Shades of Gray: A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia

by Jessica James

  The war monster is hungry, she thought to herself. But they have decided to skip breakfast.

  Running, sliding and tumbling down the incline, she mounted Justus, hoping beyond hope that she may be in time to stop the feast. Even with Justus at a gallop, she fancied she heard the rumble of the great army and likened it in her mind to the growl of a mighty stomach. She knew this monster’s appetite and determination, could picture it in its tens of thousands of unwavering eyes. This was a monster insensible to fear and numb to death. And it was apparently intent on destruction.

  From a distant place to the south Andrea began to hear gunfire, a light spattering at first, but growing more intense as daylight began spreading. She looked back in the direction of the Confederate army. She had to hurry.

  * * *

  “Pardon me, sirs, there’s a scout outside. Sinclair, I think he said his name was, to see you.”

  In the midst of a conversation with another officer, General Jonathan Jordan stopped in mid-sentence and stared. “Did you say Sinclair?”

  “Send him in,” General Bowden, said gruffly. “I need to hear what he has.”

  When Andrea entered, a breathless moment passed as her eyes met J.J.’s from beneath the broad-rimmed hat. He took a step toward her in jubilant surprise, but she remained all business. “Sir, I have the honor to report—” She spoke nonchalantly as if returning after a lapse of three days, not more than a year.

  “Well, go on with it,” General Bowden snapped.

  “If that’s you I hear skirmishing to the south, it’s just a feint.” Andrea nodded toward the sound of gunfire. “The main body is on the move to flank you. And they’re preparing for business.”

  The generals looked at each other. They had been discussing the enemy’s movements and this is exactly what they both suspected and feared. “Chrissakes,” Bowden said. “Take this to Colonel Scott. Do you know where he is?”

  Andrea looked at him blankly and he pointed at the map. “He’s here!” His finger hit the table violently. “Tell him to move up to Colonel Smith’s right flank, holding Lawson in reserve. Do you understand? See that it is done forthwith. And tell him I said to proceed without delay and without counting the probable cost.”

  “Yes, sir.” Andrea turned to leave.

  “Wait!” J.J. held up his hand. “He’s not a regular scout, sir.” He looked from Andrea to General Bowden with a look of grave concern. “And Colonel Scott is directly in the enemy’s first line of fire.”

  Andrea stopped and turned. “I understand, General Jordan, and I am willing.”

  Her eyes seemed morose and remote and fearless. The combination made J.J. cringe. She turned to go back outside and he followed her onto the porch. “Land’s sakes, Andrea, it’s good to see you! I received word you were safe with friends, but still I—”

  Andrea’s gaze jerked up to meet his. “Received word?”

  “Yes. I was wounded,” he said, regarding the look on her face intently, “and received a message while recovering. I assumed you knew.” J.J. watched her gaze shift to a place over his shoulder without commenting one way or the other. “You were safe with friends, were you not?”

  Andrea came out of her trance and glanced up at him. “There’s a fine line between friends and enemies,” she murmured.

  “Andrea.” He took a hesitant step toward her, then grabbed both her arms and shook her. “Haven’t you given enough?”

  She looked back at him defiantly. He had her attention now. “Hasn’t everyone?”

  J.J. sighed and shook his head. “Report to me upon your return,” he said, knowing it was useless to argue and dangerous to delay. Nothing he could do or say would change her mind once it was set. That much, he saw, had obviously not changed.

  Andrea turned to leave, an expression of grit and determination evident in her mournful eyes.

  “Sinclair.”

  “Yes, sir?” She turned back to face him.

  Grabbing her arm, J.J. swept her to him in a manly bear hug. “It’s good to have you back.” He felt Andrea swallow hard against him, revealing the depth of emotion she tried to suppress. “We’ll talk when you return. Really talk.”

  Andrea nodded against him, though he sensed she wanted nothing more than to lay her head on his shoulder and cry. He let her go and walked back into the house, listening to the sound of hoofbeats fade in the distance. “Godspeed,” he muttered.

  * * *

  Andrea’s heart throbbed in wild anticipation. Destiny had set her on a perilous journey, and she could barely control the excitement that flowed through her veins. All around her men galloped hastily to and fro, rushing to obey orders shouted at them by officers, and hurrying to make final preparations for the impending conflict.

  Having found and reported to Colonel Scott, she was on her way back to headquarters by a remote path when a spattering in the trees above her made Justus shy to the right. Andrea looked up at the limbs, expecting to see a flock of birds flying away. Instead, she saw small branches and leaves plunging down, mixed with the lead that had caused their descent.

  Moving her eyes to the left, she stared with unrestrained awe at the sight of men and horses, followed by flying caissons and cannons, seeming to appear out of nowhere on the brow of a hill. She felt the hair rise on the back of her neck in response to the sinister apparition of evil that seemed to materialize out of the solid green earth right before her eyes.

  Spurring Justus cruelly, Andrea struck back to Scott’s command to inform him of the proximity of the enemy. Already the far right was skirmishing, and she knew chances were good they would be hotly engaged all along the line in the not-too-distant future.

  Calm, but breathing hard from the exertion, she was in the midst of detailing what she had seen, when suddenly utter silence prevailed. Andrea stopped talking and gazed out at the horizon. Both she and Scott tensed and held their breath as if expecting something of significance to begin. Their expectations were realized in a matter of moments. Ear-splitting detonations that defied description began, and the eruptions that followed made it appear the earth itself had begun spitting fire.

  “Find Colonel Lawson,” Scott screamed above the fury. “Tell him to move up and protect my right! Then go to Murphy. Tell him to send reinforcements at the earliest possible instant and by every available means!”

  Andrea nodded and wheeled Justus around, knowing the order would take her through the midst of the fighting. She guided her mount through seemingly impassable obstacles to where she hoped Lawson was being held in reserve. The sound of battle, already deafening, continued to swell like a colossal gale gathering strength.

  An angry crackle of carbines to her left warned her she was getting close to some action, and the ensuing cloak of smoke alerted her to its intensity. Soon, to her right, more noise erupted as Federal cannons moved into place and began to talk back. The fighting began to spread and seemed to exist everywhere. Missiles of every conceivable type and every imaginable size came hurling from out of the sky, wreaking havoc on anything and everything in their path.

  Andrea thought the storm could get no worse, but when she got to the crown of a small rise, the tempest burst with all its fury. Not knowing which way to turn, she pulled Justus to a stop and found herself within a sea of smoke.

  Pushing him back into a gallop, she watched a wave of gray crest a hill of green to face a wall of blue. Her eyes, seeming of their own accord, lifted to the hills far beyond that flashed with small puffs of smoke. Almost instantly, entire lines of men disappeared. She found herself in a surreal storm of whirling hot lead so loud and brilliant it seemed to her the world was falling apart.

  Not fifty feet away a horse bounded by with only the bottom half of a man upon its back. Nearby walked a steed with its entrails dragging out behind. Slaughtered beasts and butchered men, many with their vital current pulsing out in throbbing streams, lay suffering all around.

  Just moments earlier, the land before her had been the picture of peaceful
Virginia farmland. Now, death bloomed like a hell-spawned crop on every foot of soil. The scene affected Justus, too. Trembling in terror beneath her, he stared crazily at the ground, sniffing the sulfur smoke and the scent of blood, reluctant to move forward, yet afraid to stand still. He stepped on something that made a squishing noise, and Andrea gagged when she looked down to see what it was. She did not look down again.

  Yet what she saw when she looked up was not much better. The smoke lifted, revealing a column of Union troops directly in front of her—a living, breathing mass of men plunging toward their formidable foe. Andrea lifted her gaze toward their destination on the opposite hill, where the muzzles of a dozen cannons glowered from the heights. It took a moment for her brain to grasp the surreal scene unfolding. Her mind could barely comprehend the horror about to ensue as the cannons prepared to eat everything in her midst alive.

  Even then she did not have time to feel fear or contemplate flight. She watched small puffs of smoke rise from the gaping mouths of the massive instruments of death and thought how they appeared like smoke rings from a peace pipe against the blue of the sky.

  But their effect was anything but peaceful. A dreadful roar reached her ears as the earth trembled beneath her—and hell exploded in her face. The unleashed fury that fell upon her was like nothing she had ever known or could imagine. All of the thunderstorms and all the lightning she had ever seen thrown together could not compare with the storm roaring around her.

  Justus, startled by the thunderous clamor, reared high in the air, throwing Andrea backward and off balance. She heard an appalling thud, a loud crack, the sound of iron consuming flesh and bone. Leaning forward, she grabbed erratically for a handful of mane to regain her balance, but there was no mane to grab. There was no horse beneath her. The strong, well-muscled animal between her legs had dissolved. Disappeared. He was gone.

  She hit the ground with a thud so loud it continued to echo in her ears for some moments after. Reaching up tentatively to feel her skull, Andrea envisioned that it had splintered into any number of fragmented pieces, like the vase Victoria had thrown at her at Hawthorne.

  She felt a sinking sensation, dizzy and faint, a numb darkness, as she attempted to regain her senses. Remembering Justus, she struggled to her knees, choking and gasping for air, trying to clear her mind of the fog enveloping it. The roar and the thunder that, minutes earlier had seemed so loud, now sounded faint and detached, like the battle was far away, coming to her from a distance of miles or years. Yet she could feel the earth beneath her fingers trembling with the great ferocity of the fight.

  Crawling through the smoke that hovered above the ground, Andrea moved in the direction she thought her horse should be standing. “Justus,” she cried, half expecting him to run to her through the clamor of battle. She blinked against the red haze that filled her eyes and spit blood from her mouth as she struggled and clawed and groped through the tempest of death in desperation. “Justus!”

  It seemed to Andrea that she had been dropped into the very depths of Hell. She could no longer distinguish anything in the thick, gray canopy that settled over her. Closing her eyes against the stinging sulfuric smoke, she continued edging across the ground. Her fingers finally touched something wet, something soft and warm. She stopped and lifted her head. There in the dim, shadowy haze of battle, she saw the dark mound of her horse, or the pile of quivering flesh that remained, lying in a growing pool of coagulating red fluid.

  If not for the roar of battle that already filled the air, her blood-curdling scream of pain and despair would have been enough to pierce even the most war-calloused heart. But no one heard and no one cared, so she crawled beside what was left of her beloved companion and prayed for a similar fate.

  Chapter 55

  “Then I with flowing tears,

  Allowed my doubts to rise,

  “Is there a God that sees and hears

  The things below the skies?”

  – Psalms 73:6

  When Andrea opened her eyes again, it was to a scene of heart-wrenching destruction. Moving nothing but her eyes, she scanned the field and took in the scene of massive carnage. Mutilated and disfigured horses lay everywhere, while wisps of smoke hung motionless in the air over the field of battle.

  Andrea lay still, staring at the leaden sky above. Ignoring her aching muscles, she moved her fingers and then her hands. Though her stiff, bloodstained clothes made moving difficult, she finally brought herself to a sitting position.

  “Sinclair? That you?” The voice sounded incredulous.

  Andrea looked up to see her old friend Jasper from J.J.’s command. Leaning upon him was a Union officer she did not know. Both faces were black from smoke.

  “Boonie’s down yonder.” The soldier pointed down the hill as he half-helped, half-carried the man toward a row of ambulances. “I’d be much obliged if you could take him some water.”

  Andrea stood unsteadily, and then searched aimlessly for her friend. It never really occurred to her to look down, down in the dirt where so many others lay. But then, at last, by chance, she saw him.

  “Boonie?” She dropped to the ground on her knees.

  He looked up, pain written across his usually smiling face. “Sinclair? That … you?”

  Andrea felt the crusted blood on her face when she tried to smile and realized she must be hard to recognize. She lowered her gaze to Boonie’s chest, to a wound from which warm blood still flowed.

  “You … go on, Sinclair,” Boonie whispered, his lips barely moving. “I’ll catch up.” He paused and sucked in some air, kind of gurgling as he did.

  “I’m not leaving, Boonie.” Andrea bent down still lower beside him with a choking mixture of hope and dread.

  “Where? Where … you come from?” he asked after a few moments silence.

  “We’ll talk later.” Andrea tried to sound cheerful as she attempted to stem the bleeding. But when she put her handkerchief under his shirt, her hand fell into a horrible hole.

  “Rumor had it … you was caught by … Hunter.” Boonie opened his eyes and stared at her. “How’d you … get away?”

  The way Andrea grimaced was apparently not lost on the injured man. “Betcha found out he weren’t such a bad guy.” Boonie paused and sucked some more air into his lungs. “Betcha if I got to know the guy who put this hole in me, I wouldn’t think he was such a bad guy neither.”

  “Don’t talk, Boonie.” Andrea blinked back tears she did not want to shed.

  Boonie fell silent, but only for a moment. “We had some good times … I wish—” His voice sounded weak.

  “I wish it wasn’t always the best blood that gets spilled.” Andrea rolled up an old coat to put under his head, while putting pressure on the gaping hole with one hand. His eyes fluttered open and met hers with a look of appreciation and understanding.

  “Damn it, Boonie.” Tears stung her eyes as she tried desperately to stop the flow of life that gushed from him. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t go gettin’ soft on me now, boy.” He moved his fingers in the pool of red beside him as if suddenly aware how swiftly the precious fluid was draining from him. “Don’t leave me here, Sinclair.”

  Andrea swallowed hard. “I won’t, Private Boone. I won’t.”

  He nodded slightly in recognition that he had heard her, but did not re-open his eyes. “It’s Lieutenant,” he said after a few moments rest. “Lieutenant Boone.”

  Pride swelled in Andrea at the announcement. Yet congratulations seemed so out of place when she was attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep his lifeblood from flowing through her fingers. “Are you in pain?”

  Boonie shook his head, but his teeth began chattering slightly. “Just c-c-o-l-d …”

  Andrea removed her coat and laid it across him, then knelt down close to his ear. “Boonie, I never told you how much I admire you.” She felt the slightest squeeze from the hand she held, but that was all.

  “I’m … not … afraid,” he whispered, gurg
ling again. “Tell … my … mother.” Andrea squeezed his hand firmly. “I’ll tell her …” She closed her eyes and bowed her head without finishing.

  He coughed deeply and Andrea wiped the scarlet fluid from his lips with the edge of her coat. “Sinclair … I want you … to know.” His breathing grew more sporadic and shallow.

  “Don’t talk, Boonie. And don’t worry. Best friends know everything.”

  Yea,” he whispered so faintly she could barely hear. “Best friends know everything.”

  He lay quiet then, his face pale. His coughing had aggravated the wound, causing the blood to flow even faster. Andrea tried in vain to catch the precious fluid, tried in vain to return it to its rightful place. She pushed it back toward the hole by the fistful, but it would not go in, would only come out, bubbling and gushing between her fingers. “Oh, Boonie!”

  He looked up once more, a mute appeal filling his eyes even though he could no longer speak. That’s when Andrea stopped trying to stop the blood. Instead she contented herself with stroking his hair and speaking bravely to him, easing his passing as best she could. Within minutes, she raised her head and gazed statue-like over the field of battle, knowing her friend’s spirit now floated above—up there where his eyes vacantly stared.

  Andrea looked down to the spot where the soil had drunk the last life drop from his bleeding breast. She stared disbelievingly at her own hands soaked in sticky humanity, then gazed up at the sun. Sinking behind crimson clouds, it appeared to be fleeing into its own sea of blood. The sight caused her to shudder, then shake uncontrollably. A scream rose up from the deepest recesses of her heart. “W-h-h-y-y???”

  She pounded the ground by Boonie’s corpse in a delirious rage, though it was not because he had died. “Please,” she beseeched with her cheek against the blood-soaked dirt, “take … M-E-E!”

  * * *

  Andrea awoke to the drone of a low, moaning wind that sounded almost human. She turned her head side to side in an effort to stop the noise, then realized it was coming from her own throat.