March Toward the Thunder Part 26

Bet she cracked at least two of his ribs, Louis thought as his mother let loose and Artis took a deep breath.

His mother whispered a few words and then put something in Artis's hand. He nodded and slipped the medicine she'd given him for protection into his pocket.

The tall Mohawk boy turned back to Louis.

"Far as I go, brother," Artis said. He squeezed Louis's shoulder and stepped back. "You travel well. Your ma will take care of you. From what I have seen of her, she can cure everything except that bad case of the Abenaki uglies you got."

Artis looked up for a minute, took a deep breath, then reached down to his belt. He untied the bag of marbles and placed them in Louis's hand. "I'll win these back from you after the war."

Then Artis walked away without looking back.

Should of told him that no Abenaki ever beat a Mohawk in an ugly contest.

But the moment had pa.s.sed. Artis had taken his leave in true Indian fashion.

We don't have words for good-bye.

"Climb on," the yellow-bearded driver said.

As soon as they were settled in, his mother cut off the moist dressings.

"Wet bandages! Fools! Do they not know you must keep a wound dry."

She reached into her bag and brought out a flask filled with brown liquid.

"Drink," she said.

Louis drank, warmth spreading from his throat through his chest. He breathed in and out, each breath bringing him a little more strength.

His mother held out a pair of moccasins. She helped him pull off his boots, threw them into the back of the wagon as he put the soft moose skin slippers on his feet. He lay back and his mother wrapped the blanket around him.

It was dark when the wagoneer dropped them off in the countryside.

Where are we? These woods look as thick as it was in the Wilderness.

His mother helped him down. Easier to walk with moccasins on his feet, though his leg ached some. She led him along a barely visible trail through the brush. It came out in a large clearing. Canvas-covered huts made of brush and bent saplings were mixed in with small log cabins in a circle around a central fire.

"Nidobak," his mother said. "Friends."

People with brown faces came up to them. Some wore clothing made of skin. Others were dressed like Southern farmers.

Indians, Louis thought.

Their words sounded like Abenaki, but the accent was strange. He was led into a cabin, placed on a bed.

An old man, his face as lined as a map, looked at the open wound in his leg, the one that smelled of gangrene. He and M'mere nodded heads in agreement.

The old man went outside. When he returned it was with a bark cup that he handed to M'mere. She carefully reached in, began to place the contents of the cup along the edges of the wound in his thigh where flesh had begun to rot. Small things the size of white beans. They squirmed as she held them. Maggots.

The old man patted Louis's shoulder, said something in Indian. Because of the accent, it took Louis a minute to understand.

Clean good. Eat sickness away.

He nodded and closed his eyes.

A deep, loud sound woke him.

Cannons!

He sat up from his blankets, heart pounding, reaching for the rifle that should have been by his side. But his Springfield wasn't there.

Where?

His mother's hands grasped his shoulders, gently pushing him back down.

"The fever, she is gone," M'mere whispered. "Oligawi. Sleep good."

Louis relaxed. He remembered where he was.

Not guns. The rumble of thunder.

A smile came to his lips. Things on this earth were continuing as the great good spirit Ktsi Nwaskw meant them to continue. Despite wars and all the foolishness of men, the Thunder Being, who cleansed the earth from evil, was walking again across the sky.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

ABOVE THE TOWN.

As Louis sat in the bent wood chair he'd finished making that morning, he looked out over the land. Fields and woods and in the distance the blue haze of the Green Mountains of Vermont. What M'mere had said in her letters had turned out to be true. Fishing was good in the pond. Pickerel, perch, bullhead. The farm had fine fertile ground for growing corn and beans and potatoes. Plenty of good trees. And this view . . .

You surely can see a wide swath of G.o.d's Creation from the top of Cole Hill.

It was especially beautiful today, now that the first frost had touched the sugar maples. The land was a patchwork of gold and scarlet sewn in among the green of pine and spruce and cedar and hemlock. He looked at the crutches leaning against the wall of their small cabin. A spider had set up shop between them. The harvest of dried fly carca.s.ses at the bottom edge of the web showed that it had been doing good business at its prime location for some time now.

Louis stretched out his leg. The scar pulled a little, but his limb was as strong as it had been before.

Fit to chase down a deer by the moon when the leaves fall.

As he thought that, a feeling of guilt swept over him.

He walked to the southeast corner of the porch. At night the valley below was dark save for a few scattered lights from farmsteads. Louis thought back on those nights when he'd looked from high places to see the glow of countless thousands of army campfires, the lights of the Rebels' camp across the line like a reflection.

I pray to G.o.d I never see such a sight from this hill.

He touched the hip pocket where he'd put the letter. It arrived for him at the post office in the Greenfield General Store a week ago, but he'd just picked it up yesterday.

M'mere must have told him where he could reach us.

Louis pulled it out, unfolded it, and read it for the tenth time.

Faithfully yerz, Mr. Artis Leander Cook Louis walked back to the chair and sat again. It was time he had some employment, now that he was all healed up. It wasn't right that M'mere should be the only one earning money-though he was still drawing his pay and could apply for a pension as a disabled soldier.

Except I'm not. I'm fit as a fiddle.

He thought about what it would be like that night. His birthday supper. He'd finally turned sixteen. Only sixteen. After all he'd seen, he felt like it ought to be sixty. He was a long way from the killing fields of Virginia, but even further away from the boy he'd been. He woke up every night missing the feel of his Springfield next to him. Despite his mother's remedies, he still had bad dreams.

Azonis and her parents and her brothers would be at dinner that night. She was no longer a little girl for sure. He saw the two of them marrying and settling down. He smiled at the thought of the way Azonis looked at him. As if he was some sort of hero.

Not a man who'd deserted his friends.

Louis sighed. He knew how they'd react when he told them tonight.

No.

You already done your duty.

Strong as she was, his mother would cry. But she'd realize that her son, who was just as stubborn as his father, had made up his mind.

Are you certain sure?

Louis raised his eyes beyond the hills. He saw in his mind those Virginia mountains, those tidal rivers, that terrible beautiful landscape he realized he couldn't leave behind just yet.

He held up Artis's letter.

"Be seeing you boys soon," he whispered to the wind.

Louis's journey through the battles of the Irish Brigade's Virginia Campaign in the summer of 1864.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

This novel is deeply rooted in fact. The events it describes in the Civil War, the weaponry, the military terms, the language used by the characters, the food they eat, even the songs they sing, are all real and the result of many years of research on my part.

Although the protagonist and his closest companions are fictional, all of the other characters and events are from the historical record. Plus, though I chose to call my main character by a different name, Louis Nolette is based on my own great-grandfather, an Abenaki Indian from Canada who did serve in the Irish Brigade in 1864.

Like many Americans, I've always felt a close connection to this war. When I was a child, my family drove south each summer to spend time with my great-uncle-my grandmother's brother Orvis Dunham. A Northerner, he had chosen to live in Virginia, where he managed the Warm Springs Hotel. Our stops along the way always included Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where we would tour the battlefield, and Washington, D.C., where we visited museums and historical sites. We always knew when we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, for it was a segregated South that we entered back then. The gas stations had separate drinking fountains for White and Colored. My grandfather Jesse Bowman, whose own Indian skin was the darkest in our family, only made that trip with us once after being told by a gas station attendant that he could not use the restroom with the sign WHITES ONLY on its door.

In Virginia, Great-Uncle Orvis took us on more battlefield tours, reliving stories he'd learned from men who'd survived those grim struggles. He also took us to visit African American friends who'd been his employees at the big hotel, bringing them food or presents for their children. Their shacks were a sad contrast to the homes of white Virginians. If the war had really been fought to free the slaves, I remember thinking back then, then why were things still this way in Virginia? Although it all happened long before I was born, the American Civil War was never just a distant memory to me.

My grandfather Jesse Bowman's own father, Louis Bowman, was a Civil War veteran. But I knew little about it. Grampa Jesse told me that his father would never say anything about his experience in the war. It was better not told. But the memories of it were always with him, for he'd been gravely wounded and left for dead on the battlefield. "When I told him I'd enlisted for World War I," my grandfather told me, "my father broke down and cried."

I knew that my great-grandfather had served in a New York regiment, but I didn't know that much about the details of his service until my sister Margaret, our family's best historian and most dogged researcher, came to my aid as she always does. (You'll find Marge credited in the author's notes of many of my historical novels.) Among other things, she managed to get the pension records from the National Archives of our great-grandfather, listed not as Louis, but "Lewis" Bowman. Despite the discrepancy in the first name, there was no doubt from the details that it was he.

Soldier's certificate # 208738.

Lewis Bowman.

5' 8", dark complexion, dark hair, black eyes.

born in Canada.

farmer and laborer

resident of Porter's Corners

Town of Greenfield, Saratoga.

recruited by Captain Forsythe at East Troy, New York

Private, Company E, 69th New York Infantry

Commander Peter W. Sweeney.