The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War Page 6

  Buford turned and rode back through the town, anxious for news from his scouts. People were moving in the streets. He collected a small following of happy boys, one small ragged girl with a beautiful, delicate face. He smiled down, but in the square ahead he saw a crowd, a speaker, a circle of portly men. He turned quickly away. He was no good with civilians. There was something about the mayors of towns that troubled him. They were too fat and they talked too much and they did not think twice of asking a man to die for them. Much of the east troubled Buford. A fat country. Too many people talked too much. The newspapers lied. But the women … Yes, the women.

  He rode by one porch and there was a woman in a dress of rose, white lace at the throat, a tall blond woman with a face of soft beauty, so lovely that Buford slowed the horse, staring, before taking off his hat. She stood by a vined column, gazing at him; she smiled. There was an old man in the front yard, very old and thin and weak; he hobbled forward, glaring with feeble, toothless rage. “They’s Johnny Rebs eva-where, eva-where!” Buford bowed and moved on, turned to look back at the beautiful woman, who stood there watching him.

  “Go back and say hello, General.”

  A coaxing voice, a grinning tone: lean Sergeant Corse, a bowlegged aide. Buford smiled, shook his head.

  “Widow woman, I betcha.”

  Buford turned away, headed toward the cemetery.

  “If ye’d like me to ride back, General, I’m sure an interduction could be arranged.”

  Buford chuckled. “Not tonight, Sergeant.”

  “The General could use a di-version. Beggin’ yer pardon, General. But ye’r too shy a lad, for yer age. Ye work too hard. These here now quiet towns, now, nothin’ ever happens here, and the ladies would be so delighted to see you, an important adventurous man such as you, who has seen the world, now, ye’d be doin’ ’em a gracious favor, just wi’ yer presence.”

  Buford smiled. “I’m about as shy as a howitzer.”

  “And similarly graceful. Begging yer pardon.”

  “Zackly.” Buford began the slow ride up the hill to the cemetery.

  “Ah,” the sergeant said sadly, “but she was a lovely lass.”

  “She was that.”

  The sergeant brightened. “Well, then if the General does not mind, I may just ride on over there meself, later on, after supper, that is, if the General has no objections.” He pushed the glasses back up on his nose, straightened his hat, tucked in his collar.

  Buford said, “No objections, Sergeant.”

  “Ah. Um.”

  Buford looked.

  “And, ah, what time would the General be having supper, now?”

  Buford looked at the staff, saw bright hopeful eyes. The hint finally got to him. They could not eat until he had eaten. They trailed him wherever he went, like a pennant; he was so used to their presence he did not notice their hunger. He was rarely hungry himself these days.

  The sergeant said woefully, “The folks in this here town been after us for food. The Rebs didn’t leave them much. The General ought to eat what we got while we got it, because the boys is givin’ it away.” He glared reproachfully at the other officers.

  “Sorry,” Buford said. He pointed to the cemetery. “I’ll eat right here. A little dried beef. You gentlemen have some supper.”

  They rode on into the cemetery. He dismounted at last, first time in hours, sat down on stone in silent pain. He thought: Body not much good but the mind works well. Two young lieutenants sat down near him, chewing on corn dodgers. He squinted; he did not remember their names. He could remember if he had to, duty of a good officer; he could fish in the memory for the names and pull them up out of the darkness, after a while, but though he was kind to young lieutenants he had learned a long time ago it was not wise to get to know them. One of these had wispy yellow hair, red freckles, he had a strange resemblance to an ear of corn. The other was buck-toothed. Buford suddenly remembered: The buck-toothed boy is a college boy, very bright, very well educated. Buford nodded. The lieutenants nodded. They thought he was a genius. He had thrown away the book of cavalry doctrine and they loved him for it. At Thorofare Gap he had held against Longstreet, 3,000 men against 25,000, for six hours, sending off appeal after appeal for help which never came. The lieutenants admired him greatly, and he could sometimes overhear them quoting his discoveries: Your great fat horse is transportation, that’s all he is, with no more place on a modern battlefield than a great fat elephant. He turned from eager eyes, remembering the cries for help that never came. That time it was General Pope. Now it was General Meade. Make no plans.

  He sat watching the lights come on in Gettysburg. The soldiers bordered the town along the west and the north in two long fire-speckled fences—a lovely sight in the gathering dusk. The last light of June burned in the west. He had one marvelous smoke—a dreamy cigar. Tomorrow he will come, old Bob Lee himself, down that western road, on a gray horse. And with him will come about seventy thousand men.

  One of the lieutenants was reading a newspaper. Buford saw rippled black headlines: CITIZENS OF PENNSYLVANIA: PREPARE TO DEFEND YOUR HOMES! A call for militia. He smiled. Militia would not stop old Bobby Lee. We have good old George Meade.

  Now now. Have faith. He might be very good.

  The hell he is.

  Buford peered quickly around, not knowing if he had said that out loud. Damned bad habit. But the lieutenants were chatting. Buford looked past them to the silent town. Pretty country. But too neat, too tidy. No feel of space, of size, a great starry roof overhead, a great wind blowing. Well. You are not a natural easterner, that’s for sure. Extraordinary to think of war here. Not the country for it. Too neat. Not enough room. He saw again the white angel. He thought: Damn good ground.

  He sat on a rail fence, watching the night come over Gettysburg. There was no word from the patrols. He went around reading the gravestones, many Dutch names, ghostly sentinels, tipped his hat in respect, thought of his own death, tested his body, still sound, still trustable through a long night, but weaker, noticeably weaker, the heart uneven, the breath failing. But there was at least one good fight left. Perhaps I’ll make it here. His mind wandered. He wondered what it would be like to lose the war. Could you ever travel in the South again? Probably not for a while. But they had great fishing there. Black bass rising in flat black water: ah. Shame to go there again, to foreign ground. Strange sense of enormous loss. Buford did not hate. He was a professional. The only ones who even irritated him were the cavaliers, the high-bred, feathery, courtly ones who spoke like Englishmen and treated a man like dirt. But they were mostly damn fools, not men enough to hate. But it would be a great shame if you could never go south any more, for the fishing, for the warmth in winter. Thought once of retiring there. If I get that old.

  Out of the dark: Devin.

  “Sir, the scouts are in. You were right, sir. Lee’s coming this way all right.”

  Buford focused. “What have you got?”

  “Those troops we ran into today were A. P. Hill. His whole corps is back up the road between here and Cashtown. Longstreet’s Corps is right behind him. Ewell’s Corps is coming down from the north. They were right in front of Harrisburg but they’ve turned back. They’re concentrating in this direction.”

  Buford nodded. He said absently, “Lee’s trying to get around us, get between us and Washington. And won’t that charm the Senate?”

  He sat down to write the message to Reynolds, on a gravestone, by lantern light. His hand stopped of itself. His brain sent nothing. He sat motionless, pencil poised, staring at blank paper.

  He had held good ground before and sent off appeals, and help never came. He was very low on faith. It was a kind of gray sickness; it weakened the hands. He stood up and walked to the stone fence. It wasn’t the dying. He had seen men die all his life, and death was the luck of the chance, the price you eventually paid. What was worse was the stupidity. The appalling sick stupidity that was so bad you thought sometimes you would go suddenly, vi
olently, completely insane just having to watch it. It was a deadly thing to be thinking on. Job to be done here. And all of it turns on faith.

  The faces were staring at him, all the bright apple faces. He shuddered with vague anger. If Reynolds says he will come, Reynolds will come. An honorable man. I hope to God. Buford was angry, violently angry. But he sat down and wrote the message.

  He was in possession of good ground at Gettysburg. If Reynolds came quick, first thing in the morning, Buford could hold it. If not, the Rebs would take it and there was no ground near that was any good. Buford did not know how long his two brigades could hold. Urgent reply.

  It was too formal. He struggled to make it clear. He stared at it for a long while and then sealed it slowly, thinking, well, we aren’t truly committed, we can still run, and gave the message to the buck-toothed lieutenant, who took it delightedly off into the night, although he’d been in the saddle all that day.

  Buford felt the pain of old wounds, a sudden vast need for sleep. Now it was up to Reynolds. He said to Devin, “How many guns have we got?”

  “Sir? Ah, we have, ah, one battery, sir, is all. Six guns. Calef’s Battery, that is, sir.”

  “Post them out along that west road. The Cashtown Road.”

  Buford tried to think of something else to do but it was all suspended again, a breezy vacancy. Rest until Reynolds sends the word. He sat down once more, back against a gravestone, and began to drift slowly away, turning his mind away as you shift a field of vision with your glasses, moving to focus on higher ground. He remembered a snowstorm. Young lieutenant delivering military mail: days alone across an enormous white plain. Lovely to remember: riding, delivering mail. He dreamed. The wound began to hurt. He woke to the sergeant, bowlegged Corse: The man dragged drearily by on a spattered horse, raised disgusted eyes.

  “The husband, by God, is an undertaker.”

  He rode mournfully off. The sound of music began to drift up the hill from Gettysburg. A preacher from the seminary began a low, insistent, theological argument with a young lieutenant, back and forth, back and forth, the staff listening with admiration at the lovely words. The staff began to bed down for the night. It was near midnight when the buck-toothed boy came back from Reynolds, panting down from a lathered horse. Buford read: General Buford: Hold your ground. I will come in the morning as early as possible. John Reynolds.

  Buford nodded. All right. If you say so. The officers were up and gathering. Buford said to the buck-toothed boy, “Did he say anything else?”

  “No, sir. He was very busy.”

  “How far back is he?”

  “Not ten miles, sir, I don’t think.”

  “Well,” Buford said. He faced the staff: the eager, the wary. “We’re going to hold here in the morning.” He paused, still fuzzy-brained. “We’ll try to hold long enough for General Reynolds to come up with some infantry. I want to save the high ground, if we can.”

  There was a breathy silence, some toothy grins, as if he had announced a party.

  “I think they’ll be attacking us at dawn. We ought to be able to stop them for a couple of hours.”

  At Thorofare Gap we held for six. But that was better ground.

  Devin was glowing. “Hell, General, we can hold them all the long damned day, as the feller says.”

  Buford frowned. He said slowly, “I don’t know how long will be necessary. It may be a long time. We can force them to deploy, anyway, and that will take up time. Also, that’s a narrow road Lee’s coming down, and if we stack them up back there they’ll be a while getting untracked. But the point is to hold long enough for the infantry. If we hang onto these hills, we have a good chance to win the fight that’s coming. Understood?”

  He had excited them. They were young enough to be eager for this. He felt a certain breathless quality himself. He ordered a good feed for the night, no point now in saving food. They moved out to give their orders. Buford rode out once more, in the dark, to the picket line.

  He posted the lead pickets himself, not far from the Rebel line. There were four men along the bridge: New York and Illinois, two of them very young. They were popeyed to be so near the Rebs. Closer than anybody in the whole dang army.

  Buford said, “They should come in just at about first light. Keep a clear eye. Stay in there long enough to get a good look, then shoot and run. Give us a good warning, but fire only a few rounds. Don’t wait too long before you pull out.”

  A corporal said stiffly, “Yes, sir, General, sir.” He broke into a giggle. Buford heard a boy say, “Now aint you glad you jined the calvry?”

  Buford rode back to the seminary. He made his headquarters there. In the morning he would have a good view from the cupola. He dismounted and sat down to rest. It was very quiet. He closed his eyes and he could see fields of snow, miles and miles of Wyoming snow, and white mountains in the distance, all clean and incredibly still, and no man anywhere and no motion.

  4.

  LONGSTREET

  In Longstreet’s camp, they were teaching the Englishman to play poker. They had spread a blanket near a fire and hung a lantern on a tree and they sat around the blanket slapping bugs in the dark, surrounded by campfires, laughter, and music. The Englishman was a naturally funny man. He was very thin and perpetually astonished and somewhat gap-toothed, and his manner of talking alone was enough to convulse them, and he enjoyed it. His name was Fremantle—Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lyon Fremantle—late of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards, observing for the Queen. There were several other foreigners in the group and they followed Longstreet’s headquarters like a small shoal of colorful fish. They were gathered around the blanket now, watching Fremantle perform, and everyone was laughing except the Prussian, Scheibert, a stocky man in a stained white suit, who was annoyed that no one could speak German.

  Longstreet sat with his back against a tree, waiting. His fame as a poker player was legendary but he had not played in a long time, not since the deaths of his children, and he did not feel like it now; but he liked to sit in the darkness and watch, passing the time silently, a small distance away, a member of it all warmed by the fire but still not involved in it, not having to talk.

  What bothered him most was the blindness. Jeb Stuart had not returned. The army had moved all day in enemy country and they had not even known what was around the next bend. Harrison’s news was growing old: the Union Army was on the move. Longstreet had sent the spy back into Gettysburg to see what he could find, but Gettysburg was almost thirty miles away and he had not yet returned. Longstreet dreamed, storing up energy, knowing the fight was coming and resting deliberately, relaxing the muscles, feeling himself loose upon the earth and filling with strength slowly, as the lungs fill with clean air. He was a patient man; he could outwait the dawn. He saw a star fall: a pale cold spark in the eastern sky. Lovely sight. He remembered, counting stars at midnight in a pasture: a girl. The girl thought they were messages from God. Longstreet grinned: she loves me, she loves me not.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up—a slender, haughty face: G. Moxley Sorrel, Longstreet’s chief of staff. Longstreet said, “Major.”

  “I’m just back from General Lee’s headquarters, sir. The General has retired for the night. Everything going nicely, sir. General Lee says we should all be concentrated around Gettysburg tomorrow evening.”

  “Nothing from Stuart?”

  “No sir. But some of General Hill’s troops went into Gettysburg this afternoon and claim they saw Union cavalry there.”

  Longstreet looked up sharply. Sorrel went on: “They had orders not to engage, so they withdrew. General Hill thinks they were mistaken. He says it must be militia. He’s going back in force in the morning.”

  “Who saw cavalry? What officer?”

  “Ah, Johnston Pettigrew, I believe, sir.”

  “The scholar? Fella from North Carolina?”

  “Ah, yes, sir. I think so, sir.”

  “Blue cavalry?”

  “Yes, sir
.”

  “Why doesn’t Hill believe him? Does Hill have other information?”

  “No, sir. Ah, I would say, sir, judging from what I heard, that General Hill thinks that, ah, Pettigrew is not a professional and tends to be overexcited and perhaps to exaggerate a bit.”

  “Um.” Longstreet rubbed his face. If there was infantry coming, as Harrison had said, there would be cavalry in front of it.

  “What does General Lee say?”

  “The general, ah, defers to General Hill’s judgment, I believe.”

  Longstreet grimaced. He thought: We have other cavalry. Why doesn’t the old man send for a look? Tell you why: He can’t believe Stuart would let him down.

  “Have you any orders, sir?” Sorrel was gazing longingly toward the poker game.

  “No.”

  “The men are anxious to have you join the game, sir. As you once did.”

  “Not tonight, Major.”

  Sorrel bowed. “Yes, sir. Oh, by the way, sir, General Pickett sends his compliments and states that he will be dropping by later this evening for a chat.”

  Longstreet nodded. There’ll be a complaint from old George. But good to see him. Sorrel moved off into a burst of laughter, a cloud of lovely tobacco. Longstreet sat brooding.

  There was an odor of trouble, an indefinable wrong. It was like playing chess and making a bad move and not knowing why but knowing instinctively that it was a bad move. The instincts were yelling. As they used to do long ago at night in Indian country. He gazed out into the black. The stars were obscured. It was the blindness that bothered him. Cavalry in Gettysburg? Harrison would know.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up again. In soft light: Fremantle.

  “Beg your pardon, sir. Most humbly, sir. I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Um,” Longstreet said. But there was something about the man, prepared for flight, that made Longstreet grin. He was a scrawny man, toothy, with a pipelike neck and a monstrous Adam’s apple. He looked like a popeyed bird who had just swallowed something large and sticky and triangular. He was wearing a tall gray hat and a remarkable coat with very wide shoulders, like wings.