To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (50 page)

A bit nervous, he took the man’s hand, the grip solid. Looking into his eyes, Garland saw the emotion.

The handshake after several seconds became one of nervous embarrassment for both. Garland was not sure when to let go, but the man held his hand tight.

“That was my brother you helped to carry. Your prayer was for him.”

“Sir, I am so sorry,” was all Garland could say.

They released their grip. Garland was not sure what to say next, feeling that he should turn away and continue on with watching his men, but the man’s gaze held him.

“My name is James Reilly, and yours, Sergeant?”

“Garland White, sergeant major with the 28th United States Colored Troops, and again, sir, my deepest sympathy.”

James looked back at the grave, and Garland felt as if he should turn the man away. His men, now eager to get the job done and back to their barracks for breakfast, were hurriedly filling the grave in, half shoveling, half scooping the thick, wet mud back into the hole; the clods of earth and muddy water thumping against the body wrapped in cheap linen, covering it over.

James, as if in imitation of Garland, knelt down on one knee, scooped up a handful of mud, let it drop in, made the sign of the cross, and stood back up, nearly slipping as he did so. Garland instinctively reached out to steady him and prevented him from falling in.

“Thank you,” James whispered as he stepped back.

“Patrick was my half brother,” James said, voice flat, almost without emotion. “We were never close, but still, he was all the kin I had left in this world.”

He paused. As a preacher, Garland had presided over many a funeral long before he donned the uniform, and he knew when it was best to just let a man talk.

“My mother died from the famine on the boat coming over from Ireland. Dad brought me here to America. Drunkard he was, though a good man at heart. He met Patrick’s ma on the boat over here. She had no use for me, and I moved on a few years later. That was back in ’46 or so. We were never close, but when I heard he joined the army, I tried to see him whenever I could.”

“You are with the army, sir?” Garland asked after a long silence.

James shook his head.

“Artist. I’m with
Harper’s Weekly,
covering the war.”

James started to look back again to the grave, and Garland, seeing the way the mud and water were rising around the body, put a hand on James’s arm and turned him away, walking slowly.

“Your brother, then, was a soldier?” he asked.

James nodded.

“Told the lad not to join, but he was all afire to do his part. He was wounded three days ago at Cold Harbor,” his voice began to break again. “Lost his legs, both of them, by the time they got him back here to the hospital. Blood poisoning had him. I didn’t even know he was on the same boat as me until just before we docked, and I heard him call my name. I should have found him earlier. I should have…”

Garland stopped walking, looking back into James’s eyes.

“He is at peace now, sir.”

“Some peace. They couldn’t even give him a proper grave to himself.”

“I’ll make this pledge to you, sir. Later today I’ll bring some of the boys down, we’ll dig a grave, good and proper, lift him out of where he is now, rebury him, and make sure his cross is properly marked. Can you write his name down for me?”

“You would do that?”

“I would do that for any man,” Garland replied forcefully.

James started to make the gesture of reaching to his pocket for his wallet, but a look, almost of anger from Garland, stopped him.

“I will do that for a comrade, sir,” he said quietly but forcefully.

Embarrassed, James let his hand drop to his side.

“Thank you,” James whispered.

“No, sir, it is I who thank you.”

There was another awkward silence.

James looked past him to the long line of graves; the men filling them in.

“I’ll give you his name,” James said, and opening his haversack, he pulled out a battered sketchpad. Opening it, Garland could not help but see the man’s work. Some of it was incomprehensible: a scattering of quickly drawn lines, vague outlines of men, a flag, numbers around them, but as he turned the pages, several made him draw in his breath. A man clutching his abdomen and, merciful God, entrails spilling out; the face of a boy, dirt smeared, but the eyes hollow, empty as if he was gazing off to some distant place thousands of yards away; a man holding another, whose face was contorted, crying; a fence row, bodies draped over the rails, a note in the corner, “memory of Antietam”; men crouched against a trench, and on the back of each was a white square of paper with a name on it; a priest, kneeling in a trench, surrounded by dead, hand held up as if in benediction or anguished lament.

James flipped through the pages, Garland stood gazing at the images.

“My God,” he whispered. “Is that what it is really like?”

James looked up at him, eyes steady, and finally he just nodded, saying nothing.

He reached a blank page, took a pencil out of the haversack, and wrote down a name. He hesitated as he did so, his hands beginning to tremble.

“Are you all right, sir?”

James nodded, trying to force a smile.

“Just reminded me of something. I’m fine,” but his voice betrayed the truth. With shaking hand he wrote down Patrick’s name, age, and regiment. He tore off the corner of the sheet and handed it to Garland, who carefully took the piece of paper, folded it over, and put it into his breast pocket.

“I promise I shall see it done.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Major.”

There was another awkward silence as James looked down at the sketchpad, which was now splattered with raindrops.

“It seems like sacrilege, what I’m thinking.”

“And what is that, sir?”

“James, just James, please.”

Garland nodded.

“What do you think is sacrilege?”

“To sketch what I am seeing now.”

Garland looked back at his men.

“I think you should, sir. You have the gift of the artist. Things like this should be remembered. A history of it, you might say.”

“What?”

“Something I’ve thought about much,” Garland replied. “I hope that someday an historian will remember this sacrifice in blood.”

He hesitated, looking into James’s eyes.

“I think your brother would want you to draw it.”

James smiled.

“Thank you,” he hesitated, “Garland.”

“Men of the 28th!”

Garland turned and saw that Colonel Russell, surrounded by the other officers, was stepping out from under the tarp. Something was afoot, some of the officers were actually grinning, though more than a few were tight-lipped. The mixed reaction was hard to read.

Garland turned away from James and back to his men.

“Battalion, attention!”

The men laboring on, quickly filling the graves, looked up, falling silent.

Russell stepped closer, holding up a sheet of paper.

“Men of the 28th United States Colored Troops. We have received orders! We have been officially assigned to the First Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Ninth Corps. Men, we ship out tonight to join the Army of the Potomac! We are going to war!”

All stood as if struck dumb.

“Sergeant Major White. See that this detail is completed. March the men back to the barracks. All uniforms to be cleaned, all equipment packed, and ready to march to the docks at Alexandria by four this afternoon!”

“Three cheers for the Union lads!” one of the officers shouted. The cry was picked up—men holding up shovels, cheering, slapping each other on the back, laughing—some in their excitement all but dancing.

“Battalion!” Garland roared. “See to your work, men. See to your work!”

They fell back to their labor with enthusiasm, racing each other now to fill in their grave first.

“Merciful God.”

It was James.

Garland looked back at him, sketchpad in hand, a few lines already drawn, numbers and symbols dotting the rain soaked paper.

Garland gazed down at the pad as if to comment on the horrors it contained of the world they were now marching toward, and then just shook his head, saying nothing.

Again James could only nod.

Garland looked back to the grave of James’s brother, where all sense of ceremony had been forgotten. Men were eagerly pushing the earth in, mounding it over, tamping it down; one of them already hammering a single cross into the ground with the back of his shovel.

“I promise you before we leave, I’ll bring some men down here and make sure he is given his own grave. I promise.”

“I doubt if you will have time,” James sighed. “I know you mean it. Perhaps someday, someday after this war is over, we’ll do it together.”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER.
Copyright © 2011 by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Illustration numbers 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 19, 20, and 21 by Evalee Gertz.

Illustration numbers 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 courtesy of Applewood Books.

Illustration number 4 of President Lincoln courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-03412.

Illustration number 18 of Robert E. Lee courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-2408.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gingrich, Newt.

The battle of the crater : a novel / Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen.—1st ed.

p. cm.

e-ISBN 9781429990622

  1.  Petersburg Crater, Battle of, Va., 1864—Fiction.   I.  Forstchen, William R.   II.  Title.

PS3557.I4945B38 2011

813'.54—dc23

2011026677

First Edition: November 2011