The Judas Field Read online

  Cass and Roger ran bent nearly double but moving fast, carrying their long rifles horizontal to the ground, every step jolting through the thin soles of their shoes. Cass was trembling, his heart seemed about to explode like a dropped melon; he saw through a red haze swimming with planets; he could hardly breathe. All the broad earth, all of life, and all of past and promise had narrowed to the moment where he still lived—one moment, then the next, then the next. He ran. To his left, the line: rifles and ramrods moving like levers in a complex machine, driven by the pawls, the pistons of men. The line seemed poised on the rim of a volcano—nothing visible but smoke and eruption, streaks of flame, beyond the clattering, beyond the frantic churning of the machine. To his right, the mad wilderness of the rear: province of file closers, the crawling wounded, the limping and staggering, now and then a man running who could bear no more. Held horses pulled at their bridles, musicians huddled, all in a roil of dust and smoke, while a kneeling surgeon presided calmly, remotely, over a boy he could not save. Cass ran, himself a part of the vast engine now, though some agency of his soul detached itself, kept watch still, gathered and sorted and stored all he would remember in distant, uncreated hours if he lived. He could no longer feel the ground under his feet.

  He collided with a man shot in the face, who reached blindly, clawed at Cass’s jacket, then spun away. Voices, some at his ear, clamored in strange tongues, chattered like wheeling flocks of birds. They passed Perry Sansing’s fleet mare; she lay on her side, flanks heaving, her legs moving as though she might still outrun the thing that was closing on her. But her bowels spilled from a gaping slice in her belly, and her heart was gone, and Cass saw a deep sorrow in her eyes. The adjutant himself was nowhere to be seen, but he wasn’t dead, Cass knew. He was somewhere in the smoke.

  “There!” shouted Roger, and pointed with his musket.

  Captain Byron Sullivan had bent the company back at a right angle to refuse the flank; they were dueling with the infantry supporting the guns, and trying to kill the gunners and their horses. The artillerymen had to stand the fire; Cass saw one of them struck in the breast just as he pulled the lanyard, the final gesture of a life begun far away but ended here. The gun bellowed and leaped backward and caught the man’s body under its wheels.

  Lieutenant Tom Jenkins strode behind the line in his shirtsleeves. A pistol was thrust in his waistband; on his shoulder rested a short Enfield. When he saw Cass and Roger, he grinned. “Now come on, boys,” he said, and pointed with his free hand toward the men huddled on the line.

  Some pines stood here, but canister from the guns had hewed them down to splintered stumps and chewed up the ground, and Cass wondered how Jenkins could live standing erect. Cass squeezed prone into the line, the men on either side making room. He scrabbled in his box, found a cartridge, tore it with his teeth; he bit too deep, of course, and filled his mouth with powder. His hands were shaking, but no matter, they always did, and still he got most of the powder down the barrel that was still too hot; the powder flashed while Cass’s hand was still over the muzzle. Cass cried out, looked at his hand. It was speckled with powder grains deep in the flesh, fingers glazed white and already blistering, that quick. The blood poison, he thought.

  The guns fired by battery, a devastation, rocking the earth and showering the riflemen with cascades of dirt and pine boughs. A man, thrown up in the air, landed with a thump across Cass’s legs. He sat up, looked at Cass, waggled his beard. “It ain’t hurt me any,” he said, and grinned, his yellow teeth outlined in red. Almost at once, the guns fired again—these were veteran gunners, good at their trade—and Cass curled himself into a ball, hugging his rifle while the shower of dirt poured down and the iron hummed in the air, searching. He looked at his hand again, moved the fingers. Not so bad, he told himself, though the hand was already swelling. It burned, too, but not so bad. He felt better then, knowing it would fix itself. Lying on his back, Cass loaded his musket, no flash this time, and capped it, and was about to take a shot when Roger passed him, bent low, his teeth showing white in his face. “Come on, Cass,” said Roger.

  They were extending the line, thinning it out in an attempt to lap around the guns. Once more Cass was running, breathing hard, the blood throbbing in his hand. A man stood up to fire. The crown of his head vanished, and he dropped his musket; he stood a moment longer, arms outstretched, fingers drooping. He tilted his chin, like a man trying to read through a pince-nez, turned then and took a step toward Cass and folded to his knees, where he remained. Cass ran.

  “Here!” shouted Roger, pointing. Cass flung himself to the earth, drew his bayonet, and began to dig. “Fix bayonets!” Captain Sullivan cried, but Cass dug. He dug with frantic joy, as if some great treasure lay just below. The ground was soft here, yielding, happy to embrace him. Thank you thank you thank you, Cass murmured in his mind.

  Tom Jenkins came along the line, bent low now. “Get ready, boys!” he shouted. “Get ready!” But still Cass dug, using his good hand now, scooping the dirt and flinging it behind. He knew that in a minute he would be up and running, following the company into the pines where the tormenting guns lay, but he was determined to finish this hole. Just another minute and he would be done; then he could go. He plunged his hand into a sudden cavity in the loose earth, drew it out—

  And stopped, blinking, trying to understand what he was seeing. He seemed to be holding a glove in his hand: a pale, translucent, oily glove that had come from no place he could imagine. He stared at the thing, trying to make sense of it, until all at once everything came into focus: a spray of white grubs squirming blindly in the sunlight, an eruption of ants and beetles, the blue sleeve, the delicate bones of the hand he had grasped and stripped—a man buried here after the fighting a week ago, who had lain all this time cooking in the hot earth. And now the man himself burst from the grave, not in body but as an exhalation of gas, violated, crying outrage and humiliation against the still-living man who had shamed him. The smell hit Cass Wakefield full in the face. He screamed, flung the skin away, scrambled to his feet in horror, and so was standing upright when the guns fired for the last time, and a round burst just in front of the line. The iron whirred and hummed around Cass’s head, missing him, but a chunk of rock-hard clay the size of a fist struck him in the temple. He staggered, trying to flee, but there was no use in it.

  Roger Lewellyn was played out. He sat cross-legged in the rear of the line, retching a thin gruel, while the company rose from the earth with a shout, charged madly into the pines, and overran the battery. But these things seemed infinitely remote to Roger, like a tale of some epic clash that had happened long ago, and to other brave lads than these.

  In a little while he stirred, lifted his head, and saw Cass Wakefield lying in the sunlight. Slowly he rose, swayed for a moment, then stumbled to the place where his comrade lay. The smell from the shallow grave struck him, and he bent over, hands on his knees, and retched again. He pressed a handkerchief to his mouth, knelt, and examined his friend. Cass was lying on his back, hands over his face. “Cass,” Roger said, “what’s the matter? Are you killed?”

  “Lemme ’lone,” said Cass.

  “Well, fine,” said Roger. He rose, took hold of Cass’s jacket collar, and dragged him to a stand of pines where some cavalry men had left their horses tied. The effort took all his strength, and for a moment he sat among the horses, who seemed to take comfort from him, whickering and nodding their heads in a gentle way. He spoke to them and waved at the swarming flies. He rose again, found a canteen tied to a saddle and drank greedily from it, then returned to his comrade. He wetted the handkerchief and swabbed Cass’s face, careful of the bloody knot rising on his temple. At last he sat down with the canteen between them and listened to the diminishing noise of the fight. The boys were cheering among the captured guns, and he could hear the wounded crying. For himself, he seemed to have lived, and Cass had lived, though many had not. Once he would have thought it God’s will, but he understood better now.r />
  He took another drink and afterward felt much improved. He looked at Cass and noted that he had curled on his side like a sleeper. That was fine; he would feel better if he slept awhile. Roger fumbled in his haversack and found the tintype of Sally Mae, which he placed on the ground beside him. Then he took out a pencil and a sheet of brown paper. He looked at the girl smiling up at him—the image was faded, and he could not see her clearly anymore—then spread the paper on his knee and began to compose a letter. He began: Dearest Sally Mae, I hope this finds you well as it leaves me. He paused, looked up through the pines at the indifferent sky, then turned once more to his letter. Today l had a glimpse of the ending of the world.

  Meanwhile, Cass Wakefield, curled as one sleeping, dreamed of white egrets, and of willows like green smoke along the river.

  For several days after he was knocked in the head, Cass Wakefield was more addled in his mind than usual. He could neither eat nor sleep, though these things were no particular inconvenience since there was little to eat and no time for sleeping anyway. He could compose a sentence in his head, but when it came out, it was often gibberish. Worse, he could not seem to walk in a straight line. He would start out all right, then go wandering off in the fields until Roger came and got him. His vision was blurred, and his head buzzed with annoying galvanic shocks. Worst of all, his right hand had swollen like a melon and was useless.

  The regimental surgeon took a scholarly interest in Cass’s afflictions. He questioned Cass about the “electrical episodes,” as he called them, and measured Cass’s head and made notations in a memorandum book. He poked and prodded at the hand and speculated about the chemical composition of gunpowder—did the niter, in fact, retard corruption? Probably not, but what if it did? That corruption had not spread already was a medical curiosity, the surgeon proclaimed, and he might get a monograph out of it for the professional papers. He told this with more relish than Cass thought appropriate. Finally, the surgeon insisted that the hand come off. Cass refused, maintaining he would just as soon die with it as without it. The surgeon took offense at the implication, and on the third night some of the boys held Cass down while the surgeon pried out most of the powder grains with a pen knife and drained the pus. Then he damned Cass to hell and left him alone.

  The next day, Cass was unable to walk at all, so he rode from daylight to dark on a litter strapped to the sticky floor of an ambulance. The back door was open, a square of violent sunlight, and the interior full of flies. Roger had found Cass a full canteen of water. Cass bathed his face and soaked his handkerchief and lay it across his eyes. He was as comfortable as he had been in years, it seemed. He was the only passenger, and the comparative solitude was a luxury. He had ridden in an ambulance only once before, after the battle now called Shiloh Church, or Pittsburgh Landing by those on the other side. That had been a bad time. Now, Cass felt as if he were being borne along in a sedan chair.

  As the little wagon jolted and heaved over the road, Cass Wakefield’s mind drifted into other lives—stories he had heard; confidences he had received; incidents of lives now finished, of lads who once were quick and now lay along the road behind. But not forgotten. Never the least nor the sorriest of them forgotten, these sparrows, nor even the ones across the way forgotten, some of them. Once, among various plunder, Cass took a letter from the still-warm body of a man he had killed—the letter of a father who never dreamed his words would fall to a stranger who had loosed his boy’s soul with a single lucky thrust of a bayonet. Cass made himself read the letter:

  Son, the Ice is thick on the River & on the Pond

  we dug, you remember how hot it was that summer.

  Now you should see Marly & your Mama skate

  out upon it & how they twirl so graceful cutting

  Figures & I laugh to see it. No fresh snow for a

  week but the sky is lowering out the window & I

  expect some Falling Weather ere morning. Had a

  calf born, nearly lost it. All are well.

  He swore for days he would write some answer, that the father might know the truth. But simple shame kept him from it, and at last he threw the letter away.

  All these lives commingled in the foul, sun-cooked box of the ambulance, together with the sounds of the march: the groaning of wheels, mules braying, men talking, the urgent passage of couriers, and the endless dry shuffling of feet as the army fell back toward Atlanta. Meanwhile Cass lay dozing on the mildewed canvas litter that smelled of death, among whispers and phantoms. It was as though his own life were not sufficient company, but he must draw into himself the days and years of others who clamored to be heard.

  So it was in a world where the quick and dead no longer had any clear distinction between them. Around Cass’s neck were the cool obsidian beads of his rosary, token of a faith he had come to shyly, but with gratitude. He knew the black scattering of night without faith, and from this he fled as one pursued by crows. Cass believed in the soul, and, believing, he treasured every one and would hold every one cupped in his hand if he could.

  But souls could not be held—not by him, anyway, nor by any mortal man. They had to fly, and light and air were their province. He was not surprised, then, by the brush of others’ lives through his unsettled mind, nor by the unfamiliar voices he heard, nor by a glimpse of places he had never been: a kitchen in firelight; a bed still warm and damp, the counterpane tossed to the floor; a schoolroom, a broom-swept yard, a handkerchief lying in the blue shadows of a fence corner. These were the remnants of other lives now ended. They had been real once, and now, set free from time and earth, they needed a place to rest awhile. He did not mind they chose him as the vessel, and though they crowded him sometimes, he took comfort in knowing that he, Cass Wakefield, by the same measure would not be forgotten.

  The ambulance halted momentarily, and when it jerked into movement again, Cass was shaken from his drowsing. He drew the handkerchief from his eyes and found that another passenger had joined him. In his current state of mind, he was neither surprised nor afraid to discover Rufus Pepper, who had been dead for more than two years, hunkered in the dried blood on the ambulance floor. Rufus was gangling, thin as a lath, and whiskery. An old converted flintlock lay across his knees. He wore a gray forage cap tilted back on his head, and Cass thought how odd it looked, for the boys had not sported those in a long time.

  Well, Cass, you look like a warm turd, said Rufus by way of greeting.

  “Thank you, Rufus,” said Cass. The thought struck him that he didn’t know what he looked like. He hadn’t seen a mirror in months. “You lookin’ mighty fresh yourself,” he said.

  I reckon them Romish beads ain’t hepped you any.

  “They are not a charm,” said Cass. “They are a guide and a reminder.”

  Hmmm, said Rufus, who was a hard-nosed Presbyterian from the country. The ambulance took a hard jolt to starboard, and he steadied himself. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? he asked. What you doing in this amba-lance?

  “Well, Rufus,” said Cass, “I have had my brains shook loose by a bomb shell. And look here at my hand.” He held up his swollen hand, which burned hot as a lighter knot.

  Well, that looks bad, I guess, said Rufus. Likely it will kill you directly, if a tree don’t fall on you first. Rufus grinned, and Cass remembered how they were driving the yankees from a sunken road in the great Shiloh Church battle, and an aerial bomb shell had snapped off a big hickory limb, and the limb came crashing down and flattened poor Rufus like a hoe cake.

  “I am grievous sorry we never buried you,” said Cass. “I know some of the boys looked that night but never could find you, though they did find others.”

  Oh, never mind about that, said Rufus, waving his hand. I have no hard feelings in the matter.

  Cass understood that Rufus Pepper was only an illusion coiling out of his own head; nevertheless, he seemed as real as anything else at the moment. Cass raised to one elbow, slow and careful, trying not to stir up the electricity. The
rotten fabric of his shirt was stuck to the stretcher, and some of it tore away. “Well, Rufus,” said Cass, “do you have some message to deliver, or are you just haunting around generally?”

  Rufus rubbed his chin. He looked away, then back again. I have gone down home, he said.

  “You have been home?” said Cass. He knew the lost ones stayed with the regiment, but somehow he had never considered them going home. The notion disturbed him somehow. “Can they see you?” he asked.

  The gaunt man shifted uncomfortably. Yes, they can, sometimes, he said. They see something, anyhow. They will shiver of a sudden or glance at the place where you are. My old woman saw me, I know. She spoke to me, sat right up in the bed, and said, “Rufus, what happened? I got to know!” I tried to tell her, but I couldn’t. His voice seemed to fail him then, and he moved his hands over the stock of his rifle. Durn it, you can’t talk to ’em, he said at last.

  “But you are talking to me,” protested Cass. “How come you can’t talk to them?”

  Hit’s different, said Rufus. He waved his hand in a futile gesture. I don’t know how to tell it. They are in a different place, somehow.

  “But we are not?”

  You all are closer than them, said Rufus. Some of the boys is closer’n ere others.

  “Can you tell which ones?”

  No, no, said Rufus, scratching his whiskers.

  “Well, that is no encouragement,” said Cass. He lay back and pressed his good hand to his eyes, and tried to imagine Rufus’s wife alone in the cold cabin, rising in her bed to meet such an apparition. “Damnation, Rufus, you must have scared your old woman half to death.”

  Outside, the crows were cawing and talking in the pines. They always followed the ambulance train, drawn by the sweet smell of blood. Cass said, “Rufus, can you do me a favor if you go home again?”