Away in the dark, some phantom shouted, "Whose fault is that?"
Billy scowled again. Someone else complained. "Carry them? From the last wagon that could be damn near a mile."
"I don't care if it's fifty," Billy said, and stormed back to Lije, full of self-disgust.
On the unfinished bridge, the weary infantrymen had fallen idle. Nothing more could be done until the next boat was floated down and pushed out twenty feet from the last one placed. "I need men to carry the boats, Lije. I tried to free the wagon that's stuck and wrecked it instead. No one can pass."
Standing with his musket in his arms, Farmer gave a majestic slow nod. "I saw. Don't take the guilt so deeply into your soul. There is not an engineer breathing who has not miscalculated in his time — and these are not the best of conditions for sharp thinking. Be thankful you lost a wagon and not a life."
The younger man stared at the older, thinking that when he and Brett raised children, he hoped they could counsel them as wisely and humanely as Farmer counseled those who served with him.
A musket flashed in the woods beyond the stream. On the bridge, a soldier yelled and grabbed his leg. He started to topple into the water, but others pulled him back. Simultaneously, Farmer grasped his musket by the barrel and clubbed the nearest lantern from its pole. Billy leaped for another as musketry and gibbering hoots and cries issued from the dark. They put all the lanterns out, retreated up the bank, and returned fire. In fifteen minutes the rebel sniping stopped. Fifteen minutes after that, Billy and Lije relit the lanterns and work resumed.
By half past two they had launched enough boats and laid enough balks and chesses to reach the opposite bank. Billy wrote a brief dispatch reporting completion of the bridge and sent it back to headquarters with a courier. Lije ordered a rest. The men slept in the open, finding the best available cover for themselves and their gunpowder. Troubling thoughts strayed through Billy's mind as he lay against a tree trunk, a soggy blanket over his legs. Water dripped on him. He sneezed for the fourth time.
"Lije? Did you hear what they said about the Shiloh casualties before we started out tonight?"
"I did," came the answer from the far side of the tree. "Each army is said to have lost a quarter of those engaged."
"It's unbelievable. This war's changing, Lije."
"And will continue."
"But where's it going?"
"To the eventual triumph of the just."
I am not too sure all of us will live to see that, Billy thought as he shut his eyes. His teeth chattered, and he started to shake. Somehow, though, he slept, sitting in the rain.
In the morning the engineers secured the last cables on the bridge, scouted the woods beyond for rebs and found them gone, and settled down to wait. They would be sent somewhere else soon enough.
Bivouacked one night near Yorktown, Charles said to Abner Woolner, "We've ridden together for a few weeks, but I still don't know much about you."
"Hardly a thing worth knowin', Charlie. I don't read good, I spell worse, and I can't cipher at all. Ain't married. Was once. She died. Her and the baby." The straightforward way he said it, devoid of self-pity, made Charles admire him.
"I farm up near the North Carolina line,"' the scout went on. "Small place. Right near where my grandpa fought the redcoats. King's Mountain."
"What do you think about this war?"
Ab pushed his tongue back and forth between front teeth and upper lip for a minute. "Might hurt your feelin's if I told you."
Charles laughed. "Why?"
" 'Cause I don't like you plantation nabobs and your godless high life down on the coast. You dragged us into this muss. There's a few of you who are all right, but not many."
"Do you own slaves, Ab?"
"No, sir. Never have, never would. I can't say I 'specially favor the black folk, though if you pressed me, I'd prob'ly say no man ought to be chained up against his will. I know some judge said Dred Scott and the rest of the darkies wasn't persons, but I know some who are fine persons, so I'm not sure how I feel about the nigra question that's a part of all this. I do know which folks I like. You. Major Butler. Hampton — I could tell he din't think I was enough of a gentleman to be in one of his regular troops when I signed up, but he didn't say that and make me feel bad. He just acted real happy that I'd scout for him. I'll take him over that flashy Jeb Stuart any day."
"So will I. Beauty's an old West Point classmate of mine, but I don't have the regard for him that I once did. I share your feelings about Hampton. About most of the planters, too, matter of fact."
Ab Woolner smiled. "I knew there was a reason I liked you, Charlie."
In his journal, Billy wrote:
The general is a paradox. He requires us to emplace his siege artillery, all seventy-two pieces, to bombard a position many feel could be taken in a single concerted attack. The derrick and roller system required to unload the guns would take a page to describe. We must fling up ramps to move each gun into place. A layman would be led to believe that here is a siege destined to last a year.
Questions are asked. Why is this being done? Why is Richmond the objective and not the Confederate Army, whose defeat would force a surrender beyond all question? Be it noted that such questions, though common, are not voiced within hearing of any of the ultra-loyal officers the general has gathered about him.
The paradox of which I wrote is this. The general does little, yet is loved greatly. The men molded by his hand into the most superb fighting force ever seen on the planet lie idle — and continue to cheer him whenever he comes into their sight. Do they cheer because he keeps them safe from the hazards of a conclusive engagement?
Brett, I am becoming bitter. But so are the factions in this army. Some call the general "McNapoleon." It is not meant as praise.
When the Confederates pulled back from the Yorktown line early in May, the engineers were among the first into the empty fortifications. Billy raced to a gun emplacement, only to curse what he found. The great black fieldpiece jutting into the air was nothing more than a painted tree trunk with a dummy muzzle cut in one end. The emplacement contained five similar fakes.
"Quaker guns," he said, disgusted.
Lije Farmer's white beard, grown long, snapped in the May breeze. " "Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived. I am ill derision daily — every one mocketh me.' "
"Prince John's a master artillerist. Loves amateur theatricals, too. A deadly combination. I wonder if there are more of these?"
There were. Compounding the insult, a deserter said Magrudei had paraded a few units up and down at Yorktown to convinct the enemy that he was holding the line with many more than the thirteen thousand he had now withdrawn. While Magruder held his foes at bay with tricks and nerve, the main rebel army slipped away to better defense positions being secretly prepared farther up the peninsula. McClellan's huge guns, three weeks in the placing, were now trained on worthless targets. Little Mac's dallying had given Johnston a second advantage — additional time to summon reinforcements from the western part of the state.
"This blasted war may last a while." Billy said. "Our side may have more factories, but it strikes me the other side has more brains."
For that, Lije had no ready Scriptural reply.
In May, on the Pamunkey River, Billy wrote:
Last night I saw a sight that will stay with me until I die.