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AURA LEE - PART ELEVEN 12/26/2009 12:03:01 PM
AURA LEE PART ELEVEN
Melissa and Daniel Menefee nearly made it to the North before the battle of Fredericksburg, and they would have—if Stonewall Jackson had acted in a predictable manner.
Early in November Abraham Lincoln, despite frantic opposition from his cabinet and War Department, amidst threats of resignations and mutterings of impeachment from Congress, replaced General George McClellan with General Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside’s first official duty was to make a speech at McClellan’s farewell to the army, in which he said he did not feel at all qualified to command such a “mean responsibility”. It was a premonition, perhaps, of his part in the North’s imminent, nearly permanent, degringolade.
“This may be it,” Daniel told Melissa, as they sat back-to-back on the swell of a small hill along the south shore of the Rappahannock. “They gonna move us back tomorrow or the next day, or so, maybe the next day after that, I doan know when, but soon, to that there place up by that ridge there—they call it Marye’s Heights. We supposed to join up with Gen’ral Longstreet’s division, an’ when the Feds come out of Fredericksburg, they got to cross a big open field that’s as big as the whole town itself, an’ when the Rebs open up, not even a chicken’s gonna stay alive down there.”
Melissa turned her head and looked at her husband sitting behind her. “How y’all know all this? Who been tellin’ you all this?”
Daniel shrugged, and she could feel his back muscles tense up and press hard against her. “Talk all over camp. Lee’s gonna sit here all winter if he haf to an’ wait on that Gen’ral Burnside fella to make his move. I hear’d two majors talkin’ about it. They didn’t even know I was list’in in the latrine.”
Daniel, his prejudices and expectations of hope over reality notwithstanding, was accidentally becoming something of a political and military scientist. Burnside had moved with uncanny speed across the Potomac, with genuine plans and strategies to march straight south, and move like the wind on hastily constructed pontoon bridges over the Rappahannock, and trample any and all Rebs in his way as he passed through Fredericksburg, and then sweep into Richmond with the combined forces of all but the western contingent of the Union Army. That would do it, as he had enthusiastically pointed out to Lincoln the day after he had succumbed to the president’s command to “take charge and bring us the victory we so blessedly deserve.”
But, thanks to Lincoln’s Chief of the Army, General Henry W. Halleck, Burnside’s request for the pontoon bridges was misinterpreted, and a peculiar waiting game commenced, which gave both armies a hiatus from activity that rapidly deteriorated from simple boredom to sheer ennui.
“In twenty-four hours,” Menefee told his wife, “we gonna git the chance of a lifetime. We gonna walk like Jehovah hisself righ’ across the Rappahannock, crawl outta these grays, an’ join up with the Feds righ’ where we belong! Simpl’ist thing we ever did!”
Melissa laughed her high-pitched girlish giggle. “Jess like that!”
“Yes, ma’m, jess like that! Jess like we always planned we’d do!” And he snapped his fingers to punctuate the point.
Daniel had it all worked out. With the curious delays brought about by Ambrose Burnside’s abulia to deploy his 115,000 troops across the Rappahannock and wage a full-scale attack on Fredericksburg, the war, for all intent and purpose, had come to a standstill of almost grotesque quiescence.
For one observer, a former theater critic, it was a surrealistic pause before the inevitable:
Tonight, on both shores of this fast-moving, colubrine river, we are working the stage toward a Second Act curtain; soldiers are acting more like trusted neighbors than men bent on ripping each other to ribbons with muskets, rifles, cannon, swords, and bayonets. Campfires are burning brightly in the crisp winter night. Music swirls across the stream on the piquant treble clefs of a mild breeze; men are singing and playing banjos, guitars, harmonicas, and squeeze boxes— most of it coming from the Union bivouacs, bouncing off counterpoints of catcalls, laughter, and occasional off-key harmony from the Confederate encampments. Tangy, tasty stuff of sense and nonsense!
During the day we saw Rebel soldiers sliding makeshift rafts and shaky, flimsy rowboats into the frigid water, then jumping aboard, hoping to keep dry, as they moved across the narrowest banks to be met as close to halfway as possible by Federal troops—for the merry exchange of tobacco and whiskey, an occasional pair of boots for a nearly new overcoat, and even a few loaves of fresh bread for a tin or two of cookies. I saw two pairs of wool mittens become a live chicken after limited haggling. This traffic of contraband would go on hour after hour with much laughter and curious camaraderie. Even the pickets, dug in their rifle pits and ready for action on both shores, were yelling at each other good-naturedly, unhappy their officers would not let them join in the midstream commerce.
“Hey, you, there, Johnny Reb, what’s what you want most for Christmas, ‘sides goin’ home?”
“Givin’ you the bayonet while y’all sleepin’!”
“You got any chaw?”
“Come git what you want, blue belly. An’ bring summa Hooker’s women with you!”
But the singing was the best, especially at night, most of it coming from the Yankee side. The voices were good, but they were, at the same time, hauntingly corybantic.
“We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave,” sang the Federal troops, “Shouting the battle cry of Freedom . . . The Union forever, Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!”
To which the Rebs responded, in their time, “They have laid down their lives on the bloody battlefield; shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom . . . Our Dixie forever. She’s never at a loss, down with the eagle, up with the cross. We’ll rally ‘round the bonnie flag, we’ll rally once again . . .”
Ironically, even to the untrained ear reveling on untrained voices, this was unmistakably sung to a single inspirational melody written last summer by George Root, the Yankee composer whose music will, I’m sure, be remembered long after the political rhetoric of this war has been relegated to obscurity.
The Second Act curtain came last night when a pick-up Yankee marching band, replete with tuba, pipe, glockenspiel, and bass and snare drums came down to the water’s edge and broke into “Dixie” – prescribing almost shocked silence at first, but culminating in aposematic cheering, laughter, and combined choral effects from both shores.
This confounding respite might be the only truce we shall know during this irrefragable conflict.
Jerrod Leonard, Dec 7, 1862, for the Washington Chronicle
Melissa and Daniel Menefee made three treks into and across the Rappahannock on a narrow raft with three other Confederates, and they accumulated a treasure of corn whiskey, chewing and pipe tobacco, fresh fruit, a side of salt bacon, three pair of long johns, five copies of Atlantic Monthly, and a broken alarm clock. On the last trip, Daniel told his wife that as soon as they were ashore amidst the Yankees they would casually walk away from the river and lose themselves among the hundreds of Union soldiers milling about the camp.
“What about them boys with us?” Melissa wondered.
“Forgit ‘em. They ain’t gonna pay no attention to us when they’s got stuff to negotiate to take home.”
Melissa shook her shorn head. “These gray coats gonna give us dead away.”
“No, they ain’t. We gonna shuck ‘em soon’s we off the raft an’ see if we cain’t trade ‘em for some blues. Shoot, these rags ain’t uniforms anyways.”
Daniel was right about that. Like ninety-eight percent of the Confederate army, everyone below the rank of lieutenant was dressed in whatever basic gray he could beg, borrow, or steal. At this stage of the war, and in the start of winter, most infantrymen were wrapped in an assortment of shirts, coats, trousers (usually two, sometimes three pair), ratty sweaters, tattered sox, and, quite often, mismatched shoes or boots of undetermined size and vintage. Hats, of course, were normally the badges of distinction. The standard kepi was the round, crushed turret that toppled forward over a leather, shining brim that was almost non-existent. The Rebs—those that had them—wore a pale gray, and the Yankees were similar but dark blue. Emblems of any kind were rare, and what most soldiers displayed made no sense. Some of the more industrious non-coms wore brown or black fedoras with the left brim folded up and pinned against the crown, or straw hats, or even Western-style faux Stetsons traded for or stolen or, as was often the case, simply taken from the lifeless head of an enemy soldier or hapless compatriot, neither of which would have much use for such headgear ever again.
Both Menefees wore standard kepis, each more filthy and battered than the other.
Daniel said, soto voce, “Soon’s we halfway across slip off yore cap an’ drop it on the raft like no one’s watchin’.”
“What you gonna do?” Melissa asked.
“First breeze comes up onna way over, I’m gonna brush mine off like the wind blow’d it off inta the water an’ I gotta fish for it.” Daniel looked at his young wife, and there was that mischievous glint in his eye like what they were about to do was part of a mountain game. “Jess be ready to move when I do, ol’ gal.”
It was twilight now, and they moved away from the south shore and into a mild current with two Rebs pushing them off, and the other standing in the front with a long pole to guide the makeshift raft in the general direction of the encampment on the opposite shore. It was not a warm night, but it was not as frigid as early December can sometimes become in that part of the Virginia countryside. There was little wind, and the smell of hickory and oak burning in countless glowing campfires was most pleasant and nostalgic. The raft, now with the two pushers manning the sagging rear, Daniel and Melissa in the center, and the pole man jabbing and plunging in the front, painted a drab and pelagic canvas of swirling strokes of crepuscular, oily tones.
Melissa, at the halfway point, casually slipped off her kepi and ran her thin fingers through her close-cropped hair. Just as casually, she dropped the cap between her feet and glanced about to see if any had noticed. No one had, not even Daniel. So pleased with herself, she later said she did not hear the two muffled reports from cannon somewhere behind the Confederate camp.
“What is that?” Daniel cried out, surprised.
“That,” shouted one of two in the rear, “was Stonewall Jackson! Damn! He’s made it Hot damn!”
“What?”
The pole man up front had shifted the rod to the other side and was now turning the raft around.
“Hey!” Daniel spun back and faced him. “Wha’chew doin’, boy?”
“We gittin’ outta here, thass what I’m doin’!”
“What d’you mean, outta here?”
One of the soldiers at the rear spoke up: “He means we goin’ back an’ git ready! That was the signal—two cannon shots from below town—Stonewall’s set an’ tomorrow the party’s all over! Yeeeeee, thass what he means! Doan you ‘member nuthin’ we told ‘fore chow, you dumb ass Car’lina redneck! Less go!”
Daniel glanced at Melissa and pointed toward her musket. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere but over there!” With his other hand he whipped his thumb toward the Union shore. “We got business with them Yankees!”
Both Rebs in the back raised their rifles simultaneously. “You ain’t got no business but the business of fightin’ this gawd damn war!” said one.
“We got orders!” said the other.
Daniel glared at them, and then he half turned his back and spoke softly to Melissa. “We almost there, an’ by God, we ain’t goin’ back now! When I give the signal, jump off the raft an’ we’ll make a swim fur it!”
“What!” Melissa recoiled as if Daniel had struck her. “Jump in the water? You crazy? Man, I cain’t to that! Man, you know y’all cain’t swim a lick half as good as a newborn calf!!”
Daniel seemed to visually deflate. So close . . . so close . . .
The pole man spoke up, and his voice, sharp as an ice pick, pierced Daniel’s brain. “Grab that other pole an’ starting churnin’ water. We goin’ back!”
Melissa reached for her musket, and Daniel bent to pick up his own.
“Touch them guns righ’ now,” said the taller of the two in back, “an’ you two won’t have to worry none ‘bout fightin’ no more blue bellies. This here party’s all over!”
The Menefees stood up, erect, and seemed to simultaneously breathe a sigh of relief. “Y’all’re righ’,” Daniel said, in resignation. “No sense pushin’ our luck fer the sake of some gawd damn Yankee goodies. Less git back an’ find out what’s goin’ on.” He bent down as if to pick up the extra pole, and the soldiers lowered their rifles.
In the split second the Rebels looked away, Daniel spun his body away from them and, literally tackling Melissa about the shoulders, threw them both off the raft, the momentum toppling them into the icy and roiled Rappahannock. Melissa’s gasping shriek—“Eeeeeeee- eeeaahheeeiiiiii!” –was nearly lost in the turbulent splash made by their flailing arms and legs as they hit the water and immediately sank into the dark, oily river.
“Jumpin’ Jeepers Jesus sox!” cried the pole man. “Shoot them dumb bastard cracker assho’ deserters ‘fore they git to shore!”
After a minute or so, the taller and older of the two others placed his hand on the barrel of his friend’s rifle, pressing it down. “Don’t even waste a Minié ball on ‘em. They ain’t comin’ up. They’s drowned like a couple dead ice cycles. Damn fools. Boy no more’n fifteen, if that. . . Fuckin’ war.”
