Truce

Truce 

By 

Tim Shuman 

The smell of gunpowder, death, and fresh earth fought in the air like the two armies engaged in the great civil struggle. 

The slaughter was halted by Christmas.

As the ranking NCO Dooley had been tasked by the Captain to inform the lieutenant that terms for the truce had been negotiated and that he was to send someone to recover the Union dead.  

“Begging the Lieutenant’s pardon, but I have an important message from th—” Before Dooley could deliver the message, Lieutenant Cain burst out of the tent and lashed Dooley’s cheek with a riding crop.  Dooley punched him, dislocating his jaw.  Cain collapsed faster than the tent that the small Black girl knocked over coming out the other end as she ran, trying to rearrange her knickers. The Captain pronounced Dooley’s punishment for assaulting an officer.  Recovery detail.

So it was, Dooley found himself on Christmas Eve, looking for dead Union soldiers on what had been yesterday’s battlefield.  The full moon gave a brilliant, but ghastly aspect to the landscape.  He entered a clearing, fires smoldering around the edges. Scavengers fed on the human and animal carrion and scattered at his approach. 

A shattered tree sent spiked roots high into the air where a union soldier hung, impaled, the man reaching toward the moon.  In his other hand he held the bloody and mottled hair of an impaled confederate soldier, who had thrust his bayonet into the Yankee’s arm, conjoining them in a macabre minuet. 

His soldier’s instinct had kept him alive during some of the war’s bloodiest days; the rifle butt hit his shoulder, and he heard the click of a hammer being cocked on a confederate weapon—behind him.  He turned, dropped to a kneeling position and struggled to get his rifle into firing position.  He looked up, staring into the barrel of a large caliber Confederate weapon.     

“Yuh know ah could’a kilt yuh already.”  The soldier drawled. He nodded to the two corpses stuck on the tree roots above them. “If’n ah wanted you dead you’d be talkin’ to ‘em two and old gooseberry hisself right naow.  We both know we under a flag of truce, so why don’t you put down your rifle and we’ll reckon how we’ll get those two fools down from n’ere.”

“You first.”

“Yuh know Yank, for a man staring up into ole Delilah’s mouth you’re mighty demandin’. We can stand here the next 23 hours, the truce will expire, and I’ll shoot you then; or you can put down yer gun and we can do what we was sent here to do, go back to our units and celebrate Christmas, so’s we can go back to killin’ each other after the truce is over.”  

Look Yank, unless yer army’s a lot different different’n mine, you must’a pissed in someone’s grits to git on this duty in the first place, so why don’t we put down the guns, do what we gotta do and git back to camp. Ah’m gonna count to three naow and we’re both gonna put down these guns.  Ready?  One-two-three . . .” The Confederate soldier lowered his weapon on an enemy for the first time since the war started and looked the man straight in his eyes.

Dooley stared back and saw in the Reb’s eyes, what he had seen in his own shaving mirror every day: fatigue, doubt, morbidity and a belly-full of death.  He relaxed and let the muzzle of his rifle drop to the ground. When he looked up he saw a dirty, calloused hand extended. He held out his own grubby hand.  “Name’s Dooley.  Prefer it to Yank.”

“Mine’s Immanuel, but call me Hick.”  He glanced at Dooley’s deformed hand and asked, “We do ‘at thar?”

He jerked his hand loose. “Yes!  Let’s just get this done.”

Each retrieved his pack mule and buckboard.  Dooley said, “I’ll climb up there and let my man down, you help me lower him to the ground, then I’ll help you do the same.”

“Suits me.”

He climbed the roots, ran a line under the corpse and secured it to a higher root, braced his back against the huge root-ball, and pushed on the man’s shoulders with his feet.  He felt the body move and heard the sickening, sucking sound of flesh, congealed blood and sinew pulling free from the spike of the root.  The body plummeted, dragging Dooley and the remains, crushing Hick in a tangle of arms, legs and gore.  The rifle with the fixed bayonet followed and slashed Hick’s shoulder.  

Hick heaved the bodies away and stood clutching his upper arm.

Dooley pulled himself out of the tangle of dead limbs and saw Hick, tearing equipment out of his pack, the blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder.  The items from his satchel piled up at his feet. Hick pulled a metal flask from the pack and took a long swig, then splashed it on the seeping gash.  Holding out the flask, he commanded Dooley, “Hold this!”  Hick struggled to wrap a bandage around his arm. Dooley capped the flask, then took the bandage from Hick and wrapped his enemy’s arm.

“You’re probably going to want to keep some pressure on that.”

“Ah go through two years’a fahghtin’ with nary a scratch and git wounded by a dead Reb and patched up by a damn Yankee. If that don’t beat all. Long as you got hold’a my bottle why don’t you have a little snort.  S’good fer what ails ‘ya.”

Dooley took a deep swallow and coughed-gut punched.  Hick grinned and added, “N’if nuthin’ ails ‘ya, ‘s’good fer ‘at too.  Ya’anna pass that back to me?  I could stand some nummin’.”    Dooley hit the bottle again. 

 “We got ‘em down aw’ight.”  Hick said as he shoved the fallen items back into his kit bag.  He scanned the clearing, rendered blue-white in the moonlight.  Hanging his head, he chuckled, “’Mine eyes have seen the glory . . . "  

Dooly picked up the words, “’He has loosed the fateful lightning’ . . .’” 

Hick hawked and spat.   “An he don’t seem partic’lar ‘bout who’s in the way.”  Gazing at a smoldering tree, he asked.   D’ja ever  wonder whose side God is on in all this?”  The Confederate drew long and deep from the flask, and handed it to Dooley. 

Hick indicated the clearing with a nod of his head and said, “His truth is marchin’ on.”

Dooley closed his eyes and drank Hick’s moonshine. “ Poor York. He was always cuttin’ up, makin’ us laugh. He was a fool. In war, it’s not a fool and his money is parted.”  Dooley fell silent.

He asked Hick.  “What’d you do to wind up out here?”

“They charged me with desertion.  I didn't though.  My baby was sick.  Had the ‘monia. I as’t for leave, we knew the damn Yankees, no ‘fence, was’nt close and nothin’ was gonna happen for weeks.  They brought me back an’ the bastard cap’n threatened to shoot me hisself if’n it happened again.  He’d do it too.  I got the recovery detail till some other id’jit does some dumb thang.  How ‘bout you?”

“My lieutenant was . . . Having his way with a Negro woma—girl.”    

As the liquor chased its way through the two men’s brains they slumped into exhaustion and stupor.  Scavengers returned to feed on the decaying flesh of the fallen, the white light of the moon cut through the leafless trees and across the field of battle, the remaining branches casting ghastly shadows across the clearing like the arms of great Titans, the top branches reaching heavenward as if to rip the moon from the sky. 

Dooley once believed the words of his country’s battle hymn and saw their cause as righteous in the eyes of God. Was there reward or retribution when Christian slaughtered Christian? 

“Mine eyes have seen the glory.”

Dooley wondered at the two creatures within him.  The affectionate young man who had won the heart of a girl with tender words and soft kisses.  And the other. The savage living within him, who in battle was possessed of a pagan spirit: shooting, stabbing, choking, biting, beating.  Anything to gain an edge and preserve the empty shell his body had become, to live to fight another day.  Dooley wondered which man he was?  

He gazed at Hick and he knew in his warrior’s heart that the Reb had done the same or worse and would not have survived to perform the gruesome task at hand if he had not.  An odd kinship was woven in the web of war. 

He understood, too, if they were to meet in battle, there would be no doubt of the outcome.  He would shoot Hick, or Hick would shoot him. A soldier frozen in indecision in a battle is no longer a soldier, but a target.  Dooley knew he wouldn’t be a target.  Not for this enemy.  Not for his friends.  Not for his love back home.  Not even to save his immortal soul. 

If they met in battle he knew he would kill Hick.  He knew the beast within would prevail. There would be time enough to reclaim his soul later. Hick bumped his leg with the bottle and Dooley jumped.

“Easy,” Hick reassured. “It’s conscience gnawin’ at ‘ya ain’t it?”  Hick breathed deep the night air and closed his eyes.  “Sometimes I git to hurtin’ so bad inside, I’m actually am glad when the dysentery come on, cuz’ it eases my mind of the things I done.  The pain I got on the inside, when I got the dysentery, takes away the hurt I feel, when I think about all these years of killin’.  This hooch is killin’ me, but my conscience is takin’ away my soul a day at the time. It looks like you could use it more than me. Finish it off.”  Dooley drained the flask. Hick spoke again.  “We better finish pickin’ up these bodies, or the truce’ll expire and we’ll wind up havin’ to shoot each other.”

The two men gathered and loaded the bodies. When they finished their task, they exchanged hometowns, knowing the odds of surviving were minimal.  Hick and Dooley, now numb with exhaustion, cold, and bad whiskey, looked at each other in awkward silence. Turning to go, Dooley led the mule toward the Union encampment, and heard.          

“Hey, cusin’” Dooley turned as Hick thrust out his hand.  “Wish me Happy Birthday.”  He said flashing a half-a-mouthful of teeth.

“Wha-’”  

“It’s after midnight, wish me happy birthday.”

“You were born on Christmas?”

“Yep.”

Dooley shook his head, noticed it was starting to throb and with a snorting laugh held out his damaged hand, “Happy Birthday Reb.” 

Hick pumped Dooley’s arm. “Hope I see you again.”

Dooley answered, “But I pray not here.”  Dooley gazed at their fingers, stained with the same blood, the same mud caked beneath jagged fingernails, the same scars large and small which are the souvenirs of war covering their weathered skin, and he knew in that instant he had more in common with that man than anyone else on Earth.  The warrior in him was repelled and instinctively bade him let go; instead he reached over with his other hand, placed it atop Hick’s said, “Take care cousin.”  

Hick laughed a real laugh for the first time, “Get the hell out of here Yank ‘afore I shoot y’ fer bein’ so sentimental.”  

Dooley crossed the clearing and another branch flared.  In the flash he spied a glint of brass and bent to retrieve it.  It was a small oval leather frame with the picture of a petite, nearly chinless girl wearing a melancholy smile.  He turned it over and on the back it said in a frail scrawl, “To Immanuel . . . Come home soon . . . Love Delilah.”  He turned, but Hick had vanished in the smoke. 

The truce held and the men from both the Northern and Southern camps could hear the others singing hymns on Christmas morning.  The week after Christmas passed as the armies jockeyed for position for the upcoming battle.

The Rebs were exploiting the breach in the line, and the combat broke down into hand-to-hand.  

Dooley found cover behind a fallen tree. Lieutenant Cain spied him and ordered him to rejoin the Union center. Amid heavy fire Dooley dashed to cover and ducked behind a tree as a .50 caliber slug smashed into the wood sending pin sized splinters into his neck and face. Dooley wiped the blood out of his eyes with his sleeve. 

Cain burst into their cover and screamed, “They’re regrouping. Double time, back to the center. Go!  GO!! ” They stumbled up a hill, the crest obscured by fingers of underbrush, and straight into the muzzles of twelve surprised Confederates. The Rebs held the high ground, but the Yanks had superior numbers as they stared at each other through the tattered patch of underbrush. They stood in shocked immobility as Cain came blustering up the hill, and screamed, “Fire!”  When nothing happened, he screamed again, louder, cursing and drawing his pistol.  “FIRE!” 

What paralyzed Dooley were the eyes he was staring into of the man atop the hill.  He thought Hick had aged gravely in the days since he had seen him.   He saw Hick’s lips move and heard him speak, as a voice in his head, as his own rifle sprang to his shoulder, 

“Get down!”  

Shots erupted around Dooley, but he stood fixed, gazing at Hick.  Behind him he heard Cain’s infernal screaming.  “Fire!!  Dammit, I said FIRE!!”  

Dooley pitched forward and heard the bedlam roar of musket-fire explode above and beside him and felt the dead weight of a body land on his back.  By the time he pulled himself from the heap of dead flesh, the Rebel line had either fallen or fled and Hick was nowhere to be seen.  He stood, ready to fire.  Dooley looked down at the corpse that had fallen on him and recognized Lieutenant Cain’s uniform, but little else. He turned away.

York’s brother came panting up to Dooley, “Cain was about to shoot you in the back till you fell and that Reb shot him.”

Enemy and ally were juxtaposed in the mayhem of battle. He resolved to kill no more.  

He requested, and received, duty as a medical assistant in the field hospitals, a duty shunned even more than combat by most soldiers, but Dooley knew he could do some good, and he did.  At the war’s end he was discharged to go home and carry on with his life.

Dooley knew he had an obligation, and as he returned home, he stopped at the post office of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  He asked if the postmaster knew where to find a man by the name of Hick. The postmaster was understandably reluctant to give Dooley the information. Dooley showed him the picture he meant to return to Hick. The postmaster directed Dooley to a ramshackle cabin where he met a scared, gaunt woman holding a two-year-old baby. 

Dooley tried to sound as deferential as possible and asked almost inaudibly. “Is Hick around?”

Her fear changed to pain. She winced and said, “Hick is dead.”  Dooley replayed the encounter with Hick to her, hoping she would see everything, and spare them both the pain of him explaining how her husband’s enemy stood before her while Hick lay cold, in a lump of Georgia clay.

He told her the story.  How Hick could have killed him, sharing moonshine, finding the picture and Hick’s lifesaving warning a week later. He expected an emotional thank you. 

“You are a lunatic.” 

Her eyes widened and flooded and she struggled to slam the door.  He jammed his foot in the way and pulled the photograph he had so carefully protected and jammed it through the opening.  He felt the resistance on the door relax as she took the picture then heard the sound of sobbing from the other side. Dooley sat on the ramshackle porch.  In a few moments she emerged, wiping her nose on her sleeve.  The baby, abdomen distended, had joined her crying and continued to squall.  She bounced him on her scrawny hip and apologized for the noise.  

“What’s the baby been eating?” 

She gazed at the child, “Mashed peanuts, when he’ll take ‘em.”  

“I’m sorry to hear about Hick.  He was a good man.” She hung her head and bit her lip as he continued.  “He saved my life and . . .”

  “Mr. Dooley, what you say ain’t possible.  See, Hick died of dysentery three days after Christmas ‘at year, an’ you said ‘yall tangled in Jan’yary?  It ain’t makin’ sance.”

Dooley stood dumbfounded, gazing into the hovel. Dooley replayed the skirmish in his mind over and over, and each time there was Hick, screaming his warning in his mind, cutting through the insane roar of musket fire. And he realized . . . she was right. 

Hick had not been there.  Could not have been there.  But the part of Hick that was pure, and had shed the horrific warrior within had warned Dooley and he dove to the ground and Cain had been slain while trying to shoot him in the back.  The screaming of the starving child stopped, and calm settled over him. 

He understood his obligation. He returned to the store and gave the owner a twenty-dollar gold piece.  It was half of all he owned and he gave it gladly.  “Send food and whatever they need for the girl and her baby for a month, I’ll send more as soon as I can.  They are never to starve again.”

“He‘uz a good man,” The old man said.  

Dooley turned back to the merchant. “The best I’ve ever known.”  He left the store, turned his face to the North and began his long journey home.