I Shall Be Near to You (21 page)

‘It’s a sin,’ Will says.

‘What’s a sin,’ Sully says, ‘is keeping us from the one enjoyment we’ve got. Now how are we going to entertain ourselves?’

‘Read the Bible?’ Jeremiah says. ‘You didn’t drop that, now did you, Chaplain Eberhart?’

That strikes all those boys as funny and they laugh so hard Will don’t have a chance to answer. Seeing them gets me laughing too, even though Will’s face turns red, even though there’s artillery banging off in the distance.

W
E MAKE A
bivouac under the trees hanging over the road, hoping the shade will help, but it don’t much. My clothes are wet with sweat and stuck to my skin.

‘Ross, please tell me you didn’t throw out your map like Chaplain over there,’ Sully says, about the time Will maybe got to thinking those boys had forgotten what he’s done with his cards. All the boys get to laughing again, even though Will’s cheeks blaze.

‘Heck, no,’ I say, and feel bad for laughing when I know what it is to be teased.

‘Well then, have you got any idea how far it is to that gap?’ Sully asks.

I pull out my map, stare at the turnpike taking us away from Richmond.

‘If that last town really was Warrenton,’ I say, picturing the white church steeple, stabbing at the clouds with its spire and the unfriendly feeling coming off the deserted streets, ‘the closest gap is something like thirty miles. Maybe more,’ I tell him.

‘We ain’t ever going to stop those Rebs at this rate!’ Sully says, and flops onto his back.

My stomach rumbles and complains. I lean over to Jeremiah.

‘You got any rations left?’ I ask.

‘No. I ate my crumbs for breakfast.’

‘I ain’t tried that,’ I say, and I turn my haversack upside down over my palm. Only a few stale bits of cracker fall out.

Jimmy overhears me and says, ‘I got some salt pork, if you want it. But it’s gone funny, made me sick to eat it.’

‘I don’t need anything else making my stomach upset,’ I say.

Turns out not a one of us has got any rations left to speak of, but Sully and Henry and Edward and Hiram have energy enough to start chanting, ‘Crackers! Crackers!’

Soon the whole Regiment is chanting, even Chaplain Will. That is when Captain finds it in himself to let Sergeant Ames give us some of the rations left in the wagons that ain’t broken down, that we ain’t had to burn.

‘I see how these crackers got the name teethdullers,’ Henry says as he smashes his against a rock with his rifle butt. I try the same and break my cracker into four pieces, washing them down with water.

Henry sits himself right down beside Jimmy, and it don’t take but a minute before he droops over onto Jimmy’s shoulder, his mouth hanging open. He is the only one of us who can sleep and Jimmy never shoves him off. He just sits there quiet and lets Henry doze.

Jeremiah pokes me. ‘You want a fancy place like that house back there?’ he asks, and I know just which one he means, the white one with sprawling lawns and fancy flowers planted everywhere.

‘It don’t got no farm around it,’ I say. ‘All those flowers are just taking up good soil a kitchen garden could grow in. And, you ask me, fancy buildings don’t make up for the feeling of a place.’

‘You ain’t ever seen a town you liked, have you?’ Jeremiah lies back on the grass.

‘I ain’t got use for a town. But I bet there’s good planting to be done around here.’

Jeremiah closes his eyes, leaving me with thoughts of Nebraska, and if it really is good farming, and how soon we might get ourselves clear of this Army. But then Joseph’s face comes up in my mind, how pale he was against that hospital pillow. There are things it would be fitting for Jeremiah
to read if it comes to that, so I sit with my back to an ash tree right near Jeremiah and let my thoughts spread like the branches shading me.

August 26, 1862

My Dear Jeremiah
,

I don’t want to sit and write these Words to you. I have been thinking on Us living through this War. I have been feeling it to be True, this fact of Us together. But now I have tasted War. I see how Dreaming on a thing don’t make it so. It has got me thinking on things I would have you know
.

I’m not sorry for this Thing we’ve done. You did Right by letting me stay. There ain’t a thing to make me take back These Days with You. You gave me friendship and then Love and Freedom to live a different Life. There ain’t a person else in this World who gave me More, and you should know it. I know I never wanted the things I should or been a proper Wife, but you don’t ever make me Feel it too much
.

If we see this War to its End, if we can live Free on our own Place, the two of Us, I want you should know I will give you all that is left of my Life. It is all I want to work that Land with you and see those crops come up and if God is Willing, what children we may raise up alongside the farm we build. It will make this all Worth it if we can have our Place
.

And that is what I would Give to you. I would Give you my Love. I would give you our Dream. Even if I am only watching from the Other side, I give you these things
.

Your wife
,

Rosetta

CHAPTER
19

WARRENTON TURNPIKE: AUGUST 28, 1862

We march past a hayfield, bigger than any of Papa’s, fine-stemmed grass pushing up new seed heads and rolling away from us toward the trees, where a white clapboard farmhouse stands. The sweet smell of curing hay comes to us on the breeze, the first cutting most likely done not even a month ago. It makes me wish for home, to hear Mama singing hymns to the horses from where she sits up in the hayrick, me and Papa a mirror image dance of scooping forks, twisting trunks, and throwing arms to get that hay put up. For a moment I pretend Sully yelling at us to hurry as he jogs ahead is Papa hollering, ‘Step up, gleaning girl!’ to Betsy raking the least little bits behind us.

But it ain’t Papa marching up ahead. It’s Thomas, the circles under his eyes getting darker every day and his griping to old John Morgan getting louder too.

‘My wife is asking every letter when I am coming home,’ he says, looking out over the hayfield. ‘Says she and the girls ain’t up to the task of harvest on their own.’

‘I bet all those ladies need is a good poking,’ Hiram says, and that gets Thomas’ Adam’s apple bobbing, but no one wants to say a thing where Hiram is concerned.

John acts like he ain’t heard and says, ‘At this rate you and me and Frank and half the Army will need furloughs just to keep our farms going.’

‘Maybe Pope means to march us to death,’ Henry says, and something about the way we all feel it stops Hiram’s laugh cold.

‘At least we’ll see the countryside before we die,’ Jeremiah says with a bitterness I ain’t never heard out of him. It scares me more than anything, seeing his face hard and closed.

‘We’ll be fighting for sure,’ Sully says, all breathless from weaving up and down the column to get what particulars he can from Sergeant. ‘Lee has got Jackson on the move! Maybe twenty thousand men! The Pennsylvania Regiment up there is seeing Rebel pickets ahead guarding at least a Brigade of Rebels.’

‘We don’t want to meet Stonewall Jackson if we can help it,’ Thomas says. ‘He made that name for himself right around here. My brother-in-law saw firsthand at Bull Run how Jackson don’t back down.’

But Sully just keeps on running his mouth, ‘Those damn Seceshes got our supply trains at Manassas Junction and they broke up the rail line. We ain’t getting even a taste of those crackers and candy and oranges that were on that train.’

‘This fool Army!’ Henry says. ‘We ain’t doing a thing out here but marching ourselves into the ground!’

‘It’s no use thinking on what we ain’t getting,’ Jeremiah says, but I still feel myself getting saucy too, my legs aching and my stomach warbling at the thought of candy and oranges.

‘Maybe the Rebels needed it more than we do,’ Will says, all quiet-like.

‘What?’ Sully says. ‘Chaplain, you’ve got to be kidding! You feel sorry for those Rebs?’

Will don’t flinch or back down like I think he might. He just says, ‘Those boys used to be our countrymen. Maybe they needed it more than we do. “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him
drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” That’s in Romans.’

Sully comes to a full stop and dams up the middle of the road, making Henry bump into him and blocking the rest of us. The soldiers drawing up behind us have to split to get around.

Hiram turns, pulling Edward around with him, and says, ‘We got a fucking Rebel lover here?’

Sully stares at Will, and Henry takes up a spot next to him. Jimmy and I look back and forth between them.

‘Will just wants those Rebels fed up good so no one can say it ain’t a fair fight, ain’t that right, Will?’ I say, and then Jeremiah slaps Will on the back, making him stumble.

‘You’ve got the most grave face, Chaplain, I almost believed you was serious!’ Jeremiah says, and then he laughs and pushes Will forward so we are all moving again.

It ain’t Jeremiah’s real laugh, it don’t roll out of him, but the other boys get to chuckling. It don’t make me chuckle seeing the boys’ bad tempers, or having to protect Will and keep us all getting along, me and Jeremiah taking a stand for the right thing without anybody knowing we’re doing it. I wish I could fold his hand into mine without getting noticed, but that is when the call to arms comes echoing.

I
SHOULDER MY
rifle like I ought, but then I have to step out of our line to heave up mostly nothing into the yellow yarrow along the edge of the turnpike, cursing my nerves. Jeremiah stops too, waiting for me. He don’t say a thing, not until we get back into the column winding its way down the road. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder as we walk, like a butterfly landing on a bluebell.

‘We’ll be fine,’ he says.

And that is what I tell myself over and over, letting my mouth move with the words so it somehow seems like they are more real. The air all around is hot and tight with nerves and excitement and everyone is hushed,
listening and looking for what’s to come, wondering how many Confederates are behind the soldiers making up the picket line stretched across the woods, how big that Brigade is.

Way across that hayfield, a horseman looks down on us from a rounded grassy hill ahead, a dark shape moving just at the edge of the trees. When he comes out into the sun, he is wearing a gray coat and a gray brimmed hat.

I suck in a breath and hear Will beside me murmur, ‘That’s Rebel cavalry!’

‘Thomas! Is that your goddamned Stonewall Jackson?’ Hiram yells ahead.

‘Naw,’ Edward says. ‘I’ve seen pictures in the papers. Jackson don’t wear a stag hat like that.’

Then an officer from one of the Regiments in our column gallops across that hayfield toward the Confederates. Everyone goes quiet watching as he brings those Rebels’ attention to himself.

He don’t hardly get to the top of the knoll before white smoke puffs up out of the trees by that farmhouse and then shells hail down on us. The earth heaves and smoke swirls into the air.

We are out in the open, plain as day on the road. The men in front of me keep moving, the lines staying true somehow. I clutch my rifle tighter, hunch my shoulders, and follow.

Another shell blast sounds. Dirt and grass shower down over us and then a shell explodes right in the ranks of the Regiment ahead of us. It is more than dirt that flies up this time and everywhere turns to screaming, everything happening at once.

A space clears and two boys lie there, twisted and tangled like no man in life, one’s foot still twitching, both of them looking young enough to be boys from home, their blood already soaking into the dust. And then there are more shells, pounding down after Captain Chalmers and Colonel Wheelock as they kick their horses into a race off the road and across another field, away from the artillery fire, headed for an apple orchard, leaving us there in the road.

All around me our Regiment is like a line of ants gone to swarming. I
stand there, staring, until a hand yanks on my arm. It is Jeremiah and he is yelling something, but I can’t hear it for all the noise and there is someone pushing me from behind and I am swept along too.

Jeremiah drags me down to my belly beside him in the grass along the turnpike. Boys fall to the ground around us, getting down flat and taking cover.

‘What were you doing standing there?’ Jeremiah yells.

I don’t have no answer.

Galloping horses clatter, bringing cannons and caissons up the turnpike. One team of horses stops near us, the shine of sweat darkening their necks and their heaving flanks, the pink flashing of their nostrils flaring, their tails clamped. The riders jump off the lead horses and unlimber the cannons faster than Papa ever unhitched a horse in his life. When those horses have been trotted away to safety, the cannoneers aim their pieces at that hill, thundering shells down on the farmhouse there, covering our Pennsylvania Regiment as they move out into the grass. There is so much noise, shells tearing up the hayfields, rifles scaring off whatever livestock might be left. All I can think is that farm and how there ain’t a thing you can do to stop this war ripping right through your home, right through your whole life, and the roaring is so loud my ears go to ringing even after I press my hands to them.

CHAPTER
20

THOROUGHFARE GAP: AUGUST 28, 1862

The attack don’t last long, our bugles blaring to signal the Rebels’ retreat. Sergeant Ames gathers us together, finding some shade away from the bodies of those two boys. He stands along the edge of the road, the sun beating down on him, his face red and beaded with sweat.

‘We’ve gotten reports the Rebels have already been seen coming through the Thoroughfare Gap, and we’ve got to beat the rest before we’re overrun.’