The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

  “Would he really?” asks the newspaperman, looking aghast.

  “Course he would! Give up our slaves? Never! It’s slaves that make us rich. Slaves that make us happy. Slaves that make the pancakes, and churn the butter, and boil the syrup. My father once give me a slave whose job it was to follow me around and sweep away my footprints so I could pretend to be invisible. That’s how many slaves we owned, that he could spare one for erasing footprints.”

  “I see,” says the newspaperman doubtfully.

  “Point is, we Figgs may be from Maine, but our hearts lie with the Southern rebels. Yes, sir. Never met a slave I didn’t want to own! Fact is, most every slave I ever saw we did own.”

  “Hundreds of them, you say. In Maine? With your, um, wealthy family?”

  “Not wealthy — rich! Rich is better. More slaves if you’re rich.”

  The Confederate guards are nodding at one another and one of them turns to leave. I figure he’s off to tell his boss they have put a true friend of the South in jail by mistake.

  That’s when the screaming starts and ruins my plan. A terrible screaming that puts a chill down my spine and makes my knees shiver. A screaming that makes the guards forget the amazing story of the boy in the balloon.

  “What’s that?” I ask the newspaperman, whose face has gone gray.

  “I think I know,” he says. He pulls himself up to the barred window in one corner of the stall and has a look. He drops back down and wipes his sweaty hands on his trouser legs. “The wounded,” he explains. “The battle must have begun. They’re bringing wounded to the barn.”

  And then the doors burst open and the screaming comes inside.

  THEY COME BY THE CARTLOAD. Moaning soldiers stacked in flatbed wagons or carts drawn by horse or by hand. Mostly the wounded scream only when the cart hits a bump. Some have already stopped screaming and are put aside as the carts are unloaded, their faces covered with a scrap of cloth.

  The rest are carried into the barn on litters, awaiting treatment. Dozens and dozens of men, some of them crying out for their mothers, wives, or their sweethearts. The dozens soon become a hundred, stacked inside the barn and out, under the shade of the eaves.

  “The battle of Gettysburg has begun,” the newspaperman confides. “They say that for part of the day the Union cavalry held its own, but are now being driven back through the town. According to our guard, thousands of Union troops have surrendered or been taken prisoner. The rebels expect that Lincoln’s army will be defeated in a day or two, just as they were at Chancellorsville, and then General Robert E. Lee and his troops will invade Washington from the north and declare victory.”

  “Is it true?” I want to know. “The North has lost?”

  “Truth?” the newspaperman says, shaking his head. “The truth is hard to come by when the bullets are flying. The battle won’t be truly won or lost until the dead are counted.”

  The rebels may be winning at Gettysburg, but their triumph is not without cost. Most of the wounded have been gravely injured and the rebel surgeons are as busy as carpenters, prying out bullets and sawing off limbs.

  The only thing worse than a man screaming in pain is the sound of the saws cutting through bone.

  “A good surgeon is like a good butcher — he knows his cut of meat. He will roll up his sleeves, administer a little ether if he’s got it, and have a leg off and the stump cauterized in a few minutes,” the newspaperman explains. “Longer than that and the man will die of pain, or loss of blood, or both. As it is, less than half of these men will survive the day. Of those that do, another half will die of infection.”

  Then I don’t hear no more of what he’s got to say because I’m covering my ears to muffle the screaming and the terrible wet noise of the saw. I curl up facing the wall so’s not to watch the horrible business of tending to the wounded. Inside my head I’m praying Harold has not “seen the elephant” or been injured or worse. Best thing might be if he surrendered or was taken prisoner. But that’s foolishness — a boy brave enough to stand up to Squinton Leach would never surrender to no rebel. Knowing Harold he’s probably been promoted on the battlefield. Heck, if I don’t find him soon he’ll likely be the youngest general in history.

  That’s what I cling to: the thought of Harold somehow surviving. A fever dream of hope that I’ll find him before he’s killed and we’ll escape back to Maine and kindly Mr. Brewster will take us in, and we’ll live like proper people with beds to sleep in and three squares a day and milk and pie in the evenings. We’ll sit by the fire, jawing with Mr. Brewster, and help the escaped slaves if they still need help, and make sure Bob the horse has plenty of hay, and oats if he wants them. I’ll go to school like our Dear Mother intended and learn everything there is to know about the world. I’ll learn how to stop people from starving, and put an end to wars and slavery and meanness and cruelty, and Harold will manage the tourmaline mines for Mr. Brewster. In my dream Harold will be happy and strong and find him a wife to darn his socks of an evening and give him children that are never hungry and never get beat or locked in the barn like animals, and never have to run away to war to save their big brothers and see arms and legs being stacked like cordwood, or men dying of their wounds, or hear the keening of boys who miss their mothers and beg to see her in Heaven.

  They say that even in the worst battles some of the troops survive. Please, Dear Lord, let that someone be my big brother, that’s all I’m asking. Don’t let him die in a pony cart jammed with the wounded, or tied to a plank while they saw his limbs off, one by one, or carried home in a casket wagon.

  Please, Dear Lord, please let him be okay, wherever he is, and tell him Homer is coming.

  ALONG ABOUT NOON something changes. The cartloads of wounded stop arriving, and the pitiful moaning slacks off, and the weary surgeons and their assistants wash the blood from their hands and have something to eat and drink.

  The horses and ponies that survived the battle are fed and watered, too, and some of them are put into stalls next to me and Jonathan Griswold, the newspaperman, where they neigh and nicker and rub themselves nervously against the stalls, as if trying to scratch away the fright of what they’ve been through.

  “History is happening today,” the newspaperman laments, fiddling with his spectacles. “And I am stuck in a barn with the dumb animals, blind as a bat. I’ve not even pen and ink to mark down rumors of these great events!”

  “At least you have a hand to write with, even if you ain’t got a pen,” I remind him.

  “True enough,” he admits. “I should count my blessings.”

  There is triumphant talk among the troops that the war has finally been won, that the Confederate troops will soon sweep away the last of the Union Army, and either kill them or take them prisoner.

  The newspaperman, keeping his voice low, confides that it may be just as they say, but that the rebels have been chasing victory for two years and have never quite gotten there. He says that while each man the South loses is gone forever, the more populous North has more men to lose, and many more that can be drafted to replace them.

  “In the end it is a game of numbers. Not so much who has the will to win, but who has the most men and material to sacrifice. The war is a meat grinder, as you have seen.”

  Sometime in the middle of the afternoon a messenger arrives, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “To the front! All men fit for fighting are commanded to the front! The Union Army flees and General Lee orders all fit men to the chase! Have at ’em, boys! We got ’em on the run at last!”

  The barn is suddenly alive with cries for victory. Even some of the most desperate wounded beg to be taken back into battle, with rifles placed in their shivering hands.

  “All men to the front! All men to the front! Long live the South! Long live Robert E. Lee!”

  The men guarding us have been affected by the excitement. They pick up their weapons and haversacks and race from the barn to join their comrades, leaving me and the newspa
perman pretty much alone.

  “Now is our chance,” I whisper. “I’ll take the smallest horse.”

  He firmly shakes his head. “I dare not,” he says, sounding regretful. “They will shoot me for certain.”

  “Will they shoot a boy?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Who can say what men will do when the heat of battle is upon them? But these rebels are decent enough. They will be aiming for men in blue uniforms.” He looks at me with great concern. “But why flee? I thought you favored the South, that your family owned slaves by the dozen.”

  “By the hundreds,” I tell him. “All lies. The only side I favor is named Harold Figg, and I will find him or die trying.”

  “There’s an excellent chance you will succeed in dying,” he warns me. “Best stay here and keep your head down.”

  “I made a promise,” I explain. “Remember my name in case I am forgot. Homer Figg, of Pine Swamp, Maine.”

  A moment later I’m over the stall and leading a pony to daylight.

  I LIKE TO BELIEVE THAT our Dear Mother watched over me that day. Maybe it is wishful to think that them in Heaven are concerned with those of us on earth, but something kept me alive, because by rights I should have been killed six times over.

  The first is a hail of bullets zinging past my ears as I put heels to that rebel pony and gallop out of the farmyard. No saddle nor bridle to steer by, just me clinging to the mane for dear life, and bullets cleaving the air like invisible knives.

  The next is not a mile away, when an artillery shell lands so close I can feel the heat as it explodes and smell the dirt in the air. Then I’m galloping the stolen pony through clouds of smoke, over rolling fields, over a railroad track, past thousands of soldiers massed to attack, and rolling batteries of artillery cannon, and startled men who shake their heads as me and the pony fly by, running for our lives.

  Somehow the poor animal seems to understand that I want to go through the gray Confederate lines and head for the Union blue. Or maybe it’s just so spooked that it runs straight at what frightens it most.

  Time and again shells explode, tearing up the ground, knocking down trees, and making soldiers vanish, leaving nothing behind but their boots.

  I cling to the pony as if in a bad dream, although it is nothing like the war in my nightmares, where I have seen Harold die a hundred times. In nightmares the noise of war is not louder than a thousand thunderstorms, or as blinding as a thousand bolts of lightning. In nightmares it never smelled so bad. In nightmares I do not hear the cry of wounded horses and think that it is worse than the crying of wounded men because the animals do not understand what has happened to them, or why they have been shot down.

  Men and horses are dying all around me and yet on I ride, on and on and on, spurring the pony with my bare heels, expecting to be struck at any moment.

  Like the pony, fear keeps me going. That, and anger at being so scared. I keep riding and riding through bullets and bombshells because I am furiously afraid to stop moving. Stopping is where the world explodes. Stopping is certain death.

  In that mad ride across the field of battle I see many things:

  ARTILLERY SHELLS SKIPPING ALONG THE GROUND

  LIKE ROCKS BEING SKIPPED ON A POND.

  A CAVALRY OFFICER DRAWING HIS PISTOL

  TO PUT DOWN HIS WOUNDED HORSE,

  AND THEN HIMSELF FALLING LIFELESS BEFORE

  HE CAN PULL THE TRIGGER.

  MEN DIGGING LIKE DOGS IN THE DIRT TO GET AWAY

  FROM THE DEADLY HAIL OF LEAD.

  SPENT BULLETS SPATTERING LIKE HARD RAIN

  ON THE BROKEN GROUND.

  TREES BURNING LIKE CHRISTMAS CANDLES.

  THIRSTY MEN SUCKING SWEAT FROM

  THEIR WOOLEN SLEEVES.

  A DEAD MAN ON HIS KNEES WITH HIS HANDS FOLDED,

  AS IF TO PRAY.

  THINGS TOO TERRIBLE TO WRITE, FOR FEAR

  THE PAGE WILL BURN.

  THINGS BEST FORGOT.

  LATER SOMEONE TOLD ME I must have covered five miles or more, from the rebel-held farmhouse to the Union lines at Culp’s Hill. To me it felt longer than forever. After a while I could not hear the fearsome thumping of the artillery, or the bee buzz of the bullets, or the crying of man and beast. It’s as if my ears have been stuffed with thick cotton, muffling the noise of war. The only thing I can really be sure of is my own heart slamming, and the beating heart of the pony as we ride on through the carnage, leaping over the dead and dying, our pace never slacking.

  It’s as if me and the pony exist all to ourselves, inside the battle but somehow separate. Galloping on and on until suddenly the smoke clears away and there’s a sloping hill in front of us and rows and rows of cannons pointing their dark black barrels right at me, speaking in puffs of white smoke, and I’m shouting back at the cannons, shouting for my brother, but I can’t hear my own voice.

  The pony rears up and I lose my hold, falling with a hard thump to the rocky ground. Can’t tell if I’m seeing stars, or real shells exploding, and then rough hands grab me and pull me into a trench dug in the ground below the cannon.

  Bearded men in blue uniforms are shouting, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. Finally one of them gives me water and covers my ears with a cool damp cloth and slowly my hearing returns.

  “Who are you, boy? Have you lost your mind? Charging over a battlefield without so much as a sword or gun? That’s madness! Four or five of our best sharpshooters were trying to cut you down, I don’t know how they missed!”

  “Are you from Maine?” I ask, gulping the water.

  “Vermont,” says the man with the water. “Poultney, Vermont. I never been to Maine, nor anywhere else but here.”

  I try to explain about my brother, that he will be with a company of new recruits from Maine, but the Vermont man has no patience for my story.

  “Medicine shows? Pigs like human beings? Confederate spies? Balloon rides? You’re speaking nonsense, boy! You took a bad fall and it’s gone to your head!”

  “Harold Figg,” I insist. “He’s not yet eighteen!”

  The Vermont man shrugs. “There are drummer boys of fourteen or even younger. Drummer boys no older than you!”

  “He was sworn to fight as a soldier,” I try to explain, but the cannons fire directly over our heads and once again my ears go deaf for a time.

  When the cannons are reloading for another salvo, the Vermont man hauls me over the top of the hill, out of the line of fire, and won’t let me go until he’s delivered me to his company sergeant.

  “This boy was recovered on the field of battle!” he yells to a sergeant. “He’s plum crazy! What should I do?”

  “Send him to the rear!” shouts the sergeant, pointing with his sword. “All civilians to the rear! And be quick about it, private! The Johnny Rebs are coming again, sure as Christmas. They will mount one last assault before the sun sets!”

  There are thousands of soldiers upon the hill and just behind it, and from the look most have been fighting all day. The wounded are being loaded into wagons and will be carried to where the Union surgeons await.

  Just over the ridge the cannons are booming, but here there are fires lit, and camp stoves where coffee brews, and the men all seem calm and tired but also full of purpose.

  “They have seen the worst of war and are determined to keep fighting,” the Vermont man says, with great satisfaction. “We stand our ground at last.”

  He fetches a mug of hot black coffee and bids me drink it. “Might be this’ll restore your sanity,” he says. “It must suffice, for I can’t be babysitting a lunatic boy. I must return to my men before the next assault, or be marked down as a deserter.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’m fine now. It was all the noise made my head crooked.”

  “It’ll do that,” he agrees, and points to the wagons. “Best thing, follow the wounded. That will get you a safe distance from the fighting. Don’t know what became of your little horse. I think it may still be running.”

>   I promise to follow the wagons of wounded and find safety in the rear, but as soon as he’s out of sight I skedaddle to another group of soldiers, asking if any are from Maine. None are — they’re all Pennsylvania volunteers, and some from New York, and they know nothing of the regiments from Maine, or where they might be located.

  Before they can ask what a boy is doing on the battlefield, out of uniform, I move on to the next group, looking for my brother. Fact is, they’re all too busy to take much notice of me, or too tired to give chase.

  As the sun is going down, I finally come upon some men from Maine, and ask if they have any Figgs along.

  “Figs, son? Figs?” says one of the soldiers, grinning so hard his droopy mustache goes horizontal. “How about apples or peaches? Would you settle for a pear? We have a Private Charles Pear, from Brunswick.”

  “Figg,” I insist. “Harold Figg, from Pine Swamp.”

  “Never heard of Pine Swamp. Never heard of Harold Figg. Do you know what regiment? What division?”

  “All I know is, he’s my brother and he’s in the army.”

  “And how did you come to be here, boy, looking for your brother?”

  I’m too exhausted to tell the story again, with or without the ornamentation. “I come by train,” I tell him, to keep it simple.

  “All the way to Gettysburg by train?”

  “The last stretch by horse,” I admit.

  The soldier studies me in the fading light. “You look like you could use a meal, son. Why not join us? We are all Maine men here, though none called Figg.”

  “I must find my brother,” I insist.