Wilderness Run

by Maria Hummel

“Certainly.” Faustina curtsied. “Bel?”

  “I want to go outside,” Bel said stubbornly. How excited she had once felt to be shown her father’s plans, inked in his tiny, exact handwriting over sheaves of curling paper. He had even let her choose the metal spires for the new railroad station down in the lumberyards. But now his notes and sketches were like bird tracks to her, just another ordinary passage spelled across the yard.

  “Don’t go far,” her mother warned.

  “I won’t.” Bel allowed a note of bitterness to creep into her promise. The red mark on her arm had remained, a thin crescent the size of a fingernail, but the soft kiss Louis had given her fingers left no impression, as if it had not happened at all.

  Her parents exchanged looks, then drifted off together, arm in arm. After they were gone, Bel went out into the garden alone. She broke off the largest icicle she could find and held it, burning her hands with the cold, until it melted.

  January–December 1863

  Chapter Twenty-four

  When dark fell, Laurence found himself trying to sleep in a cramped, unstable tent with three other men. They were all drenched and hungry, but food and dry ground already seemed impossible to come by at Camp Convalescence. He and Woodard had arrived there that afternoon and then had had to stand in several long lines in the rain before they were allowed to enter the miserable campground, which was situated on an old plantation. All the majestic trees had been chopped down for firewood long ago, and the giant stumps glowed between tents as Laurence and Woodard sloshed down the muddy rows, searching for a place to sleep.

  By dusk, they managed to team up with two New Hampshire men, who had commandeered a cast-off tent from a guard. After a grim hour of erecting the faulty apparatus in a downpour, there had been nothing to do but lie down in it. Laurence had drawn the shortest match and was stuck with the drafty position by the entrance. He heard his ribs creak as he huddled against the chilly earth, trying to remember the kind faces of the nurses at Mt. Pleasant and the rich soups he had tasted every day when he was there. The tent snapped and he burrowed deeper beneath his blanket, expecting a cold gust to follow.

  Instead, he heard a small voice begging, “Make room, please.” Laurence sat up and opened the flap. Outside it stood a young man, shivering. He had the rickety, unraveling build of a wicker chair, one shoulder jutting higher than the other, and his face was charcoaled by the shadows of hunger. Laurence pushed back to make some room for him, jostling his neighbors, who were still faking sleep.

  “Hold on, now. ’M afraid we’re full up,” said the burlier of the New Hampshire men in a voice that indicated he was fully awake. His knuckles pressed into Laurence’s spine.

  “Keep on trying down the line. Sommun’ll let you in,” his partner added.

  “I been trying,” the young man insisted. The words ghosted from his mouth in delicate clouds. “You’re the last tent.”

  “We could make room,” Laurence said hopefully, although the hard-earned stability of their cast-off tent might truly be destroyed by another body.

  “We ain’t got any room to make. Sorry,” said the first New Hampshire man.

  “Sorry, son,” the other one echoed, contrite. Laurence glanced to Woodard for help, but his friend feigned sleep, his face damp and serene.

  “But I’m a Vermonter. Please, in the name of being a Vermonter.” The boy would not give up. He crossed his arms over his chest and bent down to look inside the dim cavern. “There’s room,” he said eagerly. “I don’t take up much.”

  “Let’s make room for him.” Laurence kicked Lyman Woodard, who shifted slightly but did not come to his defense. “He said he won’t take up much,” he added, as if the men could not hear the boy.

  “In this democrissy, you air outvoted, sir, three to one.” The burly New Hampshire man sat up. “Either give up your own spot or shut that flap. We ain’t got room.”

  Laurence met the boy’s eyes for the first time. His pupils were so large, the irises so thin, the center of his gaze was like the darkness just before dawn, when the faint sliver of light at the rim of the hills looks too weak to prevail. Laurence recoiled when the boy tried to smile.

  “Naw, that ain’t right,” the boy said softly. “You keep your place,” he added, as if Laurence had already offered to rise and trade with him.

  “You said you walked the whole line,” protested Laurence. Very slowly, his arm was letting the flap fall shut.

  “I’ll walk it again.” The boy straightened and faced back up the row of tents. “There’s someone’ll let me in.”

  “If you say so,” Laurence said doubtfully, but the arm had finished its work; the flap was almost closed, except for a thin crack through which he watched the boy drift out of sight. And although Laurence listened to the sloshing of his boots all the way up the lane, he never heard the boy’s voice again.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  His small load of branches was hardly enough to last their miserable second night at Camp Convalescence, but they were all Laurence could find after three hours of gathering wood. The forests around the camp had been picked down to the bare earth, and many soldiers had taken to stripping the lowest green branches as well, making the trees look like they stood on stilts. Laurence hadn’t walked so long in months, and the effort had exhausted his weakened body, his legs trembling as they climbed the last short slope.

  He wondered if Woodard had fared any better with his chore, which was to find a tent for the two of them. Their domicile from the night before had leaked so badly, they parted ways with the New Hampshire men at dawn, eager to make a fresh start on their own. Laurence was glad to take firewood duty. He didn’t like the look of the longtime residents of Camp Convalescence, a surly, obdurate bunch who crowded around their morning fires as if to hoard for themselves the very sight of the warmth and light. The wholesome air of Mt. Pleasant was entirely absent here, and he wondered at the effectiveness of a recovery camp that made its soldiers sicker.

  Skirting past the garden wall of the old plantation, he saw a man limping ahead of him with a similarly small armload of sticks under one arm, a crutch under the other. If it had taken Laurence all afternoon to find his own stash, it must have occupied his neighbor’s entire day. His bandaged right leg wagged out to the side, while the left hopped along with grudging speed. Laurence was about to offer to help, when a handsome blond guard accosted the soldier.

  “Well, Davis,” said the guard with a toss of his head.

  “Well, Captain,” Davis grunted, maintaining his slow pace forward.

  “It’s a small price to pay, but it will do,” said the guard. “Give it here now.”

  Davis halted but kept his eyes aimed at the ground.

  “Give it here now and I’ll get you that little something you need to help you sleep at night,” said the guard. Davis still did not move, but he allowed the guard to ease the load from under his arm. “Give it here,” he said soothingly.

  “When, sir?” said Davis in a low voice.

  “Soon.” The guard was already striding away, carrying his prize. Laurence waited until he had turned down another row, and then he caught up with Davis.

  “Here,” he said. “Take a couple of mine. You can have a small fire.”

  Davis looked at him. He had a dull, indifferent gaze and the flabby mouth of a drinker.

  “Please,” said Laurence, handing him a few branches.

  “You must be new here,” said Davis.

  Laurence nodded and introduced himself. “Who was that?”

  “Captain Ellroy. Captain of the guards,” said Davis, limping forward again. “Don’t cross him. He’ll eat you alive.”

  He turned abruptly and hopped off in the opposite direction, the branches clutched tightly beneath his arm.

  * * *

  Woodard had already set up the tent by the time Laurence arrived, and he sat in front of it now, grinning. His hands were looped over his knees and shins, both so bony from loss of weight that they gave
him a childlike air.

  “I’m going to be part of an opera,” he burst out, his usually eager expression honed to one of fervent joy.

  Laurence shifted his pile of wood to one arm and pointed to the tent. “Where did you get it?”

  “Captain Ellroy,” said Woodard. “I went around asking this morning, and nobody would even look me in the eye until I met him. But he said he knew when he saw me that I might have acting talent, and he promised to help me out.”

  “A good-looking blond fellow?” Laurence crouched down and began to dig a pit for the fire.

  “That’s him,” said Woodard. “He’s organizing an opera.”

  “I wouldn’t trust him too much if I were you,” said Laurence. “I saw him take firewood from a cripple.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Woodard said. “You spent all day gathering firewood and that’s all you found?”

  “Firewood’s impossible to come by,” Laurence retorted. “That’s probably why some people steal it.”

  “Some people also told me a bit of information you might like to know.” Woodard folded his arms. Overshadowed by his giant nose, his chin looked like it was in desperate retreat from the upper half of his face.

  “What’s that?” Laurence began to arrange the sticks. “Did you get anything to eat?”

  Woodard pulled out a small sack of hardtack and salt pork. “I got coffee, too,” he said. “And a pot.”

  They hadn’t consumed anything that solid for weeks, but Laurence supposed it was time to start trying. His strength was coming back to him.

  “What was the information?”

  Woodard bit into a piece of hardtack. “He’s here,” he said. Crumbs scattered over his lips.

  “Who?”

  “Gilbert Rhodes.”

  Laurence sat back, staring at his companion. “Gilbert Rhodes? Why don’t we go invite him to eat with us?”

  “We can’t,” Woodard said smugly. “He’s praying.”

  The more interested Laurence looked, the longer it would take to pry the full story from Woodard, so he lowered his head and went back to the sticks.

  “They call him ‘the Preacher,’ and he gives two sermons a day, one at noon and one after dusk,” Woodard blurted out after a moment. “The rest of the time, he prays for our souls.”

  “How do you know it’s Gilbert?”

  “Ellroy took me to see him today. He used to like the Preacher, but now he’s getting tired of him. That’s why he wants to start an opera.”

  “Did Gilbert recognize you?”

  Woodard shrugged, his lips pressed together. “I don’t care if he did or not. I never liked him anyway.”

  Laurence looked to the west. Another hour until sunset. He sparked a few leaves with flint and watched the fire rise, thinking of the last time he had seen his comrade in the apple orchard near Antietam Creek. Gilbert had never written them, and Laurence had assumed he had either died or gone home to Vermont. To meet him again would mean reliving the horror of that night, but he had to go.

  “What kind of opera?” he asked, shaking off the memory.

  “A tragedy,” Woodard said. “Ellroy wants it to be a tragedy.”

  * * *

  Sitting in the mud outside the Preacher’s tent that night was the sorriest bunch of soldiers Laurence had ever seen. A third were lame, their crutches rattling beside them as they sat down; a third were clearly ill, with gummy eyes and pale complexions; and the remaining men each displayed his own particular combination of unkempt hair, fuzzy teeth, and body odor.

  “There he is,” said Woodard as they arrived.

  “Where?” Laurence looked around for Gilbert.

  “There.” Woodard pointed and waved. Amid the motley crowd, Captain Ellroy shone like a lantern on a dark night, his uniform and hair immaculate, his hands clasped behind his back. He gave them a nod and looked toward the lamp-lit tent before them.

  The men fell silent as a flap opened and a man wearing two sewn-together officer’s cloaks stepped out. It took Laurence a moment to recognize Gilbert Rhodes behind the long dark beard. In the tent behind him glowed heaps of ambrotypes, letters, and ribbons, the small keepsakes that soldiers carried with them as reminders of home.

  “‘And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see,” ’” said Gilbert in a low voice. “‘And I saw, and behold, a white horse. And he that sat on him had a bow and a crown, and went forth conquering.’”

  After he uttered these lines, Gilbert looked at Ellroy, who gave a tiny nod, and seemed pleased when the Preacher proceeded through the ensuing passage from Revelations, which Laurence remembered vaguely from childhood Sundays. As far as he could remember, it was about the horsemen of the apocalypse, the false Christ on a white horse, and then War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death following him. Was Gilbert predicting the end of the world? A wind swept up and made the flap of the Preacher’s tent fall shut behind him.

  “What the hell is he talking about?” whispered Woodard. Laurence didn’t answer. Listening to Gilbert’s voice ring through the foul-smelling camp, it suddenly seemed possible that the earth had fallen into ruin, that all men were wicked, and a judging God was sitting in that yellow tent, waiting to be unleashed on the world.

  “‘And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed him,’” Gilbert suddenly roared in Ellroy’s direction, making the men turn and stare at the guard. Ellroy’s hands unclasped from behind his back and Laurence could see they had curled into fists.

  “Death,” Gilbert went on. “After my first battle in this war, I hated and feared death, like he was an old friend who had turned on me”—he nodded at Ellroy—“who said he was going to take away everything I had if I didn’t pray enough, or fight enough, or give him his due. So I prayed in every battle not to die, and I had my own little lucky tricks, like the rest of you. I almost died at Antietam, where I lost my foot.” He thrust the bandaged stump out from beneath his cloak. “But instead of asking death not to come, I just waited. And the Lord found it fit to save me, but only after he gave me a vision.”

  As if on cue, the wind coursed in again, opening the tent flap and revealing the lamp-lit possessions inside.

  “A vision of my friend Death riding a pale horse through a fire,” said Gilbert. “The Lord told me not to fear him anymore, but the fire he rode through. The fire that will burn men who do not live virtuous lives.”

  This argument went on for some time, building in fury. The men were so riveted that most missed Ellroy stalking away, but Laurence saw it, and he turned to Woodard.

  “What did the captain tell you about Gilbert?” he whispered.

  “He told Gilbert right to his face that he was getting bored with his preaching.” Woodard seemed impressed by this. “And Gilbert, he promised to give him a good story tonight. One about a hero like him.”

  * * *

  When he finished, Gilbert retreated immediately to his tent again, and the men filed off in twos and threes, their heads low. The crutches left little crescents in the mud, as if they had been made by tiny horses.

  Woodard and Laurence hesitated a moment in the emptied arena, looking up at the star-filled sky. Laurence had thought Gilbert would recognize them in the crowd, and he didn’t know how to approach him now.

  Woodard cleared his throat. “He ain’t going to come out,” he said.

  Anything was better than listening to Woodard complain. Laurence bent down and tapped on the tent flap.

  “Go away,” said the voice inside.

  “Gilbert, it’s Laurence Lindsey and Lyman Woodard,” said Laurence. His voice sounded weak and thin.

  The flap swept back and Gilbert peered out.

  “Why are you here?” he said, examining them with a quick, irritable glance.

  “Stomach fever.” Woodard touched a spot below his ribs. “We had it terrible, but we’re getting well again.” />
  “Don’t expect to get better here,” warned Gilbert. He did not move back to let them inside.

  “I’m glad to see you alive, Gilbert,” said Laurence. Now his voice sounded too loud. “I’m going to write Addison tomorrow and let him know.”

  Gilbert grunted and toyed with his beard.

  “What are all those, Gilbert?” Woodard peered into the tent.

  “The fellows give ’em to me to pray over,” said Gilbert. “‘Pray for me to get home alive,’ they beg me. Nobody cares about winning the war anymore.” He lifted a heap of letters and let them sift through his hands. “Except probably you and your nigger regiments, Lindsey.”

  Laurence flushed, remembering how much Gilbert used to irk him. “When are they sending you home? You obviously can’t fight anymore.”

  Gilbert gazed at the sky behind him, not answering.

  “You better get back to your tents. It’s going to rain, and I ain’t getting rained on.” He started to close the flap.

  “We’ll come see you again tomorrow,” Laurence promised weakly. “For old times.”

  “I’m a busy man,” the Preacher said, scowling.

  “Come on, Lindsey. He don’t care about us,” said Woodard. “He’s a big preacher now.”

  “Soon then.” Laurence pulled his coat closer against the wind, which seemed sharper and colder now, as if it had come across a frozen lake. “Right, Woodard?”

  Woodard gave a sullen nod, but the second they both turned away, he fell facedown on the ground with a thump. Laurence twisted to see Gilbert’s good foot retreating quickly back into the tent.

  “What’d you do that for?” Woodard said, pushing himself up on his elbows. A splotch of mud had landed on his left eye and he rubbed it angrily.

  Gilbert grinned. “For old times.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chilly gusts made the canvas tents snap and groan as Laurence stalked, head down, toward the corner of the camp where Ellroy had erected his theater. He was late. Woodard had left him earlier to go rehearse, and Laurence had dozed off after eating a solitary supper of hardtack. Sleep came and left him easily now, pushing and receding like a wave, sometimes stealing an afternoon but never lingering long enough to last the whole night.