Kershaw paused beside him, ramming another load into his rifle. Pettigrew’s gun was up, flashing fire and smoke as it rolled the man’s shoulder back in recoil. Parsons was still running forward as a Yankee rose from the earth like a perverted lotus and thrust with a bayonet. Its point lanced upward through Parsons’s chest. The Yankee planted the butt of his rifle and Parsons’s momentum carried him up and over in a full arc that ripped the rifle from the Yankee’s grip and planted Parsons face-first in the trampled grass.
A clubbed rifle caught Matthew Johnson across the face, knocking his head back, flinging him off his feet.
“Fall back!” Butler screamed as he cocked and triggered his Colt, snapping shots at the Federal line. “Fall back!”
Kershaw capped his rifle, drew it to his shoulder, and discharged it into a Yankee private’s face just as the black-haired man took aim at Butler’s chest.
At the same time Kershaw shot, he jerked, rose up on his toes, and staggered sideways. The Cajun’s piercing black eyes fixed on Butler’s. A question hung behind them, as though he were asking for an explanation. His knees buckled and blood spurted from his mouth; Kershaw was trying to say something as he smacked onto the ground.
Dead! You’ve killed them all!
Throwing down his pistol, Butler dropped to his knees and clapped his hands to his ears, shouting, “Quiet! Damn you all, quiet!”
He blinked, aware that the Yankees had stopped, staring, eyes wide. At their feet lay the torn and mangled bodies of Butler’s men, all intermingled with the corpses of their foes.
“I couldn’t save them,” he pleaded to the Yankees. “I would have. Tried.”
You killed them!
“Shut up! Stop it! Don’t talk to me anymore! It’s not my fault!”
The world had turned into crystal, brittle and clear, each detail so perfectly rendered. He could see the sweat trickling down beneath the Yankees’ kepis, streaking their smoke-stained faces. See their damp mustaches and each individual hair in their beards. The separate threads of their uniforms. The intricate hide patterns on their leather belts. The polish on their buckles and the smudges on their elbows, sleeves, and jackets.
Movement broke the spell.
“Cap’n?” Peterson was crawling, trailing blood across the grass, a heavy rasping audible with each breath he drew. He reached out to Butler with a smoke-blackened and bloody hand.
One of the Yankees followed Butler’s gaze, pulled out a pistol, and shot Peterson in the back of the head. The young man from St. Francis County jerked and went limp.
Still on his knees, Butler reached out and pulled Jimmy Peterson into his lap, heedless of the blood that leaked out the hole in the back of the man’s head.
“You can go home now, Jimmy. You and your brother. You, too, Kershaw. Baker? Pettigrew? You can all go.” He choked on a sob. “All of you, go home.”
Then he looked up at the stunned Yankees who surrounded him, rifles half raised, bayonets sleek and silver. “Go home. All of you just goddamned go home!”
They stared, as if in awe.
“Are you stupid? We can’t keep them alive! What’s the point?” Butler swallowed against a lump in his throat and screamed, “I told you stupid bastards to go home!”
A Yankee major stepped forward, a Colt .44 Army in his right hand, his left out in a calming gesture. “It’s all right, Captain. My boys have to stay here. But we’re going to have to get you off the line. Can you come with me?”
“I didn’t save my men,” Butler said weakly, Peterson’s head heavy, the blood sticky on his fingers.
“We’ll tend to them, Captain. But we’ve got to get you out of here.”
“I have to save my men.” Butler dropped his head into his hands, weeping and empty. “I have to save my men!”
39
October 1, 1863
Doc studied Private Nelson’s foot as he massaged the swollen member. He stood in the hospital as the Federal private lay belly-down on the operating table. The sound of coughing could be heard from the beds just outside the door. Typhus was loose again. A slanting yellow shaft of sunlight illuminated motes of dust floating in the still air.
With each ministration Doc drained a foul-smelling pus from the trocar puncture he’d made in the sole of Private Nelson’s foot. Again he took a two-handed hold and squeezed.
“Jesus! Son of Mary!” Private Thomas Nelson screamed through gritted teeth. “Damn and hell, that hurts!”
“You ask me, Tom,” surgeon’s assistant Percy Anthony said from the side, “you’re a heap better off with Doc squeezing that corruption out of your foot than having Dr. Sullivan cut it off.”
“Hope you’re right, Percy.” Nelson squirmed on the table, twisting his head around to gaze suspiciously at Doc. Sweat beaded on the young man’s face, his blue uniform looking incongruous on the table where Doc had examined so many Confederate prisoners dressed in rags.
Nelson swallowed hard. “You making it hurt worse just ’cause I’m a Yankee?”
Doc smiled his amusement. “Sorry, Private, but it would hurt just as bad if you had a Rebel foot as it does with a Federal one.”
He glanced at Anthony, who watched from the side. The physician’s assistant had paid attention to every move Doc had made, followed by the occasional question. The young assistant had arrived as green as a pine tree. Hadn’t known a suture from a probe. Doc thought that with a little training, Anthony had the makings of a first-class physician.
“Glad I sent for you,” Anthony told him. “Sullivan’s off to see his family in Springfield. He’ll be back in a few days. Said he’d take off Tom’s foot when he got back.”
“It was just a nail!” Nelson cried. “That’s all. Nothing to lose a foot over.”
“No guarantees,” Doc said softly. “But so far all I’m seeing is infection. Not necrosis. Erysipelas isn’t gangrene, though it can lead to it. See, Percy? How this is red and swollen, but not dark and lined? And the odor of the effluvium, while bad, isn’t tainted by the smell
