General Jackson’s artillery is holding the Yankees back, but they are unloading on us with everything they’ve got. The cannon blasts have become a steady roar by the time we trudge the last few steps over a slight rise and into the ranks of General Jackson’s brigade. There must be a couple of thousand men here, lying on the ground awaiting orders. Just beyond the men are some woods where litter bearers run in and out carrying the wounded and dead.
General Jackson has disappeared now, maybe gone to talk with other officers on the field. I don’t take much time to look around for him. I throw myself to the ground behind a cedar (like that’s really going to stop a cannonball) and bury my face in the grass, praying for the blasting to stop.
Each minute seems to last as long as a school day in spring. Shells explode over my head. Clods of earth and rocks shower down on my back. The shrieks and blasts of the artillery are occasionally answered by the screams of wounded soldiers.
Finally, the shelling slows down a little. Instead of a constant bombardment, several seconds pass between explosions. Both sides seem to be stopping for breath. Thank God! I can’t take another minute of it.
Slowly, one by one, men rise to their elbows. Their faces are black or bloody or covered in mud. They look around at each other. Some crack smiles. Others roll onto their sides to reload their muskets. A few just sit there, not moving, staring at nothing. Some are heading to the rear, probably to get their wounds treated.
Maybe now I can escape. Behind me are two officers kneeling around a map, and no one else is paying attention to anything. I bet I could limp out of here, no problem, make it to the rear and keep on walking.
I slowly get to my hands and feet and start hobbling to the woods. I glance around for one last look at Cyrus, hoping I see him and at the same time hoping I don’t see him.
I don’t. But I do see Dupree. He’s on his feet too, making his way to the two officers. He taps one on the shoulder. The officers turn and Dupree tries to show him some papers.
Well, whatever. This looks like a great time to slip away; all I have to do is pretend I’m wounded and follow the litter bearers out of here. Heck, I’ve done this in PE a million times.
Faking a limp, I make my way into the woods using my musket for a crutch. Once through the tree line, the sounds of gunfire behind me are replaced by the moans of wounded men. They lie on the ground in long rows in a small clearing. Most have blood somewhere on their clothes—their collars if a head wound, or their pants if they’ve been hit in the knee. One guy looks like he’s wearing a lopsided shirt until I realize his right arm’s been blown off.
All the more reason for me to hightail it out of here.
Women hurry from one soldier to the next, giving them water from canteens and wrapping rags around their wounds until they can be loaded onto a wagon and taken to the rear wherever they’ve set up the hospital.
I keep on going. If I can just get past all the people, somewhere by myself, I can ditch the gun and concentrate on this bugle once and for all. If I could just figure out how it worked. If only it had . . . instructions.
Oh my God!
It DOES have instructions. Tom/Stonewall Jackson/whoever gave them to me.
My hand flies to my pocket. Yes, still there.
Screw this limping act. I toss my musket in the grass and plop down beside the path to read the instructions. People are still racing past, but I should be home before anyone stops to ask me what I’m doing. I am totally out of here!
There are a couple sheets of clean paper wrapped around some antique, old-timey parchment kind of thing.
I can barely read the parchment, plus it’s about to fall apart in my hands. So, I try the clean paper first. It’s a letter from Tom. I frantically start reading. Good grief, how long is this thing?
Young Stonewall,
The Book has granted me several years’ time to write this letter, but I feel you will have only a few minutes to read it, so I will come directly to the point.
You call this directly? I need some help here, dude!
By now you must realize that you are indeed in 1861 at the real Battle of Bull Run.
No duh!
And you may have even run into me already. I regret that I wasn’t more friendly to you . . .
More friendly? You weren’t any friendly!
. . . but I had no way of knowing your importance to me and to the proper course of history.
Importance? I’d really rather not be important if you don’t mind. I’d much rather know how to get the heck out of here.
You may be wondering why I’ve placed such a burden on you, but you must understand that I did not choose you. That you simply are the person who will have attempted these things. And I place all my faith and hope in your success. I know that you believe, as I do, that there are things in the present worth fighting for in the past.
Fighting in the past for the present? What? Did I mention that I’d rather get the heck out of here?
Let me explain what I know of the situation, or at least what I think will happen. I believe that another time traveler, the Weapon Wielder, is in 1861 with you now and I am almost certain that it is Senator Dupree.
Well, Tom got that one right. But what’s this Weapon Wielder business? Everybody here wields a weapon.
He’s a hateful, evil man and, if he has the Weapon, he’s a very dangerous man. I think he may have killed to get the Weapon and he’ll very likely kill you if you try to interfere with him.
I have a really bad feeling about what the next sentence is going to say. I’m really worried it will say, “but interfere you must.” I flip the page over and keep reading . . .
But interfere you must! I fear he plans to use the Weapon to alter the course of history. To help the South win the war. Yes, the South, the very side I fought for, but which I now know to have been very much in the wrong. Now I understand the extraordinary injustice of slavery and the countless contributions that African Americans as a free people have made to . . .
Well, it’s good to know he’s seen the light, but right now I need some actual help. I skim ahead looking for something about the bugle . . .
Like your bugle, which is known as the Instrument, the Weapon allows Dupree, or whoever might possess it, to travel into and out of the past. These two items are devices called Tempests, used for making changes in the time stream. Where they came from I cannot say. Whether science or magic I cannot say. Most of what I know comes from the Instructions, which I hereby pass on to you. It may be difficult for you to understand them at first.
I unfold the old-timey-looking paper. These are supposed to be instructions?
Difficult to understand? Try impossible! I mean, what the heck? Lines and hammers and jibber jabber all over a raggedy piece of paper. Good God, does that say Ben Franklin? How did he get mixed up in all this? What’s the deal with his handwriting? Oh here’s a piece I can read:
The Instrument, the weakest of the Tempests . . .
Oh great. That’s just freaking great! How did I get the weakest one?
The Instrument, the weakest of the Tempests, and the Weapon will be useful in traveling to the past, but note that they cannot take one into his own future nor can they be used to bring someone forward from the past since that person would be traveling into their own future though it be only the user’s present.
Fine, fine. I don’t need to carry anyone forward, I just need to get my own butt forward before I get shot in it like Cyrus. Why don’t these instructions explain why this piece of crap bugle isn’t working anymore? Oh wait . . .
Mind ye well that the Instrument can only carry the user between certain time junctures, severely limiting its usefulness when compared with the Weapon. Without proper precautions, the Instrument Carrier may find himself stranded in time a’waiting the next time juncture.
Well, these instructions suck. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:a. Dupree, an evil history-changing wacko has his own time bazooka.
b. Me,
a wimp, has his very own wussy magic bugle.
c. I’m stuck here until the next time juncture, whatever or whenever that is.
d. These instructions suck.
I’ve about given up, but I look back over Tom’s letter in case I missed something useful.
Yes, Stonewall, I fear for history itself. I fear for every gain our nation has made since the Civil War. I fear that Dupree will craft a new history, one where the slaves are never freed, where the Union is dissolved, where what’s left of the United States is not powerful enough to stop Hitler. Where Martin Luther King never . . .
Holy crap! How exactly did I get mixed up in all this again? How does Tom expect me to do anything about all this? Is he not aware that I’m just a loser who can’t even win at a PlayStation game without a cheat code?
What in the name of all that’s holy am I going to do?
“Stonewall?” I hear a girl’s voice call out.
It’s so impossible that it must be my imagination. But I turn around anyway and there she is.
“Oh my God, I’m so glad to see you,” Ash says at the same time that I say, “What are you doing here?”
“This is real, right?” she asks. “We’re really here in the . . .” She looks around and whispers, “ . . . the real Civil War.”
Her curly brown hair is all messed up and it’s tough to tell what’s dirt and what’s freckles on her face. But her eyes are as big and beautiful as ever—maybe even more beautiful after all the terrible stuff I’ve seen today.
I reach out to hug her . . . and see that she’s got blood on her dress.
“You’ve been shot!” I almost scream.
She looks down. “No, no, no. I’ve just been treating the wounded.”
“Really? You know how?”
She shrugs. “Nursing’s my job at the reenactments.”
“Yeah, but this . . .” I say.
She gives me a brave grin. “Yeah, there’s the blood and all. But it’s no different than you knowing how to blow that bugle or fire that gun.”
That hurts. At least she’s half right.
We take a few steps away from the path, which is starting to get busy with men running back and forth. Actually, they’re running forth and get carried back, if you know what I mean.
“So do you know how to get back?” I ask.
“I was hoping you did.”
“No clue. All I’ve got are a wussy magic bugle and Ben Franklin’s chicken scratch instructions,” I say, showing her the aforementioned chicken scratching. But I can tell I’m just confusing her.
So I tell her what happened to me as quick as I can, and when I’m finished she gives me her story.
Apparently after she left me at the reenactment, she was trying to catch up with her father to get the keys to his pickup because she’d left her nurse’s bag inside.
“But I didn’t mind because I wanted to check up on Dad anyway since he acted awfully funny this morning. He actually gave me a hug good-bye before ‘going off to battle,’ as he put it.”
But when Ash had just about caught up to him, the battle started. Everybody started running, except her father. He bent down and pulled out a tiny gun from an ankle holster. That’s right, a tiny gun. A Weapon.
Ash called him, but there was so much noise he couldn’t hear. She reached out and grabbed his sleeve, and that’s when he fired the gun in the air.
Suddenly, she was here. And so was he.
Yep, Tom was right, I realize; Dupree’s tiny gun must be the Weapon Tempest thing. At least it’s not a time bazooka like I was worried about.
“Couldn’t your father have taken you back?” I ask.
“I guess, if he wasn’t busy acting like a lunatic.” It looks like she’s starting to cry, but I can’t tell if they’re regular tears or mad tears. Probably both.
“When I finally got his attention, I tried to ask him what was going on, but he was furious. He was like, ‘What are you doing here!’ Soldiers were rushing all around us and bumping into us and I was terrified and he was just screaming at me. ‘Can’t you take me back,’ I begged him, but he said he didn’t have time. He told me to run and hide in the rear and he would try to look for me later, like I was absolutely nothing.”
I hardly even know what to say. The best I can do is “Geez.” But then I have an idea.
“Let me try the bugle,” I say. “Maybe it’ll take us home. Then we can figure things out . . .”
I reach out and take her hand. I raise the bugle—cold and clammy—and give a toot. Nothing at all happens.
“I told you it was lame,” I say. “I guess this isn’t one of Ben Franklin’s time junctures. Well, we probably shouldn’t go home without your dad anyway.”
“He can probably take care of himself.”
“That’s not exactly what I mean,” I say. “I’m kind of supposed to stop him.”
“Stop him from what?”
“Well . . .” I wish I had time to think of a better way to explain this.
“You know how your father wishes the South had won? Well . . .”
I hand her Tom’s letter, pointing to the bit about changing history and the slaves and Hitler and all that. I try to cover up the part about him killing someone.
I expect her to say, “No, my dad would never do all that,” which is what I would say.
“Last night, I was telling you how crazy he is,” she says quietly, “but you don’t know half of it. He thinks that if the South had won, everything would be perfect for him and people like him. He wouldn’t have had all his problems . . . wouldn’t have gone to jail . . . would be some kind of powerful man! And the rest of the country would be just the way he wants it too. No rap music, no immigrants, no ‘weirdos.’ Just him and his good old boys running the show.”
She looks up at me. “But even if he wants to change all that, how can he? He’s just a reenactor, not a real soldier.”
“It could be pretty easy, actually,” I said. “Did you ever see Back to the Future? I mean, you can mess up the past without even meaning to. Just think what your father could do on purpose! Especially since he knows so much about the war. He could shoot an important Yankee or block one of the bridges or . . . ”
My mind flashes back to what I saw Dupree doing earlier. “ . . . or he could just tell a couple of officers what the Yankees are planning to do next. And that’s exactly what he was doing when I saw him. Oh crap. It may already be too late.”
“But can’t we undo the things he’s doing?” asked Ash. “Can’t we try to keep history the same?”
I guess this is the time for me to say something heroic. But I’ve never said anything heroic before. I try to remember that thing Tom wrote about fighting in the future for the past or something, but I can’t keep it all straight anymore.
So I give sort of a heroic sigh.
“Uhhhhhhhh. Yeah, I guess that’s why Tom sent me back here.”
“And I can help too,” she says.
She grabs my arm and pulls me back toward the battle.
“C’mon, let’s go back and try to see what he’s up to.”
Whoa! She’s starting to sound a little like Cyrus. Go back? To the battlefield? I spent the whole morning trying to get out!
I’d like to tell her that I prefer not to be bayoneted, shot, or crapped on by any more famous horses.
But she’s got her hand on my arm and I think she could lead me anywhere. Oh yeah, plus it’s a noble cause too. But mostly I think it’s her hand on my arm.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WE STOP at the edge of the woods and look out over the battlefield. There’s a lull in the battle, but of course we know that won’t last long. From here we mostly see the rear of the Confederate lines as soldiers move about, reloading, regrouping, and trying to dodge the occasional artillery shell.
I can see Cyrus. I think I can see Big Jim and Elmer there too. It’s hard to tell from this far away and with so many people in the way.
I point out Cyrus to Ash
and tell her a little about what he and I have been through.
“Great,” she says, “maybe he’ll be able to help us.”
“Well, except for the fact that he’s crazy and a Confederate too,” I say.
“Perfect,” she says. “He may actually be the best thing we’ve got going for us.”
We keep looking and finally Ash spots her father. It looks like he’s giving another one of his speeches, not that far from where Cyrus is.
“He seems to be staying clear of the front line,” I say. “He doesn’t want to get shot either, obviously. It doesn’t look like he’s actually done much yet.”
“Maybe we can just find out what he’s up to and screw it up,” says Ash.
Finally! Something I’m good at. Screwing stuff up. Maybe there is hope after all.
“But,” she adds, “we can’t do much from back here.”
So we make a plan. It’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard of in my life. The part that’s most dumb is the part where I go back to find Cyrus, so he and I can try to get involved in whatever Dupree is doing and mess it up. Meanwhile, Ash is going to hang around in the rear near her father to try to find out what he’s up to by pretending to do nurse-type stuff.
Yeah, I know, I told you it was dumb. But what else were we going to do?
I linger for a minute hoping there’s going to be a big kiss when we separate, but she only gives me a big hug, which is nice too.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” she says.
But I’m already doing something crazy. I’m actually going back to the battlefield to get shot at some more. It was a lot easier to talk about saving the world when we weren’t actually looking at the battle. There are just so many people and they seem to fall over dead almost at random.
I promise myself that I’m going to be careful, keep my head down, and not let Cyrus get me killed.
I step carefully out of the woods, back into the shriek of artillery shells and gunfire. Thankfully, it’s still off and on, nothing as bad as earlier. I take a quick look down the line but I can’t see Cyrus’s red head anymore. I keep low and fall down alongside the other soldiers behind the rise.
Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run Page 6