FICTION
Sneed, who seemed to sleep. Cold reached
over to him and touched a bony shoulder.
“Grove?” he rasped, delicately shaking
the man. “Sneed. Sneed?”
Cold had lost most sensation, but he
could feel the rigidity of Sneed’s body as
it shifted under his prodding. Sneed had
died. Cold withdrew his hand, rubbing it
in the dirt. He swore, then broke into a dry
sob. His body had no water to give to its
grief. After he summoned up the remainder of his courage, he quelled his sorrow.
It was a costly emotion; one he couldn’t
afford to excise. Closing his eyes, he concentrated as much as possible.
His eyelids snapped back open to a
memory from five years ago. Emily Sharply
Corrigan stood at the end of a makeshift
aisle in her mother and father’s parlor,
covered in a lace and silk white dress, her
porcelain skin showing only from her uncovered hands. Her veiled face exuded the
brilliance of passion and love. Beaded tears
collected on Francis’s eyes as he watched
her walk toward him. They had loved each
other since she was sixteen, he seventeen.
They had waited four good years for this
moment. She walked toward him, the
white of her dress frayed in his joyously
bleary eyes. Now that he was back from
college, he would soon take over for his
father at the bank and work enough to
save up for a homestead out west where
you could see the Rockies pierce the sky.
A Cold boy would always have a place to
work, the bank’s owner, Mr. Blanks, had always said.
Em was the most beautiful creature
he could imagine. His heart flew as she
neared him, her pace in steady step with
the organist. He could feel neither the
ground nor himself. He was lost in her. She
smiled, and his knees felt as though they
would succumb to his euphoria. He recalled the moment he knew he was in love
with her: in highly unladylike fashion, she
7 | FICTION
accompanied him down to the pond just
off the stead, where they rooted around in
the mud for catfish. She laughed as he fell
backwards into the silty water, sputtering
when he burst back above the surface in
surprise. As she giggled, he lunged over
and pulled her down with him. Their eyes
met as she rubbed the water from her face
and playfully splashed him. Exactly then,
he knew.
She arrived next to him. He stood there,
ready to be joined to this woman, a marvel
of all the brilliance of life. His head swam,
and he blinked again; the present rushed
back like water filling a chasm, drowning
the serenity of his reminiscence. His eyes
were heavy, and twilight had passed, so he
indulged them.
He slid back into lucidity amidst shouts
and indistinguishable beckoning. He could
make out the distinct knell of sharp, nasal,
northern accents. These voices sounded
robust, well-fed. They grew closer, and
Cold scratched out the strongest shout he
could find.
“Here!”
Muffled, from outside his tent, a voice
plodded in: “I think there’s another live
fella over here, boys!”
A scruffy head capped in navy blue
peeked through, dark eyes set in a crowd
of rawhide skin and rangy red beard.
“Oh God,” he murmured. Withdrawing, he shouted incomprehensibly, then
shoved into the ratty canvas. He pushed
aside Sneed’s corpse, and his eyes met
Cold’s. He nodded, and looked away, his
expression pale with shock. Clasping under Cold’s arms, he lifted the frail man and
dragged him from the tent. Another soldier, a strapping youth, grabbed Cold by
the ankles. They carried him to a stretcher
near Sumter’s Gate, laid him on it, and
beckoned the surgeon.
“Dear God, Doc, so many of ‘em are like
this,” said the bearded Yank.
“I’ve seen,” said the doctor. “The only
thing they didn’t do is kill them.”
The doctor squinted at Cold through
oval spectacles, feeling his body at specific points, listening through a stethoscope
pressed against Francis’s bony chest.
After another moment of inspection, he
spoke to Francis. “We’ll get you out of this
place, son.”
“Thank you, sir,” whispered Francis. The
other soldiers picked up the stretcher and
jogged to a wagon outside the wire fences. On it were equally skeletal men, some
shivering, some straining to sit upright,
others slumped over ambiguously.
Francis leaned back against the splintered wood of the wagon’s bed. He forced
himself to breathe as deeply as he could.
The air tasted sweet. The smell of Em’s
perfume wafted around him. He could
feel her breath on his cheek, whispering
sweetly, the soft brush of her lips. Another sigh rendered a cough of spittle and
blood.
He was out. The consumption didn’t
matter; the barbed wire didn’t matter; the
beatings didn’t matter. None of it did, not
anymore. He’d been rescued. That hell had
lost its power over him. The air was free
here.
As a weak smile broke across his face,
he felt a cool prickling sensation radiating up his arms and legs. He knew what
was happening, but all he could do was
smile. Nothing could stanch the joy of
release. The last breath of Francis Perriman Cold escaped his mortal remains as
a man unshackled. His last words were of
hope: “Dear Lord, it’s good to be free.”
8