Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  The staff dismounts in a clutch of tents and awnings erected under the cover of a grove of cedars a little distance from Rosecrans’s headquarters. A lieutenant from Palmer’s staff joins Bierce by a campfire. “I heard the Johnnies almost got old Rosy this morning with some cannon on that hill over there,” the lieutenant says. “But Rosy insisted on coming back here anyway. They say the chief of staff had a fit.”

  “I met Colonel Garesché a few days ago. He’s an interesting man,” Bierce says.

  “He’s got to be a goddamned saint to spend so much time around generals. Palmer’s all right as they go, but I can’t wait to get orders to the line. How’s Hazen to work for?”

  “He’s a good man,” Bierce says. “The best I’ve met in the army.”

  “Kind, is he?”

  “No, not that. Hardly that. But he knows his job.” Bierce moves off, finds coffee in the cook tent, and then goes out into the rain again.

  As the light fades on the road southwest of Nolensville, Wheeler’s cavalrymen run into an unexpected bounty: a train of wagons bearing foodstuffs requisitioned by Yankee foragers from the farms around Franklin. Nothing works like food to distract Confederate troopers from other concerns. Fear forgotten, they gorge themselves. As cooking fires spring up on either side of the road, Wheeler orders out vedettes and sends scouts to examine the roads ahead. If the way is clear, he will turn southeast on the Wilson Pike and, once south of Triune, circle through Eagleville to make a dash for Murfreesboro. With luck, he will have his column within the safety of the Rebel lines by early morning. He wishes he could give Triune a going-over, but the risks have grown too great. Besides, Bragg may need him close to hand by dawn.

  He accepts a heaping plate from a member of his staff and eats, thinking about Bragg. He supposes he should be grateful to the old man, reciprocate his fondness; but Bragg seems almost impossible to like. Wheeler wonders if he has always been so, wonders if the striking Mrs. Bragg married a man much different than the man Bragg has become.

  Wheeler had met Elise Bragg at a reception in Murfreesboro two weeks before Christmas. Wheeler is a shy man, and he arrived as late as he dared, hoping to make an early escape. He expected to meet either a mousy, much-put-upon woman, or a hard, sedate matron. Instead, he found Mrs. Bragg to be a smiling, self-assured, and altogether charming woman. In her presence, Bragg seemed utterly transformed, eyes merry and pale skin glowing.

  Thomas Benton Smith, colonel of the 20th Tennessee and at twenty-four even younger than Wheeler, sidled tipsily to his side. “By God, Wheeler, they actually seem to like each other. I never would have guessed. And she sure is one hell of a lot handsomer than I’d imagined. How do you suppose old Braggsy got her to marry him?”

  Wheeler was discomforted by Smith’s familiarity but knew that he should practice at this, try to be the hail fellow. “Oh, I understand the general was quite the charmer in his day.”

  Smith snorted. “First I ever heard of that. I did hear she advises him on strategy. One of the staff boys said he saw a letter that gave the old man holy hell for quitting Kentucky without bagging Buell.”

  Wheeler was shocked. “My God, Smith, you’re not telling me that they read the general’s personal correspondence.”

  Smith laughed. “Oh, come on, Wheeler. Unlimber that load of propriety just a little.”

  And he longed to, but the rough camaraderie of soldiers has always been utterly foreign to Joe Wheeler. He set his half-empty glass on a table. “I should check on my patrols.”

  Smith ignored this, locked a grip on Wheeler’s elbow. “Now look, Wheeler, everyone knows ol’ Bragg confides in you like a son. What’s he tell you of his plans? Are we going to take a crack at Nashville? Are we going go back to Kentucky? Or what?”

  “If the general has intimates, I am not one of them. I am not privy to his plans.”

  “Come now, Wheeler. You can—”

  “Colonel, release my arm or I shall be forced to strike you.”

  Smith released his grip, stepped back surprised, and then with the exaggerated dignity of the drunk, bowed formally. “I beg your pardon, General.”

  For a minute they held each other’s gaze. Among Southern men, less has often led to the dueling field. At length, Wheeler replied, “And I yours if I spoke in heat, Colonel. Now if you will excuse me.” He turned, made his way through the crowd, aware suddenly of being both very young and very short—shorter even than many of the women. He reached General and Mrs. Bragg, waited patiently for his chance, and then thanked them for their hospitality. “Why, General Wheeler,” Elise said, “the night has barely begun. Can you not stay a while so that we can talk of horsy matters? All these infantrymen and artillerists make such dull conversation.”

  Wheeler knew that here a witty rejoinder was required, but he had none to offer. He fumbled, reddened, finally managed: “I’m afraid that I must check some patrols. I would not want your party interrupted by unexpected guests.”

  “Yankees?” She put hand to bosom in mock alarm.

  “Well, yes. There’s always a chance that—”

  Elise was suddenly resolute. “Oh, certainly the Yankees won’t be so insolent as to invade a party endowed with so many gallant Southern officers. I fear, General, that you are making an excuse to abandon our company. Come, you can tell us what gentle attraction draws you away. Our lips, both mine and my husband’s, will remain forever sealed.”

  Her tone and eyes insinuated of that which Wheeler, devoutly though he has wished otherwise, knows nothing save for the counterfeit experience paid for in brothels. Wheeler looked helplessly to Bragg, who was smiling indulgently. “Let him go, Elise. General Wheeler is a young man with a very strict sense of duty. Return to us later if you can, General.”

  Wheeler bowed, mumbled another apology, did the best he could in kissing Elise’s gloved hand, and—face burning—fled.

  In the dusk, Garesché goes looking for the orderly’s head amid the ferns on the shady side of the cabin. Exactly what he will do if he finds it, he is not sure. Perhaps it has already been found, reunited with the shattered corpse by the burial party ordered to clean the site in the long, rainy afternoon.

  Ahead in the dimness, a stooping figure straightens from the bracken, and Garesché stifles a cry of preternatural fright, for the figure’s face, half hidden in the folds of its greatcoat, is flattened nearly featureless like the skull of Death itself. The figure laughs softly, raises on high the head it holds by the hair. “And what should we quote at such times? The Bhagavad Gita? ‘I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds,’ said Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the morn of battle. Or Romans? ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ Or perhaps the Bard. ‘Alas! poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath—’”

  “For the love of God, sir!” Garesché croaks. “That was a man.”

  The figure lowers the head slowly. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I did not recognize you.”

  Garesché squints. Hazen’s topographical officer, the boy fascinated by the carnage of war. Bierce. Yes, that was the name. He walks to him and without a word takes the head, cradles it, touches the cold cheek.

  Bierce, who is not wont to apologize often, tries again. “Colonel, I meant no disrespect for the dead, only irony for the condition of the living. It is the only means I know of … of finding a way to go on.”

  Garesché raises his anguished face. “I did not even know his name. He was assigned to headquarters for a week or more and I never asked him his name. Did you know it?”

  “No, Colonel. I did not know the man.”

  Garesché looks down again at the face. Gently, he attempts to shut the staring eyes but they refuse to remain closed.

  Bierce hesitates. “It is the rigor, Colonel. The eyelids would have to be sealed with wax.”

  “Yes, of course,” Garesché murmurs. He digs in a pocket, finds a folded handkerchief, shakes it open, and lays it over the boy’s features. Bierce stands
by, awkward, powerless. “I saw him killed,” Garesché says. “Saw the cannonball tear through his throat and saw his head thrown over the roof of the cabin. It seemed for a moment that he looked back, as if his eyes could still see. Do you think that is possible? That he might have looked back at us for a moment in wonder at his own death?”

  “No, Colonel. I think his death must have been instantaneous. One moment life, the next only darkness.”

  “I hope you’re right. Otherwise, it would be too horrible.” Garesché looks at Bierce again, face more controlled now. “His head should be buried with his body. Can you find the burial party that cleaned the site? Find out where they laid his body?”

  Bierce is about to protest, but cannot under the pleading gaze. “I can try, Colonel.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you. I will tell Colonel Hazen that you may be delayed.” He looks down at the head, seems about to say something to it, does not. He hands it to Bierce, who cradles it as Garesché has.

  “Now just how the hell am I supposed to do that, Lieutenant?” The sergeant waves a hand at the long trench, which even now is being lengthened by a dozen men with picks and shovels. “Your man wasn’t the only poor devil to get his head blown off today. When armies start trading cannonballs, that’s what happens. But maybe you ain’t seen enough combat to know that.”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Well, good for you, laddy. Now, there must be half a dozen men without heads down there and another thirty or so that got blown apart some other way today. If you want to climb down there and start looking, go ahead. Otherwise, you can just chuck that head in with the arms and the legs sent over from the hospital after the hack-and-slash boys got done making cripples out of a few dozen good men. We bury everything equally here. Let God sort it out if there’s a Resurrection Day. Otherwise, let everything rot in peace.”

  “What’s your guess? Is there or isn’t there?”

  The sergeant stares at him for a moment and then laughs, shaking his head. “God, you college boys. Make you officers so you can go around troubling the rankers with questions of philosophy. How the fuck should I know what happens when we’re dead? My guess is we’re just goddamned dead. But I don’t know. And neither do you or anybody else I ever knew. They say there’s a colonel at the general’s headquarters who’s some kind of saint. Why don’t you go ask him? Me, I’m gonna get some supper and some sleep. I’ve got a hunch me and my boys are going to have one hell of a busy day tomorrow.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Bierce says to the sergeant’s back. “He might have before, but he doesn’t anymore.” If the sergeant hears, he makes no acknowledgment.

  Bierce steps to the edge of the trench and stares down. He can make out the line of corpses, a few wrapped in blankets, the rest in only trousers and shirts. All are coatless and shoeless beneath the thin layer of soil strewn over them. No one has bothered to sprinkle any dirt on the pile of arms and legs in a corner of the trench. Bierce is reminded of the clot of maggots he saw in the abdominal cavity of an eviscerated man who had lain unburied and rotting for a week after Shiloh. He holds the head at arms’ length over the pile, feeling its surprising weight for a final time, and lets it fall. The handkerchief wafts away, and the head lands face up in the embrace of arms and legs, mouth screaming.

  Captain Drury C. Spurlock, 16th Tennessee Confederate Infantry, is sitting against a tree near the Stones River bridge, half a mile west of the junction of the Wilkinson and Nashville pikes. In the dusk one of his privates approaches him. “Cap’n, Colonel Savage just got a message for you. Seems your folks are at the Miles Hotel in town.”

  Spurlock leans his head back against the trunk, closes his eyes. James, he thinks. It must be about James.

  Spurlock finds his horse, saddles it himself, and rides the mile and a half into Murfreesboro. His father greets him at the door to the narrow hotel room, shakes his hand solemnly. The old man does not spare words: “James died three days ago. We buried him next to our little girl. The one that didn’t live long enough to get a name.” He turns away, goes to sit in a chair by the window.

  Spurlock looks to his mother, sees her smaller, more birdlike than he remembered. “It was the pneumonia, Drury. Shot through the lung like he were, it took him real fast.”

  “Shouldn’t have gone,” his father says from his chair by the window. “Weren’t no good for a bunch of Tennessee boys to go up to Kentucky. Damned Kentucks don’t care nothin’ for us, why should we care about them?”

  His mother is about to break down, and Spurlock steps to her, enfolds her in his arms. She is tiny, her words whispering against his breast. “Can’t you come home now? We don’t have nobody else left.”

  “I can’t, Mother. The boys elected me captain. I’m responsible for them. Please don’t ask me again.” He blinks back tears, stares at the darkening window beyond his father’s shadowy face.

  “At least here you fight for Tennessee, not no damned Kentucky,” the old man says, voice gruff with unshed tears.

  “You have to get away from here,” Spurlock says. “There’s going to be trouble like you can’t imagine. The Yanks—”

  “Can’t. The horses need rest,” his father says.

  Spurlock tries to argue, but it is pointless. He rides back to camp, wondering at his father’s stubbornness. Perhaps it isn’t stubbornness at all, but only an old farmer’s immutable sense of limits: that we can ask only so much of our animals, though they in their inexplicable love for us are always prepared to give more. In this, he supposes, our animals are like our parents, perhaps even our God.

  On his way to the conference with Rosecrans, Major General George Thomas pauses on the rise behind army headquarters to study the sky. In the twilight, gray fields and gray sky blend, obscuring the horizon and making the glades of cedar float like islands upon a gray sea. He detects a faint glow over Nolensville and a tall smudge of smoke. Wheeler’s cavalry at work. He compresses his lips, wonders if the Army of the Cumberland will ever have horsemen to match.

  Rosecrans is smoking on the porch of his cabin headquarters. Thomas swings down, gritting his teeth against the inevitable jar to his injured back. Rosecrans watches with interest. All know how Thomas, bound from Texas for New York on his first visit to his wife in two years, stepped from a smoky car only to discover an instant too late that it had stopped short of the dark platform. The fall wrenched Thomas’s spine at an impossible angle and, a year later, there are days he can barely walk. Rosecrans, whose accident in the laboratory left scars that still burn and itch, is sympathetic. He extends an unlit cigar. “A smoke, George?”

  Under the cover of the porch, Thomas lets an aide take his greatcoat. He accepts the cigar, rolls it between palms, and then smells it—as deliberate about his pleasures as he is in everything else. “Thank you, General.”

  Rosecrans lights a lucifer on the porch rail and extends it to Thomas, who bends slightly to get the cigar lit. “Garesché thinks I ought to move back under the trees out of range of the Rebel batteries on that hill,” Rosecrans says. “He’s right, of course, but I begrudge the loss of a dry night’s sleep.”

  Thomas blows out smoke, studies the cigar. “This is a good cigar.”

  “I had them sent from a tobacconist in Cincinnati a few weeks ago. I was told he provides old Useless with his cigars, so I ordered a half dozen boxes of the same brand out of curiosity.”

  “Grant has good taste in cigars.”

  “Now that he’s got a job and can afford them. I’ve heard that he used to pick butts off the street.” Thomas is silent. He does not care for Grant, but finds Rosecrans’s overt hatred somehow unmanly. Rosecrans seems to sense the disapproval, says, “But I imagine even he never fell quite that low. Anyway, I’ll give you a box before you leave tonight.”

  Thomas bows slightly, very Virginian all at once. “Thank you, General.”

  “Did you have an opportunity to read the battle order Garesché sent over?”

  “Yes. It�
��s an excellent plan. My only reservation is the security of our right.”

  “I’m going to instruct McCook carefully. He should manage.”

  They talk for an hour, eventually moving inside to study the maps. Finally, Thomas again dons his greatcoat and trudges through the mud to mount his big patient black with the smooth gait. Watching him go, Rosecrans says a prayer of thanks for such a second-in-command. On the morrow, they will do great things.

  McCook is preparing to leave for Rosecrans’s headquarters when Captain Horace Fisher brings him an odd report. An old farmer has a tale of a massive movement of troops toward the Rebel left.

  “Why would he risk passing through the skirmish lines?” McCook asks. “Is he a John Brown sort?”

  “No, just an old farmer, but he claims that a Reb general fondled his daughter. He’s mad as hell about that and wants revenge.”

  “Did he say what general?”

  “He said Hardee.”

  McCook considers. The Hardee he remembers had been a family man with a passel of undisciplined children forever throwing dirt clods at the cadets on parade. “I don’t know if I can credit that, but I’ll mention it to General Rosecrans.”

  Trailed by his silent chief of staff, McCook rides the three miles over muddy roads from his headquarters near the Gresham house to Rosecrans’s headquarters near the Nashville Pike. He is hours late, as he has been in nearly everything during the last four days. He tells himself that no one has faced so hard a fight on the approach. Yet he has managed to get his corps in position. Surely the general cannot find too much fault tonight.