He made the circuit of the black square, put old Salt away in the smutty barn, walked around to the Duffeys’ front porch and entered the house. The doctor and his wife were in bed, but Eva had moved her lamp into the parlor adjoining the office, and had spread a sheet and comforter on the sofa. Elijah undressed. His hands smelled of horse. After he had removed his truss and donned the cotton nightshirt, he went out to the kitchen sink to wash … Pendulous flesh, heavy ache, a useless fold of his abdomen bulking down. He pressed his body against the low side of the sink as he washed.

Back in the parlor, he lay on the couch with a mound of rocky little pillows at his back. He screwed the lamp flame higher.

Elements of Military Art and History, by Edward De La Barre DuHarcq. He had paid a fortune for it: four dollars. His mother had said nothing when she saw the book; probably she thought enough. But he had intended to buy a new hat and some shoes, out of the money he made from book selling, and he had bought neither. No one should object to this acquisition of his, if he sacrificed in order to get it. He’d never let Daniel Bale know that he had the book. He knew all too well what Dan would say.

He tried to read about Waterloo. Blucher. He wondered how that was pronounced: Bloosher or Blutcher or how. In spite of his interest, he began to feel very sleepy. The cucumber taste oozed stealthily into his throat … Stubbornly, he read on. Paragraph after paragraph of tight little print. The boys of Gettysburg began to form between his eyes and the type. He saw them all, McKosh and Deffenbaugh and the seminary lads. He saw himself. Miraculously, he was hard and fierce and strong, and his loins were firm as driving-harness. Captain Gubbe, he ordered, take your men and deploy as skirmishers. Fall back slowly if they strike our front; I want time to re-form my line. Miraculously, too, in spite of the braided eagles of his rank, he had the Vincennes musket with him. He felt its massive butt prancing against his shoulder; they came toward him in ghastly phalanx—line after line of headless, quilted enemies.

He slept uncomfortably, his neck crooked across a green hair-pillow. The lamp flame grew forked and burned in varnished soot within the squat lamp chimney. He slept; the book slid deep between his legs.