It rung so loud and deafening around him.  The canister shots breaking up like so many hornet nests, popping like sacks of paper.  He could hear the failing whistle of things flying past him and feel the way that the air heated up when they passed.  But, that might just be his imagination - a dread.<br/><br/>When they had first come out of the thicket and mustered their line to charge, the air had been thick with the miasma of the cannon smoke.  It blew great puffs down the hillside, which that battery was upon, and the wind carried it down into the bluff that his company had come into.  Like boulders the artillery shells sailed high into the air and would certainly crash into the other Union lines, but his company could not see the massacre from where they had moved, under secret to flank that battery.  They knew that they had been spotted when the artillery pieces suddenly stopped issuing its rhythmic booms: one, two, three, four, five, six - one, two three…. it went like Death were to blow down a harmonica, right to left, right to left.<br/><br/>The surprise gone, it didn't change anything.  The company captain in plainclothes stood at the center of the line with his saber drawn.  The Ohio flag unfurled and the eighty other volunteers unfolded from their column to face the rebels up the hill.  "Bayonets!" went the order, but the men were already fixing those cruel implements to their rifles as they came into formation.<br/><br/>Already the guns had been turning around, ponderous on their big wheels bearing those heavy brass bores.  Frantically the artillery sergeant was running between the six guns and their grunting, crews of men.  The gun Chiefs likewise shouting charge times to the gunner who worked hastily to trim those fuses, while men were swabbing out the cannons even as the cannoneers were turning it fully around to face the union company.  When the last man had mustered into line it was almost as if the company knew itself without turning to look.  They had drilled so tirelessly that in their bodies they felt no closer to one another than a hand to an arm.  Even still, the men looking up at a certitude of death felt a heavy pit open in their bellies and all their feelings fell out through it.<br/><br/>The company captain's 'charge' was a distant strike, no more than the blaze of a match sputtering, and almost by their own will, Del McCullin felt his legs move fast. Fast in a sprint with his rifle held out infront of him and that lead muzzle pointed, wavering to and fro with his heavy breathing his hard foot falls.  He must have been screaming, but he could no more hear himself than any other man, Union or Confederate.  The canisters were going off then.  "All fire All fire!" the artillery sergeant was shouting but nobody could hear a goddamn thing except those deafening booms and pops.  He didn't notice the change when the grey powder smoke turned red.  It hung in the air the further up the hill he went.  A vapor that blew back against him like the fog.<br/><br/>Ten men slightly ahead of him were seized as if by God.  Their arms thrown out as their rifle stocks exploded into tinder.  They floated in the air for much longer than he thought possible before the group of them simply threw themselves apart with red and smoke issuing after like souls dispossessed.  When they dropped away it was as if a curtain had fallen.  Revealed before Del was the monstrous glory of that cannon.  Its gaping maw opened issued still a dark smoke for more.  The gunner had not shifted that weapon from its direction and seemed to be looking down that scope directly at Del.  The next canister was dropped down into the cannon while one of the cannoneers set the fuse to the piece.  The Chief gunner sucking in breath to command fire….<br/><br/>Del dropped to a knee and raised his rifle.  His heart must have seized and his breath caught.  His shot, a hollow snap in the air was quickly followed by others down the ragged line - peppered rolls of a rattle.  The cannon chief fell by Del's minieball.  The gunner and the man upon the fuse were likewise thrown away.  The other cannoneers rushed in, to quickly retake those positions.  For goddsakes, to fire the gun.<br/><br/>Del did not reload his rifle.  He ran, like the rest of them their bayonets lowered.  Like a flood that expected to overtake the cannoneers, skewering viscously those that stayed with their artillery pieces.  It was just five yards, it was less than five.  The cannoneer was struggling with the fuse.  The artillery men at the cannon wheels had already stood up and had were unsheathing sabers or raising pistols.  Three yards, his heart pounding in his ear and he saw that chemical flare of the fuse.  The etheric stillness in the air just before he expected that cannon to fire.  Expecting it to explode a thousand lead bullets to spray certain death upon him and anyone standing beside him.<br/><br/>He must have closed his eyes in that final realization of his mortality.  Two yards and the expected sound of that horrible device exploding… but it did not.<br/><br/>He screamed as he opened his eyes.  Sweat soaking through his uniform and his rifle thrust forward for he had not stopped running.<br/><br/>There before him was not the cannon and its desperate crew.  He looked up at a building in the woods.  Feet slowed into a slow platter on the grass.  His legs trembling from the strain and with a kind of finality the horror and exhaustion caved in his heart and he dropped to his knees.  Rifle held at his chest.<br/><br/>"What now." he said, arms shaking.