The Storm Before Atlanta Read Free

no soldiers. There was a wide, dark stain on the wooden floor, and Jeremy stepped around it instinctively.
    He walked through the station and out onto the street. The smell was stronger out here, and the street was crisscrossed with wide lines of white powder. A horse came clip-clopping along, pulling a wagon. Jeremy waved to the driver, who pulled up beside him.
    “You look lost, young man.” The driver was a woman, with stray locks of gray hair escaping from her bonnet.
    Jeremy tipped his hat politely. “Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for the soldiers, ma’am.”
    “Everyone is, who comes to Gettysburg these days.” The woman nodded over her shoulder. “They’re back that way. Back out of town.”
    “What’s all this white stuff on the streets?”
    “Chloride of lime. Disinfectant.”
    “Oh. Thank you, ma’am.” Jeremy lifted his hat again, then walked the way the woman had pointed, careful to stay at the very edge of the street. He had walked barefoot all his life, even in the coldest New York winters, and his feet were as tough as hooves. But he didn’t know what chloride of lime was, and he didn’t want to step on it.
    He saw charred black stains on the buildings, and cannonballs lying here and there. Some of the trees hadlost all their branches and stood like stark gray monuments to themselves. The war had been through here, all right.
    At the edge of town Jeremy met an old man with a shovel.
    “Looking for somebody?” He was hardly taller than Jeremy, bent over as if from years of digging. A wide-brimmed hat covered his head right down to the eyes, and from under it he grinned with a mouthful of maybe six teeth like broken yellow sticks.
    “I’m looking for the soldiers.”
    “Which ones? I’m the man to ask. Been digging for weeks.”
    He nodded at the field beside the road, which was broken up into brown clods. Jeremy had thought it had just been plowed, but of course it was too late in the year for that. Now Jeremy saw that the field was planted with long lines of narrow boards, ripped from barrels and packing boxes. Near one of them Jeremy thought he saw the toe of a boot sticking up. He didn’t see any bloodstained flags, like in “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh,” but he assumed they were there underground, along with the Bibles laid beside each unbeating heart.
    “Them that’s got names, it’s written on the boards,” the man said, still grinning. “I can find any of ’em that’s got names for you. Won’t take a minute—they’re none of ’em dug in too deep.”
    Then Jeremy knew what the smell in Gettysburg was.He was almost sick, but managed to stop himself from giving the strange grinning man that satisfaction. “I’m looking for the soldiers that are still alive!”
    “Ah, them. They’ve all left. Gone to fight the war.”
    “I’m looking for the war.”
    “Well, if it’s the war you want you’d best go to Washington. That’s my advice. It all comes through there, one time or another.”
    And seeing that Jeremy wasn’t interested in his gruesome field, he shouldered his shovel and walked away.
    Jeremy went back along the white-powdered streets to the station and bought a ticket to Washington. His money was running out, and if he didn’t find the war in Washington he didn’t know what he’d do.

THREE
    T HE OLD MAN HAD BEEN RIGHT . E VERYTHING CAME through Washington, or to it. In the railroad yards Jeremy saw endless trainloads of hardtack, embalmed beef, and coffee. There were hundreds of wagons pulled by horses and mules, and men yelling at the mules and horses to get up, and at each other to get out of the way. There were trainloads of wounded soldiers, some groaning in pain but most grimly silent.
    “You lost, sonny?”
    Jeremy looked up at a black man with a broom in his hands. He was smiling in a friendly way, but his face looked tight with pain.
    “I’m looking for the war,” said Jeremy.
    “You come to the right place for that,” said the man. “This is