Raintree County (98 page)

It seemed to Johnny that everyone on that side of the hall accepted the challenge. Flash was buried under a hail of blows and bodies. Johnny shoved the newspaper into his pocket and started trying to get through the crowd to Flash.

The room became a vortex of faces and fists. Someone smashed the lights. Someone shoved Johnny. He fell sprawling. Something flew over his head. A window smashed, scattering glass outdoors. Johnny groped for a table to get under. He found himself grappling with a woman on the floor. She screamed. Johnny stood up. Something hit him smash on the side of the head. He lurched blindly, hunting for an exit. Over the noise, he could hear Flash Perkins' jubilant and terrific profanity.

—Tryin' to hit me, huh! Well, goddamn you, where I come from——

A door opened somewhere and a gush of cold air came in. The crowd quieted down. There was a crisp young officer standing at the door swinging a lamp. Soldiers with bayonets fixed stood behind him.

—Report to your units at once, he said. Any soldier not answering to regimental rollcall one hour from now will stand court martial for desertion.

The door slammed. Someone turned a lamp up on the beshambled room. The soldiers looked at one another dully.

—Must mean we're gonna fight tomorra.

—Le's git out a here.

Johnny found the Perfessor in a corner sitting in Hesper's lap. She was applying a handkerchief to an eggshaped lump on the Perfessor's forehead.

—Poor darlin', she cooed. He hurt hisself.

—Well, Professor, Johnny said, are you enjoying yourself?

The Perfessor put his pince-nez glasses back on his nose, looked around, and recited:

—A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company!

—You better come with me, Johnny said. Flash and I have to get back to camp.

—Run along, boys, the Perfessor said, looking intently at Hesper's bosom. Remember—the soldier only has to be at his post, but the correspondent has to cover the whole damn war. See you in Richmond, John.

As he left, Johnny could hear the Perfessor's high voice reciting,

—And oft when on my couch I lie . . .

Back at the camp, General Jake Jackson spoke to the brigade.

—We'll fight tomorrow, he said. Let every man get his arms in readiness. Here's your chance, boys, to avenge Chickamauga. Get a good night's sleep.

Johnny lay on his cot, listening to Flash Perkins in the adjoining cot.

—Yes, sir! Flash was saying, I mean to kill me a whole wagonload a Rebs tomorra. Cuss it, I'm a-gittin fed up with this here war. I simply cain't unnerstan' anybody fightin' agin the United States of Amerikee. Who the hell do they think they are anyhow? Ownin' slaves when respectable folks pays for their hire. Not that I want to fight no war for no dinge—let the niggers take keer a themselves. But I cain't unnerstan' them a-firin' on the Flag, can you, Jack? What I wanna know is . . .

Johnny mumbled something. He envied Flash the simplicity of his concepts. It was perhaps good to take life as you found it, bare your teeth, and laugh like hell. It was perhaps good to have no doubts.

Johnny thought of the coming battle and of his unexpected reunion with the Perfessor. Then he thought of Raintree County lying
beneath these sharp, autumnal stars. In his coat he had letters from his father, mother, and Nell. They all said to take care of himself and come back home as soon as he could. The words in these letters cared about him. He thought of the way his name looked in Nell's highly personal handwriting.
My darling Johnny, I take my pen in hand and seat myself to . . .

When he had read those letters, he had felt like the Hero of Raintree County for certain, the darling boy precious and irreplaceable. But now he was only one of thousands of boys, waiting in darkness for a day of battle. These thousands of young men slept a little time and went back home in vague dreams remembering. But on the morrow they would get up, recalling duty. The General would have a plan. The President would be waiting for news of the Battle. The folks at home would pray for victory and the safety of loved ones. The Flag must be avenged and the Constitution upheld. On the morrow, then, he must be brave, as he hadn't been before, and distinguish himself in the fighting.

Sad words ran in his mind, words of a man named Abraham Lincoln, words from a perishable paper read in a brothel where soldiers hunted for love's poor counterfeit before the Battle. These words had been woven from the deathcries of ten thousand young men on the hills of Gettysburg and also from the anguish of Johnny Shawnessy hunting for two lost children through days of climax and disaster. These words might vanish like the thin smokes on Lookout Mountain, or they might be graven on the memory of the Republic. Tomorrow he and his comrades would go out to give life or death to these words. On the brooding hills of Tennessee and Georgia, they must affirm and reaffirm

. . . that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government

OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE,
SHALL NOT PERISH
,
FROM

T
HE EARTH
of Raintree County, covered with corn and wheat, was the image of peace and plenty in the anniversary sunlight. On the platform Mrs. Evelina Brown raised her arms to lead the opening bars of the song.

—Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom,

We will rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!

Down with the traitor, up with the star,

While we rally round the flag, boys,

Rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

A chill went up Mr. Shawnessy's spine; he perceptibly straightened his back and squared his shoulders, hoping that the Perfessor hadn't observed.

—We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

He was lifted on a wave forward and upward. Memory carried him on the feet of trampling thousands.

The Union forever! O, beautiful, unanalyzable concept!

Forward, comrades, let us push forward up the slope. Let us carry the banners of freedom to the summit. O, let us be in the vanguard of history, anonymous and fearless comrades! A hundred hands will bear us to the crest. Young men, my comrades, we shall all behold the far side of the mountain in resplendent weather, white roads of peace and blossoming summer. But first, good heart, comrades, a deep breath, a long shout, and——

The Union forever, hurrah! boys

moved out. The blue rush of the ranks poured like a wave advancing. The movement was given on down the line like a rope cracking. It swirled into his regiment, picked him up. He was running.

—Hurraaaaaaaahhhh! Hurraaaaaaaaaahhhh! Hurraaaaaaaahhhh!

He was held up by the deep bass roar of the Army. It was one voice shouting. This force held back from early morning, unleashed at last, was a torrent of grim men. Starving, marching, waiting, griping, despairing were trampled down by the thunder of forty thousand feet.

He went as though the earth moved with him. The blue line reached and topped a little slope that had hid them from view all morning. A hundred yards in front were the Rebel riflepits at the base of the ridge. Smokepuffs flowered along a line loosely entrenched.

Running, he saw on his left how Jesse Gardner, the thinfaced, querulous boy from the City, stuck out from the straight of the charge, leaning and lunging, ran down to his knees, pitched forward, his gun flung out in front. His canteen bounced on the ground like a pod tossing on water. The wave swept on. At the base of the ridge, the Enemy rose. Some furiously worked their ramrods. Others broke for the rear. Belatedly, a few shells dropped, but far behind.

Groups of enemy soldiers fell back in a ragged line, firing. Back of that line, a second was trying to fire through the first. He heard the commands of Rebel officers.

Rocks, bushes, trees faded around. He and others made for a knot of Rebels. One tall Rebel walked forth from the rest. He held his musket clubbed. His eyes glared with a personal hatred. Corporal Johnny Shawnessy flung himself under the swung musket, missed in a lunge with his bayonet, lost balance, fell, rolled over to keep moving. A blast of powder singed the back of his neck. The tall Rebel sat down hard, grabbing his stomach. Flash Perkins reached down
a hand and pulled Johnny standing. With clubbed muskets and bayonets, blue and gray soldiers drove at each other in mute violence. Johnny and Flash together rushed a Rebel on one knee ramming a charge. He threw down the rifle. Flash's bayonet was at his throat. The man squirmed like a snake, screamed for mercy, holding the bare blade in his hands. Flash missed twice with killing lunges. All around, the Enemy threw down their arms.

More Union soldiers swept in around them, bayonets flashing like cruel desires. Then an officer riding by, said crisply,

—All right. Go to the rear, you traitorous bastards. Keep your hands up.

Johnny grabbed Flash around the shoulders and pulled him back from the man on the ground, who lay panting and watching Flash with hypnotized eyes.

—Goddamn ‘im, he'd a-killed me if he could! Flash growled.

All the Rebels in sight held up their hands and walked slowly, like men treading on wires. One boy was sobbing. As always, the face of the Enemy and the speech of the Enemy were barbarous and strange. These were outsiders, men of a strange belief, plucked like fish from their own world, forcibly into his.

Grape and riflefire whined around him. A Union soldier sat down. He tore his shirt open and looked at his chest. There was a black hole in the flesh of his right breast. The soldier sat looking at the hole in his chest and then shyly around at his comrades.

The blue wave had overrun the riflepits at the base of the hill. It was momentarily confused by its own success. General Jake Jackson rode up the line, hatless as usual. His voice and sword whipped the line forward.

Johnny heard the deep shout again from along the captured pits.

—Hurraaaaaaaahhhh! Hurraaaaaahhh! Hurraaaahh!

A word and a primitive cry—a deep aitch, a growling ar, and a raucous ah—it was savage and almost exultant.

—Go on, boys! Captain Bazzle said. Keep moving forward! Fire at will!

The men advanced in groups, firing from cover. Johnny and Flash were to the left of the regimental colors. The ridge here began to rise steeply in humps covered with low bushes and scrub trees. What was left of the retreating first line of the Rebels had become
confused with a second, forming in clear view a hundred yards higher. The Rebels fired volleys of grape down the hill. Parts of the enemy line were advancing. A man with a blue bandanna tied around his neck walked right over the top of Johnny's rifle sight, getting bigger and bigger. Johnny squeezed off.

—Up, Jack, up! Flash Perkins yelled.

Johnny got up. The first Union line was forward again, forced on by the advancing second wave which was now firing over Johnny's head. In places the Unionists were running shoulder to shoulder. Johnny crossed a fence and climbed down into a road that ran diagonally up the ridge. Rebels were entrenched along the road or retreating across it. For a moment he appeared to be the only Union soldier on it. Then the road was choked in both directions with his comrades. A Rebel officer stood up from concealment on the far side of the road.

—Come on, boys, he said briskly, le's give 'em what-fer.

Forty or fifty Rebels poured out into the road. The officer cocked a pistol and aimed it directly at Johnny's head. Both sides fired a volley at short range. The road was filled with smoke and cursing men. Rebel soldiers ran out of the smoke, yelling. A big bearded man naked to the waist walked forward swinging his musket by the small end. A glancing blow smashed so hard against Johnny's bayonet that his hands and arms stung to the shoulders, and his musket clattered on the road. He grabbed it by the small end and swung wild. The blue roof of the world bloomed with fire. Stars were shooting up in a fountain of brightness and coming down in dissolving trickles of light. Blackness ate at the light in soft waves.

Johnny felt something rough on his face. He had perhaps been dreaming. Someone was pulling him up. The ground rocked, tipped, turned over, came rightside up. Tom Conway was standing beside him.

—What happened? Johnny said.

—You got a nasty crack on the head, Tom said.

Half a dozen Rebels and Unionists lay around him. In the ditch on the other side, a Union soldier stood over a Rebel, bayonet pressing him down. The Rebel held to the stock of the gun, said nothing, his eyes pleading.

Dirt and smoke spurted in a high black fountain out of the ground where the two struggled. Johnny flattened. When he raised his head, Tom Conway was lying on his back a yard away. Johnny leaned over him. Tom's eyes fluttered open. He looked around.

—What——he started to say, his voice gentle, vaguely worried.

—It was a shell, Johnny said. Where did it hit you?

—I don't know, Tom said. I can't move.

There was no mark on the front of his body. Johnny started to turn him over on his side. Tom's eyes fluttered again, and he fainted. The back of his torn coat was soaked.

—All right, boys, go on up! an officer shouted. Follow 'em up the hill.

The Enemy was shelling his own abandoned positions all along the base of the ridge. Every able soldier in the road climbed over the ditch at the far side and went on up. Johnny felt the back of his head, matted with blood. His head throbbed, and he was sick in the stomach. He didn't know quite where he was and what he was doing.