Bull Run (10 page)

By the time I got there, the fighting was done with. That griped me. Then I spied a knife, the long sort the soldiers called Arkansas toothpicks. I snatched it up. I had me a souvenir to show off at home and felt better. I kept on, wondering what else I might find. I came on a dead man, half a biscuit in his hand and the other half clamped in his teeth. I turned away. A voice asked for water. I hadn't any and scurried on. I finally came to Bull Run. Loads of Union men, shot or drowned trying to cross, lay all about. Then a voice said “Boy.” I turned and saw a man who'd no body to speak of below his waist. “Shoot me,” he said. He pointed to his rifle. My stomach emptied. He was a Yank. How I'd longed back home to kill one. Here I finally had my chance. But instead I ran, dodging dead bodies, ran back through the Southern men, past the wagons, past the doctors, and kept on running toward Georgia and Grandpap.

Rain came on during the night. It soaked the men, turned the roads to muck, and added more misery to the retreat. It was past midnight when we reached Washington. All that night and the following day the soldiers trudged across the Long Bridge, sodden, sullen, the very picture of defeat. They dropped asleep on sidewalks and porches. Kindhearted women made vats of soup, set them by the street, and fed the famished lads. Staggering along through the rain, they looked a parade of ghosts. 'Tis a fact. My eyes shall never forget it. Nor my ears. How my passengers railed against the soldiers! And their know-nothing officers, and the profiteers, and the press, and the generals, and the President. I learned later that week that Jeff Davis and Beauregard were pulled to pieces the same way for not pressing on toward Washington. A few days after the battle, Lincoln sent McDowell packing. This raised spirits some, but not everyone's. I heard that Horace Greeley himself, the most powerful editor in the land—who'd first told Lincoln to let the South secede, then insisted that Richmond be taken—now had sent Lincoln a letter stating that the Rebels couldn't be beaten! The winds blew fickle about the President, but he had his feet on the ground. I'm proud to say he ignored the letter.

The first wagonload of wounded arrived that afternoon. By night, every bed and settee and most of the floor was occupied by wounded soldiers. The other houses nearby were the same. The three servants and I did all we could, cleaning the men and their ghastly wounds, changing dressings, feeding, giving comfort. I was told that my eldest daughter's husband had been wounded, and I gave the men the same care that I prayed he was receiving. Several were Yankees. We attended them with no less solicitude. They were all simply men, all in grave need. When they died, as so many did, they seemed changed from men back into infants, their bodies relaxing just like a babe's settling into its slumber. We saved locks of hair to send to their families, and the shirts the men had worn as well, which we labored to cleanse of blood. If I slept an hour or more straight through at night, I considered myself blessed. The rooms stirred endlessly with voices. One man asked for “Clarissa” without cease. Others moaned constantly for water. An officer called out, “Open the door to the King of Glory” and died the next instant. One Union man, a German I believe, both legs shattered and shot through the neck, clutched a photograph of a woman and would not be parted from it, even in sleep. Perhaps it did have healing powers. He had both legs taken off by a doctor who came to us, and survived the ordeal.

We hadn't known there'd been a battle until a week after it was over. Everyone was greatly cast down by the news of the Union's defeat. Some feared that the war might not end until Christmas. The following week Father brought home a letter informing us that Patrick had been killed in the course of the battle. It was from his captain. It said he'd fought bravely, had been given a fine burial, and was mourned and missed by all who'd known him. Mother wailed. Father looked almost smug, as if Patrick had been punished, as promised. I felt turned to granite by the news, then dashed outside toward the wheat field. I ran without thinking, for miles it seemed, then fell down, hidden by the long wheat, and cried until my ribs ached. I tried to picture his dying, his body, his face, his grave, but couldn't. He'd been killed on a Sunday. I tried to recall it. We'd gone to church, then come home and studied our Bibles in silence, as always. It seemed impossible that on a day so quiet there'd been a battle anywhere. I felt a great hatred for the stream called Bull Run. I thought back to walking through the wheat when it had been shorter, weeks before. How I yearned to be that girl again, back before Patrick had been killed! I begged for us both to be returned to that time, over and over again, until the sky began to darken. Then I climbed to my knees, then my feet, stood for a while, wobble-legged, and slowly headed back. I'd talked to Patrick in the fields that summer. I'd fancied he heard me, far as he was. He was now ever more distant still. I wondered whether he could hear me now. I spoke to him all the long walk home.

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader.

The speakers in this book, except for General McDowell, are fictional. The background, however, is factual, from whiskey hidden in watermelons to the details of the battle.

For those who wish to stage this work or perform it as readers' theater, the following synopsis will make it easier to locate the various parts.

 

Kim

I
stood before our family altar. It was dawn. No one else in the apartment was awake. I stared at my father's photograph—his thin face stern, lips latched tight, his eyes peering permanently to the right. I was nine years old and still hoped that perhaps his eyes might move. Might notice me.