Call Each River Jordan Read online

  I pointed into the weeds. “Take up those cartridge boxes,” I told my growing band. For I judged by the sound we would need them. “And get you plenty of caps.”

  All a soldier wanted could be gathered along that road, thrown down by men who thought to quit the war. “You. You!” I seized an ancient musket from a private and thrust a fine new rifle in his arms. “That’ll do a proper damage,” I told him.

  Some began to join our ranks unbidden. One boy ran across a fresh, green field. No one wants to be alone in battle, and men rally to those who show a little pluck.

  Of course, there was no order to our march. A grunting mob in uniform we were. But they followed me, full thirty of them now. Some even started in to brag and swagger, mocking those who would not go beside us.

  I had put up my Colt and got a rifle. U.S.-issue, fine but for the dust. I must have looked a sight, laden down with cartridge leathers and the long weapon, limping along on my cane. But those boys and men saw naught but my mask of confidence, a sergeant’s trick learned fighting the Pushtoon, when confidence was all that got you through. A major had it easy by compare to the bloody young man I had been.

  Bullets stung the air. I tried to sense where we were needed most, but gained no feeling for the battle’s shape. Ahead of us loomed thunder and obscurity.

  A riderless horse careened from a grove, seeking sunlight. Animals run from the fighting, see, unless they have been special-bred for viscounts.

  “Over there,” I bellowed. “Into the trees.” I did not lead but drove them from behind, a sergeant still in soul and skills and bearing. I did not want to see them run again. Oh, two tried. But I smacked them proper with a length of cane. And nearly lost my balance in the doing, for I was loaded like a native bearer. I cursed the slackers, wounding decent English.

  Set down like this, all reeks of sense and knowledge. But I was not a thinking man that day. In battle, men survive who learn to act. Thinkers perish, or, at best, they fail. They hesitate, and die. No, I had not the selfhood ink pretends, but was a beast trained by a master’s hand. Forever a creature of the regiment I was, though I had long hoped elsewise. I was, again, the boy in the scarlet coat, streaming with the gore of Chillianwala, and grinning at the slaughter and the triumph. That was Britannia’s legacy to me, brought to my new land as a fateful cargo.

  I was not myself upon that field, see. Not the Abel Jones I had constructed across the years I wore no uniform. Not the man I prayed that I might be as I approached the age of thirty-four. Not the loving husband and father, the dutiful Methodist clerk. I fell down. And Jones the Killer rose up like a ghost, bloody as the Kashmir Gate at Delhi.

  But let that bide.

  Suddenly, we were in it. I pushed forward. The lad beside me wriggled like a caught snake, then tumbled bloody. The scrub wood tangled our feet in roots and briars, tripping us with haversacks and blankets thrown away, with weapons lost and staring corpses. Officers shouted to be heard above the volleys, but their voices only blurred. It was a realm of rifles, with no guns wheeled between the trees as yet, though cannonades resounded on our flanks. Ahead, blue backs stood and knelt and crouched, while officers went rushing to and fro. Men fell.

  I marked the weakest portion of the line.

  “Over there,” I ordered. Pointing with my hand and then my rifle. I knew that those remaining would stay by me, the way a soldier knows but can’t explain. I did my best to lead them true and decent.

  And now my cane would have to be discarded, although I feared my leg would not hold up. I needed both hands for the rifle, see, and thought to use the weapon as my crutch. Still, I felt a twinge amid the fury, for we have little sense of proper order. My stick was but another scrap of wood. Yet it had been a gift of Christian kindness, carved by honest hands in old New York. I had to let it go, but felt a grief. Well, men lost more that day than Abel Jones. A moment later, I had aimed and shot.

  I put my rough platoon in place, back in the trees where we were screened by brambles. We would be hard to see, though not protected. Nor were our enemies set out on display. The Rebels came in rushes, darting out of the smoke. Game those fellows were, but poorly led. Their officers did not know how to mass, or how to make the left support the right. A proper sergeant might have put them straight. But this was not a war of regulars. Now and then, we caught a glimpse of lines, and once a braided fellow waved his cap, riding on a black and prancing horse. But most of it was deadly hide-and-seek.

  The lads had been taught to stand and shoot, as all the manuals tell you, but that just made them targets. I had them crouch wherever there was cover. Though not before another soldier fell. A rotted log was all we had to shield us, yet that was more than our charging enemies had. Briars tangled them, and smoke grabbed their flags.

  The Rebels thinned away. As if they had been ghosts. A pool of quiet spread before us, while battle roared and screamed on either flank. The boys kept firing till I made them stop.

  “Reload, and hold your fire,” I commanded. “Look you, lads. Set your cartridge boxes up beside you. And wait for them to come, for come they will.”

  Well I knew what such a silence meant. A fresh regiment, perhaps a new brigade, was forming to fall upon us. I scrambled over to the officer nearest, a colonel with his arm in a bloody sling, whose men were pouring fire into nothing. I tried to warn him what was bound to happen, but he only looked down at me, as if I were one of the malingerers under the bluff, and told me to get away. When the attack came, his line was pierced, and only the arrival of a fresh regiment restored our front. The colonel fell at his post.

  By then I was back with my lads, giving what encouragement I could.

  The Rebels charged screaming and howling, half an army, half a heathen tribe. Unmatched flags swept over a field. That meant we faced two regiments, at least. But we, too, had grown stronger. Soldiers looking for their units had wandered into our line and joined it. Orphaned companies wedged in to shore up battered regiments. We barely had space to load.

  “Hold your fire,” I said. “Hold your fire . . . and aim low when you aim.”

  Not all paid me heed, for fear was on them. But the stronger among them coiled. I could feel the fierceness in them then. Waiting to spring loose. It is a sense of power that should disgrace us.

  I waited until the enemy was snared in the brush and bodies, close enough for us to mark their faces, their eagerness and fury and their dread. Then I screamed, “Fire,” in a voice gone raw.

  A dozen dropped at once before our front. The suddenness stunned their comrades, and they wavered. I ordered the boys to reload and fire at will. That was when they pierced us on the right, where the colonel had dismissed me, but a tide of blue poured through the trees in time. I aimed and shot, more useful thus than barking.

  We fired, and they fell, and they fell, and we fired.

  Still, we were ordered back. Somewhere, the line had failed. We lost more lads withdrawing than while holding. I saw the bafflement of men who had fought well but must give up the ground for which they bled. Some cursed in spite, while others wept with rage. Myself, I had forgotten my bothered leg, as men will overlook dreadful wounds and keep fighting. There is a wild energy that sweeps you, an opiate to pain and spur to deeds. The devil overtakes us in a battle and fills us with a mockery of joy. You feel that you were never more alive.

  The Rebels cheered behind us, but they paused. Their leaders were as new to this as ours and did not know enough to drive us hard.

  Oh, we were motley. Sloven. Reloading left our faces black as miners, with powder acrid on our swollen tongues. Trees and smoke consumed troops by the hundreds. The sun was blotted and the heavens stained.

  We came into a meadow of green shoots, and I began to understand the ground. The way a veteran suddenly knows a thing. It was no place to make your numbers tell or to sweep grandly round a hanging flank. The landscape broke the battle into fragments and made it but a brawl of split brigades. The ground was queer and crippled brave attacks
. Twas as if the Lord had dropped a cloak, its folds become ravines or swales or ridges. Rhymeless stands of trees fringed poor men’s fields. It was a sorry place, though it was warm. I late had felt the rawness of New York. Here all was buds and sprouting leaves. And death.

  A fellow got up fine cantered abroad, followed by a brace of staff men.

  “That’s General Prentiss,” one of the lads behind me called, but I knew of none such. And I was one for letting generals be.

  You feel the want of water quick enough. When you are drinking smoke and shouting orders. The heat of battle multiplies the sun, and when you are in the thing the smoke wraps you hot and drains you dry as the Balooch deserts. The thirst, too, made me think of India. I longed to call out for my good, old bhisti, with his bag of lovely water and his grin.

  I had not planned for battles in my travels, and had brought no equipment save my Colt. I had no water bottle or canteen. So I tugged vessels free of the dead, and had the boys still with me do the same. Scruples fade amid slaughter. And heat will drop a soldier like a bullet.

  But there is right and wrong, even in battle. I caught a boy stripping clothing from a corpse. Now taking up cartridges or water is a matter of need, and only practical, but looting must not be permitted. It is a matter of discipline, as much as it is of morals. For the army that grabs dissolves.

  I recognized the lad as one of mine, a boy whom I had gathered off the road. He had unruly hair, as I remember. But no one was well combed that bloody day.

  I gave him a whack with the stock of my rifle. The barrel scalded my hands.

  “You’ll leave the dead alone,” I told him. “Come along.”

  The boy responded by tugging at the corpse’s legs again.

  I slapped him hard. And then he looked at me.

  “I just want his trousers,” he pleaded, with a pitiful look in his eyes. “I done shat mine through.”

  A bullet caught him where his cheekbone bulged. Teeth and brains and blood splashed passing men.

  I marched off with a fierce, determined limp. For he who stops to think will think too long.

  WE FOUGHT FOR HOURS. In another wood. Ears stunned. Ringing. Aching. The right ear always worse. As if our heads had grown lopsided. And swollen. With the shooting shoulder bruised by the rifle’s kick. Parsing ammunition. Searching bodies for more. Breathing men’s burst guts. Gunpowder scours your nostrils, see. And gives you all the cesspit stink of war. We gagged and fired, eyes to the front. Afraid to look around us or behind. Terrified by the jamming of a barrel. Without the wanted time for proper action. Ripping weapons from the slop of corpses. Even those unscathed were splashed with blood. I had to wipe a boy’s pulp from my face and slap his innards from my tunic’s breast.

  That is how we fought. And that is where the wounded burned alive.

  Though I would be a Christian man, I strayed far from all righteousness that day. In war a man becomes a raging beast, hating those whom he will never know. And there is pleasure in killing, when the hatred is upon you. That is a secret that soldiers keep from those who keep a gentler watch at home. I would have slain the Rebels by the hundreds, with no thought that each was a man like me. I would tell you that I hate war, and I do, but what I truly mean is something other: I hate what war has taught me of myself.

  At times I fear Christ threw himself away.

  But that is looking back. That day I fought, and hated with my soul. Fellows who have never tasted battle make up fancies that ennoble us. Scribblers would have us full of thoughts of country, dreaming of wives and home and high ideals, of causes, flags and fidelity. But that is what you think of in your tent, if you are one who thinks of things at all. A warm meal matters more than any motto, and shelter from the rain is cause enough. Battle has its reasons, but they do not fit our words. Heroes are but men of timely impulse. We only want to live.

  Tell me of glory, and I will tell you of boys burned alive at Shiloh.

  ANTS. First I remember the burning men, and then I recall the ants. I lay in the dust of Adam, and hurt bloomed in my ear. The pain swelled up each time I pulled the trigger. I know that I reached for a cartridge and saw it was covered with ants. Copper in color they were. Then I saw that my hand was laden, too, and my sleeve swarmed. And then I felt the bites along my body, for I had stretched myself upon a nest. Each creature fights the battles of its kind. I will give Mr. Darwin that, though nothing more. I felt a hundred bites like stings of shrapnel.

  They saved me, the ants did. I rolled off in a panic. Just as a Rebel brought his rifle down. He would have crushed my skull.

  I shocked him with the quickness I could muster. Jolted by sudden terror, I rose before his weapon pulled back up and jabbed the nip of my gunstock in his ribs. He staggered with a grunt.

  He was a creature of the poorest fields. Of stunted cobs and shallow furrows. Thin-faced, hair long and filthy, beard stained yellow-orange as if with sulfur. His cap was gone, his uniform torn. But his eyes shone full of lightning. His skin was red and ruined. But not those eyes. I will recall them till the day I die. They were black. Eyes alive as any man’s, and desperate to stay among the living.

  Tough he was, but not trained. He judged me less a man, due to my stature. It killed him, that mistake. For I was brought up on the bayonet, and fought with emptied rifle many a day. And when our blades broke off we clubbed our foe. I knew my tools.

  He lunged for me and I slipped to the side. Bad leg or no, I had the old skills yet. He stumbled, driven forward by his weight. Greased with sweat, I parried as he passed me. Then my rifle’s stock swung to his skull. And he went down.

  In poems and ballads wounded men are spared. But fallen men may rise to fight again. Gasping, I pulped his brains with one fierce blow. Then I looked around. Ready for the next man, bloody-minded. When no one took his place, I knelt and loaded, stiff of leg but charged beyond the pain. For I had learned to load formed up in square or bent behind low walls of Punjab mud.

  Mingled and mangled we were. But coats of blue surrounded me again. Steady in the trees behind a farm road. We gulped the smoke and stink, lungs desperate. Awaiting the next Rebel try.

  Our enemies paused again. The battle carried on in other fields. But where we stood the cost had been too high. I hoped that we had stopped them in our front.

  That is when they massed the guns against us, more than they had brought to bear all day. The smoke thinned and we watched as they unlimbered, across a field and stretched into the trees. Gun upon gun. Some began to fire right away. Seeking the range.

  The fellows to our left pulled off the line. Rifle fire had sounded to our rear, trapping us as quarry for their guns. And so I had to choose. Stand beside our comrades, or withdraw.

  Round shot shattered trees, piercing men with splinters fierce as bullets. Then shells burst near us. I felt the change come over every man, as if the cauldron around us had gone chill. Our lines would not withstand their dozen batteries. Nor would our hearts.

  “Come on, you buggers,” I called, for I was vicious. I yanked at collars and kicked with my good leg, nearly toppling over. “Come on, or you’ll go to Hell and deserve it. Come on, lads . . . follow after . . .”

  A goodly dozen obeyed me. We plunged back into the wood, with me hobbling in the lead. The Rebel infantry dashed at the flanks again, and action roared to the rear. I knew that they were trying to close a circle. A man could smell surrender in the air.

  And I would not surrender. Not Abel Jones. Perhaps it was a curse on me from India, where those who quit were tortured, like as not, and always killed before their comrades reached them. This was not India, no, and skins were white. But I was in that rage of self-possession that guides the veteran soldier like a star. And I would not give up to any man. I am hard-headed, judge me as you may.

  We were not the only ones withdrawing. Tattered regiments made a rolling fight. Behind us, cannon opened by the dozen. Their ranging done, death rode on every shot. The woods burned, and the army howled like a beast.<
br />
  “This way, lads. Over here.”

  I had lost several men to the confusion. Some outran me, for I was not quick. A rifle makes an awkward sort of cane. Yet on we went. The Rebels swarmed around to bag their prey. We paused by planted flags and joined the volleys. But no line lasted long. Sugar in water we were, and nothing more. With our own troops firing wildly, and regiments wrecked in the crossfire. Soon there was no order left at all.

  Braced on my gun’s stock, I shouted commands. Whether or not a body was left to listen. My words had the value of gibberish, and perhaps not a whit more sense. A handsome fellow on the eve of manhood leapt across my path just like a deer. Laughing. Twas not a laugh of joy or any health. The boy was Bedlam mad. Shrieking with laughter. He had a prophet’s eyes and a woman’s hands.

  We fled. And turned to fire. And fled again. The best men had the spunk of cornered beasts. Through burning tents and ruined camps we went. Clots of wounded, gathered then forgotten, lay defenseless in the battle’s path. Some tried to join the fight, while others begged us to carry them away. Men crawled, dragging entrails or a useless limb. The lucky ones lay still with eyes of wonder, numb because the pain had not yet struck.

  In a meadow a downed horse quivered. It kicked and twisted, trying to bite the pain of guts spilled out like flour from a sack. I do not like horses, but pitied that animal. Its eyes were stunned and might have been a man’s. Yet, even with a rifle ready loaded, I would not waste my lead upon the beast. Nor did he merit one shot from my pistol. Every round was meant for killing men. That was but sense and discipline, see.

  Our decency is thinner than a reed. I left the creature shrieking on the ground.

  We were a sorry pack, a mass disordered. The few lads left beside me blurred into a collision of regiments. Both ours and theirs. Men fought hand to hand, and I drew out my Colt, which I had saved for such a spot as this.