3:30 p.m.
Worthington farm
“Keep your alignment, men,” Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg called as he rode between their lines. “Keep up your alignment.”
The sound of nigh on a thousand men advancing seemed to hush all else in the world. Even the thump of the guns on the far bank faded. Nichols believed he could hear his heart, fearful and no denying it.
The first field they crossed had been stripped bare of crops, leaving a man with his own feeling of nakedness. They were still out of range of the Yankee rifles, but exposed for all to see, and each step brought them closer to whatever the Lord had in mind. Horn-hard feet and rough shoes slapped baked earth, raising pale dust to bother throats consigned to the second rank. Sweating untowardly, like a fat man, Nichols felt shrunken.
In the next field, yet uncut, the shish-shish-shish of feet and calves pushed through ripe wheat with the sound of a thousand scythes.
The day was hot, bright blue, gold, green-rimmed, marred here and there by smoke. Despite his wash of sweat, Nichols felt light, with his blanket roll and haversack left behind in the trees, every man going forward with just his fighting tools. Still, he sensed a ghost where the blanket had gripped, the wet cloth cooling now, despite the sun. He’d learned so much he hoped he lived to tell it, how a man could be hot and chilled at once, sick with fear and ready to kill with fury.
“Keep your alignment, men.”
Up ahead, nothing good. Across a dreadful stretch of fields, flat enough for volleys to sweep them clean, the Yankees waited, hunkered down, no doubt licking their lips. In between, fences challenged the advance, with haystacks scattered about, as if the blue-bellies had set out a steeplechase course.
In dead air, flags hung limp. Along the lines the 61st Georgia’s officers called out encouragement. Excepting Colonel Lamar and Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg, every one of the officers walked, not because they’d dismounted to spare themselves, but because there were no horses to be had, at least not for the money printed in Richmond. It was a poor time, a hard time, for rich and poor alike among his people, with gentry afoot who had ridden all their lives. Determined they all were, though, every one of them. Nichols felt that sure as Revelation.
So far still to go, a small eternity. Fresh sweat popped. Insects rose, clouds of them. He had turned up the front brim of his hat, the way he always did, the better to look along the sights when the time came, and blackflies teased his eyes. He blinked and blinked again but kept both hands on his rifle. Wasn’t no right-shoulder-shift this day, just rifles held at port, the way General Gordon liked things.
Just seemed a mean, long way across those fields. He couldn’t figure why the Yankees hadn’t let loose with artillery. Unless their guns were already primed with canister, a terrible thing, wrathful.
He fixed his eyes on that first fence. Didn’t want to look beyond it.
The day was hot in the nose, hot in the mouth. Field dust, hay dust, peppered his nostrils, so different from the chalk-cake dust of roads. Breathing almost required an act of will. But his leg had stopped hurting, he barely felt it. He wondered why that was?
A man was a riddle, but the Lord God was a mystery.
Officers pointed the way with their swords and it almost seemed the blades tugged them along. Nichols was glad to bear a rifle, to feel its weight and solidity. Above all, he was glad to feel the smell-close press of his fellow soldiers around him, the presence of others that braved a man up and kept him from shaming himself; glad, too, to see familiar backs in the first line up ahead, to know men not just by their faces, but by their shoulders and signifying movements. Beside him, on his left, marched hard Ive Summerlin, who took every fight personal. To the right, Lem Davis panted, beard alone enough to fright the Yankees, the beard of a Methuselah, though Lem was not so old.
His friends, his kind, his war-kin.
Step forward, step again. Brittle soil crumbled underfoot. A butterfly, confused, fluttered about. His mother said that butterflies brought good luck.
He wanted to be brave inside and out. But he knew that he only could go forward like this, across these endless fields, with his brethren close. He felt himself quiver like a fevered child, the way he was ever inclined to in the moments before he could lose himself in doing.
Men killed hogs kinder than they killed each other.
That fence. A soldier learned to hate fences. Unless they were there for burning when things were quiet.
Them Yanks all tucked in. Waiting. Bits of blue speckled the distance, signs enough for a man to imagine their line, how it would explode.
At that fence. That’s where it would start. They’d wait till then.
A part of him wanted to run, a shameful part. His heart raged to burst right out of his chest, to escape his flesh and run off by its own self. Sweat sheathed him.
“Get over that fence!” Colonel Lamar roared. “Company C, open a gap!”
Men rushed from the forward line, ripping at the boards and clubbing the planks with their rifle butts. One fool fellow had cocked his rifle and it shot into the air, a stunning sound that tore right through the day.
As soon as the first rank mounted the fence, the Yankees opened fire. Men splayed their arms and fell—backward, forward—dropping their weapons, casting them off, hats flying, bodies crumpling, some caught halfway, folded over the top rail, rumps in the air, as if awaiting a spanking.
Other men climbed the slats or leapt over. Some paused to help their friends. More and more of the fence simply gave way.
“Come on, boys, come on! Re-form. Re-form and keep moving.”
It was hard doings. The first line had become a ragged thing, blundering amid haystacks. It still went forward, though.
“Hold your fire, don’t fire. Our time’s a-coming. Re-form, and hold your fire!”
Yanks weren’t holding theirs. Men dropped.
Nichols crowded through a gap in the broke-down fence, brushing past witch-finger splinters.
Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg rode through another gap and cantered along the line, calling, “Fill up the first ranks. Sergeants, do your duty!”
“I don’t need no sergeant pushing me,” Ive Summerlin declared. He trotted forward, toward a hole the Yankees had made in the gray line.
Nichols followed after. Hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t decided to. Just did. As if Ive pulled him along on a hidden rope.
Lem Davis came after. Big and breathing like a run-out steer.
The Yankees fired as fast as they reloaded.
A few men, very few, paused behind the haystacks, malingering, gripped by fear. Most just stepped along, though, like they couldn’t do anything else, and that was that. Both lines were jumbled now.
“Keep going, keep on going!”
Some of the junior officers and sergeants continued to holler about re-forming, but it was as if they did it just to feel better, to keep themselves occupied.
Everyone moved quickly now. Not running, not quite. Forming back up in their accustomed, imperfect way, anxious to get out of the shocks and stacks, craving order as much as they craved safety, needing their comrades stink-close again and ranked up, so a man’s chances evened out.
Just as Nichols spotted him again, rounding a haystack, Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg fell sideward from his horse. As if shoved hard.
“Just keep moving, Georgie,” Lem said. “You just look straight ahead.”
Wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. Of all people.
Nichols felt himself tempted by awful words, Satan just a-begging him to utter them.
Men fell on every side.
That second fence. Men couldn’t wait, could not just march toward it. One dashed forward, then another. All of them. Amid the wild racket of Yankee volleys.
“Georgia! Georgia!”
Again, men tumbled as they topped the fence, splendid targets for the Yankees now. Nichols spotted Zib Collins, who was supposed to be on stretcher duty and safe, bearing a rifle and fumbling over the obstacle. Then Zib held stone still. For one queer instant. As if at the behest of a man with a camera.
Zib’s head just burst, brains splashing everywhere. As if his skull had been struck with a railroad hammer.
“Georgia! Forward!”
Yanks had easy shooting now. But as soon as the bulk of the men were past the fence, Colonel Lamar halted them, cursing those who failed to obey promptly, employing lusty profanity, although the colonel, once a noteworthy sinner, had found his way to Jesus the past winter.
“Form up! Form up, Lord God almighty! Hurry up, boys, hurry!” Nichols shut his ears to the other words blazing by.
They formed back up, right fast. But Lem was on his left now, Ive a few spaces distant on the right.
Eyes hunting the flanks, Lem said, “Seems like we’re aiming to take on the Yankees just us’n.”
But they were back in solid ranks, instilled again—only the Lord knew how—with order and a refreshed, deepened confidence, going forward as one.
Yanks were little more than a hundred yards off now, not so thick a line, after all.
“At the double-quick … forward!”
“Georgia! Georgia!”
“Charge!”
The blue-bellies didn’t wait. It was only a bullied-up skirmish line. They fled. Yet, all the dead, the wounded this much had cost …
One man shrieked like a woman, a rare thing.
Colonel Lamar steered his horse ahead of the colors. The flags were carried by different soldiers now. The colonel paused just beyond the dip where the skirmish line had lurked.
“Halt and re-form. Halt, boys. Re-form.”
“Sure now. Jest let them Yankees have another free shot,” Ive said bitterly, for the hearing of those around him.
But these were dutiful men, ferocious and resigned, and they formed yet again after their brief charge, and they went forward again, and the second Yankee line exploded, so many rifles in play that after two volleys you couldn’t see the blue-bellies, just the smoke.
“Forward! Georgia!”
The colors tumbled, the battle flag. New hands reached out. The torn cloth lofted again.
Suddenly, unreasonably, they all began to howl, Nichols and his brethren. It felt wonderful to be a part of this sudden burst of power, to lunge forward again, hallooing, as if their war cry itself must slay the Yankees.
Hundreds of points of light blinked through the smoke. There were bodies underfoot now, from earlier struggles, their own kind, in cavalry jackets and rags.
Another man he knew from home, James Hendrix, clutched his belly and dropped to his knees.
“Onward! Georgia!”
The firing grew so fierce, it felt like walking into a storm wind. Men crouched as they went forward, as if assaulted by a driving rain.
They were close, so close. The racket of the Yankee volleys was ear-busting.
Another man groaned and dropped but paces from Nichols. It was a bewildering thing how any man could stand without being hit.
“Realign. Align on the colors!” Colonel Lamar bellowed. But even as he spoke, the colors fell again. Only to rise a fourth time or a fifth.
The colonel’s voice broke off. Men fell. Blood spattered. Nichols found his own face wet without knowing whose blood he wore. His hat was gone.
Another voice called, “Halt. Volley fire. By company. Company officers—”
Then that voice, too, fell away. But the men halted and did as ordered, standing at the edge of the expanding cloud, firing into it on command, then independently, as the smoke engulfed them, too.
A voice reported that Colonel Lamar was dead.
The regiment, the entire brigade, hardly seemed to exist. Nichols was faintly aware that he was shaking. But he dutifully reloaded, fired, and reloaded again, blasting into the smoke, aiming in the direction of those muzzle flames, unwilling to go back one inch.
They crowded together, toward the regimental colors. Before he knew it, Nichols was but a plank length from the single flag remaining. He fought madly, jamming home his ramrod, barely getting the stock back against his shoulder before pulling the trigger again, hating. Nobody was going to take those colors, nobody.
The flag toppled. This time, Lieutenant Mincy dashed forward to raise the staff, only to buckle and drop flat on his face.
The Yankees had been killing all the officers, concentrating on the officers, purposeful and cruel. The revelation made perfect sense to Nichols, but still came as a shock.
He filled up with a hatred less than Christian.
The Yankees didn’t come forward, and the remains of the Georgia Brigade would not move back.
The smoke became choking thick.
“Kerenhappuch!” Nichols said. Then he shouted, “Kerenhappuch!”
Lem turned. “What the—”
“Job’s third daughter! Kerenhappuch!” Nichols began to laugh as he felt for a cartridge.
“Best fix on matters to hand,” Lem advised.
They fired into the man-made fog, spotting rough forms now, Yankees no more than thirty yards away. Closer.
“Stand your ground, Georgia!” a grand voice called. “Georgia, hold fast, you’re licking them!”
“Well, that’s a damned lie,” someone said.
“Georgia, stand your ground!”
“That’s General Gordon!” The sound of the man’s voice, the sense it evoked, the image of the general remembered, filled Nichols with a determination he had not known he could muster. He wanted to rush forward, to go at the Yankees bare-handed. But he stood and fired, obeying the last order he had received, regular as a machine.
Moments later, word passed along the shrinking line that Gordon had been shot.
4:00 p.m.
Thomas farm
Gordon sat up, chasing breath, head hammering and puke dizzy. It had happened fast, the way it always did. Two rounds, maybe three, had struck his horse in a brace of seconds. The animal had reared, throwing him clean, but he’d landed hard.
He tested himself anxiously, checking bones. His vision wouldn’t settle and the noise was terrible, terrible. Hands gripped him. He slapped them away.
“I’m all right, damn it,” he said. “Give a man his space.”
He remembered, looked about. Faces. An aide. “Is York up?”
“Yes, sir. Louisiana’s in the fight.”
“Tigers,” Gordon muttered, meaning to speak firmly.
“Yes, sir. They’re right tigers.”
“I’ve got to … help me up.”
Hands, too many hands, assisted him. “General Evans. I need a report from Evans.”
“General Evans has been shot, sir. Your brother has taken temporary command. Until—”
“Colonel Lamar is to command it.”
“He’s dead, sir.”
Gordon bellowed. One wordless howl. Johnny Lamar. Old friend.
The moment of rage cleared his head.
“A horse…”
My kingdom for a horse … my brigade, my kingdom. Clem Evans, Johnny Lamar …
“Take my horse, sir. I’ll ride Sergeant Cook’s.”
“Just give me Cook’s horse.” He tried to smile toward the sergeant, unsure if he managed it. Then he told all of them: “Georgia must hold its ground. Can’t retreat.” He looked at the aide. His vision was sharp again. “You said General Evans has been shot. Wounded?”
“Yes, sir. In the side.”
“How bad?”
The captain shook his head. “Can’t say, sir. Heard he was conscious, though.”
“Find my brother. As soon as he can locate a ranking officer, he’s to relinquish command. Then find General York. Tell him to keep pressing them, not a step back. Only forward.” He tried to find the stirrup with his left boot, but failed twice. Still dizzy, after all.
“Help me.”
A sergeant fit the stirrup to Gordon’s toe. Gordon gathered the strength to haul his bones up into the saddle.
“Y’all go on now,” he told the little crowd. “See to your business.”
He rode back through the smoke, sure of his direction, the way he always had been, in the deep forests of north Georgia or on battlefields. His body seemed sound, if aching. And his head was clear enough now. He spurred the strange mount toward the river, where Terry’s Brigade had been ordered to halt. He’d sent them forward just far enough to clear out any threat of a flanking maneuver.
The smoke thinned. Noise still clapped his ears, though, a sharp pain. As Gordon emerged from the gray fog into the sunlight, the blaze hit his eyes, his skull, with the force of a mallet. He realized that his hat was gone. But he looked better—fiercer—without it, he fancied.
Alone, he galloped across fields strewn with bodies, most of them in gray or shades of brown. His men, McCausland’s. A few Yankees by a fence. The cries of the wounded knew not North or South, only abrupt, unmanageable suffering. But pity was not his dominion. His purpose was to win battles.
Over a rolling crest. Down the far slope, Terry sat his horse, flanked by his staff.
As Gordon reined in, Terry looked him up and down, almost regal, as if condescending to breathe the same air. Yet the fellow was pleasant for all that, as Virginian as fine tobacco and proud women.
“New horse, I do believe,” the brigade commander remarked.
The black, dying or dead, had been his favored mount.
“I was inconvenienced,” Gordon told him.
“Seems you tired of your hat, as well.”
“Never was a proper fit.”
“May my brigade be of service, sir? In this heady hour?”
“Yes. You may be of service, Bill. No more time for foolery.” He turned in the saddle and pointed to a crest back up the slope and to the left. “Move your men up there. Quick as you can, without disordering them. You’re going to roll up the Yankees and put an end to this.”
“Bad up top?” Terry asked, serious now.
“Spotsylvania. Smaller, but as bad.”
Terry took a moment to swallow that. “And when I get to the top, I’m to—”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Terry had become faintly unsettled. “But if something should happen? I hear—”
“I’ll meet you there,” Gordon repeated. “If I don’t, you’ll see what needs doing, where to attack.”
Prepared to ride off, facing myriad tasks, he nonetheless paused before digging in his spurs. Struggling to think like Ulysses, who understood the ways of men like no other: their yearnings, their pride.
“Now we’ll see what Virginians are made of,” he announced to all who might hear.
4:15 p.m.
Georgetown Pike (Washington road)
Wallace had sent an aide to warn him that his detachment of Vermonters was in retreat, leaping across the girders of the rail bridge, chased by what looked like a full Rebel division. Ricketts pictured men shot in the back and plunging into the river. Who had been in command? Young Davis, was it? Few officers left his senior, far too few. The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. Well, Davis had done yeoman’s work, holding out with his pitiful handful. But the fact that mattered now was that the Rebs would soon be in his division’s rear.
Ricketts felt he was playing poker with disappearing cards.
Wallace had claimed he could hold another half hour, but that had been almost fifteen minutes back. Ricketts imagined the Home Brigade men—who had not done badly at all—losing their courage in one fateful instant and starting to run. He knew how that contagion went. This was the hour for veterans, with all hell bubbling up. But even veterans would hold only so long before they broke.
He was tired. Growing too old for this. But he remained determined to stay at the table to play this final hand. Wallace had authorized him to retreat whenever he deemed it necessary, but Ricketts disliked quitting. Stubborn, all his life. Far more than was politic. One of the reasons he had remained a lieutenant for epochs, then a captain for ages.
And the one time he had softened his principles, at that damnable court-martial, he had marked himself with an odor that wouldn’t wash off. Better to be stubborn and pay the price.
He could no longer see the brick house, although it stood but a few hundred yards away. A cloud had grown around it, spreading along the crest, dense as a nightmare. The noise told him his men were holding, though. A few skedaddlers wandered back, and a multitude of wounded men had withdrawn, but the fight was not yet over, not just yet.
And the dead? The lives he was betting in a hopeless game?
He would not order a retreat while Truex held that ridge. He just would not do it. But he had directed his Second Brigade to swing back, now that the river was lost and their flank turned. He intended to firm up a third, last line on the Pike.
Perhaps he could bring off an orderly withdrawal? Even now? With the First Brigade falling back upon the Second, and the Second withdrawing again. Things would need to go smoothly, more smoothly than battle generally allowed, but there was a chance: Hold the Rebs while the Home Brigade men cleared off and Wallace saved the guns, then withdraw in stages, making any Rebel pursuit pay a premium.
He had been taught, many years before, that a fighting withdrawal was the most difficult military feat, and he doubted things would go nicely. But if you held a poor hand, you had to play boldly.
“Over there,” he greeted a Second Brigade officer he recognized. “Put your men over there, when they come up. Build a firing line this side of the road.”
Black with smoke and powder, the major stared in bewilderment. “Sir … I have no men … I don’t know where…”
Before Ricketts could shape a useful question, Truex’s aide, Captain Lanius, emerged out of the smoke, galloping down from the shrouded battle line and nearly riding over a wounded man. One of the many, many wounded men.
Before Ricketts could admonish him, Lanius called from the saddle, “Colonel Truex’s compliments, he needs help. Right now, sir. They’re breaking our center, Louisiana Brigade. We’re holding up on the left, it’s a bloody mess, but we’re holding. It’s the center that’s cracking.”
Ricketts made an instant decision that changed his plans again.
“Tell Colonel Truex I’m sending him my reserve. No. Wait. You can guide them up yourself.”
His “reserve.” Two bloodied, played-out regiments, with several companies already stripped away. His best hope of a last defense of the Pike.
After he had spoken, Ricketts felt a rush of doubt. But it was too late. He had promised help for Truex.
Ricketts played the last card in his hand.
4:25 p.m.
Thomas farm
Brigadier General Terry hurried his troops along, all but giving each man a boot in the haunches. Getting them up to that crest in good order, if a tad breathless.
No sign of Gordon. As Terry approached the high ground, all he could see was bald dirt and a world of smoke beyond it, set to the noise of all the devils in Hell banging pots and pans.
Spotsylvania? Bad as that? My, oh my. Terry believed he had glimpsed a spot of alarm in Gordon’s eyes. And Gordon was the most confident creature, man or beast, that Terry had ever met. Oh, surely Gordon had known doubts, the man was human. But Terry had never seen a sign until that afternoon.
If he had seen it. With Gordon, a man could be certain without being sure.
Surprising him, the leading men in his brigade began to growl as they neared the ridgetop. Climbing blindly, with the fighting still hidden from view, marching up toward the smoke and sky, they just started in to snarling, like animals that had put up with all they meant to stand. It was an uncanny sound, one Terry did not recall from previous battles.
Had to wonder what men sensed, how they came to that wordless knowing that enthralled them all at once, melting them into one big pot of mischief.
Terry heard cheering, Southern cheering, from down along the river, off toward those bridges, loud enough to compete with the roar of battle. Sounded like Ramseur might have got up from his daybed.
Growling and snarling, rabid, his men were ready to savage all in their way. It filled him with pride.
Terry reached the true crest, horse high-stepping again, and there was Gordon. Sitting upright on that borrowed nag, cool as branch water, as if he had nothing more to do than wait on old Virginia.
It was Gordon restored. In that red shirt, and still without a hat.
When the first rank spotted Gordon, the soldiers sent up a cheer.
“Hurry on, now. Hurry on,” Gordon called. His regular voice of command was back upon him, ordering men to their deaths in a tone that was downright affable.
Riding up to that “inexplicable paragon of mystifying, exasperating manliness”—as Zeb York once had put it—Terry said, “Virginia is at your service, sir.”
A fence ahead. Then a field. Another fence lower down, broken. Beyond it, the battle, with all the sparks and smoke of Vulcan’s forge.
As the two generals watched, a pair of Yankee regiments marched up from the low ground, oblivious to their presence, headed into the maelstrom and exposing meager flanks.
Terry’s men surged forward on their own. Growling again. The sound seemed to take even Gordon aback.
“Hold on now, hold on!” Gordon called, princely even on that borrowed nag. “You’ll get your chance, boys, your time’s going to come. Just get through that fence and form back up.”
“Something’s got into them,” Terry said. “Not sure they’ll be bridled again, once we turn ’em loose.”
The men rushed the fence, funneling through a gap, breaking down more gaps, or climbing over the rails in their impatience.
Hurrying to assuage some terrible need, the Yankees marching into the fight still showed no awareness that they were about to be gobbled. The bluecoats were formed up smartly, advancing at right-shoulder-shift, as if on parade.
“So much for all those reports of militia and mules,” Gordon said. “Let those Federals clear the slope, then advance, once you’re formed up.”
But the time for orders had passed. A pack of hungry dogs smelling fresh meat, Terry’s men began to run down the slope toward the Yankees. Somebody yelled “Charge!”
“What the devil?” Terry demanded.
Hundreds of men poured over and through the fence, joining the attack. It was the wildest thing that Terry had ever seen. But he had his orders, his sense of how things should go, and he rode forward to halt them, to beat them back into their proper formation.
Gordon caught up with him.
“Not going to stop them now,” he said. “You were right, they won’t be bridled.”
Terry’s Virginians raised a Rebel yell.
4:40 p.m.
Thomas farm
“Yanks are running,” Ive Summerlin hollered.
Nichols saw it, too, the sudden breaking up of the line of shadows, the individual flights.
He felt relief, immense relief, as if he had just stopped running after ten miles. Exhausted. He wanted to sit down. His leg decided to hurt again.
“Let’s go. Get them sumbitches!” somebody shouted. And they all plunged forward, into the torn smoke, howling. Nichols screamed, too, running along with the others.
It was all so sudden, so reasonless. They had stood there killing each other, as though they would just keep shooting until all but a last one was dead and maybe him, too. Then the Yanks broke.
Some tried to resist even now, but were clubbed down, shot down, run through. Others raised their hands where they stood, faces fearful—faces that surely had worn murderous looks spare minutes before. Ive Summerlin shot a Yank in the belly before the man could get his hands high enough. And they kept running, stumbling over the wounded and dead, even kicking them out of the way, charging down the slope through drifts of smoke. Ahead: a confusion of Yankees, shrieking horses, stray commands.
“Git ’em, git ’em!”
The Yanks weren’t done, not quite. Nichols ran past herded prisoners, men made sheep, past individual combats like wrestling matches at the fair, only without rules, and he came up short just as a Federal line, ragged but still standing, fired from the far side of a road.
The volley felled Rebs and their prisoners alike.
The blue-bellies yelled, “Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania!”
A nearby voice, Louisiana-toned, said, “I’ll give them shit-eating bastards Pennsylvania.…”
Nichols’ own kind formed up again, with amazing rapidity, even though no officers were near. He joined a line of strangers and near strangers, faces he knew but couldn’t quite slap a name on. In seconds, men had reloaded, raised their rifles, and fired into the blue line, just as the Yankees unleashed a volley of their own.
Men fell. The smoke thickened again.
A Yankee officer rode right between the two lines, galloping up the road, crazed, or perhaps carried along by a runaway horse. Men fired at him, but he eluded the bullets. Then he was gone, a wisp, and the men on foot went back to slaying one another.
Nichols loaded and fired, reached down into his cartridge box again—and found it empty. He knelt to snatch cartridges from a Federal lying open-eyed and still, but had no sooner bent than a fresh volley felled the soldiers who had stood to either side of him.
Nichols looked from one fallen man to the other, a broom-bearded sergeant pawing the air and a fair boy writhing. It made him want to stand up and shout at the Yankees, “You’re whipped. We whipped you, fair and square. Why don’t you quit?”
As if his outrage had willed it, the last Yankee line began to dissolve. Brave men ran. Men in gray seemed to be everywhere now, rushing up from the left, even appearing behind the last clots of resisting Yankees.
Men threw down their rifles and raised their hands. Wherever a Yankee officer tried to bring off his men, he was quickly shot. Still, the killing dragged on down in the hollows.
It was over, though. Some men just didn’t have the sense to see it. Or the Christian strength to bear defeat. But for all the shooting and shouting that continued, a fellow just knew that things had finished up, the way you knew the blood was all drained out of a strung-up hog.
Nichols stood. Dumbly. Out of worldly ambition of any kind.
There were Yankee prisoners in numbers enough to work all the fields in Georgia. Powder-blackened men with sour expressions, some weeping, though not from fright or weakness, a man could tell that. Their fear of death had passed, replaced by lesser dreads.
A broken-toothed fellow in brown homespun came smiling up to Nichols, long, greased hair gone thin and hanging below a black hat a witch might have worn in a picture book.
“Who’re you with, there, sonny?”
“Sixty-first Georgia,” Nichols said proudly, defiantly. “Evans’ Brigade, General Gordon’s Division.”
The ugly mouth cackled and formed new words: “Bet y’all glad Ramseur come to save you, ain’t you now?”
Nichols knocked the man down.
5:30 p.m.
Thomas farm
Early dismounted on the crest, amid the dead and dying.
“Stay in the saddle, Sandie,” he said. His voice carried no hint of sorrow or remorse, only cold determination. “You ride off yourself, send out couriers. Tell all of them—Gordon, Ramseur, Rodes–I said not to get carried away. No more prisoners, I can’t herd any more. Let them run off, I don’t choose to be encumbered. This army already favors a band of gypsies.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“Tell McCausland he may find the road to Washington open now, if he cares to look. And if he doesn’t mind too awfully much, I’d appreciate him doing what I goddamned well ordered that fool to do this morning. He’s to get on down that road and keep on going.”
“I believe he’s already dispatched most of his command, sir.”
“Tell him to send off the rest.”
“They’re caring for their wounded.”
“Let somebody else do it. God almighty, I’m going to get some use out of his clapped-up jockeys yet.” He chewed a cud that wasn’t there, a ghost of old tobacco. “Any word from Johnson?”
“No, sir. But he should be a good ways along now, putting a scare in folks.”
Early tested a fallen Yankee with the tip of his boot. “He won’t get within fifty miles of Point Lookout.” He pondered for a moment. “Crazy idea. No sense being too hard on Johnson on that count, fool though he may be. You go on now.”
Early squatted. The way common soldiers did when they were about to loot a corpse. But he didn’t touch the body, only looked at it—the hole in the temple nearly the size of a dollar, the blood darkened almost brown, the lazy flies, gorged, feasted, surfeited.
“Damned Sixth Corps. Looks like someone in Washington done woke up.” He lifted his eyes to the staff men gathered around. “Going to have to get an early start tomorrow morning.”
5:30 p.m.
Baltimore road, east of the Stone Bridge
Wallace could not speak at first, but needed to calm himself and catch his breath from the pounding ride. He had been relieved to find General Tyler and his men exactly where they were supposed to be, but the level of firing just across the river, toward Frederick, suggested that few were apt to be there much longer.
Wearing a harried look, Erastus Tyler waited for his superior to speak first.
“Well, we’ve lost,” Wallace said.
Tyler nodded.
“We’ve lost, but we cost them a day. A full day.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ras, you must hold the bridge, keep the Rebels from crossing. This road’s all we have left. Ricketts put up a remarkable fight, we can’t let his survivors be cut off.”
Tyler, too, appeared wearied. Stained. Not just with the salt that collected from a man’s sweat, but by life. They all were.
“Do my best, sir. Men held fine all day. Only a few ran off. But they’re tired now. Unsteady.”
“We’re all tired.”
“Just telling you the truth, sir. They will not hold against a determined attack. Some will fight, but not enough. And not long enough. Not with everybody else running. Panic’s catching, you know that.”
And running his men were, Wallace had to face it. He had waited too long to withdraw, zealous for each additional minute, tallying the hours as a child might, selfish, blinded. When he left the battlefield, with Ross tugging his mount’s bridle to make him go, he had fled a debacle, with his own men disappearing and Ricketts’ remaining soldiers all but surrounded.
Ricketts. The Republic owed that man a debt.
And Alexander had brought off his guns. Even that howitzer.
Not everyone had quit, there had been heroes. Many of them. And officers were still out there, along the line of retreat, attempting to lead the remnants of companies and regiments amid the confusion and the Rebel pursuit, to save what could be saved.
Wallace knew that he needed to move on himself, to rally as many men as he could, to gather numbers sufficient to block the road to Baltimore at whatever point presented itself, to fight again. In case he had been wrong about that, too, and Early planned on burning the docks and warehouses, the rail yards and the arsenal.
He had to see to countless tasks, but he only slumped in the saddle, allowing himself a stolen moment of rest, overtaken by the day, overwhelmed at last. He just wanted to sleep. Between clean sheets.
How many men had his obstinacy killed? And how many of those deaths had been unnecessary, offerings made too late to affect the result, men left to die when he should have begun to clear the field and spare what lives he could?
Selfishness. Pride. Vainglory. So many sins were disguised by the fine word duty.
Waking himself, Wallace told Tyler, “I’m depending on you, Ras. Hold the bridge. As long as you can. Do your best. Give me two hours. One hour.”
And Wallace turned back toward his shattered army.
7:00 p.m.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, east of Monocacy Junction
Ricketts and his staff followed the rail line. The Reb pursuit appeared to have slackened and the men let their winded horses slow to a walk for a stretch.
He had waited too long, making the wrong guesses toward the end. The Rebs had overwhelmed them, that was true. But Ricketts already saw the things he might have done differently. Would do differently. Another time.
Would he be allowed another time? With his wrecked division?
He hoped that Wallace had escaped the Rebs. The damned fool. A damned fool, and a good man. For any blunders he might have made, Wallace had done a dozen and more things right. He had seen what needed doing and had done it, where a timid man, one thinking of his career, would have found excuses so convincing they were sure to get him promoted. Together, they had bought a day for Washington. And bloodied Early’s army.
His own losses were terrible, though. He would not know the true numbers for days, as soldiers left to save themselves filtered back in to their commands, as they always did. But the numbers would be grim, not least those taken prisoner. He barely had escaped himself, refusing his staff’s entreaties to ride off until the Rebels had almost boxed them in. He believed that Truex had gotten off the field, too. But the toll of regimental officers looked to be crippling.
They passed a slump-shouldered group of soldiers—his men, judging by their hard-worn uniforms. Most had brought off their rifles, but not all of them.
“You men gave them the devil today,” Ricketts told them. “And we’ll give them the devil again, when we have the chance.”
“Strikes me the Devil got his own both ways,” a wag called out. “Any of you officers got a spare beefsteak?”
That was all right. When men could joke, it meant they were not broken. The division had been shattered, but not destroyed. The men would come in. And those two missing regiments would be found, with hell to pay when he found the man responsible for their absence from the field.
He worried a bit about his future, but not overly much. He had been the subordinate, and his division had fought handsomely. He was unlikely to bear any blame. But it had been, after all, a defeat—no matter its contribution—and the entire effort might be portrayed as foolhardy by those safe behind mahogany desks in Washington.
He was unlikely to suffer any consequences. But Wallace? No breed of man was more vindictive than those who shied from battle in the rear. If Wallace had enemies, this would be their hour.
Off to the right, ahead of them, firing erupted.
“Best pick up the pace, sir,” an aide counseled.
9:30 p.m.
Thomas farm
Nichols sat. It was all he could do, all he wanted to do, to the extent he felt any least desire to do anything. He had eaten, Yankee food, of which there was plenty. Brined pork, beans, and crackers without weevils. He had eaten like a machine, spooning up the food steadily, not tasting much, filling the empty space in his belly as if that might fill the other emptiness.
After he had knocked down Ramseur’s man, the 61st Georgia and the 12th Georgia Battalion were ordered to stop where they were and leave chasing Yankees to others. Wandering back a stretch over the field, he had come upon Tom Nichols of Company A, a namesake but no kin. Tom’s brains were hanging out of his temple, and the wounded man pawed one-handed at the slops, either trying to shove them back in or brush them away from his skull. Nichols knelt down to see if there was anything he could do, trying not to show the horror he felt, and helped Tom to a drink from his canteen. It was almost as if Tom had already turned hant, for he seemed to feel no pain. He still had a scrap of his wits, though.
“If I can get back to Virginia,” the dying man declared, “just get back to Virginia … get me a horse…” His eyes met Nichols’, but it was beyond knowing what Tom really saw. “Never going to cross the Potomac again, never going to cross the Potomac again, never.” He went back to smearing his brains across his temple.
Nichols sat with him until a pair of litter bearers appeared to take him to a field surgery. It was clear from their looks, from any expertise they had acquired, that Tom was a goner. But Nichols had already known that.
“… a horse…,” Tom said, the last words Nichols heard from him.
He meant to pray thereafter, to thank the Lord for delivering him this day, but he kept putting it off. After trying to banter with him, to cheer him, Lem Davis and Dan Frawley had let him alone, just keeping watch on his doings from a distance. He didn’t resent that, didn’t feel anything about it. When Tom Boyet fetched his blanket roll and haversack for him, setting both down by his side, he had lacked the means, the courtesy, to thank him.
Nichols wanted to see his mother again. He wanted to live that long. Tom would not live that long.
He knew he should be thankful that so many of his brethren, his close brethren, had survived. But he felt the death of Lieutenant Colonel Valkenburg unreasonably, deeply, seeing him fall from his saddle again and again, until it was maddening. And Colonel Lamar, too, it didn’t seem fair. He hoped the colonel had died in grace, forgiven his last profanities. Lieutenant Mincy stuck in his thoughts as well, although it was told he might live to drink coffee again, surviving his third wound, a blessing. Nichols meant to pray for Mincy, too. And for General Evans, who also promised to live. But it was just too hard to move, to part his lips.
He sat in the gloaming, shirking his duty to help out with the wounded, his own kind and the Yankees.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said suddenly, speaking out loud. “It’s a terrible thing.”
But had a man asked, he could not have told him what that terrible thing was.
When the roll was called, in the virgin dark, the 61st Georgia, which had gone into battle with one hundred and fifty men, answered with fifty-two voices.