“They’re safe in the cellar,” I whispered. “Safe in the cellar.”
Abel groaned, whether from pain or the noise I couldn’t tell.
“Don’t you die on me,” I screamed. “You saved my life and I aim to return the favor. Don’t you die on me!”
Just as suddenly as the shelling started, it stopped. I had seen enough over the past three days to know what that meant. When the shelling stopped, the infantry took over. Cannons were replaced with rifles, artillery shells with bullets and bayonets.
I put my hand on Abel’s chest and felt it rise and fall, rise and fall. He was still breathing.
Through the smoke, infantry soldiers moved ghostlike into position. When the smoke finally cleared, most of them were gone. My ears were ringing, but at the same time the quiet was spooky after all that noise.
A soldier ran out of what was left of Meade’s headquarters. “Get yourself away from here,” he yelled.
I looked at my friend. He couldn’t walk, and I was too done in to carry him. Besides, was there any place safe?
“Go,” Abel groaned. “Go.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said.
Abel gave me one of those funny nods—he would not have left me either—and then he seemed to pass out again.
All around us was confusion. The air was heavy with gunpowder. Knapsacks, blankets, and guns were strewn everywhere. A few officers stood in front of headquarters, tension written all over their faces. I spotted a pair of field glasses a short distance away and ran for them.
I climbed the tree above us, anxious to know what was happening and to look for a safer place to bring Abel. The Rebel infantry marched out from the cover of trees on Seminary Ridge by McMillan’s orchard. The Union men were scrambling into position on Cemetery Ridge. A broad field sat between them.
Two long lines of Rebels marched into that field and started to cross it. The lines must have been a mile wide. It was hard to believe that there were that many soldiers still standing after all the wounded I had seen.
They were silent. No Rebel yell. No double-quick. It was a grim, steady march. They crossed the Emmitsburg Road and kept coming.
Why were our men not shooting?
When the Rebs were close—too close—our big guns opened up again. Rebs fell in waves. They didn’t retreat. They didn’t run. They simply closed ranks and kept coming.
Soon our cannon fire was replaced with musket fire. Beyond the smoke toward Seminary Ridge I expected to see Rebels running away, back to their own lines. There were none. Had they broken the Union lines? Had they pushed past the infantry?
Suddenly, it was quiet. The bullets stopped and were replaced by cheers. But who was cheering? Who had won?
Once again, the smoke cleared. The field was full of dead, gray-clad men. The boys in blue were cheering. There was no retreat. The Rebels had kept coming until every last one of them was dead or taken prisoner.
I guessed the Union had won, but what did they win? What did all that killing amount to?
Tears streamed down my face. I climbed down to join Abel. He was asleep, but I spoke to him anyway. I had to say the words out loud, if only to convince myself. “It’s over,” I told him. “I think we’re safe for now.”
No one seemed to know what would happen next. I heard more fighting from the direction of the Weikert farm and I called out to a soldier coming from that direction.
“Is there fighting there?” I asked.
“There’s fighting everywhere,” he answered.
I remembered Mother’s words to me in the kitchen before I left. “Find the girls at the Weikert farm and wait out the battle there. It will be safer,” and the scared, angry look on Grace’s face when I didn’t go down into the cellar.
There was nothing I could do. No way right then to know for sure they were alive and well. I focused on Abel. About the time the sun was setting, his eyes flickered. The air had cooled a bit, but his skin was so hot it was like touching fire. He tried to sit up and raved like a madman, insisting that he had to find his drum, join his company.
“My daddy’s waiting,” he kept saying. “My daddy’s waiting.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his daddy was dead. I was even afraid to go and find the surgeon in case Abel found the energy to get up and leave.
“No,” I said. “Your daddy said to wait right here.”
I poured water over his head, hoping that would cool him down some. Then I grabbed a cap and fanned him like crazy.
After a few minutes he fell asleep again. Was this the fever the doctor spoke of? Would it kill him?
“Dang it! I didn’t carry you all the way here and lie to a general’s aide for you to go and die on me.”
Men were moving around us, collecting the dead and the wounded. A Union man came near but I wouldn’t let him take Abel. They wouldn’t take care of him like I would. I didn’t want him to end up dead, or a prisoner.
Abel woke up a few hours later and started raving again. I poured more water over his head. I had managed to find some bread and some beef tea. I gave him as much as he would take. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten.
One soldier nearby was munching on a piece of hardtack. Jacob had written to us about how awful hardtack tasted. About how the biscuits were hard enough to break a tooth. About how they were full of weevils. But I hadn’t eaten in a very long time. The soldier saw me eyeing it and I guess I looked as hungry as I felt. He threw me a biscuit.
I gnawed off a bite and held it in my mouth for a long time before it was soft enough to chew. On a normal day I might turn my nose up at such a thing, but today it was the sweetest thing I had ever eaten.
My colonel never came back. I wondered if he was dead, but I was too tired to worry about him much. With the hardtack in my belly, I lay down next to Abel. I kept my hand on his chest so I could feel it rise and fall, and drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
By the Dawn’s Early Light
Saturday morning, July 4, 1863
It was near dawn when I heard movement around me. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The soldiers slapped each other on their backs. I heard cheers coming from inside Meade’s headquarters.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Rebels are withdrawing from the town,” a soldier told me. “We’re fixing to march into Gettysburg.”
My heart leaped. The Rebels were withdrawing. My family was safe. Soon we would all be together again. I wanted to race into town and find Mother.
Abel must have heard, and it was like he could read my thoughts. “Where’s your mama?” he asked.
“In town,” I said. “You were injured. I brought you here.” I touched his face. He wasn’t nearly as hot as he was last night.
He pushed himself up on his elbows. “Got to get to your mama’s house,” he mumbled.
His face was still pale, but not the same deadly white it had been yesterday afternoon. “You’re not strong enough,” I told him. “And I can’t carry you that far.”
“Your mama,” he said, stronger this time. “She’ll be worried.”
He dragged himself to a seated position. He looked at his bandaged hand and then at me.
“It’s gone,” I told him.
I thought that would take everything out of him, but he only nodded. Then he grasped the tree trunk with his good hand and pulled himself up. He wobbled for a second before letting go. He was as unsteady as a new colt, but he was on his own feet.
“Let’s go see your mama.”
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “You almost died. You’ve got a surgical fever. You can’t march into Gettysburg.”
“You go then,” he said.
“I’m not leaving you alone here.”
“Then take me with you,” Abel insisted.
Finally I agreed. “We have to take it slow.” I pulled his good arm over my shoulder and wrapped mine around his waist. He said he didn’t want my help, but he was as useless as a shot-up
drum.
We fell in line behind a column of soldiers and slowly made our way forward. The military band at the front played familiar patriotic songs like “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but everything else seemed unreal and unfamiliar.
Taneytown Road was so torn up by wagons and shells that we stuck to the fields, eventually making it to the Evergreen Cemetery. It was a strange and blighted place in the early morning light. I hardly would have recognized it as the site of Sunday strolls.
Grave markers were overturned and broken. The grass was trampled into mud, flower beds were black with gunpowder, and body after body lay above the ground instead of below it. At first I thought the dead had been unearthed, but these were soldiers. The new dead, not the old.
Rain started to fall, like heaven itself was weeping.
The carnage got worse as we headed toward town. Battle debris was all around us. Broken down artillery wagons, guns, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, coats, and shoes were strewn about, along with letters, photographs, and even Bibles. There was a long line of unburied men, so black and bloated that I could not tell which side they fought for, nor did I care.
I strained to get a look at my house, but it was too dark and too far away still. My eyes darted here and there, looking for some assurance of the civilians’ safety, but there was none.
As the sky lightened, I could see that houses were peppered with bullet holes. The Rupp house had no windows left at all, and there were two dead men on the porch. One Rebel sharpshooter was slumped over dead, half in and half out of a garret window farther down Baltimore Street.
The smell was overpowering. Worse than when we found the dead rat under the floorboards at school. Worse than a thousand overflowing privies. I tried to breathe through my mouth so that the stench would not overwhelm me, but then it filled my mouth and made me gag.
The sun was beginning to rise. Folks peered out their windows and opened their doors. They seemed dazed at first, then waved handkerchiefs. Their voices joined with the band.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
I could see the flag now at the front of our long column. How many times had I imagined myself marching behind it, celebrating a glorious Union victory? How many times had I imagined myself a hero?
I never imagined the destruction, or the stench. I never imagined the dead.
There was muted talk from the townspeople as we marched by. Someone remembered that it was Independence Day. We hurrahed for the Fourth of July and in gratitude to the soldiers. One comment stood out above all the rest, though.
“Jennie Wade was killed,” someone said. “In her sister’s kitchen. Baking bread for the Union soldiers.”
I stopped short with a gasp. Abel stumbled beside me. “Were any other townspeople hurt?”
She didn’t know. No one knew.
I strained to get a look at my house. Would there be bullet holes? Had Mother been killed in her kitchen, too? I wanted to break into a run. Abel could tell. My steps had quickened and he couldn’t keep up with me.
“Run,” he said. “Run to your mama. Make sure ...”
It was like someone had drummed the order to charge on my heart. But I forced myself to slow down. “No.” I took a shaky breath. “We’ll go together.”
We skirted a Rebel barricade made of fences and bedposts and other pieces of furniture, and finally we were at my door. Grace’s red shawl still hung from the upstairs window.
Grace! How would I tell Grace and the twins if—
The front door was locked. I pounded on it, holding my breath. I thought my heart might jump right out of my body.
A man—a Rebel—opened the door. “More wounded,” he said over his shoulder. Then to me. “Take him to the Courthouse, or the church on the corner. We’re full up.”
I nearly dropped Abel. The Rebel caught him and sat him on the pavement, against the house.
“I live here! This is my house.” I pushed past the man and looked for Mother.
The parlor was filled with wounded. A Union man moved among them on a crutch made from a fence post. He held a basket of biscuits. Mother must be in the kitchen, baking biscuits, I thought. I jumped over the men and went to find her there, but I only saw two soldiers taking more biscuits out of the oven. I fell against the back door. There were two dead men in the yard, but I still could not see my mother. Where was she? I thought of Jennie Wade and I wanted to scream.
I ran back into the parlor and was about to run upstairs when someone grabbed my arm. I tried to twist out of his grasp, but he was too strong for me.
“Where is my mother?” I demanded. “What have you done with her?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Where is my mother?”
Why was no one answering?
“Where is my mother?” I asked again. It came out a whisper. I was suddenly full of tears. My throat closed up around them.
I recognized the Union man we had taken in that first day, the one who had argued with his Rebel guards over dinner. His answer seemed to take ten years.
“She’s at the Courthouse,” he said. “We made biscuits and she took some over. She’s been worried about you.”
I slumped against the wall and took deep breaths to try and calm myself.
“Where’ve you been?” the soldier asked. “We thought you were on a farm.”
“I was,” I choked out. “But the battle ...” I couldn’t finish.
“Your sisters?” he asked.
“Safe, I think. I had to leave,” I said, remembering Abel. “My friend is out front. He needs a clean bandage and a place to rest.”
We stepped aside while two men I didn’t recognize—one with a bandage on his arm, the other with a limp—carried a body down the stairs.
“Looks like a bed just opened up,” the Union man told me.
I met Mother on my way to the Courthouse. She was coming back with an empty basket. She walked right past me.
“Mother!” I said.
She turned to look at me.
“Mother,” I said again.
She peered at me.
“It’s me. Will,” I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in the Pierce’s parlor window. My face was covered in blood and dirt. My shirt was as stiff as Abel’s bandage, and my trousers and shoes were crusted with mud.
I took off my cap and showed her the tuft of hair that was forever sticking up. The one Grace was always tugging me by. “See, it’s me.”
Mother dropped her basket and screamed.
“I’m not hurt. Just dirty.”
She pulled me toward her, dirt and all. We stood there hugging for the longest time, and I wasn’t even mortified by my public tears.
“Are the girls with you?” Mother asked when she finally pulled away. “We heard there was heavy fighting at the Round Tops. I can’t believe I sent my babies away to be safe, and you wound up right in the middle of the worst of it.”
“I left them at the farm yesterday afternoon,” I said. “They were safe in the cellar.”
Mother closed her eyes and sighed.
“I brought Abel home with me,” I said. “I found him wounded. That’s why I had to leave. I had to get help for him.”
I picked up Mother’s basket, took her hand, and led her toward our house.
“Any chance I’ll be able to take a bath?” I asked.
Mother stopped and stared at me for the longest time. “Are you sure you’re William Edmonds?” she asked. Then she threw her head back and laug
hed until she cried.
I guess I never volunteered to take a bath before.
There were violent thunderstorms that night. General Lee used the cover of rain and darkness to begin his long retreat south. Some said the line of ambulances and wagons stretched for seventeen miles. We were finally free of Confederate soldiers—those who could walk, anyway.
The battle might have been over, but our problems weren’t. Abel’s fever came and went. He slept most of the time. Sometimes he woke up ranting and raving. Other times he was almost himself. We kept bathing him with cool water and changing his bandage, but for a few days I was sure he was going to die.
We had almost nothing to feed him to build up his strength. All our food stores were gone. Every house in town was in the same predicament. A quart of beans had to suffice for the people in our home that day, and others in town had nothing at all. The army’s supply wagons hadn’t kept up with the soldiers. Most of the farmer’s fields for miles and miles around were destroyed, and the nearest working railroad station was twenty miles away.
Somehow, the world learned of our predicament. The first wagon filled with food rolled into town on Sunday evening. By Monday, both the Christian and the Sanitary Commissions brought wagons full of food and medical supplies. I watched them ride down Baltimore Street from our doorway. A man handed me an orange. I was so hungry that I ate the whole thing, skin and all. Then I begged another for Abel.
I peeled it for him, and he ate it slowly, wedge by wedge. A drop of juice stood on his lip and he licked it up before it could dry.
“That’s the best orange I’ve ever had,” he said.
I agreed. It was sweeter than anything in Petey Winter’s candy store.
I wished I could hold the orange smell of it in my nose forever to cover up the stench all around. The Union army had left behind soldiers to bury the dead, but the task was enormous, and slow. Some said you could smell Gettysburg as far away as Harrisburg.
Mother had bottles of peppermint and penny-royal oil in the kitchen. “Put this under your nose,” she said, handing one to me. “It’ll block the smell.”
Boys of Wartime: Will at the Battle of Gettysburg Page 10