Wilderness Run (20 page)

They hadn't consumed anything that solid for weeks, but Laurence supposed it was time to start trying. His strength was coming back to him.

“What was the information?”

Woodard bit into a piece of hardtack. “He's here,” he said. Crumbs scattered over his lips.

“Who?”

“Gilbert Rhodes.”

Laurence sat back, staring at his companion. “Gilbert Rhodes? Why don't we go invite him to eat with us?”

“We can't,” Woodard said smugly. “He's praying.”

The more interested Laurence looked, the longer it would take to pry the full story from Woodard, so he lowered his head and went back to the sticks.

“They call him ‘the Preacher,' and he gives two sermons a day, one at noon and one after dusk,” Woodard blurted out after a moment. “The rest of the time, he prays for our souls.”

“How do you know it's Gilbert?”

“Ellroy took me to see him today. He used to like the Preacher, but now he's getting tired of him. That's why he wants to start an opera.”

“Did Gilbert recognize you?”

Woodard shrugged, his lips pressed together. “I don't care if he did or not. I never liked him anyway.”

Laurence looked to the west. Another hour until sunset. He sparked a few leaves with flint and watched the fire rise, thinking of the last time he had seen his comrade in the apple orchard near Antietam Creek. Gilbert had never written them, and Laurence had assumed he had either died or gone home to Vermont. To meet him again would mean reliving the horror of that night, but he had to go.

“What kind of opera?” he asked, shaking off the memory.

“A tragedy,” Woodard said. “Ellroy wants it to be a tragedy.”

*   *   *

Sitting in the mud outside the Preacher's tent that night was the sorriest bunch of soldiers Laurence had ever seen. A third were lame, their crutches rattling beside them as they sat down; a third were clearly ill, with gummy eyes and pale complexions; and the remaining men each displayed his own particular combination of unkempt hair, fuzzy teeth, and body odor.

“There he is,” said Woodard as they arrived.

“Where?” Laurence looked around for Gilbert.

“There.” Woodard pointed and waved. Amid the motley crowd, Captain Ellroy shone like a lantern on a dark night, his uniform and hair immaculate, his hands clasped behind his back. He gave them a nod and looked toward the lamp-lit tent before them.

The men fell silent as a flap opened and a man wearing two sewn-together officer's cloaks stepped out. It took Laurence a moment to recognize Gilbert Rhodes behind the long dark beard. In the tent behind him glowed heaps of ambrotypes, letters, and ribbons, the small keepsakes that soldiers carried with them as reminders of home.

“‘And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see,” '” said Gilbert in a low voice. “‘And I saw, and behold, a white horse. And he that sat on him had a bow and a crown, and went forth conquering.'”

After he uttered these lines, Gilbert looked at Ellroy, who gave a tiny nod, and seemed pleased when the Preacher proceeded through the ensuing passage from Revelations, which Laurence remembered vaguely from childhood Sundays. As far as he could remember, it was about the horsemen of the apocalypse, the false Christ on a white horse, and then War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death following him. Was Gilbert predicting the end of the world? A wind swept up and made the flap of the Preacher's tent fall shut behind him.

“What the hell is he talking about?” whispered Woodard. Laurence didn't answer. Listening to Gilbert's voice ring through the foul-smelling camp, it suddenly seemed possible that the earth had fallen into ruin, that all men were wicked, and a judging God was sitting in that yellow tent, waiting to be unleashed on the world.

“‘And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed him,'” Gilbert suddenly roared in Ellroy's direction, making the men turn and stare at the guard. Ellroy's hands unclasped from behind his back and Laurence could see they had curled into fists.

“Death,” Gilbert went on. “After my first battle in this war, I hated and feared death, like he was an old friend who had turned on me”—he nodded at Ellroy—“who said he was going to take away everything I had if I didn't pray enough, or fight enough, or give him his due. So I prayed in every battle not to die, and I had my own little lucky tricks, like the rest of you. I almost died at Antietam, where I lost my foot.” He thrust the bandaged stump out from beneath his cloak. “But instead of asking death not to come, I just waited. And the Lord found it fit to save me, but only after he gave me a vision.”

As if on cue, the wind coursed in again, opening the tent flap and revealing the lamp-lit possessions inside.

“A vision of my friend Death riding a pale horse through a fire,” said Gilbert. “The Lord told me not to fear him anymore, but the fire he rode through. The fire that will burn men who do not live virtuous lives.”

This argument went on for some time, building in fury. The men were so riveted that most missed Ellroy stalking away, but Laurence saw it, and he turned to Woodard.

“What did the captain tell you about Gilbert?” he whispered.

“He told Gilbert right to his face that he was getting bored with his preaching.” Woodard seemed impressed by this. “And Gilbert, he promised to give him a good story tonight. One about a hero like him.”

*   *   *

When he finished, Gilbert retreated immediately to his tent again, and the men filed off in twos and threes, their heads low. The crutches left little crescents in the mud, as if they had been made by tiny horses.

Woodard and Laurence hesitated a moment in the emptied arena, looking up at the star-filled sky. Laurence had thought Gilbert would recognize them in the crowd, and he didn't know how to approach him now.

Woodard cleared his throat. “He ain't going to come out,” he said.

Anything was better than listening to Woodard complain. Laurence bent down and tapped on the tent flap.

“Go away,” said the voice inside.

“Gilbert, it's Laurence Lindsey and Lyman Woodard,” said Laurence. His voice sounded weak and thin.

The flap swept back and Gilbert peered out.

“Why are you here?” he said, examining them with a quick, irritable glance.

“Stomach fever.” Woodard touched a spot below his ribs. “We had it terrible, but we're getting well again.”

“Don't expect to get better here,” warned Gilbert. He did not move back to let them inside.

“I'm glad to see you alive, Gilbert,” said Laurence. Now his voice sounded too loud. “I'm going to write Addison tomorrow and let him know.”

Gilbert grunted and toyed with his beard.

“What are all those, Gilbert?” Woodard peered into the tent.

“The fellows give 'em to me to pray over,” said Gilbert. “‘Pray for me to get home alive,' they beg me. Nobody cares about winning the war anymore.” He lifted a heap of letters and let them sift through his hands. “Except probably you and your nigger regiments, Lindsey.”

Laurence flushed, remembering how much Gilbert used to irk him. “When are they sending you home? You obviously can't fight anymore.”

Gilbert gazed at the sky behind him, not answering.

“You better get back to your tents. It's going to rain, and I ain't getting rained on.” He started to close the flap.

“We'll come see you again tomorrow,” Laurence promised weakly. “For old times.”

“I'm a busy man,” the Preacher said, scowling.

“Come on, Lindsey. He don't care about us,” said Woodard. “He's a big preacher now.”

“Soon then.” Laurence pulled his coat closer against the wind, which seemed sharper and colder now, as if it had come across a frozen lake. “Right, Woodard?”

Woodard gave a sullen nod, but the second they both turned away, he fell facedown on the ground with a thump. Laurence twisted to see Gilbert's good foot retreating quickly back into the tent.

“What'd you do that for?” Woodard said, pushing himself up on his elbows. A splotch of mud had landed on his left eye and he rubbed it angrily.

Gilbert grinned. “For old times.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Chilly gusts made the canvas tents snap and groan as Laurence stalked, head down, toward the corner of the camp where Ellroy had erected his theater. He was late. Woodard had left him earlier to go rehearse, and Laurence had dozed off after eating a solitary supper of hardtack. Sleep came and left him easily now, pushing and receding like a wave, sometimes stealing an afternoon but never lingering long enough to last the whole night.

It was a symptom, he had decided, of winter on the Potomac, which was neither fully cold nor fully warm, but a damp gray season that was somehow more dispiriting than its frigid, snowy counterpart in the north. The season had a vacuity that allowed the past to fill Laurence's mind, sensory and strange—reviving the lavender smell of his grandmother, the green park where they fed the birds together, the light prick of a chickadee's feet landing on his thumb. He would fall asleep comfortable and wake freezing, with rivulets of fallen rain flooding past his cheek, his hands stiff, aching when he flexed them.

They were numb now and he beat them against his thighs as he skirted the muddy pools that gathered in the rows between tents. Several of them were filled with piss and excrement. He looked up only when he heard a voice in the neighboring row call out, “‘And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit.'” The voice paused. “‘And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit.' And do you know what was in the smoke?”

There was no answer, where before there had been the murmur of a reply, from three dozen men, then two, then one, then a handful of stragglers who no longer sat obediently on the ground, but stood askance, their hands in their pockets, as if they might depart at any time. Tonight, there was no one outside Gilbert's tent but the Preacher himself, casting a long shadow over the mud. Laurence hid behind a flap of canvas and watched as Gilbert spoke to the emptiness, nodding and stroking his black beard.

He had hardly seen the Preacher since their first day in camp. Gilbert clearly had no interest in reviving their old camaraderie, and he kept to the little tent except when he came out to preach to his dwindling audience. It had been so long since their fight on picket, but now Laurence found himself measuring his former opponent like a boxer, seeing how his shoulder muscles had thinned, how his good leg was strong but the other as useless and weak as an old man's. His face, too, looked breakable, as if his newfound passion had scoured off the old violent weight, leaving behind only the emptiness he spoke to and the emptiness that listened back.

“Locusts,” he was saying as Laurence turned away, splashing in a puddle and cursing softly as the scummy water soaked his calf. Locusts were the size and shape of bullets, Gilbert would go on to explain, making disastrous leaps of logic that always ended in a final question, shouted to the night: “‘For the wrath of the Lord is come, and who shall be able to stand?'”

As he reached the edge of camp, Laurence thought he heard that same cry echoing across the rainy wind. In front of him, three tents formed an enclosed triangle that someone had labeled with the crude sign THE THETER OF WAR. The missing
A
was scrawled in above, but its author had made no attempt to join the letter to the word from which it was missing, and the
A
floated like a star above the others. Now in its fourth night of production, the opera had quickly become the most popular thing in camp, and Laurence's curiosity had finally gotten the better of him when he saw men carrying their invalid friends to it on stretchers. He jostled his way into the tents, which were already packed with blue uniforms.

A curtain made of gray blankets covered the back of the theater and hid the actors, although the cloth occasionally wagged and emitted loud curses, spoiling its mystery. In front of it, the crude stage was only deep enough to hold one low table, over which was draped a moth-eaten green curtain. Trying to look supremely disinterested in the proceedings, Laurence shoved through the crowd. As soon as he found a square of space behind his old New Hampshire tent mates, the lamps were snuffed. He stood in a blackness as dense as the hold of a ship.

Finally, one candle flickered and he heard the whisper of a skirt crossing the rough wood. The sound made a few men sigh audibly, until a lifted flame traveled up the moth-eaten blue taffeta gown, sunken at the hips and strained at the waist, past a conspicuous rib cage and over two lopsided but nonetheless prominent breasts to reveal Lyman Woodard's painted cheeks. The sighs turned to groans and then expectant silence. While the gown drooped from his narrow shoulders, Woodard's blond hair curled perfectly from beneath a crepe bonnet. He paced and wrung his hands for a dramatic minute before he settled on the single piece of furniture, making Laurence realize it was supposed to be a bed.

“THE CRIME OF AMNON,”
boomed a voice from behind the curtain. It belonged to Ellroy. Woodard blinked his sooty lashes and began to sing “When This Cruel War Is Over” in a grating falsetto. When he reached the chorus of “weeping sad and lonely,” the spectators started to shift and hiss. One spat a mouthful of tobacco at the green curtain.

The audience reaction appeared to Laurence to be part of the art of Ellroy's opera, for Woodard kept sawing away at the song until another fellow threw an empty canteen at his head and everyone laughed. This was the signal for the next thespian to appear, Ellroy himself, garbed in a butternut Confederate soldier's uniform and Union cap. His ensemble produced a second round of hisses, and many of the drinkers raised their canteens, taking long swallows and licking their lips in anticipation.