I Shall Be Near to You(52)

‘What’s Will want with you all the time?’ Jeremiah asks when he scuttles back from telling Henry the orders.

‘We were just praying,’ I say. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘No,’ Jeremiah says. ‘I don’t like him taking such an interest, is all.’

‘He ain’t taking interest. He’s just lonesome and looking for a friend. You got something against me having friends?’

Jeremiah shakes his head, and I wonder what he is about until Sergeant comes before us.

‘We’ve gotten word from Brigadier General Ricketts, down from General McDowell himself, that our Division is to stop the Confederates from finding another way across the river,’ Sergeant says, sweat dripping down the lines in his face, the day so humid already after the Summer storm.

‘We’ve got Rebels hitting us with shells right over there!’ Sully says, loud enough for Sergeant to hear, but it don’t do no good.

We march off quiet, if hundreds of men can be quiet. There ain’t no singing, no wandering in our lines, nothing except the clinking of bayonets on canteens, boots tramping through reddish mud that splatters on our wet trousers, nothing except the way-off sounds of cannonball blasts echoing everywhere. Dying ain’t never felt so real before, and I ain’t ready, not like I told Will. I march closer to Jeremiah. He turns to look at me and gives me something like a smile, something meant to make me feel better, I think, but it don’t.


WE ARE STILL tramping on the turnpike four days later, our orders having blown us about like a weathervane, sending us every which way trying to find the Rebels. Now we are marching away from the river, headed for a gap in the mountains. Will swings his pack around to the front and digs through it. He don’t look around while he pulls out his deck of cards. He holds them in his hand and looks down at them, his lips moving. Will has been wearing his serious face all the time since we started marching, but he looks almost relaxed as he drops those cards into the grass alongside the road.

‘What’d you do that for?’ I ask him.

He gawks at me. ‘Do what?’

‘Your cards. You dropped them.’

‘I left them back there,’ he says, and the boys’ attention snaps to him, like a bunch of hens all seeing the same bug at once.

‘You dropped your cards?’ Henry asks, turning to us.

‘I did,’ Will says, and straightens himself like boys do sometimes before a fight.

‘What for?’ Jimmy asks.

Will says, ‘I’m not dying with gambling on my head.’

‘You ain’t playing poker no more?’ I ask.

‘Why didn’t you give one of us those cards?’ Henry tries not to yell.

‘It’s a sin,’ Will says.

‘What’s a sin,’ Sully says, ‘is keeping us from the one enjoyment we’ve got. Now how are we going to entertain ourselves?’

‘Read the Bible?’ Jeremiah says. ‘You didn’t drop that, now did you, Chaplain Eberhart?’

That strikes all those boys as funny and they laugh so hard Will don’t have a chance to answer. Seeing them gets me laughing too, even though Will’s face turns red, even though there’s artillery banging off in the distance.


WE MAKE A bivouac under the trees hanging over the road, hoping the shade will help, but it don’t much. My clothes are wet with sweat and stuck to my skin.

‘Ross, please tell me you didn’t throw out your map like Chaplain over there,’ Sully says, about the time Will maybe got to thinking those boys had forgotten what he’s done with his cards. All the boys get to laughing again, even though Will’s cheeks blaze.

‘Heck, no,’ I say, and feel bad for laughing when I know what it is to be teased.

‘Well then, have you got any idea how far it is to that gap?’ Sully asks.

I pull out my map, stare at the turnpike taking us away from Richmond.

‘If that last town really was Warrenton,’ I say, picturing the white church steeple, stabbing at the clouds with its spire and the unfriendly feeling coming off the deserted streets, ‘the closest gap is something like thirty miles. Maybe more,’ I tell him.

‘We ain’t ever going to stop those Rebs at this rate!’ Sully says, and flops onto his back.

My stomach rumbles and complains. I lean over to Jeremiah.

‘You got any rations left?’ I ask.

‘No. I ate my crumbs for breakfast.’

‘I ain’t tried that,’ I say, and I turn my haversack upside down over my palm. Only a few stale bits of cracker fall out.

Jimmy overhears me and says, ‘I got some salt pork, if you want it. But it’s gone funny, made me sick to eat it.’

‘I don’t need anything else making my stomach upset,’ I say.

Turns out not a one of us has got any rations left to speak of, but Sully and Henry and Edward and Hiram have energy enough to start chanting, ‘Crackers! Crackers!’

Soon the whole Regiment is chanting, even Chaplain Will. That is when Captain finds it in himself to let Sergeant Ames give us some of the rations left in the wagons that ain’t broken down, that we ain’t had to burn.

‘I see how these crackers got the name teethdullers,’ Henry says as he smashes his against a rock with his rifle butt. I try the same and break my cracker into four pieces, washing them down with water.