Toby and I gently laid the hot, heavy form of Woody onto the table. As Cora softly brushed the tangled hair out of his face, my eyes darted to his chest; a brief wave of relief washed through me to find it rising and falling. I had found him in our tent and knew with one glance that his eyes weren’t closed with sleep. We’d waited far too long.
“Will he live?” I whispered to Cora.
She studied Woody’s still form which told me her answer before she replied. “I don’t know.”
“We should have brought him here weeks ago,” Toby mumbled.
Cora laid a hand on Toby’s arm. “You care about Woody a great deal, and you tried to talk him into getting treatment. Up until now, the choice was his. It’s our choice now, and we will do our best to keep him alive. Regrets are a waste of precious, valuable time.” Cora forced a smile at him and then moved to the supply area to prepare for surgery.
“We should have tried harder,” he muttered.
I felt exactly the same, fighting the clouds of guilt that hung threateningly over my head, but I couldn’t seem to form the words. I met Toby’s eyes across the moaning figure of our dying friend.
Cora returned with a handful of medical staff, including a gruff, exhausted-looking doctor carrying a heavy, blood-stained hacksaw. My stomach lurched and my vision swayed dizzily for a split second. I quickly forced my eyes away and sucked in a deep breath.
“You two need to leave now,” Cora whispered. “I will come find you when we’re finished.”
I started to move away when hot fingers clamped tightly around my wrist. I found Woody’s eyes open and full of fear, latched onto my face.
“Bobbi, please stay with me.” His words, though almost inaudible, came from a conscious and clear mind.
I glanced at Cora for her nod of permission and then quickly took his hand into both of mine. “I’ll be right here with you,” I promised him. His eyes drifted closed again.
Cora gently nudged Toby toward the beckoning fresh air. “Go wait outside.”
I gratefully sank down onto the chair Cora offered, worried my legs wouldn’t hold out during the medical procedure. Ha, medical procedure! I feel like I should defend my friend against these butchers instead of docilely sitting here while they chop him into pieces!
Cora placed a warm, steadying hand on my shoulder and I glanced behind me to meet her eyes.
“Stay strong for Woody,” she whispered.
I took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly, commanding, no begging my body to obey. Woody needed me, and though hard to believe, these doctors would help. I don’t know if I could have sat there complacently if Cora hadn’t stood inches away. Her presence reassured me, just enough.
At a nod from the doctor, Cora held a chloroform-soaked sponge over Woody’s mouth. Then the doctor pulled up Woody’s sleeve. A sickening odor wafted outward, assaulting my nose and stomach. Pus and blood caked the grossly swollen wound. It didn’t even resemble an arm anymore. A new wave of guilt threatened to drown me. I clenched Woody’s good hand tightly and gently stroked his arm. As the doctor began tying a tourniquet just above the elbow, I forced my eyes onto Woody’s pale face. I couldn’t watch. I wished I could cut off access to my other senses as easily.
The procedure lasted all of fifteen minutes. Thanks to Cora’s expertise with the chloroform, Woody never flinched a muscle. I hated to think of the pain and fear he would suffer when he woke. But, I emphasized to myself, he would wake up. He had to.
I sat next to Woody’s bedside, holding his hand. As soon as he had healed enough to travel, Woody would be going home. I hoped that news would bring a bit of relief to him when he awoke.
Toby slipped in for a few moments before returning to the front. He assured me he’d make an excuse for my absence, giving me an hour or two before I needed to return. He placed a hand on Woody’s head.
“You’re a good man, Woody, and an even greater friend.” He trailed his hand across my shoulders as he passed, slipping back out into the growing shadows.
I sat with an unconscious Woody for almost two hours before he began to stir. He slowly came to, his eyes fluttering open.
“Woody,” I leaned in close and whispered, “you‘re going home! And you’re going to be okay.” I hoped I spoke the truth.
“Just, just like you promised,” he mumbled and tried to smile.
Tears flooded my eyes, and I tried to blink them back. But then Woody said something, catching me completely off guard.
“You’ve always had the purtiest eyes…” He slipped into sleep.
I made my way back to the front line in a bit of a stunned daze. I’d only officially been a guy for about a year, but I could safely say that guys don’t normally compliment each other on having “pretty eyes.” Did Woody know? I quickly scanned back over the past year, the very long and horribly hard year, looking for any signs or clues. I returned to the trenches with a bruised and uneasy heart.
The darkness pressed in close around me so that I had a bit of trouble catching my breath. The anxiety I’d felt when leaving Woody’s side hadn’t eased. In fact, it had grown steadily worse until my skin pricked with every slight movement. I tried to focus on something, anything pleasant, but my racing mind couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of “pleasant,” as if the idea seemed completely foreign and unknown. I couldn’t even pull up an image of my little brother. What was wrong with me?
We hunkered in close to the mine entrance as the seconds counted down to 3:30 a.m., blast time. And to make the final moments even more tense, we’d just been informed of a change in plans. Originally, Brigadier General Ferrero had been chosen to lead the initial attack following the explosion. Of Burnside’s four divisions, Ferrero’s had the most men at 4,300, plus the soldiers had seen the least amount of action. In other words, they still had a bit of energy and spunk. I fondly remember those days of so long ago. However, Meade didn’t feel comfortable with that choice. Why? Because Brigadier General Ferrero’s division just happened to be comprised of all Negroes. Meade worried that if the attack went awry and the Negro division got roasted, the Radical Republicans in congress would chow down on his rear. Well, when Grant backed Meade up on the changing plans, Burnside consented. But instead of choosing another group based on abilities, numbers, strengths, or anything at all rational, he had the three other division leaders draw straws. Go figure. Well, Brigadier General Ledlie drew the shortest straw. Not good. I’d heard rumors that he was a drunk and a coward.
At 3:30 am, Lieutenant Colonel Pleasants ordered the fuse lit. As I watched the sparkling flame crawl away into the pitch-black mine, I felt a strange parallel lighting of my own fuse. Every hardship, every river crossing, every broken trust, every rifle loading, every friend lost, every latrine dug, every dead-end in my search for Robert, every life blasted, every secret bottled deep inside seemed to shorten my own fuse, inching closer and closer to an inner explosion with no hope of extinguishing. Sweat beaded out all over my body despite the cool nighttime breeze, and I suddenly felt lightheaded and dizzy. As blinding spots appeared behind my closed lids, I reached out a desperate hand for anything solid and dependable. Toby’s shoulder.
“You okay?” his voice whispered close in my ear, warm breath tickling the hairs on my neck.
I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to block out the overwhelming terror threatening to take over my body and mind.
“Here, sit down.” Toby pried my clawing grip off of his shoulder, squeezing return pressure with his own hand, and guided me to the ground. “Put your head down and try to take deep breaths.”
I tried to follow orders, but it seemed as if the entire world had slipped out of reach and it took every ounce of strength to keep from drifting off into the cold, dark endless space…
Toby took my jaw in his free hand and gently forced my head up. “Bobbi, look at me. Bobbi! Open your eyes and look at me!”
His kind, familiar voice seemed a hundred miles away and unreachable, but somehow I latched on and forced m
y body to obey. Inches from my own, Toby’s night-black eyes begged for understanding, for trust. “Bobbi, this isn’t about the up coming battle, is it. Bobbi, please come back; you’re scaring me.”
Slowly, my eyes locked with Toby’s, air found its way into my lungs, blood flowed through my veins, gravity regained its demands. I wrenched my jaw free of his grip, turning my back on him.
Toby let me loose, but didn’t let me go. “Bobbi, talk to me. What’s going on?”
Almost everyone I’ve let into my life ends up leaving me abandoned or leaving me wounded! Ma, Pa, Robert, Preacher, Kenny, Woody…So in just a matter of time, Toby would follow the pattern. Would he take a musket ball through his heart, or would he stab me in the back? “Leave me alone,” I muttered.
The predawn darkness surrounded the us, creeping into every crevice, until I almost felt smothered. I forced soiled air into my lungs, heavy with the odors of unwashed soldiers, gunpowder and decay, and tried to silently repositioned my cramping muscles. Anxiety ate at my nerves as the minutes dragged far beyond the scheduled strike time; something had gone wrong. Disembodied voices, scratchy with fatigue and trepidation, began murmuring through the shadows around me.
“It should have blown by now.”
“The fuse is a dud.”
“Someone should check it out.”
“No, give it more time.”
“I knew this wouldn’t work.”
“Look, Pleasants is sending in two guys to check out the problem!”
Within a few moments, the two soldiers scurried back out of the mine as fast as they could run. They’d relit the burned-out fuse. A moment passed with held breath…silence…
Then the sleeping ridgeline exploded in a blinding, deafening roar!
Rocks, dust, debris, soldiers blasted into the night sky.
Complete confusion.
Soldiers scattering. Soldiers buried. Soldiers burning. Soldiers dead. Alive.
Forces trapped in trenches with no ladders.
Mass congestion in the sixty by thirty foot crater.
Rebels firing cannons and rifles into the sea of blue uniforms.
Shouting, screaming, silent cries.
My body reacted automatically while my brain froze in horror. We charged into the crater, rifles raised and loaded. Amidst the earsplitting chaos, I picked out muffled cries for help. Rebels still alive, but buried in the rubble. Union soldiers dug down to free them, only to re-imprison them as captives of war to be shipped off to stew and rot in a Union prison camp.
A cannon ball exploded to the left of me, knocking me to my knees. Toby grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet.
“We have to get out of here!” he yelled in my ear.
“Let go of me,” I screamed, pulling free of his grasp, determined to put distance between my heart and certain pain.
“But it’s a bloodbath! We have to get out of this crater!”
“I don’t take orders from you! Get away from me!”
Toby reached out and grabbed my wrist, hauling me towards the crater walls and out of the line of fire. I pulled back with all of my strength, physical, mental, emotional, but I couldn’t break free. Another explosion knocked us both to the ground, scrambling my senses. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the ringing in my ears. Toby gasped for the breath knocked from his lungs. Spitting the dirt and ash out of my mouth, I grabbed my rifle, crawled to my feet and headed back into the center of the nightmare where human attacked human with bayonets, rifle butts and bare fists.
A hand clamped around my ankle, tripping me back to the ground.
“Bobbi, you have to listen to me. We need to get free of this!” Toby croaked, crawling alongside of me.
I slumped to the ground, suddenly exhausted, so utterly exhausted of fighting. “Why? Why should I listen to you? It will hurt too much.”
“Bobbi, I’m not your pa. You can trust me.”
“Trust you?” I yelled. “Why should I? Tell me!”
Toby captured my eyes with his own. “I trust you, I trust you with my life!”
“Well, you’re an idiot then! You can’t trust anyone, least of all someone who’s been lying to you since the beginning.”
“Then talk to me, Bobbi, tell me the truth!”
Deep inside me, my fuse ran out. Explosion.
“I’m a girl.”
Toby replied, but the surrounding war blocked his words.
My insides felt dead, the internal explosion dowsing any light and blowing a gaping hole in my heart. My secret leaked out, leaving me exposed, vulnerable and helpless. “What?” I forced the word out with great effort.
“I said, I know.”
The Union Army lost forty thousand soldiers during the Battle of the Crater. Several officers faced a review board. General Burnside left on sick leave, and soon after resigned. As for me, I felt uncovered and vulnerable. With my secret out, I knew it was only a matter of days until they sent me home, or worse, threw me in jail.
Yet the guards never came for me. How could Toby have known and not said anything?
“Because he is your friend,” said a small, quiet voice from inside of me.
I refused to acknowledge that voice.
After a while, I stopped jumping every time an officer came near; maybe Toby would continue to keep my secret. Maybe not. Either way, I kept him at a mile-long emotional distance, if not a physical one. I avoided Toby as best as I could, keeping my mouth clamped tight and refusing to meet his question-filled eyes. Quite an accomplishment, avoiding one’s tent mate. At night, I slept with my back to him, aching to be free of his unrelenting eyes boring into my back.
I felt ashamed and embarrassed, though not quite sure why. Maybe because I had failed. Failure wasn’t something at which I excelled. I had failed at keeping my identity a secret; I had failed to find my brother. Had I failed myself in my delusional belief that he still lived? My spirits fell into a nightmarish pit deeper and darker than the blasted crater. Depression ate away at my soul, consuming far more than the war ever had. Exhaustion pulled at every muscle; movement required extreme effort. Crawling out of my bedroll in the morning proved harder than facing an entire army of angry Rebels.
Woody’s folks sent train fare, and he caught a train home as soon as he felt up for travel. His spirits hovered good to middlin’, not bad considering. He looked forward to turning back into a farmer, not worried at all about his limitations of only one hand. At least, not openly worried. Captain Truckey gave me permission to escort him to the station. Thankfully, Toby said his goodbyes at the hospital tent. Woody never again brought up the subject of my eyes, pretty or otherwise, so maybe his earlier comment had resulted from trauma. But he did say something else that surprised me. He leaned down from the soot-coated window, shouting over the train’s hissing steam and departing whistle.
“Bobbi, whatever’s going on between you and Toby, you need to fix it and quick. The two of you need each other.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, or rebuke him for invading my privacy, the massive iron wheels began churning, propelling the train out of the station. I watched as the smoke poofed from the chimney, leaving a trail drifting into the sky, the chug-chug-chug intensifying as the train picked up speed.
Over the next couple of months, we engaged in a few more skirmishes such as Weldon Railroad, Peebles’ Farm and Boydton Plank Road, sometimes gaining and sometimes loosing ground around Petersburg. We did manage to cut off railroad contact with Wilmington, North Carolina, forcing the Rebs to haul in supplies by wagon. Despite the battles, the days besieging the city dragged on slower than a sleepy slug on a Sunday afternoon.
I contemplated leaving the army. But leave to go where? I couldn’t face Emma and my family back home as such a failure and a fool. They believed in me to stay until I’d finished the job, finding Robert. I couldn’t crawl home empty handed with my tail tucked, face them and confess that I’d been completely wrong, that Robert was indeed gone…
I started volunteer
ing for some of the optional and oftentimes more dangerous tasks, like scouting into Rebel territory. Every time my hand went up, I felt Toby’s disapproving and concerned gaze following me. But to his credit, he never said a word. Good thing. With the dark mood I’d fallen into, no telling what I might have done.
That’s how I found myself picking carefully across the littered battlefield following a rather unsuccessful skirmish. I’d volunteered to scour the site looking for any soldiers still alive, or more likely, retrieving firearms and ammunition off the dead. Doesn’t sound too dangerous? Throw in a handful of armed Rebs doing the same thing. But I didn’t care a wit about the potential dangers. I welcomed the risk, maybe as a punishment for my failures. Maybe I’d have more success finding Robert in Heaven.
The early morning hours lay thick with a drowning fog. The curtains and ropes of mist danced slowly around me, cutting off sight and sound, swirling, draping, disorientating. I stepped lightly, slowly, skirting the edge of the battlefield, senses straining for clues, Colt clamped securely in my hand. Dampness invaded every surface, every cranny, crawling up under my clothes; water droplets clung to my eyelashes like tears.
Hidden objects slowly revealed themselves, merging out of the mist to announce their presence, mere inches from my feet. Sounds muffled unrecognizably from shifting directions unknown. Looming up beside me, a skeleton of a tree continued to ooze smoke from its fiery death. Its blackened limbs reaching out for light, for life. Woven to its farthest tips, a spider toiled quickly spinning a new web, water droplets clinging to the fine strands like silken threads of luminous pearls.
I froze as voices drifted over in the thick air. Rebels? Union? Ghosts? But the sounds dispersed, shrouding me in silence once more. Silence surrounded me, pressing painfully on my ears. Another step, a flutter of feathers burst in my face as the startled owl’s silent wings beat the air for a safer refuge. Looking down on the ground, I found the remains of his nighttime hunting, a half-eaten squirrel. I tried to quiet my heartbeat as I moved farther along the sideline.
Echoes of Dark and Light Page 25