11

i n mid- february, six weeks after we’d left romney, jim blue’s father waited for an

opening in the weather and then, driving his weatherworn wagon, braved the frozen valley road

to haul bundles of food and clothing from our families. he also toted letters from home and

newspapers. beards settled down on a log with the staunton spectator spread on his knees and a

salty ham biscuit in one hand. contentment played across his features until he read the

headlines. “look at this! it says the confederate government plans to draft men for two more

years, or until the end of the war. that can’t be.”

“what’s a draft? i never heard of a draft,” mccorkle said. he spat toward the campfire and

scratched his ankle. all of us were peppered with red lice bites.

“i think it means they’re going after every man fit to fight and won’t let him go until they’re

finished with him. it’s something new. it’s got nothing to do with volunteering or free choice, as

i understand it,” said jim blue.

“let me see that,” zeke said. frowning, he held the grease-stained paper before his nose for a

few minutes. “well, i’ll be damned. if that’s not a poke in the eye. what about that noble

speechifying on people’s rights we heard from the new government? they must have forgotten

about all that.” he then read aloud that we could re-enlist now with our current company—that

being company d—or we could go home, lay about for a few weeks, and then for absolute

certain, be called back to fight.

pa also saw the news and sent me a letter outlining what he viewed to be my options. first,

he recommended that i re-enlist where i was. that way i’d remain with long-time augusta

comrades on whom i could depend and the leaders whom i knew. strangers wouldn’t value my

fate as highly, and new leaders would have unpredictable flaws. jackson’s brigade was

guaranteed to stay in virginia. if drafted, i might be sent to kentucky, mississippi, texas, or

who knows where, too far to furlough home and out of reach of home provisions. he also

speculated that anyone who deserted now would be in serious trouble. pa was safe from the

draft. besides being too old, he was a miller, and like blacksmiths, worked at a profession vital

for supplying the army.

zeke was deluded to think we’d ever had much of a choice. sure, we’d enlisted voluntarily,

but quickly our three-month term had been extended to a year. now the government had us by

the scruff of the neck until the end of the war, and who could say when that would be. by the

time of this latest news, most boys couldn’t tolerate their officers and didn’t much fancy being

shot at or killing others. i was one of those, but in addition, the agonized screams of men and

horses in battle now haunted me. nightly i heard them as i trudged, shivering and teeth

chattering, through icy dreamscapes with towering peaks of snow.

in a shrinking realm of choices, another was to just plain quit soldiering. during the first

year, boys wandered off because they couldn’t stand erect—much less fight—while sick with

chronic dysentery, measles, mumps, and typhoid. afterward, they just stayed home. they

sauntered off to visit friends engaged in battles elsewhere, journeyed down the valley to visit an

ailing wife or child, or chose to linger awhile in areas unaffected by the war. drifting back into

camp, they paid for their sins with a night or two in the guardhouse or sloshing the officers’

laundry in a nearby creek. but that all changed after the draft and the first full winter of the war.

i had a passing late acquaintance with a deserter—dallas bunn from wake county, a plug-

short, straw-headed fellow whose superior skills on the mouth harp drew our notice. everyone

called him jug, as his protruding ears resembled handles. he was only eighteen when he was

drafted with his cousin wesley bunn, ten years older. a year must have seemed aplenty,

because the bunn cousins then ran off with eight other north carolina boys in may ’62, just

after our second battle of the year, first winchester. in camp we were used to hearing the north

carolinians grouse even louder than virginians about being forced to fight. they had less at

stake; their homes weren’t being invaded. as an older man when i studied books analyzing the

war, i learned another reason they were less enthusiastic. seventy-five percent of folks in the

entire south owned not one slave and got no benefit from the practice. but with the draft, they

were all forced to defend it.

when we got wind that jug had been among the captured, beards and i trudged over to the

log brig to visit. the number of armed guards patrolling the perimeter was a bad sign. “hey,

jug! are you somewhere in there?” beards hollered toward the window. a mournful- eyed

dallas bunn appeared behind the bars, his pale face scratched red from his time in the brush.

“yep. can’t go no place else.” a sigh so deep it sounded like it was dug from the ground

came out of his chest.

“you’re in a fine kettle of fish, boy. what the hell happened?” beards had met jug during his

campground tours in the evenings. dallas drew closer to the opening. he looked both ways

before speaking in a low voice.

“someone must have snitched on us. that’s the only way i figure we ended up here. i never

fathomed this outcome yesterday when we lit off for the foothills. we’re mountain folk and

figured we’d be out of catching’s way in that tough terrain before word got out,” he said.

“someone snitched for sure.” his knuckles whitened on the cell bars. “i’ll make him pay if i

ever find out.”

“how’d you get caught?” i asked.

“all in all, it was rougher going than we reckoned. on foot we couldn’t get much ahead of

the mounted scouts if they knew where we was headed.” he sighed again and shifted his weight.

“goddamned snitch. otherwise, i’d be gone by now.”

“i know how hard going that country is,” i said. i’d once gone bear hunting with pa in the

blue ridge mountains. it was a custom for all thirteen-year-old males. i was amazed to see how,

up and down the valley, barn-sized boulders braced one another—tumbled eons ago from their

perch at the top. they littered the forest. rocky terrain and serpentine tree roots ensnared boots

and made climbing difficult work. dense growths of blueberry bushes, laurel, and rhododendron

crowded the slopes and at times made them impassable. under their branches laden with pink

and white blossoms in late may, toxic poison ivy sprang up and twisted its hairy tendrils into

nearby trees. poison ivy is everywhere in virginia, but it’s even worse in the mountains. an

unwary passerby was guaranteed days of itchy welts and seeping blisters after contact with its

leaves— unless he knew about the antidote of a smear of jewelweed. we soldiers rejoiced

whenever we saw poison ivy’s watery pimples speckling the faces of yankee corpses—boys

who a day or so earlier had flopped down in the midst of the unfamiliar weed to take aim at us.

jug told us how, when the ten of them finally reached the summit, they found a toothless

crone, wrinkled as a cabbage, squatted in front of a poor shanty. she had a wounded rabbit laid

across her lap that she was cutting loose from a crude leather and stick trap. it appeared to be

near dead with fear.

“my word, where’d y’all come from?” she cried, dropping the creature. one look told her the

boys were runaways. “lightening should be about here, yet there was nary a sound. it’s a

mystery why he didn’t warn me of you fellows.” she looked to and fro, and then keened out his

name.

jug told us how her wolf-like dog scared them to death when he bounded into the clearing,

but the dog wasn’t interested in them. he hurled himself toward the rocky ledge, baying his

heart out. the old woman said the dog’s barking must mean that more folks were coming their

way, and she suspected this time they were trackers. she hurried the boys to a dilapidated pigsty

behind her shack and instructed them to lie low. grabbing the rigid rabbit by its hind legs, she

ran into her shanty and slammed shut the rickety slab door. a heavy crossbar thunked into place

inside.

beards was aggravating a pebble back and forth with his shoe while jug talked. “unh-oh, that

spells trouble,” he said.

“it sure as hell was,” jug said. “a heap more trouble than we needed. pretty soon two

confederate scouts rode over the ridge, that dog yammering at their heels. the soldiers foraged

around for sturdy tree branches and then rammed the door through and drove the old woman

into the yard, butcher knife in hand. my mouth waters now just thinking what a fine stew that

rabbit would have made.” he said the old woman dropped her knife like a hot stone and cried

out when the soldiers threatened her with drawn pistols. she was quivering and shaking so, he

felt bad about bringing trouble upon her.

“did you recognize either of the soldiers?” i asked.

“no, but the tall blonde one threatened to burn down her shanty if the old woman didn’t

confess where the runaways were hiding,” he said. she jabbed a scrawny finger to where jug

and the others were bunched up peering through the pigsty’s knotholes. the soldiers hollered,

“we know you cowards are in there. show your faces, and we might go easy on you.” the boys

were frozen in place, speechless. “you get one more invitation to join me and my friend out

here, or we’ll set you afire,” they hollered.

“that last threat must have scared you aplenty,” i said.

“you bet it did, but we were quiet as church mice except for my cousin wes. his piss made a

noise splashing the ground.” he said the light-haired soldier lit a branch from a match struck on

his boot heel and approached the back of the hovel. eyes bulging, wes set the tip of his rifle

against a large knothole. jug said he poked him and made motions not to shoot, but wes fired

anyway. they couldn’t tell if he meant to, or if his trigger finger was trembling so hard that

terror made it happen. his bullet struck the short one with the beard, an officer named malleck.

an oath flew out of his mouth as well as a shower of teeth, blood, and mess before he tumbled

over.

“son of a bitch!” beards stopped fiddling with the pebble. my mouth had dropped open at

that piece of news.

“my god, you’re really in for it now,” i said.

a sob choked jug’s voice. “none of us wanted that man to die. wes just intended to stop him

from setting us afire. we never meant to hurt nobody.”

“what’d you do next? you had no place to run to,” beards said.

jug said he and the boys had kicked open the door and fallen out in a frightened pile, tripping

over themselves with their hands raised. they believed that surely the remaining soldier would

see it was an accident and give them clemency for turning themselves in. “they’d promised it,”

he said.

he took a long pause. “but that’s not what they have in mind now. oh lord, i’d like to see

ma and sis one more time.” his voice trailed off at the end, and sobs welled up. he sobbed until

he couldn’t get his breath.

beards passed his hand through the bars and squeezed jug’s shoulder. “oh, man, i’m sorry,”

he said.

i shook my head in sympathy. “me too,” i said bleakly. but there was nothing we could do to

help. he gave a hopeless shrug and disappeared into the cell’s darkness.

i saw them all die. jackson detailed an equal number of shooters from each company, and

they were divided into ten squads, one for each deserter. an additional ten reserve shooters were

also chosen. in all, one hundred and ten men were selected. imagine that—being ordered by

your commanding general to mow down the very boys who’d covered you in battle and with

whom you’d enlisted. these boys were not our enemies, but our brothers. i’d rather have been

shot myself than to be a shooter.

at the bugle call after breakfast, tayloe, beards, mccorkle, and the rest of us gathered into

winding double lines that snaked along three sides of a broad wheat field. thousands of men

gathered there in formation—jackson’s entire brigade. not a sound was uttered as we waited.

across from us on the fourth side of the field were ten upright logs dug in the ground earlier that

morning. each was a little taller than a man’s head. i couldn’t look at that scene but wondered at

the peacefulness of the moment. breezes ruffled the wheat and hinted at the advancing warmth

of summer. a red- tail hawk caught the uprising drafts and circled overhead, wings tipped

toward the sun.

finally, guards paraded the ten deserters around the division to wooden posts. i tried to catch

dallas bunn’s eye, but each condemned man bore his head high and eyes straight ahead like he

was proud to be singled out. beards repeatedly cleared his throat next to me, and nervous

coughs disturbed the silence.

a guard bound the boys’ hands behind the stakes, bandaged their eyes with white strips of

cloth, and then gave a hand signal to the firing party. ready, aim, shoot and a hundred muskets

belched forth. all spat bullets at the same moment, but not all found their mark. the ten reserves

were then called out to stand before their squads. they were ordered to fire again. their reduced

number and prominence on the field made it impossible to intentionally aim a bullet too low or

too high. when all was done—when death finally quelled the last twitching and hushed the last

moan—the division paraded past those boys, now sliced almost in half by the volley of bullets.

most of them, like dallas, were only nineteen years of age.

zeke, famous for his precision aim, had been chosen from our company to join the execution

squads. i could see zeke clearly from where i stood. he tried to conceal his weeping and the

tremor in his hands, but i knew. many of us feigned protecting our eyes from the sun’s glare to

hide the disgracing tears. it’s one thing for a man to take aim at pillagers, but it is quite another

to witness fellows shot dead for yielding to feelings familiar to the rest of us. as we trudged past

the bodies, i heard a boy behind me pray, “may you all rest in peace with the angels of god

around his throne on high.” camp was somber that night, with packed attendance at prayer

meeting.