Divided We Fall
Page 11
Oh, the dead I saw.
Bodies upon bodies, corpses in gray that had been living just an hour ago, lying lifeless on top of corpses in blue that told the same tale. It was a dry day, but the ground was wet and muddy, and the mud seeped red. I stumbled once and fell and came up wet, but it weren’t with water. Blood pooled in boot prints and flooded trenches.
“I got one! I saw the Yankee fall,” a curly-haired boy with a Carolina twang cried out, waving his musket in the air just as happy as could be, and then his chest tore open where a bayonet popped through from behind.
The blood blossomed around the tip of it, staining his gray shirt the color of roses. The bayonet slid out and he slumped into the dirt. I looked straight into the eyes of a Yankee, no older than me, and his teeth was black with powder, and he sneered and aimed his musket straight at me, and I was a goner for sure, but Dash leaped up and knocked that boy down.
His musket fell away and the boy turned and rolled. Dash’s teeth snapped shut around his trousers, but all he came away with was just a scrap of dirty blue cloth. The boy ran, bare-bottomed, back into the blazing battle, and Dash shook the cloth from side to side like he had a prize stick to play with. I ran to the curly-haired soldier on the ground, but he was beyond any help I could give. The Union boy had stabbed him through the heart.
Right then, I hated them Yankee soldiers worse than I ever hated anything in my life, even though I didn’t know the curly-haired boy at all. I took my drum off and set it down on the field, and I picked up that musket that the Yankee boy’d let fall. I felt the weight of it, heavier than my hunting rifle and deadlier too. I didn’t know fully how to use it, but the boy’d been about to shoot me with it, so I figured I had one shot loaded already. I was gonna kill a Yankee before the day was out.
I set one knee on the ground and raised the other so my elbow could rest on it and I could hold the musket steadier, just like I’d seen the other soldiers do. I sighted down the barrel into the heart of the smoking battle. I saw men in gray and men in blue struggling fist to fist. I saw others still in lines taking aim and blasting away at each other. Some fell and some didn’t. I tried to make out a blue one, but my eyes swirled. I couldn’t tell my colors right. I couldn’t figure who to shoot. I saw Union men shooting, but I also saw ’em screaming hurt, and crying, and praying, just like ours.
To my eyes, they all started to look just like Julius, and everywhere I turned, every cry of a bleeding soldier I heard, I thought it was Julius. These Union men was someone’s brother too, wasn’t they? They was the enemy, sure, but they was more than that too. They all wanted to live. Who was I to take that right away from them?
Was I a coward? Andrew Burford, who’d come all this way to make his brother join the fight, couldn’t shoot when he had the chance!
I started to lower the musket to the ground, and then I saw him.
He was a mean-looking fellow with a thick brown beard and a big scar on his forehead. I recognized him clear as day, even through the smoke and all that’d passed since last I saw him.
He was the soldier that stole Ma’s silver when our town was sacked.
Maybe I couldn’t shoot no Yankee stranger, just as caught up in this war as all the rest of us was, but sure I could shoot this man, who done my family such a hurtin’ wrong.
I raised the barrel again. I squinted down it, taking aim.
Shootin’ down a man ain’t like shootin’ down a raccoon. Men got souls and words, and hopes and all, even bad men like this ’un. I heard tell you should only shoot when you could see the whites of your enemy’s eyes, so I looked for the bearded man’s eyes.
I don’t know who came up with that old saying, ’cause the moment I saw them tired eyes on that Union soldier, I lost my nerve. I saw the face of the man Winslow’d killed back in the lineman’s shed, the way he gasped before he died.
I swallowed hard, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t make my finger end a life. The man with the beard slipped away in a cloud a smoke, and I just knelt there, struck dumb. I felt Dash lick my face, and then, suddenly, he turned away. He barked and snarled, and I saw Julius comin’ through the smoke straight at me.
“It’s me, Dash!’ he shouted, and Dash wagged his tail and aooo’d with joy.
“Andrew! Lord, what are you doing?” Julius squatted down beside me. His face was streaked and filthy, and his musket was gone and both his hands was red and bloodied. “It ain’t my blood,” he said at my questioning looks.
“I —”
“Now put that fool gun down!” He snatched the musket from me. “Why you wanna go killin’ for?”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said. “I couldn’t …”
“Well, that’s the first sensible thing I heard you say,” he told me. “I’m glad to you see you’re alive. Pa’d have killed me if I didn’t get you home. Let’s go.”
“But the colonel needs me,” I objected, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it. I wanted Julius to take me out of this battle.
“The colonel’s dead,” Julius said. “Nearly all the officers. It’s a massacre, and we gonna —” A volley of gunfire cut him off, and we ducked our heads low as the lead flew over. I saw a man’s cheek torn open as a musket ball passed through, and when another man’s head took a hit, it just popped like a corn kernel in the fire. The blood rained down around us.
“I understand now!” I shouted at Julius. “What you said in your letter! I’m sorry we came back! I ain’t no hero!”
“You’re hero enough, Andrew,” Julius hugged me. “Now come on!”
Just as we stood, a loud whistling sound screeched toward us, and Dash dove back to the ground beneath me, tripping me over, and Julius dove himself on top of me, pressing me and Dash into the dirt.
The shell shrieked, and there was a boom louder than Zeus’s thunder, and a flash of white. Something punched me in the head, and the day plunged into darkness and so did I.
“Andrew! Andrew!” I heard my name, like I was being called from real far away. “Wake up, Andrew!”
I opened my eyes, and I saw Dash sitting above me, licking my face. The sun was setting and the red sky looked stained with blood, and the orange light through the distant treetops made it look like the world was burning. My head ached, and my thoughts was a jumble of horrible pictures.
I listened but didn’t hear my name no more. It was like I’d heard it in a dream. Dash’s big tongue smacked me across the face and licked the dirt off me.
“I’m up,” I groaned, pushing myself off the ground. I looked about and saw that I was sitting in a crater made by a mighty explosion. My ears rang as if somebody’d turned my skull into a church bell, and Dash knocked me about with his big, wet nose, trying to get me up. He barked and barked, just like he’d do if we was on the hunt, trying to tree a coon. He ran a circle around me where I sat. Then he ran to the far side of the crater, past mangled bits of cloth and skin that I didn’t care to see too closely, and he dug at a mound of dirt. He nosed at it, then he looked back at me with those big, brown dog eyes of his, and he whimpered.
My head was still swirling from the explosion, so I didn’t figure what he was on about for a moment, until I saw the hand sticking from the dirt. Dash nuzzled that hand and pawed all around it.
“Julius!” I shouted, and I was over there in a flash, digging and clawing as fast as I could. My hearing started to come back as I dug. There was popping gunfire in the distance. The battle had moved on, and I didn’t know who’d won or who’d lost. I heard groans from all around the ground above the crater, but I stayed fixed to my spot, digging.
I got the arm clear of dirt and then I pulled. I pulled with all my strength, and I hauled my brother out from where he’d been buried before his time.
His head hung limp on his neck, and his shirt was all soaked in blood, dried and caked brown now. I ran my hand over him, and felt his back all torn to bits. Seemed like the shreds and patches of his uniform was all that held his body together.
I wept on him, and I pounded my fists on his chest to wake him, and Dash took to licking and licking and licking his hand, that same spot that’d been stuck out of the dirt. If it hadn’t been for Dash’s nose, I never woulda knowed to dig there, but I figured we were too late. Julius had dived on top of me, and he’d saved my life and Dash’s too, but I feared it had cost him his own.
“You can’t die!” I yelled. “Help!” I cried out from down in that crater. “Somebody help my brother!”
Nobody heard me, or at least nobody came to help. The sky was darkening, and I didn’t know what to do. I rested my head across my brother’s chest, crying into the stinky filth of his uniform. And I felt it move. I felt a rise and fall. I lifted my head and put my ear right up to his mouth, and I felt a tiny breath come out. Julius was breathing! Julius was alive!
“Can you hear me? Julius! It’s Andrew!”
Dash barked.
“And Dash!” I added.
Julius stirred a tiny bit, lifting his head just ever so slightly from the ground, and then he let it fall again.
“You okay?” he whispered. His lips was dry and bloody.
“I’m okay,” I said. “How about you?”
“Thirsty …” he groaned.
“We’ll get you water,” I said. “Don’t you worry.”
“I dreamed I saw Mary and she was my bride,” he said, and then his body shook, and his eyes rolled back in his head and he spluttered out a cough.
“No!” I yelled. “Not yet! It ain’t time for you yet!”
I slapped my brother across the face, and his eyes came back down again and met mine. His hand wrapped itself around my hand and held on. He didn’t talk no more. I don’t think he could. He just looked at me and held his eyes to mine.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered. I heard a whooping cheer far off, and then a chorus of voices broke out in song.
“Glory, glory hallelujah! Glory, glory hallelujah!” I’d heard of that song being sung. It was a Yankee song, and if the Yankees were singing, that meant they’d won the battle.
I imagined the whole regiment I’d come with running away through those woods we’d marched in, leaving me and Julius all alone here on the field of battle, without a thought or a care for us. I kept my eyes fixed on my brother, watching him breathe and fearing that every breath he took would be his last.
Suddenly, Dash’s ears perked up. His nose sniffed at the air and his whole body tensed.
“What is it, boy?” I whispered. I was afraid that Yankee troops had come back, looking for survivors they could finish off. I’d heard tell that they took no prisoners.
Dash listened, and I tried to hear what he heard, but no human ears are as good as a dog’s, and all I could make out was the chorusing of the victorious Union soldiers. Dash must’ve heard something, though, because he took off. He scampered and bounded up the edge of the crater and ran barking through the battlefield.
“Dash, no!” I called, but it was too late. I heard his barking fade into the distance as he ran away. I ain’t never felt more alone than I did right then.
“Come back, Dash,” I said, but there was nothing doing. He was gone.
I can’t say how long I sat there holding my brother’s hand as he strained and struggled to stay in this bleedin’ world. It could have been a minute or it could have been a day. The sun finished setting and the night came on, with all the stars above twinkling like they done since the start of creation. I wondered if they saw what horrors went on below, and all the bad that men did to one another because of some silly ideas they got in their heads. Slavery and secession and all them big words I’d heard and said myself … what difference did they make when you was lyin’ in a crater, holding your dying brother’s hand, and your dog gone off, and you didn’t have a friend in the world?
I won’t lie, I took to a mighty spot of self-pity then, and I sat crying in that crater and begging and pleading with the stars for mercy. Our cause was lost, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was parched, thirstier than I’d ever been in my life, and my mouth tasted of smoke and blood. I wanted so badly to run to the nearest creek and throw myself into its cool waters, but I dared not let go of my brother’s hand.
I’d failed to prove myself in battle and I weren’t no hero, but I prayed for help that lonesome night, and sometimes, I suppose, even in the darkest nights, prayers find a way of bein’ answered. It weren’t the stars that answered me, though. It was Dash, coming back barking and howling. He stood proud at the top of that crater, one paw lifted and his back straight. Lookin’ up at him, I swear, that dog looked bigger than the whole sky.
And then I saw he weren’t alone.
Dash barked again and pointed down at me with his nose. A figure stepped up beside him and cocked his head. It was a boy, about my age, maybe a little taller than I was, but wearing the strap and drum, just like I’d been before I picked up the musket. Only difference was this boy was dressed in the blue uniform of a Union soldier, and he had skin just as dark as the night around him.
“You alive down there?” he said, and his voice was deep and raspy.
“I — I am,” I said, my voice crackling like brush burning. That’s how it felt to talk, my throat was so dry.
The boy picked his way down the edge of the crater with care not to disturb any of the poor souls whose bodies lay broke and dead around us. He stood in front of me, and seemed to read me like I was a book.
Dash bounded down the crater in two leaps, without half so much care as the boy, and the sight of my dog climbing over corpses made me wince. He came right up to Julius and took to licking his face and nuzzlin’ him some more. Julius weren’t totally beyond hope because he smiled just a little at the touch of Dash’s nose.
“It’s you, ain’ it?” the boy asked.
I never laid eyes on this boy before in my life. It weren’t Alfus. I didn’t know no other colored boys, and no Union ones neither, but he seemed to know me and he smiled, friendly-like.
“Who you think I am?” I said.
“Andrew,” the boy said, just as sure as can be. “And that’d be Dash.” He pointed to my dog.
“How you —?”
I thought I must’ve died and this was the angel of death. Most strange angel I ever imagined, but I couldn’t think of no other way he’d know me. He glanced around real quick, and then peeled off his cap, showin’ me his short bristly hair.
“You recognize me now?” he asked, and his voice was higher than before, almost like a girl’s voice.
Exactly like a girl’s voice.
“Susan,” I said, and the boy nodded. It weren’t no boy at all, but the very same runaway slave I’d let escape.
“I never forget a dog that’s chased me,” she said. “When I see him runnin’ at me across the field, I thought I’d fallen into a fit, but the sounds of war told me it weren’t so. I was awake and that dog’d come to fetch me. He barked and circled and made me follow. I suppose I see why he done so.”
I just lay there on the ground, holding on to Julius’s hand and looking up at her, trying to believe what my own eyes was telling me.
“That your brother?” she asked.
“I … I …” I stuttered, because I’d just about lost all my senses. Was I havin’ some kind of fit myself?
“He looks just like you,” she said. “He in a world of hurtin’, I think.”
“He saved my life,” I said.
“You did me a good turn, Andrew,” she said. “So I better do you and your’n the same, if you’ll let me. We got a field hospital down the way, and they’s got doctors that can heal him up.”
I remembered the field hospital that I’d seen, and it made me mighty scared, but it was better than letting my brother die out here on the ground, so I said yes, that’d be fine.
“You’ll have to change from them uniforms you got on,” she sa
id. “They don’t treat rebels half so well as their own soldiers.”
Without another word, Susan started rummaging through the bodies of the fallen men around us, puttin’ together Union uniforms for us to wear.
“You gotta change yourself,” she said, tossing me a bloody blue jacket. “I’ll look to your brother.”
She apologized to Julius for the agony he felt, and took to peelin’ the clothes from him — all sticky and crusty, they was. He moaned, but she was gentle as could be, bandagin’ him up and gettin’ him dressed like an injured Yankee. She worked her nursin’ on him, and didn’t pay me no mind as I changed clothes. I was glad for it. I hadn’t never been seen a-changing by a girl, and I didn’t mean to start on that battlefield.
Once I was dressed, Susan put her cap on and nodded at me.
“Don’t say nothin’,” she instructed me. “You talk just like a Johnny Reb.”
I thought I talked regular, but I didn’t argue. There weren’t no time for arguin’. She climbed out of the crater and started shouting for a stretcher. Right away, two more Yankee soldiers showed up.
“That one there is livin’,” Susan said. The stretcher bearers, grim-faced and half-dead themselves, climbed down and approached Julius.
Right away, Dash took to barking at them, and the hair on his back went up, and he charged. He didn’t want no strangers comin’ near my brother. I had to catch him and hold him back with all my might, whispering in his ear to calm him down so that the men could haul Julius outta there.
“It’s okay, Dash,” I whispered so only he could hear. “They ain’t the enemy no more. You done good, boy. You done real good. You saved him, see? You saved me too.”