On the following day the battle began, and from the beginning it was a mess. The terrain was in places forested with pine, and in others swamp and briar. The men on both sides were exhausted, and there was scarcely an encounter through that first day and night that did not end chaotically. Men lost in smoke and rain and darkness firing back upon their own comrades. Charges led upon lines that did not exist. Earthworks abandoned before they were half dug. The wounded left in the woods (which had been set alight by cannon fire despite the rain) and burned alive within earshot of their fellows.
There was worse to come, and the captain knew it, but as the hours passed that stupor from which his son had come to stir him fell upon him again. More than once he saw an opportunity, and could not bring himself to take it. It was not fear of a stray bullet that kept him from moving. There was something leaden in him, like a weight that war had poured into his bowels, and it kept him from his escape.
It was Nickelberry the cook who finally persuaded him to leave. Not with words, but with his own departure.
It was just after dusk on the second day, and Charles had gone out from the encampment a little way, to try and put his thoughts in order. Behind him the men gathered round their cautious fires, trying by whatever means they could to keep their spirits up. Somebody was plucking a banjo; one or two exhausted voices were raised to sing along. The sound came strangely between the trees, like the sound of phantoms. Charles tried to bring to mind the garden in Charleston where he'd proposed to Adina; he'd calmed his troubled spirits many times thinking of that spot. Of the fragrance of its air; of the nightbirds that made such melody in the trees. But tonight he could not remember the perfume of that place, or its music. It was as if that Eden had never existed.
As he stared off into the darkness, lost in these melancholy thoughts, he saw a figure moving between the trees not ten yards from him. He was about to challenge the man, when he realized who it was.
"Nickelberry…?" he whispered.
The figure froze, so still the captain could barely distinguish him from the trees amongst which he stood.
"Is that you, Nickelberry?"
There was no reply, but he was certain that it was indeed the cook, so he began to walk in the man's direction. "Nickelberry? It's Captain Holt."
Nickelberry responded by moving off again, away from the camp.
"Where are you going?" the captain demanded, picking up his pace to catch up with the cook. The briars slowed the advance of both men, but Nickelberry in particular. He had walked into a very thorny patch, and flailed at them, cursing in his frustration.
The captain was almost upon him now.
"Don't get any closer!" Nickelberry said. "I don't want to hurt you none, but I ain't staying and you ain't gonna make me stay. No sir."
"It's all right, Nub. Calm down."
"I'm done with this damn war."
"Keep your voice down, will you? They'll hear us."
"You ain't gonna try and turn me in?"
"No I'm not."
"If you try-" The captain saw one of Nub's meat carving knives, pale silver, between them. "I'll kill you before they take me."
"I'm sure you would."
"I don't care no more. You hear me? I'd prefer to take my chances out there than stay and be killed."
The captain studied the man before him. He could barely see Nub's expression in the darkness, but he could bring the man's broad, expressive face into his mind's eye readily enough. There was cunning in that face; and tenacity. He wouldn't make a bad companion, Charles thought, if a man had to be living by his wits out there.
"You want to go on your own?" Holt said.
"Huh?"
"Or we could go together."
"Together?"
"Why not?"
"A captain and a cook?"
"Makes no difference what we were back there. Once we run we're both deserters."
"You're not trying to trick me?"
"No. I'm going. If you want to come with me, then come. If you don't-"
"I'm coming," Nickelberry said.
"Then put away the knife." Holt could feel Nickelberry's gaze on him, still doubtful. "Put it away. Nub." There was a further moment of vacillation; then Nickelberry slid the knife back into his belt. "Good," Charles said. "Now… did you know you were headed toward enemy lines?"
"I thought they were east of here."
"No. They're right there," Holt said, pointing off between the trees. "If you look carefully, you can see their fires."
Nickelberry looked. The fires were indeed visible; flickers of yellow in the enveloping night.
"Lord, look at that. I would have walked straight into their arms." Any lingering reservations he might have had about the captain's allegiances were plainly allayed. "So which way we goin'?" he said.
"The way I've reckoned it," the Captain said, "our best hope is to head south toward the Goldsboro Road, and then make our way from there. I want to head home to Charleston."
"Then I'll come with you," Nickelberry said. "I ain't got no better place to go."
None of what I've just recounted found its way into the pages of Holt's journal. He did not write in it again for almost two weeks, by which time the battle of Bentonville was long since over.
This is what Rachel read, as the cab carried her down Madison Avenue:
We came into Charleston last night. I can barely recognize the city, such is the violence that has been done to it by the
Yankees. Nickelberry kept asking me questions as we went, but I had not the life in me to answer. When I think of how this noble city stood before the war, and the way it is laid waste now, such despair rises in me, for truly all that was good seems to me to have passed away. This city, which was so fine, is now a kind of helclass="underline" blackened by fire and haunted by the dead. Entire streets I knew have disappeared. People wander the rubble, their faces blank, their hands bloody after turning over brick upon brick upon brick, looking for something by which to remember the life they had.
We went straight way to Tradd Street, expecting the worst, but found a strange thing. Though much around in the street lay in ruins, my house was almost whole. Some damage to the roof, windows blown in, and the gardens all withered of course, but otherwise intact.
But, oh, when I went inside, I almost wished a volley had blown it to smithereens. My house, my precious house, had been used as a place for the dying and the dead. I do not know why it was so chosen-I cannot believe Adina would have allowed this; I must assume it was done after she had departed for Georgia. I only know that every room seemed to contain some sight more sickening than the one before.
The living room had been stripped of furniture, but for the mahogany table which had been fetched from the dining room and used for a surgeon to work upon. The floor around it was black with old blood, the table the same. And all around the room, the remnants of the surgeon's craft: saws and hammers and knives. The kitchen had been used to make poultices and the like, and stank so badly that Nickel-berry, who I may say has a stronger stomach than most, vomited. I did the same, but I went on from room to room despite Nub telling me I should not.
Upstairs, in what used to be the bedroom in which Adina and I slept-the bedroom where Nathaniel was conceived, and Evangeline and Miles-I found an empty coffin. The bed had gone; looted, I presume, or used for firewood. And
in the other bedrooms filthy mattresses, blankets, bowls and all the accoutrements of the sickroom. I cannot bring myself to write further what vile signs I found of the souls who had passed their last there.