North and South: The North and South Trilogy Page 23

  Soon after, George again wrote to Constance. The opening paragraphs of the letter said:

  I have never felt so tired, although I think that is a state induced not merely by lack of sleep but by my revulsion toward this war. Death, injury, filth, eternal fear—an army of incompetents, poltroons, political cronies, and victims—always there are the victims whom the others send to slaughter in their stead—this is the “glory” by which Orry is seduced. When will he discover the “glory” is nothing but a layer of gilt desperately applied to conceal the rot beneath? For his own sake, I hope the enlightenment comes before he commits his life to military service. But sometimes lately, my dearest, I am too tired even to care much about my best friend’s fate.

  What fills my nights and days, sustaining me as nothing else can, is the thought of our being reunited one day, with nothing more fearful ahead of us than the ordinary vicissitudes of a life together. I am not a deeply religious person, but I have found myself praying for that reunion constantly of late. They do say God makes many converts on battlefields, a statement which I am beginning to understand at last.

  The conditions about which I write have been made all the worse by my recent failure to rectify a criminally unjust situation. I tried to do so, mind you, but

  All at once he glanced back over what he had written. Disgusted he realized he had been thinking only of himself when he poured out his grim thoughts. If he added to her worries, he deserved to be whipped. He picked up the sheets and crumpled them. It was the one letter penned in Mexico that he never sent.

  12

  A SHELL WHINED IN over the highroad to Churubusco. The Mexican gunners in the convent of San Mateo had found the range. So had those on the fortified bridge that carried the road over the Rio Churubusco and on into Mexico City.

  Sword in his left hand, pistol in his right, Orry crouched in the marshy cornfield beside the road. He cringed as he awaited the explosion of the shell. The concussion nearly knocked him over.

  To his left, a geyser shot up from the wet field, lifting cornstalks and bloody heads and limbs with it. It was mid-afternoon, the twentieth of August. Orry had been in heavy fighting for nearly three hours and had thought himself numb to sights of violent death. The disappearance of an entire squad of men when the shell hit showed him how foolish he’d been. He gagged as the human remains splattered back to earth.

  Choking smoke stung his eyes. He could barely discern the spires of the Mexican capital and the snowy summit of Popocatepetl through the murk. He searched for familiar faces but saw none among the milling mobs in the cornfield.

  On the highroad he heard hoarse commands; an attempt was being made to re-form Worth’s division there. Having overcome and routed the garrison at San Antonio, the division had been racing toward Churubusco when devastating fire from the convent and the bridge drove it off the road into the field.

  A stocky figure came lurching out of the smoke, teeth clenched and face barely recognizable under a layer of dirt. Orry laughed in a wild, ragged way and wigwagged his arms.

  “George. George, here!”

  George staggered toward him. Noncoms and officers ran past, most bound for the road but some going the other way. “I’ve lost sight of the colors,” Orry gasped.

  “I’ve lost all my men,” George shouted back. “When the crossfire started, the whole division just seemed to melt. But I saw Captain Smith of the Fifth heading for the road to reorganize—Jesus Christ. Down!’ ‘

  He pushed Orry face forward into the muck. Orry swallowed a mouthful of the foul stuff, but that was better than being ravaged by the charges of canister that blew apart and sent a thousand deadly bits of metal hissing through the corn.

  They waited for a lull in the artillery bombardment; then, bent over and running side by side, they started for the highroad. Musket fire from the bridge and the firing platforms in the convent was almost constant. George encountered eight of his men along the way; they were lost, confused, frightened.

  With George in the lead, they climbed the embankment near a crossroad where some adobe cottages stood. The walls were pocked by American and Mexican balls, and two rooftops were afire. Everywhere officers were shouting, trying to organize squads or platoons of men, any men available. Orry saw unfamiliar faces and the insignia of units that didn’t belong on this part of the battlefield.

  He took his cue from the other officers. “Form up, form up in squads!” he shouted, seizing running men and hurling them into a line at the edge of the road. He caught about twenty, but half of them immediately ran toward the rear. George threatened the others with his pistol.

  “I’ll shoot the next man who bolts.”

  That held them for about thirty seconds. Then everyone in the little group dove off the road. A shell blew a huge hole in the center. In the rain of dirt and debris falling afterward, Orry again started to climb the embankment. He found his foot mired in something wet. I thought all the water was in the cornfield. He looked down. His foot was planted in the warm red cavity that had been a man’s gut. He wrenched backward and gagged again, but there was nothing left to come up.

  Someone pushed him from behind. He swore, then realized it was George trying to get him away from the corpse. They regained the road and began re-forming their group. Four had been killed.

  Suddenly uniformed men came running from the direction of the fortified bridge. Americans. “We’ve been repulsed,” they screamed, and raced on by.

  A figure in the smoke at Orry’s left glided toward him. “Perhaps we’d better reconnoiter and find out whether that’s true, gentlemen.”

  Orry’s jaw dropped. George was equally stupefied. Dirty, disheveled, greasy with sweat, Elkanah Bent faced them with sword and revolver in either hand. Orry lost his last doubt that the fellow was mad when he saw Bent smiling—smiling—in the midst of this hell of musket and artillery fire.

  Bent gestured to the little squad huddling nearby. “Lieutenant Main, take those men and bring me a report on the situation at the river.” His small eyes flicked to George. “Go with them, Lieutenant Hazard.”

  “Godamighty, Bent, do you know what you’re saying? There’s no way a squad can get far enough down that road to see—”

  Bent cocked his revolver and pointed it at George. More men ran by, staring. But they didn’t stop to ask the reason for the bizarre scene. It looked as if the fat captain might be disciplining a couple of cowardly subordinates.

  “Bring me a report or I’ll shoot you for disobeying a direct order in action.”

  Orry’s hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. He fought an impulse to run Bent through and let his own life be forfeit. Bent sensed it and swung the revolver to cover him.

  George laid a hand on Orry’s arm. They both knew Bent meant for them to die. George winked quickly and jerked his head toward the bridge, as if to say, That way we stand a chance; here we have none.

  With their backs to the fat captain, they stood close together, surveying the highroad. About a quarter of a mile beyond the junction stood two other cottages, apparently deserted.

  “Let’s advance to those,” George whispered. “Once we take cover inside, he won’t be able to get at us. Then we can plan our next move.”

  For an instant Orry was lost to reality. “I’m going to kill him.” He repeated it twice in a monotonous voice. George gripped Orry’s left arm and applied pressure as hard as he could. In a moment Orry winced, blinked, and collected himself. George shouted the command to advance. Orry shambled forward with the others.

  They had taken no more than a dozen steps away from the cottages at the junction when a musket barrel came smashing through an unbroken window in one of the cottages ahead. The door flew open; three more muskets poked out. The muskets boomed, killing two of the surprised soldiers a yard to Orry’s left.

  George shouted for everyone to go into the ditches again. Two more men fell before they reached the edge of the road. George was suddenly incoherent with rage. He looked back, saw Elkan
ah Bent gesturing to a major of mounted rifles. God knew how the major and his horse had gotten to this little corner of hell. Feeling just as Orry had earlier, George started for Bent. He had made up his mind. Regardless of the consequences, he was going to murder the swine on the spot.

  A scream brought him to a stop. It sounded like Orry, and there was something terrifying about it. George peered through the smoke as the screaming intensified, a crescendo of sound.

  It wasn’t a cry of pain but of berserk anger. Orry was charging down the center of the road, brandishing his sword as he uttered that wild yell. It unnerved the stunned guerrillas hiding in the cottage. For several moments, none of them shot at the figure rushing toward them. By the time they realized they’d better, Orry was two yards from the door.

  The first musket ball missed him. The second sent his forage cap sailing. He reached the door, kicked it wide open, and jumped into the dark interior, still yelling and swinging his sword.

  George saw Bent and the mounted rifle officer watching with amazed expressions. Shrieks issued from the cottage. They might be Orry’s. George bent low and began to run forward to help his friend.

  Three of the men he had assembled clambered up the embankment and followed, their bayonets stirring the smoke ahead of them. In front of George and to the left, a shell hit. He shut his eyes to protect them from flying dirt, cut to the right, and kept running. The shrieking didn’t stop; the cottage sounded like a slaughterhouse.

  Suddenly two Mexicans in grimy clothing burst through the door. Two others hurled themselves out through a broken window. Orry appeared in the doorway, his sword dripping. He held something in his left hand—some piece of a human being—that he mercifully flung behind him before George could identify it.

  The soldiers bayoneted the guerrillas attempting to flee. George raced toward his friend, but before he could say anything, he heard another shell coming in. Very fast, very loud.

  He gestured wildly. “Orry, get out of th—”

  The shell burst. The cottage flew apart in hundreds of pieces. Dirt and debris mushroomed upward in a roiling cloud. George blinked and choked, conscious of pain in his chest. He was lying on the road and didn’t even remember throwing himself down.

  The explosion must have done it. But where was his friend? He didn’t see Orry anywhere.

  He lurched to his feet, looking down the short stretch of road to the new crater where the cottage had been. The last bits of wreckage pattered to earth. The smoke was dispersing. Behind him he heard officers yelling—Bent was one—as they once more tried to organize the men straggling through the cornfield. George’s attention fixed on something lying at the crater’s edge.

  He passed his right hand back and forth in front of his eyes, as if he were shooing a fly. He wanted to deny the evidence of his senses. He couldn’t. He began to run.

  Next to the crater lay a man’s left hand and half of the forearm. The cloth around the forearm was torn and scorched. He found Orry sprawled on the embankment on the left side of the road, bleeding to death.

  George’s mind blotted out memories of the next four or five minutes. He later concluded that he never could have endured what he saw or done what was necessary if he had stopped to think about it. By shutting the horror out of his mind, he was able to function.

  He did remember crouching over Orry and repeating three words—“You can’t die”—but he had absolutely no recollection of fixing a tourniquet with material torn from his uniform and twisted tight with the muzzle of his own pistol, stanching the flow from what was left of Orry’s arm.

  He went staggering to the rear with Orry lying head down over his shoulder. He steadied Orry with his right hand and held the gun in place with his left. He couldn’t tell whether Orry was still breathing. He might be trying to save a corpse. He didn’t dare think about that. Calling on strength he never knew he had, he quickened his step until he was almost running again.

  The major of mounted rifles cantered past, rallying men behind him with flourishes of his saber. Next came Bent, panting but safely surrounded by two noncoms and several privates with fixed bayonets. George gave the captain a murderous look. George’s face was blackened, the eyes standing out as comical white circles. If Bent recognized the apparition with the body slung over its shoulder, he gave no sign.

  The soldiers disappeared up the road to Mexico City. George kept going in the other direction, the effort filling his eyes with sweat and tears. His chest began to hurt. A couple of minutes later he came upon an ambulance stopped at the roadside.

  The orderly examined Orry quickly. “Help me lift him inside.”

  On the orderly’s instructions, the driver turned the ambulance swiftly and whipped the horses into a run. George was flung back and forth inside. He braced his palms against the walls so that he wouldn’t fall on his friend.

  “You’ll kill him, for Christ’s sake!” he protested. “Slow down!”

  “Do you want him alive and bruised, or dead?” the orderly shouted. “His only chance is to get to the surgeons. Shut up and hang onto him.”

  George squeezed his eyes shut, clearing his vision a little. He gazed down at his friend. Orry’s head bounced against the filthy blankets spread on the floor of the ambulance. George stripped off his blouse, rolled it into a pillow, and eased it beneath Orry’s head. In that moment, with the dust blowing through the ambulance and the sounds of battle ringing outside, he understood how much he loved his friend.

  To a God he prayed was listening he said, “Don’t let him die.” Tears ran down his cheeks.

  The field hospital was a bedlam of blood and screaming. The exhausted surgeon turned up the lamps above the red table while an orderly held the gun-barrel tourniquet. After a brief examination, the surgeon gestured to a second orderly.

  “Get him ready.”

  “What are you going to do?” George asked.

  “Take the rest of the arm. It’s the only way I can save him.”

  “No,” George said with a ferocity that made heads turn six feet away. The surgeon gave him a scathing look.

  “Would you like to take over the management of his case?”

  George wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “No, of course not, but—if you cut off his arm, it’ll kill him.”

  “Nonsense. He’s lost half of it already, and he’s still breathing, thanks to your quick action. I perform dozens of amputations every day that there’s fighting. Forty or fifty percent of the men survive.”

  “That isn’t what I meant when I said—”

  “Well, I’ve no time for riddles,” the surgeon broke in. “Leave the tent, if you please. I’ll let you know when we’re finished.”

  Orry woke in unfamiliar surroundings. He saw eight lanterns hanging above him, all glowing. Pain came in great surging waves, but in spite of it he tried to move his arms and found he couldn’t. There was a feeling of something wrong, over and above the pain, though what it was he couldn’t fathom. Suddenly a man appeared, a paunchy man wearing a stained apron. The man’s pudgy hand held a wet red saw. All at once Orry knew where he was and why. He screamed. Unseen hands gripped his shoulders. He twisted his head, saw another man heating a cauterizing iron in a brazier of coals. He screamed again. They poured whiskey into his open mouth to stop him.

  Six nights later, George entered the field tent of Orry’s company commander. He helped himself to some of Captain Place’s whiskey without asking. The valley of Mexico lay silent except for distant bugle calls and the occasional crackle of musketry. The generals had arranged yet another armistice, presumably to discuss peace terms. George didn’t know the details and didn’t care. Like most other line officers and men in the American army, he thought that whoever had proposed an armistice just when Mexico City was ready to fall ought to be lynched.

  “How is he?” The captain’s question, as well as George’s visit, had become a nightly ritual.

  “Still no change. Could go either way.”

  George toss
ed down the whiskey. Sometimes, shamefully, he thought it would be better if Orry died.

  Place sorted through a pile of reports and orders. He drew out a document which he handed to George, who gazed at it without seeing. “Well,” the captain said, “I hope he recovers sufficiently to read that.”

  “What is it?”

  “His promotion. He’s no longer a brevet. There’s a commendation coming from General Scott, too. For helping to clear the highroad so that the fortified bridge could be stormed and overcome. I presume Captain Hoctor will have the same good tidings for you.”

  “Full rank,” George said in a blank way. “Took less than a year.”

  “I heard another bit of news that’s less satisfying. Captain Bent of the Third Infantry has apparently offered an acceptable explanation for turning up so far from his regular command. He also managed to convince his superiors that he directed the attack on that nest of guerrillas. I’m reliably informed that he’s being breveted to major.”

  George swore and reached for the whiskey. Place was no stranger to soldierly cursing, but George’s language embarrassed even him.

  One of the surgeons told Orry he would live, but a full day passed before he realized the price of that statement. When he did, he raved and wept for an hour, then turned his face to the tent wall and shut his eyes.

  From then on, all he wanted to do was sleep. But even that means of escape was imperfect. Again and again he dreamed of an Army drum standing on a rock in the sunshine, silent. Someone had attacked the drum with a bayonet or saber. There was nothing left of the drumhead but tatters.

  It was the sixteenth of September before Orry consented to receive a visitor. Two days earlier, General Scott had ridden into Mexico City as a conqueror. The armistice had failed, there had been hot fighting at several locations, and then the enemy had surrendered.

  “Hello, Orry.”

  George moved an ammunition box next to the cot and sat down. Orry had good color. His beard was thick and luxuriant. But his eyes were dead. He had pulled the soiled sheet over his left shoulder, so that his friend couldn’t see the bandaged stump.