Authors Note: Note that this novel does not endorse the Confederate Army or what they supported.
To all those who sacrifice themselves for the good of other people.
“Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matthew 5:9
Prologue
1865
It was by the river that Marvin set up his camp, consisting of a tent, a small fire, and a bag of enough supplies to only last him a few more days. It was also by the river which he dug a hole, a two-foot deep by six-foot long hole, overlooking the river. After doing so, he put his shovel away at his camp, carefully laying it next to his canteen, and, musket slung across shoulder, went down by the riverbank, looking and searching for a tall, thin rock.
After a few minutes of grabbing, examining, and tossing back rocks, he found the perfect one, partially submerged in the river. He picked it up and eyed it. It was a soft, smooth slab of soapstone, half of it wet from being under the surface of the river. Perfect for carving into it. He walked back to his little camp again, stone in hand, and set the stone in the grass before him. Using his bayonet, he carved some words into it in his neatest handwriting and carried it back up to the hole he’d dug ten minutes prior.
He dug another hole, this one big enough to hold the stone and nothing more and wedged it in there until it sat there, snug in the earth. Marvin stood back in satisfaction.
Good, he thought. And it was good.
Before going back for one last thing, he made sure the hole was big enough. He eventually shrugged it off. It’s big enough, he thought. It has to be.
He went back towards camp but walked past it to a large pile of leaves near a large birch tree not far outside of camp. He uncovered the leaves, only to find the body he’d left there, temporarily buried in leaves.
Now it’s time for the permanent burial, old friend, he thought.
He heaved the corpse over his shoulder and walked back to the hole he’d dug near the river.
Upon arrival, he carefully laid the body down into the hole, not dropping it, but laying it down gently, for respectful reasons.
Before coating him in dirt, Marvin saluted the body.
“I never got to thank you for what you did,” he said to the corpse. “Putting yourself between the bullet and me, and all,” he continued. “I guess now would be that time. Thank you, for everything you’ve done for me.”
And with that, so began the process of burial.
After the ground was solid enough, Marvin stood back and looked upon his work.
Looking over the unsettled dirt on top of the body, there was the stone. It read,
Here Lies the Body and Spirit of
Lieutenant Aaron Bluffy
RIP
That night, a storm came, a huge thunderstorm, producing inches of rain and the occasional hail. Marvin was lucky he had a tent to take shelter in- if you could call it a tent. Perhaps, the correct description would be “a few fallen tree branches and some leaky rags and cloth he sewed together.”
Near the back of the tent, Marvin took out his journal from his satchel and his fountain pen, and wrote an entry.
I buried Lt. Bluffy today, his grave overlooking a nice little creek in the woods where I’m camping. I’m just wondering where the hell everyone else is. Dead, or lost, I’m guessing. We’ll see…
With that, he signed off, and closed his journal. He lay his head back on his hands and fell asleep replaying the same question over and over again in his mind.
Where are the other guys?
The next morning, he found a bird’s nest in a large ash tree near camp and took some eggs from it. He carried them back to camp, and set them on a small frying pan meant specifically for eggs, the pan (excluding the handle) being only the size of Marvin’s palm. He cooked the eggs over the fire for a few minutes before eating them. They tasted fine, but they weren’t the best eggs he’d ever had. Quentin’s were always the best.
Nothing beats Quentin’s eggs he thought.
Quentin was the camp cook for most of the time during the service of Marvin’s two-year career. He was a fat, jolly middle-aged man who retired to become a cook. He wasn’t any good for battle anymore; he lost his good eye in Gettysburg. So, he did the only other thing he was good at: cooking. His eggs were what made him well known across camp. He always cooked them the perfect amount of time, always cut off any extra crust to form a perfect circle on the egg white.
The only reason Quentin stopped cooking was because his throat was slit out in an ambush by some Union troops. He was killed instantly. Because there was no more room for burials, they cremated everyone else killed in the ambush except Quentin. They found a nice little patch in the burial grounds for him.
As a replacement for Quentin, they found Billy, this nineteen year-old who spent more time reading novels in his tent than getting any actual work done. You’d think from all of the time he spent reading, he must’ve known something about cooking. But, the truth was, Billy knew less than a kid half his age. The food was nearly always either overcooked or undercooked. He always took twice as long as Quentin to prepare food. And he always got orders wrong. If you wanted bacon, he’d get you eggs, or if you wanted eggs, he’d get you bacon.
When Marvin finished his eggs, he grabbed his canteen, and took a big swig of water to wash it all down before pouring the rest of it over the flames before him. Then he stood up, walked over to his tent, and started to take everything down. He unknotted the sewed-together rags from the branch and rolled it up, before wringing it out of last night’s rainwater until it was dry. He repeated the process on the other side, before packing his pack, heaving it over his shoulder, grabbing his musket, and leaving. When he got to the top of the hill not far from camp, he looked at the grave of Lieutenant Bluffy. He somehow knew he’d never be back here again.
“Goodbye, old friend,” he said, before disappearing over the hill.
A few hours of walking later, the river guiding him, he decided he needed to rest his legs. So he found a little beach along the creek and sat down.
Marvin always enjoyed this kind of scenery: deep in the forest, away from any sort of conflict or violence. Or so he thought.
Just as Marvin had finished filling his canteen, he spotted something in the water. It looked like… blood.
Maybe a fox caught a rabbit, or something? he thought.
But that thought was soon proved to be wrong as he saw something drifting down the creek.
It was a corpse.
Marvin jumped at the sight. As the corpse drifted closer to the little beach he sat at, he stood up and waded into the creek. The corpse was in about chest-high waters, with a current not helping things. Marvin gripped the corpse’s arm and dragged it to shore. Upon arrival to the beach, Marvin dropped the corpse onto the rocks.
The clothes on the body were Confederate Grey. He looked young… maybe 25. He was about 5’ 11” and probably weighed 180 pounds. He had a mix of blonde and brown hair, and a small mustache. His eyes, a unique shade of green, were wide open, suggesting he had little time to realize his fate. He also had a gunshot wound – likely a Springfield rifle, because that was one of the more common long-range rifles in the war – smack in the middle of his forehead, leaving a big, gaping hole down through his brains and to the back of his head. Blood coated the majority of his forehead.
Marvin checked his dog-tags, but they were coated in blood, so he took them down to the creek to wash them. When the dried blood came off, he could see the name more clearly:
Corporal Lance Johnson
5th R.F.G.
Louisville, KY
Protestant
He eyed a piece of paper sticking out of his coat pocket. He grabbed it and took it out, which revealed a family portrait. In the middle was a child, maybe aged two. On the right was a woman, tall and slender, by no means ugly, and on the left was a man, gripping his son’s shoulder. Marvin immediately saw the resemblance between the man in the photo and the corpse.
Marvin sighed. He didn’t want a repeat of yesterday’s burial but decided he’d do it one last time. No more burials. He’d buried too many people, and this would be his last.
He put the photo of the family back into the soldier’s pocket, stood up, and grabbed the shovel out of his backpack.
When Marvin was finished with the burial, he took a step back and looked, yet again, upon his work. Watching over the ground was a stone. It read,
Here Lies Corporal Lance Johnson
RIP
Husband, Father
Marvin didn’t do much for the next few days. He’d wake up in the morning, have breakfast, if he could find it, take down camp, walk for a few hours, take a little break; keep walking until sundown, set up camp, have dinner, write or draw in his journal, and go to bed. This went on until he came across some train tracks on the edge of the woods. He knelt down and felt for vibrations. He felt them. While very faint, they were noticeable.
A train’s not far off, he thought.
His plan was simple: get onto a freight train unnoticed when it came through, hide and blend in with the cargo, get a ride to the nearest town, buy some food and new clothes, buy some ammo, sneak back onto another train, and put as much distance between the war and him as possible. Not to the Dakota Territory, it was too far North for his taste. He’d never liked the cold. And not the Colorado Territory, because doctors sent people with tuberculosis to that place, and he didn’t want to catch it. California was too far West. From New Jersey to California would take weeks, and by then, Bounty Hunters would catch on to his route. Maybe to the New Mexico or Arizona Territories? He’d always loved reading books about the Wild West as a kid and teen, and those two territories are where they took place often, alongside California. So that’s where he’d go.
This might just work.
How much money do I have? One… two… Before he finished counting his money, he heard a whistle blast not far off.
Perfect, he smirked.
When the train came into view, he could tell that it was, in fact, a freight train. Sure, it had some guards, but they weren’t anything he couldn’t take care of. Marvin backed away into some bushes so the engineer wouldn’t spot him. And he waited.
WHOOT!
And waited.
WHOHOOT!
It was now… or never.
WHOOOO-
As soon as the engine passed him, he leapt out of the cover of the bushes and jumped onto the train.
Upon grabbing onto the guardrail of the flatbed car he leaped at, he slipped a little. At first, he thought he’d be fine if he fell. Maybe a broken bone, or two. That was, until the train was all of a sudden suspended over a deep, wide gorge. Marvin gasped as he realized if he slipped again, that’d be it for him. Maybe a broken bone or two-hundred and six. He tried not to imagine what his grave would look like:
Here Lies Marvin Jones
Tried to sneak onto a train, paid the price for it.
But that wouldn’t happen to him. All he had to do was hoist himself over the guardrail of the train – the very slick, and oddly greasy guardrail – while suspended five-hundred feet over the gorge that went on for what seemed like thousands of feet.
He had to take the risk of heaving himself over the rail.
He lifted the weight of his body over the rail. His hands slipped, and for a split second, his life flashed over his eyes: playing and napping as a baby, jumping, splashing and giggling in the mud on rainy days as a toddler, reading books as a kid, causing mischief as a teenager, joining the Confederate Army not because he was a racist or politician, but because his jerk stepfather forced him to as a young adult. And then back to now, nearly falling off a train and plummeting to his death…
…but a firm grip was grabbing his wrist in the tightest squeeze imaginable and heaving him over the rail with ease.