James Burke: Robicheaux

I visit Molly’s grave, and I try to financially help the widow of T. J. Dartez. I sleep little, welcome each dawn, and bring Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon into the house and feed them no matter how muddy they are. Through the summer, I watched the completion of Levon’s film, and in December, Alafair and I went to see its screening in Los Angeles. I had a strange experience in the theater; to this day, I cannot explain it.

The scene was on Beauregard’s left flank on a gray spring dawn outside the settlement know as Shiloh Church. The actors wore faded butternut, some with gold or blue piping, and were crouched among hemlock trees, looking up a hill where Yankee artillery was already in place, loaded with grape and chain and canister and exploding shells, the crews de-elevating in anticipation of the Confederate charge. There could be no doubt about the outcome. The commanding Confederate officer, a purple plume in his hat, rode his horse up and down a shallow creek with his sword drawn.

“No matter what happens, boys, form on me!” he said. “You’re men of the South! Be not afraid! God and our people are with you! Drummer, begin your beat!”

The entire regiment rose to its feet, and a boy not over twelve, the one I’d seen splashing his way through the shallows at Spanish Lake, began a ragged cadence that set the regiment in motion like stick figures lurching unsteadily into a wind, their faces white, their equipment banging, some of them barefoot. Halfway up the hill, the artillery crews at the top of the slope fired in sequence down the line like a string of giant firecrackers, then reloaded and fired at will. The slaughter was immediate. The slope was blanketed with fog, the air filled with the Rebel yell, a fox call that sounded like “Woo, woo, woo,” the green of the hillside and the wildflowers slick with gore.

The aggregate of smoke and dust and river mist seemed filled with bolts of lightning, as though a thunderstorm from heaven had lost its way and descended upon the earth. Inside the smoke, the battle flag of Granny Lee flipped back and forth on a staff, barely visible against a pale sun, its cloth rent with grapeshot. The commanding officer was still seated on his horse, his plumed hat on the point of his sword, shouting, “Don’t falter, boys! We’ve got them, by God! Just a little farther! Form on me!”

The drummer boy and most of the others died or were wounded in under ten minutes. Was this magnificent and tragic ordeal, one that could compare to Golgotha, the manufacture of evil men who wanted to keep our brothers and sisters enslaved? I will never believe that. I think of each dawn as a gift, and I try to remember that the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux save us from ourselves and the curse of mediocrity. But maybe that’s just another way of saying fuck it. You’ve got me. I never figured out anything.