“Here they come, boys!” Commodore Barron shouted from where he stood on the parapet. “Get ready to fire on my word.”
Bowater watched the ships, felt the sweat on his palms, the crackling of electricity in his fingers, the jerky, excited motion in his limbs, the churning in his stomach. They were under fire now, and he wanted nothing more than to run and duck under the parapet. It was grit time, and all he could do was to stand there and fight it until his mind was merciful enough to shut down that instinct for self-preservation.
Another shot from Susquehanna, and then Wabash, both shells falling short as the Union gunners worked to get their range again. And still Barron stood unmoving on the parapet and did not give the order to return fire, as certain as was Samuel that Hatteras’s guns would not reach.
One by one the big ships paraded past, then backed their engines and dropped anchor. Together they made a movable fortress with seventy big guns bearing on the fort, against the three guns with which the fort could fire back.
Soon they were all firing, all the Yankee guns, the rain of shells coming in again, the burst of dirt and sand marching closer and closer to Fort Hatteras as the gunners adjusted aim from their stable platforms.
“Let ’em have it, boys!” Barron shouted and hopped down from the parapet as the Confederate gunners cheered. Bowater felt exuberant as he leaned over the barrel of his gun and sighted down its length; he felt charged and ready and all trace of fear was gone now. He yelled with the others, despite himself, yelled to let off the tension like a relief valve on a boiler.
He stepped back, pulled the lock cord taut. No need to adjust the lay of the gun; they had been fiddling with it obsessively for half an hour, waiting for the order to fire. The old thirty-two-pounder was aimed square at the high black side of the steam frigate Wabash, once the command of Samuel Barron. Bowater stepped back and jerked the cord, and the gun blasted off with a deafening roar, flung itself back against the breeching.
Bowater kept his eyes on Wabash, hoping to see splinters fly, but instead he saw a spout of water where his shot fell three hundred feet short.
“Another pound of power in the charge, Tanner,” he instructed, as he stepped over to the breech, twisted the elevation screw to raise the muzzle another few inches. He looked at the screw. Not much travel left. That had better do.
“Look, sir!” Tanner pointed over the parapet and Bowater followed his arm. Cumberland was underway, standing into the line of battle under a reefed fore course, topsails and topgallants, with no ugly plume of smoke belching out amidships. She was the only pure sailing vessel there, on either side.
Bowater shook his head. “Lovely.” But she was an anachronism, a ship from another time, from Lafayette’s age, and not the present. One had only to look at the Union fleet and the manner in which they moved onshore and off, oblivious to the state of wind and tide, to see that the days of the sailing ship were over, rail though the likes of Samuel Bowater might. He watched the stately, silent progress of the sailing man-of-war and felt a soft kind of a sadness come over him.
And then the first of the Union shells to find the parapet exploded, shook the earthworks on which Bowater stood, pelted him with dirt, and romantic notions fled.
“Run out!” he shouted, and the heavy gun was hauled up to the wall, Johnny St. Laurent and Nat St. Clair, landsmen Francis Pinette, Harper Rawson, and Bayard Quayle, Ordinary Seaman Dick Merrow, Cape Fears all, hauling on the gun tackles.
Bowater leaned over the barrel, called for the handspike until the gun was pointed again at Wabash’s midships, stood back, and fired. And once again, a spout of water for their efforts.
Boom, boom, the shells were coming in regular now, marching up the beach, landing on the parapets and the grounds contained within the fort. Bowater guessed that for every Union shell that dropped short, six hit the fort. He heard another gun, from the north, and when he looked in that direction he could see that Fort Clark was opening up on them as well, their own guns now loaded with Yankee shells and turned on them.
Oh, dear God…
A shell hit near enough that the flying dirt stung him in the face, made him flinch, but his men did not hesitate in their swabbing, loading, running out. Bowater twisted the elevation screw until it would turn no more. The gun was pointed as high as it would go, the barrel stuffed with all the powder it would bear.
Run out, aim, fire. A white spout of water, in perfect line with Wabash. Two hundred more feet and they would have smashed the heavy ball right through her side. But there was no physical way to coax another two hundred feet from the gun.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Barron shouted, the exasperation as clear as the words, and the sound in the fort of men working guns died away, and the only sound left, and it filled the air, was the whistle of shells, the explosion of shells, the flying earth, and the screams of the men whose luck had run out.
Samuel turned toward Number 8 gun, mounted on a naval carriage alongside his own. It was commanded by Lieutenant Murdaugh of the Winslow. Bowater met Murdaugh’s eye, and the lieutenant frowned in dismay, shook his head, and Bowater nodded his agreement.
And then Murdaugh and the gun and the men around it and the parapet seemed to be ripped apart in a blast of dirt and noise and brilliant light and screaming fragments of metal. Bowater saw the sky and the earthen wall spin past him, heard men screaming and metal screaming and a ringing in his ears like the note of a huge bell, sustained for an impossibly long time.
He hit the dirt with a jarring blow that knocked the wind from him, and for a second all he could do was thrash around, gasping, wide-eyed, thoughtless of anything but getting air into his lungs.
And then he caught his breath, pulled a deep lungful of air into his chest. He felt a burning pain in his leg and arm and shoulder, isolated points of hurt amid the general ache. He could hardly hear through the ringing in his head, and what he could hear was more and more shells dropping on the fort, exploding around him, a percussion section gone mad, and, under that sound, the men shouting and running were like the orchestra’s other instruments, fighting to be heard.
He pushed himself up on his arms, struggled to achieve a sitting position. Strong hands grabbed his shoulders, and he looked up to see Tanner and St. Laurent easing him up. They leaned him against the wall, and Tanner pulled roughly at the buttons of his coat. Bowater was too shaken to speak.
He looked over Tanner’s head. Number 8 gun was pointing skyward at a crazy angle, its carriage smashed. The bloody, distorted corpse of one of the gun crew lay sprawled over the rough boards of the gun platform. Lieutenant Murdaugh, with whom Bowater had just a second before been silently commiserating, was leaning against the gun, his right arm a horrible, bloody, mangled wreck. White bone jutted out from the torn fabric of his sleeve and the arm lay on his lap at an unnatural angle, and Murdaugh, silent, just stared, as if he was unsure of what he was looking at.
“This ain’t too bad, sir, I don’t reckon,” Tanner said, looking at the bleeding gash in Bowater’s arm and shoulder. Bowater turned his head, looked at the blood and the shredded shirt. One of the best shirts to be had in all Charleston, and now it was a rag.
Samuel swallowed, summoned the energy to speak. “Leg…” he said and Tanner looked down.
“Oh, damn,” the sailor said. He pulled his knife, slit the pants. A pool of blood spilled out from the pant leg. The wound swam in front of Bowater’s eyes. He was reminded of fresh butchered meat. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, breathed hard. He gritted his teeth as Tanner’s hands, rough but sure, lifted his thigh and passed bandages around the deep laceration.
Through the din of the shells and the ringing in his ear he heard Barron’s voice, ever in command, issuing unequivocal orders. He opened his eyes. Lieutenant Murdaugh was lying on his back and men were attending to his shattered arm, and more men were swarming around the other injured gunners. There were men enough to tend to the wounded, with the Union fleet beyond the range of the guns an
d the gun crews idle.
“Sharp, get Murdaugh back to the Winslow, get Dr. Greenhow to attend to him.” Barron turned to Bowater, standing over him, and Bowater had the impression of a stern father looking down on his young son. “Captain Bowater, how are you?”
“I’ll live, sir, I should think.” Some of the sense which the shell had knocked from his head was coming back, the reality of the fort and the shelling and the silent Confederate guns resolving again.
“Good. Get your men to bear you back to your ship. Get steam up and get the hell out of here.”
“Get…out?”
“Yes, Captain, get out. Another hour and I’m going to surrender the fort. No reason to lose your ship as well.”
Bowater nodded. Of course. Barron was not making a bad choice. There was no choice at all.
26
We came with the Moses family…with a wounded soldier they were taking care of. They averred we had fifteen thousand such as he (i.e., wounded, sick, and sore) in Virginia.
– Mary Boykin Chesnut
Jonathan Paine spent two weeks washing back and forth in a tide of grief and agony, guilt and shame. His dreams were filled with battle and grim death and Nathaniel and Robley, his days filled with an all but unbearable agony in a leg that was no longer there.
Captain Sally Tompkins ministered to him, fed him, saw that he was comfortable, as she did for all the boys in her growing hospital. Bobby, assigned to that room, tended to Jonathan every day. During the clear-headed times, Bobby was someone with whom to speak, when Jonathan felt like speaking, and during the other times Bobby was a ghost, just another ghost that haunted Jonathan’s fevered sleep.
Two weeks, and then the fevers passed and the pain subsided into something that could be endured, even while awake, and Jonathan’s mind cleared to the point where it began to formulate questions.
“Hey, Bobby…”
Bobby was washing and dressing the stump of Jonathan’s leg, which terminated just above where his knee had once been. That morning the doctor had been by, had sniffed the stump, said something about “laudable pus,” which was apparently a good sign. Jonathan did not understand how the doctor or Bobby or anyone could stand to look at the hideous thing.
“Yeah?”
“What all happened, anyway?”
Bobby paused, looked up from the stump. “What happened wid what?”
“The Battle of Manassas. What happened? We win?”
Bobby smiled and shook his head. “You serious?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Well, damn! I’d say you gots to be the last person in all these Confederate States don’t know that! Yeah, we won. We whipped them Yankees good, whipped ’em like dogs.”
Jonathan nodded. This was good news. His last image of the battle, the waves of blue-clad soldiers coming up the hill, had not been an encouraging one. He realized that he had, for all that time, harbored a vague idea that the Confederate Army had been badly beaten, though he had never given it any real thought. The pain, and the memory of how he had led Nathaniel to his death, had occupied all of his conscious mind.
“So is that it, then?”
“What?”
“The war. Is the war over?”
“War over?” Bobby seemed more incredulous than before. “No, da war ain’t over. What’d give you a notion like that?”
“Before…folks used to say that one big battle would settle the thing.”
“Well, folks was wrong. It ain’t over. Them Yankees ran like rabbits, sure, clear back to Washington, D.C. And now they safe up there and folks reckon it’s jest a matter of time afore they come south and we gots to do it all again. That’s if the Southern boys don’t march north and whip ’em good and for all before dey gets the chance.”
Jonathan nodded. “You know…” he said, and for the first time his mind wound its way back to the days before Manassas, “…we used to think there would just be the one battle. We used to be scared to death we’d miss it, have nothing to tell. I recall how we used to say if only we could lose an arm or a leg or such, go home with an empty sleeve to show the girls…”
“Well,” Bobby said brightly, “now you surely can do that.”
“Sure enough.”
Go home… The words burned and tore like the bullets that had grazed and lacerated him. Go home… He had no home now. His parents would never wish to see him again, after the horrible thing he had done. And even if they did welcome him back, out of Christian charity, he could not face them. He could not face Robley, who would come home a hero and would, for the rest of his life, hold Jonathan in smoldering contempt for disobeying his orders and getting their brother killed.
So what was there for him? He had no money, beyond the family fortune, which was lost to him now. He had no skills, no way to earn a living, even if he was not a cripple. A beggar on the streets, one of these broken, wretched creatures such as he had seen by the docks in New Orleans, that was all that was left to him. He felt the tears well up. Paine Plantation and all its goodness gone, like being denied heaven. He was lost among strangers who, when he first came to them, did not even know his name.
That thought sent his mind wandering down another road. If no one in the 33rd Virginia knew who he was, then no word of his fate would have been sent to his parents.
No doubt Robley would have written, told them about how he had led Nathaniel off to the fighting. He hoped someone had found the note he had stuffed in Nathaniel’s jacket and honored the request. He hoped Nathaniel’s body was at peace in his native Mississippi soil, in the family plot surrounded by the iron fence, overlooking the Yazoo River.
But they would not know what had become of the third Paine boy.
Most likely they do not care…
Still, he had to send word. Loathe him or not, his parents should know what had become of their youngest son.
“Bobby?” Bobby was putting the last wraps of a fresh bandage on Jonathan’s stump.
“Yeah?”
“Is there someone here can write a letter for me? I don’t think my arm’s up to the task, yet.”
“Sure enough,” Bobby said. He eased the stump of Jonathan’s leg back down on the bed, pulled the sheet over him. He walked off and came back ten minutes later leading one of the white nurses, whose name was Douglas, and carrying a pencil and a few sheets of white paper and a Bible for a desk.
“All right, go on ahead,” Douglas said, settling back onto the stool by the bed.
“Very well…” Jonathan was surprised Douglas had his letters. He had never struck Jonathan as the brightest of fellows. “Dear Mother and Father…By now you will have heard of what became of…”
“Hold on there, hold on, partner…I’m a little out of practice here.” Douglas’s pencil moved with deliberate strokes. “…‘and Father’…all right, what all’s next?”
“By now you will have heard…” Jonathan continued on, slowly pronouncing each word, as if he was talking to someone just learning English. Douglas’s lack of skill was no great handicap; there was not much Jonathan had to say to his parents in any event.
When he was done, Douglas handed the letter to Jonathan and Jonathan held it up and read it.
Deer Mother and Father,
By now yo will have heerd from Robley and he will have told yo the sirkem stanses…
Jonathan wished that Douglas’s pride had allowed him to ask for the spelling of some words.
…sirkemstanses of Natanyals deth. All I can say is I am sufering as yo are, and alweys will. I am woonded but am likly to liv. I jest thot it my duty to tell yo that.
Your son,
Jonontan
Jonathan nodded his head. “Thank you, Douglas, that is fine. If you could fold it and seal it and perhaps you can help me address it, that should do. There’s money for postage in…my knapsack. Bobby, is my knapsack here?”
“Yessuh. It’s under you bed, along with what’s left of y
er uniform and such.”
“Is that a fact? Can you help me sit up?”
Bobby gave Jonathan his hand, helped pull him up to a sitting position, stuffed pillows behind his back. The bright room whirled around Jonathan’s head and the dream state washed over him and he thought he would pass out. He closed his eyes, sat very still, and soon it passed and slowly he opened his eyes again.
Bobby was standing beside him. “You all right, Missuh Jon’tin?” In his hands, Jonathan’s knapsack, a battered square canvas bag coated with rubberized paint, which was glossy black when it was new, but now was dusty and muted and cracked.
“Yes, yes…may I see that?”
“Sure t’ing.” Bobby handed the sack to Jonathan, and Jonathan took it as if it was an ancient relic, which it was, to some degree. A relic of a life now gone.
He fumbled with the buckles and managed to get them undone and flipped the flap open. The contents were just as he had last seen them, more than a month before, though it seemed much longer than that. His toothbrush, his hairbrush, deck of cards, extra shirt. His copy of The Soldier’s Guide: A Complete Manual and Drill Book, with which he would sneak off to a private place and study, more intently than he had ever studied a lesson as a boy. He never wanted the others to see him at it, to think that he lacked any confidence in his soldiering ability.
He shook his head as he thought of it. What did any of us know of soldiering? Why did I think anyone would believe I knew any more than they did? Why did I care?
There was the Bible his mother had put in his knapsack without his knowledge, as she had in Nathaniel and Robley’s as well. He picked it up, ran his fingers over the embossed gold cross on the black leather cover. He flipped the book open. The delicate pages fluttered by, stopped at a piece of paper inserted between them.
Jonathan pulled the paper out and unfolded it, unsure what it was. He read the words.
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