Twilight's Last Gleaming

By Bob Liddil

   The rain let up after a while. It had been a gully washer for the first few minutes, then tapered off to a light mist. The heavy clouds that had boiled above us moved on to the East, leaving a little patch of silver-edged pink along the western horizon.

   The Rebs gave us hell today. They are relentless, those southern boys are. They came up this hill, screaming like banshees, murder in their eyes, and did everything they could to take us, but we wouldn't budge. Finally, they backed down, just before the storm hit. They took their wounded and dead down with them. We held our fire as they did it. 

   The sun dropped down partway below the cloud line lighting up the woods and the meadow below in an eerie orange glow. There was no sound except for the dripping of water off the rain soaked leaves.

   Then we heard something. It was a very weak cry for help, coming from somewhere out in front and below us. But it wasn't a man's voice we heard. It sounded like a boy, and it sounded like he was in a lot of pain.

   He couldn't have been one of ours. We didn't have anybody down beyond the rifle line. So he had to be a Reb, somebody they missed when they swept the woods for their own. He was crying, and calling for his mamma. God, he sounded young.

   Corporal Turnbull wanted to go down and try to find him, but Sarge said stay put. Turnbull argued with him, what if that was your little brother down there? Sarge said if he was a Reb, he'd put a bayonet in him, brother or not.

Then Turnbull said, I'm going down, and you'll have to shoot me to stop me. Sarge just stared at him in that weird orange light and spat a glop of tobacco juice onto the ground. That was his way of ending a discussion.

   Turnbull climbed over the makeshift wall we'd built to reinforce the rifle line and drew his pistol. He made his way down the hill and disappeared beyond the tree line just below us. The sun was now fully below the cloud line. It lit up the mist rising up from the ground and set it aglow. All the
while, that kid's cries kept coming, more and more desperate by the minute. 

  A single shot rang out, and the cries stopped. I thought to myself, damn you Turnbull, you went out there and killed him. Sarge's face never changed expression. He just spat another glop onto the ground.

   After what seemed like a long time, someone appeared out of the mist, climbing the hill. The sun was halfway below the horizon, now, as the figure came up toward us. I had my rifle trained on him, had dead aim taken, but it wasn't needed. It was Turnbull. 

   I was so mad. I couldn't believe he'd done that. War or no war, you got to be civilized. As I watched him approach our line, he stumbled once, then a second time, and fell to one knee, got back up and came on, though on more wobbly legs. He climbed across the wall and just stood there for a second or
two, not saying a word. For that first few seconds we didn't speak either. The bloody stain on the chest of his uniform spoke for us all. Then he just collapsed.

   The sun was gone by now. All that was left was the afterglow of twilight. Out of the corner of my eye, there was a flash of blue in the dusk sky.  I saw Sarge spit. Turnbull was dead. Two guys put him on a stretcher. A couple of his friends were crying. I felt like crying too. 

   Everything was quiet. It was as if the battlefield was holding its breath in the last moments before darkness fell for real. Then, far off down the line to the right, I heard, very faintly, a cry for help in the voice of a young boy.

(c) 2002 by Bob Liddil. All Rights Reserved