. . .Alex jerked awake, her mind foggy, startled to see an unfamiliar man in parts of a tattered, dusty, gray uniform standing over her pallet grinning amicably down at her. "Are you the little feller who made the biscuits last night?" A twig dangled from his mouth as he chewed the words out around it.

Alex blinked her eyes, trying to adjust them to the pale light of dawn. "Yes. Who are you?"

"I'm Seth Jones. I was pullin' guard duty last night and some of the boys brought me a plate of your goodies. I just wanted to thank you kindly."

"You're welcome. But it really wasn't much," Alex apologized.

Seth pulled the twig from his mouth and smiled a smile that showed the absence of several teeth. "Shoot. When you get used to eatin' wormy rations, anything out of the ordinary is really something. And that strawberry jam sure was way out of our ordinary lately. My Sarry Beth used to put up jam just like that." His words were in the present, but Alex could tell his mind was suddenly far in the past. Not wanting to break into his thoughts, for God knew these men had little diversion these days, Alex sat silently as the man described his 'Sarry' to her.

She was pretty sure that no man who looked and talked like Seth would be married to the goddess he described, but she nodded, knowing that in Seth's mind the woman was indeed a princess. After a long narrative of Sarry's beauty and prowess in the kitchen along with a few smiling reminisces of her ability in the bedroom as well, the man finally seemed to become aware of his surroundings.

"Um, I guess I'd better be getting me some shuteye," he said. "If I'm lucky I may get in a couple of hours before some smartass Yankee boys get to feelin' lucky."

"Are we that close to enemy lines?" Alex hoped he didn't hear the quiver in her voice. Suddenly she was glad she was still sitting on the hard ground, for she wasn't sure her trembling knees would have held her up. It had been one thing to join the army, it would be quite entirely another to actually fight.

"Close to 'em? Law, if you was to pitch a rock up there in them bushes, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you wouldn't hear a Yankee say ouch."

Hoping he was exaggerating, Alex couldn't help looking over her shoulder.

The man grinned another toothless grin. "You ain't seen no fightin' yet have you boy?"

At the shake of Alex' head, the grin left the man's face and he shrugged his shoulders. "Ain't no way on earth I can describe it to you. All's I can say is to keep your head down and don't stop lookin' over your shoulder. Billy Blue may be right there. Don't be a hero neither boy. Heroes bleed red just like the rest of us. If you get in a tight place, head for cover. The only reason to risk your neck is to save somebody else's."

He looked around the camp at the blanket covered bodies of the still-sleeping men. "You'll make friends pretty soon, and you'll want to know they're there for you, just like they'll want to know they can count on you." He reached over and patted Alex's arm. "You'll do just fine, son."

He walked away, stopping to hitch his faded suspenders over a grimy undershirt. Suddenly a series of tremendous explosions rocked on the ground. A loud cry went up through the camp as the sleeping men came awake on their feet with rifles in hand. Gray-clad men began swarming toward the gun encampments that ringed the camp. Rifle fire and mortar blasts split the early morning calm like a water-melon dropped on a hot rock. Alex heard a scream and realized it was coming from her own throat.

"Buck up, McKinley," she heard a gruff voice say. "You're gonna' have to earn your keep this morning. It seems we're gonna' have Yankees for breakfast." Through a fog combined of early morning mist and the smoke of a hundred rifles, Alex saw Kane's worried face. He tossed her rifle to her. "Find something solid and get behind it. Shoot anything in blue that moves toward you. Now git!"

She watched in terror as he darted from tree to tree, aiming his rifle with dead precision before pulling the trigger. Screams, shouts, curses and death rattles combined with the gunfire created a cacophony of sound that Alex knew she would remember for the rest of her life. She absentmindedly lifted her hand to swat a bee that buzzed by her ear, then realized with horror that a bullet, not an insect, had come dangerously close to ending her army career...and her life. She dove for cover behind the cedar log that had served as a makeshift bench for their impromptu dinner party the night before. She shuddered, knowing that most likely some of the screams and cries of horror and pain came from the mouths of the same men she had shared a meal with hours earlier. "Dear God, be with them all," she prayed fervently.

Suddenly a flash of blue caught her eye. A tall swarthy man dressed in Yankee blues was creeping around to the back of the camp. Alex knelt behind the log, took careful aim and watched the man fall back, almost in slow motion, clutching his chest, where a bright red stain crept through the rough blue wool. "Martha," he screamed as he fell. Alex felt a moment's pang of regret, then steeled herself against the emotion.

"That's for you, Ted," she said, ignoring the single tear that coursed its way down her grimy, smoke stained cheek.

A shell whined overhead and Alex again found her face in the dirt. Thank goodness I learn pretty fast, she thought. The air was thick with the acrid smell of burnt powder and heart rending screams and moans. Another shell whined its way past her, finding its target among the men in gray. Torn bodies leaped crazily in the air with the force of the hit, reminding Alex of a puppet show she and Teddy had watched together years ago. The bodies, or what was left of them, fell in a heap beside the crater left by the shell. With rising horror, Alex recognized the stained undershirt and suspenders of Seth Jones. She realized with a wrench of sadness that in that moment, on the side of a pine-treed Georgia foothill, Mrs. Sarah Beth Jones, goddess extraordinaire, had become a widow.

Kane found her there an eternity later, her rifle gripped in hands frozen into the shape of her rifle. He gently eased the gun from her fingers and shook her gently. "Alex, it's all over. The ones that could still move ran like rats back to their den." He pointed toward the heap of blue material that had been a soldier that morning. "You did a good job. He could have taken a lot of us out from back here. You saved a lot of lives with that shot. You're going to be a good soldier."

Alex looked up at him. "I couldn't move, Kane. I tried to make myself get up and join you. I knew you might need me. But I couldn't move."

Kane smiled in understanding. "Alex, you did okay. Hell, the first time I went into battle, I hid behind a tree praying I wouldn't soil my pants. I didn't. But I wasn't sure it wasn't going to happen. Don't be ashamed of being afraid. It's when you stop being afraid that you get yourself or somebody else killed."

Alex stood up. "What happened? How did they sneak up on us like that? Where was our sentry?"

"Bushwhacked. He never saw 'em coming. It happens, Alex. You have to be aware that at every moment there might be a Yankee behind every tree or every rock. And that they've got their sights on you."

The hair on the back of Alex' neck stood on end.
"This is all so pointless, Kane. We shoot at them. They shoot at us. When will it all be over. When we're all dead? What then?" She stumbled away from him, wanting desperately to get away from it all, at the same time knowing that, for the time being, she had left herself nowhere to run. She had chosen her path, and right or wrong she had to stay on it 'til it got here where she had to go. Wherever that was.

She stumbled over a log, then stifled a scream when the 'log' groaned. She gently reached down and rolled the man over so the early rays of sunshine could shine on his face.

"Mother?"

Before Alex could answer she saw a trickle of blood edging through the right side of his mouth, his eyes suddenly opening in wide amazement. For a moment he laid there, looking at something that Alex could not see, then his eyes slowly closed and his body went limp.

Alex whimpered. Where was the glory in this? She had listened with stars in her eyes when Marcus had described how he would ride into battle with sword and rifle held high, smiting the Yankee beast who dared to trample Southern soil. She looked at the young boy dressed in blue whose last word had been a plea for his mother. He looked much more like a tousle-headed boy than a beast. Where was the glory in taking his life? What damage had he done Southern soil, except to moisten it with his blood? Lying there with a forelock of blonde hair, now stained brilliant red, he looked very little like a Yankee beast and very much like a frightened boy, far from home. In that instant, hate drained from her body, leaving her feeling empty and alone. She knew, after watching life drain from the young boy dressed in blue, that she would no longer see Rafe Peterson's face above every blue uniform. Revenge would still be sugar sweet, when it came, but it would have to be Rafe Peterson himself that suffered, bullets she sent flying toward the enemy would be for her homeland and what it had lost, not for her own personal vengeance.

"Alex, I guess maybe you want to be by yourself right now, but it's really not safe out here. Come on back to camp." Kane's eyes followed her gaze. "Poor devil." He reached down and took the gun from the boy's hand. "What size boots do you wear, McKinley. I know they're too small for me."

Alex looked at him in horror. "You'd steal from a dead body?"

Kane's gray eyes turned steely. "Look, Private, I know this is tough for you to have to take in all at once, but you're in the middle of a war. This is the way you exist. I'm not stealing. Stealing is taking something that someone might miss, need or want again." He knelt down and began unlacing the boy's boots. "I promise you that wherever this boy is right now, he don't need his boots or his gun."
---BL

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