The Amalgamation Polka

by Stephen Wright

  “Well, what do you expect? Look at our officers.”

  Fowler examined this sobering opinion for a full silent minute or two before remarking, “We are indeed commanded by a most peculiar tribe of gentlemen, that’s for certain. Why just the other day I saw Captain Dougherty kissing that damn fool dog of his right on its slobbering lips. ‘He’s my sweetheart,’ he said. What do you make of that?”

  “I try not to find fault with expressions of true love wherever they might appear.” Liberty had shifted his body into a relatively comfortable position and if, as he suspected, sleep should prove elusive, at least he could provide some relief for his aching limbs. So, arm for a pillow, he lay there on the dank ground shivering like a drenched puppy, but was it the cold, the ague or these pesky studies on death that seemed to have arrived unbidden for not just a visit but an extended residence? Death appeared to him to be the natural hollowness about which all life was uneasily constructed. And perhaps its distance to you varied considerably over the years, a black planet inexorably orbiting your being, near, then far, but eventually, over time, moving closer and closer. It was now quite apparent to Liberty that your own personal demise differed dramatically in color and tone from the shocking yet still vaguely remote passing of friends and even family. Liberty wondered how he would behave tomorrow at death’s nearest approach thus far. Would he be brave, would he flee, and if his hours, in all their novelty and consuming intrigue, should actually come to an end, what would that be like, to be transformed from a warm, upright breathing creature of passion and hope into one of those discarded sacks of decaying meat he had glimpsed just yesterday coming up the mountain, mules and men tossed carelessly by the roadside in a tangled heap of aborted life? His imagination stopped, paralyzed before the prospect of eternity, in whose features he could discern only a yawning pitch darkness and an icy wind. His nerves seemed as taut as fiddle strings, helpless before whatever grim invisible hand chose to play them. But consolation of the sort available in such a desperate emotional situation was found at last, however momentarily, in a variation of Father’s favorite injunction: your grandfather Azariah didn’t help Colonel Knox haul sixty tons of artillery three hundred miles over the Berkshires in the dead of winter for you, at the crossroads of honor, glory and all that is right and moral in the universe, to torment yourself with oppressive speculations, let alone cut and run before the foe. The notion of the Union and his family’s long, intimate and convoluted relationship with its history seemed to call him back to himself. His mood actually brightened. Thoughts were weapons, too, as his mother had repeatedly instructed. Duty, then, duty and a resignation to the hazards of fate, would carry him, safely he prayed, through the perils of the advancing day, which by the time he had finally managed to soothe somewhat his anxious heart was already beginning to reveal itself faintly against the eastern sky. Now the four batteries of twenty-pound Parrott rifles perched on the hills behind opened up with a startling roar that once begun seemed to go on without cease until the reluctant sun itself died into the west. The ground heaved, the air shook. By the time Sergeant Wickersham arrived, most of his men were up, gathered in a ragged group, every eye searching Wickersham’s face and gestures for signs of confidence.

  “Easy, my boys, easy. Remember the Lord and you’ll all be fine.”

  “No coffee?” asked Private Haskell, an inveterate guzzler of even the stingiest, meanest brew to qualify for the name, but the sergeant was already gone, his progress down the row of laggards’ tents marked by a fading refrain of grunts and oaths.

  “Well, at least the infernal rain has stopped,” remarked Private Goodspeed. “I didn’t sign up to fight the weather, too.”

  “Considering your valorous achievements so far,” answered Corporal Bell, “you didn’t sign up to do much of anything else, either,” which ignited an explosion of laughter and left Goodspeed, always too slow with a witty response, staring dolefully at the ground.

  “I’d take on the rebs any day compared to these goddamn gray-backs,” complained Private Coxe, popping a pair of newly discovered lice between his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t seem to outrun the little buggers.”

  “They like you, Thaddeus,” joked Bell. “They smell fresh linen and good grub in your pantry.”

  “The only fresh linen in this man’s army,” said Private Bromfield, an attorney’s son from Albany, “is the hankie in General Hooker’s breast pocket.”

  “And we’re not too sure about that,” added Bell.

  A white-bearded private, eyes rolling loosely around in his head, came stumbling past shouting, “It’s a-coming, it’s a-coming, all out it’s a-coming.”

  “What’s that you say?” yelled Fowler. “What’s coming?”

  “Oh, you’ll see, young duck, you and all your green comrades will see soon enough.” And he vanished into the mist, his monitory cry trailing eerily behind him.

  “Who in the hell was that?” asked Liberty. His boots were wet, his clothes clammy and a decidedly unpleasant ache had sprouted up behind his right eye.

  “Oh, that’s just Old Man Perkins,” explained Corporal Bell. “Pay him no mind. He gets quite exercised before every engagement, and then, when it begins a-coming, you’ll see him a-going quick enough.”

  A Confederate shell, then another and another, came crashing into the trees overhead, producing an immediate shower of shredded leaves, twigs, bark and splinters, then an entire branch big as a railroad tie and complete with an abandoned bird nest plummeted down directly onto Private Goodspeed’s head, knocking him senseless to the ground.

  “Quite a novel effect, don’t you think?” asked Lieutenant Rice, a grocery clerk from Elmira who had decided to attend the war in what he apparently deemed the protective guise of a fop, hands adorned with frayed kidskin gloves and knotted around his scrawny neck a bright red silk scarf which Sergeant Wickersham kept cautioning would make him an extra fine target for the secesh. “Rather like trying to conduct a dance in a collapsing saw mill.”

  Fowler’s eyes were jerking frantically about, as if searching for the door out of this place.

  “Not exactly what we expected, is it?” remarked Liberty, picking the wood chips out of his teeth, and before Fowler could reply all the Federal cannons went off at once and the artillery battle had begun. The noise was so tremendous the troops could barely hear Sergeant Wickersham ordering them into line. On Liberty’s left Private Alvah Huff, a lover of cards and money in that order, began to repeat aloud The Lord’s Prayer, mouthing the words so rapidly they lost all sense,blurring into one long indistinguishable sound. Without losing a beat in his chant, he removed from his coat pocket a deck of playing cards he then scattered carelessly at his feet.

  Suddenly, amidst the din, Liberty heard a voice clear and calm, “I’m right behind you, amalgamator.” He swiveled around to confront the leering eyes of Private Arthur McGee, former horse thief, company bully and small-town racist. “Welcome to your last day on earth.”

  “Well,” drawled Liberty, “I shall try not to leave it as I found it.”

  “Listen to me, you little nigger lover, by the time the sun sets on this day you’re going to be dancing with your Ethiopian pals around a campfire in hell.”

  “That so? Then I’ll be sure to save a place for you.”

  Instantly, Liberty’s jacket just below the collar was seized in a huge meaty fist.

  “Seems like you want to get rowed up Salt River before this here ball has even begun,” McGee hissed, spraying Liberty’s face with a liberal quantity of spit.

  “Hold!” declared Sergeant Wickersham, stepping between the two. “Save it for the johnnies.”

  “McGee don’t lie,” growled McGee, wagging a nailless forefinger under Liberty’s nose. “McGee don’t play no jokes. Unlike people, McGee means what he says.”

  “Unlike people,” responded Liberty, “I forgive you.”

  McGee glared back, his face the color of raw beef.

  “Get in line, you two,�
�� ordered Sergeant Wickersham, “we’re moving up.”

  “I thought the bumpkins,” commented Fowler, leaning in toward Liberty’s ear, “were all collected on the other side.”

  “America,” replied Liberty. “We spread the bumpkins around evenly.”

  The company was guided through a continual cascade of tree parts to the southern edge of the woods, where they were positioned with the rest of their regiment behind a freshly formed unit from Wisconsin, farm boys mostly, who were gravely studying in a murky dawn-light the sobering vista spread before them. Beyond a worn fence there was a wide rolling pasture, fog in the hollows, then another fence and a field of maturing corn and on a small knoll in the far distance stood a modest white one-room building surrounded by Confederate batteries which, even as they watched, were sending an impossible barrage of metal and explosives in their direction. One shell, dropping short, hit a rock outcropping in the pasture and, fuse still sputtering, bounced clean over Liberty’s entire regiment, detonating somewhere in the foliage behind them. Then Liberty noticed blooming upright among the tall stalks of tasseling corn blades of polished metal glinting in the early light—bayonets, hundreds of them, the rebs were in the corn. Liberty’s own rifle kept slipping through his sweaty hands, and each time he swallowed it felt as if a pebble was in his throat.

  Then, with a flurry of shouted commands, Wisconsin began climbing the fence and moving across the open pasture, flags fluttering, swords waving, bugles crying. “Grand, ain’t it?” shouted Corporal Franks, a huge grin plastered across the face of a man who had never been celebrated for his smile. “Have you ever known such bliss?” Liberty stared back in open-mouthed astonishment.

  Wisconsin was about halfway across the pasture when out of the hollows rose a line of Confederate infantry, muskets blazing, as simultaneously the artillery on the hill let loose a thundering salvo and Wisconsin disappeared in an angry cloud of fog and powder smoke. Through the shifting haze all that could be seen was a handful of men running back toward the rear and a pleasant green meadow littered with hundreds of blue-coated bodies.

  “We’re next!” cried Sergeant Wickersham. “Guide on that schoolhouse over there. We’re going to take out those damn guns!”

  Liberty was experiencing the oddest sensation: that he was no longer properly situated inside his body, that the thinking, feeling portion of himself was now hovering mysteriously ghostlike above the physical self. His hands, wrapped clumsily about his rifle, seemed miles away. Last night Private Todd had informed him, with a certain resigned conviction, that today he would be killed and asked Liberty if he would be so kind as to make sure his effects were returned home to his family in Buffalo. Liberty had scoffed at this grim premonition, but now wondered if he might not be undergoing a similar apprehension. “Think of the bondsmen,” his mother had exhorted him in a recent letter on how best to get through this terrible war. “Think of their stooped toil, their martyred agony.” The words, in his mother’s own fair hand, appeared at the moment cold and distant. All the sermons and arguments he had heard throughout his short life on the wickedness of chained servitude had, for him, come down to this: a mad charge through clouds of dense, choking smoke into the very barrels of the slavocracy. And when at last the dread order to advance was given, his body seemed light, almost weightless, and he floated over the ground like a spirit.

  Though there was nothing to see, no clear target to fire at, men began toppling out of the ranks like broken dolls, falling soundlessly to the earth. A riderless horse came charging out of the smoke, a booted human leg dangling from the stirrup. Major Hays, their company commander, who had not been seen all morning, rushed unexpectedly past brandishing his saber in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other, and muttering a stream of unintelligible gibberish. “Looks like Ole Pricklylegs has called it a day,” yelled Fowler before exclaiming “Ow!” and, with a surprised look on his flushed face, falling backward into the dirt. “Phinny!” cried Liberty, kneeling beside his friend. “Are you all right?” Fowler replied, managing a tight smile, “Sure, Liberty, just got the wind knocked out of me. I’ll be up in a second.” Then Liberty noticed the hole in Fowler’s chest. There was froth around the edges, as if his friend had miraculously grown a new mouth outside his ribs. “You’ll be fine,” Liberty said, patting his hand. “I never thought this would happen to me,” Fowler said, voice already reduced to a low rasp. “Kill a johnny for me, Liberty, I’m going to miss you.” “Keep moving!” shouted Sergeant Wickersham, abruptly materializing out of nowhere. “Fowler will be taken care of. Keep moving!” Reluctantly, Liberty retrieved his rifle and, with one last look back at his dying friend, stumbled on ahead to rejoin the line. He could hardly advance a rod without stepping on a body or a part of one. Heads were lying about like an unharvested crop of grotesque pumpkins. In many places the ground was surprisingly soft, soggy with blood. The wounded groaned and writhed about with an aching slowness, like strange marine animals trapped on the ocean floor. The frequent calls for “Mother!” near and far were almost unendurable. A hand reached up, grabbing Liberty by the pant leg. “Help me!” pleaded the man whose features were obscured in blood, his right eye missing. Liberty shook his leg free and moved on. Up ahead he finally spotted a familiar face, that of Private Amor Dibble, a farmer’s son from Lake Placid who had apparently never been around many people in his young secluded life and had hardly spoken a word to anyone since joining the company back in June and who now, observing an evidently spent cannonball rolling lazily across the grass, stuck out his foot to stop it and in an instant his entire right leg was torn from its socket and Dibble thrown screaming to the ground.

  “Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Corporal Bell, rushing to Liberty’s side. “Why aren’t you firing, man? You want to end up like him?” gesturing toward what remained of Private Dibble. He tore a paper cartridge open with his teeth and poured the powder down the barrel of his Enfield. “And look at poor Huff there.” He pointed to a body a couple yards away, where one neat bullet hole decorated the man’s left breast. “Guess he shouldn’t have tossed away those cards, might’ve saved his life. Now get yourself together and start taking part in this scuffle. You can see we need every man we’ve got.” He lifted his musket to his shoulder and fired off into the murk, then took off running after the bullet as if eager to see if his blind shot had happened to bring down any quarry.

  It was then that Liberty became aware for the first time that morning of what had been a constant accompaniment to his every move, the phenomenon veterans joked about, the nettlesome sound of bumblebees buzzing incessantly about one’s head. He also noticed in every direction small geysers of dirt were spraying into the air as if the bubbling ground itself were being cooked over a slow, mammoth fire. Men on all sides of him were screaming, cursing and, like frantic automatons, loading and firing, loading and firing, the ten-step procedure necessary to shoot the standard musket keeping even the quickest and most skilled down to about two rounds a minute. Liberty had never felt so alone. Though the sun seemed to have hardly budged a degree since first breaking through the overcast, it seemed this battle had already lasted a full day, and he had yet to fire a shot. As the good sergeant predicted, there were discarded ramrods aplenty littering the field. He gathered up several just to be safe. Then, hurrying as quickly as he could, he clumsily loaded his own rifle—at his best he was fortunate to get off one round a minute—and aimed and fired in the same direction as his fellows into an advancing wall of acrid smoke. And again and again and again until he lost all sense of himself and the failing world around him except for the monstrous, demanding rifle, which actually seemed to him to be alive, a vast, imperious host, which for a spell was permitting his pathetic, parasitic self to serve its divine needs. A sliver of pride was starting to edge into awareness—he hadn’t bolted, he was doing his duty—when a sharp blow to his buttocks sent him sprawling onto someone’s sticky body. He twisted around to see Sergeant Wickersham towering over him like an enraged gian
t.

  “Forward, you coward, keep moving forward.”

  “I was,” Liberty replied, climbing unsteadily to his feet. “I was shooting.”

  “With that?” Wickersham gestured contemptuously toward Liberty’s rifle, out of whose barrel protruded at least three twisted and bent ramrods. “Take this.” He reached down to yank the rifle from Huff’s dead hands. “He don’t need it anymore. And all you’re gonna need in about half a minute is the bayonet. Now, come on, get up there with the boys and drive these johnnies back into the Potomac.”

  Advancing now out of the smoke and fog came a whooping horde of demonic rebs who were upon the Federals in an instant. Men slashed at each other with bayonets and knives. Others, weaponless, squared off to beat on their opponents’ skulls with bare fists. Fallen to the ground, pairs grappled furiously, fingers seeking to close windpipes or gouge out eyes. With a sudden, inhuman roar a section of the fence surrounding the cornfield simply blew up into a hail of needle-like splinters, blood and bits of pink flesh. A dazed Captain Dougherty staggered past, clutching at the gaping wound in his shoulder where a limb had once been attached.

  “Sir!” cried Liberty. “Your arm!”

  The captain glanced wanly at his injury. “I am aware, private, of my unfortunate condition. Let’s see if you can attend properly to yours.” And he went on rearward.

  Someone bumped into Liberty, almost knocking him down, and he turned to see Cub O’Toole, a formerly meek professor’s son from Rochester, swinging the butt of his musket hard into the surprised face of a teenaged reb. There was a sickening crunch and the boy went down as if all his leg strings had been simultaneously cut. “Liberty!” cried O’Toole. “Where you been? You’re missing the dance!” But before Liberty could reply, O’Toole’s eyes rolled abruptly upward as he seized his own neck in both hands, blood gushing between his fingers in an obscene torrent.

  Then through the sulfurous haze, came a man running directly at Liberty. He was yelling something unintelligible and seemed quite angry, almost as if he’d taken a personal dislike to Liberty’s appearance. His maddened features were smeared black with gunpowder and in his right hand he waved a big gleaming Bowie knife. As he leaped screaming upon Liberty with a strength and weight unimaginable, Liberty managed to grasp the man’s knife hand with both of his and the two tumbled backward onto the slippery ground where they rolled around like dogs in the dirt, grunting, cursing, each grappling for control of the knife. “I’m going to kill you, Yank!” howled the reb, his hot, foul breath in Liberty’s nostrils. He was attempting to force the sharp edge of the blade up against Liberty’s larynx. “No you aren’t!” countered Liberty, drawing on muscles he didn’t know he had to push the knife at least a couple inches back from his pulsing skin.