Chapter 53 fourth quarter

"To hell with the Federation, I just want to go home," Galvin heard an officer say. Galvin didn't notice that the dwindling rations made many people angry, because for a long time he almost lost his sense of taste and smell, and he couldn't even hear his own voice.When the food was particularly insufficient, Galvin began to develop a habit of chewing rough tanned hides, and then the pieces of paper torn from the assistant doctor's smaller and smaller mobile library, and the letters on the rebel soldiers. , to keep his mouth warm and busy.The pieces of paper he chewed were getting smaller and smaller, and there weren't many papers to be found, so he had to save them.

The ground was frozen and so hard that pickaxes were needed to dig holes to bury the bodies.As the weather warmed, soldiers found many unburied black bodies in a harvested field.Galvin was amazed at the number of blacks in blue uniforms, and then he understood what it was: the bodies had been blackened after a day in the August sun, and the Infested with parasites.The postures of the dead were all kinds of strange, and there were countless dead horses, many of which seemed to be kneeling on all fours and gracefully waiting for a child to saddle them. Soon after, Galvin heard that some generals were sending fugitive slaves back to their masters, and they were chatting together as lively as if they were playing cards together.How is this possible?If the war was not fought to improve the conditions of the slaves, what was the point?On the march, Galvin saw a dead black man's ear cut off and nailed to a tree as punishment for his attempted escape.The slave master stripped him naked, knowing that the greedy mosquitoes and flies would come after him.

"Negroes helped us, scouting for us. They needed our help," Galvin said. "I'd rather see the Union go down than see the niggers win!" a lieutenant in Galvin's company yelled at him. Both sides of the opposing team were broke.One morning they caught three rebel soldiers near their camp in the woods.They looked almost starved to death, all with pointed chins.One of them was a deserter from Galvin's side.The captain ordered Private Galvin to kill the deserter.Galvin felt that if he spoke he would vomit blood. "Without due process, Captain?" he said at last.

"We're at war, Private. No time to judge him, no time to hang him, shoot him right there! Get ready... aim... shoot!" Galvin had seen how to punish privates who refused to carry out such orders.That punishment, called "bow and gag," involved binding a man's hands to his knees, placing a bayonet between his arms and thighs, and fastening another bayonet into his mouth.The deserter, scrawny and hungry, didn't look particularly alarmed. "Okay, shoot me." "Private, shoot!" the captain ordered. "Do you want to be punished with them?"

Galvin shot the man at close range.Others used bayonets to stab the limp corpse about a dozen times.The captain took a step back, with a cold light in his eyes, and ordered Galvin to shoot the three rebel prisoners on the spot.Galvin hesitated for a moment, and the captain grabbed his arm and pulled him violently aside. "You've been on the sidelines, haven't you? You've been watching everybody as if you knew how to do better than us. Hey, now you do as I say. Do as I say, you hear? !” he growled, showing all his white teeth. Three rebel soldiers were lined up. "Ready, aim, shoot." Galvin shot them one by one in the head with his Enfield.He felt numb as he shot, as if his senses of taste, smell, and hearing had been dulled.

In the ensuing fight, Galvin could no longer figure out who he was fighting for.He's just fighting.The whole world is at war and angry with itself, and the noise never stops.In short, he could no longer tell the difference between the rebels and the federal army.He had rubbed against the poisonous leaves the day before, and by evening his eyes were swollen to the point of slits.That day, a soldier pointed a rifle at Galvin's breastbone and threatened to kill him, warning him that if he didn't stop chewing those damned pieces of paper, he would shoot him right away.The soldier was later sent to a mental hospital.

Galvin was later wounded by a bullet in the chest, the first time he had been wounded in battle, and was sent to Fort Warren, across Boston Harbor, to guard rebel prisoners of war until he fully recovered. leave.On Fort Warren, no matter how many crimes they committed and how many people they killed, as long as they had money, they could live in a good room and eat good food. He learned from the recruits that rich kids could go home and be exempted from military service for three hundred dollars.Galvin was furious.His heart ached and he felt so weak that he couldn't sleep for more than a few minutes at night.But he had to move on, move on.In a battle, he was wounded and fell into a deep sleep among the dead bodies, still thinking about those rich kids.The rebels came that night and rummaged through the dead bodies and found him, dragged him out and put him in Libby Prison, Richmond.The privates who were arrested were all released because they were lowly in rank, but Galvin was a second lieutenant, and for that he was imprisoned for four months.Regarding the memory of being captured, Galvin seemed to have been sleeping and dreaming soundly, leaving only a little vague sound.

Benjamin Galvin returned to Boston after his release, and the state discharged him, honoring him and the rest of the regiment with a grand ceremony on the steps of the state capitol.They folded the battered flag and handed it to the governor.Out of the 1,000 men at the beginning, only 200 people have survived.Galvin couldn't figure out why people fought wars, which was far from their ideals.The slaves were freed, but the enemy remained the same—with impunity.Galvin didn't understand politics, but he knew that blacks, slaves or not, would not have a peaceful life in the South.He also learned what those who had never fought in the war did not: that the enemy was always and everywhere, and that they never surrendered; and that the enemy was never just Southerners, not at all.

Galvin felt that what he was saying now was incomprehensible to the townspeople.They don't even want to listen.Only comrades who have been baptized by gunfire can understand him.In Boston, Galvin began to travel with them.They all looked haggard and exhausted, like the stragglers they had seen in the woods.But the veterans, many of whom lost their jobs and homes, lamented that they really deserved to die in battle — at least to earn a pension for their wives.They make money, chase sex, drink, commit suicide.They had forgotten to spy on the enemy, and were as blind as the rest. Galvin began to feel that he was being followed closely as he walked down the street.He would stop abruptly and turn around, with a look of terror in his large eyes, but the enemy would always duck behind a street corner or blend in with the crowd just in time.I'm glad Satan is crazy...  

Before going to bed at night, he never forgets to put an ax under his pillow.He woke up one night with heavy rain and thunder and lightning, pointed his rifle at his wife, said she was a spy sent by the rebels, and stood in the yard in full military uniform in the rain for hours, patrolling up and down.Other times he would lock his wife in the house and stand guard at the door, saying someone was trying to get her.She had to wash clothes for the man to pay off his debts, and forced him to see a doctor.Doctors said he was suffering from "nervous circulatory failure"—a rapid heartbeat caused by the effects of the war.She tried to convince him to join the Soldiers' Aid, a place she had heard from other veterans' wives and how it helped care for veterans in need.Benjamin Galvin heard Green's sermon at the aid station, and he thought he saw a ray of light for the first time in a long time.

Green talks about a man in a foreign land, a wise man, a man named Dante.He had been a soldier before, and then he was the victim of a great factional strife in his city, exiled, and spent the rest of his life in exile, so he had a chance to right the wrongs of mankind.He has witnessed the unbelievable fate of the living and the dead!The blood in hell does not flow casually, the punishment created by God’s love is precise, and everyone gets the punishment he deserves.How perfect is every law of retribution, which Reverend Green calls punishment, to match every sin committed by men and women of this world, until the Judgment Day! Galvin realized how angry Dante was when he saw that the people in this city, his friends, and his enemies only knew about material and flesh, pleasure and money, and completely failed to see the judgment that followed.Benjamin Galvin listened so intently to the Reverend Green's weekly sermons that he never said a word;Every time he walked out of the chapel after listening to the sermon, he felt a little taller. The other veterans seemed to enjoy the sermons too, though he felt they didn't understand them as well as he did.One afternoon, when the sermon was over, Galvin saw Pastor Green while he was strolling, and overheard him say that Mr. Longfellow of Cambridge was hurrying to finish his English translation of "The Divine Comedy". The book is published by Tickner Fields Publishing Company. longfellow.Longfellow is working hard on translating The Divine Comedy.Great.Galvin found the Tickner Fields building with a vague longing that Dante himself was waiting for him.He took off his hat, closed his eyes, and walked in with great reverence. "Are you here to apply?" There was no reply. "Very well. Please fill out the form. There is no greater pleasure than working for Mr. Fields. The man is a genius, an angel who protects all writers." The speaker was the company's treasurer. Galvin's eyes were wide open, he took the paper and pen in bewilderment, and moved the pieces of paper that he was chewing all the time from one cheek to the other with his tongue. "Son, you have to write your name so we can call you. Come on. Write your name, or go." The treasurer pointed to a line on the employment form, and Galvin pointed the tip of his pen there and began to write: "Dantil."He stopped his pen. How do you write "Alekia"?Is it "Ari" or "Yara"?Galvin sat thinking hard, until the ink on the nib of the pen was dry, but he still couldn't figure it out.Interrupted by voices across the room, the treasurer cleared his throat loudly and grabbed the form. "Hey, don't be shy, where are we?" Clark asked, eyes half-closed. "Dan Teal. Good boy." Clark sighed in disappointment.He understood that this young man could not be a clerk with his handwriting like this. Fortunately, the company needed a lot of manpower during the transition period when it first moved to the new corner building. "Okay, man, give me your address, and you can come to work here tonight, man, four nights a week. Oh, congratulations, Teal. You're about to start your work in Teal. New life at Kerner Fields Publishing!" "Dan Teal." The new clerk repeated his new name over and over. Thiel, who was pushing a trolley to carry papers from room to room for the morning clerks, trembled with excitement as he passed the door of the author's reception room on the second floor. .Here and there he overheard their discussions, which were not the same as Reverend Green's sermons on Dante's wondrous voyage.He didn't hear many details about Dante on the street corner, and most nights Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Fields, and the rest of the Dante's club didn't meet at all.Still, there are people at Tickner Fields who support Dante's survival for a reason—talking about how they can protect him. Till felt dizzy, ran out, and vomited on the tree-lined path in the heart of the city: Dante needs protection!Thiel deduces from overheard conversations between Mr. Fields, Longfellow, Lowell, and Dr. Holmes that the Harvard committee is attacking Dante.Thiel had heard that Harvard was all over town looking for new hires, and that many of its regular staff had been killed or crippled by war wounds.The university offered Thiel a day job.After a week on the job, Thiel managed to switch from being a compound gardener to a porter in a university lecture hall, because it was here that the school committee made the most important decisions, Teal had heard from other workers.