The Face of Heaven (23 page)

13

N
athaniel moved double-quick along the Hagerstown Turnpike in the fading light, one hand gripping his musket, the other on his black hat to keep it in place. Two wagons full of fallen soldiers passed him and turned off the road to a burial pit. He ran past soldiers in groups of two or three and cannon pointed south toward Sharpsburg and Lee’s army.

Meadowlarks and robins were singing to the dusk. Gunfire all over the battlefield had ceased. Before leaving Poffenberger’s farm Nathaniel had checked his pocket watch and the hands had been just shy of seven. He guessed he would be at the Miller farmyard in a few more minutes. Once the barns and farmhouse came into sight he saw stretcher bearers and ambulance wagons and men carrying bodies through doorways. Then he saw the cornfield and the fence that separated it from the road. He slowed to a walk and clenched his teeth.

During the fighting he had scarcely noticed the bodies of the fallen. They lay three and four deep along the fence and at the side of the turnpike. The corn patch was dark with death, black hat and gray coat tumbled together as if a twister had torn through David Miller’s farm. Farther ahead he could see mounds of soldiers sprawled on the grass by the Dunker Church. A sickness came and went in his stomach and his head. Lanterns were lit and moving between the buildings. One floated by the church, disappeared behind it, then reappeared again.

He continued to approach, squinting at the figure by the church. As he came closer he realized it was a woman. He thought it might be
Clara Barton assisting the surgeons here. The light fell on the woman’s hair and shoulders. She bent and set the lantern on the grass to tend to a man at the far corner of the church. He watched her raise a canteen to the man’s lips. His uniform was gray. A voice carried to him through the twilight.

“There’s plenty, don’t worry, plenty for your friends. Drink up. Drink up for me,
ja
?”

His throat tightened. His stride lengthened. He stepped off the turnpike and walked toward the church, past the tangle of bodies to a clear stretch of grass. The woman’s face was turned to the injured man.

“The bullet didn’t hit the bone,” she was telling the soldier. “You’ll keep your arm, sir.”

“God bless ye,” said the bearded officer.

Then, as she bent toward the wounded man, the light from the lantern fell on her face. Powder and grime streaked her skin. Loose hair dangled into her eyes and she kept pushing it back with hands stained by dirt and blood. She was over a year older than the last time he had seen her. But her beauty was no less. It was her.

“Ginger,” he said.

Her head came up sharply. “What? What did you call me?” She jumped to her feet, picking up the lantern and holding it toward him. The light fell on his face and she stopped as if she’d been struck. “Oh!”

She all but dropped the lantern onto the ground and ran to him.

The impetus of her rush threw them behind the Dunker church and away from the dead and wounded. Nathaniel’s face was dark with burnt powder but Lyndel clasped his head in her strong farm-girl hands and kissed it again and again. “Nathaniel, you’re alive, thank God, you’re alive! How I’ve prayed for you!” She pressed her lips against his and they held the kiss for a long minute while the night rang with birdcalls and the rasp of crickets. “Stay with me. I need your help here. Miss Barton has a whole crew but I just have Morganne and Hiram to tend the wounded and help Indiana’s surgeons. The 19th needs you more at David Miller’s farm than it does at Joseph Poffenberger’s.”

He ran his hand over her cheek and played with the loose strands of her hair.

“Your eyes are so blue,” he said.

She laughed and put her fingers to his lips. “You can’t see my eyes in the dark.”

“Yes, I can. Your skin is so smooth and your hair is so wonderful. I wish it would all come undone.”

“Perhaps if we work hard enough on the wounded you will get your wish.”

He kissed her on the lips again. “How beautiful God has made you.”

“And how handsome my man is. Even under all that war paint.” She took a damp cloth from a pocket and wiped at his skin until some of the grime began to come off. “My sweet Nathaniel. A corporal.”

“Sergeant now. After today.”

His eyes were large and soft. She held him against her again, tucking his head into her shoulder. “So many brave boys. I pray their sacrifice will make a difference. I pray Lee will withdraw. He must withdraw.” She removed his black hat and kissed his hair. “But I need you with me. I do, Nathaniel. I couldn’t bear for you to walk off into the dark after only a few moments together. Won’t you stay close? Won’t you help me nurse the men here?”

Nathaniel lifted his head. “Captain Hanson knows where I am. He doesn’t want to see me until reveille. Said he’d put me in the brig if he glimpsed so much as the tip of my boot before drumroll.” He kissed the top of her head just in front of her
kapp
. “I’ll stay with you until four. Then I’ll have to skedaddle. There’s no telling if Lee and McClellan will mix it up again tomorrow.” He kissed her hair again.

“You picked a heck of a spot for a tryst, Yank.”

The voice came from the front of the church.

Nathaniel and Lyndel stepped around the corner. Nathaniel smiled and squatted beside the Rebel officer Lyndel had been nursing. “You can’t blame me, can you, Captain? This farm would be a place of beauty but for the quarrel we’ve had here.”

“I expect. Don’t think many of the dead would begrudge you, son. Could they rise, they’d hope you were first in line at the county-fair kissing booth.” He grinned through a beard matted with powder. “If
there’s a heaven, they’re better off than you and me right now. And if there’s nothing, they won’t know it. Now if there be a hell, that’s something else again. I hope the Lord has mercy on all these boys.”

“Yes, sir.” Nathaniel dug into his coat pocket. “Have you something to eat? Would you care for a couple of buttermilk biscuits?”

The captain propped himself up on his good elbow. “Where on earth did you come by those? You Black Hats have one of your grandmothers following you around in her wagon, woodstove and all?”

“A comrade in arms made them.” Nathaniel’s voice caught as an image of Nip came to his mind.

“Thank’ee.” The officer bit into one of the biscuits Nathaniel offered him. “Soft too. Before your girl showed up I thought I could drink the Chattahoochee dry. Didn’t have a thought for food. Now she’s poured half a canteen into me I think I could swallow a dozen of these. The butter’s off but that’s nothing for a soldier. Am I talking too much, ma’am?”

Lyndel was washing both sides of the wound where the ball had passed in and out. “Talk all you want. No one’s going to give you chloroform tonight.” She brought cloth and dried leaves out of a satchel she’d placed on the grass and made a poultice.

“What’s that?”

“Canada wild ginger.”

“Why you putting it on me?”

“You fought through all this and now you’re going to go and get scared on me, Captain? It draws out the poison, keeps the wound clean, helps the skin bind back together. How’s that?”

“Feels good, all right.”

Lyndel stood up. “Can you walk a bit? Sergeant King here would be pleased to help you away from this carnage and find you a barn to lean against or a tree to lie under. Please take this canteen with you.”

“Why, thank’ee. I expect I would like to take that walk. I’m fair tired of the sight of this spot.”

He put an arm over Nathaniel’s shoulder and tottered up the road past the cornfield to the Miller farmyard.

“Not a barn or the house or anywhere they’re doing the surgery,
son,” said the officer. “I swear I heard enough screaming today to last me a hundred year.”

“How about the old tree over there?”

“That suits.”

When Nathaniel headed back he saw Lyndel was walking about the cornfield with her lantern, examining men’s faces. The light passed over face after face and then left them to return to the dark. Dozens of black hats and black feathers lay battered in the dirt. He came up quietly beside her and saw the glint of water on her face.

“The captain’s settled,” he said softly.

She wiped the back of her hand over her cheeks. “Thank you, Nathaniel. I’m sorry. I just would like to have seen more young men survive.”

“I know.”

“Miss Barton was working here right after the Rebels withdrew and that was early on. The battle had moved east toward Antietam Creek. I came about noon. We were with casualties in the West Woods first, the place your men fought Stonewall Jackson. I watched it from time to time with Hiram’s spyglass, you know. When I could bear it.”

Nathaniel touched her gently on the arm to stop her from walking any farther. “There’s something you should know.”

Lyndel looked at him. “What? Please give me no bad news.”

He made a small smile. “War brings only bad news, Ginger. The worst of it is that I’ve lost Corinth to a Rebel bullet. He’s gone.”

Lyndel gasped.

When she regained control of herself, she asked, “There’s more?”

“
Ja
. Your brother and Joshua Yoder enlisted in the 19th Indiana. They’re in my platoon.”

Lyndel gripped his hand. “Don’t say so!”

“They fought today.”

“Oh—is Levi—is he all right? Joshua?”

“Neither of them is wounded.”

Lyndel pulled her hand free and wandered among the dead and the cornstalks until she reached the fence by the road. She climbed over it still holding the lantern and began to walk beside more bodies. The
light touched on hands and eyes, it touched on heads of curly hair, on those who still wore their black hats or Confederate caps. Nathaniel climbed over the fence after her.

“Why did they do it?” she asked as she walked. “Did they tell you?”

“Your brother saw Lee’s men abduct Africans in Maryland. They took free men and women and children captive and sent them south to the plantations. Joshua—well, he couldn’t abide the thought of the North being conquered. Of living in a slave nation. I believe Levi also mentioned Charlie Preston.”

Lyndel was silent a few moments. The light swung in her hand and the light played on rigid faces. He knew she was hoping to see movement or hear a groan.

“Do you think we’ll ever meet up with Moses Gunnison again?” she asked suddenly.

“I don’t see how.”

“Or that leader of the slave hunters?”

“Levi’s seen him.”

“Where? When?”

“Just a couple of weeks ago. After Manassas and Chantilly. Your brother was collecting Union wounded under a flag of truce. Said the Rebs called the man Georgey Washington. I suppose it was in jest.”

“George Washington! Some George Washington!” She suddenly dropped to her knees. “His leg just moved.”

Nathaniel squatted by the black hat. “Soldier, can you hear me? I’m Sergeant King with the 19th Indiana.”

A struggling voice whispered, “7th Wisconsin.”

“Do you know where you’re hit?”

“Arm. Right arm.”

“I have a canteen here.” He put it to the young man’s mouth. “Drink your fill. This woman’s a nurse. She’ll take good care of you. Things are going to get a whole lot better from now on.”

“I’m going to clean and bandage your wound, soldier,” Lyndel said, taking her satchel from her shoulder. “Then we are going to get you up to the surgeons.”

“Am I—am I going to lose my arm?”

“Perhaps not. At least not all of it. And your other arm will be just as good as it is now.”

He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

“Private, can I offer you something to eat?” asked Nathaniel.

“No, thank you, Sergeant.”

Lyndel finished bandaging the bone that had been fractured by a bullet. “We need stretcher bearers.”

Nathaniel peered through the dark. “Can’t tell where they are. It doesn’t matter. This boy’s young and slender as a birch sapling. I’ve got him.”

“Are you sure?” asked Lyndel.

“I’m sure. Just sling his arm so it doesn’t get knocked about.”