We wait in reserve, seeing everything and doing nothing. The men load and fire as one and I can’t help grabbing Jeremiah’s elbow, just to make him give me an almost-smile before he goes back to watching the field, to remind me this is where I ought to be, that we are safe here so far behind the fence. The crack of the rifles echoes back off the hills and a line of Rebels is cut down and there is more crying out before the next roar of artillery. I think on that cheering when we passed McClellan and there’s none of that Glory and Courage now, with the madness all around.
When the sun drops behind the mountains and shadows creep over us, the chill comes with it. After a time the shooting dies down and there is only the cries of the wounded. It is too dark for there to be any use in fighting anymore, but those Rebels ain’t gone from the trees, so we’ve got orders to stay put and sleep on our arms. I can’t see how any of us can rest like that but still, with Jeremiah on my left and Sully to the front and Will along my right side, it is almost morning when I startle and see I’ve slept as deep as ever and dropped my musket too.
Most everyone is stirring. Captain Chalmers is talking to Sergeant Ames back behind the last rows of our Regiment and before long Sergeant comes to us and says, ‘Seems the Rebels left in the night. We’ve got the high ground now, and we’ve got to bury our dead before we press on.’
‘Must be nice, sitting up there in fancy deerskin gloves, watching us be the reapers,’ Ambrose says, frowning even more than usual at Colonel Wheelock on his horse at the edge of the trees.
‘Dirty work or not, it isn’t right leaving those men out on open ground,’ Will says, and no one can argue with a thing like that.
My feet are leaden as we go straight out to that fence line with bodies still draped across it, not fifty paces from where we slept. Some of the boys push the bodies away and clamber on over, but Jeremiah goes to a place where there’s nobody to move off the fence and that’s where we climb. On the field all manner of dead lie among the cornstalks bent and broken. One man lays with his hands like claws and blood clotting his beard and no shoes on his feet. Standing next to another body, licking at the blood jellied where that man’s head should be, is a skinny-looking farm dog.
‘Get home!’ I yell, gagging to watch that dog doing what only comes natural. ‘Go on! Get!’ I yell until that dog slinks away, but I know it will come back as soon as we’re gone. I can’t stand the faces of those men lying there, some still looking like the terror is on them, some looking like sleeping except for the trickles of dried blood coming from their mouths or noses or ears.
Jeremiah stoops low over a body and when he straightens and turns it is almost a marvel to see him moving, to see him whole and strong. He don’t notice me and from the look of his eyes he is thinking on Jimmy again, or maybe wondering about the men staining his soul. When he finally feels me staring, his face brightens for a moment. Then I stop thinking about the bodies and smelling everything that comes from them and only look close enough to know which need burying and which are still cursing and crying.
‘Ross!’ Jeremiah calls from where he is kneeling, his hand on a boy’s shoulder. ‘I need your help.’
‘I’m coming,’ I say, taking my fingers away from the cold neck of a soldier, picking my way through more bodies to Jeremiah.
‘You’ve got to help me get this soldier to the wagons,’ he says like he might come apart. ‘Maybe they can get a surgeon.’
‘We ain’t got a stretcher,’ I say.
‘Don’t matter. We can’t leave this one.’
He’s crouched down beside a boy curled up on his side, crying and holding his stomach.
‘We’ve got to get you to the doctor,’ he says.
That boy wails ‘Noooooo,’ to Jeremiah or to the way he’s feeling or maybe both.
‘We can call the band to come get him,’ I say. ‘We ain’t here for the living, Jeremiah.’
‘No. It’s got to be us,’ Jeremiah says softly. ‘Come here.’
Squatting at that boy’s side, seeing his face, I gasp. Beneath the dirt and blood and tears that face is smooth with a narrow jaw and not a single whisker, and it almost makes me start crying.
I ain’t the only one. A rush of words spills into my mouth, things I want to ask, but I catch most of them.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask that girl, but she don’t answer for all the crying she’s doing.
‘Rosetta!’ Jeremiah says quiet, but firm. ‘We’ve got to get her off the field!’
That girl’s eyes lock on mine.
‘I’m Rosetta Wakefield. This is my man.’
And then her voice comes, all ragged. ‘Emma Davidson,’ she says before she is moaning again.
‘You got kin?’ I ask.
She says ‘Nooooooo’ again, but maybe she is just crying. The best thing we can do for her is find her people if she has got any here. I look all around, wondering if one of the bodies sprawled here is her man, but not a soul is stirring. If she’s got anybody looking for her, hopefully they’ve got ideas where she might be. I wonder how Jeremiah would ever find me, if the worst happened.
‘You got kin here?’ I ask over.