One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;
There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war.
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
Maud descended the stairs to stout applause, perceiving with pleasure that Quinn’s was the stoutest of all.
“Will Canaday has suggested I talk of the war’s reality,” Quinn said to the audience. “These cannon here look like reality to me. . and these flags all full of holes. And those things over there in the Curiosity Shop made by rebel prisoners at Point Lookout: rubber buttons turned into rings, and carved with the word ‘Dixie.’ You could walk right over there now and buy a rebel button and that might qualify as reality. Albany boys in rebel prisons down in Carolina and Alabama are making things too, carving pictures of Abe Lincoln and the flag out of kindling so the rebs can buy them and pitch them in the fire.
“Reality in this war is not always what you think it is. Take the fight at Round Top, when the Forty-fourth from Albany was part of the brigade trying to take that hill. Just a hill like a lot of others in this world, but ten thousand of our men went after it, and only twelve hundred came out alive. A pile of dead people, that’s the reality I’m talking about. The bigger the pile, the bigger the reality. We did get that hill before the rebs, and that’s reality too. A lot of hand-to-hand fighting. When it looked like our boys might get their tails whipped, our batteries opened up and dropped a whole lot of cannon shot on top of everybody — the point, of course, being to stop the rebs. Fact that our boys were mixin’ it up with the rebs wasn’t all that important, and so they got themselves killed by their own cannons. Reality.
“Then there was the major that the general wanted to see but nobody could find him. This major, he was from Buffalo. He was one nice fella, and I knew just how good a soldier he was. The best. We didn’t want him to get into trouble, so we all went out looking for him. I found him under a bridge, having what some folks like to call carnal relations — with a brown chicken. That may not seem like it, but that’s reality.”
Several women exchanged glances at this remark, rose instantly from their seats, and left the gathering. Men snickered at one another and some squirmed. Quinn fell into a natural pacing up and down the platform as he talked, unintimidated by the task for which he claimed to be so ill suited.
“This reb from Texas,” he went on, “when our boys got him in their sights at Round Top he called out to them, ‘Don’t shoot me,’ and threw down his rifle. Soon as he did, one of his fellow Texans shot him in the back. Reality coming up from behind.
“And the attack at Cold Harbor, where seven thousand of our boys died in eight minutes trying to break through Lee’s line. Couldn’t do it. Our dead boys were spread shoulder-to-shoulder over about five acres. You could hardly find any grass wasn’t covered by a dead soldier. That was unnatural reality down at Cold Harbor.
“I remember a letter I helped a young boy from the Forty-fourth write. He wrote what an awful mistake other boys back home had made by not joining up with the glory of the Forty-fourth. He died of inflammation of the brain, somewhere in Virginia. There was also a measles epidemic that killed a bunch of our lads before they ever had a chance to get themselves killed by reb muskets. Sort of a reductive reality, you might call that.
“Then there was this close friend of mine from Albany who was a captain, and we used to talk about things that were real and things that weren’t, though we never put it quite that way, and one day I heard he got shot three times in less than a minute. Shot sitting down and so he stood up, and before he could fall over he got shot again, and then on the way down they got him again, and he didn’t die. Still kickin’ after twenty-three battles, and that’s one of the nicer realities I ever heard of in this war.
“I got my own reality the day I was hit by a spent reb cannonball. Just touched by it, really, and it wasn’t moving very fast. But it knocked me down, broke my leg and made me bleed, and I thought maybe I’d die alone there on the battlefield. I couldn’t even give a good explanation of why I was hit. The battle was long over and I wasn’t a soldier. I was just out there looking for survivors and some reb cannoneer maybe figured, why not wipe out that Yankee bastard? He let one go I never paid any attention to, and it got me. I might be out there yet, but then along came this grayback doctor and I see him working on hurt rebs. I called out, ‘Hey, doc, can you stop my bleeding and set my leg?’ And he said, ‘I cain’t set no laigs. I got soldiers of my own dyin’ here.’ And he went on helping rebs. So I called out and said, ‘Hey, doc, I got money I can pay you if you stop my bleeding and set my leg.’ And the doc looks me over and says, ‘How much you got, son?’ and I say, ‘I got twenty-five dollars in gold I been savin’ for my retirement,’ and he says, ‘Okay, I can help you retire.’ And he comes over and looks me up and down and says, ‘Where’s the gold?’ And I fished in my money belt and showed it to him, and he smiled nice as peach pie at me and went ahead and stitched me up and put a splint on me, and then he wrapped that leg so fine I got right up and started to walk. I gave him the gold and says to him, ‘Thanks a lot, doc,’ just like he was a human being. And he says, ‘Don’t mention it, son, but don’t put too much pressure on that leg,’ just like I was a goddamned reb.”
The squirmers in the audience, spellbound since the mention of bestiality, were at last roused to indignation by the profanity, and a dozen or more men and women rose from their seats, a few shouting out to take Quinn off the platform. But as they left, Quinn moved to the platform’s edge, pointed after them and shouted, “Do you know the reality of Eli Plum of Albany?”
He stopped some in their exit and riveted the hardy remainder. Then he genuflected in front of them all and blessed himself with the sign of the cross.
“We called him Peaches Plum,” said Quinn, “and he was never worth much in any context you might want to discuss. He was one of your neighbors, and he and I went to school together here fifteen, twenty years ago. We were in Virginia, and we heard the drum corps beating a muffled Dead March in the woods near us and we all knew what was coming. Before long, orders came down to form with the whole First Division, and the Forty-fourth moved out onto elevated ground, facing an open field. The men formed a line, division front, facing five fresh graves.
“That, my friends, was a fearful sight. Also very rousing somehow, with all those brass buttons and rifles shining in the sun, and kids watching from trees, and older men alone on horses, or on top of rooves, and everybody’s eye on Peaches and four other boys as they came walking: two, two, and one. Peaches was the one, walking behind the drum corps, and followed by the provost guard, fifty of them with bayonets fixed. Five clergymen walked along, too, reading scriptures, and thirty pallbearers carried five new coffins. The procession went up and back the length of the whole line of battle and then the pallbearers stopped at the fresh graves. The five prisoners stopped, too, and stood there with their hands tied, a guard alongside each one of them. Then those five young men sat down on their coffins.