The March (20 page)

STEPHEN WALSH HAD
seen the burning bales of cotton, stacks of them bound for shipment and extending the length of a block. His company, marching on an adjoining street, fell out to spell the troops on fire brigade, manning the hoses and the hand pumps under the direction of the local fire captain.

After thirty minutes the fire was under control, and soon there was no sign of it but for the blackened humps of the ruined bales and spirals of smoke blowing away in the breeze. Fires die, like living things, Stephen thought. The animation is fervent and the death dramatic. I am done, defeated, you are looking at my death, the smoke seemed to say.

The troops resumed their march, striding off to the applause of the townspeople.

But it had smoldered in the heart of the bales, that fire, keeping to itself till the night came down and the wind came up. It had kept its own counsel, biding its time, and when the propitious moment came, out it flamed, spewing into the night sky and tossing its tufted torches into the pollinating wind.

Who had first lit a match to those bales? Walsh thought most likely the retreating Rebs. If they could not have their cotton, neither would Sherman. So it had always been the cotton, the cotton to build the South and now, given the stupidity of these people, the cotton to burn it down.

For Columbia was an inferno, whole streets aflame, home after home collapsing thunderously into itself, its wood sap hissing and cracking like rifle fire. The sky, too, seemed to have caught fire.

Walsh, assigned to guard the gates of a convent school, realized the blaze was advancing. Flaming clods of cotton had lodged in the garden trees. It was no longer safe here. He threw open the doors. Hurry, Sister, he shouted. The girls were in chapel, kneeling at their rosary. Up up, Walsh said, we’ve got to get them out of here. The abbess’s name was Sister Ann Marie. She glared at him and, after what he thought was an unnecessary moment of deliberation, clapped her hands and got the students lined up in the front hall, each beside a satchel on the floor. So she had known, and had prepared.

Come along, come along, Walsh shouted.

Somehow, despite the infernal roar of the blazing city, the Sister’s unforced voice was clearly heard: We will not run but walk in place behind this good soldier. We will not cry. We will look only at the ground as we walk. And the Lord God will protect us.

And so Walsh led them out of the convent, the attending nuns on either side of the column and Sister Ann Marie bringing up the rear. They were a procession of incongruous order, twenty-five or thirty children hemmed in by their teachers and seeming, in their silent humility, as if on an ordinary school excursion.

WALSH WAS ANTICLERICAL
and a resolute skeptic, but that was of no matter to his lieutenant. I want a couple of Papists, the Lieutenant had said when the order came down. Walsh, you and Brasil, step out.

Brasil, a cheerful gawky fellow with a receding chin and a perpetual glint in his eyes, was delighted. They’ve called me a Papist since the day I joined the damned 102nd, so who in the name of sweet Jesus is deservin of a night on the town if not Bobby Brasil. And after five minutes at the gate he wished Walsh a good evening and was gone.

The convent girls had been at their evensong, but outside only drifts of it could be heard for the wind blowing through the trees. It seemed to Stephen Walsh, too, that the wind was rushing the darkness along, so quickly was the light going. He had thought he smelled smoke, and looking up he saw a moment’s red flash in the sky. This will be a night, Walsh said to himself.

But it had come on as he would not have dreamed, and as he led his charges through the streets he realized he held his rifle at the ready. The world was remade, everything become something else—the sky a shimmering bronze vault, billows of thick black smoke the clouds. He turned a corner and found the street blocked by flaming timbers. The Sister came to his side. Do you know where you are taking us? she said. I was told, if it came to that, to the buildings out there on the hill, Walsh said, pointing. Yes, the South Carolina College, she said. We will go around this way.

And for a few moments all was composure again as they detoured along a clear street, until two of Walsh’s compatriots appeared out of a door, jugs of whiskey in their hands. Seeing the procession and finding it to their liking, they staggered alongside, loudly considering the possible merits of the taller girls. The Sister’s glare escaped them, and as the students quickened their pace so did they, laughing and suggesting their own merits. Wearers of his own uniform, they did not in the first moments appear as more than an embarrassment to Walsh. But some of the girls were crying and pushing up against one another in their haste to get away, and Walsh, turning, saw that one of the drunks had opened his trousers and exposed himself. Didn’t your Jesus have one of these? the drunk shouted. Walsh stood aside and urged the nuns to move along past him as he stepped into the path of the two men. Sister Ann Marie loomed up, her face an imperious demand for action. Do not watch this, Sister, Walsh muttered. Move on, move on. The two men were laughing and swaying in front of Walsh, one of them holding out a jug and swinging it, either as an offering or as a threat, Walsh didn’t take the time to consider. He kicked out at the man’s parts and, as the other came at him, managed a sideswiping bayonet slash to his hand. In a moment the two of them were on the ground, howling, and the jugs were smashed and the liquor splashing down a trough in the cobblestone had caught fire and ran like a fuse in the direction of the fleeing women.

It was the trailing edge of Sister’s habit that Walsh saw alit. She was turning in circles, trying to see behind her. He ran to her, knelt, and clapped at the cloth and crumpled it in his hands. But it was difficult, she had panicked, not wanting to be touched. You’re making it worse, Walsh shouted. Finally she stood still and closed her eyes and held her crucifix tightly so as to endure a man’s hands on her person. He was allowed to smother the flames, which had gone up above her ankles. He rubbed the charred cloth between his hands till every spark was gone.

Are you all right, Sister?

I am, thank you, she said, not looking at him, and as the students arranged themselves in their column she placed herself amid them. Please, let us go on.

Rounding a corner moments later, they all had to stop and cower on the sidewalk as cavalry rode by. But the troopers, their faces coppered in the light of the flames, were joyous. They controlled their panicked mounts with whoops and hollers. Some carried torches, the flames blown back by the wind, and as they rode down the street Walsh saw one torch fly up and crash through a window.

At this moment Walsh realized he could not comfortably hold his rifle.

THE MAGNITUDE OF
the fire had caught General Sherman by surprise. He rushed half dressed out of his chosen headquarters, a manse on the suburban edge of the city, and several minutes later his aide, Colonel Teack, found him some blocks away, where he had joined a group of firefighters and was not giving orders but taking them like any enlisted man. Sir, this is not proper duty for the General of the Armies, Teack shouted, and actually touched Sherman’s arm. Sherman was breathing heavily, and there was clearly on his soot-covered face a moment in which he did not recognize Teack. Then he nodded and allowed himself to be led back from the fire. A canteen was brought to him, and he bent over and poured the water over his head. A towel was proffered by his man, Moses Brown, and after he dried his face and dropped the towel to the ground, but still hatless and in his shirtsleeves, he said, Teack, can you tell me what in hell is going on? And he wandered off, Teack following.

It was hazardous going. Flaming walls fell flat across the roadways. Unidentifiable, seemingly immaterial pieces of cotton fire floated in the heated air. His troops were everywhere drunk. Some stood in front of burning houses cheering, others lurched along, arms linked, looking to Sherman like a mockery of the soldierly bond. It was all in hideous accord, the urban inferno and the moral dismantlement of his army. These veterans of so many campaigns, who had marched with him hundreds of miles, fought stoutly with nothing less than honor, overcoming every conceivable obstacle that nature and the Rebs could put in their way—they were not soldiers now, they were demons laughing at the sight of entire families standing stunned in the street while their houses burned.

In a park square under flaming trees, Sherman gazed on a grand dreamlike ball, soldiers and nigger women dancing to the music of a regimental band, or at least the members of it who were still capable of playing an instrument. Some old darkie was up in the band shell leading them. The General was speechless. He became aware of his own bedraggled costume and could think only of brushing himself off, tucking in his shirt, squaring his shoulders.

Down another street he was for the moment relieved to see soldiers working to put out a fire, but turning the corner he found some troops using their bayonets to puncture the fire hoses and drive off the firemen. They were not besotted, either, these men.

Nobody recognized Sherman, nor did he interfere with anything he saw, possibly understanding that, in this state of anarchy, challenges to his authority might arise. He looked at Teack and Teack nodded, knowing, as all officers did, that rank must not be invoked when it is not likely to be heeded.

Where is Major Morrison? Sherman said, looking around.

Sir, you remember. He was killed at Aiken.

Oh yes, right, right.

Teack, at six and a half feet, towered over Sherman, and when he stood in attendance tended to stoop, as a parent to a child. He had twice turned down a brigade command and the promotion that went with it, such a proprietary responsibility did he feel to protect Sherman and ensure his renown. His self-assigned guardianship he had assumed back in the bad days of Sherman’s bouts of irresolution and hysteria after Bull Run. Teack had seen him at his worst, curled up on the ground in his tent, his knuckles in his teeth and terrible whimpering sounds coming from him. The General had asked to be relieved of command and withdrew from the field for a period of rest and recuperation at home in Ohio.

Teack was a laconic Westerner, and where Sherman was careless of his dress, he, by contrast, and as if to counterbalance him, was something of a stickler for deportment. On the march he wore the cavalryman’s gloves and boots, a blocked hat and a saber. He tended daily to his long drooping mustaches, a man who believed his vanity was a strength. In truth, while he admired Sherman for his grand strategies and tactical brilliance, he was secretly scornful of the Shermanic temperament he had undertaken to protect from itself. He felt there was something of a woman in the General’s volatile moods. You never knew what to expect from an ego that could preen with self-satisfaction or slink like a whipped dog according to its own internal weather. Teack was sure that William Tecumseh Sherman was something of a genius and he derived a pleasurable energy in close company with that quality of mind. But as a steadfast professional soldier who had seen everything and was surprised by nothing, he also felt superior to Sherman. Now, for instance, the General mumbled, Christ, what are we doing in this war but consuming ourselves, and Teack was embarrassed for the man.

They were standing in front of a stone mansion that seemed oddly indifferent to the yellow light in its windows and the flames leaping out of its chimneys. Well, Sherman said, I suppose I will need a brigade of Slocum’s to come in from bivouac and bring this city under control. These drunken troops—he waved his arm vaguely. They have to be punished. I will know which units they are from and who their commanders are.

Was that an order, or was the man just thinking out loud? Teack couldn’t tell.

They stood looking at the burning mansion. You know, Colonel, Sherman said, when I was posted here maybe twenty years ago, I fell in love with a girl who lived in this very house. Of course it was not to be, but hers were the softest lips I have ever kissed.

In another moment Sherman was wandering off the way he had come, his hands held behind his back.

Teack let him go.

AFTER THE GENERAL
had turned a corner, Colonel Teack withdrew a flask from his tunic and took a long swig. The heat of the burning house was like the summer sun on his face. It felt good.

It seemed to him an exemplary justice come to this state that had led the South to war. Earlier in the day he had seen a company of Union soldiers who had been among the hundreds imprisoned right here in the city’s insane asylum. The condition they were in appalled him. Filthy, foul-smelling, their skin scabrous, they were hollow-eyed creatures shambling to parade in a pathetic imitation of soldiering. You saw the structures of them through the skin, the bony residue of their half-human life, and you didn’t want to look at them. The capital city of the Confederacy had treated these soldiers not as prisoners of war but as dogs in a cage. General Sherman had seen these men and had wept and now all he could think of was the Southern belles he had kissed.

He had sworn to wreak terror, hadn’t he? His orders were being followed. All these riotous, drunken arsonists, these rapers and looters—here were some, coming out of this fine house now, their arms filled with sacks of silver plate, loops of pearl and watches on fobs hanging from their hands—what were they but men who needed a night of freedom from this South-made war that had disrupted their lives and threatened still to take them? Now they stopped a moment to throw some torches in the windows. A soldier glanced at Teack to see his reaction and, when none was forthcoming, smiled and snapped a salute.

If these acts of vandalism are performed as vengeance, Teack thought, why, that is an efficiency of which an army should be proud.

What had brought on the almost universal drunkenness was the pillaging of a distillery on River Street. The Colonel found this out by following the trail back as men staggered by him with buckets of whiskey in their arms. It was a large brick building with loading platforms on which soldiers lay passed out. Inside was a bit livelier. The men had a nigger girl down on the floor and were taking their turns on her. They were pulling another one down from a ladder that she was trying to climb, kicking and screaming. Teack refilled his flask from a butt of bourbon and went on his way.