Chris Adrian - Gob's Grief

Tomo played sweet music for the wounded all through the night because he could not sleep. A hospital steward brought him hot food; crisp bacon and a stew of chicken and hardtack. At the bottom of the bowl was a hard-boiled egg. Tomo fished it out and ate it with great precision, nibbling away the white until he had a perfect globe of yolk pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He swallowed it like a pill. When he finished eating, he went to visit the living Weghorst twin, thinking to play him something to comfort him, but when he found him still weeping over his brother’s body, all he could do was stare numbly and clutch Betty to his chest. He thought of his mama, back in Homer. If she were there, she’d say that the dead Weghorst now inhabited the Summerland, a place where all good spirits lived.

He went and sat next to the surviving Weghorst, put his hand on the big fellow’s hand, and burst so violently into tears he felt as if his whole head had exploded in a shower of salty water. Tomo cried because it is a terrible thing that brothers should be separated, and because he missed his own brother. He suffered suddenly from the unreasoning conviction that Gob was dead, that a Rebel bullet had traveled hundreds of miles up to Homer to shatter his brother’s teeth and blow out the back of his head all over their bedroom wall. Tomo put his head on the dead twin’s chest and wept, thinking he would keep on until he was only dry skin and bones and brittle desiccated organs. The living twin petted Tomo’s hair, to comfort him , which was not the plan at all, and the world seemed to Tomo a place entirely mixed up and unjust before he suddenly fell very hard into sleep, as if into a deep ditch.

The next morning, Tomo woke suddenly to the noise of cannon. He had been having a dream: he was in the house at Homer, sharing a plate of pancakes with Gob, while their mama read aloud from The Tempest. There was a big fire built in the hearth, and Tomo was comfortable and very happy because his grandpa Buck was dead — his head was stuffed and mounted above the mantel. Tomo shoveled pancakes into his mouth: they were drenched with butter and tasted very salty. Suddenly there was a noise outside, like thunder, and his mama leaped from her chair, shrieking, “Oh Rosy, there was no hole but the one you made! Yet now truly there’s a hole in our center and Longstreet has seen it!”

Somebody had put Tomo under a tent with Johnny, who slept through the artillery noise, hugging his drum. Tomo rose and poured water over his hot aching head, and drank a cup of coffee. Johnny woke up and hastily scribbled out a note with his parents’ names and address, which he pinned to his coat. “Ought to have done this yesterday,” he said. After a few moments’ reflection, Tomo did it too. He wrote his real name, and then his mother’s name: “Victoria C. Woodhull (The Great), Town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio.”

Tomo and the rest of Company C were two miles north of the hole in the line into which Longstreet poured three divisions later that morning. Just after noon two-thirds of the Army of the Cumberland was in headlong flight up the road to Rossville and Chattanooga. Old Rosy was nobody’s man that day; he fled to Chattanooga. Tomo did not flee there, though he still had in him a hankering to see the place. He stayed with the Ninth, who got called up, just as things were falling apart, to Snodgrass Hill, where Thomas made his famous stand.

Tomo spent the whole day up there. Twice the Rebs crested Tomo’s portion of the hill and planted their colors on it; twice Tomo rushed out with the Ninth to push the colors over and bludgeon the panting Rebs. All pooped out from their run up the hill, the Rebs had very little fight in them by the time they reached the top.

A third time the Ninth charged out. The Rebs had a round of canister and grape ready for them when they rushed out from behind their works. Tomo tripped and fell on his face, and the volley passed over him. Raimund Herrman lost his head to an erroneously loaded cannonball. His big body took a few more steps and then seemed to kneel down before it fell over. A load of shot took the living Weghorst twin in the chest. Aaron Stanz, in the rear of the charge, kept running after Tomo, stranded in the front, after his comrades had turned back or flattened themselves on the ground. The artillery spent itself as Aaron Stanz ran, and did not touch him, but then he came under furious, withering rifle fire, and seemed to disappear before Tomo’s eyes. Little pieces of Aaron Stanz — a finger, a portion of his hat, part of his nose — were suddenly not there, and then he proceeded to disintegrate as butterfly-sized pieces of flesh and bone flew away from him. He ran to within a few yards of Tomo before there was not sufficient body left for his will to propel.

That horror caused Tomo to experience a reversal of feeling. Now all his former battle-mindedness left him, replaced by terror, which rose up in him until he felt he could not breathe because he was drowning in it. It was so much worse than what he’d felt the day before. Now he did want to run away to Homer, to cower under the bed and not ever come out. He and Gob would have a stolen pie and a jug of cider, a candle, and a book. What else did a boy need besides all that and his brother? They could eat and read and scratch each other’s back. They could look out into the darkness beyond the candle and say it together: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to die.” Overcome by fever and fear, Tomo closed his eyes and rested his head on the ground.

It was night when he woke to the noise of Rebels cheering their victory. The sound was muffled by the dead piled on top of him — one Union and three Rebel, entwined in a heavy confraternity that must have protected him from flying bullets. He emerged from under the bodies. General Thomas was gone, leaving Tomo and the dead behind him.

Tomo went west, walking, where he had to, over the soft bodies of the dead. Amid the cheers of the Rebels he heard the moans of some wounded, and he was certain his steps would elicit a groan at some point, but they never did. He kept walking towards the ridge, dodging campfires. When he heard a group of Rebs approaching him, he fled into a patch of woods, becoming quite lost there among the pine and scrub oak, where more dead lay scattered amid the smoldering underbrush. Eventually, Tomo lost sight of the ridge, lost all sense of direction, and came at last to a swift cold creek, which he passed over, sliding down one steep bank and clawing his way up the other, grateful for the chance to dunk his whole body. Tomo felt so hot now he thought he must soon burst into flame and draw the Rebs down on him like moths. Not knowing that he was completely turned around, he headed east on the far side of Chickamauga creek. “Gob,” he called out softly as he walked through the dark woods. “Where are you?”

His fever visions kept up. An owl alit on a low branch and said, “Tomo! Tomo!” The moon flipped in the sky like a tossed coin. A little boy brandishing a wooden sword led a troop of headless soldiers towards the creek. And a man in an immaculate white chiton rode out from a shadow on an elephant the size of a pony.

“Thomas Jefferson Woodhull,” he said. “I know you.”

“I don’t know you,” said Tomo, sitting down and rubbing his eyes. He did know him, though. He recognized him from the stories his mama told about her enormous destiny, about all the spirits in whose shadow she walked. He began to cry.

“There,” said the man. “There now. There’s no need to cry. You wanted to see the elephant, didn’t you? Well, here he is!”

Tomo said nothing, but only put his head in his hands and cried harder. The elephant played a friendly tune on its trunk as the man dismounted and came to sit by him. Only then did Tomo notice he’d lost Betty in the creek. The man took Tomo’s hands from his face and held them in his own. His hands were cool and dry and too smooth to be made of real flesh.