Night of September 20, 1863
After the Battle
Eli’s first thought was he felt too awful to be dead. Then he thought he must be having a nightmare, his head so hot and tight he thought it would explode, which given how much it hurt he considered could be a good thing. Besides that, he felt like he was floating. Certainly, he moved without walking and his head seemed to be hanging upside down, making his headache all the more intense. He opened his eyes a slit and everything lacked focus. He wondered where he was and how he came to be there, but he could not remember.
He heard low, muffled voices mixed in with the cries of horses.
He groaned. At least he heard a groan and thought he made it.
“I think he’s coming ‘round,” said a voice from the dark. “Eli?”
“Where am I?” he mumbled. He tried raising his head and failed, groaning again with pain.
Eli sensed he was sliding off of what felt like a tree limb. His feet touched the ground but his legs buckled and he would have fallen but for a strong pair of hands under each arm holding him up.
“Can you stand?” said a voice.
Eli opened his eyes and half focused on the face of Big Joe, who he realized was the one propping him up. “What happened?” murmured Eli, reaching up to rub his throbbing temple.
“It was the damndest thing,” said a voice behind him. “One second you was standing there and the next, boom, you went down like a sack a potatoes. It was the damndest thing I ever saw.”
“You got hit square in the head with a minnie ball,” said Joe. “The only reason you ain’t dead is it was a spent bullet. Must a been fired somewhere way off and just hit you by accident coming down. It had enough left in it to knock you sideways from Sunday, but didn’t kill you. Although I sure as hell thought you was kilt. Al here was the one to see you was still breathing.”
Eli tried to stand on his own, but the earth felt like the heaving deck of a ship.
“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” said Steve Blue.
Eli looked into Blue’s face, who was peering at him curiously from next to Al Belshiem. It was dark, but even so Eli thought his vision strangely blurred.
He realized he was standing in the middle of a road. Soldiers, horses and equipment moved past, and from what he could make out in the dim light, the men looked like mourners at a funeral.
“I don’t feel lucky,” said Eli, wincing in pain from the effort to speak.
“We got to get you to a doctor,” said Big Joe.
“No,” said Eli sharply, wincing again. “No doctors,” he said quietly but firmly.
“I think it best you see one,” said Al. “You got a hell of a bruise on your forehead.”
“And a knob the size of a crab apple,” said Joe.
Eli shook his head. He lived in constant fear he might be wounded and have to see a doctor. They would be sure to discover the truth about him, and that would end his career in the army and any chance of getting back to Georgia and William. “I don’t need a doctor. What’s a doctor going to do but say I’ve been shot in the head and ought to get some rest?”
“He’s right,” said a voice behind Eli. He turned to see Sergeant Hayes staring at him, his hands on his hips. “Believe me boys, the hospital’s the last damn place Craft wants to be. They’ll be sawing off legs’n stacking wounded two to a bed. There’ll be blood everywhere and the whole damn place’ll smell worse ‘n any slaughterhouse. And with the screaming, he won’t get no rest at all. You’d be better off sleeping in hell than be anywheres near an army hospital this damn night. He’s just had a good crack on the skull, and lucky for him his head’s thick as a brick. I’ve seen it before. He’ll just be woozy a few days.
“Now, keep moving. We got orders to get ourselves to Rossville Gap outside a Chattanooga to be ready to meet Bragg if his army comes after us. We got a hold ‘em there until our boys are ready at Chattanooga.”
Hayes looked in the direction from which they had retreated. “I don’t think Bragg’ll come, though. He ain’t the type.” He shrugged. “Still, best get a move on, girls. If Bragg comes a knocking, we got to be ready to give him a hot, ‘How do ya do?’”
“Can you walk?” said Joe to Eli.
“How the hell did I get here?” asked Eli, realizing with a twinge he had sworn again.
“Joe carried you,” said Al.
“All the way here?” said Eli skeptically. “How long was I out?”
“At least a few hours,” said Joe. “I ain’t sure. Seems like forever and just a few minutes. When you’re in a fight, it’s like that.”
“We held ‘em off until dark,” said Blue. “Then we pulled up stakes and skedaddled. We was gonna leave you, but Big Joe there wouldn’t have none of it.”
“He just picked you up like a rag doll and carried you on his shoulder,” said Al.
“If it weren’t for him, you’d be a Reb prisoner right now,” said Blue.
Eli shuddered at the thought. If they discovered he was a woman, and they probably would have, they might also have found out who he was and send him back to his half sister. And God only knew what that trollop would do if she ever got her hands on him again.
Al chuckled. “I guess that means you owe Big Joe your freedom, and maybe your life.”
Eli grimaced, thinking Al didn’t know the half of it.
Joe shrugged. “Eli’d a done it for me,” he said.
“Not hardly,” laughed Blue. “No way a slip of a man like Eli could carry a hulking gorilla like you.”
“I said get a move on, girls,” shouted Hayes from down the road.
Eli took three steps and his legs buckled. He would have fallen except that Joe caught him with a big, meaty hand by the scruff of the neck.
“I can do it,” said Eli, irritably struggling to get free of Joe’s grip.
“The hell you can,” said Al.
Eli hated the fact he probably owed his life to Joe, and he did not want to add to the debt by being carried any further.
Joe released him. Eli took another step and again lost his balance, this time grabbing Joe’s extended arm to steady himself.
“What’d I tell you?” said Al, walking up on the other side of him.
“Aww, just leave ‘em,” said Blue slouching past. “He’ll be more trouble ‘n he’s worth.”
Eli wanted to give him a kick but was far too wobbly to manage it. He reluctantly admitted there was no way he could walk on his own.
“All right,” Eli said. “I’ll need help. I don’t know what’s wrong but I can hardly stand and my eyesight’s all peculiar.”
Al grabbed him under one arm and Joe under the other and began walking. Or more accurately, admitted Eli, Al and Joe walked and half dragged him. Looking around through the dim light Eli saw scores of men hobbling along with the retreating army, a landscape in hell littered with bleeding and broken men streaming down this dusty road away from a battle in which their sacrifices in blood and pain had all been wasted in defeat.
They had lost and he was marching away from Georgia, not toward it.
God damn it, he thought. The anger boiled up inside of him, black and hot. The South won. How could that be? How could God let that be?
He cursed the stupidity of General Rosecrans and all the other commanders who failed them that day. Every step he took now carried him that much further from William, and it was their fault.
A wave of nausea swept through him and he vomited before passing out again.