Wings to the Kingdom Read online

Page 26

 

  “Why?”

  “Because representatives of Van Derveer and Boynton were trying to mark the spots where Chickamauga’s major players fell. Sometimes people died out in the open, and sometimes they dropped in out-of-the-way places. ”

  “So some of those spots are out in the woods. ”

  “That’s right. The places where brigade commanders fell are marked by the big pyramids of cannonballs fifteen high; and headquarters are marked by smaller stacks of cannonballs seven high. Of course we’re not one hundred percent sure about a lot of them, but what can you do?”

  “What do you mean?” Pete asked, displeased with the implications. If no one was sure where the bigwigs had died, the odds were better than good that nobody knew a thing about the mortal remains of Andrew Buford.

  “When the park was being laid out and populated with monuments, the veterans came through and pointed out the places where they thought these men had died. But this was twenty or thirty years after the battles happened. That’s why we tend to view the monuments as approximations instead of historical fact. ”

  “All right. But there aren’t any monuments to the regular Joes, are there?”

  She grinned patiently from underneath a fluffy set of bangs. “Almost all of the monuments in the park are dedicated to the regular Joes. Look out the window there, across the field—that’s the Florida monument, to all the regular Joes who came from that state to fight. And down the way there’s the Ohio monument, to all those regular Joes. Many of the monuments list names and—”

  “But none of them talk about where specific soldiers died, do they? Not unless they were officers. ”

  “No, I’m sorry. ” She shook her head. “Is there some special reason you’re asking?”

  “I’m doing some”—he thought of the librarian back on Sand Mountain—“genealogical research. On my family. I had some family members who died here. ”

  Her eyes went wide, then blinked slowly with fresh understanding. “Oh. I see. You want to know exactly where a relative died. A grandfather?”

  “An uncle. I’d like to know where he’s buried, anyway. ” A new thought wormed its way up and out into the conversation. “Hey, what about graves? Are there big patches out here where there are mass graves? They didn’t take the bodies away to bury them, did they?”

  “Pretty much everyone who died here is buried here, with a few exceptions. Wealthier families would sometimes try to have bodies shipped home for burial, but given the lack of refrigerated cargo transport back then, you can just guess how well that went. Poorly or improperly sealed wood caskets, long train trips across a couple of states…things got ugly. By the time your poor unfortunate family member made it home, you wouldn’t be able to recognize him. ”

  Pete grunted. “Ew. ”

  “Yeah,” the ranger agreed, happy to be off on a fond and obscure subject. “In fact, a lot of people don’t know this, but the practice of embalming as a science really took off in this country for exactly that reason. They didn’t use formaldehyde back then, though. They pumped the bodies full of arsenic. But the point is, most of them who died here, stayed here. ”

  “Oh. ”

  “And out here, it was especially bad. After the fighting it took over a month for anyone to come this way for cleanup. ”

  Pete winced. “Cleanup?”

  “Burying everybody. It took ’em that long to get out here and get working. That’s why we really prefer that visitors stay on the trails or on the paved roads. There are places in this park where you’ll bust an ankle wandering around off the beaten path. The old graves collapse in on themselves after a while, and it leaves the terrain all messed up. It’s especially bad out between the trees, because fallen leaves hide how uneven the ground is. People think it’s all right, so they maybe wander back to see one of those smaller monuments hidden in the woods…and then, oh, no. Twisted ankles. Scraped-up palms. Trouble for everybody. ”

  “Wow. ”

  “Yeah. Wow. So you’ve got family who died out here?”

  “Yes ma’am. And I’ve got these letters here. I’ve got copies of them, I mean. They belonged to my mother before she died, and I heard that the originals went to your museum here some years ago. ”

  “Let me see those,” she offered, fluttering her hands at him in a gentle grasping way.

  Pete pulled the letters out and handed them forward. “Do these read familiar to you?”

  She examined them, holding them up so close that they touched the tips of her voluminous hair. “I couldn’t say for sure,” she eventually said. “We get a lot of stuff like this in the collection. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in leaving them here for a couple of days and letting me poke around some?”

  He shuffled his feet and scratched at the back of his neck. “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you. They were my mother’s, and she died not long ago. I could make you copies, though. Could I leave you some copies of these?”

  “Sure you can. That would be great. And you know where else you may want to check? Go out to the university in Chattanooga. Their library has a collection of letters and things like these, and they bought out a few of our items a couple years ago. Check with them, and see if your papers ended up in the school library. ”

  “I’ll do that, ma’am. Thank you for your help. ” Before he left, he stopped himself and turned around for one more question. “While I’m here, though, could you point me at Dyer’s field?”

  “Yes I can, sweetheart. You just follow this road out here—right out front, you see it? Follow that up about a mile or three, and you’ll see the Dyer’s cabin on the left. It’s not much, but it’s still there. ”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like a little brown cabin. You can’t miss it. ”

  “Got it. Thank you, ma’am. ”

  Pete folded up the pamphlets and stuffed the lot of them into his back pocket, where they bulged like a wallet. He went back out to his car and pumped on the gas and twisted the key until the engine gargled to life, then pulled out onto the smoothly paved road that ran alongside the visitors’ center.

  Every so often, a smaller road would split off into a half circle, offering a place to park or picnic. Pete found one such turnoff across from Dyer’s field and hauled his vehicle away from the main thoroughfare.

  With a slam and a kick, he closed the car door behind him and squinted across the field.

  It wasn’t remarkable. The field was just a big rectangular stretch of bright green grass flanked on three sides by trees. All in all, the field was maybe half a mile square by Pete’s best estimate.

  At the far end of the field was a small brown cabin, exactly as it had been described. The backside of the house was only a few yards away from the tree line. Pete began walking towards it, figuring it would get bigger as he neared it. He was mistaken.

  Up close and personal, the cabin was about the size of his living room.

  The door was barred off, but left open so visitors could climb up on a stair and peek inside. A few period-appropriate pieces of furniture adorned the thing, but it was basically empty.

  Pete was underwhelmed.

  He climbed down off the stair and checked out the field surrounding it. Contrary to the park ranger’s suggestion, he didn’t see any dips for old graves, or uneven turf. Maybe the grass needed to be mowed closer.

  He wished he’d thought to bring the letters with him from the car, but he didn’t want to walk all the way back across the road, so he decided to trust his memory. The message from the soldier had said Andrew died in the woods behind the cabin—Pete was pretty sure of that. But there were a lot of woods behind the cabin.

  Back behind the little old shack he poked his head between the trees and saw a shiny hunk of granite next to a pyramid of cannonballs. He didn’t see any signs telling him not to trespass or to stay on the trails, so he decided to take his ch
ances and get a closer look.

  His footsteps crunched through the dropped leaves and over fallen branches. Birds called from tree to tree, and squirrels scattered from his path. What a perfectly normal place, he thought, for so many people to be buried here.

  Between two gigantic trunks, a podium-shaped slab of polished gray stone announced a shift in line formation and a forced retreat by the Alabama regiment that Andrew had been in.

  The black pyramid beside it stood for the loss of the troop’s commander, Thomas Winder, who had fallen on this spot—or approximately on this spot, Pete remembered—on the nineteenth of September.

  “Same day as Andrew,” Pete said aloud. “That fits with the letter, anyway. Maybe he’s somewhere around here, too. ”

  He slowly turned himself in a full circle, looking for any sign of shallow graves or a divine hint. Pete didn’t really believe in divine hints, but he was open to the possibility. Nothing short of a divine hint was going to get him anywhere today.

  “I’ll never find him. Not without…” He stopped himself. Not without what? What sort of equipment might be required to find a specific body underground, buried with many other bodies? Even a metal detector wouldn’t turn up anything more interesting than buttons or bullets.

  Or, maybe…

  Pete quit his calculating pivot and held stock-still.

  Or maybe a silver watch. But talk about your long shots.

  If Andrew had been wearing or carrying the watch on the battlefield, and if he had been somewhere near this commander when he died, and if no one came along and decided to liberate that silver watch from Andrew’s corpse while it lay exposed for over a month…then maybe.

  Maybe.

  Maybe an ordinary metal detector might do the trick.

  Pete didn’t know where he might come by this piece of equipment, but he figured it couldn’t be that hard to find. Pete knew that a detector was likely to sound off at all kinds of trinkets, medals, buckles, and lead shot, but his dim idea of how the machines worked made him think that a detector might make a louder bleep for a bigger item.