Crescent City Part 37

Her pale eyes had angry pink sore-looking rims. The fierce Virginia warrior, Miriam thought again, remembering her promise of silence. She could imagine the truth coming out, the careful tiny drippings of sly innuendo, stains spreading through the fabric of her children's trust in their mother.

They had endured enough and too much. Even as she herself carried in her mind that indelible scene of her mother's death, a scene which had only been described to her, so would they bear forever the picture of their father dying on the ground with his hands held in theirs. They spoke of it seldom now, for what was there to be said? But between his eyes Eugene had two vertical grooves which had not been there before. And Angelique, p.r.o.ne since early childhood to vivid dreams and nightmares, cried out in her sleep, so that Miriam had often to go in and quiet her. Yes, they had borne enough. If Eulalie were to add more ...

Then, no, she decided, Eulalie will not talk. She knows I would put her out. I can't think where I'd send her, but I'd send her somewhere out of this house, and she knows I would.

"The trouble is," Eulalie said now, "everyone, all of you people, have lost hope. I have not lost hope." And she looked around the table, asking to be challenged, but no one challenged her. So she continued, "We, with our good old blood, have it in our power to do much better than we've done yet. Look at the northern ranks! Full of nothing but Germans and Irish and heaven knows what else! And that ape Lincoln at the head with his emanc.i.p.ation!"

"I wish emanc.i.p.ation could be applied here."

This remark came from the foot of the table where Eugene sat. Every head turned to him in astonishment. His face had gone scarlet, as if the sound of his own words falling so unexpectedly into the room, now grown so still, had terrified even him. His startled eyes appealed now to his mother for help.

Miriam was stunned. How and when had the boy got such an idea? She had been so careful to skirt the deadly subject! Nevertheless, the little thrill, whose cause was part alarm and part a kind of joyful pride, sparked in her chest.

"It's all right, Eugene. You may speak," she said softly. "Go on."

"Well, I was thinking, I've been thinking about what I've seen since we came here to stay and-and," he stumbled, "it seems to me we'd be better off with a few skilled men working for wages than we are with all these poor, helpless folks to feed and care for."

Lambert Labouisse appeared about to erupt and Ferdinand hastened to explain.

"My grandson is only speaking practically, as a matter of economy, given the present conditions."

"Perhaps he isn't," Miriam said. Something within her rose in quick resentment of having to placate Mr. Lambert Labouisse. "Go on, Eugene."

The boy's voice grew stronger. "Well, wouldn't this whole country be better off if all these huge places were cut up into smaller farms? If the owners could work their own places, I mean. It would be more healthy. More prosperous, too, I think. There's so much waste in the slave system. And it's not really fair, either, to have so much land in so few hands. What good do two thousand acres of unused land do for anybody?"

Mr. Labouisse actually rapped his spoon on the table. "I have spent my life, and my father spent his before me, increasing our holdings for the benefit of generations to come! We have paid and paid to keep our lands intact! Talk like your son's is more than I can hear with any equanimity, ma'am! I'm sorry to say it, but I must!"

"I don't understand." Ferdinand was fl.u.s.tered. "It's very troubling to me, I a.s.sure you. Where could Eugene have got such thoughts, Miriam?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Papa. But he is certainly ent.i.tled to his thoughts." And she gave Eugene a smile.

"He got them from his uncle, I suspect," Eulalie snapped.

"From my brother?" Miriam retorted. "He's had a lot of contact with my brother these past years, hasn't her?"

Then surprisingly, and before Eulalie could fuel the fire any more, Pelagie spoke. "Do you know, Father, when Louis was home on leave the last time, he said much the same thing?" She hesitated. "He's of the opinion that these large holdings must go and the suave system along with them."

The old man stared. "My grandson said that? My grandson?"

"Well, you have to admit," Pelagie faltered, "it is a costly system. The money that our children could inherit goes for the upkeep of all these slaves, their clothing, and ... then with so much of the land being idle, as Eugene said ..."

"Eugene! Idiocy!" The old man was furious; spittle shot from his mouth. "Claptrap! Wicked, stupid claptrap! Never produced ten cents' worth of anything in their lives, not dry behind the ears yet, and already giving away their birthright, the fools. Ought to take the whip to the lot of them!"

Rosa glanced nervously at Miriam. The glance said, What on earth can have happened to Pelagie?

To that Miriam could have answered, "Only that she, even she, has at last been jolted into reality."

27.

Between the Rapidan River on the north and the wide, cleared fields of Spottsylvania on the south lay a wilderness some twelve to twenty miles long and six miles deep of sluggish, silent swamp and gloomy forest, a thick maze of vine and thorn and waist-high underbrush.

Now in the lovely blue days of early May the white-topped wagons rumbled over the turnpike and the Orange Plank Road, heading toward confrontation with Grant's Army of the Potomac.

Gabriel's body and the tawny body of his mare Polaris had, after more than three years of war, merged almost into one. Without directive or pressure the horse kept place in line, leaving the rider absorbed in his somber reflections.

Last year they had met Grant at Chancellorsville, where Lee had won. This year, pa.s.sing the site of that victory, they had come upon its aftermath of silent, burnt-out ruins, rotting and mouldering in weedy fields. There'd been a farmer alongside a road; I never owned a slave. With my own hands I cleared these fields, built this house; the Federals took it all, the hogs, the chickens, the cow for the children's milk, a lifetime's work What could states rights mean to him?

So I plod, so we go stumbling together, wading rivers, enduring in a weariness beyond belief, with no way of knowing where it will end.

He had a sense of fearful foreboding. It is the spring, he thought, it is the dogwood lying flat on the air like starched lace, white and pink; it is the wet gloss on the leaves, the south wind and the sun's warm touch on the horse's living neck; it is-it is knowing that I may never see all this again.

He straightened up. Enough! It's spineless and does you no good.

Yet all around him the others, officers and men, were quiet, too. His lieutenant, riding slightly behind him, had not spoken for an hour. The occasional snort of a horse was startling.

On either side the woods grew thicker, narrowing the road, throwing a gloom across the advancing day. Heat struck, heavy and stifling; it glossed Polaris's neck and stung the sweat under Gabriel's gray coat.

Far ahead the line could be seen turning off the road. He did not need to take the map from his pocket; he had memorized it; he knew where they were going and where they expected to take Grant by surprise. So he would rest his mind by trying to think of what lay in his past, rather than of what might he ahead today.

It was so long since he had been home! And he wondered what was left of his city. They had taken Rosa's house, that he knew. Perhaps someone would be good enough to protect the precious treasure of his law books, a collection inherited from Henry and most carefully enlarged by himself. Such a pleasant room, the little square library with its comfortable chair and footstool! The windows, opened to the courtyard, took in the pungent smell of wet stone after rain, and the lazy sound of dripping from the banana leaves. Under the window there was always a leftover puddle where the pavement sagged; there sat the most minute green frog, bright as an emerald, a crown jewel.

So long since he had seen home! Or Miriam ... Months after the fact, the news of Eugene's death had reached him, but Rosa never wrote about Miriam, wanting to spare him, he understood, and supposing herself to be tactful.

And he recalled, with a kind of half-sad humor, his sister's efforts, also meant to be tactful, to arouse his interest in one "eligible" young woman after the other. Her definition of "eligible" was young, good-natured, reasonably pretty, and, most important, of fine family background. Dear Rosa! The question of his loving the girl never entered her mind. Oh, there had been some-he remembered one, very charming, very willing, with burnished copper hair-he could very likely have gone farther with her, if it had not been for Miriam. Always the image of Miriam came between him and any other.

The hurt inside him was something he could almost touch, like a burn or a cut. The anger-not toward her; no, never toward her, but toward that man Perrin-was like fire. He tried to quench it, but it always flared back. Now that she was widowed and free, he supposed they would be married; Perrin already had a wife, to be sure, but a man like him would find some way, Gabriel thought scornfully. That man, that man-if he were here I'd run my bayonet through him, he thought, and I've never used my bayonet, not in spite of all the carnage, and I've been in the thick of it. But I've never had to use it, thank G.o.d. A bullet is bad enough, but to feel the weapon in your moving hands slicing through another man's flesh!

Polaris, following the line, stepped cautiously into the ditch that bordered the road and clambered up again, entering now a place where she must plow knee deep through troughs of many years' fallen leaves, struggling through p.r.i.c.kers and stickers, catching herself in a jumble of saplings and vines. They had been in places like this before. No, not like this, Gabriel thought, as they picked their way more deeply into a darkness that must be like the bottom of the sea. Tall pines met overhead. A ravine, so steep and sudden that an inexpert rider would pitch over the horse's head, cut across the way. They struggled on. How can a battle be fought in here where you can't see either enemy or friend? he wondered.

The call to halt was pa.s.sed up the line. A good thing, too, for it was almost noon, and they had been going since dawn. The heat was now so overpowering that if the going weren't so precarious, one might almost fall asleep in the saddle.

Men crowded into the clearing where the halt had been called. There, in a circle of patchy sunlight, hung the dogwood again, a jubilant, exquisite white in an ominous gloom. And Gabriel felt again that irregular palpitation they called "soldier's heart," blaming it on strain or heat. But it was more than just those: it was fear.

"Conference up ahead," someone reported.

"Scout says Union forces are approaching."

"-said Grant's sitting on a stump, wearing dress uniform and a sword."

Nervous laughter. The body is afraid to go ahead, but the spirit, fearing cowardice, is afraid that the body might really turn about and flee, to the spirit's everlasting shame.

Polaris stamped, curving her head as far back as she could, as if to communicate with Gabriel. She had the haughty, delicate nose of an aristocrat, but her intelligent eyes were soft and mild. She knows me well, thought Gabriel. We have been together a long time.

Someone was talking loudly. "h.e.l.l, this is no place for horses! How we gonna fight in here? Can't move faster than one mile an hour, if that much."

Nevertheless, they moved forward. They slid down the muddy banks of hidden brooks, climbed back up, and kept on going, going, until at last they heard the first spatter and crack of gunfire up ahead.

"Leave the horses. Get down. It's impossible."

Soldier's heart again. Gabriel dismounted from Polaris and stroked her muzzle. Would he ever find her again?

A corps of sharpshooters to the right went ducking under bramble bushes. Field artillery, with a great noise of dragging, crushed the underbrush.

Oh, my G.o.d! A whole blue division, so close, using grape and canister, came to life, erupting out of the woods and the murk. And a storm of lead exploded. My G.o.d! Whole sheets of it, like rain slanting in the wind.

"Forward, forward!" Who is that screaming, whose throat is that, torn raw with the screaming rebel yell as the men plunge, plunge, so close now to the men in blue and the bright silver of bayonets? My voice?

He fired. Covered by the trunk of an ancient oak, blindly he keeps firing at an enemy that is hidden in a ma.s.s of pungent, stinging smoke. The noise is shattering, a hammer on the eardrums and in the head. Bugles blare, summoning courage, giving signals that no one understands or can heed because no one can see or know where he is himself or where the enemy is.

"Fire! Fire! Load and reload." Bullets snap through the leaf.a.ge, sending a shower of papery sc.r.a.ps to the ground. Someone screams not three feet away; it is a terrible high animal scream. There is no time to look. Still firing, Gabriel kneels, bent low, for nothing that stands upright in this h.e.l.l can live.

Oh, G.o.d, it is the worst h.e.l.l in a thousand days of h.e.l.lish war that he has yet lived through!

A man collides with another, crawling on hands and knees, going toward the rear, the wrong way.

"Where you going? Where the devil do you think you're going?"

"I'm hurt, sir. Back to the rear, I'm hurt."

"Hurt where? Show blood or turn around, go back, G.o.d d.a.m.n you, go back!"

"They're shooting at our own side, for Christ's sake!"

"Can't help it. They can't see. Get down! Down!"

And still, hour after hour, the thundering, the whistle before the crash, the roar and smash go on .... Will the night never fall?

It falls. The blackest night that Gabriel has ever seen smothers the woods. Shots dwindle, and in the darkness both sides, exhausted, fall to the ground wherever they happen to be.

All is still. They have taken the wounded to the rear. The ground is littered with the dead or silent. Silent and free, thinks Gabriel. They don't have to dread the return of the morning.

Once a whippoorwill calls. Its pure, liquid voice is heard for a few seconds, then stops. Even the birds cower, he thinks, they in their nests-those that have not been blasted away-and we on the ground.

He takes a deep breath. He is too tired to investigate anything; anyway, it is too dark; it is his function to stay here with his men or with what is left of them, and wait. He sleeps with his head between his knees.

Then, the second day, a day of rising wind. While bullets rain and rattle, the wind flows and little fires, flaring out of sparks in the underbrush, are carried from twig to twig, from skeletal stripped branch to the next leaf-stripped branch. Flames, like living creatures, slither over the ground. Probing and searching, they mount the tree trunks, murmuring as they creep. In seconds a scrub pine turns into a torch, one vertical billow of flame. Far behind the forward lines the log breastworks, so laboriously built, catch fire, too. Cinders whirl in this wind; the whole forest, all pitch and resin, roars with fire. The very air burns a man's lungs.

Now the flames come like racing surf, wave after surging wave. The helpless wounded scream in horror as the waves come near and nearer; some scream in anguish as the waves roll over them; they scream and die, while others shoot themselves in time, if they are strong enough to do so. Men in blue and men in gray alike rush out to save their own, some even saving the enemy's men.

Gabriel drags a man to safety, thinking, If Lorenzo were here, he could help, and for the first time, he misses him; but Lorenzo went months ago to the other side and is in New York or Washington by now. Incredibly, in all this chaos, Gabriel has a flash of amus.e.m.e.nt: Rosa had been so sure of his loyalty! Why, why shouldn't he be faithful, he adores you?

After some yards he lays the man down near a shallow ravine; with luck the fire just may not jump that ravine. He is too exhausted at any rate to go another step. There is a terrible pain in his foot.

He looks for a pile of leaves to he on and stumbles again, this time over a body. The uniform is blue. He searches the face: young, younger than I, I am a million years old.

The eyes open, staring back at Gabriel, eyes too clouded even to recognize the enemy.

"I'm awfully cold. My sister Margaret, no, not Margaret, the other one, she says, you see, if I had a blanket, I was sick all over this one."

Gabriel leans closer, although even this slight motion stabs his foot. The boy babbles, makes a strangling noise, heaves a slimy vomit out of his guts, and having done so, falls back into silence.

Half a night later Gabriel knows that the boy is dead. The stars are thick in a sliver of sky between the treetops, and in their bluish light he can see the dead face. It is extraordinarily dignified, he thinks. He lies on his elbow looking at it, wishing he had a blanket or some decent cover for it. Then it occurs to him that something ought to be said to or about this dignified face, which seems to be expecting that recognition be given. So he says the Kaddish. It is a prayer in praise of G.o.d, a Jewish prayer, but it is the only one he knows, and surely suitable.

The pain is a cutting knife in his foot. He must have been shot. How queer that he cannot recall when! His head feels foggy. He lies without moving. From every direction the wounded are calling: Water! Help me! Mother! Christ! But no one comes. It is too dark, too far away.

Dawn comes. A fly has settled on the dead boy's cheek, and Gabriel shoos it away. The eyes are open and he reaches over to close them. It is a struggle to reach; the pain is growing worse. He wants to find a pocket with an address, and he thinks of the letter he will write to the parents about how their son died, but suddenly his leg gives way and he falls back on the ground.

Now he tries to get his boot off, but he lacks the strength to do it. He wonders whether he will lose his foot or his leg. It feels wet under the boot.

It is so quiet. The battle must have moved elsewhere. He wonders who is winning, or has won, but he doesn't really care. It doesn't concern him. High above the little s.p.a.ce between the leaves, where the stars were just a while ago, the sky has turned to the most intense and marvelous blue. So it must be full morning.

She will not want a cripple, he thinks. Does not want me anyway. Wants that-other. He has-what? A gallantry that I have not, have never had?

Back and forth, ebb and flow; that's my life. Loving without wanting to. Fighting without wanting to. Yet I fight. Yet I love.

History is battles. How many fought, how many wounded, how many died. Someday they will write about this. Numbers and words don't matter, though. They will write, but it will mean nothing. If I live through this war and they ask me what it was like, I won't be able to tell them.

And now he hears that a low whispering has begun among the vastness of the trees. Swirling and spreading, it sounds like the moan of the sea. After a while he understands that this is the moaning of the wounded.

He lies quite still. He is spent, even the pain in his foot is spent, he is slipping away and out.

When he opens his eyes, he sees that the sc.r.a.p of blue over his head is now iron gray. It must be evening again. Somebody is doing something to his foot; his boot is off.

"He may lose the foot," someone says.

"Maybe not."

"Be careful with that candle. Drop one of them and every man on the ground here goes up in flames."

These men wear blue! The Federal uniform, he thinks indifferently. He must be a prisoner.

He is picked up, carried out to a road, and put in a wagon. There must be hundreds of them stretching all the way down the road. He recognizes ammunition wagons, mustered into ambulance service. They have no springs. Now, as they begin to rumble down the corduroy road, each jolt sends a shaft of blood-red pain down his spine. He wants to ask where they are going, but it is too much effort, and besides, they will probably not answer. But he can tell by the fading light that they are moving eastward, toward Fredericksburg, he supposes.

"Lucky we got a place," a voice says. "There must be seven thousand men in this load alone. The rest of them will he there two days till they get more wagons."

How many hours to Fredericksburg?

A man dies and the wagon halts for the removal of the body. At the side of the road lies a huge black bloated crescent, curved like a beached whale. A whale here in this place! He's seen one only once before, one summer long ago at Pa.s.s Christian. He remembers it well, that summer. All that blue and silver water, all the way to Cat Island! He thinks of crabbing, fishing, and the cool porch in the evening behind the trumpet vine, and music coming from somewhere down the beach.

He looks out over the side of the wagon at the whale. But it is not a whale; it has four stiffened legs, which project into the road, almost touching the wagon wheels. It is a horse. Enormous, iridescent flies cl.u.s.ter on its back, buzzing at its ears. And suddenly the legs flail; with a wild lunge the animal flips over to its other side, making a terrible sound of despair in the brutal heat.