Nathaniel was lying half on his side, turned away from Jonathan, as if sleeping. Jonathan dropped his gun, dropped beside him, rolled him over.
The bullet had hit Nathaniel in the chest, just to the left of his breastbone. Blood gleamed through the rent in the fabric of his shell jacket, spread a dark stain through the cloth. A line of blood trickled out of the edge of his mouth.
“Nathaniel…” Jonathan did not know if he had thought the name, or whispered it or shouted it. His brother’s eyes shifted over and then they were looking at one another, looking into each other’s eyes.
Nathaniel blinked once, slowly. His mouth opened and Jonathan leaned closer, to hear what he would say. But no words came, just a soft gurgling sound, a horrible sound, then a rattling noise. Jonathan leaned back. The life was out of Nathaniel’s eyes.
Jonathan’s eyes filled, the tears made hot wet tracks down his cheeks. He felt them fall on his hands. “Nathaniel, Nathaniel, what have I done, what have I done? Oh, God, oh, God, forgive me…”
He looked up to the sky, the blue, blue sky. A bullet screamed past, he felt it graze his scalp, tear through his hair, but it made no impression on him. He had no thought of moving, could not even if he had wished to. There was nothing for him to do but to wait there with his brother. He could not leave Nathaniel, not after he had brought him so far.
A hand grabbed him by the collar, jerked him to his feet as if he was a doll, shoved him on his way, never letting go. Jonathan found himself running, half pulled, half dragged up the hill. The rail fence swam in front of him and then he was on it and someone was shoving him over the top. He fell in a heap on the other side, looked up. The soldier with whom he had shared his water was climbing after him. He landed beside Jonathan, scrambled to his feet, pulled Jonathan up again. “Come on, boy!” he shouted.
“My brother is dead!” Jonathan shouted back, even as the man pushed him back into a run for the crest of the hill.
“Don’t mean you have to be!” the soldier replied. They huffed up the hill, Jonathan staggering, nearly falling, running only because this man was pushing him along, not through any will of his own.
And then they were past the crest of the hill and the man stopped and gasped for breath and let Jonathan Paine collapse at his feet.
The tears came fast now, the grief so consuming that it was like a pressure inside, with no way to get out. “My brother is dead…” he said again.
“He ain’t the only one,” the soldier replied, but there was kindness and sympathy in his voice.
17
The top of the hill was occupied by a battery of artillery, and a body of infantry, belonging to the Federal Army. We sprang out of the ravine and went up the hill at a double-quick. The Federal battery and infantry opened fire on us as soon as we emerged from the ravine, killing and wounding a number of us as we climbed the hill.
— Private George Gibbs, 18th Mississippi, describing the Battle of First Manassas
Jonathan Paine lay in the coarse grass. Eyes closed, floating in a world of noise and grief. He could make no sense of the sounds around him. The minie balls, the shells, the shouts of officers, the screams of wounded, all melded into one horrible din of war.
He had left Nathaniel there on the field, his beautiful brother, tall and strong, all life and potential. Now he was nothing, just a corpse, everything that was Nathaniel blown out of him.
“Hey, Mississippi…” the soldier said. Jonathan looked up, saw the man as if looking through rain-streaked glass. “Looks like we’re advancing again. You want to kill some Yankees for your brother, best come.” He held out Jonathan’s rifle, which he had, apparently, snatched from the field. Jonathan could not recall.
Jonathan got on his feet and the soldier handed him his rifle and he looked at it as if for the first time. Kill some Yankees for your brother… It would do Nathaniel no good that he could think of. He was not sure, for all his high talk, that Nathaniel had ever really wanted to kill Yankees. He, Jonathan, might well be shot down too, and his body and Nathaniel’s would be rolled into a common grave and their bones would mix with the bones of others and there would be no indication at all that they had ever been.
Nathaniel buried in an anonymous grave. The thought horrified him. Their father and mother never having a notion of what had become of their son, their beautiful Nathaniel. He could not let that happen.
The soldier was five paces ahead and walking away and Johnathan chased after him, fell into step at his side. The man looked up at him, nodded his approval, then turned his eyes to the front, where the enemy waited.
They were up at the fence again. Jonathan looked to his left and right. He could see Jackson ’s brigade stretched across the crest of the hill, thousands of men in various shades of gray and blue, thousands of men who were ready to kill, men who were prepared to walk into that flying river of iron, when sane people would cower or run.
First Brigade poured like a river over the fence. They paused and shouldered rifles and pointed them at the blue lines in their front. Jonathan saw cannons and horses over the top of his barrel. He pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped down on the nipple but the expected jolt did not happen because the gun was not loaded.
He dropped the butt to the ground, reached for a cartridge. He could hear bullets splinter the rail behind him. His kepi moved a bit as some flying ordnance passed by. He felt as if he himself was in a different place, some place where those bullets could not reach him.
He finished the manual of arms, raised the rifle, pulled the trigger, stepped off with the rest as they advanced on the bluebellies. The bullets danced on the dry ground and sent up tiny dust clouds like the first drops of heavy rain on a dry summer afternoon. The thunder of the guns rolled on and on.
The line stopped and they loaded and fired and moved on, their advance accompanied by the weird yelping battle cry that had spread through the army. The Yankees seemed to be backing away. Advance, stop, fire, advance; the Confederates slowly gained back the ground they had already won and lost once that afternoon.
Jonathan could see the artillery park now, the heaps of dead men and horses, the guns that the Yankees had not managed to pull back to their lines. He could see Nathaniel, lying as he had left him, on his back, arms flung out, and he started toward him.
“Hey, Mississippi, where the hell you going?” the soldier called, but Jonathan just crouched and ran forward, as if running through a hailstorm. A bullet grazed his arm, it felt like a cut from a knife, but it did not slow him.
Jonathan covered the distance fast and then he was among the dead and the guns, kneeling at Nathaniel’s side, crouched low as the bullets whipped over his head. He rolled his brother’s body half over. It felt stiff and unyielding, not like a living thing at all. He plunged his hand into Nathaniel’s pack, felt around for the old journal he knew was there. His fingers brushed against the soft leather cover and he grabbed it and worked it out of the knapsack, held it in his hands, glanced up.
The Yankees were still falling back in the face of Jackson’s advance, but there were more bluebellies forming at the base of the hill and tramping up, their units still in good order, tight squares of marching men.
Jonathan paused in his task long enough to load and aim and pull the trigger once more. He laid his rifle aside, snatched up the notebook. He flipped to a blank page, pulled the pencil out of the binding.
Nathaniel James Paine, Company D, 18th Mississippi, 3rd Brigade, son of Robley and Katherine Paine, Yazoo, Mississippi. Please God send me home to be buried in my native earth.