Raintree County (99 page)

After a while, he was alone in dense timber. He didn't remember how he had come there. Sunlight fell down through broad trunks. He walked among gray stones covered with lichen. He lay down and listened to distant cries, explosions, his own hoarse breath. He didn't know how long he had been there. He opened his canteen and took a drink. Down the slope, he could see clear to the base of the ridge. Waves of tiny soldiers breasted the small hills. Cannon inched forward. Bits of bright color advanced. A motionless speck of blue or gray marked where a man had fallen.

Later he was up and walking again. The pale air, streaked with sunlight, had the look of late afternoon under deep trees. After a while he was standing in bushes on the rim of a deep cut.

In a sunflooded, open space here, amazing things were happening. Half a dozen Confederate guns had been parked below. Some of the artillerists were still methodically working their pieces. Others were trying to get away. Horses whinnied and kicked in the traces. The holders cursed and pulled. Officers shouted commands. Thick smoke and the stench of powder filled the air.

All around the cut Federal soldiers closed in, firing and yelling.

One dropped down from a rock near where Johnny was standing and ran toward the nearest gun. The crew had just begun to pull their piece out to a road. The Union soldier fired as he ran, and one of the men fell. A boy sitting on the lead horse raised a pistol and fired back. The Rebel artillerists, seeing that it was one soldier only, closed in on him, one with a rammer, another with a pistol, a third with a sword, like men who knew what they were doing and were sure of the result. The Union soldier broke through them, ran to the gun and onehanded himself clear over the barrel. He turned swinging his musket, teeth bared in the sunlight.

It was Flash Perkins.

—Come on, you sons-a-bitches! he yelled. Come on, you——

Every Rebel in the vicinity accepted the challenge. Johnny ran forward along with several other Unionists.

It was like a race. A battery officer in immaculate uniform stood ten feet from the gun, backing toward it and calmly loading a pistol with practiced fingers, while he kept darting his eyes around to appraise his chances. An officer with a sword ran at Flash from the other side of the gun. Flash swung his musket. Johnny heard the dull clunk of butt on skull. The officer's sword was pinned hanging through the cloth in Flash's coat under the left arm. Bullets sang on the parked gun. Two of the artillerists fell. Flash onehanded over to the other side of the gun.

The Rebel officer with the pistol threw it down and backed around the cannon away from Flash. He put up his hands.

—Prisoner.

A half-dozen Rebels were beginning to fire from farther up the hill on the Unionists clustered around the captured gun. Johnny and Flash crouched behind the prize. Balls spanged on the gunmetal. More and more soldiers in blue came up through the woods, and the Rebels retired all along the line.

The captured artillerist leaned on the gun and took out a pipe.

—Pretty sharp scrapping, he said.

He had a cultivated, amiable voice.

—Either you Yanks got a light?

A brigadier general rode by waving his sword, smiling and violently shaking his head.

—Great work, boys! Fine work! We've got 'em whipped now. Make for that crest, and plant your flags on it.

—Go to the rear, Johnny said to the captured officer. Keep your hands up, and you won't get hurt.

A man came by carrying a regimental flag.

—There's our flag! Flash said to Johnny. Let's go up with it.

He and Flash went up the slope with the flag. Johnny had a terrible headache, and his nose was bleeding. They were only a little way from the top. There was a road up there, and a disorganized mob of Rebel wagons and troops retreated down it.

On the crest of the ridge the regiment raised its flag. Johnny looked down over the ground they had covered. On the wide fanlike sweep of the battle area, he could see troops and guns coming up. Apparently, he and Flash were at the crest of the fighting, first to the summit.

—Give a cheer, boys, an officer said.

They cheered. Other cheers broke out along the ridge. Flags were waving farther down the line.

—We whupped 'em, Jack! Flash said.

He grabbed Johnny's shoulders and shook him. He capered and jumped. Soldiers were hitting each other on the backs and shaking hands. Some were crying.

—Godamighty! Flash said. Raintree County captured a cannon!

They followed the Rebels for a while, but both sides were disorganized, the one by defeat, the other by victory. Around sundown, the Unionists stopped on the far side of the ridge, trying to reform units. The men lay down and rested. But there was a new outbreak of cheering as a General rode down the lines waving to the men.

—It's Grant!

—
RRRRRRRRAAAAAAA
!

—Good old Ulyss!

General Grant smiled. He stopped at the place where Flash and Johnny were standing, pointed toward a road, said something to his staff.

—How about it, Ulyss! Flash said. We took 'em for yuh, didn't we!

The men stood around.

—Three cheers for General Grant.

They cheered.

—Good fight, men, the little General said. Reform your units, and pursue the Enemy. Don't give 'em any rest.

Out of his blackstubbled beard stuck the stump of a dead cigar. He looked quite unmoved by the victory. As he rode on down the lines, the men continued to cheer.

—Where are the other boys? Flash said.

—Jesse and Tom Conway got hit, Johnny said.

He lay down by the campfire. He had tied a wet bandage around his head. He was too sick and tired to eat. His head whirred, sang, pounded with the violence of the charge.

Twenty million hands, generations of strong hands, had pushed him up that slope. He had reached the crest of Missionary Ridge on a wave of history. Here at this vital place, the thin, tough line of the South had suffered an hour of weakness and confusion, and several thousand stronglegged young men had broken through to the top of a mountain. Perhaps at last far down the roads receding south, where the wreck of the Rebel Army retreated, a man with good eyesight could see the white shape of Victory.

Corporal Johnny Shawnessy ceased to know anything about that. He was still appalled at the fury of that long charge up Missionary Ridge. He desperately yearned for home, for the soft arms of a woman who loved him and to whom he was a precious, irreplaceable person. Hadn't he done enough for the Cause, now that he was a veteran of both defeat and victory?

What he could never get used to was the fact that War was the supreme image of Chance, brutal god of the battle casualty. With a blind sowing of gold seed in the swamp of life, life had begun. With a blind sowing of lead seed in the confusion of battle, life ended.

He began to feel a little better after he had eaten something, and he sat and talked and joked with the others, who were beginning to relive the Battle. Every man had taken Missionary Ridge in a different way. The victory had been twenty thousand separate fights. The Battle of Missionary Ridge was only now beginning to be created in the shared images of the twenty thousand men who had gone from base to summit in the forever lost afternoon of the physical fighting.

Later on, that night, Johnny saw a longlegged figure striding through the lines, looking everywhere among the resting soldiers. It was the Perfessor. His face was haggard and anxious.

—Hi, Professor, Johnny said.

The Perfessor stopped and peered at Johnny's bandaged head in the dusk.

—My God, John, is that you?

His voice was peculiarly high. He sat down on the ground beside Johnny and took a long time to light a cigar, cupping his hands around it.

—I see you got through all right, he said.

—I'm all right except for a bang on the head.

The Perfessor made his cigar glow and took his hands away from his face. He was darting his eyes about in his usual manner.

—It's a great victory, he said. Thousands of prisoners taken. Bragg won't be able to stop this side of Atlanta. Hello, Perkins. Surprised you had any fight left in you, after the other night.

—How are the dames? Flash said.

—You know terrible girls, Orville, the Perfessor said. You boys'll have to pardon me. I have to file some dispatches. How many men lost in your regiment?

—No telling, yet, Johnny said.

—Losses not very heavy for the results achieved, the Perfessor said, as if making a note. This will be great news. The siege of Chattanooga broken! Bragg in wild, disorderly retreat! The Gateway to the South opened to our armies! With his mailed fist, the Hero of Vicksburg smote one——

—Save it for the newspapers, Professor, Johnny said.

—Could one of you boys swipe me a horse? the Perfessor said. Some Confederate nag no one else wants?

Later the Perfessor got a horse and rode off toward Chattanooga.

All night in his sleep, Johnny Shawnessy was pressing up a long slope. All night long in the gray and red figuration of the dream, he was trying to reach the crest of a hill. The pale bodies of a thousand soldiers were scattered on the gray-green slopes of his sleep. The bloody fragments of the day

TRIED VAINLY TO COMPLETE THEMSELVES
IN THE TROUBLED CAVES OF
HIS

—M
EMORIES
of the Republic in War and Peace, the Senator was saying, which, by the way, I propose to make the title of a modest work of mine soon to be published—flood the soul on such a day as this. Sacred memories of other days they are, and perhaps it has been fitting to linger, as I have done, a little among some, the most sacred and significant, the common heritage of our people.

The Senator had been speaking for an hour to frequent applause. During this time he had discovered America (How many of you are aware that this is the quadricentennial anniversary of the discovery of America by the Prince of Explorers?), established the thirteen colonies (O, proud peoples, bringing in frail barks across the perilous sea the inextinguishable fire of freedom to virgin shores . . .), fought and won three wars (Did she ever bare her sword in other than a righteous cause?), composed and proclaimed two of the greatest documents in the literature of human enlightenment (Two of the greatest documents in the literature of human enlightenment!), exterminated the Indian (We must honor his stoical endeavor to keep his savage empire, but the forces of freedom, enlightenment, and civilization have pushed irresistibly on. . . .), and conquered the wilderness, the great plains, the desert, and the mountains (These ships of the interminable seas of waving grass bore in their ribbed and canvas-covered walls—burning unquenchably—the spark of. ..).

Now the Senator was approaching one of his celebrated climaxes. The Perfessor was frankly asleep. Mr. Shawnessy, impressed by the splendor of the Senator's delivery, was attempting to analyze what it was that made the Senator a magnificent ham instead of a great statesman. He had nevertheless been moved by the Senator's discourse, which was mannered and proportioned like classical inscriptions wherein the history of vanished peoples is preserved. Who then, after all, was the greater poet? Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy, the maker of a huge manuscript that might never see print, or Senator Garwood B. Jones, whose utterance was the living breath of history applauded by millions?

—If we must choose one word, the Senator was saying, if we must
seek out and sanctify a solitary epithet to express the spirit of our generation, the slogan of our Republic in the last fifty years, what would it be? Who that has beheld this epic of the forging of a nation from ocean unto ocean can doubt the answer! Forward the course of empire has advanced, the manifest destiny of a great people, riding the winds of Fate, with Courage for the arms and Freedom for the goal. What word shall describe this pilgrimage of peoples toward the setting sun? There is but one word to fit the scenes that we have seen in fifty years. Yesterday—the desolate, windswept prairie; today—the mighty City with broad boulevards and costly monuments. Yesterday—the rocky, inhospitable coast; today—the great ports filled with shipping. Yesterday—a race in chains; today—the dusky children of emancipation with faces set hopefully to the future. Only by a Union of Free Peoples, One Nation Indivisible, could we have achieved this thing. Under the banner of that God who has never forsaken our people in their hour of need, we shall go on, good soldiers in the cause of freedom, and on our banners, as we pass through burning shards of barbarous superstition and down broad roads of splendid and serene fulfillment, we shall bear a single word emblazoned for all the world to see——

because of the hundreds of supply wagons. There could be no question about it—the Army was getting out.

—Hey, Jimmy, one of the drivers called to another, I wish we could stay and see the fun.

—The engineers have all the luck.

—Goin' to be one hell of a big wreckin' party.

The foodbringers of the Army whipped on their horses. The long files kept turning into the street that debouched from the yards.

Johnny and Professor Stiles could see thick ganglia of tracks a block away. They walked on and stopped beside a bank on the corner at the edge of the yards. They were in sight of the depot. Several companies of infantry were laying levers to a length of track.

—All together, heave! yelled a cheeryvoiced sergeant.

With a reluctant shriek, the rail came ripping, up-ending ties. A thin dust drifted. The Perfessor got out his sketch book and began to draw. The destruction of Atlanta had begun.

Johnny Shawnessy stood for a while at the corner watching. He had seen a great deal since the day when, almost a year ago, a veteran of a single battle, he had charged up the slope of Missionary Ridge. Since then he had wintered in Chattanooga and had fought through one of the most exhausting campaigns in the history of warfare. Following the victory at Missionary Ridge, Grant had gone to the Eastern Theatre of Operations, where he had spent the summer in fruitless battles trying to crush Lee's army and take Richmond. Sherman had become the commander of the Armies of the West and in the spring had initiated a campaign to take Atlanta, Georgia. All summer his armies had fought and flanked from Chattanooga to Atlanta. On the first of September, the main arsenal-fortress of the Confederacy in the West had fallen. It was the first mortal crack in the South's armor.