Prager: I thought surely I’d bear a mark.

Patterson: As big as a plate, that hole.

Prager: As big as a plate. The boy just kept shooting.

Patterson: We’d frightened him.

Prager: I suppose. Flushed him out.

Patterson: Took half my face in return.

Prager: Little thing.

Patterson: Just a boy. Looked funny in long pants.

Prager: Didn’t fit in his boots, you could see. Probably took ’em off one of their dead.

Patterson: Probably had to. Those boys were eating their boots that spring.

Prager: Still walked like an Indian, though. Light as a leaf.

Patterson: That he did. I didn’t hear a thing till my head blew apart. Heard that just fine, though.

Prager: A terrible thing to see.

Patterson: It felt like hell. Like the center of a forge. It just screamed through…hot. But…over fast, anyway. I got straight up from it with my head in one piece again.

Prager: Also a terrible thing to see.

Patterson: He was on the ground nearby, he was going too.

Prager: I didn’t go so fast as you.

Patterson: Gut shot. Takes its time, sometimes.

Prager: Fast enough, though. I lay there and tried to hold my belly together, and then I felt awfully tired, and then — then I felt right again.

Patterson: Sat up and spat.

Prager: [spits] Yes sir.

Patterson: Sat up, and spat, and looked at me like you’d seen a ghost!

Prager: And so I had.

Patterson: And so had I.

Prager: The very pictures of health, once it was done.

Patterson: Not a drop of blood anywhere, not a button off.

Prager: I think I got up off that ground with buttons I’d lost in Falmouth. I could do my cuffs up right for the first time since Christmas.

Patterson: The whole walk home, he kept fastening them and unfastening them, fastening them and unfastening them.

Prager: The breezes in that swamp are like snakes.

Patterson: We walked up through Virginia to get back. Through Maryland. Through the pine stands, but we saw the others almost right away, some of them. We’d gotten caught far off the flank, going around it we saw them walking too.

Prager: Rebs, too.

Patterson: All kinds, going all different directions, and some of them still wearing their wounds.

Prager: Terrible to see. I felt sick about it sometimes.

Patterson: Heads ripped open like mine was, bellies ripped open like Joe’s was, fingers and toes off, coats clawed off, carrying their guts.

Prager: Carrying their guts in front of them like babies. Eyes out, too. Terrible to see.

Patterson: There was one boy with his jaw gone, that boy we saw up at the top of Delaware.

Prager: Terrible thing.

Patterson: He tore a sleeve down from his uniform and put it around his face, and he’d talk through the sleeve, but you couldn’t make much sense of his words, all run together that way with no mouth.

Prager: It sounded like water — like a creek running high.

Patterson: He’d got separated from his outfit and he was looking for them, it was hard to make it out but that was the substance of it. Hundreds of them like that, like us, crossing paths in the woods and the fields, and the Rebs too, like Joe says.

Prager: Good fellows, the ones we spoke to.

Patterson: Skinny. Always complained about the rain.

Prager: It did rain a sight.

Patterson: Some of them looked all right, some of them were torn up. Same as our fellows. Strange thing. It didn’t seem to have a law to it.

Prager: Roman Charles, for instance.

Patterson: You can hardly bear to look at him.

Prager: Mustard gas and four days in the rain before they took him off the ground, and he wears it on him.

Patterson: On every inch of him. And he’s a man of good cheer, doesn’t aim to scare anyone, but he’s a fearful picture.

Prager: It’s a puzzle as to why.

Patterson: It is a puzzle at that. Why we look like two men who are only a bit tired, perhaps. Why Miss Alford hasn’t got a hair wrong.

Prager: Or Steller, with that smell of char.

Patterson: Only a faint smell, as if he’s just enjoyed a pipe, but the man burnt to a cinder.

Prager: And got up whole and feeling fine.

Patterson: Feeling just fine.

Prager: Yes sir.

Patterson: I asked that boy with the jaw gone if it hurt him.

Prager: [spits]

Patterson: He shook his head. And why would it, if a body is dead, but above that sleeve where it wrapped around, I could see in his eyes it pained him to be so, though he hadn’t a mouth left to tell me so, or anyone left on earth to tell.

Prager: He’d lost his outfit.

Patterson: His outfit left him. The others went back to Philadelphia to muster out and left him in the woods like a broken boot.

Prager: Or got cut off, like we did.

Patterson: He didn’t know the way to get home.

Prager: We got cut off, Chim.

Patterson: They ought to have come back for him. They ought not to have let him wander around all by himself with half a face. What did they tell his mother? Did they come to her door caps in pockets after they’d left her boy on his side in the mud?

Prager: Chim.

Patterson: Not even a proper bandage. Only a sleeve.

Prager: Sir.

Patterson: He looked like a thing you see in a fever, Joe. It isn’t right.

Prager: Raybourne had his orders. I asked to come along to finish up my mapping. You didn’t know that boy with no bottom jaw, and Hooker is a goddamn fool. You couldn’t have done better than you did.

Patterson: I’d not have left him in the woods, I’d have cleaned up his face some.

Prager: You didn’t leave him in the woods.

Patterson: And I wouldn’t have.

Prager: You didn’t.

Patterson: I’d have brought him home.

My name is Joe Prager. I died during the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863.
My name is Chim Patterson. I died during the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863.

November 17, 2003

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