The Seeker (42 page)

Adam had wanted to ask him if he thought the war was the Lord’s will, but he had bit his lip and stayed silent. It didn’t seem wise to challenge a man of God at the same time he was seeking prayers for his brother. Then before night fell, Jake let out one last shuddering breath and did not pull in another. The chaplain’s prayers had not protected Jake. But even worse, Adam had not protected his little brother. Adam had stayed on the sidelines and watched while his little brother ran into battle. Always the watcher and not the doer, and now he’d watched his brother die.

The war. The reason for much death. Adam shook away thoughts of Jake. He had to think about drawing the scenes of war. That was his job. He couldn’t think about how close he was to Harmony Hill and Charlotte. Not yet. There would come another day in a garden, but first the war.

And it looked as if Sam was right to send him to Kentucky. The man had a nose for where the next battle was going to be. Louisville was overrun with Union troops as General Buell’s forces had just made a fast march from Tennessee to Louisville to stop the advance of the Confederate General Bragg and his troops who were trying to drive the Union out of Kentucky. Lexington had fallen to the Confederates and news was coming in that Bragg had left his main army in Bardstown to go to Frankfort for the purpose of installing a Confederate governor.

By the time Adam got to the Union’s camp, the soldiers were packing up to move out of Louisville. Reinforced with the twenty-five thousand fresh troops that had been waiting in Louisville, Buell’s army of almost sixty thousand marched toward Bardstown to crush the Rebel advance. The Union could ill afford to lose Kentucky.

As they moved swiftly southeast across the state, Adam noted with each mile he was getting closer to Harmony Hill. When the Confederates fell back from Bardstown, it began to look like the armies might meet in Harrodsburg, practically in the Shakers’ backyard. That would be sure to disturb the peace they constantly sought.

Adam couldn’t keep from wondering if Charlotte was seeking that spiritual peace now. Would she welcome him when his feet finally found his way back to her? This near, he would not leave the area without seeing her. It mattered not that every garden he passed was parched from lack of rain and picked clean of even the smallest corn nubbin by the throngs of soldiers passing through. It mattered not that the gardens at Grayson were shriveled and blackened by the fire. The garden he sought to walk with Charlotte was a garden of the heart. But if she had turned to the Shaker way as her last letter seemed to indicate, her feet would not want to walk in such a garden.

He pushed it from his mind. First the war. First he would draw more illustrations of soldiers and death for Sam to print in his newspaper. Adam had stayed purposely aloof from the soldiers marching in the ranks. He did not want to know their names. He did not want to hear their talk about the sons and daughters waiting for them to save the Union and march home heroes. It was better to just see eyes and noses and mouths with nothing behind them. Not as good for his art, but easier on his heart.

The sun beat down on their heads and dust rose in clouds around them as they marched in the unusual October heat. The countryside hadn’t seen rain for weeks, and the creeks where the men might have slaked their thirst were bone dry. The few ponds they came across that still held water were little more than pig wallows, but the men drank anyway, sometimes chasing out the hogs in order to fill their cups or canteens. The sight turned Adam’s stomach, and he took tiny sips from his own canteen to make his water last as long as possible.

They didn’t make it to Harrodsburg. Instead the Confederates had halted their march by a river that yet held water near a little town called Perryville. With the soldiers and horses so in need of water to drink, the river was more than enough reason for the lines of battle to be formed.

At daylight, Adam found a spot on a knoll with a good view of the rolling countryside. To one side a big field of drying cornstalks stood in rows waiting to be shocked. Stone fences snaked across the fields giving the possibility of cover to the soldiers. But that would be little help against the artillery the gunners were moving into place.

Adam had seen it all before. The men lining up, advancing into the musket fire. The smoke rising and settling around the artillery guns. The storm of shell, grape, canister, and minié balls. The terrible sounds of the shells screaming overhead. He could have drawn it from memory before the first shell was fired. Even so, it was his job to see it all again and he wondered uneasily if he’d chosen the best viewpoint to watch and record. He wished Bud Keeling was there, because somehow the reporter always knew where and when the action would happen first.

Bud had stayed in the East. Where he said Adam should stay. “I’m not saying Kentucky’s not important to the Union,” Bud had said when Adam told him he was going west. “But nothing that happens there is gonna compare to what might happen here. Here’s where General Lee is. That’s who we gotta beat. And if the President ever finds a general who might make that happen, it’ll be here in the East. Here’s where the big battles are gonna happen. Not out there in Kentucky.”

But Adam had come to Kentucky anyway, and now he sat with his sketchpad waiting for another battle. The day had dawned clear, with the rising sun revealing the fall colors in the trees along the little river. On the far side of the river, the Rebels were forming lines, pulling artillery into place, but neither side seemed to be in a hurry to get the battle underway.

The morning hours crept by with only a spatter of gunfire now and again to indicate a few skirmishes. The previous day the information had come down to the reporters that the attack was to commence at dawn before the day’s heat drained the men of fighting energy, but then General Buell had been thrown by his horse and injured his back. So instead of riding out to direct the troops, he’d set up headquarters in a house a few miles away from where Adam now sat atop his knoll. Couriers were carrying his orders to the field, so that could be why the troops were slow to move into place.

A young reporter, who had latched on to Adam as a battle-savvy veteran and was dogging his steps, watched the scene below for a few minutes before he yawned and lay back in the dry grass. “Ain’t it just like the army. Chase the enemy clear across to tomorrow, and then nobody wants to fire the first salvo.” He plopped his hat over his face. “Wake me when they’re ready.”

For lack of anything better to do Adam drew his picture. The kid was covering his first battle. That was why he could sleep. He had no idea of what was coming the way Adam did. Adam didn’t want to think about it as the minutes ticked by. Eventually the artillery would begin firing and the battle would be engaged, but now peace still reigned in the scene spread out below them. Crows cawed as they flew in and out of the cornfield. The soft coo of a mourning dove was almost drowned out by the chirr of grasshoppers in the parched pastures around the cornfield. Adam didn’t see the first cow. No doubt the farmers had hidden their stock when they heard the armies were coming to keep the soldiers from having chunks of beef roasting on spits over their fires.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, the reporter continued to snooze while Adam felt the tension growing inside him. He wished he were anywhere other than on that knoll waiting for another battle to begin. He calculated the miles to Harmony Hill and how long it would take him to ride there. He sketched a garden full of roses and then drew Charlotte in the midst of it.

He stared at the sketch a long time and wondered why he hadn’t left room for himself beside her. He had never put his image in any of the many sketches he’d done of Charlotte. Was that because he knew in his heart that his dream of holding her in his arms again was just that—a dream that would never come true? Perhaps he was only in love with a woman his imagination had created to be drawn by his pen. Perhaps she was nothing as he remembered and it was only the drums of war that made him wish for love just as Jake had wished for his lost love before he died. To leave something of himself behind even if it was only his memory in the heart of someone who had loved him no matter how briefly.

Maybe the best thing to do instead of calculating the miles to Harmony Hill would be to forget the kisses in the garden. To leave her in the peace of the Shakers or perhaps rebuilding her Grayson. But then he touched his pocket where he carried the last letter he had received from her, the one he’d read while Jake was in the hospital. It held no words of love. He knew enough about the Shakers to know such would not be allowed by them, but yet she always mentioned the garden. In those words he sought the flowering of love even as his love for her had grown in his heart. He would not forget. He could not forget.

The Rebels fired their first artillery piece when the sun was directly overhead. The young reporter sat up, startled by the noise. But then eagerness lit up his face as he jumped to his feet to get a better view.

“It’s started,” he said.

“It has,” Adam agreed as he turned his sketchbook back to the peaceful pasture scene to begin drawing in the scenes of death.

“How come there aren’t any soldiers charging across the field?” the reporter asked.

“They will. The artillery always gets things under way.”

Adam tried to recall what the kid had said his name was. Max, maybe. Or Mike. That was it. Mike Putnam. Adam had told him to write his name on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket. A lot of the soldiers had started doing that so their remains could be identified even if they got hit by a shell that blew away their faces. Adam had his name in his pocket on Charlotte’s letter. Not that he was worried about his remains. He wasn’t one of the green troops about to be ordered to take up positions on the field. He was safe on his knoll.

Mike was on his feet, standing on his tiptoes as if that extra inch would show him even more. “Maybe we should move closer to the action.”

“We’re close enough.” Adam kept his eyes on his sketch.

“But we can’t see much from here. How are we going to know who’s winning?”

“We’ll get the word eventually. Especially if you see the men retreating. Besides, if you think you can’t tell much about what’s happening up here, believe me, it’s ten times worse down there.”

“Worse? How could it be worse? That’s where it’s happening.”

“Down there each soldier is standing in one little pocket of what’s happening. At least that’s what the men I’ve talked to tell me. Down there in the heat of battle you’re as likely to get shot by your own side as the other side if you’re in the wrong spot. Better to be up here out of range.”

“But . . .” The kid let the word hang in the air between them.

Adam sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was babysit a green newsman. But when he looked up at the kid, Adam saw Jake as he’d been the year before when they marched out to that first battle at Bull Run. Eagerness and fear mixed. At least this kid wouldn’t have to run into a barrage of bullets. He could be an observer like Adam.

But the kid couldn’t settle down. He kept hopping up at every boom of artillery and then when at last the sound of musket fire signaled the battle had commenced, he couldn’t stand it. He looked at Adam and said, “I’ve got to be down there. I’ve got to know what it feels like to write about it, don’t I?”

“Don’t be stupid, Mike. You’re not a soldier. You don’t even have a gun,” Adam said.

“I’m not planning to shoot anybody, just report on what it’s like.”

Short of tackling him and tying him to a tree, there was no way Adam could keep him up on the knoll out of artillery range. He watched the kid pick his way down the hill toward the cornfield where most of the action seemed to be going on. Cornstalks were flying up in the air as artillery shells dug deep furrows in the ground. Trees on both ends of the cornfield were exploding in splinters from the hits. And the shells kept screaming through the air, killing without partiality.

He saw the kid fall backward when the bullet hit him. Adam wanted to turn his eyes away, wash his hands of the crazy kid, but he couldn’t. He saw him turn and begin to crawl. He’d seen dozens of men fall and not ventured into the battle to pull any of them to safety, but he couldn’t leave the boy there. It would be like leaving Jake to die again.

Adam closed his sketchpad and looked over his shoulder toward his horse still tied to a tree. The horse had his head up and nostrils flared at the noise of battle, but he was there. If Adam could get the kid back up to the top of the knoll, then he could load him on the horse to take him to a field hospital at the back of the lines.

Adam moved as quickly as he could. There was no need trying to dodge the gunfire because there was no way to know where the next bullet might be. Adam cringed when a bullet whistled past his head, but then he remembered an old soldier telling him once that hearing the bullet was good. That meant the bullet had missed and was seeking out another target. But the one chasing it might be trouble.

The kid had taken a hit to the leg, the minié ball had torn half his calf away, and blood was soaking his britches. Adam put his arm around him to lift him up off the ground as he said, “You’re going to have to help.”