After the reveille Company C gave Tomo a triple hurrah. The sonorous, Teutonic sound washed over him as he stood on his barrel. He played their breakfast call at six-thirty, their sick call at eight. He stood outside the hospital tent watching the invalids line up — in Company C there were only a few, and they were all genuine sick, not shirkers — and sipped the thick, bitter coffee Aaron Stanz had given him to drink in a soup can. Tomo strode up to a man in line and said, “My papa’s a surgeon.” The man had a green face and stank of ammonia. He said nothing to Tomo, but smiled weakly. Tomo ran back to his barrel and played fatigue call, then went and watched as Aaron Stanz helped to bury dead horses. The company had saved them up for him, a perfunctory punishment for his temporary desertion. His coworkers were two men who had stolen a pie from a sutler. The horses were ripe. Three times the two thieves took time out from the work to retire into the bushes, where they made a noise that was like hurrah! without the h.
“That grave’s too shallow!” Tomo kept saying to the two, but they had no English, and weren’t inclined anyway to listen to a boy. Aaron Stanz was working on his own grave, but when he came over at last to see how their work was coming along he said as much as Tomo had. There followed a brief argument, which ended when they dragged a stinking carcass over and pushed it into the hole. The legs stuck out a good two feet above the ground.
“Oh, that’s spicy!” Tomo said, leaning over the grave and getting a faceful of the rotten miasma. He did not watch as the thieves went to work with saws, but ran back to his barrel to play the drill call. He tagged along the back of the line as Company C drilled in the rising heat of the morning. He fetched water for Private Frohmann, and for a pair of twin corporals named Weghorst to whom Tomo naturally gravitated.
At noon, he was back on his barrel, playing the dinner call. He took a meal to Aaron Stanz and the thieves, who had skipped drill to continue their work, but they would not eat, so Tomo split the food with Johnny the drummer boy, who was by turns sullen and friendly all through the day. Tomo played another drill call after dinner, then watched from a tree with Johnny as the battalion marched and turned on the parade ground.
At quarter to six, he blew the call to inspection and dress parade, then shaded his eyes against the bright boots and brass of the Ninth. They were a shiny bunch, and Tomo felt somewhat slovenly among them. He was glad for the dusk which hid his dirty Claflin britches, his stained shirt and patched coat. As the camp darkened he played the supper call, and later, with beans still on his breath, the assembly of guard.
He spent some time fashioning crosses from twigs and twine, while Aaron Stanz stomped down the last of the horse graves. After Tomo had planted the crosses, he went back to the barrel and played tattoo, summoning the company to the last roll call of the day. The very last name read was his own — or rather the one he had adopted. “Alphonsus Hummel!” shouted the first sergeant, but there was no response. Tomo, sitting on his barrel with his chin on his fist and his eyes closed, had fallen asleep. The whole company had a chuckle at him. Aaron Stanz carried him sleeping to the tent, but woke him later to play taps. That was Tomo’s favorite tune — he always felt something settle, deep and peaceful, inside of him when he blew the last note. He heard the fifers in other companies blowing that last note, and other drummers knocking out the few final beats of the day. Johnny had overcome his distaste for bugle-infantry miscegenation and was tapping similarly next to him. Tomo stood on his barrel and watched the lighted tents go dark one by one, and then he waited in vain for another party to begin. His napping had left him wide awake, but the previous evening’s revelry had been solely a function of Aaron Stanz’s return, and not an every-night occurrence. So, after Johnny left him, Tomo sat next to the remains of the party-fire with a balled-up rag muffling his bugle, and he played the whole day through twice more before he retired.
“This company is cursed,” said Johnny. “They lost three fifers since Shiloh. Death wants ’em. They can’t keep ‘em.”
“I ain’t a fifer,” said Tomo. The boys were watching an artillery drill. Tomo wanted them to hurry up and fire the guns, but they only seemed to be dragging them haphazardly all over the field. He had been in camp a whole week and not yet heard a big gun fired.
“That’s no matter,” said Johnny. “Death’ll gobble a bugler just as quick, if he’s dumb enough to march with Company C. We ain’t marched yet, though. It’s early enough you could live, if you ran off now.”
“You put that curse up your ass,” said Tomo, and then cheered and blew a toot on Betty, because six guns had very quickly been lined up, and, in what seemed like the space of a few breaths, were loaded and fired. There came a second group of explosions as the shells burst near targets at the end of the field. One gun overshot and destroyed the top of a tree in the woods. Tomo blew a soft dirge for the departing magnolia.
“That’s your song, you dead bugler, you rotting blowhard,” said Johnny, but there was little venom in his voice. That first week, he had made himself Tomo’s companion. Tomo did not mind him. He was lonely for Gob, and it was good to have a body around to talk to, for all that Johnny said doom when he was not bragging about how his drum had been blown up by a shell at Shiloh.
When the drill was over, they ran across the field, into the woods to look at the fallen magnolia. For a little while they played in unnaturally low branches, until Johnny ducked behind the tall stump and sat down. He told Tomo to come and sit by him.
“Time to pet my snake,” he said, lifting his hips so he could pull his pants down to his knees. Tomo had seen this thing done before, but it was not something he thought he would like to do himself. Didn’t he pet his snake? Johnny asked him. Didn’t nobody ever show him how?
“It’s only about the best thing ever,” he said, tugging languidly at his member, which was even whiter and more grublike than its proprietor. “Go on,” he said. “Give it a try.” Tomo took down his pants and gave himself a few pulls, just to shut the boy up. “Ain’t that grand?” asked Johnny. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree. Tomo pulled up his pants and climbed up to the new top of the magnolia. There was a little fire there, which he patted out with his coat sleeve.
Below him, Johnny kicked his feet and bounced his hips up and down, and turned his head to kiss the tree. “Ah, Mrs. Davis, you are a fucking beauty!” he moaned, and then shouted wordlessly three times, each time louder than the last, the last so loud Tomo thought the guard must come into the woods to see who was being murdered. Johnny uttered an expansive sigh, then put his hands behind his head.
“Where are you, bugler?” he called. Tomo whistled above him. Johnny climbed up and shaded his eyes to look out over the camp, which sprawled as far as they could see.
“I think I see General Thomas,” said Tomo.
Johnny said, “Pretty soon I’ll start to spurt. Then I’ll find a girl and have me some babies.”
In another week, the Ninth marched out. Tomo played on Betty as he walked next to Aaron Stanz. They were going south and east, into Georgia, their movement part of a grand design to maneuver Bragg out of Chattanooga. “Chattanoogey,” Tomo kept saying to himself, and giggling. “I never been to Chattanoogey.”