by Naomi Finley
“I’m not leaving him here. We will put him in the compartment under the seat.”
“And smell his decomposing body for the next day or so?”
I shrugged. “You will live.”
We struggled to carry the body, and Whitney didn’t help by grumbling the whole way back to the wagon.
The smell of the corpse was unbearable, and with handkerchiefs secured over our noses and mouths, we rode in to Livingston resembling thieves seeking to loot the place.
Jones sat on the front veranda steps, whittling, and at our approach, jumped to his feet, his hand flying to his holster.
“It’s us, Jones,” I called out.
His hand dropped, and he dashed down the steps as Mammy exited the house.
She squinted into the dark. “Dat you, angel gal?”
“Et dem, Miss Rita.” Jimmy entered the yard.
Mammy gripped the skirt of her dress and winced as she descended the steps, alerting me that her arthritis had flared up.
Jimmy reached me before Jones and gagged. “What in tarnation is dat smell?”
“A dead Confederate,” I said as he reached up to help me down.
Jones had circled the wagon to help Whitney, but she swatted his hand away and dropped to the ground.
“She insisted we bury him,” Whitney said with annoyance.
“You git Mister Kipling safely back?” Jimmy regarded me hopefully.
“Yes.” I patted his shoulder. “Will you help Jones tend to the dead man? I think Whitney and I could use a bath.”
“No bath or time will remove that scent from my nose,” Whitney tossed over her shoulder as she marched toward the house.
I rolled my eyes and followed her. “Lord grant me the patience to endure her for another moment,” I said with as much hyperbole as Whitney.
Mammy chuckled. “Sleep will do both of you some good. I ain’t about to hear you two at each other’s throats for de next few days. I ’bout had all I can handle. Besides, we have guests.”
“A new shipment?” I paused to look at her.
She nodded. “Came in earlier today.”
I heaved a sigh and walked into the darkened house. Placing a hand on the banister, I looked at the sleeping forms on the cots in the parlor.
Seeking to put the last days behind me, and weary in body and mind, I ascended the stairs to my chamber.
Amelie
April, 1862; Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee
GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT AND Brigadier General William T. Sherman had led us into battle and drove back the Confederates and General P.G.T. Beauregard, sending them into retreat toward Corinth. The victory was ours, and while my comrades had roared with exultation, I had stood examining the carnage.
My ears rang from the cannons and gunfire that had dominated the day. Crimson blurred my vision from a slash over my eye. Soldiers wove through the bodies, searching for the wounded.
Where was Zeke? During the battle, I had observed him engaged in a duel with a Confederate officer who moved with skill and mastery, but when a soldier had come at me from the right, I had lost sight of him.
A triumphant thump on my back from a soldier rattled my skull and broke my survey of the battlefront. “We live to fight another day,” he said before racing off to assist the others.
“Soldier,” the coarse voice of Lieutenant Jackson bellowed behind me.
I spun to look up into his intense, unchanging face. The breath of his horse tickled my flesh.
“We have no time for standing around. Get out there and help.” He waved his sword at the fallen.
I adjusted my kepi cap to shadow my features, saluted my superior, and replied in a husky voice, “Straightaway, sir.” I turned and dashed off to assist.
Movement under the butternut-trousered legs of a lifeless Confederate soldier drew my attention. I lifted gloved fingers and wiped away the trickle of blood clouding my eye, and strode forward. I dropped to my knees and grunted, struggling to roll the body off the individual trapped underneath. After I’d succeeded, I regarded the wide-eyed young brunette clothed in Union garb staring back at me with panic in his eyes.
“Please, I-I…” His voice trailed off as he realized that in his fright, he’d revealed his secret. He wasn’t a he at all, but a woman. She looked around for a way to escape, but a gaping wound in her middle had rendered her helpless. A once-white leather-gloved hand, now stained with her blood, pressed against the injury.
I retrieved a cap lying nearby and pulled it down over her head, shadowing her delicate features. “Come, son, let’s get you to Medical.” Hooking my hands under her armpits, I hauled her to her feet before encircling her small waist with an arm.
She gawked at me with large brown eyes, and as they welled with tears, she quickly concealed them and nodded. Placing an arm around my neck, she aided me as best she could.
I stumbled under her weight, but regained my footing. “You,” I said to a lanky soldier we passed. “Help me get him to Medical.” He moved in and took most of her weight.
At the medical tent, injured soldiers lined the ground. Inside we found the doctor and two nurses, elbows deep in blood and surrounded by cots holding wounded men crying out in agony.
“Please help me.” A soldier held out a hand to us, his eyes glazed and delirious. Blood gurgled from his lips.
“I don’t want to die,” another recruit of twenty or so sobbed. He slumped on the floor next to a pile of discarded limbs. A fattened raven perched on top, feasting.
My stomach roiled at the gore staining the tent walls and the crimson streams flowing over the ground. I stifled a gag.
The doctor, a red-haired Irishman, looked at us with weariness gripping his brow. “How many more? We are out of places to put them.”
“Plenty more where this one came from, doc,” the soldier aiding me said.
“Well, there is no more room in here. Find the lad a spot outside with the others. I will get to him when I can.” He turned back to the soldier on the table and instructed the nurses to hold him down while he tied off an arm severed at the elbow.
Outside I found a dirty blanket infested with lice and shook it. I spread the blanket on the ground. After we got the woman situated, I regarded the soldier. “I will take care of him from here.”
He nodded and dashed off to scour the battlefield for more wounded men.
The plaints and prayers of the dying filled the late afternoon, and the invisible hand gripping my throat tightened. For the most fleeting moment, I yearned for the sanctuary of the brothel.
“Why are you helping me?” the woman said in a hushed tone.
I returned my attention to her, and in a gruff voice said, “The reasons you’re here are not my concern. Rest.”
Her shoulders relaxed, and she laid her head back against the wool blanket and closed heavy lids. Her pale, thin lips moved. “Thank you.”
I patted her shoulder, stood, and left.
Threading through the injured, I considered the mothers, fathers, siblings, children, and wives who had lost their loved ones to the war. At the massive pile of bodies, my stomach clenched, and I skidded to a halt at the sight of a familiar face. Atop the mass of corpses baking in the Tennessee heat lay the musician, a cheerful boy of eleven who had played the accordion at night and sung to lift the soldiers’ spirits. “No, no, no.” I gulped back tears. How had he ended up on the battlefield?
My stomach threatened to revolt, and I dashed behind a nearby tent and vomited into the blooming rhododendrons.
What was I thinking? I used the back of my hand to wipe my mouth. I wasn’t cut out for this.
“Victory doesn’t seem so victorious, does it?” a familiar husky voice said.
“Zeke.” I launched myself at him and squeezed him with all my might. Tears blurred my vision. “You’re alive.”
He peeled me off of him and cast a glance around. “Do you seek to expose yourself?” Although his tone was scolding, tenderness gleamed in his eyes.
/> “Sorry. I was worried sick.” I took a few steps back.
“Trust me when I say I want nothing more than to hold you in my arms and kiss you,” he said in a low voice. “Are you badly injured?” He eyed a soldier as he cast us a look on his way by.
“Just some superficial wounds. And you?” I regarded the darkened spot on the leg of his trousers.
“Nothing I can’t sew myself,” he said.
“Good. I will find you tonight,” I said, veering past him.
He gripped my arm on the way by. “Amelie…” The passion in his voice made my heart flutter. “Be careful.”
“I will,” I said, and smiled up at him before racing off to help the others.
Bowden
THE CONFEDERATE LINE OF DEFENSE extended from Richmond, Virginia, along the railroad north of the city to the James River. We were holed up in our encampment, waiting on orders to strike the Union’s General McClellan and his army before they lay siege to the capitol.
It was dusk, and outside the tent I shared with three other recruits, men sat around the fire, talking of home and family. Others wondered what would become of them the next day.
Sickness caused by the climate, the food, viruses, infections, malaria, and pneumonia continued to plague the troops. In the tent next to ours, a soldier suffering from tuberculosis coughed and groaned in pain. His feverish cries filled the evening and grated at one’s sanity.
Seated at the small desk in the center of the tent, I wrote a letter to my wife. The arrival of her letter some weeks back had given me the strength to carry on. Each morning I had awakened weary but grateful I still drew breath, but the loneliness never eased.
I replaced the quill in the inkwell and picked up Willow’s letter, placed it to my nose, and inhaled the fading scent of her perfume on the stationery. I folded the letter and put it to my lips before walking to my cot and gathering the leather journal next to the worn Bible I had read every night in hopes the Good Lord would grant me the courage to face another day. I opened the journal and tucked the letter inside with Willow’s ribbon, stained and dirty from time and pining.
“Lord, I know I’ve not always done right by folks and have sinned against mankind, and that I’ve been prideful and stubborn, but I ask that you will guide the hearts of my brethren in the North and South and bring this war to an end. Return us to our families…”
The tent flap swung aside, and Knox’s bulk filled the opening. He looked to the open journal in my hand. “Her words will fade from the pages with how you pine over it.” Knox tried to sound cheerful, but he too had grown solemn with the continuation of the war.
I set the journal down before lowering myself onto the edge of my cot. “What I wouldn’t give for a proper meal and the company of my wife. And a night of peace.” I nudged my head at the tent wall as another wail rose from the soldier.
He stepped inside and let the flap close. “Poor bastard yearns for death, and one can’t blame him. I long for the day when this damn war is over.” The weariness in Knox’s face mirrored my own.
“I suppose we could be worse off. At least we were stationed together and haven’t succumbed to the battlefield or to illness,” I said.
Knox sat on the edge of his cot, and it groaned under his weight. He removed his muck-covered boots and placed them beneath his bed before sprawling out, his head resting on his arm. “Never thought I’d fight alongside Italians, Germans, and Spaniards.”
“A mixed bunch we are.” I followed suit, lying back to peer at the tent ceiling. “Each time I step onto the battlefield, I wonder if it is the day my blade ends the life of my brother or my Northern friends.”
“Makes you want to go back to the days when life seemed easier before we married.”
“Hardly a more peaceful time,” I said. “Although I relish those years, I examine the man I used to be and the wrongs I’ve done. I fear the man that would’ve joined this war with enthusiasm and a distorted belief system.”
“A reminder that there is hope, and people can change. Better to look to the future than wallow in guilt over what you once were. What is that verse from the Bible you read to me about casting stones?”
I recited the verse in John 8:7 to the best of my recollection: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”
“Yes, that one. It’s about time you stop casting your own stones.” His words struck me hard, and I swallowed back the surge of emotion clotting my throat. Several moments of silence passed before Knox spoke again. “It gives me comfort to know Whitney has moved to Livingston.”
“With the Union traversing the length and breadth of South Carolina, I can only imagine the women’s distress. And learning that Willow decided to turn our home into a wayside hospital has me concerned.”
“Yes, well, Willow acts on passion. One can’t blame her for that.”
“I know, but sometimes her passion places her in unnecessary danger.”
“Evening, fellows.” A recruit by the name of Marco Rosetta ducked his head through the tent opening and stepped inside.
“Evening, Rosy.” Knox sat up and swung his feet to the ground.
The young recruit hadn’t been fond of the name Knox had given him, but in time the kid had stopped putting up a fuss. He had immigrated to America with his family as an infant, and they had taken up farming. Marco strode to his cot and sat down, eyeing us uncertainly before withdrawing a letter he had gotten that morning. The envelope appeared to be unopened.
“You going to open that there letter before the year is out?” Knox said. “Men are dying to hear from their families, and here you’ve waited all day to read yours.”
“It’s just that…” Marco bowed his head. “I-I can’t read.”
Dawning washed over Knox’s face. “You don’t say. Well, Bowden here will be obliged to read it for you.”
I regarded my friend, aware of his own struggle to read.
“Do you mind?” Marco said, turning dark, hopeful eyes on me.
I shook my head and gestured for him to hand me the letter. After I related what his ma had to say, I folded the letter and returned it.
Tears glistened in his eyes. “Ain’t nothing like the love of your ma, is there?” Calm and serenity softened his face.
“No, there isn’t.” The faded image of my mother had often brought me solace, and that night it hadn’t failed.
Later, when the camp grew quiet and Knox and the others’ snores rose and fell, I contemplated how we each, Union and Confederate alike, clung to images and memories of our families and encouraging words from home. Although we stood on opposite sides of the war, our human need unified us and provided the fortitude to endure what lay ahead.
Drifter
I HAD ENLISTED IN THE Federal Army under the name Preston Lawson and served in the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George B. McClellan. I didn’t care which side of the war I stood on, and this insight had stumped me.
As time passed, I succumbed to the voices in my head, and I found a strange comfort there, like a sense of home and belonging, although I couldn’t figure out where home was. Visions of the auburn-haired woman clad in lavish silks and jewels often melded with those of another, a brunette with distinctive, intense green eyes. I felt absolute loathing each time the images visited, and I came to assume the women had to have impacted my life. I had scoured the blankness of my memories for answers, but came up empty.
As our lines broke and merged with the Confederate scum, the deafening booms of gunfire and cannons, and the bellows of charging soldiers and cries of the fallen, filled the hot afternoon.
Exhilaration sang in my soul as I removed my blade from the gut of a blank-eyed soldier now lying lifeless on the ground before me. I glanced to the left as a horse carrying a Confederate officer reared up, and I sent my blade into its chest. The beast squealed and went down, pinning the officer beneath its massive bulk. He struggled to get free. Adrenaline stormed through my veins, and I grinned
, pulled my pistol, and placed a bullet between the soldier’s eyes while mentally adding his life to the ledger in my head.
You were born for this! the voice in my head squealed, delighted.
Battle fever governed my body, and I plunged deeper into the melee. Each soldier I encountered heightened the need for blood, and as the warmth of their death splattered my flesh, my heart beat faster, and a familiar ecstasy erupted. In the sea of moving blue and gray I sliced my sword through the air, not caring who fell at my hand.
A Confederate in front of me removed his blade from a fallen man and paused for a brief moment to assess the blood staining his left shoulder. I charged forward, and as if sensing my approach, he swerved, and I halted my advance within arm’s length as I looked into familiar, piercing eyes.
Armstrong? The name erupted in my memories. A vision flashed of the man clenching the reins of a wagon as it dragged him behind it, and he fought to keep from being trampled. Another memory surfaced of him strolling through a crowded town with the brunette who’d haunted me walking beside him, her hand tucked in the crook of his arm. I scowled at the vagueness, but yet felt a profound sense of recognition. She was mine, and he had taken her from me. No…I wanted her, but he’d claimed her heart. As quick as the revelations sprang, so did the flashes of my life in its entirety before I had acquired the alias Preston Lawson. I felt a profound hatred for the life that stood before me, and I launched my attack before he could blink, plunging my blade through Bowden Armstrong’s abdomen.
“Die this time, you bastard,” I said through gritted teeth.
My blade cut through his middle like slicing fine silk, and he gripped my sword as surprise and then annoyance widened his eyes before pain gripped his face. “McCoy?” His knees buckled, and he went down.
“Bowden!” a man bellowed above the clashing of swords and the wails of the fallen surrounding me.
I whirled as a brute of a man rushed at me like a raging bull. Knox Tucker. The man’s name formed in my mind. I went in for the attack. In his concern for his friend, Tucker had let down his guard; he was defenseless against my first blow. His blood splattered like spray from a fountain and, more swiftly than Armstrong, he dropped to the ground like a ton of bricks. I struck him repeatedly before his body went slack, and his sword tumbled to the ground. He fell backward, his legs pinned beneath him.