Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (23 page)

Sheridan tapped his cigar. Beyond the fields and tented camps, a brilliant sunset promised a perfect morning. Rays gilded puddles left by the afternoon’s showers. The rain clouds had swarmed northwest, where Early, unsuspecting, had marched his men.

“I’ve thought that over,” Sheridan said. “Any soldier would. I expect little resistance, that’s the crux of it. Scout reports are encouraging, the risk’s worth taking. Go straight for the enemy’s heart while he’s got himself unbuttoned, don’t waste time. It’s a covered approach, as well, that’s half the beauty. Cavalry screen along the front for a good ten miles, while the infantry moves in a single column of fours. Surprise the hell out of them.”

“Phil, you’re counting on everything going right.”

“And it
will
go right.” He tasted the cigar again and winked. “When I saw Grant, the old plan was well enough. But to come back and learn that Early’s marched not one, but two, divisions away from Winchester … with another scattered and only Ramseur left … it’s almost enough to make this sinner believe in Providence.” He grinned. “If I can’t swallow Ramseur whole by nine a.m., tie me up and offer me to the Comanches.”

“Well, I’ll be cheering you on. From the rear of the army.”

Sheridan renewed his grin. “Somebody’s sour, after all. Come on, George. I’m keeping you as my reserve because I can count on you. Let Wright and Emory feast on Ramseur—if Emory’s even needed—and we’ll eat up Early’s other divisions piecemeal. Turn the cavalry loose in a great envelopment, it’s a solid plan.” He reached out and clapped the taller man on the shoulder. “Might send you in for the
coup de grâce,
we’ll see.”

“Speaking of the cavalry…,” Crook said. Along the lane that had taken the other commanders back to their corps, another troop of horsemen approached the plantation, a gay and glittering bunch, with one golden-locked officer waving a floppy hat and trailing a red scarf. Crook muttered, “When you explain the new plan to
them,
you’d best speak slowly.”

Sheridan laughed.

In their last moments alone, Crook said, “Just keep that road clear, Phil. Through the ‘canyon.’ Even if the provost marshal has to resort to bayonets.”

Sheridan cast off the stub of the cigar. “I’d say you sound like my mother, but the truth is she never worried about me much. A hard lot they were, my people.” He reinforced his grin a final time. “We’ll be all right, George. All wagons and impedimenta have been forbidden the road. Until the last of the infantry has passed.”

“Well, may the Devil be with you. I’m off to tend to my boys.” Crook paused. “Has Grant or Halleck—or anybody—decided on my command’s designation yet? Do I still command the Army of West Virginia, or are we the Eighth Corps now?”

Sheridan tut-tutted. “Still the old-Army stickler.… George, I don’t give a damn what you call your outfit. As long as those mountain-creepers of yours can fight.”

The cavalry generals and a bevy of colonels jingled and clanked into the carriage circle before the mansion, laughing and preening, as if they’d intercepted the Champagne wine Sheridan had sent to Berryville for the newspapermen. He’d dispatched a keg of the season’s first oysters, too, along with deft, dishonest hints about the army’s activities. The trick to dealing with newspaper fellows, Phil Sheridan had learned, was to treat them like kings, but keep them in the dark.

Tomorrow, he’d delight them with a victory.

EIGHT

September 19, 2:30 a.m.

Summit Point, east of Opequon Creek

“No,” Rud Hayes told his adjutant, “let them sleep.” With the handle wrapped in his handkerchief, he took up the coffeepot. “I won’t have my men standing in formation, waiting for orders I know won’t come for hours. We’re bringing up the rear, it’ll be a wait.” Yawning, he extended the pot. “Slurp of this fine mud, Russ?”

Dappled by the firelight, young Hastings waved off the coffee. “Just had some of Sergeant Bannister’s brew-up. Open a man’s eyes, I’ll give it that, sir.” He saluted and faded away between the tents, a man in search of a purpose, striving to fill Will McKinley’s shoes.

He’ll do, Hayes thought. Just needs a bit more tempering.

Squatting by the fire, Doc Joe spoke in the bantering tone he reserved for their moments alone. “Never going to make general, going easy on your men, Rud.” He grinned and showed a broken tooth that made him look more a ruffian than a surgeon. “You intend to pass that coffee over here?”

Hayes stepped around the fire and poured, savoring scent and steam. The day had been damp and the night was chill, a foreboding of October.

“Told you a hundred times now, Joe. If I never see a star, that’s fine with me.” He smiled back at his brother-in-law, who had followed him through the war and sewn him up more than once. “Not that I’d mind. But I’m content to be one of the good colonels.” He settled the pot beside the fire and took up his own cup, letting the fragrance complete the work of waking him.

“‘General’ would sound better at election time,” Joe said.

Hayes lifted an eyebrow. “Sure about that? The men have some colorful words for generals nowadays.”

Joe drank and grimaced. “Soldiers are always complaining—you should hear them waiting in line for sick call. Oh, sure enough, they curse the generals now. But after the war, they’ll adore them like pagan idols, wait and see.”

“After the war…,” Hayes mused. Heated by the coffee, the tin cup stung his lips.

“After the war, Grant’s going to be president, mark my words. Now…” Joe paused, drawing up his shoulders as if for a public speech, and Hayes knew what was coming. “You might want to show a little more gratitude to the folks back home. Win the election next month, there’d be no disgrace in resigning your commission, none whatsoever. Take your seat in Congress. Will of the people.”

Too quick a swallow scalded Hayes’ tongue and throat. But even pain reminded a man that he was still alive. After the worst of his wounds, suffered at South Mountain, he had learned to value each day.

Despite the half hour’s reprieve Hayes had meant to grant them, his men stirred in the darkness. His adjutant was trying to look out for him, to ensure he was not caught drawers-down, but the boy couldn’t feel the rhythm of command. Russ was a fine young man, loyal and brave, but he lacked McKinley’s finesse, the ability to read a commander’s mind and get a step ahead of things, the right things. Hayes missed Will. Nonetheless, it had only been right to send him to Crook’s staff, where he would have a greater chance of advancement. Lucy regarded Will, a hopeless mooncalf around the ladies, almost as another son. She had been pleased when Hayes wrote to tell her of McKinley’s new position.

He had almost killed Will at Kernstown, dispatching him to guide a stranded regiment back to safety. He had not expected to see him alive again. But after a suicidal gallop cheered on by the men, the boy had returned to his side, blackened by smoke and flashing his fine, white teeth. Will McKinley had earned his chance at promotion.

Well, Will was gone and Russ Hastings would come along. Meanwhile, Hayes wasn’t having any more of his brother-in-law’s ambitions for the family.

“Joe, I told the party boys back home that, if nominated, I would not go home to campaign. And that, if elected, I would not take my seat until the war ends. I mean to stand by that.”

“You’d do more good in Congress than here. No great shortage of colonels, Rud. You’d think the Army calved them.”

“Any man who resigns his commission for politics should be scalped.” The fire had failed, but embers glowed. Hayes gestured at the surrounding camp. “
They
can’t resign. Never seemed quite fair to me.”

Joe splashed the dregs of his coffee on the ground. “Rud, you’ve paid off any obligation you ever had. Wounded twice, seen your share of fighting.”

“Took me a while to learn how to do things right,” Hayes said. He still felt a rawness of tongue and throat from his hasty swallowing. “Figure I ought to put what I’ve learned to use.”

Joe dismissed that. “No one’s going to be grateful, Rud. Not even the soldiers, not really. All this talk of duty’s a disease of the mouth that’s infected men who know better. And don’t ever use the word
honor
around me, I’ve heard that one enough.
You
try being a surgeon amid this carnage. Trade places with me, and I’ll show you honor’s results and duty’s end.” He stabbed the fire’s remains with a stick. “I might as well have been a proper butcher and saved my pap the cost of an education. This Army’s a scheming, scrambling sack of scoundrels, angling for promotion at any cost. The only thing honor gets a man is killed.”

“Stranger might mistake you for a cynic, Joe.”

“Better you hear the truth from me, than read more of Emerson’s nonsense—was
he
ever in a war? Not that I know of. The men who write the books always stay at home.” He discarded the stick he’d used to torment the embers. “You’re a
western
man, Rud, you don’t need New England ‘wisdom,’ anyway. More coffee in there?”

Hayes poured the last of it for his brother-in-law. “I may be an Ohio man—and proud of it—but my family’s roots go deep in New England dirt. They’re not all fools up thataway.”

“Devil they aren’t. Or Harvard Law School would’ve taught you how to argue a better case with yourself. I’m not letting go of it. You’re going to win that election, you know you are, and you need to go to Congress. Damn them all, you should’ve gotten a general’s star after Kernstown.”

“They don’t give out promotions for defeats.”

“Or for fighting a rearguard action for nineteen miles? And whipping the Johnnies at the end of it all? You saved Crook’s whole damned army.”

“Lucy wouldn’t care for your language, Joe.”

They smiled at each other, knowingly and warmly.

“My sister’s a Methodist,” Joe noted. “I’m merely methodical.”

“Lucy…,” Hayes said, looking away. He set his tin cup on the ground and absently scratched the last of his summer boils. It had been a painful season in the saddle. And he’d had a bad round of poison ivy, too. First time in his life he’d been impatient for the cold to overtake him. “I do wish I could…”

“Don’t you worry,” Joe told him. “It’s hardly her first child.”

“No.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“She wants a daughter, you know,” Hayes mused. “After all the boys.…”

“Rud, for Christ’s sake, she’s forgotten.”

“Neither of us will.”

“And what would your hero Emerson say? One infant’s death, amid this unholy slaughter?”

“Emerson would recognize the value—the validity—of each life.”

“Balderdash. For God’s sake, Rud, you couldn’t have prevented it. Typhoid doesn’t play favorites.”

“I never should have let her bring him to camp.”

“She wanted to be with you. It was her decision.”

“Eighteen months old,” Hayes said. He sighed, but put the iron back in his spine. “You’re right, I know that. As a matter of intellect. But I’m starting to think that intellect is the lesser part of a man.” He scratched himself again and added, “Lucy believes he’s in some celestial paradise, waiting for her up on a fluffy white cloud.”

“You don’t, of course.”

“My reason stands against it.”

“Well, she’s got other, healthy sons to be thankful for. And a husband who’s still alive. Despite his own best efforts to get blown to pieces.”

Abruptly, Hayes said, “I never wanted this war.”

Irascible again, Joe said, “But you wanted to end slavery, don’t say you didn’t. You always wanted that, ’long as I’ve known you.”

“I thought it might wear away, that we could chip at it, bit by bit.” Smoothing his beard, he spoke to his brother-in-law’s ears but to his own heart. “All those Negroes I defended in court … I believed I was doing the right thing, the moral thing. It seemed so clear. Now I see that I helped ignite all this. We all did, the self-righteous, the idealists … Emerson, too.” He jerked his head as if struck. “Good God, I want it to end, to bring an end to it.”

“Then go to Congress.”

“No.” He attempted another smile, but failed. “Anyway, brother-in-law of mine, I haven’t been elected yet.”

“You will be. No Copperhead Democrat’s going to beat our twice wounded, well-beloved colonel.”

Around them, the camp roused with curses and struggling cook-fires, with grumpy men laboring over damp wood or stepping off for privacy. Hayes did not need daylight to follow their ways. They had become his ways, too.

It was the oddest thing. For all the slaughter and even his wounds, he had never been in better health in his life. A sickly boy and a young man who flirted with tuberculosis, he had found hard muscles and refreshed lungs in the air of army encampments, even as camp life killed men by the scores and hundreds with measles, dysentery, typhoid, and the smallpox. And the years scrambling over the mountains of western Virginia chasing Rebs had left him with legs thick as tree trunks. Nearing forty-two, he was, despite those saddle boils, truly in life’s prime.

Emerson was right, so right, about life’s ineffability, its inexhaustible richness, and the divinity that resided within each man, rather than in a cold and distant God. Emerson saw the beauty behind the veil and the soul’s inherent greatness here on earth. The only thing his idol lacked, Rud Hayes had come to see, was a sense of humor. His soldiers had taught him the necessity of laughter.

Out in the fire-specked darkness, Lieutenant Henry demanded a count of the staff’s enlisted men, striving for authority and sounding like the boy he had recently been. Another eager soul, Henry had been brought in to fill Hastings’ position when Russ moved up to take Will McKinley’s place on what Doc Joe liked to call “the Army carousel.”

Hayes smelled biscuits, frying meat, and a hundred pots of coffee.

“You know what the damnable thing is, Joe? The thing I hate, that always sickens me afterward?”

“Rancid bacon?”

Hayes ignored the attempt at wit and said, “The way I feel in battle, right in the thick of it.”

“Fear?” Joe asked, surprised. “Every man feels that.”