The March by E.L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page B

hard rain spattered on the palmettos and snapped in the muck. Pioneers had corduroyed the road with fence rails and saplings. Clarke, in the vanguard with his foragers, was the first to lead his wagons across the pontoon bridge at the Oconee. Thereafter the land rose and hardened, the rain slacked off, and they left the army behind as they rode toward Sandersonville. Clarke wanted to pick the town clean and wait there. He had thirty men mounted, six wagons, and as many pack mules.
    Clarke knew from maps that the country played out east of Sandersonville and from then on, as far as Savannah, it would be progressively poorer takings, with the lowlands good only for growing rice. And how in God’s name would the army hull rice? His foraging detail had got much praise from the regiment, and he’d been running a kind of competition with Lieutenant Henley’s squad.
    At a bend in the road a quarter mile west of the town, he called a halt. Sergeant Malone rode up to confer. This was more formidable than a plantation. They could see over the treetops a church steeple and the roof of a public building, probably a courthouse.
    Evening was coming on. Clarke smelled no chimney smoke and saw no lights.
    Sergeant, take two men with you. On foot and off the road. Tell me what’s going on there.
    The patrol moved off, and Clarke waited. Behind him, softly in the dusk, the leather traces creaked, the animals breathed and snorted. Clarke rode back to the wagons and found Pearl the last in line, sitting up beside the driver. Her eyes gleamed out at him from the darkness, as if they had drunk up what light there was, invisible to him but imperially available to her.
    He rode ahead to meet the patrol. Malone reported that the town was quiet, the streets empty, but there were lights in the houses. He did not look at Clarke as he spoke but at the ground, which meant, in Clarke’s interpretation, that he, Clarke, was acting as was only expected of a prissy New England Brahmin.
    If that’s what Malone thought, so would the others. A fog was rolling in. Clarke ordered the men to unsheathe their rifles, and the company rode on into Sandersonville.
    WHEN THE FIRING started, the driver of the last wagon was in a crossroads at the town’s edge, so that, shouting and cursing, he was able to turn the panicked team around. Pearl left the box and clambered into the wagon and looked out the rear. Nobody was following. She heard screams. She saw men falling off their horses in the instant flashes of musket fire. The driver was whipping the mules and the wagon was rolling. Pearl jumped, landing on her hands and knees. She limped into the brush and cowered there.
    Moments later two riderless horses galloped past. A minute later three or four of the Union men, and then two of them on one horse. She couldn’t count how many after that. She prayed that the Lieutenant would not leave her.
    Clarke couldn’t have retreated even if he’d thought of it. He was not thinking, just trying to rein in his panicked rearing mount with one hand while, with his Enfield musketoon wedged in the crook of his arm, firing at every looming shape and shadow. The Rebs had ridden out of the side streets and come together as one charging line. In an instant, it seemed, they were riding past on both flanks. Sergeant Malone, standing in his stirrups to aim, was hacked by a passing sword. He looked at Clarke, his neck bleeding like a mouth widening in astonishment, as he toppled to the ground. The Rebel yells made of them screeching phantoms in the fog, unholy apparitions appearing and disappearing. Clarke was screaming as well. He felt no fear until his rifle stopped working. At that, he put his head down and bent over his horse like a jockey and tried to urge her forward—in what direction he had no idea. But his mount was stepping on bodies and then a wall of mounts and riders rose around him. As he straightened up he felt a pistol at the back of his head and heard the cock of the