Michael Shaara - The Killer Angels

But even the crows nearby were silent. Some of the men began to lie back, to rest. Chamberlain rode briefly off to find out what would happen, but no one knew. When he returned he found himself a place under a tree. It was very hot. He had just closed his eyes when a courier arrived with a message from Meade to read to the troops. Chamberlain gathered them around him in the field, in the sunlight, and read the order.

Hour of decision, enemy on soil. When he came to the part about men who failed to do their duty being punished by instant death, it embarrassed him. The men looked up at him with empty faces. Chamberlain read the order and added nothing, went off by himself to sit down. Damn fool order. Mind of West Point at work.

No time to threaten a man. Not now. Men cannot be threatened into the kind of fight they will have to put up to win. They will have to be led. By you, Joshuway, by you.

Well. Let’s get on with it.

He looked out across the field. The men were sleeping, writing letters. Some of them had staked their rifles bayonet first into the ground and rigged tent cloth across to shade them from the sun. One man had built a small fire and was popping corn. No one was singing.

Kilrain came and sat with him, took off his cap, wiped a sweating red face.

”John Henry’s still with us.” He indicated the woods to the east. Chamberlain looked, did not see the dark head.

”We ought to offer him a rifle,” Kilrain said.

There was a silence. Chamberlain said, “Don’t know what to do for him. Don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

”Don’t guess he’ll ever get home.”

”Guess not.”

”Suppose he’ll wander to a city, Pittsburgh. Maybe New York. Fella can always get lost in a city.”

A cannon thumped far off. A soldier came in from foraging, held a white chicken aloft, grinning.

Kilrain said, “God damn all gentlemen.”

Chamberlain looked: square head, white hair, a battered face, scarred around the eyes like an old fighter. In battle he moved with a crouch, a fanged white ape, grinning. Chamberlain had come to depend on him. In battle men often seemed to melt away, reappearing afterward with tight mirthless grins. But Kilrain was always there, eyes that saw through smoke, eyes that could read the ground.

Chamberlain said suddenly, “Buster, tell me something. What do you think of Negroes?”

Kilrain brooded.

”There are some who are unpopular,” he concluded.

Chamberlain waited.

”Well, if you mean the race, well, I don’t really know.”

He hunched his shoulders. “I have reservations, I will admit. As many a man does. As you well know. This is not a thing to be ashamed of. But the thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time, and I’ve seen a few blacks that earned my respect. A few. Not many, but a few.”

Chamberlain said, “To me there was never any difference.”

”None at all?”

”None. Of course, I didn’t know that many. But those I knew… well, you looked in the eye and there was a man. There was the divine spark, as my mother used to say. That was all there was to it… all there is to it.”

”Um.”

”We used to have visitors from the South before the war. It was always very polite. I never understood them, but we stayed off the question of slavery until near the end, out of courtesy. But toward the end there was no staying away from it, and there was one time I’ll never forget. There was this minister, a Southern Baptist, and this professor from the University of Virginia. The professor was a famous man, but more than that, he was a good man, and he had a brain.”

”Rare combination.”

”True. Well, we sat drinking tea. Ladies were present. I’ll never forget. He held the tea like this.” Chamberlain extended a delicate finger. “I kept trying to be courteous, but this minister was so damned wrong and moral and arrogant all at the same time that he began to get under my skin. And finally he said, like this: ‘Look here, my good man, you don’t understand.’ There was this tone of voice as if he was speaking to a stupid dull child and he was being patient, but running out of patience. Then he said, ‘You don’t understand. You have to live with the Negro to understand. Let me put it this way. Suppose I kept a fine stallion in one of my fields, and suddenly one of your Northern abolitionists came up and insisted I should free it. Well, sir, I would not be more astonished. I feel exactly that way about my blacks, and I resent your lack of knowledge, sir.’” Kilrain grunted. Chamberlain said, “I remember him sitting there, sipping tea. I tried to point out that a man is not a horse, and he replied, very patiently, that that was the thing I did not understand, that a Negro was not a man. Then I left the room.”

Kilrain smiled. Chamberlain said slowly, “I don’t really understand it. Never have. The more I think on it the more it horrifies me. How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible? But then right after that, after I left the room, the other one came to see me, the professor. I could see he was concerned, and I respected him, and he apologized for having offended me in my own home.”

”Oh yes.” Kilrain nodded. “He would definitely do that.”

”But then he pointed out that he could not apologize for his views, because they were honestly held. And I had to see he was right there. Then he talked to me for a while, and he was trying to get through to me, just as I had tried with the minister. The difference was that this was a brilliant man. He explained that the minister was a moral man, kind to his children, and that the minister believed every word he said, just as I did, and then he said, ‘My young friend, what if it is you who are wrong?’ I had one of those moments when you feel that if the rest of the world is right, then you yourself have gone mad. Because I was really thinking of killing him, wiping him off the earth, and it was then I realized for the first time that if it was necessary to kill them, then I would kill them, and something at the time said: you cannot be utterly right. And there is still something every now and then which says, ‘Yes, but what if you are wrong?’ “ Chamberlain stopped. A shell burst dimly a long way off, a dull and distant thumping.

They sat for a long while in silence, then Kilrain said, softly smiling, “Colonel, you’re a lovely man.” He shook his head. “I see at last a great difference between us, and yet, I admire ye, lad. You’re an idealist, praise be.”

Kilrain rubbed his nose, brooding. Then he said, “The truth is. Colonel, that there’s no divine spark, bless you. There’s many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you’ve seen them hang each other… Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I’m fighting for is the right to prove I’m a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There’s many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don’t think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. ‘Tis why I’m here. I’ll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I’m Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don’t know who me father was and I don’t give a damn. There’s only one aristocracy, and that’s right here-“ he tapped his white skull with a thick finger-“and you, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don’t even know it. You are damned good at everything I’ve seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men.