I Shall Be Near to You (24 page)

When I straighten up, there’s a shadow bending over a body back from where I came, back where that boy begged for me to take his life. I don’t want to see him again, but Jeremiah must be over there and maybe Will, so I hurry that way.

‘Will!’ I call low as I get close enough. ‘That you?’

The boy don’t answer. He is working at that body’s feet.

‘Jeremiah?’ I try again, but still he don’t turn my way or even move.

This boy is rail thin; his pale bare feet stick out from pants too short. When he stands up straight and spins around fast, his rifle pointed right at me, it’s for sure he ain’t Jeremiah or Will at all.

‘Get back,’ he says.

The whole world stops. Jeremiah is by the edge of the battlefield. I remember those shots off in the distance. I wonder how fast I can run as I reach for the rifle from across my back.

‘Don’t!’ the boy yells. ‘Don’t you think it!’

‘I don’t want trouble. You can just let me pass on by,’ I say, the words
so calm and slow even though I am thinking whether I can get to my rifle before he shoots his.

‘What makes you think I can trust a Federal?’ the boy asks, and cocks his gun.

‘I ain’t done one thing to you,’ I say. ‘I only thought you were my—’

There is a flash of fire off to my left and a blast. I throw myself to the ground as that boy drops right where he was standing.

‘Rosetta?’ Jeremiah yells, scrabbling through the grass. He hunkers at my side, talking so fast, saying, ‘You all right? You hurt?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Where is he? What happened?’

‘I was afraid—I shot him,’ Jeremiah says, and shakes his head. ‘I shot him.’

Jeremiah wrenches me to sitting, searching my face. Then he is gone, taking his rifle to where that boy has fallen, where there’s awful strangling sounds and then a rammer scraping and I crawl after, my legs too shaky for standing.

‘No, Jeremiah! You can’t—’

‘Rosetta—don’t—’ is all Jeremiah says. And then he fires again, right into that boy.

Will comes running, calling, ‘What was that?’ and I am waiting for the flash and bang of other guns firing.

I don’t know why I tell Will, ‘A Rebel sharpshooter,’ when that boy was no such thing, when now I see the shoes he was taking off the Union dead, when that pair of shoes is all he died for.

I
AM LYING
curled on my side, Jeremiah’s warmth at my back like always. I almost forget until I open my eyes and in the first light of morning, see the knees of my pants, rust-brown and stiff with blood.

I scramble to sit, my mouth watering as my stomach turns. Jeremiah is already awake, clutching his knees, staring at the ground. The blank look on his face makes me swallow back the sick.

We are the first ones stirring so I touch his shoulder.

‘I never meant for you to have to do a thing like that. Not on my account,’ I say, taking Jeremiah’s hand and tracing the Winter trees of veins there, imagining I can feel the blood flowing strong.

A strange flat voice comes out of Jeremiah when he says, ‘This ain’t a good place,’ and after that I put what he’s done down with all the other things I won’t ever say another word about.

CHAPTER
22

BULL RUN: AUGUST 30, 1862

When I wake again, it ain’t because I’m rested. It’s because the sun is full up and Jeremiah’s hand is shaking my shoulder.

‘What?’ I say, and then I see Captain standing stiff before us. I bolt upright.

‘Your efforts last night have not gone unnoticed. I want to express the gratitude of the Union Army for your assistance above and beyond your duty.’

Captain’s gaze is piercing. Jeremiah nudges me.

‘Thank you, Sir,’ I say. ‘But there wasn’t much we could—’

‘Your efforts have not been in vain,’ he says, turning to go. ‘This Army is proud to have soldiers like you.’

As soon as Captain leaves, Sully starts whispering to Jeremiah with so much excitement he might as well be yelling.

‘Before Captain decided to get all lovey with Ross here, he told me they’ve got reports those Rebs are retreating! Maybe they’re licked already!’

Jeremiah looks out toward the field, past where Will is kneeling, his hands clasped.

‘What I hear out on that field,’ Jeremiah says, ‘don’t know how we could be winning.’

‘Must be mostly Rebs dying out there,’ Sully says.

It ain’t worth stirring myself to tell him any different and risk bringing up feelings no one else needs now. Especially when Jeremiah’s face has already got a look I can’t stand, something bleak that weren’t ever there before.

It ain’t long before Sergeant comes, saying, ‘Two Regiments in the Brigade are staying in reserve to guard the stone house, but our Regiment has been ordered forward. We’re to relieve Kearny’s men, who have been stretched thin holding the Army’s right flank.’

My Mama lays baby’s breath and yarrow at my brothers’ graves to mark each year, and cries over every letter her sister sends, and now I am marching into battle. Why ain’t I said a proper good-bye to her and Papa?

Let us live let us live let us live
. The words swell up in my heart until Jeremiah says the first thing to me since we woke.

‘Don’t you think about last night. It ain’t our time yet,’ and he rests a hand on my shoulder.

O
UR BUGLES SOUND
and voices roar as we march past the stone house and up a steep hill. Our blue Company flag waves ahead of the officers on their horses and the drums roll and my feet move without me even willing them. The air around us is tight like before lightning, and I think of Mama’s pregnant belly stretched taut.

Captain yells, ‘Left Flank!’ and we turn from the road, through a strip of meadow, to a swath of trees where a ghost smoke rises. Double quick our lines braid themselves through trees. I watch for rocks and branches but the boots and legs in front of me are moving moving moving and then out from under Jeremiah’s foot, a wild violet still blooming, its purple flowers rising up from being crushed.

Firing rumbles in front of us now, the musket volleys coming closer, louder. Artillery roars off to our left, shells hail down around us, and this is what is meant by hellfire. Our lines go to wavering and breaking and it is all I can do to keep pushing forward. I want to throw myself down into the ground, anything just to stay living, but Jeremiah is there ahead of me and so I bring my rifle to my shoulder like everyone else.

The bullets keep coming and the whole Company wheels to the right, a herd of horses bolting, and then there is a steep bank rising up before us, maybe a hundred paces away, taller than any man, and so clear it ain’t natural. That bank stretches to the left and right as far as the eye can go, giving the Rebels cover to run behind for miles.

Our flag flutters up ahead, its gold fringe catching flashes of light coming through the trees, and there ain’t no orders to be heard but the boys move after it.

I stay on Jeremiah’s heel, branches snapping across my face and arms.
Let us live let us live let us live
. Gray boys move, flashing in and out between the trees in front of the bank, Rebel skirmishers set out to stop us from getting near to what must be at least a full Brigade hiding behind that embankment. We can never get up to those Rebs and still be living and I want to grab Jeremiah’s arm and run back the way we came, back through the trees with him in tow.

Beside me Sully yells, ‘C’mon! Keep coming!’ and I don’t know if he’s talking to us or to the Rebels.

The Company in front of us rushes and runs across that ground to the mound, leaving us open. A panic races through me as they go, when we are left open. There is a volley of fire and smoke and the
thug
of bullets hitting bodies, the tang of gunpowder mixing with blood, only a few of that Company even getting to the base of the embankment. Most of them fall and we are next and we’ve got to get to that mound. I push into a run, Henry and Jimmy off to my right side, Will on my left, Sully with Jeremiah in front.

‘Stay back!’ Jeremiah yells, and shoves me with his elbow when I try coming up alongside him.

The cries of wounded men pierce through everything else and then, from behind that embankment, the shriek of the dead comes, a sound that is wolf howl and rabbit scream mixed together, raising gooseflesh on my arms, coming, coming not twenty yards away and they are coming and everything inside me goes to pounding and shaking.

Jeremiah lags ’til he’s beside me, reaching his left hand out and grabbing for me, yelling, ‘Stay down!’ and then I’m on the ground with the wounded, lying flat on my stomach, the blood pumping in my ears the only sound. Jeremiah’s touch is gone, he has pushed me down, he is nowhere near.

And then there he is, running in a crouch, running at the Rebels and I get my rifle right. I aim toward the Seceshes coming through the smoke, toward the soldiers moving along the top of that embankment. Rifles blast and waves of men run and hunch and bend down like oats heavy with seed. Only some of them rise and rush forward, Jeremiah with them. Some falter and fall and there’s a swell coming from behind me as more move up to plug the gaps, each one a boy we’ve lost.

Sergeant bellows, ‘Fire at will!’ through the noise, but all I can do is keep low.

Boys from my Company are cut down. Young Frank Morgan falls, rolling and writhing, his Papa dropping beside him, but before I see if they get back up more soldiers rush forward and everything is moving. I don’t know where any of my boys are, but I have got to do this thing. I get to my knees and then
it is time it is time it is time
to make my run across moldering logs and branches and dead leaves and men.

Almost at the base of the bank, I fling myself to my belly again as the rifles roar and crawl for the next closest tree to take shelter, my fingers clawing at its bark. At the top of the mound, blood sprays from a horse shot out from under his Rebel officer, the officer still waving his arm to those men behind him even as the horse goes down, its legs crumpling. It somersaults and somehow rights itself and the officer is gone, a shadow in the trees. That horse stands on three legs, its one foreleg flapping like Mama’s stockings on the line. It ain’t got a chance at living anything except pain. I
aim my rifle and fire. The horse buckles and goes down again, goes down clean. But I ain’t here for shooting horses.

My eyes burn in the smoke until I find Jeremiah behind a tree just ahead. He is whole and a coolness flows through my veins.

I stay kneeling close to that tree and load charge ram prime and get ready to shoot again but the firing is coming off to our right now, shells landing everywhere, leaves and branches and dirt flying, mixed with I don’t know what else and smoke hiding everything. The Rebs ain’t looking for mercy and they sure ain’t planning on giving none, any one of them aiming to kill Jeremiah or me or one of my boys, like that soldier last night.

‘Ross!’ Will comes from nowhere, grabbing my arm, scaring me. He points at the embankment and there is Jeremiah with the Union boys, his long legs striding, running up out of the trees to that embankment, trying to break through and a Secesh right above him on that mound, raising his musket. It ain’t a thought, it is just a thing I do, leveling my own rifle and pulling the trigger quick, and the Secesh is gone.

But there are more Rebs coming for Jeremiah. There ain’t time to reload, not when that line goes to swarming gray and grappling blue and all of them clubbing with muskets.

‘You cover me!’ I yell at Will, his rifle sloppy in his hands, and then I charge, thinking how nice my bayonet stabs.

Before I get to Jeremiah, to the fray, before the ground even starts rising, there is a bugle call mixed in with the fighting and screaming and our flag moves off to my side, away from the embankment, back through the trees. The flood of our blue boys comes back, swirling Jeremiah up in it and coming all around me, elbows and hands and knees jabbing at me, pushing me around and then we are running. There are bodies strewn under the trees and I don’t know how I get over or through without stepping on them or tripping and falling, or maybe I do and don’t know it, I am running so fast to get back through the trees, away from the embankment and that firing, hoping Jeremiah is running too.

J
EREMIAH STANDS STOCK-STILL
like a dog pointing. Next to him Sully paces. Both of them watch the men coming back from those trees across the slip of clearing, flowing like blood from a fresh cut, fast at first and then slower and slower. The two of them stare at the men that come, working to see who can put a name to each one and how quick. Company K’s skirmishers slap the backs of the boys coming past, the ones that ain’t bleeding or hobbling.

I don’t know a thing except for the ringing in my ears, sitting on the ground on top of dead leaves, looking at my blackened hands and waiting. Waiting for something important. There’s a wetness down my side and my hands go flying to it quick and jittery and I can’t look at myself. It ain’t sticky, it is my canteen with a hole shot through it and not a drop of water left inside. I take the canteen from around my chest and hold it in my hands, a thin, high laugh coming out of me. Jeremiah reaches his hand down and squeezes my shoulder ’til it hurts. When I snatch at his hand it has got blood on it. Seeing that, I come back to myself a bit, like waking up and not knowing where I am.