Lyman kneeled at the edge of the sunken railroad. He fired down. Kneeled, fired, tore, loaded, fired. Trading life for seconds of glory. Two Rebs jumped up. Lyman shot one in the head. The other put his musket in Lyman’s face. Lyman put his hands up. Disappeared over the bank.
How could they not kill not kill not kill not kill…
25
Cousin dragged me back to the shelter of the trees. My wound bled copiously but no bones were broken. I was embarrassed that I had screamed and embarrassed that it got me out of the fight. Merrick said, “Jesus, Ro, it saved our lives.” That much was true. Wounded men crawling to the woods were shot. Men who reached the sunken railroad were killed or captured. They traded their lives for glory or fury or madness or whatever men find at the supreme moment. Life, all past, all future, for a minute of heroism. Was it choice? Destiny? Lyman Houghton wouldn’t fail to do what had to be done. That was Lyman. He was born to it. Others? If Cousin hadn’t taken me back to the woods, would he have sat at the sunken railroad, firing and loading, until he was killed?
That night, I lay on a blanket on a hill covered with wounded. Merrick was with me. Captain Ferguson gave permission. The captain had been hit in the arm but not bad. The Company’s other officers, Balch, Hollis and Corse, were dead. Colonel Barney was dead. Company K had left his body behind the Reb lines.
Cousin sat on my blanket, checked my forehead, wet my bandages, and smoked his short pipe. We watched the acres fill with wounded. Cousin made sure I stayed far from the surgeons. The moaning and crying didn’t stop, nor did the stream of wounded. Men lay on straw put down by nurses, mostly women. Over and over, men cried, “Let me die! God, let me die!” as chloroform wore off and they woke, legless or armless, in this place of pain. We watched hundreds of points of light, candles carried by nurses or men looking for comrades, flicker in the night breeze. One tipped candle and thousands on straw, unable to move, would burn to death. I couldn’t get that out of my mind. Neither could Merrick.
After midnight, I said, “Cousin, when you pulled me out, all I wanted was a wound bad enough to go home.”
“You ain’t that lucky, Ro.”
“Didn’t think about nobody but me,” I said.
“Who you supposed to think about?” Merrick said.
“I just wanted to get out,” I said.
“You stood, Ro. You stood.”
I closed my eyes. “Easy next to you.”
“I was scared,” said Merrick, watching lights move. “Scared of losing an arm or leg. Scared of not seeing Pa and my stepma again.”
“Don’t think about that.”
“I didn’t till you got hurt,” Merrick said.
“I used to think we’d win and go home. That ain’t the way home.”
“Home is a arm or leg,” said Merrick.
Ambulances queued at the bottom of the hill. Lanterns hung at their sides. I tried not to think about the men waiting for surgeons.
“We used to wonder about being brave,” said Merrick. “Never thought about having a arm or leg cut off. Never thought the surgeons’d be worse than the line. You was lucky, Ro.”
“If our fathers saw this hillside, they wouldn’t worry about bravery. They’d worry about us staying alive.”
“Brave don’t have much to do with it,” said Merrick.
“Father wants me to be brave for him,” I said. “He thinks he’s a coward. It goes back to that time he was whipped.”
“Brave,” said Merrick, watching candles move like fireflies down the hill. “My father was brave with that slaver. When he had his shotgun. He don’t know this. Uncle Mason says we pay the debt for slavery. He’s right. He just don’t know how big the debt is.”
“He talks,” I said. “We pay.”
“That ain’t his fault, Ro.”
“I saw slavery’s face. Gib showed it.”
Merrick looked at the points of light. “Most of them lights is carried by women. Them women just come. They wasn’t with regiments I know of. We got our surgeon and men nurses, but we ain’t got enough. Where’s the men to nurse the wounded?”
“Merrick, Father told me I was a coward. He said it so I’d volunteer. He thinks I came for him. I didn’t, I came for other reasons. Mostly Gib. If I’m killed, I don’t know how Father’ll get over it.”
“You’d a come anyway, Ro. Uncle knows that. There’s no getting away from this war. You’re no coward. You proved that yesterday.”
“Do you worry about your Pa?” I said.
Merrick looked at the clouds in the night sky. “Four acres of wounded men. Three, four thousand more coming. I don’t want him to see this. Let him believe in glory. Let him believe brave makes a difference.”
“I think about Helen. About children we…”
“Just get hit every battle, so I can take you out.”
I smiled. “I’ll try.”
“Maybe you’ll take me out,” said Merrick.
“You’re invincible,” I said. “It’s courage.”
“It’s luck. Maybe it’s ‘cause there’s nobody I want to see.”
“Your Pa.”
Merrick nodded. “Everybody worries about Ma and Pa.” He looked at the clouds, then the lights on the hillside. “Don’t worry about Mason, Ro. He’s a good man. He took men to Canada. He ain’t just talk. He took your friend Gib.”
“When we’re marching and thirsty and miserable, I think about Gib walking from Virginia. A man walks all that way to put his head in Lake Ontario and call it freedom. Jesus, Merrick, after what we seen, I’d be a slave before I’d do this again. I’m a coward.” I was a coward for more than that. I thought about telling Merrick about Betsey, about the child growing inside her, but I didn’t want to hear what he might say.
“Don’t matter if you a coward,” said Merrick. “You seen the elephant.”
Seen the elephant. Been on the line. I’d seen the elephant. “Wish I hadn’t.”
“Sleep,” Merrick said.
The next morning the Union Army started back to Washington. I was lightheaded and rode on an artillery caisson. Merrick walked beside me. He was one of eight men in Company G not wounded. No one talked. We were glad to get away from the hillside. We smelled men who shit themselves and we smelled the horrid odor of gangrene. We smelled death. The Army didn’t have enough boxcars or ambulances. No one had foreseen this. The Union had lost at Bull Run again—five times the casualties. We left at dawn. Women still opened bales, spread hay, tended the wounded. Young women nurses were frowned upon. The Army wanted plain nurses the age of soldiers’ mothers. Many, neither plain nor old, were here.
As the caisson moved out of the city of wounds, I saw a woman bend over a man with no legs. She dressed his stumps. Wounds must be dressed, but who could dress so many? The legless soldier gave the woman a look of pure gratitude, pure love. She wiped his face and gave him water. She stood as the caisson went by and I saw her in the pale light. Her black hair was parted in the middle, her cloak and skirt covered with dark stains. She must have been up all night and didn’t stop tending, dressing, wiping. Her face was broad, unlike Helen’s. I saw her only a few seconds, but her face touched me like Lincoln’s. Humility. Strength. Here was a woman, one of dozens, who didn’t have to be here, didn’t have to see men blown apart, turned to meat, dying in the dew.
Who were they?
We heard later that a call had gone out in Washington City for volunteers to nurse the wounded from Bull Run. Government clerks—men, not women—went. They brought spirits to ease the suffering of the wounded. Most eased their own and bribed drivers to take them back to Washington.
26
Captain Ferguson rode up to the caisson. He pulled Merrick aside, gave him a bundle, spoke to the driver and rode off. The caisson slowed and pulled through a copse of oaks and beeches to a stream. The ragged line of the 24th kept going.
“Got to water the damn horse,” the driver told the last of Company G. No one answered or joined us at the stream.
Merrick took the bundle, said, “Come on, Ro,” and handed me a captured Confederate musket.
I followed, a bit unsteady, upstream, and up a knoll to a clump of birches.
“You’re gonna make sergeant.”
“What?”
Merrick took out a 24th battle flag. It was a new blue flag with a large NY and a bold 24. The colors. The sacred colors. Men rally to them. I did. Men die for them. The colors were the Regiment’s soul.
Merrick threw the colors on the ground. He jumped, stomped, kicked and trampled the blue flag. Merrick wiped his face, took the Reb musket, aimed and shot the flag. “God damn.”
“Well?” I said, resting against a tall birch, shoulder hurting.
“Didn’t you see our colors given up at Gainesville? Given up without a damn fight?”
“Yes.”
“Well, some fellas don’t believe it happened, so the Captain says doctor ‘em. Shoot ‘em. Drag ‘em. Muddy ‘em. So when we get to Washington, nobody can say we lost ‘em.”
The 24th that came back over the Long Bridge was different from the 24th that left. We were fewer. Different. We trudged up Pennsylvania Avenue, observed by the usual bunch of whores, pimps and copperheads. Two women in a carriage—stout, tipsy, painted—tapped their driver on the shoulder and stopped. A redhead with uncombed hair started to sing “Bonnie Blue Flag,” but saw Merrick and me, and a flicker of knowing silenced her. Hard acknowledged hard. The caisson moved by. “Bonnie Blue Flag” dissolved in the morning air.
Two drunken young men approached the carriage. One was clean and slick—too clean, too slick, his face a sallow approximation of health. How do embalmers manage to look embalmed? The other was rumpled, his black clerk’s coat wrinkled and missing a button. He lifted a flask and saluted us, then saluted the ladies but the ladies didn’t look. I recognized him. It was the man we saw with the Congressman after First Bull Run. He wasn’t embarrassed about not being in uniform. No, this fellow had seen enough wounded to know what he was missing. He wasn’t worth slapping.
Merrick and I went to whores every night. We spent every last Army-issued shinplaster. Secretary Stanton’s paper currency was good in Hooker’s Division.
“Blood money,” Merrick said. “Our blood.”
Hooker’s Division was different. The pianos weren’t as loud. Laughter was less high-pitched, though broken by an occasional scream of a bandaged man bumped before his tanglefoot kicked in. We knew we were going to die. Merrick said there was no deal, no arm or leg in exchange for your life, no pact with the devil, just bone breaking by Minié ball, vaporizing by canister, decapitation by iron. We gave names to the ordnance. Bullets were swifts and bumblebees. Artillery shells were bootlegs, tubs, camp kettles. We had a language for death. We were on speaking terms with it.
The whores were different. The first night a woman insisted on dressing my wound. She did it so carefully, tears came to my eyes. Lovemaking was different. I wasn’t drunk. Sometimes I thought of Helen—a fleeting picture by a creek with flowers, dragonflies and waving summer hay. I had no qualms, no French letter. I dreamed about a place dead people meet, and knew there was no such place. Merrick and I were free. Death was as close as next week.
I fucked without the frantic abandon of spring. This wasn’t cheating death. I didn’t care about guilt. If somewhere in this city there was a child with my eyes, my hands, then God bless the child, for he was fatherless. I was gone. I held these women. I was saying goodbye. I didn’t know their names. Halls smelled of vomit and urine, and beds had the odor of other men, but I didn’t hold back, nor did I ask for anything in return. Some gave. Some had a heart to break. Ruth, a slender, plain, brown-haired woman, told me she hoped to marry me.
“You’re gentle. Strong.”
“I’m a dead man.”
“You don’t fuck like a dead man.”
Cousin caught the eye of a Madame who took him to a back room to negotiate the price of a light-skinned woman. They didn’t return until the next morning. What attracted Cousin? The woman had dyed-blond hair, smoked thin cigars and bullied her girls. She was frightening. I hoped he used his French letters. I thought of Betsey, her belly growing larger, and wondered if that Patent Office man was taking care of her. I thought of my child calling another man father.
Everything had changed.
27
September 10, 1862
Arlington Heights, Va
Dear Father,
I am grateful to Dan Buck for sending you news of me. There is no reason to worry. My shoulder is much recovered. I’ve seen a lot.
It doesn’t matter why I’m here. I’m here.
Your son,
Moreau
28
After Second Bull Run, Lincoln gave command of the Army back to McClellan. Much of the army heard the news on the road from Bull Run. The reaction was electric. Men heard “Mac is back” and cheered wildly. Many loved his youthful looks, the way he rode Dan Webster, the way he loved us. They said we were in the right hands now. They said we’d been sabotaged by Pope, we just needed another chance, another general. The “Young Napoleon” rode out to meet the Army returning from Bull Run and was hailed as a deliverer. Merrick and I weren’t so sure a deliverer was among us, but we saw how men reacted.
In a week, a very important week, McClellan reorganized the beaten Federal Army. Many in Washington thought McClellan delayed reinforcing Pope at Manassas out of spite, but if Lincoln thought so, Lincoln also knew the men loved Little Mac.
Second Bull Run had been terrible for the 24th. The report of dead and wounded sent to headquarters was returned for correction because no company could lose as many men as ours had. It went back unchanged. Merrick and I were somber.
We didn’t know it, but luck befell McClellan. This luck wouldn’t make sense in a made-up story where luck ought to seem destined and destiny not appear random. It was preposterous, unforeseeable, the kind called Providence or Hand of God, though I doubt pious Stonewall and saintly Bobby thought so.
On September 12, while crossing a field near Frederick, Maryland, a sergeant of the 27th Indiana found Lee’s Special Order 191 wrapped around four cigars. Special Order 191 detailed Lee’s plans. Those plans were now in Union hands. The “lost orders” were brought to McClellan, determined to be real, and acted on. McClellan learned Lee’s army had been divided, where it was, and what it was going to do. Being McClellan, he announced this to a gathering of staff and civilians, so a Marylander got word to Lee, and being McClellan, he delayed a day before moving his army. But he moved.
He knew part of Lee’s divided Army was at Boonsboro behind South Mountain in northern Maryland beyond Frederick and the Catoctin Mountains. We got orders to march.
The day before we left, we played baseball at camp. David Hamer yelled, “Play ball! New York game!” and two nines appeared on the parade ground. Cousin paced off thirty yards between the dirty shirts we used as bases, and I paced off a twelve-foot line the pitcher stood behind when throwing to the striker forty-five feet away, calling where he wanted his pitch. Home was a ripped sheet, and with the bases, made a diamond for the New York game, as opposed to a rectangle for the Massachusetts game. The field was bordered by white tents. Imaginary lines between stacked rifles separated fair from foul ground. Captain Ferguson secured a bat—a straight piece, quite swingable—and a ball, a real bounder. For the rest of the afternoon, the parade ground was our Elysian field. Time was determined by outs, then the sun, because we didn’t keep score or count innings. It was home time, a game, ended only by Ma’s call or nightfall.
“Let the miller pitch! Let Ro wheel ‘em over!”
I stood at the Pitcher’s Point. Company G played Company A, the winner to play Company B. Country versus city. The moment a cobbler named Jones slammed one to left that caromed off a stack of Enfields, and the cordwainer didn’t stop till he got to third, the rooting was for action, not winning. I was crafty, kept my arm straight for the underhand delivery and snapped my wrist
to vary speed. Since a striker needn’t strike till he got one he liked, the pitcher usually made his pitches inviting, but different than expected. I wanted everyone to hit, so I laid them in with the consistency of a man at ninepins. Men whacked and ran. Fielders chased grounders and flies or scooped up bounders on one bounce for outs in foul territory.
The afternoon lengthened and I batted, played first, caught, or was summoned to the pitchers’ mark as strikers favored my throws. We played hard but for fun. It was different from playing another regiment or laying money that New York men can whip Pennsylvanians. Everyone enjoyed striking and running.
29
I don’t know what we would have thought if we’d known McClellan had Lee’s plans. Little Mac wrote Lincoln that with the lost orders, he should whip Bobby Lee or go home. The General was right on both counts, but whipping Lee required moving quickly, and though Mc-Clellan whipped an army into shape quickly, he could do nothing else quickly. He waited a day and Lee’s army doubled in size.
Dividing an army is dangerous, but Lee was outnumbered and out-supplied. He had to gamble. With Jackson attacking Harper’s Ferry, and other troops a day’s march away, two mountain passes stood between Lee and the bigger Union Army. Lee needed thirteen hours of daylight to reassemble his army.
The Union attack at Fox’s Gap was thwarted. McClellan ordered First Corps, which included the 24th, to attack Turner’s Gap.
The night before, Reb general D.H. Hill reconnoitered the position. He saw blue troops stretching as far as the eye could see. Hill said it filled him with loneliness. He saw 30,000 troops. He had 9,000. He saw the pass through South Mountain at Turner’s Gap. He saw ravines, ledges, slender trees and fallen timber. An excellent defensive position.
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