I Shall Be Near to You(62)

The cries of wounded men pierce through everything else and then, from behind that embankment, the shriek of the dead comes, a sound that is wolf howl and rabbit scream mixed together, raising gooseflesh on my arms, coming, coming not twenty yards away and they are coming and everything inside me goes to pounding and shaking.

Jeremiah lags ’til he’s beside me, reaching his left hand out and grabbing for me, yelling, ‘Stay down!’ and then I’m on the ground with the wounded, lying flat on my stomach, the blood pumping in my ears the only sound. Jeremiah’s touch is gone, he has pushed me down, he is nowhere near.

And then there he is, running in a crouch, running at the Rebels and I get my rifle right. I aim toward the Seceshes coming through the smoke, toward the soldiers moving along the top of that embankment. Rifles blast and waves of men run and hunch and bend down like oats heavy with seed. Only some of them rise and rush forward, Jeremiah with them. Some falter and fall and there’s a swell coming from behind me as more move up to plug the gaps, each one a boy we’ve lost.

Sergeant bellows, ‘Fire at will!’ through the noise, but all I can do is keep low.

Boys from my Company are cut down. Young Frank Morgan falls, rolling and writhing, his Papa dropping beside him, but before I see if they get back up more soldiers rush forward and everything is moving. I don’t know where any of my boys are, but I have got to do this thing. I get to my knees and then it is time it is time it is time to make my run across moldering logs and branches and dead leaves and men.

Almost at the base of the bank, I fling myself to my belly again as the rifles roar and crawl for the next closest tree to take shelter, my fingers clawing at its bark. At the top of the mound, blood sprays from a horse shot out from under his Rebel officer, the officer still waving his arm to those men behind him even as the horse goes down, its legs crumpling. It somersaults and somehow rights itself and the officer is gone, a shadow in the trees. That horse stands on three legs, its one foreleg flapping like Mama’s stockings on the line. It ain’t got a chance at living anything except pain. I aim my rifle and fire. The horse buckles and goes down again, goes down clean. But I ain’t here for shooting horses.

My eyes burn in the smoke until I find Jeremiah behind a tree just ahead. He is whole and a coolness flows through my veins.

I stay kneeling close to that tree and load charge ram prime and get ready to shoot again but the firing is coming off to our right now, shells landing everywhere, leaves and branches and dirt flying, mixed with I don’t know what else and smoke hiding everything. The Rebs ain’t looking for mercy and they sure ain’t planning on giving none, any one of them aiming to kill Jeremiah or me or one of my boys, like that soldier last night.

‘Ross!’ Will comes from nowhere, grabbing my arm, scaring me. He points at the embankment and there is Jeremiah with the Union boys, his long legs striding, running up out of the trees to that embankment, trying to break through and a Secesh right above him on that mound, raising his musket. It ain’t a thought, it is just a thing I do, leveling my own rifle and pulling the trigger quick, and the Secesh is gone.

But there are more Rebs coming for Jeremiah. There ain’t time to reload, not when that line goes to swarming gray and grappling blue and all of them clubbing with muskets.

‘You cover me!’ I yell at Will, his rifle sloppy in his hands, and then I charge, thinking how nice my bayonet stabs.

Before I get to Jeremiah, to the fray, before the ground even starts rising, there is a bugle call mixed in with the fighting and screaming and our flag moves off to my side, away from the embankment, back through the trees. The flood of our blue boys comes back, swirling Jeremiah up in it and coming all around me, elbows and hands and knees jabbing at me, pushing me around and then we are running. There are bodies strewn under the trees and I don’t know how I get over or through without stepping on them or tripping and falling, or maybe I do and don’t know it, I am running so fast to get back through the trees, away from the embankment and that firing, hoping Jeremiah is running too.




JEREMIAH STANDS STOCK-STILL like a dog pointing. Next to him Sully paces. Both of them watch the men coming back from those trees across the slip of clearing, flowing like blood from a fresh cut, fast at first and then slower and slower. The two of them stare at the men that come, working to see who can put a name to each one and how quick. Company K’s skirmishers slap the backs of the boys coming past, the ones that ain’t bleeding or hobbling.

I don’t know a thing except for the ringing in my ears, sitting on the ground on top of dead leaves, looking at my blackened hands and waiting. Waiting for something important. There’s a wetness down my side and my hands go flying to it quick and jittery and I can’t look at myself. It ain’t sticky, it is my canteen with a hole shot through it and not a drop of water left inside. I take the canteen from around my chest and hold it in my hands, a thin, high laugh coming out of me. Jeremiah reaches his hand down and squeezes my shoulder ’til it hurts. When I snatch at his hand it has got blood on it. Seeing that, I come back to myself a bit, like waking up and not knowing where I am.

‘What’s this?’ I ask.

He twists away, says, ‘It ain’t but a graze.’

‘You ought to wash it out,’ I say.

‘It’s nothing,’ is all Jeremiah says.

‘Let me bandage it,’ I say, but Jeremiah don’t want nursing and shakes his head.