I stay kneeling close to that tree and load charge ram prime and get ready to shoot again but the firing is coming off to our right now, shells landing everywhere, leaves and branches and dirt flying, mixed with I don’t know what else and smoke hiding everything. The Rebs ain’t looking for mercy and they sure ain’t planning on giving none, any one of them aiming to kill Jeremiah or me or one of my boys, like that soldier last night.
‘Ross!’ Will comes from nowhere, grabbing my arm, scaring me. He points at the embankment and there is Jeremiah with the Union boys, his long legs striding, running up out of the trees to that embankment, trying to break through and a Secesh right above him on that mound, raising his musket. It ain’t a thought, it is just a thing I do, leveling my own rifle and pulling the trigger quick, and the Secesh is gone.
But there are more Rebs coming for Jeremiah. There ain’t time to reload, not when that line goes to swarming gray and grappling blue and all of them clubbing with muskets.
‘You cover me!’ I yell at Will, his rifle sloppy in his hands, and then I charge, thinking how nice my bayonet stabs.
Before I get to Jeremiah, to the fray, before the ground even starts rising, there is a bugle call mixed in with the fighting and screaming and our flag moves off to my side, away from the embankment, back through the trees. The flood of our blue boys comes back, swirling Jeremiah up in it and coming all around me, elbows and hands and knees jabbing at me, pushing me around and then we are running. There are bodies strewn under the trees and I don’t know how I get over or through without stepping on them or tripping and falling, or maybe I do and don’t know it, I am running so fast to get back through the trees, away from the embankment and that firing, hoping Jeremiah is running too.
JEREMIAH STANDS STOCK-STILL like a dog pointing. Next to him Sully paces. Both of them watch the men coming back from those trees across the slip of clearing, flowing like blood from a fresh cut, fast at first and then slower and slower. The two of them stare at the men that come, working to see who can put a name to each one and how quick. Company K’s skirmishers slap the backs of the boys coming past, the ones that ain’t bleeding or hobbling.
I don’t know a thing except for the ringing in my ears, sitting on the ground on top of dead leaves, looking at my blackened hands and waiting. Waiting for something important. There’s a wetness down my side and my hands go flying to it quick and jittery and I can’t look at myself. It ain’t sticky, it is my canteen with a hole shot through it and not a drop of water left inside. I take the canteen from around my chest and hold it in my hands, a thin, high laugh coming out of me. Jeremiah reaches his hand down and squeezes my shoulder ’til it hurts. When I snatch at his hand it has got blood on it. Seeing that, I come back to myself a bit, like waking up and not knowing where I am.
‘What’s this?’ I ask.
He twists away, says, ‘It ain’t but a graze.’
‘You ought to wash it out,’ I say.
‘It’s nothing,’ is all Jeremiah says.
‘Let me bandage it,’ I say, but Jeremiah don’t want nursing and shakes his head.
I get my mind in order. Edward and Thomas stand off to Jeremiah’s side. Sully is working a path into the ground with his pacing. Levi Blalock, the brand still red on his face, drags Andrew Bile who I only know from work duty through the line of skirmishers. There is old John Morgan and Thomas Stakely with Frank’s arms draped over their shoulders, his head lolling and feet dragging, the hoarse rasping of John Morgan weeping making my hands bunch up the wool of my trousers. The O’Malleys ain’t back yet.
Will kneels at my side, muttering over and over. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he says, gripping his rifle. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’
I’ve got to do something, to pull myself back to this place, to keep from thinking on where the O’Malleys might be. I say to Will, ‘What are you talking about?’
He starts like I jumped out from behind a doorway at him, but he says, ‘I couldn’t shoot. Not with God watching. How could I shoot those men? I couldn’t. Not to cover you, not even to save my own self.’
I know something of what he is feeling, but he looks like he don’t understand it himself. I don’t know what to say to him and he turns back to his rifle and cleans it out. Three Minie balls come from out of that muzzle. He oughtn’t be doing such a thing in plain view, he oughtn’t let anyone see he ain’t shot according to regulation, but then maybe it don’t matter so much for him to act right as it does for me.
‘You ain’t got to aim at no one. You just shoot and it don’t matter what you don’t hit,’ I tell him low so no one hears, not even Jeremiah.