第125章

Later, in the long, hot summer twilight, the ambulances came rumbling down the road from the battle field and commissary wagons, covered with muddy canvas. Then farm wagons, ox carts and even private carriages commandeered by the medical corps. They passed Aunt Pitty’s house, jolting over the bumpy road, packed with wounded and dying men, dripping blood into the red dust. At the sight of the women with buckets and dippers, the conveyances halted and the chorus went up in cries, in whispers:

“Water!”

Scarlett held wobbling heads that parched lips might drink, poured buckets of water over dusty, feverish bodies and into open wounds that the men might enjoy a brief moment’s relief. She tiptoed to hand dippers to ambulance drivers and of each she questioned, her heart in her throat: “What news? What news?”

From all came back the answer: “Don’t know fer sartin, lady. It’s too soon to tell.”

Night came and it was sultry. No air moved and the flaring pine knots the negroes held made the air hotter. Dust clogged Scarlett’s nostrils and dried her lips. Her lavender calico dress, so freshly clean and starched that morning, was streaked with blood, dirt and sweat. This, then, was what Ashley had meant when he wrote that war was not glory but dirt and misery.

Fatigue gave an unreal, nightmarish cast to the whole scene. It couldn’t be real—or it was real, then the world had gone mad. If not, why should she be standing here in Aunt Pitty’s peaceful front yard, amid wavering lights, pouring water over dying beaux? For so many of them were her beaux and they tried to smile when they saw her. There were so many men jolting down this dark, dusty road whom she knew so well, so many men dying here before her eyes, mosquitoes and gnats swarming their bloody faces, men with whom she had danced and laughed, for whom she had played music and sung songs, teased, comforted and loved—a little.

She found Carey Ashburn on the bottom layer of wounded in an ox cart; barely alive from a bullet wound in his head. But she could not extricate him without disturbing six other wounded men, so she let him go on to the hospital. Later she heard he had died before a doctor ever saw him and was buried somewhere, no one knew exactly. So many men had been buried that month, in shallow, hastily dug graves at Oakland Cemetery. Melanie felt it keenly that they had not been able to get a lock of Carey’s hair to send to his mother in Alabama.

As the hot night wore on and their backs were aching and their knees buckling from weariness, Scarlett and Pitty cried to man after man: “What news? What news?”

And as the long hours dragged past, they had their answer, an answer that made them look whitely into each other’s eyes.

“We’re falling back.” “We’ve got to fall back.” “They outnumber us by thousands.” “The Yankees have got Wheeler’s cavalry cut off near Decatur. We got to reinforce them.” “Our boys will all be in town soon.”

Scarlett and Pitty clutched each other’s arms for support.

“Are—are the Yankees coming?”

“Yes’m, they’re comin’ all right but they ain’t goin’ ter git fer, lady.” “Don’t fret, Miss, they can’t take Atlanta.” “No, Ma’m, we got a million miles of breastworks ‘round this town.” “I heard Old Joe say it myself: ‘I can hold Atlanta forever.’ ” “But we ain’t got Old Joe. We got—” “Shut up, you fool! Do you want to scare the ladies?” “The Yankees will never take this place, Ma’m.” “Whyn’t you ladies go ter Macon or somewheres that’s safer? Ain’t you got no kinfolks there?” “The Yankees ain’t goin’ ter take Atlanta but still it ain’t goin’ ter be so healthy for ladies whilst they’re tryin’ it.” “There’s goin’ ter be a powerful lot of shellin’.”

In a warm steaming rain the next day, the defeated army poured through Atlanta by thousands, exhausted by hunger and weariness, depleted by seventy-six days of bat-tie and retreat, their horses starved scarecrows, their cannon and caissons harnessed with odds and ends of rope and strips of rawhide. But they did not come in as disorderly rabble, in full rout. They marched in good order, jaunty for all their rags, their torn red battle flags flying in the rain. They had learned retreating under Old Joe, who had made it as great a feat of strategy as advancing. The bearded, shabby files swung down Peachtree Street to the tune of “Maryland! My Maryland!” and all the town turned out to cheer them. In victory or defeat, they were their boys.

The state militia who had gone out so short a time before, resplendent in new uniforms, could hardly be distinguished from the seasoned troops, so dirty and unkempt were they. There was a new look in their eyes. Three years of apologizing, of explaining why they were not at the front was behind them now. They had traded security behind the lines for the hardships of battle. Many of their number had traded easy living for hard death. They were veterans now, veterans of brief service, but veterans just the same, and they had acquitted themselves well. They searched out the faces of friends in the crowd and stared at them proudly, defiantly. They could hold up their heads now.

The old men and boys of the Home Guard marched by, the graybeards almost too weary to lift their feet, the boys wearing the faces of tired children, confronted too early with adult problems. Scarlett caught sight of Phil Meade and hardly recognized him, so black was his face with powder and grime, so taut with strain and weariness. Uncle Henry went limping by, hatless in the rain, his head stuck through a hole in a piece of old oilcloth. Grandpa Merriwether rode in on a gun carriage, his bare feet tied in quilt scraps. But search though she might, she saw no sign of John Wilkes.