Different Sin (29 page)

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The sun that blazed down on City Point seemed twice as hot in the entrenchments, eight miles distant. The red clay walls of the dugouts baked and cracked in the heat. Soldiers squatted or sat in ankle-deep dust, passing the time with desultory card games or letters home. The stench of souring food, open latrines and unwashed bodies struck David as he and Al emerged from the narrow trench leading to the rear. The rattle of sporadic firing sounded up and down the lines.

The card players looked up at them with dulled interest. David gazed around the stifling enclosure, trying to imagine it duplicated over and over along the five mile front: the cramped earthen trench, buttressed by earth and log walls topped with sandbags, the cave-like bombproofs dug into the ground for protection against shelling. Like rats in a hole, he thought. He sat on the edge of the packed earth firing-step and opened his sketchpad, while Al approached the men with an eager series of questions.

The gunner on duty stepped heavily from the fire-step, dipped a tin cup into a bucket of water, scattering a cloud of flies from its surface, and drank deeply. Al looked up at the man who had taken his place. “Reckon I could take a quick look through the firing slit?” she asked him.

“Sure, sonny, be my guest. Get you a mighty fine view of Petersburg from here. If you don’t mind chancing a bullet in the face, that is,” he added, chuckling, as Al moved to climb onto the step.

There was an answering round of laughter from the slumped soldiers. The gunner who’d come off duty glanced at Al’s startled, disbelieving face. “Mebbe you gotta be showed, kid,” he said. He snatched Al’s cap, dropped it onto the point of his bayonet, and hoisted it slowly in the air till the cap waved just above the top of the sandbags. Rifle fire exploded from the Confederate lines. The soldier lowered it, handing the bullet-riddled hat back to Al with a triumphant grin.

“God, Alice, you should’ve stayed at City Point. You don’t belong out here,” David said to her when they’d made their way back to the rear and were preparing to mount.

“You told me that already.” Al sprang lightly onto her horse. “You sound like my Ma. She used to say I was too headstrong for my own good. But I can’t hardly write a dispatch about the siege without ever seeing the trenches. ‘Sides, if I was to stay put where I belonged, reckon I’d still be back in Independence helping my sister mind her babies.”

“But still—”

Al prodded her horse into a sudden gallop, raising a cloud of thick, yellow dust. She reined in, grinning at David as he caught up, wiped the dust from her face as she waited for his answering smile. “Anyways, David, if I had stayed to home, then you and me would never have met up.”

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The muffled thud of picks sounded with steady rhythm from under the ground. Working with the stealth of moles, a regiment of Union infantrymen burrowed stubbornly into the earth, laboriously carting out dirt in wooden cracker boxes, excavating a shaft that was— according to whom you talked—either a brainless expenditure of time and energy or a brilliant subterfuge that would break through the Confederate defenses.

Hell, David thought, it was worth a try. With five days yet lacking till the end of June, casualty tolls were mounting from dysentery as well as the sniping of sharpshooters. Summer stretched ahead in an apparently endless stalemate. Why not give Pleasants’ 48
^th
Pennsylvania a chance?

He walked over to the opening of the shaft, peering at it through the darkness. Hell, Colonel Pleasants’ men had mined most of their lives. If they were convinced they could dig a tunnel from the rear of their own lines—a hundred yards from the Reb defenses—underneath the Confederate fortifications, they probably knew what they were talking about, despite the naysayers in the engineers’ corps.

They had Meade’s grudging approval at any rate, as well as that of General Burnside, the Ninth Corps commander. David stood watching a while longer, listening to the comments of the handful of curious reporters present. For a moment he wondered whether Al would regret having missed the start of work on the shaft in favor of trying to telegraph her story on life in the entrenchments to the
Missouri Republican.
Though he had to admit the fascination lay more in the daring of the scheme than in the steady, monotonous labor of the miners.

Anyhow, even if the miners’ scheme worked as they hoped, it would take them weeks to extend the tunnel underneath the Reb breastworks, perhaps a month or more till they could set a charge to blow a hole in the Southern defenses. David tried to imagine it—a trench full of men like the one they’d visited the day before blown sky-high in a sudden, violent explosion.

Like so much else he’d witnessed, it didn’t bear dwelling on.

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Two or three dozen infantrymen, enjoying a forty-eight hour rotation to the rear, had gathered around the opening of the shaft, calling out comments and encouragement as the 48
^th
Pennsylvania doggedly carried out box after box of earth, concealing them from possible Confederate view under piles of brush. Three weeks of work had extended the tunnel five hundred feet, ending squarely under the Reb fortifications, and work had begun on a transverse shaft where the charges of powder would be laid.

“Them lunkheaded engineers’ll have to eat their words!” The wiry, dirt-covered miner, just come off his shift of digging, smacked a fist into his left hand and grinned at Al. “You get that down in that notepad, kid? We got her dug, shored up and ven-ti-lated, and soon’s we finish the cross tunnel we’ll be set to blow them Johnnies to Kingdom Come.”

“That so? Well, seein’ is believin’.” The voice of a tall, comfortably slouched infantryman sounded with lazy belligerence.

The miner bristled. “I got a buck right here says we done our part an’ done it right.” He pulled a wrinkled, stained greenback from his pocket, waved it at the other. “Put up your money or else dry up about—”

“I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms; Lay
dis
body down.”
The plaintive line of song, carried by a hundred deep, rich voices, drifted across the evening. The men fell silent, listening. David looked up from the sketch he’d been trying to complete before dark. A swarthy infantryman spat, the spray landing wetly on David’s cheek. “You hear that?!” the soldier demanded. “That’s those damn black baboons Burnside’s gonna send in to charge the Rebs after you boys work your asses off to blow a hole in their breastworks!”

“That’s no skin off my nose,” the tall soldier drawled. “I’m willin’ to let Sambo stop a bullet ‘stead of me.” Half a dozen men laughed appreciatively.

“Go on and laugh, you damn fools! But Johnny Reb ain’t takin’ bringing in nigger troops lying down. Or ain’t none of you noticed how much more firepower they been throwin’ against us since Burnside brought in his niggers?”

“Sure we noticed. Think we’re blind?” the miner retorted. “But Burnside knows what he’s doing. Them niggers been held to guard duty since they been in this army. They ain’t worn out from fighting like the rest of us. Soon’s we get this charge set off, Johnny’s gonna find the tables turned.”

“Burnside ain’t thinking worth shit!” The swarthy soldier spat again. “There ain’t a nigger alive’ll stand up to white men. It’s a damn disgrace to call them soldiers! First round the Rebs fire, those baboons’ll turn tail and run halfway back to the jungle.”

“You can say that again, mister!”

“Hold on a minute—”

David grabbed Al’s arm and pulled her away, as men joined the argument with boredom-fueled eagerness.

“Wait a second, David, I was getting that down.”

“Hell, Al, you don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a brawl.”

“I don’t suppose they were fixing to come to blows. You needn’t keep worrying on my account.” Al shrugged off her annoyance, gave him a quick smile. “You reckon they’ll fight? Those colored soldiers, I mean.”

“I don’t see why not. The regiment my nephew’s in, the 54
^th
Massachusetts— Of course most of them were free, not escaped slaves like these troops here, but still— The battle Peter was taken prisoner in, they made a frontal attack on Fort Wagner across an open stretch of beach, lost a fourth of the regiment.”

“Maybe you should’ve told that soldier about them.”

David winced. “I doubt it would’ve changed his mind.” He quickened his steps, walking in silence. An uneasy memory assailed him, brought to mind by Al’s implied reproach. Someone else taking him to task for not shouting down some bigot— When in hell— Of course. Zach. After they’d viewed Brady’s photographs of Antietam. He’d nearly gotten himself into a brawl defending freedom for the slaves, then turned on David demanding to know what he found worth standing up for, when his own brother— Though why Zach had gotten so damned riled up about it— Forget it, he told himself.

“Anyhow,” he said to Al abruptly, as he untied his horse and climbed into the saddle, “I suppose if these troops stand up to the Rebs then he’ll see for himself.”

“My army cross over; we’ll cross de River Jordan...”
A rhythmic strain, half song, half chant, drifted through the evening once again. David reined in, listening, glad for the distraction from his memories. “Hetty used to sing that,” he said. “I remember from when I was a boy. Stirring the kettle and singing half under her breath; it must be years since I heard it.”

Al nodded. “You know, they’re camped less than a quarter of a mile from here. It wouldn’t be much out of our way to stop off and talk to them.”

“I suppose not.”

They led the horses through the sandy pine woods to the nearest campfire of colored troops, walked to the rear of the swaying circle of men. None of the white commissioned officers was in evidence. A husky, ebony-skinned sergeant sang out a line of the spiritual in a deep, bass voice; a chorus of voices swelled the refrain.

A thin, light-skinned boy at the far side of the fire looked up, stared at David and Al in surprise, then nudged his nearest neighbors. The men, one by one, fell silent, eyeing them warily. A moment went by. The sergeant cleared his throat. “Evenin’, massas,” he said.

David nodded awkwardly. “I— We’re reporters. We write about the soldiers for the newspapers. Well, I mostly draw pictures. We didn’t mean to interrupt your singing.”

“You all’s welcome to set down and lissen,” the sergeant said. “Here, you, slide over, make some room fo’ these genelmens.”

The silence seemed to deepen as they found seats on logs drawn around the campfire. “We understand General Burnside’s picked the colored regiments to spearhead—uh, to lead—the attack on the Rebs once the mine’s exploded,” David said finally.

A few cautious smiles broke out, then broadened across the dark faces. “Yassuh,” the sergeant said proudly. “We’s spearheadin’ it, sho enuf. Been trainin’ every day, so’s we be sho enuf ready when the day come.”

Al scribbled a few words, looked up with interest. “And you’ll be going into battle for the first time?”

“Yassuh.” The sergeant nodded solemnly. “This be the firs’ time. We been back guardin’ the wagon trains befo’. Ah reckons we ready though, massa.”

The thin, light-complexioned boy suddenly spoke, his eyes shining. “We gonna march right into Petersburg ‘fore summer be out.”

“I should think you’d sooner stay on guard duty,” David blurted. “You’d be a hell of a lot safer.”

The circle of men turned as one to stare at him in amazement. “Yassuh,” the sergeant said. “But that ain’t why we jined up, suh.” He paused, searching for words. “We be askin’ ourselfs who we be if we don’ fight fo’ our own freedoms. And what we be tellin’ our chillens we done fo’ our own African race? And now we gots us the chance, got we the chance to show we stands up for our ownselfs same as any other mens.”

“Amen, brudder!”

“You speakin’ de truth!”

David nodded slowly as the chorus of approval seconded the sergeant’s words. The memory of Zach’s voice, loudly arguing that, “I warrant you the niggers would fight for their own freedom if they were but given leave!” once more came painfully to mind. He stood abruptly. “It’s grown late. We’d best be getting back.”

Forget that damn argument with Zach, he told himself, when they’d reached their tent and stretched out for the night. It was no use. His mind kept stubbornly turning it over, like a tongue probing an aching tooth: his own refusal to enter the dispute, Zach’s short but bitter anger.

It wasn’t his not standing up for the colored that had gotten Zach so hot. It was Roosa. That damn Byron Roosa. Stepping from the gallery and forestalling the brawl in that gracious, so-cultivated voice of his. The same low tones as when he’d murmured his invitation to David to join him in his perverted pleasures. He’d walked off on Roosa outside Brady’s gallery, the same as he had that other time. That’s what had angered Zach so.

Hell, when you looked back—as he couldn’t stop doing now—nearly every damn quarrel he’d had with Zach had started over Roosa. Well, Zach and Roosa had been lovers. He knew that. Zach still counted Roosa a friend, even if they no longer— For that matter, for all he knew Zach and Roosa had rekindled their affection. He had a momentary vision of them embracing, Roosa moving those soft, elegant hands down Zach’s body— David dug his nails into his palms. Stop it! he told himself. You don’t know— Anyhow, he’d broken off with Zach. He ought to be glad for Zach if he’d found happiness with Roosa in his place.

In his place.
A wave of longing engulfed him. To hold Zach in lovemaking again, fall asleep in his arms, feel the tickle of Zach’s whiskers against his face, his beloved, familiar breathing in his ears. Oh Christ! Christ, forget it! His throat felt choked with yearning, his eyeballs burned.

“David? Are you all right?” Al’s voice was filled with sleepy concern. “Seems like you’ve been tossing and turning half the night.”

“I— I guess I’ve— I was having a little trouble falling asleep,” he stammered.

“You sound awfully upset. What’s the matter?”

Oh God, what could he tell her? He sought frantically for a lie. “I guess seeing those colored soldiers tonight got me kind of worried about Peter— my nephew. Mike just had word of him once since he was captured, and then it was that the Reb surgeon had to amputate his arm.”