Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (2 page)

As soon as he fitted his feet to the brute leather, Nichols had grasped that he’d have to cut the toes free or suffer the pains of a blasphemer gone over Jordan, and he’d left the shoes behind during the attack. It was as if he’d had the gift of the sight, since the shoes, at least one, must have been lost when that spent piece of shell or whatever it was knocked him down. And the shoes had been there waiting for him, faithfully, betrothed, when Lem Davis eased him to the ground in the shade they’d left to go fuss with the Yankees.

Sturdy shoes, they’d do. Nichols tried to look on the good side of things. Perfection was the dominion of the Lord, not Man the Fallen. And that was just how it was, always: a plump sergeant perched on a wagon, throwing something or other at you, hitting you smack in the chest, and your business was to be grateful. For shoes hard as the blades of a plow or for powder poorly stored, for provender lively with vermin—although he’d heard tell that a right wealth of Yankee rations had been captured at Charles Town and might be shared out soon.

The shoes would take softening and molding to the foot, the seasoning of sweat and the grumpy baptism of creek crossings—although a man had to be watchful of the foot rot marching wet. At least he had two feet attached to two legs still attached to his mortal flesh, a wondrous thing. Was that the sort of miracle of which the Good Book spoke?

He touched his curious wound again, unable to resist, and winced at its worsening.

“You just count your blessings, Georgie,” Lem Davis said with a kindly twist of smile.

Nichols mumbled and nodded, pulling another tick off his calf, crushing it. Ticks seemed as bad in Maryland as in Virginia, and rolling around in the grass had not been helpful. But he was grateful for Lem’s brotherly tone, for all of his fine brethren, the men of Company D and the rest of the 61st Georgia, no regiment in the whole great army none better, these hard-worn fellows grouped in the shade about him now, complaining not of the short, sharp fight behind them, but pleasurably of the shoes for which they had yearned on the withering marches down the Valley Pike.

Every man in the infantry hated that thoroughfare. Topped with rough Mack Adam and rendered not fit for foot of man or hoof of beast, a plain misery, it was a boon to the wagon wheel and artillery, whose cannoneers never had to march one step but rode about like princes. “Progress,” that was the word the Pike called up, the rich man’s delight in newfangledness. Such progress was just for the purse-proud man with the golden pocket watch, for the man from the bank holding papers that made no sense. It was not the wonderful sort in
Pilgrim’s Progress,
his father’s great, green book—tattered, treasured—second only to the Good Book itself in its worth to a man’s soul. He wished he could read it now, that book, right here in the shade that shielded a man from the sun’s direct attack, but not from the flanking movements of the heat in this no-place place, here on the brim of Yankee-land, no cooler than scorched Virginia, where it had not rained, he believed, since the scrap on the North Anna, where Joe Cruce fell. And on their long, unshod, hot, northerly marches, his warrior brethren, not unwilling but unable, had fallen before they heard a single shot, collapsing, gone down into delirium, clammy and startlingly cold to the touch, fish caught from a fast stream with bare hands. Dying far from the battlefield. Or merely squatting distempered by the roadside.

Skirmishers pecked the afternoon. Would they be ordered in again? Against those fortified Heights? Was there anything up there worth men’s blood? General Gordon was a pondering man, erect in body and spirit, but with General Early a fellow never quite knew. Humped over and given to temper—every man in the army had witnessed at least one memorable outburst—Old Jube had a touch of the cottonmouth’s meanness about him. And Nichols had heard that General Breckinridge, a high politician fellow, had been stirred into the batter, in between Gordon and Early. Some said Old Jube was slapping Gordon’s face, doing him down, although Nichols preferred not to think that. There wasn’t a man who didn’t admire John Gordon, commander of their brigade and now their division. He seemed an honest Christian, which might not be the case with General Early.

Nichols probed his thigh again and soon jerked back his hand, as if he had grasped hot iron from a forge. Would he be able to march, when the march resumed? He would not shirk, nor be eyed as a malingerer. He had come too far and endured too much to be mocked as a “hospital hero” once again.

He shut his eyes hard, not at the leg pain this time, nor at the face-pestering flies, but at the recollection of almost dying in the Danville hospital, in that filthy pesthouse of Damnation, the worst of those through which he had been passed like a thing unwanted, a boy not yet tested by battle and sickened unto death by the bloody trots. At one point, his weight had been shy of ninety pounds.

Compared with those hospital wards, war was a pleasure. And this hard jaunt into Maryland, perhaps even farther on into the North, was a downright joy compared to the soul-busting misery of the fighting from the Wilderness through Cold Harbor. He hoped never to see the like of the Mule Shoe’s mud and savagery again. Then the plague had been of rain, not drought, and the queer thing was that two of his friends, Joe Cruce and Bill Kicklighter, had been killed not amid the horror of the Wilderness or the confusion of Spotsylvania, but along the North Anna, in the least of the fighting.

It had been a relief to march away from all that, to cross the high green mountains into the Valley. Even the dust through which they had marched seemed fresh compared to what they left behind. That man Grant. A murderer, surely. Moloch.

At Spotsylvania, the Seventh Seal had been opened. He had put a bayonet into another man’s belly. Once, then—meanly—again. The bewildered look on the fellow’s face, the amazement and disbelief, had made Nichols want to grin and vomit at once. The chaplain’s words thereafter held no comfort.

He didn’t want to burn in Hell for eternity. But he wasn’t going to kneel to Yankees, either.

Skin hot and tight to bursting over his welt, he thought again of the Valley Pike, of its meanness to rag-wrapped feet, but beloved of the generals for its directness, an arrow pointed north. Where were they going this time? No one told them, ever. Not General Evans, Christian though he was. And not General Gordon, who could make the poorest soldier feel exalted. And surely not General Early, a profane man, spitting his sour tobacco juice and judging the world in words that befouled the air, a hard man he. They said Old Jube had not wished to leave the Union, but now hated Yankees like farmers hated blight. Who knew the workings of another’s heart? Jesus, only.

Squatting by a got-up coffee fire, Dan Frawley rasped, “If they done went to all this bother to bring shoes up from Virginny, all that way … tells me we’re meant to do a sight more marching.” He shook his head gravely. “Nothing but trouble ahead, boys, take your pleasures now.”

In response: dry-throated acknowledgment that fell well short of laughter.

“Could use a tad more water in the pot,” Frawley added, pushing clotted red hair behind an ear. “Starting to think Corporal Holloway skedaddled with those canteens.”

Holloway, Tom Boyet, and the rest of the water detail were overdue, and every man sprawled in the shade was thirst-caught, beat-down, and still, dirty men with gleaming rifles, as always.
Would
they take another crack at those Yankees in their high trenches, waiting like rattlesnakes up there in fortifications they’d had years to prepare? Or would the generals decide to move along? Deeper into the rich realm of the Philistines? And let this particular nest of serpents be? The logic of generals passed all understanding.

“I do believe we’re going to Pennsylvania,” Lem Davis said, Lem of the Patriarch’s beard and gentle heart, young wife dead of childbirth in his absence. “Dan, you cook up coffee slower than any man alive.”

“Didn’t see you rush to cook none. I figure on Pennsylvania myself. And that don’t ever like to turn out well. I’d as soon stay southwards of the Potomac. Nothing good comes of crossing it, you ask me.”

Sergeant Alderman had been listening. On his feet, arms folded, on the alert for officers, Alderman was a man who had earned his promotion. He took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and said, “My bet’s we’re headed to Washington, boys. I think we’re out to give ’em a good scare. And let folks in the Valley get a harvest in.”

“Heard something, Sergeant?” Lem asked.

Alderman shrugged. “Just front-porch talk. What I can’t figure is why there aren’t more Yankees getting themselves in our way. You’d think they’d be coming at us from every direction.” He turned. “You going to be able to march on that leg, Georgie?”

“Like to see Old Abe’s face, General Early showed up on his doorstep,” Frawley put in before Nichols could answer.

“Have to wonder if Old Jube even
knows
where we’re a-going,” Ive Summerlin said, following the words with a yard cat’s yawn. Ive’s tone had taken on a harder edge since his brother disappeared along the march. “Might have the Yankees confused because he’s confused himself.” He spit dry. “Sometimes I think he’s just looking for any old fight.”

“Like Old Jack.”

“That man ain’t no Jackson.”

“Well, thank God and Jesus Christ almighty for it. My back hooves are sore enough.” Shifting the coffee can, Frawley turned to Nichols. “What do
you
think, Georgie? You’re quiet as the preacher hid bare-ass under the bed when Farmer John come back early for dinner.”

“You wouldn’t talk rough if Elder Woodfin was here.”

The others laughed, accustomed to Nichols’ pleasant fear of the Lord and the regiment’s chaplain. Their teasing had settled into a friendly routine and, nowadays, was more apt to remark on his struggling beard than on his love for Jesus.

“Might be something to Little Georgie’s devotions,” Frawley offered. More sweat had turned his red hair maroon. “Got through all that fighting back in Virginny, not a scratch on him.”

“Must have skipped his prayers last night,” Ive Summerlin noted. “Only man in the company hit today.”

“Well now,” Frawley told him, “I’d call that more lucky than not. Everybody has to get hit sometime. And Little Georgie’s sitting there with nary a piece missing, praise the Lord.” He smiled an older-brother smile and pulled the coffee off the fire before it cooked any sharper. Saved up, the grains had been boiled over too often. He glanced at Nichols. “Reckon it’s a discomfort, though.”

“Can you get your drawers back on?” Sergeant Alderman asked Nichols. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Something’s doing.”

Responding to authority as always, Nichols reached for his rags, but found his leg stiff as a cannon barrel. He meant to march, he was determined.
Just not yet, Lord,
he prayed.
Don’t let them give us marching orders yet. Amen.

In the wake of a pair of caissons, Corporal Holloway and his detail emerged from the dust. The men took their fine time coming on, laden with canteens, burdened with the good weight of fresh water.

Frawley turned to Nichols again. “Never did get me an answer. If
you
were a high general, where would
you
lead us, Georgie? New York City?”

“Home.”

As soon as the word escaped his mouth, Nichols regretted it. He sounded weak, cowardly, girlish. As if he wanted to flee to his mother’s embrace.

His mother, a woman as good as Ruth in the Bible. Her chore-strong arms had held him fast, unwilling to give him up to godless war.

His lone word silenced everybody, just locked them all right up. Nichols was about to insist that he didn’t really mean it, that he thought going to Washington or maybe Baltimore or even Philadelphia would suit him fine, come what may. But Sergeant Alderman spoke first, laughing through his words:

“I swear to God … there’s an honest man amongst us.”

July 7, noon

Monocacy Junction

Rivers coursed through his life. First the Wabash, rich with fish and the promise of adventure, sun-dappled and seductive, had made of him a truant from the schoolhouse and its regimen of multiplication tables. Then the Rio Grande had shaped a man from a dreaming boy, as the men of his volunteer regiment perished on its sickness-ridden banks, going to graves in multiples day after day, until no wood remained for coffins and corpses were buried in undergarments, only to be uncovered again by the winds from the Gulf of Mexico. Not one of his Indiana comrades, left at a forlorn post by General Taylor, had heard a hostile shot before dying in vomit. Then, in another war, this war, he had saved Grant’s freezing army on the Cumberland, only to be scapegoated for Grant’s near disaster on the Tennessee. Now this river, slight and brown, had summoned him to a questionable destiny.

His staff, a meager collection, had gathered about him, all of them staring across the Monocacy, past fields gilt with wheat and Frederick’s spires, northwest to the heat-softened mountains and the war that hastened toward them. There was nothing to be seen, not yet, only the sometimes thump of a distant cannon, but they all stared nonetheless, as if the Confederates might appear the moment they looked away, those lean men clad in gray and brown and patched-up rags of every harlequin color, who were bound soon enough to come pouring down the road from Frederick City toward this prize of bridges and main-traveled roads, where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the highway to Baltimore, and the Pike to Washington converged.

Another invisible gun reported, a dull thud in heat as heavy as winter draperies, and Major General Lew Wallace felt the assorted lieutenant colonels and captains grouped around him tense. The first message from Clendenin, brought by a courier on a punished horse, had informed him that the cavalryman and his handful of troopers from the 8th Illinois had driven the enemy’s advance guard back toward Middletown, only to be driven in turn as reinforcements bolstered the Confederates. Clendenin had been obliged to withdraw to Catoctin Pass, and Wallace knew it was but a matter of time before Reb numbers would tell again and Clendenin—a quick, earnest man—would be forced to abandon the pass and descend into the rich fields leading to Frederick. And Frederick was but three miles from this junction, which of a sudden had become the most important point in the entire Union.