“Dear God,” Doc whispered. “Look at this.”
“Hell of a fight, indeed. What do you think, Sergeant? As bad as the Hornet’s Nest or Chickamauga?” Butler’s lips worked. “Corporal, I most surely agree. You can almost smell the burnt powder and spilt blood.” A pause. “No, no, Philip spent most of Shiloh cutting pieces off of people.”
“This is worse than I imagined,” Doc said as they topped out on the ridge. Moments later, Butler pulled the mule up, letting him cool and twitch his ears as they looked at the thick weeds filling the expanse where once Elkhorn Tavern had stood. Only the remains of the tavern’s blackened chimneys and the lone telegraph line stuck up from the field of weeds. To the west, battered forest extended toward the rounded knob of Little Mountain.
A few blackened fire rings had been left by passing campers at the Huntsville Road junction, but other than that the tavern had gone back to wilderness.
Butler said, “Last time I was here you could see clear back to the graves. After the battle Sarah hauled Federal dead for the Yankee army. Made a dollar a day doing it.”
“You never told me that,” Doc replied.
“Of course I did.” Then Butler looked confused. “Or was that Johnny Baker I was talking to?” He listened for a moment, nodded seriously and said, “Yes, I recall now. Funny how family members can have that effect on you. I was just—”
“Butler!” Doc snapped, fought off a cough, and added, “Can we go home now? I’d prefer to see Sarah with my own eyes rather than listen to you discuss her with your phantoms.”
Butler slapped the reins, turning the mule onto the Huntsville Road. “You’re being short, Philip.”
Doc glared at him, then took a deep breath and relented. “I’m sorry.” He gestured around, disturbed by the empty field where the Clemons farm had been. Weeds were already giving way to encroaching forest. “I just didn’t expect so much … I mean, in my mind I thought…”
“That home was still home?” Butler suggested, his eyes oddly unfocused as he stared at the rutted and rocky road, as though seeing it in his imagination.
Doc grabbed the wagon seat, bracing his feet on the dashboard as the mule started down the rocky descent. The swale, washed and eroded, was more like a gully than the road he remembered having been here.
His skills as a physician had indeed brought them through the winter, carried them to Rolla, and allowed him to purchase the old spring wagon and mule, both having lately been acquired from a military auction. Beyond a dutch oven and a sack of flour, they had only the clothes on their backs, his surgical kit, and some surplus blankets to their names.
Maybe he was as crazy as Butler. In his fantasies the farm had remained inviolate, as though immune to the war. Untouched and pristine, it awaited him, ready to fold him into its embrace and heal the wounds in his soul.
Home is not going to be what I remember.
Doc knotted his fists, a quiver of worry mixing with the anticipation.
He told himself, “The buildings will be shabby. Some probably missing. Sarah is twenty now. Billy’s a man. Maw will have aged.”
Butler was studying him sidelong. “And you get after me for talking to myself?”
“You’ve seen the rest of the country we’ve ridden through from Springfield south. It’s a desolate wasteland. One farm after another abandoned and burned.” Doc worked his lips and looked at his brother. “Now that we’re this close, I’m actually scared.”
Butler nodded, tilted his head as if listening, then twitched his lips, biting off a comment. After a moment, he looked at Doc, that curious satisfaction behind his blue eyes that indicated that he’d managed to avoid talking to his men instead of answering his brother.
Butler said, “Last time I was here, Billy was spending his time out in the woods hunting. He was keeping food on the table when most of the folks hereabouts were starving. Neither Maw nor Sarah were anybody’s fools. Unlike some … like the Clemonses who loudly announced their Rebel sympathies, they catered to whichever side was in control at the moment.”
“That hope has kept me going, Butler.” He glanced around at the familiar countryside. “I’ve just got the jitters, that’s all.”
He coughed into his hand, water droplets flying from his hat with each racking of his lungs. They had met a steady stream of people on the road south from Springfield. Most had been men, most of them disbanded soldiers. While the raggedly dressed Rebels and blue-clad Federals had mostly been tolerant of each other, if not patently curious, the families and some of the tight-lipped, heavily armed bands had not. The hatred among the latter had been as hot as a coke-fired oven.
The war might be over, but the wounds remained open and oozing.
To Doc’s eyes the destruction in western Missouri—let alone the little he’d seen since entering Arkansas—defied belief. What the hell had happened here?
“Dear God, please. Let Maw and Sarah and Billy be all right,” Doc prayed softly as Butler eased them through a rough section of the road.
“Lot of cavalry passed this way, Sergeant,” Butler was explaining, apparently to one of his men. “Cavalry was the key to keeping the war going in this country. Not like the big armies you were used to in Tennessee.”
Doc studied his brother from the corner of his eye. The Kershaw character seemed to show up when Butler was worried or under pressure. Sometimes when Doc asked, Butler would tell him Kershaw wasn’t there. And, to add to the peculiarity, Butler had patiently explained
