Then I with flowing tears, allowed my doubts to rise. Is there a God that sees and hears the things beneath the skies?
– Psalm 73, Isaac Watts
When Andrea came back to consciousness again, it was to a scene of heart-wrenching destruction. Moving nothing but her eyes, she scanned the field and took in the scene of massive carnage. Mutilated and disfigured horses lay everywhere, while wisps of smoke hung motionless in the air over the field of battle.
Andrea lay still, staring at the leaden sky above. Ignoring her aching muscles, she moved her fingers and then her hands. Though her stiff, bloodstained clothes made moving difficult, she finally brought herself to a sitting position.
“Sinclair? That you?” The voice sounded incredulous.
Andrea looked up to see her old friend Jasper from J.J.’s command. Leaning upon him was a Union officer she did not know. Both faces were black from smoke.
“Boonie’s down yonder.” The soldier pointed down the hill as he half-helped, half-carried the man toward a row of ambulances. “I’d be much obliged if you could take him some water.”
Andrea stood unsteadily, and then searched aimlessly for her friend. It never really occurred to her to look down, down in the dirt where so many others lay. But then, at last, by chance, she saw him.
“Boonie?” She dropped to the ground on her knees.
He looked up, pain written across his usually smiling face. “Sinclair? That…you?”
“Yes. It’s me.” Andrea felt the crusted blood on her face when she tried to smile and realized she must be hard to recognize. She lowered her gaze to Boonie’s chest, to a wound from which warm blood still flowed.
“Where? Where…you come from?” he asked after a few moments silence.
“We’ll talk later.” Andrea tried to sound cheerful as she attempted to stem the bleeding. But when she put her handkerchief under his shirt, her hand fell into a horrible hole.
“You…go on.” Boonie whispered, his lips barely moving. “I’ll catch up.” He paused and sucked in some air, kind of gurgling as he did.
“I’m not leaving, Boonie.” Andrea bent down still lower beside him with a choking mixture of hope and dread.
“Rumor had it…you was caught by Hunter.” Boonie opened his eyes and stared at her. “How’d you…get away?”
The way Andrea grimaced was apparently not lost on the injured man. “Betcha found out he weren’t such a bad guy.” Boonie paused and sucked some more air into his lungs. “Betcha if I got to know the guy who put this hole in me, I wouldn’t think he was such a bad guy neither.”
“Don’t talk, Boonie.” Andrea blinked back tears she did not want to shed.
Boonie fell silent, but only for a moment. “We had some good times…I wish—” His voice sounded weak.
“I wish it wasn’t always the best blood that gets spilled.” Andrea rolled up an old coat to put under his head, while putting pressure on the gaping hole with one hand. His eyes fluttered open and met hers with a look of appreciation and understanding.
“Dang it, Boonie.” Tears stung her eyes as she tried desperately to stop the flow of life that gushed from him. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t go gettin’ soft on me now, boy.” He moved his fingers in the pool of red beside him as if suddenly aware how swiftly the precious fluid was draining from him. “But don’t leave me here, Sinclair.”
Andrea swallowed hard. “I won’t, Private Boone. I won’t.”
He nodded slightly in recognition that he had heard her, but did not re-open his eyes. “It’s Lieutenant,” he said after a few moments rest. “Lieutenant Boone.”
Pride swelled in Andrea at the announcement. Yet congratulations seemed so out of place when she was attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep his lifeblood from flowing through her fingers. “Are you in pain?”
Boonie shook his head, but his teeth began chattering slightly. “Just c-c-o-l-d …”
Andrea removed her coat and laid it across him, then knelt down close to his ear. “Boonie, I joked around a lot, but I hope you know how much I admire you.” She felt the slightest squeeze from the hand she held, but that was all.
“I’m…not…afraid,” he whispered, gurgling again. “Tell…my…mother.” Andrea squeezed his hand firmly. “I’ll tell her …” She closed her eyes and bowed her head without finishing.
He coughed deeply and Andrea wiped the scarlet fluid from his lips with the edge of her coat. “Sinclair…I want you…to know.” His breathing grew more sporadic and shallow.
“Don’t talk, Boonie. And don’t worry. Best friends know everything.”
Yeah,” he whispered so faintly she could barely hear. “Best friends know everything.”
He lay quiet then, his face pale. But his coughing had aggravated the wound, causing the blood to flow even faster.
Andrea tried in vain to catch the precious fluid, tried in vain to return it to its rightful place. She pushed it back toward the hole by the fistful, but it would not go in, would only come out, bubbling and gushing between her fingers. “Oh, Boonie!”
He looked up once more, a mute appeal filling his eyes even though he could no longer speak. That’s when Andrea stopped trying to stop the blood. Instead she contented herself with stroking his hair and speaking bravely to him, easing his passing as best she could.
Within minutes, she raised her head and gazed statue-like over the field of battle, knowing her friend’s spirit now floated above—up there where his eyes vacantly stared.
Andrea looked down to the spot where the soil had drunk the last drop of life from his bleeding breast. She stared disbelievingly at her own hands soaked in sticky humanity, then gazed up at the sun. Sinking behind crimson clouds, it appeared to be fleeing into its own sea of blood. The sight caused her to shudder, then shake uncontrollably. A scream rose up from the deepest recesses of her heart. “W-h-h-y-y???”
She pounded the ground by Boonie’s corpse in a delirious rage, though it was not because he had died. “Please,” she beseeched with her cheek against the blood-soaked dirt, “take…me-e-e!”