Thirst

“And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” Luke 16:23

He was dying of thirst. The stench of sulphur burned the young man’s nostrils. Fever wracked his body. Fear gripped his gut. He was afraid to open his eyes, and when he managed to do so, all was darkness. Smog drifted along the hard earth where he lay prone.

Eternal damnation. How could he be here? He had been baptized in the Harpeth River when he was seven—washed by the Blood of the Lamb. Read his Bible every day. He sat next to his mama at church every Sunday. Mama. How heartbroken she would be to know he wound up in perdition. Tears, mixed with sweat, ran down his face and dripped onto unforgiving clay. He dared not move.

Slowly, more surroundings became clearer. He distinguished other fetid odors: shit, piss—the iron tang of blood. Dim flames of the underworld danced along a distant horizon. Wretched moans of the damned emerged from the blackness.

He attempted to recollect what brought him to this netherworld, but pain made it difficult to think. Trying to push himself up, he immediately collapsed. His head throbbed. Consciousness started to slip away again, but he fought his way back to the surface. Remember.

Remember . . . .

“Company K. Fall in!”

Obeying the Captain's order, weary men scrambled from their rest after a day's hard march: some from dozing in the shade, some from sharing rations with mess mates, others from staring into the distance wondering what would come next. They assembled themselves with muskets and accouterments into two lines, shorter men in front, taller ones behind. They counted off by twos. In short order, the officer called the first platoon to form a skirmish line. The second platoon fell back in reserve.

The skirmishers fanned out across the field at the left oblique and walked tentatively into the woodland in front of them. The young soldier looked to his comrades who were about twenty yards to his right and left. His brograns crunched in the dry leaves. A cardinal flitted among the brambles. Dappled sunlight filtered through the pines. It was unusually warm for late November.

After a few moments, the skirmishers were ordered to halt and to take a knee. The young soldier squinted trying to peer through briars and brush obscuring the view to his front. He thought he saw dark shapes moving in the distance. He heard a horse neigh. To his far right, a musket discharged. The air came alive with a roar like a hundred axes bringing the woods down around him. Smoke drifted among the trees. Horses cried in fear. Some men cursed, others screamed in frustration and pain. Officers, sergeants, and corporals shouted orders. He took shelter behind a tree. His musket had been loaded but uncapped. With trembling fingers he pulled a cap from the pouch on his waistbelt. He fumbled with it until it was in place on his rifle then looked around the tree toward the enemy.

Federal cavalry. To his front and far right, they were dismounting and forming a skirmish line of their own with designated troopers pulling horses to the rear. Splinters sprayed him as a round hit the side of the tree about a foot above his head. He hastily returned fire and put his back to the tree to find as much cover as possible to reload his Austrian-Lorenz. Lead buzzed around him like angry hornets ripping through leaves and brush searching for prey.

He heard someone quoting scripture or praying aloud: “Oh Death, where is Thy sting? Oh Grave, where is Thy victory!”

Was this just in his head? A memory of his preacher? A comrade calling out? An enemy calling to him to heed a warning?

He grabbed a cartridge from his cartridge box and tore the tail of the paper with his teeth. Spitting the tail out, he could taste the sharp saltiness of black powder on his lips and tongue; he poured the bulk of the powder down the rifled barrel and seated the bullet with his thumb. As he pulled the ramrod from its channel, the world disappeared.

Lucidity came back to the young soldier in ripples and fragments. He realized he was no longer in the woods. His tongue felt like it was coated in sand. A vague taste of gunpowder remained. He ached for water.

Managing to sit up, he reached for his canteen. It was gone. Also missing were his bedroll, cartridge box, cap pouch, bayonet, shoes, and socks. He unbuttoned every button of his jean wool sackcoat, exploring the inner pockets. Empty. Except for one piece of paper that had been placed in his soldier's Bible. The darkness kept him from seeing his pencil scrawl, but he remembered what was written within its folds:

PVT Henry Richmond

Co. K, 1st TN INF

Leipers Fork, TN

May 19, 1843 -

His head felt like it had been kicked by a mule. He felt the back of it. Some blood was still tacky on his scalp, the rest had dried in his hair and on his neck. Trying to stand up, he became dizzy and sat down. Something dropped from the back of his jacket. Running his hands along the ground, he found it: a spent round. It was no longer conical in shape, but mostly flattened out. The lead bullet must have struck the tree, went through it, then struck him in the back of the head with enough force to render him unconscious. With such a head wound, others may have thought him dead or, at the least, grievously wounded; they must have dragged him back to the field where the company had formed up for the skirmish line. Maybe he was not dead and not in eternal damnation as he earlier feared. Dead or alive, perhaps this was purgatory. He prayed there was water in purgatory.

He perceived a flat area where grass had been trampled to dry, cracked earth which he felt with his fingers as he clawed forward on his stomach. Henry did not know which army had possession of the field: Yank or Rebel. He needed to proceed with caution. The fires in the distance could be campfires or pickets. Friend or foe? He would approach the pickets with trepidation. The idea of becoming a prisoner of war filled him with dread, yet he needed a hospital. The world was out of focus. Perhaps the blow to his head affected his vision. He waited while his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim, smoky light, then he tried to walk.

Cries of the wounded and dying from the blackness unnerved him. Henry inched forward, shuffling at first then taking wary steps. The hard, red Tennessee clay under his feet was unforgiving. There were patches of grass he could feel with his bare feet; burnt grass, trampled grass, dry grass, grass slick with what he could only assume was the blood of men and horses. He tripped and toppled over something. Over someone.

The person wheezed in pain. Henry crawled to him.

“I'm sorry,” Henry did not know what else to say.

“Richmond? We thought you was dead.” The soldier struggled with the words, which were stretched among long, gurgling breaths.

“I don't reckon I am,” Henry responded, trying to recognize the voice.

“I'm cold.”

“I'm here.” Struck by sudden reality, Henry started to feel the cold seeping in as well. He maneuvered himself to lay next to the other soldier to embrace him. The man's ragged breaths became shallow. Blood oozed from the man's chest wounds.

“I don't see nothin, Richmond.”

“It's plumb dark. I don't see nothin neither.”

“No. I thought I would see somethin. Maybe Pa. They ain't nothin’ on the other side.” Every word took effort to speak.

Henry's own pain returned in waves. He fell asleep despite the circumstances. It felt good not to be alone.

When Henry awoke, the smog enveloped the field even more. He did not know how long he had slept. Time had no reference point. Perhaps this was Hell. The soldier no longer breathed. He was no more. Henry never recognized the comrade’s voice but knew it would echo in his brain throughout eternity. The desire for water kept him moving.

The fires never got closer, possibly now dying down to embers as night waned, or pickets

dowsed them to prepare for the next onslaught. He made another thirty yards or so before stumbling upon another body.

“I’ve got a powerful thirst! James? Is it you?” A Yankee voice.

“No.” Henry stood stock still.

“Do you have water? James went to get some but never came back. I can’t feel my arms nor legs.”

“Who you with, Billy Yank?”

“Oh, God!” Realization crept into the man's voice.

“Who you with?” Henry repeated.

“Ninth Indiana. Who you with?”

“First Tennessee.”

“We've seen a lot of each other, haven't we?”

“I reckon we chased each other all over Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee, all over God's green creation, and to Hell and back. And here we are. I ain't so far from home now. Looks like you are.”

“I'm closer than you think, Johnny Reb. I've been laying here listening to angels sing. They're across the river. It's shallow. I can just wade across.”

Henry knew there was no damned river unless it was the Styx. He was weary of war. His comrade had said there was nothing on the other side. The pain in his head hurt worse. Anger burned within him. He dropped atop the soldier.

“Here. Let me help you.” Henry ran his hands along the man's body until he found his throat. Tears rimmed his eyes but not enough to run down his face. He began a hymn as he squeezed the life from his enemy. Despite his dry throat, he managed to croak out words in a hoarse whisper without conviction:

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

Hither by Thy help I'm come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood

The pain intensified behind his eyes. He collapsed across the dead man. Shadows consumed him once again.

Upon waking, Henry realized dawn was softening the sky. It had not managed to fully penetrate the murk, but the atmosphere was changing. Henry stood. He looked down upon the dead soldier from Indiana resting in eternal sleep. The enemy’s face revealed no expression of shock nor surprise, no look of sadness, no visage of joy. Just a face drained of color. A face he would see forever. Other dead forms materialized across the field as Henry looked around. The sounds of the wounded and dying had dwindled over the course of the night.

The sky to the east was reddening like blood from a wound. As a farmer and a good Primitive Baptist, he remembered Jesus’ words from a verse in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.’ Henry stood there for a few moments watching the gloaming gather in the east. Foul weather indeed. The armies would soon be on the move.

One noise had remained constant upon his waking. Henry now turned his attention to it. As he walked toward the sound, the tableau took on form. He recognized the man: Thomas Swaggerty. Both he and his son, Esau, had enlisted as privates in Maney’s First Tennessee in May 1861 and had seen every campaign. The father had been a newspaper man before the Northern Aggression and would probably be a politician or a preacher afterwards; the son had been his printer’s apprentice. Henry had heard him speak several times. When in camp, Swaggerty had moved from company to company, from campfire to campfire extolling the greatness of The Cause. He now sat on the ground staring into the sky while cradling his dead son, reciting a eulogy he might give at his son’s graveside. He was beyond tears, almost at peace. Henry simply desired water above all else right now.

“Mr. Swaggarty, sir, you got any water?”

Swaggerty looked at Henry through the eyes of age like time itself had run away from him. “I’m sorry, boy, I gave the last of it to Esau here. He now rests in Abraham’s bosom.”

“You believe that, sir?”

“Got to believe in somethin. I have to. You know, we lost his twin, Jacob, at nine year old to the scarlet fever. Esau? Well, now, Esau here, he has been taken by the fever of war.”

“So, you still believe, Mr. Swaggerty?”

“General Cleburne's Dead.” The older man shook with fury and pointed to the heavens, to the brightening sky. “Damn that Man Lincoln. And damn Jeff Davis too!”

“Does that mean you’ll be taking him home? To bury him?”

“No. I’ll send for my brother to come bring him home. “I'll see this cursed war through to its end or mine, so he will not have died in vain. You?”

“I don’t know.”

Henry put a hand in his trouser pocket where he had put the bullet that struck him. He pulled it out and rolled it around in his fingers from hand to hand. “I killed a feller last night.”

“I suppose we’ve all killed someone at some point in this war.” Time stretched between them. “What’s your name, son?”

“Henry. Henry Richmond, sir. From Williamson County.

Cannon fire started to the west. The pickets, who had been tending the fires, rose and moved toward the sounds. The struggle moved on. Another battle. Another day.

“Henry. Go home.” Swaggerty’s voice was full of conviction and permission. “You’ve done enough.”

Henry turned and walked toward the dawn. He put the bullet back in his pocket, feeling the weight drag him down like the proverbial millstone. Seeing a wooden canteen on the ground, he picked it up. Only a few dregs remained. Immediately, he drained the hot water down his throat in two, desperate gulps. It was not enough. He did not know if his pain or thirst would ever be quenched.