Woodsmoke rose from hundreds of cooking fires. Private Smallwood would be waiting for his cooking water.
Dreamily, the surgeon said, “Just go into the Quarters anytime you have a mind, spot some wench, and say, ‘Come over here, honey.’ ” He laughed. “No wonder them rebs fightin’ so hard. Tell me, Sergeant, when that happens, I mean when some white man comes into the Quarters and picks out a woman, what do you colored bucks do?” He squinted into Jesse’s expressionless face. “Oh hell,” he said. “I’m makin’ you mad and I never meant to. I can see it in your face. I’m makin’ you mad, ain’t I?”
“I’d like to fill my canteens, sir. Can’t boil salt pork without water.”
“Well, I’m sorry if I offended you. Come from De Graff, Ohio, myself, and until I joined this army I never met any of you fellows. You’re a novelty to me. You tell me—how can you learn, you don’t ask questions? You got any savings for me?”
“No sir. Wasn’t any of my men wanted to save with you.”
Surgeon Potts was the unofficial regimental banker. Every payday he stood beside the paymaster, and as quick as one of his savers received greenbacks, they passed into Surgeon Potts’s keeping. Now Potts shook his head. “I don’t expect you fellows to be educated. But that don’t mean you got to be stupid. I don’t have to do this, you know, but I hate to see a man who’s making seven dollars a month lose it to some damn thief. Why, just last week, a sergeant in the 19th had six months’ wages stolen. I take the men’s money and I go on furlough into Washington City and I put all that money right into Mr. Rigg’s bank where nobody can steal it.” He patted his pocket. “I keep the names right here. Maybe First Sergeant Tubman isn’t my idea of a first sergeant, but he brought me sixty-three dollars last week from B Company. Don’t the men trust you?”
“Well, sir,” Jesse said earnestly, “about those thieves. I already told my men that if they steal anything I’d deal with them personal before I turn ’em over to the provost. They’d be glad to go to jail when I was done with them.” Jesse lifted his big black hands and cracked his knuckles loudly. “Yes, sir. They’d be glad to go. My men ain’t thieves, sir.”
“You think you got no thieves?”
“No sir, none in A Company.”
“Damn it!” The cigar smoke made Jesse want to cough. “That money ain’t gonna be safe until it’s inside a bank.”
“Men been askin’ . . .”
“Been askin’ what?”
“Been askin’ what would happen to their money if something was to happen to you. What if some sharpshooter picked you off? Some say they’d like to get back the money they already gave to you.”
The surgeon laughed heartily. “You tell ’em so long as they keep me alive, their money is perfectly safe. I don’t mind having a few fellows watching out for me.” He rubbed his fingers together. “You know why Tubman is first sergeant?”
“I expect he’s a good soldier.”
“You know what makes him a good soldier? He obeys orders. There’s a couple boys lookin’ to be second sergeant instead of you. Maybe one day I’ll give another boy a try.”
Jesse didn’t say that Captain Fessenden had given him his rank and only Captain Fessenden could take it away. He didn’t say he thought those who’d given money to Surgeon Potts had seen the last of it. He said, “Yes, sir. I’ll ask the men again.”
“I knew you weren’t so dumb as you looked.” The surgeon made to clap Jesse on the shoulder, but Jesse was already started to the creek and the gesture became a foolish swat. Surgeon Potts thought: Some niggers have rocks where their brains are supposed to be.
Clement Smallwood and Jesse ate hard crackers and salt pork and drank a cup of black coffee. Replete, the men of the 23rd found shade, pulled their forage caps down over their eyes, and dozed.
An hour later, when the regiment marched into Fairfax City, Virginia, the first woman who saw them raised her hand to her mouth. A graybeard stepped inside and brought others out to see.
“It’s niggers.”
“Yankee niggers, I’ll be damned.”
In Fairfax City, Virginia, the paint was peeling from the houses and no horses were tied to the hitch rails and what was broken had not been fixed. The few young men in Fairfax City, Virginia, were amputees or on crutches.
Jesse snapped into alignment, the regiment settled into its perfect rhythm, and a thousand rifles bobbed on a thousand blue-clad shoulders. The flag that danced before nearly brought tears to Jesse’s eyes.
Captain Fessenden doffed his cap to a pretty Confederate miss, who lifted her pert nose in a snub. Fessenden turned in his saddle to cry, “Will you, will you, fight for the Union?”
With a great growl his men answered him, “Ah ha! Ah ha! We’ll fight for Uncle Sam!”
“DON’T WE LOOK LIKE MEN
A-MARCHING . . .” (REPRISE)
TOWARD GERMANNA FORD, VIRGINIA
MAY 5, 1864
NOSTRILS AND EYELIDS crusted by dust, lips cracked, shoulders chafed by knapsack straps, gaze filled entirely by the sweat-darkened shirt directly ahead, devoted to finding one less sore resting place for the rifle which lay across too thin muscle and too tender bone like a bar of fire, the regiment stumbled toward the Rappahannock. The color bearers’ banners were lifeless as a poor man’s laundry.
The 23rd had been called into ranks last night and marched until midnight. They’d breakfasted at three-thirty in the morning and formed in column while the sun rose in the sky. They marched as the sun burned the dew off the May leaves. Horses plodded beside marching men, riders dozing in the saddles.
The country between the Potomac and Rappahannock had been the habitat of generals: Lee and Jackson, Pope, McClellan, Hooker and Burnside. For four years, its plantations and small farms had fed marauding armies. Its rail fences had flared in ten thousand campfires, its standing corn had comforted man and beast. Confederate wives saw the blue regiments approach and locked their doors and went upstairs with a glass of water and a headache, praying someone had warned General Lee, someone. Their pale, ribby children kept to the porches of houses that had once boasted window glass.
War had improved the roads. Cow tracks and country lanes so rough they’d snap the axles of a Concord coach had been widened and leveled and planked and bridged by Federal engineers to speed men to the conflagration.
When the regiment didn’t halt at noon, men began dropping out of ranks. Some marched on but so slowly their fellows overtook one rank at a time. Others reeled to the roadside, heads between their knees.
“Close it up!”
“Close it up!” Jesse called through cracked lips. He’d stopped sweating an hour ago: no more sweat in him. A courier’s horse’s hooves wafted new dust into the air. For a moment the courier rode beside the colonel, the two men inclined toward each other. When the colonel raised his hand, watchful officers took his signal and the bugler sounded a halt. For a second men stood stunned before drifting into the shade. Some pulled off their shoes. Some lay facedown in the grass, gasping.
Jesse uncapped his canteen and took a long swallow, which hurt his throat going down. He leaned against a shagbark hickory, looked up at the tripartite leaves, and wondered why leaves were greener on the top side than the bottom. Samuel Gatewood might know. He took an interest in such matters. Was Samuel still alive? Had the war treated Stratford as harshly as this country they were marching through? Old Uther—was he still alive? Uther wouldn’t know about the leaves. His mind never turned to plants or critters. The rights and wrongs of things occupied Uther Botkin.
Jesse had concluded that two of the stars in the Federal flag were his wife, Maggie, and Jacob, his child. Since he could no longer find his family in the night skies he would follow that flag. If General Lee and the Confederate army stood in the way, why then, he’d have to fight them.
“Sergeant Burns!”
“Sir?”
“Sit down, sit down, man. I’m on my feet because I’m saddle-sore.” Captain Fessenden’s ey
ebrows were cast in dust. “Spare me your canteen? There’s a clear brook ahead and I’ll send a detail to fill them all.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Never thought lukewarm water could taste so good.”
“Where we goin’?”
The young captain shrugged. “General Grant to General Burnside: ‘Bring up your corps.’ Grant must have run into Johnnies.”
“Where we stoppin’ today?”
“When we get as far as we’re going. General Grant doesn’t confide in me.”
“Grant know what he’s doin’?”
“I believe Grant and Lee are debating that question on the far side of the Rappahannock. Grant whipped the rebs out west.”
“Him and General Lee, they fightin’ now?”
“In the Wilderness again. Same place Lee broke Joe Hooker last year. Tangled brush and saplings so you can’t use your guns and can’t hardly see the rebs until they come shrieking at you.”
“We gonna fight?”
“We’re going to wait here an hour while our stragglers catch up, then we’re marching on. That’s what I know.”
“Some white soldiers say niggers won’t fight.”
Captain Fessenden’s eyes were blue and wet under his dusty lashes. “I never had soldiers take to drill and discipline like you men, and you’re marching like veterans. We’ve come eighteen miles today.”
“Grant’s been usin’ us to guard his supply trains. That’s all he’s been usin’ us for.”
“Maybe he’s keeping the division fresh for an assault. Hell, I don’t know. You hear the same rumors I do.”
A few men were building dinner fires. Stragglers limped up the road.
“We get marching again, I want you in the rear with me to chivvy the stragglers.” The captain sat with a grunt. “You’ll have your share of fighting before this is over. Why are you fellows so fierce?”
“They won’t let us surrender. Remember Fort Pillow? Everybody knows the Confeds murdered colored troops after they surrendered. Everybody knows it.” Jesse leaned to stare up at soft green leaves. In a dreamy voice he said, “I had a friend, Rufus. One day we were crossing this long railroad bridge and Rufus said niggers couldn’t build it.”
“Killing Johnnies isn’t the same as building bridges.”
“We got to do everything—good and bad—that white men do. Come time to whip a man’s back, we got to do it. Come time to kill somebody, we got to do that too. We been kindly too long.”
“Your old master. What if he was with Lee’s army? Would you be glad to kill him?”
“I’m not afraid of Samuel Gatewood, never was. And I’d put a ball in him as soon as any other Confederate.” Jesse sighed. “I s’pose old Samuel did the best as he could.”
“You have any hardtack?”
Jesse unstrapped his knapsack. The captain rapped crackers against his boot heel. “You remember that hard bread over Christmas? I swear it’d been in the storehouse since the Mexican War. Even the weevils couldn’t eat it.”
The regiment rested for an hour. One weary straggler caught up and sat down with a blissful expression just as the regiment fell in again. Angrily he shouted, “Master Abraham set us free!”
Some took off stiff new shoes to march barefoot. Their shoes dangled around their necks.
Jesse and the captain lagged a half mile behind, Captain Fessenden leading his horse. Soft dust covered their shoes. “You want to ride?”
“I’m too big. Horse like that needs a lightweight rider.”
“Do you always do things the hard way?”
“I’m stronger than that horse. I’ll be goin’ when he’s quit.”
They marched through ankle-deep litter—blankets and overcoats shed by earlier white regiments, ripped to angry shreds.
“I’m pleased that our men aren’t throwing anything away,” Captain Fessenden noted.
“They’re soldiers now,” Jessie lied, because he couldn’t admit that no sane colored man would throw away a good blanket or overcoat no matter how awkward or heavy it was. He nodded at the debris. “Some of the white children we been seeing could have made use of those blankets.”
“So could Johnnie. If it wasn’t for us supplying him, he would have quit two years ago. What are those people thinking of? Jeff Davis says colored troops get captured he’ll put you back into slavery.”
“That’s the only way they know how to be. I lived in Washington City long enough to wonder if you yankees are much different.”
“We pay for your work.”
“There’s that. Didn’t Jeff Davis say there’d be no quarter for a white officer leading colored troops?”
“So I hear.”
“There’s that too.”
Jesse thought to tell the captain about Maggie, but Fessenden was an officer and a white man.
When they came up on three stragglers sitting on a log beside the road, Jesse said, “You men got to go on. What’ll the others be thinkin’ of you?”
One skinny young man had enough strength for talking. “Be thinkin’ they didn’t sign on to be marched to death, I reckon.”
Jesse attached his bayonet to his rifle.
“What you gonna do with that?”
“Goin’ to stick you with it,” Jesse said calmly.
“What you gonna do that for?” The man’s voice broke in panic and his companions scrambled down the road.
“Soldier ain’t with his regiment as good as dead.” Jesse made a tentative jab. “Might as well be dead.”
Hands out, retreating down the road backward, the man stumbled, turned, ran to catch up.
Captain Fessenden grinned.
“He ain’t so whipped as he thought,” Jesse said. “He still got sweat in him.”
They were twenty miles from Germanna Ford when they heard the rumble of guns, and five miles nearer heard the musketry. The sun was setting behind a pall of smoke, and the officers were nervous. Captain Fessenden said, “Welcome to the Wilderness. Looks like Grant’s got his hands full.”
A breeze picked up, lifting the colors off their stands and making them pop. From the ranks a singer called, “Don’t we look like men a-marchin’?”
When the singer got no response, he raised his clear tenor voice again, demanding, “Don’t we look like men a-marchin’?” And though the regiment was road-weary it picked up the cadence, and its officers straightened in their saddles, and when the beast shouted it was a lion’s roar: “Don’t we look like men o’ war?” None of the white officers sang, but they surely wanted to.
THE MULE SHOE
SPOTSYLVANIA COURTHOUSE, VIRGINIA
MAY 12, 1864
Take therefore no thought for the morrow:
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
—Matthew 6:34, text of sermon preached at service
confirming Generals Lee and Longstreet into the
Episcopal Church in the spring of 1864.
“NOW WHY IN the world,” Catesby Byrd asked James Fisher, “did you ever come back to the army?”
“I was missin’ the high life,” Sergeant Fisher said. “What’s those?” He pointed at fourteen corn pones laid out on a log.
“That’s supper.”
“Goddamned, Catesby, if you fellows ain’t been livin’ high off the hog.”
“I see the Federals have been feeding you well.”
“ ’Course they did,” said Fisher, who was so emaciated his ribs resembled a washboard. “The guards were all niggers. Mean bastards. Shoot a man for thinkin’ about escapin’.”
After Fisher was captured at Gettysburg he had been sent to Point Lookout Prison in Maryland. When the Federals canceled all prisoner exchanges, Fisher escaped, and a sympathetic waterman ferried him across the Chesapeake Bay into Confederate territory.
“Actually,” Fisher said, “I came back hoping to find a game.”
“I am a Christian now,” Catesby said. “I no longer play cards.”<
br />
Fisher’s disappointment flashed across his face. He spat. “Well, I suppose I took enough of your money anyway.”
The twelve surviving soldiers of F Company, 44th Virginia, were positioned on the right-hand curve of a bulge in the Confederate line. The bulge was shaped like a mule shoe.
Private Mitchell complained, “How the hell we ever gonna get enough to eat when United States Grant leaves his sutler wagons behind? No point in drivin’ Federals less’n we get somethin’ to eat.”
Corporal McComac scoffed, “We ain’t been drivin’ them. They been drivin’ us.”
“That is surely true,” Mitchell admitted judiciously. “But that’s because Grant left his sutler’s wagons behind and we’ve got no reason for driving them.”
Once they had their corn pones most of the men went off to savor them privately, but Mitchell and McComac stayed to bring the returned veteran up to date. “They don’t attack with knapsacks no more either. Last night I was taking a message from General Johnson to General Gordon. And since it’s a mite shorter I come in front of the lines and was slippin’ along where the Federals struck the Georgians yesterday evening and I gets tangled and goes down on my hands and knees and there’s racket to wake the dead and our pickets start calling for the countersign and I’d got myself hooked in the sword of this dead Federal major, and I says to myself, ‘Oh-ho.’ I don’t want his sword. I ain’t got but two boy children and they already got their Federal officer’s swords. And somebody’d already got his boots. So I go through his pockets, and you know what he had? Naught but a Bible. And him a major! I figured he’d be good for hardtack, maybe a flask of whiskey. I believe that son of a bitch Grant tells his people not to carry no rations when they attack because we’ll eat ’em after they gets killed. When we was fightin’ with Stonewall, every Federal corpse’d have a couple days’ rations somewheres on his person.” He inspected his cylindrical corn pone without fondness. “This is only the third one of these since a week ago.”
Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War Page 43