Lincoln's Dreams

“You there!” a man on a horse said. It was the same lieutenant who’d told them to help pull the horses back. He waved his sword at Ben. “Come away from there! What’s your regiment? ”

The boot came free, and Ben straightened up, holding it. “I was looking … ”

“You were looking to get a new pair of boots. Get back to your regiment before I have you shot for looting!” He waved the sword close to Ben’s middle.

Ben felt around the inside of the boot and pulled out a damp square of paper. “You got no call to talk to me thataway,” he said. “I was just trying to help.” He knelt down and tucked the paper in the pocket of Malachi’s shirt and started down the hill toward the sound of shooting.

In the original version Ben had never found out what happened to Malachi. He had simply dropped out of sight, like how many soldiers at Antietam and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville? “Did he die?” I had asked Broun after reading the first draft.

“Die? Hell, no, an old vet like Malachi was too tough to die. He hightailed it to California after Gettysburg.”

Broun had rewritten the scene because he was furious with me, but what was he trying to communicate? Was he supposed to be Malachi, struggling with a recalcitrant research assistant who wouldn’t cooperate even when it was for his own good, or was he supposed to be Ben, who was only trying to help and who got threatened with being shot as a looter for his pains? Broun had been angry with me that afternoon, but he’d been worried, too. He had asked me that afternoon if I was Richard’s patient, if I was taking any medication. Maybe he had written this chapter to show me he was worried about me, that he only wanted to help.

I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty, eight-thirty in California, and God only knew what time it was in northern Virginia or Pennsylvania or wherever the hell Lee was tonight. Annie sighed in her sleep and turned over. I put the chain on the door and moved the chair over between it and the bed. I stood there awhile, watching her sleep, wishing I could help, and then went on reading.

Ben carried wounded soldiers off the field all afternoon. Ben’s Union brother made it out of the East Wood and away from the Sunken Road before he was hit in the side. He lay still for a while in the hot sun and then crawled under a haystack and passed out. Around two-thirty an artillery shell set the haystack on fire, and he was burned alive.

“They can’t possibly hold that position,” Annie said. She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. “I told him …” She stood up.

I glanced at the door, even though I had just fastened the chain, and took a protective step toward it, but she sat down on the side of the bed and put her arms around the wooden poster at the head of the bed. “My fault,” she said, so softly it was almost a sigh.

I tried to sit down next to her, but she pulled away, so I sat in the green chair and leaned forward, my hands between my knees. “Annie!”

“I know! I know!” she said bitterly. She stood up again, one arm still wrapped around the bedpost. “Where is he?” she asked, and turned to look at someone behind her. “He was supposed to tell Hood to bring up his division.”

She took a stiff, sleepwalker’s step toward the door to my room. “Try to reform your men among the trees,” she said kindly, as if she were speaking to a child.

“Annie?” I said quietly, moving so I was between her and the door, wishing I had chained the outside door of my room, too. “I know where we are. It’s Pickett’s Charge. Longstreet didn’t send the reinforcements up.”

She looked straight at me. “Don’t be discouraged,” she said. There was no emotion in her voice at all, but the look on her face was the look she had had at Arlington, looking down the hill at the bodies on the lawn. “It was my fault this time. Form your ranks again when you get under cover.”