Departures

Ledbetter let him be, as any of the veterans would have. After a while he said, “Well, it ain’t what we wanted it to be back then, but it ain’t too bad, neither.” Thorpe nodded gratefully; that much was true. Ledbetter changed the subject a little: “I got in here last night, and they feed you royal, that they do. If we’d had rations like these when we were in the field, we’dve won that goddamn war, no doubt about it.”

“I was thinking the same thing about the beds,” Thorpe said.

Ledbetter’s laughter was not a croak, but the hearty cackle of a laying hen. “John, you have that one dead on, and I’m not jokin’. Why, I remember the time I had to sleep in a tree four nights runnin’. That weren’t the worst of it, neither. I-” The story went on for some time. Thorpe believed not a word of it.

He suspected most of the old men here had stories like that. Several of the poker players wore coats studded with badges from so many past reunions that they looked like field marshals from some Balkan army better at bragging than fighting. Their yarns would have grown in the telling every time they were trotted out, too. By now few would resemble anything that had actually happened.

Jed Ledbetter shuffled off toward the bathroom. Thorpe stood around for a while, watching the men playing cards. Sure enough, they had stories by the trainful. As the shadows lengthened, one of them got up and turned on the electric lights. In the old days, Thorpe thought, it would have been an oil lamp or a candle, and endless eyestrain. No one else seemed to notice the change from then to now.

Again he’d wondered why he’d come, what he had in common with these garrulous oldsters. The only answer he could find was that the war had defined their lives, as it had his. He’d been with them at their beginnings; seeing them at the end of things seemed fitting, too.

“Generals, please,” a woman in nurse’s whites called over and over till she had the veterans’ attention. “We need you to go out for a little while so we can set the room up for supper.”

Thorpe left without complaint. The poker players followed more slowly, grumbling all the way. He smiled. That took him back across the years. Some of the men in his company had left their cards back in camp when they went into battle, so as not to have to explain the devil’s pasteboards to St. Peter if they got killed. But others, like these old fellows, would sooner have played than eaten.

As six o’clock drew near, more and more veterans gathered on the grass outside the dining hall. Quite a few of them had flasks, which they weren’t shy in sharing. After three or four had gone by, Thorpe began to feel merry. He joined in the cheer-not quite a real Rebel yell, but close-when the doors opened. As if at one of those long-ago mess calls, the men formed a single line as they filed in.

Since he didn’t know anyone here, Thorpe took a seat at random. He found himself across the table from Jed Ledbetter. The Alabamian grinned at him, displaying tobacco-stained false teeth. “Was I right, John, or what? Ain’t this fine-lookin’ grub?”

“That it is, Jed.” Thorpe meant it-platters of ham and chicken alternated with bowls full of green salad, peas, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Along with the unofficial liquids lurking in hip flasks, there were milk and Coca-Cola and ice water. He filled his plate full. He was eating better here than he had lately down in Rocky Mount. Times were no less hard there than anywhere else in the country.

He heard so much talk of Pickett’s Charge and what might have been at Gettysburg that he couldn’t help himself. “Don’t you forget Pettigrew’s boys,” he said at last. “We went up the hill on Pickett’s left, and a whole great lot of us never came down again.”

Maybe he’d touched glory then. He wasn’t quite sure. He did remember being too excited to be afraid, even when the Federal guns on the flank tore great bleeding holes in the tight gray ranks.

Somebody said, “Reckon they call it Pickett’s charge on account of his fellas got to the top o’ the hill and in amongst the Yankees, and Pettigrew’s didn’t.”

“One of the reasons they got to the top is that we shielded them most of the way with our bodies,” Thorpe retorted hotly. Then he stopped, amazed at the anger he could still feel sixty-nine years after the fact. He managed a laugh. “It’s water under the bridge now, that’s for certain.”

“So it is,” the other veteran answered, “and bodies under the ground, too.” The whole table fell silent for a moment then. That shot had landed too close for comfort. Almost all the bodies were under the ground by now, and the ones that weren’t-those at this reunion, for instance-would be soon.

Though tired, Thorpe found he wasn’t sleepy. Along with dozens of other veterans, he sat in the dining hall for hours after supper was done, drinking coffee (some of it spiked), smoking, and listening to and telling tales. As his regiment’s historian, he knew a lot of them. The ordinary passing of day and night seemed far away.