“Don’t be a lunkhead, boy. Skulls bleed like stuck pigs, you know that.” Sergeant Howes had pushed through the ranks and now knelt beside Sparrow. “Come on, Runt, wake up!” He pulled the cap straight, trying to hide the blood, then slapped the dead boy lightly on the cheek. This was Blanche and Frank Sparrow’s only boy, the pride of their lives. Blanche had tried real hard to persuade the boy not to march to war, but someone had left a scornful petticoat on their front porch, addressed to Joe, and young Joe had wanted to join the Legion anyways and so Blanche had relented, but now Joe was flat on his back in a field.

“Call the doctor! The doctor!” Paul Hinton, captain of A Company, slid out of his saddle and shouted the order.

Major Danson came running with his medical bag from the rear of the regiment where the band was playing “Annie Laurie,” the sax-horn tubas embroidering a clever bass line in counterpoint to the plangent melody that was so popular with the men. Danson pushed through the ranks of A Company. “Give him air!” he shouted, which is what he usually shouted whenever he was called to a sick person. Invariably the field hands or the servants or the family members all crowded about the patient, and Danson could not stand working amidst a throng of onlookers all offering suggestions. If they were so knowledgeable, he often wondered, why did they need him? “Stand back, now. Who is it, Dan?”

“Blanche Sparrow’s boy, Doc,” Hinton said.

“Not young Joe! Now come on, Joe, you’ll be missing all the fun!” Doctor Danson dropped to his knees. “What’s the matter, now? Got hit on the head, did you?”

“He’s dead.” George Waters had gone white with shock.

Major Danson frowned at this amateur diagnosis, then felt for Joseph Sparrow’s pulse. He said nothing for a few seconds, then lifted off the blood-stained forage cap to reveal Joe’s hair all soaked and matted red. “Oh, poor Blanche,” the doctor said softly, “what are we to tell her?” He unbuttoned the collar of the dead boy’s tunic as if to give him air.

Another ricocheted shell whipsawed overhead and crashed to earth a half mile beyond the regiment, its explosion lost in the dense foliage of a stand of trees. Adam Faulconer, who had been standing his horse on the hillcrest to watch the cannonade ripple smoke and flame about the distant stream, now realized something was amiss within the Legion’s ranks and spurred back to the regiment. “What’s happened?” he asked Doctor Danson.

“It’s Blanche’s boy, young Joe.”