True Aim
by Toni Artuso
Finally, I crouched behind the stoutest tree trunk within sight of the riverbank but only after the two twelve-pound Napoleon smoothbores of the section of Rebel artillery, their bronze tubes glinting in morning sun, rattled into view across the river and unlimbered between the two companies of Secesh infantry. Moments later, I sucked in my breath with a hiss as two bursts of canister, like shotgun blasts, sprayed the partially-built pontoon bridge. I raised my head to see the engineer captain’s figure, shrunk to the size of a doll at the end of the half-completed pontoon bridge in the middle of the turbid brown river, spin and fall, along with a handful of his men.
“Dammit,” I groaned as I watched two survivors haul him up and, between them, drag him off toward the shore. As they shambled down the planks, the water on either side blossomed with splashes as a hail of Rebel Minié balls followed them and the other uninjured engineers scampering toward safety. Fortunately, the Confederate infantry possessed not even a fraction of the marksmanship of my boys, huddled, like me, behind rocks and tree stumps, futilely picking off gray-coated officers on the far shore. As the threesome reached the end of the bridge, I noted the way the captain sagged between them. As the officer lost blood, he lost strength.
Behind them, the Rebel gunners opened up again, this time with solid shot, splintering the boards of the bridge, then holing the pontoon boats underneath them with plunging fire.
Desperately, I looked back. Behind me, a pair of musicians cowered in the dirt, having abandoned their usual role—in the heat of battle—to act as stretcher-bearers. Their empty litter lay between them, useless. “You two!” I hollered. “Can’t you see that man requires assistance?” I pointed toward the end of the bridge, where the captain and his two helpers staggered.
A young face, beardless, bewildered, and begrimed, looked up. “What?” “Come with me,” I yelled and broke cover, waving for the two to follow. I dogtrotted forward, rifle in hand. I didn’t look back. That’s part of the trick to get men to take your lead. You assume they will, and they do.
Minié balls buzzing past my ears, I sprinted for the head of the bridge. I arrived there in time to watch Captain Willis collapse to his knees between his two men. Now, I looked over my shoulder. The two stretcher-bearers stood behind me, shoulders hunched as if the bullets whizzing overhead were raindrops to be shrugged off, not lead. “Get him on that stretcher!”
The men finally came to life, helping the staggering officer onto the taut canvas between the poles. Blood oozed from his side, puddling on the material, staining its whiteness.
Willis looked up at me; his eyes, previously dulled with pain, lighted briefly with recognition. “Sergeant Smith,” he husked.
“Captain,” I knelt beside him, taking his hand. “These boys are taking you to the field hospital. Right, fellows?” I glanced up at the privates who nodded dully back.
Willis ignored me, spoke past me, desperate to get out his words before the last of his strength and consciousness drained away. “You know who did this,” he said. Wincing, he turned his head to stare uphill at the bluff that towered above us, the colonnaded white portico of the plantation house atop it clearly visible.
“I do, sir,” I gritted out between clenched teeth.
“He told the Sesech,” he gasped. “Now they’re killing my boys.” He nodded toward the unfinished bridge, dotted with blue corpses and bodies, the living huddling desperately for cover among the dead.
“I know, sir,” I nodded, grimly. “And I’ll make sure he pays for it.”
“How?” Willis’s brow briefly wrinkled.
“You’ll see,” I patted him on his shoulder as the men lifted the stretcher, and I stood next to him. “Just keep an eye on that hilltop. You’ll see it when we avenge your men—and you.” With that, the stretcher bearers took him off, anxious, for once, to move quickly because, of course, they headed for the rear.
* * *
I first met Captain Willis under cover of darkness on this very spot two nights before. My squad and I waited to meet an engineering officer and escort him across the river on a scouting mission to find a suitable site for a pontoon bridge. We obviously wanted to keep the Rebels guessing about where we’d cross the river so we waited in shivering silence in the frigid night. After midnight, Willis, along with a handful of his men, rolled up in a wagon with a shallow-draft boat on its bed. We unpacked the skiff, carried it to the water, and my riflemen and I embarked with Willis in the prow, his engineers remaining on the north side of the river, guarding their now-empty wagon. Even though the Confederates held the southern bank, our landing went unnoticed.
Willis struck out along the bank heading west to see how close the nearest enemy picket post lay. We proceeded in single file, Willis taking point, me covering our rear. We crept along silently; as much as possible, we stuck to the shadows cast by leafless trees. We trekked what felt like a considerable distance, our eyes desperately probing the dark woods for the faintest spark of a fire, our breath preceding us in vaporous clouds, our ears—pink with cold—straining to catch even the slightest sound of a sentry’s tread. Though we expected it at any moment, the challenge rang out of the darkness like a thunderclap. Even from my position in the rear, I saw Willis’s right hand shoot up, his raised fist the agreed-upon “halt” signal. We froze, not daring to breathe, as the sentry repeated his demand, “Who goes there?” My men refrained from cocking their rifles since the sound of a cocked lock carries with remarkable clarity to the ears of a jittery picket. I prayed that this particular Rebel possessed cool enough nerves not to foolishly fire blind into the darkness at whatever he heard. Such a wild shot posed no threat to my squad; however, the sound of a single rifle guaranteed answering shots from other pickets all up and down the line, just as one barking hound sets off every other dog all around. Fortunately, this particular Rebel held his fire. When Willis judged it safe, he spun his right hand in the air, and we about-faced, so that I took the point, and he took the rear.
When we reached our grounded boat, under the guard of my corporal and a couple of men, we re-embarked and rowed back across the river. Loading the boat, its flat-bottomed hull still dripping, back onto the wagon, we congratulated ourselves in the growing light of dawn on the surreptitiousness of our reconnaissance. That’s when I spotted him: the horseman with the broad-brimmed hat clearly silhouetted on the ridgeline above us.
“Dammit, Captain,” I pointed to the figure. “We’re being observed, sir!”
Willis tugged at his bearded chin. “We’ve gotta get ’im, Sergeant,” he ordered. “I don’t want to risk those Rebels finding out we’ve got an ideal crossing.”
With a handful of men, under the cover of the trees, I scrambled up the slope, Willis in our wake. By the time we reached the crest, the horseman trotted eastward along the ridgeline toward a large house with a columned portico. A mounted man could always outrun men on foot, but this particular horseman showed no sign of urgency.
“Cheeky devil,” I called over my shoulder to Willis. “He acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be riding around in the predawn darkness, spying.”
Ahead of us, the figure slipped through a gate in the fence surrounding the house and disappeared inside. “Well, at least we know where he’s hiding,” Willis observed.
When we approached the gate, to our surprise, a pair of Federal sentries stepped out of the shadows. One of them, the taller of the two, demanded with the same imperiousness as the Confederate across the river, “Who goes there?”
Willis stepped to the head of the column. “I’m Captain Willis of the 50th New York Volunteer Engineers.”
The stone-faced sentry didn’t flinch. “Do you have a pass, sir? By order of the provost, this house is off limits to all but authorized personnel.”
“We’re in pursuit of a spy who has valuable information about our army’s potential movements. Now, let us through so we can apprehend the man,” Willis demanded.
“There’s no spy here, sir,” the sentry who spoke first replied calmly.
“The hell there isn’t,” Willis fumed. “We just saw the man ride right in here!”
“You mean Colonel Perry, sir? He’s no spy. He’s a loyal Union man. He has a pass from the general, and his property is off limits to all but authorized personnel by order of the provost.”
“We heard you the first time, private,” Willis huffed. “Where’s the officer of the guard? I demand to speak to him!”
The first sentry shrugged and sent his comrade into the house. Moments later, a disheveled-looking officer emerged from indoors, apparently having been roused from his bed and hastily dressed. Willis saluted stiffly, but the provost officer simply touched his right index finger to the broad black brim of his campaign hat. “What’s the problem here, Captain?” he yawned.
The conversation only devolved from there. In the end, we marched back the way we came, empty-handed. As I parted from Captain Willis, he observed with a sigh, “We just have to trust the general is right and that our secret’s safe with Colonel Perry.”
We slept well that night, having been up for 24 hours. It turned out we needed that rest because the next night, well before dawn, we again stood on the riverbank, this time awaiting the arrival of not just a single wagon carrying a single pontoon boat but an entire pontoon train. Pacing back and forth in the darkness, I observed to my corporal, “A squad of us seems like mighty thin cover for an entire train of engineers.”
Corporal LaGrange shrugged and spat as he squatted in the dirt. “Well, according to you and the Captain, the only thing opposing us is a picket post a mile upriver. The engineers probably don’t even need us to protect them.”
When the engineers arrived, they set to work with a will, racing dawn to extend their bridge across the river, but, even with the help of some heavy early morning fog to lengthen the period of their relative invisibility, when the mists shredded and disappeared in the strengthening light, we faced not a random picket post but two companies of Rebel infantry, which immediately opened fire on the engineers crawling like ants over their half-built bridge. Then the Confederate section trundled into view …
* * *
Whirling about, I sprinted toward a large boulder to the west, where LaGrange hid, popping up periodically to take a shot at the Rebels before disappearing back under cover. Panting, I slid down next to him. My corporal regarded me with his usual cool, sardonic gaze above his drooping handlebar mustache. “We finally gettin’ outta here, Sarge?”
Still catching my breath, I nodded.
“Good.” LaGrange paused to tear a cartridge with his teeth. He spit out the torn paper along with a grunt, “We can’t do nothin’ ‘gainst two whole companies.” He pulled his rifle down, tapping the black grains into the muzzle before shoving in the ball. He snagged his rammer from where it lay beside him and drove the round home. Placing the rammer on the ground again, he growled, “This is like pissin’ in the ocean.” He rolled over onto his stomach, simultaneously reaching back to the cap pouch on his belt. He pulled back the cock, placed the cap on the nipple, then propped his rifle barrel on the rock, and sighted coolly down it. He squeezed the trigger, then rolled onto his back again as the smoke from his shot floated past us in the breeze. “We ain’t making no difference.”
“Gather the men,” I ordered. “We’re going up that hill.” I pointed to the mansion atop the bluff. “That house is an excellent firing position.”
LaGrange squinted up at the building. “Well, bein’ on higher ground never hurt none, but a dozen of our rifles against two hundred of theirs? It still won’t make no difference.”
Ignoring him, I continued. “There are lots of trees on that slope,” I pointed out. “Take advantage of that cover as much as possible. There’s no point in exposing the men to fire unnecessarily.”
LaGrange shrugged. “Well, don’t make no sense to me, but you’re the boss-man.”
I leaned forward in a crouch. “I’ll meet you at the house’s gate,” I said and lunged forward, making for the trees at the base of the hill as quickly as possible.
* * *
The Rebel fire slackened the moment I reached the trees at the foot of the hill. Apparently, the Secesh decided anyone getting that far didn’t represent a threat. Scrambling up the slope ahead of my squad, I determined to prove the Confederates wrong. I crested the hill, careful to keep hidden behind the ridge as I sprinted to my right, toward the Perry mansion. At the gate, the tall private again challenged, “Who goes there?” Apparently, he didn’t recognize me, and I meant to keep it that way.
“I’m a Sergeant of Sharpshooters,” I growled, holding back my name.
The guard eyed me skeptically. “A sharpshooter, eh? Why aren’t you wearin’ a green jacket like the rest of Berdan’s boys?”
“We’re still waitin’ for the shipment. You know the Army,” I sighed. Let the provost question every sergeant in Berdan’s outfit afterward. Our story—that we 1st Massachusetts Sharpshooters refused to give up our enlistment bounty money to brigade with Berdan—remained a mystery to most in the Army, and I intended for it to stay that way. “My squad’s behind me, and we’re going through that gate, into the house, and taking up positions on the second floor so we can kill Rebels and give those engineers down there some relief. We could use another rifle if you’d care to join us.”
“Can’t do it, Sarge,” the guard shook his head. “By order of the provost, this house is off limits …”
“We’re coming through,” I shrugged. Behind me, I heard LaGrange and the rest of my boys coming up at the double quick. Without turning, I continued, “Last I checked, privates don’t give sergeants orders. You go fetch the captain of the guard, and I’ll discuss your orders with him.”
“I can’t leave my post,” the private replied stubbornly. “I’m the only one here, and the captain’s back in camp.”
So his partner ran off at the sound of the first shots. “Figures,” I clucked and started forward. He lowered his bayonet tip to within inches of my gut. As I regarded the blade, I heard a half-dozen locks click behind me.
“There’s a whole passel of us and just you,” LaGrange hissed behind me. “You try to run ‘im through, and your body will have a dozen balls in it before it hits the ground.”
The guard gulped, set the stock of his rifle down, and stepped aside. “What you’re doin’ is insubordination,” he grumbled.
“Tell your captain,” I pushed past him.
* * *
We scurried up the back steps and into the mansion’s deserted kitchen. Like the second guard, the servants must have run off when the shooting began. I pushed through the door into a hallway, ran to my right then went through a second door that led into the mansion’s grand main hall. To my right, richly carpeted stairs curved up to the second floor beneath a glittering chandelier. I thundered up the steps, the pounding of my muddy Jefferson brogans multiplied by twelve as my squad followed. At the top of the second-floor landing, I nearly bowled over a square-jawed man, his brown beard streaked with gray. He crossed his arms and mulishly locked his knees, refusing to budge.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded but didn’t wait for an answer before firing off his next question. “And what are you doing in my house?”
I regarded Colonel Orlando Perry coolly. Like so many of the Southern gentry, he styled himself “Colonel,” but clearly he never commanded men—or respect—himself. Instead, he paid overseers practiced with the whip to enforce obedience.
“Where are your womenfolk?” I answered his questions with one of my own.
He lifted his chin defiantly. “I sent them away. I can’t trust them with barbarians like you around.”
“Good,” I snapped. “My boys don’t need the distraction.”
I started past him, and he seized my elbow. “You’re violating your own general’s orders. No one is to enter this house without my express permission. Get the hell out of my house, mudsill,” he snarled. “And take that flea-bitten lot with you.”
I shook him off. “Go get the captain of the guard,” I snapped. “The private downstairs says he can’t leave his post to get him, but you’re free to go.”
I pushed past Perry, who sputtered and futilely spat venomous indignation in our wake. “I’ll see you court-martialed!” He bellowed at our backs as we thumped down his upstairs hall. “You and all your men! I’ll see you all hang for this outrage!” Moments later, I heard him thundering downstairs himself, no doubt to get his horse and ride off in search of the captain of the guard.
* * *
Striding down the hall, I noted a series of doors along the side facing the river. I picked one at random to open and peered in. A canopied bed stood against the wall to my right. Having slept on the ground for months now, my back ached with longing at the very sight. A chest of drawers stood upon the left-hand wall. And a window opened on the wall opposite me. Feeling like a vandal in my mud-streaked shoes and rough wool uniform, my haversack, canteen, and cartridge pouch clanking at my side and threatening to sweep the fine china chamber pot off its doilied perch on the bedside table, I entered and hurried across to the window, throwing up the sash and peering out.
Before me and to my right stretched the mansion’s balcony, offering stunning views of the normally peaceful river which, even now, flowed sluggishly by, while, on the southern bank, the pair of Rebel cannon, their bronze tubes winking in the early morning sun, spewed forth smoke and spat balls onto the northern bank just below us. The Rebel infantry, formed on either flank of the artillery section, disappeared under sheets of smoke as, in unison, they fired volley after volley into our helpless engineers, pinned down, huddling under the riverbank’s scant cover.
“It’s a good thing those Secesh can’t shoot straight,” LaGrange, hunching uninvited at my shoulder, observed laconically.
I turned to my corporal, ready to remind him that his ma, fast friends with mine, taught him to knock and ask permission before he entered a room uninvited, but I skipped that retort. Instead, I grunted, “LaGrange, send the boys out onto that porch. I want ‘em to take out as many of the gun crews as they can.”
LaGrange turned to me, scowling. “Shouldn’t we take out the horses first? When the guns are immobilized, then we can pick off the gunners at leisure.”
I shook my head, on the verge of repeating my usual admonition in such situations, “LaGrange, you’re one stripe short to ask questions,” but, instead, I grumbled, “That’s a fine strategy when we have infantry positioned to take the artillery, but all we’ve got for foot soldiers is a decimated company of engineers—and they’re on the wrong side of the river to capture Confederate guns.”
As usual, he ignored me and continued musing aloud, “All we’re going to do is get the cannoneers mad and draw their fire. Then we won’t be able to stay here.”
“Sometimes drawing their fire is enough,” I grunted.
* * *
I left LaGrange posting the boys and headed back downstairs. Passing through the kitchen, I noted with satisfaction that, before the sounds of musket and artillery fire drove off the house servants in a panic earlier that morning, they’d lit the kitchen fire. It still guttered as, overhead, on the second-floor balcony, the first of our rifles began popping. I stepped back out through the rear door. The lone sentry still stood his post by the gate.
The small but orderly kitchen garden immediately behind the house consisted of a half-dozen short furrows. A row of fruit trees lined the far side. I strode to these, scanning the ground for a fallen branch that suited my purpose. Grabbing the first likely looking candidate, dead for at least a year, I hefted it like a cudgel and nodded, muttering to myself, “This will do.” As I headed back to the house, I heard the familiar scream like a locomotive overhead. I craned my neck as I watched the ball arch gracefully over the peak of the roof then slam, with a shower of dirt, into the kitchen garden, scratching a new furrow, at a haphazard diagonal across the rows, about a hundred yards long, into the tilled earth. As the ball rolled to a stop, I grunted with satisfaction, “Solid shot.” This particular Rebel artillery lieutenant, unlike many of his comrades, demonstrated mastery of his craft. To deprive sharpshooters of their cover in a house, use solid shot to knock down walls. Don’t waste case shot, which just sends shrapnel rattling harmlessly onto the roof.
I looked up to see the sentry vault the fence and scamper down the north face of the hill, heading away from the river—and the fight—at top speed. For my part, I headed back into the kitchen, where I thrust the dry branch into the fire. With the smallest bit of coaxing, it caught. Holding my makeshift torch before me, I started up the stairs. I heard the scream of another ball, and, involuntarily, I cringed when it crashed into the yard, ricocheting onto the porch and careening about, harmlessly spending its fury. With a shudder, I hurried upstairs, spurred by the certain knowledge that, having bracketed their target by overshooting and now undershooting, these Rebel redlegs would send the next round crashing squarely into the second floor, where my boys crouched, firing away, poking the bear that is this highly skilled Confederate artillery section.
I arrived on the upstairs landing just in time to hear the locomotive whistle of the projectile. The hallway 100 feet in front of me exploded as the ball burst through. I dodged to my left, kicking open the first door that I found and sprinting through the bedroom to the window. Thrusting my torch behind me to keep from lighting the curtains, I threw open the sash one-handed. I stuck my head out and bellowed, “LaGrange, get these boys downstairs! It ain’t safe up here!”
LaGrange, flattened on the balcony floor along with all the others, popped up. “You heard the man! Let’s get the hell outta here!”
The others leapt up as well, scrambling across the porch, and, one by one, tumbled through the window. A second ball thundered into the house, splintering the wood 50 feet down from us. LaGrange slid through last, landing with a thud on the carpeted floor at my feet. Still holding my torch over my head with my right hand, I helped my corporal up with my left. “Take the boys downstairs and have them take up positions down there and keep picking off artillerymen.”
LaGrange tugged at his mustache. “They’ll only lower the elevation of their guns and pummel the first floor.”
“Then we retreat from the house, but, first, you gotta drop more Rebel redlegs.”
“I ain’t sure what you’re playin’ at, Smith, but you’re the boss,” LaGrange sighed. “All right, then,” he shouted. “You boys look lively and get yourselves downstairs.” As he hurried in their wake, LaGrange turned to pause at the door. He scowled as he saw me setting the drapes and bed canopy alight. “What the hell you doin’?”
“There ain’t much cover out there,” I nodded toward the back of the house. “Don’t you want some smoke to help mask our retreat?”
LaGrange looked ready to make another retort, but the roar of a ball blasting the room next door decided the matter. He scrambled downstairs and I scurried in his wake, holding my torch aloft.
* * *
When I reached downstairs, I found the boys popping off rounds, crouching down in the parlor and sitting room, thrusting their rifle barrels through the open windows. The dirty white smoke from each shot hung in the still air of the Perry’s best parlor, probably opened only rarely for the most important guests —certainly not the likes of us filthy, uncouth mudsills—and curled lazily into the corners and crept along the carpeted floor like cats stalking. I surveyed the room’s fine furnishings, including a horsehair-filled settee. It reminded me of the one in my aunt’s parlor back home in Lynnfield, most uncomfortable damn piece of furniture I ever sat upon. Overhead, the balls of the Confederate Napoleons continued to hammer, the tinkling of shattering glass and growl of collapsing bedsteads and drawers following the thud of each solid, round ball. The fire upstairs crackled, not having reached the roar of an inferno—yet. LaGrange, true to form, crouched at the middle window among the boys and squeezed his rifle’s trigger. As he pulled it in to reload, he glanced over his shoulder and raised his right brow in a question. “This what you wanted, boss?”
I nodded. “Keep at it, fellows!” I bellowed, as I paced behind them, the smoke from my guttering torch blackening the whitewashed ceiling overhead.
“You know, the Rebs are gonna get our range down here any minute,” LaGrange bawled over his shoulder at me to make himself heard over the racket of our rifles.
Just then, a round shot slammed into the yard, spewing dirt and gravel, bounced up, then ricocheted against the front of the house, dropping with a thud onto the porch, where it rolled a few feet, then quivered to a stop.
“I know,” I hollered back. “The next one will probably come through the house.”
In fact, the next one slammed into one of the columns, which shuddered but held. The one after that, however, splintered the front door from its hinges, the ball careening into the kitchen, where it buried itself in a cupboard, setting off an avalanche of pots and pans as they clattered down.
“Let’s get the hell outta here!” I shouted.
LaGrange sprang up, waving his right hand over his head. “Out the back, fellas!” he growled, “assemble in the rear.”
The boys scrambled past me, tumbling pell-mell down the hall to the kitchen and out toward the back. LaGrange paused at the door to the sitting room. He looked back at me over his shoulder curiously, as I paced from window-to-window, methodically setting drapes on fire one-by-one. Balls pounded the front of the house, shattering windows and walls in other rooms further down.
“More smoke to cover our retreat?” he coughed.
“That’s right,” I barked over my shoulder as I lit the last of the drapes. “Get ‘em on back to camp. We’ve done all we can here. I’ll see you back there shortly.”
LaGrange shrugged, “Yes, sir!” Then he ducked out of the door.
“Don’t call me ‘sir’!” I hollered at his back. “I work for a living!” I pelted out the room after him, pausing just long enough to pitch my makeshift torch onto the horsehair settee, which blazed up satisfyingly, saving some other lad, as yet unborn, from fidgeting on that particular piece of furniture on a sweltering Sunday afternoon when he’d rather be in the shade fishing.
* * *
When I stumbled, coughing and gagging, out the back door onto the path to the kitchen garden, I saw no sign of LaGrange and my squad, other than the gate in the picket fence, which gaped open. I ran to it myself, anxious to get away from the Perry mansion, which still reeled under the hammer blows of the section of Rebel artillery across the river. Smoke poured furiously out the upper story, through windows shattered by the solid round balls hurled at it. I pounded along the crest of the hill, scanning the slope to my right for an easy ascent down into the valley out of sight of the river. I didn’t even notice the horseman charging at me until he almost ran me down.
I staggered back, Orlando Perry bringing his horse to a skidding stop, throwing a shower of dirt and rocks into my face. The planter rose in his stirrups and howled down at me: “My house!” He pointed in the general direction of his mansion. “You’ve destroyed it!”
Spitting dirt out of my mouth and wiping Perry’s spittle from my cheeks, I started to answer when a disheveled-looking captain on an equally lathered horse rode up beside the irate aristocrat. I recognized him as Captain Gordon, the officer in charge of the provost guard stationed to protect the Perry property, but I prayed that he didn’t recognize me. After all, the last time he’d seen me, the shadows of early morning covered my face, and Captain Willis did all the talking. Summoning my best subservient sergeant air, I straightened and saluted, “Top of the mornin’ to you, Captain!”
The hen-pecked looking Gordon panted, “What the hell’s going on here, Sergeant?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, sir. My boys did their best, but a squad of sharpshooters ain’t no match for Rebel artillery. That’s why we’re withdrawin’.”
“That wasn’t what I was asking, Sergeant,” Gordon sputtered, exasperated, mopping his brow. “I wanted to know what the hell you were doing on the Perry property at all! You and your men had no business being there in the first place,” he grumbled.
I looked about me, wide-eyed. “Well, sir, I didn’t see no other cover for my boys.” I stared up at the officer “Do you?”
“That isn’t the point, Sergeant!” the officer huffed. “The point is that property is off limits. That’s why there’s a guard posted—to keep out the likes of you and your men!”
Continuing to keep my eyes wide, I turned to survey the Perry mansion. “Guard, sir?” I reached up under my kepi to scratch my head in puzzlement. “I didn’t see no guard when we arrived, Captain, and there ain’t one there now. See for yourself.” I gestured toward the mansion.
“Damn you!” Perry screeched, cringing as another ball smashed into his house. “There was a guard there! They ran like hell when the shelling started.”
I looked up at the honorary colonel, aghast. “Are you implying, sir, that some of our brave soldiers deserted their posts in the face of enemy fire? Have a care, sir! If what you say is true, those men are subject to court martial. Ain’t that so, Captain?” I turned to Gordon. “But, then, none of your fine boys would skedaddle like that, now would they, sir?”
Before the befuddled Gordon formed a reply, Perry jumped in. “You’re the only one who should be worried about a court martial, Sergeant!” Perry leaned over in his saddle and waved an accusing index finger right in my face. “I’ll see that you’re put up on charges! Even if there were no guard to tell you the obvious —that you were trespassing—I told you.” He waved his right index finger imperiously in the air over his head.
I shrugged. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t take such orders from civilians. If every civilian could declare his property free from trespass by Federal troops, the Army would never march south of Alexandria.”
Perry cringed again as another round shot hit a pillar and ricocheted about his front porch. He stood up in his stirrups, and, surveying the wreckage yet again, he wailed, “Why the hell did you burn my house?”
“That’s not my doing.” I gestured vaguely southward. “It’s your people across the river.”
“There’re not my people. I’m no Rebel,” Perry insisted stoutly. “I’m a loyal Union man.” He practically thumped his chest.
Ignoring Perry’s trumped-up patriotism, I turned to Gordon, speaking confidentially, soldier to soldier. “Those Rebs don’t know the first thing about artillery. Can you believe they’re firing case shot at a target like the house? No wonder they set it ablaze.”
The thundering mid-air explosion of a shrapnel-filled ball behind us drowned out Gordon’s reply. Even though the bright burst of flame posed no threat to us, though it would light shingles and planking, we all ducked, foolishly, since the wool cover of my kepi, Gordon’s felt crown, and Perry’s straw hat offered no protection from the razor-sharp shards raining down. Fortunately, that round overshot us. Silently, I admired the Rebel lieutenant in charge of that section for not only having the wits to switch from solid shot to case shot when firing at people and not buildings but for cutting the fuse so close to right on the first trial.
“You two on horseback are drawing their fire,” I coughed, straightening. “The next shot may fall short, but the one after that will be on target. I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I ain’t waitin’ around for them to find the range.”
The planter spurred his horse toward the house, hollering over his shoulder to the Captain to “save what we can.” Gordon bolted in his wake, bellowing that the house offered the only shelter in sight. For my part, I turned to my right and pelted downhill, putting the crest between me and the line of sight of the Rebel gunners. As I looked down, I noted the white canvas of a hospital tent in the valley below to my left. Despite my better judgment, I skidded to a halt and turned to look over my right shoulder. The dirty plume from the Perry mansion rose high above the hill. Glancing down to my left again, I decided, with a satisfied grunt, that, even from the hospital, the smoke must be visible. I breathed a silent prayer that Captain Willis survived to see it.
With thanks to Col. Wesley Brainerd, whose Civil War memoir, Bridge Building in Wartime, inspired this story.
About the author
Toni Artuso is an emerging/aging trans female writer living in Salem, Massachusetts. Recently retired from a 30-year career in educational publishing, she is transitioning, as well as trying to accelerate the emerging and slow down the aging. Her stories have appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly, The Broadkill Review, Another Chicago Magazine (ACM), The Pine Cone Review, Mollyhouse, Once Upon a Crocodile, Sledgehammer Lit, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, quip literary review, and Fiction on the Web. Twitter: @TAltrina.
About the illustration
The illustration is "Union Sharpshooter 'California Joe' with his Sharps rifle", 1862, phot by George Houghton. In the collection of the Vermont Historical Society.