March Toward the Thunder Part 8

Louis listened. He was soaking wet, the water dripping off his cap as he leaned forward. He no longer had his rubber blanket over his head, nor did any of the other men in the company. They had taken them down, rolled them, and tied them to their packs. They'd soon enough be leaving this trench. Once they went over the parapet there'd be no chance of coming back to claim any possessions left behind.

Possum Page was at Louis's left, his head nodding up and down.

"Hey Chief?" Possum whispered.

"Yup," Louis said.

"Could you pinch me and wake me if you see I've gone and fell asleep?"

Louis turned and stared.

"What?"

Possum nodded his round head even harder. "I cain't help it," he said. "When I get scared, all I want to do is just close my eyes and pretend it's all just a dream. But I guess it doesn't do much good 'cuz when I wake up I'm still here. I'm not back home with my ma and pa and my two little sisters. Y'know, I never got further than five miles away from home afore. I just miss them all dreadful much."

Louis reached over and put his hand on Possum's quivering shoulder.

"All right," he replied. "I'll do just that."

"I'm not like you," Possum said, his voice low and intense. "Seems there's nothing can scare you. I guess you got spirits or something that is protecting you. Could you maybe talk some more with me when this fight is over? I'm thinking that it might help me some. I'd like not to be afraid so much."

It was the longest speech he'd ever heard Possum make. It made Louis realize that, in a way, Possum was like himself, a scared boy whose friends didn't see what was going on inside him. To them he was just Possum, who could sleep through the Final Judgment.

Louis turned toward Possum, reached out and grasped his right hand. "Shake on it," Louis said. "We'll talk after the battle's over."

Possum grinned. His shoulders relaxed and he let out a deep breath.

Somehow, Louis thought, those few words I just said meant something to him.

"I sure do appreciate that, Chief."

Louis let go of Possum's hand and c.o.c.ked his head.

What was that soft thumping noise? Even through the rain Louis began to hear a m.u.f.fled sound with a familiar rhythm to it. It came from off to their left.

Louder now.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

I know what that is. Even wet earth could not hide the metronomic thud of thousands of feet of men in blue approaching across the rain-curtained land.

Hanc.o.c.k for sure, his whole corps trying to march silent.

But even with no sound of drums to keep them in step they'd fallen into step. No enemy ears seemed to have noticed their approach, even though the surface of the water in the rain puddle at his feet was now quivering in time to the thuds. Soon they'd be right on top of the Rebel pickets watching halfheartedly for a Yankee attack they doubted would come.

In all the battles before this, that had been the Union pattern-fall back if the first hard a.s.sault fails. Lee and his boys hadn't learned yet that General Grant was not one to turn tail. He had sent orders all the way down the chain of command that they were to fight it out on this line even if it took all summer.

"Hear that?" Louis whispered to the man who'd come up on his right in the half darkness.

"Hear what?" Merry said.

Louis shook his head. He wasn't sure. It might have been the m.u.f.fled sounds of a Confederate sentry being overpowered- his mouth stopped by a hand clamped over it or the thrust of a bayonet. Desperate deeds were being done down there under the cloak of the pouring rain.

Louis found himself thinking, as he always did now before fighting began, about the men on the other side. Louis hadn't been able to stop such thoughts since that night when the Rebel sentry spoke to him out of the darkness.

"Do you find it hard to hate them, Louis?" Merry asked.

It surprised Louis how close that question was to what he'd been thinking.

"I do," he answered.

"I too find it very difficult," Merry said. "But the thought that one of them might kill my . . . my brother makes me determined to stand against them. If my Tom should fall to Rebel guns I would hate them. I would hate the South forever."

Louis started to reply that he understood. But his words went unspoken as what had first started as a single shout from a Union soldier was taken up by one man after another until it became a great cheer. Thousands of voices lifted from below as Hanc.o.c.k's men, having overpowered the sentries, reached that jutting salient, and poured through the Mule Shoe.

Who was it who then shouted the order for E Company to stand, climb over their own parapets, and charge down into the fight below?

Corporal Hayes? Sergeant Flynn? Young Lieutenant Finley waving his sword? Or was it all of them at once?

In the sound of the shouting, the steady wash of the rain, and the pounding of his own heart, Louis could not remember. All he knew was that he and the others had taken up that cry and were running headlong downhill.

The Rebels were so taken by surprise that almost no shots were fired. Sixth and Second Corps split the Rebel line like twin bolts of blue lightning. Men in gray grounded their weapons and raised their hands. In the time it took a man to have breakfast, they took not just the position, but captured three Confederate generals and 4,000 men. They even caught up to the artillery train and took possession of those twenty cannons being moved down the line.

Louis stood with a smiling group of the men from E Company on a hill in the midst of a stand of pines. They could hardly believe the victory they seemed to have won. Even the rain had let up. The sun was about to break through the clouds.

"Whooo-heee!" Possum Page yelled. "Them Rebs is running all the way back to Richmond. This is how war ought to be fought, Chief! We'll be home by the Fourth of July!"

He started to do a little jig, raising his rifle over his head. Then, for some reason, he threw his rifle away.

As it spun past Louis's head, he saw that the b.u.t.t of the Springfield was broken and splintered. A red stain was spreading across the middle of Possum's back. The young soldier who'd been able to sleep anywhere turned slowly, then crumpled like a doll made of rags into his final rest.

Minie b.a.l.l.s were whizzing past them now from both left and right, peeling the bark off the pines.

Twenty feet ahead, Happy Smith and Scarecrow Dedham stood as if their feet were stuck in tar. Puffs of dust burst from their clothes as b.a.l.l.s struck, holding them up for a terrible breathless moment before their legs gave way and they dropped to their knees.

"Get down for the luv of Mary!" Devlin shouted in a voice that was half a sob. He yanked Louis's belt. "Down!"

Then they were on their knees and stomachs, crawling backward, firing their rifles, rolling over onto their backs to reload, firing again along with the hundreds of other retreating Union men around them caught in the counterattack. A whole division was coming at them.

Midnight. No more sounds of gunshots or shouts of officers trying to rally their men. As close to quiet as it had been since the start of the dawn a.s.sault that had seemed destined to take them all the way to Richmond before the 10,000 men of General Gordon's Rebel reserves struck back. The exhausted stillness of the night was broken now only by the moans of the wounded who lay in the field between the lines of the two opposing armies.

Louis sagged against the back wall of the rifle trench and looked first to one side and then the other. No one from E Company to be seen. In the desperate confusion of the fight, Second Corps had been torn asunder. What remained was a mix of companies and regiments st.i.tched together like patches in a quilt.

At midday, in the mad back and forth of attack and counterattack, Louis had found himself in the midst of this squad of Corcoran lads from the 155th New York. The officer in charge was none other than that same Lieutenant Michael O'Connell who'd told them three days ago that they would be crossing the river. Three days? It felt as if three years had pa.s.sed.

"It's the heart of the secession we're facing," Lieutenant O'Connell shouted as Louis joined the squad that was pus.h.i.+ng back a larger force of Confederates.

Second North Carolina. That was what the enemy flags read.

O'Connell pulled off his hat and waved it over his head. "Pour it into them, boys! Break them and we've won the day. Drive those Tarheels back!"

That was when the Rebel general came at them atop a great black stallion, galloping out of the smoke and the mud as sudden as a ghost. Louis, who'd been standing by the lieutenant's side reloading, fell backward as the horse slammed into their line while the Gray officer on its back fired shot after shot from his .36 Colt Navy revolver into the ma.s.s of Union men around him.

The horse reared over Louis as he lay on his back.

Have I managed to finish the sequence of loading? No time to check. Pull the trigger!

Fire belched out of its barrel as his gun kicked hard against his shoulder. The Confederate general's arm jerked back as if struck by a club. The Navy Colt spun free to land in Louis's lap.

"Thuh gennul's down," a Rebel soldier screamed.

"Rally to General Ramseur," a bearded officer in gray shouted.

The Rebel general stumbled to his feet, clasping his arm. Before any Union soldiers could take him captive or get off another shot, he was surrounded and pulled back by his men.

Louis used his musket like a cane to rise to his feet. His left arm was bleeding. He remembered seeing a bayonet coming his way, slicing into his sleeve. He felt his forearm.

Cut, but not too deep.

It was worse on his other side. His right shoulder ached from the kick of his own rifle. He looked down at the handgun he'd grabbed as it landed in his lap.

Not the kind of gun a private ought to be carrying.

"Sir," he said, turning toward the place where Lieutenant O'Connell had been standing. "You want this?"

The lieutenant wasn't there. Louis tried to wipe the grime from his eyes. He was half deaf from the sounds of so many muskets going off near his ringing ears.

"Lieutenant?"

Lieutenant O'Connell lay on the ground. His hand still clutched the hat he'd been waving to rally the men. His eyes were wide-open to the sky, but they saw nothing in this world anymore.

Then Louis heard the singing.

"We are a band of brothers . . ." rang from somewhere in the retreating ma.s.s of enemy soldiers. It was a voice as clear and true as Songbird Devlin's, but its accent was that of the South and not Tipperary.

For a heartbeat it seemed as if every other sound on the battlefield stopped. Blue and Gray alike harkened to the painfully sweet melody.

"We are a band of brothers,

and native to the soil,

Fighting for the property

we gained by honest toil;

And when our rights were threatened,

the cry rose near and far,

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag

that bears a Single Star."

Then that voice was no longer alone. A hundred, a thousand, and two thousand more Rebel soldiers joined in the chorus.