The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War
was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present
din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar
explained a celestial battle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the
air.
Reflecting, he saw a sort of a humor in the point of view of himself
and his fellows during the late encounter. They had taken themselves
and the enemy very seriously and had imagined that they were deciding
the war. Individuals must have supposed that they were cutting the
letters of their names deep into everlasting tablets of brass, or
enshrining their reputations forever in the hearts of their countrymen,
while, as to fact, the affair would appear in printed reports under a
meek and immaterial title. But he saw that it was good, else, he said,
in battle every one would surely run save forlorn hopes and their ilk.
He went rapidly on. He wished to come to the edge of the forest that he
might peer out.
As he hastened, there passed through his mind pictures of stupendous
conflicts. His accumulated thought upon such subjects was used to form
scenes. The noise was as the voice of an eloquent being, describing.
Sometimes the brambles formed chains and tried to hold him back. Trees,
confronting him, stretched out their arms and forbade him to pass.
After its previous hostility this new resistance of the forest filled
him with a fine bitterness. It seemed that Nature could not be quite
ready to kill him.
But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he was where he
could see long gray walls of vapor where lay battle lines. The voices
of cannon shook him. The musketry sounded in long irregular surges that
played havoc with his ears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes
had an awestruck expression. He gawked in the direction of the fight.
Presently he proceeded again on his forward way. The battle was like
the grinding of an immense and terrible machine to him. Its
complexities and powers, its grim processes, fascinated him. He must go
close and see it produce corpses.
He came to a fence and clambered over it. On the far side, the ground
was littered with clothes and guns. A newspaper, folded up, lay in the
dirt. A dead soldier was stretched with his face hidden in his arm.
Farther off there was a group of four or five corpses keeping mournful
company. A hot sun had blazed upon this spot.
In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This forgotten
part of the battle ground was owned by the dead men, and he hurried, in
the vague apprehension that one of the swollen forms would rise and
tell him to begone.
He came finally to a road from which he could see in the distance dark
and agitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed. In the lane was a
blood-stained crowd streaming to the rear. The wounded men were
cursing, groaning, and wailing. In the air, always, was a mighty swell
of sound that it seemed could sway the earth. With the courageous words
of the artillery and the spiteful sentences of the musketry mingled red
cheers. And from this region of noises came the steady current of the
maimed.
One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped like a
schoolboy in a game. He was laughing hysterically.
One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through the
commanding general’s mismanagement of the army. One was marching with
an air imitative of some sublime drum major. Upon his features was an
unholy mixture of merriment and agony. As he marched he sang a bit of
doggerel in a high and quavering voice:
“Sing a song ’a vic’try,
A pocketful ’a bullets,
Five an’ twenty dead men
Baked in a—pie.”
Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.
Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face. His lips were
curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched. His hands were bloody
from where he had pressed them upon his wound. He seemed to be awaiting
the moment when he should pitch headlong. He stalked like the specter
of a soldier, his eyes burning with the power of a stare into the
unknown.
There were some who proceeded sullenly, full of anger at their wounds,
and ready to turn upon anything as an obscure cause.
An officer was carried along by two privates. He was peevish. “Don’t
joggle so, Johnson, yeh fool,” he cried. “Think m’ leg is made of iron?
If yeh can’t carry me decent, put me down an’ let some one else do it.”
He bellowed at the tottering crowd who blocked the quick march of his
bearers. “Say, make way there, can’t yeh? Make way, dickens take it
all.”
They sulkily parted and went to the roadsides. As he was carried past
they made pert remarks to him. When he raged in reply and threatened
them, they told him to be damned.
The shoulder of one of the tramping bearers knocked heavily against the
spectral soldier who was staring into the unknown.
The youth joined this crowd and marched along with it. The torn bodies
expressed the awful machinery in which the men had been entangled.
Orderlies and couriers occasionally broke through the throng in the
roadway, scattering wounded men right and left, galloping on followed
by howls. The melancholy march was continually disturbed by the
messengers, and sometimes by bustling batteries that came swinging and
thumping down upon them, the officers shouting orders to clear the way.
There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder stain from
hair to shoes, who trudged quietly at the youth’s side. He was
listening with eagerness and much humility to the lurid descriptions of
a bearded sergeant. His lean features wore an expression of awe and
admiration. He was like a listener in a country store to wondrous tales
told among the sugar barrels. He eyed the story-teller with unspeakable
wonder. His mouth was agape in yokel fashion.
The sergeant, taking note of this, gave pause to his elaborate history
while he administered a sardonic comment. “Be keerful, honey, you’ll be
a-ketchin’ flies,” he said.
The tattered man shrank back abashed.
After a time he began to sidle near to the youth, and in a diffident
way try to make him a friend. His voice was gentle as a girl’s voice
and his eyes were pleading. The youth saw with surprise that the
soldier had two wounds, one in the head, bound with a blood-soaked rag,
and the other in the arm, making that member dangle like a broken
bough.
After they had walked together for some time the tattered man mustered
sufficient courage to speak. “Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he
timidly said. The youth, deep in thought, glanced up at the bloody and
grim figure with its lamblike eyes. “What?”
“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?”
“Yes,” said the youth shortly. He quickened his pace.
But the other hobbled industriously after him. There was an air of
apology in his manner, but he evidently thought that he needed only to
talk for a time, and the youth would perceive that he was a good
fellow.
“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he began in a small voice, and then
he achieved the fortitude to continue. “Dern me if I ever see fellers
fight so. Laws, how they did fight! I knowed th’ boys’d like when they
onct got square at it. Th’ boys ain’t had no fair chanct up t’ now, but
this time they showed what they was. I knowed it’d turn out this way.
Yeh can’t lick them boys. No, sir! They’re fighters, they be.”
He breathed a deep breath of humble admiration. He had looked at the
youth for encouragement several times. He received none, but gradually
he seemed to get absorbed in his subject.
“I was talkin’ ’cross pickets with a boy from Georgie, onct, an’ that
boy, he ses, ‘Your fellers ’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn a
gun,’ he ses. ‘Mebbe they will,’ I ses, ‘but I don’t b’lieve none of
it,’ I ses; ‘an’ b’jiminey,’ I ses back t’ ’um, ‘mebbe your fellers ’ll
all run like hell when they onct hearn a gun,’ I ses. He larfed. Well,
they didn’t run t’ day, did they, hey? No, sir! They fit, an’ fit, an’
fit.”
His homely face was suffused with a light of love for the army which
was to him all things beautiful and powerful.
After a time he turned to the youth. “Where yeh hit, ol’ boy?” he asked
in a brotherly tone.
The youth felt instant panic at this question, although at first its
full import was not borne in upon him.
“What?” he asked.
“Where yeh hit?” repeated the tattered man.
“Why,” began the youth, “I—I—that is—why—I—”
He turned away suddenly and slid through the crowd. His brow was
heavily flushed, and his fingers were picking nervously at one of his
buttons. He bent his head and fastened his eyes studiously upon the
button as if it were a little problem.
The tattered man looked after him in astonishment.
Chapter IX.
The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier was
not in sight. Then he started to walk on with the others.
But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding. Because of the
tattered soldier’s question he now felt that his shame could be viewed.
He was continually casting sidelong glances to see if the men were
contemplating the letters of guilt he felt burned into his brow.
At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He
conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished
that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.
The spectral soldier was at his side like a stalking reproach. The
man’s eyes were still fixed in a stare into the unknown. His gray,
appalling face had attracted attention in the crowd, and men, slowing
to his dreary pace, were walking with him. They were discussing his
plight, questioning him and giving him advice. In a dogged way he
repelled them, signing to them to go on and leave him alone. The
shadows of his face were deepening and his tight lips seemed holding in
check the moan of great despair. There could be seen a certain
stiffness in the movements of his body, as if he were taking infinite
care not to arouse the passion of his wounds. As he went on, he seemed
always looking for a place, like one who goes to choose a grave.
Something in the gesture of the man as he waved the bloody and pitying
soldiers away made the youth start as if bitten. He yelled in horror.
Tottering forward he laid a quivering hand upon the man’s arm. As the
latter slowly turned his waxlike features toward him the youth
screamed:
“Gawd! Jim Conklin!”
The tall soldier made a little commonplace smile. “Hello, Henry,” he
said.
The youth swayed on his legs and glared strangely. He stuttered and
stammered. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”
The tall soldier held out his gory hand. There was a curious red and
black combination of new blood and old blood upon it. “Where yeh been,
Henry?” he asked. He continued in a monotonous voice, “I thought mebbe
yeh got keeled over. There been thunder t’ pay t’-day. I was worryin’
about it a good deal.”
The youth still lamented. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”
“Yeh know,” said the tall soldier, “I was out there.” He made a careful
gesture. “An’, Lord, what a circus! An’, b’jiminey, I got shot—I got
shot. Yes, b’jiminey, I got shot.” He reiterated this fact in a
bewildered way, as if he did not know how it came about.
The youth put forth anxious arms to assist him, but the tall soldier
went firmly as if propelled. Since the youth’s arrival as a guardian
for his friend, the other wounded men had ceased to display much
interest. They occupied themselves again in dragging their own
tragedies toward the rear.
Suddenly, as the two friends marched on, the tall soldier seemed to be
overcome by a tremor. His face turned to a semblance of gray paste. He
clutched the youth’s arm and looked all about him, as if dreading to be
overheard. Then he began to speak in a shaking whisper:
“I tell yeh what I’m ’fraid of, Henry—I’ll tell yeh what I’m ’fraid of.