Fisher's Hill: Reserve

The sinking feeling was back. No matter how many times he heard the echoing report of a far off rifle fired in anger, his nerves always seemed to collect in a glowing, pulsating ball located just behind his navel. It glowed brighter with every shot, sent a tingling jolt up his spine and out to his extremities, a single impulse reaching the brain that registered what the sound meant. The single impulse touched off thousands of other impressions, some fleeting, some burned into his mind: the colonel he had helped to carry off the field at Antietam, screamingly gutshot and not to live out the day, his fine coat dripping dignified red, his moustache matted with spittle and blood that was bubbling from the corners of his mouth, the fiery commanding eyes now imploring help me, boy, help me, I am afraid, I have not known this awful certainty - young George running to help the grizzled man on the side of the mountain at McDowell, head snapping back and dropping to the ground; how he had dropped his musket and ran for the boy, the bluecoats holding their fire while he struggled to lift the prostrate form onto his shoulders (a soldier? but he can't be over twelve years old) - Sean stumbling and falling on the first day of the fiasco at Gettysburg, picking himself up with a high-pitched laugh and blessedly free of blood, though he displayed the spot where the spent ball had hit him long after the bruise had faded.

Another shot, followed by a doublebang from the pickets on his side of the valley. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and rummaged in his haversack for his pipe.

From their vantage point near the crest of the hill, they could see faint wisps of smoke rising from the picket line.

His matches were damp and he broke three of them before giving up, carefully knocking the unused tobacco back into its pouch and tying it shut. He would have given anything for a light, but his squad was perpetually short on matches and fires this close to the line were forbidden. Theo and Greg produced some cheese, which they sliced into small pieces and passed around; one of the other men shared his crackers. He felt isolated, separated from his usual mess. Jess, always looking for a fight, had gone forward into the picket line; Sean had vanished as well, presumably detached on a sharpshooting detail. He did not know these other men, did not feel comfortable with them, and still the incessant picket fire drove small spikes into his skull.

The squad turned at the sound of hoofbeats. A group of cavalrymen, disparately armed, was moving up to the line with a casual arrogance, looking down at the infantry with ill-disguised contempt. The infantry returned the looks with interest.

"Whoever seeeeeeeen a dead calvryman?"
"Picket post four, ten o'clock an' heeeere's yer mule!"
"Flicker flicker!"

The cavalry refused to rise to the bait. They dispersed into groups of four; three dismounted, handed their reigns to the fourth, and loped off towards the sound of the firing with the unsteady, swaying gait of men who are more accustomed to riding than walking. The men disappeared into the tall grass, and soon the sounds of shotguns and carbines replaced those of rifles. The horses rolled their eyes and jerked away from the sound of the guns, one whickered nervously.

Fisher's Hill: Reveille

He could fly.

He hadn't tried hard enough, hadn't wanted to badly enough before; days of watching the birds and daydreaming couldn't grant him the lightness he needed to hover above the trees looking down at his sleeping friends, couldn't grant him the nerve to ascend higher and higher until they were just specks, faint outlines on a great patchwork cloth spread beneath him until it disappeared into mist on the horizon. His nature nearly bested him, nearly sent him crashing back to earth. He was a quiet, unassuming, sensible man, not often given to flights of fancy, a voice of calm reason to his friends. Yet here he was, surprised and delighted in the lower atmosphere. Tentatively, he moved his arms and legs, tried to make sense of the experience before realizing there was no sense in being able to fly, and in that moment he was free.

Something tapped his foot.

He looked down; nothing below him for at least fifty feet. Treetops, faint curls of smoke, the distance of knowing the impossible could happen-

"Private."

Hell-

"Git up. Come on. You all got five minutes."

Everything vanished. He was in purgatory. The world was a gray, hazy, pounding denial immediately behind his eyes.

Another voice.

"Shit, come on boy. We gonna get chewed good if we miss roll call."

He surrendered, opened his eyes and was earthbound. Sergeant Myers was moving down the line of prostrate forms, giving each protruding foot a kick and a sharp warning. Beside him, Sean was wincing in the morning sunlight, and Jess had his arms crossed resolutely over his eyes.

Sean was the first to move.

"Alright, guess he ain't fucking around this morning. Le's go."

Resignedly, the three men threw off their blankets and unwrapped their long, heavy rifles from their groundcloths. Long experience had taught them that sleeping with their weapons was preferable to leaving them stacked; the discomfort was balanced by keeping the weapons free from rust, and by this September only one of them had a bayonet anyway.

Myers was calling in the distance.

"First company - fall in! Canteens and haversacks! Drop yer packs, boys, we're not going far."

The cartridge box slung over one shoulder, belt fastened, haversack and canteen hanging under his left arm, short jacket half-buttoned, rifle in hand and cap on head, he trailed after his friends as they made their bleary, hungry way into line.

an old battlefield

"You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching , across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there.

I repeated my thoughts to my wife, but she said it was not difficult to understand about battlefields: The blood of the men killed on the field, and the bodies buried there, fertilize the ground and stimulate the growth of vegetation. That was all quite natural, she said.

But I could not agree with this, too-simple, explanation: To me it has always seemed that God is so sickened with other men, and their unending cruelty to each other, that he covers the place where they have been as quickly as possible."

- William March
(Company F, Second Battalion, 5th Marines - 1917-1918)
"Company K"

The Man With The Pigeons

you said you want
the man
with the pigeons

i can give you
his image
in black and white

a freeze frame
blurred wings

i can give you
his image
in color

a spoken word
sharp memories

what i can't give you
is the feeling

figures

that's what you live on.


[2003]