by Crowe (epub)
“The magic inside that arm will go bad,” Scratch had said. “It’ll get a mind of its own, start doing its own thing, looking to get into trouble and whatnot. You don’t want that.”
The thought of doing one bad thing every day for the rest of his life caused Johnny to throw up his breakfast along the side of the road, there wasn’t much left by the third time he stopped to retch. He was hot and tired from the walk and his pack, which Scratch had somehow manage to find and save for him, had grown heavy on his back. His legs were wobbly and his head throbbed. Johnny didn’t think he could go much further that day when he realized that he didn’t have to. He had made it to camp.
“Hey, you there,” called out a soldier as Johnny made his way through the tents. Johnny stopped and watched the man approach. Johnny recognized him as Colonel Morris’s aide. “What are you doing here?” Jensen asked.
“I’m lookin’ for Colonel Morris, sir,” said Johnny.
“I’m afraid the Colonel’s dead,” said Jensen. “Wounded about a week ago. We were told the surgeons couldn’t help him.”
Johnny wondered whether the Colonel was one of the men that had been lined up, arms crossed, waiting to be hauled into one of those gory tents. He shook his head and pushed the thought from his mind.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Johnny. “I was wounded, too.”
“I thought I recognized you,” said the aide. “Name’s Jensen.”
Johnny nodded. “I remember. Johnny Crowe.”
“Fit for duty now, Crowe?”
“Yes sir,” Johnny said, though he wondered just how fit he was after the day’s journey.
The aide looked Johnny up and down. “Looks like you could use a rest,” he said. “Couldn’t have been easy to get past the Federals and get back here. Report to Captain Reynolds… when the Colonel died half of us were assigned to him and half were assigned to Major Benson.”
“I think I’d like to see the Major instead,” said Johnny.
“The Major’s troops are engaged to our south, where the fightin’s the heaviest. The Captain is in reserve. You’d do better to see the Captain today and get some rest, then see about reassignment tomorrow.”
Johnny found the Captain’s tent and was made to stand at attention outside while the secretary introduced him and asked the Captain if he would see him. Johnny had fallen asleep on his feet when the secretary exited the tent and ushered Johnny inside.
“What is it?” Captain Reynolds asked. He was a short, older man with a bulbous nose and thin, wispy white hair poking around and out of his large ears, everywhere but the top of his bald head. “Very busy here. We’re in reserve. Got to be ready to move at any moment.”
“Yes sir,” Johnny said. “I’m reportin’ for duty, sir.”
The Captain raised an eyebrow. “New recruit, is it?”
“No, sir,” Johnny said. “I was in Colonel Morris’s unit, sir.”
“The Colonel’s been dead a week now,” puffed the Captain, his cheeks turning red. “Where have ya been? Why weren’t ya there when the rest of the men were reassigned?” The Captain leaned in close to Johnny’s face. “Tried to desert, did ya?”
“No, sir,” Johnny said. “I was wounded in the fight, sir. Just now got to the camp.”
“Wounded, huh?” asked the Captain. “You don’t look wounded to me. Where were ya hit, boy?”
“Shoulder, sir,” answered Johnny.
“Shoulder?” the Captain said, taking Johnny by the arms and rotating them around. The Captain kept a close eye on Johnny’s face for any sign of pain. “Looks fine to me. Must’ve just grazed ya, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Johnny.
“Captain, sir,” Jensen called, entering the tent.
Captain Reynolds dropped Johnny’s arms. “I told ya not to just come bustin’ in here, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jensen. He had heard this speech many times in the past week since his reassignment. “I have word from Major Benson, sir.”
“Well,” said the Captain, “that’ll just have to wait until I finish my business here with…”
“Johnny, sir,” said Johnny.
“With Johnny here.” The Captain turned to Johnny. “We’ll talk more about this later. Go with my secretary here and he’ll assign ya quarters.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnny said and he exited the tent with the secretary. Leaving, Johnny heard the Captain yelling and stomping around his tent, chewing Jensen’s head off.
Johnny spent that evening in a tent with three other men whose names he was too tired to even bother to learn, hoping that he would be reassigned to Major Benson the next day. Tired though he was, Johnny couldn’t fall asleep. He lay awake listening to the men snoring around him. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. Every time he thought he had it the issue eluded him. Now his golden arm had started to itch.
Oh, Johnny remembered. That’s it. I haven’t done my meanness yet today. Between his exhaustion and trying to focus on what he’d tell the Captain in the morning to his reassignment to Major Benson’s unit, Johnny had forgotten about his magic problem.
Johnny propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. He was at the back of the tent, which meant he would have to get past the other three guys without waking them, else they’d be apt to ask him why he was roaming about this time of night. Johnny guessed that would be something that the Captain would wonder about, too, if he found out, and like it or not, he needed to be on the Captain’s good side at least until he was moved to the Major’s unit. Besides, if he did manage to make it out of the tent without incident he’d still have to find some sort of meanness to pull off without disturbing the rest of the camp or getting caught.
No, Johnny thought, laying back down, it’d be impossible to do somethin’ tonight. I’ll just have to try in the mornin’.
Johnny lay down and closed his eyes. The itching in his arm intensified. Johnny tried to scratch it through his sleeve, felt the cloth slide over the smooth metal underneath his fingernails. It was no good. Just got to think about somethin’ else. The only thought that came was what might happen if the arm started acting on its own. Johnny couldn’t help but wonder what kind of trouble a runaway magic arm might get him into. He sighed and opened his eyes again. Perhaps there was something he could do after all.
“Yeow!”
From the tents around them came shouts of “quiet down there” and “hush, now”. The soldier sat up, rubbing the welt growing on his arm. He had been having the most wonderful dream when his arm felt like it had been caught in a vice and squeezed, sending the nerves in his arm screaming and causing him to cry out.
“Go on to sleep now, Red,” mumbled the soldier closest to the tent flap.
“Somethin’ got me,” Red said.
“Snake?” asked the soldier between them, his words muffled by sleep.
“Nah, somethin’ else.”
The soldier rubbed his throbbing arm, looked over to his other side, but all he found was new soldier, who was fast asleep.
Here we go again, thought Johnny, musket balls whizzing by overhead.
The camp had risen at the sound of the bugle, the men groggy and grumpy from having been disturbed by some fool hollering in the middle of the night. They had eaten in sullen silence, the last man through the line just had time to finish when the order came; Captain Reynolds’s men were to join the fight. Johnny never had time to ask about reassignment before they were on the march.
So, here he was once again, hunkered down behind some makeshift barrier, the rested troops attempting to cover the retreat of the soldiers in front of them. Some coincidence, Johnny thought. Had it not been so rainy and smoky the last time he was in a fight, Johnny might have recognized Captain Reynolds as the mounted officer who fled on horseback ahead of h
is men, leaving them behind to stumble their way into Colonel Morris’s defensive line. That really would have brought things full circle for Johnny.
This morning, Captain Reynolds stood well away from the action, watching the fighting from the safety of the ridge well above the bulk of the fighting. The Captain’s positioned his aides and secretaries in front of him like a human shield and ordered them to relay what they saw to him. Jensen stood ahead of the others and saw the slaughter taking place on the field below. The aide was torn between pity for the troops and disgust for his new commander.
“Can’t see nothin’,” said Red, the welt on his arm matching his nickname. He was a big Georgia boy, pale-skinned and freckled. He brushed his red bangs out of his eyes when he tried to peek out past the overturned cart that served as their only defense. He jerked back just in time, a musket ball impacted on the cart where his head had been only a second before, sending splinters flying.
“We gonna have to pop up and fire,” said another soldier, whose name Johnny hadn’t caught. In front of him, the cart looked like a slice of Swiss cheese. It had been punched full of holes by the incoming fire and he was feeling the need to do something, anything, before one of those shots got lucky and found its mark.
Johnny looked down at his musket in disbelief. I can’t believe it, he thought. I still don’t have a cartridge box. He had been too tired to re-stock his supplies when he had arrived last night and didn’t have time to grab one before the unit was ordered out this morning.
“What do you say, boy?” asked Red. He had a crazed, wild-eyed look that showed just how close he was to total panic. Johnny, realizing that he was being spoken to, came to his senses.
“Huh?” asked Johnny.
“I said, what do you say… you ready to fire?”
Johnny looked at the two soldiers, both crouched down behind the what was left of the disintegrating cart, looking for him to tell them what to do. He couldn’t clear his head enough to tell them that he was out of ammo, the connection between his brain and tongue had gone bad. When he didn’t respond, the faces of the men fell. They think I’m no good, thought Johnny, that I’m crackin’ up under fire. That ain’t it at all. I just ain’t got no ammunition.
Johnny stood and brushed past the two men. Muskets fired to their front, sending a rain of wood down on them while the shots tore up the side of the cart.
“Get down,” shouted Red. “You’re drawin’ fire.”
“Aw, hell,” said the other soldier. The soldier popped up and fired, then crouched back down behind the cart. New holes punched through the cart, shredding it enough to cause the wood to give and collapse in on them. Sunlight poured through the gap, illuminating the smoke from the battle in its rays. “He’s right, Red,” said the soldier, fumbling to reload. “We can’t stay here.”
The two soldiers stared in disbelief when Johnny stepped out from behind the cart and walked toward a low rock fence about twenty yards away. All along the fence, men lay where they were shot, their weapons and supplies scattered about them. At first there was nothing. The Union troops had to reload after that last volley. Then, they heard the shots. Johnny was struck in the left arm and was thrown down behind the stone barrier. Red looked to the other soldier, they only had a short time while the Union boys before all hell broke loose again. Without speaking a word, both men made a dash for the rock wall. They dove forward just in time, covering the final few yards in the air and landing with a thud just before the firing resumed. Rock and mortar from the wall sprayed them from above while they crawled further behind the barricade.
Red rolled Johnny onto his back. The other soldier grabbed Johnny’s left arm, feeling for the wound. The soldier saw the burnt hole in Johnny’s shirt, but there was no blood. He looked up at Red, confused. Red unbuttoned the front of Johnny’s shirt, didn’t see any wounds on his chest, ran his hands up Johnny’s ribcage to his shoulder, then stopped. Red tore the shirt down from the shoulder and the two soldiers were forced to shield their eyes. The golden shoulder gleamed in the hazy sunlight.
Johnny coughed, opened his eyes and sat up. The two soldiers stared at him, oblivious to the chinks of mortar and stone falling around them. Johnny looked from one to the other and smiled, holding up his gloved left hand. It was clutching a cartridge box.
Moments after Johnny and the other two soldiers reached the rock wall, Major Benson’s men arrived and managed to push the Union soldiers back. Johnny had buttoned his shirt back, but Red tore it open again, raving to the Major’s men about that golden arm that could stopped a bullet and saved Johnny’s life, the story becoming more embellished with every subsequent retelling. Word spread like wildfire throughout the camp about the amazing golden arm. That evening, soldiers from Captain Reynold’s unit came by the tent, wanting to see and touch the arm and verify that it was real with their own senses. Johnny was uncomfortable with all the attention at first. Just like Scratch had said they would, difficult questions arose. For instance, where did the arm come from. Johnny told the men that he had been wounded and that a gentleman had found him and agreed to fix him up. That much was true, even if he left out a few of the details like the surgeons and the imps. Johnny still hadn’t quite come to terms with those facts himself and wasn’t ready to share them with the others. Most of the time this answer was enough, the men just nodded as though that sort of thing happened all the time. No one wanted to be the one to point out the ridiculousness of the situation and Johnny’s telling of it. If the questions ever probed any further, Johnny just shrugged and said that he was told that the arm was magic and that he believed the gentleman and didn’t pry any further. “You don’t ask about stuff like that when a man offers to give you a golden arm,” Johnny told them, ending the discussion.
The truth of the matter was that it wasn’t every day that a fella with a golden arm just strolled into camp. Everyone was curious about what kind of magic was in the arm and it wasn’t long before the men had used their downtime around camp to find or invent all sorts of trials to test the arm. Johnny would wake up in the morning, eat a bite of breakfast, then find a group of soldiers watching and waiting for him with some feat to perform. Like lifting heavy objects or chopping through solid materials like hardwoods or stone. Each day the size of the group got a little bigger and the tasks a little tougher, but Johnny managed to accomplish them all.
As he became a celebrity around camp, Johnny’s ego swelled. For the first time, he was more than just accepted, he was a star. The pride Johnny felt from the looks on the soldiers’ faces made him forget about Mr. Scratch’s warnings to keep quiet about his golden arm. In his mind, the faces of the soldiers changed and became the faces of the folks back home, watching in disbelief and amazement while Johnny did the impossible. He became a hero to the men serving under Captain Reynolds, someone they could look up to, since they didn’t think much of the Captain himself. As for the Captain, he watched the displays of strength from afar, a sour look on his face.
While the troops didn’t think much of the Captain, the man was no fool. He didn’t care for the way the boy that showed up out of nowhere and won the hearts and minds of his men with that God-forsaken arm, but the Captain recognized that here was a tool in his unit that could be used to help him achieve the fame and glory that he so coveted. It wasn’t long before the Captain himself had ordered the simple demonstrations ended and had replaced with more practical uses for Johnny and his golden arm. The soldiers marched where General Johnston ordered them, with the Captain’s unit at the front. Johnny cleared obstacles from the roads that were far too heavy for a whole group of men to lift. He took out whole lines of trees, saving the men from having to go around them. In no time at all, Captain Reynolds’ unit gained a reputation for being one of the finest in the whole Confederate army, right up there with General Jackson’s Stonewall Brigade.
Even on the Union side, word spread of entire regiments of Confederate tr
oops covered in gold, strong as oxen, and couldn’t be killed in battle. None of the Federal officers were allowed to join in the spreading of the rumors or state their belief in any such thing. After all, who had ever heard of soldiers made of gold? All the same, the men were slow to advance their position towards Richmond, though their numbers were far superior to that of the rebel army.
Not that all this success changed the Captain’s demeanor toward Johnny. The Captain still didn’t trust Johnny. Reynolds was the kind of man who always thought someone was out to catch him off his guard or doing something wrong. Perhaps it was driven by guilt over leaving his unit behind to be massacred in the rain, but Reynolds saw enemies and conspirators in every face. Sure, he thought, ya keep the men happy, Johnny Crowe, but I’ve got both my eyes on ya.
And if little things kept popping up, inconveniencing the men; someone’s socks were stolen or a tent falling over in the middle of the night. Well, the men either didn’t notice those things at all or thought them small prices to pay for continued successes on the battlefield.
Though their advance was slow, the Federal troops did push on, pressing the Confederate army back to the west. The two sides skirmished here and there, all the while moving the fight into the heart of Virginia. Even though Captain Reynolds’s unit, the boy with the golden arm in particular, raised the spirits of the troops they met and passed, tensions ran high among the Confederate leadership. General Johnston refused to communicate his plans with the leadership in Richmond, who could only watch as the battle lines drew closer to their capital.
So it was that Reynolds’ men were always on the march, always in retreat from the great mass of blue to the east, clearing the way or covering the retreat of the next unit. For all its natural beauty, for all the fineness of springtime in Virginia, there is one thing that frustrates an army that is always on the march more than anything else, and that’s the spring rains. The muddy, rutted lanes in out of the market square in Fiddler’s Picket were nothing compared to the state of the roads that ran east from Richmond. All the way to the peninsula, thousands of Confederate soldiers and their provisions covered that ground in attempt to stave off the advance of McClellan’s men.