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The man said, “I don’t feel too kindly. Colonel.”
Chamberlain nodded. He went on inside the tent, the scarred man following, and sat down on a camp stool, letting the man stand. He invited the man to have coffee, which the man declined, and then listened silently to the man’s story.
The scarred man spoke calmly and coldly, looking straight into Chamberlain’s eyes. A good stubborn man.
There was a bit of the lawyer about him: he used chunky phrases about law and justice. But he had heavy hands with thick muscular fingers and black fingernails and there was a look of power to him, a coiled tight set to the way he stood, balanced, ugly, slightly contemptuous, but watchful, trying to gauge Chamberlain’s strength.
Chamberlain said, “I see.”
”I been in eleven different engagements. Colonel. How many you been in?”
”Not that many,” Chamberlain said.
”I done my share. We all have. Most of us-“ he gestured out the tent flap into the morning glare-“there’s some of them no damn good but most of them been all the way there and back. Damn good men. Shouldn’t ought to use them this way. Looky here.” He pulled up a pants leg.
Chamberlain saw a purple gash, white scar tissue. The man let the pants leg fall. Chamberlain said nothing. The man looked at his face, seemed suddenly embarrassed, realized he had gone too far. For the first time he was uncertain. But he repeated, “I done my share.”
Chamberlain nodded. The man was relaxing slowly.’ It was warm in the tent; he opened his shirt. Chamberlain said, “What’s your name?”
”Bucklin. Joseph Bucklin.”
”Where you from?”
” Bangor.”
”Don’t know any Bucklins. Farmer?”
”Fishermen.”
Former Sergeant Kilrain put his head in the tent.
”Colonel, there’s a courier comin’.”
Chamberlain nodded. Bucklin said, “I’m tired, Colonel.
You know what I mean? I’m tired. I’ve had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this goddamned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody lousy rotten mess of sick-brained pot-bellied scabheads that aint fit to lead a joh
He let it go, out of breath. He had obviously been waiting to say that to some officer for a long time. Chamberlain said, “I get your point.”
Kilrain a
Chamberlain rose, excused himself, stepped out into the sunlight. A bright-cheeked lieutenant, just dismounted, saluted him briskly.
”Colonel Chamberlain, sir. Colonel Vincent, wishes to inform you that the corps is moving out at once and that you are instructed to take the advance. The Twentieth Maine has been assigned to the first position in line. You will send out flankers and advance guards.”
”My compliments to the Colonel.” Chamberlain saluted, turned to Kilrain and Ellis Spear, who had come up. “You |g heard him, boys. Get the Regiment up. Sound the General, strike the tents.” Back inside the tent, he said cheerfully to Bucklin, “We’re moving out. You better hurry up your eating. Tell your men I’ll be over in a minute. I’ll think on what you said.”
Bucklin slipped by him, went away. Chamberlain thought: we’re first in line.
Kilrain.
The former sergeant was back. “Sir.”
”Where we headed?”
”West, sir. Pe
”Then I’ll be stayin’, Colonel, laddie.” Kilrain gri
”But you know I can’t promote you. Not after that episode with the bottle. Did you have to pick an officer?”
Kilrain gri
”Buster, you haven’t got a bottle about?”
”Is the Colonel in need of a drink, sir?”
”I meant… forget it. All right. Buster, move ‘em out.”
Kilrain saluted, gri
He would die happy. Now. What do I say to them?
Tom came in, saluted.
”The men from the Second Maine are being fed, sir.”
”Don’t call me sir.”
”Well, Lawrence, Great God A-Mighty-“
”You just be careful of the name business in front of the men. Listen, we don’t want anybody to think there’s favoritism.”
Tom put on the wounded look, face of the ruptured deer.
”General Meade has his son as his adjutant.”
”That’s different. Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as a general on a battlefield.” The tent was coming down about his head; he stepped outside to avoid the collapse. The General and God was a nice parallel. They have your future in their hands and they have all power and know all. He gri
”Lawrence, what you goin’ to do?”
Chamberlain shook his head. The regiment was up and moving.
”God, you can’t shoot them. You do that, you’ll never go back to Maine when the war’s over.”
”I know that.” Chamberlain meditated. “Wonder if they do?”
He heard a flare of bugles, looked down the road toward Union Mills. The next regiment, the 83rd Pe
Kilrain says tell the truth.
Which is?
Fight. Or we’ll shoot you.
Not true. I won’t shoot anybody.
He walked slowly out into the sunlight. He thought: but the truth is much more than that. Truth is too personal.
Don’t know if I can express it. He paused in the heat.
Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it. He shook his head.
I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother.
Nobody ever died for apple pie.
He walked slowly toward the dark grove. He had a complicated brain and there were things going on back there from time to time that he only dimly understood, so he relied on his instincts, but he was learning all the time. The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man.
His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle.
He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually over all the earth.
But it had begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil.
They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves.