by David Mason
and wrote up a receipt for the old man
who touched my hand and wished me a safe journey.
Back then our farm in Illinois was much
like his, and it made me think of my wife and child.
We got back safe with peaches, corn, honey,
hogs and brandy, halted where the Colonel
rode out to meet us behind the picket lines.
“You have any trouble, Mitch?” he says.
“Yes Sir,” I says, “we skirmished with some bees.”
The men were a great sight, so badly stung
we had to laugh, but they ate well that night.
Some of the corn we cooked by laying ears
in the hot ashes of cooking fires, some
shelled and parched in the kettles of our cooks.
We slept all right, but next day had new orders
to cross the river and march to Sand Mountain—
we was on our way to Chickamauga.
Supplies were never sent to that old couple,
which has bothered my mind for all these years.
All Houses Are Haunted
Mrs. Gresham:
Some nights in the Palouse the moon-blue sky
was windless, stars adrift in its forever.
No one knew how often I left the ranch
and walked alone out to the luminous fields,
my nightdress trailing in grass like spun silver,
and lost myself in meditation there
before the day I really left for good.
When you leave a place it is more beautiful
those last few days, the earth will open up
secrets you never guessed at: the hushed grass,
the bluish cottonwood that seems to wait
and breathe with you in solitary union.
Alone on a hill at night, you can feel
the world was made for us to listen to.
Other nights I thought us the accidents
of a sorry God, or worse. Overcome
by silence, I could feel the planet whirl
like a crazy bronco bucking through space—
the best that we could do was grip the saddle.
Those were nights I felt I would be crushed,
my family would wake and not recall me.
Who was I but the girl who read Longfellow
to her Papa when his war-damaged eyes
no longer focused on the page, and when
no men came by to listen to his stories?
My sisters loved the poets too, but I
was the one who read aloud. I understood
always that I was here to be a voice.
“All houses wherein men have lived and died
are haunted houses.” Yes, and looking back
across the fields, so wide awake around
my Papa’s house, I saw how fragile love is,
how easy to uproot from any place,
how hard to plant again. I was a voice,
an echo, if you will,
though nothing echoed in that open land.
Acoustic Shadows
Lt. Mitchell:
We climbed Sand Mountain and could see the dust
raised by Bragg’s army beating a retreat.
That night we saw the flash of cannon fire
but didn’t hear a sound. “Acoustic shadow,”
the Colonel called it, hillsides all lit up
like summer lightning, but only a drizzle
hissed and the men were too dead tired to hear.
Then Bragg vanished. We were ordered back
to Chattanooga where we suffered more:
no rations, and water in short supply
so men drank from horse and mule tracks and wrung
out moisture from mud stuck to their ponchos.
Six miles out of Chattanooga we lay down
like dogs in the road beneath a long cliff.
More than a mile east, we could see a belt
of timber marking the river’s course, the smoke
of rebel campfires drifting from the trees.
They had chosen this for their battlefield.
During the night we heard them move to the ground
below us, bivouac so near we smelled
tobacco sweet enough to drive us mad.
Next morning the big guns that woke us up
pounded a short ways up the line. Charley
brought me a cup of water he had scavenged.
“No more of them acoustic shades,” he said,
and I could see he knew we were in for it.
The guns thudded and rapped like heavy mauls
driving a stout post deep into the ground.
I told the Colonel of a trick I learned
in the Indian campaigns out west. The men
could bite a cartridge end and suck a third
of the powder out. So stimulated then,
they would not think of their thirst. We’d be firing
at close range and would not need a full charge.
He sent the order out along the lines.
At daylight an orderly come up from Chattanooga:
“Men, get out of the road,” he said. “No cheering.”
Then General Garfield and his staff rode through
the lines, twelve officers who raised their hats
to every color they passed. They all set
forward in their saddles just a little
and made a sight. We formed ranks in their wake.
When my brigade come under enemy fire,
the Rebs shot from breastworks of brush and rock.
The 79th Illinois marched up
on top of them before we shouldered rifles.
We opened fire at thirty steps. Crazed with thirst,
our desperate men knelt down and kept on firing,
stood and fired again into the thick smoke.
We fought our way toward water, all our guns
rattling till they made a single roar,
Minié balls shredding through the grass and leaves
and boys dropping wounded to their knees.
we could see the timber belt, reached water
short of the river in a marsh. The men
threw off the scum and drank the puddles dry,
and found the spot alive with wiggle-tails.
We heard the rebels yell, and we yelled back,
though many of our boys were badly wounded.
For a moment the shooting stopped. My hand hurt
from gripping the sweaty hilt of my sword so tight,
but I was in one piece and saw to my men.
A fellow from Illinois fell next to me
and lay stone dead, staring up at the clouds,
blood thick in his beard. I saw where the ball
had ripped open his guts, and in his last
sad moments he had torn his tunic open
searching for the wound, now packed with dead leaves.
I just had time to dismount and close his eyes
and mutter a Lord have mercy over him.
But rebel sharpshooters lay ahead of us
on a hill, their bullets cutting through the trees.
Men were hit, horses were hit, and finally
a ball grazed Colonel Butler on the shoulder,
so he shouted to Captain Clark, “Get rid
of those pesky fellows, will you?” I told
the Captain, “Give me eight men. We’ll climb up
that rock a quarter mile off and take
a shot at them.” I got more volunteers
than I could use, chose eight from my company.
Colonel Butler said, “Mitch, dislodge those men.”
I saluted and inquired of Captain Clark,
“What’s your pleasure, Sir?” The Captain said,
“Kill the long-haired devils where you find them.”
We pulled off our blue coats and haversacks,
advancing from the Pe
nnsylvanian line.
“Go get ’em, boys,” said one. The Captain there
only shook his head: “You won’t come back.”
At the base of the rock two poor skirmishers
lay stone cold where the sharpshooters dropped them.
We crawled ahead, our pantaloons gray with dirt.
Then Tommy Wenn, a noble young churchgoer
from home said, “I’ll pass over,” and ran up.
The skirmish line kept firing to make work
for them sharpshooters, so Tommy could pass.
We all passed over in like manner, I last,
and with good cover climbed up the hillside
a mile, came out to the sharpshooters’ rear.
They fired at our reserves a mile away,
dropping bullets, you could say, from the clouds.
We advanced to spitting distance from the first
sharpshooter. I told Tommy Wenn, “You wait
till he lifts up to shoot, then fire at him.”
Tommy got the first man with a clean shot
through the head. We had to lay the body
over the splattered brains to hide the sight.
Tommy stayed in the dead man’s barricade
to shoot the ground at intervals and fool
the Rebs while we went on to do the next.
We killed six in this fashion, with one left
atop a gulch. I took Jesse Peterson:
“Now Jesse, take your time, but get him good.”
Jesse lowered his rifle and said, “Lieutenant,
I’m afraid my gun won’t reach him from here.”
We went further, till Jesse found a rock
to rest his rifle on. He cocked the gun,
and just as that rebel’s hairy head appeared,
Jesse let him have it. We didn’t bother
to gather up that sorry soul’s remains,
but took the first six rifles back to our lines.
The soldiers raised Tommy Wenn on their shoulders
and gave three cheers for Mitchell and his men.
The colonel sent a dispatch bearing praise.
But while we did our job the rebel guns
blew up the roadside cliff two miles away,
killing some of General Garfield’s staff.
I’d been in a shadow and I did not hear it.
Leaving Pomeroy
Mrs. Gresham:
Running away is something children do
and I was not a child. Though I ran out
those many nights, I always came back home
by dawn to see to it that Papa was fed
and help out Mama any way I could.
She used to tell me I should have my own life
and there were plenty of men about who’d do.
My sisters snatched up half the able men
in Pomeroy. Oh, I had offers—eight
to be exact—but I had wanderlust
like some have measles. Anyway, my brother
lived for the ranch and would take care of it,
so I made plans to see my parents settled
and strike out for the world all on my own.
By 1900, Papa found the ranch
harder to manage. We bought the big house
in Pomeroy so we could take in boarders,
left the wheat and cattle in William’s hands,
though Papa went back any day he could
to mend his fences or repair his tools
or just to wander in his memories.
Some people have no gift for growing old.
Though there were days my Papa could hardly breathe,
the old cough coming back, his eyesight poor,
though his hair and beard had long been white,
he still had the bearing of a younger man
and thought himself a soldier, and so his offspring
were forced to soldier with him all those years.
My sisters and I were quite small, like Mama,
with her brown hair and eyes, and some said we
were pretty, admiring our clothes and manners—
my parents made sure we were well-behaved—
and now with all the grandkids coming by
it seemed as if the Mitchell clan of Pomeroy
had justified their travels.
I was almost thirty. I had said no
enough to good men that my sisters thought
I’d lost what little brain I had. I helped
our Mama cook and clean for boarders, men
who came for harvest work, or to punch cows.
By autumn I had told them I was leaving.
Mama sat down, frozen in the kitchen,
and that night I made supper by myself.
She was ten years younger than our Papa was,
and a much sturdier Methodist than he—
she used to organize camp meetings back
in Illinois, and taught her children prayers.
The world we knew in childhood was all God’s,
but somehow as we grew God slipped away,
or didn’t hold us as He used to do.
The war hurt Mama too. Her brother died,
no one knew just where, and after that
her father had no use for Southerners
and never spoke to one. Papa, of course,
loved people no matter who they were,
wanted every stranger in Pomeroy
to stay at the Mitchell house and hear him tell
old tales about escape from Libby Prison.
My parents were so unlike each other in
the way they bore the burden of the past.
That day I took the train
I saw Mama cry for the first time ever;
Papa simply ordered me to write
and stood beside her, waving, as I left.
I see them both receding on the platform,
Papa in his suit and watch-chained vest,
Mama veiled as if for someone’s funeral,
the whole town growing smaller till I saw
it wasn’t a town at all, but a few trees
nestled in the grass of a great dry land
growing so much wider by the minute
that suddenly I feared what I had chosen.
Boyish War
Lt. Mitchell:
“All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.”
My daughter read that to me years ago—
Maggie, the one who left for California.
We weren’t all boys. I was thirty-three
and I knew older men in uniform.
But we fought like boys. You know what I mean.
We bragged and laughed when we weren’t terrified.
And I saw schoolkids torn apart by bullets,
their heads bashed in by Confederate rifles.
And I saw Yankees do a thing or two
to make those people hate us all their lives.
But in those days I couldn’t waste my pity
on men who broken our union.
There was a fire in me that made me fight.
Not anger—no, nothing like that old Greek,
Achilles, who we read about at school.
I don’t think I could ever really hate,
or could even understand Abe Lincoln’s cause.
He was from Illinois and he was ours,
and we elected him our President,
and when he asked for volunteers, I went.
We was the right flank at Chickamauga,
and never saw the center of the fight
where Longstreet charged a gap in the Union lines
to give his West Point roommate, Rosecrans, hell
at great cost to both sides—many thousands
killed, wounded, or missing in two days—
and set the stage for Missionary Ridge.
After we killed the rebel sharpshooters,
my men and I stayed out on the high ground
&n
bsp; for the view. We saw another old boy
dressed in a butternut suit, dodging and shooting
half a mile off, but didn’t have the heart
to do him in. He only had a shotgun
and didn’t kill a living thing I saw.
Near sundown seven stands of rebel colors
moved toward us from the Chattanooga side.
In the confusion of our fight that day,
as ranks were scattered and reformed in smoke,
the picture changed. I told my boys to move
back to the Pennsylvania skirmish line
as fast as their tired legs would carry them.
I told the Pennsylvania Colonel, “Sir,
there’s seven stands of colors waving there.
They are for us, as we’re inside their lines.”
We found my Captain with the Illinois
telling the men tall tales beneath a tree.
In the dim light he asked, “Mitch, is that you?”
I passed him the bad news to give our Colonel.
Our order was to hold the rough terrain
at all hazards. The Army never thought
a Second Lieutenant could get tired or hungry
and I was given charge of Company F
whose Captain had been wounded in the morning.
I cast an eye for Charley, my colored man,
hoping he’d stayed arrears with our supplies,
but heard about his fate a few days later.
The land was full of hollows, broken fences,
and we moved like regiments of blind men,
blades before us, poking for the enemy.
Suddenly we was firing at their lines.
When they fired back we ordered, “Down to cover!”
Damned if they didn’t pass right over us.
I ordered the boys to change, front to rear.
When we raised up I saw that we were stuck
between two rebel battle lines. The boys
in gray come running up and shouted, “Captain,
give us your sword.”
“I can’t see it that way,”
I said. A rebel parried, but one of mine
bayoneted him and was in turn thrust through
with a bayonet and dropped down at my feet.
The fellow who called me Captain bled and moaned
and died pretty quick. Though I couldn’t see
a damned thing, I sensed the fight was over.