March Toward the Thunder (5 page)

“Forgive me, sir,” Devlin replied. “It was just honor I was doing to the valor of our comrades, the living and the dear departed whose memories'll remain green in our souls as that same emerald flag under which they fought, the very flag that leads us now, proudly waving beside the starry banner.”

“Aye, Devlin,” Corporal Hayes sighed, “every man in the company knows you've kissed the Blarney Stone. Now find another verse or be quiet.”

Louis, close behind Devlin in the line of march, shook his head. He'd met Irishmen before in the occasional jobs of labor that he had done. It was always the Irish, the blacks, and the Indians who were there in greater numbers to do such hard work. Though he'd stayed long enough to make friends with them, he never fully experienced just how much they loved to talk till now.

Of all the talkers and singers in the brigade, Devlin seemed the king. Louis had heard more speeches, poems, songs, exaggerations, and tales, more “blarney,” from the stocky little Irishman in the last two weeks than from all the people put together in his entire previous fifteen years of life.

“We're the New York Sixty-ninth,” Devlin warbled, making up a song of his own now from the way he paused between lines. “We fear no fight or foe.” Then he grew quiet, perhaps to seek the next rhyme in his mind or because their line of march was now taking them up a steep hill.

The Fighting Irish 69th
.
Who would have thought an Indian boy like me could have become one of them? Yet here I am in a fine blue uniform and carrying a rifle and marching through northern Virginia.

The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He'd read in the newspapers about the Irish Brigade, the five regiments of which the 1,000 men of the New York 69th were a crucial part. At Antietam and Frederickburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, men of the 69th had stood as firm as oak trees when others ran. They'd never retreated or lost a battle flag to the enemy.

It was a week now since they'd left Camp Meagher. He was feeling what most of the other men in his company were—the nervous impatience of a young soldier not yet tested by battle. Then another, more sober voice spoke within him.

A year or two ago, as an Indian, he likely would not have been accepted into the Irish Brigade's ranks. At the start of the war, nine out of every ten men in the five gallant regiments had been born in Ireland. But, because of their bravery, no brigade had suffered greater losses. After Gettysburg, fewer than one man in four remained of those who had marched behind the green flag emblazoned with an Irish harp. To bring the brigade back up to strength, hundreds of men had been recruited with lightning speed. As before, most were from the working class, but now many were not Irish. There were Germans and Scots, French Canadians and even, like Louis, an Indian or two. The Union Army was no longer telling Indians who tried to sign up to go back home because this was a white man's war.

Though the Irish Brigade was less Irish in its makeup, the songs of Erin's Isle and the lilt of the Gaelic language were still everywhere—as was Irish nationalism. At times it seemed to Louis that the true enemy was not the South, but Great Britain, the pitiless nation that had turned the green soil of dear old Ireland into a desert and driven its finest sons into exile.

I may come out of this more Irish than Abenaki
.

Then he shook his head, remembering the remark made to him that very morning by Joker Kirk.

“Chief, you haven't done a rain dance again, have you? We'd like to stay dry for once while we're marching.”

The jest hadn't hurt his feelings, but it had reminded him yet again of who he was. His brown skin and Indian features would always make him stand apart from white men—even in this company of men who were becoming as close to him as brothers.

He didn't like being different. It made him feel less like a fighting man and more like a lonely boy.

Come on, Songbird
, Louis thought.

It was better when Devlin was singing. It left less space in his head for him to think. But the hill was still steep and his red-haired friend clearly still cogitating.

He needed something to take his mind in another direction. Then he remembered something his father had told him.

“Do not just look at the world, my son, study its working. To know your way, see how things come together.”

How things come together, that was it. Whether it was the building of a wigwam from bent saplings and bark or the makeup of an army, this Grand Army of the Potomac.

Company was about as far as most privates took it. Know your company and these three rules:

Louis, though, had learned more of the makeup of the army.

Louis had seen Colonel Smyth just once, a big, broad-shouldered man with a thoughtful look to him. Mounted on a fine horse, he'd waved back at them all as he rode ahead of the line of march.

“Ye'll always see him like that riding in front of our own picket lines,” Sergeant Flynn said. “It's a charmed life that fine brave man will have led if he comes out of this war alive.”

They topped the hill now, went down the other side. As they trudged along, they passed a farmyard empty of all signs of life. Any livestock, from cattle on down to chickens, had “failed to give the password and suffered the penalty,” as Joker put it. Every soldier welcomed a change from the salt pork and hardtack that made up most of their meals.

They were entering a cornfield now, further trampling down the already flattened grain. No rail fences standing to slow their progress. They'd been pulled down and chopped up as fuel for camp fires by the regiments that preceded them.

Louis calculated in his head:
160,000 men or more.

Going up an even steeper hill now, leaving the farmland behind. Aside from Louis, whose life on the road had accustomed him to walking great distances with a heavy pack on his back, most of the men were breathing hard. That was especially true of Bull Belaney, whose breath was coming in gasps that Louis could hear even though the suspected bounty jumper was a good hundred feet ahead of him. Bull had been placed in the first line of march by Sergeant Flynn.

“No straggling, skulking, or skedaddling for you, boy,” Flynn had said when he caught Belaney trying to position himself at the back of the company.

Kirk caught his heel on a rock and almost stumbled. Louis reached out a hand to steady him without breaking stride.

“Thank ye!” Joker wheezed. “I take back what I said this morning. In this heat I'd be glad for a bit of rain.”

One man farther over, Merry's round childish face was as red as a beet, but he was laboring on. The weight of packs, muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes filled with forty rounds of ammunition was over thirty pounds. Some of their company had started off with even more weight than that. Prized personal possessions had been stuffed into their packs along with blanket rolls, three days of rations, and full canteens. After the first five miles, the sun beating down upon them, the new recruits had started to jettison that extra weight. All sorts of things, from spare clothing, knives, and compasses to books lay on the hillside.

Something clanked under his foot. Louis looked down. It was a rounded plate of the sort some soldiers brought with them in the hopes that it might stop a minié ball.

Probably the same one that I saw Wilson tying over his belly this morning
, Louis thought, kicking the abandoned piece of armor to the side.
Won't lay here long.

Sutlers were close behind them. They hovered like the turkey buzzards, fellow scavengers following the army. Hated for their presence and missed in their absence, the sutlers offered such high-priced necessities as tinned meat, whiskey, tobacco, newspapers, shoelaces, candy, and playing cards. Always ready to make a quick profit, they'd swoop in to pick up any cast-off items and add them to the goods they'd sell.

Louis shifted his pack to swat at the air. His own load was five pounds heavier than most since he was carrying half of a shelter tent. He hardly noticed the weight, but couldn't ignore the gnats that formed a cloud around his face whenever he stopped walking for more than a heartbeat.

Downhill again, still not even the hint of a breeze. Hot as Hades, though it was only early May. Up north there might still be snow. But here roses as red as blood were in bloom by the roadsides.

There was a river ahead to cross. The name Louis had heard someone mention was something like the Rapid One. Most likely they'd just pitch their tents in the woods on the other side, set up camp, and go back into the endless, boring routine of bugle calls and drills.

“The Johnnies are beat,” someone said from behind him in a rueful voice. Louis didn't look back. He recognized the voice as belonging to Happy Smith. Happy's nickname came from always being able to see the downside of every situation.

“Dang it all!” Happy groused. “Them graybacks'll give out complete afore we even get a chance to shoot off our guns.”

A distant rumble came from ahead.

Louis listened close, trying to hear that sound again over the tromp, tromp, tromp of marching feet from his company and the hundreds of other men in front of them and behind.

Ten paces ahead, Devlin coughed to clear his throat, took a deep breath, and began to sing the words that had finally come to him.

Another rumble sounded again. Louder this time.

Not thunder,
Louis thought.

CHAPTER SIX

SMOKE

The crackling sound was coming from somewhere on the other side of the confusing tangle of hills and forests in which they'd found themselves lost. Rutted roads so narrow that they seemed no more than trails led off in every direction. Not a marker to be seen anywhere. Whatever signs there might have been had been taken down by the Southern soldiers whose land they were invading.

Sounds like corn popping
, Louis thought, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
But it's not
.
It's rifles.

They'd advanced a mile or so since the battle began. It was nothing like what he had expected. Rather than ranks of Gray soldiers, all Louis had seen so far was tangles of cedars and vines, pines and heavy brush cut here and there by dirt trails and meandering streams. Midday sun hot on his shoulders. From the woods to his left came the familiar sound of a cardinal's song,
fweet-fweet-fweet, cheer, cheer, cheer.

Louis sniffed the warm air. Smoke in it now for sure.

Somewhere ahead of them General Hancock, the Second Corps commander, had given the order to keep advancing. They'd find good ground ahead. At least that was what the colonel who brought back the order told them before he rode off.

Sergeant Flynn growled from the tree stump he was standing on to Louis's left, trying without success to see more than fifty feet up the twisted trail.

“Good ground for the Rebs, but not us. No way for the artillery to find them in these godforsaken woods. They'll be shooting at us from behind every tree. Babes in the wilderness 'tis what we are!”

Flynn was talking to himself in a low voice that he thought no one else could hear. He'd not yet learned just how sharp were the ears of the brown-skinned young man who made it a point to seem as if he were not listening.

The wilderness
.
A good name for where we are.

The sergeant hopped down from his perch. “Follow me, lads,” he boomed. “Stick like a burr to the men to the left and the right of ye. If ye get confused, just march toward the sounds of the guns.”

Louis cocked his head. Something was coming fast from up ahead. Hoofbeats were thudding in their direction from one of those roads that disappeared into the woods.

“Cavalry,” Louis yelled.

“Off the road!” Flynn bellowed.

The men of Company E scattered to every side. Hats and bedrolls went flying in their haste to avoid the hooves galloping down on them. Louis barely held on to his rifle as he dove and rolled, coming up against the sharp roots of a cedar that tore a hole in the right knee of his trousers.

As quickly as they had appeared, the company of Union cavalrymen was gone. They left behind a cloud of dust, the echo of hooves and jingling spurs, the memory of gaily decorated horses, shining boots, spotless blue uniforms, and plumed hats . . . and more than a few curses.