It was not a deep grave. The only marker was Abraham’s musket. The only words my own poor wishes that he and Israel were together in a better place, where there was no war.
If there were other rebels in the town – ones with murderous intent, anyways – their rough handling as the regiment moved through, followed by the whole of V Corps, had dissuaded them of making any more mischief. We left Prince Edward Courthouse behind after dark, and we jogged down the road in the quiet shadow of night.
The woods sighed. A brief rain shower slicked the road some, turned the green leaves to brief silver in the weak moonlight. But that was all that troubled us.
We saw the glow of campfires up ahead. Found a picket – we had no word to offer, but they knew us. They were first company boys, probably picked by Captain Rhoades. Not friends of Miller’s or Derr’s and I saw the strange look they gave me as we passed by.
Respect, I think. It didn’t seem right.
APRIL EIGHT
We woke. We broke camp. We set our feet to the road, and we marched again.
The energy that had motivated us the day before seemed to wax and wane, come and go like morning dew. Some of the men were in high spirits, but others seemed to have had all passion washed from them, and it was as likely to change again in the space of a mile as not.
Everything was unreal. It did not seem real that the war could end; I had grown from a boy into a man and signed up to fight in it. Killed, I wager; almost been killed. That the war could end in a few days, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, after such loss and pain… I kept coming back to what General Chamberlain had said: “What was the war worth?” Was it worth losing a friend like Abraham, and then – only then – seeing him killed… by a damn militia no less. Was it worth the sense of hanging doom I felt whenever Miller looked my way, hate turning his eyes the colour of spite.
How do you weigh up the difference between a young, pale hand, reaching for the sky from a dead field, and the deep, welted scars of brutality and slavery?
Was it worth what had happened to me? What was happening to me.
We marched. Now we moved like men walking into a heavy rain, into a sleeting wind; it was a fine day, but our shoulders were set, and each step seemed to come against some great weight in front of us. It was like destiny itself was holding us back. But the same invisible force pushed us on, also – an force pushing us forward with a greater weight then the fear of expectation growing in the hills and woods around us.
More rumours, and some of the boys drank them up like men dying of a thirst. Grant had asked for Lee’s surrender, said one, and I could believe it. Lee had asked for his, and I scoffed, though some seemed convinced that Lee could do no wrong, even after seeing his army reduced to so much wrecked and burned and discarded ruin. Johnston was near or he was far; Sherman had killed every last rebel in Carolina. A slave revolt would swallow Lee whole.
I just put one foot in front of the other. I tried not to think of Abraham’s shallow grave, and my poor words at his reckoning.
Enoch prayed now, all the time. Seeing Abraham killed, like that, so sudden and quick, had put a new fear in him. He prayed as he walked, as we sat by the road, between bites of whatever food we had at hand. I asked him if he was okay, and he just prayed.
A minute later, he looked up at me, said he was sorry. But he took my hand, like he had never done before. Despite all the work at musketry, and war and killing, it was the softest thing I ever held.
He said nothing. Just looked at me. I looked back. He prayed.
We marched.
Boytz seemed not to have a care in the world. I wished… I prayed that I could be like him. He killed easy; marched easy. Saw death easy, too. I knew he cared for Abraham; he cared for us all, or he wouldn’t watch our backs so readily. But I wondered if I died, or if Enoch died… would he shrug it away? Just keep marching to whatever end we then would not see?
Dear God in Heaven, I wanted to be like him.
Fields and woods. Farms, towns, and streams. I’d stopped paying attention. I was living solely in my head, thinking of what might be around the next bend, and if there was nothing… well, I’d think of the next.
Or I was thinking on what had been. Enoch prayed, I was stuck outside my own present, and Boytz was just… Out of everyone I knew in the army, he was the best I knew at it. If the men were singing, he’d sing. If they joked, he’d joke with ‘em. It was like he always knew how to fit into the space around him, but he never tried to control it. If all he needed was to be quiet, he’d be quiet.
When I thought to listen, I noted that the sounds of war were… not gone, but lessened. We’d hear the odd canon blast, or a rattle of musketry. A bugle or whistle. But they were scattered and thin sounds. The most action we could see was a new column of black smoke, billowing into the sky away north and west in the late afternoon.
I could imagine the scene. Another supply depot, another advance raid from Sheridan’s cavalry, and one more nail in the coffin of the Army of Virginia.
Another note in the funeral dirge of the Confederate States of America.
On the instant, though, it meant nothing to us. We marched. Night fell, and we all of us laid down like dead men to await the dawn.
April Nine
“Hey. Wake up.”
The dark was quiet and safe. My blanket was warm, and I did not want to get up.
“We’re moving. Get up.”
I opened my eyes, and Boytz stood over me. He looked as close to concerned as I’d ever seen him.
“What.” Not a question; just all I could of think to say.
“We got Lee in a bind,” he said. “Ord’s moving in a hurry, and we’re to move with him. That smoke we saw, yesterday, that was Sheridan’s boy, Custer. Caught a whole mess of artillery and a train of supplies. Took or burned it all, and now Grant and Sheridan are pushing everything forward.”
I struggled out of my blanket, and rubbed sleep and grit and exhaustion from my eyes until they hurt.
“Where?” My voice sounded like my throat was made of raw leather and wood.
“Place called Appomattox Courthouse.”
I nodded, stood up, and blinked. Boytz handed me a cup of hot coffee. No food, this morning, just a weak fire, blankets growing cold in the dawn, and the promise of… I could not imagine.
Rhoades got us in line, Weber got the regiment moving, and so on and so up until all of V Corps was moving, limbs stamping out an uneven pace, cold and sore from all the cold and sore mornings. I could not help but blink for the first hour or two, something in my eyes, and it turned all the motion about me into something from a nightmare. Jerking legs and arms, men there one moment, and then over there the next.
No. It wasn’t blinking. In one moment Boytz was trying to tell me a story about a hunt he’d had once, something about… I don’t know. And the next he was just looking at me.
I’d missed the thing entire.
“You okay?” Enoch said.
“Yeah,” I stammered. “Like a daisy.”
He nodded. Went back to his prayers. Boytz smiled, and kept on marching, but I caught him looking at me, out of the corner of his eye.
Boytz was worried, and that worried me, but it was a distant kind of sensation.
“That cut okay?” He said.
“What?”
“Your arm,” Boytz said. “You cut it the other day.”
I reached up, felt the tear in my sleeve, and the dull pain beneath. The window. When Abraham had died.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Alright,” he said.
We marched, and now we were moving north. I could not fathom where the decisions were coming from. It was like I was in a deep mist, and the men around me just… thicker twists of the same fog. Only when one of them spoke could I perceive them as real.
The sun arced across the sky like roundshot on fire. I swear I could see it move, like hours were minutes. The ground rose and fell beneath my feet, like I was the one not moving, and my legs some elastic thing that merely found whatever level it needed to keep moving.
To keep marching.
It’s what I imagine purgatory to be. If I really believed in it, that is. A place where it feels like you’re moving toward something, but you’re never quite there; some momentous event, always just over the horizon. Like you’re waiting for the next stop on the road, or the next town, or station on a rail line.
The next battlefield.
The sound of a bugle shocked me. I stumbled, felt a hand on my shoulder; Enoch looked at me, held me from falling flat onto my face. I sat my head about like a drunkard; saw the regiments flag flying in a strong wind I could not feel, Boytz with his rifle in his hands, waiting like a deadly sentinel. Men, rushing all about, and Captain Rhoades yelling at us, calling us from a some deep place in the earth.
“Skirmishers front!”
Enoch pushed me forward, and I stumbled, unslung my musket, nearly fell again, and I shook my head. I do not know what had come over me; I felt light, like I might float away at any moment. My heart was a lump of hot iron in my chest, not beating but pulsing; I felt its weight must drag me into the dirt at any moment.
Boytz rushed ahead, alone, and he knelt and fired in one fluid motion, and my heart sang to see him kill. I felt the hammer fall, felt the small, contained explosion; I saw the ball leave his musket and two hundred yards away, up a gentle hill, I saw a line of grey-coated men.
One fell, nerveless, dead before he hit the ground.
Now I did fall, but I caught myself on one hand, held my musket clear of the dirt and wet grass. I drew in the deepest breath of my life: black powder, gun oil, sweat, stink, blood, fouled bodies, earth, green life all around, cut wood, wool, animals.
Fear.
I blinked. I blinked for an eternity, and with every flash of new light I saw blue coated men running past me to the rear, and more men running past me to the front. Up the long slope toward a line of rebels, a thin line, but one that seemed defiant out of all proportion to their strength. Their ramrods rose and fell, the barrels of their muskets came up, fired, dropped again. I saw first company around me, and they moved like a single, fluid body.
“Miller,” I said. “Where’s Miller?”
“Don’t know,” said Boytz, reloading, his eyes looking up the slope, “and I don’t care. We got cares enough.” He ducked, and I heard a Minie ball whizz by.
I felt hands on my shoulders, turning me. Enoch’s face, inches in front of me. Eyes bright.
I nodded. The world crashed in around me, light and sound and sensation falling into place like a puzzle solved. My arm was sore, my shoulder too. There was an ache in my heart, but now was not the time. I looked at Enoch. I said “Thank you”, but neither of us could hear it.
I hope he knew what I meant.
We were moving up a slope running diagonal to our line of attack. The men running past us, riding past us in some cases, were Sheridan’s cavalry, and I allowed myself a small moment of satisfaction, but I looked left and right, and it was a solid wall of blue, the longest Union line of battle I had ever seen. All of the Army of the James, and all of V Corps alongside it, extending its right flank. Up the slope – not heavy going, but if it where anything but a spent army defending it I would not chance it – was a line of poor, sick looking men, huddled around tattered flags, clumped like men about to be washed from some small rock in a large ocean.
Cavalry dashed away westward; grey cavalry, but if they were leaving the field, they were not our problem. East, on our right flank, I saw rebel infantry rushing our way, down the hill. But a moment a later I realised it was not a counter attack – more cavalry were coming up on our right, and there were Union infantry behind the fleeing rebs.
Over the hill, I could hear another fight. We had Lee on three sides. We had him.
It was farmland, hereabouts, and lightly wooded. Not a few yards away was an old tree, and a hollow at its base. I could see everyone else going to ground, grey and blue, and so I pointed ahead. Enoch nodded, Boytz stood straight, fired again, and we all ran into the cold depression. There was a long rattle of volley fire above us, and I heard several balls strike the tree above us. I smiled.
“Good to see you boys,” I said. It wasn’t much. It was all I had.
“You too,” said Boytz.
I looked at Enoch. At his pale face, his black hair. He looked back, and he looked… sorry. Another volley was fired from above, and another answered it from down the slope. We were stuck between two dogged lines of infantry, hammering away at each other, as if the outcome of this fight were still in the balance.
Enoch smiled. Stood up to take a shot, because he was never one to shirk his duty.
Boytz reacted before I did. He sprang to his knees, aiming not up the hill, but down below where we sheltered, to a deep gully between us and Sheridan’s fresh troopers. He fired. A ball caught my hair with its passing, and another struck Boytz in the shoulder, but all I saw was Enoch. Before he could fire up the slope, he’d slumped forward, and I could not make sense of what I was seeing. He’d not been hit; I could not see what John was shooting at. It all seemed like some strange joke that I would get in a moment or too, and we’d all laugh; until Enoch grasped at my arm, fell further forward, into my lap, and I saw the gaping wound in his back and far side.
I saw bone, and splinters of bone. Blood, as if the whole world was bleeding. Coils of pink and purple and I looked away, before I knew I had to look back.
He looked up at me, craning his neck. The war went away, and he screamed in agony. There was blood on his teeth, and I could see it welling in the deepness of his throat. I reached out, but found I could not touch him, and his screamed filled all the world. His musket fell away to one side, his hands fluttered like small birds. But he fell back, off me, and lay in a crook of the tree’s roots.
Enoch’s lips moved. Splinters flew, musket smoke billowed all about, but I could not hear any of it. The earth beneath him was already sodden with hot blood, and his body spasmed and relaxed in time with his failing heart. He would not live.
He would not die fast.
His lips moved and I know what he implored. What he begged. I know what he feared more than anything else in this world, and it was the one thing I could not give him. My lips moved; I could not hear it, and I doubt he could. But the only thing I pray for now is that he knew what I said. To imagine him going to his end without knowing is more than…
I could not kill Enoch Shade, not even if he begged me to. Even though I promised that I would.
Boytz was looking at us. I had looked up, and not even known my head was moving. I could feel Enoch’s blood on my hand, pulsing, ebbing from his body. Boytz looked at us, at me, and he saw me crying, and he just nodded.
“I got one,” he said. He shrugged, and when I handed him my musket he took it, pulled back the hammer, and just nodded again. I looked down the slope, saw two men framed by the sun and the swift running water that even now it was turning to molten gold. The small creek that had cut the land that had killed my friend.
They were frantically reloading, and I stood up.
I marched.
I stepped down that hill like I was moving toward a rebel line across an open field. Like I had Abraham on one side of me, Israel on the other, and Enoch at my back. Like every man, blue or grey, that I had seen fall in my six months of war was with me. I saw a man, below, stand, discharge his piece; I stopped, shouldered my musket, took a breath.
I’d seen Boytz hold his breath when he took a shot, so I did too. I fired, and I did not even wait, I just kept walking. I saw blood spray, bright and red in the late sun, and one of the figures fell out of sight. There was a splash, and then another shot, from the last man standing. In the flame I saw Miller’s face, lit by fire and fear.
The shot went wide and I marched. Down that slope, into the ravine, and I did not stop to reload. As I walked I took my musket in my hands, and I reversed it; held it by its still hot barrel, brandishing the heavy stock over my shoulder. I stumbled, but did not fall. The ground fell away, and I leapt into cold running water. It foamed and frothed about my ankles.
Miller was reloading; trying to, anyway. Water struck his face, and he looked up, and his ramrod fell from his fingers. His eyes went wide; time slowed, and I watched his eyes, the way they seemed to take up all of his face, the way his mouth opened, yawning, something vibrating at the back of his throat, a scream I could not, would not, hear.
I swung. Not at him, not into him. I swung through him. I felt the impact of wood and brass and iron like something that was happening to another man. I almost twisted all the way around. Almost.
He was still standing there, somehow. Leaning to one side, looking away from me, his head twisted by the impact, his cheek shattered, the stark white of bone showing clear through the mess and gore and sudden, rushing, blood. Somehow, he kept his feet, and a small part of me was glad. Righteous.
He turned to look at me. One hand came up to cup the ruin of his face; the other to beg, held out, palm forward.
I twisted my grip, and I swung back, and I swung, and I swung again. I killed him and I kept killing him.
LINE BREAK
Private Jackson Miller was not the last man to die in the war. General Johnston took a while to surrender, and there were rebels still fighting in the West. I want to say Miller was the last man to die fighting in the East, but, truth is…
They assassinated President Lincoln two days after Lee gave up and I will never forgive the South for it.
General Robert E. Lee surrendered his command late in the day of the ninth of April. The same day Enoch Shade died. Lee just had no more to give for the cause. Not far from where the last shots were fired he sat in a small room with General Grant, and he ended the war. Sure, Jeff Davis needed a little more convincing, but once Lee had given up the Army of Virginia, everything else was just waiting for the corpse of rebellion to stop twitching.
Boytz told me about the surrender. About our general, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, offering a gallant salute to his brave foe; about the rebels – those still in arms, at least – stacking muskets and marching by, heads held high like they’d somehow won the whole show. He told me how solemn General Lee looked, how ragged our own General Grant was for the occasion.
The war took months to end, depending on how you looked at it. For some, it ended there. Some Union boys cheered, but General Grant would have none of it – told the army we were all Americans now. For some it ended with the last surrender, out near a place called Palmetto, or at sea, when the CSS Shenandoah ran its colours down.
If you were a Southern boy, I guess it was a slow end. Painful, maybe, drawn out, like surgery in a cold, damp, dirty tent. The removal of a rotten limb that would sooner or later kill the entire body.
I don’t give a damn what those boys think.
For Boytz, the war ended when the 182nd was dismissed, our unit mustered out, and when he and I decided we’d had enough of Maryland and Virginia and knew we could never go home to Pennsylvania after what we’d seen and lost. We could not go home, not now, so we headed west ourselves.
But for me the war ended at Appomattox Court House, where I buried Enoch Shade.
My friend.
THE END
EPILOGUE
“In time, even death itself might be abolished; who knows but it may be given to us after this life to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning role call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle.
Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say, Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”
— Private Barry Benson, Army of Northern Virginia, 1880
Throwing Words at the Stars 