completely blown off. He had been drinking right next to him, only inches away.
Before he quite realized what he was doing, Hazner got to his knees, bent double, and vomited.
Gasping, he leaned over, ashamed of the fact that he had vomited on the dead soldier.
'It's all right there, Sergeant,' one of his men said. He looked up. It was young Lieutenant Hurt, the boy he had braced up before the assault on Fort Stephens. Hurt put his hand out and pulled Hazner up to his feet.
'We thought you seen it,' Hurt said, and he pointed to bodies around the small pond, not just on the banks but floating in the middle of it, one of the bodies having jammed in the millwheel. The water was actually tinted pink. Some of the men were still alive, but so weak that after having collapsed into the water they were now drowning.
Hurt ordered the detail to drop canteens and pull the poor wretches out. The men set to work, some of the wounded so badly injured that as they were pulled out they screamed with pain, one of them a man scorched black from the waist up.
Hazner, still in shock, said nothing.
The men, having finished their task of pulling the drowning back, were not sure what to do next. Hurt looked at Hazner, as if expecting the experienced sergeant major to resume control.
'Nothing we can do for these boys now,' Hurt said. 'I'll tell Colonel Brown when we get back and he can get Scales to send ambulances down.'
He said it loud, as if offering an excuse to the injured and the dying around them.
'Come on, boys. Let's get above the pond.'
Hazner picked up a dozen of the canteens and said nothing, following along woodenly. They reached the ground above the pond, and all along the banks of the stream hundreds of men were at work at the same task, so that by the time Hurt found a spot for the men to start filling, there was barely a trickle of water.
After twenty minutes the last of the canteens was filled, and Hurt motioned for them to start heading back. Hazner brought up the rear, the detachment crossing over the railroad tracks up the slope and tumbling into the trench. Moving down the line Hazner just walked along tall, while his comrades moved bent double until they reached their regiment Hazner leaned against the side of the trench, still standing, saying nothing as the men around him greedily took canteens, tilted their heads back, and drank deeply.
'Sergeant?'
He focused his gaze. It was Colonel Brown. 'Yes, sir.'
'Maybe you should get down, Sergeant.'
'Sir.' Hazner looked around, suddenly aware that he was still standing erect, his men gazing up at him. He slid down to the bottom of the trench.
'Lieutenant Hurt told me what happened back there, Sergeant. How are you?'
'Me, sir?' Hazner said, forcing a smile. 'Just fine, sir. Just fine.'
Brown patted him on the shoulder and crept off, calling for the men to save a little water to pour down their barrels so they could swab their guns clean.
Someone offered Hazner a canteen. He tried to drink the water, but to his utter shame, seconds later, he vomited it up.
No one spoke.
Can I ever drink a drop of water again without seeing him? he wondered.
Hauling Ferry
6:30 P.M.
Jim thought he knew what labor was, but the long years of life in the White House, the formal protocol, the softly spoken and ever-so-polite conversations, even between the servants, had never quite braced him for this.
For hours he had stood out in the sun, until someone, surprisingly, a young white officer, had brought over a chair and pointed out that an awning had been set up for him, complete with desk.
He had gladly taken this position, along with the offer of a half dozen colored men who were fairly well dressed, most of them clerks who said they could write with a good hand, and were now his staff.
The makeshift bedsheet banner WASHINGTON COLORED VOLUNTEERS hung limp from one side of the awning, now fluttering slightly with the evening breeze that carried with it the scent of rain.
Thus he had worked through the day, struggling to keep things organized. As ordered by the general, he had first assigned fifty men, largely chosen at random, to be captains, told them to pick ten sergeants each, and then for the sergeants to pick ten men as workers.
Within an hour that had all but threatened to fall apart as some men started coming in complaining, declaring their captain was drunk, or they would be damned if they would take orders from a dockyard roustabout while they had actually taught school or owned a barbershop.
At first he tried to reason with them, but within minutes was overwhelmed, until finally one of Winfield's staff officers settled the bombardment of complaints with a drawn pistol fired into the air. That had silenced the gathering crowd.
'Either take orders or get the hell out,' the officer had said, pointing back to the towpath.
Several dozen, to Jim's shame, actually threw down their tools and walked off.
'Best to be rid of them anyhow,' the officer had said. 'Every unit has its whiners and malingerers.'
Before leaving, the officer had hesitated, handed the revolver over to Jim, and told him to feel free to use it if need be, and no questions asked.
He actually had threatened to use it twice. Once on a 'sergeant' who was dragged in after beating the hell out of his captain, the second time, on of all things, a white corporal, drunk, who came up and started taunting Jim and the men in the cookhouse, saying he'd be damned if he'd ever fight alongside of 'goddamn niggers.'
After so many years' experience in the White House, dealing with all kinds of guests, some of them downright hateful of the colored race, Jim at first tried to speak quietly and politely in reply, until the drunken corporal, with the. foulest of oaths, raised a foot, slapped it into Jim's lap, and ordered him to polish his shoe.
The startled corporal was greeted with the revolver, cocked and aimed straight into his face.
'You son of a bitch,' Jim snapped, amazed at the words coming out of him, but no longer caring. 'Now kindly remove your foot from my lap. President Lincoln would never have done anything like this, and I sure as hell will not take it from trash like you.'
Jim shouted for a white officer, and then started to shake, not sure of the reaction that was about to unfold over a black man waving a pistol at a white man, as the officer came running up.
When Jim told the officer what happened, there were a nervous few seconds, the corporal swearing that 'no nigger is gonna talk to me like that,' even though the cocked revolver was still aimed at his face.
The officer, grinning, then drew his own revolver and suggested that the corporal 'comply with Mr. Bartlett's orders,' placing an emphasis on the word 'mister.'
The world was indeed changing this day, Jim realized.
The corporal and the black 'sergeant' were 'bucked and gagged,' the object of ridicule by all who passed. That support from the white officer seemed to have settled things down significantly, and there was little backtalk to Jim as he checked off work schedules, reassigned some men who obviously were not working out as leaders, and detailed off new crews to work as men continued to swarm in throughout the day.
So many were now at work that Jim had assigned his six assistants to be 'colonels,' each responsible for fifteen work crews, and yet still more were coming in.
Surprisingly, in the last several hours, the chaos had given way to a fair semblance of order. Crews worked four hours on, then were given an hour off to go down to the makeshift cookhouse, where salt pork, hardtack, and coffee were being served out. There were few plates or cups available, the men passing around a bucket with the hot coffee, taking the hot slabs of salt pork, slapping them onto pieces of hardtack, and wolfing them down, then lying down in the shade until called back to work.
At mid-aftemoon he was offered a horse. A Yankee cavalry trooper came leading an old swaybacked nag.
'She ain't much, sir,' the trooper said, 'but me and the boys figure that with you in command it was only proper you should have a horse. We took her from a nearby farm.'
