The Last Full Measure (15 page)

He nodded slowly. "Never even let any of us read it. You ever read it?"

"No, David. I don't think Mama ever did, either."

He grunted and did more thinking. "Surprised he'd allow you to go along and see all those horrors he spoke of up there. Well..." He scratched his chin. He had a day's worth of beard. "I'm going to have to think this over a bit. Right now I'm hungry and Josie's making supper. Come on, let's eat. Get Marvelous."

"What about Mama?"

"Doctor said that remedy would put Pa right to sleep. I expect she'll be down in a minute. Don't say a word about this to her, you hear? Or to Marvelous or Josie."

Not even Josie? That meant he was serious about it. "Yes, David, I hear."

***

P
A DID SLEEP
and we had a quiet supper. I was especially on my good behavior, so as to be agreeable to David. After supper I offered to clean up and do the dishes with Marvelous so he and Josie could take a walk outside. It was such a beautiful evening.

David gave me a peculiar, surprised look and said "thanks," and they went out.

Before they came back I fetched a book for Marvelous, my old copy of
Fairy Tales
by Hans Christian Andersen. Marvelous could not read as well as she should for her age. I was helping her and she loved fairy tales. While she was involved with the book, I crept upstairs. Mama was in her sewing room. Pa was sleeping.

I secured his
Physician's Handbook
and left the room with it. I seldom did important things behind Mama's back, but I understood that if David and I went to Culp's Hill I'd have to go without telling Mama.

I knew that she would not approve. Oh, maybe she'd allow David to go, begrudgingly, only because when push came to shove David was a man and she could not hold him back. But never me. So I'd have to sneak off. And make it up to her later.

Downstairs I hid Pa's book behind a pillow of the couch, where I sat waiting until David came home.

***

F
ORTUNATELY, AS IT
turned out, Mama was so taken with Pa, with worrying about him and tending him, that she scarce paid mind to me in the next day or so.

As a matter of fact, everything fell into place for me so perfectly that I began to become worried. It was as if my life were charmed. And I knew better than that. My life was never charmed.

Marvelous went back to the church to help her mother the next morning. After she left, David told me that yes, he was going today, and yes, I could come along provided I obeyed him in everything he said and gave him no mouth about anything. He would leave a note for Mama.

"Don't say anything to her," he ordered quietly. "We don't want to worry her. When we come home all in one piece tonight, she'll see it'll be all right to let us go back tomorrow."

So David was, in his own way, conspiring against Mama, too.

But he still had to get around Josie.

We were leaving at ten o'clock on this sixteenth day of July. He told Josie about nine o'clock, and she fixed some food and water for us to take in our haversacks.

At nine thirty, I could not find David, but I heard some murmurings behind the almost closed door of Pa's study. Now, I am not one to ignore murmurings behind an almost closed door, so I listened and sneaked a glance in, too.

David was holding Josie close. "I don't want you along," he was saying. "It's going to be downright stinking up there."

"But you're taking your little sister."

"She wants to go. She wants to do it for Pa. I can't say no to her at this point. I've given her so much crap lately. I've got to make it all up to her somehow."

"You've got things to make up to me, too, David."

He kissed her, then. He told her he loved her. And that if she would have him, he wanted to marry her.

He said it all soft and dear-like, my own mean-mouthed brother David. And she said yes. And then he said that he had to be off and he would see her tonight. I ran, light-footed as I could in the stupid rubber-soled boots I had to wear, right into the parlor, where I waited for him, scowling.

"You're late," I scolded him. "Where have you been?"

"I told you: no mouth," he said.

And so we were off to a good start.

W
E RODE OUR
horses as far as Evergreen Cemetery, and there we tethered them under a tree near the archway. David gave a guard a two-dollar bill to guard them, and we started to walk to Culp's Hill.

First we had to walk past McKnight's Hill. It was really just a knoll, but it was there that we saw our first corpse, lying facedown near a small spring. His hands were reaching out, clutching small tufts of grass. His haversack and canteen lay beside him.

David knelt down and turned him over. "Maine," he said. "He'd been trying to fill up his canteen. His musket is gone."

We looked around. Within a short distance were a lot of other Rebs and Yankees. David stood up. "Let's go," he said.

We went on. A short distance, still on McKnight's Hill, we saw a Confederate body cut in half, lying there in grass, which was red with blood for about two yards all around it. I wanted to stop, but David grabbed my arm and pulled me forward.

Then we climbed the wooded sections around Culp's Hill and the bright sun overhead dimmed, as if we were walking into a fairy story. Only this was instead like walking into the part of it that was owned by the wicked witch who was preparing poisons to kill the prince and princess.

First we came upon body parts.

Legs and arms, as if to introduce us to what was coming. As if to prepare us for the rest.

David walked in front of me, bade me follow directly behind and halt when he did. He stopped once, just to look up.

"Look at the trees," he told me. He spoke in a whisper, and I gazed up.

All around us the trees were still standing, mute evidence of what had happened here. They were standing, yes, but you could see where the minié balls had shot away the bark and made holes in the trunks.

Some had no bark left. They were, most of them, as mangled and torn as the bodies that lay on the ground all around them. Only it was their destiny to live on if they could and remember the hell that had gone on here. And if not, if they could not bear it, then they must die.

The trees had given of themselves, too.

"Oh, it's terrible, David," I moaned.

"Yes." That was all he said. Then he went over to one particularly beautiful oak into which an iron ramrod was fastened, jammed in far. He set down his things and tried to pull it out. But it would not come out. So he cursed and tried some more, but it would not budge. So he bit his bottom lip and gave up. He picked up his things and we went on.

We headed for the place Pa had told us about, the breastworks built by the Twelfth Corps, but we became disoriented and couldn't find it. Then we smelled coffee and the aroma drew us in the direction of some soldiers from the Third Wisconsin, who were already burying some dead. There were six of them and they waved at us.

We went over to them and David shook hands and introduced his "little sister" and told them what we were about and how we were here to continue Pa's work, how Pa was a doctor with the Union army, and they directed us to the breastworks.

They offered us some coffee, which they'd been brewing on a small fire. We took out our cups. I offered them some sugar cookies Josie had sent along. She'd sent more than enough. We visited about ten minutes, then went on our way to find the breastworks.

Once there we found the graves that Pa had dug and marked and recorded in his book. We opened and read the book together, figured out Pa's system and where I should write the names of those we buried that afternoon.

In the next three hours or so, we had to decide which of the many bodies that lay about to bury.

The one that was legless, with the flies buzzing about what was left of it? And if so, mustn't David first find the legs and bury them with it? He made me step back, then searched the pockets of the man's jacket, where he found what he was looking for. A letter with his name on it.

"Write this down in Pa's book," he directed. Then from the ground where he was kneeling next to the body, he looked up at me. "Are you all right?"

I said yes, that I was, though truth to tell I was a little dazed. I did not know a body had so much blood in it. And I had never seen a man with no legs before. It did not seem to bother David, and I would certainly never let him know that it disturbed me.

He gave me the man's name and I wrote carefully:
Corporal Albert Sydney Sawyer of the 20th Connecticut
. I also wrote where he was buried:
On Culp's Hill, by the 12th Corps breastworks
.

"There are some legs over yonder," I told my brother.

"Got to dig the grave first." He took up his shovel and commenced to dig, thanking the Lord for the rain and the soft ground and remembering how Pa had told him it had to be deep. In no time at all he had a respectable grave, had retrieved the legs and had them placed in the hole with the soldier. Having covered it all over, he took out of a sack some light wood he'd brought along to make grave markers. While he was going for the next body I was the one who wrote, with a lead pencil, the name and regiment of the dead man on the marker.

"They'll designate someone to come and carve it on later," he told me. "No time to do it now."

The next soldier was Private William Sensebaugh, also from the Twentieth Connecticut. He'd been shot in the chest and his right arm was in tatters. Just as quickly, David dug the grave and buried him, made the grave marker, and while I went about my business writing his name on it, and again in Pa's book, David went to choose another body.

Only before he did this, he ran his hand across his forehead and planted the end of his shovel in the ground. "We haven't eaten anything yet," he reminded me. "You hungry?"

I nodded yes.

"Why didn't you say something? Come on—let's go over to this clump of trees, away from the dead."

I followed him to the trees, where there were some rocks, and we took out our food and ate. If you faced away from the battlefield, looked out over the hills toward town, you could pretend you were on a picnic and not on a gory mission. You could make believe there were no dead around you.

We sat in silence. "It's really beautiful up here," David said. "Gotta bring Josie up here someday when all this mess is over."

He grinned at me and I gave a small smile back. "Sorry you came?" he asked.

I shook my head no.

He finished the rest of his food and wiped his mouth. "Damned war," he murmured. "Ruined everything for everybody. And now I hear that Meade didn't pursue Lee, but let him get away across the river. So it'll go on for a couple of more years. Lincoln's gotta get himself a better general than that. Well"—he stood up and stretched—"let's get back to work. The afternoon is almost gone."

We went back to work.

All in all we buried three more bodies. Then the man came.

I didn't know what time it was. The sun was low in the west, though, so it must have been about six o'clock already. I was worn down, and if somebody hadn't come I think David would have gone on working until dark. He's like that, David is. Once he's involved in something he just keeps right on going, never wants to quit.

We didn't hear the man coming, and he was on a horse, too. We didn't hear the horse's footfalls.

All of a sudden he was just there. I looked up and saw him first. A dumpy-looking man wearing a canvas coat. I recollect wondering why he was wearing a canvas coat in the July heat. And he was carrying a gun, too. A rifle.

First thing that came to me was that David did not have a gun. He hadn't thought it necessary to take it along to a cemetery. He'd had so much else to carry.

I worried about that for half a second. David always carried a gun.

"David," I said.

He was busy digging a grave and didn't hear me at first, so I said it again. "David."

"What?" He was annoyed at the interruption.

"Somebody's here."

He stopped digging. He took off his hat, shoved his hair back, and looked up at the man. "Can I help you?" he asked. "You lost?"

"Don't think so," the man said. He was from the North, didn't have a Southern accent. He slipped off his horse but kept his rifle. He offered his hand to David. "Name's Daniel Sensebaugh, down from Connecticut earlier this day."

David took off his glove and shook hands.

Sensebaugh. I must be overtired
, I thought,
but why does that name ring a bell?

"Is this the site of the breastworks of the Twelfth Corps?" he asked.

"You've got it," David told him.

"Well," Mr. Sensebaugh announced, "like I said, I come down earlier today by rail with my mother to get the body of my brother who was killed the other day on this here hill."

Oh. Sensebaugh
. We had just buried him.

"I'm sorry about that," David said.

"Yeah, well so am I. And my mother. I've put her up at the Globe Inn. I've got a coffin all ready to take my brother home in. Tomorrow. Guess I'll have to look around and find him." He gazed around the hill at all the bodies. "God Awmighty, what a slaughter. Well, there's a couple of hours of light left yet for me to look." He started to walk away.

David did not look at me. He bit his lower lip and looked down at his boots for a minute. But just for a minute. Then he turned and called out. "Mr. Sensebaugh!"

The man turned. "Yes?"

"Don't bother looking. Your brother's here."

"Where?"

David pointed with the shovel. "Here. We just buried him. That's what we're doing here. Burying the dead and marking their graves and keeping an account of where they're buried for future reference. My sister and I. We've been working at it for hours. Others are doing it also. At different places."

The man walked back to us. On his face was a look of pleasant surprise. "Well then, you've saved me a lot of trouble, son. Now you can just help dig him up and put him on my horse and I can take him back down the hill into town."