Love and War

His eyes shone in the flaring light. 'Thank you.'

He walked down the creaking steps into the fog. As soon as her door closed he extinguished his torch, faced about, and quietly lowered himself to the edge of the porch, where he intended to stay until daylight.

Although Jane was awake for some time, she didn't know he was out there. She heard instead the noises of the spring night beyond the window from which Cuffey had torn the curtain. She heard the doglike barks of the frogs, the three-note chant of the chuck-will’s-widow, the drone of insects. And, in imagination, she heard a voice promising vengeance. She lay with her hand clenched against her cheek, wishing she didn't hear the voice but unable to silence it.

76

In the early morning of April 28, Billy wrote by the light of a candle pushed into the mounting ring of a borrowed bayonet.

Lije F. and yr. obdt. are detached with a volunteer co. for duty with Gen. Slocum's three corps. We march upstream tomorrow. Some suspect a great sweep around Lee and a strike at his rear. The regulars and vols are cooking rations for 8 days. Pack mules numbering 2,000 will replace most of the supply wagons, further evidence of a desire for speed and surprise.

Weather is better — rains over, though roads & stream banks remain very muddy in some places; we will earn our pay planking the worst spots.

Among the army's current complement of vols, about half are replacements for deserters or the dead, wounded & sick; most of the greenhorns are foolishly excited at the prospect of battle — much happier to march forward than stay behind with those corps which will apparently demonstrate against Lee's works in Fredericksburg, or below the town. One such corps is Howard's XI, the Germans, almost universally detested as radicals, revolutionaries — fugitives from the trouble of 1848 whether they be so or not. Almost without exception, the Dutchmen swear by Old Abe and his proclamation, while the rest of the army swears at them. We have not much tolerance  — and I point the finger of conscience first at myself. Yesterday I saw two Negro teamsters in army blue and confess to being unsettled by the sight. Lije prayed twenty mins. longer than usual tonight. At supper, while a band played 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' I asked why. He replied, Do not forget who is over in Fredericksburg. Two of the best — Bob Lee & Old Jack. Lije said he had implored the Almighty to confuse their minds and impair their judgment, though he stated this was done with regret, as both generals are staunch Christians. Wish I were, Brett. It might ease my soul. I am sick of the dirt and killing and cannot take any joy in what's to come, as the vols do. But they are boys yet. They will be something else before this spring's over.

Late the next day, Billy and a detachment of twelve volunteer engineers found a farmhouse with a sturdy barn and a smaller outbuilding from which the breeze brought the powerful odor of chicken droppings.

'What d'you think, sir?' asked the senior noncom with the group, a youth from Syracuse named Spinnington. He had been appointed corporal because he seemed less lazy and stupid than the other replacements; no positive traits recommended him.

From the roadside Billy studied the neatly kept buildings surrounded by a small orchard of peach trees. The detachment had fallen out around a wagon commandeered from another farm. Other detachments, with wagons similarly obtained, were roaming the countryside just above the Rapidan. Screened by Stoneman's horse, the army had marched with great secrecy and encountered no difficulties until reaching the chosen ford. The rain-swollen river could still be crossed, but its near bank was a bog where it should be solid.

'Sir?' Spinnington prodded. Billy continued to stare at the farmhouse, wishing he could give the order to move on. He felt tired enough to drop. He knew that had little to do with the forced march from Fredericksburg and everything to do with the task at hand.

Billy's beard had grown out during the winter; it was carelessly trimmed, and matted in places. Despite a natural stockiness, he had a curiously shrunken appearance. Seen with his brother George, he might have been picked as the older — or so he thought on those increasingly rare occasions when he saw himself in the scrap of polished tin he used as a mirror. The reflected face had a saggy look, as if it were made of melting candle tallow.

Spinnington fidgeted. Billy said, 'All right.'

There were whoops as the new replacements charged the house, the low-lying sun gilding an ax blade, the face of a boy with a crowbar. Their elongated shadows climbed up the side of the house.

The front door opened; a man came out. A tiny man with a white tuft of beard but huge strong hands.

Billy approached the porch. Before he could speak, a woman appeared behind the man. She weighed three times what he did and stood a head taller.

'Mr. Tate,' she said, 'get back inside. General Hooker's men who came by said we'd be shot if we stepped one foot in the open.'

'It's a bluff,' the old farmer said. 'They're afraid we'll slip over the Rapidan and warn Bob Lee. I wouldn't do that. I have to protect this place. That's why I must talk to these boys.'

'Mr. Tate —'

'What do you boys want?' the old fanner called over his wife's continuing objection.

Billy pulled off his kepi. 'Sir, I regret to inform you that we've been sent to forage for lumber and siding. We need them because the Germanna ford is a mire and must be planked so General Hooker's forces can cross the river. I'll be obliged if you and your wife will go back inside and permit us to do our work.'

'What work?' the old man cried, his white tuft twitching in the twilight breeze. 'What work?'

He knew. Ashamed to look him in the eye, Billy bobbed his head at Spinnington. 'Get them to work, Corporal. Take the barn first, and maybe we'll get enough to fill the wagon. Maybe we can leave the chicken house alone.'

'It's taken me all my life to build this place,' the old man said, clutching the porch post, angry tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. 'Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

'I'm sorry, sir. Truly sorry.'

A nail squealed, a raw, screaming sound. Two volunteers pried off the first piece of siding. Another ran it to the wagon.

The old farmer lurched off the porch. Billy drew his side arm. The farmer hesitated, sat down on the steps, and gave Billy a look he would never forget. Then the farmer stared at his shoes as the engineer volunteers tore the barn apart. They brought out cross­cut saws for the pillars and beams. They had it all down by dark, leaving the unpenned milk cows and plow horses wandering around the chicken house. Billy sat on the seat of the wagon as it rolled away and didn't permit himself to look back.

An entry in his journal, made sometime between sunset that evening and dawn on April 30, read:

I hate what I am becoming because of this war.

'It's the Dutchmen,' Spinnington snarled. 'The fucking Dutchmen caved in.'

'Shut up,' Billy said, naked to the waist, swinging the ax two-handed and bracing for the shock when it bit into the five-inch trunk of the elm.

It was just daylight. An hour ago, while the Wilderness burned, set afire by shells, Billy's detachment had been rushed from Slocum's Twelfth Corps to the relatively clear ground at the Chancellorsville crossing. To judge from the heavy presence of headquarters guards and all the couriers riding up and galloping away again, General Hooker was holed up inside the white manor house. No one professed to know what he was doing, but one thing appeared certain: Fighting Joe's great scheme had come to nothing.

Hooker had gained his planned position in the Wilderness, been poised to smash Lee from the rear — and had thrown away the advantage. Why? Billy thought, timing the ax blows to reinforce the raging repetition of the question. Why?