I Shall Be Near to You: A Novel

I ain’t dead. Something worse.

 

Go up the low ridge. Pass that farm. Find our colors. Find the boys, what’s left of them. Every last one ragged and torn. No one fit for more fighting. Our flag in strips of blue and white.

 

Feet stop. Legs buckle. Sink to the ground. The Company a circle around the flag.

 

But not a face means a thing to me.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER

 

29

 

 

Dull and blurred, like a photograph of everything moving. Smoke. Black specks moving across the fields. Patchworked fields that ought to be green. That pretty farm. Legs of men passing, then gone. Long earthen mounds. My breath rasping.

 

Someone says ‘Ross’ over and over. Far away. A dark blue shape in front of me, blocking the field.

 

Can’t see the field. Can’t move. Don’t ever want to move again. Something lands on my shoulder. Shrug but it won’t go. It squeezes tight, shakes me. A hand waves in front of me.

 

‘Ross!’

 

A voice I know. A kind face, a worried slant to the eyebrows.

 

‘Ross!’

 

Blink. Blink hard. Make myself see the face. I know that face.

 

‘Ross! You okay?’

 

No words come to say what there is to be telling. Shake my head.

 

‘You hurt?’

 

I only shake my head.

 

‘Where’s Sully?’ the voice asks. It is Will. Will is still here.

 

Shake my head.

 

‘Have you seen Jeremiah?’

 

Hold out my hand. Hold them out. Those letters.

 

Will sinks in front of me, his hand still on my shoulder.

 

‘No one,’ my voice croaks. ‘Not a soul but you.’

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER

 

30

 

 

Dusk falls. What’s left of our Company huddles close around a few small fires, not even half the boys from two days ago. But I can’t think on Jeremiah. Sully neither.

 

Hiram’s voice comes out of the night, louder than the rest. ‘We licked those goddamn Rebs! Got ourselves a fucking Union victory!’

 

Edward says, ‘Sergeant’s got word those Seceshes are turning tail and crossing the river, going back South where they belong.’

 

There’s low cheers. Someone laughs.

 

I drag myself away, feeling torn apart and empty. I lie in the open, away from the campfire, because I can’t think about being under a tent, talking, lying with Jeremiah. I stare up at those stars and try telling Jeremiah I am sorry we ain’t done all the things we said, how I wasn’t at his side when it mattered, how I didn’t keep him from getting hurt like I meant. I try telling him how it feels being left here, lying on this ridge, strange trees hanging their broad leaves over me and those fields below. I look toward the edge of the woods down there with him underground, but it calls up things in my head I don’t want to be seeing.

 

My heart just rips open.

 

This ain’t the life I ever wanted. This ain’t my life at all.

 

And the tears come running down my face, into my ears, drowning out almost everything.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER

 

31

 

 

It ain’t even dawn. I can’t sleep, my eyes on stars disappearing one by one. I can’t stop thinking on Mama losing every one of her babies but for me and Betsy. Mrs. Waite seeing her husband’s name on that first casualty list, her baby close to being born. Joseph Brown dying in that hospital, his Mama reading his last letter. Henry laying his brother in the ground, Jimmy blanketed with dirt. And Jeremiah. Always Jeremiah.

 

I am still wearing my coat, sleeping in it because of the chill. Because Fall is coming on now. I reach inside my breast pocket and take Jeremiah’s letters from it. The one for his Ma and Pa and brothers on top, his coarse scrawl across the envelope. My hands shake putting that letter back in my pocket before I get to staining it. The other letter, the one saying Mrs. Jeremiah Wakefield, has got his family’s address on it like he is still trying to tell me what he wants. I wipe the tears away with the back of my hand so I don’t spatter any of them on the writing.

 

The sky gets lighter. There’s only a little more time before the sleeping boys start stirring, humped shapes rising out of the grass in broken lines, like the dead scattering the fields below.

 

Thinking don’t do me no good. The tears roll too fast and my nose runs. I’ve got to get hold of myself and keep quiet so no one wakes.

 

I wipe my nose across my sleeve, turn that envelope over. Jeremiah’s hands touched that paper and then I am crying again and smoothing his letter like maybe something of him is still there, my fingers slow and careful on the seal.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER

 

32

 

 

I get hold of myself, will myself to do this thing, to open that letter, see these last words from Jeremiah, the last there is of his voice.

 

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