Prayers to Broken Stones by Dan Simmons
The Captain raised his pistol and pointed at the treeline. I stepped back, expecting him to fire, but the only noise was the rasp of his voice. “Remember? We got to that point … ’bout there where them damn vines is growing … and the Yanks rise up along that whole quarter mile of wall there and fire right into us. Like they’re comin’ up out of the ground. No noise at all except the swish of our feet ’n legs in the wheat and grass and then they let loose a volley like to sound like the end of the world. Whole goddamn world disappears in smoke and fire. Even a Yank couldn’t miss at that range. More of ’em come out of the trees back up there …” The Captain gestured toward our left where the wall angled northwest to meet the road. “That puts us in an enfilade fire that just sweeps through the 5th North Carolina. Like a scythe, Boy. There was wheat in these fields then. But it was just stubble. No place to go. No place to hide. We could’ve run back the way we come but us North Carolina boys wasn’t goin’ to start learning’ ourselves how to run this late in the day. So the scythe just come sweepin’ into us. Couldn’t move forward. That goddamn wall was just a wall of smoke with fire comin’ through it there fifty yards away. I seen Lieutenant Colonel Davis of the 5th—Old Bill his boys called him—get his regiment down into that low area there to the south. See about where that line of scrub brush is? Not nearly so big as a ditch, but it give ’em some cover, not much. But us in the 20th and Cap’n Turner’s boys in the 23rd didn’t have no choice but to lie down here in the open and take it.”
The old man advanced slowly for a dozen yards and stopped where the grass grew thicker and greener, joining with tangles of what I realized were grapevines to create a low, green thicket between us and the wall. Suddenly he sat down heavily, thrusting his wooden leg out in front of him and cradling the pistol in his lap. I dropped to my knees in the grass near him, removed my hat, and unbuttoned my tunic. The yellow tag hung loosely from my breast pocket button. It was very hot.
“The Yank’s kept pourin’ the fire into us,” he said. His voice was a hoarse whisper. Sweat ran down his cheeks and neck. “More Federals come out of the woods down there … by the railroad gradin’ … and started enfiladin’ Old Bill’s boys and our right flank. We couldn’t fire back worth horseshit. Lift your head outta the dirt to aim and you caught a Minié ball in the brain. My brother Perry was layin’ next to me and I heard the ball that took him in the left eye. Made a sound like someone hammerin’ a side of beef with a four-pound hammer. He sort of rose up and flopped back next to me. I was yellin’ and cryin’, my face all covered with snot and dirt and tears, when all of a sudden I feel Perry tryin’ to rise up again. Sort of jerkin’, like somebody was pullin’ him up with strings. Then again. And again. I’d got a glimpse of the hole in his face where his eye’d been and his brains and bits of the back of his head was still smeared on my right leg, but I could fell him jerkin’ and pullin’, like he was tuggin’ at me to go with him somewhere. Later, I seen why. More bullets had been hittin’ him in the head and each time it’d snap him back some. When we come back to bury him later, his head looked like a mushmelon someone’d kicked apart. It wasn’t unusual, neither. Lot of the boys layin’ on the field that day got just torn apart by that Yankee fire. Like a scythe, Boy. Or a meatgrinder.”
I sat back in the grass and breathed through my mouth. The vines and black soil gave off a thick, sweet smell that made me feel lightheaded and a little ill. The heat pressed down like thick, wet blankets.
“Some of the boys stood up to run then,” said Captain Montgomery, his voice still a hoarse monotone, his eyes focused on nothing. He was holding the cocked pistol in both hands with the barrel pointed in my direction, but I was sure that he had forgotten I was there. “Everybody who stood up got hit. The sound was … you could hear the balls hittin’ home even over the firin’. The wind was blowin’ the smoke back into the woods so there wasn’t even any cover. you usually got once’t the smoke got heavy. I seen Lieutenant Ollie Williams stand up to yell at the boys of the 20th to stay low and he was hit twice while I watched.
“The rest of us was tryin’ to form a firin’ line in the grass and wheat, but we hadn’t got off a full volley before the Yanks come runnin’ out, some still firin’, some usin’ their bayonets. And that’s when I seen you and the other two little drummers get kilt, Johnny. When they used them bayonets …” The old man paused and looked at me for the first time in several minutes. A cloud of confusion seemed to pass over him. He slowly lowered the pistol, gently released the cocked hammer, and raised a shaking hand to his brow.
Still feeling dizzy and a little sick myself, I asked, “Is that when you lost your … uh … when you hurt your leg, sir?”
The Captain removed his hat. His few white hairs were stringy with sweat. “What? My leg?” He stared at the wooden peg below his knee as if he had never noticed it before. “My leg. No, Boy, that was later. The Battle of the Crater. The Yankees tunneled under us and blowed us up while we was sleepin’. When I didn’t die right away, they shipped me home to Raleigh and made me an honorary Cap’n three days before the war ended. No, that day … here … I got hit at least three times but nothin’ serious. A ball took the heel of my right boot off. Another’n knocked my rifle stock all to hell and gave me some splinters in my cheek. A third’n took off a chunk of my left ear, but hell, I could still hear all right. It wasn’t ’til I sat down to try to go to sleep that night that I come to find out that another ball’d hit me in the back of the leg, right below the ass, but it’d been goin’ so slow it just give me a big bruise there.”
We sat there for several minutes in silence. I could hear insects rustling in the grass. Finally the Captain said, “And that son-of-a-bitch Iverson never even come down here until Ramseur’s boys finally got around to clearin’ the Yankees out. That was later. I was layin’ right around here somewhere, squeezed in between Perry and Nate’s corpses, covered with so much of their blood an’ brains that the goddamn Yanks just stepped over all three of us when they ran out to stick bayonets in our people or drive ’em back to their line as prisoners. I opened my eyes long enough to see ol’ Cade Tarleton bein’ clubbed along by a bunch of laughin’ Yankees. They had our regimental flag, too, goddamnit. There was no one left alive around it to put up a fight.
“Ramseur, him who the Richmond papers was always callin’ the Chevalier Bayard, whatever the hell that meant, was comin’ down the hill into the same ambush when Lieutenant Crowder and Lieutenant Dugger run up and warned him. Ramseur was an officer but he wasn’t nobody’s fool. He crossed the road further east and turned the Yankee’s right flank, just swept down the backside of that wall, drivin’ ’em back toward the seminary.
“Meanwhile, while the few of us who’d stayed alive was busy crawlin’ back towards Forney’s house or layin’ there bleedin’ from our wounds, that son-of-a-bitch Iverson was tellin’ General Rodes that he’d seen our regiment put up a white flag and go over to the Yanks. Goddamn lie, Boy. Them who got captured was mostly wounded who got drove off at the point of a bayonet. There wasn’t any white flags to be seen that day. Leastways not here. Just bits of white skull and other stuff layin’ around.
“Later, while I was still on the field lookin’ for a rifle that’d work, Rodes brings Iverson down here to show him where the men had surrendered, and while their horses is pickin’ their way over the corpses that used to be the 20th North Carolina, that bastard Iverson …” Here the old man’s voice broke. He paused a long minute, hawked, spat, and continued. “That bastard Iverson sees our rows of dead up here, 700 men from the finest brigade the South ever fielded, layin’ shot dead in lines as straight as a dress parade, and Iverson thinks they’re still duckin’ from fire even though Ramseur had driven the Yanks off, and he stands up in his stirrups, his goddamn sorrel horse almost steppin’ on Perry, and he screams, ‘Stand up and salute when the general passes, you men! Stand up this instant!’ It was Rodes who realized that they was ‘lookin’ at dead men.”
Captain Montgomery was
“If I’d had my rifle,” said the Captain, “I would have shot the bastard right then.” He let out a ragged breath. “Him and Rodes went back up the hill together and I never seen Iverson again. Captain Halsey took command of what was left of the regiment. When the brigade reassembled the next mornin’, 362 men stood muster where 1,470 had answered the call the day before. They called Iverson back to Georgia and put him in charge of a home guard unit or somethin’. Word was, President Davis saved him from bein’ court-martialed or reprimanded. It was clear none of us would’ve served under the miserable son-of-a-bitch again. You know how the last page of our 20th North Carolina regimental record reads, Boy?”
“No, sir,” I said softly.
The old man closed his eyes. “Initiated at Seven Pines, sacrificed at Gettysburg, and surrendered at Appomattox. Help me get to my feet, Boy. We got to find a place to hide.”
“To hide, sir?”
“Goddamn right,” said the Captain as I acted as a crutch for him. “We’ve got to be ready when Iverson comes here today.” He raised the heavy pistol as if it explained everything. “We’ve got to be ready when he comes.”
It was mid-morning before we found an adequate place to hide. I trailed along behind the limping old man and while part of my mind was desperate with panic to find a way out of such an insane situation, another part—a larger part—had no trouble accepting the logic of everything. Colonel Alfred Iverson, Jr., would have to return to his field of dishonor this day and we had to hide in order to kill him.
“See where the ground’s lower here, Boy? Right about where these damn vines is growin’?”
“Yessir.”
“Them’s Iverson’s Pits. That’s what the locals call ’em according to John Forney when I come to visit in ’98. You know what they are?”
“No, sir,” I lied. Part of me knew very well what they were.
“Night after the battle … battle, hell, slaughter … the few of us left from the regiment and some of Lee’s Pioneers come up and dug big shallow pits and just rolled our boys in where they lay. Laid ’em in together, still in their battle lines. Nate ’n Perry’s shoulders was touchin’. Right where I’d been layin’. You can see where the Pits start here. The ground’s lower an’ the grass is higher, ain’t it?”
“Yessir.”
“Forney said the grass was always higher here, crops too, when they growed them. Forney didn’t farm this field much. Said the hands didn’t like to work here. He told his niggers that there weren’t nothing to worry about, that the U.C.V.’d come up and dug up everythin’ after the war to take our boys back to Richmond, but that ain’t really true.”
“Why not, sir?” We were wading slowly through the tangle of undergrowth. Vines wrapped around my ankle and I had to tug to free myself.
“They didn’t do much diggin’ here,” said the Captain. “Bones was so thick and scattered that they jes’ took a few of ’em and called it quits. Didn’t like diggin’ here any more than Forney’s niggers liked workin’ here. Even in the daytime. Place that’s got this much shame and anger in it … well, people feel it, don’t they, Boy?”
“Yessir,” I said automatically, although all I felt at that moment was sick and sleepy.
The Captain stopped. “Goddamnit, that house wasn’t here before.”
Through a break in the stone wall I could see a small house—more of a large shack, actually—made of wood so dark as to be almost black and set back in the shade of the trees. No driveway or wagon lane led to it, but I could see a faint trampling in Forney’s field and the forest grass where horses might have passed through the break in the wall to gain access. The old man seemed deeply offended that someone had built a home so close to the field where his beloved 20th North Carolina had fallen. But the house was dark and silent and we moved away from that section of the wall.
The closer we came to the stone fence, the harder it was to walk. The grass grew twice as high as in the fields beyond and the wild grapevines marked a tangled area about the size of the football field where our Troop practiced its close order drill.
In addition to the tangled grass and thick vines there to hamper our progress, there were the holes. Dozens of them, scores of them, pockmarking the field and lying in wait under the matted foliage.
“Goddamn gophers,” said Captain Montgomery, but the holes were twice as wide across the opening as any burrow I had seen made by mole or gopher or ground squirrel. There were no heaps of dirt at the opening. Twice the old man stepped into them, the second time ramming his wooden leg in so deeply that we both had to work to dislodge it. Tugging hard at his wool-covered leg, I suddenly had the nightmarish sense that someone or something was pulling at the other end, refusing to let go, trying to suck the old man underground.
The incident must have disconcerted Captain Montgomery as well, because as soon as his leg popped free of the hole he staggered back a few steps and sat down heavily with his back against the stone wall. “This is good enough, Boy,” he panted. “We’ll wait here.”
It was a good place for an ambush. The vines and grass grew waist high there, allowing us glimpses of the field beyond but concealing us as effectively as a duck blind. The wall sheltered our backs.
Captain Montgomery removed his topcoat and canvas bag and commenced to unload, clean, and reload his pistol. I lay on the grass nearby, at first thinking about what was going on back at the Reunion, then wondering about how to get the Captain back there, then wondering what Iverson had looked like, then thinking about home, and finally thinking about nothing at all as I moved in and out of a strange, dream-filled doze.
Not three feet from where I lay was another of the ubiquitous holes, and as I fell into a light slumber I remained faintly aware of the odor rising from that opening: the same sickening sweetness I had smelled earlier, but thicker now, heavier, almost erotic with its undertones of corruption and decay, of dead sea creatures drying in the sun. Many years later, visiting an abandoned meat processing plant in Chicago with a real estate agent acquaintance, I was to encounter a similar smell; it was the stench of a charnel house, disused for years but permeated with the memory of blood.
The day passed in a haze of heat, thick air, and insect noises. I dozed and awoke to watch with the Captain, dozed again. Once I seem to remember eating hard biscuits from his bag and washing them down with the last water from his wineskin, but even that fades into my dreams of that afternoon, for I remember others seated around us, chewing on similar fare and talking in low tones so that the words were indistinguishable but the southern dialect came through clearly. It did not sound strange to me. Once I remember awakening, even though I was sitting up and staring and had thought I was already awake, as the sound of an automobile along the Mummasburg Road shocked me into full consciousness. But the trees at the edge of the field shielded any traffic from view, the sounds faded, and I returned to the drugged doze I had known before.
Sometime late that afternoon I dreamed the one dream I remember clearly.
I was lying in the field, hurt and helpless, the left side of my face in the dirt and my right eye staring unblinkingly at a blue summer sky. An ant walked across my cheek, then another, until a stream of them crossed my cheek and eye, others moving into my nostrils and open mouth. I could not move. I did not blink. I felt them in my mouth, between my teeth, removing bits of morning bacon from between two molars, moving across the soft flesh of my palate, exploring the dark tunnel of my throat. The sensations were not unpleasant.
I was vaguely aware of other things going deeper, of slow movement in the swelling folds of my guts and belly. Small things laid their eggs in the drying corners of my eye.
I felt my lips wither and dry in the heat, pulling back from my teeth, felt my jaws open wider and wider in a mirthless, silent laugh as ligaments decayed or were chewed away by small predators. I felt lighter as the eggs hatched, the maggots began their frenzied cleansing, my body turning toward the dark soil as the process accelerated. My mouth opened wide to swallow the waiting Earth. I tasted the dark communion of dirt. Stalks of grass grew where my tongue had been. A flower found rich soil in the humid sepulcher of my skull and sent its shoot curling upward through the gap which had once held my eye.
Settling, relaxing, returning to the acid-taste of the blackness around me, I sensed the others there. Random, shifting currents of soil sent decaying bits of wool or flesh or bone in touch with bits of them, fragments intermingling with the timid eagerness of a lover’s first touch. When all else was lost, mingling with the darkness and anger, my bones remained, brittle bits of memory, forgotten, sharp-edged fragments of pain resisting the inevitable relaxation into painlessness, into nothingness.
And deep in that rotting marrow, lost in the loam-black acid of forgetfulness, I remembered. And waited.