I Shall Be Near to You (33 page)

Captain keeps talking. ‘That’s where Lee will come from, if he comes back. For now, we’ll be staying here.’

Sully is still missing. Jeremiah is buried in the ground. But Captain leaves Sergeant to set up pickets and teams of men to go scavenging for rations and weapons scattered on the fields. Sergeant calls out my name along with Ambrose and Will and Thomas. My throat closes again thinking on working a detail without Jeremiah keeping between me and them. But I’ve got to keep myself hidden, keep moving, acting like the man I am trying to be, until I find my own way, until I can see what is next for me.

All I know is there is nothing I feel useful for.

Sergeant’s voice booms but I don’t care a thing about what he is saying. The only thing I care about is gone and I must be still. I stare at the Company flag until it is a blue blur moving against the lighter sky. Until I don’t even see the clouds or the trees off in the distance. Until there is nothing.

‘Ross!’ Will calls. ‘You coming?’

I take a steadying breath and set my fingers loose. I blink to see clusters
of men already broken off, walking to their campfires and tents to get what there is for breakfast before they start working. Sergeant must have excused us to our duties. Will is with Ambrose and Thomas off to my right, and I can’t remember them moving away. There ain’t anybody near me, they’ve all gone. I wonder how long I’ve been standing there in front of Captain’s tent. I make my feet move, go to them.

I don’t say anything because I don’t know what sound will come out. I nod my head.

‘You sure you can do this?’ Will asks.

Thomas looks at me like Papa when Betsy gets to crying, like it is the saddest thing he’s ever seen but he don’t know what to do about it. ‘Maybe it ain’t time yet. Scavenging won’t be pretty.’

The smallest kindness makes me want to come apart. I steel myself, my brain snapping back to this place. I’ve got to do it, whatever duty Sergeant has given us, whatever my condition, because there ain’t a thing else for me now but working, keeping my mind from going off and staying someplace else.

‘I can do it, if it needs doing,’ I say, my voice jagged.

T
HOMAS,
A
MBROSE, AND
Will sit on the ground, eating fast and silent. Will watches me. Thomas too. I make myself swallow bits of sowbelly whole, swigging water to wash it down. It makes me gag, but I keep at it until even water makes me retch.

After breakfast, our duty is to look for anything we can still use to fight those Rebels, anything we don’t want them getting. The whole Company, those that ain’t on picket, walks in clumps down the ridge, boys spattering the slope, seeping across the hill, no lines or rows now. I keep with these three.

We trample through the grass, trouser hems damp with the dew. Up on the ridge, at camp, things don’t look so bad, the land still grows. From there, the pretty farm below looks white and clean, like it might be running. But when the ground flattens, we pass that farm and its cluster of outbuildings and I can’t look. I can’t think about anything. I just move my feet.

Ambrose tells us, ‘That house is being used as a hospital now.’

Will says, ‘Sully might be there, or maybe they need help nursing.’

We move into the woods, shaded and cool. And then we are out of the trees and into the sun. The sickly sweet smell gets stronger. Things lie about. Hats. Haversacks. Buckles. Buttons. All laid out before us, sprawling across the last low hill before the plowed fields and the fields that used to be corn. Ten horses lay scattered. Pieces of a rifle carriage. Our legs slow and then our feet stop. We stand there, silent, looking.

‘Union battery must’ve been here,’ Ambrose says. ‘Firing over our heads. Trying to help.’

The horses lay there, dropped out of their teams, harnesses tight around swollen bodies, looking like they just lay down for a nap in the sun. Some with thick legs twisted and torn, some with legs stiff and straight. To the far right is a broken-down caisson. One wheel splintered, three horses still harnessed to it, piled almost on each other, the ground torn up in front of them. The smell of rotting is everywhere. I retch before I get smart and hold my breath. Will has got his arm across face, covering his nose.

‘Waste of good plow horses,’ Thomas says.

No one has a thing different to say.

It’s all a waste, I want to say, my life, this whole war, this country too, but I keep my mouth shut.

‘We won’t find what we want here,’ Ambrose says. ‘There won’t be any muskets, not with the artillery.’

He starts walking again. They all do. I follow down the hill. We move closer to the woods, beyond the bare land where the cornfield was, to where Jeremiah is. Everything in my body pulls my feet to him but I only let my eyes go, looking for his tree. There it is, stretching out above the others. I take a sharp breath and hold it or else I will go to making noise. It’s near enough and I’ve got a job. I make myself do it.

We walk through the same fields we marched on only three days ago, the same fields Will and I passed through this morning. This time, I make myself see, I don’t have no choice. Jeremiah’s tree off in the distance. This whole valley bound by woods and low mountains the color of Mama’s lavender sachets. The ground ripples and rolls down to the town
of Sharpsburg, land meant to be harvested, land I would have been proud to farm, if it could be had, before all this. Across the valley, near the trees, thin trails of camp smoke rise into the air. In the open fields, thick dark smoke rises from fires burning more than just sticks and kindling. The smell of singeing hair and roasting meat comes on the breeze. Burning carcasses.

Everywhere there are scattered clothes blown like laundry from the line, so soiled there’s no reason to gather it back up. And then there are the Rebel dead, their pockets turned out, their faces turned black from the sun, like tomatoes left too long. Touch them and they burst. I can’t stop myself from thinking of Jeremiah’s blue eyes. The freckles across his cheeks. How pale he looked.

‘You okay?’ Will’s voice, his head turned over his shoulder. Ambrose and Thomas spread apart, casting about.

‘Fine,’ I say. But I ain’t. I feel so sick, like sitting down on that field and never picking myself back up, like crying and tearing at my own clothes or the ground or anything. But I can’t. I make my legs, legs that don’t even feel like mine anymore, keep moving.

Ambrose bumps me with his elbow.

‘Want some?’ he asks, holds out his flask to me. ‘It’s a powerful help.’

My voice ain’t trustworthy so I shake my head. He lifts that flask to his mouth, taking a long pull.

‘You sure? Ever since my wife—It’s the only thing that makes it easier.’

And then I am not sure. I reach for that flask, its metal warm from Ambrose’s hand. He watches me take a swig. It tastes awful, like being back in Doc Cuck’s surgery, but there is something good about the heat down my throat.

When I take my mouth away, Ambrose says, ‘Have another,’ and I do.

It don’t make a thing better, but I say, ‘Thank you,’ and get out in front of Thomas and Will so I don’t have to see their faces. So none of them can see my feelings. So Will don’t look at me like I’ve done something bad, taking Ambrose’s drink.

T
HREE MUSKETS HANG
across my back, but there are more sad things than I can count. Bodies twisted out of any shape. Hands puffed so big the skin pulls tight away from the bones. Soldiers killed so young they look like schoolboys curled up to sleep. Men killed so slow they took out pictures of sweethearts and wives, of children too young to remember their fathers. All these boys, all these men, they are something to someone. There are people back home, waiting on them and the waiting ain’t never going to end now. For the rest of my life I am waiting too.

I search the grass, letting my tears fall as I walk.

I blink. There at my feet is a small leather book, not much bigger than my palm, its cover an engraved spiderweb. There ain’t a single body anywhere near.

It is sodden, its binding cracked and worn. I can’t bring myself to touch the metal clasp that closes it. I straighten and turn, the book still in my hand.

‘Will!’ I call. He is twenty paces behind me and off to my left, but his head pops right up, his face drawn and tight. ‘Come here!’

He jogs, his forehead creased with worry. ‘What is it?’

I hold it out to him.

He says, ‘Oh,’ and a ghost of a smile crosses his face. ‘A Bible.’

‘We can’t leave it here,’ I say. ‘Ain’t right.’

‘May I?’ Will asks, and puts his hand out.

I set the Bible in his hand. He looks at it. Turns it over. Flips open the clasp.

‘It’s got a name in it,’ he says, real quiet, and there on the first page, in someone’s fine handwriting, is the name
Benjamin Harlin
and underneath
32nd Virginia
.

He turns the thin paper, looks to see if there is anything else written in that Bible. He flips ahead and the book falls open right in Psalms:
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight
. And flattened between the pages are two four-leaf clovers.

‘You keep it,’ I say.

‘No,’ Will says, and looks at me. ‘It should go back to his people.’

CHAPTER
34

The dark creeps from the mountains toward the valley and the fields where all our dead are buried. I hug my knees and sit next to the pit fire Will is tending, the cold air at my back. Loud singing and laughing drifts down the ridge, the glare of campfires lighting the tents like lanterns. Shadows swallow up the tents scattered at the edges of the battlefield until all that’s left is the bright spots of flames flickering in the night.

I am working at keeping my mind swept bare when Will asks me, ‘You going to write Jeremiah’s folks? Send them that letter of his?’

Every feeling comes rushing over me. I just shake my head.

‘You’ve got to send it. At least his letter,’ Will says.

‘Don’t want to.’

Will looks at me like that is the worst thing. ‘What do you mean?’

I can’t explain it right. How all I’ve got left is two letters. How I can’t send any more of him away.

‘Long as I don’t send that letter, he’s still living to them,’ I say.

That stops Will right as he’s poking one of the logs with a stick. ‘They’ll
be hearing news of the battle,’ he says real quiet. ‘And it won’t be long before they see the casualty list. They’ll be starting to think if they haven’t heard word …’

Will is right. I know he is.

‘You want me to write them?’ he asks.

It is a kind offering, but it is wrong. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to do it.’

Will nods. After that we are silent. Nothing passes between us but the cracking and popping of the logs in the fire. The flames work their way through the biggest log so that it glows orange behind the black bark.

Will shifts and stands, saying, ‘I’m going on over to find Thomas. He’s been wanting to read the Bible.’

He looks at me so if I weren’t sure before, I know now what he is doing.

‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ He hands me the stick he’s been using to work our fire and digs that tattered Bible, the one from the battlefield, out of his knapsack.

He steps away from the small circle of light the fire casts, a dim shape moving along the ridge back to camp, to where the rest of the boys are.

I take Jeremiah’s letters out, the cold air chilling my breast before I can get my jacket buttoned again. How did he ever think I could send the last of him home to his family, that I could do these things without him, that I could push everything aside, and live with only memories of him?

I drag my knapsack to me, telling myself I am going to do what is right, but that don’t help one bit because I start crying.

I
GET HOLD
of myself and dig inside my knapsack to find my letter paper. It is rumpled and I don’t have a thing to write on but my knees. I iron a sheet against my pants, but those wrinkles stay and I want this letter to be nice. I think about waiting, finding some fresh paper. But the paper don’t matter and maybe writing it I will feel something of him flutter through me again. I ain’t doing right by him, keeping the truth of things from his folks.

September 20, 1862

Near Antietam Creek and Sharpsburg

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield and family
,

It is only because My Heart breaks to do it and is Broken already that I did not Write sooner. You will have heard, I think, how this Army met the Rebels at Antietam Creek and how we have had Victory. From what I saw there was Nothing that we won with this fighting and now we have Lost so Many. Our Regiment saw heavy fighting in a Cornfield and I was there with Jeremiah. I did not see how the enemy got him but with his Wounds I think it was canister. I Found him after it happened and he was still Living and he knew me and was Very Brave. There wasn’t a thing to be Done for him but I do not think he Suffered long. I Tried to get him to where it was Safe, but he was Gone too quick. I held him when he Passed to the Other Side and the Last words he said was, Home. Home. So you can know that his last thoughts were of You and of Good Things and He died in the Company of Someone who Loved him. There are others here who Miss him but that is not the same as what it is to lose a Son or Brother or Husband
.