Echoes of Dark and Light (17 page)

As I walked back towards the battleground, I dreaded what would meet my eyes. Working at the hospital tent, I had only witnessed a fraction of the battle; I didn’t look forward to the full experience, but knew I would participate soon enough. Broken bodies littered the charred crossroads of Campbell’s Station. A hazy stench hung heavy in the air, despite the nighttime breeze attempting to blow through the chaos. A handful of soldiers worked at clearing away the dead, while others set up tents and built fires for the night’s camp on a ridge about three quarters of a mile away. I found it hard to believe that after witnessing and participating in the brutal act of war, a person could even attempt a normal activity like making coffee or drawing a bow across a fiddle’s strings. The sorrow-filled notes of the fiddle did match the mood though, moaning and wailing after the dead. I needed to find my unit; I needed to make sure Toby had survived. And Kenny and the rest. I needed to report back to Captain Truckey.

“Looks like the baby made it through without a scratch!”

“Yeah, Mr. Greenie went and hid behind the hospital tent.”

Jimmy, Kevin and their gang. It appears they all survived the battle with no more than a scratch or two. Yippee.

“Was itty-bitty Bobbi scared? Did he wet his pants?”

I tried to ignore their ribs, knowing a retort would only encourage them, or enrage them with me ending up on the bottom of a pile. Not that their words didn’t find their mark. My neck burned as I reminded myself that I’d been under direct orders from Captain Truckey; I’d done nothing wrong. Still, I had to forcibly focus in on Kevin to ask my question, trying hard to block out the others’ voices.

“Hey Kevin, have you seen Kenny? Is he okay?”

Kevin shrugged. “Has Kenny ever been okay?”

His pals snickered.

Kevin pointed over his shoulder. “Kenny and his pals are over there somewhere.”

I mumbled a thanks and headed in that direction, eager to both escape their abuse and to see Toby. And the others. He’d said ‘Kenny and his pals’. I prayed everyone had survived unscathed.

“Hey, look! It’s Bobbi!” Woody’s voice, though hoarse from smoke and overexertion, sounded happy to see me.

I raised a hand in greeting and hurried over to the group sitting around a welcoming fire. I carefully looked everyone in the eye as I took a seat near the warmth. Preacher. Kenny. Woody. Toby. Exhaustion pulled lines in their faces, slumped them on their logs, but everyone survived, and in one piece.

“You made it!” Kenny punched my arm.

“I think that’s my line,” I said. “I’m the one who hid out behind the hospital tents.”

Preacher handed me a hot cup of coffee. “I’ve worked with the medical crew before, and believe me, their job is no walk in Heaven either.”

“You okay?” Toby asked, concerned eyes reading into mine.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m tired, and unfortunately a bit wiser in the ways of war, but okay. Boy, that was quite a commotion, eh?”

“Not really,” Kenny popped a chunk of jerky in his mouth. “Comparatively, it stood on the smaller side of the scale. But a victory none the less.”

“That was a victory?” I asked, surprised.

Toby nodded. “We defended our supply wagons and pushed back Longfellow, objectives completed. Plus, the 27
^th
had relatively few losses, three dead and eighteen wounded. Total loss for our side, four hundred.”

I didn’t quite comprehend how four hundred people dying gave us a victory.

Everyone fell quiet, staring into the fire. As the high pace of the day slowed, I suddenly felt cold, really cold, and I folded in over my coffee cup, trying to absorb some heat. I scooted as close to the fire as I dared, yet shivers continued to rack my body. Without speaking, Toby reached behind him into our tent and pulled out a coarse wool blanket. He tossed it into my lap and I dug up a small smile of thanks as I wrapped it tight around my shoulders. It helped, a little. But every time I closed eyes, pictures flashed across my lids, pictures of dead soldiers, piles of amputated limbs, pools of dark red blood, the terrified look on the crazed man’s face… I tried instead to focus on the faces before me, Kenny single-mindedly cleaning his rifle, Preacher intently praying with his head bent and eyes closed, Woody staring blankly into the orange flames with his palms wrapped in cotton bandages due to a burn received from grabbing a hot gun barrel (“Woody, that’s the third time you’ve done that! Stop grabbing the rifle barrel!”). And Toby. Toby sat starring up at the few stars peeking out from between the clouds, his usual sparkle hiding behind a thoughtful and solemn frown. My first battle and I had survived, yet I couldn’t help that feel some small part of me deep inside had not.

Thankfully, none of us had pulled guard duty that night, even with the number of lookouts doubled and tripled in the aftermath of the Campbell’s Station Battle. In fact, I already fought to keep my eyes open; no way could I guard the perimeters, successfully anyway. As I sat there trying to find the energy needed to stand, walk two feet and crawl into my bedroll, Preacher glanced at his pocket watch.

“It’s about that time,” he announced. “Anyone care to join us tonight?”

“I will,” Woody chimed in with a yawn. He drained the last of his coffee before he stood, sticking his hands inside his pockets against the advancing chill.

Kenny stood, too, but passed on the offer. “Not tonight, Preacher. I’m tuckered out. ‘Night all.” He gave a half-hearted wave as he stepped into the shadowed maze of tents.

“Toby? Bobbi?” Preacher looked at us expectantly.

“Sure, why not,” Toby agreed.

“What’s going on?” I hesitated to ask, fearing some additional, over enthusiastic, nighttime training exercises.

“Relax,” Toby said with a hint of his usual smile. “It’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad?” repeated Preacher with annoyance. “I thought you enjoyed these meetings as much as I do.”

“Nobody enjoys these as much as you do, Preacher.”

Preacher waved as he tromped off into the darkness. Toby began extinguishing the fire while he explained. “This is one of Preacher’s ideas; he cooked up the entire thing. See, Preacher didn’t feel having church services once a week constituted enough soul saving, especially for the dilapidated souls of us soldiers. So he got together with the company’s chaplain to organize a special service following each battle. It’s informal and casual, and whether or not it’s actually good for my religious pathway, I couldn’t say, but it sure does give a guy the necessary quiet he needs to do some thinking.”

I understood completely. A bit of quiet to do some thinking…or some snoozing if I couldn’t keep my eyes opened.

“Oh, but don’t tell Preacher that. He’s positively tickled that he’s so personally involved in saving our souls. I wouldn’t want to disappoint him.”

Toby led us to one of the empty officer’s tents, borrowed with permission for the special services. Men had started to gather, lining along the walls and filling chairs set up in rows. The prime spots, next to the wood stove, were unofficially reserved for any wounded, those with injuries not severe enough to be sent home. The crowd came from every branch: infantry, cavalry and artillery, and though most wore the uniforms of private, a few officers did grace the meeting as well.

Woody, Toby and I stood at the back while Preacher joined the chaplain up front. The chaplain wore a long black coat over a civilian suit. A neatly trimmed beard, more gray than brown covered his face, with dark brown eyes peering out over half spectacles. He held an open Bible in his smooth-skinned hands and a welcoming smile on his thin lips. When his smile grew broader and brighter, I turned to see who had caused it.

In walked Nurse Cora Davis, dressed in a pressed, dark blue dress and matching hat. Every eye in the tent zeroed in on the pretty nurse. She smiled politely as she surveyed the room, though her smile spread to include her eyes as well when she saw me.

“Well, if it isn’t Private Rivers!” She walked over to join us. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“And yourself, ma’am.” I nodded my head with a smile. “Nurse Davis, this is my tent mate, Toby, and another friend of ours, Woody.” I had to remind myself to remain formal and reserved. I didn’t need anyone suspicious over a friendship between a single female nurse and a single, supposedly male soldier.

“Gentlemen,” Cora nodded at each before turning back to me. “Well, Private Rivers, you’ve survived your first battle and you’re still in one piece. How does it feel?”

“Just fine, ma’am.” For some reason, I had to fight an atypical giggle that threatened to erupt and send out seeds of suspicion to everyone within hearing distance; I guess the reassurance of sharing a secret can do that to a person.

“Good, good. Well, I’d better take my seat. It was nice to meet you both, and Private Rivers, I hope we shall speak again soon.”

I watched as she made her way across the tent, a pathway forming curiously before her like the dividing sea in the Bible. If I hadn’t caught the sly wink she’d sent me as she turned away, I’d almost have thought I’d dreamt our conversation earlier. She’d covered her tracks to my secret so well, she’d almost fooled even me. I smiled at the thought.

“Do you fancy Nurse Davis, too?” Woody asked, breaking through my thoughts.

“No, no of course not,” I objected a little too quickly.

“If you did, you wouldn’t be the only one, not by far,” Toby said. “Almost every single man in the camp has eyes for Nurse Davis; even some of the married men like to take a look. So, what’s the matter, don’t like beautiful blondes? Or are you a raven-haired admirer?”

Not the female variety
. “Oh, she’s pretty enough,” I answered back, struggling to play it nonchalantly. “Just not my type.”

“She sure seems to like you,” Woody objected wistfully. “She hardly ever talks to the fellows outside of the hospital tent, and she singled you out right away.”

“Oh, that’s just ‘cause we met at the hospital today. I sort of helped with an amputation.”

I guessed that explained it enough, and thankfully they dropped the subject. As the chaplain stepped forward to begin the service, voices lowered and almost all eyes directed to him. I noticed that Preacher and one or two others continued to watch Cora, and I really couldn’t blame them. With all the ugliness surrounding us, with guns and killing, amputations and seemingly wasted death, it felt a bit of a relief to gaze on a pretty sight. Then I noticed another pair of eyes not on the chaplain, and I turned to Toby.

“What?” I whispered a bit too harshly. His scrutinizing eyes made me extremely uncomfortable.

“Nothing,” he murmured, and quickly shifted his eyes to the front.

The chaplain spoke an interesting and thought-provoking sermon, at least the part I listened to. So much so, that it provoked my thoughts right off of his speech onto a tangent of my own. The chaplain started off reading the Ten Commandments from the old testament. But when he reached the one about not killing, my mind zeroed in and wouldn’t let go. Just where did that commandment fit in during wartime?

I had never pulled the trigger on any person. Deer, yes. Possum, coons, ducks, heck yes, though always to put food on the table, never for fun or sport. But now I found myself in the middle of a raging war, and in the very near future, I almost certainly would find myself gun barrel to gun barrel with another person. Would I be able to pull the trigger? Would I really be able to look someone in the eye and rip his life out and stomp it into the coals? And if so, would that make me a murderer? Would God be disappointed in me? If life ran in the normal spectrum, I’d take these weighty questions to Robert. But life hung far from normal, and Robert…only God knew where Robert was. I missed him more dreadfully than ever.