Shades of Gray: A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia (56 page)

Having found
and reported to Colonel Scott, she was on her way back to headquarters by a
remote path when a spattering in the trees above her made Justus shy to the
right. Andrea looked up at the limbs, expecting to see a flock of birds flying
away. Instead, she saw small branches and leaves plunging down, mixed with the
lead that had caused their descent.

Moving her eyes to the left, she stared with
unrestrained awe at the sight of men and horses, followed by flying caissons
and cannons, seeming to appear out of nowhere on the brow of a hill. She felt
the hair rise on the back of her neck in response to the sinister apparition of
evil that seemed to materialize out of the solid green earth right before her
eyes.

Spurring Justus cruelly, Andrea struck back to
Scott’s command to inform him of the proximity of the enemy. Already the far
right was skirmishing, and she knew chances were good they would be hotly
engaged all along the line in the not-too-distant future.

Calm, but breathing hard from the exertion, she
was in the midst of detailing what she had seen, when suddenly utter silence
prevailed. Andrea stopped talking and gazed out at the horizon. Both she and
Scott tensed and held their breath as if expecting something of significance to
begin. Their expectations were realized in a matter of moments. Ear-splitting
detonations that defied description began, and the eruptions that followed made
it appear the earth itself had begun spitting fire.

“Find Colonel Lawson,” Scott screamed above the
fury. “Tell him to move up and protect my right! Then go to Murphy. Tell him to
send reinforcements at the earliest possible instant and by every available
means!”

Andrea nodded and wheeled Justus around, knowing
the order would take her through the midst of the fighting. She guided her
mount through seemingly impassable obstacles to where she hoped Lawson was
being held in reserve. The sound of battle, already deafening, continued to
swell like a colossal gale gathering strength.

An angry crackle of carbines to her left warned
her she was getting close to some action, and the ensuing cloak of smoke
alerted her to its intensity. Soon, to her right, more noise erupted as Federal
cannons moved into place and began to talk back. The fighting began to spread
and seemed to exist everywhere. Missiles of every conceivable type and every
imaginable size came hurling from out of the sky, wreaking havoc on anything
and everything in their path.

Andrea thought the storm could get no worse, but
when she got to the crown of a small rise, the tempest burst with all its fury.
Not knowing which way to turn, she pulled Justus to a stop and found herself
within a sea of smoke.

Pushing him back into a gallop, she watched a
wave of gray crest a hill of green to face a wall of blue. Her eyes, seeming of
their own accord, lifted to the hills far beyond that flashed with small puffs
of smoke. Almost instantly, entire lines of men disappeared. She found herself
in a surreal storm of whirling hot lead so loud and brilliant it seemed to her
the world was falling apart.

Not fifty feet away a horse bounded by with only
the bottom half of a man upon its back. Nearby walked a steed with its entrails
dragging out behind. Slaughtered beasts and butchered men, many with their
vital current pulsing out in throbbing streams, lay suffering all around.

Just moments earlier, the land before her had
been the picture of peaceful Virginia farmland. Now, death bloomed like a
hell-spawned crop on every foot of soil. The scene affected Justus, too.
Trembling in terror beneath her, he stared crazily at the ground, sniffing the
sulfur smoke and the scent of blood, reluctant to move forward, yet afraid to
stand still. He stepped on something that made a squishing noise, and Andrea
gagged when she looked down to see what it was. She did not look down again.

Yet what she saw when she looked up was not much
better. The smoke lifted, revealing a column of Union troops directly in front
of her—a living, breathing mass of men plunging toward their formidable foe.
Andrea lifted her gaze toward their destination on the opposite hill, where the
muzzles of a dozen cannons glowered from the heights. It took a moment for her
brain to grasp the surreal scene unfolding. Her mind could barely comprehend
the horror about to ensue as the cannons prepared to eat everything in her
midst alive.

Even then she did not have time to feel fear or
contemplate flight. She watched small puffs of smoke rise from the gaping
mouths of the massive instruments of death and thought how they appeared like
smoke rings from a peace pipe against the blue of the sky.

But their effect was anything but peaceful. A
dreadful roar reached her ears as the earth trembled beneath her—and hell
exploded in her face. The unleashed fury that fell upon her was like nothing
she had ever known or could imagine. All of the thunderstorms and all the
lightning she had ever seen thrown together could not compare with the storm
roaring around her.

Justus, startled by the thunderous clamor,
reared high in the air, throwing Andrea backward and off balance. She heard an
appalling thud, a loud crack, the sound of iron consuming flesh and bone.
Leaning forward, she grabbed erratically for a handful of mane to regain her
balance, but there was no mane to grab. There was no horse beneath her. The
strong, well-muscled animal between her legs had dissolved. Disappeared. He was
gone.

She hit the ground with a thud so loud it
continued to echo in her ears for some moments after. Reaching up tentatively
to feel her skull, Andrea envisioned that it had splintered into any number of
fragmented pieces, like the vase Victoria had thrown at her at Hawthorne.

She felt a sinking sensation, dizzy and faint, a
numb darkness, as she attempted to regain her senses. Remembering Justus, she
struggled to her knees, choking and gasping for air, trying to clear her mind
of the fog enveloping it. The roar and the thunder that, minutes earlier had
seemed so loud, now sounded faint and detached, like the battle was far away,
coming to her from a distance of miles or years. Yet she could feel the earth
beneath her fingers trembling with the great ferocity of the fight.

Crawling
through the smoke that hovered above the ground, Andrea moved in the direction
she thought her horse should be standing. “Justus,” she cried, half expecting
him to run to her through the clamor of battle. She blinked against the red
haze that filled her eyes and spit blood from her mouth as she struggled and
clawed and groped through the tempest of death in desperation. “Justus!”

It seemed to
Andrea that she had been dropped into the very depths of Hell. She could no
longer distinguish anything in the thick, gray canopy that settled over her.
Closing her eyes against the stinging sulfuric smoke, she continued edging
across the ground. Her fingers finally touched something wet, something soft
and warm. She stopped and lifted her head. There in the dim, shadowy haze of
battle, she saw the dark mound of her horse, or the pile of quivering flesh
that remained, lying in a growing pool of coagulating red fluid.

If not for the roar of battle that already
filled the air, her blood-curdling scream of pain and despair would have been
enough to pierce even the most war-calloused heart. But no one heard and no one
cared, so she crawled beside what was left of her beloved companion and prayed
for a similar fate.

Chapter
55

“Then I with flowing tears,

Allowed my doubts to rise,

“Is there a God that sees and hears

The things below the skies?”

– Psalms 73:6

When Andrea opened her eyes again, it was to a
scene of heart-wrenching destruction. Moving nothing but her eyes, she scanned
the field and took in the scene of massive carnage. Mutilated and disfigured
horses lay everywhere, while wisps of smoke hung motionless in the air over the
field of battle.

Andrea lay
still, staring at the leaden sky above. Ignoring her aching muscles, she moved
her fingers and then her hands. Though her stiff, bloodstained clothes made
moving difficult, she finally brought herself to a sitting position.

“Sinclair? That you?” The voice sounded
incredulous.

Andrea looked up to see her old friend Jasper
from J.J.’s command. Leaning upon him was a Union officer she did not know.
Both faces were black from smoke.

“Boonie’s down yonder.” The soldier pointed down
the hill as he half-helped, half-carried the man toward a row of ambulances.
“I’d be much obliged if you could take him some water.”

Andrea stood unsteadily, and then searched
aimlessly for her friend. It never really occurred to her to look
down
,
down in the dirt where so many others lay. But then, at last, by chance, she
saw him.

“Boonie?” She dropped to the ground on her
knees.

He looked up, pain written across his usually
smiling face. “Sinclair?  That … you?”

Andrea felt the crusted blood on her face when
she tried to smile and realized she must be hard to recognize. She lowered her
gaze to Boonie’s chest, to a wound from which warm blood still flowed.

“You … go on, Sinclair,” Boonie whispered, his
lips barely moving. “I’ll catch up.” He paused and sucked in some air, kind of
gurgling as he did.

 “I’m not leaving, Boonie.” Andrea bent down
still lower beside him with a choking mixture of hope and dread.

“Where? Where
… you come from?” he asked after a few moments silence.

“We’ll talk later.” Andrea tried to sound
cheerful as she attempted to stem the bleeding. But when she put her
handkerchief under his shirt, her hand fell into a horrible hole.

“Rumor had it … you was caught by … Hunter.”
Boonie opened his eyes and stared at her. “How’d you … get away?”

The way Andrea grimaced was apparently not lost
on the injured man. “Betcha found out he weren’t such a bad guy.” Boonie paused
and sucked some more air into his lungs. “Betcha if I got to know the guy who
put this hole in me, I wouldn’t think he was such a bad guy neither.”

“Don’t talk,
Boonie.” Andrea blinked back tears she did not want to shed.

Boonie fell silent, but only for a moment. “We
had some good times … I wish—” His voice sounded weak.

“I wish it wasn’t always the best blood that
gets spilled.” Andrea rolled up an old coat to put under his head, while
putting pressure on the gaping hole with one hand. His eyes fluttered open and
met hers with a look of appreciation and understanding.

“Damn it, Boonie.” Tears stung her eyes as she
tried desperately to stop the flow of life that gushed from him. “Don’t do
this.”

“Don’t go gettin’ soft on me now, boy.” He moved
his fingers in the pool of red beside him as if suddenly aware how swiftly the
precious fluid was draining from him. “Don’t leave me here, Sinclair.”

Andrea swallowed hard. “I won’t, Private Boone.
I won’t.”

He nodded
slightly in recognition that he had heard her, but did not re-open his eyes.
“It’s Lieutenant,” he said after a few moments rest. “Lieutenant Boone.”

Pride swelled in Andrea at the announcement. Yet
congratulations seemed so out of place when she was attempting, unsuccessfully,
to keep his lifeblood from flowing through her fingers. “Are you in pain?”

Boonie shook his head, but his teeth began
chattering slightly. “Just c-c-o-l-d …”

Andrea removed her coat and laid it across him,
then knelt down close to his ear. “Boonie, I never told you how much I admire
you.” She felt the slightest squeeze from the hand she held, but that was all.

“I’m … not … afraid,” he whispered, gurgling
again. “Tell … my … mother.” Andrea squeezed his hand firmly. “I’ll tell her …”
She closed her eyes and bowed her head without finishing.

He coughed deeply and Andrea wiped the scarlet
fluid from his lips with the edge of her coat. “Sinclair … I want you … to
know.” His breathing grew more sporadic and shallow.

“Don’t talk, Boonie. And don’t worry. Best
friends know everything.”

Yea,” he whispered so faintly she could barely
hear. “Best friends know
everything
.”

He lay quiet then, his face pale. His coughing
had aggravated the wound, causing the blood to flow even faster. Andrea tried
in vain to catch the precious fluid, tried in vain to return it to its rightful
place. She pushed it back toward the hole by the fistful, but it would not go
in, would only come out, bubbling and gushing between her fingers. “Oh,
Boonie!”

He looked up once more, a mute appeal filling
his eyes even though he could no longer speak. That’s when Andrea stopped
trying to stop the blood. Instead she contented herself with stroking his hair
and speaking bravely to him, easing his passing as best she could. Within
minutes, she raised her head and gazed statue-like over the field of battle,
knowing her friend’s spirit now floated above—up there where his eyes vacantly
stared.

Andrea looked down to the spot where the soil
had drunk the last life drop from his bleeding breast. She stared
disbelievingly at her own hands soaked in sticky humanity, then gazed up at the
sun. Sinking behind crimson clouds, it appeared to be fleeing into its own sea
of blood. The sight caused her to shudder, then shake uncontrollably. A scream
rose up from the deepest recesses of her heart. “W-h-h-y-y???”

She pounded the ground by Boonie’s corpse in a
delirious rage, though it was not because he had died. “Please,” she beseeched
with her cheek against the blood-soaked dirt, “take … M-E-E!”

* * *

Andrea awoke to the drone of a low, moaning wind
that sounded almost human. She turned her head side to side in an effort to
stop the noise, then realized it was coming from her own throat.