Pennsylvania had slid down beneath their sore feet. “And folks call the rebels foot-cavalry!” a cracked voice jeered, but few soldiers were wasting their breath in talk. After dark they went into line across the road, a half-mile past the Truckenmiller farm. Every once in awhile they heard a far-off sound which might have been a shot, though there wouldn’t be much shooting now that dark had come … Tyler formed a notion that he was coming home with college mates, or with some foreign aggregation of which he was very proud, and with which he would astonish the villagers. If fighting had actually taken place close to town, he’d have every opportunity to snatch a few minutes at home.

I wonder, he thought with sudden horror—maybe my letter made her so angry that she went home to Philadelphia. And that would be a ghastly scandal; the town would never get over it.

Breastworks, came the order, and the sleepy men had to be kicked out of the grass where they lay. Too tired to swear, they fumbled weakly in the gloom, dragging fence rails and turning up a shallow ditch across the cornfield. Well enough, grunted the sergeant. All right, said Ty—let them sleep. And they all lay down and died, some with the tools still in their hands. There were but eighteen stragglers in the whole brigade.

The moon seemed surprised to find itself confronted by guns. It slid up out of the eastern ridges, a brass bangle, and waited motionless above the hot, black trees. Old Baxter had been wiser than he knew. Now, if another battle occurred, Tyler would be available for duty. He could make these youths hold their first volley until they counted the wooden buttons on the rebels’ shirts … Thirty-five miles. Ty lay back and slept with the lemon moonlight on him. His stomach awakened him about eleven o’clock, and the awful carriage wheels began to turn inside his brain.

Book Five: Stars Cease to Shine on the Brave

Book Five

STARS CEASE TO SHINE ON THE BRAVE

Chapter 1

1.

In that half world which lay somewhere between nightmare and fact, an existence claimed by sleep but never subservient to it, Irene heard the sounds of the house and yard. She was conscious of sheets wrapping her naked legs, of the damp nightgown coating her.

The terror of past hours would not let her rest. One face swelled like a sun: high forehead, green-grape eyes, the lips gone back from flat teeth … He breathed through locked jaws, pain leaving him at every breath and filling him once more as he sucked again. He lay on the floor of the sitting room, his soaked bandages gluing the carpet. The surgeon stepped carefully from place to place, over one body, past other whinnying men; he had removed his shoes, and his feet were immense in their ragged white socks.