The advancing line of yelling Rebels stopped now to return fire, covering themselves in the smoke. And now cannon were firing from both sides of the field.
Charlie raised the mike. "Those are six-pounders out there making that serious racket and raising all kind of smoke. Imagine you're down there in a real battle, you see the cannon fire and you know this big goddamn iron ball's coming at you. Excuse my language, but it's a frightening situation to think about."
Charlie looked out at the field. All the shooting and not one on either side had taken a hit.
He looked for Dennis along the blue line, but he could be any one of those guys firing and loading. The one with the sword, out in front a few yards, looked like John Rau, a little more than halfway up the line. He was looking across at the Rebs falling back, leaving only a few skirmishers out in the field, all of them down on one knee to fire and staying down to reload.
And now Rau, yeah, it was John, with the sword, looked like he was yelling encouragement to his troopers.
Charlie raised the mike. "Well, the Rebels got turned back. But if you know what happened at Brice's, you know Old Bedford kept coming backyou wait and see-till he broke the Federal line. But listen, lemme tell you an interesting fact while both sides are regrouping. There was a Union soldier fought at Second Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg. And you know what he did some twenty years before the war started? His name was Abner Doubleday and he invented the game of baseball-a sport I gave eighteen years of my life to, in my prime able to throw a fastball ninety-nine miles an hour. Any you young boys out there think you can throw that hard, come on over to the Tishomingo Lodge and let's see your arm. We'll measure your throw with a radar gun. If you can throw a ball a hundred miles an hour we'll give you ten thousand dollars on the spot. Well, now I see General Forrest himself out there on his horse, riding up and down the line encouraging his boys to give those Yankees hell. That's Walter Kirkbride of Southern Living Village doing his impression of Old Bedford… And now here they come again charging headlong into those Yankee guns, the Yankees coming out to meet them."
It was too late now to go from Yankee guns to Yankee bats, damn it, the battle was on, a bunch of Rebels in black hats getting more than halfway across the field when the Yankee cannon blew out a cloud of smoke and every one of those black hats went down, staggering, clutching themselves, making a show of dying. Some of Arlen's boys, the ones that practiced taking hits. Now they'd lie there sipping shine from their canteens till it was over.
Hey, but they were crawling forward on their bellies toward the Union line, getting to their feet now and rushing the officer out in front, John Rau, four of them taking him by surprise, grabbing John by his arms and legs between them, lifting him off the ground and rushing him headfirst like a battering ram through the Confederate line, the boys in gray stopping midfield to return fire. Charlie raised his mike.
"You see that, folks. The Rebs made a daring raid there and have taken a prisoner."
They saw it, all right, the whole crowd cheering, loving it, watching the black hats running with John Rau all the way across the field and into the orchard. Now the Confederate line was falling back.
Dennis turned to Hector next to him. "You see that? They got the cop."
"That fucking Robert," Hector said, "he must have thought of that."
Dennis let it go. Tonto stepped over to him saying, "How you doing? You got a load?" Dennis told him yeah, he'd only fired twice. After the first one he'd started to reload and Tonto exchanged rifles with him saying, "You shoot, I load. I don't get nothing out of shooting black powder."
Hector turned to Jerry staying in the thicket behind them. "The next time they come we go in the woods. You can sneak over there now, get a head start."
Jerry's voice came out of the thicket. "You saying I can't keep up with you?"
Hector turned away, not answering, and said to Tonto, "I insulted him."
"It's easy to do," Tonto said. "We carry him if we have to. Robert wants him there."
"I don't see Robert," Dennis said, looking across the field at the Confederates getting ready, loading their rifles.
"He took a hit," Hector said. "See the sword stuck in the ground? That's Robert." He said to Dennis, "They come this time we take off. Be sure you bring the rifle."
Dennis heard Charlie's voice over the PA system telling the crowd about Union soldiers playing baseball between campaigns to occupy their time. "They even played ball in Confederate prison camps," Charlie said, "and that's how us Southerners picked up the game. Pretty soon there was games between the prisoners and the guards. Well, I see casualties out there now in the hot sun, in their wool uniforms. I hope none of 'em have come down with heatstroke, and are real casualties. You want to be sure and drink plenty of water. And here we go again, Old Bedford's boys mounting their charge. From Brice 's, they run those Yankees all the way back to Memphis."
Dennis brought up his Enfield and looked down the barrel at the wall of gray uniforms advancing, Dennis thinking, Pick one. He wondered if that's what you did, or you fired into them coming three deep and were pretty sure of hitting one, or if you fired as soon as they came out of the orchard and would have time to reload, pour in the powder, the ball, ram it down the barrel, set the cap on the nipple…
He heard Hector say, "Let's go," and he fired and saw Hector and Tonto ducking into the trees, Dennis realizing there wouldn't be time to reload. Man, it would be bayonets then, close enough to see the faces of guys trying to kill you. He followed Hector and Tonto into the gloom of the trees, holding the Enfield in front of him straight up to brush through the branches, his running steps kicking up dead leaves. He saw Jerry ahead of them with his sword hacking his way through vines hanging from the trees, Hector and Tonto darting and weaving past him, and Dennis slowed up to stay behind Jerry-but why?-and ran past him without a word and saw Hector and Tonto break out of the gloom into a clearing, a glade, a scattering of tall trees in sunlight. Now Dennis was out and running, gaining on Hector and Tonto as they reached the other side of the glade and disappeared into a dense wall of trees. Dennis followed, made his way through to come out at a ditch and a bank of coarse grass that sloped up to a road of red dirt and a truck standing there: a commercial delivery van painted white over the original white, a thin coat covering an emblem that looked like red, blue and yellow balloons and words faintly readable that said WONDER BREAD.
Groove and Cedric, both stripped to the waist and wearing shades, stood in the road at the back of the truck.
Now Groove was giving high-fives to Hector and Tonto, and Cedric was raising the truck's loading door, running it up on its tracks, Hector saying, "Man, give us the iron, we got to move." He said to Dennis coming up the bank, "Leave your rifle there to pick up when we come back. Cedric's passing out the six-guns, tell him you want one or two and if you think you gonna need an extra loaded cylinder to snap in when the Colt's empty-you think you gonna do all that much shooting. Pick up the one you snap out. Any people you shoot, pick up their guns and bring 'em back here. Except the general."
Hector, looking at Jerry approaching the bank worn-out, trying to breathe, said, "We pick up after the general," and said to him, "How you doing, you all right? You have cramps? You feeling dizzy, kinda sick?"
Dennis was up by the truck. He watched Jerry seem to cave in and sit down on the slope, watched him take off his coat and ease back to lie flat in the coarse grass, his shirt soaking wet. He didn't answer Hector.
"You sweating," Hector said, "that's good. You have a heatstroke you don't sweat none. Drink some water, it will pick you up."
Dennis took off his shell jacket and dropped it on the slope. He believed he could hear the popping sound of rifle fire coming from the battlefield, but it was so faint he had to stop and listen before he heard it again.