Chapter Twenty-nine

At the top of the hill outside Fredericksburg, the captured Mississippians sat in a huddle by their old fire pit, whittling pine twigs. It had been a long time since Laurence had seen the enemy up close, and he stared, knowing the others were doing it, too, watching the men who had become abstractions become men again, with yellow teeth and bony, muscle-hard shoulders, strong legs and ordinary feet mashed in boots that were too small and split at the seams. There was scarcely a uniform among them—one wore a gray coat, another the trousers, another the Confederate cap with a tarnished front buckle. The rest of their outfits were recognizably Yankee, stolen from living and dead Union soldiers, and yet Laurence knew they looked nothing like him and never would.

One of the Mississippians glanced up. He had a scraggly blond beard and long-lashed eyes, the right one slightly askew, as if it could not agree with its partner which world to watch.

“What are you staring at?” he asked. “We ain’t gonna try anything. We figure we’ll be fed more as Yankee prisoners than as Lee’s soldiers.”

It had been the hardest charge in the war, straight up a slope through burning brush to conquer the summit. Men had died trying to win the same hill the year before, and twice as he’d ascended, Laurence felt a chill pass through his body. When they took the heights, Davey had announced proudly that the victory was key to crippling nearby Fredericksburg, and it bothered Laurence to hear the Mississippian dismiss their surrender as a matter of better rations.

“What were you fighting for, then?” he countered.

“Shoot. What kind of question is that?” The man looked around at his companions for reassurance, but they were whittling or trying to sleep or writing letters to loved ones about their capture. He shrugged. “Because you’re here,” he said.

Laurence recognized Addison’s forceful new gait coming up behind him.

“We need to take their knives from them,” said the sergeant.

They wouldn’t have won without Addison spurring them on, fighting enough for two men, but Laurence refused.

“They’re pocketknives, Addison.”

“Throw down your knives,” ordered the cockeyed secesher lazily, as if he were telling them a story. There was a silence and then a series of soft thumps as the men obeyed, some digging in their pockets, others making one last carve before letting go of their weapons. The blades shone on the orange pine needles. Far off in the valley, Laurence heard a high scream. It was not the sound of any living creature. He glanced down through the trees, seeing nothing but the black shapes of branches.

“If you got me captured, you’ve got them all, Sergeant,” the Confederate continued. “We already gave you our lives, our land.” He gestured to the valley, but his wayward eye was watching the sky behind them. “And it ain’t enough, is it?”

There was another scream, and a few of the prisoners looked up this time, brushing the soot from their hands, but Addison and the blond Confederate faced each other with the intensity of lovers. The trees drew dark bars across the space between them.

“I take you on your word,” Addison said finally in a quiet voice. “I don’t know what ‘enough’ is anymore,” he added, spinning on his heel.

The knives disappeared again, one by one, into pockets and fists, and the prisoners went back to their letters and daydreams. Laurence felt their leader watching him with his wayward eye, so he, too, walked away into the pines, his legs so tired, they stumbled on every root they crossed. It was only later, when they had marched back down the hill, grabbed their haversacks and gear, and set off toward the next battle that he realized the source of the screams.

Beside the rail line that led to Fredericksburg, someone had spent the afternoon with a few horses and a giant fire, melting rails, twining them up trunks. Thinking of his father’s railroad tracks in Allenton, weed-thick, shifted only by winter frost, Laurence felt a flicker of rage at such easy, useless loss.

“It ain’t enough, is it?” He heard the secesher’s voice, and turned, but only Addison was behind him, marching with his head down, his hand on his revolver. They had let another company lead their prisoners away.

“They won’t survive the winter,” Addison said to his boots, and Laurence decided he must be talking about the trees, their bark scored and black, some still smoldering. He wondered briefly why the screams had come from the metal as it was twisted from straightness, and not the destroyed trees, which would die as silently as they lived, dropping their leaves, going hollow in their cages.