Laird Hunt - Neverhome

It was five waves and by the fourth we were all down to but a few cartridges each. If it had been six we would have had to fight with bayonets and teeth. Somewhere in the fight, the Colonel had got down off his horse and stood along the line between me and his cousin. He had those big mustaches so you couldn’t see his mouth but he had the look of a man had his jaw set. We’d been at it three good hours when I glanced over next to me and saw the two Akron boys. They each looked about ten years older. If they recognized me they didn’t show it. They were dug in behind a dead tree about as deep as you could be but they were getting off their rounds. One of them died when the rebels tried a charge. The other one got swept away.

I saw the Colonel and his cousin until the end of it, though. The Colonel had rallied his officers to reform the line and now we lay waiting with hardly a bullet left for that fifth wave and not a cartridge box hadn’t been pulled off the dead by me and many another left to sweeten our supply. The Colonel was standing next to his cousin, who had found his way back to sit on his rock. They both of them were black as chimney sweeps from powder burn and had cigars in their mouths. My lieutenant had been shot in the shoulder but he came up again and put his leg where he had planted it the first time.

“How we coming, Gallant Ash?” he asked.

“Drawing breath, Lieutenant,” I said.

“Well, draw you up some more and raise up that firearm,” he said. “For here they goddamn come.”

They came and it was like a hot wind came with them and the air on either side of my ears began to burn and the world turned up and over. I was charging one minute and running back another. A boy twice my size kicked me in the stomach with his foot and I fell down into some fool’s hole. Next thing I knew there was another in the hole with me and I tried to get my weapon around but saw it was the Colonel’s cousin come down off his rock. He looked at me and he smiled, and well there might have been a rain of hellfire and the battle all around us, I can tell you right now he was the handsomest man I ever saw. It wasn’t a handsome you could see down the line and sitting up high on a rock, it was a handsome you could see only up close, with death come a-calling, a handsome of soft cheeks and powder black and eyes set aglow.

“You’re the Colonel’s cousin,” I said.

“Did he acknowledge a relation?” he said.

The voice was as high and as handsome as the face. A voice scooped straight up out of a butter churn set to cool in a clear spring. He said a thing or two more with that voice but I couldn’t hear him for the popping of weapons up above. A hot gust of wind came down into our hole and lifted his wet hair off his forehead and he leaned up close to me.

“I know what you are,” he said.

“I am a soldier in the Union army,” I said.

“I know that too,” he said.

“We got to get up out of here.”

I said this but I didn’t move a muscle and he lifted his soft hand and held it to my cheek. He held it there and I did not move nor breathe nor shiver, only closed my eyes and let my face sit still against his hand.

When I opened my eyes I saw he had jumped up out of that hole and guessed he had run off to regain his rock. I saw him there when my cheek had left off burning and I had climbed out of the hole myself. He was standing on his rock and had his weapon raised. I had it in my mind to run over and get him to put his hand back up onto my face but my lieutenant came up beside me again.

“How we coming, Gallant Ash?” he asked me, just like he hadn’t asked it a few minutes before.

“Drawing breath, Lieutenant,” I said, just like I hadn’t said it either.

“Well, draw a little more.”

He said that and I heard the rebel cannon and saw the tree coming down at me and felt myself falling backward all at the same time. It wasn’t at the same time, only felt like it was, because the lieutenant wasn’t there anymore and the Colonel’s handsome cousin was gone from his rock and the rebels were almost on us. A soft branch shoved me down then the trunk pinned me tight. I must have lost some of that breath I’d been drawing and taken a whack to the head because it seemed when I looked up through the leaves and branches that the grays and blues were taking turnabout in leaping over the rubbage above me, that the whole contest of the war was to be decided by who could most neatly vault the debris.

I slept then. Went wandering in realms of black and green. When I woke it was the deep hours. Stars lit the sky, bright burny things. Bigger than the springtime stars of Indiana. I started to count them but there were too many oak leaves in front of my face. I tried to clear the leaves away but found my arms were pinned at my sides. I could turn my neck and wiggle my toes and hands but otherwise could not budge. The breeze blew vigorous through my leaves for a good bunch of my breaths, and then it died. I heard more in its silence than I liked and shut my eyes.

I had walked out more than once of an after-battle and so had a fair idea of what lay clawing at the air that night around me. Ghosts of the new dead laughing down at what lay cut and burned and broken and still awake to it on the ground. Ours and theirs both had fallen and it was impossible to know what color cloth it was giving up those moans. One boy called out for his aunt Jane. Another was trying to whistle. Three or four wanted something wet to put down their throats. I expect every one of us there of either color had thought about those fights, like the Wilderness to come, when the wounded had been left where they lay and the forest had caught fire and gathered them all up in its burning arms. You would want a weapon if the fire was coming and you couldn’t run. Something that would take you away on out of it quick. I could see my musket if I turned my neck as far as it would turn to the right. But even if I had been able to move I could see it was pinned down just about as neat as me. I caught the panic then. I shook and pushed and coughed and wriggled. Nothing. I had the trunk on my chest and arms and a branch across my legs. The tree wasn’t much more than a sapling but it was tall and full of sap and had me good.

“I can’t move because I got a ball in my back,” a voice behind me said.

“You one of us or one of them?” I said. I craned my neck around to the left and saw the bottom of a boot had a hole worn straight through it. It wiggled a little when I looked.

“I expect so,” the voice said.

“I’m just pinned down here,” I said. “I’m not hurt.”

“Won’t make much difference if you stay stuck.”

I didn’t have any answer to this. Writhed at it little. Got nowhere. After a minute or two, of watching me I imagine, he spoke again.

“Looks like you got a scratch on your arm.”

I had forgotten about my arm. I had been aware of a pain but had not yet thought to verify it. As soon as he said this I felt it like some of that fire we didn’t want to come had already set in to burn.

“That’s about all it is, a scratch,” I said.

“I’d sure like a sip of water,” he said.

“Well, hold you on a minute and I’ll run fetch you some.”

We both of us laughed at this, only his laugh didn’t gallop on too long. You could hear it in his voice and in his breaths that he wouldn’t keep creaking on much more.

“Where you from?” I said.

“That ground under you looks soft,” he said. “Looks like it ain’t much more than bits of bark and would succumb to some scratching. Can you move your hands?”

I moved my hands, pushed my fingers down. The dirt was as soft as he’d said.