ALL NIGHT WE are pelted with warm needle-sharp rain. Horses hunched and huddled in a stormy field never felt so miserable and I get to cursing myself for leaving my rubber-backed canvas by the side of the road, way back when we started marching. The kepis the Army gave us don’t hardly have a brim and they don’t do a thing to keep the rain out of our faces or from going down our collars. I am soaked through to the skin before it is even close to morning. Sometimes I drop off to sleep for a bit, leaning on Jeremiah’s shoulder, only to jerk awake as often as a horse twitches at flies. But mostly we are awake and staring, nervous for Rebels to come out of the weather.
At first light Sergeant comes along our row of graves. He crouches down next to Thomas Stakely before moving on past. Thomas crawls to where Ambrose is hunched at the next headstone and that is how Sergeant’s orders to march come whispering from mouth to mouth down the line. Will brings the orders to us.
‘The enemy is moving, looking for another way across. We’re marching off to some ford, to keep them getting through,’ he says, and pats Jeremiah on the shoulder, sending him past me, crawling to the next grave, where the O’Malleys wait.
‘You ready?’ Will whispers to me once Jeremiah is gone.
‘Course,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll almost be a relief, leaving here.’
‘Sully says we might see some real action today. You think you might say a prayer with me?’ Will asks.
‘I don’t mind praying,’ I say, and the words are barely out of my mouth before Will takes up my hand in his clammy one.
‘Dear Lord, give us the strength,’ Will says. ‘Give unto us your whole armor, that you may help us withstand the evil day. Hide us under your shield of protection, that our enemy will not find us. Amen.’ He squeezes my hand before opening his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and crawls off the way he came, and I wonder if his prayer made a lick of difference.
‘What’s Will want with you all the time?’ Jeremiah asks when he scuttles back from telling Henry the orders.
‘We were just praying,’ I say. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘No,’ Jeremiah says. ‘I don’t like him taking such an interest, is all.’
‘He ain’t taking interest. He’s just lonesome and looking for a friend. You got something against me having friends?’
Jeremiah shakes his head, and I wonder what he is about until Sergeant comes before us.
‘We’ve gotten word from Brigadier General Ricketts, down from General McDowell himself, that our Division is to stop the Confederates from finding another way across the river,’ Sergeant says, sweat dripping down the lines in his face, the day so humid already after the Summer storm.
‘We’ve got Rebels hitting us with shells right over there!’ Sully says, loud enough for Sergeant to hear, but it don’t do no good.
We march off quiet, if hundreds of men can be quiet. There ain’t no singing, no wandering in our lines, nothing except the clinking of bayonets on canteens, boots tramping through reddish mud that splatters on our wet trousers, nothing except the way-off sounds of cannonball blasts echoing everywhere. Dying ain’t never felt so real before, and I ain’t ready, not like I told Will. I march closer to Jeremiah. He turns to look at me and gives me something like a smile, something meant to make me feel better, I think, but it don’t.
WE ARE STILL tramping on the turnpike four days later, our orders having blown us about like a weathervane, sending us every which way trying to find the Rebels. Now we are marching away from the river, headed for a gap in the mountains. Will swings his pack around to the front and digs through it. He don’t look around while he pulls out his deck of cards. He holds them in his hand and looks down at them, his lips moving. Will has been wearing his serious face all the time since we started marching, but he looks almost relaxed as he drops those cards into the grass alongside the road.
‘What’d you do that for?’ I ask him.
He gawks at me. ‘Do what?’
‘Your cards. You dropped them.’
‘I left them back there,’ he says, and the boys’ attention snaps to him, like a bunch of hens all seeing the same bug at once.
‘You dropped your cards?’ Henry asks, turning to us.
‘I did,’ Will says, and straightens himself like boys do sometimes before a fight.
‘What for?’ Jimmy asks.
Will says, ‘I’m not dying with gambling on my head.’
‘You ain’t playing poker no more?’ I ask.
‘Why didn’t you give one of us those cards?’ Henry tries not to yell.
‘It’s a sin,’ Will says.
‘What’s a sin,’ Sully says, ‘is keeping us from the one enjoyment we’ve got. Now how are we going to entertain ourselves?’