by Jeff Shaara
The black man lay in the shadow between two round rocks. He was very big and very black. His head was shaved and round and resting on mossy granite. He was breathing slowly and deeply, audibly; his eyes were blinking. He wore a faded red shirt, ragged, dusty, and dark pants ragged around his legs. There were no sleeves in the shirt, and his arms had muscles like black cannonballs. His right arm was cupped across his belly. Chamberlain saw a dark stain, a tear, realized that the man had been bleeding. Bucklin was bending over him with a tin cup of coffee in his hand. The black man took a drink. He opened his eyes and the whites of his eyes were red-stained and ugly.
Chamberlain pointed to the wound.
“How bad is that?”
“Oh, not bad,” Kilrain said. “I think he’s bled a lot, but you know, you can’t really tell.”
Bucklin chuckled. “That’s a fact.”
“Bullet wound,” Kilrain said. “Just under the ribs.”
Chamberlain knelt. The black man’s face was empty, inscrutable. The red eyes looked up out of a vast darkness. Then the man blinked and Chamberlain realized that there was nothing inscrutable here; the man was exhausted. Chamberlain had rarely seen black men; he was fascinated.
“We’ll get him something to eat, then we’ll get him to a surgeon. Is the bullet still in?”
“Don’t know. Don’t think so. Haven’t really looked.” Kilrain paused. “He sure is black, and that’s a fact.”
“Did you get his name?”
“He said something I couldn’t understand. Hell, Colonel, I can’t even understand them Johnnies, and I’ve been a long time in this army.” The black man drank more of the coffee, put out both hands and took the cup, drank, nodded, said something incomprehensible.
“Guess he was a servant on the march, took a chance to run away. Guess they shot at him.”
Chamberlain looked at the bald head, the ragged dress. Impossible to tell the age. A young man, at least. No lines around the eyes. Thick-lipped, huge jaw. Look of animal strength. Chamberlain shook his head.
“He wouldn’t be a house servant. Look at his hands. Field hands.” Chamberlain tried to communicate. The man said something weakly, softly. Chamberlain, who could speak seven languages, recognized nothing. The man said a word that sounded like Baatu, Baatu, and closed his eyes.
“God,” Kilrain said. “He can’t even speak English.”
Bucklin grunted. “Maybe he’s just bad wounded.”
Chamberlain shook his head. “No. I think you’re right. I don’t think he knows the language.”
The man opened his eyes again, looked directly at Chamberlain, nodded his head, grimaced, said again, Baatu, Baatu. Chamberlain said, “Do you suppose that could be ‘thank you’?”
The black man nodded strongly. “Tang oo, tang oo, baas.”
“That’s it.” Chamberlain reached out, patted the man happily on the arm. “Don’t worry, fella, you’ll be all right.” He gestured to Kilrain. “Here, let’s get him up.”
They carried the man down out of the rocks, lay him on open grass. A knot of soldiers gathered. The man pulled himself desperately up on one elbow, looked round in fear. Kilrain brought some hardtack and bacon and he ate with obvious hunger, but his teeth were bad; he had trouble chewing the hardtack. The soldiers squatted around him curiously. You saw very few black men in New England. Chamberlain knew one to speak to: a silent roundheaded man with a white wife, a farmer, living far out of town, without friends. You saw black men in the cities but they kept to themselves. Chamberlain’s curiosity was natural and friendly, but there was a reserve in it, an unexpected caution. The man was really very black. Chamberlain felt an oddness, a crawly hesitation, not wanting to touch him. He shook his head, amazed at himself. He saw: palm of the hand almost white; blood dries normally, skin seems dusty. But he could not tell whether it was truly dust or only a natural sheen of light on hair above black skin. But he felt it again: a flutter of unmistakable revulsion. Fat lips, brute jaw, red-veined eyeballs. Chamberlain stood up. He had not expected this feeling. He had not even known this feeling was there. He remembered suddenly a conversation with a Southerner a long time ago, before the war, a Baptist minister. White complacent face, sense of bland enormous superiority: my dear man, you have to live among them, you simply don’t understand.
Kilrain said, “And this is what it’s all about.”
A soldier said softly, “Poor bastard.”
“Hey, Sarge. How much you figure he’s worth, this one, on the hoof?”
“Funny. Very funny. But they’d give a thousand dollars for him, I bet. Nine hundred for sure.”
“Really? Hell.” It was Bucklin, grinning. “Whyn’t we sell him back and buy outen this army.”
Chamberlain said to Kilrain, “He can’t have been long in this country.”
“No. A recent import, you might say.”
“I wonder how much he knows of what’s happening.”
Kilrain shrugged. A crowd was gathering. Chamberlain said, “Get a surgeon to look at that wound.”
He backed off. He stared at the palm of his own hand. A matter of thin skin. A matter of color. The reaction is instinctive. Any alien thing. And yet Chamberlain was ashamed; he had not known it was there. He thought: If I feel this way, even I, an educated man … what was in God’s mind?
He remembered the minister: and what if it is you who are wrong, after all?
Tom came bubbling up with a message from Vincent: the corps would move soon, on further orders. Tom was chuckling.
“Lawrence, you want to hear a funny thing? We were talking to these three Reb prisoners, trying to be sociable, you know? But mainly trying to figure ’em out. They were farm-type fellers. We asked them why they were fighting this war, thinkin’ on slavery and all, and one fella said they was fightin’ for their ‘rats.’ Hee. That’s what he said.” Tom giggled, grinned. “We all thought they was crazy, but we hadn’t heard a-right. They kept on insistin’ they wasn’t fightin’ for no slaves, they were fightin’ for their ‘rats.’ It finally dawned on me that what the feller meant was their ‘rights,’ only, the way they talk, it came out ‘rats.’ Hee. Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin’, and he said, well, he didn’t know, but he must have some rights he didn’t know nothin’ about. Now, aint that something?”
“Button your shirt,” Chamberlain said.
“Yassuh, boss. Hey, what we got here?” He moved to see the surrounded black. The surgeon had bent over the man and the red eyes had gone wild with new fear, rolling horselike, terrified. Chamberlain went away, went back to the coffeepot. He felt a slow deep flow of sympathy. To be alien and alone, among white lords and glittering machines, uprooted by brute force and threat of death from the familiar earth of what he did not even know was Africa, to be shipped in black stinking darkness across an ocean he had not dreamed existed, forced then to work on alien soil, strange beyond belief, by men with guns whose words he could not even comprehend. What could the black man know of what was happening? Chamberlain tried to imagine it. He had seen ignorance, but this was more than that. What could this man know of borders and states’ rights and the Constitution and Dred Scott? What did he know of the war? And yet he was truly what it was all about. It simplified to that. Seen in the flesh, the cause of the war was brutally clear.
He thought of writing Fanny a quick letter. Dreamyly. He wanted to tell her about the black man. He wanted time to think. But the 83rd Pennsylvania was up and forming. Ellis Spear was coming along the line. It came to Chamberlain suddenly that they might move from here to battle. Under his command. He took a deep breath. Bloody lonely feeling.
He moved back to the cluster around the black man. The shirt was off and Nolan was attending him. The light was stronger; the sun was a blood red ball just over the hills. Chamberlain saw a glistening black chest, massive muscles. The black man was in pain.
Nolan said, “He’ll be all right, Colonel. Bullet glanced off a rib. Cut the skin. Looks
just like anybody else inside.” Nolan clucked in surprise. “Never treated a Negro before. This one’s a tough one. They all got muscles like this one, Colonel?”
“We’ll have to leave him,” Chamberlain said. “Let him have some rations, try to give him directions. Buster, can you talk to him?”
“A little. Found out who shot him. It was some woman in that town there, Gettysburg.”
“A woman?”
“He came into town looking for directions and a woman came out on a porch and shot at him. He don’t understand. I guess she didn’t want to take a chance on being caught with him. But shoot him? Christ. He crawled out here figurin’ on dyin’.”
Chamberlain shook his head slowly.
Kilrain said, “He’s only been in this country a few weeks. He says he’d like to go home. Since now he’s free.”
Bugles were blowing. The men were moving out into formation. Tom came up with the black mare.
“I don’t know what I can do,” Chamberlain said. “Give him some food. Bind him up. Make a good bandage. But I don’t know what else.”
“Which way is home, Colonel?”
“Let’s go, Buster.”
“Do I point him generally east?”
Chamberlain shrugged. He started to move off, and then he turned, and to the black face looking up, to the red eyes, he looked down and bowed slightly, touching his cap. “Goodbye, friend. Good luck. God bless you.”
He rode off feeling foolish and angry, placed himself in front of the regiment.
The division was forming on level ground, down the road—great square blocks of blue. The colors were unfurled, the lines were dressed. A stillness came over the corps. They were expecting a review, possibly Meade himself. But no one came. Chamberlain sat on his horse, alone in the sun before the ranks of the 20th Maine. He heard Tozier behind him: “Dress it up, dress it up,” a muffled complaint, whispers, the far sound of hoofs pawing the ground. His own horse stood quietly, neck down, nibbling Pennsylvania grass. Chamberlain let the mare feed. The day was very hot. He saw a buzzard floating along in the pale blue above, drifting and floating, and he thought of the smell of dead men and chicken hawks swooping down and the only eagle he’d ever seen, in captivity, back in Brewer, a vast wingspread, a murderous eye.
Colonel Vincent came down the line, trailing aides like blue clouds. Chamberlain saluted. Vincent looked very happy.
“We’ll be moving up soon. No action this morning. I expect we’ll be in reserve.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reserve is the best duty. That means they’ll use us where we’re needed. ‘Once more into the breach.’ ” He grinned brightly, showing teeth almost womanly white. “How does that go, Professor?”
Chamberlain smiled politely.
“You spell breach with an ‘a,’ am I right? Thought so. I’m a Harvard man myself.” Vincent grinned, looked thoughtfully at the regiment. “Glad you got those extra men. You may need ’em. How they getting along?”
“Fine.”
Vincent nodded, reached out cheerily, patted Chamberlain on the arm. “You’ll be all right, Colonel. Glad to have you with us. I’m having some beef driven up. If there’s time, we’ll have a good feed tonight in this brigade.”
He was interrupted by bugles, and there it was: Dan, Dan, Dan, Butterfield, Butterfield. He swung his horse to listen, saw riders approaching, began to move that way. Over his shoulder he said, “Anything you need, Colonel,” and he rode off.
The call came to advance. Chamberlain turned to face the regiment. He ordered right shoulder arms; the rifles went up. He drew his sword, turned. Down the line the order came: advance. He gave the long order to Tozier, guide on the next regiment, the 118th Pennsylvania. He raised his sword. They began to move, the whole corps in mass, at slow march forward through a flat farm, a peach orchard. He ordered route step. Looking far off down the line, he saw the men moving in a long blue wave, the heart-stopping sight of thousands of men walking silently forward, rifles shouldered and gleaming in the sun, colors bobbing, the officers in front on high-stepping horses. Chamberlain sucked in his breath: marvelous, marvelous. Behind him he could hear men joking, but he could not hear the jokes. Details of men, in front, were removing white rail fences. He rode past a house, slowed to let the men flow round it, saw a fat woman in a bonnet, a gray dress, standing on the porch, her hands in her apron. She extracted one hand, waved slowly, silently. Chamberlain bowed. Some of the men wished her good morning. A sergeant apologized for marching through her farm. The regiment moved on across the open place and through a cornfield and some low bushes. Then there was high ground to the right. The front of the corps swung to face south, rolled forward down a slope through more cornfields. The corn was high and the men tried not to trample it, but that was not possible. It was becoming a long walk, up and down in the heat, but Chamberlain was not tired. They came to a brook, cold water already very dirty from many men moving upstream. Chamberlain sent back word that no one was to fall out to fill a canteen; canteen bearers would be appointed. On the far side of the brook they came upon a broad road and the rear of the army. He saw a long line of dark wagons, a band of provost guards, men gathered in groups around stacked rifles, small fires. To the right there was an artillery park, dozens of guns and caissons and horses. Beyond the road there was a rise of ground, and at that moment, looking upward toward a broad tree on a knoll just above, a tree with huge branches spread wide in the shape of a cup, full and green against a blue sky, Chamberlain heard the first gun, a cannon, a long soft boom of a gun firing a long way off.
A short while later the corps was stopped. They were told to stop where they were and rest. The men sat in a flat field, an orchard to the left, trees and men everywhere, higher ground in front of them. They waited. Nothing happened. There was the sound of an occasional cannon. But even the crows nearby were silent. Some of the men began to lie back, to rest. Chamberlain rode briefly off to find out what would happen, but no one knew. When he returned he found himself a place under a tree. It was very hot. He had just closed his eyes when a courier arrived with a message from Meade to read to the troops. Chamberlain gathered them around him in the field, in the sunlight, and read the order.
Hour of decision, enemy on soil. When he came to the part about men who failed to do their duty being punished by instant death, it embarrassed him. The men looked up at him with empty faces. Chamberlain read the order and added nothing, went off by himself to sit down. Damn fool order. Mind of West Point at work.
No time to threaten a man. Not now. Men cannot be threatened into the kind of fight they will have to put up to win. They will have to be led. By you, Joshuway, by you. Well. Let’s get on with it.
He looked out across the field. The men were sleeping, writing letters. Some of them had staked their rifles bayonet first into the ground and rigged tent cloth across to shade them from the sun. One man had built a small fire and was popping corn. No one was singing.
Kilrain came and sat with him, took off his cap, wiped a sweating red face.
“John Henry’s still with us.” He indicated the woods to the east. Chamberlain looked, did not see the dark head.
“We ought to offer him a rifle,” Kilrain said.
There was a silence. Chamberlain said, “Don’t know what to do for him. Don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
“Don’t guess he’ll ever get home.”
“Guess not.”
“Suppose he’ll wander to a city. Pittsburgh. Maybe New York. Fella can always get lost in a city.”
A cannon thumped far off. A soldier came in from foraging, held a white chicken aloft, grinning.
Kilrain said, “God damn all gentlemen.”
Chamberlain looked: square head, white hair, a battered face, scarred around the eyes like an old fighter. In battle he moved with a crouch, a fanged white ape, grinning. Chamberlain had come to depend on him. In battle men often seemed to melt away, reappearing afterward with tight mirthless grins. Bu
t Kilrain was always there, eyes that saw through smoke, eyes that could read the ground.
Chamberlain said suddenly, “Buster, tell me something. What do you think of Negroes?”
Kilrain brooded.
“There are some who are unpopular,” he concluded.
Chamberlain waited.
“Well, if you mean the race, well, I don’t really know.” He hunched his shoulders. “I have reservations, I will admit. As many a man does. As you well know. This is not a thing to be ashamed of. But the thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a peawit. You take men one at a time, and I’ve seen a few blacks that earned my respect. A few. Not many, but a few.”
Chamberlain said, “To me there was never any difference.”
“None at all?”
“None. Of course, I didn’t know that many. But those I knew … well, you looked in the eye and there was a man. There was the divine spark, as my mother used to say. That was all there was to it … all there is to it.”
“Um.”
“We used to have visitors from the South before the war. It was always very polite. I never understood them, but we stayed off the question of slavery until near the end, out of courtesy. But toward the end there was no staying away from it, and there was one time I’ll never forget. There was this minister, a Southern Baptist, and this professor from the University of Virginia. The professor was a famous man, but more than that, he was a good man, and he had a brain.”
“Rare combination.”
“True. Well, we sat drinking tea. Ladies were present. I’ll never forget. He held the tea like this.” Chamberlain extended a delicate finger. “I kept trying to be courteous, but this minister was so damned wrong and moral and arrogant all at the same time that he began to get under my skin. And finally he said, like this: ‘Look here, my good man, you don’t understand.’ There was this tone of voice as if he was speaking to a stupid dull child and he was being patient but running out of patience. Then he said, ‘You don’t understand. You have to live with the Negro to understand. Let me put it this way. Suppose I kept a fine stallion in one of my fields and suddenly one of your Northern abolitionists came up and insisted I should free it. Well, sir, I would not be more astonished. I feel exactly that way about my blacks, and I resent your lack of knowledge, sir.’ ”