Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (11 page)

“Don’t drink that canteen dry,” he told a youthful soldier. “You’re going to want water long before you see another well.” He sought to balance his tone between authority and bantering, something he had never fully mastered. Artillerymen did not jabber like the infantry.

“Stay down, stay down now.”

When the firing ceased down at the ford, he had known it was only a matter of minutes before the Rebs came at them. He was almost surprised at their slowness. Waving off another assault of black flies, he halted his horse. Facing the house beyond the cornfield.

And there they were: emerging from the trees, men who had become his mortal enemies because of pride and political skullduggery, darkies and busybodies. Most of the Rebs were on foot. Those who rode soon dismounted.

The officers were easy to spot: They were the only men who remained in the saddle.

Well, they wouldn’t stay mounted for long.

His men could see nothing from their hides, nor could they hear much, if anything, but they tightened as one—he felt it like a sudden temperature change—sensing the approach of battle, as veterans did.

Ricketts had nothing more to say to them, not until it was time for the fateful order. He didn’t want to move his lips, to appear to be giving commands, in case some Reb was eyeing him through a spyglass. Let them wonder why an old fool in a blue suit was sitting on a horse, alone in a dried-out grainfield in the heat. Just let them wonder.

And let them come on, straight through that corn, he begged of any higher power that could hear. James B. Ricketts was not much given to prayer, but he asked for help now:
Lord, let them come straight on.

11:20 a.m.

The Worthington house yard

The men near McCausland hurried about, full of purpose but still a tad shocked at the order that there would be no horse-holders this time. Every mount was to be tied to a tree or fence, while every cavalryman in the brigade would go into battle as an infantryman. McCausland was certain that the illusion of infantry formations on their flank would be all it took to set the blue-bellies running for their mothers’ teats.

He nodded at his reassembled colonels. “Brigade front. Two lines. Every flag held high—you tell your boys to wave ’em and wave ’em hard.” He pointed across the cornfield. Just beyond it, a lone Yankee horseman sat watching them. Well, let him have a good look and warn his Sunday-soldiers what was coming.

Probably a few more Yankees about, he figured, vedettes out on the flank. Maybe the same turn-tails who’d run down at the ford.

“Midway through that cornfield, order your men to the double-quick. And I want them hooting and hollering. Those blue-bellies need to hear us long before they see us, let ’em think it’s Doomsday and the legions of Hell are swarming.” His expression turned as cold as the day was hot. “We’re going to show Old Jubilee how Virginia Cavalry fight. Y’all get moving.”

Three of four colonels saluted and strode toward their mounts. Only Tavenner hesitated.

“Shouldn’t we send a few boys forward to scout things?” the colonel asked. “See what all might be out there?”

McCausland felt his expression turn downright cruel. “Worried about a few militia, W.C.?”

11:40 a.m.

Ricketts’ skirmish line

Flags flying, God help them. Everything but a brass band. The Confederates had dressed their two ranks as if on parade, stepped their colors forward, and come straight on, every officer mounted. It was a glorious spectacle, and it was absolute folly.

Ricketts held his horse steady and kept his expression steadier. Every man along his line looked in his direction, the soldiers flat on the ground and wed to their rifles, the officers kneeling or crouching low—Ricketts was damned well going to court-martial any idiot who popped up for a look at what was coming.

And the Rebs … they hadn’t even sent skirmishers ahead. They just prettied up those two long lines and advanced.

Their first rank marched into the corn, filling their little portion of the world with a thrashing, crashing noise that seemed to rival the artillery duel to Ricketts’ rear. The flag-bearers waved their banners like frantic signalers.

One officer caught Ricketts’ eye: He rode forward with one hand cocked on his hip, deigning to draw neither sword nor pistol, as disdainful as a schoolmarm catching out dunces.

The thrashing in the cornfield grew louder as the second rank entered the stalks.

Going to be an early harvest, Ricketts thought.

He knew he had them, but even so, the spectacle of their advance sent a quiver through him.

Then the dab of fear was gone again and there were only those brave, doomed lines, pushing through the crotch-covering corn, rifles held abreast now, their order disturbed by the resistance of the stalks.

He began to feel a child’s impatience, yearning to order his men to their feet, to spring his surprise. He
ached
to do it. But he needed to wait until the very last moment.

And if a Reb sharpshooter dropped him first? There were plentiful reasons to shout the order immediately, with the Johnnies already in range.

Rabbits dashed under the fence and through his line, startling his waiting men. One of the creatures leapt over a sergeant’s shoulders.

Just wait now, Ricketts told his men without speaking. Just wait a little longer.

The Reb officers pointed the way with lofted swords, riding before, beside, and among their men, between regiments, between ranks. Proud, such proud men. Pride had made this war, Ricketts told himself for perhaps the thousandth time. All of this death and destruction was just about pride.

One Southern voice called out and dozens of officers repeated the command. “Double-quick … march!”

The rustling in the cornfield swelled. The Rebs began yelling and howling. Smaller animals fled the approaching waves, field mice and distraught squirrels. A bewildered fox ran by.

He felt his soldiers clench tighter and tighter. The officers looked toward him, expressions demanding, “What the hell are you waiting for, you old fool?”

No, not demanding. Pleading.

Ricketts refused to move the smallest muscle.

He could see the names of battles embroidered on the advancing, shot-through flags, but couldn’t quite read them. Faces grew distinct.

He waited, counting the seconds.

He could not see the whites of their eyes, only glittering darkness under hat brims.

He raised his hand sharply, pointing at the Rebs.

“On your feet!
Fire!
”

The officers sprang up, followed by their men. Even before his orders could be repeated, they were obeyed. The officers shouted:

“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

But these men, his men, had learned how to kill. Instead of shooting urgently and wildly, they rested their rifles on the top fence rail, taking an extra brace of seconds to aim.

When the volleys rippled out, the Confederate lines disappeared.

Riderless horses galloped in every direction. Flags drooped and fell, blanketing cornstalks. A few officers remained mounted, shouting orders. His men did their best to shoot them.

Here and there, a grayback rose and ran like hell for the farmhouse. A few stood and fired toward the fence, but too quickly, too shaken to aim. Out there, in that burnt green field, men were crawling in agony, others just skedaddling, low to the ground. Even at Cold Harbor … or at Spotsylvania … Ricketts had never seen so swift a repulse.

More Rebs were up and running now. Ricketts’ men sent up a cheer, a roar. But they kept on firing, even as some hotheads leapt the fence to charge after the Rebels.

“Call those boys back!” Ricketts shouted. “Get them back here right now!”

Even as he issued the command, one of his soldiers, swift and sure, collared a staggering Rebel in midfield. Discipline left something to be desired, but enthusiasm counted, too.

Royal flush on the first hand, Ricketts told himself. More hands still to play.

11:50 a.m.

Worthington farm

Tiger John McCausland rode among his fleeing soldiers, screaming at them.

“Goddamn you, damn you, god
damn
you … stop your running … stop, goddamn you, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

He pointed his pistol at one man after another, but did not pull the trigger. Men fled into the grove behind the house or leapt yard fences. Some halted in the trees or sheltered behind outbuildings, but others, too many, raced back down the hill up which they’d come. A few soldiers hunted their horses, as if they expected to be allowed to ride off.

McCausland fired into the air. “I’ll shoot the man who doesn’t stand and fight.”

The last escapees from the cornfield limped and staggered, hatless, weaponless, blood-drenched. Some of them looked at him insolently, as if to say, “Go ahead and shoot, you sonofabitch.”

It only made McCausland that much angrier—regretting that he had not pulled the trigger on the unwounded men who’d behaved as craven cowards.

Hen Bowen rode up beside him. There was blood on the colonel’s face, but he seemed able. Bowen’s horse bled, too.

“General …
General McCausland
 … they’ll rally, they’re just spooked … give them some time.”

“We don’t
have
any goddamned time.”

“Just let me and Jimmy rally our boys, they’ll be all right. W.C. and Milt are rounding up theirs.”

“God
damn
it, Hen. If Early hears…”

“He’s done a sight worse himself. Whupped by a pack of coons back of Spotsylvania.” Bowen smiled grimly. “Think he’ll live that down?”

McCausland was in no mood to be appeased. Yet he calmed sufficiently to lower his pistol, panting in the weariness left by fury. But when he considered the inevitable jokes about his nickname, “Old Tiger John turned out to be a house cat” and the like, rage boiled his complexion again.

“Then you damned well rally those yellow sonsofbitches. Damn them all to Hell, they’re going back in.”

“Just give us a little time, sir.” The colonel wiped at his sweat, smearing the blood across his face. “The boys were just surprised, you know how that goes. Even the best troops lose all sense, you give them a good enough shock. They’ll remember themselves and be shamed till they’re mean as hornets.”

“They’d damned well better be,” McCausland told the regimental commander. “Because we’re going to rip the living hearts out of those Yankee bastards.”

Noon

Gordon’s Division, south of Frederick

“How’s that leg getting on?” Sergeant Alderman asked Nichols.

“Tolerable, Sergeant. A sight better.”

“I don’t want to see you on canteen detail again. Unless I tell you to go myself. Hear?”

“Lookee there,” Dan Frawley interrupted. “Jest you look. Yanks are holding on, all right. Smoke an’t backed up one bit.”

Lem Davis shrugged. It wasn’t his fight, at least not yet. Fingering his thornbush beard, he renewed the earlier conversation. “I
still
say the finest goobers come from down in Sumter County. And I’ll hear no man defy me.”

“Eat some now, I had some,” Tom Boyet put in.

“Think we feed ’em to the Yanks at Andersonville?” Nichols asked.

“Maybe the shells,” Ive Summerlin said.

As if by mutual compact, the sprawled and sitting men looked across the river again, pleased to have the rare chance to sit out a battle and watch.

“I don’t see any real fussing,” Ive offered.

“That there was my point, what I said.” Frawley took off his straw hat. The rim looked mule-et. His long red hair appeared cooked, like it had started out maybe brown and boiled up in the heat. He wiped his forehead with a big, scarred hand. “Nary a man seems hurried worth the mention, just picking and pecking. End up camping right here tonight, things don’t soon start to going.” He considered the prospect. “Tad far to fetch water.” He placed his hat back atop his roasted skin.

Sergeant Alderman slapped at a fly bothering his neck. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves, boys. I expect we’ll be eating dust again, headed for Washington. Once they stop their fool play over there.”

Down where the hidden river had to be, black smoke rose, a contrast to the paler smoke of rifle fire.

“Something’s burning,” Tom Boyet said.

“Yanks are smart,” Lem Davis said, “they’ll burn themselves any bridges fit to light.”

“Might be that,” Boyet agreed. He was the smallest of them, but for Nichols. Made tight, though.

“Time to boil up another pot?” Frawley asked Alderman.

The sergeant smiled, which was ever something of an occasion. “How many pots you done cooked up with that dirt you pretend is grounds?”

The sergeant’s easy tone reassured them all. This time, they might just watch other men die.

Nichols had found the talk an oddity as his brethren observed the battle, calculating its course from rising smoke, the noise of the firing, and the occasional glimpse of troops. There had been a good fuss on the right, when a burst of gray smoke had risen above a fringe of trees on the high ground, with plenty of shooting to go along as fixings, but that hadn’t lasted five minutes. The rest of the doings just sounded like more skirmishing, the rifle noise going up and down, without a muchness of guns to give things a shake. His comrades had commented on the fighting as calmly as if sizing up hogs at an auction, almost uncaring about who had the advantage. It was as if they felt duty-bound to be fair, like a prizefight judge come in on the train from Atlanta. They didn’t cheer on their own kind particularly, or damn the Yankees like revival preachers. Lem and Dan, Ive and Tom, they just took it all in, appreciating the finer points of the scrap, like a town man savoring a fat store-bought cigar.

Nichols had prayed another selfish prayer, the kind you weren’t supposed to send to the Lord. He asked that they truly be allowed to rest this day, that just this once other men might bear the burden. His leg remained swollen and discolored, black, purple, and jaundice yellow, although the skin was a little less tight and the lump seemed smaller, if hardened. He had asked Elder Woodfin, the regiment’s chaplain, to look it over the night before, since surgeons weren’t to be trusted. They had prayed together, and Elder Woodfin had assured him that his leg would be fine.