Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1)

by Diane Munier

  “Tom,” she cried out, like she was just starting to believe it, gripping that railing. “Live!” she yelled, and she kept yelling it for I heard it echoing in the sky, I’m telling you.

  My feet were bent on following her. Changing directions and chasing after that other train was like turning the flow of a river. I had to run to catch the boys, but once I got going, it wasn’t hard to do seeing as I was het up to beat the band. Well William was standing up top, staring at me, waiting to make sure I got on, I reckon.

  But once I did, and still I held to that door and looked back long as I could. When I felt a hand, it was Gaylin, just a hand on my shoulder, just a quick touch. It comforted me to know he was with me. “Glad you’re along,” I said. “Sorry…but I am.”

  He nodded, too. “She looked real nice,” he said.

  That’s all we said, but it was enough. Okay God, I thought, I reckon you gave me a gift. I want to say…I been hard on you. I’m taking it all back mayhap. Least I’m considering it.

  I was stuck looking out then, my head, my heart so full. Next thing I knew I was flying through the air. Funny thing is, I saw William flying, too.

  Came on so quick. One minute we were ten miles out of that town. Next I was waking up, sprawled on the ground. The front of the train was hanging over the river where a bridge had been blown into the sky. The rest of the cars, save ours and the caboose, were on their sides. One car had gone some into the car before it.

  “William,” I yelled. He was rousing, like me, sitting upright holding his arm. The gun had rolled out the door of our car, and sat there in the field like it was ready to fire. Gaylin was climbing out the car, landing on his feet shaky. Folks down the line were yelling for help. Two of my prisoners were running away still tied to each other. They were met by riders coming out of the treeline. I felt myself wanting to pass out again, but I heard Addie then, screaming in my head, “Live!”

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  There sat that damn useless Gatlin gun. William was already up and gone, but as he’d run by he said, “Move.” Leastways he had a revolver. Wait a minute, I had one of Jimmy’s stuck in my pants.

  I pulled that out now. Yonder was enough ammo to blow up the world one bullet at a time. I had wanted to get my hands on some dynamite. Looked like these others beat me to it. Well a man’s got to have more than good ideas, I’d grant them that.

  Someone on a horse was riding toward me digging a rifle butt in his side to take a shot at me. I was calm because I was still addled, but he got close enough I whipped out the gun and blew him from the saddle. “What I ever do to you?” I said. That brought me back some. I looked around again. Some folks climbing from the train, and there was wailing and screaming from over that ridge where the front part had disappeared. I staggered to my feet, that gun still in my hand. I tried to run toward that car we’d been in, but kept veering to the left and having to correct myself.

  There were bodies, just a few, most in the cars I reckoned. Two of the cars were passengers. One of them gone over the side. One of the bodies here in the field was wearing a dress and God, my God, Addie had crossed this very bridge not long ago. Couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t.

  When I reached the car I looked in there. The car before us had pushed in some, and the coffin was open and crushed pretty much, like it had hit that gun and froze. That’s the thing that got that Gatlin rolling I guess. Thing of it was somebody’s head was off. Couldn’t be helped, it just came in that way. Yeah that was Sonny, and the one next to him was mangled. Those must have been his sons running to the Promised Land I reckoned. “Jimmy,” I yelled, but he was gone. His stretcher, too. So the boys must be alive or thrown yonder like me.

  I looked around. Maybe they headed for the trees. A bullet whizzed past me and hit the car. I looked around again, back in the train, a wild thought that Jimmy was in there I just wouldn’t see it, but no, other than those three outlaws…..

  William liked to got his face shot off lighting in the doorway across from me holding my Enfield.

  “You gonna stand there?” he said.

  I crawled through then and jumped out other side after him. He tossed me my rifle. We ran the length and we saw it then, me following him, climbing on top the wreck, looking in. I left my rifle and so did he, and we dropped in that car on its side, civilians…Lord this was the worst. And there was Gaylin, already helping folks, holding a child, handing him to Michael who sat in the busted out window and took the little limp form, the arm dangling that way, the leg, that shoe black and tied with pink bows.

  Someone moaning nearby and I looked. There was nowhere to stand to get purchase enough to lift on some of these. I was sick myself, sick over this for sure.

  I don’t know where they came from, but two braves, dressed in pants and loose shirts, moving easy and light, right into it, red brown hands reaching toward me, the kind always took William away when a group came through and he’d go off with them and I used to hate it when I was younger cause he didn’t want me, just them.

  But now, I lifted this fella, about Gaylin’s age not nearly so thick, and the brave took his shoulders and I kept the legs and we lifted him and handed him to his pard, and we just kept doing that, anyone whole enough who didn’t scream too much, we worked together to lift them out. But when you got one off there were more underneath. For they had piled on one another, and I was doing that talking sometimes, like with Addie that day, that soft talking.

  When I’d done all I could I climbed out of that car and went to view the part of the train that was over the cliff. More braves had come upon the disaster and gone into the cold water in which the engine was half submerged, it and the twisted passenger car behind it like a giant snake with its head gone under. People had been thrown into the river, and these boys went in after, dragging them out. They had just been coming through, from down south.

  And there it was one time no God, no sign of God something happened so bad, next time something so unlikely for timing and chance you got to wondering again.

  So two lines started to be formed, the injured, and the dead. Twenty-five regular folks dead including the engineer. Then there was the one already dead, Monroe, and the two outlaws also dead, also the six we had shot. I got one, William got others, the railroad officer got one. Thirty-six injured. Twelve in good health, or walking anyways. And two escaped low-down curs.

  It was some time before I came upon Jimmy who had been carried clear of the train by Gaylin and Michael. I gave him his revolver and he was raving I should drag him where he could use it as they’d abandoned him, he felt, under a tree.

  “Gimme that gun,” I grabbed it away for the bandits were long gone having killed two to spring two which was dumb over dumb asked me. And all this sorrow they’d caused. Well, you could say I had a hand, but this was never my intention. I could only carry so much guilt. What I did know, the army would come now, and Monroe or Stone would not have an Adam to carry on the line once they were done.

  Jimmy pulled me down to whisper, “Now would be the time to dig that loot out of that coffin.”

  I pulled back. I’d clean forgotten about it with all the suffering around.

  So I signaled Michael and Gaylin, for William was already signing up with his new tribe.

  I hated to think we had to claw through more bodies, but there was nothing for it. Leastways these were stinking outlaws and not decent folk. “The loot,” I said out the side of my mouth.

  Gaylin groaned, but they followed. We went back to that car and hopped in. Well I tried to hop, but I fell back out and tried it again more slowly. So I reached in my pocket and got Addie’s bandana and tied it over my nose and mouth like a thief. “Got to warn you about Sonny. His head is missing, so step lightly.”

  I hated coming upon severed anything. It was the shock of it I hated most, I think—hands taken off like gloves, feet removed like shoes, legs cast about like pants, but heads taken off like a hat? Lord.

  I
don’t know how many there were, but in time help came, then it kept coming, my own boys the best sight, the Twenty-Seventh clear from Greenup to ride along us, to help us out. Too late, just like in the war a couple of times, but a real sincere bunch that I was never so glad to see.

  Course they were stuck on the other side of the river and the bridge was out, but it was only a matter of time before they crossed. They’d gotten wind of our dilemma when that rider sent ahead wanting to know if there were warrants on Sonny and his boys. They figured they would honor us with an escort home as we brought in the outlaws, not realizing the state of our duress. Reckon they realized it now though. Funny they should come upon us here.

  How things can turn and keep turning. Keeps me in mind of what we knew then. Peace is always around the bend. And sometimes you can catch it for a spell. If you reach hard.

  Jimmy insisted I get him on his feet then. He’d given up his stretcher to those more in need. That thing had saved his life, for we had hung him from the ceiling in it so he’d not have to ride the bumps, and being high like that had kept him from getting crushed.

  He wanted to meet the boys standing. So we got him up and he walked a little. “Oh hell, when I put weight on this side….” It was the side with the wound.

  “Healing hurts,” I said, for we had learned to say this in the war, putting a better light on it for one another. Better still, I put his arm over my shoulders and gave him some strength there for I needed him as well to keep me straight.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I remembered how in the war, William, our flag bearer, would run close to the reb line as he could without getting shot. It was a dangerous practice, and we took it serious. He’d press hard to get our flag out front of the others and plant it for the twenty-seventh. Us breathing up his ass, him calculating how close to those rebs he wanted to crawl. He’d set our goal, and on we came then, one bloody inch, one bloody mile we pushed that line. By God, we pushed that line.

  When we got going I tell you, pluck, oh my God, “Well, who the hell you shooting at?” we’d say, firing ourselves into such a tizzy we’d as soon club a man to death with our guns as shoot him. Or choke him with our hands, beat him with a rock, and some of us already dead with wounds that would go gangrene, or the dysentery already working its fingers in our innards.

  But when we pressed that line we said, no weapon shall prosper against us and no wall of flesh, gun and good intention shall keep us out. We were the fearsome sons of the union.

  We’d argue some when the battle was over who’d pressed forward the hardest, made it there first, met the line or broke past it.

  We fought the rebs. And we fought one another. And ever since that war ended we’d been fighting ourselves. And trying to look passable while we did.

  Jimmy Leidner. I went against him my whole life. First for Garrett. You had to know my big brother, you had to know.

  If you did, you’d want to walk in his sunshine too, he was that way. We were close, joined at the hip, he’d tell folk. Me not able to voice how that unfolded inside like a sheet blowing on the clothesline, just big and proud. It meant something, oh God, it filled me and I walked in its warm fragrant shine, I did, I did. Baptized by a brother’s love, held in the confidence it inspired, in the grit of his protection. He delighted in me.

  But Jimmy…I thought him a better copy of myself for when he came to live with us, I got shoved aside. Well the knife got in then, don’t you wiggle it, don’t you dare, but Jimmy knew just how to do it and I took him serious.

  He loved him just like me, more, for I had William. That was the thing. He loved Garrett fierce. I never wanted to give him mercy but when Garrett died I had the guilt, but Jimmy had the nothing.

  You couldn’t tell so much by looking, but you had to know first, and though he appeared to be everyone’s friend and neighbor, Jimmy Leidner did not let you in. So when it was time and he saw me balking, time to put Garrett out like I’d promised, Jimmy stayed on me, stayed on me to do it cause he couldn’t bear the suffering, but he couldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t do it. And he knew me. He knew I would do the hard thing.

  And if I didn’t, it would break me down, shatter me down, and he knew it. So he let me take it, and he hid behind me, and tried to talk me out of what I was feeling from being the one without me knowing…he couldn’t do it.

  I was strong as him. Just as worthy. That’s what I always doubted, but that’s what he knew, only he thought me better, and he pushed me and he pushed me. And hard as it was, I was better for it. He made me figure out myself. I couldn’t hide around him like with Garrett. I couldn’t be tolerated like with William who had to get away from me regular to stand it.

  So Jimmy had feared me and fought me all that time, all that time it wasn’t just me. It was me and him, struggling, even on all counts, and Garrett and William were on the outside of it. All this time he’d seen himself the prodigal, and me the judgment on him, the good son, right all the time and not a drop of mercy. By damn.

  No wonder he wanted Allie. When I thought it over, she was the one. Others he used, but her he had always treated like the sweetest rose. Called her little puss. But it was Allie, so of course she was our little doll. Yet now I reviewed his efforts, they rang steady and true in my mind. He’d let her in longtime back. She got over the line and stuck in her flag. It was like Addie and me, and I had no right to stand in the way of it.

  Well I didn’t ever want to see it, cause I wasn’t gonna give him another. But there again, and this here’s the hardest of all, my family ain’t never belonged to me.

  Addie knew me. She told me I lived by two sets of rules, one for me, one for everyone else, and mine were the harder…like I was God she said.

  I realized something, and it was a hard thing, but true all the same. It’s going against my own code made me sick. More than anything I went through in the war, or even today. It’s going against my own code made me sickest of all. I was here to lead and protect, I’d always known it. And when I could not…well I wasn’t God, was I? I had to let myself by. I had to let myself live.

  The road home was a glory trail. They was waiting in Greenup, the boys said, to dance in the streets and sacrifice the virgins in our honor. William was already gone. Michael and Gaylin were curious. But me, my heart was down the track back the way I came from when I passed my woman and my children. That was my trail, my glory and my life. I was going for them. And nothing would prosper against me.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gaylin was worried for me and wanted to tag along.

  “You go on home,” said I. “They got to have them a hero back home.”

  “You can’t go,” Jimmy said, “who will talk for us? We got money comin’. We got to get ourselves to Springfield. You don’t know these boys. They’ll dog us out of it. You think they’ll pay William straight? We got to band together and shoot that place down, tear it down, rip it up, we got to…we got to…don’t you be goin’ now. What about my weddin’? Where’s my black? Twenty battles and never a scratch on him, never a burr in his tail, not one I let stay anyways.”

  “By the time you’re home the boys will have a hard time not believin’ they was with us,” I said, hoping Jimmy would have the strength to regale them like was his wont. “This story will grow from a clod of soil to its own country on its lonesome.”

  “You seen my black? Did we bring Tusaint’s mount?” Jimmy said, pulling on my arm. I took him in my arms then, and lowered him down best I could. Then he laid right back, groaning and breathing hard. “Damn. I got to get off my feet, that’s all,” he said.

  I looked at Gaylin and he ran for Michael.

  “We brought your stallion, remember?” I said sitting beside him. “He tried to kick the livers out of those handlers.” Every time he said something loco I answered him back like it made sense. I knew it was the laudanum in the alcohol. He’d been at it too much, but Michael was seeing to i
t.

  “They didn’t handle him right! If I’d of seen, I’d have shot them through. He run off you think? Boys said he wasn’t in that stock car.” He was swallowing hard. Well we’d kept him pretty doped most the time. Even when he was looking at you and talking he didn’t know what the hell was going on. He kept swallowing.

  “If he run…mayhap not too far,” I said.

  “It’s better then. I don’t want to know. Reckon one of those braves took him? Don’t tell me it was one of those outlaws,” he said, the tears leaking. He was that done in. “Those braves…they was good boys…coming home. Wouldn’t mind so much if they took him, but I’d kill them if I seen it.”

  “Ease yourself,” I said. “We made it out. It’ll wash in the end. He’s running free is what I think.”

  “Well he did like to take the lead,” he said. “Remember how it was Tom? How we were then?”

  “We ain’t so different now.”

  “No? We’re lovers now,” he said, laughing weak.

  “I don’t want to know,” I told him, for the object of his love was my baby sister. I was easing off, but he shouldn’t push it.

  He laughed more, but he went to crying just as quick. I wasn’t sure if I should leave him. What if he was dying? I put my hand on his arm, and he gripped over it. I must see him settled.

  I knew what it meant to him, that horse. He liked the flash and dash of that stallion. That horse was tied to his breads, and his willy, plain and true…but his heart, if there’s a difference for a fella…tied there too.

  “You did look fierce upon him with that nickel harness and braided mane,” I said, remembering how he’d dressed him for that march around the square when we came home. “From warhorse to parader now. He’s been family, that black.”