Can Such Things Be? By Ambrose Bierce
A TOUGH TUSSLE
One night in the autumn of 1861 a man sat alone in the heart
of a forest in western Virginia. The region was one of the
wildest on the continent - the Cheat Mountain country. There was
no lack of people close at hand, however; within a mile of where
the man sat was the now silent camp of a whole Federal brigade.
Somewhere about - it might be still nearer - was a force of the
enemy, the numbers unknown. It was this uncertainty as to its
numbers and position that accounted for the man’s presence
in that lonely spot; he was a young officer of a Federal infantry
regiment and his business there was to guard his sleeping
comrades in the camp against a surprise. He was in command of a
detachment of men constituting a picket-guard. These men he had
stationed just at nightfall in an irregular line, determined by
the nature of the ground, several hundred yards in front of where
he now sat. The line ran through the forest, among the rocks and
laurel thickets, the men fifteen or twenty paces apart, all in
concealment and under injunction of strict silence and
unremitting vigilance. In four hours, if nothing occurred, they
would be relieved by a fresh detachment from the reserve now
resting in care of its captain some distance away to the left and
rear. Before stationing his men the young officer of whom we are
writing had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot at which he
would be found if it should be necessary to consult him, or if
his presence at the front line should be required.
It was a quiet enough spot - the fork of an old wood-road, on the
two branches of which, prolonging themselves deviously forward in
the dim moonlight, the sergeants were themselves stationed, a few
paces in rear of the line. If driven sharply back by a sudden
onset of the enemy - and pickets are not expected to make a stand
after firing - the men would come into the converging roads and
naturally following them to their point of intersection could be
rallied and “formed.” In his small way the author of
these dispositions was something of a strategist; if Napoleon had
planned as intelligently at Waterloo he would have won that
memorable battle and been overthrown later.
Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was a brave and efficient
officer, young and comparatively inexperienced as he was in the
business of killing his fellow-men. He had enlisted in the very
first days of the war as a private, with no military knowledge
whatever, had been made first-sergeant of his company on account
of his education and engaging manner, and had been lucky enough
to lose his captain by a Confederate bullet; in the resulting
promotions he had gained a commission. He had been in several
engagements, such as they were - at Philippi, Rich Mountain,
Carrick’s Ford and Greenbrier - and had borne himself with
such gallantry as not to attract the attention of his superior
officers. The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but
the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes and
stiff bodies, which when not unnaturally shrunken were
unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He
felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy that was
something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common
to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute
sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these
hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he
could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in
it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the
dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether
unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not
picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing,
hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant
Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his
horror of that which he was ever ready to incur.
Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants and retired to
his station, he seated himself on a log, and with senses all
alert began his vigil. For greater ease he loosened his
sword-belt and taking his heavy revolver from his holster laid it
on the log beside him. He felt very comfortable, though he
hardly gave the fact a thought, so intently did he listen for any
sound from the front which might have a menacing significance - a
shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants coming to
apprise him of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible
ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a slender,
broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting
branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among
the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only
to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his
imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar
shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and
silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown
experience needs not to be told what another world it all is -
how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on
another character. The trees group themselves differently; they
draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has
another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of
half-heard whispers - whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds
long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard
under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries
of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in
their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap
of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused
the breaking of that twig? - what the low, alarmed twittering in
that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms
without substance, translations in space of objects which have
not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to
change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight,
how little you know of the world in which you live!
Surrounded at a little distance by armed and watchful friends,
Byring felt utterly alone. Yielding himself to the solemn and
mysterious spirit of the time and place, he had forgotten the
nature of his connection with the visible and audible aspects and
phases of the night. The forest was boundless; men and the
habitations of men did not exist. The universe was one primeval
mystery of darkness, without form and void, himself the sole,
dumb questioner of its eternal secret. Absorbed in thoughts born
of this mood, he suffered the time to slip away unnoted.
Meantime the infrequent patches of white light lying amongst the
tree-trunks had undergone changes of size, form and place. In
one of them near by, just at the roadside, his eye fell upon an
object that he had not previously observed. It was almost before
his face as he sat; he could have sworn that it had not before
been there. It was partly covered in shadow, but he could see
that it was a human figure. Instinctively he adjusted the clasp
of his sword-belt and laid hold of his pistol - again he was in a
world of war, by occupation an assassin.
The figure did not move. Rising, pistol in hand, he approached.
The figure lay upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but
standing above it and looking down upon the face, he saw that it
was a dead body. He shuddered and turned from it with a feeling
of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat upon the log, and
forgetting military prudence struck a match and lit a cigar. In
the sudden blackness that followed the extinction of the flame he
felt a sense of relief; he could no longer see the object of his
aversion. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes set in that direction
until it appeared again with growing distinctness. It seemed to
have moved a trifle nearer.
“Damn the thing!” he muttered. “What does it
want?”
It did not appear to be in need of anything but a soul.
Byring turned away his eyes and began humming a tune, but he
broke off in the middle of a bar and looked at the dead body.
Its presence annoyed him, though he could hardly have had a
quieter neighbor. He was conscious, too, of a vague, indefinable
feeling that was new to him. It was not fear, but rather a sense
of the supernatural - in which he did not at all believe.
“I have inherited it,” he said to himself. “I
suppose it will require a thousand ages - perhaps ten thousand -
for humanity to outgrow this feeling. Where and when did it
originate? Away back, probably, in what is called the cradle of
the human race - the plains of Central Asia. What we inherit as
a superstition our barbarous ancestors must have held as a
reasonable conviction. Doubtless they believed themselves
justified by facts whose nature we cannot even conjecture in
thinking a dead body a malign thing endowed with some strange
power of mischief, with perhaps a will and a purpose to exert
it. Possibly they had some awful form of religion of which that
was one of the chief doctrines, sedulously taught by their
priesthood, as ours teach the immortality of the soul. As the
Aryans moved slowly on, to and through the Caucasus passes, and
spread over Europe, new conditions of life must have resulted in
the formulation of new religions. The old belief in the
malevolence of the dead body was lost from the creeds and even
perished from tradition, but it left its heritage of terror,
which is transmitted from generation to generation - is as much a
part of us as are our blood and bones.”
In following out his thought he had forgotten that which
suggested it; but now his eye fell again upon the corpse. The
shadow had now altogether uncovered it. He saw the sharp
profile, the chin in the air, the whole face, ghastly white in
the moonlight. The clothing was gray, the uniform of a
Confederate soldier. The coat and waistcoat, unbuttoned, had
fallen away on each side, exposing the white shirt. The chest
seemed unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen had sunk in,
leaving a sharp projection at the line of the lower ribs. The
arms were extended, the left knee was thrust upward. The whole
posture impressed Byring as having been studied with a view to
the horrible.
“Bah!” he exclaimed; “he was an actor - he
knows how to be dead.”
He drew away his eyes, directing them resolutely along one of the
roads leading to the front, and resumed his philosophizing where
he had left off.
“It may be that our Central Asian ancestors had not the
custom of burial. In that case it is easy to understand their
fear of the dead, who really were a menace and an evil. They
bred pestilences. Children were taught to avoid the places where
they lay, and to run away if by inadvertence they came near a
corpse. I think, indeed, I’d better go away from this
chap.”
He half rose to do so, then remembered that he had told his men
in front and the officer in the rear who was to relieve him that
he could at any time be found at that spot. It was a matter of
pride, too. If he abandoned his post he feared they would think
he feared the corpse. He was no coward and he was unwilling to
incur anybody’s ridicule. So he again seated himself, and
to prove his courage looked boldly at the body. The right arm -
the one farthest from him - was now in shadow. He could barely
see the hand which, he had before observed, lay at the root of a
clump of laurel. There had been no change, a fact which gave him
a certain comfort, he could not have said why. He did not at
once remove his eyes; that which we do not wish to see has a
strange fascination, sometimes irresistible. Of the woman who
covers her eyes with her hands and looks between the fingers let
it be said that the wits have dealt with her not altogether
justly.
Byring suddenly became conscious of a pain in his right hand. He
withdrew his eyes from his enemy and looked at it. He was
grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so tightly that it hurt
him. He observed, too, that he was leaning forward in a strained
attitude - crouching like a gladiator ready to spring at the
throat of an antagonist. His teeth were clenched and he was
breathing hard. This matter was soon set right, and as his
muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath he felt keenly enough
the ludicrousness of the incident. It affected him to laughter.
Heavens! what sound was that? what mindless devil was uttering an
unholy glee in mockery of human merriment? He sprang to his feet
and looked about him, not recognizing his own laugh.
He could no longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his
cowardice; he was thoroughly frightened! He would have run from
the spot, but his legs refused their office; they gave way
beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling.
His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill perspiration.
He could not even cry out. Distinctly he heard behind him a
stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and dared not look over
his shoulder. Had the soulless living joined forces with the
soulless dead? - was it an animal? Ah, if he could but be
assured of that! But by no effort of will could he now unfix his
gaze from the face of the dead man.
I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a brave and intelligent man.
But what would you have? Shall a man cope, single-handed, with
so monstrous an alliance as that of night and solitude and
silence and the dead, - while an incalculable host of his own
ancestors shriek into the ear of his spirit their coward counsel,
sing their doleful death-songs in his heart, and disarm his very
blood of all its iron? The odds are too great - courage was not
made for so rough use as that.
One sole conviction now had the man in possession: that the body
had moved. It lay nearer to the edge of its plot of light -
there could be no doubt of it. It had also moved its arms, for,
look, they are both in the shadow! A breath of cold air struck
Byring full in the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred
and moaned. A strongly defined shadow passed across the face of
the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half
obscured. The horrible thing was visibly moving! At that moment
a single shot rang out upon the picket-line - a lonelier and
louder, though more distant, shot than ever had been heard by
mortal ear! It broke the spell of that enchanted man; it slew
the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering host from
Central Asia and released his modern manhood. With a cry like
that of some great bird pouncing upon its prey he sprang forward,
hot-hearted for action!
Shot after shot now came from the front. There were shoutings
and confusion, hoof-beats and desultory cheers. Away to the
rear, in the sleeping camp, were a singing of bugles and grumble
of drums. Pushing through the thickets on either side the roads
came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, firing backward at
random as they ran. A straggling group that had followed back
one of the roads, as instructed, suddenly sprang away into the
bushes as half a hundred horsemen thundered by them, striking
wildly with their sabres as they passed. At headlong speed these
mounted madmen shot past the spot where Byring had sat, and
vanished round an angle of the road, shouting and firing their
pistols. A moment later there was a roar of musketry, followed
by dropping shots - they had encountered the reserve-guard in
line; and back they came in dire confusion, with here and there
an empty saddle and many a maddened horse, bullet-stung, snorting
and plunging with pain. It was all over - “an affair of
outposts.”
The line was reëstablished with fresh men, the roll called,
the stragglers were reformed. The Federal commander with a part
of his staff, imperfectly clad, appeared upon the scene, asked a
few questions, looked exceedingly wise and retired. After
standing at arms for an hour the brigade in camp “swore a
prayer or two” and went to bed.
Early the next morning a fatigue-party, commanded by a captain
and accompanied by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead and
wounded. At the fork of the road, a little to one side, they
found two bodies lying close together - that of a Federal officer
and that of a Confederate private. The officer had died of a
sword-thrust through the heart, but not, apparently, until he had
inflicted upon his enemy no fewer than five dreadful wounds. The
dead officer lay on his face in a pool of blood, the weapon still
in his breast. They turned him on his back and the surgeon
removed it.
“Gad!” said the captain - “It is Byring!”
- adding, with a glance at the other, “They had a tough
tussle.”
The surgeon was examining the sword. It was that of a line
officer of Federal infantry - exactly like the one worn by the
captain. It was, in fact, Byring’s own. The only other
weapon discovered was an undischarged revolver in the dead
officer’s belt.
The surgeon laid down the sword and approached the other body.
It was frightfully gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood.
He took hold of the left foot and tried to straighten the leg.
In the effort the body was displaced. The dead do not wish to be
moved - it protested with a faint, sickening odor. Where it had
lain were a few maggots, manifesting an imbecile activity.
The surgeon looked at the captain. The captain looked at the
surgeon.