”Bucklin. Joseph Bucklin.”
”Where you from?”
” Bangor.”
”Don’t know any Bucklins. Farmer?”
”Fishermen.”
Former Sergeant Kilrain put his head in the tent.
”Colonel, there’s a courier comin’.”
Chamberlain nodded. Bucklin said, “I’m tired, Colonel.
You know what I mean? I’m tired. I’ve had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this goddamned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody lousy rotten mess of sick-brained pot-bellied scabheads that aint fit to lead a johnny detail, aint fit to pour pee outen a boot with instructions on the heel. I’m tired. We are good men and we had our own good flag and these goddamned idiots use us like we was cows or dogs or even worse. We aint gonna win this war. We can’t win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers. Only one officer knew what he was doin: McClellan, and look what happened to him. I just as soon go home and let them damn Johnnies go home and the hell with it.”
He let it go, out of breath. He had obviously been waiting to say that to some officer for a long time. Chamberlain said, “I get your point.”
Kilrain announced, “Courier, sir.”
Chamberlain rose, excused himself, stepped out into the sunlight. A bright-cheeked lieutenant, just dismounted, saluted him briskly.
”Colonel Chamberlain, sir. Colonel Vincent, wishes to inform you that the corps is moving out at once and that you are instructed to take the advance. The Twentieth Maine has been assigned to the first position in line. You will send out flankers and advance guards.”
”My compliments to the Colonel.” Chamberlain saluted, turned to Kilrain and Ellis Spear, who had come up. “You |g heard him, boys. Get the Regiment up. Sound the General, strike the tents.” Back inside the tent, he said cheerfully to Bucklin, “We’re moving out. You better hurry up your eating. Tell your men I’ll be over in a minute. I’ll think on what you said.”
Bucklin slipped by him, went away. Chamberlain thought: we’re first in line.
Kilrain.
The former sergeant was back. “Sir.”
”Where we headed?”
”West, sir. Pennsylvania somewhere. That’s all I know.” – “Listen, Buster. You’re a private now and I’m not supposed to keep you at headquarters in that rank. If you want to go on back to the ranks, you just say so, because I feel obligated-well, you don’t have to be here, but listen, I need you.”
”Then I’ll be stayin’, Colonel, laddie.” Kilrain grinned.
”But you know I can’t promote you. Not after that episode with the bottle. Did you have to pick an officer?”
Kilrain grinned. “I was not aware of rank, sir, at the time. And he was the target which happened to present itself.”
”Buster, you haven’t got a bottle about?”
”Is the Colonel in need of a drink, sir?”
”I meant… forget it. All right. Buster, move ‘em out.”
Kilrain saluted, grinning, and withdrew. The only professional in the regiment. The drinking would kill him. Well.
He would die happy. Now. What do I say to them?
Tom came in, saluted.
”The men from the Second Maine are being fed, sir.”
”Don’t call me sir.”
”Well, Lawrence, Great God A-Mighty-“
”You just be careful of the name business in front of the men. Listen, we don’t want anybody to think there’s favoritism.”
Tom put on the wounded look, face of the ruptured deer.
”General Meade has his son as his adjutant.”
”That’s different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield.” The tent was coming down about his head; he stepped outside to avoid the collapse. The General and God was a nice parallel. They have your future in their hands and they have all power and know all. He grinned, thinking of Meade surrounded by his angelic staff: Dan Butterfield, wild Dan Sickles. But what do I say?
”Lawrence, what you goin’ to do?”
Chamberlain shook his head. The regiment was up and moving.
”God, you can’t shoot them. You do that, you’ll never go back to Maine when the war’s over.”
”I know that.” Chamberlain meditated. “Wonder if they do?”
He heard a flare of bugles, looked down the road toward Union Mills. The next regiment, the 83rd Pennsylvania, was up and forming. He saw wagons and ambulances moving out into the road. He could feel again the yellow heat. Must remember to cover up. More susceptible to sunstroke now. Can’t afford a foggy head. He began to walk slowly toward the grove of trees.
Kilrain says tell the truth.
Which is?
Fight. Or we’ll shoot you.
Not true. I won’t shoot anybody.
He walked slowly out into the sunlight. He thought: but the truth is much more than that. Truth is too personal.
Don’t know if I can express it. He paused in the heat.
Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it. He shook his head.
I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother.
Nobody ever died for apple pie.
He walked slowly toward the dark grove. He had a complicated brain and there were things going on back there from time to time that he only dimly understood, so he relied on his instincts, but he was learning all the time. The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man.
His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle.
He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually over all the earth.
But it had begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil.
They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves.
And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.
Yet the words had been used too often and the fragments that came to Chamberlain now were weak. A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals? He thought finally Well, I owe them the truth at least. Might’s well begin with that.
The Regiment had begun to form. Chamberlain thought: At least it’ll be a short speech. He walked slowly toward the prisoners.
Glazier Estabrook was standing guard, leaning patiently on his rifle. He was a thick little man of about forty. Except for Kilrain he was the oldest man in the Regiment, the strongest man Chamberlain had ever seen. He waved happily as Chamberlain came up but went on leaning on the rifle. He pointed at one of the prisoners.
”Hey, Colonel, you know who this is? This here is Dan Burns from Orono. I know his daddy. Daddy’s a preacher. You really ought to hear him. Best damn cusser I ever heard. Knows more fine swear words than any man in Maine, I bet. Hee.”
Chamberlain smiled. But the Burns boy was looking at him with no expression. Chamberlain said, “You fellas gather round.”
He stood in the shade, waited while they closed in silently, watchfully around him. In the background the tents were coming down, the wagons were hitching, but some of the men of the Regiment had come out to watch and listen.