Forrest looked around at the others, as if for confirmation, and the other officers nodded their delighted agreement. Then Fairfax looked Bowater up and down and said, “Dear Lord, sir, what has happened to you?”
21
GREAT BATTLE AND GLORIOUS VICTORY
The greatest battle since that of Waterloo was fought yesterday, in the neighborhood of Manassas, between 50 and 60,000 Southerners on one side and 95 to 100,000 Yankees and Hessians on the other. The loss is not known, except that it was great on both sides.
— Richmond Whig, July 22, 1861
The Great Battle was two days gone when word reached Paine Plantation, just south of Drumgould’s Bluff on the Yazoo River. Robley Paine read about the event with a strange back-and-forth pull of emotions. It was the birth of his nation, and like the birth of his sons a bloody, wrenching, frightening affair. Like the birth of his sons, it should have filled Robley with an irrepressible joy.
But that was not what he felt, sitting on the wide porch, under the blue-painted ceiling, reading the newspaper accounts, the bold type that heralded victory, last-minute arrivals that turned the tide of Yankee and Hessian attacks.
What Hessians? Robley wondered. All the papers were filled with allusions to the Hessians.
Despite these accounts of Southern heroism, brilliant leadership in the field, feats of courage, Robley’s eyes moved again and again to the single line: The loss…was great on both sides.
How will I know about my boys ? he wondered. If they are hurt or killed, will the army write me? If not, I will have to wait until the boys themselves write, to find out what has become of them.
Paine thought of the boys’ mother. He glanced up at the front door, as if she might be standing there. His sons had not been overly vigilant about writing, as he had suspected they might not. That silence had only added to Katherine’s already great misery. News of the battle had sent her to her bed. He wondered if she could endure a long wait to hear from the boys.
What if they are hurt? Or…
The papers were reporting that nearly 160,000 men had participated in the fight, Union and Confederate. Even if twenty thousand were casualties, that was still only one man in eight. And of those, most would only be wounded. An even smaller number would actually be dead.
When his boys marched off, Robley Paine had been dreadfully worried that they might receive wounds, but now that was hardly a concern. It would not be so very bad if they were wounded, he caught himself thinking. Not so much as to cripple them or kill them, just enough that it took them out of the fighting, let them come home with honor.
He shook his head, tried to distract himself from those dark thoughts. There was a dispatch from Norfolk, the paper reporting some minor victory by an armed tug of the Confederate States Navy. Robley smiled at the thought of the Confederate States Navy, wondered at what a motley collection of tugs and paddle wheelers and barges old Mallory was calling a navy. Still, they had managed to effect something, this navy, so there must be some merit in the idea.
He could not concentrate. He put the paper down, stepped down off the porch and walked the familiar downward slope to the riverbank. His beloved Yazoo rolled on past, that wide, disinterested stream. Did she care if the Yankee vandals were coming, if Yankee steamers would part her with their sharp bows? No, she was just water.
Paine turned back to look at the big house, the open-armed oak, his favorite view in the world. He imagined his boys tramping weary home from the war, seeing that big tree, its limbs like open arms, welcoming then back to the one place of earth that would always be their sanctuary. How much more beautiful would that tree look after the terror of war? Robley ached for that day to come. He ached to get word of his boys.
Four days later he did.
The letter was from Richmond, a printed envelope with the name of the Department of War. The very look of the thing was ominous, loathsome. Robley carried it unopened into the library. He felt sick to the point of nausea just holding the horrible thing, still sealed, in his hand. Finally, with trembling fingers, he tore it open.
Dear Sir:
We regret to inform you of the death of Lt. Robley Paine, Jr., Company D, 18th Mississippi Regiment, 3rd Brigade, during the late Battle of Manassas. Lt. Paine fought bravely in defense of his country.
Regretfully,
E. R. Burt, Colonel, 18th Mississippi
Robley fell back in the winged chair, staring at the stark, cold, typed words. He thought of his beautiful boy, four years old, blond hair and smudged face, running across the lawn, whooping like a wild Indian. He thought of him in his lieutenant’s frock coat, lying splayed out on the battlefield, dead eyes open and staring skyward, flies buzzing around open wounds. Robley Paine had seen enough battlefield casualties to know what they looked like, to guess how his lovely, handsome boy had ended up. The tears rolled down his cheeks and the sobs rose from his chest.
He heard soft steps in the hall, approaching the study, and he panicked. He did not want his wife to see the letter, but he could not hide it, and he could not lie to her.
“Robley, whatever is it?” But he did not have the strength to reply, or even move. She crossed quickly, plucked the letter from his hand. She gasped, dropped the paper, fled from the room.
It was several hours before Robley could find it in himself to stand up, to drag himself upstairs to the bed on which his wife had flung herself in her grief. He tried to comfort her, but there was little comfort in him.
Three days dragged by in a purgatory of grief, and then another letter arrived and it was in an envelope like the first. Robley opened the envelope in a numb, mechanical way, thinking vaguely that the regiment had by accident dispatched two letters announcing Robley Junior’s death. He unfolded the letter.
Dear Sir:
We regret to inform you that, as of this date, Private Nathaniel Paine, Company D, 18th Mississippi Regiment, 3rd Brigade, and Private Jonathan Paine, ditto, are missing. As their names have not appeared on any of the lists of prisoners taken by the enemy, we fear they must be presumed deserted or dead.
Regretfully,
E. R. Burt, Colonel, 18th Mississippi
Robley did not know what to think. Even if his mind had not been so muddled with grief for his eldest son, he would not have known what to make of it.
Not prisoners, so deserted or dead. For a hopeful second he thought that perhaps they had deserted, perhaps they had left the army, were coming home that very moment, coming back to the proper side of their moat, their Yazoo River, where he would keep them safe. Let a provost try to extract them from Paine Plantation. It would never happen. The Yankees would seem a trifle compared to the way Robley Paine would fight to protect his boys. They would be safe there, within the family kingdom.
No sooner did that happy thought occur to him than he banished it away, and in its place came a new level of grief. His boys would not desert. He knew them too well to find hope in that thought. They would willingly die, side by side, but they would never desert.
And that left death. Their perfect bodies shot down by Yankee killers, left to rot in the hot sun. Robley Paine had seen the bloated, bursting corpses, the black faces of the battle dead. He saw his boys in their toy-soldier outfits, shot dead in some thick tangle of brush, some impenetrable wood where they would never be found, where their flesh would become carrion.