Lost Cause

By J.R. AYERS

Published at Smashwords by J. R. Ayers

Copyright 2015 by J. R. Ayers

Prologue

In the spring of 1862 Jack Saylor and his
family lived in a cabin that looked across the Nueces River and the
green plains of grass and the brown hills above Mathis Texas. Most
days the river ran crystal clear, cleansed by rocks of sand and
giant boulders protruding from the clay bottom, their rounded tops
as white as the sun shimmering on the surface of the flowing
water.

Confederate Troops marched by the cabin and
down the road heading toward Fort Brown further to the south. The
dust they raised settled over the leaves of the trees and the
cabbage sprouts in the garden and the long front porch where Granny
Saylor sat and dipped her snuff. Jack sat with her too and watched
the troops marching past and the dust rising like smoke and the
leaves of the cottonwood trees along the river falling to the
ground and the road turned gray and butternut by the many uniforms
moving as one entity among the fallen leaves of green and yellow
and gold. The land thereabout was lush with crops—potatoes and
Indian corn and cucumbers and rows of wax beans and cabbage heads
and curled vines of yellow squash thriving among beds of spring
onions and leafy lettuce. Behind the cabin stood orchards of apple
and pecan trees and beyond the fence line an endless sea of grass
stretched upward and onward toward the distant blue hills.

Lately there was fighting in those hills. At
night Jack could see the flashes from muskets and artillery and the
smell of gunpowder often hung heavy over the river. After the sun
went down the gunfire looked like flashes of lightning in the dark
sky and the eerie silence made deep by distance did little to
illustrate the savagery of battle to those who sat on porches and
dipped snuff and yearned for the chance to join the valiant
struggle.

Sometimes late at night Jack heard troops
marching past the cabin and mules braying and shouts from officers
charging the men to stay alert and fix bayonets. There was more
traffic at night it seemed; horses and wagons pulling boxes of
ammunition, couriers on horseback traversing the road and a
seemingly endless parade of soldiers carving ruts into the road
with their boots and knocking down boundary fences in their haste
to join the fight.

To the east Jack could look across the plain
and see a copse of cottonwood trees and behind that a rolling
grassy plain on the other side of the river. There was fierce
fighting at the base of the hills but the blood that was shed there
saw no advantage to either side.

The next day the sound of boots marching
northward filled the road. Those left behind blew up the fort and
the sun grew warmer and men collapsed from the heat and their
grievous wounds and the glory of battle seemed as tarnished as the
bruised and broken country side left in the wake of the retreating
Rebel army.

Chapter 1

The next year Jack turned twenty-one and
joined the fight mustering in at Edinburg. He took his basic
training with patience and dignity then wore his Confederate
Infantry uniform with pride and marched with his comrades prepared
to engage the enemy wherever they found them. His first assignment
was with a Company stationed in Brownsville area. The camp was near
a little town called Las Rusias that had a covered well and
numerous shady live oak trees inside a walled garden. It had been
captured by Confederate Calvary troops when the Union thought it
could not be taken. People lived on in the village despite the
turmoil and sold merchandise and peddled whiskey and operated a
cantina/brothel and even managed to hold a church service once or
twice a week. Life went on as usual, but the people had changed.
The territory had changed too. The oak trees on the hills above the
town were tall and green before the war but now they were nothing
but stumps and shattered limbs and broken trunks lying in ruined
disarray on the ravished ground. The Union forces had pulled back
to the other side of the hills and dug in with cannons aimed at the
Confederate camp outside Brownsville. A stalemate of a sort had
ensued, but there was always the threat of a frontal assault which
kept everyone on edge.

While on guard duty one day near the edge of
camp Jack saw a priest assigned to his regiment walking by in the
street and motioned for him to stop for a chat. The priest shook
his head saying he had pressing business at the infirmary and went
on his way. That night at supper after the fatback and mush was
mostly gone, the priest stopped by to offer Absolution to anyone
interested in listening to him. A corporal named Campbell began
picking on the priest asking him if he was a virgin. The priest was
young and embarrassed easily. He wore no uniform like the other men
but a dark robe complete with rosary accouterments. Campbell lit a
pipe and prodded the priest’s arm with a gnarled finger. “I believe
I saw you over by the whore houses this morning,” he said with a
draw. “You been naughty have you Padre?” The priest smiled and
blushed and shook his head.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay then, it wasn’t you. So how do you
relieve the pressure, Priest? I mean you’re a man like the rest of
us, right?” Everyone around the fire laughed and the priest smiled
and Campbell said, “I’m just funnin’ with you. I’m a Baptist so I
don’t expect the Pope to be too cross with me for pokin’ a little
fun.”

“No offense taken,” the priest said softly.
“Would you like to repent now?” Campbell laughed harshly and shook
his head.

“I told you I was Baptist. They dunked me
under when I was just a little feller so I’m tight with the
Almighty I figure.” He looked sternly at the priest and said,
“Forgive me Father for I have sinned. And if the captain gives me a
furlough, I’m going down to that whore house and sin a little
more.” The men all laughed and guffawed until the priest walked
away from the mess tent and disappeared into the shadows of the
trees.

Chapter 2

In July Jack went home on leave and helped
with the corn harvest and bailed hay and sat on the porch with
Granny and the rest of his distant kin. When he returned to his
regiment there were many more Union soldiers in the area. Summer
was in high advent and the fields were green and grapes were on the
vine and berries were on the bush and men were eager to fight or
move on to less tranquil territory.

It was hot in the hills above Brownsville as
Jack walked through the Juniper trees to his quarters. The door was
open and Jack went in and saw his captain sitting at a table
pouring over rolls of maps. The windows were open and brilliant
sunlight flooded the room and cast great wedges of light across the
wooden floor. Jack turned down a short hall and proceeded to the
room he shared with six other men. The lone window was open by his
bed and his things hung on pegs on the wall; extra shirts and
drawers and a butternut slicker he only wore when it rained. At the
foot of his bed were his winter boots, shiny with oil, and his
haversack and cartridge pouch stuffed with cartridges and squares
of linen cloth and tins of black powder wrapped in sacks made of
canvas wagon sheet. His Enfield .50 rifle stood in the corner by
his bunk, the blued octagon barrel and dark walnut stock covered by
a sock made of wool.

Corporal Campbell lay asleep on a bunk across
the room. He woke when he heard Jack enter the room and sat up.

“See you made it back from leave,” he
said.

“Yep.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Home mostly.”

“Tell me what you did.”

“Everything. Ate. Slept. Kissed a girl.”

“The hell you say. Sister’s don’t count.”

“She was a sister, but not mine.”

“Kissed her huh? Anything else?”

“She used her hand.”

“For what?”

“You, know, my pecker.”

“The hell you say! Where did you meet
her?”

“Sabine Pass. She’s a nurse.”

“How old is she?”

“Old enough.”

“Probably forty.”

“Not even.”

“So, how did you meet?”

“On a train.”

“And she just put her hand in your
pants?”

“Pretty much.”

“Where, where did this happen?”

“On the train.”

“With everyone watching?”

“I had my coat on my lap. No one saw.”

“Damn, Saylor, I ain’t sure I believe
you.”

“That’s okay.”

“Damn. You ain’t joshin’ are you?”

“Guess you’ll never know, will you?”

Campbell rolled a smoke and lit it with a
match and threw the spent stick out the window. “Since you’ve been
gone we ain’t done nothin’ but sweat and drill and chase whores and
sweat some more,” he said. “Gonorrhea and pneumonia’s got a lot of
the men down. Every day or so someone gets wounded by a sniper or a
shell fragment. The captain says the fighting starts up again next
week. I didn’t know it ever ended. But that’s what he says anyway.
Do you think I can find me a girl like that nurse? I’m tired of
Mexican whores.”

“Absolutely,” Jack said.

“Got to get me a furlough. Maybe take a trip
on a train.”

“There you go,” Jack said. “Now, if you’ll
excuse me, I need to get a little sleep before morning.”

Jack took off his blouse and shirt and washed
his face and upper body in a water basin and rubbed himself dry
with a towel. While he was dressing in a fresh shirt Campbell asked
him if he had any money.

“Yes.”

“Loan me five dollars.”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna ask for that furlough. Gonna take
a train ride, maybe look for a nurse.”

Jack removed his wallet from his trouser
pocket and handed Campbell a five dollar note. Campbell slipped it
into his shirt pocket and smiled. “I have to make a good
impression, you know. Maybe I can get more than a hand if she
thinks I’m a man of means.”

That night at supper Jack sat next to the
priest and he said he was glad to see him and Jack said likewise.
The priest drank wine and Jack drank chickory coffee and the two
men talked while the others argued about whores and bad food. Not
caring about the foul use of language and the surly talk the priest
looked at the night and sipped his wine and listened to the gist of
Jack’s time away from camp.

Jack said things hadn’t changed at all and
the priest said everything had gone sharp and hard since the
announcement about impending hostilities. Some of the niceness had
gone and the men argued more and hardly anyone showed up at Mass
anymore. Jack said he understood and the priest said he doubted it
and Jack agreed that he probably didn’t understand after all.

The night turned overcast and the priest
tried to explain the difference between the night and the day and
how the night brought out the worst in people and how the day made
brave men braver. Jack was dubious, but the degree of difference
between them was not worth arguing about so the conversation lagged
and the soldiers argued all the more loudly and the warm night
pressed down like a woolen blanket.

Corporal Campbell finally appeared and the
teasing of the priest commenced in earnest. “Senorita Big Tits was
askin’ about you,” he chided. “She said she needs you to put one of
them little wafer crackers in her mouth. That Eucharist thing. Or
was it somethin’ else she wanted you to put in her mouth?” The men
howled with laughter and the priest stared into his wine and Jack
stood to his feet and put a hand on Campbell’s sleeve and said,

“Let it go Carl.” Campbell stopped laughing
and looked at the hand and then looked at Jack and pushed his hand
away with a snort.

“You the mother hen are you?”

“No. Just tired of the teasing.”

“Bullshit. Look at him, he ain’t a happy
man.”

“I’m happy,” the priest said.

“Leave him alone,” Jack said. “He’s a priest.
A man of God.” Campbell puffed his pipe.

“Maybe so, but he ain’t God. He’s got a
pecker like the rest of us don’t he.”

The camp grew quiet and the men stared into
the fire and Campbell smoked his pipe and the priest got up and
left the group.

Chapter 3

Cannonade woke Jack the next the morning and
he got out of bed and went to the window and looked out. The
battery fired twice more and the concussion shook the window and
made the glass rattle. Jack couldn’t see the guns but they were
evidently firing near the camp aiming at the Union forces camped in
the hills west of Brownsville. It was an aggravation having the
guns so close but a comfort to know they were spoiling the Yankee’s
breakfast.

As Jack looked out at the camp he heard the
sound of horses on the move. Four columns of Calvary followed by
ten teams of mules top-heavy with ammunition and cannon balls moved
along the lane by the garden wall. The wagons were painted gray and
black and yellow and built like blocks of granite.