Glory In The Name

Jonathan grinned. “Let’s go!”

The boys picked up their knapsacks and rifles, shuffled out of what was left of the line of march. The men of the 3rd Brigade were spreading out again, going after blackberries, ambling down to the river to fill canteens. There were no officers that they could see, so they walked along, slow and inconspicuous, as if they were in search of a blackberry bush of their own.

“Hey, you.” Jonathan heard a voice, Robley’s voice, behind.

Damn… He turned around. “Lieutenant! Are we going to attack them Yankees, or what?”

“Where y’all going?” Robley ran his eyes over his brothers. “Nathaniel, where y’all going?”

“Looking for blackberries,” Jonathan supplied, because he knew Nathaniel could not lie with conviction.

“That’s a damned lie. Where the hell you going?”

Nathaniel straightened a bit. “We’re going to join that brigade yonder. Going into the fight.”

Robley squinted at them, shook his head. “You can’t do that. This here’s your regiment. You can’t just go off where the hell you like. This isn’t playing soldier back home.”

“Well, goddamn it, Robley, there isn’t anything going on here!” Jonathan replied. “I’m not going to spend the whole damned war marching back and forth over that infernal river.”

“There is a reason we are here, you ever think about that? What if them Yankees come down that road, try and flank us?”

“The Yankees aren’t coming down that road! The Yankees are over there! That’s why every damned brigade but us is over there. I’m going. You can come or not, but I’m going.”

“I order you to get back in line!” Robley pointed back to where the 18th Mississippi was milling about.

“There’s no damned line. I’m going. Have me arrested or don’t, but I’m going.” He tossed his rifle over his shoulder, turned on his heel, as he had been taught in drill, and marched off on the double quick, his eyes on the tail end of Brigadier General Thomas Jackson’s 1st Brigade, Army of the Shenandoah.

Robley Paine scowled, clenched his teeth, balled his fists in fury at the sight of Jonathan, marching double-quick away. Issuing another order was pointless. He could summon the provosts, have his brother arrested. If they charged him with deserting, he could be shot. The thought made Robley sick.

Besides, Jonathan was not deserting. In a way, he was doing just the opposite.

Robley turned and glared at Nathaniel, who remained where he had stopped. He was about to say something about Jonathan’s damned insubordination, how he would regret it, but the expression on Nathaniel’s face stopped him. Nathaniel looked apologetic, and sorry, and determined, all at once.

“Nathaniel…”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I have to go.” He snapped to attention, gave a flawless salute, then turned as Jonathan had and hurried after his brother.

Robley stood alone and watched the two boys march away, and for that moment he hated them, hated them profoundly. He hated them for ignoring his orders and making a mockery of his rank. He hated them because they were going off to be in the fight and he was not, and they would find out if they had the brass for this work, and he might never know.

He hated them because they were privates and could get away with what they were doing, but he was an officer and could not.

And mostly, he hated them because he knew that he was using his lieutenancy as an excuse. He could follow them if he chose. There were nearly three thousand men in the 3rd Brigade. No one would see him, no one would care. At the core of it all, they had the courage to do the thing that they were doing, and he did not, and he hated them for it, and he hated himself.

15

They look for a fight at Norfolk. Beauregard is there. I think if I were a man I’d be there, too.

– Mary Boykin Chesnut

Sunday was perfect, the sun just shy of being too hot, a light breeze off the water, but Bowater felt guilty and exposed as he crossed the naval yard and left through the iron gates. He was still reeling from the terrible thing he had been led into doing, pulled apart by the opposing forces of his humiliation over having lied-there was no other word for it, no softer term-and his delight at seeing the big guns lowered onto the deck.

Bowater skirted the wall of the navy yard to a little waterfront park just to the north of the shipyard. It was no more than a strip of grass and a few trees and benches running along the Elizabeth River, but it afforded a nice view of the water and the town on the far side, a pretty view that Bowater had been working to capture on canvas for the past four Sunday afternoons.

He stopped at the place he had been working, set up his easel, and placed the half-finished canvas on it. He dabbed paint on his palette, stared at the canvas, the river, the canvas. It was the same view he had been staring at from the deck of the Cape Fear for over two months. He wondered why he had thought to paint that scene when he was already so sick of looking at it.

He wondered why he bothered to paint at all, when he was so utterly incapable of capturing that essence that he was seeking. The colors were rendered true, the proportions, the perspective. There was a nice sense of framing with the after end of one of the yard tugs taking up the foreground. It should have been a nice painting, but it was not. Something was not there, like a forgotten word on the tip of the tongue, tantalizing, but he could not find it.

Maddening. Painting was supposed to be his passion, the thing that drew his mind away from the horrible sameness of the rest of it. Now it, too, was becoming a burden.

He dabbed at the oil-paint river, coaxing some of the reflected sunlight out of it, and soon, despite his frustration, he was immersed in the work. There was no Cape Fear, no Hieronymus Taylor, no war that he was in danger of missing, no shame in compromising his integrity. There was only him and the river in front of him and the river he was making appear on the canvas.

“I should not have done that, but the effect is interesting.” A woman’s voice behind him, as if they had been carrying on a conversation, and Bowater jumped, nearly ran his brush right over the canvas.

He turned around. The speaker was perhaps in her mid-twenties. Long, dark hair fell out from under a wide straw hat. She wore a short jacket and skirts-no hoops. Drops and splatters of paint dotted her clothing.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You most certainly did not frighten me.”

“Startle you then. That’s not bad.” She nodded toward his painting. Samuel felt himself bristle.

“Thank you, ma’am, for so insightful a commentary.”

“You needn’t get in a huff. Just a friendly critique, one painter to another.”

She took a few steps forward, bent and studied the painting while Samuel Bowater studied her, tried to think how this person had managed to squeeze so many damnably irritating comments into two simple sentences.

“If you don’t mind…” Bowater said. The girl straightened, said, “Oh. Sorry. My name is Wendy Atkins.”

She held out her hand in a very masculine gesture and Samuel took it, shook, said, “I am Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, at your service.”

“‘Lieutenant’? An army officer?”

“Confederate States Navy.” Samuel heard the irritation creep into his voice, and Wendy heard it as well.

“Forgive me, Lieutenant, I don’t want to interfere with your artistry.” She turned and walked off, and Samuel watched her, despite himself. There was something about her, something of the libertine, that made Samuel think of the suffragettes or one of these radical, thoroughly distasteful women’s groups.

Forty feet away she stopped and set up an easel and rested a canvas on it. She had been holding a paint kit and canvas in her hand, but Samuel had not even noticed, and he only now caught her phrase “one painter to another.”