I dreamt, but dreams such as these are the slippery slopes to madness and I found myself unhinged from the moorings of my mind in a cornfield where the bodies of the dead lay all about in various states of decay. I alone was of one flesh and soon I began to recognize the faces of the corpses and found in each one people I had known — family, friends, acquaintances, even the women I’d had back in the districts of Richmond, all were there with death and I raised myself up from the bloody stalks and ran through the field but it only stretched wider in all directions and the bodies grew thicker like some awful harvest of offal. But on the horizon, I could make out the pale shape of a rider and I strained for my life to collapse at the horse’s feet and with trembling hands grasped the hem of the rider’s cloak. I turned my face to his and saw with surprise no decay there, nothing but the refined features of Jackson but Caesar there too and what I took to be Alexander the Great and a whole host of other men shimmering there underneath with a great vitality. The horseman spoke and his voice was an organ that sang out over the dead fields, “Poet, you know nothing about the workings of the heart.” Before the words were complete, I thought them strange but then he drew aside his heavy gray cloak and I saw nothing inside the emptiness but a heart most hideous, a thing of sutured iron and quaking with a great turn of pistons. I longed to rip the revolting organ out of him with my hands but when I reached to do so he was already gone and I saw with a horror fathomless the arm I raised to wrest was nothing but a rotted thing of maggoted flesh and I collapsed on legs rotted through and my face was in blood and mud and I screamed the shriek which waked me to a world changed anew.
I raised my face off the ground and found the battle had moved away, at least from where I was directly, and I could hear off in the distance the harsh roar of rifle fire coming back through the woods in long discordant waves. There hung heavy over the camp a pall of gun smoke and through its fog I could make out the ground slithering around me and I thought I might still be in dreams but then saw the undulations were nothing but the wounded in their aimless wanderings for aid and succor. I remembered myself and found the pain gone in my wound and my neck and uniform front stained wet from a bottle drained to its very dregs. It sat between my legs, placed by whom or how I know not. I took a sniff from the neck and the overwhelming smell of laudanum threatened to return me back to the land from which I had just returned. I must have swooned with horror at the prospect for the pain brought my head back some clarity. With tenderness I removed a gauntlet and probed the wound for some sign of mortal death. I found nothing but a shallow groove high on the side of my head, near the part, and though the blood was all on me I could not help but think, “Life,” and I rose like the dead one day will do and stood on feet none too steady and swayed.
The faintness dissipated and I noticed most of the moving forms about me had stilled their motions and now I appeared to be the only one standing among the wrecked tents and scattered provisions of a camp abruptly abandoned. The smoke continued to drift backwards from the battle lines and I began to smell burning resin and leaves from the dry bracken caught fire. Common enough occurrence on these battlefields but today it lent the gun smoke a denser opacity and as I walked towards the woods often I tripped blindly over the dead forms of enemies and allies. Finally, I gained the trees and felt a sense of relief come to my light head. But even here in the confines of the forest I grew muddled and lost in my bearings. I found myself walking in ever widening circles. At one point, there was a man ahead of me looking equally lost and I took him by the arm to ask where General Jackson’s corps was but when he turned to look at me I saw he was without a nose and blood flowed freely from the rude orifice lead-gouged. I let him pass and set out again into the forest where the sounds of war echoed and rebounded among the trees.
I know not how many hours passed in my labyrinth hut when I came to again out of the haze of opiates I found myself in a thinned area of the forest and the moon was a pale pearl streaming its light down cleanly from above the tree line. Somewhere deeper in the woods the flames of the fire gleamed like a jewel hut the smoke here had cleared by some trick of the wind. I was halfway through the scattered grass tussocks when I heard the voice of a man cursing, harsh and strained, hut in a steady monotone. I looked about hut there was no one, save the dead and the wounded not expired. The cursing continued and I realized this was not the ranting of the wounded against the heavy hand of existence hut a vital man struggling under some heavy load. I walked further and in the fading light. I made out the origin of the words. Beneath a tall oak, near blended in from the darkness about, a man held a dead horse by the foreleg and lugged with jerks and pulls backwards on the balls of his feet against the weight. As I came closer. I saw there was a man underneath near crushed by the beast. The person pulling had an odd medley of colors to his uniform and for the life of me I could not tell whether he was my ally or my enemy hut despite the vulgarities thought he had to be at least a brother officer bereaved by the death of the man on horseback. Instinctively I came up behind him and lent a hand and together we heaved and the horse finally shifted in a great slough of dead skin, the horseman beneath freed.
“Whew!” said the other man. “Thankee kindly. I was about worn out from tugging on that thing.” I looked at him and could make out little of his features, save he was of my height and weight and seemed in good health. He wore a great heard stretched down near to the middle of his chest though it was neatly barbered and smelled even pomaded, which was slathered in full evidence upon his hair. His blouse was grimy from powder stains hut his coat looked newly bought. A gold watch chain gleamed dully from the pocket. He looked at me with an aspect not unfriendly and from his accent I could only conclude he was Southern and of good standing. He suddenly smiled and said, “Looks like you been wounded, friend,” and he gestured with a hand towards the side of my head.
“It’s nothing,” I said, “I’m fine.” I touched the wound and my hands came back black and clotted. My fingers felt thick and strange from the opiates but I still spoke my plan lucidly, “Well, shall we go about bringing him to the surgeons?”
The man looked confused. “Who?” he asked.
“The man, the officer,” I pointed at the nearly crushed horseman, who now was beginning to mutter and move with odd, spasmodic jerks. The other man followed my finger and an expression of surprise flittered across his features. “Well, I’ll be... I thought ye was a dead ’un...” he said underneath his breath and he looked about for a moment and stooped down and brought up in his hands the shattered butt-end of a Springfield rifle. He walked over to the stirring horseman and before I had a chance to shout a protest dispatched him out of this world with two swift violent chops of the club. The head made the same sound a melon did splitting open under the blade of one of the kitchen hands back home. He threw away the rifle butt and commenced to root through the pockets of the dead man. He palmed up gold coins and threw away all else into a pile behind him. My mouth was open. I closed it. I pulled my revolver from its holster, thumbed back the hammer, and leveled it at the kneeling form. The hands froze in mid-rummage at the clean click of the pistol coming back to cock.