"I'll get you out, Lije." He leaped for the tree, slipped his hands under, pulled. Pain shot through his back. The oak trunk didn't move.
He twisted around. "You men help me!"
"Fruitless," Lije murmured. He closed his eyes, licked his lips, repeated the word, then said, "Withdraw, Lieutenant. The enemy fire is growing too heavy. Withdraw — that is my direct — order."
Though badly frightened, several of the volunteers ran up and attempted to lift the oak. The trunk rose about two inches. Then the hands of one man slipped, and the oak fell again. Billy heard Lije's teeth clench and scrape.
"Withdraw," he whispered.
"No," Billy said, his control breaking down.
"William Hazard, I order —"
"No, no." He was crying. "I can't leave you to die."
" 'What man is he that liveth — and shall not see death?'"
"Don't spout Scripture at me," Billy yelled. "I won't see you left here."
"I will not be." Though Lije's voice was faint, he articulated each syllable. "I trust the Master's promise. 'He that heareth — my word'"— in the shell-struck rifle pit, men shrieked like children, without cease — "'— and believeth in Him that sent me — shall not come into condemnation but — is passed from death unto life.' I was — meant to fall here. You are — meant to live and — take these men —"
Another shell hit in the forest, shredding vines, blasting earth into the smoke, blurring Lije's faint voice with its roar.
"— to safety. I order you."
"Jesus," Billy wept. "Jesus Christ."
"Do not — blaspheme. I order you. Live and — fight on. I — loved you like a son. This was — ordained."
It was not, Billy cried in secret places. It isn't God's will but chance and your stupid Christian sacrifice —
"Come on, sir." Hands tugged. "He's dead, sir."
Billy looked down from the smoke to which his gaze had drifted. Lije's eyes were closed, his face smooth. A silver line of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth nearest the ground. A grasshopper hopped onto his beard and sat there, as if curious about the dead giant.
"Come on, sir," Spinnington repeated. With surprising gentleness, he and another beardless volunteer took hold of Billy's arms. He was dazed, muttering to himself. "We'll come back for his body, don't you worry," said a faraway voice he didn't recognize. He ground a dirty fist into his wet eyes and let them lead him.
Near the headquarters encampment, a surgeon offered a bottle of whiskey. Two swallows jolted Billy awake, made him able to function again. He knew something he hadn't known earlier. God did not rule a war such as this — if indeed He ruled anywhere.
It was dismal to face that truth. Against it, Lije had worn the armor of his faith. It was good armor; it had protected him. Billy felt himself flawed — mean and weak — because he could not don the same armor. But he couldn't. Not after his sojourn in the Wilderness, where the treetops burned through the night, pyres for the dead and dying. Where Billy had watched Lije die. Where Fighting Joe had turned advantage to stalemate, stalemate to defeat.
The retreat to the river began in midmorning, soldiers, cannon, ambulances all pulling out in a mad melee as the reb infantry advanced while the reb artillery kept pounding. Billy, Spinnington, and two others stole forward into the shell-blasted area to retrieve Lije's body. But the guns at Hazel Grove had poured in so much heavy fire and so many trees had ignited and the flames had spread so fast that Lije's body resembled nothing human. None of them, not even Billy, could stand to touch it or look at it for more than a few seconds. They left the charred thing and withdrew.
A realization struck Billy in the midst of the retreat. Well, at least he went to his rest on Sunday.
77
Throughout Monday night, the military telegraph remained quiet for long periods. Tired men came and went at the War Department, some keeping vigil for an hour, others intending to stay until some news arrived. Stanley was among the latter, part of a small group whose status permitted waiting in Stanton's office. The President was there for a while, stretched on his favorite couch but turning restlessly every few minutes.
"Where is Hooker now? Where is General Stoneman? Why in thunder don't they send word?"
Stanley held his temples and worked two fingers down to rub his itching eyes. He was sick of the Chief Executive's impatient rhetorical questions. So was Stanton, evidently; his voice rasped as he replied, "They will break silence at the opportune moment, Mr. President. I imagine the generals are busy consolidating our victory."
It was Tuesday, nearly sunrise. For the past twelve hours, as they received only the sketchiest reports and casualty figures on the wire, an unsupported consensus had spread like a bad cold. Hooker had won a victory, though at a high price.
Not everyone had caught the cold. Welles, the bearded curmudgeon who held the Navy portfolio and had once been a newspaperman in Connecticut, had not. "Perhaps they're silent because there is nothing but bad news. If we'd had success, the reports would be coming in volumes, not paragraphs."
The secretary gave him a long look. Lincoln, too, though his, sorrowing, contrasted sharply with the spleen of Stanton's. "I am beginning to believe you're right, Gideon." Lincoln rose, wrinkled and unkempt, and put his plaid shawl around his shoulders. "Send a messenger the instant we have definitive news." The military guards in the antechamber snapped to attention as he shuffled through the door.
Falling asleep even though he had deliberately chosen a hard chair, Stanley hung on till half past eight, by which time the department's daily routine was well started. With permission from the secretary, Stanley entered Stanton's private dressing closet, splashed his face with tepid water from a basin, then some of Stanton's cologne. He stumbled out into the spring morning in search of breakfast.
He hoped to God that Hooker had won a victory. The party needed not one but several. The presidential election was little more than a year away, and if Lincoln went down, he would carry many others with him. Stanley cringed at the possibility. He had acquired a taste for his job and the power it carried. If Isabel had to retire to Lehigh Station for the rest of her life, she would blame him and make his life even more miserable than usual. A pity he didn't have an antidote for Isabel — some younger and less shrewish female who would understand and sympathize with his problems.
Even at this early hour, hawkers were out. One cried the virtues of bars of soap piled on his curbside stand. Another shoved a cheap telescope in George Hazard's face. Military wagons, private carriages, hacks, and horseback riders crowded the avenue, along with pedestrians and the mule-drawn cars of the street railway. Bell clanging, one car blocked George's passage across Pennsylvania. Short-tempered — last night he and William had argued over the boy's poor marks, and George had slept badly — he scowled at the passengers. Most were men, but a few —
A face, glimpsed and then gone, stunned him. A teamster swore at him. Wheel hubs brushed the skirts of his uniform coat. Then two horsemen blocked his view, and when they passed, it was too late for him to do anything unless he wanted to stage a one-man foot race to pursue the car. He shook himself and weaved on across the street like a drunken man.
When Stanley entered Willard's dining room, he saw his brother breakfasting alone at a table half in sunshine, half in shadow. Stanley's first impulse was to leave. He hadn't seen George since Wade's defeat in the Senate, and undoubtedly George would crow about that. Had the situation been reversed, he would have.