And One Wore Gray by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

bitterness into his face. His eyes were a faded color. Maybe they had been blue once. Now they were the weary shade of the powdery mist.
    “Did the Union take the battle?” she asked.
    Johnston looked down at her. “Yes, miss. From what I hear, both sides have been trying to claim the victory. But General Robert E. Lee has taken his men and pulled back, so I daresay the Union has taken the battle. Though what we’ve taken, I’m not so sure myself,” he said softly. “Jesu, I have never seen so many dead.”
    He looked over to the two privates he had ordered down. They were still stepping around the men strewn across her yard, studying them carefully. Callie felt her nails curl into her palms.
    Good Lord, she could not look at them so closely. She didn’t want to see the saber wounds and the great holes caused by the minnie balls and the destruction wrought by the cannons and canisters.
    There were no living men in her yard. Not one of them had moved. Flies created a constant hum beneath the warm September sky, and that was the only evidence of life.
    “See if those Yank boys are breathing, men,” Captain Johnston said.
    Callie looked at the captain and then gazed upon the devastation on her lawn. “What if there had been a survivor in gray?” she asked softly.
    One of the men on the lawn, either Jenkins or Seward, answered her gravely. “Why miss, we’d take care of him, too, right as rain, don’t you fret none about that.” His voice lowered, and she was certain he didn’t want his hard-nosed captain hearing him. “I got kinfolk myself on the other side,” he told her. He looked to the captain. “We would take care of a Reb, right, Captain?”
    “Oh, indeed, we would,” the captain said. He gazed hard at Callie once again. “Are you sure your loyalties are with the North, miss?”
    “Yes. My loyalty is to the North,” Callie said flatly, her teeth grating. But no one could stand here and seethese men, these young men, enemies in life, so pathetically entwined in death, and not feel a certain pity for the other side.
    “Sir!” Callie said, remembering Eric. “An officer I know went through here in the midst of the battle. Captain Eric Dabney. Have you seen him? Has he—survived?”
    Johnston shook his head. “Not as yet, I haven’t, ma’am. But I’m sure that I will by nightfall. I’ll be glad to express your concern.”
    “Thank you.”
    The captain tipped his hat. “We’ll be back with a burial detail shortly, miss. Seward, Jenkins, mount up.”
    With another nod to her, the captain turned his mount. Dirt churned as his company did an about-face, and he rode into the gray mist of the now quiet battlefield.
    Callie closed her eyes. She suddenly felt very alone, standing on her lawn surrounded by the dead. Her fingers wound tightly into her skirts, and she fought the overwhelming feeling of horror and devastation sweeping through her. They would come for these poor fellows. They would be buried somewhere near by, she was certain, and probably en masse.
    And somewhere, far, far away, a sweetheart, a mother, a lover, a friend, someone would weep for their fallen soldier. And say a prayer, and erect a stone in memory, and bring flowers to that stone.
    Just as she brought flowers to the stone that had been erected out back next to her mother’s grave. Gregory’s body had been returned to her in a coffin. She had awaited it at the railway station, cold, numb, and clad in black. But her father had fallen at Shiloh, far, far away, and all that she had received had been the letter from his captain. “Dear Mrs. Michaelson. It is my great misfortune to have to inform you …”
    She had been lucky, she understood now. Officers nolonger had the time to write to loved ones of their fallen men. Widows now discovered their status by reading their husband’s names aloud from the lists posted in the nearest town, or reprinted in the newspapers.
    It was no good to stand on the lawn. No good to feel the