Nostalgia

by Dennis McFarland

  If it had been pandemonium near sunrise, with the infantry columns splintering and shouldering their way around the cavalry and supply wagons clogging the road—now, turning twenty thousand soldiers and funneling them into the windy Brock Road was a brand-new kind of bedlam. The officers scuttled back and forth on their mounts trying to forge some semblance of disposition, but dust and hopelessness rose all around. Hayes thought he caught a glimpse of the corps commander, conferring with other officers near the intersection of the two roads, and when he turned to consult Leggett in the matter, he found by his side, instead, a boy he didn’t know. Pointing with his chin, Hayes said, “Do you think that’s … do you happen to know … is that General Hancock over there?”

  The boy looked at Hayes as if he didn’t understand the question. Small and pale and anxious-looking, he sniffed the air and said, “Can you smell that? I think the woods is on fire.” Hayes assured him that some of the men had built fires for heating coffee, but the boy only looked as if he might cry and backed away. A moment afterward, it seemed to Hayes that the young blue-clad stranger had evaporated into the sea of blue-clad soldiers surrounding them.

  A few paces forward, Hayes spotted Leggett and elbowed his way through the throng of men between them. When Leggett saw him, he gave him a chilling blank stare. Hayes said, “I think I just saw General Hancock, turning his steed into the other road.”

  “Could’ve been his twin brother, I suppose,” said Leggett, darkly, hoisting his musket sling over his shoulder.

  Leggett appeared more peaked than ever—the swollen jaw put his face askew, and the eye on that side stayed half shut. “Well, anyway,” said Hayes. “I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  “Did he look soo-perb?” asked Leggett, a reference to the major general’s nickname.

  Hayes, who thought Leggett was being unnecessarily difficult, squatted to retie his laces. When he stood again, Leggett put an arm around him. Hayes recalled their wandering through woods the night before, in search of a dentist or a doctor—and how their lantern had made the thicket shadows swing side to side. “Well,” said Leggett, “if it can’t be Julius Caesar leadin’ us, I reckon Hancock’s the next best thing. I’d just trust the situation a whole lot more if he wasn’t acting under somebody else’s orders.”

  It was Leggett’s view that Hancock should have replaced Meade at the head of the Army of the Potomac, Hancock being far and away the more qualified officer. Because of Leggett’s status as a veteran, Hayes seldom doubted his judgments in such matters. Indeed, Leggett’s high opinion of General Hancock was mostly what had made Hayes so excited to catch a glimpse of the man. It occurred to him to remind Leggett that Meade himself was likely under orders from the general in chief, whom Leggett consummately admired, but he decided to let it drop; he was already feeling agitated, and he feared Leggett might offer another of his pessimistic rebuttals.

  Leggett released Hayes and asked for the time.

  “Somebody stepped on my watch,” answered Hayes. “It’s stuck at ten past nine.”

  Leggett squinted up at the cloudless sky. “Close to noon’s my guess,” he said.

  Their brigade, led by General Hobart Ward, was second in line to go. Once again they had to maneuver around the supply trains, and artillery clogged the narrow route as well, but soon they were advancing at a fairly good pace. In his feet and legs, Hayes felt the previous day’s long march, combined with last night’s lack of sleep. He wondered if Leggett, older by more than a decade and sore in the mouth besides, wasn’t suffering an even worse strain. Soon they were drenched with sweat, and any singing and joking among the men died away, leaving only the drumming of shoes on the hard-baked road, the clatter of gear, the cloudy rasp of labored breath, and the pop of gunfire in the woods to their left. So far, no officer of any rank had disclosed to the men their mission. They were moving away from the artillery they’d heard earlier to the west, while to the north, they’d heard only what sounded like skirmishes. But as they continued the advance up the Brock Road, with its encroaching brush and vines, the battle din ahead of them steadily escalated. After an hour or so, the road began to fill with smoke—at first white like a mist, then thicker and grayer—and the order came down the columns to increase the pace to double-quick. Leggett, who was two men in front of Hayes, looked back for a moment, and then moved to his right and began to trot ahead, disappearing toward the front.

  A few minutes later, Hayes found him waiting at the edge of the road. Quite winded, Leggett fell in alongside Hayes, and said, “There’s a corner up ahead a ways. There’s a Sixth Corps division already up there”—he paused to take a gulp of air—“General Getty’s. We got to get up there and help hold it. Otherwise we’ll be cut off from the rest of the army.”

  Hayes couldn’t think how any kind of battle could be staged inside these narrow roads; likewise, he couldn’t imagine how any army could fight its way through the dense woods that surrounded them. Even if there were paths through the tall switch and tangled grapevines—which there didn’t appear to be—how could any sort of lines be maintained? “Is it a clearing up there?” he asked Leggett. “Something like a field?”

  “None’s I know of,” said Leggett.

  “Well, then where are we to fight?”

  Leggett looked straight ahead. “What do you think I’ve been talking about for the last two days?” he said. He turned his head just slightly toward the woods on Hayes’s side and nodded. “We’re gonna fight in there.”

  Now Leggett dropped back and fell in directly behind Hayes, and in a moment, Hayes heard him say, under his breath, “Like a bunch of savages.”

  After a while Hayes found that his body took charge of the marching. What had hurt him before stopped hurting. He no longer had to will himself forward, which left his mind free to drift. He examined his fear and found it building and darkening, like the smoke in the road. He found further that, like the feeling at the start of an important match, it was mixed with exhilaration. The difference was in the proportions: at the start of a match, one part fear to five parts exhilaration; now, exactly opposite. He wondered if he shouldn’t have written a letter like Vesey’s, unburdening himself should he not survive and asking for pardon. Vesey’s sin had an enviable clarity about it, the bluntness of an Old Testament commandment. Hayes’s—an unnatural regard for one’s sister, and consequentially deserting her—was a bit more complicated. Never mind that Vesey’s sin induced a shake of the head, and his a shrinking back in horror. And where, in that murkier picture, was the counterpart to money, which could be repaid? Where the recognizable weakness, a bent for gambling? He supposed there was an eve-of-battle letter that might be composed (with careful omissions), proclaiming love, hoping for sympathy, but he’d already done that, Saturday last. He had nothing to add. If death waited for him in those brambles, he would meet it with the satisfaction—despite his depraved nature—of having done right.

  A bit farther along the road, he found himself asking, But what if I’m patently wrong in everything I think?

  What if an hour from now he was to meet a horrible gory end, his last feelings soaked in remorse and terror? It was May, springtime. He’d just turned nineteen, had never crossed the Atlantic, never been with a woman. If he’d made different choices, he might now be playing ball at the Union Grounds, cheered by adoring spectators. The “problem” might well have withered away of its own accord. People grew out of things. After all, he’d once been agonizingly fond of his rocking horse. And what would it be like to look into another man’s eyes and kill him? To witness one’s comrades killed? The most blood he’d ever seen had been at winter quarters, when the commissary boys slaughtered cattle. Still, he believed himself to have a strong constitution, for no experience had ever instructed him otherwise. He’d lost both his parents at a tender age, and he hadn’t wilted. He knew what it meant to persist, to fight hard and give one’s all in quest of a victory. He would survive—and, if lucky, survive reasonably intact.

 
Some minutes before their pace started to slow, a bullet now and again zinged overhead, clipping the tree limbs above the road and raining down leaves and pine needles. The gunfire in the woods to the left grew louder, closer, denser, the smoke in the road thicker.

  And then they stalled again.

  They could hear a lot of shouting to the front but too far away to make out any words. Some of the men, dog tired, began to squat in the road while some few others collapsed to the ground and went instantly to sleep. Still others retreated into the brush to their right to relieve themselves. Many took advantage of the break to eat something. All around, men fell into conversations, but there seemed to be a general tacit understanding that these be carried on softly.

  Farther away to the north they could hear the rolling thunder of artillery, evidence of a much greater clash than any skirmishes in the thicket. Hayes knelt on one knee, facing the western woods, and began fussing with his cartridge belt. He felt an almost panicky need to run an inspection on himself. The canteen, the haversack, the bayonet, the ramrod—touching these things with his hands was a bit like doing a sum and had the same occupying effect on his mind. If he’d learned anything in the army so far, it was how to endure long stretches of idleness, though he’d never before idled on a road in the woods with minié balls occasionally flying overhead. He turned in Leggett’s direction, but Leggett had vanished.

  Instead, he saw Billy Swift running in a crouched posture toward him from the rear. Swift squatted next to him and said, “What in blazes are we doing now?”

  Hayes shrugged. “More waiting, I guess,” he said.

  Swift took a swig from his canteen. Gazing into the woods before them, he said, “Can you tell if it’s coming closer?”

  Hayes shook his head. “Sometimes it sounds closer, sometimes it sounds farther away.”

  Swift closed his eyes as if to listen more keenly. After a moment, he said, “Ever noticed how gunfire stops the birds from singing?” he said.

  “It has a similar effect on me,” said Hayes.

  Swift looked at him with a sad expression. “I reckon I ought to be feeling afraid, but I don’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Hayes. “I’m plenty afraid for both of us.”

  Swift didn’t smile at this remark but only looked down at the ground; he picked up a small clod of dirt from the road and threw it into the brush; he glanced back at Hayes and then at the ground again. At last Hayes said, “What?”

  Swift let out a sigh. “You know I look up to you, Hayes,” he said. “I never expected to … well, you know, be on talking terms with the likes of you. Now, I want you to be square with me about something.”

  Hayes nodded.

  “How good am I?” asked Swift. “Your honest opinion. Don’t spare my feelings.”

  It took Hayes a moment to understand what Swift was asking. “You’re good, Billy,” he said.

  “But how good?”

  “Real good.”

  “But what I’m trying to ask … am I good enough to play for a legitimate club? I don’t mean next week, naturally … but say a year or two from now.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Hayes. “You just have to be willing to make certain sacrifices and spend most of your leisure hours—”

  “I am, I am!” said Swift. “I am willing. Hayes, do you think there’s a chance … assuming we both make it out of here … there’s a chance you might—”

  At that moment, the chaplain appeared at the edge of the road with Banjo, the stray foxhound, at his heels. “I’ve been looking for you,” said the chaplain to Hayes and knelt next to him and Swift.

  He removed his spectacles, which had fogged up in the heat, and began clearing them on the cuff of his coat.

  Swift gave the dog a few pats on the head and then poured some water from his canteen into the cup of his hand, which she lapped up eagerly.

  The chaplain replaced his eyeglasses and started rooting around inside his bread bag. Banjo, intent on getting her nose in as well, had to be pushed away two or three times.

  “I’m delighted to have found you,” said the chaplain, again to Hayes. “I was afraid … as we’re about to be engaged … I wouldn’t have the opportunity.”

  After another moment he pulled out a base ball.

  “I thought you might like to have this,” he said, passing it to Hayes. “I varnished it, you see, so the inscription won’t wear off.”

  WELL INTO THE MIDDLE of the afternoon they felled and hauled trees, cleared as best they could the brush nearest the west side of the road, and threw themselves body and soul into fashioning a line of impressive earthworks. The very important corner, not half a mile north, was with the Orange Plank Road, the route of the rebel offensive. By four o’clock, three of Getty’s brigades and two of Hancock’s were dug in, with the rest of the Second Corps still coming up from the south. If the Confederates hoped to take the corner or any part of the Brock Road near it, they’d better be praying for a miracle.

  Pressed up against Leggett in the trench, Hayes must have dozed off, for suddenly he was sitting before a fire in the library at Hicks Street, and his sister, Sarah, was asking him please to cut her the thinnest possible slice of marble cake. He heard the jingling of a small bell, like that on a shop door, and then Leggett’s voice: “That’s cannon!” he said. “And it sounds like its firing from our side!”

  Hayes opened his eyes and found Leggett looking straight at him, his face only inches away. “I think we’re attacking,” he said. “Not defending. Now tell me why in the world did we break our backs making this damned ditch.”

  Leggett reached into his haversack and brought out an oblong cloth bag, gathered and tied at the top with string. “Here,” he said, passing it to Hayes, “this is for you.”

  “Why, this is your coffee,” said Hayes, feeling the weight of the thing, then bringing it to his nose and sniffing.

  “That’s right,” said Leggett. “And it’s got the sugar mixed into it already.”

  “Leggett,” said Hayes, attempting to pass the bag back to him, “I’ve got plenty of my own.”

  Leggett pushed the bag back toward Hayes. “Take it, son,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

  “But I don’t want it,” said Hayes, offering the bag again.

  Now Leggett pushed the bag back at him with vigor, pressing it firmly into Hayes’s chest. “Would you keep the damned coffee and be quiet about it,” he whispered forcefully in Hayes’s face, and Hayes saw that the man’s eyes had clouded over with tears.

  “Well, okay, then,” he said. “I guess I’ll keep it for you if you like.”

  “I do like,” said Leggett.

  “All right then,” said Hayes.

  “All right,” said Leggett and then turned away and busied himself with untying and retying his shoes.

  An interim of time transpired between this moment and the big thing that happened next, but Hayes would later recall only three vivid impressions: not very deep inside the woods, there was an explosion, and then an enormous cloud of blackest smoke rose up from the tops of the trees, swelling out five dark petals from its center even as it moved toward the Union line, and then they were enveloped in darkness; a human roar like nothing Hayes had ever heard descended on them slowly from their right, burgeoning down the earthworks like a locomotive coming into a station; and horses’ hooves rained into the road behind them, so near Hayes’s face (when he turned to look) he first took them for debris from some sort of rotating machine that had slipped its axle and was flinging out its dangerous inner parts.

  Then the bellowed Forward! flew down the line, repeated rather like gunfire itself, and they were all leaving the earthworks—a blue wave breaking in a curl along a curve of shoreline—and charging into the woods.

  The colonel—or was it only the captain?—barked something about Vermonters, and then it was brambles and switch and vines and a gnarly washboard of three ridges to cross. With each step deeper, the air grew hotter, the smoke thicker.
In the troughs between the ridges, they sank ankle-deep into ribbons of swamp that threatened to suck the shoes off their feet. Hayes’s ears and eyes felt as if they were on fire. When he called out for Leggett and received no reply, he tried his Christian name: “Truman!” he shouted, but all that came back was the heightening brattle of musketry and the screaming and yelling of other men. Soon the trees bore the multiple scars of bullets. The Wilderness—itself affronted, itself mangled and marred—swallowed the jagged lines of the army, and once inside its bowels, the men were less and less distinguishable to one another as friend or foe.

  SARAH, seated on an ottoman near the grate, offered the boy another of Mrs. B’s ginger biscuits, but he declined with an anguished look. It struck Summerfield that the poor boy would rather go hungry than further manage the weight of eating under the eyes of his teacher, with whom he was obviously, violently smitten. He’d got through the first round of tea painfully. He’d nearly dropped his cup when it startled him by rattling in its saucer. He’d brushed crumbs off his militarystyle vest, only to think better of it immediately, and then retrieved them one by one from the carpet and held them in the palm of his hand until Sarah indicated he should put them on the tea tray.

  Summerfield had found the two of them in the parlor (and all the lamps already lit) when he arrived home a few minutes earlier. She’d never before had a pupil to the house. She’d introduced the boy, Harmon Fellows, said only that he was from the school, and passed Summerfield a cup of tea, though he wasn’t accustomed to drinking tea at the end of his workday. Still, he welcomed it, along with the good fire in the grate, since the January afternoon had turned quite cold. He was trying to sort out the occasion as best he could, and he thought Sarah was conspicuously not helping, though she did seem to cast him a deeply meaningful look now and again. When he asked Harmon Fellows what he’d been up to at school, the boy only looked at him blankly, and so Sarah intervened to narrow the question: “Why don’t you say what we did today at school?” she said.