I Shall Be Near to You(68)

There is a rumbling clatter as a wagon carrying more wounded soldiers drives up the road, and Jeremiah and Sully’s attention snaps to it. The wagon bumps to a stop in the ruts outside the gate of one of the plain houses across the way where piles of the surgeons’ handiwork grow outside the windows. The bay cavalry horse tied to the paling fence in front rests the toe of his hind leg on the ground. The warm rain drips down his belly and he’s too tired to even try for the short grass that’s nibbled down around the post, too tired to even flick an ear. The driver jumps down and another man runs up and opens the door to the house, calling inside before coming back to help lift soldiers out of the wagon. None of them is Henry.

Just when I can maybe wipe my mind clean as a slate, Will comes back from reporting to Sergeant. He slows to help another soldier stumbling up the road, stooped and filthy like every single one of us, stained with blood and dirt and gunpowder and who knows what else.

Will ain’t long hefting that man up the steps into one of the houses and then he is before me.

‘You think you might want to help at one of the hospitals?’ he asks. ‘Pretty near every building in this town has got wounded in it.’

I think of new casualty lists posted in every town in this whole country, of Jennie Chalmers keeping her worries at bay nursing over a new stream of boys at the Judiciary Square Hospital. There is sadness everywhere now.

I shake my head and tell Will, ‘I can’t muster up the energy just now,’ but really I can’t touch those wounded and not think on Jimmy, not think on John Morgan holding his dead son’s hand, cradling his face, or that soldier I aimed at so careful.

Will looks at me through narrowed eyes before shrugging. ‘I’ll be checking on how Thomas is, ministering to John, and then I’ll be over at that house, if anybody needs me,’ he says.

I nod. Across the way, the bloody hands and feet and legs and arms keep spewing through the front window. Those parts land in a big heap, and bodies lie out in the front yard and we watch like steers waiting our turn for slaughter, listening to the crying and groaning while the surgeons carve our boys up into cuts of meat, hoping that ain’t what’s coming for us.





CHAPTER

24


FORT CORCORAN, VIRGINIA: SEPTEMBER 4–6, 1862

Fort Corcoran ain’t much to look at and I never thought it’d feel at all nice to see those dirt piles and telegraph wires. But after days of rain and mud and mourning, anything meaning shelter and rest where we can pitch tents and live almost civilized makes me feel a tiny bit better. We don’t know how long we’ll stay here, and I know it ain’t anything worrying on can fix, but that don’t stop me.

Now we’ve seen action, Captain’s lost his keenness for drilling all the time and that is just fine by me, except away from the battlefield, my mind won’t stay easy. I wake before morning, remembering dreams of mouths filling with dirt, of blood wrung from soiled cloths, of embroidered names I can’t read, of Papa burning bloody sheets. I reach for Jeremiah, thinking to hold his hand, but we are spread as far apart as can be. He twitches and grinds his teeth until they squeak.

He takes a sharp breath, and then he is bolting straight up, looking all around with eyes that ain’t focused on anything, saying, ‘You’re here?’

When I say, ‘Course I am,’ he lies right back down and is sleeping so fast that he must not have ever been full awake. After that, my mind is working ’til dawn, wondering how long before I have to tell Jeremiah my fears, how long before I’ll know for sure. I am glad when Jeremiah wakes up proper except for the circles under his eyes.

Outside in the shade of our tent, Jeremiah sits, tight and drawn. I look sidelong at him, thinking on how his face was always easy and peaceful back at home in our Little House, wondering if a baby would be a thing for him to be happy on again when Sully comes walking fast down the aisle, carrying a newspaper.

‘You heard the rumors about General Lee?’ he says, and thrusts the paper at Jeremiah.

‘Can’t say we have,’ Jeremiah says, his voice flat even as he reaches for Sully’s paper.

‘Everybody says he’s moving his Confederates into Maryland.’ Sully talks loud, and Hiram from the next tent over looks up from whatever he’s carving.

‘I got that paper from Thomas Stakely and it says Lincoln’s fired Pope,’ Sully keeps on.

‘Course Lincoln ought to fire him,’ Edward yells from where he sits by Hiram. ‘They brought him from out West to win and all he did was lose the biggest battle since the first Bull Run!’

‘What’s this mean for us?’ I ask Sully.

‘What it means is McClellan’s in command of our Army now.’

‘What it means is we might be leaving for Maryland any day,’ Jeremiah says, looking up from the paper as Sully snatches it away, my heart sinking at the words.

Hiram calls over, ‘McClellan is damn slow moving, but his soldiers like him real fine.’

Edward says, ‘That’s because he keeps them in supplies. And he don’t get them killed. Look at how many we lost—Jimmy, Frank, Henry—and we didn’t even see an hour of action.’

Hearing those names rattled off don’t make me want to go to Maryland and chase after General Lee. Jeremiah is already pulling inside himself, and if we are moving soon, I can’t add new worry to the weight of all that.