Scar (11 page)

Major Meeker beams.

“Let us stick to our original plan,” continues the colonel. He turns to Dr. Tusten. “Benjamin, you will attack from our right flank, Lieutenant Colonel Wisner will charge the left flank, and I shall strike from the middle. But first we shall proceed up the path, looping back to surprise them from the direction they least expect, the north.”

If Dr. Tusten disagrees, I see nothing in him that says as much. He promptly hands me the rest of his extra medical sacks and begins to head north on our path. I gladly follow him.

The doctor and I lead the line, behind Tyler and Cuddeback, who have gone ahead to scout out Brant's exact position. I keep my eyes locked on the doctor's back.

We are moving fast. I follow too closely. When I fall, I don't feel the pain of my knee against the rock, just the warm blood seeping through my trousers. When I stand, I step on one of the knapsacks and trip again, winding up back in the dirt. The doctor gives me his hand, but I refuse it, and I stumble up and after him.

I see nothing but the fabric of the doctor's jacket. My own breath fills my ears. The medical bags crowd around me. It's just as yesterday, I tell myself, we are only marching …
marching … marching. After a few paces I begin to relax.

A shot cracks the silence.

We freeze—as if that single musket ball has stopped every one of us dead in our tracks. The shot is followed by a volley of three or four more. These bring us instantly back to life and we scurry about like ants that have lost their trail.

This is not in the plan.

Dr. Tusten shouts to those of us assigned to him and then motions us downhill toward the river. Again, I follow him, forcing myself to keep back so as not to knock him down from behind. He turns to find me and I run into him, losing my balance. His hands grip my shoulders and he yanks me back to my feet.

“Noah.” He shakes me, not hard, but so that he has my attention.

I nod. I'm with him.

He releases me and heads west again, but slower, his gaze scouring the trees. We're no longer a large group, but more like thirty or forty. Josh and I acknowledge each other with a look.

Silence.

Slinking.

Every step forward. Unbearable.

Ahead … movement.

Men.

The enemy.

I do as the others do, and drop to my belly behind a rock.
The explosion of musket fire fills the forest.

I pull my legs in under me and crouch behind the rock with my eyes pressed shut and my forehead against the cool stone. My nose fills with musket smoke. I open my eyes. The smoke burns and I can't see a thing. A body bangs into mine, knocking me into the pine needles. A musket is thrust into my chest by a man I recognize, but don't know by name.

“Load it,” he growls.

I do as I'm told. He snatches the musket from me and shoves a second one at me. I reload it and hand it back to him, retrieving the first musket to load again. Sweat and smoke squeeze in around us and all I see is the man, the rock, and the musket I load.

Fill the lock, drop in the cartridge … ramming, cocking, until my whole body knows the routine and performs it in swift, fluid motions. I crouch behind the rock and reload over and over and over.

I start to feel almost comfortable. There's nothing like having a task. It's my mother coming out in me. I even let myself look around a little. Dr. Tusten is not far off through the smoke, firing and reloading, firing and reloading. I can see other men now, crouched like my partner and me behind their own rocks or trees, firing and reloading as we are. I stretch just a little to look around the rock and I swear I can feel a musket ball pass through my hair. I will not do that again.

I return to reloading.

I don't know how long we've been behind this rock—long enough for me to memorize this spot on earth for life. A rough piece of the rock juts out a little and catches my elbow as I reload, sending sparks of pain through my arm. I will die here, and the last thing I'll see is this small piece of forest. I forget to hand over the musket and my partner yanks it from my hands, catching my finger … more pain.

I pick up the musket he dropped and reload. I certainly don't need two good feet for this.

I'm so thirsty that my tongue feels like it doesn't belong to me. And the smoke is roasting my eyes from my head. How is my partner standing this?

He peers over the rock, stiff, aiming. I watch him wait patiently for a target. He's a calculating shot. Thanks be to God for this, as it gives me more time to reload. I can't tell if he's hitting anything or not. Of course, I'm hoping he is.

He's a tall man, but thin. Although he must have a solid constitution, for he hasn't taken a moment's rest since the firing started, and not once has he investigated his whereabouts. He must have been here before, in battle, crouching and endlessly firing into a black cloud of smoke. I itch inside my father's frock. I would be far less sweaty if I removed it, but I know that I won't.

Reload, reload, reload. The sun has passed overhead, and if our shadows were visible through the smoke, they'd be growing in length.

I dream of water—the way the river looks frozen over
in winter with large chunks of ice bobbing in the center, the day it poured rain with the sun still shining when I was out plowing, every wasteful splash I ever let slide over the side of my water bucket.

Reload, reload … smoke and this rock. “Please, God, let this stop,” I pray.

But then my prayer is answered, and I immediately wish to reload a hundred more muskets against this rock than be forced to leave it.

Someone howls down the line to my right. I can't see who it is, but his howls sound like an animal caught in one of my traps. My partner fires his musket and throws it my way, taking off like a rabbit in the direction of the injured man. Dr. Tusten jumps in behind me on my left and shoves me hard into my partner's position behind the rock.

“We're down men, Noah. You'll have to start shooting,” he shouts directly into my ear, his breath hotter than the muggy air, and then he crawls off after my partner and the injured man.

I clutch the loaded musket. And then I turn, point, and pull the trigger. There is no thought about a target. I just have to fire off the first shot. The crouching and reloading are over, replaced by the new series of crouching, reloading, and firing.

A cheer rises up from the enemy. It's so loud. It's so close. How many of them are out there? Have they received reinforcements? Following the cheer—there comes the most
grotesque sound I've ever heard coming from fellow human beings. It is some sort of guttural song or chant, which ends with more terrifying shouts of joy. I sit, fixed behind my rock, clinging to my musket.

“Shoot, Noah,” I tell myself, but I can't move. The terrible whooping fills my ears. I cannot move.

Dr. Tusten scrambles back behind my rock, shouting at me to carry the packs and muskets he drops at my knees. I don't want to give up my rock. There is some kind of safety here, some kind of loyalty I feel toward this spot. But before I can protest, Dr. Tusten disappears into the smoke, only to return a moment later dragging someone I assume is the wounded man I heard howling. He isn't howling anymore; in fact, he looks dead.

“Follow me, Noah,” Dr. Tusten yells, commanding me with his dark eyes. So I pick up the muskets and packs and trip after him as he stumbles backward through the woods, hauling the wounded man over leaves and rocks and branches. I stay hunched over, but each time a musket fires, I crouch down even closer to the earth until I feel like a snake slithering along behind the doctor. If only I could move like this, sliding on my belly, I'd do it. The packs and muskets are weighing me down and I half drag, half crawl right over top of them.

We aren't the only ones on the move. Many of our men are retreating with us. This doesn't seem like a good sign to me. Distracted by this bad thought, I trip over a soft obstacle, falling on top of it. It's Josh.

“Josh! Josh!” I scream into his face, violently shaking his shoulders. He doesn't respond.

I stick my head into the air … creating a perfect target for the enemy. “I need help! I need help!” I scream, again and again. To anyone. “Help! Help!” To no one. “I need … help.”

But it's no use.

No one can help.

He is dead.

“Dr. Tusten,” I whisper, defeated.

The doctor is struggling with the weight of the wounded man up ahead of me. He looks back and motions hard with his chin for me to keep up.

But I can't leave Josh. I won't leave Josh. I throw his musket over my shoulder with the others, grab his knapsack along with the doctor's, and try dragging him from under his armpits the way I see the doctor moving the wounded man. Josh isn't large and my arms are strong, but the sacks and muskets are falling all over the place and slowing me down, and with each loud crack of a musket, I drop to my knees. The hollering. The whooping. It weakens me. This is useless. I know it. But I keep dragging him because I don't know what else to do. The doctor runs back and grabs me, pulling me and my sacks and muskets away from Josh. I don't fight him.

Hot sweat burns my eyes and the taste of salt wets my tongue.

Dr. Tusten throws me behind a new rock and begins to tend the wounded man. I can't move. I lie with my face in the dirt. It smells sweet. I see my mother bending over a row
of corn seedlings, weeding. But then she kicks me. No, it's the doctor. He's binding up some poor fellow's shattered leg and glaring at me. “Get up, Noah, and help me,” he orders. “Now! See how I place the wad of dressing over the bleeding? This will put pressure on the wound and stop the blood flow. Noah … watch. See how I wind the bandage around to apply the pressure on the wound and keep it clean?”

“Is he dead?” I ask.

“If he were, Noah, I wouldn't be dressing his wounds. He has just lost consciousness. Listen, I'm off to search for others, stay here and load the muskets.” And he's gone.

I do as I'm told, and load. My arms are so sore from this task that they feel clumsy and odd. Before I have the second musket loaded, Dr. Tusten returns with another screaming man.

Blood, sweat, screaming, death … “Put your hand over here, Noah, and push down,” more screaming, and grunting, and moaning. The moaning is worse than the screaming. The moaning is so much worse.

More of our men gather around us. I can see them behind trees and rocks, loading … firing. Through the smoke comes the shrieking. It seems to reach out and grab me by the throat and squeeze, slowly. It sounds closer now.

“Noah, here, roll this around the splint, like this …”

I roll the bandage around the bloody arm of some poor fellow.

“Now, tie it here, off the site of the wound.” Dr. Tusten
comforts the injured man with one breath and instructs me with the next. It is better to move in this way, to follow him, than to think about what is happening around me.

I'm in the middle of wrapping what is left of Jon Haskell's knee when I catch sight of Colonel Hathorn coming in on our left. He looks like a different man from the man he was this morning; his bright eyes are cloudy and his clothes are wet and crusted with dirt and leaves. He meets the doctor's eye and then drops behind a rock and begins to load. He comes up from the rock and aims south, not west, which is the direction we've been shooting in all day. Has the enemy moved?

But that thought is quickly put to rest. I hear the cries of our enemy coming from the south now as well as the west. And a few moments later, I hear their howling coming from the east. We are hemmed in.

I can see our men scattered throughout the forest. But we don't number that many. I count us up … and have to stop at around thirty, including the wounded lying at my feet. Where is everyone? They cannot be dead. That would be over a hundred dead. They cannot be dead. I grab at Dr. Tusten's elbow. “Doctor, where is everyone? Why are we so few?”

The doctor continues his work for a moment, and then stops and says low into my ear, “I don't know, Noah, we've either lost heavily or some of the men have been cut off from us. Keep tending the wounded and stick close to me.
They need us, and it's all we can do right now.”

I return to my cleaning and wrapping and calming. But I'm not calm. The sky feels as if it's pushing down on me, and I'm holding it up with my shoulders. As I work, more men drag themselves near the doctor and me, and we're running out of cover. The musket balls bounce off nearby rocks and trees, spraying us with pine needles and dirt. The doctor sees this, nods at me to keep working, and takes off.

I feel frantic without him. I can't remember how to do anything. The man in front of me is bleeding from a small musket hole in his shoulder near his neck, and compared to some of the grisly wounds I've encountered today, his seems small and unworthy of my time. I move onto the next man, but the man with the hole in his shoulder catches my wrist. I look down at him. “Yes, yes, I'll be right there,” I tell him. But when I turn back, he's dead. Where is the doctor?

Dr. Tusten dives back behind our rock and begins to gather up our supplies. “We're moving. There's a rock ledge behind us where we can tend the men better. It's good cover and lots of it.” He tells the men who can still walk to follow us, and the rest, that we'll return for them one at a time. We don't need to explain why.

Again I follow the doctor, banging my knees on rocks, the sacks snagging every fallen tree branch I crawl past. He disappears over a small ledge and I slide down after him.

“Stay with these men while I return for the others,” he shouts as he climbs back up and over the ledge. It's the
farthest I've been from musket fire all day, but I don't relax, not with the wounded surrounding me. I begin to clean, wrap, and calm them. I know all of their faces, and a few of their names. One of the men stops me and tries to hand me something. He struggles to speak, and his voice comes out almost too thin to hear.