Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath

by Elsie Singmaster

But Parsons had gone, leaping over the graves, bending low by the fences, dashing across an open field, then losing himself in the woodland. For a moment Adams's eyes followed him, then he saw that the cemetery and the outlying fields were black with ten thousand men. It would be easy for Parsons to get away.

"No hope for him," he said shortly, as he set to work to do what he could for the maimed creature at his feet. Dawn, he knew, must be almost at hand; he fancied that the moonlight was paling. He was almost crazy for sleep, sleep that he would need badly enough on the morrow, if he were any prophet of coming events.

Parsons, also, was aware of the tens of thousands of men about him, to him they were dead or dying men. He staggered as he ran, his feet following unconsciously the path that took him home from fishing, along the low ridge, past scattered farmhouses, toward the cone of Round Top. It seemed to him that dead men leaped at him and tried to stop him, and he ran ever faster. Once he shrieked, then he crouched in a fence-corner and hid. He would have been ludicrous, had the horrors from which he fled been less hideous.

He, too, felt the dawn coming, as he saw his mother's house. He sobbed like a little child, and, no longer keeping to the shade, ran across the open fields. There were no dead men here, thank God! He threw himself frantically at the door, and found it locked. Then he drew from the window the nail that held it down, and crept in. He was ravenously hungry, and his hands made havoc in the familiar cupboard. He laughed as he found cake, and the loved "drum-sticks" of his childhood.

He did not need to slip off his shoes for fear of waking his mother, for the shoes had no soles; but he stooped down and removed them with trembling hands. Then a great peace seemed to come into his soul. He crept on his hands and knees past his mother's door, and climbed to his own little room under the eaves, where, quite simply, as though he were a little boy, and not a man deserting from the army on the eve of a battle, he said his prayers and went to bed.

When he awoke, it was late afternoon. He thought at first that he had been swinging, and had fallen; then he realized that he still lay quietly in his bed. He stretched himself, reveling in the blessed softness, and wondering why he felt as though he had been brayed in a mortar. Then a roar of sound shut out possibility of thought. The little house shook with it. He covered his ears, but he might as well have spared himself his pains. That sound could never be shut out, neither then, nor for years afterward, from the ears of those who heard it. There were many who would hear no other sound forevermore. The coward began again his whining, "Oh, God! Oh, God!" His nostrils were full of smoke; he could smell already the other ghastly odors that would follow. He lifted himself from his bed, and, hiding his eyes from the window, felt his way down the steep stairway. He meant, God help him! to go and hide his face in his mother's lap. He remembered the soft, cool smoothness of her gingham apron.

Gasping, he staggered into her room. But his mother was not there. The mattress and sheets from her bed had been torn off; one sheet still trailed on the floor. He picked it up and shook it. He was imbecile enough to think she might be beneath it.

"Mother!" he shrieked "Mother! Mother!" forgetting that even in that little room she could not have heard him. He ran through the house, shouting. Everywhere it was the same—stripped beds, cupboards flung wide, the fringe of torn curtains still hanging. His mother was not there.

His terror drove him finally to the window overlooking the garden. It was here that he most vividly remembered her, bending over her flower-beds, training the tender vines, pulling weeds. She must be here. In spite of the snarl of guns, she must be here. But the garden was a waste, the fence was down. He saw only the thick smoke beyond, out of which crept slowly toward him half a dozen men with blackened faces and blood-stained clothes, again his dead men come to life. He saw that they wore his own uniform, but the fact made little impression upon him. Was his mother dead? Had she been killed yesterday, or had they taken her away last night or this morning while he slept? He saw that the men were coming nearer to the house, creeping slowly on through the thick smoke. He wondered vaguely whether they were coming for him as they had come for his mother. Then he saw, also vaguely, on the left, another group of men, stealing toward him, men who did not wear his uniform, but who walked as bravely as his own comrades.

He knew little about tactics, and his brain was too dull to realize that the little house was the prize they sought. It was marvelous that it had remained unpossessed so long, when a tiny rock or a little bush was protection for which men struggled. The battle had surged that way; the little house was to become as famous as the Peach Orchard or the Railroad Cut, it was to be the "Parsons House" in history. Of this Parsons had no idea; he only knew, as he watched them, that his mother was gone, his house despoiled.