Departures

Thorpe tripped on a cross-tie as he ran across the railroad track. He stumbled, almost fell, caught himself just in time. Then he was at the low Federal earthwork. A man in blue scrambled up to meet him, thrust with a bayoneted Springfield. Thorpe fired the Colt pistol at point-blank range. The Federal wailed and reeled backward, clutching his belly.

Other southern men were up on the Union works now, too, some fighting hand to hand, others shooting down into the trenches behind the parapet. Some bluecoats fired back, but more threw down their guns and threw up their hands in token of surrender.

The cheering Confederates swarmed forward. A ragged private seized a flag from a color bearer who seemed too stunned to stop him. A glum Federal who wore a major’s shoulder straps on the plain blue blouse of a private turned to Thorpe and said, “Captain, your men fight well; that was a magnificent charge.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thorpe said, nodding to his courteous captive.

The Rebels began hustling more prisoners off to the rear. They must have bagged a couple of thousand Yankees, Thorpe thought proudly. But the cost was not light. Men of the Chicora Guards who’d seemed to have charmed lives all through the company’s hard fighting were down now, dead or wounded. No doubt the story was the same all through the Forty-seventh North Carolina. The surgeons would be busy tonight.

Thorpe peered east. The Federals not hit or captured were abandoning their works and retreating in that direction. They wouldn’t tear up any more of the Weldon Railroad here, not for a good while to come; Confederate cavalry-Wade Hampton’s boys-galloped up from the south to speed the Yankees on their way.

The rattle of gunfire slowed to a lethargic pop-pop-pop and finally petered out. Thorpe glanced back over his shoulder. The sun was almost down. Hard to believe the fighting had lasted most of the day. In the middle of the action from the moment it began, he’d had no time to think… about what he was doing here at Reams Station, about how he’d returned to August 1864, to his youth, again.

“That’s over,” he said to no one in particular. “All over.”

“So it is,” agreed the Union major, who he somehow hadn’t gone back with the rest of the prisoners. “So it is-in a way. Welcome, John. We’ve been waiting for you a long time; you’re one of the last to join the ranks.”

Under the orange light of the setting sun, dead and injured men of both sides, their wounds suddenly vanished, sprang to their feet and went around slapping one another on the back. “That was a good shot you nailed me with, Eb.” “Just luck, Willie, just luck. Fact is, I was aiming for Joseph there next to you.”

Proud, bullet-torn battle flags from North and South fluttered together in the evening breeze. Under them, the men of both sides gathered, all sound and well as they had been before the battle started. “I got me some good coffee here,” a Yankee announced. “Who’ll swap me some baccy for it?” A Rebel stepped forward, smiling, to make the trade.

Thorpe stared, not fully understanding, not yet. The northern major touched him on the forearm. “Did it not seem real, John?” he asked quietly. “Was it not as in the old days?”

Then Thorpe knew beyond any doubt. “Yes, by God, it was,” he said.

He woke next morning in a shelter tent he shared with Benjamin Bunn and George Westray. The lieutenants were already up, and bent over a chessboard. They set the game aside to go out with him and take morning roll for the company. He smiled as he walked in front of the drawn-up men. So many faces he hadn’t seen in so many years!

After the roll was taken, the Chicora Guards lined up for mess call, and then for drill. Before they could begin their evolutions, though, the drummer began the monotonous patter that summoned soldiers gray and blue to battle. “Dismissed to get your war gear!” Thorpe called. Cheering, the men trotted back to their tents and bedrolls, snatched up rifles and cartridge boxes.

Thorpe followed a little more slowly. He wondered which fight it would be today.

“Poor old John,” Jed Ledbetter said as the hearse pulled away from the Soldiers’ Home. He took off his hat and held it over his heart. “Poor old John. He went and missed the grand parade.”

DESIGNATED HITTER

As I’ve said, I love baseball. If I were the athletic type, I would have tried to play. Since I’m not, I sometimes play beer league softball, which is not the same thing at all, at all. Those of you who have done likewise will recognize that a good deal of this story is drawn straight from life. I never met anyone like Michael, though. I wish I had.

You find all kinds playing beer league softball. I ought to know. They let me play, for instance.