The March (17 page)

You will ask Miz Thompson next time we make camp an she will have enough for you, you needn’t worry ’bout that. Whatever Porhl can do you can surely do. But there’s one more matter, since I am lookin after you in your weak state and sorrow, an you know what that is?

No.

Well, it’s what you wouldn’t think of for all the time I was a chile in your house. You can teach Porhl to read. Startin here, Pearl said, holding out Clarke’s letter.

Mattie reached for the envelope, and Pearl put it in her hand. Their eyes met.

Now don’t you go cryin on me, Pearl called out, but to no avail. The tears flowed down Mattie Jameson’s cheeks. She was shaking her head and biting her lip, and Pearl, not knowing whether to comfort her or shout at her, was suddenly overtaken by the surge of feeling in herself as, unsummoned, and unwanted, the tears welled from her eyes as well.

III

J
OHN JUNIOR AND HIS BROTHER JAMIE COULD SEE IN
the openings between the logs the first of the moving shadows far off amid the swamp trees. Then there were more and more after that, and soon in the mist of the first light it was an army of them slogging forward with the water to their armpits and their rifles held high and their shoes and cartridge boxes hung from the tips of their bayonets. Hold your fire, the Lieutenant said, running up and down the line. Hold your fire, he said in a hoarse whisper, as though the Unions, though too far off to shoot at, could hear his every word.

Cavalry had been drawn off to cover the flanks, but there were so many Yanks and only a thousand and a half Rebs to stop them. Oh Lord, Jamie said. He was cold and shivering, his lips were blue, and he was like as not to piss his pants. The brothers had not slept much in the night for the skirmishing going on up and down the river. They were hungry too, having eaten the last of their hardtack the previous day. John Junior, who was a year older, took on the role of military expert for Jamie’s scared sake. Don’t you worry none, he said, these works as good as a fort. They’ll never get up here—we man the bluff, and we got artillery and they ain’t. Can’t set a fieldpiece in swamp.

Moments later John Junior was able to poke his brother in the ribs, for the guns had opened up, the shells whistling overhead and crashing out there in the water, bringing trees down and blowing men into the air. But still they came, some behind floating logs, which they used to steady their rifles as they fired to keep the cannoneers’ heads down. They got their sharpshooters out front, John Junior said.

We’re gon die. I don’t want to die, Jamie said.

Shush, s’posin Daddy was to hear you talk like this.

Well, he ain’t here, is he, so I can say what I please.

Think of somethin that’s pleasurin so’s you don’t act such a coward.

Like what?

I dunno. Somethin. Like back home how we spied on the slavey women when they washin theirsels in the creek.

Yeah.

See ’em naked and they none the wiser.

Yeah.

That Pearl, that white one. I will have to fuck her ’fore some nigger gets to it.

Yeah.

She the prettiest a them.

Yeah.

Little tittles jes a comin out. Not big baloozas like them mammies. Lord, I never seen such big ones as some of ’em have, not even on our momma.

You spied on our momma?

Naw, I jes sayin from outward appearances an all.

You spied on our momma! I’m gon tell her.

Tell her what?

You peeked at our momma naked, John Junior. Oh, boy.

Shut your mouth or I’ll do you in ’fore the Yanks get to it. You can die sooner easily as later.

Jamie thought about this and was quiet. You said they wouldn’t, John Junior.

I was lyin, you snivelin little bastard.

You said—

You ain’t no Jameson, nosir. Lookit them tears—Jesus, he turnin into a girl ’fore my eyes. You is goin to die, you little runt, and me too, so shut your face and be a man about it. Or after you dead the Yanks will fuck your ass.

You lyin!

Nosir. That’s what they do to crybaby boys. You want that, why you jes go on bawlin. Yessir. That’s jes what they’ll do.

THE MAN DOWNSTREAM
of Stephen Walsh took a bullet, seemed to throw his rifle away, and lay for a moment floating on his back, his hands clutching at the shoes strung around his neck. Then he was gone. Who was it? Wading to the spot, Walsh felt around, bending his knees and searching in the water with his free hand. Nothing. In this flood-tide swamp in the dim light of the early morning the only sign of the dead man was the reddish water, an oily patch of it slowly eddying and thinning away with the current.

All right, soldier, someone behind him said. Keep moving.

The ranks of men pushed forward through the chest-high swamp. It was a resistant thing with a life of its own, and in Walsh’s mind it was not Union or Confederate but its own nameless kingdom and, as far as he could see as he pressed forward in the kind of plod it demanded, it went on forever. He felt no fear, only the grim despair that had filled his breast from the day he took the three hundred dollars to lay his life on the line. As he had marched across Georgia, burning houses and tearing up railroad tracks, it seemed to him he was fighting an insane war. To see the smiles on the faces of freed slaves coming out to meet the troops was no recompense. He had read in their eyes the angry moral knowledge that cannot be consoled. He did not know if he could have stood the burden of their life. To be lost on earth so, as on an island of godless predation.

Around him the water burst in small vicious snaps. They had artillery, too, the balls coming over with an eerie shriek. He could not help himself—when he heard this sound he turned his back and flinched. But around him men did the same. And then the trees would crack and fall into the water behind them. He heard over the water a round cursing of General Mower as the designer of this fool advance. Goddamn you, Mower, I’m a sitting duck out here! Goddamn you too, Sherman, and goddamn this whole goddamn war! But Walsh knew it was not like the generals to invest in heavy losses. He assumed that this frontal assault was the diversion, and the flanking movement downriver or upriver was the effective action. So that when the secesh position was turned they would abandon their lodgment. I am to trust in God that it will be soon, Walsh thought, and laughed at himself for this uncharacteristic surge of piety. Because the swamp was filling with dead men, some floating by entangled in tree limbs.

As the light filtered through the cypresses, Walsh saw the men as boats. All together, advancing through fire and water and visible only from the waist up, they were an armada gliding forward with a side to side head-dipping motion as they held their rifles aloft. Here and there one would be stopped, like a ship shelled, its rigging a shambles. Walsh was not tall, at a sturdy five seven, and most of the time was concerned to keep his torso above water. But when he waded into a downward slope he was grateful for the increased depth, with only his head and raised arms available for a bullet. When he rose up again, the water pouring from his tunic, he felt he was there for a sharpshooter’s bullet.

Feeling something bumping into his side, he turned and found a detached head, bearded and blue-eyed, its expression one of wounded dignity, and with strings of integument and vein trailing from its neck. For a hideous moment, before he could push it away, Walsh felt it was appealing to him as if, given even this experience, life could seem still to be desirable.

IV

T
HEY WERE A DAY AND A HALF IN THE HIGH GROUND
between the Salkehatchie and Edisto rivers while the army moved on. Wrede’s surgery was one of three set up in the field. Hospital tents held forty of the wounded, but there were nearer eighty needing treatment. Wrede was the only surgeon in the corps who did resections in the field. He was doing one now, a suppurating fractured long leg bone. The accepted view was that resections usually led to postoperative complications. Amputation was a cleaner and more successful procedure with a higher survival percentage. The soldier might lose a limb, but he had his life. Wrede knew this was nonsense—he had seen too many amputees die at the hands of his colleagues. Now, as Emily attended, she became aware of the audience of other surgeons, assistant surgeons, and army nurses who had gathered around the open-air operating table. It was early morning. The sky was a bright blue, the sun glimmered through the treetops and the air was fresh and bracing, but the scene was otherwise grim, with men lying about on their litters calling for water, cursing God, screaming in pain. Yet the doctors had left their patients to observe Wrede Sartorius at work.

He’d incised the leg in two places and tied retractors above and below the infected bone. He applied forceps to the major arteries. Passing the threaded needle under the bone, he brought it around and attached it to a flexible chain handsaw. The marvel was how quickly and decisively he worked. Emily, at the head of the table, watched his hands. They seemed to her creatures with their own intelligence. In only moments, it seemed, Wrede displayed the offending bone section aloft in forceps. The rejoinment and closure were effected to the murmurs of the onlookers, and the leg was lightly bandaged and placed in a box splint. Emily had been holding the chloroform bag over the patient’s nose and mouth. She was now instructed to remove it. Wrede was asked questions. He quietly answered them, though she could tell that he felt it was a waste of his time. They are still using collodion dressings on wounds, he had said to her one day, which almost assures inflammation. I have written papers arguing for light and air as the healing agents, but they do not listen. They do things the way they’ve always done them, because that’s the way they’ve always done them.

Soon enough he was on to the next procedure, and the other surgeons had returned to their work. Emily only then became aware that as many glances had been directed at her as at the operating table. Had she caught one of the doctors with a knowing smile on his face? Or was it more like a smirk? How intolerable this all was.

In the meantime, the service companies had arrived and coffins were unloaded from the quartermaster wagons. The corpses were laid out at the edge of the field in the shade of the trees.

Pearl held Mattie Jameson tightly by the elbow as she led her along the rows of bodies. There were Southern boys there in their tattered grays and Union in their torn and bloody blues. Mattie considered each one, it didn’t matter what the uniform. She looked on them in solemn study. It was as if she were trying to understand death. She would frown and shake her head. Some of the faces were swollen and broken and bloodied beyond all recognition. Others were clear and unmarked and frozen, their teeth bared, as if they had died trying to bite someone. Why should they look like that? Mattie thought. As if death puts us back to animals. Yet my John with his eyes closed died like a human at peace, almost as if he was glad to be dead, his hand folded on his breast and only his nose grown a little longer.

When the two women reached the last body, Mattie began to cry. Pearl didn’t understand. It was a Union dead. Now, wife ma’m, she said. You can see for yourself the brudders ain’t wif these fallen mens. So why are you weepin like some pore mama of a dead boy? You ought to be thankin God your babies an their little army are high-tailin it fast as they can to get outen the way of Gen’ral Sherman.

V

R
IGHT IN THE DAMN MIDDLE OF THE BRIDGE THE MARE
stopped. Arly threw the reins across her back. Gitup, he shouted, move, goddamn you! She did not respond. Arly stood up to see her better in the darkness. The left front hoof was lifted, she would not put it down.

Behind them the wagon train was halted. He heard the protests going back along the whole bridge and beyond the bank into the forest. The shouting echoed through the cypress trees, and suddenly the air over his head was filled with screechy bats. If there was anything Arly hated, it was bats. Get away, get away, he said, waving his arms wildly and hopping around, his feet drumming on the boards.

Cavalry splashed by on both sides of the bridge. An officer reined up.

What’s the trouble, soldier?

Arly knelt by the mare. ’Pears her leg’s busted, sir.

What’re you carrying? the officer said, pointing to the wagon.

One wounded.

Get him out.

By now teamsters from the wagons just behind had come up to see what the trouble was. Arly lifted the back flap and said, Will, we got to move you. Can you get up? Don’t lift him by the arm, Arly said to the men. That’s what’s the matter with him.

Will could hardly stand. He was holding his bad arm, which seemed to have stopped bleeding. But the whole front of his tunic was wet with his blood.

The mare was unhitched and steadied on the downriver edge of the bridge. The officer tied his mount’s reins to a stanchion, jumped onto the pontoon, jammed his pistol into the mare’s ear, and fired. Her good leg buckled and as she went down she toppled into the water.

Arly put his shoulder under Will’s good arm and held him up that way. Will smelled of his sweat, he was bathed in it.

A good dozen teamsters rocked the ambulance side to side, and with a mighty heave they shoved it into the river as well.

All right, said the officer, let’s get moving.

ARLY AND WILL
rode now in a commissary wagon filled with sacks of flour. Can’t get more comfortable than with your back against this, Arly said, punching a sack into shape to suit him like it was a pillow. A whitish haze filled the air.

Where is this, where we going? Will said.

Well, we’re back with Gen’ral Sherman, Arly said. You knew that.

It’s dark, Will said after a moment.

Well sure, it’s nighttime.

I b’lieve I’m dying, Will said.

Aw now, that’s the way you talk with the least little hurt.

No, it don’t hurt no more, Will said, so it must be so.

Arly could hear him breathe.

I’m thirsty.