‘We’ll be fine,’ he says.
And that is what I tell myself over and over, letting my mouth move with the words so it somehow seems like they are more real. The air all around is hot and tight with nerves and excitement and everyone is hushed, listening and looking for what’s to come, wondering how many Confederates are behind the soldiers making up the picket line stretched across the woods, how big that Brigade is.
Way across that hayfield, a horseman looks down on us from a rounded grassy hill ahead, a dark shape moving just at the edge of the trees. When he comes out into the sun, he is wearing a gray coat and a gray brimmed hat.
I suck in a breath and hear Will beside me murmur, ‘That’s Rebel cavalry!’
‘Thomas! Is that your goddamned Stonewall Jackson?’ Hiram yells ahead.
‘Naw,’ Edward says. ‘I’ve seen pictures in the papers. Jackson don’t wear a stag hat like that.’
Then an officer from one of the Regiments in our column gallops across that hayfield toward the Confederates. Everyone goes quiet watching as he brings those Rebels’ attention to himself.
He don’t hardly get to the top of the knoll before white smoke puffs up out of the trees by that farmhouse and then shells hail down on us. The earth heaves and smoke swirls into the air.
We are out in the open, plain as day on the road. The men in front of me keep moving, the lines staying true somehow. I clutch my rifle tighter, hunch my shoulders, and follow.
Another shell blast sounds. Dirt and grass shower down over us and then a shell explodes right in the ranks of the Regiment ahead of us. It is more than dirt that flies up this time and everywhere turns to screaming, everything happening at once.
A space clears and two boys lie there, twisted and tangled like no man in life, one’s foot still twitching, both of them looking young enough to be boys from home, their blood already soaking into the dust. And then there are more shells, pounding down after Captain Chalmers and Colonel Wheelock as they kick their horses into a race off the road and across another field, away from the artillery fire, headed for an apple orchard, leaving us there in the road.
All around me our Regiment is like a line of ants gone to swarming. I stand there, staring, until a hand yanks on my arm. It is Jeremiah and he is yelling something, but I can’t hear it for all the noise and there is someone pushing me from behind and I am swept along too.
Jeremiah drags me down to my belly beside him in the grass along the turnpike. Boys fall to the ground around us, getting down flat and taking cover.
‘What were you doing standing there?’ Jeremiah yells.
I don’t have no answer.
Galloping horses clatter, bringing cannons and caissons up the turnpike. One team of horses stops near us, the shine of sweat darkening their necks and their heaving flanks, the pink flashing of their nostrils flaring, their tails clamped. The riders jump off the lead horses and unlimber the cannons faster than Papa ever unhitched a horse in his life. When those horses have been trotted away to safety, the cannoneers aim their pieces at that hill, thundering shells down on the farmhouse there, covering our Pennsylvania Regiment as they move out into the grass. There is so much noise, shells tearing up the hayfields, rifles scaring off whatever livestock might be left. All I can think is that farm and how there ain’t a thing you can do to stop this war ripping right through your home, right through your whole life, and the roaring is so loud my ears go to ringing even after I press my hands to them.
CHAPTER
20
THOROUGHFARE GAP: AUGUST 28, 1862
The attack don’t last long, our bugles blaring to signal the Rebels’ retreat. Sergeant Ames gathers us together, finding some shade away from the bodies of those two boys. He stands along the edge of the road, the sun beating down on him, his face red and beaded with sweat.
‘We’ve gotten reports the Rebels have already been seen coming through the Thoroughfare Gap, and we’ve got to beat the rest before we’re overrun.’
Just like that we are back on the march as the crow flies, scrambling through chokecherry and brambles to get to the Gap, no time for proper roads. Every step is its own battle and every time I lose footing, it jolts my knapsack and makes its straps dig into my shoulders. Jeremiah looks back at me each rail fence we have to climb, and sometimes he starts to reach a hand out to help me across. I get to wishing I could take it, but even just the offering of it pulls me along.
Sully marches in front of us and sees how we ain’t keeping up as we should.
‘Keep coming!’ he says. ‘We’ve got to beat those Rebels. Get to that Gap.’