The Black Flower Page 4

  Bushrod took off his own cap and wrung the water from it as he would a rag. “What about Virgil C.?” he asked. He was trying to keep his voice from quivering.

  “God in the mornin,” said Jack. “We could hunt til the Kingdom comes and never find Virgil C. in this goddamned mess. Time to fall back—tomorrow’s another day.”

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” said Bushrod. “Have you ever seen the ocean?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “Well, I mean, if we’re to fall back, I vote we try for the Gulf of Mexico. I never seen the ocean myself. My Uncle Jarvis was a sailor in his day—crossed the line lots of times, to Brazil or someplace—said they’s fish down there would swallow up a cow if one should happen to fall in. Imagine a fish that big, imagine a cow in the ocean, that’s pretty funny, ain’t it? Ain’t it, Jack? Great God—”

  Bushrod fell silent and looked at his hands. Jack Bishop regarded his friend through fogged spectacles. After a moment, he said quietly, “It’s all right, boy. Come on. I wish this dern rain would stop.”

  Bishop turned, took a step, tripped and fell headlong onto the body of a Recently Departed who lay in his path. The thing was black with rain, but there was a beard, there were teeth; it heaved a moist sigh and closed its arms around Jack like a lover.

  “Son of a bitch!” cried Jack and clawed frantically away, retching and spluttering.

  “This is worse than hell, worse than anything,” sobbed Bushrod.

  A big Dahlgren shell from the gunboats plowed through the trees and exploded with a deafening roar, filling the air with humming fragments. The boys hugged the ground under a shower of dirt and branches, then ran for their lives. They had not gone fifty yards before they found Virgil C.

  He was propped against a big gum log that glowed with foxfire. He was soaking wet, and his blackened, swollen face reminded Bushrod of Luther Falls, a strange, unhappy boy who had tied an anvil to his leg and jumped in the deep turn hole of Little Spring Creek. After two days, the search party thought of the turn hole. It was Bushrod who dove to the bottom and found him, his eyes wide open, his hair waving in the slow current like grass. Now someone must have dragged Virgil C. out of the dark waters of the battle and sat him up against the gum log. Across his knees, like the dismantled skeleton of some small animal, lay his broken fiddle. Jack Bishop took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Well goddamn,” he said.

  Bushrod felt a knot rise in his throat. Before this day he had thought of death in battle as a romance that he and his comrades flirted with. By association, death would make them all wise, thoughtful, mysterious; it would give them dark memories that they would only talk about if pressed, though they might write poems about it. However, death was expected to be a thing that happened only to people they did not know—and now here it was, sordid and wet and personal, like Luther Falls after two days in the turn hole. “No!” Bushrod choked, as if someone had struck him in the chest. “No, that can’t be Virgil C., that can’t be—”

  At the mention of its name, the Departed fluttered an eyelid and groaned. Jack and Bushrod jumped as if bitten. Then the eyes popped open. “Oh, howdy boys,” said Virgil C.

  Before Bushrod could stop him, Jack Bishop dove for the grimy neck of Virgil C. Johnson. “Damn your soul!” cried Jack. “Goddamn you to hell!” He was shrieking now, and hammering Virgil C.’s head against the mushy wood of the log.

  “Whoa, Jack!” cried Virgil C. “You gone bust my goddamn fiddle!”

  Then Jack Bishop sat down against the log himself and laughed for a long time, great tears cutting furrows in the powder grime on his cheeks. “Damn you, Virgil C. Johnson,” he said over and over. “Oh damn you anyhow.”

  They found a bloody shelter-half and a blanket and made a place for themselves against the big log. They huddled together, shivering with cold and exhaustion, ignoring the ghostly shapes still shuffling through the coiling smoke around them, calling the names of men who would never answer. They ignored the rain, the shells, the picket firing, even the crying of the wounded in the dark. They ignored, as best they could, the thought that tomorrow was another day. They only wanted to sleep, and tomorrow was far away, and maybe with luck it would never come at all. As Bushrod began to drift among the phantoms of sleep, he heard, as if at a great distance, the voice of Virgil C. Johnson: “Oh, I ought to of left this fiddle back in Corinth. I wisht I’d never brung it now. I didn’t know it’d be this way, did you? My, what a circus. I got lost. I saw a man that was blowed in two, half over here, and half over there. Say, you think this fiddle is broke, or do you think—”

  “Goddammit, Virgil C., shut up,” said Jack Bishop. “Just please won’t you shut up?”

  “Well, all right, then,” said Virgil C.

  Bushrod thought he heard a horseman pass. He heard the hooves scuff in the leaves, pause, and move on. Then he slept.

  “It’s times like these,” Jack Bishop was saying, “that a man’s confronted by his own mortality.” It was the same remark that he made before every action, large or small, and it drew the usual response from Virgil C.

  “If you are killed,” said Virgil C.,“can I have your watch?”

  “No!” said Bishop. “I have told you a hundred times, that watch was give to me by my mother, and I intend to carry it even unto the grave.”

  “What you care what time it is down there?” asked Virgil C. “What about us that is left to bear the sorrow? You and Bushrod always had a watch, and I have forever had to ask what time it is. You would think—”

  “Bushrod Carter,” Jack said, “I charge you to make sure that should I fall this man don’t prowl among my remains.”

  “Oh, hell, Jack,” said Bushrod. “That watch of yours ain’t anything but a piece of junk. It makes more racket than a sawmill engine—I can hear it tickin away out here. And besides, Virgil C. can’t tell time anyhow, can you, Virgil C.?”

  “Yes, I can,” said Virgil C.

  “My mama give me that watch,” said Jack. “It hurts me you should talk about it in that way.”

  “Oh, your granny,” said Bushrod.

  “You just try me, see if I can’t tell time,” said Virgil C.

  The company, the regiment, the brigade were formed up now. Beyond them were other companies, regiments, brigades: thousands upon thousands of men all confronted by their mortality. Across the way, the great host of Strangers, similarly confronted, waited in the autumn twilight for something to happen. Bushrod could not remember when his army had last been arrayed like this, where he could see nearly all of it at once. It seemed an enormous living thing, breathing and moving, possessed of instinct and intelligence and malevolence all its own. Bushrod knew it was the sum of many parts, that those parts were individual men, each one the result of a complex personal history and each one convinced that he stood at the very center of the universe. But to look at it like this, to see the long lines flung out in diminishing perspective over the folds and wrinkles of the land—to see it thus, a vast patchwork quilt of color, all the faces and hands blurred by distance—then the individual was completely absorbed, lives were poured and blended into the one great Life, and Bushrod felt as he did when he contemplated the enormity of the stars. How else could we ever do this thing? he thought.

  With the Strangers over there, the effect was even greater. They presented a creature—dark blue above, light blue below—whose aspect changed only at certain times in winter when they wore their dashing, much-coveted sky blue overcoats. It was Jack Bishop who once devised a figure for their seasonal mutation: “They are like so many mushrats,” he said. “The meat’s no-account, but the pelt is prime.” Even the individuality of their hats and blanket rolls did not mar the impression, from a distance, that the Strangers’ army had been stamped out by some mill in Pennsylvania. This made them easy to kill, from a distance, like so many mushrats. Up close, it was another matter. Up close, the Strangers seemed uncomfortably like themselves, and for this reason Bushrod hat
ed any contact face-to-face. When prisoners were taken, Bushrod hung back. When opposing pickets traded for coffee and tobacco, Bushrod stayed by the fire. Most of all, Bushrod Carter hated hand-to-hand fighting. He left that to the Other who, in rare, unhappy times when they actually grappled with the enemy (“crossing bayonets” was the way the popular journals phrased it), seemed to have no scruples about the individual life.

  Lastly there were the Departed, who were in a class by themselves. No group Bushrod had ever known were so jealous of their anonymity. Having surrendered everything to the great Mystery, they had nothing left to offer those who had not. The color of their uniforms made no difference.

  Today, Bushrod was trying very hard to lose himself in the greater whole. He wanted desperately to forget himself and be absorbed into that abstract, faceless swarm from which fear and injury and death emerged as mere numbers on the First Sergeant’s morning report. But it was all very theoretical and, try as he might, Bushrod kept coming back to a lonely, corporeal fact: that here he was, Bushrod Carter, standing at the center of the universe with ashes in his mouth.

  Then, with a great tin-plated crash, the band of Adams’ Brigade, stationed immediately to the company’s rear, erupted in song. For once, Bushrod was grateful: he had been thinking too much, and in the presence of that band, philosophy and introspection could not live.

  Because he loved music, Bushrod hated all military bands. The rigors of the field kept the instruments perpetually out of tune; the bandsmen played too fast, they used up rations, and the glittering bells of their horns drew fire from the Strangers’ artillery. Moreover, these Confederate bands seemed to know only one song really well: “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” which the Brigade Band was playing even now.

  Bushrod despised “The Bonnie Blue Flag” with all his heart. Early in the war, the song had stirred him, awakening in his mind a collection of noble images—pennoned lances, tilted banners, the Holy Rood, and so on. Now, after three years, he had heard it played and sung so often he could not suffer the sound of it. Worse, the merest suggestion of the tune would usher its threadbare lyrics into Bushrod’s consciousness, there to chant for hours in maddening iambics:

  We are a band of brothers, native

  to the soil,

  Fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood, and

  toil. …

  Bushrod’s right foot, shod comfortably in the Jefferson shoe, was already tapping in time. He willed it to stop, but it was useless to resist that inner chorus.

  Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern

  rights, hurrah!

  Bushrod’s was the color company of the regiment. A few files to his right, the color guard huddled protectively around their charge, a standard battle flag painted with the names of their most celebrated combats: Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta. Like all his comrades, Bushrod felt an almost supernatural affection for that flag. In his mind it existed as the stained and ragged symbol of their stained and ragged selves. Whatever else it might have stood for had long ago been humbled by the terrible names written across it.

  Hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag

  That bears the single star.

  General Loring, their division commander, rode across the regimental front, his staff jingling along behind. The General gravely acknowledged the salutes of the officers in the ranks; some of the soldiers raised their hats, but nobody cheered as they had once cheered for General Cleburne. The men had nothing against Loring, but their hearts were still with Cleburne, in whose division they had once served, and who was now way off to the left somewhere. Besides, the boys seldom cheered for anything these days.

  “Attention. …Company!”

  At the Captain’s command, Bushrod’s heart made a practice leap. He forced it down and came reluctantly to attention, his musket pressed against his right thigh. Jack and Virgil C. jostled him on either side as the long line squeezed together, dressing on the colors. They were in the front rank, and Bushrod hated to be in the front rank. He felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. Whoever was behind him would invariably discharge his musket in Bushrod’s ear. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now.

  We are a band of brothers, native

  to the soil. …

  Even Jack and Virgil C. had quit their foolishness for the moment. Bushrod wondered if they too, in the moments before a battle, closed down the delicate machinery of thought. Tomorrow, I will ask them, Bushrod thought. Tomorrow they would go all three down to the river in the twilight, and Bushrod would ask them about it. He glanced at his friends. Jack was muttering to himself and wiping his spectacles with a filthy handkerchief, his rifle in the crook of his arm. Virgil C. caught Bushrod’s eye and grinned faintly but said nothing. Bushrod could smell their rank wool and the indelible reek of wood-smoke that hung about them all.

  Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern

  rights, hurrah!

  Hurrah! for the

  Bonnie Blue Flag. …

  “Load and prime! Come to order arms!”

  Ah, me, thought Bushrod. He brought his rifle around and planted the butt between his feet. He fumbled in his cartridge box, extracted a cartridge, and tore off the paper tail with his fingers (no use biting it off this early in the dance—plenty of time for all that later: the blistered lips the swollen tongue, the acid taste of black powder and no more spit—). Then, as he made to pour the powder into the muzzle, his hand began to shake so badly that all the powder spilled on the ground.

  “Load and prime, boys,” said the lieutenants walking up and down behind the line. “Move smartly—keep your muzzles up, there.”

  Bushrod dropped the torn cartridge and reached for another. This was bad business; ammunition and water were two things Bushrod was loathe to waste. He cursed softly as he noted that all the men around him had charged their pieces and were rattling the long steel ramrods back into their guides. Bushrod could not even tear the new cartridge. He held it up in frustration and contemplated the shaking of his hand. Bushrod’s eyes suddenly swam with tears: he could not load his goddamned musket—

  Then Jack Bishop lifted the cartridge gently from Bushrod’s fingers. “Here, old pard,” said Bishop. He tore the paper, poured in the powder, and started the ball into the muzzle of Bushrod’s rifle, pressing it down with his thumb. Then he turned away and busied himself scratching under his hat.

  “Much obliged,” said Bushrod, his face burning. He dried his eyes on his coat sleeve, then finished ramming the charge. Now to prime, he thought. He brought the piece up, cocked it, and with finger and thumb plumbed his cap box for a percussion cap.

  Now I guess I will drop the cap, he thought, and if I do I will by God go in without one. But he didn’t drop it. In fact, when he brought his hand up, it was steady. He slipped the cap onto the nipple, lowered the hammer (not to the regulation half-cock, but all the way down), and came to order arms. He felt ashamed, as if he’d forgotten his lines in a play.

  Hurrah! Hurrah!. …

  Bushrod was sure he was the last man in the company to load, but in fact that distinction belonged to another. Nebo Gloster, Virgil C.’s rear-rank man, was only now beginning to prime. Nebo was a conscript, and this would be his first fight. He was barefoot, without uniform or bayonet or accoutrements, only a musket and his civilian rags and an old, grimy quilt draped over his shoulders like a shawl. He was so new, so inept, so miserable that he should have inspired pity. Instead, by the harsh merit system of veteran armies in all ages, he was an object of contempt. Into Nebo Gloster’s gangling, malarial frame, the men of the company poured all the disdain they felt for those who, by choice or chance, had not shared in their adventures. Not one of Nebo’s comrades-at-arms could tell his history. Not one of them cared that he should never have been sent to the army at all. When they did take notice, it was only to remark that someone, at least, was more wretched than they.

  So Nebo Gloster labored on unaided and, for the moment, unnoticed. Now he affixed the percussio
n cap and was engaged in lowering the hammer. He seemed unable to coordinate thumb and forefinger. His eyes were narrowed in concentration; his lips moved as if he were reciting some mysterious inner catechism. The muzzle of his cocked and loaded rifle wavered two inches from the back of Virgil C. Johnson’s head.

  At this moment, Bushrod happened to glance to his left. “Great God!” he yelped, and with his hand knocked Nebo’s muzzle skyward just as the man’s thumb slipped off the hammer. The Enfield discharged with a prodigious roar over the crown of Virgil C.’s hat.

  “I am killed!” shrieked Virgil C., and collapsed in a heap.

  Nebo flung the rifle away in horror. “What happened! What happened!”

  “What happened, hell!” Bushrod cried. “You like to blowed his head off! Damnation, man—how many loads did you have in that thing?”

  Nebo began to hop from one bare foot to the other. “I done it just like they tol me,” he sobbed. “Bushrod, I done it just like—”

  “Shut up, for God’s sake,” said Bushrod. Men were craning their necks to see what had happened, and Bushrod was as embarrassed as if he’d been the culprit himself. He took Nebo Gloster by the arm. “Just be quiet, will you? And quit that dancin around.”

  All the company’s lieutenants came on the run, their swords rattling. “What happened here?” said Tom Jenkins.

  “Why nothin, Tom,” said Jack Bishop. “Nebo was just tryin out his musket. Shootin at the moon over yonder, I think.”

  “That’s right,” said Bushrod. “He’s mighty eager to get into the fray.”

  Tom Jenkins glared at Nebo. “Didn’t nobody teach you how to—”

  “Go easy, Tom,” said Bushrod. “He’s only a conscript, and Virgil C. ain’t hurt—just thinks he is.”

  “Sure,” said Jack. “I declare, I never saw Virgil C. so animated.”

  The other officers and file-sergeants drifted away. Tom Jenkins shook his head. “You fellers be careful,” he said, and went on down the line.