Hell or Richmond (20 page)

Abruptly, Henry Hill said, “Sergeant Brown, I’ve just got this queer feeling.” Even in front of Bill Wildermuth, the oldest of comrades, Hill insisted on using his friend’s new rank.

“Taking sick, Henry?”

“No. I didn’t mean that.”

A bolt of alarm shot through Brown’s chest. He’d known a number of men to have premonitions, and it was uncanny how often they foresaw their deaths.

“Worried? Anything in particular?” He didn’t know how forthcoming Hill would be in front of the other man. Henry Hill was the most private being Brown had ever known, as solid as an oak tree and about as likely to display his emotions.

Hill deciphered Brown’s meaning. “Not that. Nothing like that. It’s…” Hill searched for words. “It’s that something’s different now. About the war, I mean. I don’t know.”

Wildermuth jumped in, as he usually did: “I know just how you feel, Henry. Yes, I do. Oh, there was dying enough before, Lord knows, but right up to Vicksburg and even a while after, it was all kind of a lark, to be plain honest.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘a lark,’” Brown said.

“You know what I mean, though. Then, at Knoxville—”

Hill cut him off. “I wasn’t talking about Knoxville. Shut up for a minute, Bill. I mean the war. I can’t say exactly, but something just feels different. Like it’s going to get worse, a whole lot worse. I don’t know. It’s all just … so big now. It isn’t man-size anymore.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s fool talk. I can’t explain it right.”

For Henry Hill, that had been a speech comparable to a sermon for the ages.

“It’s not fool talk,” Brown said. “I think we all feel something on those lines. Even Bill here. Though he does have a knack for overtalking matters.” He drank the last, cold dregs of coffee, wishing that Wildermuth were not present. He and Henry had things to share that the other man would just cut down to jokes.

“Captain’s on his feet,” Hill said.

Brown turned, saw, rose. They would be moving again.

“I better let some of this coffee back out,” Wildermuth told them, and he turned to face the tree.

What Brown wanted to say was that, yes, there was a new ugliness in the air, and a sudden decrease in the old fool talk that made light of earnest things. Even Bill had eased up on his mockery. There were no shining daydreams left, no expectations of glory. The world had become a darker place, as if winter lingered on in the hearts of men.

Brown’s problem wasn’t exactly with the war, it was with himself. Maybe it was the effect of his feelings for Frances, but he asked himself, again, if it were possible to remain a good man through all this. He had done things so shameful that he didn’t know how to measure them. Forgiveness fled his heart and forbearance weakened. He had become a harder man, with a toughness grimly different from that of the lad he had been when he killed the Ranger. He feared he might not be fit for the soft things in life.

Virtue was something he had not pondered before. He had assumed he was good enough, normal, imperfect, but a worthy companion to others. Now he longed to be virtuous and good. Not in some tent revival way, spouting Bible verses and preening. Damnation in the afterlife didn’t worry him, though he knew it should. He just accepted that, in the wake of this war, the Lord would judge them all as he saw fit. But it had become a matter of grave concern to be a good man on this earth. Not merely a man who would make his Frances proud, if indeed this war let her be his. And not a man drunk with pride at the things he abjured. He wished to live and live well, to love and be loved. But he just wasn’t sure he knew the how of it anymore.

The kind of goodness fixed in his mind was about far more than the daily care of the men given into his charge, although that was a serious thing. He could not explain his longing, no more than Henry could find words to capture his altered feeling about the war. Brown wanted to be honest inside and out, but it was more than that. When he spoke to himself of goodness, he did not mean meekness or show-off public kindness. Nor could he say he wanted to do no man harm, since he was sworn a soldier and obliged to kill. But in a world that held beings such as Frances, a man had to find a proper way to live. And neither honor nor riches had to do with it. Not fame or glory, either. The riddle was how to stay upright marching through Hell.

Henry’s cousin, First Sergeant Hill, bellowed for the company to fall in. But even after the lines were dressed and the men had faced right to form a marching column, they were held up to keep the road clear for someone else, a brigade or perhaps a battalion of guns urgently needed ahead. But the road remained empty. The sky even cleared of dust. A few stragglers came up, and that was all.

It was just another pointless delay that would never be explained or even remembered.

At last, the order came down from some all-knowing general, passed on by colonels to lieutenant colonels and downward to the captains who led the companies:

“Forward, march!”

Four p.m.
Junction of Brock Road and the Orange Plank Road

“Getty, don’t be an idiot,” Hancock said.

Getty stiffened. Hancock might sit upon his stallion in all his majesty, but Getty had been fighting and Hancock had not.

The division commander resisted the urge to ask the corps commander what had taken him so long to bring up his corps. And Hancock remained unready and disorganized even now, his men still streaming in.

“I have my orders,” Getty said, “and I always follow my orders.”

“But … this is folly. Don’t be pigheaded, George. Just hold off until Mott closes up behind Birney and I can support you. You told me yourself you’re already short a brigade. If you advance your division unsupported, you know what will happen.”

A few hundred yards from the crossroads, skirmishing rattled the woods. Smoke prowled.

“I have my orders. As you have yours, General Hancock. Meade has directed me to attack ‘immediately.’ I shall do so.”

“Getty … for Christ’s sake…”

Bulky and grand, Hancock did indeed resemble the war god praised in all the newspapers. And Getty knew that Hancock was correct, tactically speaking. He would have preferred not to attack without Hancock’s divisions on his flanks, he had made that clear to Meade’s pink-pated errand boy, Lyman, a society creature got up in a tailored uniform. But that had been the extent of Getty’s protest.

He was an old soldier and, he believed, a good one. Earlier in the day, he had followed his orders to rush his division to this place and hold it, and he had held it. He had cursed Meade, but he had done so to himself, not to other men. And Meade had been right, he had been needed exactly where he was sent and precisely when he got there. For all he knew, Meade would be right again this time.

But even if George Meade was wrong, the order must be obeyed to its last letter. The greater point was obedience. An army could not function if the orders of its commanders went ignored or were amended to each subordinate’s liking. George Washington Getty had never disobeyed or delayed the execution of an order in his life. He believed his fellow officers respected that.

Of course, he yearned to make excuses, to blame others, to agree with Hancock, to delay his attack until he had a full division up on either flank to step off with his men. He feared that this attack would squander lives. But soldiers did not make excuses, nor did they fish for sympathy. Soldiers followed orders.

“General Hancock,” Getty repeated, “my orders are to attack immediately. I can no longer delay.”

Even Hancock’s horse appeared disgusted. The animal backed away, prancing and snorting.

“Then be it on your head, you damned old fool,” Hancock told him. “You’re throwing away your division.”

Getty saluted and turned away to see if his brigade commanders were ready.

EIGHT

Seven p.m.
Tapp Farm

“We’re holding them!” Powell Hill could not wait, but had to shout his tidings over the hoofbeats of his horse and the storm of gunfire. “By God, sir, my boys are holding them!”

Lee passed over the use of the Lord’s name. Hill’s two scant divisions were, indeed, holding their lines. They had been driven back, but they refused to be driven farther. It made him proud unto sinfulness.

He could not see the fighting, which had been veiled by smoke. Even with little artillery in play, the roar of ten thousand rifles and more made the fouled air quiver. Men howled and cheered in masses. Still, he heard Hill’s flinty voice as the corps commander reined up, panting and sweated through his blouse, deprived of his hat by war.

“Hancock’s men … they just come on and we pile them up, just pile them up.”

Lee sensed the butchery wrought within the smoke. It had been and still was a desperate day, but his soldiers had been magnificent, a wonder.

Not all of them, of course. The wounded men who could walk streamed back and shirkers infiltrated the ranks of the brave. There always would be a few, Lee knew, men pleading, if challenged, that they were out of ammunition or seeking to locate their units. Other men wandered open-mouthed and open-eyed after something cracked inside them. But the cowards and weaklings were few today, as if all good men sensed the desperate hour.

“My compliments, General Hill,” Lee said. “Your men have done splendidly.”

“Any reinforcements coming from Ewell?” Hill asked.

“I have asked him to spare us any strength he can.”

“We could use help now, sir. They do keep coming. Hancock’s got at least one Sixth Corps division added in.”

“I know.”

“Longstreet?”

Lee’s stomach churned unpleasantly. “There have been delays. The march is long.”

“Sir, we
need
him. With two divisions, I can’t—” Hill broke off and stared at Lee. Hound-eyed and reproachful.

“You must hold until dark, General. By morning, General Longstreet’s men will relieve you.”

“Morning…”

Hill’s proud spirits were plunging by the second. Lee did not want that. He knew what Hill longed to say, but dared not. Would they still be here in the morning, he and his men? What if Hancock gave them another hard push? The fighting had been savage, the men were exhausted. Many an ammunition pouch was empty. But they had to hold on. He could not let it be otherwise, would not think it. Grant could not be allowed an early triumph.

“Your soldiers will not let you down,” Lee said. “And you will not let me down.”

“No, sir. Of course not. But…”

Hill would have to be satisfied with such praise as he had given him. Lee’s mind drove on.

“I can’t understand it,” he said. “I cannot fathom it.”

Hill’s fine stallion nickered, eyes straining, as uneasy as its master. As if it had only now discovered fear.

“Sir?” Hill said. His lank hair clotted to his face, rendering Lee’s fellow Virginian as ill of aspect as he was in body. Earlier, Lee had feared that the effects of Hill’s youthful indiscretion would incapacitate him before a battle again—as illness had at Gettysburg—but this day had been a triumph for Powell Hill. Never had he performed more bravely or finely than in the face of Hancock’s onslaught. But there was still much to do before nightfall spared them.

What had Wellington said? “Give me night or Blücher”? His Blücher, James Longstreet, still struggled along country roads. It would be night, or nothing.

“I do not understand,” Lee said, “the piecemeal nature of General Hancock’s efforts. It isn’t his practice.” He looked at Hill. “General Grant, perhaps? Might he be impatient?”

Hill considered the matter, but said nothing. Both men sensed that it was time for Hill to ride back down to his troops. It was remarkable how soldiers understood certain things between them.

“Express my gratitude to Generals Heth and Wilcox for their labors today,” Lee said. “Your corps never did this army finer service.” Anticipating Hill, he raised a salute and dropped it. His hand was heavy, the knuckles swollen.

Hill spurred his mount and pounded back down into the battle’s miasma. His sweat-heavy hair broke free and streamed behind him, as if daring his aides to grasp a lock.

How long? How long until those people ceased fighting this day? Two hours? Surely they could not fight in those hideous thickets in the darkness? An attack would dissolve into chaos.

Jehovah had stayed the course of the sun for Joshua. Now Lee wished the Lord would speed it along. The thought was insolent, blasphemous. But it was there. He wanted the Lord’s attention, hope, a sign …

Meade and Grant seemed taken by surprise, there was that much. All day, their moves had been awkward and incremental, meeting successive repulses. Ewell’s front, to the north, along the Turnpike, had been quiet for hours, the killing grown desultory. But Hancock was a bulldog.

Lee’s own plan had gone to pieces. There could be no withdrawal to the Mine Run position now. Despite this day’s severity and loss. The hasty barricades and rifle pits his men had thrown up here, in this … this wilderness, indeed … were nothing as to the entrenchments to their rear. But such would have to do. The battle had been joined, against his will … perhaps against wills on both sides … but Lee knew that he had to fight here and now, that Grant could not be allowed a victory in their first encounter. He had to be taught a lesson, his expectations frustrated, his army bloodied and its commander shamed. Grant had to learn here, on this field, that there would be no easy victories anymore, that the army he now faced was not the hapless foe he had known in the West. No matter the cost, the Army of Northern Virginia had to hold its ground, to command it.