SNODGRASS

and sweethearts, crying out in anger over the injustice and stupidity of it all. 4000 died here, I recall reading. 23,000 more wounded. The insanity of war…

I peer toward the field I can barely see, willing myself to imagine the tractor that’s no longer there. I think about my little store that caters to tourists just half a mile away, my dogs, the refreshing shower I’ll have when I get home. Dinner.

Then I hear it — a groan. My hearts skips a beat then turns to hard thumping. It’s human — I feel sure of it. Again, the groan. Is it a trick — some sicko trying to make me stop? I don’t think so. It sounds like real suffering. I’ve heard real suffering. I’ve suffered real suffering. I know it when I hear it. So I stop and peer into the dark woods.

Again, the groan, but weaker. “Who is it?” I whisper. And there’s a fearful silence. Not only does the groaning stop, but all of nature stops. Human words past the hour of humans. The animals stand still and listen. I listen, too. We’re all afraid.

Then quiet weeping, so sad, so hopeless that it breaks my heart, because I have wept those tears and I know them, too. I have lost what is dear to me and it has crushed me. The weeping I hear now is that kind and tears begin to slide down my cheeks. I’m impatient with myself and wipe them away.

A little louder I call, “Who’s there? What’s wrong?”

“Who are you?” asks a man’s voice, strained and grainy.

“I’m just someone who walks up here,” I reply. “Do you need help?” “You’re a lady,” he says.

“Yes.” I confirm the obvious and feel a little more worried.

“Am I the only one left?” he asks. What does he mean? “I don’t know,” I say. “Were you with a group?” He’s still in the woods and my fear is growing because he won’t show himself.

“I’m hurt,” he whispers, as if ashamed to admit it. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if I’m alive. Are you alive?”

Fear wraps its long, crawly fingers around my entire being. I swallow hard and call on whatever nerve I have left. “Yes, I’m alive. If you come out, I can get help for you.”

“Are you a Yank? You sound like one.”

“No, I’m not. I just want to help.” “Are you a Reb?”

Okay, I think to myself, he’s a re-enactor, a really good one who’s having a grand old time pulling one over on me. I’ll be the butt of the jokes around the campfire tonight.

Then the moaning again — and again I know it’s real. He’s hurt, body and soul. But if it’s real, who is he? He can’t be a ghost. I don’t believe in them.

I ask, “Who are you? Can you walk? Is someone after you?”

“I don’t think anyone’s left to be after me,” he says, as if trying to grasp the meaning of his own observation.

“They’re all gone, all but me. What am I?”

Chills run down my spine. Indeed, what is he? If he doesn’t know, what am I supposed to think?

The clouds have shifted and the moon is bright, though not full, and now I see movement, a man stumbling through the trees, bent double, holding one arm tight against his gut. I’m afraid, but I can’t move. I’m riveted to the spot. He trips and I step toward him.

Finally, I’m close enough to touch him, but I don’t.

He’s a ghastly sight. Thin gray skin, hollow, sad eyes, his clothes in tatters, the hand he holds to his stomach caked in dry blood. He’s wounded. He needs help. But he is not human as I had believed. And yet he is.

As he steps from the woods he moans loudly and deeply and I jump, though I do not mean to. He smiles sadly, “I scare myself as much as I scare you. What day is it?”

“The 14th of September,” I say. He looks confused. “We fought here the 20th day. I was shot. I was…”

I force myself to look at him, at his translucence and grayness, at his blood and his pain. “The year is 2012,” I tell him.

He looks incredulous. He is speechless. He falls to the ground and I reach out instinctively and touch him. He is flesh, yet not. I place my hand lightly on his shoulder, because he feels so fragile, then under his arm and help him to his feet. He looks into my eyes and the gratitude is tangible — the appreciation of not just help but acknowledgement of his existence, his humanity. He is human, even as he is not.

He leans against me and now I wonder what I should do. Call for help? Walk him to my car and drive him to a hospital? But is he alive? If he’s not alive, what does he need, what does he want? Why him and not hundreds of others fatally wounded on this ground? Why me and not thousands of others who have traversed this hill over 150 years? I don’t believe, yet here is evidence before my eyes.

We walk slowly, down the hill, he leaning on me, me holding him up ever so gently. We maneuver around the bar blocking the road and start toward my parking spot. A ranger approaches and stops. Is everything okay, he asks. I nod. He moves on.

He didn’t see.

We reach my car and the soldier lets me help him in. My hands are deep red with his crusty, sweaty blood. He trusts me, I realize, and I am overwhelmed by it. I drive, slowly, slowly, slowly. I go where my heart tells me to go — home — to the place where I find peace, where the husband I’ve lost knew peace, where there lived love.

I help him out of my car and up the steps of my big wood porch and into my home. I guide him to a chair in my kitchen and I fold a towel and slip it under the hand that holds his stomach. I gently wash his grimy face.

He cries and I hold his head against me and cry with him. When he has spent his loneliness, I help him to my bed and sit beside him, holding his hand, until he sleeps. I watch as his breathing becomes shallow. As dawn approaches, he becomes still. He has found his peace. It was love he needed, someone to be with him as he passed from this life to the next.

I arrange his dirty uniform as best I can and kiss his wispy brow, then go outside and deep into my woods to a small clearing. There I dig a grave. His body is light — so very light. I bury him without a box — and I weep at his graveside. I weep the tears of his mother and his father and all the people who surely loved him. And I weep my own tears, for I loved him, too, if only for a short hour.