by Mark Berry
The moans were familiar. Reminiscent of a chorus of cattle at dawn. But this was night, not day. Rays of moonlight illuminated the battlefield in between the fast-moving storm clouds advancing from the not-so-distant ocean. The anguished wails revealed words, beseeching God, loved ones, anyone within earshot for some sort of relief or ultimate release.
Pain knifed through Joshua’s belly, and his butternut brown frock coat was darkened with blood. His own? Others? The coat had been a gift from his grieving sister-in-law, soon after the funeral of his older brother, who had died at Manassas in the summer of ‘61. An early martyr in the fight for freedom, she had said, wear it well, you hear? Do us proud, boy, his parents echoed.
Now, two Canteys would die in the same coat. Joshua laughed at the irony and the brothers’ bad luck. Perhaps the coat had been the curse, not the damn Yankee bullets and bayonets. His chuckle turned violent, and he coughed blood. It tasted almost sweet in comparison to the salty hardtack he had gulped down before the final charge in the night attack.
Joshua’s cough was echoed by another, just to his left. A broken bayonet separated the two forms, his body and that of another man sprawled out in an unnatural angle of repose. The bayonet’s tip was lodged in his side, an unlikely plug keeping him alive. Joshua’s chin caught on his coat’s collar as he strained to see who his Longinus might be.
“Hey, there, Yank, you dead or alive?”
“Near dead, lad. I believe you kill’t me while I kill’t you,” said the voice. There was an Irish twist to it, but his words lacked any harshness or hatred.
“My sincere apologies to you’ns and your family,” Joshua replied.
“Likewise. You dying, too?”
“I reckon so,” Joshua said. “You got me pretty good. Well, there are worse places to meet the Almighty.”
“And, if you don’t mind me asking, where are we? I’m not too familiar with this side of the Atlantic.”
“I imagine you’re going to be buried on the outskirts of Dakker…here in South Carolina.” Joshua’s voice grew a little stronger, swelling with the kind of pride of place that had set these violent years in motion.
“Ahhh, Carolina. I was hoping to make it here and see Charleston, where it all started. I signed up in New York City, right when I come over.”
“Well, you made it. Kind of. I expect it didn’t live up to your reckoning.”
“No, but to be fair, I didn’t get a chance to get very far…did I, thanks to you Rebs.”
An unnatural scream stopped their conversation. It was coming from overhead, where several black, blurry shapes circled above them.
“Buzzards?”
“Not any kind of turkey vulture I’ve seen or heard before, and I’ve seen my share over the last few months, but never at night,” Joshua replied, as he tried to focus on the forms spiraling down near them.
One dark shape, like a hole in the night air, fell upon a man just a few yards away. The man grimaced from the new weight upon his chest and then let out a high-pitched scream when he realized the presence upon him.
The black shape fed loudly on the man, his shrieks turning to desperate pleadings for help. More dark figures descended around them like cannon shot, and a din of pain and cries circled about them.
“Lad, that’s not a natural way to die, by God.”
“It surely ain’t. And I’m pretty certain God left a while back. Does your Enfield still have shot in it?”
“No, I discharged it during the counterattack. You might be carrying my Minié ball somewhere on you, along with my bayonet’s point.”
Joshua did a quick inventory of his body’s pain and only felt the white-hot heat coming from his abdomen. He chuckled momentarily at the odd dialogue with his murderer but was immediately drawn back to reality by the turmoil around him.
“I got me a LeMat revolver I took off one of our officers down in the marsh. It may have some killing left in it. If I move about too much, I’ll probably bleed out and not be any help. Can you reach into my coat pocket for it?”
The Irishman grunted his assent and, groaning slightly, reached a hand over. It was a strange moment of intimacy as the man’s fingers probed and explored the inside of Joshua’s coat along its ripped skirt. Just moments ago—it could have been hours, minutes, or seconds even—
these two men were in the act of killing each other, and now they were collaborators in trying to stave off their inevitable ends.
“Got it, lad!” the Irishman said and handed over the pistol, just before a black mass enveloped him. The high pitch of the Irishman’s scream was soon muffled and replaced by the sound of ripped flesh and bone.
Joshua’s terror transformed into a kind of rage he hadn’t known before. Not even during the charge. Anger at his sister-in-law for this cursed coat. Anger at his parents for expecting him to fight. Anger at the Irishman who’d traveled more than 3,000 miles to kill him. Anger at his God for having abandoned him here on the battlefield. And now an anger at whatever creature was gorging itself so loudly next to him. Joshua positioned the pistol upward and hoped he would have the strength to pull the trigger when the time was right.
Joshua didn’t have to wait long. A tentative sniffing, like a bloodhound, zeroed in on his midsection. A pressure—from what he could only assume was the creature’s nose or mouth—pushed violently into his side. And then the black form mounted him like an impatient, infernal lover. Joshua waited, not wanting to miss what he hoped would be a kill-shot. The saliva from whatever mouth was hanging above him dripped warm against his cheek. He pulled the trigger and felt the kickback. His eardrums nearly burst at his screaming and the ringing of the shot—like he had put his head against a firing cannon.
The black form crumpled upon him, but Joshua was powerless to shift from beneath its weight. It felt like he was being crushed beneath a massive wagon wheel. He struggled futilely to shake it off while gasping for air, each breath a spark of intense pain.
Joshua didn’t remember passing out, but when he awoke that dawn, the struggle commenced anew. Two large black wings fluttered and flapped in his line of sight, along with a pinprick pain at his abdomen where a beak was pecking at the embedded bayonet point.
“Be gone, vile bird!” Joshua wheezed out, and he was met with a welcome flutter and flap as the vulture hopped back a few feet. “I ain’t done for just yet.”
Grim and gruff voices rumbled like low human thunder as the quartermaster’s unit picked its way through the battlefield. These men had the somber task of finding and identifying bodies and, if time allowed, giving them a proper burial. The clean-up crew’s prayers and laments at discovering the shredded corpses nearby brought Joshua a kind of solace: a recognition of the nightmare. A blurry man approached, brighter than the rest and humming the hymn “Softly Now the Light of Day.” Joshua’s mind flashed the corresponding lyric: “fades upon my sight away” as he drifted back into his own dark eternity.
Mark Berry is a writer based in Charleston, SC.