Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (3 page)

I fold up my spectacles, slip the letters back into
my haversack, rest my head on it for want of a pillow, and stare up
at the stars. If I start counting the men I have to mourn, the
missing faces, Sam the most recent of that long list, I’ll start to
cry. I need to sleep instead. Around a fold of oilcloth I wrap my
arms.

Well, shit, here come the tears nonetheless. Stop it,
Ian. You don’t want to think about death. You want to think about
men, about a man naked and willing and in your arms.

Thom, that beautiful bastard, rubbing his bare ass
against me. That’s memory. Or poor blue-eyed Brandon, lying
bare-chested on top of me, nuzzling my face. That’s fantasy. Both
images harden my groin. I hug on the oilcloth as if it were a
lover. Sleet pats my brow and my mood of futile ardor riles me up,
but eventually I slip toward sleep, the ache of limbs and
half-empty belly grading minute by minute into blessed
insensibility.

_

CHAPTER THREE

_

General Early and his remaining men are already gone
when we wake to a grim and rainy dawn. “He’s off to report to Lee,”
Sarge says simply, after calling us out for a hurried and unkempt
morning muster. “As for us, boys, the Yanks are moving our way,
heading east up the mountain. We need to hide up in the woods till
they pass. Once they’re gone, we’re heading west for Staunton. The
citizens there are a mite better off than those in Waynesboro.
They’ll provide for us. I’ve told Early we’ll hide in the mountains
west of Staunton and bushwhack what Yanks we see in the Valley.
Nelson’s got a little force in southwest Virginia. With luck, we
can join up with him.”

No time for coffee, much to Rufus’ distress. Instead,
our little group has a quick breakfast of hardtack before climbing
the mud-slick steeps above the road and hunching down behind
evergreen walls of laurel and hemlock. “Hide the horses way up
there, deep inside the laurel, boys, and feed them some of what you
have in your sacks. That’ll keep them quiet until the Yanks pass,”
Sarge orders. “If the bluecoats hear any whinnies up here, we’re
done for. Rufus will collect the food. Whatever you boys have that
our mounts will eat. We’ll replenish our stores in Staunton, I
promise you.”

As intimidating as Sarge can be, as loyal as we all
are to him, still there are several reluctant grumbles as Rufus
makes the rounds, collecting precious bits of food. When I hand
Rufus the loaf of bread the Waynesboro slave girl gave me, his
lower lip trembles. “I sure was looking forward to a chunk of
that,” he says. “But you hold onto that honey and ham, okay? Them
horses wouldn’t care for any of that. I’d keep the dried apples
too.”

Gray woodlands surround us, boughs dripping with cold
rain. The wind pouring through the gap brings fog today, drifting
through our bivouac. We wait inside ragged white clouds that come
and go, beading our beards with tiny droplets. In between breaks in
the fog, Sarge trains his spyglasses west.

“Here they come,” he says just before noon. “Get
down, boys, and keep quiet. If the foe discovers us, we’re all
finished.”

Here’s hoping Confederate gray blends in with March
drizzle, tree trunks, and dead leaves. We drop onto our bellies
onto the frozen ground, huddle inside the laurel thickets, or hide
behind the thickest tree trunks, though a few of us can’t resist
peering over a ledge or two to watch the Yanks as they pass.

“There’s Custer,” George growls at my elbow. “Golden
ringlets like a whore.”

“Shut
up
, George,” Sarge
whispers.

Very carefully, I pull aside a hemlock branch and
look down. They’re passing, Custer’s cavalry first, then
Sheridan—short little bastard with a dark moustache—leading long
lines of troopers. Those are the scum who burnt up the Valley last
fall. With their clean uniforms of blue and gold and their robust,
well-fed bodies, they look like a different species of soldier
altogether, nothing like the tattered, dirty scarecrows we’ve
become after four years of war. As close as they are and as
unaware, it’s a great temptation to shoot a few through the heads,
but then our tiny band of Rebs would be slaughtered for sure.
Twenty-three of us, thousands of them. Not exactly appealing
odds.

They pass. They pass. They pass. Flashes of blue
moving in and out of fog, only yards below. It looks like half the
population of one of those crawling Northern cities on the march.
We watch, stunned, sick, despairing. What can we do against men
such as they? So many men such as they?

Finally the long line ends. The clopping of horses’
hooves descends the mountain, heading for Charlottesville and who
knows what sort of destruction. Sarge waits until there’s nothing
to hear but wind and dripping boughs before he stands, whispering,
“Let’s go. Keep quiet.” We rise to our feet, one by one, brush wet
leaves and dirt off our already filthy uniforms, and follow him
down the shaly slope to the road.

“Sarge’s horse ate your bread,” Rufus says sadly,
shouldering his haversack. “He acted like it was mighty tasty.”

We mount up, two men to a horse, heading west toward
the Valley Pike, which will hopefully be free of Yanks at present.
We ride wearily through Waynesboro—not a citizen on the street. For
a second, I remember Winchester, May 1862, the Feds routed, our
triumphant entrance into that town behind Stonewall Jackson, the
girls cheering us, offering us posies and fruit. Long years ago. A
different world, a hopeful one. No cheering here, just empty
streets and gray buildings. We pass out of town, past the rifle
pits where we did our best to make a stand.

Near where Sam fell, there are fresh graves, piles of
red earth in a field of brown grass. The townspeople must have
buried our fallen already. I don’t know which grave is Sam’s, but
it doesn’t matter. In a war like this, all those boys were kin.

Sarge reins in his horse, pausing long enough to bow
his head. Some damned Yankee, perhaps even the one whose bullet
brought Sam down, has that bloodstained flag that Sam fell in. They
wouldn’t bury him in it; they’d keep it as a souvenir of victory.
It was probably presented to Sheridan, along with all the others,
in some triumphal parade. I can seem them smiling now; I’d like to
beat their beaming faces in.

“Lord help this land’s defenders and bless all those
who’ve fallen,” Sarge mutters, then he snaps the reins and we’re
off, horse hooves clopping along the muddy road toward
Staunton.

_

CHAPTER FOUR

_

We limp into town as gloomy dusk gathers, as lamps
flare up in windows and a chilly mist rises from the streets. The
few pickets lead us to the railroad depot. It’s seriously
fire-damaged still, after that bastard David Hunter and his
destructive passel of Yanks passed through last June, but a section
of the station’s whole, with dry floors upon which we’re invited to
sleep. Word goes out, and within the hour citizens are lining up in
the brick-paved square beside the depot. By this point in the war,
I doubt that they have much to give, but what they do have, they
give us: cornmeal, moldy onions, coffee, molasses, dried beans,
cold biscuits, warm blankets, shoes. The mayor appears, a man with
impressive side-whiskers; he gives a quick, solemn speech about
welcoming Virginia’s defenders. Afterwards, he pulls Sarge
aside—they know each other well—and presents him with several
bottles of amber liquid. I’m hoping it’s whiskey, and I’m hoping my
uncle will share it with me, as he usually does. I’ve inherited a
taste for strong waters from the Campbells, my father’s side of the
family, and as religious-righteous as Sarge can be about profanity,
he’s never seemed to deny himself a sip of fiery spirits when he
can. It can make me silly, morose, or sleepy, but it never
“embrutes” him, as he puts it. It seems only to make him a little
less stern.

Of course there are no young men for me to admire
among the people of Staunton. After four years of war, they’re
either dead, thanks to Yankee bullets and artillery, or they’re
starving behind the lines with Lee at Petersburg. But here come,
much to my fellow Rebs’ delight, a few young ladies from the female
academy hereabouts, dressed for the occasion in fancily furbelowed
dresses that nevertheless have seen better days. “We hid this ham
from the Yankees under a sewing basket,” says one with a
plump-lipped smirk, presenting it to Sarge. He’s in his element
here, receiving the people’s gratitude with low tones of thanks.
He’s composed in a way I’ll never be, and handsome for his
age—fifty—with his high cheekbones and wavy grey hair. My uncle’s
always seemed free of the doubts and despairs that assail me
daily.

My fellow soldiers do what they always do when girls
are around—they flush and flirt. Their grins grow wide and nervous,
their limbs jittery. It’s funny to watch, though I guess I’d act
that way around a bunch of handsome soldiers. As it is, I like
women, and they like me. It’s good for my pride, their attentions,
and I can be easy around them, since their attractions don’t move
me the deep way they obviously do my comrades. Several of the
prettier ones circle me, making chat, touching my uniform, the
handle of my sheathed Bowie knife, asking me what battles I’ve
seen, why we lost in Waynesboro.

The poor things, they must be desperate for men,
making such a fuss over smelly, muddy skeletons like ourselves.
Jeremiah gets the lion’s share of their attentions, not only
because he’s handsome, even in his present half-starved,
raggedy-ass state, but because he’s a charmer, a natural ladies’
man. It must be exhilarating, to be open about one’s desire, to be
wanted by someone you want in return. Rufus, he’s too awkward for
such girls to find appealing, and George is too, well, homely. As
much as he raves about the Bible, he probably thinks these girls
are hell-sent temptresses.

After some chatter and some giggling, the cold rains
renew themselves, and so the flirtacious girls depart, the rest of
the citizens disperse. Sarge and the mayor head for a nearby
tavern, while the rest of our crew ducks into the rail station,
thankful for the shelter. There we have a cold meal of ham and
bread—some elegant dowager with a gray bun in her hair brought us
several fresh loaves, bless her. We roll out our blankets in the
lamplight and listen to the rain—it’s a comforting sound when you
don’t have to be out in it, as we have for most of the last four
years. Jeremiah picks out “Dixie,” then “Lorena.” The notes of the
latter make us so sad and homesick that Rufus interrupts.

“Pardon me, Mr. Jeremiah, but we don’t need no more
of that melancholy music! Sarge ain’t here,” he says, with a
mischievous grin. “Ian, why don’t you tell us something bawdy? I
think, after looking at all them pretty girls, some of us are in
the mood.”

“Good idea, Rufus. Let’s hear it, Ian!” Jeremiah lays
down the banjo and brandishes a little ivory comb one of his female
admirers must have just given him. “Meanwhile I’ll just groom
myself and dream of the next passel of delightful ladies.” He takes
it to his uneven and unruly beard, then his lank hair.

Rufus gives him a sour look. “They always did like
you best. I need to find me a big-hipped little honey who falls in
love with me for my biscuits… Some big girl with great big
titties…”

“I ain’t having none of your sinner’s stories,”
grouses George. He moves his bedroll to the far side of the room,
where he starts up a card game with the redheaded New Market
twins.

“Hmm, let’s see…” I contemplate my options. Well, I
could tell a story about sodomites, about David riding Jonathan, or
Achilles prick-spearing Patroclus, or how much I used to want to
take Jeremiah’s substantial cock in my mouth during those long
summer days at the swimming hole, but I suspect my friends want
something composed of more average lechery.

“How ’bout the one about the lass that was bitten by
the trouser snake?” Rufus suggests, licking his lips. “Or that one
about the saddlehorn that weren’t a saddlehorn? Or the hussy who
grew too fond of horizontal refreshments? Or that woman who
couldn’t never be satisfied? Or that one about Harrolson collecting
ladies’ piss to make nitre?”

“Umm, ‘you have put the pretty dears / to patriotic
pissing’…uh, ‘when a lady lifts her skirts / she’s killing off a
Yankee.’ Hell, I should have written that one down. I can’t
remember it. How about ‘While one, more wanton than the rest /
Seized on love’s moss-bounded nest. / And cried, “Poor puss shall
have a treat / For the first time of juicy meat.”
 
’ 
”

“Hooray!” says Rufus. “’Bout time that puss was fed!”
Bless him, he’s as earthy a farmboy as they come. I’m about to
continue when the station door opens and Sarge appears. He takes
the situation in within a couple of seconds—the flushed grins, the
guilty looks. “Coarse amusements, boys? Not worth of the
Southland’s soldiers. At it again, Ian?”

I wipe a grin from my mouth and try to look solemn.
“Yes, sir.” That line about juicy meat has me counting the years
since I last lay with a man. My youth’s flying by, I could die
tomorrow, ripped to shreds by a barrage of Yankee bullets, and I
have no one to touch. “The boys asked me to. I figured, as grim as
things have been lately, they could do with…”

“Vulgar laughter. Yes, I see. You all get some rest!”
Sarge orders. “Tomorrow we’re heading west, into the
mountains.”

“Yes, sir” is the statement that crops up all over
the room. Card decks are thrust into haversacks; lamps are snuffed.
I’m about to turn to my own bedroll when Sarge says, “Come with me,
nephew. I have something for you.”

A scolding, I expect. Hell. Still I obey without
question, as usual. Sarge leads me outside onto the station
platform. We sit side by side on a bench. Rain, silvered by distant
streetlamp light, drops in sheets off the eaves. Sarge pulls out
two cigars, lights them, and hands me one. Typical of him: he’s
been alternately stern and generous with me since I was a child. We
sit in silence for a time, till our cigars are glowing cheerily in
the dark. He pulls out a flask now; still silent, we pass it back
and forth. Before us, rails gleam in the rain. I’m surprised the
damned Yanks didn’t pull them all up when they occupied Staunton
last summer. After all the fire damage, much of the town still
exudes a strong smell of wet ash.