I Shall Be Near to You(60)

I see Papa putting his rifle in my hands and saying, ‘It’s loaded. You aim right here,’ and tapping the cow’s broad forehead.

I lower the barrel, right to the boy’s temple, telling myself it’s a mercy and still he begs and moans like he don’t even see what I’ve done. There’s the rattle of shots off in the distance. Answering this boy’s prayers will bring those Rebels’ attention this way, closer to me, to Jeremiah. I can’t do that. I can’t do even this one thing for that boy lying there; all I can do is give him water that won’t help none. I thought my heart had already broken, but now it is gone to pieces.

‘I’ll be back,’ I say, tears running down my face. ‘There’s stretchers coming.’

I’ve got to move on, is what I’m thinking. I’ve got to do something more than standing there and saying no to the only thing that boy wants. The wounded and dead lie all around in rows like they are still in line of battle, making it easy to see how the fighting went across the field. There ain’t one stretcher but there are other shapes down the line, bending over the bodies, and I hope they are helping. I move away, trying not to hear the man behind me go to shrieking, ‘Please please kill me’ over and over, trying not to think what the greater kindness would be.

There’s so many more boys, all of them gone, no rising of a chest or anything telling me there’s still a soul there. Maybe all the boys with lives to be saved are already gone, taken by their Companies or dragged off by themselves. There’s nothing to be done for these boys, not in truth, but a voice calls for water, so I keep moving ’til I find a man old enough to be my Papa. With my hand under his head, I lift him up a bit before fumbling with my canteen and pouring a sip for him.

‘More,’ he says, so I give it to him and then he don’t say anything else. There’s a warm stickiness on my hand and a wetness seeping through the knees of my trousers. He’s bleeding in slow pulses from his side, his breath gasping.

The minutes are long before there ain’t no life left. I sit with him, with his body, waiting for his spirit to go. That is the least I can do for this stranger, the smallest thing he is owed. It takes a long time, watching the last life go, the little tremors and tics, making sure. I think on Papa and if I will ever meet him again.

This man has still got a haversack slung across his chest. It ain’t much inside, a cracker and some salt pork, and I feel like a thief, but with boys hungry behind our lines there’s no use in leaving good rations on the field so I put what’s there into my pockets.

When I straighten up, there’s a shadow bending over a body back from where I came, back where that boy begged for me to take his life. I don’t want to see him again, but Jeremiah must be over there and maybe Will, so I hurry that way.

‘Will!’ I call low as I get close enough. ‘That you?’

The boy don’t answer. He is working at that body’s feet.

‘Jeremiah?’ I try again, but still he don’t turn my way or even move.

This boy is rail thin; his pale bare feet stick out from pants too short. When he stands up straight and spins around fast, his rifle pointed right at me, it’s for sure he ain’t Jeremiah or Will at all.

‘Get back,’ he says.

The whole world stops. Jeremiah is by the edge of the battlefield. I remember those shots off in the distance. I wonder how fast I can run as I reach for the rifle from across my back.

‘Don’t!’ the boy yells. ‘Don’t you think it!’

‘I don’t want trouble. You can just let me pass on by,’ I say, the words so calm and slow even though I am thinking whether I can get to my rifle before he shoots his.

‘What makes you think I can trust a Federal?’ the boy asks, and cocks his gun.

‘I ain’t done one thing to you,’ I say. ‘I only thought you were my—’

There is a flash of fire off to my left and a blast. I throw myself to the ground as that boy drops right where he was standing.

‘Rosetta?’ Jeremiah yells, scrabbling through the grass. He hunkers at my side, talking so fast, saying, ‘You all right? You hurt?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Where is he? What happened?’

‘I was afraid—I shot him,’ Jeremiah says, and shakes his head. ‘I shot him.’

Jeremiah wrenches me to sitting, searching my face. Then he is gone, taking his rifle to where that boy has fallen, where there’s awful strangling sounds and then a rammer scraping and I crawl after, my legs too shaky for standing.

‘No, Jeremiah! You can’t—’

‘Rosetta—don’t—’ is all Jeremiah says. And then he fires again, right into that boy.

Will comes running, calling, ‘What was that?’ and I am waiting for the flash and bang of other guns firing.

I don’t know why I tell Will, ‘A Rebel sharpshooter,’ when that boy was no such thing, when now I see the shoes he was taking off the Union dead, when that pair of shoes is all he died for.


I AM LYING curled on my side, Jeremiah’s warmth at my back like always. I almost forget until I open my eyes and in the first light of morning, see the knees of my pants, rust-brown and stiff with blood.

I scramble to sit, my mouth watering as my stomach turns. Jeremiah is already awake, clutching his knees, staring at the ground. The blank look on his face makes me swallow back the sick.