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Large wars have small, important corners, where the damage that they do can sometimes be repaired. A flat wash of blackness lay underneath the bluffs down by the river. It was a part of the same night that filled the streets of the town, growing deeper beyond the entrenchments where forest stretched away forever. The dim horizon line throbbed as faint red flames flickered. This might have been summer lightning someplace far. Except, like shooting stars, the tracks of burning fuses flew, and when mortar bombs struck there was no distance left. Falling shells brought death into the town. Pemberton was trapped in Vicksburg, and so were all his men.
At first Ulysses S. Grant tried to wash over Pemberton's butternut boys, but the rebels stuck. The Union dead lay in windrows facing trenches they couldn't storm. The attacks would have to stop. New York and Ohio boys spoke hopefully, telling each other no general could keep on forever killing his own men. In this they were correct. Instead of attack it was siege, a sensible improvement. While digging was harder than dying, it was a thing men could complain about.
Now at last the Union troops were readied, the guns drawnclose so as to throw harsh iron against the fragile town. Porter's fleet of tin clads increased the devastation as they bombarded from the river. Burning fuses through the night gracefully arched the sky. Where they hit, houses, mules, and people died or got so broken it was an ugly shame. Staying was bad. Leaving was worse. Federals tightly ringed the town.
The dreary days of siege had turned from weeks into months of misery, and the invested city sensed its dying, hammered to death by Union guns.
A Vicksburg lady paused to watch a horse's agony--one slight wound in his sleek black side and at first the blood was only a dribble. The horse was tied to a tree. When he could not reach to gnaw his hurt he turned. The whole body arched to rake the tree's bark with his teeth. Such a little wound, yet so much pain.
Death came in so many different ways. The soldiers claimed they could hear from various whistles, shrieks, and screams which guns were turned against them. It didn't seem to matter much. A churning explosion destroyed a house or made a tiny gout of blood. There were so many ways to die.
On life's side, the woman thought, her clothes were clean and she had--she hefted them--two fine-formed apples in a parchment envelope. An officer had been kind to her. It was a gentleman's gesture amid these ruins. Suffering and death could be intolerable if men should lose their honor.
The owner of the wounded horse argued with three other men. It was only a little wound. Perhaps he would recover. One of his comrades had his pistol drawn, holding it without the hammer pulled so as to fire. The woman watched closely and noticed other soldiers, the tattered infantry, who were gathering one by one.
Once, when bands played, the horses were all sleek and fed and these men marched in proud straight ranks. How her heart had lifted to hear the battle hymns and see the companies stride by in springing step. Now, these men walked, one by one or two at atime. She sensed an aimlessness about them. It was because the siege was tight. There was no place to go. She looked for what those gray, empty faces might say. They were starving and had no expression as they waited for the horse to die.
The horse's blood was now flowing faster, but its agony remained the same. He did not fight the halter that held him to the tree. He fought at what had come to lodge inside him. Corded muscles whipped his body into huge arcs and arabesques. He could no longer find the tree to bite, so now the horse could only scream. These were screams a woman knew, the sounds of an infant's agony grown huge. The horse's owner was crying now, and the man with the revolver holstered it. An artillery man had his short sword drawn. He used it like an axe. The heavy blade flashed above his head. He had both hands to the scaled grip. The woman looked away to see ragged soldiers moving in on the kill. The horse's screaming stopped.
She walked along the broken street toward her undamaged home. There were no shells falling now. How long ago, or was it just last month, this war had been such gallant pageantry.
Then there had been Vesuvius fountains of fire in the night. At first alarm empty houses along the river, soaked with turpentine, had been turned into torches. Everyone--women, soldiers, and children--had come to see the huge black waterbugs of Porter's fleet spit sheets of flame as those Union gunboats ran the river down, past Vicksburg's protective batteries.
She had been at the grand ball. When the gun thunder started, her partner and all other men ran to be with their troops. Suddenly in that bright-lit hall only women in their ball gowns stood. She still kept that dance card with young officers' names inked beside dances never danced.
Everywhere men ran through the light-filled streets. The flares and flaming barns lit the river brightly until it was hard to see the winking flashes of the guns. The billowing smoke reflected muzzleflashes and a glare from the houses and ships that burned. One gunboat, like a child's toy in a roadside rivulet, was caught in the current and then whirled just beneath the batteries. Somehow its armor held, or the crew had the luck, for the ship floated free and fled down the river from her sight.
With clash and clatter, horse artillery arrived to set their guns up in the street. The roar was continuous. The guns would never sound so loud again.
She came back from her memories into the daytime street. The dead horse was hidden by a crowd of quietly struggling men. Two months ago the city had fought back against the gunboats in the river. Today it sat to suffer siege. Those silent men were frightening.
Her eyes returned to memories of the river. Then sparks shot skyward like a comet trail erupting from the ground. The gunners worked in a frenzy but one by one the armored boats fought through. As they did the city had one last, long breath to catch. Fires in the houses died and the river blackened to empty night. When sleep finally came to Vicksburg's people, they knew with sureness, defeat had started. Federal gunboats had run past their batteries.
The town's deeper caves were safe havens against huge mortars in the siege train of the Federals. Frightened people who had lost their homes cowered deep within them, and the army's main hospital had moved into the deepest one. Even the shallow caves were safe unless there, was what people, called a "lucky" hit. It was hard to remember which was which. As she hurried home from the death of the horse, the woman thought, lucky or unlucky for who or whom. The whos did the shooting and the whoms got hit. Once the cannon was discharged--This thought was interrupted. She stopped to stare at a neighbor's house. It had once been so like her own. Now there was just smoke-blackened shambles. Walking by she noticed broken, hanging beams. Three chimneys stood as though expectant, with thick rubble piled around their bases. She had always wondered how houses were made that they could holdtogether. What a complication of boards and beams. So long a time to build them up and how quickly blown and burnt to hell. She looked around to see if anyone had heard her think so coarse a word.
Inside her own house, all roughness of board and beam still hid behind smooth panelings and plaster. Her clean-scrubbed windowpanes winked back the light. She was sure to always have them polished clean. The chimney pots were like little hats and the chimney bodies were comfortably clothed by this building's walls. There was no need for a...
