part 1 chapter

22

i feel reduced, thinned. when i stroll past the hall mirror, the outlines of my body

waver, fly off into the room. if i hold my hands before my face, they are transparent, just the

same as looking through the lunar moth wing. i seize up with shudders of fear, my arms and legs

paralyzed. for so long, i have depended upon my home and the things i own to keep hell at bay.

now the man and woman have whittled these away until the most painful memories are all i

have left. they are like dragonflies under the surface of a frozen pond, not dead but waiting until

they can paddle upward toward the promise of a thaw, which is now upon me.

here it is—the day we were captured in may 1864. it was the first week of combat after the

battle at mine run following five long months in winter camp, and the morning couldn’t have

started off worse. the fields of spotsylvania courthouse were swaddled with cotton fog after

rain so fierce that i could see no farther than beards on one side and zeke on the other. for five

days, we’d done nothing but dig until a four-mile ditch unfolded, throwing up hillocks of clay in

front of our line. now spear-sharp tree trunks bristled outward from the mounds that formed a

great shield. we huddled behind it, waiting for the enemy at first light.

yankee noisemaking no longer frightened us. “that sounds too far away to be an attack cry,”

i told jim blue. he just grunted. no one was stirred up enough to rise to his feet.

“why would they do something so danged stupid? now they’ve wasted any element of

surprise,” zeke said in a slurred voice. none of us had slept the previous night. we’d been on

watch, and anyone who nodded off for even a few minutes risked being shot as punishment.

“never mind. we’ll whip their asses in no time,” he assured me, and perhaps himself.

“they must be as blinded by this fog as we are,” i said. it seemed forever that we’d crouched

there, although it was only a few minutes before a tide of the enemies’ shots roared in our

direction. it was then that we leaped to our feet, raised our rifles, and were ready when a line of

blue-clad boys rose out of the mist and over the edge of the earthworks.

my rifle misfired with a forlorn little pop, and beards hollered, “what in god’s name!” as his

did the same. a sea of yanks charged toward us as we and the other boys nearby futilely loaded

and reloaded rifles. we had shouldered our weapons and pulled the triggers, but nothing

happened. moisture had besotted our gunpowder.

one of our boys, a young fellow no more than seventeen, charged up the earthwork’s steep

incline. he shouted toward an oncoming yankee, “i’ll show you, you yellow-bellied bastard!” a

bullet struck him in the eye. the force spun him around and then toppled him onto beards.

before beards could scream “what the hell?” frye, the dead fellow’s comrade, grabbed the

dropped rifle, drew his arm back, and heaved his bayonet forward into the air. “take that, you

yankee pig,” he cried. the weapon whizzed past me and flew so forcefully into the yank’s

chest that the blade burrowed into him at least six inches up the rifle barrel. you never heard

such an unholy shriek as he fell backward, just beyond where i stood, the rifle poking straight

out of his chest and saluting the sky.

zeke and i followed frye’s example and frantically twisted bayonets onto our rifle muzzles.

the short piece of sharpened steel was handy for digging, cutting meat, and sometimes as a

candlestick, but our troops rarely used it to kill, not since first manassas. now it was all we had.

the barricade we’d built as protection held us and the yanks imprisoned, face to face. there

was no room or time to reload rifles at that close range. we couldn’t run, and neither could the

yanks once they were over the top. we were in a gutter of muddy water, our feet glued in the

mire.

a dark- haired yankee propelled himself toward me, steel flashing. i’ll never forget the

moment—how i felt his iron grip on my collar and saw his arm above with a bayonet pointed

downward. thrusting my shoulder into his chest, i writhed away and finally found enough space

between us to stab upward with my blade. the jab of my bayonet brought the feel of shattering

bone and the slippery slice of flesh right up through my arm muscles, and it crawled into my

soul. for a second, images of this boy’s life, likely similar to mine, flashed by. but after this first

one dropped at my feet, the second wasn’t as hard. you stared a man right in the eyes and

attempted to kill him before he killed you, both of you screeching like maniacs and gnashing

teeth.

in their ghoulish faces, only the desperate eyes of beards and blue appeared human. enemy

blood was splattered there and on their chests. i stayed close to beards. we always fought side

by side, but this time we needed the other’s protection like never before.

when rifles and bayonets weren’t enough, fellows around me dropped them, abandoned their

clubs and knives, and grabbed for hatchets to hammer enemy heads into scarlet pulp. but the

soldiers continued to surge over the barricade in a vast blue wave until there were thousands of

them amongst us. at one point, zeke climbed a little knoll and hollered across the din, “fellas,

look at me . . . look at me! if you doubted my powers of reasoning, think again! i’ve got brains

all over me!” he threw his head back and roared with crazy glee in the midst of all that gore,

teeth ablaze. “only problem is, now i’ll think like a yankee!”

around midday, rain again pounded the scarlet field, flooding sinkholes and the blood-soaked

ground. one enormous depression was surrounded by at least a hundred wounded men, some

groaning piteously. they had dragged themselves there on their bellies to slurp the water,

crimson with blood. other wounded fellows twisted onto their backs, mouths open toward the

sky, attempting to moisten their parched tongues.

in the chaos, i lost sight of beards and my company. strangers screamed and thrust by my

side, and rank made no difference. i searched in vain for a recognizable face but found none. in

a landscape that teemed with bellowing lunatics, exploding bombs, roaring cannons, and tens of

thousands of guns discharging in the distance, i was without a friend or acquaintance. even

worse, my men were without a sergeant.

as i bent over at the edge of a melee, hands on knees and gasping for breath, a yank spotted

me and plunged through the battling soldiers, headed in my direction. his feet flew nimbly over

bodies littering the ground as he gained speed. i couldn’t pull my wits together, and my hands

seemed disconnected from my mind. time slowed, and the yank grew larger and more

murderous looking by the second. so this is how it is, i thought as my heartbeat thrummed in my

ears. it’s finally my time.

without warning, a young confederate burst out of the nearby swarm. he rocketed toward

me and lunged shoulder first into the approaching enemy. as the yankee wobbled with the

impact, my savior plugged him hard in the kidneys with his blade. after an abrupt grunt, the

yank toppled forward, a crimson fountain spouting from above his waistband. had the

confederate seen my plight a second later, i would have been the one gasping my last breath.

for a brief moment, this tall young man locked his brown eyes with mine and then disappeared

into the thick of it. he was gone too quickly for words.

by late afternoon, bodies stacked five-deep hemmed me in, and i still didn’t see anyone i

knew. dead had fallen on the living, and the survivors’ desperate twitches and clawing animated

the macabre piles before me. it was next to impossible to find a foothold, but that didn’t stop me

from swinging my rifle butt at yet another blue-jacketed attacker.

suddenly i felt the hard mouth of a rifle barrel bite into my lower back and a gruff northern

voice rasp, “drop your weapon and raise your goddamned hands in the air.” a chill ran down

my spine, and i jerked my head around to see my captors. two enemy soldiers had surprised me

from behind. this scene was repeated all around with cries of, “you boys better surrender!

throw down your weapons, or we’ll stab bayonets in one side of you and out the other!”

a rebel nearby clung to his musket, either too scared to release it or frozen with mad rage.

one shot through the heart from the bluecoats, and he buckled over, his weapon tumbling from

his fist. i wondered how beards and the rest of my company had fared, whether they were

facing my fate or that of this poor soldier. in this mass of thousands ordered to the rear of the

battlefield away from the shooting, i feared i might not know.

but then i heard someone call my name. it was beards, with jim blue, tayloe, and zeke at

his heels. a cry burst from my throat, startling me with its animal sound. we fell together,

embracing and madly laughing, not with mirth but something i couldn’t name.

never has such a miserable looking group been assembled. faces were begrimed with mud

and gore and besmirched with sooty gunpowder. tears cut white paths through the smut of

some, though i couldn’t know if they were tears of relief or grief at the loss of friends and

brothers. we were clothed head to toe in the elemental materials of being human: feces, mucus,

blood, guts, urine, and earth. injured men leaned upon comrades, and those without wounds lent

an arm or shoulder to those blinded or whose reason had given out. later i met a fellow who had

been deafened for life that day. many boys could only hobble or limp, and the rough terrain of

shattered tree trunks and sundered branches made the going even more treacherous.

the yanks lost patience. three guards moved behind our straggling line and cursed us.

“goddamned rebels. you mince along like girls,” one of them hollered. “we don’t have all day.

double quick, walk, goddamn you.” several fellows in the line cried out as the guards prodded

them in the back with the tips of their bayonets. at that, the five of us kept our eyes forward and

tried to keep up the pace set by the yanks. i prayed not to attract the guards’ attention, but

beards was worn out and stumbled. before he could regain his step, a guard with a filthy shirt

and blood-stained boots poked him close to his lower spine with his steel blade. beards winced

but stifled a cry. then the same fellow turned his attention to jim blue. “what’s the matter with

you? can’t you keep up or are you a girl too?” he jabbed his blade against blue’s shirt, and a

thin trickle of blood seeped through the small cloth tear. blue gritted his teeth.

i’d had enough. i looked the fellow in the eyes and howled at the top of my lungs, “stop that!

stop it now. we surrendered. you have no right!” i was in such a terrible rage that i could feel

my ears burn and twitch. there was a long silence. beards and the others froze on the spot,

staring at me in disbelief. but nothing happened. the guard glared at me and then moved on.

there was no more prodding. the others clapped me on the back, and we marched on. i was still

their sergeant, and they were still my responsibility.

strange as it may sound, capture was a huge relief. only by accident had i survived. after

three long years, i was withdrawn, without disgrace, from the center of death’s aim. a minié

ball had been waiting for me; it just hadn’t been fired yet. my knees trembled, and my hands

quivered as i was overcome with gratitude that cannons, disease, and the surgeon’s knife hadn’t

done me in. you might say it was a miracle. i was now finished with this business, and the

prospect of prison was welcome. my fingers brushed mary’s rubbed-slick rabbit’s foot in my

pants pocket one more time.