Morning Comes
On a morning like many others, a young man stepped out of his home. He entered the grey hours with a sense of duty, of a job needing to be done. He did so silently, and without flourish. He waited outside in the time before the light, his time had come, and he was prepared.
Loyal stood outside the only home he'd ever known in the cold of the morning before the sun had even shown itself. He pulled his Union Blues tighter, wished he could wait inside by the fire. The time for that was over though. He'd been called to serve, and serve was what he'd do. There'd been a push, and the front needed more men, plain and simple. If Loyal was anything, that was him, and he was willing to do his part. If fifth company needed him, he would be there for them.
He breathed slowly, watching his breath cling together in a tiny cloud in front of him. His breath would hold steady in front of him for a fleeting moment before the frigid breeze would tear up the street and shred the little cloud to the wind, leaving no sign it had ever been there. Loyal counted his breaths, one, two, three, for what felt like an hour, losing count and starting over as many times as breaths he could count.
Still, he waited. With his eyes focused on the three inches in front of him, the war felt distant and he felt properly small. If it was anything out there like the others said, the ones who had to come home, out there he'd feel monumentally small. He tried not to talk to the ones who had been required to come home. They didn't want to talk to him, not with his working legs and still-seeing eyes. All they could do, or would do (Loyal never knew), was warn him. When the time came, and it was a when, not an if, when the time came, he'd know why they were so silent. Loyal tried not to think about the others, about the silence.
The creaking of wood and the slush of cold mud being moved turned Loyal's attention up the street, away from his cloud of breath. The horses came around the turn first, a pair of powerful brown Bretons with straw-colored manes. They pulled a long wagon with an open top. Three men sat in the back of the wagon, and two more sat up front with rifles across their laps. One of them held the leads, and gave them a pull as they neared Loyal. The horses came to a stop just a bit past the house Loyal had grown up in, his parents' house where they both still slept soundly. He'd told them he would be leaving for the front the following day. He knew he'd never be able to leave with them watching him, but he also knew he had to serve.
The man carrying the leads just looked down to Loyal before pointing back to the wagon with a nod of his head. Loyal swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded back. He walked to the back of the wagon through the cold mud and climbed up the single wooden step on the back. The driver stirred the horses as soon as Loyal climbed into the back of the wagon. It had a bench on each side, two men in Union Blues sat on one side, one on the other. Loyal took a seat beside the lone man and looked back to get a final glimpse of his home.
Loyal hung his head and willed back the tear that wanted so desperately to fall. In the back of his head, he couldn't shake the feeling he'd never see his mother or his home again. He'd been called to serve, though, and he had to do his part. Then maybe he'd still have a home to come back to, and if not him, then perhaps the man at his left would. Loyal tried to focus on his breath again, but in the back of the wagon, his breath just couldn't hold together. Where outside his home he could call out little clouds, here he could only leave a trail like so much smoke.
The wagon left Loyal's hometown behind long before the sun rose. In the hours before it did, no one in the wagon spoke. The men in front kept their eyes and minds on the road. In the back of the wagon, the men kept their eyes down, and lord only knows where their minds were. It wasn't until the grey light of morning crept up behind the wagon that anyone's eyes left the boards under their feet.
Loyal hadn't lived in a big city, but they were nowhere near civilization anymore. The wagon still rolled over a path like the one that crossed in front of his home, but instead of a butcher on one side of the street and a carpenter on the other, there were just trees. Behind those trees were more trees, and behind those after another few hundred refrains were perhaps the mountains Loyal's father had always wanted to scale. From here, though, Loyal could only see the trees.
It was nearly noon by the time the first word was spoken in the wagon. It came so suddenly and with no follow up that Loyal missed what was said. He heard someone speak, and his head shot up from his floorboard vigil. By the time he found his focus though, the men in front were done speaking. The one on the right was shaking his head. The men in the back of the wagon with Loyal looked up as well, but none spoke. None asked what had been said. Loyal was curious, but not enough to speak up. So he just looked ahead. Those first words roused others, but Loyal did not join them. It was only nervous chatter anyway.
Smoke rose above the treetops to the north. Far to the north, much farther than Loyal imagined the wagon could carry them. He thought he could hear gun shots in the distance, but the calm of the woods around them drowned out whatever noises may have been snaking their way through the trees. The smoke may not have even been from a battle, Loyal reasoned. It could have just been a brushfire, or a farmer clearing dead wood.
Regardless of the source, Loyal watched the smoke rise for as long as he could see it. The wagon didn't head towards the billowing column, not that one at least. As the wagon moved through the woods, he saw more smoke above the tree line, and on all sides. By the time Loyal had lost the first smoking pillar behind them, three more had cropped up in front and alongside them. Still though, the wagon rolled onwards past the smoke and every branching path along the way.
By the time the sun had really begun to slip and the blue of the sky had taken on a few other colors, they had passed numerous smoking pillars, and stopped for none of them. It had been hours since Loyal had seen any smoke when the wagon began to slow. The trees grew sparse as the horses slowed to a walk. In the distance, Loyal could definitely hear gun fire. It was rhythmic though, steady. A shot would ring out, then a four count, then another shot. Voices joined the gunfire, then the tree line broke and the wagon stopped. They'd arrived at camp, at the base of a hill. They were there to serve.
It didn't take long to get processed. After the eternity of the wagon ride, and the longer eternity waiting for it, it was a blink of an eye for Loyal to receive his private pin and blue cap. He had a duffel bag with his name sewn in it at the foot of a bedroll in a tent as well, but nothing to put inside it like a set of civilian clothes, or a collection of love letters. So instead, he scrawled the address of his parents' home, and each of their names, on a scrap of paper borrowed from another private and put that in the footlocker. Just something to stand for who he was.
Loyal didn't talk more than responding to superior officers, but he heard a lot from the other privates. Nervous chatter, gossipy ghost stories about the other side of the hill, questions why they're so far from the front, what made the hill so special? None of the privates seemed to hold answers to any of the questions asked by the others. No one knew what lay beyond the peak of the hill, why they were in the middle of nowhere, why the hill was worth taking. For every theory, there were two worse ones ready to dogpile onto the confusion. So Loyal tried to ignore it all, focus on why he was there. He had a job to do; he had been called to serve.
That night, Loyal cleaned and maintained his gun, a Springfield musket, same as were issued to all the other privates. He sharpened the bayonet, and when the edge could become no finer, he polished it until it shone bright enough to see himself in the metal. Finally, he repeated his process on his sidearm, a Starr revolver. He didn't know if the others had one as well, or something else. Everyone walking around camp seemed to have a different handle sticking out of their holsters. By the time night fell, Loyal's guns were clean and oiled, his shot was prepared and readied for use, and his percussion caps were dry and properly stored. If Loyal slept, he didn't notice the time pass.
Loyal heard the tent flap open and had his feet on the ground before the Sergeant began waking the other privates. Loyal rubbed his eyes and dressed in his Union Blues quickly. He gathered his equipment and made for the tent flap. But he stopped. Before he left, Loyal looked at the footlocker and thought of the paper inside. He hadn't gotten to say a proper goodbye to his parents or the home he'd been raised in. He regretted that now. So he spoke his silent farewells to the footlocker, and the note inside of it. In the wagon he'd held back his tears. Now he had to join the other privates heading to the base of the hill through the darkness.
An early morning fog blanketed the camp for as far as Loyal could see. Every direction he looked was an endless mass of grey, so much so that he couldn't even see the hill he marched toward with the other privates. The camp was fully awake within moments. Men rushed past him in the fog, dashing away from the hill, toward it, to the artillery, to the infantry, and in the far distance, he could hear others scurrying as they were. Could they be just on the other side of the hill? Were they camped so close? The hill had to matter somehow.
He had been cold waiting for the wagon the previous morning, but now as he marched toward the hill, the chill seemed to emanate from within his very core. The chill crept through his bones, and wracked his body with shivers. But he was moving, and so was everyone else. If he was shaking, maybe the other privates were too. How could he be the only one afraid, the only one with such a chill in his very being?
Sergeant addressed the privates of fifth company on the outer edge of camp. Loyal could hear shells being loaded into the artillery behind him, but he focused on what Sergeant said. They had to take the hill, by any means necessary. The Union depended on it, depended on them, on Loyal. He joined the men at the front, but fielded no question. But that didn't stop the privates from asking them to each other. Why? How does this hill save the Union? They couldn't ask for much longer.
The trumpet blared. Any discussions turned from whispered questions to roaring cries, and the privates surged forward into the fog, toward the hill. The sun hadn't yet risen, but they charged through the darkness, and when they hit the slope of the hill, they poured on more steam and scaled it. Shots rang out in front of Loyal, then behind him. Figures broke the fog, but couldn't be separated from it. Men in grey, in the grey, so Loyal fired forward, reloaded, and fired again. He was here to serve.
Then came the hiss from behind that screamed into a roar thirty yards in front of him as part of the hill in front of him exploded outwards. The men in grey soared into the air around the fireball, but Loyal didn't slow. He pressed on through the grey towards the peak. Shapes in the fog didn't last long. A flash of gunpowder would illuminate the figure of a man and ten more shots would ring out to put the man down. Or they would appear and disappear in an instant as the shells rained against the side of the hill.
Loyal could make out the curve of the top of the hill when the world went black and white. As he rammed a fresh shot down the barrel of his rifle, the ground around him burst open and he was flung forward. He rolled across the ground, his rifle flung far from his hands. When he opened his eyes, he could only see shapes, and the curve of the peak. So he pushed himself up on shaking arms and drew his revolver. He still had a job to do.
Loyal charged to the peak, firing at movement through the fog. He reached the top of the hill and looked down the other side. Explosions, muzzle flashes, chaos. It was only now that Loyal realized he could hear nothing. He looked over his shoulder and saw the same scene down the other slope. The men behind him were indistinguishable from those in front of him. In the smoke and fog, through the silence and shock, Loyal fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded. Until his pouches were emptied and his revolver spit no more death, Loyal fired. When he could shoot no more, he dropped to the ground and pulled a bayonet from the dirt.
As artillery shells climbed the hill on both sides, as the silent shots flashed brighter from all around, Loyal held the peak. He drove the broken bayonet through any man who dared to try and take the hill from him. Men charged up from every direction, with artillery blazing at their backs. From the dead, Loyal drew new guns, and from the peak, he blazed back. But he was just one man.
He hadn't heard any of them, but when he felt the first, he realized he had missed several. He could hear now. When he felt the ball tear across his cheek, he grabbed his face with only four fingers and returned fire with his other hand. He could hear, but it was quiet. His Blues were blood soaked, black now. No more shots rang out. On the peak of the hill, Loyal collapsed.
He looked to the sky as peaceful sounds slowly dripped back into his ears. He heard distant voices, and he felt warm. With eyes straight up, Loyal stared and smiled. The sun had risen, and the world was a vibrant orange all around him. He could rest knowing he'd done what he was called to do. He had served well. He could rest now, he would return to camp when he woke.
*
The men of fifth company were quiet. The battle had been won, but at great cost. While just a few hours prior, they numbered in the hundreds, they were a scant forty-nine now. They could see to their wounded since they'd claimed the hill, and recovered their dead. Or, the ones they knew were theirs. The Blues they brought home, all else they checked for death, or confirmed death with a shot or bayonet between the eyes.
When the wounded had been seen to, the men sat around outside the tents. They stared at the hill, as though it might start to mean something. Sergeant sat with them and didn't try to offer reasons they cared not to hear. He was the first to notice movement on the hill. A blood red figure clad in black stumbled slowly down the hill. It carried a gun. One of the privates raised his rifle, leveled off, and fired before anyone could think to do anything else.
"I guess we missed one," the private said.
The figure fell forward and tumbled down the rest of the hill, coming to a stop in a twisted heap some thirty yards from the tent that still held a duffel bag, inside of which bore the only history Loyal had to leave the world.
