Colonel Jubal Anderson Early’s 6th Brigade, held in reserve behind Longstreet, came up in support and drove the Yankees back until they came no more. The men of the 3rd stood tensed, listening to the bang of artillery, the crack of small arms like a pitch-pine log in a fire, watched the clouds of smoke building over the trees. They stood ready until the tension began to ebb away and they headed down that slope to boredom, and there they would stay until the big guns began to fire again.
“We’re in the right place for a fight, I reckon,” Jonathan continued. He was nervous. The only time he showed any interest in what the army might do was when he was nervous.
“General Beauregard seems to think so,” Robley said. Nearly all of the Confederate troops were massed at that end of the line, the Confederate right. Bonham, Longstreet, Jones, Ewell, Early, and Holmes had all been positioned there, strung out behind the Bull Run.
The day before, as brigades of Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah had begun to arrive by train—to the great relief of the Confederates, from Brigadier General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, in overall command, to Private Jonathan Bonaventure Paine—they too had been massed near the McLean house. Now they stood in the rear of Bonham, Longstreet, and Jones, ready to come up to support the regiments along the river that would surely take the brunt of the Yankees’ massed assault.
The sun was breaking the horizon and the sky above was blue, clear and blue, and promised more unrelenting heat. The 3rd Brigade, like a great animal coming slowly out of sleep, began to move and shift and shuffle into place. Nathaniel came up, carrying two canteens, one of which he handed to Jonathan.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” he said.
“We drew cards to see who would fill canteens,” Jonathan explained. Robley frowned and shook his head as an officer should.
He ran his eyes over his two younger brothers, recalled how they had looked standing under the big tree in the front yard of Paine Plantation, their uniforms new and perfectly fitted, the leather of their belts and cartridge boxes gleaming black, their faces red-cheeked and eager. They looked like theatrical soldiers then, boys in costume.
They did not look that way anymore. They had lost so much weight that their clothes hung loose on them, and they wore their uniforms with the casual air of professionals. The leather belts and cartridge boxes were cracked and dusty and faded. Only their rifles retained the luster of newness, and that was only through meticulous maintenance. They had been soldiers long enough to know what was important and what was not.
In the distance they heard a gun fire, the flat bang of a cannon, field artillery.
“Shush!” Robley said to Jonathan, who was opening his mouth to speak. The three boys cocked their heads. The gunfire was far off, three or four miles at least.
“Sounds like it’s up by the Warrenton Turnpike,” Robley said in a whisper, pleased for the chance to display a knowledge of the terrain. “Fifth Brigade might be getting it…”
“You reckon that’s the Yankees attacking?” Nathaniel asked, also whispering.
“No. It’s a feint, I’ll wager. Real attack is going to come here.” And then, as if in support of his prediction, they heard artillery opening up much closer and to the north, a battery that must be aimed at them. Robley felt the sharp jab in his stomach, the sweat break out on his palms. So many times had the charge of excitement come and then drained away that he thought he would never feel it again. But with the sound of the guns he was flashed up in an instant, ready to go.
“You scared?” Jonathan asked, speaking soft.
Robley considered his answer. “No. You?”
“No.”
“I’m not either,” Nathaniel offered, but they were all lying and they all knew it.
Captain Clarence F. Hamer came stamping up the line, his tall boots in high polish, his tailored gray coat buttoned snug around his midriff, the top of his kepi a swirl of gold lace. “Lieutenant Paine! Get the company in order! We move out in half an hour. You hear?”
“Yes, sir!” Robley fairly shouted. He turned to the soldiers closest to him—his brothers—and began to issue orders. “Fall in, there! Get ready to march, men!” The order to move, to actually move, pitched his excitement even higher. And when Nathaniel and Jonathan said nothing but “Yessir!” and stumbled off to fetch their gear, he knew that they felt the same.
It was an hour and a half after Hamer’s orders that Private Nathaniel Paine splashed into the Bull Run River. The warm, brown water quickly filled his shoes so that each step was accompanied by a sucking, squishing feel. He wished he could shed them, go barefoot, as he had for half of his life, but Robley would not like that.
Nathaniel felt twisted up, alternately nauseated and jubilant. He wanted to get into the fight, he wanted to run, he wanted to move just to release the awful tension boiling inside. Robley could issue orders and yell at the beats, Jonathan could make jokes and get the ranks roaring with laughter. Nathaniel did not have those safety valves, so he marched, and that was some relief. But the pace was agonizingly slow, stopping, starting, stopping, until he wanted to scream with frustration.
They crossed through the river and trudged up the bank on the north side, and Nathaniel considered how he was now at the northernmost point on earth he had ever been. It was pretty, with the rolling green fields and the darker trees and the brown roads crisscrossing the country. Pretty, but not the place he would care to spend eternity.
Off to the left, northeast of their position, he could hear artillery making it a hot morning for someone. Longstreet’s brigade, he imagined. Third Brigade was marching now, and he wondered where they were going, what they were trying to accomplish. March on Centreville? Hit the flank of a Union attack? What was it like, to hit a flank? It was an expression he had heard again and again from the many would-be generals in camp, but he had only the vaguest idea of what it meant.
Still, they were moving toward something, and that alone buoyed him. The marching was good, the final call to action. And just as his shoes were starting to dry, and he was taking some joy in the long, rhythmic strides of the army advancing, someone called a halt.
The sound of tramping feet died away, and in its place came groans of frustration, muttered curses. Some said, “Aw, now what the hell is it?” loud, so the words carried over the ranks.
Jonathan, at Nathaniel’s side, shouted back, “We got to wait for the Yankees to change into their brown pants!” It was not a particularly funny reply, but in that charged atmosphere the men would have laughed at anything, and they laughed at that.
For twenty minutes or so they remained in place, on the road, standing ready to move out. Then slowly, like a cube of sugar in coffee, the tight ranks began to dissolve. Men leaned on rifles, then sat on the road, then stretched out on the roadside with their heads on their knapsacks and fell asleep. Others wandered down into the fields that bordered the road and began to eat the ubiquitous blackberries off the tall, dense, thorny bushes.
To the northwest the artillery continued to pound away, and farther off, five miles or so, on the Confederate left, where there was not supposed to be a battle, they could hear sounds that sounded very much like a battle indeed. Over the tops of the trees, smoke like low-lying fog rose from the field and hung there. And on the Confederate right, where the 3rd Brigade waited, the insects buzzed in the grass, the songbirds flashed through the trees, and the men ate blackberries and dozed.
The morning grew hotter, the men more lethargic, and the gunfire off to the far left grew more intense. Jonathan sat on the road, leaning on his knapsack, and Nathaniel sat beside him. From his knapsack he pulled a battered leather-bound journal and the pencil that he kept stuck in the binding.