Folks
were saying that Washington City might fall by sunup.
If
General Jubal Early and his Reb raiders got their way, there’d be no more
capital and no more Union left to fight over.
But
not if we could help it.
When
the 151st arrived by the rail cars, Nick and me marched the
regiment right through the town out to the camp at Fort Stevens. Quite
a proud show we made of it, too, even if it was after midnight and hardly
a soul around to see us. I’ll bet we woke ’em up, though! We led the defenders
straight down the city streets, all tramping in time to our music – to
Syl Foster’s fife and Nicodemus’ drum. Didn’t matter none that, being so
young, we lacked a good foot in height on any other man in the regiment.
They had to follow us, ’cause we two were the drill corps, and for at least
that one hour, we felt like kings for sure.
I
think we were both surprised to reach camp at last and to see the “fort”
we’d been sent to. It was poorly lit by torches and weak moonlight, but
any fool could see it wasn’t a proper fort at all – just three broad cannon
ramparts built up against the wide ditch. That ditch had been dug out,
almost overnight, all around the capital for miles. But I guess I’d expected
to see a fort like the ones in those pictures in my school books back home;
something like those wood spiked affairs they built out on the frontier,
or better yet, the big stone castles with moats in the fairy tale stories.A
ditch and three cannons was a trifle disappointing, for a fort.
Nary
a man of us could sleep, even if it was the middle of the night. We were
all sure that Jubal Early could be just brazen enough to try storming the
defenses in the dark, and we were going to be ready. So soon as all the
bedding assignments were done with, I went down to the colored soldiers’
tent to find Nick. I figured we could maybe work out what songs to line
up for tomorrow, just in case we had drill as usual, instead of a battle.
If
we got a chance to drill with the drum and bugle corps that was already
here with the 3rd Massachusetts, maybe we could learn some new
songs, or maybe teach them a few. I’d ask ’em if they knew Lorena
yet. Didn’t matter none to us that it started out a Reb song. We Yanks
liked it, too, and so we took it for our own.
I
found Nick out behind the Negro bivouac, sitting by a camp fire and whittling
himself a new drumstick.
“Broke
one on the way in,” he said when I came up and sat down on the other side
of his fire. “Nobody’s sleepin’ nohow, so I thought I might as well do
sumpthin’ useful.”
“Makes
good sense,” I answered, and found I had to scoot back a ways from the
fire. It was July, and so sticky-hot in these parts, you didn’t really
need a fire except if you wanted the light. “You think maybe we should
use Old 1812 and Minstrel Boy for drill tomorrow?”
Nick’s
whittling knife stopped in mid-stroke and his large black eyes blinked
at me, little flames dancing in ’em. “If there’s drill, you mean?”
“Yeah.If.”
“Them’s
fine. And maybe Hell on the Wabash, too. I got the beat on that’n
real good.”
I
nodded, and Nick went back to whittling. His knife made soft skritch
skritch noises as he worked. The fire popped and snapped when his wood
shavings flew into it.
“You
think Jubal will do it?” I asked at length. I had to admit, part of me
hoped the Rebs would see the capital wasn’t defenseless after all, and
would turn tail and run before morning. “You think he’ll attack?”
Nicodemus
didn’t answer for a long while. He rubbed the finished drumstick on the
sleeve of his too-large uniform, then, apparently satisfied, slipped both
stick and whittling knife into a pocket. Only then did he push back his
kepi and look across the fire at me, as though I’d only just posed him
the question.
“Scared?”
he asked.
I
pretended to a sudden need for rolling up the cuffs some more on my own
ill-fitting trousers, and didn’t answer his question any more than he’d
answered mine.
“We
just gon hafta stop him, is all.” Nick said it as though the declaration
alone made it a sure thing. Then he looked me over good and smiled sorta
grim-like. “What’s givin’ you the heebie-jeebies, Syl? Ain’t you never
seen no battles before?”
I
supposed I might as well admit it, so I shook my head “no” and stared back
into the fire some more. At fourteen, Nicodemus had only a year on me,
but he was already a veteran. He’d grown up a slave, but had been drumming
for the 151st Ohio ever since the start of the war, when the
Yanks had taken Nashville and told him he was free. Me, I’d only signed
up two months back, after trying three times and getting sent back home,
till I could finally get my pap’s consent.
“Since
I joined up,” I said, “I haven’t seen anything but a whole lot of drilling
and marching, marching and drilling. I’ve never even got within spitting
distance of a Reb. Don’t know what I’d do if I ever got a real shot at
one, or him at me.”
“Don’
worry none.” Nick weaved his long slim fingers in between each other. “You’ll
see fightin’ soon enough. And you’ll get used to it.”
“Yeah,”
I said, hating myself for the coward I must sound like. “I guess so.”
Camp
rumor said Abe Lincoln himself might be coming out to watch Early’s attack.
I thought that was odd, ’cause I couldn’t think of anything would make
the Rebs any happier than having Old Abe to shoot at. I wondered where
he planned to watch from.
“Tell
you what...”Nicodemus had got up and come around
to my side of the camp fire. From somewhere under his coat, he pulled out
a round, palm-sized thing the color of blood, and pressed it into my hand.
“You keep this in your pocket tomorrow. An’ if we gets a battle out of
ol’ Jubal, you reach in and squeeze this jus’ as hard as you kin squeeze.”
I
tilted the thing into the light and saw it glow a more fiery red. “It’s
beautiful,” I told him, but then I had to add the next part, ’cause I didn’t
have any idea. “Uh... What is it?”
“Wish
stone,” Nick said. “Come from Africa. Used to belong to a king, so they
say.”
“Who
said?” The pretty rock’s smooth edges were starting to warm to my hand.
“My
Gramma Huru. She give me that on the day she died, two weeks before Nashville
done got itself lib’rated. She told me whoever holds this stone and squeeze
it real hard, he’ll get a wish. Jus’ one wish, though.”
I
had to smile at that, and almost handed the trinket back to him. But on
a whim, I put it into my tunic pocket instead and asked him, “Did it grant
you your wish?”
He
looked a shade disappointed. “Not yet. Will, though.”
“Well,
what’d you wish for? Or does telling spoil it?”
“Nope.”
He sat down beside me and stared into the fire, too. “I jus’ done like
Moses, that’s all. Wished my people free. Wished all the Negroes free,
everywhere. Made that wish out loud, the very same minute Gramma Huru gived
me the stone. An’ you know what she say?” I shook my head. “She say, ‘It’ll
be, Nicodemus, it’ll be. Maybe not right now, not today, but tomorrow.
Tomorrow we be free.’ Well, we didn’ all get free on the next day.
So I figured she musta meant some other tomorrow.” He grinned at me. “You
see Old Abe in the mornin’, you tell him for us that we’s still waitin’.”
I
didn’t know what to say to that, so I just smiled back and nodded again,
and we both sat and watched the fire till it burned itself all the way
out.
As
a rule, I didn’t put no stock in magic charms. Back home in Lima, there
were plenty of old wives who swore by the “magic” in those little asafetida
bags they hung round your neck when you got the croup. Only thing they
ever gave me was more croup and a powerful stink besides.
Nick’s
wish stone, though, I took back to the tent with me. I fished it out of
my tunic before I hung that up and then got onto my bedroll and held the
stone up to the moonlight coming in the tent flap. I looked into its dark
depths and wished there was such a thing as magic. And I thought
to myself, if there was such a thing, Sylvanus Foster, and you only had
one wish, what would you wish for?
I
had to think some on that.
While
the sentries outside scuffed the dirt path back and forth from the flag
pole and the few other men in the tent snored and muttered in their sleep,
I stared at Nick’s “magic” bauble and decided that just wishing to live
through a battle was maybe a pretty big waste of its powers. I wondered
why it hadn’t granted Nick his wish yet, and if it ever really would. I’d
never met any colored people till I joined the OVI, but I knew I didn’t
hold with slavery nor with all the bad things some folks said about Nicodemus’
people being cursed of God, and such nonsense. I liked Nick well enough.
So why shouldn’t he get his wish that the Negroes all be free?
That
set me wondering how much longer the war could go on for, and after it
was finally over, then what? General Grant was supposed to have
Lee on the run down in Richmond: he’d pulled so many troops out to help
him, he’d nearly left Washington City defenseless. Which was why we were
here. But even if Lee did surrender and the war come to be over, I wondered
how much would be left to start over with. And how on God’s earth did you
put Rebs and Yanks back together again and expect ’em to just shake hands
like all was forgiven, after so many years of shootin’ at each other?
I
couldn’t see any way to do that. But then, I guess it would all be Abe
Lincoln’s row to hoe when it was over.
Just
like freeing the slaves would be.
I
didn’t see how exactly he could accomplish that, either, but I’d sure give
a lot to come back in a hundred years or so and see how it’d all come out.
Then
I thought, All right, Nicodemus. Here’s a wish for your magic rock after
all. And I squeezed the pebble hard. If it can really grant a wish,
then I’ll ask it to show me your children’s children and my children’s
children and how they fare with each other a hundred years from now. That’s
what I’d wish.
Nothing
happened, of course. The charm didn’t grant my wish any more than it had
granted Nick’s two years ago in Nashville. Maybe it planned on waiting,
like he said, for some other tomorrow. Shrugging, I slipped the bauble
into my trouser pocket for safekeeping, and turned over to get some shut-eye.
Shots
and a bugle call woke me. It was barely after dawn and all hell was breaking
loose in camp, with men scrambling for shoes, tunics and guns all at once
and the officers outside bellowing orders over the sound of more gunfire.
My rifle was taller than me by eight inches and I tripped over it twice
just getting out of the tent. Didn’t need it after all, though, as I wound
up ordered to join the relay lines passing shells from the bunkers up to
the cannon ramps. They were eight-inch bore 69-pounders, those cannons,
big enough to shake the ground and dull your ears when they went off. The
shells were mighty heavy, too, especially after you’d hefted the first
five or six of ’em.
Smoke,
cannons, shouts and gunfire were all I knew then for what seemed to be
hours. I never did see a Reb, but I heard ’em shootin’ clear enough, and
every now and then there’d come a cry from one of the sharpshooters who
got hit up on the breastworks.
The
smoke got so thick I could hardly see or breathe, but there was nothing
for it but to cough and wipe my eyes and keep on passing shells. I also
kept one foot up against my rifle on the ground beside me, even though
I prayed all along not to need it.
After
a while, I caught a glimpse of Nicodemus up the relay line a ways, standing
with the other colored soldiers close to the left-most cannon ramp. Every
time a guidon fell and signaled one of the cannoneers to fire, Nick would
put his hands over his ears, even if someone was trying to pass him a shell
at the same time. I wished I’d thought of that, but right now in all the
thunderous noise, I couldn’t tell if my ears might be ringing or not.
I
almost didn’t hear the order to cease passing and come to attention: I
only made sense of it when everyone around me did that. So I stood at attention
and wondered what was going on. The gunfire from the battlements hadn’t
stopped, so the fight couldn’t possibly be over.
Someone
shouted something. The men on either side of me stiffened up even more.
I looked where they seemed to be looking, and through the haze, saw Generals
Wright and McCook and two officers walking with a tall man in a black coat
and a high hat. I didn’t realize it was Abe Lincoln with ’em till they’d
walked right past us and continued up the center ramp all the way to the
parapet. I wondered why he hadn’t taken that hat off, such a handy target
as it would make, but then the order to resume passing came, and we got
back to business.
Fort
Stevens had been dug out around a big oak tree that rose front and center
of the ramparts, and it was next to that President Lincoln chose to stand
and observe the battle. Cannon smoke almost obscured him from our view,
but it wasn’t long before Jubal’s troops must’ve spotted him, ’cause a
Reb shell landed smack on that oak and split it, with more shots flying
close behind. One of the officers with Lincoln pushed him down just as
another soldier who’d been moving to protect the president got hit, cried
out and fell. The Yank sharpshooters up on the wall opened up, and in another
moment they’d whooped and hollered that they got the sniper.
I
started to turn and look for Nick again, only a loud whistling noise made
me look up instead. The man next to me dropped the shell he’d been about
to pass and hit the dirt. Before I could do the same, the loudest noise
I’d ever heard and something that felt like a ton of cinder blocks knocked
me clean off my feet.
I
think I flew a ways. Don’t remember hitting the ground, though. The cannons
and gunfire all faded into stone deaf silence, and smoke blinded my whole
world gray.
Strangest
thing is, the next sound I could hear was a bird singing. No explosions,
no battle cries, no guns – just one little mocking bird cheerily practicing
his repertoire.
I
couldn’t smell smoke anymore, and the ground under me didn’t shake. The
fight must be over, I figured. So I opened my eyes.
And
saw green grass.
I
was sure there hadn’t been any grass in the camp last night, but maybe
I’d just missed it in the dark.
I
found I could move, so I pushed up and got to my feet. My rifle was missing.
But when I looked further, I realized that so was the camp. Our bivouac,
all the trees and most of the ramparts were gone, replaced by a soiled,
brick-sided building and a tiny, whitewashed church. I stood in the middle
of a half-acre greensward that vaguely resembled Fort Stevens only because
it retained a piece of the embankment (that, too, was grass covered), three
cannon ramps (only one had a cannon on it, and that was a rusting hulk),
a flag pole and the ruins of an ammunition bunker. The bunker’s wooden
doors had been replaced with huge slabs of white sheet rock, but even that
was cracked and crumbling, as though some titan with a giant hammer had
taken his spite out on it.
I
didn’t see a soul around.
Only
thing I could figure was I had to be either dead or dreaming. After some
thought, I ruled out dead just because this didn’t look like any Heaven
I’d ever read of in the Good Book. So, if there was nothing for it but
to wait till I woke up, I supposed I might as well have more of a look
around.
Something
made flapping noises over my head, and I gazed up at a flag up there on
the pole, whipping full out in the wind. It was Old Glory, sure enough,
but it wasn’t quite right. There were too many stars on it.
Another
block of that white sheet rock stood not far away, and it had a bronze
plaque bolted to its top that mapped out what the camp should have looked
like – had looked like, more or less, just this morning. The bronze
was dark, like it’d been there awhile, and in the bottom left corner it
bore the inscription DEDICATED SEPTEMBER 1956 BY THE DAUGHTERS OF UNION
VETERANS OF THE CIVIL WAR, 1861 - 1865.
Two
pieces of that inscription sort of stared right back at me: the year 1956
and the word DAUGHTERS. My hand went straight into my pocket to pull out
Nicodemus’ wish stone. Hadn’t I just told it before I fell asleep last
night that I wanted to see how Nick’s children’s children and mine would
fare in about a hundred years? Could this shiny little rock really grant
wishes after all? It lay in my hand, deeper red in the sunlight, and didn’t
part with a single one of its secrets.
The
roar of some terrible engine sounded from beyond the embankment. My first
thought was to get down and hit the dirt again, but if this was a vision,
hadn’t I ought to be safe enough? The sound faded off. Emboldened, I climbed
a cannon ramp up to the parapet, where another bronze plaque pictured Lincoln
under fire, and gazed over the top at what I knew had been open ground
north of Washington City: the ground Jubal Early had attacked us from this
morning.
It
was all gone.
No
fields, no farm houses, no trees. Just dirty brick buildings as far as
the eye could see, all cramped and crowded together, surrounding my greensward
on all four sides. A wide stretch of tarred road and a smaller one of white
sheet rock lay between, and on the road’s edge, unattended, sat a row of
gleaming glass and metal carriages. Leastways, they looked like
carriages, as they each had strange, fat black wheels on ’em. But there
wasn’t a horse in sight anywhere.
The
crack-whine of a gunshot made me duck fast behind the embankment. Someone
shouted something, and three more shots went off in rapid succession. I
hunkered down behind the Lincoln marker till the shooting stopped, then
carefully peeked around its edge till I could see the road.
Two
colored boys, neither of ’em much older than Nick, had run into the street,
and right behind them had come five white soldiers in peculiar dark blue
uniforms I’d never seen the like of before. They carried guns and clubs,
those soldiers, and they caught up to both boys right there on the sheet
rock in front of the dugout, where they commenced to beating them senseless.
Black folks started pouring out of the buildings then, some with bricks
or rocks or bottles in hand, and they set upon the soldiers with shrieks
louder than any Rebel yell. They smashed the shiny glass carriages into
splintered ruins, set ’em afire and ran like hell when more white soldiers
showed up and started shooting.
That
terrible roar I’d heard before came again, along with a fearsome wailing,
and right quick at least a dozen horseless wagons, all black and white
with blazing red lanterns, came barreling into the fray. Dozens more soldiers
spilled out of ’em, guns blasting.
Quaking
like a damn coward, I clutched the edge of Old Abe’s bronze likeness, stayed
hidden, and watched the bloodshed. My first look at a real battle, and
I couldn’t do nothing but watch, ’cause my feet rooted and just
plain refused to budge.
I
saw Negroes shot down in cold blood and soldiers beaten into pulp by blacks
who’d managed to gang up on them. The two boys the first soldiers had set
upon were shackled and dragged, screaming, off to a wagon while a colored
woman followed and cried that they hadn’t “done nuthin’ wrong.” Her pleas
for mercy fell on deaf ears.
Bigger
wagons arrived, and now the soldiers had clearly won the skirmish, for
they quickly herded or carried every last Negro into those transports.
Then they picked up the dead ones and took them as well. Their own dead
and wounded they hauled away in a different sort of wagon, but in the end,
they took everyone, and roared away with their red lanterns blazing.
The
burned carriages stank and smoldered. Glass exploded out of one of them
and scattered itself with an almost musical sound across the oiled road.
Behind me, a stiff breeze snapped and fluttered the flag with too many
stars.
I
don’t know how long it took me to convince my feet to hold me up again.
I climbed up onto the parapet for a better look at the battlefield, but
somehow all I could look at was a bright pool of blood on the white sheet
rock where the soldiers had beaten the two Negro boys.
When
I did tear my gaze away, it was because a glint of sunlight caught my eye.
I looked up and away, past the burning wagons and the squalid brick houses,
over the rooftops to a thing familiar from the Washington City I knew.
There, not more than a ten minute march away, stood the gold-gilded Capitol
dome. It should have been a comfort, seeing something I recognized in this
grim, war-torn place, but it wasn’t. Would our children’s children’s world
really come to this? Could the law of our great land truly have allowed
this horror to go on for so long?
I
made a fist, and shook it at the gleaming, golden dome.
“What
did our boys fight and die for?” I shouted. “Nick’s people are still in
chains! It was all for nothing!”
I
raged at it for several minutes more, but the dome only glittered at me
in the bright sun, and staunchly refused to care.
***
“He’ll
be fine,” I heard a gruff voice say. “Shell concussion knocked him flat,
that’s all.”
I
had to think on it a spell before it seemed I remembered how to open my
eyes. When I did, I saw two hazy forms standing at a tent flap. From his
black bag I figured one for a sawbones. The other one was Nicodemus.
“You
can go in now, boy,” the doc said, and he hustled off, the leather bag
making skiff-skuff noises as it rubbed against his long black coat.
Nick
came in, and seeing my eyes were open, he knelt down next to my bedroll
and grinned at me. “’Bout time you waked up,” he said. “Sawbones says you’ll
live, but I could tell he was powerful disappointed not to be cuttin’ no
arms or legs off you.”
“Powerful
sorry to disappoint him,” I replied, borrowing his words. I realized then
that I couldn’t hear any cannons or gunfire. “Battle over?” I asked.
Nicodemus
nodded. “Hours ago, right after you got knocked out. Gen’ral Jubal, he
got in his shot at Old Abe, then seein’ as he missed an’ our boys got his
sniper, he lobbed that last shell up over the ’bankment and took off runnin’.
We been celebratin’ ever since.”
“They
missed Old Abe,” I repeated, and smiled ’cause I remembered seeing the
officer push the president down just before the shell had gone off.
“Shore
did,” said Nick. “Lieutenant Holmes, he grabbed Lincoln and yelled ‘Get
down, you fool!’ jus’ like he was talkin’ to some green recruit. Landed
square on top of ’im, too! You’d a thought Old Abe’d be hoppin’ mad, only
he jus’ picks ’isself back up when it’s all over, dusts off his stovepipe
and says to Holmes, ‘Son, it sure is a good thing you know how to talk
to civilians!’ Had the whole lot of us fallin’ down laughin’ till we couldn’
laugh no more!”
I
laughed too, though it made my head hurt. I remembered the wish stone then,
and had to squirm some to fish it out of my pocket and hold it out to Nick.
“Reckon I can give this back to you now,” I said.
He
frowned a bit, although he took it. “What’d it show you?” he asked, just
as if he already knew about my vision.
I
didn’t rightly know what to say. I just couldn’t tell him that a hundred
years from now, there’d still be a war on, and his people would still be
slaves, and the only thing white folks would’ve learned is how to build
shiny wagons without needing no horses to pull ’em. I couldn’t tell him
none of that, so I just said, “It showed me that your Grandma Huru was
right.”
He
looked puzzled at that. “About us gettin’ free, you mean?”
I
nodded. “Tomorrow,” I said, and closed my eyes again because my head still
ached and I felt suddenly very tired. “Tomorrow.”
And
before I fell asleep, I prayed that somewhere, in some future tomorrow,
Nick’s wish really would come true.