What The War Took

A Short Story by Tony Jarrah

But I was a boy once. Hard to believe, lookin’ at these hands. But I was.

Sixteen years old when I lied ‘bout my age and joined up with the Confederate army. Didn’t know nothin’. Thought it’d be an adventure. Thought I’d see places. Thought I’d come home a hero.

I was so young. Idealistic. Naive.

The names still come to me sometimes. Wiley Crook from Hardin, Tennessee. Josiah Bell from down around Glasgow. A boy called Pleasant Pigg from a crossroads they called Calvert City. These were boys I served with. Boys who died. I say their names out loud now so somebody remembers ’em. Don’t matter that it’s just me.

Them boys called me Professor on account of me always telling them trivia things. Things that didn’t matter at all but always entertained them. I had a million of ‘em in them days.

There was four boys I stayed close with. Andrew Jamieson from Arkansas, big farm boy, strong as an ox, dumb as a bag of rocks but good-hearted, brave, and funny.

Jeremiah Cole from somewhere in the Shenandoah, Virginia. Quiet fella. Carried a Bible his mama gave him, read from it every night.

Elijah Burns, same area as Jeremiah, I think. Steady. Dependable. And then there was little Oby, Obadiah Tucker. Fourteen years old, looked twelve, voice hadn’t changed proper yet. Oby cried every night. Every night we pretended to sleep. In the mornin’ we’d act like nothin’ happened. He knew we knew, I reckon. But we never spoke of it. Just made sure he slept in the middle, between us and the dark.

One evening we got separated from our battalion. It was durin’ a skirmish near someplace I can’t even remember now. Just suddenly we was alone. Three of us and Oby. Lost. Cold and hungry. Boots barely holdin’ together. Ammo nearly gone.

We wandered for days, maybe longer. Time gets strange when you’re scared and hungry.

We come across dead soldiers more than once. First time was around a dozen Union boys and twenty Confederates, tangled together where they fell. Been dead maybe three days. Faces waxy. Flies busy.

One of the Union boys looked Oby’s age, with fine yellow hair, eyes half open, lookin’ at nothin’. The Confederate next to him had his hand out like he died tryin’ to reach for somethin’. I noticed later his mama had sewed his name in his collar. Jeremiah Hales, Fincastle.

He was somebody’s son, like Oby, like all of us, just tryin’ to survive, tryin’  to get home to our mommas in one piece.

Andrew did most of the scavengin’. Practical farm boy. He’d pull boots off, apologizin’ under his breath. “Sorry, friend. Sorry. You got no more need.” Found a good Enfield rifle under one body, still loaded. Ammo pouches half full. Elijah found a wool blanket with just one small bullet hole. We took what we needed and moved on. None of us spoke for hours after.

The old dead was worse. Found ’em in a draw and on the ridge where a skirmish had been fought and forgotten. No burial details come for ‘em. The smell hit us before we seen anythin’.

Oby gagged and vomited. My stomach heaved but I forced it down. The bodies was, wrong. In a bad state of decay. Some had been disturbed by animals. They wasn’t whole no more. Nothin’ human left in ’em. But we needed boots. Needed coats. Needed ammunition. So we done what we had to.

Andrew worked quick, not lookin’ at what he was touchin’. Elijah prayed under his breath the whole time, quiet Baptist prayers. Oby sat with his back to us, hands over his ears, rockin’. I took boots from a dead Confederate officer. They was good boots, nearly new. He was maybe twenty-two, beard just startin’ to fill in. His watch was still in his pocket, silver, with an inscription from his wife. I left the watch. Some things you don’t take. But the boots, I needed ’em. My own had no soles left.

I still dream about them boots. Not about the man who wore ’em. About the sound they made walkin’ away from that muddy field. Livin’ steps movin’ away from the dead.

Jeremiah always read over ’em after we scavenged. Pulled out that worn Bible, opened it wherever felt right. Sometimes the Twenty-Third Psalm. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. 

After the really bad ones, the old dead that didn’t look like men no more, he read from Ecclesiastes. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die. Then he’d pray. Quiet. Just a few words. “Lord, receive these souls. They done their duty. Let ’em rest now.” Then we moved on.

I remember one time, late ’62 or early ’63, years all run together now, when what was left of our battalion got ordered to move northeast toward Lexington. We was tired. Bone tired. Had sustained heavy losses in the previous three weeks, morale was low, and there wasn’t much talkin’ goin’ on. Just the sounds of boots and coughin’, and fellas trippin’ over their own feet.

We come across a blue belly force equal to ours in numbers but with more and better fixin’s. Fresh coats. Good boots. Ammo to spare. We fought for many days and nights, or maybe just one long day and night stretched into forever. Time plays tricks.

We lost a lot of good boys that week, on both sides. To this day I remember the cries. Boys callin’ for God to take ’em. Others callin’ for their mamas, for a friend. Young voices, couldn’t have been more than fifteen, screamin’ “Mama! Mama!” over and over. Those sounds stay with a man.

Cannons start like a whip swung fast around your hand, that flickerin’ sound, then build to a scream almost deafenin’ before the shell bursts. Muskets goin’ off in volleys sound like tearin’ cloth, if tearin’ cloth could kill a hundred men at once. And the moanin’ afterward, that’s the worst. Goes on for hours, sometimes all night, until one by one they quit.

At ninety-three I’m at the other end of my life now, but I still wake in cold sweats dreamin’ of that week. Dreamin’ of the cries. Dreamin’ of the smell. You get used to the smell of blood, death, gunpowder, and horse shit after a while, stops havin’ an effect, which is a terrible thing to admit. But the memories never leave you.

Among all of this a breeze would come up and you’d catch the fragrance of flowers growin’ somewhere nearby, and that’s when you’d start to cry. The flowers remindin’ you the world went on bein’ beautiful while boys died in the mud.

Sittin’ here now, smokin’ my pipe, I remember we had funny times too. Mostly because of Andrew.

One night we was bivouacked near a farmhouse, officers sleepin’ inside, Andrew got that look in his eye. Elijah tried to stop him, “Andrew, don’t you dare, we’ll be on latrine duty for a month”, but Andrew already creepin’ across the moonlit field, crouched over like that made him less visible.

Cow was sleepin’ standin’ up. Andrew got his shoulder positioned just right and heaved. That cow let out a surprised moo and went over like a felled tree, legs stickin’ out. Lay there stunned, tryin’ to understand why the sky’s beneath it now.

Laughin’ his ass off, Andrew sprinted back. We was all tryin’ not to laugh, comin’ out as horrible wheezin’ sounds. Oby gigglin’ so hard he was cryin’, real tears, but good ones for once. Even serious Jeremiah shakin’ with laughter, hand clamped over his mouth.

Then a light come on in the farmhouse. Sergeant’s voice: “Who’s out there?” We dropped flat in the undergrowth, hearts poundin’, lay there forever listenin’ to him grumble and finally go back inside.

Later, crawlin’ back to our bedrolls, Andrew whispered, “Worth it.” And it was. For one night, we wasn’t soldiers. We was just boys, tippin’ a cow and gettin’ away with it.

Andrew died at Chancellorsville. Shot through the throat while laughin’ at somethin’. That’s how he’d want to go.

Oby made it through the war. Went home to his people, married a girl over in Tennessee. Had two sons and a daughter. Farmed. Lived quiet. And then one mornin’ his wife found him in the barn. Still young. Hung himself from the hay loft. Never left a note. Never said a word. Just couldn’t carry it no more, I reckon. The war waited twenty years and then it took him after all.

I thought about that a long time. Still think about it. Oby, who cried every night and thought we didn’t know. Oby, who we kept in the middle so nothin’ could get him. And in the end, it was what was inside him that done it. The war got in and just… waited.

I never married. Had chances, I s’pose. There was lots of girls in the county after the war, widows mostly, lookin’ for a man who could work a field. But I reckon I used up all my lovin’ on them boys. They’re still with me. Every one of ’em. Still boys, still young. But I’m the only one who got old.

This one night, as I sat there on my back porch, smokin’ my pipe, like I did most nights, I heard a rustlin’ in the tall grass.

“Professor.” A voice calls from beyond the edge of the grass.

That voice. Soft. Low. Clear as day, but still like it was a long way off.

“Who goes there?” I called.

Nothin’. Just the crickets.

“Come on forward,” I said. “I’m just an old man in his last days. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

“Three of y’all. I can see ya,” I call again. “Who are you?”

Silence. Then the voice again.

“Professor.”

I flinched hard on my seat. My heart skipped. Just for a beat. Then started poundin’ harder.

“Who’s there? Show yourself, fella.”

They stepped forward, slow, came out of the dark and into the moonlight.

I knew ’em at first glance. I knew ’em like I know my own face.

“Andrew?” My voice cracked, barely able to speak. “Jeremiah? Oby? Is that, is that really?”

Andrew grinned. That same idiot grin. Not a day older. Not a scratch on him.

“Yes, boss. It’s us.” Jeremiah nodded, just once. His eyes wet.

And Oby, oh little Oby, fourteen years old forever. He smiled and waved. Urgent like. Shy like he always was.

“We come to get ya, Professor,” Oby said, his voice crackin’. “Takin’ you home with us.”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. My hands shakin’ on the arms of the rocker.

“Home? What do y’all mean, takin’ me home?” I finally asked. “I am home. This here’s my home. Has been for fifty years.”

Andrew shook his head, still grinnin’. “Naw, Professor. This ain’t home. This just where you been waitin’. We come to take you to the real home now.”

I looked at Jeremiah. He nodded, just once. The way he always did when somethin’ was true and he didn’t need to say it.

“But I’m, ” I looked down at my hands. The old hands. The spotted skin. “I’m still here. I’m still, “

“You’re still here, Professor.” Jeremiah spoke soft, like he was explainin’ somethin’ to a child. “But you ain’t gotta be no more.”

Oby stepped closer. “We been waitin’ for ya. All of us. Andrew, Jeremiah, Elijah, me. Even Wiley, Josiah, and Pleasant. A few others too. They’re here. They’re all here, in the tall grass.”

Wiley. Josiah. Pleasant. Names I ain’t spoke out loud in years, except to myself on this porch.

“They’re waitin’?”

“Everyone,” Oby whispered. “They’re all waitin’.”

I looked back at the house again. At the rocker. At the blanket on the porch where it had fallen. Looked at my hands again. Then I looked at them. Three boys. My boys. Young and whole, and smilin’ at me like they’d been missin’ me all this time. Like they never forgot me neither.

“Get up, old man.” Andrew, comin’ up the steps now, big as life. “Give us a hug.” He picked me up like I weighed nothin’. Like I was a child. I cried, because I could feel the wet on my cheeks, cuz he was cryin’ too, big Andrew from Arkansas, holdin’ me like I was his long lost brother, which I was I s’pose.

Then Jeremiah. Quiet as ever. Wrapped his arms around me and held on. I felt his Bible pressed between us, same as always.

Then Oby. Shy at first. Came up slow. But when he hugged me, he held tight, with a sense of urgency like. “Missed you, Professor,” he whispered.

As I held him I couldn’t help thinkin’ bout that barn in Tennessee, bout his wife findin’ him, which only made me hold him tighter. “I missed you too, kid.”

When we got done huggin’, we just stood there lookin’ at each other. All four of us. Smilin’, half-laughin’, barely able to breathe, like when we was kids jumpin’ in the river on a hot day. All of us whole. Together.

I still felt the same love for them as I did durin’ the war, maybe more. You tend to get more sentimental when you get old.

Andrew broke the silence first, jerkin’ his head toward the field. “Ready, Professor?” I looked back one more time. At the house. At the rocker. Then I stepped off the porch. My legs, they worked. Easy. Like I was young again.

We walked toward the tall grass together. The field that’d been empty so long wasn’t empty no more. Andrew already lookin’ around, that mischief in his eye, with Oby on his back, like that was the only way he traveled.

Jeremiah walked beside me, arm over my shoulder like we used to as boys. My head on a swivel, goin’ from one boy to another, still not quite believin’ we was together again. I couldn’t take this stupid smile off of my face.

Then Andrew stopped. With his nose he pointed past me, toward the far end of the field where the old barn stood. “Hey, Professor,” he said, eyes wide with that same old trouble. “That your cow?” The boys all laughed out loud.

I turned. Ol’ Betsy stood there in the moonlight, sleepin’. Andrew was already shiftin’ Oby’s weight on his back, gettin’ ready.

“Andrew Jamieson, you leave that old girl alone.” But I was laughin’ too. “She’s an old girl, same as me. She ain’t done nothin’ to you.”

“She’s a cow, Professor. That’s what she is.” He was grinnin’ that idiot grin. “And I ain’t tipped one in sixty years.” Jeremiah sighed. Oby giggled. And I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in sixty years. I’ve always had a cow on the farm, Andrew. Reckon cuz they always reminded me of y’all, so leave her alone. She’s one of us.

“Maybe later, then” Andrew said, still eyein’ Betsy. “After we get you home. You can watch.” We walked into the dark, like we used to when we was boys. The grass was high, the night was warm, and we was all young again, together, laughin’, like we used to when we was boys.

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