Soldier, Come Home
He was eighteen. That’s what it said on the papers. But time is strange when men are torn open in front of you and you’re the one holding the rag to keep the soul in.
They called him “Steward,” though he wasn’t trained for anything. Just showed up because the man in charge said, “We need hands,” and he had two. Didn’t matter that they shook when they held the saw.
He came to the war out of boredom. Out of duty. Out of some dumb-headed belief that he’d learn to be a man. What he learned instead was how to fish a tooth out of a basin full of amputated fingers. How to wash entrails off a wooden floor with a bucket of rainwater and lie to the man on the cot that, yes, the doctor said he’d be just fine.
They were camped along a stretch of field outside Fredericksburg. December 1862. Cold as a whore’s kindness. Mud up to the ankles. No tents for the men, just thin canvas for the “hospital,” a word that meant very little. One pole tent, half-collapsed, with two lanterns, six cots, and the smell of iron and sweat thick enough to chew.
The surgeon was a drunk. But he was good, they said. Could cut a leg in under a minute. Didn’t say much. Just pointed and grunted. The boy learned to listen. Learned when to hand him the knife and when to turn the body.
The first soldier he watched die had been a drummer. Too young to shave, but old enough to know when his gut was opened like a seed sack, he wouldn’t see another morning. The boy held his hand. Said nothing. Watched the light go out in his eyes and felt something inside him go with it.
He stopped counting the dead after thirty.
Meals were a joke. When they got them.
The bread came moldy, if it came at all. Most of it blackened around the edges and stiff like bark. They scraped the fuzz off and called it breakfast. The hardtack came next. You could break a tooth on it. Sometimes, you did.
Then there was the pudding.
Bread pudding, they called it, though it was more like slop. Moldy crusts soaked in old milk and baked with whatever was lying around. The cook, a man with half a nose and a limp from Shiloh, stirred the pot like it held gold. “Sweet as sin,” he’d say, even when it stank of curdled grease.
The boy fed it to the men who could eat. Held their heads up. Let it drip from the spoon into mouths with cracked lips. Sometimes they smiled. That was the worst part. The smiling. Like a man could forget the hole in his belly if you gave him enough sugar.
He saw the first one on a Tuesday.
The fighting had moved east. They were left with the wounded. The dying. The broken.
The surgeon slept in a chair, still in his apron. The cook had passed out in the firelight, bottle in hand. The boy walked the rows of moaning men, offering sips of water, wiping brows.
That’s when he saw her.
A woman.
Not a nurse.
She wore no bonnet, no apron. Her dress was simple. Homespun. Blue, or maybe grey. It was hard to tell in the lantern glow. Her face was turned down. Hair black, unpinned, falling over her shoulders. She moved slow, careful, like a woman in a church.
He stepped toward her. “Ma’am?”
She didn’t look up.
“You can’t be here,” he whispered.
She reached down and brushed the hair from a soldier’s forehead. He was unconscious. Maybe already gone. She said something—too soft to hear.
Then she looked at him.
Her face was pale, but not sickly. Just… faded. As if light passed through her skin instead of resting on it. Her eyes were deep. Not in color, but in weight. Like looking into a well.
She didn’t speak. Just looked.
Then she turned and walked between the cots.
He followed. But by the time he turned the corner of the tent, she was gone.
He didn’t mention it.
Didn’t want the cook laughing. Didn’t want the surgeon calling him shell-shocked.
But the next night, there she was again. This time, with others.
Three. Maybe four. All in different dresses. Some barefoot. One old, hunched like a question mark. They moved slowly. No sound. As if they weren’t walking but gliding.
They stopped at beds. Looked down. Whispered. Touched cheeks.
The boy stood frozen.
He watched one kneel. Take a soldier’s hand. Begin to sing.
A lullaby. He didn’t know the tune, but he knew the rhythm. He remembered it from somewhere. The deep-down part of childhood he’d forgotten.
The soldier died with a smile.
The woman kissed his hand, then vanished.
He began to ask questions.
Not out loud. Just to himself. In the quiet hours when the wounded slept and the whiskey had worn off.
Why did they come?
Why only at night?
Why only when death was near?
He watched. Listened. Tried to piece together patterns.
They always came for someone near the end. Always knew where to go. Like they were called.
And sometimes, they wept. But it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t grief. It was… relief.
He saw one woman hold a bloody shirt to her chest and say, “I found you. I found you.”
And the boy began to understand.
They were mothers.
He didn’t know how he knew. But he knew.
Mothers who had lost sons to the war, who had died a hundred miles from home, buried in shallow graves or not buried at all.
And some part of them—the part that couldn’t rest—kept looking.
Not angry. Not cursed.
Just unfinished.
Searching.
They found their sons only when they were close to death. Not always in time. But often just before. Enough to whisper a name. To be seen.
To be recognized.
The boy began to see them every night.
Sometimes a dozen.
Once, thirty.
They never spoke to him again. Just passed by. Silent as fog.
But they saw him.
And one night, one stopped.
“You remind me of mine,” she said.
He couldn’t speak.
She smiled.
Then kept walking.
The surgeon didn’t see them.
The cook didn’t.
Just the boy.
And he wondered: Was he touched? Cursed? Or maybe it was because he was there, in the thick of it, in the mess and the madness, night after night. Holding their hands. Whispering comfort. Pretending to believe what he was saying.
“You’ll be alright.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Rest.”
Maybe the spirits saw that. Maybe that’s why they let him see.
He started carrying a Bible, though he didn’t read it. Just held it. Like armor.
Sometimes he wrote the names of the dead in it.
Not always the full name. Just enough. “James – teeth missing.” “Will – sang hymns in sleep.” “Elijah – kissed a photo.”
It made them real.
Made them count.
Then came Gettysburg.
They were moved again. More wagons. More wounded. Thousands.
They worked day and night. Sleep stolen in half-hour pockets. Chloroform gone. Whiskey low. Food spoiled.
The boy lost weight. His cheeks hollowed. His knuckles showed.
He cut with the surgeon now. Held bones. Cracked joints. Learned the smell of infection before it showed.
But he still saw them.
The mothers.
Every night, they came.
And one night, they filled the camp.
Hundreds.
They stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, along the edge of the field. Their dresses wet from dew. Hair braided, loose, tied back. Some wore shawls. Some held cloth dolls. One carried a lantern that didn’t glow.
The boy stood in the center.
They looked at him.
And for the first time, he spoke.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I tried.”
And one of them stepped forward. Laid her hand on his chest.
“You did,” she said.
“More than most.”
Then she was gone.
And the others faded.
The war ended.
Or maybe it didn’t.
Some men came home.
Some didn’t.
The boy—no longer a boy—walked away from the hospital with blood still under his fingernails and the surgeon’s kit in his hand.
He didn’t go home.
There was nothing there.
Instead, he walked.
Town to town.
And sometimes, he’d find a dying man on a cot or in a barn, and he’d kneel beside them. Hold their hand. Say a name.
And sometimes, in the corner of the room, he’d see her.
A woman in a blue dress, smiling through her tears.
And he’d nod.
Because he understood.
Some ghosts don’t haunt.
They search.
They wait.
They remember.
And when they find what they lost, they don’t scream.
They whisper.
They let go.
And the world, for one quiet moment, breathes.