I Shall Be Near to You (20 page)

B
ATTLE

AUGUST 21–SEPTEMBER 19, 1862

‘Your resolution once fixed, never lose
sight of it until it is carried out.’

—The 1862 Army Officer’s Pocket Companion

CHAPTER
18

RAPPAHANNOCK STATION: AUGUST 21–26, 1862

Me and Jeremiah are marching across green pastures, taking our money to get that farm. There’s rolling hills and apples in Fall and fat cows and a raven-haired child gathering eggs. We work a hayfield together, the golden hay swirling in the air, going home to a cabin at night, making plans for rooms we could add if we need. But when I wake up I am curled on the hard ground, not under Mama’s double wedding ring quilt, but wrapped in my wool blanket, and the only thing that is the same is Jeremiah beside me. I stare up at the lightening sky and pray we don’t ever have to see one Confederate soldier, but that can’t be. After more than a month of moving about the countryside all up and down the Rappahannock River, we ain’t ever been closer to the enemy. I find Jeremiah’s hand under the blankets, but he don’t wake and it is a marvel he can sleep so solid. I lie there like that ’til most of the camp gets to stirring, ’til Jeremiah opens his eyes and smiles at me.

Breakfast is barely even a thought when news comes tripping down through the soldiers that there’s Rebel pickets and artillery setting up along the river.

After that, the morning and breakfast don’t ever get to being like usual. There’s no jeering, no horsing around, no laughing, no storytelling. Even Sully sits quiet, chewing his lip. I force myself to swallow bits of salt pork, but when it gets to my belly it don’t settle right.

It ain’t clear where the notion starts but when breakfast’s eaten, Jeremiah draws out his pen and papers, unfolds the sheets down onto his thighs, ironing them over and over with his hands. Soon as everyone starts seeing what’s afoot, the hush gets even deeper. There ain’t a human sound except the moving of the rest of the boys as they fan out, getting space for private thoughts, taking up every boulder or log that’s good for sitting.

Jeremiah’s pen hovers over the blank page. It goes to quivering and then he writes
My Dear Wife, Rosetta
.

I can’t take none of that. I grab my things and shove off for the trees, heaving my guts, heaving every last bit of that breakfast, heaving long past everything is clean out of my body. When I stand straight, trying to look for all the world like ain’t nothing wrong, heads are still bowed, hands are still crawling across paper. I find a low flat boulder and sink down into the wet leaves and grass, digging in my pack to find the map. It is folded back to show the Capital and Virginia. From there it’s easy to trace the twisting snake of the Rappahannock River, just a thin ribbon keeping us from Richmond, less than a hundred miles away, not even a five-day march.

I smooth my own letter paper over that rock ’til McClellan’s grave picture stares flat out from top of the page. All the things I want to tell Jeremiah feel too big, too much to put to a piece of paper, and whatever I say won’t be enough to do him a lick of good. Instead I write:

August 21, 1862

Near Rappahannock Station

Dear Mama, Papa, and Betsy
,

If you are Reading these Lines, then You will already know what came of Me. I want You should know I ain’t sorry doing this thing and staying with my Husband. Sin or no, I am Proud I have been of Some Help and have done as Well as any Soldier and Better than some. I have Friends here from that neighborhood, and more besides and my Life has been Happy for having Done this Service
.

I don’t fear the Rebel bullets and those Cannons don’t scare me None. I have Made my Peace and Forgive all who ever done a thing to me. I want You should Forgive me for all the Wrongs I done. I know I haven’t always been a Right and Good daughter, or a good sister neither but I never did none of it to hurt you. I Hope you still Remember me as Your Daughter and Sister but are Proud of Your Soldier
.

I am Thinking on Home and if Ever I will Come there again. I want that you lay out for the Family and the Farm what the Army sends for my part here. I will See that it is done from where I rest. I don’t Aim to Die, but it gives me Comfort to know We will meet again in Heaven where there is no more Parting
.

I am Always
,

Your Rosetta

I seal that letter in a Liberty and Union cover with a three-cent stamp, writing
Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Edwards and Miss Elisabeth V. Edwards. Flat Creek Crossing, Montgomery Co., New York
. I slide it in my breast pocket and hope that when I look on it again, it’s because this war is over and Jeremiah and I are packing for one last visit home.

Across camp, away from the boys writing letters, the Chalmerses hug like they ain’t ever going to see each other again. Captain hands Jennie into a wagon, kissing that same hand. When he lets go, her shoulders hunch like she is crying, and she keeps herself turned around, her eyes on her husband as that wagon drives her back the way we’ve come. Watching her fade into the trees pulls at something inside me, seeing her for maybe the last time. I could be just like her, saying good-bye to my man, going away alone.

I hurry to Jeremiah. All around, men who ain’t writing letters sit, housewife kits on their knees, coats in their laps, needles in their hands,
stitching their names across the collars, like it is nothing to think on being so torn up a person wouldn’t know a body, or being shot down with the whole Company.

I sit myself silent beside Jeremiah. He looks at me once, his eyes full. From my own housewife kit I unspool some coarse thread, break it between my teeth, and lick the frayed edge. Holding the needle up to the sun, I push the wet thread through and shiver off my jacket.

‘Give me yours too,’ I say soft, and start sewing.

‘W
E
’
RE TO HOLD
here,’ Captain says, ‘and protect the railway in the town if the Rebels break through the Pennsylvania Regiment guarding the bridge.’

The town below the knoll where we’ve stopped ain’t much, a few brick buildings and the train station, its tracks running over the muddy brown river, trees growing all around and hills sloping away. Without those trains running we can’t get provisions and munitions and reinforcements. It don’t matter how pretty the rolling grassland is, or how tall the corn grows in the rich soil around this town, there ain’t none among us wants to be traipsing about in the countryside looking for farms with cows we can give vouchers for, not when the whole place is crawling with Seceshes.

Down beyond the town, too far off to make out much more than the blue of their uniforms, those Pennsylvania men line up in a trench on the other side of the bridge, a dog weaving through their lines, barking at the trees where Confederates are firing, maybe Jackson’s whole Corps.

‘This ain’t good luck,’ I say as we file through the tombstones littering the hill, trying not to think on the souls beneath as we hunker down and kneel for cover. Me and Jeremiah have got the best hiding place with oxeye daisies growing at the foot of a headstone so old it’s got soft edges, the bones beneath us waiting for Kingdom Come a long time now.

‘Plenty of things ain’t good luck.’ Sully shakes his head and sends me a look. ‘At least maybe the Rebels won’t be looking for us here.’

But those Rebels send a thunder of artillery fire right over the railroad bridge, over the Pennsylvanians’ heads, right toward us, making me cower.
Puffs of white smoke rise and hover over the box elders and poplars, smelling like sulfur.

The heights behind us are lined with our Division’s artillery, hidden among the skinny tree trunks. Beyond them is Colonel Wheelock and the rest of the high-up officers.

Sometimes we can hear more artillery echoing from upriver and that’s when this river ain’t big or wide enough, not even the Potomac River would be enough.

‘We ain’t winning,’ Jeremiah says.

‘What?’ I ask, even though I can hear him plain. ‘How do you know?’

‘If we were, those’d be the first words out of Sergeant’s lips, how them Rebels are falling back,’ Jeremiah says.

Sergeant paces at the end of our row of gravestones, looking like he’s counting us, like he’s measuring our chances. Jeremiah must be right.

I trace the letters carved on our gravestone, the shadow of a furrow, spelling out
Deliverance Lockhart, dau. of Samuel & Mary, My peace I give unto thee
. I flatten myself against Jeremiah and imagine sinking down into the earth, down to the bones below us.

Jeremiah bumps into me, his thigh long against mine, his head tilted so he can see around our tombstone. ‘Any Rebels come across that bridge and we start seeing action,’ he says, ‘you slip back.’

‘I ain’t going nowhere but with you,’ I say.

‘Ain’t no sin in falling back,’ Jeremiah says. ‘Helping those that need it when the time comes.’

There is comfort in those words. Especially with the sick feeling that’s settled in my belly. But I signed on for this and there ain’t a thing I have ever been made to feel proud of in my life but the doing of a job that needs doing.

A
LL NIGHT WE
are pelted with warm needle-sharp rain. Horses hunched and huddled in a stormy field never felt so miserable and I get to cursing myself for leaving my rubber-backed canvas by the side of the road, way back when we started marching. The kepis the Army gave us
don’t hardly have a brim and they don’t do a thing to keep the rain out of our faces or from going down our collars. I am soaked through to the skin before it is even close to morning. Sometimes I drop off to sleep for a bit, leaning on Jeremiah’s shoulder, only to jerk awake as often as a horse twitches at flies. But mostly we are awake and staring, nervous for Rebels to come out of the weather.

At first light Sergeant comes along our row of graves. He crouches down next to Thomas Stakely before moving on past. Thomas crawls to where Ambrose is hunched at the next headstone and that is how Sergeant’s orders to march come whispering from mouth to mouth down the line. Will brings the orders to us.

‘The enemy is moving, looking for another way across. We’re marching off to some ford, to keep them getting through,’ he says, and pats Jeremiah on the shoulder, sending him past me, crawling to the next grave, where the O’Malleys wait.

‘You ready?’ Will whispers to me once Jeremiah is gone.

‘Course,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll almost be a relief, leaving here.’

‘Sully says we might see some real action today. You think you might say a prayer with me?’ Will asks.

‘I don’t mind praying,’ I say, and the words are barely out of my mouth before Will takes up my hand in his clammy one.

‘Dear Lord, give us the strength,’ Will says. ‘Give unto us your whole armor, that you may help us withstand the evil day. Hide us under your shield of protection, that our enemy will not find us. Amen.’ He squeezes my hand before opening his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and crawls off the way he came, and I wonder if his prayer made a lick of difference.

‘What’s Will want with you all the time?’ Jeremiah asks when he scuttles back from telling Henry the orders.

‘We were just praying,’ I say. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘No,’ Jeremiah says. ‘I don’t like him taking such an interest, is all.’

‘He ain’t taking interest. He’s just lonesome and looking for a friend. You got something against me having friends?’

Jeremiah shakes his head, and I wonder what he is about until Sergeant comes before us.

‘We’ve gotten word from Brigadier General Ricketts, down from General McDowell himself, that our Division is to stop the Confederates from finding another way across the river,’ Sergeant says, sweat dripping down the lines in his face, the day so humid already after the Summer storm.

‘We’ve got Rebels hitting us with shells right over there!’ Sully says, loud enough for Sergeant to hear, but it don’t do no good.

We march off quiet, if hundreds of men can be quiet. There ain’t no singing, no wandering in our lines, nothing except the clinking of bayonets on canteens, boots tramping through reddish mud that splatters on our wet trousers, nothing except the way-off sounds of cannonball blasts echoing everywhere. Dying ain’t never felt so real before, and I ain’t ready, not like I told Will. I march closer to Jeremiah. He turns to look at me and gives me something like a smile, something meant to make me feel better, I think, but it don’t.

W
E ARE STILL
tramping on the turnpike four days later, our orders having blown us about like a weathervane, sending us every which way trying to find the Rebels. Now we are marching away from the river, headed for a gap in the mountains. Will swings his pack around to the front and digs through it. He don’t look around while he pulls out his deck of cards. He holds them in his hand and looks down at them, his lips moving. Will has been wearing his serious face all the time since we started marching, but he looks almost relaxed as he drops those cards into the grass alongside the road.

‘What’d you do that for?’ I ask him.

He gawks at me. ‘Do what?’

‘Your cards. You dropped them.’

‘I left them back there,’ he says, and the boys’ attention snaps to him, like a bunch of hens all seeing the same bug at once.

‘You dropped your cards?’ Henry asks, turning to us.

‘I did,’ Will says, and straightens himself like boys do sometimes before a fight.

‘What for?’ Jimmy asks.

Will says, ‘I’m not dying with gambling on my head.’

‘You ain’t playing poker no more?’ I ask.

‘Why didn’t you give one of us those cards?’ Henry tries not to yell.