My Brother's Keeper My America 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

have stopped to let Rex rest for a moment before we head back to Gettysburg. I have ridden nearly all day.
    At dawn, I started down Baltimore Pike, riding past the battlefields. They were silent and ghostly.
    Still not a songbird sings.
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    I stopped at three hospitals on White Run and studied the wounded. None of them were Jed.
    I stopped at a hospital in the village of Two Taverns. Jed was not there, either.
    I must start for home now, to get back to Pa before dark.
    Later
    I will not be riding Rex home tonight. Pa will be worried.
    But he will be happy to find out why.
    On our ride down the pike, Rex was weary. We trotted through the twilight at a slow pace.
    Near White Church Road, I heard a bird singing. It was the first bird I had heard in a long time.
    It was not just a twitter. It was a wondrous song.
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    I stopped. I could not see the little bird in the brush. But its spirit moved me to turn Rex onto the road.
    Shadows were falling quickly around the white church. A light burned in the open doorway.
    I hitched Rex to a tree. When I looked inside the church, I saw dozens of men on beds of hay and straw. Lady nurses silently served from a soup kettle.
    I asked one if I could look for my brother. She gave me a candle. I began carrying it from face to face.
    Before I even came to Jed, my heart started to sing.
    His eyes were closed. His face was hollow and pale. But I knew him at once. I knew the shape of his light brown beard, his lips, his long lashes. I knew his hands folded across his chest.
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    He has not seen me yet. He has not opened his eyes.
    The nurses tell me Jed escaped from the Rebels and crawled here with a broken leg. He has a fever now and has slept for many days.
    But Jed breathes. His heart beats.
    I only have to wait for God to wake him up.

    July 28, 1863

    This morning one of the nurses will get word to Pa that Jed and I are here. I know he will come right away. I asked the nurse to tell him to bring
    The Death of King Arthur
    so I can read it to Jed.

    Later
    Pa is here. When he saw Jed was alive, he fell to his knees and wept with joy.
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    Now he is pacing back and forth beside the bed. He is watching Jed, anxious for him to wake up.

    July 29, 1863
    It is long after midnight. Pa snores now. But I still have not closed my eyes. I am afraid that if I stop seeing and hearing for Jed, he will slip away into that other world.
    I have been talking to him of all the things he loves. I have reminded him of his books and his writing, of Pa and our mother and President Lincoln.
    Still, he has not opened his eyes.

    For the rest of the night, I will read to him from
    The Death of King Arthur.

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    This is the brightest morning of our lives.

    Did Jed hear me reading
    The Death of King Arthur
    7
    .

    Why else would he have opened his eyes just as I read: "... lightly and fiercely he pulled the sword out of the stone."?
    That has always been his favorite part.
    I laughed and cried to see him awake. So did Pa.
    Jed was too weak to speak. He sleeps again now, but the nurse says his fever has broken.
    I imagine that somewhere that little bird is singing its heart out.
    July 31, 1868
    Jed has been awake all morning.
    Pa asked him about what happened, and
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    Jed told how he had been captured by Rebs on his way back to Gettysburg. He had escaped with two other prisoners. But he soon found himself in the midst of fighting. Jed was trampled by a horse and his leg was broken. As he lay on the ground, he saw the two men he had escaped with get killed by cannon fire.
    When Jed started to speak of the death of his friends, he could not go on. He turned his face to the wall. He closed his eyes.
    I tried to comfort him. I told him I had been his eyes and ears while he was gone. I asked if he wanted his journal back now.
    He shook his head.
    I asked if I should keep writing until he felt better.
    He kept his eyes closed and nodded.
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    The doctor has just said magic words to us: He said Jed could go home this very