by Murray Pura
“‘In the presence of mine enemies,’” repeated Clarissa. “Recite it again, Mother. Please. It calms my mind.”
“Of course.”
She did but stopped at “the valley of the shadow of death.” Then repeated the whole line three or four times: “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.’” She finally moved on to the rest of the psalm, and after that to Psalms 24, 25, and 26. Many psalms she repeated twice. The gunfire never stopped, so she kept reading, now and then stopping to sip tea that went from hot to warm to cold. Suddenly the clock in the hall struck noon. She paused, waiting for the twelfth gong. As soon as it did, a loud peal of thunder burst over their house and the town.
“It’s going to rain,” Mrs. Ross said.
Clarissa went to the window. “The sky is blue.”
“Perhaps you can’t see the thunderhead.”
“I don’t think it is a storm, Mother. It’s too constant. I think it’s a fresh battery of cannons. Maybe ours, maybe theirs.”
“I wish your father would come home. What can he be doing at his boot shop? Surely he isn’t getting his people to work through all this?”
He arrived ten minutes later when Clarissa had taken over the reading and was at Psalm 107. Mrs. Ross jumped up and threw her arms around him so tightly Clarissa saw her father wince. “It’s all right,” he kept saying to his wife, “it’s all right.”
“Why have you been gone so long? What on earth are you up to at your shop when there is a battle only a mile away?”
“Officers have come for boots. Some have had theirs shot to pieces. Others have been needing new ones for months and took the opportunity to come to the shop when there was a lull. It was a good thing we hadn’t shipped the latest batch to Harrisburg.” He released his wife gently and dropped into a chair. “We’ve whipped them. I believe we’ve whipped them. Hundreds of Rebel troops have surrendered by McPherson’s Woods. The Iron Brigade is here, the Black Hats, and they’ve trounced a brigade or two. Yes, a good number of Union boys are here now. General Howard with Eleventh Corps. Reynolds with First Corps. But bad news there. Reynolds was killed this morning.”
Mrs. Ross put a hand to her mouth. “Oh no.”
“God rest his soul. But we’ve pushed the Rebels back, Ann. And captured General James Archer. That’s the news I’m getting at my shop. I have everyone working like beavers. Boots are going out the door as if we were an ammunition cache. I think the Confederates will withdraw. They’re getting a licking. Unless they plan to sink their teeth in and bring up more divisions. Then this fight could get out of control.”
“We heard new cannon firing,” Clarissa said. “At noon.”
Her father nodded. “The Rebels have set up batteries on Oak Ridge.”
“So then, they do intend to stick it.”
He shrugged. “Or cover their retreat. Hard to say.” He looked around. “Could I get a sandwich and some coffee? I need to get back.”
“You must be careful, Benjamin,” his wife admonished him. “Very careful.”
“Officers from First or Eleventh Corps will keep me apprised of the situation when there’s a lull.”
“What if there is no lull?”
“Ann, I won’t get caught if the battle moves south through the town. I’ll know. I have my new boy, Gilbert, staying abreast of the situation.”
“How?”
“I’ve sent him up to the cupola at the seminary twice. I’ve let him ride Rosebuds. She’s gentle and swift and never panics.”
Ann Ross listened and finally nodded. “I will fix you something.” She went to the kitchen. “You just rest yourself there.”
Clarissa followed her. “I can do that, Mother.”
“You can help. But you’re not doing it all.”
“I …”
“Don’t coddle me, Clarissa Avery. I’ll find my rhythm. I’m fine.”
After Mr. Ross had returned to his shop—the volume of firing increased noticeably the brief moment he held the front door open—Clarissa and her mother prayed together for a half hour and resumed reading the Psalms once more, now and then hearing the welcome clatter of rain on the roof and windows, doubly welcome because it deadened the sound of the fighting. After Psalm 150, they began again with the Twenty-Third. Just after two o’clock, there was a pronounced explosion of muskets and cannons that grew without stopping. The windowpanes began quivering again. Crockery moved around. Something broke with a loud crack somewhere in the house.
It makes it sound as if the house is haunted. As if we have ghosts. Do we? Do we have ghosts?
They tried to keep reading, but the battle roar was harsh and incessant. At a quarter to four, Clarissa glanced at the clock and then the window and saw horses and riders in blue moving quickly past their house toward Seminary Ridge. Two or three became ten or twelve and then scores. She got up and looked. Horses pulling cannons and caissons pounded past. Some of the horses were bleeding. Then came the men on foot. Hundreds of them. Running. Limping. Being helped by fellow soldiers. Turning and shooting behind them. As she watched—her mother begging her to return to her seat—an infantryman was struck a blow out of thin air and spun around. Blood was on his chest. He fell. Other men ran frantically over him as he lay in the street. So did several limbers hauling large artillery pieces, the horses rearing and plunging and stamping their hooves as their drivers whipped them. And then there were more soldiers in blue running. And more.
“We’re routed.” Clarissa spoke so softly her mother said she could not hear what she’d said. She repeated herself in a stronger voice: “Our boys are running. They’re running as if all the devils of hell were after them.”
“Oh no. Oh no. And where is your father?”
Clarissa did not sit back down, though she knew she should have because she could hear the crackle of musket fire right outside their door and saw the smoke and muzzle flashes. She simply couldn’t pull herself away from the frightening spectacle of the Union retreat. It was sheer pandemonium. And then there were gray uniforms. So many there was no point in counting the number of secesh infantrymen. “A lot, Mother,” would have to suffice. They were streaming in the direction of the seminary. She ran up the stairs to her third-floor room, where a window faced the Lutheran seminary and she could see the building and the grounds. Her mother followed her, moving almost as nimbly as her daughter.
The tall brick seminary building was smothered in dark gray smoke from thousands of muskets. Flames flickered and leaped as if trees and bushes were burning. The Union held the high ground, but the Rebels had the numbers, and they swarmed up to the ridge screaming and shrieking. Bayonets. Muskets. Cap-and-ball pistols. Cannons. Horses running and falling. Men rolling down the slope and not getting up. The red Confederate battle flag. The Stars and Stripes. Regimental banners of all colors. Some riddled with holes from bullets and shrapnel. Falling, rising, falling, rising—as soon as one flag bearer was shot, Union or Confederate, another took his place and lifted up the staff, holding it high until he too was shot.
“They are breaking.” Clarissa was whispering into her fist. “Mercy, Lord, mercy. Our boys are breaking.”
The Union troops began to retreat again. This time heading toward Cemetery Ridge. Where Clarissa’s stone wall stood. And the Round Tops. And the chestnut oaks she and Iain loved.
Not all the boys in blue were panicking as they withdrew. Clarissa and her mother watched a formation of Black Hats turn, fire, reload, march off as if they had all the time in the world, turn again, fire as one again—their fire scything through Confederate ranks like a sharp-edged farm tool—reload, and continue their march toward the second ridge.
“They will cross the valley,” Clarissa said out loud. “Maybe ford one of the little streams that will barely wet their boots. Climb the fence onto Emmitsburg Road. Climb another to get off Emmitsburg Road. Run or limp or march up the slope to the stone wall. It’s not much of a slope. And it’s not
much of a walk. Most of them will get from the seminary to the top of Cemetery Ridge in twenty to thirty minutes.”
“And then what?” asked her mother.
“I don’t know. I expect they will stand and fight until they are overwhelmed. They are vastly outnumbered. Just those two corps and it looks like the Rebels practically have an army in Gettysburg. Why? I don’t understand why they are here.”
“Maybe … maybe our boys should just surrender and be done with it.”
“If Iain were here with Second Corps, he wouldn’t surrender.”
The front door banged open downstairs.
“Ann! Clarissa!”
“We’re in my room, Father!” Clarissa called.
“Get down! Get down to the root cellar! There are thousands more Rebels coming. Who knows what they’ll do? Who knows what they’re aiming at when they shoot? We need to get out of sight. Hurry.”
They followed him through the trapdoor located in the pantry off the kitchen, stepping carefully down the ladder to sit in the dark among sacks of last year’s potatoes and carrots and apples and turnips. The thump of cannons and bursting shells and the hail-on-a-tin-roof rattle of musket fire was still distinct. Once they heard boots stamping through the house, a man shouted, glass broke, and there were several loud musket shots. Then no more sounds. Clarissa looked at her father and raised her eyebrows. He shook his head and consulted his pocket watch in the light of a small candle they had lit.
“It is just after six o’clock,” he said.
The gunfire continued, but as Clarissa counted to one hundred for the fifth time, she could tell it was decreasing. Then it was sporadic. By the time her father announced it was six thirty-five, there was no firing at all. No sound from the street. No shriek of shells over the rooftop. No horses’ hooves. There was nothing. Still, they waited, silent, listening. At eight, Mr. Ross nodded and went to the two doors that opened to the backyard and the garden.
The doors were on a slant and locked from the inside. He opened them slowly. The rush of evening air felt as good as cool water on her face to Clarissa. Her father walked up the ramp and went out into the backyard. After a minute, he called softly for his wife and daughter to join him. They stood together and looked at the houses near theirs. Many were dark. On the air, Clarissa caught the smell of burnt powder, still floating about from all the fighting that day. Everything was etched in silver, and the night sky was luminous—the moon hung enormous and round in what darkness it had not burned away.
“We won’t light any lamps indoors,” her father told them. “It’s best to be prudent at this point. The fight could be over and either the Rebs or the Union troops will withdraw tomorrow morning. Or Thursday might see them clash again.”
“Is the rest of the Army of the Potomac coming, Father?” asked Clarissa. “Did you hear?”
“I received no reliable news on that.”
After a few more minutes, they went around to the front and entered their house. A window had been smashed and three or four percussion caps from a musket littered the floor. There were boot prints of dried mud. That was all. Her father prayed with them, and they went to their rooms. Once she had changed into her cotton nightgown, Clarissa opened the curtains and let the moonlight flood her room. It was as if she’d lit twenty or thirty candles.
She stood at the window and saw campfires flaring around the Lutheran seminary. Now and then a body would pass in front of them, man or horse, and the silhouette would be obvious. She watched and prayed a long time. Then she went to a window that faced east and whispered, “Come to me, my love. Come with the army and fight here. Come and be by my side. Please, won’t you come? Then I can keep you safe. Then my faith and hope and presence can better protect you. If there must be a battle here, then you must be in it, and if you are, then so must I.”
She thought she did not sleep but realized she must have, for there were creases on her face from her pillow, and she recalled part of a dream where she had been riding her horse on Seminary or Cemetery Ridge. The dream had not been unpleasant, and as her thoughts began to crowd in upon her, her stomach quickly tightened. War had come to her peaceful town, and she knew nothing would be the same in its streets or hilltops or fields again. Blood had been spilled, and it would be in the soil forever. She just knew it. As if a murder had been committed in a lovely home and now no one could enter that home, no matter how dressed up it was, without thinking about what had happened there.
We’re going to have ghosts. And forever and a day, when people come here, they’re going to come looking for those ghosts: loved ones, fathers, brothers, fiancés. People will come looking for the dead. Just like at Sharpsburg or Fredericksburg or Shiloh.
“But if they break off now,” she said out loud, “if both armies leave off now and go their separate ways, perhaps it will not be so bad; perhaps we will not be remembered for the one-day fight, but for better things.”
You just prayed Iain would come.
Only if there’s more fighting here. Then he must come and make a difference. But I’d just as soon all the soldiers went away and left us to our wheat fields and orchards and unblemished meadows and ridges. I just want our town to be known for its beauty. Not warfare and death.
You can’t control fate.
I don’t believe in fate. But I am certainly aware I can’t control generals or battalions or history. Or the ways of God. I can only wish and pray. And then, whatever comes, act as I see fit as a Christian woman.
Clarissa’s father rose before dawn, and the three of them ate a breakfast of toast and oatmeal together. From their windows they could see Rebel soldiers roaming the streets, cannons drawn by horses thundering past, and officers on horseback moving to and fro. Finally, at nine, her father left for the shop. Clarissa and her mother decided to read a Gospel—they chose Luke—and took turns reading chapters out loud. The cracks of whips made them cringe, thinking thousands of muskets were about to open fire again, but the morning remained quiet. Mr. Ross returned promptly at noon, took off his hat, and fell heavily into a chair.
“What’s going on, Ben?” asked his wife.
“What news, Father?” asked Clarissa, trying not to push him. “What have you found out? Are the Confederate soldiers leaving?”
He blew out a lungful of air. “Where do I begin? Well, first of all, no, the Rebs aren’t going anywhere. Lee is here. Has been here since yesterday afternoon. He means to finish the fight. That’s what the Confederate officers think. No one has been given instructions to withdraw. A number of them have congregated at my shop. Some of it was ransacked overnight, but they didn’t find my cache of finished, or almost finished, boots and shoes. Those were well hidden under a trapdoor. Or, had been well hidden. A Reb major had just uncovered it before I walked in, and they were busy sorting through the pile. They said they would pay me, and so they did—in Confederate dollars. Which will be useful if we ever head down to Richmond to purchase supplies. Another promised to get me Yankee dollars if he got his hands on any. And one colonel did come by when he found out what was going on and gave me two gold pieces.” He lifted his hands in resignation. “Yesterday I outfitted Union troops. Today, Rebel troops.”
“There is nothing you can do about that,” his wife responded.
“Indeed not. Shortly after all this, the sexton came by expressly to tell me our church had been turned into a hospital. I went quickly along Chambersburg, and sure enough, the pews were packed with wounded. Union and Confederate both. Some were lying, some sitting, some were on the floor. I will tell you there was already a small stack of hands and feet, yes, and legs and arms, outside at the back. I understand the seminary has been turned into a hospital as well, oh, and the other churches in town too. But Christ’s Church couldn’t be busier. They badly need more help to clean and bandage wounds and feed the soldiers.”
“I will go,” said Clarissa.
“Well, you are not going alone.” Ann Ross sat upright. “We’ll both help.”
&
nbsp; Ben Ross held up a hand. “All three of us will help. I see no danger to moving about the town this afternoon. Most of the troops are away off toward Seminary Ridge. I expect there will be an action, but heaven knows when. It is getting on to one o’clock. In any case, I must tell you, I borrowed a brass scope from the reverend and went up to the church’s cupola. I had never been up there before. With the trees in full bloom, I could not see much. I did spy the seminary and see some large Rebel troop movements. No cavalry, which I find odd, given that I was told the whole Army of Northern Virginia has been ordered to concentrate in Gettysburg.”
“But why?” demanded Ann. “Why? What do we have here that Lee wants?”
“Right now? The Army of the Potomac. Meade has brought his men here. He is going to fight. And Lee wants to fight too. And destroy him. So that is that. No one appears to be budging. I took Rosebuds from Gilbert and walked her wherever the Rebs would let me. I must tell you, they were most polite and obliging. A Mississippian officer escorted me as far forward as I was permitted. He recognized me from the shop and called me the Boot General.”
“So, Iain’s Mississippi is here,” said Clarissa.
“It is.” Her father locked his gray eyes on her. “And so is he.”
Her heart stammered in her chest, as if it could not catch its rhythm properly. “You’re sure?”
“Most of the Army of the Potomac is here now, my girl. Dug in on Cemetery Ridge. From the graveyard to the stone wall and the copse of chestnut oaks, and all the way south to the Round Tops, though even with my scope I could discern no Union troops on those two hills. However, I did pick out something else—a green flag here, a green flag there. Now, I realize there are other Irish regiments in the army that fly green flags. I don’t know how many. But it’s safe to bet, if I were a betting man, that one of the flags I spotted is part of the colors of the Sixty-Ninth.”