I Shall Be Near to You: A Novel

Captain yells, ‘Left Flank!’ and we turn from the road, through a strip of meadow, to a swath of trees where a ghost smoke rises. Double quick our lines braid themselves through trees. I watch for rocks and branches but the boots and legs in front of me are moving moving moving and then out from under Jeremiah’s foot, a wild violet still blooming, its purple flowers rising up from being crushed.

 

Firing rumbles in front of us now, the musket volleys coming closer, louder. Artillery roars off to our left, shells hail down around us, and this is what is meant by hellfire. Our lines go to wavering and breaking and it is all I can do to keep pushing forward. I want to throw myself down into the ground, anything just to stay living, but Jeremiah is there ahead of me and so I bring my rifle to my shoulder like everyone else.

 

The bullets keep coming and the whole Company wheels to the right, a herd of horses bolting, and then there is a steep bank rising up before us, maybe a hundred paces away, taller than any man, and so clear it ain’t natural. That bank stretches to the left and right as far as the eye can go, giving the Rebels cover to run behind for miles.

 

Our flag flutters up ahead, its gold fringe catching flashes of light coming through the trees, and there ain’t no orders to be heard but the boys move after it.

 

I stay on Jeremiah’s heel, branches snapping across my face and arms. Let us live let us live let us live. Gray boys move, flashing in and out between the trees in front of the bank, Rebel skirmishers set out to stop us from getting near to what must be at least a full Brigade hiding behind that embankment. We can never get up to those Rebs and still be living and I want to grab Jeremiah’s arm and run back the way we came, back through the trees with him in tow.

 

Beside me Sully yells, ‘C’mon! Keep coming!’ and I don’t know if he’s talking to us or to the Rebels.

 

The Company in front of us rushes and runs across that ground to the mound, leaving us open. A panic races through me as they go, when we are left open. There is a volley of fire and smoke and the thug of bullets hitting bodies, the tang of gunpowder mixing with blood, only a few of that Company even getting to the base of the embankment. Most of them fall and we are next and we’ve got to get to that mound. I push into a run, Henry and Jimmy off to my right side, Will on my left, Sully with Jeremiah in front.

 

‘Stay back!’ Jeremiah yells, and shoves me with his elbow when I try coming up alongside him.

 

The cries of wounded men pierce through everything else and then, from behind that embankment, the shriek of the dead comes, a sound that is wolf howl and rabbit scream mixed together, raising gooseflesh on my arms, coming, coming not twenty yards away and they are coming and everything inside me goes to pounding and shaking.

 

Jeremiah lags ’til he’s beside me, reaching his left hand out and grabbing for me, yelling, ‘Stay down!’ and then I’m on the ground with the wounded, lying flat on my stomach, the blood pumping in my ears the only sound. Jeremiah’s touch is gone, he has pushed me down, he is nowhere near.

 

And then there he is, running in a crouch, running at the Rebels and I get my rifle right. I aim toward the Seceshes coming through the smoke, toward the soldiers moving along the top of that embankment. Rifles blast and waves of men run and hunch and bend down like oats heavy with seed. Only some of them rise and rush forward, Jeremiah with them. Some falter and fall and there’s a swell coming from behind me as more move up to plug the gaps, each one a boy we’ve lost.

 

Sergeant bellows, ‘Fire at will!’ through the noise, but all I can do is keep low.

 

Boys from my Company are cut down. Young Frank Morgan falls, rolling and writhing, his Papa dropping beside him, but before I see if they get back up more soldiers rush forward and everything is moving. I don’t know where any of my boys are, but I have got to do this thing. I get to my knees and then it is time it is time it is time to make my run across moldering logs and branches and dead leaves and men.

 

Almost at the base of the bank, I fling myself to my belly again as the rifles roar and crawl for the next closest tree to take shelter, my fingers clawing at its bark. At the top of the mound, blood sprays from a horse shot out from under his Rebel officer, the officer still waving his arm to those men behind him even as the horse goes down, its legs crumpling. It somersaults and somehow rights itself and the officer is gone, a shadow in the trees. That horse stands on three legs, its one foreleg flapping like Mama’s stockings on the line. It ain’t got a chance at living anything except pain. I aim my rifle and fire. The horse buckles and goes down again, goes down clean. But I ain’t here for shooting horses.

 

My eyes burn in the smoke until I find Jeremiah behind a tree just ahead. He is whole and a coolness flows through my veins.

 

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