‘Ross!’ Jeremiah yells, and I turn to him. ‘You’re sure?’
Something makes me think he knows what I’ve been hiding, but I just put my left hand on my heart and nod and then we step forward into the corn. In between the musket volleys and shelling, a dry rustling is all around me as every one of us pushes through the stalks. I can’t see Jeremiah and my heart goes to hammering in my ears so I keep my mind on that. With each step the air changes, the light growing brighter. A new crack of muskets tells me our first boys are through the corn and that is waiting for us too.
And then there’s the last of the corn and volleys of gunshots come, but I step forward. Already there are boys lying on the ground screaming, a haze of smoke mixing with the fog still hanging over the ground, the smell of gunpowder thick in the air, mixing with shit and the rusty smell of blood. I’ve got to see Jeremiah, I’ve got to know he is there so I press forward, stepping fast over Union and Confederate boys lying on the ground toward the line of Rebels hiding behind the snake-rail fence. And then everything around me slows down and I can see it so clear. A dark shape moves and I aim. My rifle fires loud in my ear but there’s no way to tell if that bullet hits its mark. I look to my right but Jeremiah and Sully ain’t there. On my left, Will is hunched down next to me. I slap him on the shoulder, startling him into a run as more yelling boys crowd up from behind us. All I can think is to find Jeremiah. I fumble with my cartridge box and rammer and then I get the feel of it and load charge ram prime fire again and again. Bodies are falling around me—no, not falling, not dropping—they are knocked right out of the lines, men and things flying through the air.
We stand there plain as day for those Rebels to fire volleys into, them safe behind that fence, not three hundred paces away. As soon as that thought goes through my mind, I get myself low, crouching and firing, and then, moving through the smoke is Jeremiah, just up ahead.
There is a loud crack right in front of me and a wrenching in my hands and my musket spins away from me. My hands sting and burn but they look whole and then I get smart and throw myself flat on the ground, looking for my rifle. It ain’t anywhere but there’s a boy lying curled like he is a baby sleeping and I crawl to him on my belly. I yank his rifle away from him and he don’t even wake, and then I see that D brand on his face. At least dying like this means Levi’s family will never know what he done, and there ain’t time to wonder if that is better.
I stay low, my head almost against Levi’s belly, hiding behind him as best I can, keeping myself safe. His rifle is still loaded so I prop myself up, firing over Levi into that fence line of Rebels and I load charge ram prime again faster than ever, the whole time wondering where Jeremiah has got to now. Everywhere are running boys and galloping horses and smoke and noise and the bullets coming fast like a hailstorm. They don’t even scare me no more, those bullets buzzing all around. You’ve just got to move as fast as you can and not let yourself think on them, not let yourself think on anything, and that is what I do.
I keep firing. I can’t quit working my rifle. Not even when an artillery horse gets to screaming and galloping across the field, dragging its harness and traces, but then I see I’m wrong and it is tangles of innards. Not even when a line of our men moves forward and every one of them gets cut down by those Reb artillerymen laying canister right in front of them. Not even when the shrapnel flies up into the lines behind them, tearing them to pieces, a whole arm flying up like a bird taking flight only to come flopping right back down.
I fire until my hands burn, the barrel of that rifle is so hot, and then make my way toward the fence, stumbling over the wounded and dead lying there, and maybe it is a marvel I ain’t been shot yet myself. Some of the bodies still have cartridge boxes and using what is there for the taking, I don’t know how many times I shoot. But then jeering starts up from those firing Rebels and our troops are falling back.
The panic hits me that I don’t know where anyone is or even where we came through that corn.
I yell, ‘Jeremiah! Jeremiah!’ and scramble back looking at each boy, only none of them are him. It don’t make any sense how that cornfield got so far away but I can’t even find it now and then I am tripping over the stalks, the cornfield stripped down to nothing. Jeremiah ain’t anywhere. All the worst thoughts spill into my head, but maybe it is just he has already quit the field.
A row of boys lie in the stubble, laid out by canister, their bodies twisted and torn. And then a lightning bolt goes through me. There, sprawled on the ground, is a lanky body, his kepi gone and that shock of hair I would know anywhere.
CHAPTER
27
ANTIETAM: SEPTEMBER 17, 1862
‘Rosetta,’ is all he says when I kneel by him.