Glory In The Name

arm and shoulder, isolated points of hurt amid the general ache. He could hardly hear through the ringing in his head, and what he could hear was more and more shells dropping on the fort, exploding around him, a percussion section gone mad, and, under that sound, the men shouting and running were like the orchestra’s other instruments, fighting to be heard.

He pushed himself up on his arms, struggled to achieve a sitting position. Strong hands grabbed his shoulders, and he looked up to see Tanner and St. Laurent easing him up. They leaned him against the wall, and Tanner pulled roughly at the buttons of his coat. Bowater was too shaken to speak.

He looked over Tanner’s head. Number 8 gun was pointing skyward at a crazy angle, its carriage smashed. The bloody, distorted corpse of one of the gun crew lay sprawled over the rough boards of the gun platform. Lieutenant Murdaugh, with whom Bowater had just a second before been silently commiserating, was leaning against the gun, his right arm a horrible, bloody, mangled wreck. White bone jutted out from the torn fabric of his sleeve and the arm lay on his lap at an unnatural angle, and Murdaugh, silent, just stared, as if he was unsure of what he was looking at.

“This ain’t too bad, sir, I don’t reckon,” Tanner said, looking at the bleeding gash in Bowater’s arm and shoulder. Bowater turned his head, looked at the blood and the shredded shirt. One of the best shirts to be had in all Charleston, and now it was a rag.

Samuel swallowed, summoned the energy to speak. “Leg…” he said and Tanner looked down.

“Oh, damn,” the sailor said. He pulled his knife, slit the pants. A pool of blood spilled out from the pant leg. The wound swam in front of Bowater’s eyes. He was reminded of fresh butchered meat. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, breathed hard. He gritted his teeth as Tanner’s hands, rough but sure, lifted his thigh and passed bandages around the deep laceration.

Through the din of the shells and the ringing in his ear he heard Barron’s voice, ever in command, issuing unequivocal orders. He opened his eyes. Lieutenant Murdaugh was lying on his back and men were attending to his shattered arm, and more men were swarming around the other injured gunners. There were men enough to tend to the wounded, with the Union fleet beyond the range of the guns and the gun crews idle.

“Sharp, get Murdaugh back to the Winslow, get Dr. Greenhow to attend to him.” Barron turned to Bowater, standing over him, and Bowater had the impression of a stern father looking down on his young son. “Captain Bowater, how are you?”

“I’ll live, sir, I should think.” Some of the sense which the shell had knocked from his head was coming back, the reality of the fort and the shelling and the silent Confederate guns resolving again.

“Good. Get your men to bear you back to your ship. Get steam up and get the hell out of here.”

“Get…out?”

“Yes, Captain, get out. Another hour and I’m going to surrender the fort. No reason to lose your ship as well.”

Bowater nodded. Of course. Barron was not making a bad choice. There was no choice at all.

26

We came with the Moses family…with a wounded soldier they were taking care of. They averred we had fifteen thousand such as he (i.e., wounded, sick, and sore) in Virginia.

– Mary Boykin Chesnut

Jonathan Paine spent two weeks washing back and forth in a tide of grief and agony, guilt and shame. His dreams were filled with battle and grim death and Nathaniel and Robley, his days filled with an all but unbearable agony in a leg that was no longer there.

Captain Sally Tompkins ministered to him, fed him, saw that he was comfortable, as she did for all the boys in her growing hospital. Bobby, assigned to that room, tended to Jonathan every day. During the clear-headed times, Bobby was someone with whom to speak, when Jonathan felt like speaking, and during the other times Bobby was a ghost, just another ghost that haunted Jonathan’s fevered sleep.

Two weeks, and then the fevers passed and the pain subsided into something that could be endured, even while awake, and Jonathan’s mind cleared to the point where it began to formulate questions.

“Hey, Bobby…”

Bobby was washing and dressing the stump of Jonathan’s leg, which terminated just above where his knee had once been. That morning the doctor had been by, had sniffed the stump, said something about “laudable pus,” which was apparently a good sign. Jonathan did not understand how the doctor or Bobby or anyone could stand to look at the hideous thing.

“Yeah?”

“What all happened, anyway?”

Bobby paused, looked up from the stump. “What happened wid what?”

“The Battle of Manassas. What happened? We win?”

Bobby smiled and shook his head. “You serious?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Well, damn! I’d say you gots to be the last person in all these Confederate States don’t know that! Yeah, we won. We whipped them Yankees good, whipped ’em like dogs.”

Jonathan nodded. This was good news. His last image of the battle, the waves of blue-clad soldiers coming up the hill, had not been an encouraging one. He realized that he had, for all that time, harbored a vague idea that the Confederate Army had been badly beaten, though he had never given it any real thought. The pain, and the memory of how he had led Nathaniel to his death, had occupied all of his conscious mind.

“So is that it, then?”

“What?”

“The war. Is the war over?”

“War over?” Bobby seemed more incredulous than before. “No, da war ain’t over. What’d give you a notion like that?”

“Before…folks used to say that one big battle would settle the thing.”

“Well, folks was wrong. It ain’t over. Them Yankees ran like rabbits, sure, clear back to Washington, D.C. And now they safe up there and folks reckon it’s jest a matter of time afore they come south and we gots to do it all again. That’s if the Southern boys don’t march north and whip ’em good and for all before dey gets the chance.”

Jonathan nodded. “You know…” he said, and for the first time his mind wound its way back to the days before Manassas, “…we used to think there would just be the one battle. We used to be scared to death we’d miss it, have nothing to tell. I recall how we used to say if only we could lose an arm or a leg or such, go home with an empty sleeve to show the girls…”

“Well,” Bobby said brightly, “now you surely can do that.”

“Sure enough.”

Go home… The words burned and tore like the bullets that had grazed and lacerated him. Go home… He had no home now. His parents would never wish to see him again, after the horrible thing he had done. And even if they did welcome him back, out of Christian charity, he could not face them. He could not face Robley, who would come home a hero and would, for the rest of his life, hold Jonathan in smoldering contempt for disobeying his orders and getting their brother killed.

So what was there for him? He had no money, beyond the family fortune, which was lost to him now. He had no skills, no way to earn a living, even if he was not a cripple. A beggar on the streets, one of these broken, wretched creatures such as he had seen by the docks in New Orleans, that was all that was left to him. He felt the tears well up. Paine Plantation and all its goodness gone, like being denied heaven. He was lost among strangers who, when he first came to them, did not even know his name.

That thought sent his mind wandering down another road. If no one in the 33rd Virginia knew who he was, then