Chapter 4

Out in the streets of Gettysburg there was a frenzy of excitement. Scared civilians were running toward the Diamond, on Chambersburg Pike from Seminary Ridge. Union soldiers were racing in the opposite direction toward the sound of thunder, which emanated from the artillery of both the Union and the Confederate forces. Instead of heading toward the Fahnestock Building, the trio curiously walked along Chambersburg Street to get a better vantage point on the battle.

“Be careful,” Mr. Greene advised. “If anything comes close to us we are going to turn around and run back to the square. Is that understood…my Lord?” Greene said pointing. “That old man carrying the flintlock rifle is John Burns. He’s headed out to fight. The story is true,” Greene said, surprised. “I always thought the John Burns story was a myth.”

Just as Mr. Greene said this, an artillery shell flipped over a military caisson as easily as an angry child might have turned over a toy. A horse, whimpering in pain, lay on the ground next to the overturned vehicle, gasping for air.

“Oh, the poor horse!” Bette cried.

“Yes,” Mr. Greene agreed. “Before this day is over scores of horses and hundreds of men will be lying all over the area. I think we should retreat to the observatory on the Fahnestock Store.”

A Union officer raised a pistol and mercifully ended the horse’s agony with a shot to its head.

They entered the Fahnestock Store to find one of the Fahnestock brothers still at his post behind a counter.

“May we climb to the rooftop observatory, sir?” Mr. Greene asked politely.

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure,” the proprietor said graciously.

“My name is Greene, sir, a refugee from Mercersburg in town with my niece and nephew. We fled ahead of the Rebel horde, sir.”

Fahnestock extended his hand and Greene shook it. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Greene, my name is Fahnestock. You and your family feel free to go up on the roof. There are several folks up there already, including General Howard.”

*

They climbed up the stairs to the roof of the building, surprised to find the roof had a railing around it and benches on which to sit. Obviously, Victor thought, people came up to the roof on a regular basis. Several people had already congregated along the rail, watching the smoke to the west. The trio joined the gathering off to the side and no one asked who they were. The roof provided a clear view, and a general held a pair of binoculars with one hand, as he was missing his second.

“Oliver Howard,” Greene whispered to his students. “He took over General Reynolds’ corps after Reynolds was shot.”

The name rang a bell for Bette. She whispered, “Isn’t he the general who made Elizabeth Thorn prepare supper for him?”

“Yes, Bette, I see you read Mrs. Thorn’s memoir. What an incredible woman; her husband off at war, she became the caretaker of the Evergreen Cemetery. Even though she was six months pregnant, she continued to dig the graves. A pregnant gravedigger. Let’s keep our voices down and just watch for a few minutes.” Bette and Victor nodded agreement.

They continued to watch the battle unfold west of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Victor recognized the face of Daniel Skelly from the photograph on the cover of Skelly’s reminiscence, A Boy’s Experiences During the Battle of Gettysburg. Remembering that the booklet was published in 1932, Victor realized that the boy on the roof of the Fahnestock Building had died nearly a hundred years before the time from whence the Cassadaga contingent came. Daniel, who had recently been out on Seminary Ridge near the fighting, was telling the few people on the rooftop about what he had witnessed. “I climbed a good-sized oak tree,” Daniel began, his face animated. “I had a good view of the ridge to the west, and the battle began out at Marsh Creek about three miles outside town, I reckon. Buford’s cavalry was trying to stop the Rebs by themselves without any infantry support. They were being pushed back and the Rebs’ artillery opened fire and shot, and shells began to fly over our heads and one round hit the top of the tree I was perched in and I scrambled down to the ground and skedaddled back into town as fast I could run,” Daniel admitted.

“Is it true General Reynolds is dead, Daniel?” a lady asked the boy.

“Yes, Mrs. Fahnestock,” Daniel replied. “I am sorry to say that he is gone. Shot by a Rebel sniper.”

“Damn the Rebels!” the lady shouted, and the men were shocked at her outburst. Seeing their reactions, the lady blushed and apologized. A lady did not say such things, Victor realized.

Victor, Bette and Mr. Greene had listened to Daniel’s eyewitness account and the teacher whispered to his two students. “Reynolds’ death was a great loss for the Union. We’d better get back to the hotel and pack up our things,” Greene added, still whispering. “It is almost time to move south of town before the Rebels get here.”

While the people on the roof were mesmerized by the battle, the three visitors slipped unobtrusively down the stairs.

When they were out on Baltimore Street, Victor asked his teacher, “Mr. Greene, why did you say we were from Mercersburg instead of Chambersburg?”

“I recalled that the Fahnestock brothers did business with Chambersburg merchants and I was afraid Mr. Fahnestock was going to ask me if I knew so and so in Chambersburg.”

“Quick thinking, Mr. Greene,” Victor said. “Well done.”

“Thank you, Victor. I guess I still have most of my marbles, and I’m not ready for the Old Teachers’ Retirement Home, yet.”

Bette chuckled. “I’m glad you haven’t gone senile, Mr. Greene. I think we are really going to need you over the next few months.”

“I am truly sorry about all of this, children,” Greene lamented. “I never suspected our historians of subterfuge and chicanery.”

Victor smiled. He appreciated that Mr. Greene never talked down to them and wasn’t afraid to use his sophisticated vocabulary with his students. Victor believed his high verbal S.A.T. scores were a direct result of listening to Mr. Green’s vocabulary. Harry Potter had Professor Dumbledore, Victor thought. He had Mr. Greene.

“Heck, Mr. Greene. The only one who is upset is Minerva,” Bette said. “She thinks she’s going to miss her college visits…but we will return to the day we left…won’t we?”

“I think it may depend on our spirit guides. Has anyone seen Mr. Catton or Mr. Foote floating around?”

“No, sir,” Victor replied.

*

Meanwhile back at the Gettysburg Hotel, Minerva was reading from Sarah Broadhead’s diary, which the Quaker matron kept from June 15th to July 15th of 1863, and from which filmmaker Ken Burns had extensively quoted for his Civil War series.

Diary of Sarah Broadhead

July 1, 1863

I got up early this morning to get my baking done before any fighting would begin. I had just put my bread in the pans when the cannons began to fire, and true enough the battle had begun in earnest, about two miles out on the Chambersburg pike. What to do or where to go, I did not know. People were running here and there, screaming that the town would be shelled. No one knew where to go or what to do. My husband advised remaining where we were, but all said we ought not to remain in our exposed position, and that would be better to go to some part of town farther away from the scene of the conflict. As our neighbors had all gone away, I would not remain, but my husband said he would stay at home. About 10 o’clock the shells began to “fly around quite thick,” and I took my child and went to the house of a friend up town. As we passed up the street we met wounded men coming in from the field. When we saw them, we, for the first time, began to realize our fearful situation, and anxiously to ask, Will our army be whipped? Some said there was no danger of that yet, and pointed to Confederate prisoners who began to be sent through our streets to the rear. Such a dirty, filthy set, no one ever saw. They were dressed in clothes of all kinds and no kind of cuts.

Some were barefooted and a few wounded. Though enemies, I pitied them. I, with others, was sitting at the doorstep bathing the wounds of some of our brave soldiers, and became so much excited as the artillery galloped through the town, and the infantry hurried out to reinforce those fighting, that we forgot our fears and our danger. All was bustle and confusion. No one can imagine in what extreme fright we were when our men began to retreat. A citizen galloped up to the door in which we were sitting and called out, “For God’s sake go into the house! The Rebels are in the other end of town, and all will be killed!” We quickly ran in, and the cannonading coming nearer and becoming heavier, we went to the cellar, and in a few minutes the town was filled of the filthy Rebels. They did not go farther, for our soldiers having possession of the hills just beyond, shelled them so that they were glad to give over the pursuit, and the fighting for the day was ended. We remained in the cellar until the firing ceased, and then feared to come out, not knowing what the Rebels might do. How changed the town looked when we came to the light. The street was strewn over with clothes, blankets, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, dead horses, and the bodies of a few men, but not so many of the last as I expected to see. “Can we go out?” was asked of the Rebels. “Certainly,” was the answer, “they would not hurt us.” We started home, and found things all right. As I write all is quiet, But O! how I dread to-morrow.

Just as Minerva was about to turn the page to read the Quaker mother’s entry for July 2nd, the ghosts of Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton appeared in the hotel room. Great, she thought, she had to entertain the revenant rascals, but she couldn’t help but smile at Shelby’s twinkling eyes. He was a merry old ghost, she thought. Mischievous, but merry. The dead historians were floating about her room, inspecting the furniture and making comments.

“The hotel is more rustic than I imagined,” Catton said. “For some reason I thought they had water closets; they had water closets in Arlington. Of course, Arlington was more modern than Gettysburg. Gettysburg was rather backward, really. The furniture is rather drab, Shelby, clearly functional but drab,” Catton evaluated.

“Her window has a nice view of the battlefield, though,” Shelby Foote remarked. “We should see your Army of the Potomac boys running with their tails between their legs anytime now, Mr. Catton.”

“Enjoy the day, Shelby,” Catton countered. “It was the Confederates’ best day of the whole battle.”

Minerva, who was sitting on a bed quietly listening to the two dead men, finally decided to speak. “Why did you do it, gentlemen? Why did you alter the time line?”

“Why Minerva,” Shelby Foote replied with a grin worthy of Huckleberry Finn. “I guess it was devious of us to change the date, but Mr. Catton and I have argued about Pickett’s Charge since…since when, Bruce?”

“Since you died,” Catton said, for he had predeceased Mr. Foote. “You see, for us, Minerva, there was no other way to settle our argument about the battle unless we were able to see it. A historian dreams of actually being at the time and place of a great event, but unfortunately, we are dead. However, Mr. Greene’s selection of Gettysburg afforded us the opportunity of eternity, so to speak. I contend there were only 12,000 Rebel troops and Shelby said there were 15,000 men at Pickett’s Charge.”

“So you are going to what…count the men?” Minerva wondered.

“Precisely,” Foote answered. “And watch the show of course.”

“Let me get this straight. You two inconvenienced the four of us to stay here in 1863 for months because you wanted to count the soldiers at Pickett’s Charge and watch the show?”

“That sounds so harsh when you say it in that tone of voice, Minerva,” Catton said sheepishly.

“I’m missing my Yale interview and my Duke visit!” Minerva shouted.

“You’re lucky, Minerva,” Catton replied. “I never finished college because of World War I. I was going to Oberlin College when the first war began. When I was young, most students only went to eighth grade and girls didn’t go to college. So you are a very lucky girl.”

“Yes, Bruce, I know,” Shelby Foote interjected. “You have told me several times. Minerva, you see poor Bruce had to fight in World War I, and he joined the navy in the Great War. Great War, my foot, no pun intended. World War II was my fight, now that was a war, let me tell you. But enough of that… Why do you want to go to Duke, Minerva?” Foote asked. “I went to the University of North Carolina. You should go to UNC, Minerva. Not prissy Duke. Too many snobs at Duke,” he added. “Be a Tar Heel, I say. Be a Tar Heel!”

“Well, thanks to you two, I won’t be going anywhere,” Minerva grumbled. “I might even wind up at the junior college.”

“I don’t understand, Minerva. Bette and Victor are thrilled to be back here at the battle,” Foote said, genuinely disappointed in her. “I really enjoyed my trip with Mr. Greene’s class to Ford’s Theater when Victor chased John Wilkes Booth across the stage. Spunky lad! I know you were not along on that first trip, but I heard you were spunky as well, Minerva. So you spend a few months in 1863…even Mr. Greene seems okay with what we did. Like I said, Bette and Victor are fine with the way things are.”

“Bette and Victor are idiots!” Minerva groused. “All they want to do is go to the University of Florida…almost anyone can get in there. Geez!”

Foote frowned. “On second thought, perhaps you should go to Duke, Minerva. You are a snob.”

“I am not!” Minerva protested. “I am not a snob!”

Before a full throttle quarrel could break out, Bette burst through the door of the Gettysburg Hotel room.

“Minerva! Get your things together. We are leaving!”

“We just got here,” Minerva complained.

Bette, seeing the two ghosts, snapped, “You two!” causing both ghosts to skedaddle. She turned to Minerva.

“Mr. Greene says that within an hour the Confederates will control the town. We have to leave!”

Victor and Mr. Greene joined the girls in their room. “Let’s not dawdle, ladies,” Mr. Greene said. “Time is of the essence. The Union line is breaking. We need to flee out Baltimore Street and get south of Cemetery Ridge, behind what will soon be the Union lines.”

“No, Mr. Greene, I am staying put,” Minerva said. “I feel safe in the hotel.”

“C’mon, Minerva, don’t be obstinate,” Bette urged.

“Wait a minute,” Mr. Greene intervened. “Perhaps Minerva is right. The Confederates did not mistreat the women of Gettysburg, and the town square was relatively safe throughout the battle. You ladies will be out of harm’s way here, but I think Victor and I need to flee. If we are caught they might take us prisoners and send us to Libby Prison in Richmond. We could be taken for spies and hanged.”

“By either side, Mr. Greene,” Bette suggested. “Either side might consider any of us spies. If you were interrogated by either side, they might find you suspicious. Look, Mr. Greene, prissy Minerva can sit around in the hotel during the battle and rewrite her college admission essay, but I want to see the Battle of Gettysburg.”

“You’re crazy, Kromer!” Minerva said.

“You’re chicken, Messinger!” Bette countered.

“Ladies stop!” Mr. Greene interjected. “Look, the Rebels will occupy Gettysburg until the night of July 3rd. It is July 1st now. Bette, if you want to see the battle, you go with Victor and I will stay at the hotel with Minerva.”

“That works for me,” Bette said, satisfied. “Let’s go Victor.”

Minerva was peeved. Her best friend was deserting her, and traipsing off with her ex-boyfriend, to boot. What infamy! She scowled at Bette. Bette Kromer was a 19th century Benedict Arnold.

“Don’t look at me like that, Minerva, you’re no Medusa, it won’t work,” Bette said, referring to the Greek goddess who could turn a person to stone with a glance. “Who was the goddess of chickens, Minerva? Maybe you could be a double goddess…as for me, I am dying to watch the battle.”

“You just might be…dying,” Minerva cautioned.

“Stop arguing, ladies,” Greene said. “It is settled. I too would love to watch the battle, but I have a duty to Minerva. Now please listen… Victor, if you two are going to go south out of harm’s way,” Mr. Greene advised, “go out Baltimore Street past the Evergreen Cemetery gatehouse; you can’t miss it. It is an arched structure, the entrance to the cemetery. You can stop there for an hour or so and safely watch the battle, but after that hightail down Baltimore Street to Taneytown Road. You have those directions?”

“Yes, sir,” Victor replied.

“Get going and stop by the Fahnestock Building and buy a change of clothes or you will be living in those clothes for three days. Perhaps we should all go there now and buy additional clothing before the Confederates ransack the place,” the teacher said. Mr. Greene withdrew a leather pouch from his pocket and gave both Bette and Victor another double eagle gold piece.

The four went out into the square together. Minerva was still simmering like a pot nearly ready to boil. Townspeople were gathered around the town’s flagpole. The teacher and his students paused to watch. An army band struck up “The Star Spangled Banner.” People began to sing along. Victor saw tears in many eyes. How poignant, he thought, for by the late afternoon the Confederate’s battle flag would be flying instead of the Stars and Stripes.

When they walked into the Fahnestock Store, the same Fahnestock brother they had met earlier in the day, welcomed them back.

“Our friends from Mercersburg,” he smiled, remembering a customer like a good merchant. “Do you wish to go up onto the roof again?”

“No sir,” Mr. Greene said. “We left most of our belongings behind when we fled from the Rebels. We need some clothes.”

“Certainly,” Fahnestock said with a smile: cash customers. He quickly produced a copy of Godey’s Lady’s Book and opened it to a page on summer dresses for young ladies.

“Something practical, which doesn’t show the dirt,” Greene suggested.

“Right this way,” Fahnestock said and showed the girls to his selection of summer dresses.

“I need some overalls,” Bette said.

Fahnestock was taken aback. It was one thing for Bette to have a boyish haircut, and another for her to request men’s clothes. But like a good retailer sensing a quick sale, he shook off his doubts and showed Bette some boys’ overalls. She liked the brown ones and tried them on. Minerva selected a polka dot dress and Victor found a pair of overalls in the men’s section. Mr. Greene duplicated his clothing with another pair of trousers and a waistcoat. Victor was a bit disappointed; he had hoped to see his teacher as a hayseed.

As they left the Fahnestock Store and walked out into Baltimore Street, Bette explained that she wished to dress like a boy for her foray behind the Union lines. “I will go as Victor’s little brother and I want to be called Bill,” she added.

“Fine by me,” Victor said. “C’mon, Billy boy, time’s a waistin’.”

Mr. Greene, on the other hand, pointed out that Bette’s New Balance sneakers were now visible. “That may be a problem,” he said to Bette.

Bette pointed to Mr. Greene’s footwear, which were commonly called Brogans. “I picked black, Mr. Greene. My sneakers resemble your shoes,” she said, defending herself. “I knew better than to take white sneakers to a town with dirt streets. She lifted her dress to show him the shoes.”

Mr. Greene smiled and nodded approval.

Before they said their goodbyes, promising to rendezvous at the Gettysburg Hotel on July 4th, the day after the battle, Mr. Greene handed Victor ten of his antibiotic pills. “Take these in case either of you are wounded. They will prevent gangrene. Do not let anyone amputate one of your limbs, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Victor said. Bette echoed her acknowledgment.

“Bette, I believe you read Tillie Pierce’s account of the battle, did you not?” Mr. Greene said. “If you did you will recall, Tillie found safety at the Weikert farm on Taneytown Road. It is behind what will be, later today, the Union lines.”

“Yes, Mr. Greene. I recall that,” Bette replied.

“So be on your way, you two, and God bless!” Greene said.

As he walked with Bette away from his teacher and Minerva, Victor wasn’t sure he heard correctly. Did Mr. Greene just invoke God’s name? He had never done that before. Suddenly, Victor was anxious. If Mr. Greene was using God’s name, Victor thought that what they were about to do might be dangerous.

“Bette,” he asked. “Have you ever heard Mr. Greene refer to God before? I mean when he says the pledge of allegiance he only lip syncs the ‘Under God’ part, he never says it.”

“I know. I asked him about that once and he said that ‘Under God’ was not part of the original pledge, that it was added during the Cold War to differentiate between us and the godless communists. You probably know the pledge was written by a socialist, Victor, a Christian socialist of all things. Mr. Greene goes to A.A., Victor, and recovering alcoholics are into all the God stuff.”

“Good point,” Victor agreed. Everyone in the class knew that Mr. Greene was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous from the time Johnny Johnson had been court ordered to attend A.A. meetings after his D.U.I., and Johnny saw Mr. Greene at one of his meetings and blabbed. Johnny Johnson was the epitome of Benjamin Franklin’s saying, “three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Funny, because of Johnny Johnson every kid knew Mr. Greene was in A.A., but no one ever mentioned it in class. It was odd, Victor thought, but the kids seemed to respect Mr. Greene for doing something about his addiction. Too many kids had active alcoholic- or drug-addicted parents. Even Bette’s father was a raging alcoholic, but Victor never discussed the subject with Bette.

“No, I honestly didn’t know the pledge was written by a socialist,” Victor replied, wondering why Bette Kromer had never tried out for the academic team. She had a mind full of trivia. She was as smart as anyone, but she could be intensely annoying, even more annoying than Minerva. Maybe it was just the way women were, Victor thought: annoying.

Bette smiled. “I like it Bridges when I know something you don’t about history. The author’s name was Francis Bellamy and he was a Christian socialist minister. He was a minister and he didn’t put God in the pledge, Mr. Greene told me. So Mr. Greene figured he wouldn’t either. He said the Cold War was over and we should get back to the original pledge.”

“We have an odd teacher, Kromer,” Victor chuckled.

“Not odd, eccentric… Look! Atop the arch! Foote and Catton!”

Victor saw the ghosts sitting atop the Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse, their transparent legs dangling over the side of the building. He was thankful that the citizens of Gettysburg couldn’t see the ghosts. The inhabitants had enough on their plate without seeing apparitions as well. Robert E. Lee was about to scare the bejesus out of them.

“They’re watching the battle like it’s a football game. Are they eating popcorn? How do ghosts get popcorn?” Victor wondered aloud.

“Who knows? How do vampires turn into bats?” Bette ventured. “How do zombies come back from the dead? I am so over zombie shows, Victor. I dread the walking dead. And Abraham Lincoln and vampires. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Who cares about a little popcorn? I appreciate our ghosts, Victor; they are real people not cartoon characters like in the movie Ghostbusters and those silly ghosts were always eating… Ravenous little reprobates,” Bette said, showing off her college board verbiage. “Hey, let’s stop in at the Gatehouse, I’m dying to meet Elizabeth Thorn. See the woman at the window on the left side of the arch. The second floor? I think that is Elizabeth Thorn. I have got to meet that lady…did you know she’s a statue? She is, Victor. Elizabeth Thorn is memorialized like Robert E. Lee and the boys. Elizabeth Thorn represents the women of Gettysburg and what they contributed during the battle. They became the angels of the battlefield, the Florence Nightingales of Gettysburg, the nurses. She dug graves.”

As the duo approached Evergreen Cemetery, they paused so that Bette could give Victor a short biography of Mrs. Thorn. Bette, unlike Victor, had read and reread Elizabeth’s reminiscence.

“Victor, Elizabeth Thorn, was, or in this case, is the mother of three boys, aged two, five and seven. She is also six months pregnant with a fourth child, and has served as caretaker at the Evergreen Cemetery for nearly a year in place of her husband Peter who joined the Union Aarmy. She and her children live on the north side of the arched Gatehouse that serves as an entrance to Gettysburg’s largest cemetery. Her parents, Catherine and John Masser, age sixty-three, reside in the living quarters on the south side of the arch. Even though she was pregnant, Elizabeth dug the fresh graves in the cemetery.

“Peter and Elizabeth Thorn emigrated from Germany in 1855 and were the first family to occupy the Gatehouse, as the cemetery house at the Evergreen Cemetery entrance was known. Evergreen Cemetery founder and president, David McConaughy, hired Peter as the first caretaker of the thirty-acre necropolis in 1856. In August 1862, Peter joined the 138th Pennsylvania Infantry, leaving his wife in charge of the burial ground, which added to her responsibilities of raising her three little boys as well as caring for her elderly parents.

“The Gatehouse was constructed in stone and brick and each side of the arch had a cellar with a fireplace. Two rooms were above each cellar, a first-floor living room and a second-floor bedroom. From the second-floor bedroom, a panorama of Gettysburg and the surrounding countryside was visible.”

“You sound like a docent,” Victor said in admiration.

“I read her diary three times, Victor, and then I read everything I could. I Googled her. She fascinated me. The idea that I could meet the lady I read about is awesome!” Bette said. “Most of the accounts of the battle deal with the men, the soldiers, but what really interests me are the travails the women endured.”

“Travails, Bette? Really?”

“Look, Victor, forgive me but I’m taking the S.A.T. again in the fall,” Bette admitted. “I am incorporating S.A.T. words into my speech. They say that if you use a word five times, it becomes yours.”

“Then travail away, Kromer,” he laughed. “Travail away!”

His laughter ended when a cannonade commenced. Victor swiveled his head to see smoke cover Seminary Ridge, obscuring all of the Lutheran Theological Seminary save for its cupola.

Bette, too, turned at the cacophony of cannons reverberating from the west.

“Good heavens, Victor! Listen to it.”

“It’s hard not to, Bette,” he replied.

“Bill, Victor, start calling me Bill.”

“Sorry, I forgot…Billy…”

“Bill,” Bette corrected.

“If you are supposed to be my little brother, then I should call you Billy not Bill,” Victor suggested.

Bette nodded agreement. “That makes sense I guess,” she said. “I’ve never been a little brother before.”

As they approached the Evergreen Cemetery Gatehouse, three little boys were running around and through the arch, merrily playing a game of tag amid the sounds of battle. An older woman was having trouble corralling the three boys who seemed to be oblivious to anything but their childhood game. Suddenly, there was a sharp whistle and the boys stopped and stood at attention. Elizabeth Thorn, wearing masculine overalls similar to those that Bette had on, rubbed her protruding belly in response to her fetus’s kicking, and glared at her three little men.

“Behave for grandma, boys. Or I will find a switch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they said collectively.

Victor was impressed by Elizabeth Thorn’s command presence. Hers was a Lilliputian army, but her boys marched to her tune. Bette took that moment to introduce herself.

“I am Billy…Kardashian,” Bette said, irritated at her otherwise facile mind for having the name of that narcissistic reality show family appear on her tongue.

Victor held back a laugh. He covered his mouth for fear of cracking up. Kardashian? That’s the best Kromer could do?

Elizabeth Thorn looked at Bette suspiciously. “Billy is a funny name for a girl,” she observed.

Bette turned red.

Victor intervened. “We thought it better to dress my sister as a boy, Mrs. Thorn,” he said.

“Well,” Mrs. Thorn evaluated. “You’ll fool most men with your short hair and your overalls, but I’m always more aware of things when I’m pregnant. Now, do you have a loved one who needs a resting place?”

“No, ma’am,” Bette said. “I just wanted to offer you my help. From the looks of what is happening, you may be digging some new graves.”

Elizabeth Thorn’s eyes drifted to the smoke on Seminary Ridge more than a mile away. “Well, Fraulein,” she replied, using the German word for miss. Elizabeth Thorn often interspersed her native German in with English. “You may be right about needing fresh graves. Follow me into the cemetery if you like and I will show you how it is done.”

How it is done? Victor wondered. What was there to digging a grave? All one needed was a shovel, although Victor had once watched a grave dug with a backhoe at a cemetery in Cassadaga. There were no backhoes in 1863. So what could be the big deal? He watched curiously as Elizabeth Thorn waddled to an uninhabited area of the graveyard and took a ball of yarn from her pocket and measured off a rectangular plot, placing a small stone at the corners of the rectangle. Then she handed Victor a pick and Bette a shovel. Elizabeth Thorn examined the palms of Victor’s and Bette’s hands.

“You two have pretty soft hands. Have you ever done any hard work in your lives?” she inquired.

Neither Victor nor Bette responded except to blush, for indeed, neither of the students had done much manual labor in their lives, although Victor at least, had joined junior rodeo at Cassadaga Area High School, after he read the Florida classic A Land Remembered, and could ride a horse and rope a steer, but Victor doubted steer roping was going to be useful in the present circumstances.

Elizabeth Thorn shrugged and said to Victor, “Start with the pick ax, boy. Break the ground. Some of the dirt is a bit rocky. Once you break ground a few inches, Billy there can start with the shovel. You have to go down six feet. Some folks think four feet deep is enough, but over time the coffin will collapse and at four feet you can have sink spots and you might wind up putting a boot into the dearly departed,” Elizabeth chuckled. “Happened to me once, let me tell you, and I could feel the bones crunching underneath my boot. Ha!” Mrs. Thorn went on, adding, “Ouch, you little rascal,” to the fetus, which was kicking up a storm in her uterus. “Has to be a girl,” she said. “None of my boys ever kicked like that. Girls like to kick their mothers,” Elizabeth opined. “A daughter fights with her mother all the time and it starts in the womb. Get to work!”

The pick ax was heavier than Victor anticipated and he thought it was extremely odd that here, during the Battle of Gettysburg, he was busy opening a fresh grave. When Bette dug down two feet and removed the dirt, she turned to Victor with a pleading look. Lord, Victor thought, she was already tired and needed a rest. Victor took over and continued to dig, shoveling the dirt to a pile beside the hole.

“There is a short ladder by the Gatehouse, girl,” Elizabeth advised. “Go fetch it.”

Victor continued to dig, fully expecting his hands to blister. But to his surprise, his hands held out and he finished the grave. The top of the grave was about an inch over his head, he estimated. Since he was nearly six feet tall, Victor calculated that he had completed the grave.

“Not bad, boy,” Elizabeth evaluated.

As Elizabeth paid Victor the back-handed compliment, two Union army caissons, tugging artillery pieces, pulled up to the cemetery. Soldiers quickly set up an artillery battery on Cemetery Hill, pointing the barrels of their cannons in the direction of Seminary Ridge. Two more caissons arrived in short order, adding a pair of artillery pieces to the hill. Victor turned his head toward the town of Gettysburg and was alarmed to see men in blue suits running through the town and heading for the high ground on which he now stood. It was exactly what Mr. Greene predicted would occur.

“Let’s get back to the Gatehouse,” Elizabeth suggested, and Victor and Bette followed the pregnant gravedigger to her residence. By this time, Elizabeth’s mother had the boys inside the northern apartment, although they were at the upstairs window watching the action of the battle. After a moment, a Union lieutenant appeared at the back door.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, saluting. “Is your husband home?”

“No, lieutenant, my husband is in the army elsewhere,” Mrs. Thorn replied.

“Is there a man around?”

“Just this boy and his little brother,” Elizabeth said, smiling at Bette who nodded an appreciative thank you to Mrs. Thorn for not giving her away.

Victor was surprised but pleased that Elizabeth Thorn went along with Bette’s masquerade.

“What is your name, boy?”

What had Bette said? What name had she given? Then he remembered. How embarrassing he thought. “Victor Kar…Kardashian, sir.”

“I’m with General Howard’s Corps, Victor, and we desperately need a man to give us directions in the area, to show us the terrain.”

“I’m a refugee from Mercersburg. I don’t know the area that well.”

“Drat!” the lieutenant said.

“My father is here, but he is sick, lieutenant,” Mrs. Thorn said. “However, I can help you.”

The lieutenant looked at Elizabeth Thorn skeptically. “Ma’am, you are in no condition to walk around through the fields.”

Elizabeth laughed heartily. “Lieutenant, who do you think digs the graves in this cemetery? I assure you I am quite capable of walking a bit. Pregnant women are not invalids, lieutenant. We are made of stronger stuff than most men realize.”

The lieutenant blushed. “I meant no disrespect, ma’am,” he said. “Please come on, then.”

“Mama, please watch the boys while I go off with the soldiers,” Elizabeth said to Mrs. Musser, and then said to Victor and Bette, “You two come along as well.”

Victor, Bette, Mrs. Thorn and a small detachment of soldiers walked through flax and a field of oats where Elizabeth pointed out the York Pike to the lieutenant, as well as identifying the roads to Harrisburg and Hunterstown. “Gettysburg is a crossroads town, lieutenant, roads go every which way.”

“We are the right flank of the Union army,” the lieutenant explained. He took out a piece of paper, whittled the end of a pencil and began drawing a rudimentary map of the position. Victor realized the lieutenant was a cartographer and he watched appreciatively as the young lieutenant sketched an accurate map of the terrain. When he completed the map, the group returned to the Gatehouse.

“Ma’am.” the lieutenant said, “we will commence heavy fire soon. Please take heed and either evacuate or take your family to the cellar.”

“I will,” Elizabeth said. After the lieutenant left, she ignored the young man’s warning and welcomed Victor and Bette to join her upstairs to watch the battle. The little group was halfway up the stairs when, “Blam!”

A Confederate artillery shell cut through the upstairs window frame and oddly jumped up and went through the ceiling of the room.

“That was close!” Mrs. Thorn observed. “Everyone! Go downstairs to the cellar!” she ordered.

She gathered up her family, her parents and her three children, as well as Bette and Victor. and were about to descend to the cellar when a Union major appeared.

“Ma’am, General Howard requests you prepare supper for him later today,” the major said, removing his hat and bowing politely.

Seeming flabbergasted by the request, Elizabeth Thorn replied, “I have no bread left, major, for we have given all our bread to passing soldiers. I suppose I could make some cakes, I guess,” she added.

“I am sure the general would be pleased with the cakes ma’am. This is wartime after all.”

Victor was amazed. A Union major comes to a civilian’s door and orders her to prepare a meal for a general.

Bette whispered to Victor. “I think we should go,” she said.

Victor nodded agreement. After the major left, Victor said to Elizabeth Thorn, “I think we should be going now, Mrs. Thorn.”

“As you wish… I am curious though, your family name…Kardashian, is it Polish?”

“Ah yes, I think so,” Victor lied. He had no idea of the origin of the reality show family’s name.

As they walked away, Victor said to Bette, “Why did you use the name Kardashian, Bette?”

Bette blushed. “It was the only name that popped into my mind, Victor, I’m sorry.”

“Do you actually watch that crazy family?” Victor asked.

Bette didn’t say a word, but her red face gave Victor the answer. Finally, she said, “I certainly hope Kardashian does not appear in Elizabeth Thorn’s diary. That would be embarrassing…the poor woman, Victor, she is going to sacrifice the last smoked ham she was saving for her husband’s return to feed General Howard and General Sickles.”

“Sickles?” Victor mumbled. “I think he lost his leg in the battle and dedicated the limb to the Smithsonian. After the war, he would often visit his leg at the museum. That was in the Ken Burns series I think.”

“That is really strange,” Bette agreed.

“Yeah,” Victor replied.

Victor and Bette trudged along the side of the road as both cavalry and infantry were marching along the road, headed for the high ground of Cemetery Ridge. They paused at the junction of Taneytown Road and leaned against a fence to rest.

At that moment, the ghost of Shelby Foote appeared. “I see y’all are hightailing it to the Yankee side. Don’t you remember that Florida was part of the Confederate States of America, Victor?” Foote said, his eyes twinkling like an elf.

“Mr. Foote, you and Mr. Catton put us in quite a predicament,” Victor said. “Where is Mr. Catton anyway?”

“He floated out to Little Round Top to watch the Yankee Signal Corps set up,” Foote replied.

“You two really messed things up,” Victor persisted. “You really should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Now, Victor let’s not be a hypocrite. Aren’t you the spunky lad that chased John Wilkes Booth across the stage at Ford’s Theater?”

Victor blushed. “Yes,” Victor sheepishly admitted. “But I…”

“What would have happened if you had tackled old Sic Semper Tyrannis?” asked Foote, referring to the president’s assassin by the Latin phrase that Booth reportedly shouted when he limped across the stage after shooting Abraham Lincoln. “Thus be to tyrants!” Booth had cried.

“Imagine what you would have done to history,” Foote continued. “And I wasn’t the reason for the rip in the timeline in Philadelphia when you, Victor, inadvertently gave Peggy Shippen Thomas Jefferson’s address at the Graff House. Peggy Shippen was destined to marry Benedict Arnold and turn him into a traitor, but you messed that all up, young man, and the class had to return to Philadelphia and reverse what you did, and you preaching to Mr. Greene about the butterfly effect and you turning out to be such a lepidopterist. So, I do not think you should be lecturing me on hypocrisy. And try not to mess things up this time, Victor. Even though I am a Southerner, let’s not have Robert E. Lee win the Battle of Gettysburg, shall we? You know, Victor, that before the Civil War, people said ‘the United States are a great country.’ Sounds funny today, doesn’t it? Today we say the United States IS a great country. You see, the Civil War changed the country from an are to an is, from a collection of states to a strong union. It put the unum into Pluribus. If Lee wins this battle, there will be two countries. So don’t mess things up again, hear?”

Shelby Foote was right, Victor admitted to himself. Victor’s carelessness in giving Peggy Shippen an address in Philadelphia had led the pro-British girl to the Graff House where Jefferson was composing the Declaration of Independence and, consequently, turned the Tory teen into a Patriot. With that tear in the timeline, Peggy Shippen married Thomas Jefferson after Jefferson’s wife died. Without Peggy Shippen to turn his head, Benedict Arnold remained loyal to the fledgling nation and wound up the second president of the United States with his mug on the ten-dollar bill. And now Victor felt hypocritical that he chided Bette for using “Kardashian”—that was less harmful than mentioning the Graff House.

“I will try not to mess things up again, Mr. Foote, but we are stuck here until November,” Victor complained.

“That’s true, but when you do return home it will be to the day you left,” Foote replied. “No harm done. Now, children, I take my leave for now.”

“Where are you going Mr. Foote?” Bette asked.

“I’m floating over to Lee’s headquarters. He is setting up near the Lutheran Theological Seminary. I want to see if Major General James Longstreet tries to convince Robert E. Lee to flank the Union army. The stubborn old Lee won’t, of course, but one wonders what would have happened here if Lee had listened to Longstreet and moved his army south of Gettysburg and threatened Washington. That would have forced the Army of the Potomac to attack Lee and Lee would have been in a defensive position, a position of which he was a master. But he didn’t listen. Longstreet mentioned all of this in his autobiography and I am curious to see if Longstreet was telling the truth. You two should find safety at the Weikert farm just down Taneytown Road. Bette, you will find Tillie Pierce there by now. Just a short stretch of the legs.” And with that, the dead historian drifted off in the wind toward Lee’s nascent headquarters.

Mr. Foote’s “short stretch of the legs” turned out to be more than two miles. As Victor and Bette walked toward the farm on Taneytown Road, Union soldiers marched in the opposite direction headed for the Union lines forming on Cemetery Ridge.

“The soldiers don’t look happy,” Bette observed.

“Why should they be? I would be scared to death,” Victor admitted. “Death waits ahead, Bette.”

*

The Weikert farmhouse closely resembled the photographs of the restored National Park Service site, which Victor had seen online. Viewing the original farmhouse, Victor was impressed by the marvelous job of restoration that the Park Service had performed. A two-story gray stone house was set back from the road and white columns supported a front porch roof. Beside the columned front porch that ran the length of the building with its view of Taneytown Road, were the spacious barn and the charming carriage house. There were apple and peach trees and rows of corn and wheat on a farm of thirteen acres. Union soldiers were passing by the farm, and a girl stood out front next to a rail fence by the side of Taneytown Road, holding a water bucket and offering the infantrymen a dipper of cool water.

Bette immediately recognized her: Matilda Pierce, who went by the nickname “Tillie.”

“I think that is Tillie Pierce,” Bette whispered to Victor. “I am almost certain of it. The braided hair, the part down the middle. Yes, she looks just like her photograph, Victor.”

“Who is she?”

“You mean you didn’t read her memoir of the battle…?”

“I wasn’t interested in the women, Bette,” Victor replied. “Did you read Daniel Skelly’s account of the battle?”

“Well, no,” Bette admitted.

“So that makes us even. I read the accounts of the men and the boys, you read the recollections of the girls and women.” Noticing a wagon barreling down Taneytown Road, Victor grabbed Bette and pulled her out of the way of the charging horses.

“That was close!” Bette shouted. “Thank you, Victor.”

“My pleasure, Kromer,” Victor replied, feeling suddenly more masculine.

“Watch yourself there,” Tillie Pierce belatedly yelled. “You best get out of the road and get on the other side of the fence. Just climb over it. It will be alright. The Weikerts are kind folks. I’m helping their daughter with her children. My name’s Tillie Pierce,” she chattered on like they were all old friends. She offered her hand and shook both of theirs. “There is a little spring over by that grove of trees,” she said, pointing in that direction. “You should find a bucket or two and a few cups. How about helping me out with these thirsty Union boys?”

Victor and Bette walked over to a grove of elm trees and found the buckets and tin cups by the spring. First, they both took a long cool drink of refreshing spring water. Then they filled two buckets.

“I wonder what Tillie would think of us putting spring water in plastic bottles,” Bette mused aloud.

“First off, she wouldn’t even know what plastic was, Bette.”

“I guess not,” Bette said.

They returned to the fence and stood beside Tillie Pierce, who was in the middle of dispensing water to parched troops. When she was finished and there was a lull in the troop movements, Tillie turned to Bette and asked, “I don’t believe I caught your name?”

“Billy Kardashian, this is my big brother Victor,” Bette smiled.

“Billy is a funny name for a girl,” Tillie replied. She gave Bette a knowing look.

Bette blushed. She hadn’t fooled Tillie, either.

“I told you wouldn’t fool anyone, Bette,” Victor said.

“We are from Mercersburg, Miss Pierce. Brother and sister,” Victor explained.

“Uh huh,” Tillie mumbled, but she eyed Bette suspiciously. “You sure you ain’t Rebel spies? I heard the Rebs dress up girls as boys and some of them fight beside the men.”

Victor knew the stories: two women were found dead among the bodies from Pickett’s Charge. Sometimes, women masqueraded as boys during the Civil War. And some were in combat.

“We are Unionists, Miss Pierce,” Victor said.

“Well, if you are then join me in singing…” and Tillie Pierce began to sing The Battle Cry of Freedom. Victor smiled when he heard the first verse, for he knew the song, having heard a collection of Civil War songs performed by a baritone in a traveling revue, which sang at Lutheran churches throughout Florida. “Gettysburg: Music!” it was called. And ironically, the 21st century musical revue was sponsored by the Lutheran Theological Seminary, which at that moment was in Confederate hands.

Tillie started off with the first verse:

Yes we’ll rally round the flag boys, we’ll rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom,

We will rally from the hillside, we’ll gather from the plain,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

Victor joined in with Tillie on the chorus…

The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!

Down with the traitors, up with the stars;

While we rally round the flag, boys, we rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

And we’ll fill our vacant ranks with a million freemen more,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

Tillie smiled at Victor and frowned at Bette. “What’s wrong with her, can’t she sing?”

“She has a lousy voice,” Victor said.

It was Bette’s turn to frown, although she glared at Victor.

As Victor and Tillie finished another chorus of Battle Cry of Freedom, Bette said, “I much prefer this tune,” and began a rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, in a lovely alto voice, which startled Tillie Pierce. And Victor. He knew she was in the school chorus, but he had never heard her sing before.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

Victor joined her in the chorus.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

Smiling, Tillie Pierce joined in as well until the trio consisted of a soprano, an alto and a first tenor.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His day is marching on.

And then the trio, finding a harmony, lifted their voices, sending the words resoundingly down Taneytown Road, causing a company of infantry to pause and listen to the three teenagers’ rendition.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on!

The soldiers began to applaud, and several approached the fence for cool water and to deliver their heartfelt thanks for the acapella performance.

The only disparaging note was added when a wagon stopped to stack several piles of rough pine boxes alongside the road. Coffins. Victor sadly realized their purpose and wondered which of the men who had just applauded their rendition of Julia Ward Howe’s song would be resting in those coffins by the end of the day. But Victor conceded to the practicality of the Army of the Potomac; there would no doubt be many dead soldiers before the night fell.

One of the soldiers remarked, “There is no telling how soon I will be put in one.”

To which the man next to him responded, “I will consider myself lucky if I get one.”

Both men laughed at the second man’s gallows humor.

As the sardonic soldiers and the rest of their company passed the Weikert farm, another group followed behind them. Victor spotted a bedraggled soldier, crawling along on his hands and knees, trying futilely to keep up with his companions. Suddenly an officer rode up to him and cursed at the poor fellow to get off his knees.

“I can’t go on!” the soldier complained. “I am finished.”

“Get up, you bastard!” the officer swore and struck the man on his back with his officer’s saber. Then the officer rode on, leaving the soldier lying wounded in the road.

Two of the man’s comrades picked up the limp body and carried the wounded man into the Weikert farmhouse. When the two men returned to their company, which had stopped to rest along Taneytown Road, one of the soldiers said, “We will mark that officer for this!”

Bette whispered to Victor, “What does he mean by that, Victor?”

Victor said soberly, “The soldiers mean to kill the officer, Bette.”

“Really?” Bette asked, incredulous.

“In every war, some soldiers will kill their own officers and most often it is justified. In Vietnam, the soldiers called it ‘fragging.’”

About an hour after the incident with the officer and the soldier that Bette thought was actually suffering from sunstroke in light of the fact of the July heat and the man’s wool uniform, three officers on horseback approached the three teen water carriers. The one in the center of the group, sporting a well-trimmed beard, asked Tillie for a drink of water. Victor saw that the man was a two-star general. But who was he? Victor wondered.

“Please excuse the tin cup, sir,” Tillie said politely, raising the cup to the man on horseback.

The general smiled. “Certainly; that is all right,” he said.

After the officer downed the water, he leaned down and returned the tin cup to Tillie. “Thank you, miss,” he said pleasantly. He then turned his horse away, returned the salute of nearby soldiers and rode on down the Taneytown Road.

“Who was that?” Tillie asked a nearby soldier.

“Why that is General Meade,” the soldier said. “He’s the commander of the army and the man who is going to lick Bobby Lee!”

“Hoorah!” a group of soldiers shouted.

So that was General Meade, Victor thought. How right they were; Major General George Meade, a Pennsylvania native, would defeat Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, but not without the greatest tussle of the Civil War, a battle which would determine the outcome of the struggle between the North and South.

The trio continued to dispense water to the passing, thirsty troops. Caissons of Union artillery continued to pass by. The muddy road was worsening with the heavy volume of wagon traffic, and many of the vehicles and the artillery caissons left the roads to proceed through the fields, finding the pastures easier going than the soggy Taneytown Road. As the trio watched, an explosion blew up a caisson, tossing a man into the air. He came to rest in a wheat field nearby. Two of his companions picked the man up and brought him into the Weikert house. Victor noticed that the man’s eyes were blown out, and he heard him strangely mutter, “Oh dear! I forgot to read my Bible today! What will my poor wife and children say?”

The two soldiers carried their comrade up the stairs to a second-floor bedroom and placed him on a bed. Then they wrapped him in cotton. Bette and Tillie exchanged shocked looks.

But their attention was returned toward Taneytown Road as another battalion of infantry marched by and the teens realized that these soldiers were as thirsty as the troops who had preceded them. They returned to their work.

The passing troops were soon replaced by wounded soldiers. Victor, on a trip to the spring, overhead two soldiers converse with Mr. Weikert about the hard fighting in which they were engaged, and the many men who were wounded or killed.

“My buddy was hit by an artillery shell, and when the smoke cleared I went looking for him, sir. All I could find of him was one finger.”

Envisioning the scene, Victor felt a sudden urge to throw up, which he promptly did behind a nearby bush. A wounded soldier passed by with his thumb tied up. Tillie Pierce thought the poor man’s injury was dreadful and mentioned this to the soldier.

“Oh this?” he said. “This ain’t nothin’, girlie,” the man replied with a smile that showed a few missing teeth. “You’ll see worse than this before too long, I think.”

The soldier was prophetic. Wounded soldiers began to arrive at the farm. The Weikerts’ commodious barn was turned into a make-shift field hospital. Some of the injured men were hobbling, some of the men had their heads bandaged, while others had arms in slings. Some men crawled from the ambulances. Others were brought to the barn on stretchers. Victor watched in stunned silence as did both Bette and Tillie Pierce. Before dark, the Weikerts’ immense barn was filled with wounded and dying men who had charged off to fight the enemy so heroically only scant hours before. Victor was certain that some of the men had received water from the Weikerts’ spring. The Union boys who had so gallantly marched past the form were back now in mangled form. Victor saw no glory in it, only horror. Why, Victor wondered, did mankind never learn from war? Why did they keep starting new ones? His musing ended when Mrs. Weikert called the three teens in for supper. Like the Union army, Victor marched on his stomach.