Read Online Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ralph Peters
Tags: General Fiction
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himself in my absence. Can we now? Listen here, Billy. You’re a captain now. It’s a different job. You know it, but I’m going to tell it to you anyways. Your job is to control your company. And dead men don’t control a pile of shit. Inspiring your men is just fine, all that preaching and praising and getting them riled up before they step off. But your main business is to control them when we go forward. I don’t ever want to see Company I or any damned company in the Fifteenth Alabama go to pieces the way we did at Gettysburg. And I will shoot the man who lets it happen. Hear?”
They walked a few steps in silence, letting the heat of the words cool on the air. At last, Strickland said, “I remember how thirsty I was. That’s what I always think about. How thirsty I was.”
“You just keep your hellions together, doing what they’re meant to do. This war’s going to get even uglier, mark my words.”
As he spoke, it struck Oates that, above all, he was speaking to himself. Strickland needed to hear this counsel. But William C. Oates was the man who needed to take it to heart: When he got in a fight, he just wanted to fight, to go at the enemy with gun, sword, knife, knuckles, teeth, anything at all. He was the one who had to control himself.
They walked back toward the temporary camp. They had been there but one night and the men had not yet had time to render it foul. The air smelled of spring, not mankind.
“Funny thing,” the captain said to his commanding officer, “as much as they complained about the work, the men enjoyed the review the other day. Once they got to it. Never saw them so proud. More spit than polish, but you saw how they stood up proper.”
“Complaining,” Oates said, “is the soldier’s one inalienable right.”
“And General Lee…,” Strickland went on. “I do believe every man present would have died for him right there.”
Oates snorted. “They’re going to get the chance.”
Lee. A fine man, no doubt. But a man. Having knocked down the God above, Oates wasn’t looking for a substitute on earth. He was willing to fight for Robert E. Lee. To die for him, if dying was required. But he wasn’t about to worship any creature that walked on two legs or four.
Lee’s magic had touched him, too, though, on that splendid afternoon: the erect old man in his unsullied uniform, riding his fine dapple gray, with his daughter in a borrowed carriage behind him, spine as straight and face as stiff as her father’s. The men had cheered their throats raw. Oates only hoped that Longstreet hadn’t imagined that any of the cheers were for him.
Lee’s daughter now. Fellow would be afraid to marry her, even if he took an interest. Which seemed unlikely, given what Oates had seen of her: plain and prim, with not one hint of pleasure anywhere near her. With a few startling exceptions, white women had never been sporting enough for his tastes: The ones who weren’t outright slatterns had too little joy about them and a bushel too many worries. Every one of them thought too much. He’d take a brown girl for pleasure any day: They lived in the moment, the way he did himself. Women, good women, had always been powerful fond of him, but he had no interest in subsequent domesticity, with all the do’s and don’ts, the ifs and buts and maybes. When the war finished up, he meant to buy himself the finest piece of tail in Alabama and shut the door. Maybe old Toney would sell him that pleasing missy with whom he had developed an acquaintance. Cheekbones of a Cherokee and the rump of the devil’s dam. Or if Toney didn’t have a mind to sell her, perhaps he’d put her out to him on loan. For services rendered to the glorious Confederacy. The way the old man had given him William for a manservant in the field.
It was a fine thing to have a nigger to clean your boots.
Thinking about all that put him in the mood for a woman’s company, for the rut smell of just one of them, even though
They walked a few steps in silence, letting the heat of the words cool on the air. At last, Strickland said, “I remember how thirsty I was. That’s what I always think about. How thirsty I was.”
“You just keep your hellions together, doing what they’re meant to do. This war’s going to get even uglier, mark my words.”
As he spoke, it struck Oates that, above all, he was speaking to himself. Strickland needed to hear this counsel. But William C. Oates was the man who needed to take it to heart: When he got in a fight, he just wanted to fight, to go at the enemy with gun, sword, knife, knuckles, teeth, anything at all. He was the one who had to control himself.
They walked back toward the temporary camp. They had been there but one night and the men had not yet had time to render it foul. The air smelled of spring, not mankind.
“Funny thing,” the captain said to his commanding officer, “as much as they complained about the work, the men enjoyed the review the other day. Once they got to it. Never saw them so proud. More spit than polish, but you saw how they stood up proper.”
“Complaining,” Oates said, “is the soldier’s one inalienable right.”
“And General Lee…,” Strickland went on. “I do believe every man present would have died for him right there.”
Oates snorted. “They’re going to get the chance.”
Lee. A fine man, no doubt. But a man. Having knocked down the God above, Oates wasn’t looking for a substitute on earth. He was willing to fight for Robert E. Lee. To die for him, if dying was required. But he wasn’t about to worship any creature that walked on two legs or four.
Lee’s magic had touched him, too, though, on that splendid afternoon: the erect old man in his unsullied uniform, riding his fine dapple gray, with his daughter in a borrowed carriage behind him, spine as straight and face as stiff as her father’s. The men had cheered their throats raw. Oates only hoped that Longstreet hadn’t imagined that any of the cheers were for him.
Lee’s daughter now. Fellow would be afraid to marry her, even if he took an interest. Which seemed unlikely, given what Oates had seen of her: plain and prim, with not one hint of pleasure anywhere near her. With a few startling exceptions, white women had never been sporting enough for his tastes: The ones who weren’t outright slatterns had too little joy about them and a bushel too many worries. Every one of them thought too much. He’d take a brown girl for pleasure any day: They lived in the moment, the way he did himself. Women, good women, had always been powerful fond of him, but he had no interest in subsequent domesticity, with all the do’s and don’ts, the ifs and buts and maybes. When the war finished up, he meant to buy himself the finest piece of tail in Alabama and shut the door. Maybe old Toney would sell him that pleasing missy with whom he had developed an acquaintance. Cheekbones of a Cherokee and the rump of the devil’s dam. Or if Toney didn’t have a mind to sell her, perhaps he’d put her out to him on loan. For services rendered to the glorious Confederacy. The way the old man had given him William for a manservant in the field.
It was a fine thing to have a nigger to clean your boots.
Thinking about all that put him in the mood for a woman’s company, for the rut smell of just one of them, even though
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