The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara [14]
“Gosh, Lawrence,” Tom Chamberlain said.
“Smile,” Chamberlain said cheerily, “and don’t call me Lawrence. Are they moving?” He stopped and glanced pleasantly backward, saw with delight that the men were up and moving toward the trees, toward food. He grinned, plucked a book from his jacket, handed it to Tom.
“Here. This is Casey’s Manual of Infantry Tactics. You study it, maybe someday you’ll make a soldier.” He smiled at the scarred man, extended a hand. “What’s your name?”
The man stopped, looked at him for a long cold second. The hand seemed to come up against gravity, against his will. Automatic courtesy: Chamberlain was relying on it.
“I’m not usually that informal,” Chamberlain said with the same light, calm, pleasant manner that he had developed when talking to particularly rebellious students who had come in with a grievance and who hadn’t yet learned that the soft answer turneth away wrath. Some wrath. “But I suppose somebody ought to welcome you to the Regiment.”
The man said, “I don’t feel too kindly, Colonel.”
Chamberlain nodded. He went on inside the tent, the scarred man following, and sat down on a camp stool, letting the man stand. He invited the man to have coffee, which the man declined, and then listened silently to the man’s story.
The scarred man spoke calmly and coldly, looking straight into Chamberlain’s eyes. A good stubborn man. There was a bit of the lawyer about him: He used chunky phrases about law and justice. But he had heavy hands with thick muscular fingers and black fingernails and there was a look of power to him, a coiled tight set to the way he stood, balanced, ugly, slightly contemptuous, but watchful, trying to gauge Chamberlain’s strength.
Chamberlain said, “I see.”
“I been in eleven different engagements, Colonel. How many you been in?”
“Not that many,” Chamberlain said.
“I done my share. We all have. Most of us—” He gestured out the tent flap into the morning glare. “There’s some of them no damn good but most of them been all the way there and back. Damn good men. Shouldn’t ought to use them this way. Looky here.” He pulled up a pants leg. Chamberlain saw a purple gash, white scar tissue. The man let the pants leg fall. Chamberlain said nothing. The man looked at his face, seemed suddenly embarrassed, realized he had gone too far. For the first time he was uncertain. But he repeated, “I done my share.”
Chamberlain nodded. The man was relaxing slowly. It was warm in the tent; he opened his shirt. Chamberlain said, “What’s your name?”
“Bucklin. Joseph Bucklin.”
“Where you from?”
“Bangor.”
“Don’t know any Bucklins. Farmer?”
“Fisherman.”
Former Sergeant Kilrain put his head in the tent. “Colonel, there’s a courier comin’.”
Chamberlain nodded. Bucklin said, “I’m tired, Colonel. You know what I mean? I’m tired. I’ve had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this goddamned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody lousy rotten mess of sick-brained potbellied scabheads that aint fit to lead a johnny detail, aint fit to pour pee outen a boot with instructions on the heel. I’m tired. We are good men and we had our own good flag and these goddamned idiots use us like we was cows or dogs or even worse. We aint gonna win this war. We can’t win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers. Only one officer knew what he was doin’: McClellan, and look what happened to him. I just as soon go home and let them damn Johnnies go home and the hell with it.”
He let it go, out of breath. He had obviously been waiting to say that to some officer for a long time. Chamberlain said, “I get your point.