Solomon Page was a member of the 59^th Georgia Infantry. He was wounded at the Wheatfield on July 2, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was eventually transferred to Union hospital care and died in Harrisburg, PA, on August 7, 1863.

Contrary to most myths of the Battle of Gettysburg, neither Little Round Top nor Pickett’s Charge were the most desperate parts of the fighting (someone has to break it to Faulkner). At the end of July 2, the Wheatfield had seen more than 6000 casualties among 21,000 combatants. It was covered with the dead, dying, and wounded. A nearly full moon cast its luster over the field, and ambulances and surgeons moved among the men, seeking out the most wounded. Hogs broke free of their pens and began to eat the dead and dying alike. In the distance, a Confederate soldier sang hymns near the Peach Orchard.

The following story ruminates on this experience. It quotes scripture as well as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which is in the public domain (and yes is an anachronism—we’re creating myths and legends here with a sense of timelessness).

I lay at the edge of the woods, my head on a pillow of trampled wheat, the sky to the north gradually darkening, the canopy of trees to the south a gently waving, inky darkness. Off  to the northeast, I heard muskets crackling, could sometimes make out a flaming shell rocketing across the purple sky. But here, the guns was mostly quiet. The skeeters was buzzing round, black flies too. I tried to shoo them away cuz I knew they’d lay eggs in the wound in my left thigh. I seen that after Malvern Hill—fellers whose wounds got maggots and started oozing. Sometimes, men would light sticks and burn the maggots and the wounds. Can’t tell whether that helped.

As the evening grew darker, the lanterns and torches came out. The moon too. Almost full moon. A right nice farmer’s moon, and I reckon the feller who owned this wheat field and wood lot woulda liked a night like this on any other day. Ain’t so hard to get extra work done when you can see so good and when the summer air cools off.

This night weren’t no wheat harvest, though. The whole field was covered with men, some of em moving and moaning and some not. In the dark, even in the moonlight, I couldn’t make out who was blue and who was butternut. You could tell better when they’d holler. And they did a lotta hollering. Mostly, men yelled for water, and when men needed water, there weren’t no colors anymore.

“Anyone got water?” a feller yelled.

“They’s a bit in my canteen, Billy Yank,” a man called back. “You might as well take it. I’ll be dead in an hour.”

“My feet been blown off. Can you bring it over?”

“Cain’t feel nothin from my waist down, Billy.”

Those two got quiet. Don’t think they made it much longer.

Now and again, a lantern or torch would appear to the east or west. When it did, moans would erupt from men begging for water or laudanum.

Then a strange thing happened. A voice clear as day came from the woods.

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

And I knew that I was going to die and that there weren’t no point to it. I didn’t want this war. I didn’t sign up in the big rush when it first started. I waited a whole year. I got me a farm worth $1500. Got me a wife too. And a baby girl.

“O ye that fought at Malvern Hill and Fredericksburg and Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, hear the word of the Lord! The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

“Shut up, you damn fool,” a man nearby hollered. His accent was New York. I met some of them before—prisoners at other battles.

“That one of ours or one of y’all’s?” I called to him.

“I know him,” the feller called back. “He’s a damn sight crazy with all his Bible talk. He lost a leg while we were falling back. Now he’s losing his mind.”

“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man!” the voice called back.

A scream erupted from the wood lot, but west of the crazy guy. Then I heard snorting and snuffing and another man yell, “You damned sows! You fiendish swine!” Another called, “Push it away! It’s rutting on me. I can’t move!”

I heard a smack then a hog squeal.

“You there, Johnny?” the man nearby said.

“Still here, Billy.”

“You all let the hogs outta their pens. I don’t suppose you’d mind putting them back?”

“Well, now Billy, I’d be happy to help, but one of y’all gone and shot me in the leg. I took a step on that leg and heard the bone splinter. So I reckon we gotta find someone else.”

He gave a grim chuckle in response.

We were back to moans again, and I thought of Marjorie. If she could see me, she would curse me. She told me, “You ought not join up. They’re killing people like they never done in history.”

“Everyone has gone. It’s my duty. Besides, they’re gonna conscript me anyway.”

“We can sell a bit of the farm, pay a replacement. Your duty is here. With us.”

“I cain’t show my face around here much longer, what with all the other men out suffering for the cause. Dying, some of them.”

“Don’t you see?” she said. “There ain’t no ‘cause.’ From the days of Adam, war never had no cause. You just go out and die for nothing. For your own ego is what.”

Lying there, after having seen so many others die, I knew she was right.

“Where ya from, Johnny?” Billy said.

“Georgia,” I said. “You?”

“New York. Scotch Irish.”

“I figured,” I said. “Got a good bit of y’all down in our parts.”

“Aye,” he said.

You see? This feller mighta been the one that shot me. Or maybe I shot him. Or we shot each other. And lying here, I ain’t got no quarrel with him.

“There’s water here in the woods,” a man called. “I’m close to it.”

“I do not find the Hanged Man,” the Preacher called. “Fear death by water.”

“He ain’t making sense,” I said.

“Aye, but there’s truth in what he says now, whether he knows it or not. There’s half a dozen dead men at the water’s edge. They get to the water and die, some with their faces in it and some from exhaustion.”

My wound didn’t hurt too badly as long as I didn’t move. Trouble is, a man’s gotta move or everything else hurts. And when I moved, that shattered bone welled up from within, made me see stars dance across my sight, colored my vision red. Go to the center of the pain, I heard a doctor say to a man once. Confront it there. Don’t run from it.

When I done that, I could see inside my body, all the torn muscle, bits of the shattered bone, the blood pulsing with each heartbeat. And I could see my daughter’s face, watch it age from two years old to ten to sixteen to twenty-two, and she kept saying, “Why ain’t you here, Daddy?”

I wanted to say, “I am here, baby,” but my tongue was tied and my brain was froze, and the words wouldn’t form.

“And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,” called the voice from the woods, “which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see.”

Yes, the card. I was forbidden to see the card. That is why I am here. Whereas I was blind, now I see. But it was too late. Yes, vanity of vanities.

“If ye don’t shut it, Lewis, I’ll raise the sword to you myself,” my friend Billy called.

“Don’t,” I said. “He is the only man who can see.”

A fly buzzed around my ears, and I swung at it, and white-hot pain shot up my leg and blinded me. I was senseless but then heard Billy speak, as though he called from underwater.

“Aye, Johnny. But at the final hour, which of us wants to see the truth?”

I reckon this was so, but now that I saw it, I was blind to all else.

I too wanted water. Chills swept over my body, I think from the pain but maybe from the bitter cold. How had it gotten so cold?

When I glanced above me, just to the south, I saw the tree branches close ranks, bind themselves together, and covenant with an oath that they would assist the roots in burying me. By this I knew my body would never go home, it would not lie on my farm in repose awaiting the resurrection with Marjorie.

“You still with me, Johnny?”

“Billy,” I said, “I am not going home.”

“Nay, Johnny. Ye are. You will pass through this night, and our doctors will fix you up good. They will mend that leg. You just have to stay with me.”

“I seen it,” I said. “I ain’t gonna make it.”

“You’re feverish,” he said. “Your brain is hot.”

The Preacher now called forth a sermon.

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water.”

“You see, Billy?” I said. “He knows.”

“He’s an actor who stuffed his mind full of plays and poetry and is spewing them at the hour of his death,” said Billy. “He’ll be gone soon.”

I was conscious of the buzzing flies and whirring crickets, and then, from the northwest came a voice, a song.

Abide with me: fast falls the even tide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

The voice sang the whole hymn, and we in the field fell quiet.

When he finished, it was quiet a few moments longer, and then I said, “Still there, Billy?”

“Aye, Johnny.”

“You a Catholic?”

“Aye.”

“Are you gonna die?”

“We’re all gonna die, Johnny.”

“You know what I mean.”

My new friend was quiet for a few moments. “Aye, probably.”

“I’m sorry, Billy,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry, Johnny. We were only doing our duty. The Lord will measure us in His balance.”

The Preacher bellowed again:

“There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either.”

“He’s plum lost it, Billy,” I said.

Billy didn’t answer directly. “Ye may have seen them when ye were marching toward us. To the east of us are giant boulders. Red boulders. Many a brave man lie over yonder on those rocks.”

The voice by the orchard now started “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

We listened quietly, and then a few of the men in the wheat field began warbling with him. I did not—I did not feel that God was a mighty fortress, nor a bulwark of strength, nor a helper mighty, and I knew that I was not prevailing over the ills of life.

“The singer,” said Billy. “He’s one of yours.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“A fine voice. Even if it is a Protestant song.”

When the singer finished that hymn, he started on “When This Cruel War Is Over.”

The field fell silent again except for the wagons moving the injured and the doctors murmuring directions. Somewhere in the mournful verses, I felt myself lifted from my spot in the wheat and suspended above the field, the carpet of dead and wounded stretching out below me, seemingly for miles, the lanterns dotting the shadowy ground, the moon glowing softly on the ambulance drivers and litter carriers. I heard the Preacher call from afar, “I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

So many still, silent bodies. So persistent the sounds of the flies, the grunts of the hogs tearing into the bodies of the silent.

When I came to myself again in the wheat, I said hoarsely, “Hey, Billy,” but he didn’t answer, and my stomach tightened and cold gripped my chest.

“Billy?”

No answer except the whirring crickets and buzzing flies. My time was close. A dark heaviness pressed on me. The dead have no consciousness, I thought. In a way, the idea relieved me. Then, I heard the Preacher cry a final time:

“Solomon! That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”