Thomas Wolfe, page 493
And maybe hit was a pity that hit did. Fer Jim Weaver until the day that he met Martha Patton had been the most happy-go-lucky feller that you ever seed. He didn’t have a care in the whole world—full of fun—ready fer anythin’ and into every kind of devilment and foolishment. But from that moment on, he was a different man. And I’ve always thought that maybe hit was a pity hit had to come jest at that time. If hit could only have waited till the War was over! He’d wanted to go so much—he’d looked at the whole thing as a big lark—but now! Well, she had him, and he had her: the day they marched us out of town, he had her promise, and in his watch he had her picture and a little lock of her black hair, and as they marched us out, and him beside me, we passed her, and she looked at him, and I felt him jerk again and knowed the look she gave him had gone through him like a knife.
From that time on he was a different man; from that time on he was like a man in hell. Hit’s funny how hit all turns out—how none of hit is like what we expect. Hit’s funny how war and a little black-haired gal will change a man—but that’s the story that I’m goin’ to tell you now.
The nearest railhead in those days was eighty mile away at Locust Gap. They marched us out of town right up the Fairfield Road along the river up past Crestville, and right across the Blue Ridge thar, and down the mountain. We made Old Stockade the first day’s march and camped thar fer the night. It was twenty-four mile of marchin’ right across the mountain with the roads the way they was in those days, too. And let me tell you, fer new men with only two months’ trainin’ that was doin’ good.
We made Locust Gap in three days and a half, and I wish you’d seed the welcome they gave us! People were hollerin’ and shoutin’ the whole way. All the women folk and the childern were lined up along the road, bands a-playin’, boys runnin’ along beside us, good shoes, new uniforms, the finest lookin’ set of fellers that you ever seed—Lord! you’d a-thought we was goin’ to a picnic from the way hit looked. And I reckon that was the way most of us felt about hit, too. We thought we was goin’ off to have a lot of fun. If anyone had knowed what he was in fer or could-a seed the passel o’ scarecrows that came limpin’ back barefoot and half naked four years later, I reckon he’d a-thought again before he ’listed up.
Lord, when I think of hit! When I try to tell about hit, thar jest ain’t words enough to tell what hit was like. And when I think of the way I was when I joined up—and the way I was when I came back four years later!—When I went away I was an ignerant country boy, so tender-hearted that I wouldn’t harm a fly. And when I came back when the war was over, I could-a stood by and seed a man murderd right before my eyes with no more feelin’ than I’d have fer a stuck hog. I had no more feelin’ about human life than I had fer the life of a sparrer. I’d seed a ten-acre field so thick with dead men that you could have walked all over hit without steppin’ on the ground a single time.
And that was where I made my big mistake. If I’d only knowed a little more, if I’d only waited jest a little longer after I got home, things would have been all right. That’s been the big regret of my whole life. I never had no education. I never had a chance to git one before I went away. And when I came back, I could-a had my schoolin’ but I didn’t take it. The reason was I never knowed no better: I’d seed so much fightin’ and killin’ that I didn’t care fer nothin’. I jest felt dead and numb like all the brains had been shot out of me. I jest wanted to git me a little patch of land somewheres and settle down and fergit about the world.
That’s where I made my big mistake. I didn’t wait long enough. I got married too soon, and after that the childern came and hit was root, hawg, or die: I had to grub fer hit. But if I’d only waited jest a little while, hit would have been all right. In less’n a year hit all cleared up. I got my health back, pulled myself together and got my feet back on the ground, and had more mercy and understandin’ in me jest on account of all the sufferin’ I’d seed than I ever had. And as fer my head, why hit was better than hit ever was:—with all I’d seed and knowed, I could-a got a schoolin’ in no time. But you see I wouldn’t wait. I didn’t think that hit’d ever come back. I was jest sick of livin’. And that’s where I played smash!—
But as I say—they marched us down to Locust Gap in less’n four days’ time, and then they put us on the cars fer Richmond. We got to Richmond on the mornin’ of one day:—up to that very moment we had thought that they were sendin’ us to join Lee’s army in the North. But the next mornin’ we got our orders—and they were sendin’ us out West. They had been fightin’ in Kentucky: we was in trouble thar; they sent us out to stop the Army of the Cumberland. And that was the last I ever seed of old Virginny. From that time on we fought hit out thar in the West and South. That’s where we was, the Twenty-ninth, from then on to the end.
We had no real big fights until the spring of Sixty-two. And hit takes a fight to make a soldier of a man. Before that, there was skirmishin’ and raids in Tennessee and in Kentucky. That winter we seed hard marchin’ in the cold and wind and rain. We learned to know what hunger was, and what hit was to have to draw your belly in to fit your rations. I reckon by that time we knowed hit wasn’t goin’ to be a picnic like we thought that hit would be. We was a-learnin’ all the time, but we wasn’t soldiers yet. Hit takes a good big fight to make a soldier, and we hadn’t had one yet. Early in Sixty-two we almost had one: they marched us to the relief of Donelson—but—law! they had taken her before we got thar—and I’m goin’ to tell you a good story about that.
U. S. Grant was thar to take her, and we was marchin’ to relieve her before Old Butcher could git in. We was seven mile away, and hit was comin’ on to sundown; we’d been marchin’ hard. We got the order to fall out and rest. And that was when I heard the gun and knowed that Donelson had fallen. Thar was no sound of fightin’. Everything was still as Sunday. We was sittin’ thar aside the road, and then I heard a cannon boom. Hit boomed five times, real slow like—Boom!—Boom!—Boom!—Boom!—Boom! And the moment that I heared hit, I had a premonition. I turned to Jim and I said: “Well, thar you are! That’s Donelson—and she’s surrendered!”
Cap’n Bob Saunders heard me, but he wouldn’t believe me and he said: “You’re wrong!”
“Well,” said Jim, “I hope to God he’s right. I wouldn’t care if the whole War has fallen through. I’m ready to go home.”
“Well, he’s wrong,” said Cap’n Bob, “and I’ll bet money on hit that he is.”
Well, I tell you, that jest suited me. That was the way I was in those days—right from the beginnin’ of the war to the very end. If there was any fun or devilment goin’ on, any card playin’ or gamblin’, or any other kind of foolishness, I was right in on hit. I’d a-bet a man that red was green or day was night, and if a gal looked at me from a persimmon tree, why, law! I reckon I’d a-clumb the tree to git at her. That’s jest the way hit was with me all through the War. I never made a bet or played a game of cards in my life before the War or after hit was over, but while the War was goin’ on, I was ready fer anything.
“How much will you bet,” I said.
“I’ll bet you a hundred dollars even money,” said Bob Saunders, and no sooner got the words out of his mouth than the bet was on.
We planked the money down right thar and gave hit to Jim to hold the stakes. Well, sir, we didn’t have to wait half an hour before a feller on a horse came ridin’ up and told us hit was no use goin’ any farther—Fort Donelson had fallen.
“What did I tell you?” I said to Cap’n Saunders, and I put the money in my pocket.
Well, the laugh was on him then—I wish you could a-seed the expression on his face—he looked mighty sheepish, I tell you what he did. But he admitted hit, you know, he had to own up.
“You were right,” he said. “You won the bet. But—I’ll tell you what I’ll do!” He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills—“I’ve got a hundred dollars left—and with me it’s all or nothin’! We’ll draw cards fer this last hundred—high card wins!”
Well, I was ready fer him. I pulled out my hundred, and I said, “Git out the deck!”
So they brought the deck out then, and Jim shuffled hit and held hit while we drawed. Bob Saunders drawed first, and he drawed the eight of spades. When I turned my card up, I had one of the queens.
Well, sir, you should have seen the look upon Bob Saunders’ face. I tell you what, the fellers whooped and hollered till he looked like he was ready to crawl through a hole in the floor. We all had some fun with him, and then, of course, I gave the money back. I never took a penny in my life I made from gamblin’.
But that’s the way hit was with me in those days—I was ready fer hit—fer anything. If any kind of devilment or foolishness came up, I was right in on hit with the ring-leaders.
Fort Donelson was the first big fight that we was in—and as I say, we wasn’t really in hit because we couldn’t git to her in time. And after Donelson that spring, in April, thar was Shiloh. Well—all that I can tell you is, we was thar on time at Shiloh. Oh, Lord! I reckon that we was! Perhaps we had been country boys before, perhaps some of us still made a joke of hit before—but after Shiloh we wasn’t country boys no longer. We didn’t make no joke about hit after Shiloh. They wiped the smile off of our faces thar at Shiloh. And after Shiloh we was boys no longer: we was vet’ran men.
From then on hit was fightin’ to the end. That’s where we learned what hit was like—at Shiloh. From then on we knew what it would be until the end.
Jim got wounded thar at Shiloh. Hit wasn’t bad—not bad enough to suit him anyways—fer he wanted to go home fer good. Hit was a flesh wound in the leg, but hit was some time before we could git to him, and he was layin’ out thar on the field, and I reckon that he lost some blood. Anyways, I heared he was unconscious when they picked him up; they carried him back and dressed his wound right thar upon the field. They cleaned hit out, I reckon, and they bandaged hit—thar was so many of ’em they couldn’t do much more than that. Oh, I tell you what, in those days thar wasn’t much that they could do. I’ve seed the surgeons workin’ underneath an open shed with meat-saws, choppin’ off the arms and legs and throwin’ ’em out thar in a pile like they was sticks of wood, without no chloroform or nothin’, and the screamin’ and the hollerin’ of the men enough to make your head turn gray. And that was as much as anyone could do: hit was live or die and take your chance—and thar was so many of ’em wounded so much worse than Jim that I reckon he was lucky they did anything fer him at all.
I heared them tell about hit later, how he come to, a-layin’, stretched out thar on an old dirty blanket on the bare floor, and an army surgeon seed him lookin’ at his leg all bandaged up, and I reckon he thought he’d cheer him up and said: “Oh, that ain’t nothin’—you’ll be up and fightin’ Yanks again in two weeks’ time.”
Well, with that, they said, Jim got to cursin’ and a-takin’ on somethin’ terrible: they said the language he used was enough to make your hair stand on end—they said he screamed and raved and reached down thar and jerked the bandage off and said: “Like hell I will!” They said the blood spouted up thar like a fountain, and they said that army doctor was so mad he throwed Jim down upon his back and sat on him and took that bandage, all bloody as hit was, and he tied hit back around his leg again and he said: “Goddam you, if you pull that bandage off again, I’ll let you bleed to death.”
And Jim, they said, came ragin’ back at him until you could have heard him fer a mile, and said: “Well, by God, I don’t care if I do; I’d rather die than stay here any longer.”
They say they had hit back and forth thar until Jim got so weak he couldn’t talk no more. I know that when I come to see him a day or two later, he was settin’ up and I asked him: “Jim, how is your leg? Are you hurt bad?”
And he answered quick as a flash: “Not bad enough. They can take the whole damn leg off as far as I’m concerned, and bury hit here at Shiloh if they’ll only let me go back home and not come back again. Me and Martha will git along somehow,” he said. “I’d rather be a cripple the rest of my life than have to come back and fight in this damn War.”
Well, I knowed he meant hit, too. I looked at him and seed how much he meant hit, and I knowed thar wasn’t anything that I could do. When a man begins to talk that way, thar hain’t much you can say to him. Well, sure enough, in a week or two, they let him go upon a two months’ furlough, and he went limpin’ away upon a crutch. He was the happiest man I ever seed. “They gave me two months’ leave,” he said, “but if they jest let me git back home, old Bragg’ll have to send his whole damn army before he gits me out of thar again.”
Well, he was gone two months or more, and I never knowed what happened—whether he got ashamed of himself when his wound healed up all right, or whether Martha talked him out of hit. But he was back with us by late July—the grimmest, bitterest-lookin’ man you ever seed. He wouldn’t talk to me about hit, he wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I knowed from that time on he’d never draw his breath in peace until he left the Army and got back home fer good.
Well, that was Shiloh, that was the time we didn’t miss, that was where we found out war was no picnic, where we knowed at last what hit would be until the end.
We seed some big fights in the War. And we was in some bloody battles. But the biggest fight we fought was Chickamauga. The bloodiest fight I ever seed was Chickamauga. Thar was big battles in the War, but thar never was a fight before, thar’ll never be a fight again, like Chickamauga. I’m goin’ to tell you how hit was at Chickamauga.
All through the spring and summer of that year, Old Rosey follered us through Tennessee.
We had him stopped the year before, the time we whupped him at Stone’s River at the end of Sixty-two: we tarred him out so bad he had to wait. He waited thar six months at Murfreesboro. But we knowed he was a-comin’ all the time. Old Rosey started at the end of June and drove us out of Shelbyville. We fell back on Tullahoma in rains the like of which you never seed. But Rosey kept a-comin’ on.
He drove us out of Tullahoma, too. We fell back across the Cumberland: we pulled back behind the mountain, but he follered us.
I reckon thar was fellers that was quicker when a fight was on, and when they’d seed just what hit was they had to do. But when hit came to plannin’ and a-figgerin’, old Rosey Rosecrans took the cake. Old Rosey was a fox’. Fer sheer natural cunnin’ I never knowed the beat of him.
While Bragg was watchin’ him at Chattanooga to keep him from gittin’ across Tennessee, he sent some fellers forty mile upstream. And then he’d march ’em back and forth and round the hill and back in front of us again where we could look at ’em, until you’d a-thought that every Yankee in the world was thar.—But law! All that was jest a dodge! He had fellers a-sawin’ and a-hammerin’, a-buildin’ boats, a-blowin’ bugles and a-beatin’ drums, makin’ all the noise they could—you could hear ’em over yonder gittin’ ready—and all the time Old Rosey was fifty mile or more downstream, ten mile past Chattanooga, a-fixin’ to git over way down thar. That was the kind of feller Rosey was.
We got to Chattanooga early in July and waited fer two months. Old Rosey had to cross the Cumberland, push his men and pull his trains across the ridges and through the gaps before he got to us. July went by, we had no news of him—“Oh Lord!” said Jim, “perhaps he ain’t a-comin’!”—I knowed he was a-comin’, but I let Jim have his way.
Some of the fellers would git used to hit. A feller’d git into a frame of mind where he wouldn’t let hit worry him. He’d let termorrer look out fer hitself. That was the way hit was with me.
With Jim hit was the other way around. Now that he knowed Martha Patton he was a different man. I think he hated the War and army life from the moment that he met her. From that time he was livin’ fer only one thing—to go back home and marry that gal. When mail would come and some of us was gittin’ letters, he’d be the first in line: and if she wrote him, why he’d walk away like someone in a dream. And if she failed to write, he jest go off somers and set down by himself: he’d be in such a state of misery he didn’t want to talk to no one. He got the name with the fellers for bein’ queer—unsociable—always a-broodin’ and a-frettin’ about somethin’ and a-wantin’ to be left alone. And so, after a time, they let him be: he wasn’t popular with most of them—but they never knowed what was wrong, they never knowed that he wasn’t really the way they thought he was at all—hit was jest that he was hit so desperate hard, the worst-in-love man that I ever seed. But law! I knowed! I knowed what was the trouble from the start.
Hit’s funny how war took a feller. Before the War I was the serious one, and Jim had been the one to play.
I reckon that I’d had to work too hard. We was so poor. Before the War, hit almost seemed I never knowed the time I didn’t have to work. And when the War came, why at first I thought hit would be different from the way hit was. I only thought of all the fan and frolic I was goin’ to have, and then at last when I knowed what hit was like, why I was used to hit and didn’t care.
I always could git used to things. And I reckon maybe that’s the reason that I’m here. I wasn’t one to worry much, and no matter how rough the goin’ got, I always figgered I could hold out if the others could. I let termorrer look out fer hitself. I reckon that you’d have to say that I was an optimist. If things got bad, well, I always figgered that they could be worse, and if they got so bad that they couldn’t be no worse, why, then I’d figger that they couldn’t last this way ferever, they’d have to git some better some time later on. I reckon you’d have to say that was the Pentland in me: our belief in what we call predestination.
Now, Jim was jest the other way. The War changed him round the other way. And, as I say, hit didn’t happen all at once. Jim was the happiest man I ever seed that mornin’ that we started out from home. I reckon he thought of the War, as we all did, as a big frolic. We gave hit just about six months: we figgered we’d be back by then, and, of course, that jest suited Jim. I reckon that hit suited all of us. Hit would give us all a chance to wear a uniform and to see the world, to shoot some Yankees and to run ’em north, and then to come back home and lord it over those who hadn’t been, and be a hero and court the gals.
