October 19, 9:15 a.m.
Valley Pike, south of Winchester
Sheridan reached the crest and beheld disaster. Another train of supply wagons had stopped in confusion, blocking the Pike. This time it wasn’t rumors that had brought them to a halt. Nor was it the sound of cannon echoing from the south. Hundreds of soldiers fled northward, choking the roadway and spilling into the fields. In the clearing day, some appeared to be wounded. Most did not.
“Good God,” Sheridan muttered.
Pierced by the scene, he reminded himself that even great armies looked rotten in the rear, that realm of skulkers and clerks. But less welcome thoughts flooded over him: He remembered that peculiar signal about Longstreet’s arrival and Stanton’s threats couched as praise; he rued his dismissal of the first reports of firing from the officer of the day and drowsing on at Winchester; and it sickened him that he’d bothered with breakfast at all, even if eaten standing and in gulps.
Yes, he had heard it, sensed it, known it, before he saw it. The sound of the guns had been moving northward as he and his escort rode southward: a fighting withdrawal, if not an outright defeat.
Now this. As he spurred Rienzi forward, maintaining a moderate pace to show no fear, the number of men running from the fight increased, clotting the fields and overwhelming the wagons pointed south. At the head of the train, an ambulance contested the right-of-way. Teamsters waved their arms and shouted, their words smothered by the din.
If it was a defeat … if Longstreet … if …
He’d have to establish a new defensive line closer to Winchester. Along Mill Creek? And try to hold.
Miserably, he grasped how much he’d enjoyed his newfound fame, his mantle of glory. He always loved the fighting itself, but had found the applause far sweeter than expected.
Would Grant relieve him?
Grim and glowering, he led his aides and escort through the first knots of frightened men. He felt the unease of the officers riding behind him, sensed Forsyth forming a question, choosing his words.
Don’t show fear, Sheridan cautioned himself again.
And he wasn’t afraid. Not of wounds or death.
But shame was another matter. Failure and shame.
Poisonous Stanton, a viper behind a desk. Halleck, blustering and unforgiving. Then the way newspapermen turned on a man …
A horseman galloping northward abandoned the Pike to skirt the wagon train. As the fellow raced through a field, dodging broken soldiers, Sheridan recognized his chief of commissary.
The colonel waved to Sheridan, coming on hard, horse shimmering with sweat.
Sheridan reined up. “What the devil, Brown?”
Panting as though he might burst out of his uniform, the colonel declared, “It’s all lost, General. All gone. They’ve captured your headquarters, the army’s broken, dispersed…”
Looking at the man, listening to him, witnessing the fear disgracing another, changed Sheridan utterly. In the time it took to flick away a fly, he brushed off his worries: He would not retreat to Winchester.
Damn it, he wasn’t going to retreat at all.
Leaning toward the commissary officer, he said, hard-voiced but low, “Brown, get a grip on yourself. Don’t let the men see you like this.”
He turned to Forsyth, his favorite aide. “You and O’Keefe will come with me. Cut out fifty of the best riders from the escort.” He gave the rest of his staff a get-ready look. “The rest of you, stop these men. Turn them around. Alexander, ride back to Winchester, have the garrison deploy across the Pike. No man retreats from here. Have the rest of the escort set up a cordon.” He glared. “Do it, goddamn it!”
He turned Rienzi southward again, followed only by his flag-bearer and O’Keefe, confident that Forsyth would overtake them. The Pike was clogged and useless, so he leapt a ditch and a stone wall to ride through the fields, increasing his pace to a canter.
His army would not be defeated.
What the buggering hell had Wright let happen?
As he rode along, men stopped. Dumbfounded. A few cheered.
He waved his cap. Even that had gone wrong: In his belated haste to get out of Winchester, he’d been unable to find his favorite hat and had to settle for a kepi an orderly produced. He needed the men to recognize him from a distance this blasted day. And they knew that old hat of his.
Hat or no hat, there was work to be done.
Far more of the men shambling northward were unwounded than were casualties. Some had run bare-handed and only half-dressed, but most carried their rifles. When more of them cheered him from the dust of the Pike, he turned and bellowed:
“I’m with you now, boys! If I’d been with you this morning, we wouldn’t be in the shit. Face the other way now, turn around! We’re going back to our camps.…”
The men howled. But not all heeded his call.
Some did, though. Some did.
He passed hundreds of soldiers, then met thousands. At times, he could ride the Pike for a stretch only to be forced to take to the fields again. But he made damned sure that every officer he encountered understood that he was to rally his men and rejoin the army.
If army there still was.…
Deeming the distance between themselves and the Rebs sufficient for safety, gaggles of soldiers had paused by the side of the Pike to brew up coffee.
“Drink up and follow me,” Sheridan hollered, a grin masking his fury. “We’re going back to whip those sonsofbitches. We’ll make our coffee from Cedar Creek water tonight!”
The cheers grew in conviction.
By the time he reached the outskirts of Newtown, though, the demoralization facing him was appalling. Hard to believe that this was the army he’d led, his victorious army. Intact batteries inched northward amid throngs of disorderly soldiers. Wagons, sutlers’ carts, officers lacking troops, and sheeplike troops without officers all had bottled themselves in the little town, struggling to get through the streets, like a fat woman wiggling into a young girl’s corset.
And Newtown was a Reb nest, body and soul. The inhabitants were surely in their glory.
When he’d ridden out of Winchester that morning, Confederate-minded women had stepped out onto their porches to shake their aprons and skirts as he passed by, an insult peculiar to their stubborn world. Somehow, they’d known … it was the strangest thing.…
“You’re headed the wrong way, boys,” he called, forcing a smile. “I’m heading south myself, you come along now. We’re going to smash those no-good sonsofbitches.”
Again the men cheered. And more of them turned to follow.
Avoiding the stoppered-up streets, he veered back into the fields and met Captain McKinley, one of Crook’s aides. To his credit, the boy was rounding up troops with a passion, although with mixed success.
Sheridan pulled up. McKinley saluted. Red-faced. And grinning like a moron. McKinley was one of those eternal smilers.
“General, sir, I sure am—”
“Glad to see me. McKinley, you ride through this traveling circus and tell every bastard you see that Sheridan’s back. I’m going to drive those Rebs till they shit blood.”
Blood was the truth of war. Just south of Newtown, by the side of the Pike, a field hospital might as well have been a slaughterhouse. Every man passing saw the mounds of limbs, heard the groans and occasional screams, registered the bodies laid in a row. The surgeons’ aprons were red as a harlot’s dress.
Sam Grant had it right: You couldn’t fix on the casualties, you could not let yourself do that. You had to think about winning and nothing else.
He rode on, galloping hard now, pushing Rienzi over the last miles. Stabbing his boots into the stirrup hoods hiding his tiny feet, he let the great black horse have its head and charge. All he could do was to shout a few raw words and stay in the saddle as the marvelous beast pounded over harvested fields, leaping any fences that had not already done their duty as firewood. His escort trailed by hundreds of yards, and only his flag-bearer kept up, maintaining the perfect distance behind his spur, a small man, hardly more in size than a boy, on a horse that seemed but a pony beside Rienzi.
Well, Sheridan knew what little men could do.
Emerging from a creekbed, he sought the Pike again, impatient to close the distance to what might be left of his lines. But the roadway remained obstructed, albeit with the normal business of an army’s rear now. Gaining another low crest, he spotted troops assembling off to the west. The blue mass was fixed in one place, if not well-ordered. A passing courier identified the remnants of Ricketts’ and Wheaton’s divisions.
Good Lord, the Sixth Corps driven, too?
At least those men weren’t running. Not anymore.
He didn’t turn toward the re-forming divisions, but galloped straight for the firing, which had grown sporadic, almost desultory. For whatever reason, the Rebs had eased their pressure.
Regrouping for the final blow?
He saw a line of battle ahead, a frail one.
Torbert met him in the fields. He looked as tense as Sheridan ever had seen the man.
“My God!” the cavalry chief called. “I am glad you’ve come, it’s good to see you, Phil.”
“What the buggering Jesus happened, Torbert?”
They rode toward the last blue line.
“Not sure anybody really knows. They just burst over the infantry. From the south and east, I think. Just burst over them. Wrecked George Crook’s bunch first, then tore up Emory’s. Couldn’t see a blessed thing for hours, fog thick as wool. The Rebs just came out of nowhere.”
“What about the Sixth Corps?” Sheridan demanded. “They couldn’t hold?”
“Wright did what he could. Ricketts had the corps, but he was hit.”
“Bad? Will he live?”
Torbert nodded. “Chest and shoulder. Toss a coin.”
“Damn it.”
“I brought up my boys, they’re on the line now. Holding. Put a scare into the Rebs. With those repeaters. But if any man saved the army, it was Getty. And that stick-up-the-ass Vermonter of his, the one who looks like an undertaker.”
They reached Getty’s division north of Middletown. Three miles from their old camps. The men had thrown up barricades along a rail fence and Torbert had deployed cavalry on both flanks.
The line was thin as watered whiskey, though. Why hadn’t the Rebs pressed on?
Sheridan spurred Rienzi hard and the animal gave its all, sailing over the rail fence, putting him between his own men and the Rebs fussing in the distance.
Showing himself to the men, he waved his cap.
Recognizing him, the soldiers rose. Cheering wildly and wonderfully this time. An officer rode out to greet him: Lew Grant, a New Englander of the soberest, solemnest sort. Who really did look like an undertaker, Sheridan had to admit.
“The acting division commander reports, sir,” Grant said, saluting.
“Where’s Getty?”
“General Getty has the corps, sir.”
“I know he has the damned corps. Where is the man?”
“Rallying the other divisions, sir. He means to fight, if the Johnnies have a mind to.”
“Fuck the Johnnies. I’ve got a mind to fight.” Sheridan softened. “I hear you did splendidly, Grant. Bully for you.”
The Vermonter refused to smile. Christ, they were cold porridge, Sheridan told himself.
He meant to ride back to find Getty and look for Wright, but as soon as he passed to the rear of Getty’s division he was startled by a line of flags shooting up from the earth, as if rising out of graves. The men gathered about the banners cheered: George Crook’s men. Sheridan saw Rud Hayes.
A politician unlike any other he’d met, Hayes always struck him as thoughtful and honest. Brave, too. Traits Sheridan didn’t associate with the run of elected officials.
He rode closer.
“Devil of a morning, I hear.”
“That’s putting it gently, sir. We were surprised, we—”
“No matter, we’ll see things right. Just got our knuckles bruised.” Sheridan looked more closely at the colonel—a man awaiting a promised star—and added, “You all right, Hayes? You look like the convict’s last breakfast.”
“I’ll do, sir. A minor discomfiture. I’ll do fine. As will my men.”
His men. Barely a handful. But there would be more, in time, Sheridan believed. And Hayes? Dear Jesus. What kind of officer—or politician—used a word like “discomfiture”? Unless he was describing a case of clap?
For all that, Hayes had done well enough at Opequon and Fisher’s Hill. Damned well. Probably too good a man to go far in politics.
Before he rode off, Sheridan bellowed down the line of flags—a line with as many officers as men: “You boys just wait. Those sonsofbitches might think they’ve wrung the chicken’s neck this morning, but they’ll be the ones cooked in the soup tonight. You’re going to sleep in your own damned camps, we’re going back.”
Robust cheers, from too few throats. And cheers were not bullets.
Not yet.
As they continued rearward, searching for Wright and Getty, Torbert asked, “You really do mean to attack, sir? After—”
“I’m going to shit all over them.”
Found at last, Horatio Wright shocked Sheridan with his appearance. Blood all over the man. Face swollen up like a monkey’s. Yet Wright seemed alert enough. Beside him, Getty’s own mug was set in stone. Except for eyes that betrayed the strain of the day.
“You look like a whore cracked you over the snout with a bottle.”
“Would’ve preferred that,” Wright told him, struggling to pronounce his words with clarity. “Grazed my chin. Looks worse than it is.”
“I hear Ricketts is down.”
Wright grimaced. “Did what he could, Jim did. Chance he’ll live, but no more than a chance. Thoburn’s dead.”
“Done’s done,” Sheridan said. “The living have work to do. Where’s George Crook? And Emory?”
“Rounding up their men.”
“Well, gather the rest of yours. I mean to attack.”
That raised eyebrows. Even Getty’s.
Sheridan drew his watch from his vest: It wasn’t even noon.
He turned to Torbert. “I need to know whether Longstreet’s on the field. Or anyone else we weren’t expecting to call. Have your men take prisoners, find out.” He faced Wright and Getty again. “As soon as you can, get all of your divisions back in the line, free up Torbert’s Comanches for flanking movements. Emory’s pack will go back in, as well. What’s left of Crook’s divisions can form the reserve.”
Wright stammered, “Sir … we need time. It’s going to take—”
“We’ve got the time,” Sheridan told him. “The Rebs don’t.”
11:30 a.m.
Middletown
Early thought: What the hell did those Yankees have to cheer about?
1:15 p.m.
Northwest of Middletown
Gordon watched his men slump back.
“Couldn’t do it,” Clem Evans told him. “Yanks have thickened up, would’ve cut us to pieces.”
Gordon nodded. Ruefully. “‘Ripeness is all.’”
“Try again, though? Slip left, get around their flank?”
“No. They’ve got cavalry over there, I’m sure of it. Don’t want you cut off.”
Evans took off his hat, scrubbed the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and said, “We should’ve kept going. This morning.”
It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement of fact, like a man saying “It’s hot” in a Georgia August. Gordon didn’t reply.
Early had, at last, ordered a renewal of the attack, but couched in such cautious and qualified language that it seemed too kind to describe it as halfhearted. It was clear that the army commander’s desire to hold what he’d gained still outweighed the hope of achieving more. It wasn’t like Jubal Early—not the Early who’d fought, fiery and foulmouthed, for three hard years—and this unexpected collapse into timidity, on this day of all days, made Gordon sick and furious at once.
He had advanced his men and they stepped off dutifully. But the weather deep down in their souls had changed. Exhaustion had caught up with them in that pair of do-nothing hours. Worse, they’d had time to think themselves into a scare. The attack hadn’t failed so much as petered out, the only saving grace the low count of casualties.
They’d been deserted by the gods, like those obstreperous Greeks on the plains of Troy. And no sacrificial libations were going to help.
The waste, the waste …
Between Early’s order to halt and his tardy directive to nudge forward again, something had happened to the Yankees, too. A clamor of cheers had arisen from those blue blots on the horizon. Gordon could not fix the cause—not after the Federals had suffered so great an embarrassment—but he was certain the reason for that new and boisterous confidence would prove unwelcome.
Reinforcements? Had less of Sheridan’s army been on the field than they had reckoned? Had they done less damage than every man in a gray uniform believed? That made no sense. They’d taken prisoners from every Yankee division known to be in the Valley.
Reinforcements from Grant, then, their arrival fatefully timed? What else could those whipped wastrels have to cheer about?
Gordon felt exhausted himself, head clouded all around the edges of thought. Every man from Middletown south needed sleep.
For their part, the Yankees appeared to have caught their wind. Well enough to deliver confident volleys and stand their ground. By the time his men had worked their way forward through the copses and swales, it also had become evident that the Yankees had gathered in many of their runaways. The lines encountered were skeletal no more.
As the gun smoke quit, the earth gleamed between the armies. The beauty of the day seemed unjust and cruel, almost dizzying. A man just wanted to nap under a tree.
His last, bloodied men passed Gordon. Their eyes reproached him, an unusual thing.
Surely they didn’t blame him for the morning’s halt? When, dudgeoned nigh unto mutiny, he’d pushed Early to continue, even begged?
Probably just plain angry at the world, those threadbare devils. The men had common sense, that was the thing. Those who had survived this long in the ranks were little generals, one and all, keen as to what made sense and what did not. They knew the army should have kept going, back when the going was all peaches and plums. And they’d grasped that this late, enfeebled attack was a waste. The hour of triumph had passed, and his soldiers knew it.
On the far right, the advance by Ramseur’s Division had been paltry, with even less action between the army’s wings. Was Dod still spooked by that premonition of his? For Dod, of all people, to let his fire go out, and on this day … Gordon remembered him sitting on his horse, mouth sealed, as Early stopped them short of destroying Sheridan. Any other day, Dod would have spoken up, as hungry for glory as a preacher for beefsteak. But in that crucial moment he’d held his peace.
And now the spark was out of the men, leaving them surly and restive. They knew as well as he did that their position was a wretched one, inviting the Yankees to come and take revenge. Cavalry country lay beyond their left, conjuring memories of the debacle at Winchester. They knew, those veterans did, that the sensible thing, the wise thing now, would be to withdraw to ground that could be defended, even if it meant giving up the field.
But Gordon also knew that Early was resolute. Jubal Early wasn’t hard to figure, not on this marred, upside-down of a day. He’d scared himself with victory, unable to quite believe it. Aching to put his row of defeats behind him, he’d longed for a win so terribly that the ease and speed of the morning’s success unnerved him. Now the old man hoped to claim this ground through sunset, to prevent the Yankees from pronouncing all this a mere raid. The traditions of warfare—pernicious things—held that the army occupying the field at the close of the day had won the battle. Jubal Early just wanted to keep what he had.
Gordon feared losing everything.
2:00 p.m.
Sheridan’s knoll
Lying on his side on the grass, with his head propped on one hand, Sheridan watched young Forsyth dismount and approach. The captain looked as though he meant to chaw nails and spit out bullets.
“Got an itch there, Forsyth?”
The captain all but tore into him. “The Rebs couldn’t make their advance stick anywhere. They’ve peaked, sir, they’ve used themselves up.”
“So I hear,” Sheridan noted.
The aide could not contain himself. “It seems to me, General, that we ought to advance. I came to you hoping for orders.”
Sheridan sat up. He was not one to take advice, let alone a scolding, from a junior officer. But before he could speak, he caught the sudden look of terror on Forsyth’s face: The younger man had realized in an instant just how far he’d overstepped.
Sheridan laughed out loud. Stray officers nearby chuckled along on cue.
“Sir, I…”
Sheridan waved away the captain’s alarm. Better to have officers who longed to fight than the sort who always saw reasons for doing nothing.
“Not yet, Forsyth, not yet. Go back and wait.”
And Sheridan left it at that.
Of course, it had been tempting, the impulse to order a broad counterattack when the Rebs sought to resume their advance and crumbled before they’d come to serious blows. But Sheridan was still waiting for the cavalry to confirm that Longstreet was merely a spook and not a presence. While presenting a front of unconcern—all but lolling atop the knoll where he’d fixed his headquarters flag—he kept an eye on the constant stream of men returning to seek out their regiments. He could read their hearts, the way the shame of the morning’s defeat was transforming itself into anger. They needed to stew a little longer, though. Meanwhile, the damned quartermasters and ordnance officers, the supply sergeants, and each last corporal had to do their work and put cartridges in pouches, pouches on men, and men back under arms.
As for Jubal Early, his brazenness was admirable. He’d almost pulled off the great coup de main of the war. But “almost” wasn’t cash money. And soon he was going to pay.
When Forsyth reappeared an hour later, agitated as only the young can be, Sheridan didn’t give him a chance to speak, but grinned and repeated, “Not yet, Captain, not yet.”
3:30 p.m.
North of Middletown
Lucy.
Lucy and the boys.
It seemed to Hayes that nothing else mattered at all. War? This madness? He’d had his fill of it, wanted nothing more to do with the carnage.
And yet …
His borrowed horse stirred mildly. Hayes took off his hat and tilted back his head. Sniffing up the last blood.
His skull throbbed. Worst headache of his life. Cracked skull? Couldn’t tell. And many another feature of his body pained him, too. Not least, that ankle. He would’ve liked Doc Joe to look him over, but that was not going to happen for some time. His brother-in-law was busy just to rearward, sawing and sewing and sweating amid the gore of a field hospital missing all the tools left in Rebel hands.
The queer thing was that he had not really bled from all the thumping. Not until midafternoon, when a sudden gush from his nose crimsoned his shirtfront. Even that seemed to have stopped, for the most part. But his head felt the size of a mountain.
He longed to leave it all and return to Lucy, to life, to a pretense, at least, that men could live in harmony and accord, to go back to his law books, to Shakespeare, to lamplit evenings in a familiar chair.
But he knew that, even now, he wouldn’t go. He would keep his promise to these men around him, would not leave their ranks until, together, they were paroled into peace.
Correcting his posture for the hundredth time that afternoon, he looked about himself, at the faces. Faces with names he knew. A motley bunch, they were, these men of Ohio and West Virginia, weathered and withered by war. Some had trousers but no shirt or jacket. A few wore only undergarments. Others were as barefoot as the Rebs now, though not as toughened against the claws of the earth. Hats were rare.
But they had returned. To him. He had thought his division gone. And yes, it had suffered. But these men had come back to rally around their uncaptured flags, most returning of their own free will, but some driven by the provost marshal’s horsemen and others cajoled by the likes of Will McKinley.
Lucy. He closed his eyes and let himself ache with longing for a last moment. Then he forced himself back to his unwanted duty.
Crook had told him that his division and poor Joe Thoburn’s—under Harris now—would not join the coming counterattack, but would be held in reserve. He should have welcomed the news, he knew. And in one sense he had. Yet these men around him, who had endured so much through years of war, must not be left with the sense that they had failed. They had fought too hard, won too often, and seen too many comrades fall away to finish what might be their last great battle like this, as defeated men left standing in their undergarments, stripped of their possessions and their pride. These men deserved better.
Crook understood, of course. Hayes had not needed to speak up on the matter. He’d read Crook’s voice, his expression, even the way his fingers clutched the reins.
These men did not deserve to be left behind when the others went forward. They did not deserve to be shamed. No, it was not the division it had been one day before. But it did not deserve shame.
It struck Hayes, again, how much he loved these men. Not with the odd, perfunctory love many officers professed, but in a bared and honest sense that was almost familial. He saw the paradox, of course, in his desire to lead them back into battle against his own dear wishes, against all reason, merely to save that intangible thing called “pride.” What an odd thing it was, that almost embarrassing tenderness you came to feel toward your brothers in arms. Was it possible to love so broadly? Was “love” even the right word? Was the human heart, so often sordid, capable of emotion so enormous?
Nearby, a sergeant returning to his troops from a personal errand hitched up his trousers and announced, “Boys, I’ve just taken the grandest shit of my life. ’Twas pure magnificence. I wish it had gone right down Early’s gullet.”
Wiping a drop of blood from his nose, Hayes smiled. Love had to take a number of things in stride.
3:40 p.m.
Sheridan’s knoll
“All right, Forsyth,” Sheridan said. “Issue the order. The army will advance at four o’clock.”
The confirmation had come at last that all the Longstreet rumors were pure nonsense. And the men were ready now, angry as wasps whose nest had been poked with a stick.
Forsyth rushed off. All around, officers and orderlies stirred into action. The air sparked. Even before the order could be transmitted, the blue lines beyond the knoll seemed to quicken and stiffen.
It was not a time for refinement. His plan was straightforward. Attack head-on with the infantry to knock the Rebs out of position, then envelop them with cavalry on both flanks. Early’s dispositions were idiotic, his flanks petered out in thin air, a display of overconfidence that hearkened back to the earliest months of the war. Jubal Early’s arrogance would be Jubal Early’s destruction.
Unexpected, unwanted, and, as usual, uncontrollable, Custer galloped up, fair hurled himself from his snorting, prancing mount, rushed over to Sheridan, wrapped him in his arms, and picked him up, dancing him around.
“Put me down, damn it!”
Custer cried, “Phil, it’s grand to see you! Now we’ll give them a licking!”
“Put me down!”
Grinning like a boundless fool, Custer set him back upon the earth.
Although the gaudy young cavalryman was oblivious, every two-legged being near them had tensed. Hushed. Waiting for a burst of outraged temper.
Instead, Sheridan smiled, shaking his head as at a naughty boy. “George, I’ve sent down the order to attack. You should be with your men, they’ll go in late.”
Custer’s delight collapsed. He looked like a lad who’d been told he might miss out on the cherry pie.
“I’ve been shifted about all day,” Custer said apologetically. “I just wanted to—”
“George, go back to your men and see to the enemy,” Sheridan said more firmly. Cannily and cruelly, he added, “Wesley Merritt’s already got the jump on you.”
A quarter mile to the south, the Sixth Corps received the order to attack. The army that had broken that morning roared.
4:40 p.m.
Middletown
“Ramseur’s holding,” Early snapped. “God almighty, he’s got infantry and cavalry on him. He’s holding, you can hold.”
Gordon peered toward Ramseur’s end of the line, but could see little for the smoke. “Whether he holds or not, I can’t. Not out there, not without being reinforced.”
“Damn you, Gordon, you know there’s no reinforcements.”
They sat on their horses on a patch of high ground outside of Middletown, careless of the lead thickening the air.
“Well, then,” Gordon said. “Pull back. Before it’s too late. If it isn’t too late already.”
“Just go back out there and hold your position.”
Gordon reached to grasp Early by the arm, but the ferocious, almost crazed expression worn by the other man stopped him.
“General Early, I’m struggling to hold back their infantry. Their cavalry’s on the way. I don’t know why they’ve waited, but the cavalry’s going to hit my flank and rear, I’d bet my life on it.” A deathly smile possessed his mouth. “I am betting my life on it.”
“Refuse your left, then.”
“I already have. It opened up my right. We need to—”
“Damn you, don’t you tell me what we need. I command this army, not you. Now go on back to your division. And be a man. Like Ramseur.”
The world howled, barked, shrieked: the men, the guns, the banshee shells in flight.
Ignoring the insult, Gordon tried a last ploy: “General, you’ve won a great victory. Don’t throw it away. Order a withdrawal.”
Early snorted, spit. “Why don’t you just go, if you’re so yellow. I’m not leaving this field.”
Gordon saluted, a gesture of sarcasm now. He turned his horse.
Barely halfway back to the tumult engulfing his division, he saw thousands of sabers flash as Sheridan’s truant cavalrymen exploded over a ridge, aiming for his flank and the army’s rear.
4:50 p.m.
Confederate right flank
He’d held them. Threw back their cavalry, then threw back their infantry. Then his division held against simultaneous attacks. But Stephen Dodson Ramseur understood—hated it, but understood—that his line was near to breaking.
A well-aimed Yankee shell struck a caisson, playing havoc with his last sound battery. Half-butchered horses shrieked, while those less injured struggled against their harnesses. A cannoneer circled madly, like a spring-loaded toy, spraying blood from a shoulder missing its arm.
The first few shirkers had begun to slink rearward, but the guards he’d posted turned them back to the fight. On threat of death.
If they could hold until dark …
Ramseur smirked. Remembering another day and the very same thought. They would not hold until dark. They would fight on, but would not hold. Their plight was as unforgiving as mathematics.
He saw the futility, yet he felt no fear. All that silliness about dying today. He regretted—would ever regret—sharing his melancholy with John Gordon. Gordon would remember it as weakness and there it would be, forever, a quietly mocking glint in Gordon’s eye.
Dying? His interest was in killing. In killing Yankees. In killing every damned Yankee that crossed those fields. He meant to kill Yankees and keep on killing Yankees. He’d kill them for months, for years, if they kept coming. And then, when the last smoke cleared, when the last filthy Yankee was dead, he’d go home to his wife and take their child in his arms.
John Pegram rode up. Face stained black as a coon’s. Eyes huge. Horse skittish.
Shells chased him.
“Sir, they’re set to flank us.”
“Bloody ’em up,” Ramseur told him. “They’ll think better of it.”
“It’s their cavalry. They’re massing. All but behind us.”
But what was to be done, what choice was left? It was too late for an orderly withdrawal, damn Jubal Early. Leaving them stranded on this useless ground.
“Just fight,” Ramseur told him.
5:00 p.m.
Hayes’ division
General Crook rode up, trailing flags and orderlies. Behind Crook, the Rebs were losing their grip on the field. At first, the Johnnies had put up a bitter fight, almost a daunting one. But they were breaking now. For all the smoke, it was easy enough to tell.
Hayes saluted. Crook smiled.
“Take your division in,” his superior told him. Then, in a louder voice, “Your men are needed.”
No, they weren’t needed. Crook even gave him a wink. Sheridan had understood. These men needed to be in on the kill. It was as if Little Phil had been right there beside him when, shortly after the counterattack began, a soldier had presumed to ask Hayes, “Sir, we being punished? ’Cause of this morning?”
How strange, how endlessly strange! That men who knew war so well should want more of it.
Excitement pulsed through his reduced, half-clad ranks; the fervor was unmistakable. It was all he and his officers could do to restrain the men, to keep them in formation as they advanced, flags lofted high and two rescued drums beating cadence, all of them marching square-shouldered into the smoke. They wanted, needed, to get at the Rebs, while there were still Rebs to be gotten at.
And as they neared the half-managed chaos of battle, Hayes, too, shrugged off reason and decency, surrendering to pride and the urge to kill.
5:00 p.m.
Gordon’s Division
Nichols gave up and ran. Wasn’t right, none of it. Yankees everywhere. After they’d whipped them fair that very morning.
He’d stopped his rearward trot twice, once when General Gordon, that scar carved into his left cheek like a broken cross and standing out in a face hot as pink sow meat, that time, that moment, when John Brown Gordon, a Joshua but a false prophet, swept in among them, crying, “Rally, boys, rally! We can whip ’em, if we just stand our ground.” That one time John Gordon proved a liar. For the Yankees were on them like the Plagues of Egypt, like sickness upon those firstborns, and they pulled the ground right out from under their feet, that was how it felt, the Yankees thieving the very earth they’d earned.
The other time was when General Evans, a saint among men, fooled him and half the others just as bad, calling to them, “Stand, men! We can hold!” General Evans, a Methodist, lying like a no-good Irish drunkard. Worse.
Yankees everywhere. First, their infantry, that whipped and whupped-on blue-belly infantry, came crashing down upon them, rushing into the breaks in their line like floodwater, splashing bluecoats every which way and drowning all hope.
That was before their cavalry came on. The cavalry just finished them, adding more scare to the big scoot back to the rear. The men on horseback were cruel, showing no mercy.
Without quite deciding, Nichols stopped and turned. He raised the rifle he somehow had loaded and fired at a Yankee horseman, one as good as another, but missed for shaking. And he was not given to shaking, never that kind of scared, but tired, Lord, he was tired enough to lie down and just give up, though he would not.
A file of cantering Yankees cut off Sergeant Alderman, who had tarried.
He wouldn’t have run, not one step, had it been up to him. No, he did not believe he would have run. But all the others sure did. And when that happened, a fellow just went along and couldn’t help it. Some of them, Nichols included, had re-formed back a ways by the regiment’s flag, encouraged by Gordon. That hadn’t lasted. Then they rallied, briefly, by broken-up companies, herded by General Evans, that good shepherd. Finally, the survivors only paused in flame-spitting huddles or by themselves. Then they just ran.
All the treasure was lost, left behind, discarded, the tent halves and blankets finer than store-bought town ones. All encumbrances were discharged so a man could run deer-fleet, until, some terrible how, Nichols lost the spare pair of foraged shoes, the finer pair of the two, saved up, reducing him to the possessions he had ferried across the river before dawn, all else gone except for the one good pair of Yankee brogues he’d had the presence of mind to tie onto his feet back when things were quiet.
Lem Davis all but crashed into him, only to veer away, mad-eyed, glancing back as though he recognized no man. At least Lem was alive. Couldn’t see anyone else. Just the pillaged Yankee camps receding underfoot, one after another, prizes hard-won, even if by guile, and around him blue-jacketed troopers slashing blades down upon not armor but thin wool and cotton worn to a see-through, steel biting into flesh and muscle and bone, hard men atop beasts.
Let the dark come quick. Oh, let the dark come quick.…
Surely, I come quickly. Saith the Lord.
No time to pray.
Behind him, beside him, Yankees cheered, cursed, catcalled. Wasn’t much artillery now, the attack had outrun its guns, but the Yankees had themselves a time blazing away from their saddles with those devil repeaters, making a game of death, maybe even betting on which man could hit what and keeping score.
He reached the Pike and found there was no army left, just a mob forcing wagons into ditches to make way for the terrified and cannoneers whipping men away from their limbers, only to be pulled off and beaten themselves. Yankee horsemen, maybe an entire regiment, dismounted on the high ground and shot into the mass.
Nichols believed his heart was bound to fail him, set to burst, and his lungs felt like a barn-burner got at them. Only his feet, blessed by those splendid shoes, a provenance of the Lord, went along untroubled.
Leaving the Pike, he thrashed through brush and scrub trees, trying to work away from the feast of killing, only to find himself drawn back to higher ground and another plundered Yankee camp, where dead men lay in shameless states of undress, not yet swelled up but a first few stiffened in rictus.
Two soldiers, his own kind, sat before a dead campfire and spooned beans from a pot that had not been emptied.
“Yankees are coming!” Nichols warned them.
“Set a spell,” one soldier encouraged him placidly. “Them’s good beans, and plenty.”
“Yankees—”
“Oh, let him go, Ezra,” the other soldier said. “He ain’t figured out this here war’s over.”
Ezra nodded. “I reckon.” He looked up at Nichols, kindly enough. “You take yourself a paw-full of them beans, boy. There’s to spare, and beans won’t slow you down.”
Nichols ran back into the brush, away from the all-but-encircling shots and shouts, seeking the low ground, the creek or the river, safety.
How had it happened? When they’d whipped the Yankees so complete? How had it happened? Briars clawed him. Imagining Yankees all around and closing in, he had to fight the urge to drop his rifle.
How had it come to this? How had they sinned?
He emerged from the woods not in a quiet corner, but just east of the bridge over the creek. In the fading light, it offered a scene from Hell. On the southern bank, on the heights, some good men had put their cannon in battery and were firing back at the Yankees, brave as David, fending off a Federal Goliath, doing what they could to punish the blue-belly hordes closing on the bridge below.
The bridge itself was all wickedness. Men swung their rifles at their own kind to clear a path, and soldiers toppled shrieking into the water. Some tried to wade or swim across. Bodies floated downstream. On the narrow span, an ambulance was no more welcome than any other box set up on four wheels.
He would’ve stopped to fight, he told himself. But it wouldn’t do no good. Even before he turned away, determined to save at least one Confederate soldier and that one himself, he heard bugles pierce the thunderous racket and saw, in the half-light, Yankee cavalry sweep into view on the heights held by the battery, long blades catching the last rays of the sun.
In moments, that golden light was gone and the battery taken.
Trapped on the bridge, men hollered like women with snake-fright, brave men screaming. Soldiers tossed their rifles in the creek and raised their hands, so many of them that the Yankee horses couldn’t make any headway on the Pike, either side of the creek.
Nichols ran, stumbled, and crashed through brush and brambles, one of a few men nosing down the bank, trying to get out of sight of the swarming Yankees, out of any possible lines of fire, just trying to git.
The autumn dark fell fast, suggesting mercy. Nichols heard his own breathing, the gasps of a hunted animal. He heard other men, too, but could not see them. The world seemed newly vast, his day-scorched eyes reluctant to make sense of darkened spaces. Searching along the bank of the creek, he could not find one ford, though he reckoned there had to be several. Nor had he reached the river, he could tell that much.
He fell in with two of his own sort, South-talking men and notable for their smell, the three of them bumbling into each other and Nichols cry-whispering, “Don’t shoot, I’m of your’n.” And they went along together, which only made sense, as the war grated on in the distance and a wicked Yankee band far off played an Irish jig of a tune, its merriment like pissing on the dead.
That tune, or some other deviltry, worked on his new companions—one of them, anyway—for when they came upon a can’t-get-up Yankee, a shot-through man who must’ve lain there since morning, and he greeted their brush-thrashing footfalls with a plea of, “Water … for Mother’s sake…,” that soured new comrade hefted the stock of his rifle and beat the Yankee’s skull in, no reason to it, just spite, the way Nichols once had seen a boy smash in a turtle’s shell with a rock, just to feel bigger and better than something else, to kill something weaker, like he was saying, “I’m alive, goddamn you, and you’re not.”
Then they found what seemed to be, what had to be, a ford, for it wore an apron of mud and a trail led from it, climbing back up the hill, or so it seemed in that darkness unpricked by campfires or torches, and they waded in, Nichols last, just in case, for he was not much of a swimmer, not much at all, but, Lord, they did want to get away from the Yankees, all three of them did, you could smell it on them like stink, and when the creek proved their judgment wrong and the opposite of the sea parting for Moses, the two dark shapes before him fell waterward at the exact same moment, their splashes small but terrible, and only one emerged again to flail his arms and make wildly for the southern bank, while the other disappeared into that water and never resurfaced, not even to cry out in lamentation like the children of Israel. Perhaps he had been punished by the Lord for the sin of Cain, for pulping that Yankee’s brains—surely the Lord had selected the right man—and there in that creek, that creek that had swallowed a man as surely as the great whale swallowed Jonah, Nichols scared up and turned back.
As he struggled, unnerved and shivering, toward the Yankee bank, the mud stole one of his fine, new shoes, just sucked it off, though he’d laced it on real tight, and the creek wouldn’t let his bared foot find it again.
Returned to dry land—or to the bank mud, anyway—he tried to go on with one foot shod and the other as good as naked, but that was no use at all. In a sorrow immeasurable he kicked off, tore off, the left-behind shoe, a grand shoe of stout leather, a sad-as-a-family-burying, useless shoe, and he picked it up, adoring it with his fingers one last time, then he pitched it into the creek to rejoin its mate.
7:30 p.m.
Cedar Creek
None of it had the dignity of a retreat: It was a rout from start to finish. If, indeed, it was anywhere near finished. Which hardly seemed the case, with the Yanks giving chase.
Gordon had tried to rally them—his own men and the rest—to make a stand first on one bank of the creek, then on the other. Each time, it was no good. The Yankees were everywhere, and that “everywhere” was usually right behind any line he formed.
He’d heard early on in the collapse that Ramseur had been wounded, perhaps fatally. Perhaps Dod’s premonition had been real. More to Heaven and earth than any philosophy could contain, he recalled a line in Hamlet to that effect. More likely, though, Dod meeting a bullet had been one of war’s coincidences. War found infinite ways to tease a man, sometimes to death.
Later, in the flame-streaked dark, amid the report of rifles and clang of sabers, John Pegram, tearful, had told him that the ambulance carrying Dod had been taken by Yankees. He wouldn’t even die among his kind.
Never did get to see his infant, Dod did not. But Gordon intended to live.
He was trying to halt the two guns left to a battery, to snatch a few more minutes from the Yankees and allow another shred of the army to flee, when yet another throng of blood-glutton horsemen swept down upon them.
So fast, it all went so fast.
In the grave-dark night, with moonrise hours off, he all but gutted his horse with his spurs, guiding the beast toward what seemed the least-Yankee-bothered corner of the field.
After dashing along for a few dozen yards, his horse shied and reared up.
Gordon stayed in the saddle. And somehow he saw, grasped, understood, that horse and rider had come to the edge of a precipice.
“There’s one of those bastards. Over there,” a Northern voice called.
Gordon didn’t know if the man meant him or some other unfortunate, but he did not intend to become a guest of the Yankees.
He said, aloud, “Fanny, I love you.” And he drove his horse over into the unknown.
11:00 p.m.
Belle Grove
He couldn’t bear the interior any longer. A chaotic mix of headquarters, surgery, and refuge for the dying, the old mansion reeked of the dark side of the war, of the place beyond glory. He went outdoors, sidling down the steps, careful of his spurs, and positioned himself before the fire in the yard. He’d borne enough in the hours past and did not need to witness any more misery. Or listen to any more excuses from staff men who’d found their way back only after the battle. He just wanted to stand there alone and unbothered.
Of course, he couldn’t—and wouldn’t—avoid the couriers reporting the ever-increasing count of cannon and flags taken, of guns and wagons recovered, of prisoners captured. He reveled in those numbers; he’d just had too large a ration of human beings. His usual mood of celebration in the wake of a victory, the urge to be surrounded by good men sharing a bottle, of that he was inexplicably bereaved.
Arms folded across his chest, he lingered before the bonfire, its crackle and flare fueled by empty ammunition crates and the scraps of a wagon splintered by a shell. The fire’s warmth was a fine thing, wonderfully inhuman, and welcome in the stiffening autumn night.
Within the house, a man screamed. Sheridan damned the softhearted fool who’d allowed the surgeons to set themselves up in his headquarters. How on earth was a fellow supposed to think? You had to be hard, harder than the man on the other side.
Had he been damned lucky, though? Was that the truth of the matter? Blessed not to have been present for the debacle in the morning? Would his presence have made a difference, or would he have faltered as the others had? Had he been better placed by fate at Winchester, so he could ride, untainted, to rescue the army after others failed? The newspapermen who’d stayed with the army, the few who hadn’t fled, had already pawed him up, thrilled at the story they had to tell and equally pleased that their absent colleagues had missed it.
They would not merely report his feat, they’d exaggerate it beyond the bounds of the plausible. Not because they admired him, not really, but because they wanted to top each other’s versions.
Just in case, he had treated them to whiskey while he regaled them. Not all of his staff’s papers and maps had been rescued in the morning’s evacuation, but some intelligent orderly saved the liquor. And there, on the field he had reclaimed, he had poured the ginger-colored broth into the scribblers’ cups with his own hand, letting them laud him with praise of his achievement.
Now they were gone, those creatures of ink, in a race to the nearest military telegraph office, with his signed authorization to transmit their stories and grant them priority over routine messages. And his generals, too, had heaped on the congratulations, as if he were Napoleon and Frederick made one, and he had praised his generals in turn, and no more was said about the mistakes of the morning or about flawed dispositions and poor vigilance.
He considered taking a dose of whiskey himself, but preferred not to go inside the house to get it. He could not explain his mood, but felt that any movement from his spot would be for the worse. Flames snapped and the tower of wood fell inward. Sparks leapt into the night like fleeing men, as if the fire had suddenly grown too hot for them. In the distance, far to the south, flurries of shots marked the continuing pursuit.
Cruel, to run men to ground like that. But there was no other way to make an end of things. And the Johnnies had asked for it.
Early was broken this time, broken for good. He had misjudged the man’s resilience, true enough, but this day had a finality none could mistake. Early was finished, and soon enough the Confederacy would be finished, probably after tormenting itself through one last hungry winter.
The fire was mesmerizing, inexplicably pleasing, but the paper assault that followed a battle could be held off no longer. He remained by the fire but reviewed reports, gave authorizations, and signed a dispatch he’d dictated—wouldn’t Grant be pleased? Riders came and went. Forsyth brought him scalding coffee in his bone china mug—Sheridan did not tolerate tin cups—and he cradled it in his hands, taking in the aroma, suddenly aware that he’d wanted just this thing: to be alive on this cold night with a mug of fresh-made coffee. To be alive. And victorious.
“Something to eat, sir?” Forsyth asked.
“This’ll do fine. Not hungry.”
But he knew Forsyth well enough to calculate, almost to the minute, when the aide would reappear with a slice of ham or the like between two cuts of bread.
A cavalcade approached. It didn’t take a bonfire’s light to recognize George Custer.
George dismounted theatrically, with acrobatics worthy of a circus show. Grinning like a damned fool all the while.
“Ain’t it splendid?” Custer called, pulling off his gloves, striding, shaking off the saddle stiffness the way a dog sheds water. “It’s the most complete victory of the entire war! Ain’t it glorious?”
“Yes, George,” Sheridan agreed. “Good work.”
“I feel like dancing and howling at the moon.”
For a moment, Sheridan feared that the younger man would pick him up again. He tensed at the thought.
But Custer just slapped one glove against the other. “Don’t think I lost more than a few dozen men, you should’ve seen it.”
“I saw enough. By the way, Charlie Lowell’s dying. Or dead by now.”
“Oh, bad luck.” Custer sounded as though he’d missed the soup course.
“And Ramseur. Isn’t he a friend of yours?”
“Old Dod? We were at West Point at the same time. What about him?”
“You don’t know?”
Still half grinning, Custer said, “Old Doddie get himself captured? He’ll be hot.…”
“For God’s sake, George. Your own men captured the ambulance he was in. They brought him here, he’s inside.”
“Wounded?”
“Dying.”
Custer considered that. “Hard luck. I’m sorry to hear it.”
They stood before the fire, each waiting for the other to speak first. At last, Sheridan asked, “Don’t you think you should see him? He’s still conscious. At least, he was when I looked in on him. Not feeling much pain, I don’t think. But the surgeons agree he won’t live through the night. Don’t you want to say good-bye to him, George?”
Fidgeting like a child during a sermon, Custer said, “I suppose I should. I mean, I don’t want to crowd in on him, add to his burden.”
“Merritt sat with him. As long as he could.”
“Wesley’s good at that sort of business. Ain’t he?”
“George…”
“Oh, well. Poor Dod. Better have a look, I suppose. Buck him up.”
“Christ, George. Don’t try to ‘buck him up.’ I understand his wife’s just had a baby. He’s never seen it, doesn’t know if it’s a son or daughter. And, for God’s sake, don’t go bragging about your victory.”
Wounded, Custer said, “I don’t think I brag.” He looked up dolefully. “Do you, Phil?”
Good Christ. “I think he’ll be glad to see you, George. You’re the very breath of life. Now go on in.”
Reluctant but obedient, Custer jingled up the stairs to the busy house. Sheridan thought: After the war, we’ll have to keep the bugger in the Army. Wouldn’t be fair to turn him loose on the citizenry.
Alone and staring into the fire again, into the blaze that celebrated his triumph, Sheridan felt possessed by a wordless sorrow.
That ended when Forsyth brought him some beef on a biscuit.
11:00 p.m.
Cedar Creek
Gordon could not judge how long he’d lain unconscious or how far he’d fallen. He tested each limb, each finger, and explored his throbbing skull. Hardly felt ready to lead off the cotillion, but he seemed to be intact within his skin.
Ached like the devil, though. When he rose, his head swam through muddied-up air. His eyes struggled. Leaving him a touch dizzy.
Tore hell out of his uniform. New one, too. Still, just standing up whole counted as a miracle.
The second miracle was that his horse stood nearby, nosing in the grass, another unlikely survivor.
Gordon listened. The firing, what there was of it, had moved off. Nearby, though, up on the high ground, hooves pounded. And there were shouts. Cavalry. Searching.
He petted his mount, making low and soothing sounds, cooing to a baby. Carefully, gently, he traced the animal’s limbs.
The horse seemed fine, a wonder. But even if they could have climbed back up that bank, riding off across Yankee-owned ground seemed a tad ill-considered.
Where there was such a drop, though, there had to be a streambed. And streams led to creeks, and creeks led on to rivers. Gordon figured he’d best walk the horse along the ravine until he found a trail far enough removed from the fray and fuss to give him a chance. Failing in that, he could work along to a ford down on the river.
He was glad to be in one piece after that leap, but couldn’t say he’d had the finest luck, not overall. After the glorious morning, Fortuna had turned her wheel, leaving him a victor robbed of his victory and a general without a division. Or even a hat.
Well, hats could be purchased, divisions reassembled. Irate though he was, he knew he should count his blessings. He would bear no blame.
He stumbled along, hushing the horse, determined.
And not just determined to rejoin the army—or what bits and pieces remained of it. He intended to find a way to have himself recalled from the Valley. Early’s reputation was played out, beyond repair. Any man who remained with him would see his own reputation tarnished as well. Early was finished, the Valley was finished. But John Gordon wasn’t done.
Come what might of the war, advantage waited at Robert E. Lee’s side. Lee was the one who’d escape vilification, no matter what happened, and those seen as close to Lee would be judged the stalwarts. The trick now was to become Lee’s man, not Early’s.
With a dried-up streambed’s stones annoying his feet through the soles of his boots—fine boots, but worn thin as slippers—Gordon swore he’d get back to the Petersburg lines, even if it required the Labors of Hercules.
As for Jubal Early, he owed the man nothing.
October 20, 2:00 a.m.
The Valley of the Shenandoah
His feet were in a sorrow. And the scrap of sleep hadn’t helped none. Nor did the sight he saw when he woke up.
The moon had run high. Reckoning that he and the passel of fugitives he’d joined must be near the base of Three Top Mountain, Nichols stepped from the trees into a clearing to fix his bearings. He let the moon tug his eyes on south, and the outline of Three Top—unmistakable even seen from an unexpected slant—just hit him like a fist aimed low in the belly.
Three Top was there, all right. But they weren’t nowheres near the foot of that refuge, nor did they just need to find a ford to scoot through. The mountain had slipped a goodly distance south. Which meant they’d blundered in the earlier dark, men who hadn’t slept for two days and who’d just got a licking, and, fool him, he’d let that lieutenant gather him up and lead him along, since that was what officers were supposed to do.
Gripping himself, just straightening right up, Nichols dashed back into the scrub trees and kicked apart the fire the others were raising.
“What the hell, you crazy sumbitch?”
“Yankees. We got all turned around. We’re in their rear, talk quiet.”
The lieutenant—name of Baskett, how it sounded—said, “That can’t be.”
“Lieutenant, we need to get on. Now. Come daylight, we’ll be taken up.”
Befuddled, the lieutenant just repeated, “That can’t be.”
“Come look out here,” Nichols invited him, heading back to that field of revelation, but cautious this time.
“Can’t be,” the lieutenant said again, brushing off the last grip of his sleep.
“Where y’all from, Lieutenant?” Nichols had begun to add things up and he wasn’t fond of the sum.
“Miss’ippi. Kershaw’s Division.”
Yes, that explained it some. This officer and his maybe eight men all lost as children got into a blackwater swamp, and a hard stroke on him for joining up with them.
“You and your men just been here a speck of days. I hoofed this ground till I’m tired even thinking on it. You look down there, Lieutenant. That outline, that there mountain, right of the moon.”
“I see it.”
“Sir, that’s Three Top. Looks different from up here, but you look close. Remember looking east from Fisher’s Hill? That mountain across the river?”
“Can’t be. That one there’s six miles away.”
“Look close.”
“I’m looking.”
“You seeing?”
“I’m seeing. Oh, Lord Jesus.”
Nichols let it all burn deep. The lieutenant shook his head in the silver light. Getting his first good look at the man, at this officer who had held out a promise of rescue hours back, Nichols realized that if there was a year’s age between them, it wasn’t more than that. Just made him feel sicker, pondering that. As if he’d been fooled by a city feller come out on the train.
“What are we going to do?” the lieutenant asked.
“Reckon we ought to get going, sir. Cover what ground we can. Before the light comes up.”
“I just don’t know how we got so turned around,” the lieutenant said, dropped in a pot of wonder, with embarrassment stirred in. He edged closer to Nichols and lowered his voice again. “Figure you could lead us out of here? I’ll appoint you as our scout, like it’s official.”
“Do the best I can, sir. But we got to go soon, and we got to go on quiet.”
“I’ll see to that.” But he didn’t move. “You think we can make it?” he asked, all of the officer gone out of him now. Church-earnest. Maybe afraid. Afraid, surely.
Nichols was spooked, too. He’d heard the stories about those Yankee prisons. Elmira, worst of all. He knew, heart-deep, that his own kind would never treat prisoners like that.
He also knew—understood in the queer way men did—that he was the leader now, that the lieutenant would inhabit his rank again only when they were safe. If safe they ever were.
“Best get on,” Nichols said. Firmly.
And they went, the men grumbling for a stretch, then too tired to whisper. Nichols’ bare feet had lost some of their toughness, and more than just some, across a summer and autumn of shod going. He winced at the hurt, even felt girl tears come up.
Ain’t going to cry, he told himself, ain’t nothing on this earth can make me cry. But he did not turn around, would not let those trailing him see his face, as he led that little chain of Mississippians, men even farther from their homes than he was. He clutched his rifle, his last possession, in a strangler’s grip, meaning to brace his manhood and steady his innards. But in that cold-handed, Yankee-haunted dark, the tears came anyway.
Walking into the moon, walking south into that white, revealing moon, Nichols gave his word to the Lord above and to all men below that he wasn’t wet of cheek because they’d been whipped again, maybe for good this time, nor because he couldn’t know just what had become of Sergeant Alderman, whether those saber-swinging Yankees had killed or spared him. He didn’t know the come-outs of his other war-kin, either, whether Lem Davis and Dan Frawley, Tom Boyet or Ive Summerlin, or even Elder Woodfin, all righteous men, had escaped the tribulation.
He wasn’t even crying because, for the first time, for the first true can’t-fool-yourself time, he had to ask what would become of them all, of their whole world, if they lost the war. He wasn’t dripping from the tip of his nose and tasting salt because he was scared or homesick, either. Not even because he’d had his fill of fighting and wanted to wake up in a bed and not rise till he was ready. He wasn’t weeping over unmet girls or from dreaming of his still-nameless bride, unsullied and inevitable, nor even because his heart was broken like a buttermilk jug hurled down, no reason to it. Wasn’t even the hurtsome way of the world. It was another, bitter loss entirely:
Them shoes.