The March Read online

  She knew the Lieutenant Clarke and the others had not fallen in battle. If they had fallen in battle, why were the townsfolk in such a hurry to hide their bodies. No, she had heard that volley of rifle fire, clear in the silence. She had seen the blood going right up to the jailhouse doors, and she had seen the men lying in the field where they had been shot down in a row. They were unarmed.

  She had to tell someone. But she was still unsure of her white talk, and if she spoke naturally they would hear she weren’t no white drummer boy. Where was her teacher the Lieutenant now she needed him? At the moment she decided she dasn’t say a thing she bolted into the road in front of an officer with gold shoulder straps and saluted. His big bay horse snorted, tossing its head and rearing and turning in circles. What in hell! the officer shouted while Pearl stood there with her hand at her cap.

  His horse quieted, the officer looked down at Pearl. Don’t you know better’n that, boy? Why are you not with your company?

  Dead.

  Say what?

  Dey . . . is. I means . . . they . . . is.

  Speak up, lad!

  They is. I means they . . . are.

  Are what?

  Dead.

  Don’t you know how to address an officer?

  I do.

  I do, SIR!

  Yes, me too, sir.

  Put your hand down and stand at attention! Goddamn it, the officer said to one of the men who had stopped beside him. Now he’s crying! Is this what we’re fighting a war with?

  At this moment another officer came along on a mount not much taller than a pony, so that his feet practically touched the ground. He was not at all military-looking, with his tunic covered with dust and half unbuttoned, and a handkerchief tied at his neck, an old beaten-up cap, and a cigar stub in his mouth, and a red beard with streaks of gray. Pearl would remember that first impression she had of General Sherman, that he wasn’t an officer in deportment or dress, and she wouldn’t have thought of him as such except for the deference paid him by the high and mighty fellow who towered over him on his fine bay mount.

  The General on his little horse was practically at her eye level. Well, here’s a handsome young Union man, he said. Are you a good drummer, son?

  Pearl nodded.

  A fellow has to be brave to join the army and fight for his country. Drummer boys come under fire like the rest of us, don’t they?

  Yessir.

  Sometimes I want to cry, too.

  Yessir.

  And what seems to be the problem? he said to the officer on the bay horse.

  General, he says he’s lost his company. He believes they are casualties.

  Were they in the vanguard, son? They came through last night?

  Yes sir, Gen’ral.

  That would be Wheeler again, the General said to the officer. I imagine we took some losses.

  No, Gen’ral sir, Pearl said. It were no battle when they murdered my Lieutenant Clarke.

  Pearl couldn’t help herself. She wept copiously, the tears streaming down her face as she held the reins of the General’s little horse, and led him and his staff through the town to the cemetery and pointed to the fresh-dug trench.

  XI

  SHERMAN AFFECTED THE SLOPPY UNIFORM, AND SHARED the hardships, of the enlisted man. He slept in a fly tent, when he slept at all. Only one servant attended him and his string of mounts consisted of exactly one, and that one plug hardly befitting a man of his rank. Of course, having issued orders for an army stripped down to essentials, it was right that he should serve as an example. But to Morrison, a West Pointer on the General’s staff, it was all somehow unseemly. Morrison saw no reason why a general officer, especially one not holding a political appointment but a true West Point professional like Sherman, should not distinguish himself from the men under his command. Perhaps some smartness of attire and a measure of remoteness would put some starch into the army he led. The men could fight, all right, they had proved that, but a firm and formal observance of rank and its attendant privileges engendered respect. Respect, not affection, was what a commanding officer depended on—it was a surer thing and lasted longer, and through such ordeals of the march that affection might not survive.

  Besides all that, Morrison felt demeaned. He was a loyal aide-de-camp and did his job as signal officer impeccably, with not so much as the expression on his face to indicate anything but his complete devotion to duty. But he liked his comforts and privileges. Sherman had made a point of depriving his staff of their wall tents and all but two mounts per man. Morrison had to leave behind his trunk, his books, and his cook. He had only his body servant. He said nothing, of course, but could not help feeling that the General secretly took a malicious glee in imposing hardships that he by nature was disposed to, knowing full well that others were not.

  Stiff and proper though he was, a burly red-faced young man already balding, Morrison was a good student of human nature, first of all his own. He could perceive his taste for field luxuries as a kind of weakness, or lack of assurance that his own person imprinted on the world. In fact, he tended to be self-effacing and believed Sherman tolerated him without liking him very much. They were too different as men. But Morrison knew of himself that he would not pretend to a style of leadership that was so cynical as to greet and talk like a comrade with enlisted men on the march but feel nothing when twenty-five hundred of them were lost at Kennesaw Mountain. He had seen the General’s reaction then—a moment’s disappointment in the outcome and a consideration of the next stratagem.

  After Atlanta was theirs the General pretended not to take seriously the mail that came in, the plaudits, the expressions of gratitude akin to worship. His correspondence, which Morrison took down, displayed a calm rectitude, a modesty that was in direct contrast to the joy of triumphal vindication in his soul and his obvious feelings of superiority to all those, including the President, who had sent their congratulations. How did Morrison know this except by the tone of the dictating voice, the sly self-satisfied laughter after a particularly elegant self-deprecating phrase, or the impatient pacing of a general so happy to be who he was that he could not contain himself for the tremors of excitement that ran through him before he assumed his sober mien and went from his study to receive the latest politician come to praise him.

  And now here, this latest example of a general’s prerogative—that he would simply by whim attach this drummer boy to his staff, and a strange child, too, who did not speak very much or do very much but sit by his side and listen in on the most confidential military discussions. It was unfortunate that Lieutenant Clarke had been killed, but did that mean his company drummer could not be reassigned?

  Morrison confided his feelings to Colonel Teack, who had been with Sherman since Shiloh.

  Well, you see, Morrison, Teack said, drawing on his meerschaum, the General wouldn’t permit himself a leave two summers ago, and so his family came down from Ohio for a visit. Miz Sherman and the children, including his son Willie, Teack said, as if this explained everything.

  Morrison was immediately sorry he had begun the conversation.

  At the time we were in Vicksburg, Teack said. There is no worse place to suffer the heat of summer than Vicksburg.

  Morrison waited.

  And the son Willie, a Northern boy, he succumbed to it, Teack said. It was very sad, because he was not a party to the war.

  What, he died?

  Like that, from the typhoid, Teack said. Now, this drummer boy—something is not right. He’s a strange one, I grant you. But if he does nothing else he is good for the solace of a grieving father. You don’t have to go to Harvard to see he is standing in for the poor dead son in General Sherman’s mind. And we want that mind to be sound, don’t we, Morrison?

  Of course.

  Because it hasn’t always been, Teack said, and turned away.

  IT WAS COLONEL Teack, though, who quietly made some inquiries. No drummer boy was assigned to the late Lieutenant Clarke’s foraging company. Hi
s regiment had lost one around Milledgeville, but in that case the boy was attached to an infantry company. Perhaps Teack would have attempted to find and speak to one of the survivors of the skirmish at Sandersonville, but he thought he saw the answer to the mystery in Pearl’s hazel eyes, which, when he caught their attention, flashed with a defiance not at all typical of the humblest of all the enlisted.

  In any event, Pearl could not keep her secret very long, conditions in the field being what they were. Soon enough Teack and the other members of Sherman’s staff had reason to be satisfied that this strange boy of few words and moody disposition was, in fact, a girl. And circumstances being what they were in this war, they knew that, white as she was, she had to be Negro. At this point their protective feelings for General Sherman prevailed. With scant discussion, hardly more than an exchange of looks, the officers came to the consensus that kept Pearl’s secret from their commander. Sherman’s manservant, Sergeant Moses Brown, was delegated to see to it that neither the General nor anybody else in the army would know the truth, and he did his job well. He made sure the girl’s privacy was maintained when she saw to herself. In camp one day he built a sort of shebang from the underbrush beside a brook so that Pearl could bathe without being seen.

  In all of this, Pearl accepted the arrangement as her due. Moses Brown was very formal, and gave no indication that he had any opinions about her or the orders he had to look after her. He was good at his work, protective and forbearing. For this she was grateful. She came to have for him some of the same regard she had had for Roscoe back home. But she felt no particular gratitude to these officers that had conspired to protect her. She was still grieving for Lieutenant Clarke. She kept the letter he had written in her breast pocket. She kept the two gold coins Roscoe had given her in her trouser pocket. She wore her red shawl with the gold thread under her tunic. These items were her estate. As for the General, she quickly learned that she had less to fear from him than from any of the others. He enjoyed seeing her eat well and supposed she didn’t speak much as a result of the terrible sights she had seen in the engagement at Sandersonville. Won’t you tell me your name, son? he would say. And she would shake her head. At night she lay in her fly tent and heard him walking about the grounds, unable to sleep. She smelled his cigar smoke and listened to his back-and-forth patrol among the tents. She surmised that he did his thinking at night. And in the daytime, when it was possible, she listened to his conversation with his men and mouthed the words silently as she strove to train herself to speak white speech. On the march, the General liked to ride forward of his headquarters wagon, then back again toward the rear of the march. Everywhere, the men knew him and called out to him as he waved. They called him Uncle Billy, and she delighted him one morning when he asked how she was feeling and she said, Thank you, Uncle Billy, I are quite well.

  XII

  A DAY’S MARCH OUT OF SAVANNAH, THE FIFTEENTH Corps found themselves on a road that the Rebels had mined. There were two or three muffled explosions that were unlike anything the men had ever heard. Infantrymen took cover. Everything halted. A rider came at a gallop to bring Wrede’s hospital unit forward.

  It was a warm day for December. Arly and Will followed the Colonel in Ambulance Two. The going was slow, the wagon train slow to move aside, the teamsters reluctant to take their wheels onto the soft ground off the road.

  At the head of the column the road was cratered. Men and horses had been blown into the fields. Wrede’s nurses brought out the stretchers and went about collecting those who were still alive. Emily Thompson tended a boy whose leg was gone at the knee. She applied a tourniquet at the thigh. Just over the fence rail lay a decapitated body. It was an awful carnage here on this warm December day.

  Wrede had to ask an officer who was comforting one of the wounded to step aside. Please, he said. The officer stepped back, saying to Wrede, Now we see these Rebels for the murderers they are. They are not soldiers. Soldiers stand and fight, they don’t do this. He turned and shouted, Provost guard! Bring me prisoners, get some damn prisoners up here! Emily realized, as Wrede had not, that this was General Sherman.

  About a half mile away off to the left was a woods before which stood a house and barn. That will be our hospital, Wrede said.

  Several prisoners were brought forward. They were given picks and spades and commanded to march in close order down the road. You will find every mine planted there, Sherman said, or be blown up in the process. Jesus! General, have mercy, one of them said, it wasn’t us did this. Forward march! Sherman said, and gave the man a kick. He then raised his arms and pushed the air to indicate that everyone was to move back.

  Whimpering and trembling with fear, the prisoners after a few stumbling steps abandoned their tools, dropped to their knees, and with their fingers began to search for the land mines. They crawled forward, feeling with their outstretched hands like blind men. Each time they uncovered something they cried out. Sherman’s engineers studied the first device, figured out how it was constructed, and disabled it. Six mines were found, all of the same design. They were pressure-sensitive via friction matches, housed in copper cylinders, and with the detonating power of a howitzer shell.

  Arly and Will loaded their ambulance with groaning, bleeding men. Two tiers of racks ran lengthwise under the tarpaulin. They saw a drummer boy standing in the middle of the road looking down at his bare foot, which had blood on it. You don’t look too bad, sonny, Arly said, but we’ll fix you up anyways. Get away! the boy shouted. Arly took him by the shoulders and Will by the knees, and they brought the screaming, squirming boy to the wagon.

  Only when he saw Emily looking down at him from the rear of the ambulance did the drummer boy go quiet and consent to be put aboard. But tears brimmed in his eyes and Emily thought how oddly beautiful his face was.

  Will, for his part, stood a moment gazing up at Nurse Thompson while Arly, waiting not one moment, took his place on the box and got the mules moving. Will had to hurry forward and leap on at a run. To a chorus of moans and curses and cries, the mules trotted down the road toward the house by the woods. Mounted troops cantered past them in the same direction and Emily saw Wrede, too, riding past.

  Each rut or ravel in the road brought forth screams. Up front Will, his shoulders hunched, said, One man’s suffering is pitiable. But when it’s a howling chorus it can only be you’re in Hell.

  Why, Will, son, I only got us this amblance duty so as you could moon over that Miz Thompson.

  Never mind that. I could never aspire to a woman of her degree.

  How can you know a woman’s degree till you put it to the test?

  She just don’t see me now that I am a recovered Union on his feet again.

  Well, then, think on Savannah. We will have Christmas in Savannah. The ladies there will see you. They will pucker up under the mistletoe. We will have ourselves Christmas goose and figgy puddin. And when we’re through with all that we’ll get back on the march.

  I ain’t getting back. This is not me wearing this blue. To where? Will said after a moment.

  To all the way to Richmond, maybe, and I wouldn’t mind if to the North Pole. On the march is the new way to live. Well, it ain’t exactly that new. You take what you need from where you happen to be, like a lion on the plains, like a hawk in the mountains, who are also creatures of God’s making, you do remember. We may have dominion over them, but it don’t hurt to pick up a pointer or two. I never was much good for settling down with the same view out the window every morning and the same woman in bed every night. It is only the dead in their graves who should live like that, Arly said to the gasps and urgent prayers and implorings for water rising into the warm December morning.

  THE SMALL HOUSE Wrede had chosen for his field hospital was unoccupied. The front door swung on its hinges. The glass panes were shattered. It was just two rooms on the ground floor, a parlor and a kitchen. The two upstairs bedrooms were small, with little headroom under the slanting roof, and they were baked hot from
the sun.

  Wrede indicated the parlor for his surgery. His nurses carried the furniture outside and within minutes they had set up the two tables, brought out the sheets, drawn water from the well, opened the medicinal case, and laid out the surgical instruments.

  Outside, the ambulances were unburdened of their riders. The wounded were arranged on pallets outside the front door, in the shade of an oak tree. The dozen or so cavalry rode about to check the surroundings, especially the woods behind the house, and set themselves out as pickets.

  Emily stayed outside with the wounded, trying to keep them comfortable until they were brought in for surgery. When it was the drummer boy’s turn, she went with him, walking beside the stretcher and holding his hand. It was a soft, small hand. He was quiet enough, though his eyes showed fear, but when he was placed on a table and Wrede’s nurses took a pair of shears to the bottom of his trousers he hollered, struggling to raise himself, squirming and shouting, twisting like a bronco, as one of the men said with a laugh.

  Emily at this moment understood the boy’s reaction as the same she would have had under the circumstance. Soldiers about to undergo surgery often struggled, but for some reason it was the fact of the nurses intending to enforce their will that was to her the essential meaning of what was happening here. Was it only a matter of the boy’s age? The nurses were doing their duty, but, without knowing why, she felt that she had to stop them. And then all at once, as she read the look of anguish the child flashed at her, her intuition named itself. No no, wait, stop, she said, and moved to stand between the nurses and the table.

  On the other side of the room Wrede, doing a procedure, and his attendants waiting upon him, were in such poses of intense concentration as to release her to her own authority. She had by now a respect from the medical detachment that was only partly due to her serious accommodation to the work. It was Wrede’s attentions to her that gave her the credential she assumed this moment as she ordered the men to carry the patient upstairs. And bring me towels and a basin of water, she said.