Chapter 12

Isaac Weikert shook the sleeping Victor hard enough to wake him. He announced the joyful news, “The Rebels have gone! Get up, Victor! The Rebels have gone! The Rebels left Gettysburg. The town is ours again! Get up!”

Groggily, Victor turned over and put a pillow over his head to block the noise, irritated at the younger boy for interrupting an interesting dream in progress in which he was courting both Bette Kromer and Minerva Messinger and was so befuddled that he couldn’t make his mind up on which girl was right for him. In his dream, he had just kissed Bette and was puckering up to smooch with Minerva when Isaac intervened.

“C’mon, Victor. Mom said breakfast is ready,” the Weikert teen persisted.

Victor mumbled an epithet under his breath at Isaac, but grumpily arose and dressed for the day. After he descended the stairs from the second floor, Victor cautiously made his way to the kitchen, gingerly stepping over an array of wounded men scattered about the floor. He swore to himself that there were even more men than he had counted the previous evening.

The ever-cheery Mrs. Weikert welcomed her tardy house guest. Victor admired her countenance. Her pleasant home had been invaded by the Union army, the serenity of the house overturned, and yet she willingly assisted one and all, like some 19th century Mother Teresa, he thought.

“I saved you two eggs from the coop, Victor,” Mrs. Weikert said by way of greeting. “Sit yourself down and have a slice of bread or two while I fry your eggs. Over easy?”

“Yes, ma’am. Where is Bette?”

“She and Tillie are helping out with the wounded in the barn, boy. You can join them after I feed you, “Mrs. Weikert said as she peered out a kitchen window. “Looks like rain. Feels like it, too,” she said. “My old joints are aching.”

Victor remembered Professor Jacob’s weather journal. The Pennsylvania College instructor recorded rain on the 4th of July. The rain, Victor realized, would slow the Confederate retreat over South Mountain. That was another reason that Meade’s reluctance to attack the wounded Confederate army confused Victor. Could a more aggressive Meade have forced Lee to surrender or would an attack and possible defeat reverse the tide of Gettysburg? He wondered if the Civil War might have been over sooner if Meade had had access to the Weather Channel.

The ghost of Bruce Catton sat down beside Victor and answered his thought. “There was no Doppler radar during the Civil War, Victor,” he said. “Meade will chase Lee to the Potomac River, the Federals will destroy Lee’s pontoon bridge across the Potomac at Falling Waters, but Lee’s engineers will hastily erect another bridge for the Confederates and they will escape into Virginia and continue the war. Meade’s men will follow, but when they arrive at Lee’s location Meade realizes that the old gray fox has dug an impregnable defensive position, inviting the Federals to duplicate the folly of Pickett’s Charge. Lincoln will be angry at his commander and will write Meade a letter, but the president will never send the epistle, preferring to place it in his desk at the White House instead. U.S. Grant will eventually defeat Lee after a battle of attrition in Virginia.”

“That’s interesting,” Victor said to the ghost.

“What is interesting, Victor?” Mrs. Weikert asked. “That it is going to rain today?”

Oops, Victor thought, annoyed at himself for his lapse of tongue which led his words to the dead historian to leave his mouth. “Ah yeah, Mrs. Weikert. It is interesting that it is going to rain,” he lied, feeling rather guilty for having to lie to a sweet soul like Mrs. Weikert.

Mrs. Weikert laughed. “You are an odd boy, Victor Bridges,” she said. “You should be a farmer if you find rain so interesting.”

Victor shrugged and took a bite of bread slathered in apple butter. He had come to love apple butter. Satisfied at seeing a boy gobbling away at her table, a smiling Mrs. Weikert said no more and quietly scooped the fried eggs from her skillet with her metal spatula and placed them on Victor’s plate.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Victor said, remembering his manners. He was delighted when the farmer’s wife added a slab of ham to his plate. One thing about the 19th century, Victor thought, the food was all organic. And it was tasty. But then, he soberly thought, there wasn’t much else that the 19th century could brag about. It smelled for one thing, even to a boy who was accustomed to stinky boys’ locker rooms, and the smell was only going to get worse as the dead bodies on the battlefield decomposed under the stifling summer sun. The smell around the farm was changing as well, although Victor’s nose had adjusted to the usual barnyard odors. But the coppery stench of blood and death about the grounds lingered in the air, and as he walked outside after his late breakfast, dark clouds were gathering and surgeons were erecting makeshift canvass lean-tos to cover their amputating benches so that the doctors could remain dry as they separated the mangled and gangrenous limbs from their chloroformed clients. The rain began to fall and the drops pelted the wounded men out in the open. As the drizzle advanced to a downpour, Victor ran for cover in the barn and witnessed a scene that might have been out of Dante: tortured souls crying out in agony. Bette and Tillie were going from wounded man to wounded man dispensing water to the patients. He marveled how his classmate stoically kept her eyes from watering. The nurses stressed that they wanted no crying girls making things worse for the men. Girls had to smile and be sweet, the nurses ordered. They had to be cheerful. If they had to cry they were to leave the barn to do it.

Victor stayed just inside the entrance to the barn, out of the rain. He felt sorry for the poor men with no cover, but at the same time he wondered if somehow God wasn’t crying for all the dead and wounded. Were God’s tears washing away the blood? He found a teardrop crawling down his own cheek and wiped it away, taking a deep breath to regain control of his emotions. It was one thing to read about the Battle of Gettysburg in a book, Victor thought, but to actually witness it was quite another. Once again he concluded that events he had witnessed were vignettes he would remember for the rest of his life. Just like Tillie Pierce and Daniel Skelly recorded in their reminiscences.

As he stood there thinking and absently looking at the falling rain, Bette came up and pulled on his shirt sleeve.

“Hey, are you alright, Victor?”

He turned to his classmate and his saddened face was his answer.

Bette embraced him in a hug. He hugged her back and then broke the embrace, his masculine pride asserting itself.

“Let’s go back to town, Victor,” Bette suggested. “We should check on Minerva and Mr. Greene. As soon as the rain lets up a bit.”

“Is that what you think we should do?” Victor asked.

“Yes, we have General Meade’s passes, we can safely return to the hotel. I’m worried about them.”

Victor wasn’t. He assumed that Minerva had spent the last three days holed up in her cushy, by comparison, hotel room. But he wondered if Mr. Greene had been able to see Pickett’s Charge. Perhaps he had watched it unfold from the roof of the Fahnestock Building.

As the rain finally subsided, Bette and Victor returned to the farmhouse and prepared to leave to return to the Gettysburg Hotel. Then they went into the kitchen to say their goodbyes and their thanks to Mrs. Weikert.

As usual Mrs. Weikert attempted to dissuade them from their impetuousness, but to no avail.

Bette attempted to explain their predicament to their gracious host. “Mrs. Weikert, our uncle and our cousin remained in Gettysburg and I know they must be worried about us, having been gone for three days as we have.”

The old lady smiled at Bette. “Well, now child, you never told me about your uncle being in town. Why ever did you leave in the first place?”

Victor intervened. “It’s my fault, Mrs. Weikert. I talked Bette into going with me. Our uncle was furious at us, of course.”

Bette picked up on Victor’s lie and added some mendacious embellishment. “Yes, Mrs. Weikert. I just hope he will forgive us,” she said.

Mrs. Weikert smiled, knowingly. “I do declare, I don’t know when I have met such little rascals as you two who bend the truth as easily as I can bend a willow switch, and I’ve had more than my share of children. Have either of you told the truth even once during the time you have been here?”

Both Victor and Bette blushed in response.

“I thought so,” Mrs. Weikert said. But her smile got even bigger. “Rascals, ha. But it doesn’t matter. All children lie. It gets them ready to be adults,” she laughed. “The only difference is that lies get bigger when we are adults. Now you both give me a hug and go on your way, but be careful. There may still be some Rebels out there somewhere.”

As a last gesture, Mrs. Weikert gave them one of her numerous umbrellas, a red bandana and a blue bandana, and a bottle of peppermint oil, with an admonition and an explanation: “You put a dab of that oil above your top lip and cover your face with a bandana if the smell gets too bad. There are bound to be some rotting bodies between here and town. The stink may be something awful.”

After their hugs, Bette and Victor started off down Taneytown Road in the direction of the Baltimore Pike and town. But suddenly, Victor stopped and turned around.

“Hey, Bette, let’s go by way of the Round Tops. I want to see what the battlefield looks like today.”

“Alright,” Bette agreed.

“Mrs. Weikert is really a smart old woman, isn’t she?”

“She is very perceptive, Victor,” Bette replied. “She saw through my ruse in dressing as a boy easily enough, but we didn’t fool her about anything. She had us pegged for liars from the get go, but it didn’t matter. She’s a mother. We weren’t the first kids to lie to her. She knew all along that we were full of it, but she didn’t let on. She’s a wise old bird.”

“My grandmother is like that,” Victor said. “When I was little and told lies I think it really amused her. Little kids lie.”

“So do adults,” Bette said.

“And teenagers, too, Miss Kardashian,” Victor added and they both laughed.

They walked through the gap that separated Big Round Top from Little Round Top.

“Oh, Victor! Look at them all!”

Victor was speechless. The Valley of Death earned its nickname at the Battle of Gettysburg. The ground between Little Round Top and Devil’s Den was littered with decomposing bodies. Victor detected an odor, but the smell was not as overwhelming as he had feared. Perhaps the rain had slowed the corpses’ decomposition. While vultures flew over the area, one buzzard was already at work, feasting on a body in a butternut uniform while a runaway pig was nibbling on a dead boy in blue. Victor ran at the swine to scare it away, shouting at the animal while Bette shooed the buzzard away from the dead Confederate.

“Maybe this wasn’t the way to go,” Victor said in an understatement.

“I think we probably would have seen the same things any way we chose,” Bette said, realistically.

As they approached the rock formation of Devil’s Den, a lieutenant and three Union soldiers appeared and told them to halt.

“Where are you two headed?” the lieutenant asked.

Victor produced his pass from General Meade.

The lieutenant looked at the pass and shook his head in disbelief, but said, “You may pass, but be careful there still may be Rebs out there.”

“We will be careful, lieutenant,” Bette assured him.

They walked out to the Emmitsburg Road where the scenes of carnage and devastation dwarfed the death and desolation of the Valley of Death. The immensity of the slaughter took Victor’s breath away. Among the hundreds of dead men were dozens of dead horses, innocent victims of the brutality. Victor and Bette stood silently side-by-side for a moment, mesmerized at the landscape. Knapsacks and haversacks were strewn about the ground. Pistols, rifles and sabers were strewn about. This was the aftermath of Pickett’s Charge.

Bette was the first to notice. “The stench, give me the peppermint oil, Victor.” She placed a drop on her upper lip and donned her blue bandana. “That’s better,” she said in a muffled voice.

Victor put a dab of the peppermint oil on his finger and ran it across his upper lip. Then he added the red bandana, wondering if he resembled a stagecoach robber.

They walked slowly and carefully around and through the fallen, and made their way to the tree line on Seminary Ridge, not realizing that they were going in the wrong direction from the town and in the direction of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Before they got their bearings, they had inadvertently come upon a Confederate rear guard detachment, which was covering the Confederate withdrawal. Unfortunately, Victor’s knowledge of the battle ended with July 3rd and he was unaware that the Army of Northern Virginia left troops on Seminary Ridge on the morning of July 4th to protect Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg. It was these troops that Victor and Bette chanced upon. Again, they were told to halt, but this time the command was accompanied by pointed bayonets.

“Remove your masks,” a Confederate captain said. “Let’s see some identification.”

Before Victor could stop her, Bette produced her pass from General Meade.

The captain smiled and looked at Victor. “Do you have one of these too, boy?” he asked.

Victor winced and turned Meade’s pass over to the Confederate captain.

“You can be on your way, miss,” the captain said. He turned to Victor. “Boy, you are staying with us.”

Bette protested. “I can’t leave my brother, captain.”

The captain replied. “I’m afraid you must, miss. We don’t take female prisoners. Except, of course, darkies. Are you a colored gal?”

“No,” Bette replied.

“Then you are free to go. Your brother, however, is our prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” Victor asked. “I’m a refugee.”

“Uh huh, and I’m Jeff Davis,” the captain commented. “For all I know you may be one of Meade’s spies.”

“My brother is no spy!” Bette cried.

The captain turned to an enlisted man. “Sergeant, please escort the girl back into town under a white flag. Take her as far as the first Federal you see and hand her off to him. She can be his problem then.”

Something came over Bette and she kicked the captain in the shin.

“She’s a little wildcat, captain!” One of the soldiers laughed. He grabbed Bette and held her hands behind her back. She continued to kick away at the captain but only connected with air.

The captain laughed, but he rubbed his leg. “Sergeant, you best tie the lady’s hands for your own safety,” he said. The other soldiers roared with laughter.

Victor could see that his classmate was fuming. But the ultimate indignity was when the rebels took her bandana and converted it into a gag.

Victor watched as Bette, gagged, hands tied in front of her, was taken by an arm and marched away from him toward the east and down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg. Victor was placed in the bed of a covered Conestoga wagon and sat next to a muscular African-American man who appeared to be in his thirties. Beside the man sat a beautiful woman whom Victor assumed was the man’s wife. Next to her, were two small, wide-eyed children, a boy and a girl, who appeared frightened by their surroundings. Their little faces expressed hopelessness, Victor thought.

The wagon headed west toward Chambersburg, Victor guessed. He was wrong. They were headed to Fairfield. In retreat, the Confederates split their forces. Some of the units went through Cashtown over to the western side of South Mountain, while others marched through Fairfield on the eastern side of the mountain, heading for the Monterey Pass, which would lead them to the western side of the mountain and a rendezvous with the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia at Williamsport, Maryland.

“You a spy, boy?” the black man asked Victor.

“No, sir.”

“Don’t need to call me sir, boy. Name’s John Quincy Adams. Most white folks call me Quincy. Took that name when I got my freedom fifteen years ago, a week after that good man died. This is my wife Sarah and our two children, Gabriel and Rebecca. We are Bible-reading people. But the pharaoh has us now, that’s for sure.”

John Quincy Adams. Victor thought of the man’s name. He remembered how angry dead historian Henry Adams had been after their trip to Philadelphia unseated John Adams as the second president. Henry threw such a fuss, they had to return and correct that butterfly effect, and all because Victor had given Thomas Jefferson’s address to Peggy Shippen. How could he foresee that Peggy would wind up marrying Jefferson instead of Benedict Arnold? As a consequence of that chance meeting between Tom and Peggy, the bachelor Benedict, hero of the Battle of Saratoga, never betrayed Washington because he had no nagging wife to push him to sell out his country. John Quincy Adams was Henry Adams’ grandfather, the sixth president of the United States and an abolitionist member of the House of Representatives for seventeen years after leaving the White House. Victor thought it great that the former slave named himself after such a beacon of liberty.

“My name is Victor Bridges,” Victor replied to John Quincy Adams. “I’m from Mercersburg. People call me Victor, Quincy.”

“We’s from Caledonia, Victor. I was workin’ for Mr. Stevens out at his iron works until Jubal Early and his soldiers destroyed it.”

Stevens? Victor wondered, ”Is that Thaddeus Stevens?”

“Yes, do you know him?”

“No, I don’t, Quincy. Where are they taking us?”

“Over the mountain, by way of the Fairfield and Monterey Pass, I expect,” Quincy replied. “I am a freeman and so are my wife and my children. But the Rebs are sending us into slavery. You, they probably are fixing to hang, Victor.”

Victor shuddered at the thought. He felt his neck muscles tense up. They might hang him? Really? Mr. Greene had mentioned that during the Gettysburg campaign the Army of Northern Virginia captured free blacks as well as runaway slaves and sent both freemen and runaways south into slavery. These poor people in the wagon beside him had been working for the great abolitionist, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who Victor envisioned as the actor Tommy Lee Jones who played the part of Thaddeus Stevens in the Stephen Spielberg movie Lincoln. Victor felt pity for the poor souls headed for slavery. He also felt nervous for himself.

They had traveled southwest on the Fairfield Road for two hours when John Quincy Adams and his family curled up together in the bed of the wagon and went to sleep. At the moment when they were all asleep, Shelby Foote made an appearance sitting on the end of the wagon gate.

A grateful Victor smiled when he saw the ghost, but Shelby Foote cautioned him to whisper so as not to alarm the corporal driving the wagon.

“Looks like you got yourself in quite a pickle, Victor,” Shelby said.

“Yes, Mr, Foote,” Victor said softly. “Would you float into Gettysburg and tell Mr. Greene about my predicament.”

“I’d be glad to, Victor,” Shelby Foote replied and floated off to Gettysburg.

*

After a short while the ghost came upon Bette, who was accompanied by a Confederate sergeant under a white flag, walking along the Chambersburg Pike.

“Hello, Bette,” Foote said, smiling.

Bette worked her gag loose with her tongue. “Mr. Foote!” Bette said through her gag.

The sergeant stopped and looked at Bette. “What did you do to your foot, miss?”

“Oh it’s okay, I guess,” she mumbled. “I thought I twisted my ankle.”

“Just think your thoughts as conversation, Bette. It is safer for you.”

Alright, Mr. Foote, Bette thought.

She really had no choice as the sergeant tightened her gag to silent mode.

“See, we can do that. Victor is headed west in a covered wagon. He asked me to tell Mr. Greene. If you don’t mind, I will just float along with you.”

Bette thought, making the images in her mind. Mr. Foote, I can’t believe the death and destruction. This is all so sad.

“It is,” Foote replied. “I wrote in one of my books: ‘The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things… It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. Well, Bette, Gettysburg was literally the crossroads town. This was hell at that crossroads.” 

Under protection of the white flag, they came to a Federal barricade on Chambersburg Street.

“Whatcha want, Johnny Reb?” a Federal sentry asked.

“Well, Yank, this little hellcat has a pass signed by General Meade. We don’t want her. We figure she’s your problem.” He handed the Union corporal Meade’s pass.

Bette was irritated when the Union soldier smiled in response. The corporal looked at the pass and said, “Well, it looks alright, will you untie her and remove her gag?”

“I’ll leave that to you, Yank, if you don’t mind. She already kicked my captain. I’m afraid she might bite me.”

Two other Federal soldiers chuckled. Bette was simmering at being the object of ridicule among a bunch of men, boys really, she thought, looking at the peach fuzz on the young faces. She wanted to kick the Confederate in a spot that he’d always remember her.

The Confederate, holding his white flag high, turned and literally ran away from Bette.

“Looks like you scared that Reb, pretty good, miss,” the corporal said as he untied her hands. She removed her gag herself. Expletives were forming in her mind. She was afraid that she might unload a string of F-bombs, but into her mind came the kindly face of her grandmother, waving a finger, shaking her head in disapproval, and admonishing her to, “count to ten before you speak.” She made it to seven, but by that time the expletives had vanished from the tip of her tongue and once more she could feign 19th century femininity.

“Thank you, corporal. My uncle is waiting for me at the Gettysburg Hotel. I shall be fine from here on.”

“Did you really kick a Confederate captain?” asked the corporal, a big grin on his face.

“Yes,” Bette replied. “And I would have shot him had I a gun.”

“Huzzah!” one of the Union soldiers shouted. It was followed by more of the same.

Bette felt strangely patriotic; she was pleased by their response. She smiled and curtsied to the boys. They in turn bowed to her. She liked the attention. Narcissistic nymph, she told herself. You are acting like Minerva.

The corporal assigned two privates as her honor guard to escort her to the Gettysburg Hotel. Chuckling, Shelby Foote floated alongside her.

“It seems you are a star, Bette. You see that two-story frame house?”

Bette nodded in the affirmative.

“That is the home of John Burns, the hero of Gettysburg. He grabbed a rifle on the first day of the battle and joined the Federals west of the Lutheran Seminary. He was wounded several times and left for dead on the battlefield. But he survived and the next day crawled a mile to a makeshift hospital. A truly marvelous story. When you get back to your time you should read Timothy H. Smith’s biography of Burns. Today, John Burns is recuperating in his own home, but he is surrounded by wounded Rebels. And it galls him. In a few weeks, Matthew Brady, the famous Civil War photographer, will take Burns’ picture and he will become a national hero and will sit beside Abraham Lincoln at the church service after the cemetery dedication and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Funny thing, most people in Gettysburg disliked John Burns. He exaggerated his war service in the War of 1812 and lied about his combat experience, but for one day he truly was a hero. Sixty-nine years old.”

“Wow!” Bette said aloud.

“Wow what, miss?” one of the soldiers asked.

Bette scrambled to cover her tracks. “Wow, there are so many dead bodies. Horses, too.”

“Yes, miss, and they are starting to smell pretty ripe.”

“Uh huh,” Bette replied. She put her bandana back on. Too bad the peppermint oil’s protection was wearing off. She would need more of the oil.

She shook each soldier’s hand at the threshold of the Gettysburg Hotel and thanked them for her escort. One of the soldiers was bold enough to ask if he could call on her if he received some time off. Bette was demur enough to smile, but say nothing, giving the soldier a bit of hope. She was officially a tease, she decided, liking it. Scarlett O’Hara at the Wilkes’ barbecue, she mused.

Shelby Foote took his leave, saying that he wanted to float over to Pennsylvania College, but he would return directly.

Bette thought to herself as she entered the hotel: A Union soldier had asked her out, but the boy she secretly liked, Victor, was a prisoner. Mr. Greene! she thought. She needed to report in and talk to her teacher.

She knocked on the door to Mr. Greene’s hotel room.

“Come in!” came Minerva’s voice.

Bette wondered what was up. She walked in to find Mr. Greene sitting on his bed, a leg resting over a chair and Minerva changing a bandage.

“Mr. Greene? What happened?” Bette asked.

“I was shot,” Mr. Greene replied. “Minerva has been my Florence Nightengale.”

“I prefer Dorthea Dix,” Minerva said. “She’s American. Welcome back, Bette,” she said, standing up to give her classmate a sisterly embrace.

Bette got right to it. “Victor has been taken prisoner,” she said.

“Oh no!” Minerva said.

“Where?” Mr. Greene asked. “When?”

“We were coming back to town from the Weikerts’ farm when we ran into some Confederate soldiers.”

“The rearguard,” Mr. Greene said, explaining. “The Confederates kept some men on Seminary Ridge the day after the battle to protect their withdrawal from a counterattack.”

“We had passes from General Meade and when they asked for an I.D. I stupidly gave them my pass from General Meade.”

Mr. Greene was impressed. “You had a pass from General Meade? You met George Meade?”

“Yes. We met a man named Chamberlain, too. The man who led the bayonet charge on Little Round Top.”

“You met Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, too!” Mr. Greene said, envy in his voice.

Minerva looked at her teacher. She was afraid that he was about to faint like Julia Culp. But instead of fainting, Mr. Greene groused.

“I stayed in town and got shot for my troubles while you two kids got to see everything.”

Minerva intervened. “You passed Robert E. Lee our salt shaker,” she said.

“Wow, you met Lee. Cool,” Bette said.

“Yes, but I would have loved to meet Chamberlain, too,” Mr. Greene complained.

“Uh huh,” Bette replied and brought her teacher back to the matter at hand. “What are we going to do about Victor, Mr. Greene?”

“That,” Mr. Greene remarked, “is a good question.”