Voice groaned, gimme drink … the sky widened again. He whispered, amid salty constellations: “Wish they’d stop that,” and the blast went ringing among the rocks. He lifted a hand; thought it was somebody else’s hand; it felt far away. By God, my own hand, and I don’t recognize. Shot in the face—saw the sparks go.

He put his fingers into his hair … so very little blood. Gimme drink. The pale stars looked at him.

He touched his forehead. There was no hole: all a big lump. It seemed nonsensical, now that he was gossiping about it in his own mind, to have been struck by a stone when none of the bullets could find him. He planed his hand up and down, criss-cross, back around to each ear; it sensed the splitting ache inside his skull, but it could find no hole, no spring where blood and brains welled out. I didn’t expect, he thought wisely.

Ow, men repeated off into the spinning curves of distance. Ow-wo. Bale began to repossess his own body again. It was difficult, when he had been away so long.

This hand. He moved again. He occupied himself with testing his feet, moving each foot on its ankle-joint, wriggling his hips, taking deep breaths of the sultry air. And feeling moonlight tint his face. No coolness in the world. The insects stewed above … mosquito hymns, wiry and annoying. Woe, woe, woe said a thousand quaint voices, interlarding their general complaint with names and mingled phrases. Where is this? There was a cemetery before.

Then the whole understanding occurred: where he was, and why he was there, and the long day yonder. He sat up with his palms against his pounding temples. His vision cleared, and he saw the nearest bowlders looking cushiony in the moon-glow, and observed the ice of fallen musket barrels. Dim lumps lay along the wide bosom of the hill. Dan shifted his leg; a stone clattered down the incline. Some wide-spread life above seemed to catch its breath—the voiceless second of silence—then several muskets boomed in a merging report, and bullets spattered the granite beside him.

He burrowed flat, and dared not stand. The Confederates had retreated, he lay between the two opposing armies, and any further movement from him might provoke a fatal shower … Daylight, he thought. Then they can see my blue cloth. He slid his fingers down and touched the shoddy material, and tried to close his mind to the memory of how it was obtained.

Water and God and Melanie, the wounded men prayed. Who was Melanie? That person kept asking for her. Then he talked in French, and how could anyone know what he wanted? .. They hooted like owls, all the way over toward Culp’s hill. The National army bustled, and chopped wood up past the cemetery.