Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [100]
5. LONGSTREET.
The hospital was an open field just back of the line.
There were small white tents all over the field and bigger tents where the surgeons did the cutting. Hood was there, in a big tent, on a litter.
Longstreet came in out of the dark, bowing under a canopy, saw the face like cold marble in yellow candlelight, eyes black and soft like old polished stones. Cullen and Maury were working together on the arm. Longstreet saw; not much left of the hand. Exposed bone. He thought of Jackson hit in the arm at Chancellorsville: died a slow death. Let us cross over the river. Hood's black eyes stared unseeing. Longstreet said softly, "Sam?"
Cullen looked up; Maury was tying a knot, went on working. Troops had gathered outside the canopy. A sergeant bawled: move on, move on. Hood stared at Longstreet, not seeing. There was dirt streaked in tear stains on his cheeks, but he was not crying now. His head twitched, cheek jerked. He said suddenly, in a light, strange, feathery voice, "Should have let me move to ri-" He breathed. "To the right."
Longstreet nodded. To Cullen, he said, "Can I talk to him?"
"Rather not. We've drugged him. Sir. Better let him sleep."
Hood raised the other arm, twitched fingers, let the hand fall. "Din see much.
Boys went in an' hit the rocks. I got hit."
Longstreet, no good at talking, nodded.
"Should have moved right, Pete." Hood was staring at him, bright, drugged, eerie eyes. "How did it go, Pete?"
"Fine, Sam,"
"We took those rocks?"
"Most of 'em."
"Took the rocks. Really did."
"Yes," Longstreet lied.
Hood's eyes blinked slowly, blearily. He put the good hand up to shade his eyes. "Devil's Den. Good name for it."
"Yep."
"Worst ground I ever saw, you know that?" Hood laid the back of his hand across his eyes. His voice trembled. "Got to give my boys credit."
Longstreet said to Cullen, "Can you save the arm?"
"We're trying. But if we do, it won't be much use to him."
Hood said, "Casualties? Was casualties?"
"Don't know yet," Longstreet said. And then: "Not bad." Another lie.
Cullen said gloomily, plaintively, "He ought to go to sleep. Now don't fight it, General. Let it work. You just drift right on off."
Longstreet said softly, "You go to sleep now, Sam. Tell you all about it tomorrow."
"Shame not to see it." Hood took the hand away. His eyes were dreaming, closing like small doors over a dim light. "Should have gone to the right." He looked hazily at the hand. "You fellas try to save that now, you hear?"
"Yes, sir. General. Now why don't you...?"
"Sure will miss it." Hood's eyes closed again; his face began smoothing toward sleep. Longstreet thought: he won't die. Not like Jackson. There was a blackness around Jackson's eyes. Longstreet reached down, touched Hood on the shoulder, then turned and went out into the moonlight.
Sorrel was there, with the silent staff. Longstreet mounted, rising up into the moonlight, looking out across the pale tents at the small fires, the black silence. He heard a boy crying, pitiful childish sobs, a deeper voice beyond soothing. Longstreet shook his head to clear the sound, closed his eyes, saw Barksdale go streaming to his death against a flaming fence in the brilliant afternoon, hair blazing out behind him like white fire. Longstreet rode up the ridge toward the darker ground under the trees.
Barksdale lies under a sheet. They have not covered his face; there is a flag over him. Semmes is dead. How many others? Longstreet cleared the brain, blew away bloody images, the brilliant fence in the bright gleaming air of the afternoon, tried to catalogue the dead. Must have figures.
But he was not thinking clearly. There was a rage in his brain, a bloody cloudy area like mud stirred in a pool. He was like a fighter who has been down once and is up again, hurt and in rage, looking to return the blow, looking