The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (18 page)

All of which is explained to me by a bright young fellow named Jonathan Griswold, who says he is correspondent for the
Valley Spirit
, a newspaper in Chambersburg.

“I should be in the office, setting type,” he explains, “but our fine little city has lately been overrun by invading rebels. They requisitioned all of the bread and grain, and every spare saddle, and all the horseshoes, and nails for the horseshoes, and looked about ready to requisition the printing press and me. Seemed a good opportunity to venture out and see the war!”

Mr. Jonathan Griswold has a mousey brown mustache, a pair of reading spectacles hanging from a ribbon around his skinny neck, and a whole cavalry of ideas and opinions at his command.

He says, “I rode out from a little town called Gettysburg, expecting to find the Union Army, and was intercepted by Stuart’s raiders, who have no particular affection for Yankee newspapermen. I take it you were seized by the same fellows?”

“The man had a feather in his hat.”

“Jeb Stuart himself!” the newspaperman says, sounding impressed. “They say he can ride circles around the Union Army, and will report back to Robert E. Lee before the main battle starts.”

“He called me a midget!” I complain, still incensed. “A midget and a spy!”

The newspaperman chuckles. “Did he now? They’ve taken away my notebook but I must remember that. ‘A midget and a spy.’ That’s an improvement on tales about girls who disguise themselves as soldiers, and dogs who save their masters. I can see you are no midget, sir. But if, as they tell me, you arrived by surveillance balloon, then surely you really are a spy of sorts? And too young for hanging, lucky for you.”

Outside the stall the Confederate guards are acting ever so casual, smoking their pipes and complaining about the rations, but I can tell they’re keeping keen ears for our conversation. So I decide to tell the newspaperman all about traveling with Professor Fleabottom, and that he’s really a rebel patriot arrested by the Union Army, and how I escaped in a stolen balloon.

“Said his true name is Crockett, Reginald Robert Crockett,” I say as my tale concludes. “He’s got a brother, Levi, they beat up something awful.”

“Crockett you say!” the newspaperman exclaims. “That’s a famous name in the South. Was your medicine showman related to Davy Crockett, that died at the Alamo?”

“Must have been,” I say, working up some enthusiasm for the idea. “In fact, I’m sure he is. I once saw him kill a mountain lion with his bare hands. Must be the Crockett blood.”

“A mountain lion. Extraordinary! Bare hands, you say?”

“Course it was an old lion, missing most of its teeth. Escaped from a circus.”

“And you were employed by Mr. Crockett, also known as Professor Fleabottom?”

“You might say so,” I say grandly. “I was the star of the show.”

“Star of the show? In what capacity?”

“I played the Amazing, um, the Amazing Wolf Boy. Raised by wolves and so on.”

The newspaperman is nodding feverishly, as if anxious to write it down, if only he had pen and paper. The Confederate guards lean closer, hanging on my every word, just as I planned.

“Course I wasn’t really raised by wolves,” I confide. “I’m a Figg. You probably heard of the Figgs. We’re the richest family north of Boston. Figgs own most of the timber, a railroad, a good portion of the mines, and a fleet of schooners. Plus too many farms and factories to bother mentioning. Why we even own slaves,” I add, eyeing the guards. “Dozens of ’em. Hundreds, probably, if you took the trouble to count. We Figgs favor slavery. My father, when he was governor, he wrote a law saying every man must own a slave. Owning slaves is what makes America great, everybody knows that. Everybody but that fool Lincoln. My father says if Lincoln was to take away our slaves he’d chop old Abe down like Washington chopped down the cherry tree.”

“Would he really?” asks the newspaperman, looking aghast.

“Course he would! Give up our slaves? Never! It’s slaves that make us rich. Slaves that make us happy. Slaves that make the pancakes, and churn the butter, and boil the syrup. My father once give me a slave whose job it was to follow me around and sweep away my footprints so I could pretend to be invisible. That’s how many slaves we owned, that he could spare one for erasing footprints.”

“I see,” says the newspaperman doubtfully.

“Point is, we Figgs may be from Maine, but our hearts lie with the Southern rebels. Yes, sir. Never met a slave I didn’t want to own! Fact is, most every slave I ever saw we
did
own.”

“Hundreds of them, you say. In Maine? With your, um, wealthy family?”

“Not wealthy — rich! Rich is better. More slaves if you’re rich.”

The Confederate guards are nodding at one another and one of them turns to leave. I figure he’s off to tell his boss they have put a true friend of the South in jail by mistake.

That’s when the screaming starts and ruins my plan. A terrible screaming that puts a chill down my spine and makes my knees shiver. A screaming that makes the guards forget the amazing story of the boy in the balloon.

“What’s that?” I ask the newspaperman, whose face has gone gray.

“I think I know,” he says. He pulls himself up to the barred window in one corner of the stall and has a look. He drops back down and wipes his sweaty hands on his trouser legs. “The wounded,” he explains. “The battle must have begun. They’re bringing wounded to the barn.”

And then the doors burst open and the screaming comes inside.

T
HEY COME BY THE CARTLOAD
. Moaning soldiers stacked in flatbed wagons or carts drawn by horse or by hand. Mostly the wounded scream only when the cart hits a bump. Some have already stopped screaming and are put aside as the carts are unloaded, their faces covered with a scrap of cloth.

The rest are carried into the barn on litters, awaiting treatment. Dozens and dozens of men, some of them crying out for their mothers, wives, or their sweethearts. The dozens soon become a hundred, stacked inside the barn and out, under the shade of the eaves.

“The battle of Gettysburg has begun,” the newspaperman confides. “They say that for part of the day the Union cavalry held its own, but are now being driven back through the town. According to our guard, thousands of Union troops have surrendered or been taken prisoner. The rebels expect that Lincoln’s army will be defeated in a day or two, just as they were at Chancellorsville, and then General Robert E. Lee and his troops will invade Washington from the north and declare victory.”

“Is it true?” I want to know. “The North has lost?”

“Truth?” the newspaperman says, shaking his head. “The truth is hard to come by when the bullets are flying. The battle won’t be truly won or lost until the dead are counted.”

The rebels may be winning at Gettysburg, but their triumph is not without cost. Most of the wounded have been gravely injured and the rebel surgeons are as busy as carpenters, prying out bullets and sawing off limbs.

The only thing worse than a man screaming in pain is the sound of the saws cutting through bone.

“A good surgeon is like a good butcher — he knows his cut of meat. He will roll up his sleeves, administer a little ether if he’s got it, and have a leg off and the stump cauterized in a few minutes,” the newspaperman explains. “Longer than that and the man will die of pain, or loss of blood, or both. As it is, less than half of these men will survive the day. Of those that do, another half will die of infection.”

Then I don’t hear no more of what he’s got to say because I’m covering my ears to muffle the screaming and the terrible wet noise of the saw. I curl up facing the wall so’s not to watch the horrible business of tending to the wounded. Inside my head I’m praying Harold has not “seen the elephant” or been injured or worse. Best thing might be if he surrendered or was taken prisoner. But that’s foolishness — a boy brave enough to stand up to Squinton Leach would never surrender to no rebel. Knowing Harold he’s probably been promoted on the battlefield. Heck, if I don’t find him soon he’ll likely be the youngest general in history.

That’s what I cling to: the thought of Harold somehow surviving. A fever dream of hope that I’ll find him before he’s killed and we’ll escape back to Maine and kindly Mr. Brewster will take us in, and we’ll live like proper people with beds to sleep in and three squares a day and milk and pie in the evenings. We’ll sit by the fire, jawing with Mr. Brewster, and help the escaped slaves if they still need help, and make sure Bob the horse has plenty of hay, and oats if he wants them. I’ll go to school like our Dear Mother intended and learn everything there is to know about the world. I’ll learn how to stop people from starving, and put an end to wars and slavery and meanness and cruelty, and Harold will manage the tourmaline mines for Mr. Brewster. In my dream Harold will be happy and strong and find him a wife to darn his socks of an evening and give him children that are never hungry and never get beat or locked in the barn like animals, and never have to run away to war to save their big brothers and see arms and legs being stacked like cordwood, or men dying of their wounds, or hear the keening of boys who miss their mothers and beg to see her in Heaven.

They say that even in the worst battles some of the troops survive. Please, Dear Lord, let that someone be my big brother, that’s all I’m asking. Don’t let him die in a pony cart jammed with the wounded, or tied to a plank while they saw his limbs off, one by one, or carried home in a casket wagon.

Please, Dear Lord, please let him be okay, wherever he is, and tell him Homer is coming.

A
LONG ABOUT NOON
something changes. The cartloads of wounded stop arriving, and the pitiful moaning slacks off, and the weary surgeons and their assistants wash the blood from their hands and have something to eat and drink.

The horses and ponies that survived the battle are fed and watered, too, and some of them are put into stalls next to me and Jonathan Griswold, the newspaperman, where they neigh and nicker and rub themselves nervously against the stalls, as if trying to scratch away the fright of what they’ve been through.

“History is happening today,” the newspaperman laments, fiddling with his spectacles. “And I am stuck in a barn with the dumb animals, blind as a bat. I’ve not even pen and ink to mark down rumors of these great events!”

“At least you have a hand to write with, even if you ain’t got a pen,” I remind him.

“True enough,” he admits. “I should count my blessings.”

There is triumphant talk among the troops that the war has finally been won, that the Confederate troops will soon sweep away the last of the Union Army, and either kill them or take them prisoner.

The newspaperman, keeping his voice low, confides that it may be just as they say, but that the rebels have been chasing victory for two years and have never quite gotten there. He says that while each man the South loses is gone forever, the more populous North has more men to lose, and many more that can be drafted to replace them.

“In the end it is a game of numbers. Not so much who has the will to win, but who has the most men and material to sacrifice. The war is a meat grinder, as you have seen.”

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon a messenger arrives, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“To the front! All men fit for fighting are commanded to the front! The Union Army flees and General Lee orders all fit men to the chase! Have at ’em, boys! We got ’em on the run at last!”

The barn is suddenly alive with cries for victory. Even some of the most desperate wounded beg to be taken back into battle, with rifles placed in their shivering hands.

“All men to the front! All men to the front! Long live the South! Long live Robert E. Lee!”

The men guarding us have been affected by the excitement. They pick up their weapons and haversacks and race from the barn to join their comrades, leaving me and the newspaperman pretty much alone.

“Now is our chance,” I whisper. “I’ll take the smallest horse.”

He firmly shakes his head. “I dare not,” he says, sounding regretful. “They will shoot me for certain.”