An excerpt from "White River"

     The trip from Grangerville to Virginia had shown him the plentitude and industry of the Country: Montpelier to Brattleboro, by rail to New Haven, to the Hudson River in New York, to Amboy, then to Baltimore – where the assembled regiment were issued their Enfield rifles. That had been in the fall. Now it had been four months of wet winter, camped on the north side of the Rapidan. He had searched out the remnants of the 5th among the city of tents, and had been led to a dark hedgerow of pines by a sickly Captain coughing blood-stained mucous.
     "You may need a magnifying glass to read them," the Captain intoned. "Some we were able to move and bury near White House Hospital at the Richmond & York Railroad. It was an ugly business. We were guarding retreating wagons and guns at Savages Station and got caught in a cross-fire between two Mississippi regiments. A lot of the boys went to their maker."
     Elisha crouched low to the wood planks set haphazardly.
     "Some are dead of course from sickness; the fever took a quarter of the regiment when we first arrived. Boys not used to the damp ground is my reckoning."
     Hastily engraved in the pine boards were names he didn’t recognize, and then some he did: Pvt. Hiram Baker, 29 June 1862; Pvt. Owen Walker, wd 29 June, died 8 July 1862. He glanced at the hard-packed loam, rain drizzling from the bill of his forage cap. He glanced at the encampments spread throughout the black horizon and pine woods. It was a land of black stumps, vermin, winter lungs, legless men.
     The phlegmatic Captain passed him a hand-rolled cigarette. "Know these boys?"
     Elisha crouched near the markers.
    "We don’t think much of it anymore – you’re with the 6th, right?" They were both standing in ankle deep mud. "You white breads got a break this winter. Last year was worse. We’ll be moving soon as this swampland hardens up."
     Elisha had heard the rumors of the coming assault, across the swollen bulk of the Rapidan River, to Richmond.
     "You new boys haven’t seen the elephant yet, ‘ave you?"
     He flattened his palm out onto the soaked ground of a crude grave where the mud was flowing in a deep runnel.
    The Captain shook his head. "It’s not what they think up home. It’s terrible business."
      It was a week later, in a farmhouse near the railroad bed, that he found Daniel, his rockman. A steady stream of blood drizzled from the interstices of the second floor. Eighty to ninety boys groaned on makeshift beds throughout the house, a host of wounded guests.
     The boy was soaked, hard face emaciated with dull acceptance and pain. An elbow stump was supported by the straw mattress, cloth bandages wet with discharge.
     When Daniel saw him, recognition took a second. "Lord, did they draft you?"
     Elisha shook his head. "Substitute. You think I joined for the fun of it?"
     "It’s good to see you. I been all alone here for two days I think, more."
     Elisha raised a cup of water to the boy’s parched mouth.
     "I think about the river all the time, remember? Percy’s ales, how cold the water is, how the current took us down?"
     Elisha smiled at him. He began wiping Daniel’s forehead with a damp rag.
     "I can see it in my mind. It’s there now, isn’t it, Elisha?"
     "Sure it is. It’s always there. It doesn’t stop."
     "I’m sorry."
     "What the hell for?"
     "I’ve not been the best at anything."
     "You’ve been the best in my crew."
     "There’s always more."
      Elisha stroked his head, wiping away the clammy sweat.
     Daniel’s breaths were labored, and to Elisha’s fingertips it felt as though the boy’s skin was on fire. The boy grasped onto his sleeve and held in that position.  
     "Will you tell my mother that I did the best I could?"
     "Tell her yourself."
     "Will you stay with me?"
     "I’m not going anywhere."
     Somewhere from within the farmhouse a boy began singing Home Sweet Home; then others took it up. Soon many were following along weakly – a strange half-moaning half-singing. Many were crying in the crude oil light. The nurse – a compact woman with a blood-stained apron and sky-blue cotton dress – tried to shush them when a colonel came in to make the rounds.
     Toward sunrise moonlight flooded the farmhouse, cascading onto the ghostly faces of the prone men. Daniel’s hair was stiff and matted against his arm, but the boy was gone. When a nurse came, he rose and went outside into the strengthening sun.