Mrs. Jeremiah Wakefield
Just the writing there, my name in his schoolboy’s hand, makes my eyes swim. My voice whispers, ‘I can’t.’ I can’t read any of that letter, what Jeremiah said. I can’t think about the things he might have put in those lines, not for a long time. Tears stream down my face. My knuckles go white from holding on to that envelope, ruining it, ruining the only thing left of Jeremiah excep’t—But I can’t think about that now. It is too much. I look up into the sky to stop those tears only it don’t work, not with God and Heaven and Jeremiah there already looking down.
Choking back sobs, my throat closed up and aching, I pull my knees to my chest and rock myself, the paper crumpling against me. I’ve got to stop this, I’ve got to get hold again. But there ain’t a thing to fill that lonesome wildness, that empty ache inside.
The sun is peeking over the low ring of mountains and I take that letter, clutching it. It is damp and the edges are going pulpy so I put it straight inside my pocket, over my heart. It is so light, like it ain’t even there. Like the other bit of him I carry.
I ain’t ever felt so alone. Will is just a little ways off, curled under his blanket.
‘Will!’ I whisper. ‘Will!’
He bolts straight up.
‘What is it? You need something?’ he asks, rubbing his hands down his face.
That letter is somehow back out of my pocket, and holding it out for Will to see gets my eyes filling again.
Will looks at that letter addressed to Jeremiah’s wife and then at me, but he don’t say a thing, he just waits.
He’s the only soul left in this Army knows my name, besides Sully who is missing and Jennie Chalmers who ain’t near, who I probably ain’t ever seeing again neither.
I can’t talk. I can’t stop with the crying. Will puts a hand on my shoulder and the heat of it makes me feel like a burnt-out empty shell.
His hand stays put. ‘You want company or you want to be alone?’
‘Company.’
He stands there next to me, his hand on my shoulder. It gets me tearing up again.
‘I’ve got to see him,’ I say.
Will looks at me. ‘See who?’ he asks.
‘Jeremiah. The place where he is.’
‘You want me to come along?’ he asks.
The sky is going pink but no birds sing. We ain’t got time before reveille.
I say, ‘If you can.’
‘I can.’
We march back on that field, just days since I dragged Jeremiah from it. My whole life. My dreams gone. Tumbled over. Passed. Like I already lived them in my head and now I’ve got to live another life without him only I don’t see how I can.
Our legs thresh the grass. Over torn ground, rocks, holes. There are ruined fields and ugliness everywhere. A magnet draws me to that place, to the tree where he is buried, where something of me went and now I’ve got to get it back.
Will keeps pace. We don’t talk, don’t stop, don’t look at what we pass. We don’t watch the burial details working their shovels into the earth, burying the Rebel soldiers still left all across the battlefield. Looking don’t serve no purpose but making me mourn even harder. The cornfield is gone. Nothing left but broken stubble and stalks like a scythe has been taken to it. I don’t know how any of us walked out of there with our lives.
The field. The woods. The log. The place where we were last together. Empty like he was never there.
I squat down, press my hand to the leaves where we laid, claw my hands into the earth, but all I feel is hollow, even though that can’t be. Will stands there on the other side of that log. I look around and it is the first time I even see where we hid, the bodies scattered like boulders around this place. There ain’t nothing but Rebel soldiers left here for days and the tree where Riflebutt took my whole life. The tree witnessing over the battle and over Jeremiah, keeping his body sheltered.
His mound ain’t far, at the edge of the woods, his place marked with a slat of wood carved with JW and 97NY on it.
I kneel and wait to feel something, something to ease the bayonet through my heart.
I wait to feel Jeremiah, something of him still here, still with me in this world. Will kneels with me and he puts an arm around my shoulders. It is nice whether he means it in friendship or something different, but it ain’t the arm I want. We sit like that a long time, not a sound passing between us besides the wind rustling the leaves. Quiet. Not even a bird. Nothing but flies buzzing.
‘You want to say a prayer?’ Will asks after a while.
‘No. Past time for that.’
We sit some more. I don’t see God in this thing, I just wait to feel Jeremiah’s spirit touching mine.
Jeremiah. His blue eyes. The heat coming off him when he stands next to me, not even touching me. His voice whispering Rosetta. His body saying all the things he can’t.