Past Lives (10 page)

“We’ve been deployed! Everyone wake up and pack up—we’ll stop for breakfast on the road!”

It was barely first light. I stretched my sore muscles and rolled over, colliding with the now muscular body of my brother. Both of us sat up abruptly and stared at each other in disbelief. Finally, I smirked.

“Guess I’m not going home after all,” I said, goading him. His eyebrows knit, and I could see him processing the changes in me—the fire that had been kept burning low all these years. I saw the exact moment that he gave in, and saw me as an equal. He held out his hand.

“For Ireland?”

I grasped it firmly, and we shared our renewed bond with joy, albeit a joy tinged with apprehension. None of us were soldiers, really…and we were walking into a war with elementary fighting skills.

“For Ireland,” I declared. And that was that. Bastian stared at us curiously, but said nothing. It seemed that his relationship with my brother was so respectful that he immediately got on board, and he quietly packed up his own bag and exited the tent, waiting for us to come out so he could pack it up to carry. I hefted my load onto my shoulders, playing with the strap of my bag until it sat comfortably. We were lined up single file…and then the walking began.

Fun fact about The Civil War number 487: most of it was spent walking.

We took trails that were overgrown with forest and caked in mud. The concept of cleanliness became a distant memory. With the heat of summer bearing down upon us, it was more comfortable to sleep out under the stars, and after a long day of walking I would lie out and stare up at the inky black sky with little holes poked into it, sprinkling heaven’s light for us to see. Jack and Bastian did a great job of spreading word that I was Jack’s younger brother, which was why I didn’t have a beard like everyone else. Our uniforms became tattered; our shoes became worn.

After walking for so long in the heat, my sweaty feet began to blister. I could feel the little bubbles of pain pressing against my shoes over and over and over as we walked and walked. Halfway through the day, I felt them burst and fill my shoes with fluid and blood, pain shooting up my legs with each step…and still we walked on. Jack and I became great at hiding my bathing rituals, and I found that spending time together as accepted equals deepened our familial connection. I grew to care for Bastian, too, as I watched the way he treated my brother, offering his friendship while asking for nothing in return. The best part was that he began to do the same with me, tossing little jokes my way as we marched and marched and marched.

Still, it was grueling. Food rations were handed out in an irrational manner that resulted in us running out of provisions with no hope of receiving more. Anyone with hunting skills became everyone’s best friend, and my ability to find herbs along the side of the path to provide some flavor made me popular, too. Generally, when anything seemed effeminate about me, Bastian stared down the man who mentioned it, and it was never brought up again.

I was breathing in the clean scent of the forest as we walked one afternoon when our scout came running back, frantic.

Union soldiers. A couple hundred yards ahead.

I was surprised at how afraid I became in that instant—cold dread sank straight through my battered, bloody toes. We all began to prep our weapons, and I stared at my dirty reflection in the knife tip of my musket. Did I really have it in me to stab a stranger with this? To take a life for a cause I had no actual ties to? I glanced around, seeing the somber, determined faces of the men around me. Though we knew little and were already half-starved, no one looked prepared to run from our first battle. The mood turned into an electric charge as we made our way the distance it took to get to an open field, where a line of blue uniforms stood waiting on the other side.

Everything seems so much sharper in the minutes before you think you’re about to die. I could smell the earthy pitch of grass that stretched before us, the oil and sweat that was the cologne of every man. Our line folded out to match theirs, a faded gray compared to their sharp blue dyes. The three of us were planted in the third row, much to my relief. I let out a breath that wanted to be held. And we stood, and we waited. And they waited.

And suddenly, some unseen and unheard alarm went off, and they charged at us. I allowed a roar to rise up from the pit of my stomach and out toward my enemy, who had until now never had a face. From the corner of my eye, I made sure that Jack and Bastian stayed beside me, our legs sprinting in perfect unison, my torn up feet all but forgotten. As we were nearly upon the Yankee soldiers, I heard distant blasts, and seconds later the ground around us began to erupt, sending men’s bodies flying in every direction.

They were using cannons to blast us from the air, even as their own men continued to rush forward. Men from the front line held their guns at the ready and began to send forth volleys of bullets, soldiers of both sides dropping like flies all around us and crying out in pain. By the time we finally reached the opposing line, a good chunk of our men had been wounded or killed.

“Get behind me!” Jack screamed, and I fell back a few paces and obeyed. I watched as he shot his only bullet before stabbing and hacking away at the piles of Union soldiers that had fallen upon us and all around us. Bastian placed himself at my side, making us a formidable triangle, stabbing and hacking away. A Yankee sprinted right for me, and without thinking I pulled the trigger of my gun and watched him fly to the ground, his insides pouring out from the middle.

That was the moment when the reality of war really sank in for me. I wish I could tell you that I remember the entire battle with perfect clarity, but, in all honesty, my intense focus on simply surviving is all I can really remember. It was complete chaos…complete, murderous chaos. Blood and guts spattered over our faces as we stabbed and hacked, both sides tiring out and diminishing. Still, our stamina outlasted theirs in that fight, and we beat them back slowly and meticulously. I could feel the battle nearing its end as they began to retreat into the woods, and allowed the smallest sliver of relief to sneak into my heart. I looked at Jack, and we allowed ourselves to grin at one another…then there was a gunshot.

His face crumbled in shock and pain. I fell with him to the ground, my hands drenched in his precious blood…the blood of our family. Our comrades were chasing the Yankees into the woods, and some of them began to erupt in cheers at the victory. Bastian crouched on Jack’s other side as he too sank to the ground, his eyes wild with panic. On his back, Jack coughed up a chunk of blood, and I wiped it away with my sleeve…a gesture that felt oddly familiar. I shivered.

“Jack, no, please…” I begged, wiping at his face with my blood-smeared hands, not knowing what else to do. Medical knowledge wasn’t exactly prevalent back then. His eyes were frantically searching around until they found my face, and I didn’t let them go. I heard Bastian cry out for help, for a medic somewhere…and no one came. We sat on either side of Jack, his breath labored. He coughed up more blood, and I continued to wipe it away with my oversized sleeve.

“J…” he moaned, wincing in pain as his life slowly bled from him.

“What? What is it? Please tell me what I can do, Jack,” I cried, hot tears leaving streaks down my dirty, blood-soaked face.

“Be strong…you were always so strong…” his body convulsed as it entered its final moments of life. This time he looked to Bastian.

“Take care of her…please…promise me,” he said fiercely. Bastian grasped his hand firmly, his eyes moist with his own unshed tears.

“I promise,” he choked. “You’re…you’re my best friend, Jack. What will we do without you?”

Jack’s body began to relax, his eyes distancing themselves from us, his soul preparing to depart. He moved his mouth as though to answer, until his body went still, and the light left his eyes. There are times in your life when the world around you dissolves, and you sit in a bubble, tucked away from anyone else around you. As Bastian and I sat and wept over the body of my brother, time froze, and no one else existed in that moment. I held a hand over my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, as though blocking the sight would undo what had been done. One bullet was all it took. One battle.

Unfortunately, the other funny thing about time is that it doesn’t stop when your whole world falls apart. Men came along and began to line up the bodies, and Bastian and I watched helplessly as Jack was pulled by the legs and dropped beside another man we barely knew. With nothing else to be done, we slowly made our way back to the woods in a daze. Someone had found a local stream nearby, and the men violently washed the blood from their skin as though it were diseased…and it probably was.

Wild screams came from the back of our makeshift camp, where our one medic (who finally decided to show up, apparently) was dealing with the wounded…and it didn’t sound like they would be healed.

“We have to take the leg, sir,” I heard him say frantically. “You, hold him down. Sir, if we don’t take the leg then you will surely die of infection!”

The man screamed as the saw cleaved his bone from his body, and then fell silent, unconscious, when the pain became too much to bear. I leaned back against a tree and stared into space, waiting for the images of battle to stop beating at my mind, replaying themselves as though to torture me—nothing was more painful than my memory of the grimace on my brother’s face as a bullet stole his life. It was moments later, or perhaps hours, that Bastian knelt before me, tilting my head as he had done once before as he searched for any wounds.

“I’ve built the tent for the night,” he said quietly. I could tell he was trying to be the strong one, as I had no desire to continue on as a functioning human being. I was mildly surprised to realize that darkness had already fallen. I wondered why he had bothered to build a tent at all, as we hadn’t really been using them outside of rainy days. Perhaps he just needed to be busy.

“Do you think you can get up?” he asked gently. I struggled to focus on his face, and when I did, all I saw was Jack. Bastian was all I had left of him now, and he was suffering, too. Swallowing a new batch of tears, I nodded, and allowed him to help me rise. Like a pair of zombies, we walked in a stupor. When I knelt to enter our tent, the empty space between us where Jack should be was like a cavern I was prepared to fall into at any moment. Still, I crept in, subconsciously avoiding his bedroll, which Bastian had still laid out. Perhaps it was a way for us to keep him in the tent, even in spirit.

Mechanically, I lay on my back, looking up at the short makeshift rooftop covering our heads. I didn’t even bother removing my shoes. I thought about all the times Jack had looked out for me and held the family together when our father fell apart. Hot, steamy tears mixed with the dried blood on my unwashed face. I sniffed.

“J?” Bastian asked from across the tent, a distant voice in the dark void that had so suddenly become my world. My throat constricted enough for me to be unable to provide an answer beyond some form of gurgle. He appeared by my side, the shadow of his face hovering over me. Instead of saying anything, he lay by my side, on Jack’s blanket. I almost yelled at him not to, but then he took my hand in his, and squeezed it tight. I couldn’t help myself—I rolled over and into his arms, silently coughing my sobs into his dirty uniform. He held me like that until I cried myself out, saying nothing.

We fell asleep that way. God help us had we been caught. The company came together the next morning and held a small service for the dead, many a strong man wiping at his eyes. It was only one battle, and already we had lost our friends, our family. So much, so soon. The officers’ kindness did not stretch beyond that moment of grief, and soon we were walking once again. It took a little over a week before Bastian and I could speak about anything other than Jack, mostly because I was afraid that if we did then he would be gone forever in every possible way.

He wasn’t though. I found peace in the quiet solitude of nature, the sturdy, ever-present trees. I imagined his spirit flying around in the wind, spraying us with a light mist when we crossed a stream. Bastian and I began to talk quietly about many things, from politics to nature and everything we missed back home. In that place, I finally felt free to tell him of the torment Miss Jean had put me through, the beatings and the verbal abuse. One night, by a small campfire we had made for just the two of us, I told him about how she slapped me over and over again in an attempt to realign my nose.

“She did not!” he exclaimed, scandalized. His blue eyes gently caressed my face, and his hand twitched as though to run along my cheek, to fix whatever damage she had caused during all those years of emotional torment. I gazed back at him, unknowingly letting him see that I would like nothing better than for him to do just that. My smirk was tinged with bitterness.

“What do you expect for an Irish girl in America?” I asked, turning on my brogue and deepening it for impact. He laughed.

“This is America, my dear…friend,” he almost said girl. “Anything is possible in the land of the free.”

I shook my head.

“Anything is possible for
you
in the land of the free. As a white male landowner, you can do and have whatever you want—the possibilities are endless. If you’re Irish, they specifically put up signs to keep you from working. If you’re black, you are property…not a person at all,” I finished, watching his eyes widen at my brazen and uncommon opinion. His eyes flickered as he registered my point. How would he know, anyway? Raised in a world where there are no limitations, it was impossible for him to believe that anyone else could live such a struggle. Our walls had been placed around us at birth, and the barriers keeping us from climbing out would not budge.

“You wouldn’t have even let me come with you on this mission because I’m a woman. What would you have done, when Jack…if I wasn’t there?” I couldn’t say it yet, knowing that to say out loud that my brother was dead would finalize it for good. I expected him to protest, to tell me that women are delicate creatures and that my choice had been foolish by anyone’s standards. Instead, he stared at me as though seeing a completely different person. He had listened.