Shiloh by Shelby Foote Read Free Book Online Page B

touch of summer and fragrant with rising
sap and bursting buds.
    O my
dearest, if only you knew how much I lo
    There was a rattle of sound all across the front of the
position, like snapping limbs, and another racket mixed in too, like screaming
women. Bango lifted his head, the big yellow eyes still glazed with sleep. I
recognized it as the sound of firing, and then there were the thudding booms of
cannon. Beyond the swale and through the screen of trees along the stream I saw
rabbits and fluttering birds and even a doe with her spotted-backed fawn. She
ran with nervous mincing steps, stopping frequently to turn her head back in
the direction she had come from.
    Then I saw the skirmishers come through. They looked tall
and lean, even across that distance. Beneath their wide-brimmed hats their
faces were sharp, and their gray and butternut trousers were wet to the thighs
with dew. They carried their rifles slantwise across their bodies, like quail
hunters.
     
    3
    Private Luther Dade
    Rifleman, 6th Mississippi
     
    When I went to sleep the stars were out and there was even a
moon, thin like a sickle and clear against the night, but when I woke up there
was only the blackness and the wind sighing high in the treetops. That was what
roused me I believe, because for a minute I disremembered where I was. I
thought I was back home, woke up early and laying in
bed waiting for pa to come with the lantern to turn me out to milk (that was
the best thing about the army: no cows) and ma was in the kitchen humming a
hymn while she shook up the stove. But then I realized part of the sound was
the breathing and snoring of the men all around me, with maybe a whimper or a
moan every now and again when the bad dreams came, and I remembered. We had
laid down to sleep in what they call Line of Battle and now the night was
nearly over. And when I remembered I wished I'd stayed asleep: because that was
the worst part, to lie there alone, feeling lonely, and no one to tell you he
was feeling the same.
    But it was warm under the blanket and my clothes had dried
and I could feel my new rifle through the cloth where I had laid it to be safe
from the dew when I wrapped the covers round me. Then it was the same as if they’d
all gone away, or I had; I was back
home with my brothers and sisters again, myself the oldest by over a year, and
they were gathered around to tell me goodbye the way they did a month ago when
I left to join up in Corinth after General Beauregard sent word that all true
men were needed to save the country. That was the way he said it. I was just
going to tell them I would be back with a Yankee sword for the fireplace, like
pa did with the Mexican one, when I heard somebody talking in a hard clear
voice not like any of my folks, and
when I looked up it was Sergeant Tyree.
    "Roll out there," he said. "Roll out to
fight."
    I had gone to sleep and dreamed of home, but here I was,
away up in Tennessee, further from Ithaca and Jordan County than I'd ever been
in all my life before. It was Sunday already and we were fixing to hit them
where they had their backs to the river, the way it was explained while we were
waiting for our marching orders three days ago. I sat up.
    From then on everything moved fast with a sort of mixed-up
jerkiness, like Punch and Judy. Every face had a kind of drawn look, the way it
would be if a man was picking up on something heavy. Late ones like myself were
pulling on their shoes or rolling their blankets. Others were already fixed.
They squatted with their rifles across their thighs, sitting there in the
darkness munching biscuits, those that had saved any, and not doing much
talking. They nodded their heads with quick flicky motions, like birds, and
nursed their rifles, keeping them out of the dirt. I had gotten to know them
all in a month and a few of them were even from the same end of the county I
was, but now it was like I was seeing them for the first time, different. All
the put-on had gone out of