Andrew Hudgins

MAY 3, 1863 When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine, I went to look among the fields of dead before we lost him to a common grave. But I kept tripping over living men and had to stop and carry them to help or carry them until they died, which happened more than once upon my back. And I got angry with those men because they kept me from my search and I was out still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn, stopping to stare into each corpse’s face, and all the while I was writing in my head the letter I would have to send our father, saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him. I found him bent above a dying squirrel while trying to revive the little thing. A battlefield is full of trash like that — dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform. Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live. Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw. When in relief I called his name, he stared, jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat. I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,” as you might talk to calm a skittery mare, and then I helped him kill and bury all the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field. It seemed a game we might have played as boys. We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime, the way they do on burial detail, but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves. When we were done he fell across the graves and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons. His chest was large — it covered most of them. I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair, and as I hugged him to my chest I saw he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.