Brave Enemies Read Free

cheering him. He walked down the field stepping around bodies. Wagons were coming up the Green River Road from the south. It was Tarleton’s baggage wagons that hadn’t been burned. Slaves walked along behind driving cattle. There was a wagon with a chimney on it, the blacksmith’s forge I’d heard about. A cheer went up when a wagon with two big grog barrels on it creaked by.
    Where the cannons had been taken on the field, men stood around admiring them. The brass shone like gold. Something jerked my leg and I looked down and saw the officer picking at the wound with a knife and a kind of pin. “Hold still, laddie,” he said, “and be so kind as not to look.” He picked out pieces of bone red as painted splinters. I jerked again.
    â€œYou must hold steady,” the officer said. He looked at my wound like a man studying fine print. His army had been defeated and yet the Scotsman was doctoring me. He picked out more bits of skin and cloth and slivers of bone.
    â€œYour foot may have to come off,” the officer said.
    â€œNo,” I yelled and tried to jerk away. But my arms didn’t move the way they were supposed to. They were too little and weak. My hands felt far away.
    â€œYou’ll not help yourself that way,” the officer said. He wiped his hands on a rag and stood up. I decided I’d not let him touch my leg again. I would slip away into the woods. I would find a spring in a thicket. My mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my teeth felt stuck in glue.
    â€œDo you want a drink?” a soldier said. He bent down holding a canteen. When he pressed it to my lips I could taste the damp cedar wood. The water was sweet as white honey as he poured it through my lips. Living water, I thought, remembering the Bible.
    â€œYou’ll live,” the soldier said.
    I drank more from the cedar canteen. My body was all dried out and I was parched to my fingertips. The man holding the canteen had ablackened face, and I noticed the strangest thing. I was looking at him and the clouds beyond him. And it felt like the world started tilting up. The ground beyond my feet rose toward the sun so steep I was about to slide backward. I could hardly hold on to the ground.
    Then it was like I was upside down and all this hot water and sand filled my mouth, and I was about to choke.
    â€œTurn your head over,” somebody said. I tried to turn my head and hot water came scalding through my nose and down my chin. My throat gushed again and my nose burned and my mouth was full.
    â€œHold his head,” somebody said.
    The ground spun around and somebody put a hand on my forehead the way Mama used to when I was sick. His hand was cool and my forehead wet as grass on a July morning.
    â€œWhere’s Mama?” I said, and somebody laughed as if he were way off at the top of the world. I was so tired I couldn’t move a finger. I couldn’t blink an eyelid. I was washed out and limp as a rag. And then I felt this storm coming from somewhere, like the wind behind trees on the other side of a hill. There was a grumble and a low roar, and gusts breaking through. But the spate was in my throat, boiling and flooding.
    â€œTurn your head,” somebody said.
    But I couldn’t move at all. The swill gushed into my mouth and rushed down my chin and on my neck. Somebody wiped it off with a piece of rag. I spat and spat.
    When my mouth was finally empty I got cold. A chill came over me all at once and my bones started aching and rattling. The shiver went down to my toes and my teeth were clacking. I shook and couldn’t stop. I shuddered and jerked.
    â€œGet him a blanket,” somebody said.
    They wrapped me in something, but it felt thin and cold as a tablecloth. I jerked so hard it seemed my bones were pulling apart. The air was blowing through my bones.
    â€œTake this,” somebody said. He put a bottle to my mouth and poured in some more