Lost Cause Read online

  LOST CAUSE

  By J.R. AYERS

  Published at Smashwords by J. R. Ayers

  Copyright 2015 by J. R. Ayers

  Prologue

  In the spring of 1862 Jack Saylor and his family lived in a cabin that looked across the Nueces River and the green plains of grass and the brown hills above Mathis Texas. Most days the river ran crystal clear, cleansed by rocks of sand and giant boulders protruding from the clay bottom, their rounded tops as white as the sun shimmering on the surface of the flowing water.

  Confederate Troops marched by the cabin and down the road heading toward Fort Brown further to the south. The dust they raised settled over the leaves of the trees and the cabbage sprouts in the garden and the long front porch where Granny Saylor sat and dipped her snuff. Jack sat with her too and watched the troops marching past and the dust rising like smoke and the leaves of the cottonwood trees along the river falling to the ground and the road turned gray and butternut by the many uniforms moving as one entity among the fallen leaves of green and yellow and gold. The land thereabout was lush with crops—potatoes and Indian corn and cucumbers and rows of wax beans and cabbage heads and curled vines of yellow squash thriving among beds of spring onions and leafy lettuce. Behind the cabin stood orchards of apple and pecan trees and beyond the fence line an endless sea of grass stretched upward and onward toward the distant blue hills.

  Lately there was fighting in those hills. At night Jack could see the flashes from muskets and artillery and the smell of gunpowder often hung heavy over the river. After the sun went down the gunfire looked like flashes of lightning in the dark sky and the eerie silence made deep by distance did little to illustrate the savagery of battle to those who sat on porches and dipped snuff and yearned for the chance to join the valiant struggle.

  Sometimes late at night Jack heard troops marching past the cabin and mules braying and shouts from officers charging the men to stay alert and fix bayonets. There was more traffic at night it seemed; horses and wagons pulling boxes of ammunition, couriers on horseback traversing the road and a seemingly endless parade of soldiers carving ruts into the road with their boots and knocking down boundary fences in their haste to join the fight.

  To the east Jack could look across the plain and see a copse of cottonwood trees and behind that a rolling grassy plain on the other side of the river. There was fierce fighting at the base of the hills but the blood that was shed there saw no advantage to either side.

  The next day the sound of boots marching northward filled the road. Those left behind blew up the fort and the sun grew warmer and men collapsed from the heat and their grievous wounds and the glory of battle seemed as tarnished as the bruised and broken country side left in the wake of the retreating Rebel army.

  Chapter 1

  The next year Jack turned twenty-one and joined the fight mustering in at Edinburg. He took his basic training with patience and dignity then wore his Confederate Infantry uniform with pride and marched with his comrades prepared to engage the enemy wherever they found them. His first assignment was with a Company stationed in Brownsville area. The camp was near a little town called Las Rusias that had a covered well and numerous shady live oak trees inside a walled garden. It had been captured by Confederate Calvary troops when the Union thought it could not be taken. People lived on in the village despite the turmoil and sold merchandise and peddled whiskey and operated a cantina/brothel and even managed to hold a church service once or twice a week. Life went on as usual, but the people had changed. The territory had changed too. The oak trees on the hills above the town were tall and green before the war but now they were nothing but stumps and shattered limbs and broken trunks lying in ruined disarray on the ravished ground. The Union forces had pulled back to the other side of the hills and dug in with cannons aimed at the Confederate camp outside Brownsville. A stalemate of a sort had ensued, but there was always the threat of a frontal assault which kept everyone on edge.

  While on guard duty one day near the edge of camp Jack saw a priest assigned to his regiment walking by in the street and motioned for him to stop for a chat. The priest shook his head saying he had pressing business at the infirmary and went on his way. That night at supper after the fatback and mush was mostly gone, the priest stopped by to offer Absolution to anyone interested in listening to him. A corporal named Campbell began picking on the priest asking him if he was a virgin. The priest was young and embarrassed easily. He wore no uniform like the other men but a dark robe complete with rosary accouterments. Campbell lit a pipe and prodded the priest’s arm with a gnarled finger. “I believe I saw you over by the whore houses this morning,” he said with a draw. “You been naughty have you Padre?” The priest smiled and blushed and shook his head.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay then, it wasn’t you. So how do you relieve the pressure, Priest? I mean you’re a man like the rest of us, right?” Everyone around the fire laughed and the priest smiled and Campbell said, “I’m just funnin’ with you. I’m a Baptist so I don’t expect the Pope to be too cross with me for pokin’ a little fun.”

  “No offense taken,” the priest said softly. “Would you like to repent now?” Campbell laughed harshly and shook his head.

  “I told you I was Baptist. They dunked me under when I was just a little feller so I’m tight with the Almighty I figure.” He looked sternly at the priest and said, “Forgive me Father for I have sinned. And if the captain gives me a furlough, I’m going down to that whore house and sin a little more.” The men all laughed and guffawed until the priest walked away from the mess tent and disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

  Chapter 2

  In July Jack went home on leave and helped with the corn harvest and bailed hay and sat on the porch with Granny and the rest of his distant kin. When he returned to his regiment there were many more Union soldiers in the area. Summer was in high advent and the fields were green and grapes were on the vine and berries were on the bush and men were eager to fight or move on to less tranquil territory.

  It was hot in the hills above Brownsville as Jack walked through the Juniper trees to his quarters. The door was open and Jack went in and saw his captain sitting at a table pouring over rolls of maps. The windows were open and brilliant sunlight flooded the room and cast great wedges of light across the wooden floor. Jack turned down a short hall and proceeded to the room he shared with six other men. The lone window was open by his bed and his things hung on pegs on the wall; extra shirts and drawers and a butternut slicker he only wore when it rained. At the foot of his bed were his winter boots, shiny with oil, and his haversack and cartridge pouch stuffed with cartridges and squares of linen cloth and tins of black powder wrapped in sacks made of canvas wagon sheet. His Enfield .50 rifle stood in the corner by his bunk, the blued octagon barrel and dark walnut stock covered by a sock made of wool.

  Corporal Campbell lay asleep on a bunk across the room. He woke when he heard Jack enter the room and sat up.

  “See you made it back from leave,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Home mostly.”

  “Tell me what you did.”

  “Everything. Ate. Slept. Kissed a girl.”

  “The hell you say. Sister’s don’t count.”

  “She was a sister, but not mine.”

  “Kissed her huh? Anything else?”

  “She used her hand.”

  “For what?”

  “You, know, my pecker.”

  “The hell you say! Where did you meet her?”

  “Sabine Pass. She’s a nurse.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Old enough.”

  “Probably forty.”

  �
��Not even.”

  “So, how did you meet?”

  “On a train.”

  “And she just put her hand in your pants?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where, where did this happen?”

  “On the train.”

  “With everyone watching?”

  “I had my coat on my lap. No one saw.”

  “Damn, Saylor, I ain’t sure I believe you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Damn. You ain’t joshin’ are you?”

  “Guess you’ll never know, will you?”

  Campbell rolled a smoke and lit it with a match and threw the spent stick out the window. “Since you’ve been gone we ain’t done nothin’ but sweat and drill and chase whores and sweat some more,” he said. “Gonorrhea and pneumonia’s got a lot of the men down. Every day or so someone gets wounded by a sniper or a shell fragment. The captain says the fighting starts up again next week. I didn’t know it ever ended. But that’s what he says anyway. Do you think I can find me a girl like that nurse? I’m tired of Mexican whores.”

  “Absolutely,” Jack said.

  “Got to get me a furlough. Maybe take a trip on a train.”

  “There you go,” Jack said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get a little sleep before morning.”

  Jack took off his blouse and shirt and washed his face and upper body in a water basin and rubbed himself dry with a towel. While he was dressing in a fresh shirt Campbell asked him if he had any money.

  “Yes.”

  “Loan me five dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m gonna ask for that furlough. Gonna take a train ride, maybe look for a nurse.”

  Jack removed his wallet from his trouser pocket and handed Campbell a five dollar note. Campbell slipped it into his shirt pocket and smiled. “I have to make a good impression, you know. Maybe I can get more than a hand if she thinks I’m a man of means.”

  That night at supper Jack sat next to the priest and he said he was glad to see him and Jack said likewise. The priest drank wine and Jack drank chickory coffee and the two men talked while the others argued about whores and bad food. Not caring about the foul use of language and the surly talk the priest looked at the night and sipped his wine and listened to the gist of Jack’s time away from camp.

  Jack said things hadn’t changed at all and the priest said everything had gone sharp and hard since the announcement about impending hostilities. Some of the niceness had gone and the men argued more and hardly anyone showed up at Mass anymore. Jack said he understood and the priest said he doubted it and Jack agreed that he probably didn’t understand after all.

  The night turned overcast and the priest tried to explain the difference between the night and the day and how the night brought out the worst in people and how the day made brave men braver. Jack was dubious, but the degree of difference between them was not worth arguing about so the conversation lagged and the soldiers argued all the more loudly and the warm night pressed down like a woolen blanket.

  Corporal Campbell finally appeared and the teasing of the priest commenced in earnest. “Senorita Big Tits was askin’ about you,” he chided. “She said she needs you to put one of them little wafer crackers in her mouth. That Eucharist thing. Or was it somethin’ else she wanted you to put in her mouth?” The men howled with laughter and the priest stared into his wine and Jack stood to his feet and put a hand on Campbell’s sleeve and said,

  “Let it go Carl.” Campbell stopped laughing and looked at the hand and then looked at Jack and pushed his hand away with a snort.

  “You the mother hen are you?”

  “No. Just tired of the teasing.”

  “Bullshit. Look at him, he ain’t a happy man.”

  “I’m happy,” the priest said.

  “Leave him alone,” Jack said. “He’s a priest. A man of God.” Campbell puffed his pipe.

  “Maybe so, but he ain’t God. He’s got a pecker like the rest of us don’t he.”

  The camp grew quiet and the men stared into the fire and Campbell smoked his pipe and the priest got up and left the group.

  Chapter 3

  Cannonade woke Jack the next the morning and he got out of bed and went to the window and looked out. The battery fired twice more and the concussion shook the window and made the glass rattle. Jack couldn’t see the guns but they were evidently firing near the camp aiming at the Union forces camped in the hills west of Brownsville. It was an aggravation having the guns so close but a comfort to know they were spoiling the Yankee’s breakfast.

  As Jack looked out at the camp he heard the sound of horses on the move. Four columns of Calvary followed by ten teams of mules top-heavy with ammunition and cannon balls moved along the lane by the garden wall. The wagons were painted gray and black and yellow and built like blocks of granite.

  “Where are they heading?” Jack asked a civilian walking alongside the procession.

  “Elisabethtown. The Yanks are on the move tryin’ to cut off the trade lanes with the Mexicans again.”

  Jack watched the procession move out of sight than drank a mug of coffee and put on his boots and went to find breakfast. His regiment looked anxious and ate their bacon slowly and watched the town square for signs of command officers heading their way. Jack drank another mug of coffee at the mess table and waited with the other men for something to happen. There was a feeling of dryness in the air and a bluish haze lay on the hills which meant the day would be hot later on.

  The offensive was a go, Jack heard the captain say. The southern routes must be protected at all cost. Jack’s division were to attack at a place up the river on the western edge of Brownsville, a major route for the transport of cotton and sugar cane to the Mexican provinces across the Rio Grande. The regiment would cross the river at Las Rusias and spread out along the hillside above the town. They were to break through any lines of resistance and support the Calvary in driving the Union troops back across the hills.

  The fighting was fierce and dirty with the cannons doing most of the heavy work and the Calvary cleaning up those stragglers brave enough to stand and fight in the face of impossible odds. Afterward when Jack went back to his room to wash off the dust and sweat Campbell was sitting on his bed inspecting a wound on his left arm. He still wore his over blouse and his knee boots and his face shone with sweat and black powder.

  “How are you Campbell?” Jack inquired

  “Splendid.”

  “How bad?”

  “Just a scratch. You?” Jack shook his head.

  “Never got in range.”

  “Heard the Yanks pulled back across the bluffs.”

  “Good.”

  “You sure you’re alright?”

  “No.”

  “Wanna get a drink?”

  “All right, but wait until I get cleaned up first.”

  Jack washed his hands and face, brushed dust from his hair and went with Campbell to the social tent. Men were engaged in checkers and bingo and mugs of home brew beer and sour mash whiskey. Laughter rang out periodically despite the depression of the earlier battle. Jimmy Parsons of the regiment had been shot through with a mini ball and died alone among the black brambles and lilacs. Three other men received minor wounds and one sergeant broke a bone when his horse fell and rolled on his leg. All in all not a bad day of fighting given the circumstances.

  The beer was strong and intoxicating.

  “Another one?” Campbell asked.

  “Not for me.”

  “Me neither.”

  They gave their empty mugs to a black orderly and Campbell invited Jack outside for a walk. It was hot walking through the town but the sun was on its way down and it was very pleasant on the thoroughfare. They passed the infirmary and the tent flap was open and Jack and Campbell saw a surgeon working on the sergeant’s broken leg. A nurse in a drab brown dress and white apron splashed with blood stood close by assisting.

  “Look Saylor,” Campbell said. “a
nurse. Could she be your nurse?” Jack took a long look and said,

  “Nope, mine had red hair. And green eyes. And a longer chin.” Campbell stopped walking and cupped a hand to his eyes.

  “Maybe she could be my nurse.”

  “Well, you do have a wound on your wrist. Trivial though it may be.”

  Another nurse appeared and together with the surgeon and the apron clad nurse pulled on the sergeant’s leg until his screams echoed off the bluffs across the river. Campbell tugged up his sleeve and said, “Look, two little birds in the nest. Shall we?”

  They cut through the trees and walked toward the medical tent Campbell virtually skipping and Jack moving more moderately.

  “How do you do?” Campbell said to the apron clad nurse. The surgeon was not impressed with the intrusion.

  “You have business here?” he asked. Campbell displayed his bullet scratch and doffed his cap to the nurses. “Wait over by the flap,” the surgeon said. “Miss Mason, please hold the splint in place.”

  Campbell moved to the front of the tent and Jack moved into the shadows of the nearby trees and Campbell began talking to the other nurse asking her if she liked to ride on trains. They were laughing within seconds and whispering within minutes and the surgeon was becoming increasingly angry. Finally he ordered Campbell out of the area and his nurse to a wagon for more cotton cloth.

  “What a tight ass,” Campbell said referring to the surgeon.”

  “That’s a major you’re talking about,” cautioned Jack.

  “Major tight ass maybe. Did you see the way she looked at me?”

  “I saw the way the major looked at you.”

  “Her name’s Marie Hayes. She’s from Travis County. And she loves ridin’ on trains.”

  “Do we have to go on talking this way?” asked Jack.

  “No. Look, she’s comin’ this way.”