Crossing the Deadline Read Free

words,” he says.

CHAPTER TWO

    I glance at the newspaper. “New York, Saturday, July 25, 1863” is printed across the top. A sketch of Major-General Ulysses S. Grant occupies the entire front page. “From a new photograph just received from Vicksburg” is written under his likeness.
    I turn the plump orange over in my hand several times as I stroll to the southwest corner of the room. With a big window on each wall and two soft chairs tucked below them, it’s the perfect spot for reading.
    I sit and scratch the skin of the orange with the tip of my thumbnail. Sunlight illuminates the mist of juice as it explodes from the rind. A tangy, sweet smell fills the air.
    From my spot in the corner, I can hear a group of older men chat at the hearth. One is a local fellow the kids in towncall Possum Peckham. His real name is George Peckham, but his eyes sit too close beside an extremely long and narrow nose. Unless he looks directly at you, he appears to be crosseyed. Folks in Centerville talk about how he left for the war with a full head of dark hair and returned ten months later crippled and gray.
    Spinning yarns at the Mansion House is all Peckham can do since a rebel minié ball found his leg while he was down in Tennessee. He can’t take a labor job of any kind. He claims a wad of flesh the size of a biscuit was ripped from the side of his thigh. I’ve never seen it.
    Mom says the old fellow’s true job is testing Dutch’s ale for quality purposes. Occasionally, he drives a delivery wagon to Richmond, six miles east of Centerville. When pressed, he’ll take a longer haul up to Fountain City.
    Some of the men around the hearth sit backward in their chairs, chins resting on knuckles. Peckham’s war stories hold my attention better than the preacher’s sermon on Sundays.
    â€œI tell you what, pards,” Peckham says, “all them youngins who want to see the elephant, that’s well and good until they stare it square in the face.”
    â€œThe South is using elephants?” a man blurts out.
    Peckham laughs. “‘Seeing the elephant’ means going intobattle for the first time. When soldiers hear that beast bellow like they’ve never heard before, then they change their minds. When they see the elephant once, feel it, smell it, nobody cares to wrestle the monster again. Our division had five thousand four hundred men, not a man less when we started. Three hours later, our numbers had dwindled to five hundred. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Twenty-Third Missouri, every man would have been lost that day.”
    â€œWhere was this?” someone asks.
    â€œTennessee . . . a place called Shiloh,” I call out.
    â€œThat’s right, Stephen,” Peckham says, looking over at me. “Almost smack on the Mississippi line.”
    Peckham stands and removes a cracked, leather-bound book resting on the mantel. “Is your brother, Robert, still serving with Grant?”
    â€œYes, sir,” I say proudly while showing the general’s image spread across the front page of Harper’s Weekly. “His last letter said his group is attached to the Army of the Tennessee down in Vicksburg, but we haven’t heard from him lately.”
    He opens the book to reveal a tattered page of a newspaper pressed between the pages. “This here’s a drawing of the battle of Shiloh. Gotta give it to ’em. They got the battle drawn mostly right, too.”
    I’d seen Peckham share the same drawing many times.
    â€œAnd you were there? And saw it all?” a tall man asks, staring at the image. Peckham nods in silence and passes the picture to a man with a pipe hanging from his mouth. The man takes the picture, looks at it, shakes his head, and passes it to the man sitting to his left.
    I rise from my chair and approach. “Can I give it a look, sir?”
    He nods and hands the faded yellow paper to me.
    The picture