Boys of Wartime: Will at the Battle of Gettysburg (14 page)

I never imagined the destruction, or the stench. I never imagined the dead.

There was muted talk from the townspeople as we marched by. Someone remembered that it was Independence Day. We hurrahed for the Fourth of July and in gratitude to the soldiers. One comment stood out above all the rest, though.

“Jennie Wade was killed,” someone said. “In her sister's kitchen. Baking bread for the Union soldiers.”

I stopped short with a gasp. Abel stumbled beside me. “Were any other townspeople hurt?”

She didn't know. No one knew.

I strained to get a look at my house. Would there be bullet holes? Had Mother been killed in her kitchen, too? I wanted to break into a run. Abel could tell. My steps had quickened and he couldn't keep up with me.

“Run,” he said. “Run to your mama. Make sure ...”

It was like someone had drummed the order to charge on my heart. But I forced myself to slow down. “No.” I took a shaky breath. “We'll go together.”

We skirted a Rebel barricade made of fences and bedposts and other pieces of furniture, and finally we were at my door. Grace's red shawl still hung from the upstairs window.

Grace! How would I tell Grace and the twins if—

The front door was locked. I pounded on it, holding my breath. I thought my heart might jump right out of my body.

A man—a Rebel—opened the door. “More wounded,” he said over his shoulder. Then to me. “Take him to the Courthouse, or the church on the corner. We're full up.”

I nearly dropped Abel. The Rebel caught him and sat him on the pavement, against the house.

“I live here! This is my house.” I pushed past the man and looked for Mother.

The parlor was filled with wounded. A Union man moved among them on a crutch made from a fence post. He held a basket of biscuits. Mother must be in the kitchen, baking biscuits, I thought. I jumped over the men and went to find her there, but I only saw two soldiers taking more biscuits out of the oven. I fell against the back door. There were two dead men in the yard, but I still could not see my mother. Where was she? I thought of Jennie Wade and I wanted to scream.

I ran back into the parlor and was about to run upstairs when someone grabbed my arm. I tried to twist out of his grasp, but he was too strong for me.

“Where is my mother?” I demanded. “What have you done with her?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Where is my mother?”

 

 

 

W
hy was no one answering?

“Where is my mother?” I asked again. It came out a whisper. I was suddenly full of tears. My throat closed up around them.

I recognized the Union man we had taken in that first day, the one who had argued with his Rebel guards over dinner. His answer seemed to take ten years.

“She's at the Courthouse,” he said. “We made biscuits and she took some over. She's been worried about you.”

I slumped against the wall and took deep breaths to try and calm myself.

“Where've you been?” the soldier asked. “We thought you were on a farm.”

“I was,” I choked out. “But the battle ...” I couldn't finish.

“Your sisters?” he asked.

“Safe, I think. I had to leave,” I said, remembering Abel. “My friend is out front. He needs a clean bandage and a place to rest.”

We stepped aside while two men I didn't recognize—one with a bandage on his arm, the other with a limp—carried a body down the stairs.

“Looks like a bed just opened up,” the Union man told me.

I met Mother on my way to the Courthouse. She was coming back with an empty basket. She walked right past me.

“Mother!” I said.

She turned to look at me.

“Mother,” I said again.

She peered at me.

“It's me. Will,” I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in the Pierce's parlor window. My face was covered in blood and dirt. My shirt was as stiff as Abel's bandage, and my trousers and shoes were crusted with mud.

I took off my cap and showed her the tuft of hair that was forever sticking up. The one Grace was always tugging me by. “See, it's me.”

Mother dropped her basket and screamed.

“I'm not hurt. Just dirty.”

She pulled me toward her, dirt and all. We stood there hugging for the longest time, and I wasn't even mortified by my public tears.

“Are the girls with you?” Mother asked when she finally pulled away. “We heard there was heavy fighting at the Round Tops. I can't believe I sent my babies away to be safe, and you wound up right in the middle of the worst of it.”

“I left them at the farm yesterday afternoon,” I said. “They were safe in the cellar.”

Mother closed her eyes and sighed.

“I brought Abel home with me,” I said. “I found him wounded. That's why I had to leave. I had to get help for him.”

I picked up Mother's basket, took her hand, and led her toward our house.

“Any chance I'll be able to take a bath?” I asked.

Mother stopped and stared at me for the longest time. “Are you sure you're William Edmonds?” she asked. Then she threw her head back and laughed until she cried.

I guess I never volunteered to take a bath before.

 

There were violent thunderstorms that night. General Lee used the cover of rain and darkness to begin his long retreat south. Some said the line of ambulances and wagons stretched for seventeen miles. We were finally free of Confederate soldiers—those who could walk, anyway.

The battle might have been over, but our problems weren't. Abel's fever came and went. He slept most of the time. Sometimes he woke up ranting and raving. Other times he was almost himself. We kept bathing him with cool water and changing his bandage, but for a few days I was sure he was going to die.

We had almost nothing to feed him to build up his strength. All our food stores were gone. Every house in town was in the same predicament. A quart of beans had to suffice for the people in our home that day, and others in town had nothing at all. The army's supply wagons hadn't kept up with the soldiers. Most of the farmer's fields for miles and miles around were destroyed, and the nearest working railroad station was twenty miles away.

Somehow, the world learned of our predicament. The first wagon filled with food rolled into town on Sunday evening. By Monday, both the Christian and the Sanitary Commissions brought wagons full of food and medical supplies. I watched them ride down Baltimore Street from our doorway. A man handed me an orange. I was so hungry that I ate the whole thing, skin and all. Then I begged another for Abel.

I peeled it for him, and he ate it slowly, wedge by wedge. A drop of juice stood on his lip and he licked it up before it could dry.

“That's the best orange I've ever had,” he said.

I agreed. It was sweeter than anything in Petey Winter's candy store.

I wished I could hold the orange smell of it in my nose forever to cover up the stench all around. The Union army had left behind soldiers to bury the dead, but the task was enormous, and slow. Some said you could smell Gettysburg as far away as Harrisburg.

Mother had bottles of peppermint and penny-royal oil in the kitchen. “Put this under your nose,” she said, handing one to me. “It'll block the smell.”

Abel and I tried each one. He thought the penny-royal worked best, but I favored the peppermint.

Even in the terrible heat, we kept our windows closed. The sky was full of flies, buzzards, and crows.

Aunt Bess surprised us on Monday. She came to the door, rolled up her sleeves, and commenced to scrubbing blood off the walls. “My house is gone,” she said. “But I'm alive and I'm
free
.”

Many people came to our door that day. Another invasion of sorts began almost as soon as the soldiers left. People arrived hunting for their wounded or their dead. Newspapermen were on their heels.

I had no stomach for telling stories. I stayed with Abel and helped Mother as much as I could with the wounded and the cleanup.

A soldier had come by on Sunday with the word that Grace and the twins were safe. Mother and I decided that they were best off in the country, at least until the injured men could be moved out of our house and to one of the churches. We asked a soldier who was heading out to the Round Tops to stop at the Weikert place and let her know that I would come to get them as soon as I could.

Grace, being Grace, didn't listen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Reunions

 

 

 

I
was coming back from the church when I saw them. A scraggly group on the top of the Baltimore Street hill. More gawkers, I thought. More mouths to fill. Then I saw the four little ones. It was Grace and the twins with Mrs. Shriver, Tillie Pierce, and the Shriver children.

I was relieved to see them all walking upright. No one appeared injured. No telling what they had seen on their way here. The bodies in town had been buried by Union soldiers—their own men first, and then the Confederates. I didn't know about those in the fields outside of town. Some were in graves so shallow that feet stuck out of the earth. Countless dead animals had yet to be burned.

I had spent a day picking up debris the soldiers had left behind. Abel was still in bed, but he helped me go through the letters and diaries, looking for clues as to whom they belonged to, so as to send them on to their loved ones.

“This one is cut off right in the middle of a sentence,” he had said, turning the paper over.

I'd stared at a picture of a little girl—younger than the twins—in a leather case, hoping that her father had only dropped the picture and was not among the dead.

Now I shook off my sadness and prepared to meet my sisters.

Grace spied me, let out a screech, and started to run.

Uh-oh, I thought. Was she still mad at me for not going into the cellar on the day I had found Abel?

When she was within hearing distance I tried to tell her I couldn't help it, but Grace swooped me up in such a tight hug that she squeezed all the words out of me.

She checked my arms and legs, and then pulled me into a hug again, blubbering like crazy.

Sally hung onto one of my legs. Jane Ann stood back and watched, her face pale and worried.

Finally, Grace took a good look at me. Then she boxed my ears.

I yelped. I was done being happy to see Grace again.

“You said you'd be right back, William Edmonds. We thought you were wounded, or dead, or both!” she said.

“What?”

“We got word that Mother was well, but no one could tell us anything about you. The soldier who told us to wait at the Weikerts' said there was a wounded boy in the house.”

“That's Abel,” I told her. “He lost his hand, but I think he'll be fine,” I said.

Grace took a deep, shaky breath.

Jane Ann clung to Sally and whispered in her ear.

“Are you a ghost?” Sally asked.

I knelt down and looked into Jane Ann's eyes. “I'm no ghost. If I was a ghost, it wouldn't hurt when Grace boxed my ears. And boy did it!”

The twins nodded solemnly.

I straightened up again and took a sniff from the bottle of peppermint oil I had taken to carrying. Truth to tell, there was a powerful smell coming off of Grace. She hadn't changed her clothes or had a decent sleep in a week. She was covered in mud and muck.

“I'm sorry I scared you,” I told her. “I had to find help for Abel, and then there was no way to get back. I brought him here when the Rebs cleared out.”

“Hmmpf.”

“Mother's at the Christian Commission, getting supplies. I'll set up a tub in the backyard for the twins,” I said. “You'll be all fresh and clean when she gets back.”

For the first time in a week, Grace thought about her appearance. Her eyes flew from the cellar doors to her red shawl hanging over the front door and back again.

“No one touched your clothes,” I told her. “They're hanging over the woodpile right in the cellar where you left them.”

Grace put her hands on her hips. “If you expect me to bathe in the yard—”

“I'll bring some hot water to the cellar for you,”

“Yes, you will,” she said. She was as bossy as ever, but a smile played on the corner of her lips.

I smiled, too. “Just make yourself presentable before you scare somebody to death.”

I was out of reach before she could box my ears again.

 

My reunion with my sisters wasn't the last I was to have that week. On Saturday, Colonel Braxton came to call.

I had gone out to the Bailey farm to collect Molasses. She weathered the battle in a secret room under the Baileys' barn, along with their own horses. She spent an entire week in the dark, but she was safe. If the ordeal had made Molasses frightful or skittish, I couldn't see it. She was as steady as ever.

I rode into town and spotted the flag flying in the middle of the Diamond. Someone had built a new flagpole. I was proud to see it there.

Most of the houses had taken down their red flags, but every church, hotel, and public building was still a hospital. We kept Abel with us, but the rest of our men moved to the Presbyterian Church.

The town's telegraph equipment was back, and one of the first telegrams to arrive was from Father, asking about our welfare. He had good news to share, too—Jacob had been released! He and Father were together in Washington, and as soon as Jacob was strong enough to travel, they would be on the first train home.