The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Sh - Stephen Crane [42]
The sergeant, taking note of this, gave pause to his elaborate history while he administered a sardonic comment. “Be keerful, honey, you’ll be a-ketchin’ flies,” he said.
The tattered man shrank back abashed.
After a time he began to sidle near to the youth, and in a different way try to make him a friend. His voice was gentle as a girl’s voice and his eyes were pleading. The youth saw with surprise that the soldier had two wounds, one in the head, bound with a blood-soaked rag, and the other in the arm, making that member dangle like a broken bough.
After they had walked together for some time the tattered man mustered sufficient courage to speak. “Was pretty good fight, wa‘n’t it?” he timidly said. The youth, deep in thought, glanced up at the bloody and grim figure with its lamblike eyes. “What?”
“Was pretty good fight, wa‘n’t it?”
“Yes,” said the youth shortly. He quickened his pace.
But the other hobbled industriously after him. There was an air of apology in his manner, but he evidently thought that he needed only to talk for a time, and the youth would perceive that he was a good fellow.
“Was pretty good fight, wa‘n’t it?” he began in a small voice, and then he achieved the fortitude to continue. “Dern me if I ever see fellers fight so. Laws,n how they did fight! I knowed th’ boys ’d like when they onct got square at it. Th’ boys ain’t had no fair chanct up t’ now, but this time they showed what they was. I knowed it’d turn out this way. Yeh can’t lick them boys. No, sir! They’re fighters, they be.”
He breathed a deep breath of humble admiration. He had looked at the youth for encouragement several times. He received none, but gradually he seemed to get absorbed in his subject.
“I was talkin’ ‘cross pickets with a boy from Georgie, onct, an’ that boy, he ses, ’Your fellers ’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,‘ he ses. ’Mebbe they will,‘ I ses, ’but I don’t b‘lieve none of it,’ I ses; ‘an’ b’jiminey,‘ I ses back t’ ’um, ‘mebbe your fellers ’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,’ I ses. He larfed. Well, they didn’t run t’ day, did they, hey? No, sir! They fit, an’ fit, an’ fit.”
His homely face was suffused with a light of love for the army which was to him all things beautiful and powerful.
After a time he turned to the youth. “Where yeh hit, ol’ boy?” he asked in a brotherly tone.
The youth felt instant panic at this question, although at first its full import was not borne in upon him.
“What?” he asked.
“Where yeh hit?” repeated the tattered man.
“Why,” began the youth, “I—I—that is—why—I—”
He turned away suddenly and slid through the crowd. His brow was heavily flushed, and his fingers were picking nervously at one of his buttons. He bent his head and fastened his eyes studiously upon the button as if it were a little problem.
The tattered man looked after him in astonishment.
CHAPTER IX
The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier was not in sight. Then he started to walk on with the others.
But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding. Because of the tattered soldier’s question he now felt that his shame could be viewed. He was continually casting sidelong glances to see if the men were contemplating the letters of guilt he felt burned into his brow.
At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.
The spectral soldier was at his side like a stalking reproach. The man’s eyes were still fixed in a stare into the unknown. His gray, appalling face had attracted attention in the crowd, and men, slowing to his dreary pace, were walking with him. They were discussing his plight, questioning him and giving him advice. In a dogged way he repelled them, signing to them to go on and leave him alone.