Sweetsmoke

by David Fuller

  McLaren came upon the body of a friend and stopped to bury him. The sixteen-year-old went on, anxious to catch up to the battle that he thought was sure to start at any moment. Cassius found a shovel and worked alongside McLaren.

  They spent the night at Turner's Gap and in the morning set off to cover the distance to Sharpsburg. It was hot and dry, but Cassius read the sky and thought the weather was about to turn.

  By late afternoon they had come upon the two enormous armies camped up against one another on a rolling, confusing ground that hid whole regiments from his view, exposing them only after he had walked past them. He and McLaren walked by rows of tents that stretched out and vanished beyond a rise, only to reappear continuing on but smaller in the distance. They passed wagons and food and horses, they smelled food and burning campfires. There were cannons and more cannons, and shells piled up alongside the cannons, dropped off by supply wagons. Cassius saw things that he would not have imagined in his most extravagant dreams. How could this Federal army be so large, how was it managed, how did it move? How could the Confederates put up a fight against so many men? The ocean of blue jerseys stretched on and on, in all directions around him. He would not have been surprised to find them under his feet or flying overhead. To see this many men in one place was more than impressive, it was positively daunting. He had been hearing a distant tink and crack throughout the afternoon, and now he knew it was the incidental burst of musket fire. But was this the sound of war? It was so puny compared to the manpower arrayed around him. No, he decided, the majority of the two armies were not engaged at this time. The clashing occurred in snarling pockets of rage that began and ended suddenly. This was but prelude.

  The ground was confusing; they walked on land that had appeared continuous from a distance, but suddenly dropped away to reveal a creek and an arched stone bridge.

  The afternoon light was almost gone with low clouds moving in, and he and McLaren crossed the bridge, dodging wagons and troops. He stopped for a moment to look down at the small creek that flowed below him, some fifty or sixty feet across. They asked after the 13th Pennsylvania, but usually before they could speak their question, men were pointing, having seen McLaren's hat, sending them off the road along the river up a modest hill. They reached another road and were told to make a hard left.

  "Just stay on Smoketown Road," someone advised.

  They heard rumors of a skirmish that had just ended, that the Bucktails now had partial control of a patch of woods just ahead. The news put McLaren in high spirits until he saw bodies of men with whom he was acquainted being littered back to the creek, one with his bucktail hat resting on his chest. McLaren's mood darkened.

  They reached the woods and located his unit, and it was then McLaren discovered the price that had been paid to take that ground. Twenty-eight Bucktails killed, including Colonel McNeil. Sixty-five wounded. McLaren was angry, and he spoke of McNeil as a fine and noble officer. He was not alone, as the Bucktails to a man were in great despair over the death of an officer they admired. McLaren was ready to enter the fight then, but his friends spoke words to cool his passion and said that tomorrow would be soon enough. Cassius recognized recklessness in the man's rage and moved away from him.

  He picked his way to the far side of the woods, found what seemed to be a good spot, and settled down to sleep. The night was filled with pickets firing, small pockets of distant cracks that would come in a burst, then stop, followed by the occasional explosive sound of a nearby musket or rifle firing in retort. He lay on his back, and through the heavy tree foliage above he saw, through the open patches, artillery shells flying, as sparks of their burning fuses glimmered against the low clouds. Cassius heard the men around him restless in their attempts at sleep. He planned to cross to the other side once he understood the lay of the land in daylight, so that he could be behind Confederate lines in the morning before the battle began. Then he would look for Whitacre. If it still mattered after that, he would look for Jacob.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cassius woke just as the sky was growing light. He had slept poorly, between the late night drizzle that had turned to rain before dawn and the sounds of the occasional musket shot, which gave the night an unending offbeat rhythm. Throughout the night he had sensed that the men around him were awake. He rose and was hungry. The sky was brighter and he saw he was on the edge of an area of woods by a cornfield. He still intended to cross the line to the Confederate side, but first his belly wanted to know if the corn was ripe. He heard a closer shot this time, then another closer still. Fog hugged the ground, the rain had stopped and the trees dripped.

  He entered the cornfield at the same time as two Union soldiers. The stalks reached over his head, and he was comforted by the familiar crop. He waded in deeper and found the corn ripe. Faced with this bounty, he became choosy and moved from one stalk to the next. He was dimly aware of a handful of others wandering nearby. He glanced at them in their dark blue coats and saw eyes glazed with fatigue, rifles carried in the crooks of their elbows. The morning fog kept him from seeing little more than a few feet in any direction, as if swathed in a cloud. He moved slowly under the not unpleasant burden of sleeplessness. His fingers tested the sheathed, unpicked corn until he hit upon a substantial ear and twisted it free. It was satisfyingly plump in his palm. The drowsy corn stalks rustled. The fog would burn off, the day would be hot, and the predawn rain would bring humidity, but for now he was content. He took hold of the corn silk at the top of the ear and pulled down to reveal white nubs perfectly aligned. He smiled, looked at his neighbor to share the perfection, and saw the closest man wore a gray jacket. Cassius hesitated, knowing something was out of place, and it was a moment before he identified what it was. He looked back at a blue coat a few feet away, and the blue had not seen the gray, just as gray was unaware of blue. The light was diffused and the colors were gorgeous in the fog shroud, the leaves and stalks near him vivid green and true, while a few feet away, the haze softened the color to a subtle greenish gray. The soft light toned down the deep blue Federal coats and made creamy the butternut gray of the Confederate coats. Cassius held his perfect ear of corn and turned in a circle, losing his sense of direction as he saw another gray coat just visible there, then watched vanish two blue coats in the murk and stalks behind him.

  A series of overlapping extraordinary booms sucked the air, the sky shrieked, and from above a huge sudden stunning concussive burst squeezed his skull and slapped his body flat against the ground, knocking his breath completely away. Deaf, dirt-mouthed, desperately fighting for air, ears filling with a gush of rushing white river noise that quickly narrowed into a high-pitched whine. His alarm urged him to flee but his body was unable to move. Slowly, precious breath came and filled him, his sluggish ears cleared and he made out tinny crackling gunfire. After a moment he knew that the whine in his ears was real and not the ringing aftermath of artillery. His head was stupid, aching, his hands explored his body to know if he was still of a piece. Artillery boomed close and splattered him with dirt and corn, his chest and legs and bowels quaked and he dug his fingers into the soil and knew the ground shuddered beneath him. On hands and knees he scrabbled back to the woods, throwing himself down. Bucktails were cramped behind logs and stones, aiming

  Sharp's rifles and firing, dense clouds of smoke blinding, then consuming them after each shot, the smoke hovering, thickening the local fog. Return fire came from within the woods, too close. An inconsistent shiver gripped the leaves around him as minie balls chopped through them. Bucktails cracked their smoking weapons open in the middle, grabbed from a small box a whitish linen cartridge, shoved it into the bore, raised the breechblock which sheared off the back end of the cartridge, brought the rifle back up, and fired, all in a matter of seconds. Cassius had never seen a breechloader in action. Astonishing the speed, the accuracy; indeed they were dangerous marksmen who well deserved their reputation. He heard and felt the whiz and zing, then the sickening th
umps that he hoped were projectiles drilling trees but knew to be the impact of bullets smacking men's bodies.

  Artillery was constant, a gross thunder that raged from both sides and encircled him no matter which direction he turned. The plan to find Whitacre blew out of his brain, as how could anything survive the very air being shredded to bits? He thought of birds and squirrels and insects, and wondered where they would hide.

  A piercing cry rose up around him, a violent wildcat yell, and the Bucktails were up and flowing past, firing as they moved. He saw Confederate skirmishers rise from their positions right there, not twenty yards away, to turn and run out of the woods and across the road. The Bucktails drove forward to the snake-rail fence bordering Smoketown Road and settled in and continued their terrible accurate firing.

  Artillery shells blundered overhead, some crashing high up into the trees, and giant chunks of shagbark hickory and black walnut and green ash came thundering down, killing a man not ten feet from him. Splinters sprayed and a four-inch sliver stung his shoulder and stuck deep. He eased it out, felt it bleed, and knew it was time to move. He rushed forward in a crouch, dodging bodies and branches, to where a line of Bucktails shielded themselves behind the low fence along the road. Cloaked by woods' edge, he took in the landscape. He was south of the line of corn with an open clover field to his right. The clover field bordered the road on its north side; below the road were a farm and a plowed field. The entire vista revealed an undulating land of tricky rises and swales. The Bucktails sent their accurate fire into Confederates hunkered down in the plowed field, who also endured artillery shelling from the far side of the creek to the east. His eyes followed Smoketown Road southwest up a grassy rolling swell to a small white building turned bright orange by the rising sun, heavy woods beyond it. Confederate artillery sat upon the rise and great blooms of smoke burst from the snouts of their big guns, the sound coming after, the clouds spreading and merging with the smoke of the other guns, all of it rolling down the hill toward and past him to the creek. The natural fog dissipated and this new fog replaced it, borne of muskets and cannon.

  His eye was drawn back to the plowed field as a long line of Confederates rose up and opened fire into the Bucktails' position, the space around him coming fantastically alive as bullets cleaved the air, searing perforations that demolished everything in their path. So many projectiles, so many that it seemed the air itself was enraged, spewing vengeful hornets riding hurricane winds. The Confederates knelt to reload, biting off the ends of paper charges, emptying powder into the far end of their musket barrels, dropping in the ball, tamping it down as the patient Bucktails waited, and within a minute the Confederates stood to fire and the Bucktails timed it just so and gave them a crippling volley. Cassius watched the gray men catch the singing fusillade and fall. He noted the harsh sun in their faces and the long shadows thrown out behind them, and knew it was barely past six in the morning with the dead already piling up.

  The Bucktails were running low on ammunition and were ordered to fall back. Cassius looked to say good-bye to McLaren but did not see him. Fresh Blues moved in to take their place, and Cassius stayed where he was, feeling a false security as he had so far survived and any venture into the snarling air seemed insane. Out on the plowed field he saw the Confederates turn their weapons away from him and angle them to his right. He looked over his shoulder across the clover and saw, coming through the cornfield, two glorious flags waving over the stalks, leading an unknown force to the southern rim of the corn.

  The Bluecoats emerged from the corn rows in parade formation, glorious in their precise emergence. Then, from the turnpike up near the small white building—and Cassius had not noticed them before—coming from behind a wooden fence a vicious fire erupted against the Blue troops—God what smoke!—and the Grays in the plowed field rose as well, perfectly coordinated, as if one man, reflected a hundred times, abruptly stood, and they opened fire catching the Blues in a murderous crossfire. A stunning number of Federals dropped instantaneously in the perfect rows of their formation, as if a giant scythe glinted across their ankles. Survivors dove back into standing corn to escape. Artillery canister from the bald area near the small white building screamed into the cornfield and split men apart as if the human body were little more than a rag doll with poor stitching.

  This was killing on an impossible scale, and Cassius could not wrap his brain around the images in front of his eyes. He tried to remember that each one of these men had a life, a family, mother, father, children, fears and hopes and ideas; each one worked and dreamed and had once been a child, and now screamed in astonished agony. He lost his sense of reality, as if his intelligence shut down to preserve him from madness. Unable to comprehend the meaning of such an immense horror, he began to see falling men as unreal, no different than the soldiers he carved. These were white men being killed by white men who were the same but for the color of their uniforms; mindfully, purposely slaughtering one another by the dozens, by the score, by the hundreds, by the thousands. Cassius saw how easy it was to devastate a man's body and rob him of his valuable life. And yet those who survived remained on the battlefield and fought on.

  He watched because it was impossible not to watch. He stayed in one place until he moved, and his reasons for moving were no greater than his reasons for staying, unmotivated by fear or superstition. Heat and humidity tormented him, but it was worse for the combatants who held smoldering weapons and did their work on the water in their canteens. Time lagged, and the order in which events occurred began to slam together until it was a confused nightmare of attack and retreat on both sides. More Blues came through the cornfield, but in smaller groups, and not in formation. More Grays reinforced the plowed field and died; others fired; still others ran. A handful of Gray skirmishers slipped into the cornfield between two Blue brigades and sat between them picking off men in both directions, so that when the Blues fired back, they killed their own.

  Still more Blue troops came through the cornfield from the north to reinforce their decimated brethren, and the thinned and exhausted Grays fell back to the far woods. The Blues chased them firing, but they too were losing men and running short of ammunition, and then they gave up the field and fell back to the corn. The Grays regrouped and rushed back to their original positions, and all the dead to date were for nothing. He remembered a moment when Grays from the plowed field rose to charge his position, but the gunfire around him caught them climbing a fence and they fell back. He began to doubt that he had actually seen it, even though it had been clear and purposeful and had set his heart racing. Confederates set fire to the farmhouse next to the plowed field, and he knew that was true because the smoke occasionally blew in his direction and choked him, more intense than the passing smoke of artillery.

  The cornfield was thinning, acres of stalks flattened by bodies and artillery, and it was patchy and smoking and smelled of sulfur, but the fighting over it did not stop, as if this patch of ground was the key to the war. He saw men go mad. He saw men hurl their weapons at the enemy. He saw men forget to remove the ramrod from their muzzle and fire so that it flew like a spear. He saw men weep. He saw men scream, he saw men throw their weapons aside and crawl among the dead for a fresh weapon. He saw dead men piled atop one another where they had fallen, and others using those bodies as shields to fire on their enemy. He saw a man of rank open his mouth to shout an order, only to have a bullet drive through it and out the back of his head. He saw fresh Gray troops charge the cornfield—someone saw their flag and said Texans—and drive the Blues back, the stalks thinning badly now, and he heard artillery from just north of the cornfield, canister fired at close range, that chewed the Texans apart and only a handful came back. He heard sudden whoops and yells from somewhere to the northwest and knew another battle raged there, and he wondered how many men could be fighting at once. He wondered when they would run out of men, and if they did, would that stop it or would the wind and the trees take up arms and carry on?

&nb
sp; It had to be after nine o'clock in the morning, Cassius guessed, looking at the sun that was somehow safely up over South Mountain. The cornfield, what was left of it, belonged to the Blue. The fight was now in the clover field and the plowed field just south.

  Cassius got to his feet. He struggled to stand, his leg muscles knotted and strained. He walked into the cornfield, out into the open where here and there a stalk still stood, frayed and uncertain. He stepped cautiously around the dead, an intricate chore as they carpeted the area. Artillery had rent bodies into fetid fetal lumps sprayed across the earth. In some areas, severed body parts were so thoroughly shredded by canister they were hard to identify. Blue bodies covered Gray bodies on top of Blue that rested on green stalks and smashed bits of white corn. He was barely aware of the sounds of battle surrounding him. He heard the zip of the occasional bullet and ignored the one that went clean through his shirt without touching his skin. He cringed at the stench, the ammonia smell of unbathed men, the odors of sulfur and sour vomit, slick oily feces and the first breath of decay. Delirious frenzied flies massed and dove and spewed their cream into open wounds. Flattened cornstalks were splattered with gore, and blood collected like dew in the curled fallen cups of the leaves. The charnel smell chafed his nostrils and burrowed into his sinuses and brain, seeping under his armpits and up his ass, marinating his skin down to his bones until his teeth tasted of rot from within.

  Gunfire and artillery stopped at the same moment on both sides. There came over the field a sudden and shocking shroud of silence, and Cassius looked up with alarm and wonder. It lasted only a few breaths, but in that time he was more afraid than he had been all morning.