropped to his knees, clawing his police radio from his haversack, and yelled into it. “SHUT IT DOWN. We got a man down for real…fuck do I know…hit by gunfire. Yeah, hit bad. In the throat. Deputy Beeman, I’m with the casualty at the far left end of the Union line. Start an ambulance.”

  Beeman’s eyes locked on Paul’s.

  “Hang in there, Paul, we got help coming,” Beeman shouted in a shaky voice, grimacing at the awful gurgle coming from Paul’s throat. Eyes fluttering, whole body fluttering, his breath hollow, feathery. Jesus there’s a lot of blood.

  Beeman’s hands were slippery with it as he tore packs of compresses from his haversack, ripping through the plastic covers, pressing the pads of white gauze down on the blood welling from the ragged neck. Pressure point? Where, for a throat wound? Collarbone?

  The sun had come out, because Red Beard’s shadow fell across Paul’s shrunken white face.

  “Get an EMT, goddamn it,” Beeman yelled at the sergeant with pointed fury. Red Beard stumbled off. Fingers fumbling, Beeman gripped Paul’s limp hand.

  “Hold on there, buddy…”

  Beeman watched the light leak slowly from Paul’s eyes, the bloody bubbles turn to faint slush on his slack lips. No more air. I’m losing him. His eyes scoured up the slope to the reloading Rebs, then left, to the edge of the copse of woods, instinctively looking for the source of the fire. Where are you, fucker? Then, leaning over the bloody compress with one hand, holding Paul’s hand with the other, he noticed that the man from the rear rank, who had taken a hit, was on his hands and knees, vomiting into the grass. Jesus, everybody was just standing around numb, in shock. So Beeman bellowed a reflex command never given on an early Civil War battlefield. But he’d yelled it a couple of times for real, as a young army sergeant in Kuwait in ’91:

  “SPREAD OUT, GODDAMN IT! HIT THE DECK, TAKE COVER!”

  16

  CANNONS STILL FIRING UP ON THE HILL DROWNED out the loud pounding of Mitch’s heart. Can’t see. Did I get him? Breathing heavily, he strained to see into the drifting clouds of smoke. The extreme right end of the blue formation, where he had fired on Beeman, had come apart and now milled in confusion. The chaos rippled through the blue uniforms from right to left, stalling the center. Officers and sergeants waved their arms as if trying to stop the din of musketry and cannons. Others raced up and down the ranks.

  Then, after a last crash of muskets, he could hear muffled shouts. Several officers had their hands cupped to their ears, yelling in cell phones.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Mitch mouthed impatiently as he crouched, groggy with excitement, sliding the rifle into the protective canvas sleeve. Then he got down on his hands and knees, folding the poncho, tucking it away, and checked the ground to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind. He plucked up a cigarette butt, pulled a loop of yarn from a branch he’d hung it on to test the wind.

  Finally the smoke cleared enough for him to make out four or five blue uniforms stoop over, then hoist a flop
ping burden. The playact panorama was shattered by a wailing siren. A blue-and-white ambulance, lights flashing, started bumping across the field. Closer in, Mitch saw the gray reenactors rise from behind the fence, craning their necks forward. A last doleful musket popped. The siren tocsin froze hundreds of men in place as they looked around for information.

  Several mounted men galloped across the field, followed by a man in a blue police uniform racing a four-wheeler. They converged with the ambulance toward the right end of the line where men sat, their heads in their hands. Some stood like statues in the tatters of smoke. Others wandered. Near the scrum of blue gathered around the casualty, some men had started with clubbed rifles toward the now-confused gray line that had come out to challenge the flank attack. Other men in blue restrained them.

  Mitch took no great pleasure from the mayhem. Necessity, he thought, and then, with fleeting cynicism, What y’all come down here for, to experience the Civil War…Now you’ll have something to talk about.

  Men dressed in gray were now climbing over the snake-rail fence, descending the slope. Some of them assumed the familiar twenty-first century posture, hands raised to their ears, hunched to their cell phones.

  Okay. It’s time to get out of here.

  He backed out of the nest, using a fallen branch to smooth out the tramped leaves and erase his imprint in the muddy earth. After he tossed the branch aside, he slung the cased rifle over his shoulder, then turned his back and quickly walked away. The trees closed in, walling off the scene below. A minute into the woods, and even the alarm of the siren started to recede.

  He had a three-hour walk to get back to his truck on the fire trail. Up on the hill Dwayne would be watching through binoculars from the artillery position. Darl would take his time, then thread through the confusion to the Reb camp parking area. It was going to work. In mid-thought, he froze at a scurry in the brush. Squirrel maybe?

  After a few more steps he stopped and heard it again.

 

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