The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  Nathaniel saw men drop their muskets because they had become too hot from constant firing. They snatched up the Springfields of the dead and wounded and began to use them instead. A bearded giant, his left leg shredded by bullets and a tourniquet tight on his thigh, had a musket under one arm to prop him up and fired another musket at the Rebels. Wounded soldiers ordered into the seminary for treatment balked or pretended to go and then sneaked back without walking through the doors and returned to the barricade. The thin blue line bristled with musket barrels and bayonets and long flashes of orange flame. Firing and shouting encouragement and tying quick tourniquets on soldiers whose wounds were gushing blood, Nathaniel began to believe they could hold out on Seminary Ridge until nightfall and win the day from the Rebel brigades.

  He often thought of Lyndel in the building and glanced over his shoulder frequently, afraid he might see her at a window cracked by a bullet or at an open door splintered by shellfire. Stay back, he would tell her in his head, Stay well clear. He noticed a man with a brass telescope in the cupola once but no woman and for that he was grateful.

  He had dropped to his knees to search for extra cartridges in the pockets and cartridge boxes of the wounded and dead. Shot was slapping repeatedly into the fence rails close to his head, when Levi and Joshua gave a loud shout. He glanced up—they looked like ragmen with all the homemade bandages they had applied to different parts of their bodies. Levi caught Nathaniel’s eye and pointed.

  “The left flank is collapsing! The 1st South Carolina is pouring in even though Biddle’s men are fighting like hornets!”

  Nathaniel jumped up. “Hold! Hold!” He climbed the rail barricade again. “Maintain your line! Keep firing!” Bullets cut past his head but he grabbed an American flag, clambered up on the barricade as high as he could go, and waved it back and forth. “Stay on the barricade! Throw Johnny back! Do not break!”

  But the gray and butternut troops were forcing their way in despite point-blank artillery fire and musket blasts. Attacking Rebels covered the slopes of the ridge, and more were ascending from the valley in long dark lines. Union officers behind him were ordering units to withdraw to Cemetery Ridge or Culp’s Hill through the streets of Gettysburg and to do so as quickly as they could.

  “Fall back!” It was Colonel Williams. “The 19th Indiana will fall back to Culp’s Hill! Quickly, men, before the Chambersburg Pike into Gettysburg is cut off! You’ve stalled the Rebel assault, you’ve bought General Meade and the army all the time they need, now get to the heights and dig in!”

  Nathaniel gathered his platoon and company as bodies swirled around them and muskets continued to bang and flash. He saw that the 7th Wisconsin were not withdrawing immediately and were covering the Iron Brigade’s retreat—turning, firing, marching toward Gettysburg, turning and firing again as hundreds of soldiers streamed past them.

  “We’ll maintain a skirmisher’s line on the 7th’s left flank,” Nathaniel said swiftly. “Pick a target, shoot, turn and march twenty paces, stop and pick a target, shoot. All the way down the ridge and into the town. What does your watch say, Sergeant?”

  Ham pulled it from a pocket and snapped the lid open. “It’s just coming on to 4:30, sir.”

  “The longer we keep at it and slow the Rebs, the more daylight we eat up. Then it gets less and less likely they’ll charge Culp’s Hill or Cemetery Ridge. By tomorrow morning Meade and the army will have secured the heights. Are you with me?”

  Ham nodded. “That’s what we bought the tickets to the dance for. The final waltz with the prettiest gal.”

  The powder-blackened faces with the tall black hats grinned.

  Nathaniel smiled back. “All right. God bless you boys. You’ve fought like lions. We’ll talk again in Gettysburg.”

  “Amen,” said Levi.

  The group of Indiana men went twenty paces, Nathaniel shouting the count, and they aimed, fired, and walked off another twenty. The 7th Wisconsin was marching down the ridge into Gettysburg using their own rhythm—firing to the left, to the right, to the front. Screeching and shooting, the Rebels were coming after them but could never go too fast or get too far before Wisconsin bullets or the volley fire of Nathaniel’s company slammed into them and brought them up short. They couldn’t overwhelm the rearguard action of Union troops so they poured fire into them without letup.

  Men fell in masses on both sides as the sun dropped in the sky, closer and closer to the fields and farms of Gettysburg. Nathaniel recited Psalm 23 to himself as his men fought their way from Seminary Ridge through the late-afternoon light that plated the tall grass, the Lutheran Seminary, the battling soldiers, and the small town in brass. The words of the Bible passage, he realized, made more sense to him in the middle of his men’s desperate fight than they ever had in his life.

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  “One—two—three—four—five—six—”

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

  “Eighteen—nineteen—twenty—”

  He restoreth my soul:

  “Fire! Reload as we march!”

  He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

  “Seven—eight—nine—ten—”

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:

  “Lieutenant, Nip is down, Lazarus is down!”

  For thou art with me;

  “Nineteen—twenty—turn, aim, fire!”

  Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  “Reload as we march! One—two—three—four—”

  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:

  “Joshua is down! Joshua is down, sir!”

  Thou anointest my head with oil;

  “Eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—”

  My cup runneth over.

  “Fire!”

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

  “Levi!”

  And I will dwell in the house of the Lord.

  “Fifteen—sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—”

  For ever.

  When the shot hit him he thought he had been kicked by one of the Wisconsin officers’ horses. He was spun in a full circle and thrown to the ground. Grass and dirt was jammed into his mouth and under his fingernails. He heard a sharp blast of volley fire. When the world stopped moving he stopped moving too. A monarch butterfly lighted on his arm and stayed there for an hour, unafraid, before making its way across Seminary Ridge to a cluster of wild roses.

  28

  The heavens opened and rain pounded like hammers on the canvas of the hospital tent. Hiram came riding up, his coat drenched, his hair plastered to his skull. He jumped off his horse and ran in.

  “Davey! Lyndel!” He looked at them and looked at the doctors. “Lee is retreating! His troops have already withdrawn from the town and from Seminary Ridge!”

  Lyndel put down the sponge she was using to clean a leg wound. “Are you certain?”

  “I thought it was only a rumor and went to check for myself. They’re leaving. Wagons with the wounded are at the front.”

  “All the wounded?”

  “No. The townsfolk say the most severe cases have been left behind. And there is more news. General Grant is on the verge of capturing Vicksburg. It could have already surrendered.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I cabled my newspaper after I rode into town. They told me that dispatches had arrived that were dated July first. The word then was that the Confederate commander knew he could not fight his way free of the siege and would seek surrender terms. I would not be surprised if Vicksburg had surrendered by now, but we won’t know for sure until the next steamer shows up in Washington with more dispatches.”

  “I’ve lost all track of time in here. Is it Saturday or Sunday? What is the hour?”

  “Today is Saturday, July fourth, Lyndel. Independence Day. It�
�s well after seven in the evening.”

  Lyndel threw a cape over her shoulders. “Doctor, may I take an ambulance?”

  A nearby physician lifted his head from a Rebel corporal’s shattered chest. “Go ahead, Mrs. King. Bring in all you can. Please stop by and see how the doctors are faring at the Lutheran Seminary.”

  “I will, sir. Davey, are you coming?”

  Morganne was drying her hands on her apron. “Yes, of course.”

  “Mrs. King.”

  Lyndel stopped as she was about to leave the tent. “What is it, Doctor?”

  “I hope you find your husband.”

  She nodded and put up the hood of her cape. “Thank you.”

  Hiram drove. Lyndel looked at the thousands of bodies as they rounded the back of Cemetery Ridge into the open. She had seen so much horror and killing that she thought she was past feeling anything, but the sight of so many dead in rain-black butternut and gray made her ill. She seized Morganne’s hand.

  “Too much…it’s too much,” she said.

  Morganne put an arm around her. “I’m sorry.”

  Hiram flicked the reins. “George Pickett’s disastrous charge yesterday afternoon. Terrible.” He glanced at the two women. “You realize that with Vicksburg’s fall and Lee’s defeat here it changes everything about the war?”

  The storm lashed the gray and green ridges and fields. The whole dark sky seemed to be sliding to earth. Horses lay dead beside the soldiers. Lyndel scanned the men they went by for signs of life. Most appeared beyond help, their heads and limbs shot open or crushed. Then an officer rolled painfully over onto his back and opened his mouth to try to take in some drops of rain.

  “Stop!” cried Lyndel. “Hiram, stop the ambulance!”

  “But Nathaniel would be near Seminary Ridge.”

  “There is a wounded man alive right here.”

  She climbed down and ran to the man, who was choking on the rainwater. Lifting his head she helped him get his breath back before placing a canteen to his mouth.

  “Drink this, Major.”

  “Thank you…God bless you…thank you.” His eyes were swollen shut and oozing blood. “Can’t see…can’t see you…”

  Morganne knelt by them. “You’ve been blinded.”

  “A shell knocked me down.”

  “It could be fragments, sir. A doctor might be able to get some of them out. We’re getting you to a hospital.”

  “Thank you…thank you.” His hand groped for Lyndel’s hand. “I prayed someone would come for me.”

  Lyndel wiped his face with a cloth. “Can you walk, Major? There is an ambulance just here.” As she cleaned away the last of the blood and dirt her hand stopped. “You’re Nehemiah Hargrove.”

  He clutched her arm. “How did you know that?…Who are you?”

  Morganne saw the look on Lyndel’s face. “What is the matter?”

  “He caught two men on our farm. Charlie Preston and Moses Gunnison. He lynched the one and forced the other back into slavery.”

  “You…you know about Charlie and Moses? You were on that farm?” He shrieked. “Have mercy! Don’t leave me here! I want to see again! I’m sorry! I been baptized since!”

  Lyndel stared down at him. Her husband was out in the same brutal rain somewhere. If he was not beyond help—no, she refused to think about that yet—he had been lying on the battlefield for three days. Why was she wasting time here when she needed to be saving him? She detested Hargrove and all he stood for and wished she had never asked Hiram to halt the wagon.

  “For the love of God…for the love of Jesus…”

  Lyndel bent and put one of his arms over her shoulder. “Can you stand up?”

  “Yes, bless you…yes, I believe I can…”

  Morganne got his other arm and they helped him to his feet. He staggered the few steps to the ambulance and crawled into the back. Lyndel sat down next to Hiram.

  “He needs someone to look at his eyes,” she said. “The sooner the better.”

  “The seminary is on our way.”

  “It’s much shorter if we go back.”

  “Lyndel, your husband is out there.”

  She exploded into tears. “I know he’s out there! I know he could be just barely hanging onto life! But we need to help this man! It’s the road to Jericho and we need to help this man! Turn around!”

  Lyndel gripped her hands together as they returned to the field hospital behind Cemetery Ridge. She stared straight ahead as Union soldiers helped Nehemiah Hargrove out of the ambulance and into the tent. When Hiram drove the wagon back to the battleground she shook her head.

  “Why am I even bothering? I can’t save anyone! I can’t even save the man I love most! Look at the bodies! How many of them are wounded? There’s only a handful of us! It’s hopeless!”

  “We save who we can,” Morganne said softly.

  “That’s right. I rescue a slave driver while my husband dies! How wonderful is that?”

  Hiram moved the wagon forward. “We’re going to Seminary Ridge.”

  “Don’t bother,” Lyndel groaned. “It’s been three days. None of his platoon made it to Culp’s Hill. I have been praying day and night for a miracle…what sort of miracle do I expect? That I can still recognize his face and body after three days in the hot sun? Stay here, Hiram. The wounded from Pickett’s charge have a better chance of surviving. Stop the ambulance.”

  “We’re going to Seminary Ridge.”

  She struck him with her fists. “No! No! I don’t want to see his body! Don’t take me there!”

  Morganne grabbed Lyndel’s hands. “He could be alive.”

  “Not after all this time!”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I do know. We both know. You’re just trying to be kind—”

  “What is that line of wagons?” Hiram interrupted. “It’s not the army.”

  The wagons were traveling the same track they were, the Emmitsburg Road, except they were coming from Gettysburg and heading toward them. Some were carriages. The sort of carriages Lyndel knew well.

  How can this be?

  “What is the matter?” asked Morganne as Lyndel strained forward to get a better look.

  “I think…that man…in the first carriage…”

  Suddenly she leaped from the ambulance, stumbled, fell, picked herself up, and ran through the mud and pools of water and the jagged streams of rain. “Papa! Papa!”

  The driver of the first carriage reined in, applied the brake, and jumped down into the road. Lyndel threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek again and again. Hiram and Morganne saw that he began to weep as he held Lyndel in his arms.

  “My girl—I feared you might have come to harm in the fighting—”

  “What are you doing here? Who is with you?”

  “Abraham Yoder is here. Adam King is here. Some of the women also came. Your mother is with the children but she sends her love and her prayers.”

  “But why? You said you would never come to a battlefield.”

  Her father’s face was covered with rain. “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me…Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” He placed his hand on her cheek. “We have come to bind up the wounds. The army let us through. Now tell us where to begin.”

  “Oh Papa, there are so many wounded everywhere. And I can’t find him. I can’t find Nathaniel. I can’t find Levi. Or Joshua.”

  “Then we will make a start right here. I will tell our people to find the living and bind their wounds. Where is it they can take the soldiers after they have tended to them?”

  Lyndel pointed. “Do you see that
brick building on the ridge, Father? It’s a seminary. There are surgeons inside taking care of the wounded.”

  “Gut.”

  The men and women from the Amish church near Elizabethtown began to fan out over the slope of Cemetery Ridge, the women kneeling in their dresses, aprons, capes, and kapps, rolls of white cotton in their hands along with Canada wild ginger leaves for poultices, while the men began to carry wounded to the carriages and wagons and carts. Lyndel watched them a moment, feeling a love for them she had suppressed for a long time because of the shunning. Her father put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Daughter, I and Mr. King and Pastor Yoder should like to help you find Nathaniel. Do you know if—” He stopped and took a breath. “Do you know if…Levi…and Joshua would have fallen in the same place as him?”

  Shops and houses in Gettysburg were full of Union and Confederate wounded but they couldn’t find the young Amish men there. The Lutheran Seminary was also full of men in pain. The blood left her father’s face as he stood in the hall and saw the soldiers twisting and turning in agony on the floor. But Nathaniel wasn’t there nor Levi or Joshua either. Nor any of the platoon. The barricade had long since been emptied of its wounded and only the dead lay quietly in the rain. They began to search the grounds but the grass too only held dead men. The light faded as they walked over Seminary Ridge. Now and then they passed horses, still saddled, standing alone with their backs to the storm.

  “Someone should take care of them,” Abraham Yoder said.

  “They will,” Lyndel responded.

  “They are so attached to humans. So loyal to their masters.” He pointed. “Do you see how that one will not leave her dead rider?”

  Lyndel looked at the black mare in the downpour, its reins trailing on the ground, its head bent, now and then cropping grass, pausing to nuzzle the face of a soldier who lay unmoving. She watched for several moments. Then raced over the grass calling out to God and causing the horse to rear and skitter sideways.

  “Nathaniel! Nathaniel!”

  He didn’t open his eyes but he managed a whisper. “I knew…my nurse would come…I hung on for my nurse…”