I nodded wearily and bent to rummage through a box of supplies when a deafening explosion shook the earth. The windows opposite me blew out, showered us with glass and dirt. I stretched prone on the floor and stared stupidly at my bleeding hands. My ears hurt terribly.

Dr. Booker rose from the debris coughing and flinging his arms through the dusty air.

“I told you they had bombs.” Dr. Mason sat on the floor beside the blackboard. He smiled like a child who has outdone the grownups.

I raised up carefully. The stinging wounds on my hands and face seemed to be scratches and I could see all right. I crawled to the doorway, pulled myself up. Dr. Booker stood outside.

“Sons of bitches!” he screamed. He looked skyward.

I heard a buzzing and wasn’t sure if it was my ears or the airplane returning. I felt drunk and sat back down again. “Is this how they do now?” I asked.

We had ten wounded who had not yet been sent back to Charleston. Dr. Booker examined them. After a while my head cleared and I went to one of them, a boy of about eighteen. He was sobbing. “Did the whole mine go?” He had a shoulder wound and had lost a lot of blood. I brushed the dirt from his bandage, picked the slivers of glass off his clothes.

We carried the wounded outside and cleaned them as best we could, then washed ourselves at the pump. Next to the building I saw a crater deep enough to stand in up to the waist. It steamed as though the land was a live thing with a hunk of flesh torn out, and rivers of loose earth ran down the sides.

“And that was just Sheriff Chafin’s bomb,” Dr. Mason said triumphantly. “Wait until the regular Army gets here. They’ve been refining the whole procedure.”

We treated scores of wounded and I counted at least thirty dead. I glimpsed other bodies carried past the schoolhouse by grim, silent men. They would bury their own.

Then word came that the men were pulling back. Volunteers came from Danville to carry our wounded to the train that would take them to Charleston. We only had two minor casualties left on that last afternoon, and Dr. Mason went home. I had trudged to the pump for what seemed the millionth time when I saw a small knot of men up the dusty road moving fast toward us. One of them waved.

“Call Doc! He’s hurt bad!”

I tried to convince myself it was not Talcott Lloyd who yelled.

“Dr. Booker!” I called, “they’s a man hurt bad.”

He stood in the doorway and wiped his face with a handkerchief.