Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  “General Meade has given me the following orders, which I now pass along to you,” Randolph said. “We are going to move to Pipe Creek, and entrench ourselves there. Meade wants Lee to attack us. Our reconnaisance parties are scouting the entire Gettysburg area, and so are the Rebel units of Jeb Stuart and A.P. Hill.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” asked Major Stonehead, “but we’ve been up against Hill and Stuart before. If they’re along with Lee, I’d say Meade is wrong. Jeb Stuart doesn’t come along for a meander in the countryside. I think Lee is getting set to put the fire to our feet once and for all.”

  “I can only tell you what I have been told,” Randolph said, to a mutter of dissent, “but, frankly, Stonehead, I share your view entirely.”

  The mood of the meeting changed instantly. Action loomed, the hopeful prideful expectation of blood and thunder, cannon and conflict, life and death, for which hardened soldiers live and breathe.

  “We march in four hours, so ready your men,” the colonel ordered. “Tomorrow, June thirtieth, we ought to be in position along Pipe Creek, covering Meade’s right flank. Lee is to our north. So if he can be baited to the attack, we’ll see action for certain.”

  A final burst of cheering ended the staff meeting. Many of these officers, Stonehead of Indiana, Cleveland of Ohio, “Mad Dog” Spaeth of the Minnesota Territorial Irregulars, had served long and bitterly under the timid McClellan. At least Meade would fight, not run, if he got drawn into a battle, although he was still too hesitant for some of the staff.

  “The only way to do this,” Lieutenant Colonel Spaeth was telling his fellow officers as they left the tent, “is to grab Lee by the throat and kick him in the hind end. That’s the way to settle with the fellow. I never liked him anyway.”

  “Lieutenant Gunnarson,” Colonel Randolph called, as Eric waited for the senior officers to exit before he did, “join me for a moment.”

  Eric was more than happy to do so. Since he’d taken his commission, and been given charge of a company of troops, Colonel Randolph’s attention and advice had served him in good stead on many occasions.

  Randolph had a steward bring coffee, and the two men sat down at the command table. A large, detailed topographical map was spread upon it, features of the hilly terrain clearly delineated, and the apparent positions of both armies marked by blue and gray flags.

  “This is bad,” Randolph said, in a voice different from that he had used only moments before to address his staff. “We don’t know exactly where their reconnaisance and support units are, nor whether they are quite certain of the location of ours. The whole thing could come to flashpoint by accidental encounter before either side is prepared. And when that happens…”

  “…all planning has gone for naught,” Eric finished.

  During the past few months he had felt himself growing in all respects, coming to terms with command, travail, and his own ambitions. He and Randolph had also grown close, close enough for the colonel to have suggested that they find and exploit some enterprise after the war was over. Eric also told Randolph about Kristin, asking him to call on her if he did not survive, and Randolph made a similar request that Eric contact his own family in Boston, in case of his death.

  “The lesson of history,” Randolph had told his young student, “is that war advances and multiples the fields of human activity.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction?” Eric had wondered. “What of the ruined cities, the devastated countryside, the maimed and the dead?”

  “Tragic, indeed. But armed conflict must be regarded also from an objective point of view. All wars finally end. Then cities must be rebuilt, land renewed. The maimed must be cared for. And the dead you have with you always, do you not?”

  It had seemed to Eric, at first, a shockingly cold-blooded appraisal, quite at variance with the intelligent, civilized personality he knew Randolph possessed. But when he considered the colonel’s words further, he saw the truth they held: Life went on, and had to be served.

  “Moreover,” Randolph went on, “war is a spur to technology and inventiveness. Consider the expansion of the railroad, the development of communications evidenced by the telegraph, the move to oil as fuel for engines of all sorts. These things do not go away when the battle ends. No, they are platforms from which to build. And that’s what I propose. After the war you and I ought to choose an enterprise, and see what we can make of it, see how far we can go.”

  Eric had agreed, in general terms at first, later with growing enthusiasm. But for now the war itself had to be endured, and survived.

  “Get your men into formation,” the colonel told him, “for the march to Pipe Creek.”

  By noon of the following day, June thirtieth, Eric’s company was well entrenched along Pipe Creek, and he was proud of them. But by midafternoon they were abandoning the trenches and fortifications forged with so much labor. Because by midafternoon everything had changed.

  “What the hell is going on?” grumbled the men, when they were ordered to pack up and prepare to march again. “We just got dug in here, the battle hasn’t even begun, and now we’re moving out already?”

  “Wrong,” Eric informed them. “The battle is already on, and it’s going to be a lot worse than anyone thought.”

  It had begun, as Colonel Randolph had feared, because neither army knew exactly where its adversary was located, on those wooded, heavily foliated hills of Pennsylvania. The Confederate cavalry of General A. P. Hill, out on a scouting mission, decided to stop in the little town of Gettysburg. Some of the men needed new boots, and certainly the town would have a bootery. They did not, however, get much of a chance to shop, because in the town itself were Northern troops, riding with the cavalry division of General Buford.

  Flashpoint.

  Lee abandoned his defensive plans, and went on the attack, so the battle took place not at Cashtown, where he had wanted it, but in and around Gettysburg. Colonel Randolph was ordered west from Pipe Creek to Cemetery Ridge, there to dig in and defend. A forced march across difficult terrain brought Eric and his men to Cemetery Ridge itself, a limestone outcropping shaped like a fishhook, facing Confederate forces to the west and north. There they met the beaten and bedraggled remnants of the Union First Corps, driven from the village of Gettysburg on July first, the first day of battle. Units of General A. P. Hill and General Ewell had slashed the First Corps to pieces, and their retreat to Cemetery Ridge was less a calculated move than a rout. They sank down exhausted, shell shocked, while Colonel Randolph’s men set up the defensive guns.

  Eric’s men, boisterous and bright with bravado on the march toward the Ridge, now gazed with veiled fear at the wounded and the dead. Cries of anguish rose from the encampment as twilight descended that day, from the wounded men who lay suffering, dying. Campfires were not permitted, so as not to give away the exact Union positions, and every sound from under bush or behind tree was interpreted to have been caused by a Rebel scout. Watchful and jittery, Eric inspected his company’s cannon and talked to the men.

  “They got hit real bad, didn’t they, sir?” asked Krantz, the tough Ohioan. It was the first time he’d ever called Eric “sir.”

  “It’s true, but we can’t think about that now. Colonel Randolph has it from headquarters that Jubal Early’s men will attack us tomorrow morning.”

  Krantz and his fellows gave low whistles. Jubal Early. The great names of the war were known to nearly all of them, and, like all great names, they carried an aura. The history of the war was written in the names of men and places, so that men and places had become more than they were, had acquired by repetition and significance and, yes, by death, too, a power mightier than daily reality. The Wilderness and Sharpsburg, Vicksburg and Ulysses S. Grant. Andersonville and Manassas and the golden Shenandoah, and Robert E. Lee. Fighting Joe Hooker was one of the great names, and Jeb Stuart. And Jubal Early, too.

  The men listened to the mutter of the night, heard the million trackless noises beneath the trees, and
shivered, eating sourdough bread, drinking water from canteens, wondering if one night hence they would eat and drink again.

  “Well, it’s only Early,” said Private Cleavis, trying to cheer himself. “It could be Jeb Stuart himself. That’d be worse.”

  “Shut up. Early is bad enough,” Krantz shot back.

  A long, low moan sounded down the line, and Eric walked toward it. Darkness had almost fallen, and he picked his way carefully among the rows of wounded men. Several officers and a doctor bent over a filthy, bloody bedroll, on which a soldier lay dying. The man was still conscious, but suffering acutely. He had lost an arm, and his right leg from just above the knee. He was dying, and he knew it, and he did not like it.

  “Kill me now,” he groaned, “goddam you bastards. You got me into this, and I’m a goner. Have a heart and put a bullet in my head.”

  Something was familiar about the voice. Eric bent down. By the last light of day he saw Mick Leeds, by whom he had been so ill used in his early days in New York. Mick’s once ruddy complexion was pale now, pale as death, and his thick, rowdy mustache was limp and wet with the sweat of final exhaustion.

  “Leeds!” said Eric, in recognition.

  The officers turned; the doctor looked up. He seemed relieved that someone else had come along. “You know this man?”

  Eric went down on one knee next to the wounded man. “Yes. Mick. Mick. You remember me?”

  The big roughneck squinted against twilight and pain. A glimmer of knowledge came into his eyes. “Hey. It’s the foreigner. Hey, man, sorry about back in New York. You hate me? You got a right. Look, get even now, and put a bullet in me…oh, God!” he wailed, as new spasms of pain shook him, left him breathless. “Hey…” he gasped, “come…on. Shoot me…ah…bitch…”

  “I can’t do that. You want to talk? Take your mind off some of the pain? Your sister. What happened to your sister, Joan?”

  Mick Leeds struggled up through layers of agony, and a hard glint came into his eyes.

  “She…she done me,” he said. “She got me to go in the army, and then she stole my draft money.”

  “She stole your…?”

  “An’ you know what I think?” With his remaining arm he reached out and grabbed Eric’s sleeve, holding on as if, when he died, he meant to take Eric across with him. “You know, I think she did Liz in. Killed our own ma. I think she did. To get the money. That was all she ever wanted. She didn’t love me…”

  This seemed to sadden him.

  “Where is she now? Joan?”

  Mick was gasping irregularly now, and it was clear he would not last much longer.

  “You want a priest or a minister?” the doctor interjected.

  Mick Leeds shook his head. “No, God damn it…no…unless you get one who’ll shoot me, put me out of…Joan’s in…Pittsburgh now. She’s…she’s got a…rich man. Horace…is his name. But don’t…don’t mess with her. She’s trouble…she’s death…”

  His voice stopped. He gulped, coughed. Blood rose in his throat, and ran down the corners of his slack mouth.

  “Remember,” he cried, still holding onto Eric’s sleeve, his eyes bright and big, “remember those…rides out to the Island? Getting the liquor? Those…those were good…times, they were…”

  His body shook once, twice. Blood pooled in his open mouth, but no longer spilled over. His blood had stopped running. His heart had quit.

  The doctor pulled a blanket up over Mick’s head. “So,” he said to Eric, “ran a little mm in your younger days, did you?”

  But he was only making nervous conversation, separating himself, separating the rest of the living, from the husk of death in the blanket at their feet.

  “What was that name he mentioned? The one in Pittsburgh?”

  “Horace,” said Eric.

  “I wonder if that could be Benjamin Horace? The one who’s interested in oil? He’s the meanest son of a bitch in western Pennsylvania.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Eric said. But it sounded like the type of man Joan would want. He made a mental note to stay far from Pittsburgh.

  Early attacked Cemetery Ridge in the morning. Eric’s first battle, his first taste of combat. It was something that just happened, as if outside of time. There was no chance to experience it, study it, certainly not to reflect upon it, as the battle was going on. Men moved by instinct and fear, loaded and fired rifle or cannon so frantically they were seldom aware of the discrete elements of their physical action. But their training had been good. They worked. If a man fell, and many fell, that was as it was. There was no time, in the melee of shouting and blasting and blood, to think, only to act.

  Early’s men came up Cemetery Ridge, and kept on coming. Eric, with his men next to their cannon, saw the charge begin, far down the slope, and thought they will never get past the row of hedges, and bent to work, passing balls for the cannon, calling out to his men, “Fire! Reload! Fire! Reload! Fire! Reload!” as if he were no longer a man, but rather a piece of some vast killing machine, which he was supposed to be directing but which was actually directing him. But they did get past the row of hedges, the Confederates, and came on. They will never get beyond the ditch at the bottom of the ridge, Eric thought, sweat-soaked now, three of his men dead, four, five, another fallen, another. But they did get beyond the ditch and kept on coming, up the ridge now. They cannot ever get halfway up, thought Eric then, our fire is too withering. And the Union fire was indeed monstrous, a rolling field of thunder beneath heaven. It seemed as if all Pennsylvania were rocking upon the cradle of mother earth, as if the earth herself were shuddering in its depth. And Early’s men kept on coming. “They shall never reach the top of the hill,” cried Eric to his men, but then, as if in slow motion, removed from the minute-by-minute record of man’s sad history on the face of his patient planet, Eric saw his cannoneer turn away from the blazing-hot weapon, and run for cover. A moment passed. He saw the flicker of a triumphant smile cross the face of an oncoming Confederate cavalryman, saw two more of his men melt away. He felt the hoofbeats of the horses coming at him, sensed the bitter pall of fear in the air. All along Cemetery Ridge men were turning, running, a ragged wave of blue abandoning positions and rolling toward the wooded cover on the opposite side of the ridge. Colonel Randolph pounded up on his chestnut stallion, pointing, exhorting. Eric leaped toward his own horse, the beast terrified now, ready to bolt. He was in the air. He saw the Confederates about to crash through what had been, until this instant, the Union line. He heard the blast and the thunder, and felt whirling through the air some device or engine of incomparable power. He saw Colonel Randolph lifted from his saddle, lifted from his horse. How odd, he had forgotten to remove his leg. And then Eric felt himself lifted, too, and struck, and spinning far above the bloody fields of ancient earth. Then everything was soft and lovely, soft and sweet, and he was with Kristin in a blaze of light, far up in the mountains above Sonnendahl Fjord. He was loving her, and she him, bathed in gorgeous light. He drank her image, and she his, and nothing bad had ever happened to them, and never would.

  VI

  Faces.

  Faces came and went, appeared suddenly, dimmed, flickered out like pale fires.

  Faces. Worried. Curious. Dispassionate. Coming down out of a cloud to look at him, and then receding, like gods come to study small life on a bizarre and distant world.

  One face came more often than the other.

  Soft. Comforting. Soft white, surrounded by lovely blackness, shards of blue light, jewels within the face.

  “Elaine.”

  Elaine, Eric thought Elaine.

  Faces, and a word. Other words. Oslo. Anandale. A slip of memory there, an image: water harbor city cold. More then: thunder…

  “Elaine?”

  Face soft white with blue jewel eyes. Smile.

  Thunder. Images in water. Kris…Thunder. Boot in a stirrup…

  “Has he opened his eyes again, Elaine?”

  The face moved above him, red lips, white teet
h. Music. Music, from those lips.

  “I think he’s awake now, praise God.”

  God. Thunder battle and earth, thin blue line of men running for trees.

  Himself in the trees, lying down, the earth sweet and soft upon him. This is my grave…

  He heard other words, felt them come out of himself, as if from a point in his soul so remote that speech had only been invented yesterday, was only now being tested.

  “This…is not my…grave…”

  “I hope not,” came the music from the mouth of the face above him, jewel eyes smiling, and teeth smiling, too. “Father, come!”

  And then another face, angular, with gray at the top and long gray coming down. Beard.

  “You rest easy there, son.”

  Son! That is who I am. Someone called son. Rest easy there, son. No, I am not son. I am…something, something son, I am

  “Gunnarson,” he heard a voice say.

  “Gunnarson,” he heard another voice repeat. The melody voice. “Is that his name, father?”

  “I reckon.”

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Dunno yet. Can’t tell.”

  “Dear God, let him be all right.”

  “I’m…all right” Eric heard someone say. I said that. “I’m all right,” he said again. All right. Alive. I’m…what of the soft earth in the forest, hiding, the grave…“Where am I?” he asked.

  The face of black and white, jewel-blue eyes, came down and close to him. A girl. A woman. Pretty, very. And worried, but with a touch of hope in her expression. “You’re in bed. In a farmhouse in Pennsylvania.”

  Pennsylvania. Familiar. I have been there. Starbane? No. Gettys…something.

  Battle. The battle. Running. He tried to rise. Barely moved. The bearded man touched him on the chest “Easy now, you ain’t goin’ nowhere yet.”

  “But I’ve got to…my men…what day is it? Must drive General Early back…”