March Toward the Thunder (15 page)

Then it was fall back to find the enemy's right flank and get around it.

Cross the North Ana a second time. Turn toward Hanover-town and over the Pamunkey River to find the enemy at Tolopotomy Creek.

“Move out, men!”

This time to Hanover Court House, where more soldiers in gray waited, dug in north of the Chickahominy River.

And then, finally, after more than a week of marching and digging trenches, skirmishing, falling back, moving forward to dig in yet again, they came to a halt.

Corporal Hayes stroked his mustache as he looked over the top of their trench toward the heavily fortified Confederate lines a mile away. He turned to nod down at Louis and his mess mates laboring below him. “Dig in lads, build up them walls.”

“Lads?” Joker said in a low voice as he nudged Louis with his elbow. “Moles is more like it.”

Louis nodded as he levered up yet another spadeful of red earth. Moles.

“Corporal, sir, do you know the name of this place?” Joker asked, leaning for a moment on his shovel.

“Cold Harbor, I'm told,” Hayes replied in a monotone. “Remember that name, so you can say you were at the place where the battle was fought that broke the back of the rebellion?”

Strange. He's not saying those words as if he believes them. More like a question. In fact, it seems as if everything Hayes says since he escaped from the Rebs has been a question. As if he's doubting everything around him now
.

Hayes gestured vaguely in the direction of the Rebel entrenchment that stretched for miles in each direction.

“The South's worn out, so Grant says. All Lee has the heart to do is dig in.”

Dug in like an old wounded wolf. What was it
mon père
said? No animal more dangerous than a hurt one in his lair.
The thought brought a tight feeling to his gut.
Lee and his boys are just waiting for us fools to try to go in after them.

“Wore out?” Belaney growled.

“So the general says,” Corporal Hayes replied. Then he wandered off down the trench, still stroking his mustache.

“Cold Harbor,” Belaney said, twisting his face as if the words hurt his mouth.

“Hot Harbor, more like,” Kirk said, tapping his spade against the floor of the trench. “Fill this hole with water, the sun'd heat it up enough to boil potatoes.”

“Potatoes,” Devlin said, looking up from the skillet where he was taking his turn fixing their dinner. Since Merry's departure, Songbird had drawn the short straw to be the man lugging the iron pan.

“Potatoes,” he repeated, his voice wistful. “Now there's a word that none of our commissary men seem to have in their vocabulary these days. It's naught but sowbelly, worm castles, and water for us poor boys in the Irish Brigade.”

“Water?” Joker said. “So that's what you call the liquid we've been drinking that's dark enough to paint a barn?”

“Ah, but it makes for a fine cup of coffee,” Devlin said. “Soldier's coffee, indeed.”

“And what is soldier's coffee, might I inquire?” Belaney asked.

“Coffee,” Devlin said, “strong enough that when you stick a spoon in it, the spoon stands up.”

“Not as strong as lumberman's coffee,” Louis said, surprising himself and the others by joining in.

“And how strong would that be, Chief?” Kirk asked, playing along.

“Lumberman's coffee,” Louis said, keeping his face straight, “you stick a spoon in it and the spoon melts.”

The others laughed as if the old joke was as fine and new as a shiny silver dollar. Everyone seemed quick to laugh now, even at the smallest and weakest of jokes. A hard, nervous sort of laughter that died as quickly as it was born.

Like the other morning as they had been trudging along yet another dusty red track. Someone in the line of march had seen a three-legged dog by the side of the road and shouted out, “Wull, there's Jeff Davis.”

Within moments that comment about the sorry three-legged stray being the president of the Confederacy had gone all the way back down the line. About every man in the regiment was guffawing at it whether he'd seen that dog or not. Some had laughed so hard they almost choked. A few had even fallen down on the ground and had to be helped back to their feet.

Devlin poked at the fire under the dented iron skillet.

“How's our dinner doing?” Belaney asked, coming over to look. “You've got the last of me salt pork in the pot.”

“Now, Bull,” Devlin said, “don't be complaining. You know that if you'd kept it in your pack, that sowbelly would just be oozing grease and rotting in the weather instead of part of a fine skillygallee.”

Louis thought, and not for the first time, about the meals his mother made for them as they traveled from place to place.
Rabbit, that makes a good stew. Muskrat too. Deer, beaver. Shucks, me, I would be glad for as much as a squirrel.

But with all these men in blue and gray scouring the land, every animal that could be eaten had already been consumed or fled for its life. He'd heard the Johnnies were even eating the rattlesnakes. Any critter big as a field mouse was taking its life in its paws if it ventured near the Rebel lines.

Songbird tapped the bayonet he was using as a stirring spoon against the side of the skillet. “Done as it'll ever be,” he sighed. “But don't expect much of it. There's no man can mix up a batch of skillygallee like our dear Housewife could.”

“There's a fact,” Kirk agreed. He dropped his shovel, took a spoon from his coat pocket, and scooped some of the gray mixture onto the tin plate he'd pulled from his pack. “And now our fine lad who made an even finer lass'll be cooking for her husband. Chicken and gravy with dumplings, most likely.”

As the others helped themselves to the sorry stew, Louis filled their tin cups with coffee from the pot placed on a flat stone next to the fire.

“Boys,” Kirk said, rising to his feet and lifting his coffee cup high where the light from the fire glittered off it, “here's to the finest man who never was.”

Before the others could stand to voice their agreement, there came a sudden sound like the whining of a gnat.

Coffee sprayed around the small circle of men as the cup went flying from Kirk's hand.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Joker said, dropping down onto his back and grabbing his numbed fingers with his other hand. “Them Rebel snipers are going too far. It's one thing to knock a man's head off, but spilling his coffee is a low, uncivilized act.”

“Did you notice,” Devlin said, crawling over to pick up the dented cup and refill it for his comrade, “the pitch of that particular ball before it struck? Being a musician meself, I believe it swelled from E flat to an F and then dropped near to a D as it lost its velocity.”

A distant rumble came from the heavens. For a moment, Louis thought it was guns before he recognized it as thunder. Just a month ago it would have been the opposite and he would not have confused the ancient voice of the Bedagiak with the brutal sound of cannons. All four of them were silent for a moment, looking up at the dark sky as they lay on their backs in the trench.

Finally, Songbird sighed. “And there was the bass drum of the Lord, sounding the counterpoint to the melody.”

“So give us a song,” Belaney said as he sat up.

The one-time claim jumper had shown himself to be a man of more depth and sentiment than anyone had expected. No fewer than four times in the last few weeks, Belaney had spent his spare cash not on sweets from the sutlers but sheet music, eager for the newest songs being penned. Not that he was alone. There were countless thousands of men eager to hear a song that might lift their hearts. Bull couldn't read the notes, but with Devlin's help he could puzzle out the words printed below them. And once Songbird had sung him the tune, Bull would always remember the melody.

“Bull's right,” Kirk agreed. “After a fine batch of skillygallee we need a song to round off the festivities.”

“What shall it be?” Songbird wiped off the skillet with a rag and tied it onto his pack. “'Rally Round the Flag, Boys'? ‘After the Battle, Mother'?”

Belaney rummaged in his pack. “This one,” he said.

Devlin scanned the name and illustration on the front of the folded sheet. “Good title.” He opened it to study the tune, took a breath, and began to sing.

The second time around, Bull, then Kirk, then Louis, then even more of the other men who had been working in the darkness to each side of them joined in. Louis was never sure just how many voices finally raised together. A hundred? A thousand? But when they stopped, he heard what seemed to be an echo. Then he recognized it for what it was. Other voices from farther off had taken up the tune—Rebel soldiers whose minds and hearts and bodies were just as weary of war.

And as they sang, voices uniting the darkness, rain began to fall.

CHAPTER TWENTY

AFTER COLD HARBOR

Louis gritted his teeth as he tried to lever the log into place. An arrow of pain stabbed into the bruised small of his back. He wiped the moisture from his eyes with his other sleeve. His arm rustled against a sheet of paper stuck to his chest. He looked down at it in momentary confusion, read the words upside down.

He did. He'd printed those letters, pinned that paper in place a full day ago.

He pictured the scene again. Hundreds of other blue-coated soldiers carefully lettering their identities onto white sheets with a calmness that belied their fears. From the greenest private to the oldest veteran, they'd all known what would happen when the bugles blew the advance.

Cold Harbor. Not a port where ships might come in, although the sluggish Pamunkey River ran behind them. Cold Harbor had been the name of a white-framed tavern in a nearby grove. Now, though, it was the name of the nearby field of battle. Cold Harbor. A place that gave cold comfort, for sure.

Louis closed his eyes. He didn't want to see it, but the images came to him just the same.

Rain before dawn. After a night so hot that the downpour was a blessed relief to some. But Louis had another thought as heavy drops fell from thick clouds, obscuring all signs of sunrise.

Great Creator knows what is going to happen. He's closed the eyes of the sky so He doesn't have to watch
.

“All-out assault?” Hayes said, gesturing at the steep hill ahead.

“Break through that line?” the corporal continued in the questioning monotone that had become his voice.

A short month ago Sergeant Flynn's right-hand man had been one of those neat, precise men who did as he was told and never felt the need to think deeply. Well-groomed as Flynn was rumpled, Hayes always had his hair combed, his red mustache exactly trimmed. But though he'd leap to Flynn's every command, he'd never seemed weak.

Now something's missing in Hayes. Still does as ordered. But there's a dark edge of doubt
.