WELCOME BACK, ALVA
“our hero return’d”
The floor of the room had been cleared away—a thick rug had been rolled up and shoved in a corner.
On the bare floorboards two soldiers danced a spirited turn to the fiddle’s tune. Their faces were bright with sweat and excitement and they laughed as they turned and kicked around each other.
One was dressed in a tattered uniform of dark blue cotton and his face was torn and bloody, the skin hanging in ragged strips. He didn’t seem to mind, judging by how he laughed and clapped to keep time.
His partner looked in far better shape. He was a giant of a man, maybe seven feet tall. He was dashing in a green frock coat and tight gray trousers, his shoes shined to a high luster. The chevrons on his sleeve were picked out in gold embroidery. A shaggy mane of hair and a thick beard shot through with traces of gray framed a tanned, slightly lined face. His eyes were deep and soulful and very brown.
None of the room’s occupants seemed to notice Caxton as she clomped up the last risers and into the square room. They were too busy watching the wild dance, too absorbed in drinking and eating their fill.
Even as she raised her patrol rifle and tried to get a bead on one of the dancers’ hearts, not a single eye tracked her.
Then she fired—and everything changed.
92.
They came at us all at once. That is called Pickett’s charge now, but at the time we did not know who had called the advance. At the time it was only a wall of gray, sweeping toward us, as if some dam had been burst open and floodwaters were rushing uphill right at us. They screamed as they came, even as our mortars blew them to bits, even as General Berdan’s Sharpshooters picked them off one after the other. Still they came, our muskets blazing, and still they came, with banners flying. They pushed up against us, spun and died as they ran athwart our bayonets and still they came!
They broke our ranks. We pushed them back and they pressed us harder. The guns spoke volumes, the smoke so thick I could suddenly see nothing, and wandered mazed through a world that had lost all color and definition. I brushed up against the flank of a horse and muttered a pardon. The rider leaned down to get a look at me. It was General Hancock. “Have your men ready, sir,” he said, his eyes wide. “Make them ready!” He dashed off into the gloom and a moment later I heard him cry out. Had he been struck by enemy fire? I learned later that he had, and most grievously, but that he refused to leave the fighting. By God, even the generals were not safe that day!
I rushed back to where the coffins lay, watched over by a small guard of wounded men. I would have thrown them open at that very minute, and bid Griest and his men come forward and do battle, but time was against me. Despite the black pall over the sky the night was still far off.
—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER