Different Sin (24 page)

He turned to a clean page, listening as couriers brought news of the conflict: Warren’s Fifth Corps faced troops led by the Confederate general Ewell across one of the few open fields adjacent to the turnpike; divisions of Hancock’s Second Corps had been ordered to throw up breastworks at the crossing of Plank and Brock roads, where fighting had raged since morning. David finished a sketch of Grant handing a scrawled message to a waiting courier, moved to another angle. But hell, he was wasting his time here. He knew Leslie well enough to know his editor would expect him to forward battle scenes, not portraits of Grant. Ed Forbes, for all his talk of covering battles in safety through his field glasses, had long since headed toward the lines of skirmish. At any rate, you couldn’t see a damn thing that was going on through field glasses today.

Reluctantly he started down the knoll. Musketry sounded in staccato rolls, mingling with a frenzied undercurrent of shouts and cries. Zach’s warning over a year ago sounded in David’s mind: in order to sketch the conflict he’d have to come under fire as much as if he were a soldier himself. He swallowed, slowing to a standstill.

But he’d asked Leslie to send him here; he could carry out his assignment as well as his fellow correspondents. He’d just stay to the rear of the action. Ed had told him he’d ride east in the direction of Hancock’s corps. David mounted, made his way to the turnpike and turned west. A dense scrub growth of pines, oak and chinquapin closed in on the narrow road. Half a mile down the road, in the fields of the plantation house commandeered for Warren’s Fifth Corps headquarters, caissons lay parked, the artillerymen unable to bring them into play in the overgrown wilderness. The din of musketry and hoarse cries rose as he rode.

Union breastworks of logs and earth had been thrown up a half mile farther down, where a second cleared field opened out on either side of the turnpike. A line of Federal troops stretched out behind them across the perimeter of the clearing. David tied his mount well behind the Union line, edged cautiously forward.

Between the Union and Rebel lines lay a quarter mile of open field, dusty earth divided by rows of trampled corn stubble. A gully ran the length of the field. A low, tense murmur ran through the troops as the buglers raised their instruments to sound the signal for a charge. The first line of troops poured over the breastworks, shouting hurrahs as they raced across the field with fixed bayonets.

Gunfire spattered with fierce intensity. David climbed a stump and raised his glasses. Small clouds of dust boiled up from the field as bullets landed on the dry earth like skipping stones on a river. Men screamed and fell, lay twitching in the gully. David held his breath as the remainder of the infantrymen continued their charge and gained the shelter of the woods. The cries of fierce fighting sounded from across the field. “Let’s help them boys!” a Union officer yelled. The second Union line charged. David watched in stunned admiration as men ran past the bodies of wounded and dead soldiers, pressing on through the hail of Rebel bullets. The cries, screams and shrill cheers swelled, then slowly moved farther away. David strained to see through the field glasses, caught an occasional glimpse of a blue uniform, flashes of musket fire. The Union charge was driving the Rebs back from their breastworks, as far as he could make out through the trees and powder smoke.

The dusty cornfield was quiet, except for the moans of the wounded. Here and there, men struggled painfully to their feet, began limping back in search of the field hospital, their faces dazed and anguished.

The skirmish line had moved out of sight, into the wilderness. David felt startled by the sudden fascination drawing him toward the struggling men. He let the now useless glasses dangle on their strap, set out gingerly across the field.

Dust swirled around his feet. Pieces of dry corn stubble blew into his face on the warm breeze. His mouth was dry. A shiver ran down his spine, despite the heat of the sun, as he neared the scores of bodies that littered the field and piled up in the ravine. Wounded men too weak to walk lay waiting for aid, gazing blankly upward from bloodless faces. Here and there men ripped aside blood-soaked uniforms to stare at their torn flesh with numbed horror or grunt with relief at discovering a wound less serious than they’d feared.

A hand clutched at David’s leg. “You got water, mister?” The wounded infantryman, a husky blond boy of eighteen or so, spoke in a halting whisper he had to strain to hear.

“Yeah, sure.” David pulled his canteen from his belt, knelt and held it to the soldier’s mouth. The boy took several deep gulping swallows, then fell back with a low moan, eyes closing, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Blood dampened the front of his uniform in a slowly growing circle. A half dozen greedily buzzing flies landed on the wet cloth, walked stickily over the oozing wound.

David shuddered again, broke into a run as he covered the remaining distance across the field. The Confederate entrenchments, abandoned now, stretched along the edge of the woods. The ground was littered with odd bits of gear, trampled slouch hats, scraps of cartridge paper, a half filled cartridge belt. More bodies lay on the ground. The roar of musketry, frantic shouts, an occasional shrill rebel yell sounded from farther within the woods. David plunged into the underbrush in the direction of the sounds.

Thick brush impeded his way, honeysuckle vines and Virginia creeper tangled around his ankles, sharp blackberry thorns caught his clothes and scratched his skin. He pushed his way through a clump of briers, nearly losing his footing as he skidded down the side of a small ravine, stopped to get his bearings once he climbed the other side. Thickets of interlaced branches of scrub pine, clumps of saplings, tangled vines blocked his view. Thick, acrid smoke hung over everything like a morning fog. He couldn’t have worked his way more than a few hundred feet into the woods, but he could no longer spot the clearing he’d crossed, was uncertain even of its direction.

He pressed on toward the noise of the battle. The rattle of musketry grew into a deafening roar. Twigs and small branches rained to the ground ahead of him. He edged on a little farther, stumbling suddenly on a half dozen blue-uniformed soldiers. Other infantrymen could be seen dimly, stretched every few yards in a ragged line, standing or kneeling for shelter behind the larger trees. David edged over to the nearest of the soldiers. “Could you tell me how to find the battle?” he asked him.

The man gaped. “Where the hell you think you’re at?” He turned back, blazed away with his rifle, then ran in a low crouch to a tree several yards away.

“Christ!” David looked wildly around. The explosion of rifles around him was answered by a volley from a short distance off. Men fired without bothering to aim. David peered at an indistinct line of butternut-clad soldiers, barely visible through the smoke and trees. He raised his glasses for a better view. A bullet thudded into a tree a few feet away. A large branch crashed in front of him. He flung himself to the ground behind a large oak, lay trembling, afraid to raise his head from the ground.

Bullets flew by, smacking into trees or tearing with a dull, sickening splatter into living flesh. My God, he thought, how could he have been so stupid as to blunder into this? A cry of agony sounded a few feet away. David peered over. The man who’d spoken to him was clutching his hands to his groin, blood spurting between his fingers and sinking into the dry ground.

An eternity seemed to pass by. Fierce shouts sounded on either side of David. He raised his head an inch. Unbelievably, men were moving toward the Rebs, firing swiftly, dodging from tree to tree, closing the gap on a retreating Confederate line. The ground around him was littered with dead and wounded. He rose gingerly to his knees, brushed dirt from his face. He’d been clutching his sketchpad to his chest, gripping it so tightly his fingers had stiffened around it. He flexed his hands, got to his feet, freezing in momentary panic as dry twigs cracked underfoot, terrified of drawing a sharpshooter’s bullet.

He took a deep breath, choking on acrid smoke, cast wildly about, desperate to retrace his steps. He stumbled past the man with the shattered groin, now mercifully unconscious, past the body of a redheaded youth, arms outstretched, mouth gaping and blood-filled. An undercurrent of moans sounded under the steady roar of thegunfire that had been sounding so constantly he’d almost ceased to hear it.

A few yards away, a bearded man sat on the ground, cutting a blanket into strips with the edge of his bayonet and wrapping them around his bleeding upper arm. He checked his rough bandaging, grunted in apparent satisfaction, then stood unsteadily, a look of fierce determination on his face as he headed into the underbrush. David stumbled after him.

“Help me outta here, mister! I gotta git to a hospital!” David halted. The infantryman who’d called to him sat on the ground, back against a tree, legs outstretched, eyes burning in a pale, smoke-grimed face. David stared at him, slowly taking in the boy’s broken left shinbone, the white bone showing through his bloody pants. Christ, he thought, it’s all I can do to get out of here myself. How the hell am I gonna drag him along? He looked down at the soldier again, started to shake his head, took in the panic in the thin face, white from pain and loss of blood beneath the coating of dirt, the downy attempt at a mustache. Hell, he’s just a kid, he told himself. What kind of a man would leave him here?

He knelt, put an arm around the boy, and managed to heave him from the ground. The boy threw his arm around David’s neck, his face drawn with the effort of keeping his damaged leg from touching the ground. His weight, surprisingly more than he’d expected, pulled down on David. David grabbed hold of his wrist, tightened his free arm around the boy’s waist, straining his muscles in the effort to support him as he walked. They moved forward with painful slowness. Briers and interwoven tree limbs closed in on them. There was no landmark in any direction.

They inched forward a few minutes, stopped to rest, fought through the thickets, stopped to rest once more. The clamor of gunfire was growing louder, coming closer. David looked back, caught sight of musket flashes in the woods behind them. “Christ, we’d better hurry,” he muttered.

They struggled on again. David looked over his shoulder. Blue-clad troops were streaming toward them, crashing through thickets in disorderly retreat from pursuing Confederates. The firing grew in intensity. An occasional bullet swept past them. He saw the young infantryman’s quick fearful glance behind them. “You gotta carry me!”

Hell, he should’ve thought of it. He could manage his weight, probably move a hell of a lot faster. He grabbed the boy up as a bullet tore into a tree a few feet behind them, moved forward at a stumbling run. A second bullet whizzed by his ear, so close David could feel its passage. He gasped, froze with panic. “I— I can’t— I— I’m sorry, oh Christ I’m sorry!” He laid the boy on the ground behind the scanty shelter of a tree, crashed blindly through thickets, tripping over vines and roots, stumbling to his feet and running till the whistling of bullets died out behind him.

He stopped, gasping for breath. His hands were ripped by scratches from thorns he hadn’t felt. He leaned weakly against an oak, too limp with relief to move. His field glasses still dangled from their strap around his neck. He raised them, looked back. The haze of smoke was too thick to make out the line of skirmish he’d fled from, but the flashes of muskets made pulsating sparks in the smoky fog.

Sparks flared and grew as he watched, joined together into candles of reddish flames. Christ! he thought. Fire! These damn dry woods— They’ll go up like kindling. Just like Chancellorsville last year. Oh my God, oh Christ, I left that kid to that!

He fell forward, smoke-blackened vomit spewing from his mouth, racked by waves of shame. Long moments went by. Finally he rinsed his mouth with water from his canteen, got shakily to his feet. He couldn’t go back. He’d best find his way out of this wilderness before he was trapped as well.

The regiments he’d followed had been somewhere near the right flank of the Union lines. If he headed north— Hell, no telling which way it was. He stumbled on again, away from the fires. The ground grew marshy and sucked at his feet. His body ached with exhaustion. Rivulets of sooty sweat ran down his face and plastered his clothes to his body.

He stumbled up the side of a ravine onto dry ground, sucked in his breath as he heard the sudden ringing of axes. He worked his way slowly forward, weak with relief as he emerged to a line of Union soldiers frantically throwing up breastworks. Men surrounded him, asking what the hell he was doing there, demanded to know the number of Reb troops they faced before he’d half finished explaining.

David shook his head in helpless ignorance.

Men spat in disgust.

“Shit, no one can see in this Godforsaken place. Can’t hardly tell what regiment you’re fightin’ with,” a grizzled sergeant told him. “Onliest way we know where they’re at is hearin’ them work on their fort’ications same as us. You listen good. They’re throwin’ up breastworks, right the other side of this here low area.”

“Christ!” David listened, heard the sound of Reb axes on the opposite bank of the ravine, an occasional burst of gunfire from invisible gray lines. God, he was damn lucky not to have blundered the other way, walked right into the Reb lines and ended up in Libby Prison the rest of the war. Or worse yet, been trapped between the lines. He shuddered. “How do I get out of here?”

The sergeant snorted. “You expectin’ a road map?” He fished a compass from his pocket, held it close to his face. “Danged if I know if this thing’s still workin’, but that way should bring you somewheres close to the turnpike.”

Swelling volleys of musketry, the fierce opening cries of a charge gave new strength to David’s legs as he fought his way through the wilderness, taking care to stay well behind what he could see of the Union lines. He crossed one of the narrow mining roads that wound through the region, kept on through a section of woods where the debris of earlier skirmishing lay strewn. He pushed through a patch of thorn bushes and stared down at a worn leather boot that lay discarded in his path.