“Got fifteen, Captain. All Federal.”
As the clerk scribbled in his bound book, Captain Stengel called, “Thank you, Miss Hancock.” Then he stepped close, waving at her to wait. His brown eyes were filled with concern. “Are you all right?” His German accent tainted the English.
“Fine, Captain.” She fought a smile beneath her cloth mask. “Well … as fine as could be, given the kind of work this is.”
“We appreciate, ja. None of the men have been untoward?”
“No, sir.”
“You let me know, ja?” He shook his head. “You are no older than my daughter Ilsa. I cannot imagine her doing this.”
“Just a job, Captain. A dollar a day.”
His nose wrinkled as an eddy in the breeze carried the full stench to his nose. “And you get to keep your wagon, ja.”
That had been the deal when he had come in command of the small wagon train sent to finally evacuate the Rebel wounded and dead from the Hancock farm.
Sarah had been watching from the porch as the last of the wounded were being loaded. That was when one of the Yankee corporals had pointed to the Hancock’s wagon, saying, “If we had the horses, there’s another wagon for us, Captain.”
Sarah had walked out, placing herself firmly before Captain Stengel. “That’s ours. Maw’s and mine. You wouldn’t steal a woman’s wagon, would you?”
Stengel had studied her appreciatively, aware that the corporal was watching her the way a young man did when in the company of a most attractive young woman. He had looked around, taking in the empty barn and outbuildings.
“Where are the horses?”
“Taken by the Rebels. Captain Stengel, come next fall, we can borrow horses, but that wagon is the only way we can take our crops to market.”
“Miss Hancock,” he had said gently, “I am in need of wagons, ja? I have men to collect all over the battlefield.”
It had hit Sarah like a thrown stone. “I’ll rent it to you. And better yet, you find me the horses, I’ll drive it. Dollar a day.”
“Sarah!” Maw had protested, but desisted at Sarah’s lifted hand.
She’d thought the figure outrageous. A dollar? He could have hired all the wagons he wanted at two bits.
Something had warmed behind Captain Stengel’s eyes. “Ja, you have a deal, Miss Hancock. Corporal Steinmetz, you will send for two horses.” To Sarah he’d asked, “You start today?”
“Yes, sir!” Sarah had cried, somewhat stunned by the rapidity of it. “I’ll have the harness laid out by the time you get me a team.”
“It will not be pleasant work, Miss Hancock.”
She’d looked over to where four Yankee soldiers were loading the last of the Rebel corpses into a field ambulance. “Captain, after the last few days, I can handle anything.”
Now, two days into the work, she wondered. Down deep inside it was as if some part of her soul had gone eternally numb and unfeeling. Given the things she’d seen, a distant part of her wondered if she’d ever believe in God again.
What she’d give to be home with Maw, sitting in the chair, watching the flames in the hearth and wishing she could forget. This time of night, Maw would have tea made. Maybe Billy would have dropped by with a squirrel or opossum.
“Is almost sunset, ja?” Stengel waved her forward. “You deliver these to burial detail, and to the camp you proceed. Tomorrow, we start again.”
She nodded, slapping the reins, and tried to breathe through her nose as the breeze blew from behind. As she bounced down the road, she glanced back at her gruesome load. The ones on the bottom were just dead. Shot through the body or head mostly. Still human looking.
And then there were the others. The things of nightmares. Had she not seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. The boy couldn’t have been more than fifteen, slight, thin faced. Some bursting shell had splintered a high branch over his head. He had tried to duck, only to have the falling branch drive through his back and pin him to the forest floor like a speared rabbit. She’d watched the amazed burial detail pull the wood back through the boy’s body and gone queasy as his guts came with it.
God, he was younger looking than Billy.
It still sent a shiver down her back.
Oddly, the pieces, the severed arms, legs, and heads no longer gave her the willies. She averted her eyes, however, when they loaded the bayoneted ones with their gaping holes, or the ones who’d been hit in the guts by the occasional cannon shot.
She wasn’t even sure who she was anymore.
Little Rock and the future she’d dreamed about might have been like a golden haze of memory.
After delivering her load to the burial detail, she drove her wagon to the camp set aside for the civilians who’d been drafted into the Union cause. Twilight was fading into the cold March night as she cared for the horses and led them to their picket.
The tent Captain Stengel had provided was pitched in a row just down from the fire where a couple of soldiers dispensed plates of stew. Even though she’d removed the cloth mask, the stench of death seemed to linger in her nostrils, as if it permeated her dress, skin, and hair.
“Here you go, miss,” the burly private from Iowa told her as he handed her a tin bowl of the stew. He glanced around, lowered his voice. “Supposed to get cold tonight.”
“I reckon,” she agreed, reaching for a handful of squares of hardtack to soak in her stew. “It’s still March.”
His dark gaze fixed on her. “If you need a body to keep you warm in that bed of yours tonight, it’d be worth five dollars to me.”
It took a couple of seconds for his meaning to sink in. “What?”
He gestured around. “Well, some of these other gals doing the mending and all. They
