I Shall Be Near to You(51)

I sit myself silent beside Jeremiah. He looks at me once, his eyes full. From my own housewife kit I unspool some coarse thread, break it between my teeth, and lick the frayed edge. Holding the needle up to the sun, I push the wet thread through and shiver off my jacket.

‘Give me yours too,’ I say soft, and start sewing.


‘WE’RE TO HOLD here,’ Captain says, ‘and protect the railway in the town if the Rebels break through the Pennsylvania Regiment guarding the bridge.’

The town below the knoll where we’ve stopped ain’t much, a few brick buildings and the train station, its tracks running over the muddy brown river, trees growing all around and hills sloping away. Without those trains running we can’t get provisions and munitions and reinforcements. It don’t matter how pretty the rolling grassland is, or how tall the corn grows in the rich soil around this town, there ain’t none among us wants to be traipsing about in the countryside looking for farms with cows we can give vouchers for, not when the whole place is crawling with Seceshes.

Down beyond the town, too far off to make out much more than the blue of their uniforms, those Pennsylvania men line up in a trench on the other side of the bridge, a dog weaving through their lines, barking at the trees where Confederates are firing, maybe Jackson’s whole Corps.

‘This ain’t good luck,’ I say as we file through the tombstones littering the hill, trying not to think on the souls beneath as we hunker down and kneel for cover. Me and Jeremiah have got the best hiding place with oxeye daisies growing at the foot of a headstone so old it’s got soft edges, the bones beneath us waiting for Kingdom Come a long time now.

‘Plenty of things ain’t good luck.’ Sully shakes his head and sends me a look. ‘At least maybe the Rebels won’t be looking for us here.’

But those Rebels send a thunder of artillery fire right over the railroad bridge, over the Pennsylvanians’ heads, right toward us, making me cower. Puffs of white smoke rise and hover over the box elders and poplars, smelling like sulfur.

The heights behind us are lined with our Division’s artillery, hidden among the skinny tree trunks. Beyond them is Colonel Wheelock and the rest of the high-up officers.

Sometimes we can hear more artillery echoing from upriver and that’s when this river ain’t big or wide enough, not even the Potomac River would be enough.

‘We ain’t winning,’ Jeremiah says.

‘What?’ I ask, even though I can hear him plain. ‘How do you know?’

‘If we were, those’d be the first words out of Sergeant’s lips, how them Rebels are falling back,’ Jeremiah says.

Sergeant paces at the end of our row of gravestones, looking like he’s counting us, like he’s measuring our chances. Jeremiah must be right.

I trace the letters carved on our gravestone, the shadow of a furrow, spelling out Deliverance Lockhart, dau. of Samuel & Mary, My peace I give unto thee. I flatten myself against Jeremiah and imagine sinking down into the earth, down to the bones below us.

Jeremiah bumps into me, his thigh long against mine, his head tilted so he can see around our tombstone. ‘Any Rebels come across that bridge and we start seeing action,’ he says, ‘you slip back.’

‘I ain’t going nowhere but with you,’ I say.

‘Ain’t no sin in falling back,’ Jeremiah says. ‘Helping those that need it when the time comes.’

There is comfort in those words. Especially with the sick feeling that’s settled in my belly. But I signed on for this and there ain’t a thing I have ever been made to feel proud of in my life but the doing of a job that needs doing.


ALL NIGHT WE are pelted with warm needle-sharp rain. Horses hunched and huddled in a stormy field never felt so miserable and I get to cursing myself for leaving my rubber-backed canvas by the side of the road, way back when we started marching. The kepis the Army gave us don’t hardly have a brim and they don’t do a thing to keep the rain out of our faces or from going down our collars. I am soaked through to the skin before it is even close to morning. Sometimes I drop off to sleep for a bit, leaning on Jeremiah’s shoulder, only to jerk awake as often as a horse twitches at flies. But mostly we are awake and staring, nervous for Rebels to come out of the weather.

At first light Sergeant comes along our row of graves. He crouches down next to Thomas Stakely before moving on past. Thomas crawls to where Ambrose is hunched at the next headstone and that is how Sergeant’s orders to march come whispering from mouth to mouth down the line. Will brings the orders to us.

‘The enemy is moving, looking for another way across. We’re marching off to some ford, to keep them getting through,’ he says, and pats Jeremiah on the shoulder, sending him past me, crawling to the next grave, where the O’Malleys wait.

‘You ready?’ Will whispers to me once Jeremiah is gone.

‘Course,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll almost be a relief, leaving here.’

‘Sully says we might see some real action today. You think you might say a prayer with me?’ Will asks.

‘I don’t mind praying,’ I say, and the words are barely out of my mouth before Will takes up my hand in his clammy one.

‘Dear Lord, give us the strength,’ Will says. ‘Give unto us your whole armor, that you may help us withstand the evil day. Hide us under your shield of protection, that our enemy will not find us. Amen.’ He squeezes my hand before opening his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and crawls off the way he came, and I wonder if his prayer made a lick of difference.