The Girls of Gettysburg (17 page)

“Steady, sons,” Gideon reassured them.

Boom! Boom! Boom
!

The Federals returned fire. The air was alive with screaming shells and flying fragments.

Annie dug even lower to the ground as a fragment whistled above her head. Someone gasped behind her. She chanced a quick look back over her shoulder, and saw that a soldier had caught the fragment square. But she couldn't tell who it was. He didn't have a face.

“Hold steady, boys!” Gideon shouted.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

For an hour it rained fire. More boys fell to the flying fragments.

And then the cannons stopped. It was a mean silence, as thundering as the cannon fire.

“Fall in!” Gideon stood tall. “It's time, sons! This is the moment that'll define your life, heroes of Virginia! For your mother, then, and for your sisters! Stand tall, boys. Stand tall as you might!”

And the boys of the Ninth Regiment stood tall as they might. There were none taller.

Annie looked up Seminary Ridge. Stretched along the rise for over a mile, twelve thousand men stood tall as they might.

These were the boys of Virginia, all around her. Farther down the line stood the boys of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. There were so many, and James Anachie Gordon had lived among them, had earned his measure as one of them.

“Strawfoot,” Dylan said, standing next to her, “it might be that I am a coward by nature, as big as any might be. But if all my friends march forward, I'll march beside them—with great pride.” He looked squarely at Annie. He looked so hard that, for a moment, she thought he'd discovered her secret.

“You've been a pain in my backside from the very beginning,” Annie said. “And I'm quite proud to march beside you.”

Below the lines, General Pickett rode up and down his division. His curls were flying. His horse was prancing. He waved his sword above his head.

“Look to the heights to take, heroes of Virginia!” he shouted. “See the greatness of the moment. Remember, today we are all Virginians!”

“Portsmouth Rifles, up and at 'em!” Gideon shouted.
“Destiny awaits!”

The first cannon rang out. The men moved into formation, a wall of men stretching more than a mile down the ridge.

The second shot rang out.

“Right shoulder, shift arms! Forward, march!” The order echoed down the line.

Bayonets glistening in the hot sun, the wall of men stepped off the rise in perfect order. The cannoneers cheered as the soldiers moved through the artillery line, into the open fields.

The line had advanced less than two hundred yards when the Federals sent shell after shell howling into their midst.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The shells exploded, leaving holes where the earth had been. Shells pummeled the marching men. As one man fell in the front of the line, another stepped up to take his place. Smoke billowed into a curtain of white, thick and heavy as fog, stalking them across the field.

Still they marched on. They held their fire, waiting for the order.

Boom
! A riderless horse, wide-eyed and bloodied, emerged from the cloud of smoke. It screamed in panic as another shell exploded.

Boom
! All around lay the dead and dying. There seemed more dead than living now. Men fell legless, headless, armless, black with burns and red with blood.

Boom
! The very earth shook with the terrible hellfire.

Still they marched on.

A high whine zipped close to her as the Yankee sharpshooters opened fire.

Keep steady, boys!

For more than a mile they marched, ninety steps a minute.

Annie leaned forward, holding her hat down as if hit by a hailstorm. But all around, soldiers fell like stalks of corn as bullets found their mark.

Jasper spun hard about, falling like the others as a bullet hit true.

Keep steady, boys! Do not hurry or fire too fast! Wait until I give the order!

Ahead was nothing but smoke and flames. As they neared the
road, they came to a rail fence that divided the fields. The fence slowed them down, but it couldn't stop them. They climbed over the fence, some picked off like ducks on a farm by the blue-belly fire. But still they marched on and crossed the road.

Then the rebel wall of men raised such a thundering holler, the very heart of every man stirred anew.

Annie yodeled as loud as anyone, raising her Whitworth in defiance.

And Dylan yodeled, his crooked grin wide. And they marched on, the trees not eight hundred yards away. Federals poured down from the right and the left, meeting at a stone wall.

“
Now
, boys! Gideon shouted. And the order came. “Now, sons of Virginia!
Fire!
”

Annie fired, rushing forward.

The moon rode high, and the stars were bright, but already clouds were moving in. By morning light, the drizzle began. Then thunderstorms rumbled over the little town. The rain filled the creeks to overflowing, but it did little to wash away the blood.

The Confederate army was leaving. General Lee led the way back to Virginia. Behind him came the wagons carrying the wounded, trailing for seventeen miles.

Left behind in the homes of Gettysburg, and in the fields and rocky hills and ridges surrounding the small town, were thousands more men—the dying who had no hope of surviving, and the dead.

The Battle of Gettysburg was done.

The quiet proved more deafening than the cannon fire, and it scared Grace to the bone. They dared not move from the cellar. Off and on they heard frantic shouting, shooting, and stomping. But who was shouting? Who was shooting? And whom were they shooting?

Mrs. Woods never came.

Mr. Butler never came.

They were forgotten, there in the darkness.

“Does she ever talk?” Grace asked Wisdom, pointing to Sorry. Sorry crouched near a crate, close to the light. They were running out of candles.

“Not unless she has something to say, which is none too often.”

“Is that why you call her Sorry?”

“I don't call her Sorry,” Wisdom said. “That's what
they
call her.”

“What do you call her?”

“That's not my name to give. But the story is something else. Once long ago in a faraway land lived a king who lost his queen. Out of loneliness, this king sent his messengers throughout the lands to find him a new queen. It weren't too long before they came upon a particularly beautiful woman named Esther.”

Grace smiled. Wisdom's voice was like the mourning doves that called to the sun.

“When the king saw her, he fell madly in love with her. Unknown to the king, however, Esther was Jewish. And her father was Mordecai, who refused to bow to the king. He felt no man should bow before
another. This made the king very angry, and he made a law to put all Jews to death. When Esther found out, she went to her king. Even though she knew it might mean her death. She became the voice that saved them.”

“Your sister's name is Esther.” Grace smiled as Wisdom nodded, the two looking to Sorry—Esther—who frowned.

A chill seeped into the little hole, and Grace knew it had begun to rain. Water began to seep down the outside wall. It seeped across the dirt floor, turning it to mud.

And more rain came, and now Grace feared the cellar was flooding.

“We cannot stay here,” Grace announced.

“We don't know who's up there,” said Wisdom.

“But we know what's down here,” Grace said. “We
can't
stay.”

Unable to sit up, Grace pushed against the shutter. She slipped in the mud, and lost her hold. The shutter didn't move. The cellar had flooded, and the water had moved something in front of the panel.

The water now rushed down the wall. The mud deepened and the water began to pool around them.

Esther eased next to Grace, and both pushed against the shutter, both sliding in the mud. The water was now pooled so deep that it ran across the floor, snaking its way to the shutter and under the wood. It rushed like a river, and it was getting deeper.