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corner of that fence there’s some slick willow. Here, lay down and rest.” She took her extra shift out of her sack and I laid in it, smelling of ham. I closed my eyes and wanted to say thank you, wanted to tell her I had my own shift in my own bag and she didn’t have to give me hers, but nothing came, no hants nor specters nor even dreams. Just sleep.
    Somebody shaking me, pounding me around, and I had in my mind a picture of Greerson getting beat against the fence in the yard until my eyes snapped open. Gray light, small chill of morning air, not quite dawn.
    “Come on!” It was Lucy. “There’s going to be a battle. Come see.”
    I still had sleep in my brain or I wouldn’t have gone. Didn’t have time to be watchingno battles with my children gone. But I was never one to think straight when I woke up so I followed Lucy up to a small rise a stone’s throw away.
    “I came up here this morning just before first light to take care of my doings and there they were fixing to fight. Looks like the whole army.…”
    Wasn’t the whole army. I read on things about the war later and learned that it would have been considered a small battle, compared to Gettysburg or Antietam.
    But it looked big then. Below us was a shallow valley, went out about a mile and rose in trees on the other side. Trees just starting to show. Closer to us, less than half a mile, were two lines of men.
    I wasn’t good at counting then. Hadn’t learned numbers except to slave count. Count to five, make a mark, count to five, make a mark, then count the marks. Way to count chickens or ducks or portions of corn flour. Counting that way, slave counting, I came to over a hundred men on each side.
    The ones on the left were an even line, blue coats, almost clean. The other side the troops were ragged looking. Some had gray on, most just tatters of homespun or linsey and ‘most half of them were barefoot but they stood in astraight line. Out front there were officers on horses and I wanted to go.
    Wanted to leave but I couldn’t. Like watching a storm coming. You knew it would come, knew you had to get in under something but you couldn’t stop watching.
    “What are they waiting for?” Lucy said and I looked and saw her eyes were shining like she was going to get food. Maybe more.
    “You want this?”
    She nodded. “They’re all white, ain’t they? I hope they all kill each other. Wouldn’t bother me if every damn one of them died.”
    She said it soft, almost like she was praying, and there was a time, knowing only Waller, there was a time when I would have been with her but I shook my head. “They’re all white but all whites ain’t bad.”
    She stared at me. “Why,
listen
to you—have you gone feeble?”
    I pointed. “Half of them are fighting to keep you in slavery but the other half are dressed in blue. Fighting to make you free. Fighting and dying and for you …”
    They were done waiting.
    The ragged side raised their rifles and fired. Some blue men fell. Then the blues fired and some of the ragged men fell. Then they all reloaded and fired as fast as they could. Sounded like a rattle, a giant rattle beingshaken or somebody tearing all the coarse cloth in the world. So loud you couldn’t think.
    Before it fairly started the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see. Just red flashes and the tearing noise and then loud yelling, yips and yoops, and then some of the raggedy men could be seen running from the smoke, running away.
    Then quiet except for screams. I thought it was from more fighting but a soft morning breeze came up and blew the smoke off and I could see the screams were from the wounded.
    Laying all over the ground like broken toys, busted dolls, some crawling, pulling with their arms because their legs didn’t work. Terrible damage. Only been three days of war and freedom and all I’d seen was terrible, terrible damage. Waller with the bayonet through him, bodies in the ditches by the road, Greerson dead, burned