The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara [11]
Lee looked past him into the soft blowing dark. The rain had ended. A light wind was moving in the tops of the pines—cool sweet air, gentle and clean. Lee took a deep breath.
“A good time of night. I have always liked this time of night.”
“Yes.”
“Well.” Lee glanced once almost shyly at Longstreet’s face, then looked away. They stood for a moment in awkward silence. They had been together for a long time in war and they had grown very close, but Lee was ever formal and Longstreet was inarticulate, so they stood for a long moment side by side without speaking, not looking at each other, listening to the raindrops fall in the leaves. But the silent moment was enough. After a while Lee said slowly, “When this is over, I shall miss it very much.”
“Yes.”
“I do not mean the fighting.”
“No.”
“Well,” Lee said. He looked to the sky. “It is all in God’s hands.”
They said good night. Longstreet watched the old man back to his tent. Then he mounted and rode alone back to his camp to begin the turning of the army, all the wagons and all the guns, down the narrow mountain road that led to Gettysburg. It was still a long dark hour till dawn. He sat alone on his horse in the night and he could feel the army asleep around him, all those young hearts beating in the dark. They would need their rest now. He sat alone to await the dawn, and let them sleep a little longer.
2.
CHAMBERLAIN
He dreamed of Maine and ice black water; he awoke to a murderous sun. A voice was calling: “Colonel, darlin’.” He squinted: the whiskery face of Buster Kilrain.
“Colonel, darlin’, I hate to be a-wakin’ ye, but there’s a message here ye ought to be seein’.”
Chamberlain had slept on the ground; he rolled to a sitting position. Light boiled in through the tent flap. Chamberlain closed his eyes.
“And how are ye feelin’ this mornin’, Colonel, me lad?”
Chamberlain ran his tongue around his mouth. He said briefly, dryly, “Ak.”
“We’re about to be havin’ guests, sir, or I wouldn’t be wakin’ ye.”
Chamberlain looked up through bleary eyes. He had walked eighty miles in four days through the hottest weather he had ever known and he had gone down with sunstroke. He felt an eerie fragility, like a piece of thin glass in a high hot wind. He saw a wooden canteen, held in the big hand of Kilrain, cold drops of water on varnished sides. He drank. The world focused.
“… one hundred and twenty men,” Kilrain said.
Chamberlain peered at him.
“They should be arriving any moment,” Kilrain said. He was squatting easily, comfortably, in the opening of the tent, the light flaming behind him.
“Who?” Chamberlain said.
“They are sending us some mutineers,” Kilrain said with fatherly patience. “One hundred and twenty men from the old Second Maine, which has been disbanded.”
“Mutineers?”
“Ay. What happened was that the enlistment of the old Second ran out and they were all sent home except one hundred and twenty, which had foolishly signed three-year papers, and so they all had one year to go, only they all thought they was signing up to fight with the Second, and Second only, and so they mutineed. One hundred and twenty. Are you all right, Colonel?”
Chamberlain nodded vaguely.
“Well, these poor fellers did not want to fight no more, naturally, being Maine men of a certain intelligence, and refused, only nobody will send them home, and nobody knew what to do with them, until they thought of us, being as we are the other Maine regiment here in the army. There’s a message here signed by Meade himself. That’s the new General we got now, sir, if you can keep track as they go by. The message says they’ll be sent here this morning and they are to fight, and if they don’t fight you can feel free to shoot them.”
“Shoot?”
“Ay.”
“Let me see.” Chamberlain read painfully. His head felt very strange indeed, but he was coming awake into the morning as from a long way away and he could begin to hear the bugles out across the fields. Late to get moving today. Thank God. Somebody gave us an extra hour. Bless