The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara [95]
Chamberlain turned. All right? Boyish face. He smiled.
“They can’t send us no help from the Eighty-third. Woodward said they have got their troubles, but they can extend the line a little and help us out.”
“Good. Go tell Clarke to shift a bit, strengthen the center.”
Kilrain, on hands and knees, squinting: “They keep coming in on the flank.”
Chamberlain, grateful for the presence: “What do you think?”
“We’ve been shooting a lot of rounds.”
Chamberlain looked toward the crest of the hill. No Thomas anywhere. Looked down again toward the dark. Motion. They’re forming again. Must have made five or six tries already. To Kilrain: “Don’t know what else to do.”
Looked down the line. Every few feet, a man down. Men sitting facing numbly to the rear. He thought: Let’s pull back a ways. He gave the order to Spear. The Regiment bent back from the colors, from the boulder, swung back to a new line, tighter, almost a U. The next assault came against both flanks and the center all at once, worst of all. Chamberlain dizzy in the smoke began to lose track of events, saw only blurred images of smoke and death, Tozier with the flag, great black gaps in the line, the left flank giving again, falling back, tightening. Now there was only a few yards between the line on the right and the line on the left, and Chamberlain walked the narrow corridor between, Kilrain at his side, always at a crouch.
Ruel Thomas came back. “Sir? Colonel Vincent is dead.”
Chamberlain swung to look him in the face. Thomas nodded jerkily.
“Yes, sir. Got hit a few moments after fight started. We’ve already been reinforced by Weed’s Brigade, up front, but now Weed is dead, and they moved Hazlett’s Battery in up top and Hazlett’s dead.”
Chamberlain listened, nodded, took a moment to let it come to focus.
“Can’t get no ammunition, sir. Everything’s a mess up there. But they’re holdin’ pretty good. Rebs having trouble coming up the hill. Pretty steep.”
“Got to have bullets,” Chamberlain said.
Spear came up from the left. “Colonel, half the men are down. If they come again …” He shrugged, annoyed, baffled, as if by a problem he could not quite solve, yet ought to, certainly, easily. “Don’t know if we can stop ’em.”
“Send out word,” Chamberlain said. “Take ammunition from the wounded. Make every round count.” Tom went off, along with Ruel Thomas. Reports began coming in. Spear was right. But the right flank was better, not so many casualties there. Chamberlain moved, shifting men. And heard the assault coming, up the rocks, clawing up through the bushes, through the shattered trees, the pocked stone, the ripped and bloody earth. It struck the left flank. Chamberlain shot another man, an officer. He fell inside the new rock wall, face a bloody rag. On the left two Maine men went down, side by side, at the same moment, and along that spot there was no one left, no one at all, and yet no Rebs coming, just one moment of emptiness in all the battle, as if in that spot the end had come and there were not enough men left now to fill the earth, that final death was beginning there and spreading like a stain. Chamberlain saw movement below, troops drawn toward the gap as toward a cool place in all the heat, and looking down, saw Tom’s face and yelled, but not being heard, pointed and pushed, but his hand stopped in mid-air, not my own brother, but Tom understood, hopped across to the vacant place and plugged it with his body so that there was no longer a hole but one terribly mortal exposed boy, and smoke cut him off, so that Chamberlain could no longer see, moving forward himself, had to shoot another man, shot him twice, the first ball taking him in the shoulder, and the man was trying to fire a musket with one hand when Chamberlain got him again, taking careful aim this time. Fought off this assault, thinking