by Maria Hummel
Up the hill, the scene changed abruptly, as if a storm had swept across the land but reached no farther than the green summit, the white church rising above it. Everywhere, there were bodies, some scattered, some lined up in rows, and ladies who had come to worship that day in their pastel Sunday dresses were bent over men they had never seen before, trying to keep them from death.
When he reached his first casualty, Laurence halted for a moment, transfixed by the red shell hole gouged in the man’s belly and the soft squelching noise that rose out when he tried to breathe. A woman walked by the dying soldier with a pail of water, her stride unbroken by his cries. The man continued to call out after she passed, but when he saw Laurence’s eyes on him, he averted his face, ashamed. Behind his ear, a bullet had carved a pathway to his glistening gray brain. Shards of skull lay matted in his hair.
Addison sprinted by, cuffing Laurence on the shoulder, and he started forward again to reach the crest of the hill. Across from him, the white smoke of the rebels’ guns puffed up just after the crack of fire. Minié balls whistled past his ears. Suddenly, Laurence was thrown to the ground. Pasture grass ripped at his cheek, cutting the skin.
“I’m shot,” he said. He could not feel any pain, but he had read that some fatally injured men went into shock and did not suffer before they died.
“No, you ain’t shot yet, you goddamn fool,” Addison yelled in his ear. He was lying beside Laurence. “I knocked you down so you wouldn’t be. Now load. Davey’s about to call the order to fire.”
Laurence thought he heard the woman with the water pail scream as he rammed a ball down the barrel of his gun, but when he looked back, he could not see her. Ahead of him, a white house stood on the hill between the armies. Its walls lay in pieces on the ground, boards showing their mottle and knots, bits of glass blinking among them. He finished loading the gun and aimed just to the south of it, toward the Confederate army.
“Fire!” Captain Davey yelled from a few yards away. Addison felled a man on the other side. Laurence’s shot went too high, above the heads of the rebels. Fumbling for another bullet, he loaded again, the musket burning his fingers.
“Fire!” Davey’s voice rang out.
When his second shot spun into the clouds. Laurence turned to Addison, embarrassed, but his friend was dodging back and forth along the line, rallying the others. He heard a woman shriek once more and realized the sound was coming from the house on the hill.
“There’s a woman in there!” he yelled, sitting up, casting about for someone to listen.
Captain Davey did not look at him, absorbed in loading his gun. His squat body pillowed up from the earth. A few rods away, Lyman Woodard turned and blinked, uncomprehending. He lay on his stomach, his hands folded over his head, his gun beside him.
“There’s a woman in there!” Laurence yelled again. A blast of grape sailed over the hill and crashed down between him and Woodard, who whimpered and scooted backward on his elbows, leaving the gun behind in the grass.
Davey lifted his gun. “Fire!” he ordered.
A long swath of shingles slid from the roof. Laurence watched it sway on the air, tossed like a maple leaf in autumn. Halfway to the ground, it got caught in the crossfire and split into shards that stabbed the grass below. The woman wailed again, her voice ancient, his mother weeping on winter nights when his father was away, his sisters crying in the next room as they woke from nightmares, a startled lament, one that cannot believe its own origin in sadness and terror, one that will not be comforted. Smoke stung his eyes as he loaded again, tearing the packet of cartridge powder with his teeth, tasting its peppery ash.
He raised his gun, aiming this time at a stocky, wide-hipped secesh with sandy hair and two canteens slung over his shoulder.
“Fire!” Davey sounded distant now.
When Laurence’s bullet hit the secesher in the shoulder, the man staggered back, flapping, spinning on his toes as if he thought he might take flight before he fell, face-first, into the torn green pasture.
* * *
Later, by the river, Laurence stumbled alone, searching for a place to cross. The captain had yelled to retreat and he had obeyed, moving clumsily back from the firing line and down the hill to the water. His breath came in ragged gasps. He could see his shadow flicker over a body before he registered the body itself, tossed like driftwood onto the shore of weeds.
The boy’s legs were splayed, and one arm lay across the barely breathing chest, the other pointing north. Laurence recognized the streaks of berry juice on the small white hands before he recognized the face. He fell to his knees, the impact making his teeth clack together.
Pike’s throat had been gashed open by a shell and the long red wing of exposed flesh fluttered lightly when he breathed. Beneath him, the grass was blood black and matted. It reeked of metal, vinegar, and ash. Laurence began to retch, hearing his own voice reciting poetry to the boy in the days before: I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
When he could sit upright again, Laurence stared at the body, hoping someone else would arrive and tell him what to do. Pike had the half-shut eyes of a man playing the piano or singing alone, transfixed by some inner music. The last time Laurence had seen him, he’d been lying a few feet back from Gilbert, loading and firing. How he had gotten here alone, Laurence could not guess, unless Pike had followed him as he retreated, leaving his brother behind to fight. Laurence would not have seen him. Soon after he began to run, the seceshers had opened up with every last chunk of their artillery, and there was no looking back.
Daylight shuddered on the nearby river. The sounds of the battle receded to a dull thrum. Pike was still breathing, his breath a soft, intermittent rattle. Out of the corner of his eye, Laurence saw a sparrow dive deep into the hedgerow, vanishing. Its wings were flecked with blood.
Soon after, a retreating soldier vaulted right through the bushes and splashed clumsily into the water. The soldier’s momentum took him to midstream, where he floundered, batting his hands against the current. So few fellows had ever learned to swim, but Laurence knew how, because his uncle Daniel had taught him in the summers on Lake Champlain. Uncle Daniel entered the water the same slow way each time, walking deeper and deeper, a little smile on his face, as if he enjoyed his own disappearance, limb by limb.
“Help me, goddamn it,” the soldier shouted from midriver, waking Laurence from his reverie. He realized he had been waiting for orders and that none would come. It was up to him to save Pike and this stranger, too. His lungs swelled with air. Grasping Pike’s skinny ankles, he pulled him gently toward the bank, then leapt into the river. The bridge downstream echoed with the high-pitched screams of horses. Another tug and Pike rolled into the river beside him, his eyes fluttering as his body hit the cool water. Laurence towed the boy by his coat as he swam for the other side. The water sucked at his uniform. His boot-weighted feet felt like hooves, but he had never before felt so sure of his own strength. He kicked hard, and they caught up with the other man, whose arms windmilled wildly but did not propel him forward.
“Stay there. I’ll come back and get you,” Laurence shouted to the soldier, cupping Pike’s skull to keep his nose above water. The gashed neck gurgled as Pike tried to breathe. He hadn’t expected the boy to be so heavy. “I just have to get him across, and then I’ll come back.”
But as the pair began to pass him, the man’s wet eyes bulged, and he launched up from the water. Laurence swerved too late. The other soldier managed to wrap his arms around Laurence’s neck, plunging him down. He felt the water ride over his head, green-brown and flecked with slow light, and he hung suspended there a moment opposite Pike, too surprised to fight back. He could not hear the battle anymore except for the far-off crash of feet pounding through a crowded ford upstream.
Before him, Pike frowned and twisted his face toward the sky, and for a minute it seemed like the boy might save himself. Pike’s arms beat feebly once and his ankles twitched,
but the effort failed and he began to sink again. Bits of moss and river silt drifted into his open mouth. A necklace of bubbles spiraled from his throat.
“Goddamn you,” Laurence shouted, wasting his last breath, and punched upward at the panicked soldier with his free hand. But the current slowed his fist. Pike’s collar tore from his grasp. The boy’s body went down, casting a boat-shaped shadow into the river. Laurence punched again, this time kicking with his own frenzied strength. He thrust the man off him and gagged on the wet air. The river tasted like sweat.
“Goddamn you,” he screamed again, thrashing around for Pike, but the boy had sunk, irretrievable, to the bottom. When the man lunged again, Laurence bunched his knees and pushed off from the soldier’s ribs, cracking them to power himself swiftly toward the bank from which he had come. He closed his eyes to the water streaming over his face. The distance seemed endless as he darted, fishlike, freed of weight. When at last he lifted his waterlogged body onto the muddy earth, he heard the man give a last shout, but he did not look back. Thundering in him was the urge to fight again, even though his weapon was lost, and he started running blindly uphill against a tide of fleeing men.
“There’s a black horse cavalry coming,” a retreating soldier yelled, his legs tumbling fast down the bank. He wore the tight government-issue coat of New York and his lips were smeared black with cartridge powder. Laurence thought he could hear the rumble of horses, and he turned for a moment to watch the speeding trajectory of the soldier. From his new height, he saw the stone bridge they had used to cross the river the night before. Most of what remained of the Army of the Potomac swirled around it. Another retreating soldier slammed into his back, knocking his breath loose. It was no use. He stumbled down the hill, coughing, holding his bruised neck. The battle was already over and they had lost.
Everywhere, two-wheeled limbers tipped sideways, caissons of minié balls spilling onto the dust. Horses still attached to them screamed and kicked, trying to break free. Dodging past them, Laurence slipped on the canteens and haversacks and bedrolls abandoned by others as they ran. A wagon had overturned on the bridge, blocking the way across, and Laurence had to halt behind it to avoid being kicked by a rearing horse. It was then he first noticed the spectators, picnickers who had flung down their bottles of wine and sandwiches to flee to Washington. A lady in dancing slippers tore out her petticoats and ran like man through the chaos, her hands fisted in her raised skirt. The undergarments swept over the side of the bridge and mushroomed down to the stream.
Beyond her, Laurence saw Addison threading among the horses, cutting them free with his bayonet.
“Don’t. You might get hurt,” Addison yelled as Laurence fell in behind him. “Stay here and I’ll come back and get you.”
“Where’s Gilbert?”
“Behind us. He lost Pike somehow when Davey called the order to retreat.” Addison’s eyes swept over him. “What happened to your uniform?” he asked.
The overturned wagon groaned as two soldiers tried to tip it upright.
“We can’t wait,” Laurence pleaded, unable to answer the question. Drips from his wet clothes splashed on the dust, making dark pocks. He saw Pike drifting down through the water, his arms raised. “There’s a black horse cavalry behind us.”
“Think I wouldn’t know the sound of horses coming? Just set tight right here. I got two more.” Addison gestured to a stallion staggering against the side of the bridge, one hind leg dragging. His dusty yellow mane, clotted with mud and ash and blood, stood as erect as the manes on the helmets of ancient knights. It was the only quiet thing in the whole noisy scene, that horse stumbling and righting himself. Laurence watched Addison load his gun and dodge through the crowd. When he reached the animal, the private fired through the yellow temple and danced out of the way. The stallion slumped against the stone rail and nearly fell into the water, but some force kept him suspended, the dead eye aimed toward the center of the earth.
Without further deliberation, Addison jumped on the last mare still attached to a limber and cut her free with two sweeps of his bayonet. He steered the horse toward Laurence and helped him clamber up behind, yanking him forward as he slipped on the wet steam of her hindquarters. They rode bareback into the water, past a parasol embroidered with tiny violets and several drowning havelocks, useless white cloths stitched by industrious mothers and sisters to keep the sun off the necks of their soldiers.
Wading nearby in the shallows of the river was Spider, a high-waisted and balding man from their company. The oldest soldier in the regiment, Spider was the camp’s usurer and resident sutler, making loans to the needy soldiers, selling flasks of black-market whiskey. Now he sifted through the wreckage of the picnics and stuffed the waterlogged items in a knapsack that sat like a hump on his spine.
“There’s a black horse cavalry coming!” Laurence yelled. He could hear them now, their pounding hoofbeats just over the rim of the hill, and the terrified screams of the men leaping out of their way, the steam rising from the dust, the dust turning to smoke at their hooves. But Spider merely waved gaily back, holding a newly filched pocket watch in his hand. Sunstruck, the round face shone like an eye without a pupil. Laurence shuddered and turned away as the mare charged up the steep bank on the other side. For a moment, it looked as if they were riding straight for the bone-colored clouds.
Chapter Ten
“Did you see him?”
“No. I’m sorry, Rhodes.”
“Sorry, fella. He’s gone.”
“He ain’t gone! I heard his voice behind me during the retreat, only I dint retreat yet because there were so many rebs to kill first.”
“There was a shell that fell among us as we ran.” As we ran. Where had they come to? A place halfway between the battle and the capital. Soldiers from other companies said they would not stop until they got to Washington, but Davey made them halt in the storm beneath a stand of sweet gum and wait while he found Sergeant Hamilton, who had been asking other companies about Pike Rhodes, the only one missing among them. It was getting dark. The trees arched over the gathered men, spilling small handfuls of rain.
“Lindsey, you see him?”
“There was smoke and fire in the air.”
“If you seen him wounded, I’m going back.”
“He’s not wounded, Gilbert.” The roots of the sweet gum were ugly, exposed. He wished they were buried.
“Then you seen him. I know it! You seen him and you kept running.”
“He was dead.” His mouth tasted of metal. “He was dead because he followed me.”
“He didn’t follow you,” said Gilbert, his fists rising.
Laurence lowered his head, waiting for the blows. They had been marching for an hour, but it had not brought him any farther from the grassy bank where he first found the dying boy.
“He did,” Laurence muttered at the ground.
“What are you saying, Lindsey?” Gilbert demanded.
A tense silence fell over the crowd, and the rain came down harder, splashing the back of Laurence’s skull. What was he saying? That he blamed Pike for losing his life because he followed him? He kicked at the wet roots of the sweet gum.
Addison’s voice rang out after a moment. “He must have been lost. You know Pike couldn’t find his way out of a round barn, much less a battlefield.”
Laurence raised his head, seeing Gilbert consider this.
“The confused little fellow,” said a tall, bearded soldier named Alfred Loomis, nodding at Addison as if some unspoken dialogue was passing between them, “he was probably looking for some sugar.”
Gilbert’s fists stayed high, but the anger in his face began to slip away and he gave Laurence a pitying glance. “He didn’t follow you,” he repeated.
“Where did you find him, Lindsey?” asked Addison. The white crust of dried horse sweat marked his thighs.
“By the river. His neck was split by a shell,” Laurence said haltingly. “He couldn’t even breathe through it.…” He
paused, unwilling to continue.
“Davey can send someone back to fetch him, then,” declared Gilbert, touching his own throat. “It won’t be hard to find him by the river.”
Laurence swallowed and did not answer. He saw his own skepticism reflected in the expressions of others. Davey would not be sending anyone back soon.
Addison opened his mouth as if about to ask something else, but then he shook his head and said quietly, “I should have looked for him after retreat was called.”
“I heard him run past me,” added Alfred Loomis, tugging at his beard. “I should have stopped him and made him stay by my side.”
“I always thought he was hardly old enough to be a drummer boy,” Woodard said mournfully, “much less a soldier.”
One by one, the men spoke up while Laurence and Gilbert stood close in the center of them, not fighting, breathing each other’s breath. Gilbert’s coat was torn across the shoulder. Rain fell on the long scrape beneath and made his blood run in pink streaks down his shirt. Behind him, Alfred Loomis began binding another soldier’s arm with strips of a picnic cloth the spectators had left behind. And there were more injuries—Woodard limping on a twisted ankle, Addison’s wrist bruised from where a panicked horse had bitten him—but none that would stop their whole company from going into the next battle, because there would be a next one, and a next. To redeem Pike’s lost life, they would have to fight until every last picnic blanket in Washington was torn up for bandages and the rivers filled with the dead. That was the way it would be in every company, Union or secesh, now that this day was over.
“Did he say anything?” Gilbert whispered finally.
Laurence was about to explain that Pike had been past speech, but then he looked Gilbert straight in the eye and answered loudly, for all of the men to hear. “He asked me if we won,” he said. “I told him yes.”
July 26, 1861
