The Bitter Angel

By Chuck Farley

8-15-94

            Odon knew the boys would soon be gettin' called to form a line.  `Stand behind the man who'll die just a'fore you do s'what they orter' say,'  he sat thinking almost out loud while pulling his things to him in the half dark, `stead'a yellin' RANKS, RANKS!'

            The skirmishers had already got their mess an gone off.  Saying their good-by's to anyone else that was up and awake, shouldered their kit an disappeared into the fog.  Odon had heard that Tennessee be where they were, Shiloh's Church is what the Captain say to somebody. All'n all most of the boys had stopped figgerin' what state or town or heave up in the ground they was on mattered any too much.  This God-damned war couldn't get over soon enough to suit Odon no matter where it got over at.  In his three seasons of it he'd had his belly full and just wanted it quits, win lose 'er not, them officers could untangle the mess just fine without him.  Hell, both sides counted on how the Lord All-Mighty God was on their side of the thing His-self.  So if The Good Lord was confused then far be it for an Indiana farm boy to take on airs an declare as how he knew any better.  Just Aim, shoot then reload.  Aim, shoot `n reload.  Don't think about nothin' else, 'sept stayin' alive for one more minute as the unholy hell it's very self come a raining down around your heads an soaken' ya' red to the knees.

            Shit-fire, even that Baptist what fancied hisself Chaplain for the 36th was forever a preachen' on how the Federals were on the side of the Lord an visa versa and on and on into the night.  Why, Odon had been one night on picket duty, a'fore the Cumberland Gap fight, up in Kentucky back at the very first.  Crouched there in the darkness he'd shivered and hoped that those pickets for the rebs couldn't hear him jingle'n, cause he could sure hear that reb popinjay of a preacher over there a workin' those Grays into a lather.   All about how God meant as fer all men to be free to choose his own mind on sech things as Slavin' and the like.  `Tell that to yer darkies.' Odon thought but that was prior to his revelation of divine apathy and some muddy months before finding himself this day taking breakfast mess in a misty Tennessee orchard waiting to fight another pointless battle.

            A fat boy plopped against the tree next to Odon.  Coe Delp always helped Odon finish the last bite or two of his meals.  Snatching for himself a chunk of salted pork from the edge of Odon's mess tin he smiled his pudgy grin.

            The Delp boy had signed up the same day as Odon.  Both had hiked from Greenhill to Lafayette, the Tippecanoe County seat, stood in line with thousands of other farmers who were volunteerin' same as them, took the oath to `declare and to ordain one and all, hereby now and forever these United States under God.  Sign here or make yer mark. Next.'

            After the `oath' they were promised thirteen dollars a month, three meals a day and a right smart set of uniform clothes, then swish, like that, herded on out of town where they were billeted.

            Since that time Odon had long ago worn through the set of uniform clothes all save for the blouse, which was so thin he wore two now-a-days.  The thirteen dollars soldiers pay that had been slow at best first-off had skeeter-petered out to nothing of late.  Today Odon just fought to live through another day, usually having to forage on his own for what ever he got to eat.

            "Hey, Colfax, ain't chur gunna' finish thet there cracker?"  Coe Delp was already reaching over Odon's knee to dip the hardtack in the last dollop of molasses there at the corner of the tin.  Odon smiled at his friend reaching the plate over to balance on the heavier boy's lap.

            "Coe, I bet yer the only one in the regiment that's put on weight since inlistin'"

            "If'in I make 'er outa this wa' alav I'm gonner eat ma self ta death, that's a promise.  I kin take jest er-bout any kinda grulin turmoil sepin' bein' hongry."

            "I do believe ya there Delp, yer motto's  always been ta `never git down hill from yer lunch' ain't that so?"

            "Good'ens any."  Coe, starting to expand on one of his theories was cut short by scattered musket fire some far piece off.  Both farm boys jumped to their feet in a motion with the thousands of others about them in the mist.  The sound of mess tins rattling across the dirt mixed up with the clatter of rifle, bayonet and boot leather.  These the sounds of a stalwart machine having been engaged upon it's sanguinary specialty.

            The Captain on his charger appeared from out of the fog, plowing furrows in the sod as he reined the horse in.  "Dress a line on my voice lads and order arms!"  The regiment knew they were to form lines four abreast behind the mounted officer who continued calling out into the morning fog so's the stragglers could get an idea of where the line was beginin' from.  They must join in anywhere they could find there to be less than the required quartet on quartet that their field orders dictated or become the rear of the thing.

            Musket fire had gone from a gentile pop-pop-pop to a shriek that hadn't an ending.  Suddenly the earth was bounced a good shake, a mortar shell exploding, the air around them seemed to jump into it's self.

            The young Captain for the 36th was joined now by other officers a'horse-back.  Arch Webster, the master sergeant over Odon's platoon jingled as he ran past the line of men to where the officers sat their horses. Pulling his self up by the pommel of the captain's saddle.   One foot in the stirrup, Arch got his ear up close to the officers mouth, nodding as he listened.

            The dark faced sergeant stepped to the ground, holding the stirrup for the officer's boot he saluted with his free hand, turned on a heel and double-timed back along the line passing the orders along to the sergeant behind Odon and Coe Delp.  This sergeant in turn doubled back to the sergeant behind his bunch. Odon knew this procedure would be repeated through the miles of men behind them.  Turning smartly once again the sergeant trotted back up to where Odon and Coe were standing with their muskets and powder boxes.  Using the moment, leaning over at the waist, he regained his wind, then at full voice he filled in the blanks, "Boys!  The Rebs have launched a surprise attack on our forward picket lines.  All the skirmishers are now engaged, those are their muskets y'all heard first thing, now we got's to stand in reserve for General Prentiss."

            The sun was full up and the fog burning clear when time came for these reserve troops to join the fight.  Truth be told, the fight joined them.  That, in the form of a wave.  A blue wave of retreating Union soldiers sweeping through their position like a swarm of indigo garbed locusts propelled by a good stiff wind.

            The miniballs sizzled over their heads, and around their legs, those that wern't tearing into flesh.  Men were falling all around Odon as they stampeded to distance themselves from the grey wall of death. 

            A load of grape shot sliced into a platoon fifty feet to Odon's right cleaving the bodies like a cutlass through paste-board.

            He felt sick.  The strength drained from his legs when first he heard the war cry of the rebels.  Out they came from a peach orchard that bordered the field, a murderous gray pariah.  Roiling blue-black powder smoke punched out before the howling charge.  Individual smoke rings punctuated the singing bullets that were swarming like bees around Odon's head.  Before turning to run he took a steady breath, aimed and took one last careful shot at one of 'em.  The musket bucked into his shoulder, but through the flash of the cap he saw an old Reb officer on a white horse ride into the peep-sight.

            The bullet took him in the thigh. 

            The old man appeared surprised as he rolled from the saddle. 

            Odon allowed that if he stood and held this field he'd be a'doin it alone and decided to join in the running away with the rest of these retreating men. 

            Bits of dirt sprayed up where the miniballs struck the ground.  Bits of flesh, bone and brain fairly jumped from bodies where these bullets found their fated targets.  Mayhem was contagious, some even ran the wrong way directly into the tide of butchering fusillade.  Odon was forced to hurdle dead and wounded men.  Often his legs were fouled sending him sprawling face first into these doomed pawns from whence he was forced to extricate himself by means of clamoring for purchase in hand fulls and foot holds of bloody men.

            As they ran, turned and fired, then ran again Odon realized they were fighting now where they had bivouacked the night before. Men dressed in brown and grey mixed with the boys in blue, all in a tangle where he and Coe Delp had shared their breakfast not so long ago by the ticking of a clock.  An eternity ago for so many more.      Still he ran, Sunday morning air hard in his nostrils, cool on his sweated shirts.  Ahead the column had stopped running at a canebrake beside a dirt road.  Snatches of the boys taking up positions behind the willows others simply lay at the bar-ditch's lip.  A battery of six pounders had been loosed from the mules and trained to face the charging Confederates.  Odon threw himself to the ground where he tried to become as small a target as his imagination could conger.  In this fetal ball he cracked the lid of his ammo box. 

            The Quartermaster had issued each trooper sixty rounds of the paper wrapped cartridges yesterday and as it had rained that day they had each fired a round or two as to assure that the damp was out of the gun and powder.  The Rebs had been up to the same, so the location of both armies was known to the other.  Odon at a glance discerned he had roughly two thirds of his original ordinance left.

            Rolling twice over to where he was confident that the musket fire at least could not hit him, he took stock of his plight.  No breast-work was a defense against mortar shells and a ditch bank was a poor sight of a breast-work.  Johnny Reb would throw his infantry hard against them first though and wouldn't want no bombs dropping on their own heads.  `A charge like that last will sweep this position.'  Odon felt this more than he formed thoughts, `Whereabouts if we was ta' have cannon hea'...'

            The rebels had stopped just out of range now and would charge again once they had regrouped.  Through the dust Odon saw the Confederate Officers in their plumed hats storm to and fro on their mounts waving their glinting sabers.  Like no dread Odon had ever known, a sick feeling filled him while he watched the squads turn into platoons.  Then platoons into well ordered brigades lining on the commands of their leaders, just as he had feared, preparing for another murderous charge.

            Odon scooted farther down the road bank before sitting up on an elbow.  The sight that greeted him was none too reassuring.  Most of the soldiers that had dived in with him had tossed their muskets in the panic which had swept the column.  Cast among them were scores of maimed and dead.  Their bodies smoldering like spent wicks where white hot shrapnel from the canister shells had touched their uniforms, at times even cauterizing the waste. 

            At first glance Odon could see no officers.  He crawled and duck-walked to his left for ninety feet before encountering one that wasn't wounded or worse.  "Colonel Sir!  Have you some orders to pass through the ranks?"

            The red haired man slid down the bank to where Odon had squatted.  "Son, there are upwards of ten thousand pissed off enemy about to come over the top of this hea' bar-ditch.  What I need's ta have done is fer you to get back behind me 'n get that battery of skirmish guns up front here double quick."

            "Yes'er"  Odon scooted to the bottom of the slope where the cane break made a nearly impenetrable wall.  A grape shot had cleared a swath large enough to run a race through.  Odon hurled himself over the first wave of his own comrades then through the hedge and on into the cane field.

            Rows of sugar cane had been flattened by the retreat.  Across it's expance he saw the mule drawn guns being driven from the field at a right angle to their position on the road.  There would be no catching the teamsters on foot and firing a shot over their heads for attention would be futile.  Odon ran back up the line behind the cane-break, men were massed up there a quarter mile deep, spreading on over the rise out of his line of sight.  Seven or eight thousand men huddled in a human breast-work.  Suddenly his eye stopped on a black mound in the broken stalks of sugarcane.  A saddle horse, its sides would rise and fall in labored breaths. 

            As Odon ran up to her she reared up her head from the ground.  He disentangled from her reins the fingers of a blond lieutenant, who's boot he was forced to pull from a nearly severed leg in order to jimmy the spur from it's catch in the cinch.  There was a bit of blood on her rear which may have belonged to the officer.   Still Odon knew she was mortally hit, he could hear a flute like whistle each time she exhaled.

            Dragging the dead man away from the horse, Odon "God blessed his poor soul" then pulled the other boot off.  Dancing around on one foot then the other he managed to remove his own shoes and reapply those of the dead officer.  Stepping astride the wheezing animal Odon gigged her in the soft belly with the spur on his right foot hauling back all the while on the head-stall.  Screaming to be heard over the roar of musket fire and battle cries Odon succeeded in bringing the wounded animal lurching to her feet under him, turned her head from the front and roweled her with the dead officers spurs to a gasping gallop straight at the retiring battery of artillery.

            Thinking that he had been pole-axed from behind, his face slammed into the mare's neck.  Hearing the bones in his nose crunch, while his skull-plate rang the knell, still he kept the saddle.  Closing the distance between him and the retiring battery of artillery, the war began to shrink.

            Two mini-balls had struck him in the back, passing through his middle, exiting the front of his blouse.  A large red stain spread there.  He felt the wet running under his belt.  It was such a sad feeling and he was ashamed.

            Business as normal went all to hell in Odon's body.  The queer copper taste in his mouth took his full attention and he thought deep thoughts about it as the horse died in full gallop contemplating the same thick flavor.

            Time seemed to slow or speed, he was want to know the difference.  All about him was soft and going to other colors.  The mare had slid in on her chin just in front of the mule team at the lead of the column, he felt no impact nor jar as the ground rushed up to meet him, for his mind had had the forbearance to shut down in anticipation of this collision.  Unconsciousness hugged him like a favorite winter coat.

            Once he became aware of his surroundings the nineteen year old Indiana farm boy tried to speak.  Lips that once whistled Yankee-Doodle were now crusted shut with his own blood and bile.  Odon, his sight though blurred, knew from a life time of tents that what he was seeing above him was the expanse of roof for a large one.  Shadows passed over him, followed by the face of a bearded man, a man in a Rebel Officer's uniform.

            "Done all's I kin fo this un Bob."  This face was soon replaced by another.  "Cart this boy outside'n lay 'em with the others, suh'.  I will take anotha' soon as I relieve this pressure in ma bladda'."

            `I'll out-live you, ya reb bastard.'  But Odon wondered if this would really be so.  He felt that wherever he was wounded that it must have removed half his guts for as he probed about at his chest with his fingers he felt some lacking in his old girth.  It was the thirst though which seemed to call to him in death's voice, saying, "Give `er up an let it happen, cause It's warm in here....Yes, die now....It's so easy."

            Roughly, he was drug off the table by his knees and underarms, head smacking off the edge of the table, hanging straight back.  Eyes back he watched upside down the flaps of the tent whisper shut.  They fell closed behind him, rain falling into his open eyes from a starless sky, puddling up to run over into his ears.             Paradoxically the unseen bearers lay him gently on the ground between the bodies of the other men there, living or dead, enemy or fellow, he had no way to know as he drifted into unconsciousness.

            What inner force gages the time one languishes in comma?  Where is the buried chamber of the mind, body or soul of a man which sparks his wakening from a healing sleep?  Whatever is this catalyst?  The gentle nudge of God's hand, or the morose curiosity of our own egos to be aware of how we perish?  Perhaps the men of future wars will have these answers but the men on that ravaged ground near Shilo Tennessee in April of 1866 who slipped from the grasp of it's merciful slumber and into the agony of reality, were absent of any thought more lofty than of the bloody challis from which they had been served, filled to it's rim with horror.

            The shrieks and moans of the wounded and dying mixed with the constant pelting of the muddy earth by the rain and hail.  Bone-saws rasped constantly and a pyre of human arms and legs flourished only to be decimated by a marauding band of hogs gorging themselves on those abandoned limbs and the bodies of the dead.

            Odon had wallowed himself into a sitting position leaning his wounded side against two dead fellows which the orderlies had stacked like bags of grain against him.  On his right lay a boy younger than himself staring listlessly at nothing.  Odon felt a stiffness in his torso when he stretched his leg to where he could prod the lad with his naked toe.  "Hey, are ya alive?"  His voice a ragged whisper.

            The startled youth's eyes turned back into his lids.  Odon saw him to be dressed in a drummer-boy's uniform.  Scooting himself to a sit, the boy began to touch himself with piano-playerish fingers that had not so long ago  played the roll for a marching army which now lay dead or dying in this mud.

            Odon squeezed his eyes together tightly.  Opening them he looked down at the bloody wrap around his middle.  His blouses were missing and so was a good portion of his side.  The mud fouled bandage appeared to have once been someone's parlor curtains.  He let his gaze open to take in the enormity of his situation.  Bodies lay stacked like cord wood in willy-nilly ranks carpeting the earth then stretching on into the murky drizzle, melding into an indistinct horizon.  Halo-men moved about with a deliberateness that lent some comfort.  "The world has not ceased to BE this mornin' after all."  he seemed to say, although the words came back to him as from a deep well. "These Rebs have takin' the day on the battlefield, but ol' General Boeregard shall regroup and wupp 'em this afternoon and handy."  This boast for anyone who might hear.

            The drummer boy's mouth moved up and down several times before any words could be heard by Odon.  "They just keep a puttin' these dead men here like sacks u' beans.  Don't seem to matter no how as we're a lyin out here gettin' all fouled by thet stench.  Taint right."

            Odon brought the boys attention to him with a wave in front of the lad's eyes, "Can ya tell me how the battle went?  Have ya heard any-thin' from the Indiana 36th?"

            "Well," the boy began thoughtfully, "out there in front where most of the big fight was, why we up an' retreated, the whole mob of us, into a dry canal next to a road.  We held there for a spell, on account of gettin' the cannons bunched up aggin' em' an there we stayed on for most of the day a'fore their cannonade blasted ever last one of whoever was left into the hereafter.  I just sorta found my self settin' out here.  But damned if I din't hear one of them saw-bones say that their General Johnston got himself killt' though.  One of our boys done shot that ol' featherheaded Johnny of a General right in the leg an he up an bled ta' death into his own boot, fine as paint."

            "Well hain't you droll wunst you gits rollin'?"  Speech was coming much easier now for him but Odon closed his eyes and let the kid ramble on.

            "I heard one of them Johnny doctors say if'n General Johnston han't a been kilt why he would have pressed the whole of the Union Army right back into the Tennessee River and we woun't never a been no good fer no more war on nobody, least of all them Rebs..."   A mud sodded boot stepped into the puddle beside Odon's face then another.  "Stawt down thaya `n comenst ta loadin' these men onto the wagons, Private, an damn their eyes get someone to keep those hogs from a gorgin' on those yankee bodies"

            "Yes'sa."   Odon was immediately startled by the gore in which this Reb was drenched.  From his boots to the grey forage cap dripped red.  Bearded to his eyeballs the man literally ran with fresh blood that mixed with the constant drizzle.  A specter out of nightmares only imagined.  Odon felt, more than thought that in hell only can a vision so grizzly as this exist.  Yet today at Shilo Church, men yield to deny that such a specter is but routine, and accepted as such.  Truly God must turn away to let such things be.

            Another Confederate began to prod the pigs with a bayoneted end of a rifle.  The swine squealed and turned on the man who was forced to retreat or be devoured alive by the biggest of the boars.  Stepping onto a pile of dead men he took aim and shot the beast, scattering the rest of the mob which, once pushed in the direction away from the bodies, were more easily persuaded to be herded into the adjoining field.  A mule was harnessed to pull the bore out to the field where he was eviscerated and allowed to be devoured by the rest of his brood.