refuse if offered—in short a seedy
tramp no different in appearance from those
bearded, barefoot tramps that followed him—which
would have made you wonder, wouldn’t it, whether
God weren’t on the Southern side after all?
“They glory in their shame,” the reporter
wrote, and so we did. That Harper’s Ferry
crew laughed and joked, confident as crows, boasting
as anybody would, even Deacon
Jackson in his grim and pious way: “Through
God’s blessing,” he dispatched to Lee, and isn’t
that just how the Good Lord works? You never
know what He’s doing, and just when most you’re
satisfied He’s on your side, look out, here
it comes. So Lee got Stonewall’s message, knew
that within a day Jackson and the larger
half of his army could join him: he changed
his mind about retreat, thought the campaign
in Maryland was saved, looked at the high
ground behind Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg,
and said, “We will make our stand on these hills”—
and thus fulfilled again the ancient words,
The stouthearted are spoiled, have slept their sleep;
and none of the men of might have found their hands.
At thy rebuke, O God, both chariot and horse
are cast into a dead sleep. Surely
the wrath of man shall praise Thee.
*
Dunker Church, evening
That evening I sat in the Dunker Church
alone. Way off up cemetery way
the bump, bump now and then of our guns sounded,
and fainter, deeper, Yankee crews thumped back,
their heavy shot whistling toward that graveyard.
But birds still twittered in the trees around
the meeting house. It was just a square room,
as plain as biscuits on a clean-washed plate.
Against the north wall stood a bare table,
unpainted. On three sides, plank-backed benches.
The floorboards and plain benches gave the dry
rose smell of books a quiet schoolroom gives
in deep late summer, after months of heat
and standing empty in the afternoons.
The whitewashed walls bore no adornment but
the windows. What you see out such windows
looks more sharply colored for those white walls—
the clean walls, and that pure light of heaven—
green trees through hand-washed glass clearer than water—
and then some boys came in. They hushed at first
and then broke into talk and I stood up
and shuffled out. It was all right. I’d seen
what heaven is. I’d felt it in my lungs
and smelled it. This was what the great battle
was fought for. This is what we all wanted.
The battle’s center was the Dunker Church.
Old Jack is Here
When General Lee drew up his line behind
Antietam Creek that early afternoon,
we hadn’t but about fifteen thousand
worn-out, hungry, angry men. The Old Man stood
on Cemetery Hill, his hands still bandaged
from a fall, which must have made him just mad,
and looked across the middle bridge. He saw
the Yankee army, or half of it, forty
thousand, come down the Boonsboro Road, deploy
three miles along the Creek, place artillery—
some batteries of big twenty-pounders
included—on the high ground. McClellan
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
