The Killer Angels Read online

  “Looking for the commanding officer, Twentieth Maine.”

  “You’ve found him,” Chamberlain said.

  “That’s him all right.” Tom’s voice, behind him, very proud. Chamberlain suppressed a smile.

  “You Chamberlain?” The captain stared at him grimly, insolently, showing what he thought of Maine men.

  Chamberlain did not answer for a long moment, looking into the man’s eyes until the eyes suddenly blinked and dropped, and then Chamberlain said softly, “Colonel Chamberlain to you.”

  The captain stood still for a moment, then slowly came to attention, slowly saluted. Chamberlain did not return it. He looked past the captain at the men, most of whom had their heads down. But there were eyes on him. He looked back and forth down the line, looking for a familiar face. That would help. But there was no one he knew.

  “Captain Brewer, sir. Ah. One-eighteen Pennsylvania.” The captain tugged in his coat front, produced a sheaf of papers. “If you’re the commanding officer, sir, then I present you with these here prisoners.” He handed the papers. Chamberlain took them, glanced down, handed them back to Tom. The captain said, “You’re welcome to ’em, God knows. Had to use the bayonet to get ’em moving. You got to sign for ’em, Colonel.”

  Chamberlain said over his shoulder, “Sign it, Tom.” To the captain he said, “You’re relieved, Captain.”

  The captain nodded, pulling on the dirty gloves. “You’re authorized to use whatever force necessary, Colonel.” He said that loudly, for effect. “If you have to shoot ’em, why, you go right ahead. Won’t nobody say nothin’.”

  “You’re relieved, Captain,” Chamberlain said. He walked past the captain, closer to the men, who did not move, who did not seem to notice him. One of the guards stiffened as Chamberlain approached, looked past him to his captain. Chamberlain said, “You men can leave now. We don’t need any guards.”

  He stood in front of the men, ignoring the guards. They began to move off. Chamberlain stood for a moment looking down. Some of the faces turned up. There was hunger and exhaustion and occasional hatred. Chamberlain said, “My name is Chamberlain. I’m Colonel, Twentieth Maine.”

  Some of them did not even raise their heads. He waited another moment. Then he said, “When did you eat last?”

  More heads came up. There was no answer. Then a man in the front row said huskily, in a whisky voice, “We’re hungry, Colonel.”

  Another man said, “They been tryin’ to break us by not feedin’ us.” Chamberlain looked: a scarred man, hatless, hair plastered thinly on the scalp like strands of black seaweed. The man said, “We aint broke yet.”

  Chamberlain nodded. A hard case. But we’ll begin with food. He said, “They just told us you were coming a little while ago. I’ve told the cook to butcher a steer. Hope you like it near to raw; not much time to cook.” Eyes opened wide. He could begin to see the hunger on the faces, like the yellow shine of sickness. He said, “We’ve got a ways to go today and you’ll be coming with us, so you better eat hearty. We’re all set up for you back in the trees.” He saw Glazier Estabrook standing huge-armed and peaceful in the shade of a nearby tree. “Glazier,” Chamberlain said, “you show these men where to go. You fellas eat up and then I’ll come over and hear what you have to say.”

  No man moved. Chamberlain turned away. He did not know what he would do if they did not choose to move. He heard a voice: “Colonel?”

  He turned. The scarred man was standing.

  “Colonel, we got grievances. The men elected me to talk for ’em.”

  “Right.” Chamberlain nodded. “You come on with me and talk. The rest of you fellas go eat.” He beckoned to the scarred man and waved to Glazier Estabrook. He turned again, not waiting for the men to move off, not sure they would go, began to walk purposefully toward the blessed dark, wondering again how big a guard detail it would take, thinking he might wind up with more men out of action than in, and also: What are you going to say? Good big boys they are. Seen their share of action.

  “Gosh, Lawrence,” Tom Chamberlain said.

  “Smile,” Chamberlain said cheerily, “and don’t call me Lawrence. Are they moving?” He stopped and glanced pleasantly backward, saw with delight that the men were up and moving toward the trees, toward food. He grinned, plucked a book from his jacket, handed it to Tom.

  “Here. This is Casey’s Manual of Infantry Tactics. You study it, maybe someday you’ll make a soldier.” He smiled at the scarred man, extended a hand. “What’s your name?”

  The man stopped, looked at him for a long cold second. The hand seemed to come up against gravity, against his will. Automatic courtesy: Chamberlain was relying on it.

  “I’m not usually that informal,” Chamberlain said with the same light, calm, pleasant manner that he had developed when talking to particularly rebellious students who had come in with a grievance and who hadn’t yet learned that the soft answer turneth away wrath. Some wrath. “But I suppose somebody ought to welcome you to the Regiment.”

  The man said, “I don’t feel too kindly, Colonel.”

  Chamberlain nodded. He went on inside the tent, the scarred man following, and sat down on a camp stool, letting the man stand. He invited the man to have coffee, which the man declined, and then listened silently to the man’s story.

  The scarred man spoke calmly and coldly, looking straight into Chamberlain’s eyes. A good stubborn man. There was a bit of the lawyer about him: He used chunky phrases about law and justice. But he had heavy hands with thick muscular fingers and black fingernails and there was a look of power to him, a coiled tight set to the way he stood, balanced, ugly, slightly contemptuous, but watchful, trying to gauge Chamberlain’s strength.

  Chamberlain said, “I see.”

  “I been in eleven different engagements, Colonel. How many you been in?”

  “Not that many,” Chamberlain said.

  “I done my share. We all have. Most of us—” He gestured out the tent flap into the morning glare. “There’s some of them no damn good but most of them been all the way there and back. Damn good men. Shouldn’t ought to use them this way. Looky here.” He pulled up a pants leg. Chamberlain saw a purple gash, white scar tissue. The man let the pants leg fall. Chamberlain said nothing. The man looked at his face, seemed suddenly embarrassed, realized he had gone too far. For the first time he was uncertain. But he repeated, “I done my share.”

  Chamberlain nodded. The man was relaxing slowly. It was warm in the tent; he opened his shirt. Chamberlain said, “What’s your name?”

  “Bucklin. Joseph Bucklin.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Bangor.”

  “Don’t know any Bucklins. Farmer?”

  “Fisherman.”

  Former Sergeant Kilrain put his head in the tent. “Colonel, there’s a courier comin’.”

  Chamberlain nodded. Bucklin said, “I’m tired, Colonel. You know what I mean? I’m tired. I’ve had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this goddamned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody lousy rotten mess of sick-brained potbellied scabheads that aint fit to lead a johnny detail, aint fit to pour pee outen a boot with instructions on the heel. I’m tired. We are good men and we had our own good flag and these goddamned idiots use us like we was cows or dogs or even worse. We aint gonna win this war. We can’t win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers. Only one officer knew what he was doin’: McClellan, and look what happened to him. I just as soon go home and let them damn Johnnies go home and the hell with it.”

  He let it go, out of breath. He had obviously been waiting to say that to some officer for a long time. Chamberlain said, “I get your point.”

  Kilrain announced, “Courier, sir.”

  Chamberlain rose, excused himself, stepped out into the sunlight. A bright-cheeked lieutenant, just dismounted, saluted him briskly.

  “Colonel Chamberlain, sir, Colonel Vincent
wishes to inform you that the corps is moving out at once and that you are instructed to take the advance. The Twentieth Maine has been assigned to the first position in line. You will send out flankers and advance guards.”

  “My compliments to the Colonel.” Chamberlain saluted, turned to Kilrain and Ellis Spear, who had come up. “You heard him, boys. Get the regiment up. Sound the General, strike the tents.” Back inside the tent, he said cheerfully to Bucklin, “We’re moving out. You better go hurry up your eating. Tell your men I’ll be over in a minute. I’ll think on what you said.”

  Bucklin slipped by him, went away. Chamberlain thought: We’re first in line.

  “Kilrain.”

  The former sergeant was back.

  “Sir.”

  “Where we headed.?”

  “West, sir. Pennsylvania somewhere. That’s all I know.”

  “Listen, Buster. You’re a private now and I’m not supposed to keep you at headquarters in that rank. If you want to go on back to the ranks, you just say so, because I feel obligated—well, you don’t have to be here, but listen, I need you.”

  “Then I’ll be stayin’, Colonel, laddie.” Kilrain grinned.

  “But you know I can’t promote you. Not after that episode with the bottle. Did you have to pick an officer?”

  Kilrain grinned. “I was not aware of rank, sir, at the time. And he was the target which happened to present itself.”

  “Buster, you haven’t got a bottle about?”

  “Is the Colonel in need of a drink, sir?”

  “I meant … forget it. All right, Buster, move ’em out.”

  Kilrain saluted, grinning, and withdrew. The only professional in the regiment. The drinking would kill him. Well. He would die happy. Now. What do I say to them?

  Tom came in, saluted.

  “The men from the Second Maine are being fed, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir.”

  “Well, Lawrence, Great God A-Mighty—”

  “You just be careful of that name business in front of the men. Listen, we don’t want anybody to think there’s favoritism.”

  Tom put on the wounded look, face of the ruptured deer.

  “General Meade has his son as his adjutant.”

  “That’s different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield.” The tent was coming down about his head; he stepped outside to avoid the collapse. The general and God was a nice parallel. They have your future in their hands and they have all power and know all. He grinned, thinking of Meade surrounded by his angelic staff: Dan Butterfield, wild Dan Sickles. But what do I say?

  “Lawrence, what you goin’ to do?”

  Chamberlain shook his head. The Regiment was up and moving.

  “God, you can’t shoot them. You do that, you’ll never go back to Maine when the war’s over.”

  “I know that.” Chamberlain meditated. “Wonder if they do?”

  He heard a flare of bugles, looked down the road toward Union Mills. The next regiment, the 83rd Pennsylvania, was up and forming. He saw wagons and ambulances moving out into the road. He could feel again the yellow heat. Must remember to cover up. More susceptible to sunstroke now. Can’t afford a foggy head. He began to walk slowly toward the grove of trees.

  Kilrain says tell the truth.

  Which is?

  Fight. Or we’ll shoot you.

  Not true. I won’t shoot anybody.

  He walked slowly out into the sunlight. He thought: But the truth is much more than that. Truth is too personal. Don’t know if I can express it. He paused in the heat. Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it. He shook his head. I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie.

  He walked slowly toward the dark grove. He had a complicated brain and there were things going on back there from time to time that he only dimly understood, so he relied on his instincts, but he was learning all the time. The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man. His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle. He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually over all the earth. But it had begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

  Yet the words had been used too often and the fragments that came to Chamberlain now were weak. A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals? He thought finally, Well, I owe them the truth at least. Might’s well begin with that.

  The regiment had begun to form. Chamberlain thought: At least it’ll be a short speech. He walked slowly toward the prisoners.

  Glazier Estabrook was standing guard, leaning patiently on his rifle. He was a thick little man of about forty. Except for Kilrain he was the oldest man in the regiment, the strongest man Chamberlain had ever seen. He waved happily as Chamberlain came up but went on leaning on the rifle. He pointed at one of the prisoners.

  “Hey, Colonel, you know who this is? This here is Dan Burns from Orono. I know his daddy. Daddy’s a preacher. You really ought to hear him. Best damn cusser I ever heard. Knows more fine swear words than any man in Maine, I bet. Hee.”

  Chamberlain smiled. But the Burns boy was looking at him with no expression. Chamberlain said, “You fellas gather round.”

  He stood in the shade, waited while they closed in silently, watchfully around him. In the background the tents were coming down, the wagons were hitching, but some of the men of the regiment had come out to watch and listen. Some of the men here were still chewing. But they were quiet, attentive.

  Chamberlain waited a moment longer. Now it was quiet in the grove and the clink of the wagons was sharp in the distance. Chamberlain said, “I’ve been talking with Bucklin. He’s told me your problem.”

  Some of the men grumbled. Chamberlain heard no words clearly. He went on speaking softly so that they would have to quiet to hear him.

  “I don’t know what I can do about it. I’ll do what I can. I’ll look into it as soon as possible. But there’s nothing I can do today. We’re moving out in a few minutes and we’ll be marching all day and we may be in a big fight before nightfall. But as soon as I can, I’ll do what I can.”

  They were silent, watching him. Chamberlain began to relax. He had made many speeches and he had a gift for it. He did not know what it was, but when he spoke most men stopped to listen. Fanny said it was something in his voice. He hoped it was there now.

  “I’ve been ordered to take you men with me. I’ve been told that if you don’t come I can shoot you. Well, you know I won’t do that. Not Maine men. I won’t shoot any man who doesn’t want this fight. Maybe someone else will, but I won’t. So that’s that.”

  He paused again. There was nothing on their faces to lead him.

  “Here’s the situation. I’ve been ordered to take you along, and that’s what I’m going to do. Under guard if necessary. But you
can have your rifles if you want them. The whole Reb army is up the road a ways waiting for us and this is no time for an argument like this. I tell you this: we sure can use you. We’re down below half strength and we need you, no doubt of that. But whether you fight or not is up to you. Whether you come along, well, you’re coming.”

  Tom had come up with Chamberlain’s horse. Over the heads of the prisoners Chamberlain could see the regiment falling into line out in the flaming road. He took a deep breath.

  “Well, I don’t want to preach to you. You know who we are and what we’re doing here. But if you’re going to fight alongside us there’s a few things I want you to know.”

  He bowed his head, not looking at eyes. He folded his hands together.

  “This regiment was formed last fall, back in Maine. There were a thousand of us then. There’s not three hundred of us now.” He glanced up briefly. “But what is left is choice.”

  He was embarrassed. He spoke very slowly, staring at the ground.

  “Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came in mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came … because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. Most of us never saw a black man back home. We think on that, too. But freedom … is not just a word.”

  He looked up into the sky, over silent faces.

  “This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. I don’t … this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We’re an army going out to set other men free.”

  He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, “This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here’s a place to build a home. It isn’t the land—there’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me, we’re worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I’d die for, but I’m not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we’re all fighting for, in the end, is each other.”