Doc raised his hands, as if in surrender. “You’ve been doing so much better. What’s caused you to—”
“Sergeant Kershaw says it’s the food.”
Doc’s expression pained for the briefest instant, then he pasted the placid mask back on his face. “The last time we tried to talk about this—”
“You became unreasonably angry,” Butler reminded.
“I just…” Doc swallowed hard, as if struggling to keep his voice calm. “I want to understand.”
“The men are my responsibility,” Butler told him reasonably. “My command. I have to take them home.”
“To each of their homes?”
The question was confusing, requiring too much effort to sort through. “No, Doc.” He’d come to calling Philip “Doc” like so many of the prisoners did. “Just have to get them home.”
“Home? That can mean a lot of things. Our home? On White River? I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either, but the sergeant will tell me when it’s time.”
“The one you call Kershaw?”
“He don’ know me fer frog spit, Cap’n,” Kershaw said. “Bonhomme, he t’ink I’s just a ghost or spirit!”
“Aren’t you?”
“’Course not, Cap’n.”
“Then why don’t you show yourself like the rest of the men? You just talk into my ear like a—”
“Butler!” Doc barked. “I need you to concentrate. Pay attention.”
“That’s all I do, Doc. Do you think it’s easy to be a captain? The entire company is counting on me. I have to keep them alive.”
Doc’s face was pained again. “You say that with such simple faith it wounds me. Don’t you know … know that your men died at Chickamauga? You’ve told me that they were all shot down in the attack against the Union breastworks.”
Butler said nothing, nodding slightly. When Doc kept looking insistently at him, Butler finally told him, “We’ve gone over this before.”
“If you know they’re dead, how can you still see them?”
“You’re going to tell me I’m crazy again.” Butler smiled in weary amusement. “So, all right, I’m crazy. You want to talk crazy? General Hardee put me in charge of the company! Made me, of all people, responsible for all these men. And they call me a lunatic?”
Kershaw was laughing, the others smiling in amusement. Butler gave them a conspiratorial wink.
Doc grimaced, his thin face working. “I’m trying to get you to admit that your men, the ones you think you see, aren’t real.”
Pettigrew threw his hands up. “Here we go again. I’ll say fer sure, yer brother’s like a bulldog when he sink his teeth into something.”
Butler gestured for Philip to desist. “So I’m seeing ghosts. Philip, they’re here. Just as real to me as you are. I can’t make them go away any more than I seem to be able to make you go away. Go ahead, say it. I’m crazy.”
Philip looked panicked. “I didn’t mean…”
Frowning, Butler tried to find the words. “It’s a most peculiar thing. I don’t feel crazy, just … well, a little confused by the way people act around me.”
“It’s what we call the fatigue. It’s in your mind, Butler.”
“Philip, you don’t see them clustered around all the time.”
“We’s a cluster!” Johnny Baker crowed, breaking Butler’s concentration.
Butler’s lips twitched. Baker never took things seriously.
Doc sighed, blinked his eyes wearily.
“Doc,” Butler said softly, “you think you’ve got to take care of me. You don’t understand, do you? Me and the men, we’re going to take care of you.”
Doc gave him a dull stare. “I can hardly wait.”
“Sarcasm ill suits you, big brother.” Butler scratched where a louse kept biting his side. “Did you have a reason for disrupting the men and me, or just the indefatigable urge to harangue me back to whatever version of sanity currently preoccupies you?”
Doc coughed hard into his hand, and when he got his breath, said, “I finally got my appointment with Colonel Sweet today. He said he’d have his staff start on the paperwork. Given your improvement from the raving scarecrow I found in the yard, to merely delusional, I think I can take you home.”
“By damn, boys!” Willy Pettigrew cried. “Ole Doc’s gonna see us outta hyar!”
“Wait!” Butler called as the men cheered. “Doc, how are you going to do this?”
“I took what they’ve started to call the yellow dog oath—the oath of allegiance to the United States.” Doc laughed, coughed again. That deep-lung kind of cough. “As if I ever had any loyalty to the Confederacy. Given your, um, condition, you’ll be released into my custody. For some reason, the good colonel doesn’t seem to think you’ll be a threat to the continued survival of the Union.”
“Dat show what he know ’bout us,” Kershaw said darkly. “We could still whip us a full regiment of blue bellies.”
“As you proved so well at Chickamauga, Sergeant,” Butler reminded.
Kershaw only growled in response. From where they crowded around the bunks, the rest of the men were looking uncertainly at Butler.
“Philip?” Butler asked. “What about your own men, the ones who depend on you here?”
Doc gave him a hollow look. “I’m tired, Butler. I save so few. I’m just … sick. Sick of death and suffering, and…” He coughed into his hand. “I’ve lost everything. Except perhaps you. I want to go home. I want to see Maw, Billy, and Sarah.”
His eyes went dreamy. “I want to go down and sit on that flat rock and look at the sunlight on the river. I want to enjoy a cup of coffee on the porch and talk to Maw about the weather and the tobacco crop. Beyond that, I want…” He blinked away a tear. “I want to forget.”
“The men and I,” Butler told him, “we’ll get you there, Philip. You’ll see.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” Philip broke into maniacal laughter until the coughing grew so severe he gagged and almost threw up.
47
May 5, 1864
A fire continued to burn—white ash smoking—in
