Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [70]
Please, God, do not withdraw them now. He saw illness in one face, told the man to report to sick call. One man complained. "Colonel, it keeps raining, these damn Enfields gonna clog on us.
Whyn't we trade 'em for Springfields first chance we get?"
Chamberlain agreed. He saw Bucklin, together with a cold-eyed group from the old Second Maine, nodded good morning, did not stop to talk. A young private asked him, "Sir, is it true that General McClellan is in command again?"
Chamberlain had to say no. The private swore.
Chamberlain finished the walk, went back alone to sit under a tree.
He had dreamed of her in the night, dreamed of his wife in a scarlet robe, turning witchlike to love him. Now when he closed his eyes she was suddenly there, hot candy presence. Away from her, you loved her more. The only need was her, she the only vacancy in the steamy morning.
He remembered her letter, the misspelled words: "I lie here dreamyly.'' Even the misspelling is lovely.
A mass of men was coming down the road, unarmed, unspiked, no rifles visible: prisoners. They stopped near a long rock ledge, which walled the road. Some of his own troops began drifting over that way, to stare, to chat. They were usually polite to prisoners. The accents fascinated them. Although some of the Regiment were sailing men, most of them had never been out of Maine.
Chamberlain thought vaguely of the South. She had loved it. She had been at home. Heat and Spanish moss. Strange hot land of courtly manners and sudden violence, elegance and anger.
A curious mixture: the white-columned houses high on the green hills, the shacks down in the dark valleys. Land of black and white, no grays. The South was a well-bred, well-mannered, highly educated man challenging you to a duel.
She loved it. Dreamyly. She had liked being a professor's wife. She had been outraged when he went oif to war.
Square-headed Kilrain: "Is the Colonel awake?"
Chamberlain nodded, looking up.
"I have found me a John Henry, sir."
"John who?"
"A John Henry, sir. A black man. A darky. He's over thataway.'' Kilrain gestured. Chamberlain started to rise.
"I heard him a-groanin'," Kilrain said, "just before dawn. Would the Colonel care to see him?"
"Lead on."
Kilrain walked down a grassy slope away from the road, across the soft field, marshy with heavy rain, up a rise of granite to a gathering of boulders along the edge of a grove of dark trees. Chamberlain saw two men standing on a rock ledge, men of the Regiment. Kilrain sprang lightly up the rock. The two men-one was the newcomer, Bucklin- touched their caps and wished him "morning"
and grinned and pointed.
The black man lay in the shadow between two round rocks. He was very big and very black. His head was shaved and round and resting on mossy granite. He was breathing slowly and deeply, audibly; his eyes were blinking. He wore a faded red shirt, ragged, dusty, and dark pants ragged around his legs. There were no sleeves in the shirt, and his arms had muscles like black cannonballs. His right arm was cupped across his belly. Chamberlain saw a dark stain, a tear, realized mat the man had been bleeding.
Bucklin was bending over him with a tin cup of coffee in his hand. The black man took a drink. He opened his eyes and the whites of his eyes were red-stained and ugly.
Chamberlain pointed to the wound.
"How bad is that?"
"Oh, not bad," Kilrain said. "I think he's bled a lot, but you know, you can't really tell."
Bucklin chuckled. "That's a fact."
"Bullet wound," Kilrain said. "Just under the ribs."
Chamberlain knelt. The black man's face was empty, inscrutable. The red eyes looked up out of a vast darkness.
Then the man blinked and Chamberlain realized that there was nothing inscrutable here; the man was exhausted.
Chamberlain had rarely seen black men; he was fascinated.
"We'll get him something to eat, then we'll get him to a surgeon. Is the