Measured blessings
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin?
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Ian had a hole in his heart, Charles instinctively knew. Like most orphans there was a missing piece that Ian – and others like him – were constantly trying to fill by different measures: Introverted determination, acute shyness, heightened sense of bravado – all offensive mechanisms while searching for a connection, a bond, with another human being. Even strangers were not excluded. It was not uncommon for a charge of St. Mary’s or the girls’ orphanage near the levee, slipping in and out of shadows, to follow strangers, to make up stories about how they were related. To many, that was better than the alternative: No family and no one to care whether they lived or died.
A vast majority of orphans had a common need: To find or claim missing family members. Many found comfort, at least at some point, by finding a relative to two, even if the person or persons existed only in their minds.
Charles, too, had a heart hole that was large. At times it seemed so big he would swear he could hear the wind blowing through it. The sound it made . . . dreary, soulful, low . . . seldom left him, even in sleep. And the mournful sound always hinted at the same unspoken questions.
Family? Why don’t I have a family?
Sister Bloody knew the hearts of most of her charges, and tried to compensate for what was missing in each. She was a tender mother figure to those that needed special attention. She played the role of ritualistic matriarch when called upon to do so. To others she was religious instructress, giving plausible options to what some youngsters believed to be unanswerable questions. To Charles she was more of a big sister or young aunt than a religious scion or mother figure.
His quietness troubled her, exactly why she could not fathom. She watched him as he approached everyday life at the orphanage with a methodical sameness – eyes on the goal, hands at the ready, back bent to the task at hand. Whatever she wanted done, he did. Not happily. Not grudgingly. He just did it. When she praised him (which was often), he would smile or nod, or both, his eyes fixed on her face, so she could see the glassy reflections of the scene before him.
Only when she scolded him, or when one of the sisters or brothers did so, did emotion show in his face. Hooded eyes. Furrowed brow. Thin lips crushed thinner still. Anger, perhaps? But she didn’t really believe that. Disappointment for letting others down, she decided. Her, the other nuns, or the brothers? she wondered. Hard way to go through life, she thought more than once.
She often marveled at the bond between Charles and Ian. Due to circumstances that placed the boys in similar life-scenarios – needy youths, authority-figure helpers, and older sibling role models – they had been inseparable for several years. At first, Ian detested the slight, quiet introvert with the wiry hair and funny eyes. The initial feeling was mutual. Charles thought Ian a bombastic, blow-hard who worked aggressively at being annoying, rude, and profane.
Over time – working hip-to-hip scrounging for scraps of food and usable items in the dank, dark city alleyways – without even realizing it, they began looking out for one another. Ian was street smart, wise to the whims and waves of the cobblestone pathways and dirt alleys that crisscrossed New Orleans; Charles was just plain smart, a reader, more studious, but much more naïve about the human heartbeat and bloodstream of the city.
He was always surprised about the human nature aspect of aberrant situations in which the two often found themselves. Ian reacted immediately to such situations; Charles liked to study on things for a bit before taking action.
It was more than a partnership, more even than a kinship. It was an existence born out of individual desires for survival . . . and to be needed. On some level. By someone.
Life at the orphanage was like a woodpecker’s tapping: Repetitive, with no apparent change in rhythm or purpose. For most of the older charges at St. Mary’s, each day was a mirror image of the one before: Get up by six o’clock, roll up a thin blanket-pallet, help the little ones any way that was needed, eat something – pieces of cold hoecakes, flour milk, stale bread, coffee boiled with old grounds for the older charges, water or watery milk for the younger ones – go to the school room to practice reading and penmanship, listen to monotonic recitations on every subject from French history to simple principles of mathematics by sleepy-eyed priests, and do chores assigned by the priests and nuns.
For the older orphans the time spent in the classroom was diminished, the number of chores escalated. “Teaching responsibility,” one grizzled brother intoned, after ordering Charles and Ian to remove the filled privy buckets, dump them in a nearby ditch, and give each a thorough washing before placing them again under the three irregular holes.
After chores, the charges went off scrounging, in pairs or organized packs.
For the most part, the priests at St. Mary’s – Brother Vincent, the director, and Brothers Basil, Theodule, De Sales, Aloysius, and Gonzaga – assumed the role of harsh taskmasters and stern, by-the-rote teachers. The boys quickly learned any coddling (or, simply, kind words) would come from the nuns. One, actually: Sister Bloody. Holding forth a stern demeanor and a foreboding attitude were not in her.
Ian had come to like Charles’ company because the slight, dark boy didn’t talk much. Talking was Ian’s forte, the one thing at which he excelled, despite his stammer, despite his disinterest in book-learning, or learning anything that didn’t have to do with minor adventure and survival.
Over time, Charles found a familial contentment in listening to his stammering friend talk about nothing and everything. But then, again, he seldom listened with a full ear as he was always watching his surroundings, listening for out-of-place noises, looking for opportunities to make survival more of a certainty.
As Charles walked, his eyes constantly flitted side to side, like a swamp panther harried by a passel of hounds. His peripheral vision was passable, but was limited by the wide-brimmed hat he had heard some refer to as a Messkin Gigolo. The hat was a rather fancy affair with short rear brim and longer brim in front. Six months earlier he had slipped it off the head of a dead man of undetermined heritage slumped in an alleyway. Charles circled the body and thought the man was probably a robbery victim or, perhaps, the end result of botched kidnapping by a crew of hard billys looking for seamen – willing or unwilling – to crew-out a whaling ship set for a voyage around the tip of South America and then head west across the Pacific Ocean.
The man had been beaten severely about the head. Charles took the hat without a single negative thought; he certainly didn’t consider himself a thief.
You can’t steal from a dead man.
That thought and others of a similar vein bounced around his head as he rescued the hat from under the man’s blood-encrusted head. Water from a spitting summer shower, a little saliva, and elbow grease removed much of the stains congealed in the crown and sweat band.
Even thought Ian constantly made fun of his odd-looking hat, Charles liked it. It kept the sun and rain out of his eyes; and few people had one like it. While the hat kept him from seeing the entire world around him, it also prevented the world from seeing details of his face, which was in a constant shadow.
It’s not that there was anything wrong with his face. It was, for lack of a better description, an ordinary face bordering on pleasant . . . serene even. Like most faces, it was a face of parts: Fleshy nose, a bit large for his small features; small ears, standing at attention at a forty-five-degree angle to his head; soft, brown eyes partially hidden beneath heavy lids; a straight mouth with thin lips; medium-brown hair hacked off short with a kitchen knife to hold lice at bay.
What most people saw first when they looked at him were his eyes. Highlighted as they were by a prominent forehead and cheekbones with abrupt angles, their color (light cocoa, like the underside of a well-washed brown flannel shirt) was emphasized by the subdued, outside teardrop eyelid folds; golden flecks of color radiating from the edges of the cornea. His natural dark complexion, wiry, unruly hair, high cheekbones that hinted of Basque or Indian influence, and, again, those distinctive eyes, caused people to stare. Those eyes. That dark coloring. The dominant cheekbones. More than one person immediately thought of him as a mixed-breed, a blending of races. French Cajun-Oriental-Negro? Negro-Caucasian-Indian? Mexican-Oriental-Caucasian? While the possibilities seemed endlessly suspect, the truth, which he did not know, was quite simple.
What he was or where he really came from, he didn’t know for sure. Charles, like many of the St. Mary’s charges, didn’t remember his parents or the two brothers a nun told him he was supposed to have had. He didn’t have a middle name, as far as he knew. It stressed him that he could not remember the names of his family, that when he tried to visit them in his dreams, most of the time their faces were blank slates. He was four when the dreaded Yellow Jack descended on the city like a swarm of viral locust. More than two thousand residents died from the distinctive smothering, choking, and agonizing death of the mosquito-borne disease in less than four months.
Sister Bloody had picked up a short, and quite unsensational, tale from a well-meaning neighbor woman who had delivered the mewling toddler to the orphanage. When Charles was eight and had started asking questions, the nun said his father was a doctor who came to this country a few years before Charles was born. He and his wife and his brothers died in a wave of the creeping sicknesses that hit the Crescent City every couple of years.
Although she did not know for certain, Sister Bloody felt sure that his family (like the French-born nuns and brothers at the orphanage) only knew that the “Port of New Orleans” was as close to living on French soil as you could get anywhere in the world.
Charles believed he was born several years after his family came to New Orleans. He was told he was four when he was dropped off at the orphanage but he thought he must have been younger.
At four, wouldn’t you remember the names of your parents and brothers?
He tried to remember his family, to recall a name, any detail of his life before St. Mary’s. He thought he could remember his father laughing and wearing a funny little hat. He thought he remembered two brothers, one bigger than the other.
Memories of his mother were different. Occasional vivid visions of his mother holding him tight, nuzzling his neck, swarmed his thoughts. She had brown hair, like his own, with a face of angles and light. Small eyes, assuredly, also like his, and clean hair as thick and unruly, tied up in a swirling topknot. In dreams and stray thoughts, she was called Josephine; her smile was small, yet captivating; flickering candlelight danced in her eyes.
In his mind, she was always looking kindly at him, smiling.
Always.
Showing posts with label Reveille: From an unpublished Civil War novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reveille: From an unpublished Civil War novel. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Second novel about ready to launch
"Reveille: A story of survival, war, family" is in final editing stages. It has been a labor of love . . . and a daunting task. How does one tell a story about a member of the family, when little is known? With scant records, hand-me-down stories, and a love of history, "Reveille" started out as a minor research project and turned into an historical fiction novel.
Hopefully, it will be published by July 1. If not, that's okay. It will be at some point in time. It started out as an idea, grew into a research demon with no apparent end, and came out the other side an interesting tale.
Charles Andre was born with one name, was stuck in an orphanage with another, and with that name, served in the Civil War as a Union drummer. Almost two years after the war, he settled in South Arkansas and made a name for himself as Charles Montgomery Andres.
He was my great-grandfather and his story is something of which I will always be proud. Taking time to research his life and mesh tales with history was an act of love.
Here's the draft cover and back cover for "Reveille." It is still undergoing revisions. It is the product of Chase Perryman, one of the most creative and talented people I know and whom I consider a friend.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Hard life decisions
Note: "Reveille" is an unpublished novel about a Civil War drummer boy, Charles Andre. Searching for something better than life in a New Orleans orphanage, he set out with his best friend and "pure-dee idiot" Ian O'Rourke, to join the First Louisiana Regiment. When Charles was turned down for the oddest of reasons, he was left with a major dilemma.
Chapter 5
Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of
second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.
Robert Neelly Bellah
Charles and Ian slipped down the creaky stairs in the dark, staying to the inside by the wall where the boards were tight. They maneuvered down the long front hall, through a small dining room to the kitchen, moving in the pitch darkness like blind men in familiar surroundings.
In the kitchen, Ian stood by the door listening, while Charles opened a cabinet door and pulled out two fist-sized chunks of hard bread he had placed there the night before.
He psssted to Ian and moved quickly to the back door, pushed aside the floor-level, wooded, door stop with his foot and slowly opened the door. He took a step down onto the small stoop and stopped dead in his tracks, feeling rather than seeing a presence on the miniature porch.
“Sit down, Charles,” Sister Bloody said, her lilting, accented voice hitting his heart like a railroad spike. Charles sat, his legs off the edge of the porch. He heard a scuffing noise as Ian came through the door: “Sit down, Ian,” Sister Bloody repeated.
“Gah-gah-gawd-a-mighty!” Ian said in a whisper. “Why dinit ya sca-scare the bah-bejeezus out of somebody?”
Charles could feel the nun’s dismay in the silence that enveloped them.
“Why—?” was all she got out before she started quietly crying. Charles couldn’t see her but he could “feel” her, sitting on the top step, holding her head in her hands.
“It’s not you, Sister. It’s this place. Ian and me have been here our whole lives. This is all we know. There’s got to be somethin’ out there better, somewhere, yes. We left you a note—“
“I know,” the sister said, “in the big Bible, in the chapter about the prodigal son. Appropriate in a way, wouldn’t you say?”
“We’re gah-going to jin up wah-with the Confederate Army, see us a big chunk of tha-the country,” Ian said, his voice shaking as if he were cold.
Sister Bloody sniffed once, again, then exhaled loudly. “So, you think fighting in this stupid war that’s split the country, split families, and has already left thousands and thousands of good lads dead and rotting on battlefields is better than living here with people who love you?”
“Not better, Sister,” Charles offered. “Different. New.” He didn’t say the thought ricocheting inside his head.
Loves us? Who besides you?
Charles felt her hand touch his knee, move to his arm and down to his hand. She held it, gave it a squeeze, pressed something cool and familiar into it and stood up. He took the rosary with the small crucifix and stuck it deep in his pocket.
“Come here, you two,” she commanded between gulping sobs. “I’m just being selfish. You’ve been such a big help in gathering food for the little ones. I’ll just miss you, that’s all.” Dry sobs racked her body.
The trio hugged on the tiny porch for what seemed like hours, but was still not long enough for Charles.
“You be safe, you hear me?” she said harshly, finally loosening her grip around their necks. “Be gone with you, if you’re going. Remember your lessons, especially the ones from the Church. Be safe and God protect you. And come back to see me after the war when you’re all grown up. And don’t forget your rosary and Hail Mary’s.”
“We will. We assuredly will, me and Ian,” Charles said, knowing for a fact that probably was a lie.
The boys slipped down the alley, willing themselves not to look back. Both stopped at the street corner and glanced over their shoulders. They could see nothing but shadows in various shades of black.
Charles put his hand in his pocket and directed his thumb and forefinger to gently stroke the small cross.
Daylight was breaking as Charles and Ian trudged along the well-worn path at the top of the levee. A soft summer breeze blew off the river cool and clean. Their destination was several miles east of the French Quarter; they were headed toward an old boarding house that had been converted into a Confederate Army recruitment center. The irony that the recruiting center was within three or four long rifle shots of the Union encampment located just up the river at DuCrois Station, not to mention the two battalions located in the city center, was lost on the two boys.
They had hiked to the Confederate camp the previous day to check it out and were amazed that the soldiers went nonchalantly about their business as though Yankee troops were not encamped less than five miles to the north and not more than six miles to the west. Tents sprouted in a vacant lot next to the old boarding house that had served as a wagon stop for east-west travelers before train tracks cut through the back country like dandelions after a spring shower.
Uniformed soldiers stood about, rifles close by, but few at the ready. Two soldiers sat over a small fire, cooking something on a spit. Ian pointed to the pair: “Dah-don’t that look like a cah-cat carcass to you,” he said. Charles forced the image and the ensuing thought to retreat.
He pointed out to Ian a smattering of civilians going in and out of the boarding house.
“Wah-well, ol’ sah-sot,” Ian said, “Here we are. Let’s go gah-get our sah-soldiering gear and go kill us some Yah-yanks.”
Charles wanted to wait a bit and observe the surroundings, but found himself trudging along in Ian’s footsteps. Confidence was one attribute Ian had in abundance, Charles thought as they entered the building.
Be nice if he had some common sense to go along with it.
Inside they were directed to the courtyard to the rear of the house and there they got in line behind a tall, lanky man, who looked to be in his early twenties.
“How old do you have to be to get into the army?” Charles whispered to Ian.
“I’m tellin’ ‘im I-I-I’m sah-seventeen,” Ian said.
Charles looked up at Ian and encountered his goofy grin. “What does that make me look like, nine?” Charles said.
“Tha-they only want men, ya dog dah-dick! Not Frenchie runts!” he finished with a chuckle.
The man in front of Ian made his mark on a long sheet of paper, said, “Thankee Sergeant,” and moved aside. Charles watched as he was directed to follow a soldier who also had an upside down V on his sleeves.
Ian stepped up and said in a loud voice: “Eh-Ian O’Rourke rah-reporting for duty, Sah-Sir!” He finished by standing at what he thought was attention and popping a salute, which ended up looking like he was trying to shield the sun from his eyes.
The sergeant looked at Ian like he wanted to spit in his eye. “So, ya wanna be a soldier in the best army in the world, do you, Snotnose!”
Ian relaxed and nodded his head up and down like a dog with an earful of ticks. “Yah-you betcha. Indeedydo I do.”
“So you say you’re at least sixteen. That be right?”
“Sah-sixteen, it is. How’d ja know?”
“Sign right cheer,” the burly sergeant said, pointing to a long line at the bottom of the page. “Ya git eleven Confederate dollars a month, a uniform when some more come in, a blanket after a while, some other trinkets, and you get half a tent to share. You get to do a lot of walking and take in the beautiful countryside and you kin pitch yore half-sheet anywheres ya a mind to inside a set area. How’s that for a deal?”
Without reading the document, Ian signed his name in a perfect cursive script.
“Why, that’s a fine hand, indeed,” the sergeant said, showing it to a younger, less-secure soldier standing to his right. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pretty handwriting. You’ll do fine, Son. Get on with yourself with the corporal there,” he said as he pointed to a fat soldier leaning against the fence, “and he’ll get your gear and get you sit-e-ated. Welcome to the By God Johnny Reb Army.”
Ian jumped out of line and the sergeant leveled his eyes at Charles.
“What ya want, Boy?” the sergeant growled as Charles took a step up to the table.
“My name is Charles Andre and I want to join up, me,” Charles said, his voice cracking.
“We don’t take nigras nor runts, in that order. We ain’t in that bad a shape yit. Next!” the sergeant bawled.
Charles didn’t budge. “I ain’t no nigra an’ I ain’t no runt.”
“I said ‘Next!’ Now git!” the corporal said, loudly and with meaning.
Charles remained still, the tops of his thighs pressed firmly against the table. “I want to join up and fight Yankees,” he said in a measured tone, staring straight at the soldier.
Charles felt footsteps behind him and instinctively tucked his neck into his collarless shirt as a protective reflex.
“What’s the problem here, Sergeant?” a rich baritone voice rang out.
Charles glanced over his right shoulder and saw a tall man looking down at him. The man was in a tailored, clean uniform with gold braid, epaulets, and a shiny sword in an ornate scabbard. His hair was long, to his shoulders; a mustache perfectly framed his mouth on three sides.
The sergeant stood quickly and snapped to attention. “No problem, Major. This here quadroon or octoroon tis tryin’ to jine up is all. I was just sendin’ him on his way.”
The major’s kind eyes stayed on Charles.
“So, boy, are you a nigra like the sergeant says?”
“No, sir, Major-suh. I’s French, me.”
“How old er ya be, boy?”
“Seventeen, sir,” Charles said, stretching his age more than a year.
“So, you small for yore age, er ya?” the major said, looking sternly.
“All us Andre’s is small, then we shoot up quick-like. My spurt's about due.”
“Sergeant,” the major said, “what makes ya’ll think this young’un’s a nigra?”
“Wah-wah-well, just look at him. He’s a half-breed if I ever saw one. Part Messkin and Chinneyman, I suspect, and looks like he probably got some black blood, too. Zits obvious, ain’t it?”
The major turned back to Charles as he spoke to the corporal. “Did you happen to notice his eyes? Did you ever see light brown eyes in a nigra’s head? I did once, but it was only one eye and it was just part of that one eye. No, Sergeant, this lad is no nigra. He may have a little mix in ‘im, but nigra blood, if he got any atall, is a dribblin’. But he’s a bit small to offer up as cannon fodder to the gawddamn Yankees.”
He put his hand on Charles’ shoulder and gently pushed him out of line. “Go home, boy. Go home and thank God that you was not taken in this army this day. Come back when you are much oldah and much biggah.”
The major turned to leave, but Charles’ voice stopped him: “I’m an orphan. I got no place to go.”
Without turning around, the major, his chin seemingly resting on his chest, said, “Then go back to the orphanage. Now. Git away from this camp and when you git where you are going, git down on your knees and pray that you never have to fight in a war such as this. This is a bad-feelin’ war, boy. Go away from this camp. En don’t come back.”
Charles watched him march off, back straight, left hand on his sword to minimize the swing.
When he disappeared in the shadows of the house’s entryway, Charles set his shoulders square and marched after him. He dodged a backhand blow thrown at him by a sentry stuck like a pike by the front door. Charles skidded into the house. The major was halfway up a stairway to the right, just passing a large portrait of a bloated man with billowy white hair. The man in the portrait looked kindly and evil at the same time.
“Whatcha doin’ back, heah, Boy?” the sergeant from the courtyard said from a part of the room that direct sunlight could not reach.
Charles stepped two steps forward and snapped to attention: “Charles Andre, sir, at your service, I am.”
The sergeant walked out of the darkness and spat, the glob of dark brown tobacco juice speckling the cypress plank floor just to the right of Charles’ foot. “Go home, boy, go home now. And don’t come back around here no more.”
Charles felt his arm gripped in a death-claw as he was hustled out the front door and shoved toward the street.
He looked around the camp and thought he saw Ian in a long line of disheveled and uncoordinated recruits, marching down the wagon road toward a tent village barely visible in the distance.
Ce qui maintenat?
What now? I can’t go back. I have no place else to go.
Chapter 5
Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of
second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.
Robert Neelly Bellah
Charles and Ian slipped down the creaky stairs in the dark, staying to the inside by the wall where the boards were tight. They maneuvered down the long front hall, through a small dining room to the kitchen, moving in the pitch darkness like blind men in familiar surroundings.
In the kitchen, Ian stood by the door listening, while Charles opened a cabinet door and pulled out two fist-sized chunks of hard bread he had placed there the night before.
He psssted to Ian and moved quickly to the back door, pushed aside the floor-level, wooded, door stop with his foot and slowly opened the door. He took a step down onto the small stoop and stopped dead in his tracks, feeling rather than seeing a presence on the miniature porch.
“Sit down, Charles,” Sister Bloody said, her lilting, accented voice hitting his heart like a railroad spike. Charles sat, his legs off the edge of the porch. He heard a scuffing noise as Ian came through the door: “Sit down, Ian,” Sister Bloody repeated.
“Gah-gah-gawd-a-mighty!” Ian said in a whisper. “Why dinit ya sca-scare the bah-bejeezus out of somebody?”
Charles could feel the nun’s dismay in the silence that enveloped them.
“Why—?” was all she got out before she started quietly crying. Charles couldn’t see her but he could “feel” her, sitting on the top step, holding her head in her hands.
“It’s not you, Sister. It’s this place. Ian and me have been here our whole lives. This is all we know. There’s got to be somethin’ out there better, somewhere, yes. We left you a note—“
“I know,” the sister said, “in the big Bible, in the chapter about the prodigal son. Appropriate in a way, wouldn’t you say?”
“We’re gah-going to jin up wah-with the Confederate Army, see us a big chunk of tha-the country,” Ian said, his voice shaking as if he were cold.
Sister Bloody sniffed once, again, then exhaled loudly. “So, you think fighting in this stupid war that’s split the country, split families, and has already left thousands and thousands of good lads dead and rotting on battlefields is better than living here with people who love you?”
“Not better, Sister,” Charles offered. “Different. New.” He didn’t say the thought ricocheting inside his head.
Loves us? Who besides you?
Charles felt her hand touch his knee, move to his arm and down to his hand. She held it, gave it a squeeze, pressed something cool and familiar into it and stood up. He took the rosary with the small crucifix and stuck it deep in his pocket.
“Come here, you two,” she commanded between gulping sobs. “I’m just being selfish. You’ve been such a big help in gathering food for the little ones. I’ll just miss you, that’s all.” Dry sobs racked her body.
The trio hugged on the tiny porch for what seemed like hours, but was still not long enough for Charles.
“You be safe, you hear me?” she said harshly, finally loosening her grip around their necks. “Be gone with you, if you’re going. Remember your lessons, especially the ones from the Church. Be safe and God protect you. And come back to see me after the war when you’re all grown up. And don’t forget your rosary and Hail Mary’s.”
“We will. We assuredly will, me and Ian,” Charles said, knowing for a fact that probably was a lie.
The boys slipped down the alley, willing themselves not to look back. Both stopped at the street corner and glanced over their shoulders. They could see nothing but shadows in various shades of black.
Charles put his hand in his pocket and directed his thumb and forefinger to gently stroke the small cross.
Daylight was breaking as Charles and Ian trudged along the well-worn path at the top of the levee. A soft summer breeze blew off the river cool and clean. Their destination was several miles east of the French Quarter; they were headed toward an old boarding house that had been converted into a Confederate Army recruitment center. The irony that the recruiting center was within three or four long rifle shots of the Union encampment located just up the river at DuCrois Station, not to mention the two battalions located in the city center, was lost on the two boys.
They had hiked to the Confederate camp the previous day to check it out and were amazed that the soldiers went nonchalantly about their business as though Yankee troops were not encamped less than five miles to the north and not more than six miles to the west. Tents sprouted in a vacant lot next to the old boarding house that had served as a wagon stop for east-west travelers before train tracks cut through the back country like dandelions after a spring shower.
Uniformed soldiers stood about, rifles close by, but few at the ready. Two soldiers sat over a small fire, cooking something on a spit. Ian pointed to the pair: “Dah-don’t that look like a cah-cat carcass to you,” he said. Charles forced the image and the ensuing thought to retreat.
He pointed out to Ian a smattering of civilians going in and out of the boarding house.
“Wah-well, ol’ sah-sot,” Ian said, “Here we are. Let’s go gah-get our sah-soldiering gear and go kill us some Yah-yanks.”
Charles wanted to wait a bit and observe the surroundings, but found himself trudging along in Ian’s footsteps. Confidence was one attribute Ian had in abundance, Charles thought as they entered the building.
Be nice if he had some common sense to go along with it.
Inside they were directed to the courtyard to the rear of the house and there they got in line behind a tall, lanky man, who looked to be in his early twenties.
“How old do you have to be to get into the army?” Charles whispered to Ian.
“I’m tellin’ ‘im I-I-I’m sah-seventeen,” Ian said.
Charles looked up at Ian and encountered his goofy grin. “What does that make me look like, nine?” Charles said.
“Tha-they only want men, ya dog dah-dick! Not Frenchie runts!” he finished with a chuckle.
The man in front of Ian made his mark on a long sheet of paper, said, “Thankee Sergeant,” and moved aside. Charles watched as he was directed to follow a soldier who also had an upside down V on his sleeves.
Ian stepped up and said in a loud voice: “Eh-Ian O’Rourke rah-reporting for duty, Sah-Sir!” He finished by standing at what he thought was attention and popping a salute, which ended up looking like he was trying to shield the sun from his eyes.
The sergeant looked at Ian like he wanted to spit in his eye. “So, ya wanna be a soldier in the best army in the world, do you, Snotnose!”
Ian relaxed and nodded his head up and down like a dog with an earful of ticks. “Yah-you betcha. Indeedydo I do.”
“So you say you’re at least sixteen. That be right?”
“Sah-sixteen, it is. How’d ja know?”
“Sign right cheer,” the burly sergeant said, pointing to a long line at the bottom of the page. “Ya git eleven Confederate dollars a month, a uniform when some more come in, a blanket after a while, some other trinkets, and you get half a tent to share. You get to do a lot of walking and take in the beautiful countryside and you kin pitch yore half-sheet anywheres ya a mind to inside a set area. How’s that for a deal?”
Without reading the document, Ian signed his name in a perfect cursive script.
“Why, that’s a fine hand, indeed,” the sergeant said, showing it to a younger, less-secure soldier standing to his right. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pretty handwriting. You’ll do fine, Son. Get on with yourself with the corporal there,” he said as he pointed to a fat soldier leaning against the fence, “and he’ll get your gear and get you sit-e-ated. Welcome to the By God Johnny Reb Army.”
Ian jumped out of line and the sergeant leveled his eyes at Charles.
“What ya want, Boy?” the sergeant growled as Charles took a step up to the table.
“My name is Charles Andre and I want to join up, me,” Charles said, his voice cracking.
“We don’t take nigras nor runts, in that order. We ain’t in that bad a shape yit. Next!” the sergeant bawled.
Charles didn’t budge. “I ain’t no nigra an’ I ain’t no runt.”
“I said ‘Next!’ Now git!” the corporal said, loudly and with meaning.
Charles remained still, the tops of his thighs pressed firmly against the table. “I want to join up and fight Yankees,” he said in a measured tone, staring straight at the soldier.
Charles felt footsteps behind him and instinctively tucked his neck into his collarless shirt as a protective reflex.
“What’s the problem here, Sergeant?” a rich baritone voice rang out.
Charles glanced over his right shoulder and saw a tall man looking down at him. The man was in a tailored, clean uniform with gold braid, epaulets, and a shiny sword in an ornate scabbard. His hair was long, to his shoulders; a mustache perfectly framed his mouth on three sides.
The sergeant stood quickly and snapped to attention. “No problem, Major. This here quadroon or octoroon tis tryin’ to jine up is all. I was just sendin’ him on his way.”
The major’s kind eyes stayed on Charles.
“So, boy, are you a nigra like the sergeant says?”
“No, sir, Major-suh. I’s French, me.”
“How old er ya be, boy?”
“Seventeen, sir,” Charles said, stretching his age more than a year.
“So, you small for yore age, er ya?” the major said, looking sternly.
“All us Andre’s is small, then we shoot up quick-like. My spurt's about due.”
“Sergeant,” the major said, “what makes ya’ll think this young’un’s a nigra?”
“Wah-wah-well, just look at him. He’s a half-breed if I ever saw one. Part Messkin and Chinneyman, I suspect, and looks like he probably got some black blood, too. Zits obvious, ain’t it?”
The major turned back to Charles as he spoke to the corporal. “Did you happen to notice his eyes? Did you ever see light brown eyes in a nigra’s head? I did once, but it was only one eye and it was just part of that one eye. No, Sergeant, this lad is no nigra. He may have a little mix in ‘im, but nigra blood, if he got any atall, is a dribblin’. But he’s a bit small to offer up as cannon fodder to the gawddamn Yankees.”
He put his hand on Charles’ shoulder and gently pushed him out of line. “Go home, boy. Go home and thank God that you was not taken in this army this day. Come back when you are much oldah and much biggah.”
The major turned to leave, but Charles’ voice stopped him: “I’m an orphan. I got no place to go.”
Without turning around, the major, his chin seemingly resting on his chest, said, “Then go back to the orphanage. Now. Git away from this camp and when you git where you are going, git down on your knees and pray that you never have to fight in a war such as this. This is a bad-feelin’ war, boy. Go away from this camp. En don’t come back.”
Charles watched him march off, back straight, left hand on his sword to minimize the swing.
When he disappeared in the shadows of the house’s entryway, Charles set his shoulders square and marched after him. He dodged a backhand blow thrown at him by a sentry stuck like a pike by the front door. Charles skidded into the house. The major was halfway up a stairway to the right, just passing a large portrait of a bloated man with billowy white hair. The man in the portrait looked kindly and evil at the same time.
“Whatcha doin’ back, heah, Boy?” the sergeant from the courtyard said from a part of the room that direct sunlight could not reach.
Charles stepped two steps forward and snapped to attention: “Charles Andre, sir, at your service, I am.”
The sergeant walked out of the darkness and spat, the glob of dark brown tobacco juice speckling the cypress plank floor just to the right of Charles’ foot. “Go home, boy, go home now. And don’t come back around here no more.”
Charles felt his arm gripped in a death-claw as he was hustled out the front door and shoved toward the street.
He looked around the camp and thought he saw Ian in a long line of disheveled and uncoordinated recruits, marching down the wagon road toward a tent village barely visible in the distance.
Ce qui maintenat?
What now? I can’t go back. I have no place else to go.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The mettle of a man
Chapter 9
Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten;
bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Private Wilmer Scoggins was not someone Charles would ever seek out as a confidante or to pass the time in a friendly game of Wisk. Scoggins was not a man to sit around a campfire and enjoy a give-and-take round of casual conversation. Every time Charles saw the burly former bullwhacker he had the same reaction.
If he were on fire, I’d go to the creek to get some water to put him out. But I’d walk damn slow going and coming.
The hulking private had the face of a bully: Flat face, squashed nose slumping to one side like a wind-whipped, thick-trunked willow, and tiny, black river-pebble eyes lost in a face puffed from countless bottles of bad whiskey and the hammer of bare knuckles. Scar tissue dotted both cheekbones; busted ear cartilage, bulbous and fiery red, pulled his expansive ears away from his head.
If’n he could flap those things, he might soar high like a buzzard.
Scoggins was a loud, profane dullard, who thought being drunk was as close as he would ever get to Heaven. He hated the army, hated the officers of the Ninth, and only got along with two or three men in the company, all of his ilk – tough men, with the brains of moles, eyes always on the look-out for prey, fists always clinched in response to some indescribable internal rage.
The men of C Company acknowledged Scoggins’ strength was a blanket of unwavering courage he wore into battle. Or, his audacity in battle could be because, as one solider said in a whisper, “He’s just plain asylum-bound.”
Scoggins took an instant dislike to Charles for the smallest of reasons: The youngster’s slight stature.
“You’re too small and buggery looking to be much good for nothing,” Scoggins said more than once, eyeing Charles like a corn snake sizing up a crib mouse.
For the most part Charles consciously stayed out of the bully’s way. Like all slow-to-focus, dull-eyed, mouth-breathers, Scoggins’ attention was easily scattered and could be swayed from an intended target with relative ease.
It was fall and there was a faint chill in the air. The regiment was still encamped just south of the small village of Duroix Crossing. Charles Jacob Skimmer, a newcomer to the drum corps from the Twenty-first Michigan (who was reassigned to the Ninth “on an accident,” as he put it), was sitting under a chestnut tree near a small creek. Charles lightly tapped out sick call on a flat rock for practice while Jacob twittered on about life in Michigan. “Shore, it can get cold back home. But heck, it gets cold everwhere. The coldest I ever got in my life was in Mississip last winter. Damn near froze off my twig and berries! But it don’t get hot up home like it gets down here. Lord, but it’s hot. I hate wet heat worsen I hate the wet cold of the South.”
Scoggins stumbled onto the pair and quickly decided that tormenting the young drummers would be perfect pre-supper fun.
“Well, well, well,” Scoggins said, running blunt, dirty fingers through his bird’s nest of a beard. “If it ain’t the Rebel squirt and that other skin-beater. Whatcha doin’, boys, beatin’ on your skins!” He hee-hawed at this own joke.
Charles jumped up like he had sat on a hornet’s nest. Putting his right hand to ear, he said, “Hark! Hark, I say!”
Jacob squinted at Charles like he was about to have a fit. Scoggins’s beady eyes shrunk to the size of lentils.
“Hark!” All three held their breath. “I swear that’s cannon fire. Sounds like the Rebs are coming up the north road. Come on, Jacob! The colonel will be wanting us quick-like.”
As they ran back toward camp, Jacob looked hard at Charles. “I didn’t hear nothing. What did you hear?”
“Nothing!” Charles said, laughing. “But it was the best nothin’ I never did hear.”
They ran on toward the camp, laughing the frenzied cackle of the men jerked back from the edge of the grave.
“Hark?” Jacob said, wheezing between gulps of breath and forced laughter.
“I read it once in a book,” Charles said. “It sounded like the right thing to say at the time.” He paused. “Hark! Yep, that’s a right fine word.”
Thirty minutes later, as Charles and Jacob gathered up their supper rations, they saw Sergeant Rooney, a square-headed Irish tough squared up with Scoggins. The sergeant was screaming.
“The fooking Rebel Army is a-comin’, now ya be saying? Well, where they be, that’s a question I’ll be askin’ you?”
“Sergeant, that damn squirt—"
“You be shuttin’ your face, Private Scoggins. But since you think that the entire Rebel By Gawd Army be comin,’ I’m going to let you dig us a nice, deep hole so we can all hide in it. I want that nice, deep hole right next to the nice, deep pit at the end of that nut orchard. And, while you’re at it, cover up the old pit.
“In fact, get in the hole that you be coverin’ up. I’m sure you’ll feel right at home in that nice, deep, shitty hole with all your relatives.”
The sergeant stomped off toward the mess area and the two boys ducked quickly behind a tent as Scoggins scanned the area, his face a thunderhead of hatred.
“Best you stay out of his way for a spell,” Jacob said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, yeah,” Charles answered. He tried to sound fear-free and knew he failed.
Over the next several days, Charles spent a goodly amount of time on the lookout for Scoggins. When he went about camp on errands for the surgeon, the quartermaster, or one of the company or regimental officers, he blended in with groups of men going somewhere, or walked fast along the road next to the bivouac, keeping to its center and away from covering brush.
He admitted to himself that he was afraid of Scoggins; any sane man would be. He convinced himself that keeping away from the man was good, solid, New Orleans, Catholic, orphan common sense. Being hurt at the hands of a bully served little purpose.
Am I afraid of Scoggins?
He asked himself the question more often than he realized.
Not afraid, exactly, more like . . . cautious.
No, maybe afraid is what I am.
Not having had much experience in rough-and-tumble and none at all in what Brother Bartholomew had called the “art of pugilism,” Charles simply didn’t see any reason to fight the menacing soldier. That left plenty of reasons not to fight the man.
A couple of months after his run-in with Scoggins, Charles was headed toward the quartermaster to pick up some plug tobacco for Colonel Healy. A moisture-laded, steady breeze from the south nipped at his face and fingers as he burrowed further into his wool coat. His bedroll blanket served as a cape and scarf, but failed to keep the wind’s icy fingerlings from digging at his neck.
A roar to his right straightened him just as a blurred force knocked him from his feet. The impact launched him several feet; his momentum was retarded by a two-man tent, which collapsed under his weight. He later remembered hitting something solid inside the tent, an elbow maybe, or a knee, most likely. Yelps and grunts of pain came simultaneously from Charles and the tent’s occupant as Charles’ momentum carried him over the tent and into a small circle of men squatted around a campfire.
Stopping just short of the fire, Charles jumped up quickly and turned just in time to receive a numbing blow to his neck and shoulder. Backwards he stumbled before losing his balance and hitting the ground with his face facing the fire. Someone grabbed his leg and tried to flip him over onto the fire, but Charles kicked with his free foot, landing a squishy blow that elicited a satisfying grunt.
Rolling clear of the fire, Charles rose in a crouched position, ready to run if possible
. . . or fight, if necessary.
Scoggins!
Anger scorched his brain, a heated flatiron left on a cotton shirt. Fiery sparks hit the back of his eyes and blossomed into white-hot embers, as his brain tried to comprehend a logical solution to the problem.
He could feel his brain sluggishly starting to evaluate all angles of the situation just as a fist swept by his cheek, connecting like an iron bar into his shoulder. The blow knocked him to the ground a third time. Gathering his feet under him, he launched himself at his tormentor. With a banshee scream and fingers extended forward—eight daggers searching for a tender target—Charles left the ground and felt a high degree of satisfaction as the straightened fingers of his right hand struck Scoggins’ neck at the apex of his prominent Adam’s apple, as his left sliced into the big man’s right ear. Scoggins was trying to take a step backward to set himself firm but caught his right heel on a root, causing him to bend to the right. At impact he went ass over teakettle, turned a complete somersault, and ended up with his legs scattering the blazing campfire logs.
Scoggins grasped his neck with both hands; bawling sounds accompanied by a gagging noise strangled their way out of his open mouth. He only had time to make one feeble kick to disperse the flaming sticks when Charles started kicking him in the head with both feet.
(One soldier, recalling the scene in a letter home, wrote, “The young’un was poundin’ on him with both feet and it made a thumpin’ sound, like mess call on a little drum.” Every time he told that story to a new audience, the laughter was loud, raucous, and sustained.)
One kick connected with Scoggins’ chin and another was headed at the same target when Charles felt his feet leave the ground; his breath whooshed out by a chest-crushing weight. A feathering of red hair sprouted over his right shoulder; he grabbed the hair with both hands and yanked forward. A sharp yelp slapped his right ear like a blow from a flat stick.
Charles went airborne, hit the ground on his right side and rolled twice before his hip slammed into the trunk of a small pine. He lay still. Very still. He wanted to move, felt he should move out of a survival instinct, but his muscles refused to obey brain commands. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and took stock of the extent of the damage to his hip. The intense pain and dizziness quickly eased. Despite the confusion gripping him, he jumped to his feet and ran at Scoggins, still sitting on the ground, still holding his throat, screaming like a swamp cat beset by a pack of hunting dogs.
A heavy hand grabbed a headful of hair and jerked him off his feet. Pain sliced through the back of Charles’ head and a bubbling of tears hit the corner of both eyes. Grimacing and grinding his teeth so hard they ached, he forced his eyes open and through a thick veil of tears, he stared into the wild eyes of Sergeant Phillip Reilly of I Company.
The soft voice belied the crazed look in those eyes. “I’m trying to help you, boy. Now calm yoreself down.”
Trying not to move, Charles nodded with his eyes, blinked twice. The pressure on his hair eased, his feet found ground. “Now, git!” the gruff sergeant whispered loudly.
Charles turned to force his way out of the circle of soldiers. He stopped and slowly twisted his neck to stare at Scoggins, who was still on the ground. Charles noticed with satisfaction that there was blood on Scoggins’ shirt and a red ripple of blood ran from his ear, down his neck and dripped onto the fine dirt of the camp. He inwardly grinned when he heard the man blubbering. Consciously trying to lower the tone of his voice, he said in a sawmill whisper: “Private Scoggins, if you ever touch me again—ever touch me again!—I will kill you. That’s no threat, that. C’est une promesse. That’s a promise.”
He turned and walked away. A circle of men he didn't remember being there parted to let him through. More than one hand slapped him on the shoulder as he passed.
Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten;
bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Private Wilmer Scoggins was not someone Charles would ever seek out as a confidante or to pass the time in a friendly game of Wisk. Scoggins was not a man to sit around a campfire and enjoy a give-and-take round of casual conversation. Every time Charles saw the burly former bullwhacker he had the same reaction.
If he were on fire, I’d go to the creek to get some water to put him out. But I’d walk damn slow going and coming.
The hulking private had the face of a bully: Flat face, squashed nose slumping to one side like a wind-whipped, thick-trunked willow, and tiny, black river-pebble eyes lost in a face puffed from countless bottles of bad whiskey and the hammer of bare knuckles. Scar tissue dotted both cheekbones; busted ear cartilage, bulbous and fiery red, pulled his expansive ears away from his head.
If’n he could flap those things, he might soar high like a buzzard.
Scoggins was a loud, profane dullard, who thought being drunk was as close as he would ever get to Heaven. He hated the army, hated the officers of the Ninth, and only got along with two or three men in the company, all of his ilk – tough men, with the brains of moles, eyes always on the look-out for prey, fists always clinched in response to some indescribable internal rage.
The men of C Company acknowledged Scoggins’ strength was a blanket of unwavering courage he wore into battle. Or, his audacity in battle could be because, as one solider said in a whisper, “He’s just plain asylum-bound.”
Scoggins took an instant dislike to Charles for the smallest of reasons: The youngster’s slight stature.
“You’re too small and buggery looking to be much good for nothing,” Scoggins said more than once, eyeing Charles like a corn snake sizing up a crib mouse.
For the most part Charles consciously stayed out of the bully’s way. Like all slow-to-focus, dull-eyed, mouth-breathers, Scoggins’ attention was easily scattered and could be swayed from an intended target with relative ease.
It was fall and there was a faint chill in the air. The regiment was still encamped just south of the small village of Duroix Crossing. Charles Jacob Skimmer, a newcomer to the drum corps from the Twenty-first Michigan (who was reassigned to the Ninth “on an accident,” as he put it), was sitting under a chestnut tree near a small creek. Charles lightly tapped out sick call on a flat rock for practice while Jacob twittered on about life in Michigan. “Shore, it can get cold back home. But heck, it gets cold everwhere. The coldest I ever got in my life was in Mississip last winter. Damn near froze off my twig and berries! But it don’t get hot up home like it gets down here. Lord, but it’s hot. I hate wet heat worsen I hate the wet cold of the South.”
Scoggins stumbled onto the pair and quickly decided that tormenting the young drummers would be perfect pre-supper fun.
“Well, well, well,” Scoggins said, running blunt, dirty fingers through his bird’s nest of a beard. “If it ain’t the Rebel squirt and that other skin-beater. Whatcha doin’, boys, beatin’ on your skins!” He hee-hawed at this own joke.
Charles jumped up like he had sat on a hornet’s nest. Putting his right hand to ear, he said, “Hark! Hark, I say!”
Jacob squinted at Charles like he was about to have a fit. Scoggins’s beady eyes shrunk to the size of lentils.
“Hark!” All three held their breath. “I swear that’s cannon fire. Sounds like the Rebs are coming up the north road. Come on, Jacob! The colonel will be wanting us quick-like.”
As they ran back toward camp, Jacob looked hard at Charles. “I didn’t hear nothing. What did you hear?”
“Nothing!” Charles said, laughing. “But it was the best nothin’ I never did hear.”
They ran on toward the camp, laughing the frenzied cackle of the men jerked back from the edge of the grave.
“Hark?” Jacob said, wheezing between gulps of breath and forced laughter.
“I read it once in a book,” Charles said. “It sounded like the right thing to say at the time.” He paused. “Hark! Yep, that’s a right fine word.”
Thirty minutes later, as Charles and Jacob gathered up their supper rations, they saw Sergeant Rooney, a square-headed Irish tough squared up with Scoggins. The sergeant was screaming.
“The fooking Rebel Army is a-comin’, now ya be saying? Well, where they be, that’s a question I’ll be askin’ you?”
“Sergeant, that damn squirt—"
“You be shuttin’ your face, Private Scoggins. But since you think that the entire Rebel By Gawd Army be comin,’ I’m going to let you dig us a nice, deep hole so we can all hide in it. I want that nice, deep hole right next to the nice, deep pit at the end of that nut orchard. And, while you’re at it, cover up the old pit.
“In fact, get in the hole that you be coverin’ up. I’m sure you’ll feel right at home in that nice, deep, shitty hole with all your relatives.”
The sergeant stomped off toward the mess area and the two boys ducked quickly behind a tent as Scoggins scanned the area, his face a thunderhead of hatred.
“Best you stay out of his way for a spell,” Jacob said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, yeah,” Charles answered. He tried to sound fear-free and knew he failed.
Over the next several days, Charles spent a goodly amount of time on the lookout for Scoggins. When he went about camp on errands for the surgeon, the quartermaster, or one of the company or regimental officers, he blended in with groups of men going somewhere, or walked fast along the road next to the bivouac, keeping to its center and away from covering brush.
He admitted to himself that he was afraid of Scoggins; any sane man would be. He convinced himself that keeping away from the man was good, solid, New Orleans, Catholic, orphan common sense. Being hurt at the hands of a bully served little purpose.
Am I afraid of Scoggins?
He asked himself the question more often than he realized.
Not afraid, exactly, more like . . . cautious.
No, maybe afraid is what I am.
Not having had much experience in rough-and-tumble and none at all in what Brother Bartholomew had called the “art of pugilism,” Charles simply didn’t see any reason to fight the menacing soldier. That left plenty of reasons not to fight the man.
A couple of months after his run-in with Scoggins, Charles was headed toward the quartermaster to pick up some plug tobacco for Colonel Healy. A moisture-laded, steady breeze from the south nipped at his face and fingers as he burrowed further into his wool coat. His bedroll blanket served as a cape and scarf, but failed to keep the wind’s icy fingerlings from digging at his neck.
A roar to his right straightened him just as a blurred force knocked him from his feet. The impact launched him several feet; his momentum was retarded by a two-man tent, which collapsed under his weight. He later remembered hitting something solid inside the tent, an elbow maybe, or a knee, most likely. Yelps and grunts of pain came simultaneously from Charles and the tent’s occupant as Charles’ momentum carried him over the tent and into a small circle of men squatted around a campfire.
Stopping just short of the fire, Charles jumped up quickly and turned just in time to receive a numbing blow to his neck and shoulder. Backwards he stumbled before losing his balance and hitting the ground with his face facing the fire. Someone grabbed his leg and tried to flip him over onto the fire, but Charles kicked with his free foot, landing a squishy blow that elicited a satisfying grunt.
Rolling clear of the fire, Charles rose in a crouched position, ready to run if possible
. . . or fight, if necessary.
Scoggins!
Anger scorched his brain, a heated flatiron left on a cotton shirt. Fiery sparks hit the back of his eyes and blossomed into white-hot embers, as his brain tried to comprehend a logical solution to the problem.
He could feel his brain sluggishly starting to evaluate all angles of the situation just as a fist swept by his cheek, connecting like an iron bar into his shoulder. The blow knocked him to the ground a third time. Gathering his feet under him, he launched himself at his tormentor. With a banshee scream and fingers extended forward—eight daggers searching for a tender target—Charles left the ground and felt a high degree of satisfaction as the straightened fingers of his right hand struck Scoggins’ neck at the apex of his prominent Adam’s apple, as his left sliced into the big man’s right ear. Scoggins was trying to take a step backward to set himself firm but caught his right heel on a root, causing him to bend to the right. At impact he went ass over teakettle, turned a complete somersault, and ended up with his legs scattering the blazing campfire logs.
Scoggins grasped his neck with both hands; bawling sounds accompanied by a gagging noise strangled their way out of his open mouth. He only had time to make one feeble kick to disperse the flaming sticks when Charles started kicking him in the head with both feet.
(One soldier, recalling the scene in a letter home, wrote, “The young’un was poundin’ on him with both feet and it made a thumpin’ sound, like mess call on a little drum.” Every time he told that story to a new audience, the laughter was loud, raucous, and sustained.)
One kick connected with Scoggins’ chin and another was headed at the same target when Charles felt his feet leave the ground; his breath whooshed out by a chest-crushing weight. A feathering of red hair sprouted over his right shoulder; he grabbed the hair with both hands and yanked forward. A sharp yelp slapped his right ear like a blow from a flat stick.
Charles went airborne, hit the ground on his right side and rolled twice before his hip slammed into the trunk of a small pine. He lay still. Very still. He wanted to move, felt he should move out of a survival instinct, but his muscles refused to obey brain commands. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and took stock of the extent of the damage to his hip. The intense pain and dizziness quickly eased. Despite the confusion gripping him, he jumped to his feet and ran at Scoggins, still sitting on the ground, still holding his throat, screaming like a swamp cat beset by a pack of hunting dogs.
A heavy hand grabbed a headful of hair and jerked him off his feet. Pain sliced through the back of Charles’ head and a bubbling of tears hit the corner of both eyes. Grimacing and grinding his teeth so hard they ached, he forced his eyes open and through a thick veil of tears, he stared into the wild eyes of Sergeant Phillip Reilly of I Company.
The soft voice belied the crazed look in those eyes. “I’m trying to help you, boy. Now calm yoreself down.”
Trying not to move, Charles nodded with his eyes, blinked twice. The pressure on his hair eased, his feet found ground. “Now, git!” the gruff sergeant whispered loudly.
Charles turned to force his way out of the circle of soldiers. He stopped and slowly twisted his neck to stare at Scoggins, who was still on the ground. Charles noticed with satisfaction that there was blood on Scoggins’ shirt and a red ripple of blood ran from his ear, down his neck and dripped onto the fine dirt of the camp. He inwardly grinned when he heard the man blubbering. Consciously trying to lower the tone of his voice, he said in a sawmill whisper: “Private Scoggins, if you ever touch me again—ever touch me again!—I will kill you. That’s no threat, that. C’est une promesse. That’s a promise.”
He turned and walked away. A circle of men he didn't remember being there parted to let him through. More than one hand slapped him on the shoulder as he passed.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Some deaths just ... stand out
This is a chapter from an unpublished historical novel titled "Reveille: Survival, war, family" about a young musician with the Ninth Connecticut Regiment serving in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. Charles Andre was my great-grandfather.
Chapter 24
Some deaths just . . . stand out
Charles was attending to business at the latrine, having set up on the south end of the pit; the early evening southern breeze carried the nose-hair-curling smell in the opposite direction.
Small victories make for happy soldiers.
He smiled at the thought.
A noise from the tree line behind him – a small, muffled thump, followed by a miniscule squeak – caused him to look in that direction. Cupping his left ear, he waited for a repeat. Other than the nattering of a couple of squirrels and lonely bleat of a magpie, the forest was quiet.
Something, it assuredly was. But what?
He finished up with a handful of fallen leaves, still pliable enough to use without falling to pieces, when he heard the same, high-pitched squeak.
What is that?
Buttoning his pants and arm-wrestling his galouses into place, he walked to the edge of the tree line, stopped, listened.
There! To the left!
Three steps later, Charles stopped. Listened. Three more steps. He repeated that procedure four times before his eyes followed his ears to the ground beside a fat-trunked, silver-leafed maple. He saw a brief movement and watched as a leaf seemed to skitter slowly, unaided by wind, toward him.
A little early for snakes to be out, but you never know.
Using a nearby dead limb as a poke rod, he cautiously pushed the leaf aside. Under it was a tiny, gray thing, long-limbed and lean, powering through the ground cover.
A baby squirrel! It’s a baby squirrel! Probably fell out of the tree. Or pushed out by its mama or bigger brothers.
Charles bent over and looked the squirrel over carefully.
It’s eyes aren’t even open. It’s abandoned. Poor little thing.
He carefully picked it up, and brought it up to eye level. The squirrel
squirmed out of his loose grip, digging into Charles’ fingers with its tiny claws and levering itself onto the back of his hand.
It was an overcast early spring morning; a chill, held close to the ground by a low cloud cover, settled into the valley. Without conscious thought, Charles plucked the squirrel off his hand and stuck it inside his coat, between the wool outer garment and his longhandles. Without hesitation, the tiny critter crawled up Charles’ chest, finally settling on his left shoulder, where he seemed to be either very comfortable or just petered out due to the effort.
Feeling the bump to make sure the squirrel was secure, Charles started walking back to camp. His mind ran amok with endless questions?
Where’s his mama?
How’d he survive the fall?
How can I keep him alive?
Where can I get squirrel’s milk?
Back in camp, he went straight to the surgeon’s tent, where he found Surgeon Avery asleep on a frayed cot. “Mr., er, Doctor Avery,” Charles said, gently shaking his shoulder. Charles was greeted with heavy-lidded eyes.
In a matter of seconds, Charles had the bad news: Wild animals don’t do
well in captivity. A squirrel needs squirrel milk, although the doctor had heard of squirrels surviving on dog or goat milk. There are no dogs in the regiment, and no goats. The squirrel is going to die.
Dejected, Charles walked back toward his tent, cuddling the still squirrel through his rough wool coat.
A thought hit him as he walked along the creek bank near the command tent.
I’ve got to get some milk.
There was none to be had in camp; the last milk he had seen was from a cow confiscated by a Massachusetts company on a foraging trip several weeks ago. A half-bucket of milk was drawn before the cow was slaughtered and divided up among the regiments bivouacking in the valley.
Then he remembered something: Several days ago, he had gone exploring, back up the Valley Turnpike. Just walking, looking. At a ramshackled house right on the road there had been a yard cat, huddled in a box on a porch. He distinctly remember the sounds of mewling kittens and wondered what it would be like to have a real pet, something he could take care of, something that would love him . . . unconditionally.
He hollered at Sergeant Burke as he started jogging up the road, “Be back in a bit, just going for a look-see!”
The house was further than he had remembered and it took more than half-an-hour to get there; it was as he remembered, perched right in the bend of the road. He hello-ed the house from the road, not wanting to enter the property, especially when asking a favor was in the offing. The front door opened, and a young woman stepped from the dark into the porch’s shadow. She was plain in appearance, and a baby, girl maybe, clung to her neck like a small, hairless monkey. Dressed in a patterned shift of indeterminable age, the woman automatically touched her bun, checking for stray hairs, before shielding her eyes from the outside brightness. She stood stock still, staring at Charles.
“Excuse me, Ma’m, but I am in dire need of some milk.”
Taking a step backward, the woman pulled the baby closer and put her free arm across both breasts.
Embarrassed by his abrupt introduction, Charles stammered: “What-what I mah-mean, Ma’m, is that I need some milk from that mama cat yonder. Or a cow, if you got one.” He reached into his tunic and pulled out the tiny squirrel. “For my squirrel. Elseways, he’s gonna die.”
“Don’t have no cow. You Yanks done took her. Bull and baby, too. The squirrel, where’d you git him?” the woman asked in a voice just barely louder than the sound of a bare foot scuffing across a hardwood floor. Not the sound of emphatic statement, more of an after-thought.
“Sorry about your loss, Ma’m. I truly am. The squirrel, I found it in the woods back at camp. Reckon he fell out of a tree. I would’ve put him back, but the tree was kinda lean at the top, and I heard wild mama won’t take back babies that’s done been touched by a man.”
“So, what do you plan on doin’, milk the cat?”
Charles hadn’t thought through that part. His anguish was apparently obvious.
“Bring him up on the porch. What’s yore name, boy?”
“Charles Andre, Ma’m. What shall I call you?”
“Mrs. Lancaster will do. This is Honor,” she said, nodding at the baby.
Without another word, she took the squirrel in her free hand, simultaneously handing Honor to Charles. Without a word, the woman bent to the cat-filled box, pulled the five sleeping kittens away from the mama cat and put them on the porch, replacing them with the squirrel. Calming the cat with one hand – “Easy, Sadie, it’s all right.” – she thrust the squirrel toward a middle nipple. Charles watched as the squirrel simply sat there, obviously sniffing, but taking no action.
Mrs. Lancaster grabbed one of Sadie’s nipples and gently massaged it; a single bubble of milk appeared, which she gathered on her fingertip and massaged it gently but forcefully on the front of the squirrel’s mouth. A heartbeat later, the squirrel sucked in and the milk mustache disappeared. Retracing previous movements, the woman eased the squirrel’s mouth onto a teat, and this time the squirrel latched it, holding its base with tiny, skeletal hands, and started sucking.
Charles almost cried out in joy and he watched the squirrel . . .
My squirrel!
drinking his fill.
The woman looked at him with a puzzled look. “You gonna rub all Honor’s hair off, iffen you don’t stop rubbin’ her so hard.” Without even realizing it, Charles had been rubbing the baby’s head, his ministrations increasing with his excitement.
In less than a minute, the squirrel rapid sucking motion had stopped; its claws relaxed, body went limp as it fell into a hard sleep.
The woman lifted it gently from the box, stopping to let Sadie smell the squirrel. The cat didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the visitor.
Exchanging Honor for the squirrel, Charles started thanking the woman profusely. She held up a hand, stopping him in mid-sentence: “Whatcha gonna do with it’s time to feed it again?”
What am I gonna do?
Charles placed the squirrel inside his coat and it nestled once again on top of his left shoulder. He sat down heavily on the porch and just stared at the woods beyond the road.
“How far is your camp? Is it the one past the brook?”
“Yes, ma’m, Mrs. Lancaster. I’m with the Ninth Connecticut. A fine bunch of boys, they be.”
“Can you leave camp and bring the squirrel here three or four times a day to let it feed? Sadie apparently don’t mind the squirrel nursing. Two kittens died and there seems to be plenty of milk.”
Camp life was regular for regular soldiers, as well as for the drummers – drilling still going on, chores to be done for the quartermaster and surgeons, errands to be run for the officers.
But . . . maybe.
“Let me go back to camp and check with my sergeant, Ma’m. Is it okay if I come back this afternoon?”
Mrs. Lancaster stopped bouncing the baby and cast a glance in Charles’ direction. “You better. Or the squirrel won’t make it till dark.”
She turned to go in the house, but Charles stopped her by blurting out: “Mrs. Lancaster. Your man? Is he in the war?”
She didn’t turn around. Her head dropped by degrees until her chin was almost on her chest. “He was. Not any more. He’s up on the hill now, under that lone tree. At least that’s where I put my memories of him.” With heavy steps, she entered the house and gently closed the door.
Charles turned to go, but a slight door squeak caused him to turn back. The woman, still clutching the baby, was standing in the doorway.
“The squirrel? It got a name?”
“Not yet,” Charles answered. “I thought I’d think on it on the way back to camp.”
“Squirrel needs a name. A name makes things more permanent, somehow.” Neither of them moved during a long pause. “My husband’s name was Edward. Edward Eugene Lancaster.” Without seeming to move, she closed the door.
The entire way back to camp, Charles rolled a litany of what he considered proper squirrel names around in his head. By the time he reached camp, he had the perfect name picked out.
Less than a half-mile from camp Charles met Private Joseph Dronant, a Texan who had signed on with the Ninth in New Orleans about six months before Charles.
The young soldier had just emerged from a stand of trees at the side of the road. The two had had several conversations about life in New Orleans over the past year or more so Charles was not surprised when Dronant said, “Andre! Where you been? We all thought you had runned off to join Jubel Early and his boys?”
Charles joshed back: “Been feeling a little squirrely at that, Nawlins Joe.” Without another word, he hauled the squirrel out and put it on display in the palm of his hand.
Charles recounted the tale of finding the squirrel, of getting its meal from a cat named Sadie and the sad-faced woman who was so accommodating.
“Ya named it yet?”
“Yep. Eugene.”
“Eugene? What kinda name is that for a critter?”
“It’s just a name, is all. But I’m gonna call him Johnny Reb.”
“Why, Andre, that’s just plain queer. Why Johnny Reb.”
Holding the squirrel up to eye level, Charles smiled and said: “Why, it’s a plain as the nose on your face, Joe. He’s kinda skinny and helpless, like them Rebs we been pushin’ all over these mountains. But mostly it’s because he’s got a little gray coat. Get it? Gray coat? Johnny Reb?”
Put back inside Charles’ coat, the squirrel went back to sleep immediately. And the two soldiers walked side by side into camp, laughing at the tiny irony.
Two hours later, after getting permission from Sergeant Johnson to visit the Lancaster household – “But no more than once a day. Is that understood?” – Charles approached the farmhouse. The woman was sitting on an old, flat-bottomed chair, holding a sleeping Honor in her lap.
“Back so soon?”
Charles stopped at the porch’s edge. “Named the squirrel.”
“Really? That fast? Well, boys are always making decisions fast. That’s why they get in so much trouble.”
She looked at Charles and cocked her head. “Well, you gonna tell me the name or not?”
“Eugene.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She mouthed, “Eugene?”
Charles nodded.
She cleared her throat, startling Honor. “Funny name for a squirrel, don’t you think?”
“I thought it was a fine name. Thought about naming him ‘Edward,’ but Edward seemed like a funny name for a squirrel. So it naturally fell to ‘Eugene.’”
There was a short, quiet pause, then Mrs. Lancaster started laughing. Waiting to see if it the laughter was real or forced, Charles quickly joined in. The belly-shaking laughter of her mother woke up Honor and the peals of laughter washed over the front yard.
It was Mrs. Lancaster who came up with a workable plan for keeping the squirrel alive. (“Feeding it once a day just won’t do.”) Charles agreed to leave Eugene (Johnny Reb) full time at the Lancaster farm to let it nurse with the five kittens. Mrs. Lancaster made it clear Charles could visit whenever he could and stay as long as he liked.
Upon returning to camp, Sergeant Johnson seemed a bit disappointed that Charles didn’t have the squirrel, but clapped him on the back: “That was a mighty grownup decision you made, Andre. Mighty grownup.”
Over the next three days – two of which were overcast, chilly and rainy – Charles made the two-mile trip to the Lancaster farm six times (Sergeant Johnson eager to approve the squirrel-visit requests), reveling in the thought of playing with Johnny Reb and visiting Mrs. Lancaster and Honor.
The fourth day was bright and sunny and it was dew early – the dew still covered the fields – when Charles approached the Lancaster place. He was surprised to see Mrs. Lancaster out on the porch.
“Mornin’, Mrs. Lancaster. How’s Honor?”
“She’s fine. She got up early, but is sleepin’ again. The squirrel had a bad night. It’s real poorly.”
Just like that. No preamble. No warning. No “Eugene.” Just “squirrel.”
“What’s the matter with Johnny Reb? Where is he?”
Her eyebrows arched at the “Johnny Reb” reference, but she let it pass. “He’s havin’ trouble gettin’ air. He’s not eatin’ right. His stomach is all pooched out. It’s what wild animals do sometimes. They get sick and die for no good reason. Like some people.”
Charles bent over the cat box, and picked up the tiny squirrel. It was mostly limp and mostly cold. “Oh, Sweet Mary, he’s really sick.” Without a word, Mrs. Lancaster went into the house, but didn’t close the door despite the chill north breeze slipping over the mountains and down the valley.
She watched through the cracked door as Charles cupped the squirrel tightly to his chest, rubbing it gently on his stiff wool coat; she heard his plaintive whispers as Charles bent his head and breathed words into the lank fur: "You're going to be okay…you're going to make it…you're a fighter. Please. Come on!"
He held the squirrel up chin high and rubbed its legs, brought him back down and cradled him, rubbing his chest, trying to warm him. Charles extended his arms, raising the baby squirrel up, offering him the sun’s warmth.
And, just for a moment, Mrs. Lancaster saw Charles look directly at the early morning sun, seeming to try and mentally gather its power for a miracle.
Charles’ thoughts tumbled around like a piece of driftwood in a swollen creek:
Don’t want much. Just a bit of good luck. Never asked for much. Now I’m asking. Come on, Johnny Reb!
He gathered a large breath and blew into the squirrel's face and rubbed its chest frantically. The squirrel's legs straightened. It took a breath, and went completely limp.
Charles said nothing more. His mind went blank; his eyes filled with tears that he refused to let fall. He looked at the tiny squirrel stretched out in an unnatural position in the palm of his hand. It did not move. Its black eyes, open and unfocused, stared blankly, seeing nothing.
Since he had joined the army, Charles had lived near death daily. Men died for vile diseases, of consumption, in camp accidents, and in the rigors and throes of battles. He had watched gut-shot men curl up and die, and had seen animals killed and butchered – large and small, domestic and wild – and he had never blinked an eye.
But today was different; there was no reason for Johnny Reb to die – there was no hunger, no way of life to fight for, no belief to defend. There was no blood; there was no reason.
It's just a dumb ole' squirrel.
And . . . he’s gone.
Mrs. Lancaster watched as Charles placed the squirrel on the edge of the porch and walked away, his eyes facing down to the ground and away from the sunshine. He walked to the edge of the road, stopping to kick a rock into the field across the road, like that was his mission all along.
Neither said a word for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Mrs. Lancaster said, “I am going to put Eugene in an old sock. There’s a hoe around back if’n you want to bury him.”
“It don’t make no difference. It’s just a squirrel.”
“Don’t you talk that way!” she said, stomping her foot forcefully on the porch. “Don’t you dare talk that way atall! He was yourn and he had a name. Now, go git that hoe and git it quick-like.”
There was no argument left in Charles. He turned to the house and fetched the hoe. He picked up the sad sock, cradled it in his left arm and turned toward the hill.
“Hold on a minute. Let me get Honor and I’ll go with you.”
Charles waited until she returned with the fussy child, who obviously would have preferred to sleep rather than go on a grave-digging jaunt.
As they walked around to the back of the small house, Mrs. Lancaster said, “Got any special place you want to bury the squirrel?”
“Haven’t given it much thought.”
She stopped abruptly at the corner of the house and leaned her head on the bare boards. Reflected sunlight off the parched field caused her to close her eyes.
She looks tired, tired as I feel.
Her voice was soft and thready: “I think a good place might be under that oak on the hill yonder.”
Charles had seen the spot before, but now looked at it with a discerning eye. It was a small knoll, capped by a majestic, spreading oak tree and a single, simple, wooden cross.
“I can’t think of a better place in this whole valley, Mrs. Lancaster.”
It was three days before Charles could work enough energy and want-to to walk back to the Lancaster farm. Even from a distance, he knew no one was home. More of a feeling than a fact. When he got closer he saw the porch chair and the basket of hanging flowers were gone; there was a vacancy on the north side of the barn, where the wagon had always been.
As a matter of courtesy, he announced his presence; when there was no answer, as expected; he walked up on the porch and peered through the single-paned window. Empty. He walked through the skinny front yard, rounded the corner of the house and started up the hill for the tree.
Stray thoughts skipped around inside his head like a flat stone slung on a calm pond.
Feeling this way about a squirrel is just dumb.
Wonder where they went?
Didn’t have it long enough to become attached.
Wished I could have said goodbye.
It was just a dumb squirrel.
Why’d it have to up and die?
He was topping the rise when he looked up and saw that the flimsy cross on Mr. Lancaster’s grave had been replaced with a round-topped slab of barn board. The hand-painted letters were in a bold, clean hand:
Edward
Eugene
Lancaster
b. June 3, 1841
d. July 10, 1864
Good man, husband, father
Blinking back the tears, Charles turned his attention to the smaller, wooden grave marker with small, pinched writing next to it.
Eugene
One of God’s fine squrels
In his short life,
he was loved
There was a tobacco tin between the two crosses. “Chas” was printed on it with what looked like (and felt like) a mixture of honeycomb and boot black. It was closed tight, and it took some working with a small stick to pry off the lid. The note was short:
Dear Chas:
Me and Honor goin back to MaryLand to live with my Foks. No thing left for us Here. Sorry I didn’t get to say Goodby. One of the soljers told me about you naming Eugene “Johnnie Reb.” Those are too Fine names to my way of Thinking. Don't be too Sad! Eugene had Food and Warmth and a Place in the Light for the best part of his Life. Unlike too many of us, he didn't Worry bout a World thout him, but wuz jest fine being a Squrel and content to be. As long as that was the thing to do.
Mrs. Edw. Eugene (Hope) Lancaster
Charles had never felt as alone in his whole life as he did at that moment.
He sat down between the two little wooden tombstones – one small, one smaller – and didn’t get up until the sun had set over Manussetten Mountain.
Chapter 24
Some deaths just . . . stand out
Charles was attending to business at the latrine, having set up on the south end of the pit; the early evening southern breeze carried the nose-hair-curling smell in the opposite direction.
Small victories make for happy soldiers.
He smiled at the thought.
A noise from the tree line behind him – a small, muffled thump, followed by a miniscule squeak – caused him to look in that direction. Cupping his left ear, he waited for a repeat. Other than the nattering of a couple of squirrels and lonely bleat of a magpie, the forest was quiet.
Something, it assuredly was. But what?
He finished up with a handful of fallen leaves, still pliable enough to use without falling to pieces, when he heard the same, high-pitched squeak.
What is that?
Buttoning his pants and arm-wrestling his galouses into place, he walked to the edge of the tree line, stopped, listened.
There! To the left!
Three steps later, Charles stopped. Listened. Three more steps. He repeated that procedure four times before his eyes followed his ears to the ground beside a fat-trunked, silver-leafed maple. He saw a brief movement and watched as a leaf seemed to skitter slowly, unaided by wind, toward him.
A little early for snakes to be out, but you never know.
Using a nearby dead limb as a poke rod, he cautiously pushed the leaf aside. Under it was a tiny, gray thing, long-limbed and lean, powering through the ground cover.
A baby squirrel! It’s a baby squirrel! Probably fell out of the tree. Or pushed out by its mama or bigger brothers.
Charles bent over and looked the squirrel over carefully.
It’s eyes aren’t even open. It’s abandoned. Poor little thing.
He carefully picked it up, and brought it up to eye level. The squirrel
squirmed out of his loose grip, digging into Charles’ fingers with its tiny claws and levering itself onto the back of his hand.
It was an overcast early spring morning; a chill, held close to the ground by a low cloud cover, settled into the valley. Without conscious thought, Charles plucked the squirrel off his hand and stuck it inside his coat, between the wool outer garment and his longhandles. Without hesitation, the tiny critter crawled up Charles’ chest, finally settling on his left shoulder, where he seemed to be either very comfortable or just petered out due to the effort.
Feeling the bump to make sure the squirrel was secure, Charles started walking back to camp. His mind ran amok with endless questions?
Where’s his mama?
How’d he survive the fall?
How can I keep him alive?
Where can I get squirrel’s milk?
Back in camp, he went straight to the surgeon’s tent, where he found Surgeon Avery asleep on a frayed cot. “Mr., er, Doctor Avery,” Charles said, gently shaking his shoulder. Charles was greeted with heavy-lidded eyes.
In a matter of seconds, Charles had the bad news: Wild animals don’t do
well in captivity. A squirrel needs squirrel milk, although the doctor had heard of squirrels surviving on dog or goat milk. There are no dogs in the regiment, and no goats. The squirrel is going to die.
Dejected, Charles walked back toward his tent, cuddling the still squirrel through his rough wool coat.
A thought hit him as he walked along the creek bank near the command tent.
I’ve got to get some milk.
There was none to be had in camp; the last milk he had seen was from a cow confiscated by a Massachusetts company on a foraging trip several weeks ago. A half-bucket of milk was drawn before the cow was slaughtered and divided up among the regiments bivouacking in the valley.
Then he remembered something: Several days ago, he had gone exploring, back up the Valley Turnpike. Just walking, looking. At a ramshackled house right on the road there had been a yard cat, huddled in a box on a porch. He distinctly remember the sounds of mewling kittens and wondered what it would be like to have a real pet, something he could take care of, something that would love him . . . unconditionally.
He hollered at Sergeant Burke as he started jogging up the road, “Be back in a bit, just going for a look-see!”
The house was further than he had remembered and it took more than half-an-hour to get there; it was as he remembered, perched right in the bend of the road. He hello-ed the house from the road, not wanting to enter the property, especially when asking a favor was in the offing. The front door opened, and a young woman stepped from the dark into the porch’s shadow. She was plain in appearance, and a baby, girl maybe, clung to her neck like a small, hairless monkey. Dressed in a patterned shift of indeterminable age, the woman automatically touched her bun, checking for stray hairs, before shielding her eyes from the outside brightness. She stood stock still, staring at Charles.
“Excuse me, Ma’m, but I am in dire need of some milk.”
Taking a step backward, the woman pulled the baby closer and put her free arm across both breasts.
Embarrassed by his abrupt introduction, Charles stammered: “What-what I mah-mean, Ma’m, is that I need some milk from that mama cat yonder. Or a cow, if you got one.” He reached into his tunic and pulled out the tiny squirrel. “For my squirrel. Elseways, he’s gonna die.”
“Don’t have no cow. You Yanks done took her. Bull and baby, too. The squirrel, where’d you git him?” the woman asked in a voice just barely louder than the sound of a bare foot scuffing across a hardwood floor. Not the sound of emphatic statement, more of an after-thought.
“Sorry about your loss, Ma’m. I truly am. The squirrel, I found it in the woods back at camp. Reckon he fell out of a tree. I would’ve put him back, but the tree was kinda lean at the top, and I heard wild mama won’t take back babies that’s done been touched by a man.”
“So, what do you plan on doin’, milk the cat?”
Charles hadn’t thought through that part. His anguish was apparently obvious.
“Bring him up on the porch. What’s yore name, boy?”
“Charles Andre, Ma’m. What shall I call you?”
“Mrs. Lancaster will do. This is Honor,” she said, nodding at the baby.
Without another word, she took the squirrel in her free hand, simultaneously handing Honor to Charles. Without a word, the woman bent to the cat-filled box, pulled the five sleeping kittens away from the mama cat and put them on the porch, replacing them with the squirrel. Calming the cat with one hand – “Easy, Sadie, it’s all right.” – she thrust the squirrel toward a middle nipple. Charles watched as the squirrel simply sat there, obviously sniffing, but taking no action.
Mrs. Lancaster grabbed one of Sadie’s nipples and gently massaged it; a single bubble of milk appeared, which she gathered on her fingertip and massaged it gently but forcefully on the front of the squirrel’s mouth. A heartbeat later, the squirrel sucked in and the milk mustache disappeared. Retracing previous movements, the woman eased the squirrel’s mouth onto a teat, and this time the squirrel latched it, holding its base with tiny, skeletal hands, and started sucking.
Charles almost cried out in joy and he watched the squirrel . . .
My squirrel!
drinking his fill.
The woman looked at him with a puzzled look. “You gonna rub all Honor’s hair off, iffen you don’t stop rubbin’ her so hard.” Without even realizing it, Charles had been rubbing the baby’s head, his ministrations increasing with his excitement.
In less than a minute, the squirrel rapid sucking motion had stopped; its claws relaxed, body went limp as it fell into a hard sleep.
The woman lifted it gently from the box, stopping to let Sadie smell the squirrel. The cat didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the visitor.
Exchanging Honor for the squirrel, Charles started thanking the woman profusely. She held up a hand, stopping him in mid-sentence: “Whatcha gonna do with it’s time to feed it again?”
What am I gonna do?
Charles placed the squirrel inside his coat and it nestled once again on top of his left shoulder. He sat down heavily on the porch and just stared at the woods beyond the road.
“How far is your camp? Is it the one past the brook?”
“Yes, ma’m, Mrs. Lancaster. I’m with the Ninth Connecticut. A fine bunch of boys, they be.”
“Can you leave camp and bring the squirrel here three or four times a day to let it feed? Sadie apparently don’t mind the squirrel nursing. Two kittens died and there seems to be plenty of milk.”
Camp life was regular for regular soldiers, as well as for the drummers – drilling still going on, chores to be done for the quartermaster and surgeons, errands to be run for the officers.
But . . . maybe.
“Let me go back to camp and check with my sergeant, Ma’m. Is it okay if I come back this afternoon?”
Mrs. Lancaster stopped bouncing the baby and cast a glance in Charles’ direction. “You better. Or the squirrel won’t make it till dark.”
She turned to go in the house, but Charles stopped her by blurting out: “Mrs. Lancaster. Your man? Is he in the war?”
She didn’t turn around. Her head dropped by degrees until her chin was almost on her chest. “He was. Not any more. He’s up on the hill now, under that lone tree. At least that’s where I put my memories of him.” With heavy steps, she entered the house and gently closed the door.
Charles turned to go, but a slight door squeak caused him to turn back. The woman, still clutching the baby, was standing in the doorway.
“The squirrel? It got a name?”
“Not yet,” Charles answered. “I thought I’d think on it on the way back to camp.”
“Squirrel needs a name. A name makes things more permanent, somehow.” Neither of them moved during a long pause. “My husband’s name was Edward. Edward Eugene Lancaster.” Without seeming to move, she closed the door.
The entire way back to camp, Charles rolled a litany of what he considered proper squirrel names around in his head. By the time he reached camp, he had the perfect name picked out.
Less than a half-mile from camp Charles met Private Joseph Dronant, a Texan who had signed on with the Ninth in New Orleans about six months before Charles.
The young soldier had just emerged from a stand of trees at the side of the road. The two had had several conversations about life in New Orleans over the past year or more so Charles was not surprised when Dronant said, “Andre! Where you been? We all thought you had runned off to join Jubel Early and his boys?”
Charles joshed back: “Been feeling a little squirrely at that, Nawlins Joe.” Without another word, he hauled the squirrel out and put it on display in the palm of his hand.
Charles recounted the tale of finding the squirrel, of getting its meal from a cat named Sadie and the sad-faced woman who was so accommodating.
“Ya named it yet?”
“Yep. Eugene.”
“Eugene? What kinda name is that for a critter?”
“It’s just a name, is all. But I’m gonna call him Johnny Reb.”
“Why, Andre, that’s just plain queer. Why Johnny Reb.”
Holding the squirrel up to eye level, Charles smiled and said: “Why, it’s a plain as the nose on your face, Joe. He’s kinda skinny and helpless, like them Rebs we been pushin’ all over these mountains. But mostly it’s because he’s got a little gray coat. Get it? Gray coat? Johnny Reb?”
Put back inside Charles’ coat, the squirrel went back to sleep immediately. And the two soldiers walked side by side into camp, laughing at the tiny irony.
Two hours later, after getting permission from Sergeant Johnson to visit the Lancaster household – “But no more than once a day. Is that understood?” – Charles approached the farmhouse. The woman was sitting on an old, flat-bottomed chair, holding a sleeping Honor in her lap.
“Back so soon?”
Charles stopped at the porch’s edge. “Named the squirrel.”
“Really? That fast? Well, boys are always making decisions fast. That’s why they get in so much trouble.”
She looked at Charles and cocked her head. “Well, you gonna tell me the name or not?”
“Eugene.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She mouthed, “Eugene?”
Charles nodded.
She cleared her throat, startling Honor. “Funny name for a squirrel, don’t you think?”
“I thought it was a fine name. Thought about naming him ‘Edward,’ but Edward seemed like a funny name for a squirrel. So it naturally fell to ‘Eugene.’”
There was a short, quiet pause, then Mrs. Lancaster started laughing. Waiting to see if it the laughter was real or forced, Charles quickly joined in. The belly-shaking laughter of her mother woke up Honor and the peals of laughter washed over the front yard.
It was Mrs. Lancaster who came up with a workable plan for keeping the squirrel alive. (“Feeding it once a day just won’t do.”) Charles agreed to leave Eugene (Johnny Reb) full time at the Lancaster farm to let it nurse with the five kittens. Mrs. Lancaster made it clear Charles could visit whenever he could and stay as long as he liked.
Upon returning to camp, Sergeant Johnson seemed a bit disappointed that Charles didn’t have the squirrel, but clapped him on the back: “That was a mighty grownup decision you made, Andre. Mighty grownup.”
Over the next three days – two of which were overcast, chilly and rainy – Charles made the two-mile trip to the Lancaster farm six times (Sergeant Johnson eager to approve the squirrel-visit requests), reveling in the thought of playing with Johnny Reb and visiting Mrs. Lancaster and Honor.
The fourth day was bright and sunny and it was dew early – the dew still covered the fields – when Charles approached the Lancaster place. He was surprised to see Mrs. Lancaster out on the porch.
“Mornin’, Mrs. Lancaster. How’s Honor?”
“She’s fine. She got up early, but is sleepin’ again. The squirrel had a bad night. It’s real poorly.”
Just like that. No preamble. No warning. No “Eugene.” Just “squirrel.”
“What’s the matter with Johnny Reb? Where is he?”
Her eyebrows arched at the “Johnny Reb” reference, but she let it pass. “He’s havin’ trouble gettin’ air. He’s not eatin’ right. His stomach is all pooched out. It’s what wild animals do sometimes. They get sick and die for no good reason. Like some people.”
Charles bent over the cat box, and picked up the tiny squirrel. It was mostly limp and mostly cold. “Oh, Sweet Mary, he’s really sick.” Without a word, Mrs. Lancaster went into the house, but didn’t close the door despite the chill north breeze slipping over the mountains and down the valley.
She watched through the cracked door as Charles cupped the squirrel tightly to his chest, rubbing it gently on his stiff wool coat; she heard his plaintive whispers as Charles bent his head and breathed words into the lank fur: "You're going to be okay…you're going to make it…you're a fighter. Please. Come on!"
He held the squirrel up chin high and rubbed its legs, brought him back down and cradled him, rubbing his chest, trying to warm him. Charles extended his arms, raising the baby squirrel up, offering him the sun’s warmth.
And, just for a moment, Mrs. Lancaster saw Charles look directly at the early morning sun, seeming to try and mentally gather its power for a miracle.
Charles’ thoughts tumbled around like a piece of driftwood in a swollen creek:
Don’t want much. Just a bit of good luck. Never asked for much. Now I’m asking. Come on, Johnny Reb!
He gathered a large breath and blew into the squirrel's face and rubbed its chest frantically. The squirrel's legs straightened. It took a breath, and went completely limp.
Charles said nothing more. His mind went blank; his eyes filled with tears that he refused to let fall. He looked at the tiny squirrel stretched out in an unnatural position in the palm of his hand. It did not move. Its black eyes, open and unfocused, stared blankly, seeing nothing.
Since he had joined the army, Charles had lived near death daily. Men died for vile diseases, of consumption, in camp accidents, and in the rigors and throes of battles. He had watched gut-shot men curl up and die, and had seen animals killed and butchered – large and small, domestic and wild – and he had never blinked an eye.
But today was different; there was no reason for Johnny Reb to die – there was no hunger, no way of life to fight for, no belief to defend. There was no blood; there was no reason.
It's just a dumb ole' squirrel.
And . . . he’s gone.
Mrs. Lancaster watched as Charles placed the squirrel on the edge of the porch and walked away, his eyes facing down to the ground and away from the sunshine. He walked to the edge of the road, stopping to kick a rock into the field across the road, like that was his mission all along.
Neither said a word for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Mrs. Lancaster said, “I am going to put Eugene in an old sock. There’s a hoe around back if’n you want to bury him.”
“It don’t make no difference. It’s just a squirrel.”
“Don’t you talk that way!” she said, stomping her foot forcefully on the porch. “Don’t you dare talk that way atall! He was yourn and he had a name. Now, go git that hoe and git it quick-like.”
There was no argument left in Charles. He turned to the house and fetched the hoe. He picked up the sad sock, cradled it in his left arm and turned toward the hill.
“Hold on a minute. Let me get Honor and I’ll go with you.”
Charles waited until she returned with the fussy child, who obviously would have preferred to sleep rather than go on a grave-digging jaunt.
As they walked around to the back of the small house, Mrs. Lancaster said, “Got any special place you want to bury the squirrel?”
“Haven’t given it much thought.”
She stopped abruptly at the corner of the house and leaned her head on the bare boards. Reflected sunlight off the parched field caused her to close her eyes.
She looks tired, tired as I feel.
Her voice was soft and thready: “I think a good place might be under that oak on the hill yonder.”
Charles had seen the spot before, but now looked at it with a discerning eye. It was a small knoll, capped by a majestic, spreading oak tree and a single, simple, wooden cross.
“I can’t think of a better place in this whole valley, Mrs. Lancaster.”
It was three days before Charles could work enough energy and want-to to walk back to the Lancaster farm. Even from a distance, he knew no one was home. More of a feeling than a fact. When he got closer he saw the porch chair and the basket of hanging flowers were gone; there was a vacancy on the north side of the barn, where the wagon had always been.
As a matter of courtesy, he announced his presence; when there was no answer, as expected; he walked up on the porch and peered through the single-paned window. Empty. He walked through the skinny front yard, rounded the corner of the house and started up the hill for the tree.
Stray thoughts skipped around inside his head like a flat stone slung on a calm pond.
Feeling this way about a squirrel is just dumb.
Wonder where they went?
Didn’t have it long enough to become attached.
Wished I could have said goodbye.
It was just a dumb squirrel.
Why’d it have to up and die?
He was topping the rise when he looked up and saw that the flimsy cross on Mr. Lancaster’s grave had been replaced with a round-topped slab of barn board. The hand-painted letters were in a bold, clean hand:
Edward
Eugene
Lancaster
b. June 3, 1841
d. July 10, 1864
Good man, husband, father
Blinking back the tears, Charles turned his attention to the smaller, wooden grave marker with small, pinched writing next to it.
Eugene
One of God’s fine squrels
In his short life,
he was loved
There was a tobacco tin between the two crosses. “Chas” was printed on it with what looked like (and felt like) a mixture of honeycomb and boot black. It was closed tight, and it took some working with a small stick to pry off the lid. The note was short:
Dear Chas:
Me and Honor goin back to MaryLand to live with my Foks. No thing left for us Here. Sorry I didn’t get to say Goodby. One of the soljers told me about you naming Eugene “Johnnie Reb.” Those are too Fine names to my way of Thinking. Don't be too Sad! Eugene had Food and Warmth and a Place in the Light for the best part of his Life. Unlike too many of us, he didn't Worry bout a World thout him, but wuz jest fine being a Squrel and content to be. As long as that was the thing to do.
Mrs. Edw. Eugene (Hope) Lancaster
Charles had never felt as alone in his whole life as he did at that moment.
He sat down between the two little wooden tombstones – one small, one smaller – and didn’t get up until the sun had set over Manussetten Mountain.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Life Lessons Learned
Reveille: A story of survival, war, family
(Unpublished historical fiction novel about a New Orleans orphan who served as a drummer boy with the Ninth Connecticut Regiment. The teenager was my great-grandfather.)
Chapter 12
"There are endless sufferings to endure
and endless lessons to learn."
Chinese proverb
Downtime in the winter camp was an invitation for creative thinking for many of the men of the Ninth. Around roaring campfires – shortly after breakfast call to taps, between must-drills, other chores, foraging, finding, gathering, and splitting wood – the men talked or played card games (some with rules, others made up on the spot). They rolled bones for money (real and imagined), talked of their past and future lives, and made up tall tales for the sheer entertainment value.
Charles didn’t often join in the games. Too many of the games demanded talking – bidding, over-bidding, being asked seemingly innocuous questions. The talk was mostly benign early in the day, but seemed to turn malignant and dark as livers floating in foul-smelling liquor when darkness descended. Offered a drink of “plum punch” on a lazy evening in the late fall, Charles took a tentative sip, then a healthy swig, smacked his lips loudly, and within minutes . . . was praying for a quick death.
The “punch,” concocted of plums gone bad and allowed to ferment in a wayward canteen, then cut with grain alcohol snagged from the hospital tent when the surgeons and assistants were at mess, and sassafras root, was like “drinking the Devil’s piss,” one soldier cried as his stomach tied itself in knots.
But, if the intent of the elixir was to graduate its partakers from sober to drunk in eye-blink time, it was a fine brew indeed.
Charles held his stomach as if he expected his guts to fall out in a cascade on the cold ground. Trying to focus eyes that seemed to be trying to meet each other at his nose, Charles floundered out of the campfire light. He made his way into a nearby pin cushion of oak saplings, and promptly puked. When his stomach was drained, he dry-heaved for what seemed longer than Job endured his trials. His guts in a twist, Charles groaned, cursed silently, cursed loudly, and screamed at man and God for relief.
A friendly soldier who had passed on the potent potion – “I done had it onest ‘while back and that were ‘nuff.” – half-carried, half-dragged Charles to the hospital tent, roused a sleeping hospital steward, and asked for his assistance. The man – August Ruhl, a former rifleman from Norwich who was a recent transfer to surgeon aide detail – took a long look at Charles, shook his head and said, “This ‘un he’ll have to pay for. The cure may be worser than the ailment.”
Ruhl walked to the backside of the tent and after rummaging around a spell in a large, plain, pine chest, produced a great dark bottle with a wooden stopper. Using his teeth, he extracted the stopper, which he spat on a nearby table. Charles, in severe pain and feeling he was going to pass out any minute, never took his eyes off the bottle swaying at the end of the man’s long arm.
“What . . . is . . . it?” he asked with gulping breaths.
“Ipecac. It’ll clear you right up, most probably.”
Ruhl put the wooden stob on a nearby table before pushing the bottle’s mushroom lips to Charles’ mouth. “Hold his nose,” the steward said to the soldier, “then grab his arms. He’s gonna fight some, most probably.”
“Fight?” Charles said, “Why wo . . . “
Ruhl quickly pinched his Adam’s apple as the soldier grabbed his nose. A large glug of the dark, sticky liquid slid down Charles’ throat.
In spite of his best efforts, he coughed, sputtered, tried to spit, and then swallowed. His taste buds initially refused to register the taste but when they did . . . Charles felt his stomach roil once, twice, then a upside down waterfall of ipecac and bile came up twice as fast as it went down.
Once, twice . . . five times, Charles’ body tried to turn itself inside out as the two men held him down and did funny, side-step dances to avoid the spewings.
When the series of incredible tidal waves of cramps had passed, Charles was awash in a swooning sweat. He fell down on the long table and was passing into blessed unconsciousness when he said, “Why did you give me . . . that? I had already throwed up?”
“You have to get the poison out, boy, or you will feel real bad for a long time. That’s what ipecac does. Cleans you out.”
There’s gotta be a better way to go about it than poisonin’ a fellow.
His last thought was partially lost in the slamming darkness:
How do them other fellas . . . ?
The next day, well after reveille, Charles woke up. Or tried to. Then wished he hadn’t. His head was a cannonball pressuring up about to explode. He had apparently slept in a tight ball due to on-and-off stomach cramps; the muscles in his back, legs, neck, and arms were tight.
As tight as Dick’s hatband. And sore . . . Oh, God! . . . to boot.
Ruhl hovered nearby. “How’re you feelin’?”
“Better than last night. But then, I was about to die, so anythin’ has to be better, oui?”
“Oui, yes, and surely.”
Charles was quiet for a spell, thinking. “So, bein’ a surgeon and all, you know a lot of medicines and such, right?”
“I’m no surgeon, not even a ‘sistant. I volunteered into the army but wasn’t a very good soldier and knew it. I might want to be a doctor someday after the war. If it ever does end. So I volunteered myself to come over here and help out wherever I can. I could never be a sawbones. Cuttin’s not for me. I know it and the army knows it. But the army needs to have a warm body fillin’ a set slot in the ranks. I do the best I can and that’s all I can do.”
“Do you know medicine? Can you teach me some?” The question was direct, not hesitant; it was bold for Charles, but contained no hint of begging or pleading in his tone or mannerisms.
“You want to be a doctor?”
“Truly? I don’t know. I seem to be goin’ through life findin’ out things I don’t want to be and I want to find somethin’ I do want to be even if I don’t know what the somethin’ is just yet.”
Ruhl paused, staring at Charles, studying him. “Hmmmm. That sounds like a right smart plan, when you get right down to it.”
(Unpublished historical fiction novel about a New Orleans orphan who served as a drummer boy with the Ninth Connecticut Regiment. The teenager was my great-grandfather.)
Chapter 12
"There are endless sufferings to endure
and endless lessons to learn."
Chinese proverb
Downtime in the winter camp was an invitation for creative thinking for many of the men of the Ninth. Around roaring campfires – shortly after breakfast call to taps, between must-drills, other chores, foraging, finding, gathering, and splitting wood – the men talked or played card games (some with rules, others made up on the spot). They rolled bones for money (real and imagined), talked of their past and future lives, and made up tall tales for the sheer entertainment value.
Charles didn’t often join in the games. Too many of the games demanded talking – bidding, over-bidding, being asked seemingly innocuous questions. The talk was mostly benign early in the day, but seemed to turn malignant and dark as livers floating in foul-smelling liquor when darkness descended. Offered a drink of “plum punch” on a lazy evening in the late fall, Charles took a tentative sip, then a healthy swig, smacked his lips loudly, and within minutes . . . was praying for a quick death.
The “punch,” concocted of plums gone bad and allowed to ferment in a wayward canteen, then cut with grain alcohol snagged from the hospital tent when the surgeons and assistants were at mess, and sassafras root, was like “drinking the Devil’s piss,” one soldier cried as his stomach tied itself in knots.
But, if the intent of the elixir was to graduate its partakers from sober to drunk in eye-blink time, it was a fine brew indeed.
Charles held his stomach as if he expected his guts to fall out in a cascade on the cold ground. Trying to focus eyes that seemed to be trying to meet each other at his nose, Charles floundered out of the campfire light. He made his way into a nearby pin cushion of oak saplings, and promptly puked. When his stomach was drained, he dry-heaved for what seemed longer than Job endured his trials. His guts in a twist, Charles groaned, cursed silently, cursed loudly, and screamed at man and God for relief.
A friendly soldier who had passed on the potent potion – “I done had it onest ‘while back and that were ‘nuff.” – half-carried, half-dragged Charles to the hospital tent, roused a sleeping hospital steward, and asked for his assistance. The man – August Ruhl, a former rifleman from Norwich who was a recent transfer to surgeon aide detail – took a long look at Charles, shook his head and said, “This ‘un he’ll have to pay for. The cure may be worser than the ailment.”
Ruhl walked to the backside of the tent and after rummaging around a spell in a large, plain, pine chest, produced a great dark bottle with a wooden stopper. Using his teeth, he extracted the stopper, which he spat on a nearby table. Charles, in severe pain and feeling he was going to pass out any minute, never took his eyes off the bottle swaying at the end of the man’s long arm.
“What . . . is . . . it?” he asked with gulping breaths.
“Ipecac. It’ll clear you right up, most probably.”
Ruhl put the wooden stob on a nearby table before pushing the bottle’s mushroom lips to Charles’ mouth. “Hold his nose,” the steward said to the soldier, “then grab his arms. He’s gonna fight some, most probably.”
“Fight?” Charles said, “Why wo . . . “
Ruhl quickly pinched his Adam’s apple as the soldier grabbed his nose. A large glug of the dark, sticky liquid slid down Charles’ throat.
In spite of his best efforts, he coughed, sputtered, tried to spit, and then swallowed. His taste buds initially refused to register the taste but when they did . . . Charles felt his stomach roil once, twice, then a upside down waterfall of ipecac and bile came up twice as fast as it went down.
Once, twice . . . five times, Charles’ body tried to turn itself inside out as the two men held him down and did funny, side-step dances to avoid the spewings.
When the series of incredible tidal waves of cramps had passed, Charles was awash in a swooning sweat. He fell down on the long table and was passing into blessed unconsciousness when he said, “Why did you give me . . . that? I had already throwed up?”
“You have to get the poison out, boy, or you will feel real bad for a long time. That’s what ipecac does. Cleans you out.”
There’s gotta be a better way to go about it than poisonin’ a fellow.
His last thought was partially lost in the slamming darkness:
How do them other fellas . . . ?
The next day, well after reveille, Charles woke up. Or tried to. Then wished he hadn’t. His head was a cannonball pressuring up about to explode. He had apparently slept in a tight ball due to on-and-off stomach cramps; the muscles in his back, legs, neck, and arms were tight.
As tight as Dick’s hatband. And sore . . . Oh, God! . . . to boot.
Ruhl hovered nearby. “How’re you feelin’?”
“Better than last night. But then, I was about to die, so anythin’ has to be better, oui?”
“Oui, yes, and surely.”
Charles was quiet for a spell, thinking. “So, bein’ a surgeon and all, you know a lot of medicines and such, right?”
“I’m no surgeon, not even a ‘sistant. I volunteered into the army but wasn’t a very good soldier and knew it. I might want to be a doctor someday after the war. If it ever does end. So I volunteered myself to come over here and help out wherever I can. I could never be a sawbones. Cuttin’s not for me. I know it and the army knows it. But the army needs to have a warm body fillin’ a set slot in the ranks. I do the best I can and that’s all I can do.”
“Do you know medicine? Can you teach me some?” The question was direct, not hesitant; it was bold for Charles, but contained no hint of begging or pleading in his tone or mannerisms.
“You want to be a doctor?”
“Truly? I don’t know. I seem to be goin’ through life findin’ out things I don’t want to be and I want to find somethin’ I do want to be even if I don’t know what the somethin’ is just yet.”
Ruhl paused, staring at Charles, studying him. “Hmmmm. That sounds like a right smart plan, when you get right down to it.”
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