I Shall Be Near to You(54)

‘What?’ Sully says. ‘Chaplain, you’ve got to be kidding! You feel sorry for those Rebs?’

Will don’t flinch or back down like I think he might. He just says, ‘Those boys used to be our countrymen. Maybe they needed it more than we do. “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” That’s in Romans.’

Sully comes to a full stop and dams up the middle of the road, making Henry bump into him and blocking the rest of us. The soldiers drawing up behind us have to split to get around.

Hiram turns, pulling Edward around with him, and says, ‘We got a f*cking Rebel lover here?’

Sully stares at Will, and Henry takes up a spot next to him. Jimmy and I look back and forth between them.

‘Will just wants those Rebels fed up good so no one can say it ain’t a fair fight, ain’t that right, Will?’ I say, and then Jeremiah slaps Will on the back, making him stumble.

‘You’ve got the most grave face, Chaplain, I almost believed you was serious!’ Jeremiah says, and then he laughs and pushes Will forward so we are all moving again.

It ain’t Jeremiah’s real laugh, it don’t roll out of him, but the other boys get to chuckling. It don’t make me chuckle seeing the boys’ bad tempers, or having to protect Will and keep us all getting along, me and Jeremiah taking a stand for the right thing without anybody knowing we’re doing it. I wish I could fold his hand into mine without getting noticed, but that is when the call to arms comes echoing.


I SHOULDER MY rifle like I ought, but then I have to step out of our line to heave up mostly nothing into the yellow yarrow along the edge of the turnpike, cursing my nerves. Jeremiah stops too, waiting for me. He don’t say a thing, not until we get back into the column winding its way down the road. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder as we walk, like a butterfly landing on a bluebell.

‘We’ll be fine,’ he says.

And that is what I tell myself over and over, letting my mouth move with the words so it somehow seems like they are more real. The air all around is hot and tight with nerves and excitement and everyone is hushed, listening and looking for what’s to come, wondering how many Confederates are behind the soldiers making up the picket line stretched across the woods, how big that Brigade is.

Way across that hayfield, a horseman looks down on us from a rounded grassy hill ahead, a dark shape moving just at the edge of the trees. When he comes out into the sun, he is wearing a gray coat and a gray brimmed hat.

I suck in a breath and hear Will beside me murmur, ‘That’s Rebel cavalry!’

‘Thomas! Is that your goddamned Stonewall Jackson?’ Hiram yells ahead.

‘Naw,’ Edward says. ‘I’ve seen pictures in the papers. Jackson don’t wear a stag hat like that.’

Then an officer from one of the Regiments in our column gallops across that hayfield toward the Confederates. Everyone goes quiet watching as he brings those Rebels’ attention to himself.

He don’t hardly get to the top of the knoll before white smoke puffs up out of the trees by that farmhouse and then shells hail down on us. The earth heaves and smoke swirls into the air.

We are out in the open, plain as day on the road. The men in front of me keep moving, the lines staying true somehow. I clutch my rifle tighter, hunch my shoulders, and follow.

Another shell blast sounds. Dirt and grass shower down over us and then a shell explodes right in the ranks of the Regiment ahead of us. It is more than dirt that flies up this time and everywhere turns to screaming, everything happening at once.

A space clears and two boys lie there, twisted and tangled like no man in life, one’s foot still twitching, both of them looking young enough to be boys from home, their blood already soaking into the dust. And then there are more shells, pounding down after Captain Chalmers and Colonel Wheelock as they kick their horses into a race off the road and across another field, away from the artillery fire, headed for an apple orchard, leaving us there in the road.

All around me our Regiment is like a line of ants gone to swarming. I stand there, staring, until a hand yanks on my arm. It is Jeremiah and he is yelling something, but I can’t hear it for all the noise and there is someone pushing me from behind and I am swept along too.

Jeremiah drags me down to my belly beside him in the grass along the turnpike. Boys fall to the ground around us, getting down flat and taking cover.

‘What were you doing standing there?’ Jeremiah yells.

I don’t have no answer.

Galloping horses clatter, bringing cannons and caissons up the turnpike. One team of horses stops near us, the shine of sweat darkening their necks and their heaving flanks, the pink flashing of their nostrils flaring, their tails clamped. The riders jump off the lead horses and unlimber the cannons faster than Papa ever unhitched a horse in his life. When those horses have been trotted away to safety, the cannoneers aim their pieces at that hill, thundering shells down on the farmhouse there, covering our Pennsylvania Regiment as they move out into the grass. There is so much noise, shells tearing up the hayfields, rifles scaring off whatever livestock might be left. All I can think is that farm and how there ain’t a thing you can do to stop this war ripping right through your home, right through your whole life, and the roaring is so loud my ears go to ringing even after I press my hands to them.