Caleb (31 page)

“That bad?” asked Caleb.

“No,” said Brent. “Worse.” He smiled ruefully. “But things have gotten better. Believe it or not, I like the army. I’m not the success you are, but I’ve applied for a commission. If Harvard hasn’t forgotten that I did
any
work during those three terms, I may get one—or at least a chance at officer candidate school. Which will get me out of this hole. Have you heard anything about what’s going on?”

“Meeting I just came out of, they seemed about as confused as we are,” said Caleb. “I’m just going to go back to my squadron to continue training those poor devils and wait for orders. If that battle that’s promised around here is anything like they say, they’re going to need some mounted rifles even if they are black.” Caleb started to get up. “I’d better be getting back to our bivouac before they post me as a deserter.”

Staunton got up, too. “Caleb,” he said, “it’s been a real pleasure. You’ve been heavy on what’s left of my conscience.” He held out his hand. “I hope you don’t hate me anymore.”

“Not anymore, Brent,” Caleb said, taking his hand. “Those days are long gone. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“I hope so, Caleb,” Staunton said, and he watched as Caleb swung up on his horse, waved good-bye, and rode toward the camp exit. Staunton stood looking long after Caleb had disappeared from sight.

53

For the next few days, all was calm. Then McDowell’s corps suddenly discovered that it had such a thing as the Eleventh Mounted Rifles. The squadron spent days in the saddle and nights on the ground wherever dark found them, foraging for food wherever they smelled cooking. Otherwise they lived on hard biscuits, stream water, and whatever small furred or feathered things they could kill and cook. For a time, they moved together. Then troop by troop they were drawn off to support units that had already moved on by the time the cavalrymen reached their destinations.

For five days, Padgett’s troop was put to work digging trenches for white troops, who lay back and enjoyed having servants. Just as the black troops were about to mutiny, they were ordered to relieve white troops in another sector of the ever-changing front. There, they were set to work digging their own trenches. Once they were getting comfortable, orders came to move, and they reluctantly left their new homes for others to inherit.

Throughout these confusing days and dark nights, the talk was constantly of the rebels. Encouraged by his victory, Confederate General Longstreet had decided to push hard on General McClellan’s battered Union forces to see if he could encourage the Yankees to go home and leave the South alone. The distant sound of cannons and rifle fire kept everyone in the Eleventh alert to the point of nervousness, but they seldom if ever saw anything they could identify as the enemy. Occasionally, under the orders of almost anyone wearing brass, they were ordered to stop, dismount, find what cover they could, and blaze away at an invisible enemy. Once, they were lined up with a couple of troops of white cavalry and sent, rifles blazing, on a futile charge across a small brook where they found nothing more threatening than an encampment of slaves who had scattered when their plantation was overrun. Several of the slaves were killed by wild fire, and one member of Caleb’s troop died of a broken neck when his mount tried to go through, rather than over, a fallen tree.

Once ordered to join General Porter’s forces at Groveton, Padgett’s troop—being black and riding horses—had been commandeered by Kearny’s division as messengers. No longer working as a unit, they found themselves dispersed all over the Bull Run area. When one of the Eleventh Mounted Rifles delivered his message, he often found himself recommandeered by another unit. Almost everywhere they went, they were viewed with a combination of welcome and suspicion. Many of the Union troops they encountered could not believe that there was such a thing as a black Federal soldier. Some thought they were runaway slaves who had taken uniforms off the dead. Once, when Monkey Higgins had been sent with a dispatch to a light artillery unit near New Market, he was himself amazed to find that the unit was composed of black volunteers from Pittsburgh and that he knew a couple of them from a local racetrack.

Reduced by a shortage of men to delivering messages himself, Caleb arrived at General Sigel’s headquarters, handed over his dispatch, and prepared to mount up to go back where he’d come from. But then the adjutant, a lieutenant colonel who’d hardly noticed him, looked up and said, “Hold on a minute, soldier. Are you a
real
sergeant?”

Not knowing how else to answer, Caleb saluted and said, “Sergeant Caleb Jardine, Eleventh Mounted Rifles, sir.”

“Are you a fighting man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why are you delivering dispatches?”

“A major told me to, sir.”

“Well,” said the officer, “
I’m
a colonel telling you that I need a sergeant. Hell, last time I looked, I needed a lieutenant and
several
sergeants. And we’re expecting another visit from Johnny Reb any time now. Welcome to Sigel Country.”

“But, sir—” Caleb began.

But the colonel was already calling to someone outside the tent. “Baker! Get your raggedy ass in here.”

A weary-looking corporal in filthy clothes came in and saluted limply. “Sir?”

“Take this sergeant and give him to Captain Lockhart of Company B. And tell the captain that he owes me a very big favor. Now get out of here—both of you.”

“What’s happening here?” Caleb asked the corporal as they walked through a small copse of trees toward a distant hill.

“We’re getting the shit shot out of us,” said the corporal. “I hope you’re good at digging holes. All we seem to do is get new troops, use them up, and bury them.”

Reporting to Captain Lockhart, who had made his headquarters under a live oak tree, the corporal saluted and said, “Colonel Benning’s compliments, sir. This here sergeant belongs to you now. Colonel says you owe him.”

“Well, this is something new.” Lockhart laughed. “I had an Irish piper last week and six Germans who couldn’t speak a word of English, but never before a black sergeant. Thank the colonel, Baker, and tell him that I will return the favor one of these times.” When the corporal had saluted and turned away, the captain looked up at Caleb. “No offense, Sergeant,” he said. “I’m getting demented from lack of sleep, but I am very glad to see you. I’ve got three platoons without a sergeant between them. You have your choice. Any preferences?”

“Sir, I’d prefer one with men who won’t fall over in a faint at the sight of a black face.”

“All right,” said Lockhart, “I’ll give you to Lieutenant Alleyne of the Third Platoon. Unless he’s kidding me, he’s from Barbados, and I think they have some blacks there. Welcome to Fox Company.” He looked back down at the paperwork on his little collapsible table.

While Caleb was trying to find Alleyne and the Third Platoon, half a mile away, on the other side of an unnamed creek, Boyd Jardine had his own problems. As Rafe Bentley had predicted, a vacancy for captain had opened up quickly when Philip Poindexter had turned out to have more dash than ability. He joined the family cemetery plot without ever seeing anyone more hostile than members of his own troop.

Bentley had been wrong about something else, though. His leisurely prediction of three months to get their troops trained and fully operational had telescoped into a little over a month. Jardine barely had enough time to say good-bye to Boyd Junior and send him to a cousin’s house not far from Charleston, hide as many valuables as possible, and hand over the keys to Three Rivers to Drusilla and Mose.

“I wish that I could go with you, Marse,” Caesar said as the house staff gathered to see Jardine off.

“Caesar,” Jardine said, “I wish that you could go instead of me.” Halfway down to the gate, he turned in his saddle and saw them still waving. The last thing he saw of Three Rivers was Mose waving his big black hat.

After that it was all motion, if very little action, for the Kershaw County Dragoons. By boat, train, and horse, they wandered generally northward, never settling and never seeing much action until they fetched up nearly a year later at Henry House Hill as part of General Longstreet’s reserves at what the Confederates called the Second Battle of Manassas. They might have stayed there for the duration of the war—Longstreet had little regard for homegrown militia—but demands for more troops toward the middle of August got them pushed forward to fill a hole on the south side of an unnamed creek while waiting for a Yankee counterattack.

And then they waited for the rest of that hot, dry August for the counterattack that seemed like it was never going to come. Except for the exchange of a few ritual shots across the creek, Jardine’s men had little to do but dig in, wait, and worry about those they’d left at home. Benjy Pitman had ended up hiring Captain Plunkett to look after Bienville and was getting reports that Plunkett’s heavy hand and whip had the plantation in near revolt. Jardine did not bother to tell Pitman that his own slaves had chased the captain away.

One morning, as Jardine was making up his guard roster, he got word that Corporal Parsons in the observation platform, high in an elm tree, wanted him to see something. When Jardine climbed up to the platform, Parsons handed him the binoculars.

“Captain, you are not going to believe this.”

“Believe what?” Jardine asked, adjusting the glasses to bring the tree-shaded area across the creek into focus. “I don’t see anything but trees.”

“Be patient, sir,” Parsons said. “He’ll be back. They got a nigger sergeant over there.”

“A sergeant?” Jardine asked.

“Big as life,” Parsons said, “and twice as ugly. I never saw him before this morning. I nearly fell out of this goddamned tree.”

“Look, Parsons, I don’t have all day to—”

“I swear I saw him, sir,” Parsons said. “He’ll be back.” He gestured toward a sniper with a German hunting rifle higher up in a nearby beech. “Shall I tell Smokey to see if he can pick that black bastard off? It’s a long shot, but there’s not much wind this morning.”

“No,” said Jardine firmly. “We are not wasting bullets on niggers, sergeants or not. You remind Smokey that he is not to snipe at anyone under the rank of major without my express order. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Caleb had found Lieutenant Alleyne asleep in the shade of a blackberry bush and woke him as gently as possible.

“Sergeant Jardine reporting, sir,” Caleb said. “Captain Lockhart says you’re short a sergeant, and now I belong to you.”

“Can’t be, Sergeant,” said Alleyne, a slight man with dark-honey skin and tightly curled sun-bleached hair. “We outlawed slavery nigh thirty years ago where I come from.” He held out his hand. “Help me up, will you?” He looked at the big man standing in front of him. “Where the hell did Lockhart find you?”

“I found
him
, sir,” said Caleb. “I started out this morning as a messenger from corps to your headquarters when a colonel commandeered me. He sent me to Captain Lockhart and Captain Lockhart sent me to you.”

“Well, God bless the chain of command, Sergeant,” Alleyne said, yawning. “I was just dreaming that someone had sent me a big, ugly sergeant to terrify my men into a semblance of order.”

“You’re not going to send me on, then?” Caleb asked.

“Not on your life,” said Alleyne. “As soon as I get the branding iron smoking, you are going to officially belong to Third Platoon, Fox Company, the finest collection of odds and ends in the Union army.”

“How do you suppose they are going to react to a black sergeant?” Caleb asked.

“They are going to love you like a brother, or rather, a father,” Alleyne said. “I’ll tell them that you are one of my cousins from the—where are you from, Sergeant?”

“Boston, sir.”

“From the Boston branch of the Alleyne family. You ever been to Barbados?”

“No, sir. Not that I recall.”

“You wouldn’t have forgotten it,” Alleyne said. “Most beautiful place on earth. And you would have learned that there are probably more black Alleynes on the island than white ones.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward Caleb. “You may have noticed that I, myself, am not the whitest person you will ever meet, though if you suggested that back in Bridgetown, I’d have to call you out.” He held out his hand. “Richie Alleyne at your service, Sergeant.”

Caleb took the hand. “Caleb Jardine at yours, sir,” he said.

“Welcome aboard, Caleb,” Alleyne said. “Between the two of us, we are going to get this outfit into some kind of shape.”

Caleb and Alleyne had barely begun that monumental task, and Jardine had scarcely climbed down from the observation platform, when General Lee gave the order to begin what was to become known as the Second Battle of Bull Run or Second Manassas, depending on whose side you were on. And it was to begin on the little arc of territory nominally held by the Kershaw County Dragoons.

Rafe Bentley hurriedly called his officers together. “Unless this is another of those goddamned false alarms, boys,” he told them, “you have just about enough time to give your troops a cold feed, issue them as much ammunition as you have, and get them saddled up. Soon as the big guns start up in the rear, we are going to storm across that crick and reclaim that little patch of heaven for the Confederacy.”

“What do we do when we get to the other side, Colonel?” asked a young lieutenant.

“Assuming you are still alive, son,” Bentley said, “kill everything that resists, capture anything that doesn’t, and dig in for a counterattack. I’ll try to think of something for you to do then. Now, get to your men.”