Ghost Soldier (4 page)

I asked the school librarian, and she said De Soto had crossed the swamp in Busseron Creek Valley and camped at Merom on his way to Terre Haute. He was looking for a road to the South Sea so they could get to China. But I didn't know why I'd seen them, or the Indians before them. I hadn't found any more windows through time since then—until last night.

I thought about going to the battlefield tomorrow. If that was where the soldiers were headed, maybe that's why I'd had to make this trip to North Carolina—not because Dad liked Mrs. Hambrick, but so I could find out about the ghosts.

Chapter Three

T
HE
S
IEGE OF
P
ETERSBURG

“Where were you?” demanded Carleton as I opened the front door on Saturday morning.

I could see Mrs. Hambrick frowning over his shoulder and Nicole smirking. Dad didn't say anything.

“I was out running,” I told them, as if they couldn't tell from my sweaty clothes. “I run every morning. Dad knows. Usually he runs with me.”

“I thought I told you we were planning on an early start today,” Dad said.

“Well, everybody was still snoring when I went out, so I didn't figure you were starting
that
early.”

“Just get cleaned up,” Dad told me.

I went into the bathroom and took my time doing my cooldowns before getting into the shower. Then I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, with the blue-and-grey plaid shirt hanging open this time, tied the lariat around my wrist, and headed down to the kitchen to see what was for breakfast.

“Hurry up, Alexander!” Dad called impatiently from the driveway. “Paige said to grab something to eat and just bring it with you.”

I glanced out the window. He and Mrs. Hambrick were studying a map, and her kids were already sitting in a beat-up old van that looked as dingy as the house itself. I grabbed a few slices of bread, slathered on some peanut butter and marmalade, and headed outside.

Nicole was sprawled out, taking the whole rear seat of the van. Carleton was bouncing up and down in the seat in front of her, and the grown-ups obviously had dibs on the front seat.

“Move over,” I told Nicole.

She shook her head.

“I get sick unless I sit in the backseat,” I told her. “I tend to throw up. Not that anything could hurt this wreck, but it kind of stinks, you know?”

Nicole studied me. “That's bull. Sitting in the backseat makes people sick.”

I shook my head. “Other people, maybe. Not me.” I shrugged. “Well, it's not your problem. Yet.” I started to climb in next to Carleton.

“Eeuuwwhh! I don't want you barfing on me!” he cried. “Sit in the back.”

I turned to Nicole, and she reluctantly made a little room on the seat.

“Excuse me,” I said, climbing over her. “I need to sit by the window. That way I can open it if I start feeling—you know, queasy.” A blob of marmalade slid out of one of the sandwiches and missed her knee by less than an inch.

“Gross!” She slid past me and moved up next to Carleton.

Dad climbed in the front passenger seat. “You guys okay back there?”

I held my breath. Nicole tightened her seat belt but didn't say anything. After a quick glance at her, Carleton said, “Yeah, we're okay.”

I'd counted on Nicole not wanting to talk to Dad any more than she absolutely had to. If she'd said anything, I'd have been stuck in the smaller front seat in a heartbeat. Dad knows I never get carsick, no matter what I've been eating.

I settled back to enjoy the ride.

*   *   *

“I'm really looking forward to seeing the battlefield,” Mrs. Hambrick said, after we'd been on I-85 heading north for a while. “I can't believe we live this close to Petersburg and we've never driven up to see it.”

“That's because no one was interested, Mother,” Nicole said in a bored voice.

“I imagine you'll be more interested when you get there,” Mrs. Hambrick told her. “The city of Petersburg was besieged by Union troops for nine whole months! Both sides actually dug trenches in the earth and then built up earthworks, with sharpened sticks pointing out toward the other line in order to stop a charge. Soldiers could stand in the trenches and shoot over the tops of barricades made of dirt.”

“Cool,” Carleton said. “Can I build a trench in the backyard?”

“We don't need a trench,” his mother told him. “We don't have any soldiers besieging us.”

“Why were the soldiers in Petersburg?” asked Carleton.

“Who cares?” muttered Nicole.

“Come on,” Dad said. “This is interesting.”

“Yeah,” said Carleton, elbowing his sister.

Nicole shrugged. “We never went to any battlefields, because Dad thought they were boring.”

No one said anything for a minute. I actually felt sorry for Nicole—maybe she missed her dad the way I missed Mom. Of course, it wasn't the same thing. He couldn't ever come back.

Mrs. Hambrick said, “Well, there were plenty of things your father liked that you thought were boring. Remember the time he took you to see an opera and you fell asleep?” She looked into her rearview mirror. The way it was angled, I think she could see Nicole.

Nicole kind of shrugged.

“Your father didn't mind it when you liked different things than he did,” her mother said softly.

Nicole just stared out the window.

Yeah, stick to your guns, I thought. You don't have to believe her.

“So why were the soldiers in Petersburg?” Carleton asked again.

Mrs. Hambrick was quiet for a minute, still looking at Nicole in the mirror. Then she said, “Petersburg protected the railroad line that went straight up to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.” Now she sounded more like she was a teacher talking to a class. “In the end, the war came down to a question of whether or not General Lee, the Southern commander, could keep General Grant and the Northern Army out of Petersburg and away from the railroad.”

“Why didn't that general just go around Petersburg and take another road?” Carleton asked.

“There wasn't another road, you moron,” Nicole said. “They couldn't just jump in a car like this, you know.”

“Actually, there were other ways to get to Richmond,” Mrs. Hambrick began.

“See? I told you!” Carleton crowed.

“But Grant had tried every way, and Lee's Army always blocked him. So Grant decided to dig his own earthworks at Petersburg and wait out the Confederate Army. He could get food and supplies for the Union Army, but Lee's men only had what food and medicines and supplies they carried with them, or could get in the city itself. Everyone—even old men and young boys—fought in the siege, trying to protect the city, but there were just too many Union soldiers. General Grant captured Petersburg.”

She sounded sad, as if it hadn't happened so long ago, and I thought about those tired-looking ghosts. Were they really struggling to get to Petersburg? It was too late for them to change what had happened at the siege. Did ghosts keep doing the same thing even though they knew it wasn't going to change anything, just because they'd done it in real life? Why be a ghost and show yourself to people unless something could be changed?

*   *   *

At the battlefield, I let Nicole and Carleton climb out before jumping down myself. I rubbed my stomach and tried to look sick, but Nicole just rolled her eyes and started off for the building.

“Where's the trenches and the earth-i-cades?” asked Carleton. “No, that's not it—the earth—what were they?”

“Earthworks, cretin,” Nicole told him. “Or barricades. Take your pick—but not both at once.”

I tried not to grin, but Carleton was kind of cute. He looked at me, and I winked. He laughed and ran over to his mother.

“First we get the map for the driving tour,” she said, leading the way to a long, low building off to one side of the parking lot. “That's where you'll see the trenches and the earthworks.”

I rolled up the flannel sleeves of my shirt, since it had warmed up, and followed my dad. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me, but I just looked intently at the sleeve I was working on. I didn't want him to think I was having a good time.

Inside I saw a gift shop that looked like a library at first, it had so many books. I passed those by while Mrs. Hambrick got some maps. I went up a ramp to a round building with real uniforms and rifled muskets, and displays showing ramrods and paper cartridges with powder and minié balls—that's what they shot then, instead of bullets. I saw some weapons that looked like stubby metal tubes on a flat base. The sign said they were called Coehorn mortars, and they worked kind of like little cannon.

I looked at a drawing of a line of earthworks with deep zigzagging trenches. Soldiers on the enemy line would be firing Coehorn mortars back into your trenches. What would it be like to stand behind those earthworks while someone was shooting hollow iron balls filled with gunpowder at you from a mortar? I shivered, thinking of those soldiers who had held Petersburg for nine months.

“Hey—no you don't!” Dad said.

I looked over one shoulder and saw an opening in the floor that showed a fake trench leading to sort of a burrow dug out of the earth with a hard plank roof—the sign said it was a bomb proof, where soldiers could rest when they were off duty. That little wooden roof was supposed to keep them safe from the shelling. Carleton was halfway under the display railing before Dad grabbed him.

“But I want to see the trench!” Carleton complained.

“Sure you do, pal—but not here, okay?” Dad told him.

I turned away, sorry I'd winked, and headed into a room in the center of the round building. It turned out to be an auditorium, and I saw a model of the town of Petersburg and the countryside. We were just in time to catch the next show—a taped talk with lights flashing on the model showing the armies and the way the battle shifted. The prerecorded lecture explained that things got steadily worse for the Confederate Army in 1865, until General Gordon proposed a desperate plan to break the siege. His soldiers would cut a path in the night to the Union earthworks at a place called Fort Stedman. At dawn they would launch a surprise attack. And it worked! But Gordon's troops couldn't hold Fort Stedman. He managed to get some of his men back to safety only because a unit of North Carolina soldiers covered the retreat.

I felt my chest tighten as the lights showed the Southern line being pushed back, as Lee pulled his army out and let Petersburg fall, as Grant pursued him. Then Lee surrendered, and I finally released the breath I'd been holding as the lights went out.

Chapter Four

S
TEADFAST TO THE
L
AST

“Wow,” Carleton said softly, actually subdued for once. I guess he'd figured out that those trenches and bomb proofs weren't just for fun.

“So—where do we go from here?” Nicole asked, getting up and turning her back on the model.

“Can we see Fort Stedman?” I heard myself asking. Why couldn't I keep my mouth shut? I really hadn't wanted to show any interest in any part of the battlefield. But something about that story got to me. Those guys made a last-ditch effort—and they failed. And so many of them died.

“It's on the driving tour,” Mrs. Hambrick said.

Outside, a National Parks guard gave us a list of the living history demonstrations.

“Can we see a real cannon shoot?” Carleton asked, wide-eyed. “And climb into a real trench?”

The guard just smiled as my dad kept a firm grip on Carleton's hand.

We climbed back into the van, and I claimed the backseat with no trouble. But I didn't feel any sense of victory. I just sat there, staring outside and thinking of those guys struggling to cover the retreat from Fort Stedman. Old men and boys, Mrs. Hambrick had said. Why would a kid do that? What was he trying to hold on to that he'd stand there holding Fort Stedman to the last? It scared me just thinking about it.

The driving trail wound through different places on the battlefield. The ground on either side of the road was thick with dead leaves and old, dried grass, and you could see the strange way the surface rose and dipped.

“I don't see any trenches,” Carleton complained.

“Look closer,” my dad told him. “Can you see those waves in the ground? It looks like rolling land, but it's really manmade. There are your trenches.”

“Now I see,” Carleton said, staring at them.

I could see what Dad was talking about, too. But Nature had softened the curves. It was difficult to imagine how those trenches would have carved up the land into opposing lines of earthworks that the soldiers had depended on to save their lives during the War. I almost expected to see the ghosts from last night standing in the trenches, but there was no one.

Then the driving tour wound past a curve in the road, and I saw what those earthworks were all about. This stop on the tour was a maze of reconstructed zigzagging trenches that showed the front line's firing steps inside the earthworks and the sharpened stakes pointing toward the enemy line. I saw signs saying Keep Off Earthworks on the trenches, and the parking lot was jammed. One of the living history demonstrations was going on in front of some log buildings and a canvas tent. But it looked like marching and drilling—no cannon for Carleton.

“Let's try the next one,” Dad suggested.

So we drove on through the shadows of pin oaks and live oaks. All around I could see grass and ferns growing over the remains of the original entrenchments. The trees that grew back then would have been cut down to make planks for bomb proofs, and the branches used for those sharpened stakes, or to build fires to keep soldiers warm. I shuddered at the thought of all those living trees destroyed so that people could fight.