”Yes,” Longstreet said.
Lee looked up with black diamond eyes. “We’ll move at first light.”
Longstreet felt a lovely thrill. Trust the old man to move.
”Yes, sir.”
Lee started to rise. A short while ago he had fallen from a horse onto his hands, and when he pushed himself up from the table Longstreet saw him wince. Longstreet thought: go to sleep and let me do it. Give the order and I’ll do it all. He said, “I regret the need to wake you, sir.”
Lee looked past him into the soft blowing dark. The rain had ended. A light wind was moving in the tops of the pines-cool sweet air, gentle and clean. Lee took a deep breath.
”A good time of night. I have always liked this time of night.”
”Yes.”
”Well.” Lee glanced once almost shyly at Longstreet’s face, then looked away. They stood for a moment in awkward silence. They had been together for a long time in war and they had grown very close, but Lee was ever formal and Longstreet was inarticulate, so they stood for a long moment side by side without speaking, not looking at each other, listening to the raindrops fall in the leaves. But the silent moment was enough. After a while Lee said slowly, “When this is over, I shall miss it very much.”
”Yes.”
”I do not mean the fighting.”
”No.”
”Well,” Lee said. He looked to the sky. “It is all in God’s hands.”
They said good night. Longstreet watched the old man back to his tent. Then he mounted and rode alone back to his camp to begin the turning of the army, all the wagons and all the guns, down the narrow mountain road that led to Gettysburg. It was still a long dark hour till dawn. He sat alone on his horse in the night and he could feel the army asleep around him, all those young hearts beating in the dark. They would need their rest now. He sat alone to await the dawn, and let them sleep a little longer.
2. CHAMBERLAIN.
He dreamed of Maine and ice black water; he awoke to a murderous sun. A voice calling: “Colonel, darlin’.” He squinted: the whiskery face of Buster Kilrain.
”Colonel, darlin’, I hate to be a-wakin’ ye, but there’s a message here ye ought to be seein’.”
Chamberlain had slept on the ground; he rolled to a sitting position. Light boiled in through the tent flap.
Chamberlain closed his eyes.
”And how are ye feelin’ this momin’. Colonel, me lad?”
Chamberlain ran his tongue around his mouth. He said briefly, dryly, “Ak.”
”We’re about to be havin’ guests, sir, or I wouldn’t be wakin’ ye.”
Chamberlain looked up through bleary eyes. He had walked eighty miles in four days through the hottest weather he had ever known and he had gone down with sunstroke.
He felt eerie fragility, like a piece of thin glass in a high hot wind. He saw a wooden canteen, held in the big hand of Kilrain, cold drops of water on varnished sides. He drank.
The world focused.
”… one hundred and twenty men,” Kilrain said.
Chamberlain peered at him.
”They should be arriving any moment,” Kilrain said. He was squatting easily, comfortably, in the opening of the tent, the light flaming behind him.
”Who?” Chamberlain said.
”They are sending us some mutineers,” Kilrain said with fatherly patience. “One hundred and twenty men from the old Second Maine, which has been disbanded.”
”Mutineers?”
”Ay. What happened was that the enlistment of the old Second ran out and they were all sent home except one hundred and twenty, which had foolishly signed three-year papers, and so they all had one year to go, only they all thought they was signing to fight with the Second, and Second only, and so they mutinied. One hundred and twenty. Are you all right. Colonel?”
Chamberlain nodded vaguely.
”Well, these poor fellers did not want to fight no more, naturally, being Maine men of a certain intelligence, and refused, only nobody will send them home, and nobody knew what to do with them, until they thought of us, being as we are the other Maine regiment here in the army. There’s a message here signed by Meade himself. That’s the new General we got now, sir, if you can keep track as they go by. The message says they’ll be sent here this morning and they are to fight, and if they don’t fight you can feel free to shoot them.”
”Shoot?”
”Ay.”
”Let me see.” Chamberlain read painfully. His head felt very strange indeed, but he was coming awake into the morning as from a long way away and he could begin to hear the bugles out across the fields. Late to get moving today. Thank God. Somebody gave us an extra hour. Bless him. He read:… you are therefore authorized to shoot any man who refuses to do his duty. Shoot?
He said, “These are all Maine men?”
”Yes, sir. Fine big fellers. I’ve seen them. Loggin’ men.
You may remember there was a bit of a brawl some months back, during the mud march? These fellers were famous for their fists.”
Chamberlain said, “One hundred and twenty.”
”Yes, sir.”
”Somebody’s crazy.”
”Yes, sir.”
”How many men do we now have in this Regiment?”
”Ah, somewhat less than two hundred and fifty, sir, as of yesterday. Countin’ the officers.”
”How do I take care of a hundred and twenty mutinous men?”
”Yes, sir,” Kilrain sympathized. “Well, you’ll have to talk to them, sir.”
Chamberlain sat for a long moment silently trying to function. He was thirty-four years old, and on this day one year ago he had been a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College. He had no idea what to do. But it was time to go out into the sun. He crawled forward through the tent flap and stood up, blinking, swaying, one hand against the bole of a tree. He was a tall man, somewhat picturesque. He wore stolen blue cavalry trousers and a three-foot sword, and the clothes he wore he had not taken off for a week. He had a grave, boyish dignity, that clean-eyed, scrubbedbrain, naive look of the happy professor.
Kilrain, a white-haired man with the build of an ape, looked up at him with fatherly joy “If ye’ll ride the horse today, Colonel, which the Lord hath provided, instead of walkin’ in the dust with the others fools, ye’ll be all right- if ye wear the hat. It’s the walkin’, do you see, that does the great harm.”
”You walked,” Chamberlain said grumpily, thinking: shoot them? Maine men? How can I shoot Maine men? I’ll never be able to go home.
”Ah, but. Colonel, darlin’, I’ve been in the infantry since before you was bom. It’s them first few thousand miles.
After that, a man gets a limber to his feet.”
”Hey, Lawrence. How you doin’?”
Younger brother, Tom Chamberlain, bright-faced, high-voiced, a new lieutenant, worshipful. The heat had not seemed to touch him. Chamberlain nodded. Tom said critically, “You lookin’ kinda peaked. Why don’t you ride the horse?”
Chamberlain gloomed. But the day was not as bright as it had seemed through the opening of the tent. He looked upward with relief toward a darkening sky. The troops were moving in the fields, but there had been no order to march.
The wagons were not yet loaded. He thought: God bless the delay. His mind was beginning to function. All down the road and all through the trees the troops were moving, cooking, the thousands of troop and thousands of wagons of the Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, of which Chamberlain’s 20th Maine was a minor fragment. But far down the road there was motion.
Kilrain said, “There they come.”
Chamberlain squinted. Then he saw troops on the road, a long way off.
The line of men came slowly up the road. There were guards with fixed bayonets. Chamberlain could see the men shuffling, strange pathetic spectacle, dusty, dirty, ragged men, heads down, faces down: it reminded him of a history book picture of impressed seamen in the last war with England. But these men would have to march all day, in the heat. Chamberlain thought: not possible.