Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (45 page)

The bitterness graven on faces around the headquarters had grown fearsome, etched deep by concern that such might be the fate of the entire South. The one thing burning the Valley did not do was to incline men to surrender.

On the threshold of the parlor serving as Marshall’s office, Lee paused again.

“We must all have faith,” he said. “We must have faith.”

That seemed to end the evening’s exchange, but upon reaching the stairs, the older man turned and surprised Marshall with a smile.

“I forget myself, Colonel. You have a birthday today. My congratulations. I wish you many more.” The smile faltered. “In better times.”

October 3, 9:00 p.m.

Outside Harrisonburg

The darkness between the tents produced Doc Joe. Face bedeviled by shadows and the campfire’s orange light, he appeared to a mournful fiddle tune that rose from the depths of the camp.

“I come, dear brother-in-law, bearing good news.”

“Miracles do happen,” Hayes said. He moved to stir the fire, then chose to let the flames weaken. “Take a seat.”

“Little cold to be sitting out,” Joe said. “Fire or not.”

“Sit down, or tell your news standing.”

The surgeon took a camp chair. “It’s Russ Hastings. Sawbones’ telegraph tells me he’s likely to live.”

Hayes closed his eyes for a moment, thanking the Lord in whom he could not believe.

“That
is
good news. Wonderful news.”

“Most of the pieces seemed to fit together. He may even look presentable again. To the extent that boy ever did.”

“Get word to Will McKinley. He feels guilty.”

Joe stirred up the fire Hayes had neglected. “Wait till morning, I expect.”

“Still holding Russ at Winchester?”

The surgeon nodded. “Can’t move him yet. May be some time.”

“When we get back to Winchester, I need to see him.”

“Sounds like it isn’t only Will McKinley. Who’s feeling guilty.”

Hayes shook his head in denial, but he did feel a trace of guilt. He remembered telling Hastings, “Stay close to me.” And the aide had stayed close and had paid for it.

“May not be that long,” Joe said, “before you get to see him. I also hear, from a very different and generally dependable chain of informants—that would be the commissary sergeants—that we’ll be moving north again right soon. To the Cedar Creek line, at least.” He nodded at the southern horizon, the view that had kept Hayes mesmerized all evening. “Get away from all this.”

“That’s a military secret, Joe,” Hayes noted.

“There aren’t any secrets in the military,” his brother-in-law said. “Might as well try to hide a dose of clap as a general’s plans.”

“Still…”

“I’m not pumping you. Just offering up what the sergeants are all saying. In case my cherished relative—who I hear has been recommended for brigadier general—in case that august gentleman has not been informed by the mighty powers about the latest change in the situation. Hate to see a hero look plain ignorant.” Joe tossed the stick atop the reborn flames. “When were you going to tell me? About the promotion?”

“Hasn’t happened yet.”

“It will. And you know it. And next week, after the ballots are counted for the Ohio elections, you’re going to be a congressman-elect. Yet, here you sit, moping like Hamlet in a traveling troupe.” Casting a wild shadow on stained canvas, Joe stretched wide his arms, then slapped his hands together. “Papers back home are full of you, I hear. ‘Hero of the Opequon.’” Joe chuckled. “Sounds a bit like ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’”

“That about captures it, I’d say,” Hayes told him. “Made-up stories.”

“I will admit that the illustrations—’least, the one I saw—look somewhat more dashing than the somewhat unkempt reality. Lucy’s going to be wondering who she married.”

On the southern horizon, flames soared.

“You know,” Hayes said, soft-voiced, “this is as close as I’ve ever come to taking your advice.”

“About trimming that beard, if you want to keep the lice off?”

“About resigning my commission.”

“Well, hallelujah! Let me shake your hand, Congressman Hayes. Boys are talking about you for governor, you know that? And it wouldn’t hurt you to go home and stump for Lincoln ahead of November.”

“I didn’t say I was taking your advice. Only that I’ve never come so close.”

“Well, come a little closer. You’ve done your part. Lucy and the boys need a husband and father.”

“Nearing her time,” Hayes said, changing the subject.

“Don’t you worry about that, either. She’ll be fine, that gal. Probably birth a twelve-pounder, in honor of du Pont’s artillery.”

“Her rheumatism worries me.”

“Rheumatism doesn’t affect childbirth. As a practitioner of the high science of medicine, I can attest to that with fair authority.”

“But after.”

“Worry about ‘after’ after. Lord almighty, Rud. You’re about to be elected to Congress, you’ve been recommended for a general’s star, you’re a hero to the folks back home, and your wife is set to give birth to a healthy, strapping infant who, no doubt, will have the lungs of a company first sergeant. How about tossing some joy into the pot?”

Hayes gestured toward the countless glows that pinked the horizon in the direction of Staunton. “It’s that, Joe. All that.”

“Nothing you can do about it.”

“No,” Hayes agreed. “But I can be ashamed.”

“Turn around and face north. Forget it. This damned war.”

“These people won’t forget it. Their great-great-grandchildren won’t forget it.”

Joe coughed up a laugh. “Two weeks ago, you were the apple-pie optimist. Telling me how good men would patch this country up.”

“Not after this.”

“They had it coming.”

“No.”

“Sounds insubordinate, Colonel Hayes. General Sheridan’s orders—”

“I’ve followed my orders. But I don’t have to
like
my orders.”

“Seems to me, dear brother-in-law, you’ve gotten off light enough. ’Far as conscience goes. Our boys haven’t had to do with the worst of it. Cavalry’s been happy to do the chore.”

“I’ve had over a dozen reports of unauthorized pillaging. Just today. Done by men in this division. Men in my old brigade, even our old regiment.” He turned to face his relative, shunning the conflagration for a moment. “You might want to write a piece for that medical journal, that London one you read. About the epidemic breakdown of military discipline, how it spreads quicker than any plague known to man.”

“I suspect,” the physician said, voice half good-old-Joe and half sepulchral, “that the article has been written. By some unsavory Greek, if not a Babylonian in high dudgeon.”

Hayes didn’t answer but turned back to the horizon. He grasped the logic of the vast destruction, eliminating the Valley’s ability to feed either an army or Virginia. Barns burned by the hundreds, haystacks by the thousands. Mills, forges, depots, granaries, even root cellars met the torch, while stock was driven off or simply slaughtered. Homes were to be spared, but some burned, too. Anyway, what good was shelter? After soldiers, whether under Pharaoh’s standard or the flag of these dis-United States, robbed every ham from your smokehouse, the chickens from your yard, the last egg from your kitchen, and the final sack of flour from your pantry? When invaders made a science of denying you the food to feed yourself or nourish your children? Hayes understood the logic, and he hated it.

He imagined the same acts perpetrated against Lucy and the boys.

But he also knew that he would not resign. For the same reason as always: The men down in the ranks could not resign. And for a new reason now: It was more important than ever to end this war, to bring it to a conclusion, however baleful, before the torch and hunger made the breach truly irreparable.

For all that, for all the idealism that sounded more and more like a cheap tin bell, he hoped that he had seen his final battle, that Sheridan, Crook, and all the others were right, that Early was finished and the war’s end near. And if the war had to last another winter, he hoped his men would draw an assignment guarding a railroad in some quiet corner.

Down in the tidy rows of tents, the fiddler played “Cumberland Gap.”

“You know,” Joe said, “you bewilder me, Rud. You and your darling Emerson. Or whichever other high-flown ink-dripper you’re reading nowadays.”

Hayes laughed, surprising his brother-in-law. “Hardly ‘high-flown.’ I just finished a novel Lucy sent me.
East Lynne,
by a Mrs. Wood.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it was
meant
to be comical, but if a body could concoct a more impossible plot … well, I suppose I should stick to my practice of shunning novels. A man needs beefsteak, not just trimmings.” He sighed. “I’m sure Lucy was trying to ease my mind, draw me away from all this.” Again, he gestured toward the arson pinking the southward night.

“Now that,” Joe said, “is what you and your literary friends back home might call a dichotomy, it’s just what I was getting at. Here we are, nearing—we hope—the end of a savage war. Hundreds of thousands dead, passel of whom shit themselves to death before hearing a shot. And you may not have liked it, but you didn’t reject that war and all the killing on moral or ethical grounds. But now you’re at your wits’ end, brokenhearted, because inanimate objects, barns and corncribs, suffer the torch. Have you
thought
about that, Rud? That you’re sitting here more outraged over a water mill or hay barn up in flames than you’ve ever been about the casualty lists? And by the way: I recall you devouring
Great Expectations
like a bowlful of fresh-picked cherries.” He flashed uneven teeth by the fire’s sear. “But, then, hypocrisy never disqualified a man from serving in Congress. Or the Army.”

October 6, 5:00 p.m.

Harrisonburg

“Well, Rosser,” Early said, “I hear tell you’re the ‘Savior of the Valley,’ sent to put us all to rights and show the rest of the cavalry how it’s done. Wonder who spread that high-flown claim about? ‘Savior of the Valley,’ yes, sir! Wouldn’t, by any chance, have been Brigadier General Thomas
Lafayette
Rosser himself now, would it?” Early cackled. “Best take care the Yankees don’t crucify you, hah! I’m counting on you to perform your wonders first, turn this whole war around. God almighty, Rosser, I won’t stand in your way, that I will not.” Dripping spite, he added, “I’ll expect you to demonstrate your supernatural proficiency by moving out tomorrow morning and teaching the Yankees a
proper
lesson, not the pissant skirmishing you did today.”

“I assure you I’ll do my best, sir,” Rosser replied, “and the Laurel Brigade will consider it an honor to lead
your
cavalry to victory.”

Early kicked a charred board and glared at the Texan who claimed a Virginia birth. “‘Laurel Brigade,’ hah! I want you on your warhorse, not your high horse, so get on down and don’t you back-talk me, son.” He knew all about Rosser’s exploits at West Point and his departure to serve the Confederacy right before graduation. But the high jinks and gestures of 1861 didn’t draw cards in 1864, and Early was unimpressed by Rosser’s war record. On top of all, Rosser was just the sort of big, handsome, pomaded pet that Early detested.

Savior of the Valley, indeed. They’d soon see.

“Look around you, Rosser, look around you. Think ‘gentlemen’ burned that house and barn, that goddamned corncrib? And threw a cow down the well just to piss in the soup? Those were your West Point friends—Merritt, Custer, the pack of ’em.” Early spit a brown gob and wiped his beard with the back of his hand. “You just forget about being a high-flown gentleman and give them a whipping like they’ve never had. And not just one whipping, either. Take those nag-kickers of yours and get revenge for … for all this.” He waved an arm almost madly. “You go out there and forget what the Lord has to say about vengeance, Rosser, because it ain’t his business this time. You take the Devil’s vengeance on those bastards.”

“I reckon we can handle Custer and Merritt,” Rosser assured him.

October 8, 8:30 p.m.

Strasburg

Sheridan didn’t just enter the house: He exploded through the door like a burst of canister. The gathered cavalry generals and colonels looked up from their plates in bewilderment followed by dread. No man among them had ever seen the army’s commander in such a rage.

Taking in the bones of the turkey and the near-empty plates, Sheridan threw down his riding gloves and bellowed.

“Well, I’ll be damned! If you ain’t sitting here stuffing yourselves! You, Torbert—and you, Merritt—generals, staff, and all. While the Rebs are riding right into our camp.” He glared at Torbert. “Having a party, ain’t we? While Rosser’s carrying off your guns—next thing, he’ll have Merritt’s drawers off his dainty ass.” Sheridan gave them a wordless growl and continued: “Oh, and you even got on your nice clothes and your clean shirts, ain’t that a sweet picture! What is this, the king of Prussia throwing himself a ball? With all the fixings but Champagne and hoors?”

He lunged toward the table, as if barely restraining himself from striking out with his fists. “Torbert, mount quicker than Hell will scorch a feather. Follow me to headquarters.” He growled again. “Leaving Custer out there to lose wagons and runaway darkies and his blacksmith train. Under
your
orders not to counterattack.” He raised a hand as if to wipe the leavings from the table, then lowered it in disgust, eyeing Torbert again. “I should cashier you and have you horsewhipped besides.” Heated past words, he glowered.

“Sir…,” Torbert stammered, “you … you said not to—”

“I don’t give a
damn
what you think I said. I want you to go out there in the morning and
whip
that Rebel cavalry. Or get whipped yourself. Put every sonofabitch you can collar in the saddle. I’ll be watching you—all of you—closer than a priest watching the poor box.”

Sheridan turned and stamped out, leaving his gloves on the floor, unwilling to lower himself before any man.