A Vicksburg Homecoming

   A Union divided by war preys on the nerves and civility of its citizens.  Daily war-reports posted to the door of the telegraph office, shoved frantic mothers forward, squinting and searching for a name with their finger - praying it wouldn’t be there.  Before the ink of one casualty list could dry, another list would be posted.  Like spinning a loaded chamber in a game of Russian Roulette, the unknown kept Vicksburg on edge. 

     Gathering for news from the front, businessmen discussed needed war production, while the foolhardy were running off to war.  I enrolled in the sanctuary of the Medical College of Louisiana.  I have no issue with these faceless boys north of Kentucky.  This conflict, between greedy men, hell bent on securing their futures with blood-stained dollars, was nothing more than a nuisance.  I figured, sewing those boys back together was better than eating Union lead.  

     Grant’s army was already in Mississippi; like pine beetles, the yanks had  infested the entire state, making my two-day ride from Vicksburg to Oxford, frothed with danger.  But, blinded by an acute case of contempt and naiveness, I rode on to visit school friends. 

     Arriving in Oxford, the spirited fervor of Charles Longsworth, Franklin Hilburn, and Jedediah Jones turned my indifference into guilt.  There was much bravado about saving the Confederacy, about being part of a heroic history.  How many times in a man’s life will there be an opportunity to leave his mark on a new nation?  This was our time, our shot.  

     I’d like to think it was misplaced southern pride, or possibly family honor, but truthfully, it was a shameful submission to peer pressure.   We penned our names to the Mississippi Volunteers rolls.  Four naive school boys,  celebrating our resolve, palliated by whiskey.  But a bottle of courage didn’t drown the dread, not of war, but the anticipated conversation with my mother.  Wiping tears from her cheeks with a corner of an apron, her only words were, “You just signed your own death certificate.”

    Another skirmish, north of Gettysburg.  Random rifle fire escalated into waves of human frailty, fighting an enemy that looked like our brothers.  Up and down a quarter-mile line in a railroad cut, men charged, crashing like a wave against immovable rocks.  A bloody riptide receded, dragging mangled bodies back, over silent souls, into an abyss of destruction of trees shredded from musket balls, and a creek running red from soldiers washing their wounds.  

     And just as it had started, the raging hail of hot lead slowly disintegrated into random volleys - then nothingness.  The aftermath was still, but not silent.  A dense haze, and smoking embers, were remnants of a hellish cannonade.  Downed horses and mules whimpered in pain, not knowing why.  Injured soldiers cried out to a deity, begging for relief by another pistol round, while distraught men wandered aimlessly, shouting names of a brother, a son, a friend.

     The dead are buried, comrades, and foe.  Wounded carried - some, only torsos or limbs.  Weapons, ammo, dry boots - scavenged.  A hellish workday, then again, they all are.  Returning to our encampment, we’re a little less human, less alive.

     Collapsing to the ground, exhaustion never completely leaves.  A tin of hardtack and a canvas pouch of jerky wait in my knack-sack.  I tell myself to eat.  Strange how food can sicken a stomach, clinching with hunger.  My body rejects needed nourishment, sight, smell, taste, ...seized by war.  

     In any direction, random points of light flicker; scattered campfires pierce the blackness that hides uncertainty.  Three-hundred yards separate the two sides, yet still audible; the measured sobbing of grown men is dampened by the darkness.  A poignant harmonica conjures-up images of home.  It’s a melancholy elixir, drifting on death-infused breezes across a peach field, sanctified by fresh blood.  And men dare to hope, hoping to return home, if this insanity ever ends.  

     Yanks in their camp, we in ours, soldiers lay with backs turned, and knees drawn into a fetal cocoon, trying to escape - if only for a few hours.   

     My name is John Reuben Gant, Johnny to my mother, J.R or Rube to the boys of my childhood.  Here, in the 42nd Mississippi Infantry Regiment, I’m Corporal Reuben Gant of The fighting Mississippi Reds, under the command of Colonel Andrew Nelson.  We’ve joined up with the army of Northern Virginia, marching through Pennsylvania, seven months, and 900 miles from Vicksburg, mostly on foot.

     I  stumble back into camp.  Using my rifle as a crutch to break my fall, I feel for the ground, as weakened knees buckle, collapsing in pain.  Laying injured and exhausted, sure that if I close my eyes, l’ll succumb in my sleep.  Please God, don’t let me sleep, pray thee, I must focus -  breathe - move my toes, fingers - clear my mind.  

     But the body can’t fight the damage, it needs rest, ...my eyes are heavy.  They close.  The battle is lost.  Death’s sweet release is euphoric, transporting a rapturous soul free of pain, to a ghostly state, yet strangely aware of the living.

     None of this was suppose to happen.

     Shouldn’t I have been whisked away to a celestial resting place?  Trapped here, in this dimension, the world I was taken from lies before me like a stage whose curtain has been pulled back after the play ended.  I see the souls of other soldiers rising like a charged zephyr of steam out of their bodies, where they fell and drew their final breath.  

     Some leave, disappearing as orbs of energy, while others wander in.  The battlefield is now as crowded as a train station with semi-transparent souls, crisscrossing, searching.  But, for what?  Peace?  A portal to another realm?  Perhaps, another body to reincarnate?  

     They came from Roanoke, VA, Litchfield, Illinois, Wheeling, West Virginia, Zenia, Ohio, Albany, New York, Buford, South Carolina and Dothan, Alabama, but can’t leave, ...not yet.  Even a soldier from Gettysburg, sees his house in the distance, but couldn’t go home.  It’s a chilling mystery why some souls leave, yet others remain tormented, forgotten, ...here, in this place.

     Someone yells, “We need a preacher man over here!”  

     Dear God, it’s Charlie.  A gaseous orb of energy rises from his limp, mangled body.  Frank and Jed cradle Charlie close in their arms, weeping,  I want to tell them about his soul rising, free of earthly bonds, but they’re unable to hear me.

     Fallen brothers-in-arms are buried in mass pits.  A few officers are ceremoniously buried in private graves, marked with a simple wooden cross, carved in a board from an ammo box.  

    I watch, detached of emotion, as Frankie and Jed wrap my body in a blanket and load me on a wagon.  Laid in a crude wooden coffin, a sticky sap oozes from the green-pine, matting my hair.  I’m going home.

     The world below me spins like a panoramic backdrop in a melodrama.  Beneath me flows a wide, peaceful river, maybe the Big Muddy, or perhaps Lincoln’s Father Waters.  A paddle-wheel rounds the bend, with coffins stacked like cordwood on the deck of her stern.  My coffin lies under dozens of other southern boys resting in pine boxes.  

     Gathering steam, her paddle-wheel built to push water, takes life.  The paddles, now a wheel of gnashing teeth, stares a steely grin, waiting for another body to be fed into its coffin-grinding mill.  I float over-head, screaming in horror.  Still, no one hears me.  My body waits to be crushed, pushed under the murky current by churning teeth-like paddles, only to surface as splintered debris.

     Straight away comes a jarring stop; the grinding paddles lock up.  Erupting into flames, the riverboat lists to starboard, grounded on a sandbar.  Out of the burning ship, my coffins floats downstream on a purple sheen of oil.  Peacefully - like the infant Moses’s basket floating in the Nile - my earthly vessel drifts with the current, without a captain.  

     Heavenly voices confuses my despair, (singing:)

                I looked over Jordan and what did I see

                Coming for to carry me home

                A band of angels coming after me

                Coming for to carry me home

                Swing low, sweet chariot...

     “Wait!”

     Walking atop of the water, an apparition gently guides my coffin to shore.

     “Jesus, Sweet Jesus.  Is this the River Jordan?”  

     Without a word, He smiles a pure smile, one without intent, and beckons me to come.  But the image vaporizes as quickly as it appeared.  

     No, it can’t be.  This stretch of the river is all too familiar I tell myself.  See, over there, I fished these banks as a boy, swung-out over the Mississippi on that rope swing, and skipped rocks across its water at passing barges.

     A breeze carries me on, down river toward a familiar light.  I must be close to my childhood home, my grandfather’s home, which became my father’s home...a white-plastered Greek Revival, sitting atop the east bluffs of the Mississippi River, at Vicksburg.   

     Memories rush over me: dappled sunlight through old-growth oaks, an iron gate anchored in brick pillars, a sandy-white lane leading to pilastered columns as large as Norfolk Pines, high ceilings and transom windows making the Delta’s sweltering summers tolerable.  And tight-spiraled stairs leading to a rooftop Widow’s Watch, offering a commanding view of the river in both directions.  

     I can see the lantern’s light from the Widow’s Watch, magnified through faceted windows. From there, Grandmother watched and waited for her Captain to return.  It was my hiding place from chores and to smoke.  Now, a light from that perfect childhood is guiding me home.

     A cold wind pushes me into the east river bank.  Vicksburg, “The Gibraltar of the South” is under siege by General Grant and the Union army.  Yankee gunboats fill the Mississippi, so numerous that for a half-mile up and down the river, a man could leave the west river bank, cross ship-to-ship, and step off on the east bank with dry boots.  

     The arc of countless cannonballs are made visible, if only for a second, by flashes of exploding shells.  My hometown has endured 41 days of unmerciful shelling, rained indiscriminately, reducing the city to rubble.  Sheer terror for their lives has driven women and children into makeshift caves.  When the bluecoats arrived, the stench of death permeated Vicksburg.

     A noticeable absence of men, especially young men, pressed children and women into hard labor to survive.  Inescapable grief muddied the streets, sticking to your soul, like Mississippi river clay on your boots after a hard rain.  

     The home I left was a war zone, more decimated than Gettysburg.  Yet, stubbornness, posing as pride, brought families out during the evenings, back to their shambled homes, as if to wag their tongues at the resting Yanks.

     I descend over the Widow’s Watch, through shelled walls, into family and friends.  The parlor was prepared for a wake, draped in black.  Our family crest over the fireplace was riddled by rifle volleys.  Though dark outside, heavy drapes are drawn over broken windows, enveloping the room in an amber-glow of candles and a few oil lamps. I move, room to room, by the moonlight, streaming through gapping holes in the roof.  Still, no one knows I’m here.  

     In the kitchen where Mother cried when I told her I’d enlisted; neighbor-ladies gathered, fussing over dishes of root vegetables and stale bread.  Food was scarce.  The last of rancid horse and mule meat, had been consumed.   No one has tasted fresh meat, milk, butter or an egg in months.  

     Familiar faces mill-around outside for no particular reason other than to see and be seen, a required social etiquette in normal times, something hardly expected in a city under siege.  Perhaps they were claustrophobic and needed fresh air, out of their hiding places.  Maybe their hunger drove them to a Wake in hopes of even a morsel of food.  In a odd way, they could feel lucky; their sacrifice seemed pale in comparison to the young, once vibrant, corpse laying in the house.

     Partially hidden under a laced black veil, Mother has positioned her rocker next to my coffin.  A slight rocking motion seems to comfort her.  Softly rubbing two small pewter crosses in her gloved hands, she weeps in silence.  Family and friends awkwardly console her.  Father, her rock, isn’t here.  The grief overwhelms me.

      My sister, Rachel, sits to herself.  I stare into her deep eyes, void of emotions, with no reflection of me.  She holds my diary, revealing my secrets, innermost thoughts, and how much I really loved her, a brother’s love that wasn’t shown often enough.  Seven months earlier, we strolled the Vicksburg docks listening to river-men tell stories of St. Louis and New Orleans.  Now I struggle to remember her touch, her smell of lilacs, her dimpled chin that quivers when she laughs.  Why is it so difficult to remember?  I try to recall, but my memory is frayed, unraveled by regrets.  

    Hesitant, yet curious, I take a closer look at my corpse.  Silver coins rest on my eyelids.  Errant whiskers of a young man, protrude in every direction from my chin and neck.  My hair was combed into an unnatural part and slicked down with the mortician’s axle grease.  A heavy coat of make-up vainly hides cuts and bruises that jar my memory.  An impenetrable sweet perfume masks the body’s condition.

     Someone had removed my soiled and bloody uniform.  A clean or borrowed uniform couldn’t be had.  I’m dressed in a favorite blue silk shirt.  Someone added a red sash from my right waist, across the chest, to my left shoulder, pinned with ribbons and an indistinguishable medal.  I look peaceful, a paint-by-numbers corpse. 

     A condescending ritual, the Wake.  A sham. A lie.  The undertaker orchestrates a  slight-of-hand illusion to achieve closure for the living.  How I wanted them to hear my screams, know my anguish, feel my restlessness.  Why are you smiling, brushing at my hair with your hand, talking like I’ll soon be back from some journey?  Damn it, I’m dead.  There’s nothing heroic about dying, no honor, no glory.  The truth; there’s no greater cause than living.  Curse the foolish.

     People began to stir-about the house.   A horse-drawn wagon arrives out front and movement heightens in anticipation of more parlor rituals.  A second table is set up next to the one holding my coffin.  Mrs Pricilla Langley pumps the organ in the corner.  Six men solemnly carry another coffin through the foyer, as strains of Sweet Hour of Prayer filled the house, muffling a crescendo of cries.

     Father’s body is laid next to mine.  I cry out in ghostly silence.  He died in Pennsylvania, searching for me, thrown from his horse, spooked by cannon fire.  None of this was suppose to happen.

     The Yanks cease the cannonade on Sundays.  I watch the procession to Ebenezer’s Baptist Church, Mother and Rachael, walking streets too cratered for wagons or carriages.  Songs and scriptures meant to comfort, seemed hopeless in a church without a back wall, in a city under siege.  Absent of any physical pain that only the body could provide, my spirit heaves with unexplainable misery.  Death’s sting passes, it’s the agony of an earthly purgatory that torments the soul.

     A life full of family, friends and accomplishments is given a hastened farewell by five people: Mother, Rachael, the minister, undertaker, and digger.  Ironically, The pine boxes of my father and I are carried to the family cemetery at Eagle’s Crest Manor, overlooking the Mississippi River, one of the few plots of ground untouched by the shelling.  

     Each shovel of red dirt hits my wooden coffin like wet cement.  Body, separated from the soul, now suffocating in a pitch-black grave.  For an immeasurable time, I watch hair and nails turn brittle, my skin shriveling into crepe-paper-like thinness.  My muscles seize-up; beetles and worms feed on my organs .  Maggots crawling in and out of my eyes, burrowing in my brain. 

     Awareness is fading.  My soul panicks, where’s the Light?  The brilliant Light, ascending to the next life?  Why can’t I see it?

     Hovering in a cold suspended vacuum, an irresistible force pulls me down, like a magnetic field.  My consciousness is dimming.  Despair.  Hopelessness.  This can’t be how it ends.  

     A lake of fire rages up, lapping at my existence as I fight to resist it.  Regiments of entangled serpents with undulating heads, encircle me.  The laughter of Lucifer himself drowns out my screams.  Sobbing uncontrollably...

     “Wake up, soldier!”  

     “Get ahold of yourself, boy!”

     The first glow of morning was announcing itself.  I have a coughing spell from the stale odor of burned-out fires infused into my blanket. Officers marched through camp, mustering the troops, kicking their tall boots at tent poles, and bed rolls.  Excited horses pulled caissons into position.  There was a drone of mummers from men on their knees, kissing a photo, saying their last prayers, …again.  And the sound of Enfield Rifles being cleaned for today’s battle, shot through my head.

    “No, ….oh no, God, NO!”